“Yeah,” Shane sniffed. “Names like what?”
“Sissy, homo, weirdo—silly stuff.”
Shane stopped crying. “What you do?”
Leonard stepped closer. “Nothing, really. Mostly cried a lot and tried to avoid them. Shane, some people fear anything they know may very well exist in them. So they call people bad names.”
“Then what’s your excuse?”
Leonard almost laughed. “I don’t have one. I, of all people, should know better.”
“Did Pa-pa call you names?”
“He was the main one.”
“He called me names, too.”
“He did?” Leonard was shocked. He’d thought his father had gotten past that nonsense.
“Yup, he sure did. Ignoramus. Nut case. Airhead. Schizzy was his favorite. I looked for it in the dictionary, couldn’t find it. When he really got mad at me, he’d say, ‘Shane,’” raising his voice, sounding remarkably similar to Leonard’s father, “if brains were tissue, you wouldn’t have enough to wipe a mosquito’s ass.’”
“Mother, your grandmother, treated you nice, didn’t she?”
“Oh, she’s the best. She treats me better than my real mother.”
“She’s worried about you, Shane. She doesn’t like the idea of you out here alone.”
Shane shrugged. “I’m all right.”
“Let’s head back home. I had some hot food Mother cooked for you. I left it at the motel. Come on, we’ll get her to scrape up a good home-cooked meal. Mmmm-uh, I can smell her cooking now.” He started walking away.
“I’m not going back.”
“Shane, what happens when the scouts come back? They’ll run you off, call the police.”
Shane gestured at the damaged cabin. “The scouts don’t come up here no more since the tree fell. I’m not going back.”
“Shane, surely you’d like a good meal and a hot… a hot cup of coffee.” He’d almost slipped and said hot bath.
Shane shook his head.
Leonard looked up and saw more buzzards circling above. “Shane… Shane, you can’t stay here. Come home with me.”
“I’m not going. I’m waiting for Kenny G to become one with nature. For some reason it’s taking a lot longer than usual.”
Leonard had a bad feeling what that entailed. “Are you sure you don’t want to come home with me?”
Shane answered by picking up the crossbow.
“Guess you are,” backing up. “Before I go back to Chicago, I’ll try to get back up here and see you.”
“Tell Grandma I…” He stopped… and waved.
“Sure,” backing his way to the trail. “I’ll tell her. I sure will.”
Chapter 15
Sheriff Bledsoe popped four Pepsid AC tablets into his mouth and washed them down with a swig of Pepto Bismol. “Ah!” smacking his lips. “Hits the spot.”
The phone rang. “Sheriff Bledsoe.”
A woman’s voice: “Ruth Ann did it.”
“Did what?”
“Poisoned her daddy. Check her back.”
“Her what? Who is this?”
“Not important.”
“Okay. What kind of poison was in the chili?”
Silence on the other end. Then: “You wanna play games, go buy yourself a PlayStation. You wanna solve a murder, go arrest Ruth Ann.”
“Ma’am, what’s your name? I’ll keep it anonymous.” The voice sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. “Who is this?”
“A concerned citizen,” and the line went dead.
“Darn it!” He took another swig of Pepto Bismol.
This case had his stomach twisted in knots. At first he thought Leonard was the culprit, but his alibi checked clean—unless he brought a box of Juggernaut Gopher Bait on the plane with him. Highly unlikely. Or he had someone in town buy it for him. Possible, but also highly unlikely.
Next grandma waltzed in and confessed, rekindling the fantasy the case might be solved soon; yet she didn’t offer a single shred of evidence to corroborate her story.
Maybe, if he were lucky, he thought as he holstered his .357 Magnum, Ruth Ann would confess and then he could return to the business of serving the good people of Dawson, all five thousand of them, by taking long, uninterrupted naps, which saved the city a tremendous amount of revenue.
Murder was a rare bird to land in Dawson. He couldn’t remember a single one occurring here. Now he was mired in a murder investigation straight out of a made-for-television mystery. Arsenic, money and enough suspects to organize a softball team.
If this case went unsolved, he would not win the next election. Any yahoo with a loud mouth could run against him and win by reminding the good people of Dawson of the one murder in decades that, thanks to Sheriff Bledsoe, did not get solved.
He got into his cruiser… and then jogged back inside and retrieved the Pepto Bismol.
Upon turning down Whisperwood Drive, Sheriff Bledsoe spotted a man walking down the sidewalk. The blue shirt, khaki shorts and sandals the man wore made him conspicuous in this modest neighborhood.
At the end of the block the man hesitated before turning the corner. Sheriff Bledsoe drove past the Hawkins’ residence, where Lester Hawkins was sitting on a porch swing. Lester waved.
Sheriff Bledsoe kept going, not noticing. He was in pursuit. Not a whiz solving murder cases, but he could do burglars and peeping Toms. Easily. He turned the corner… and, as he expected, the man was nowhere in sight. He parked and got out, trusty Magnum held to his side.
He moved stealthily, his two-hundred-fifty-pound frame low to the ground, eyes scanning the area like a surveillance camera.
“Freeze!” The man jumped and jerked both hands up, a box in one hand. “Eric?”
Staring at the gun, buck-eyed: “Hey, Sheriff.”
Sheriff Bledsoe holstered the Magnum. “What you doing back here?”
“I was… I came to see Ruth Ann.”
“Why didn’t you go to the front door? I saw you walk right past the house. What you got there?”
Eric stared at the box as if noticing it for the first time. “This? This is nothing.”
Sheriff Bledsoe took it from him and glanced at the back of the box. “What you doing with this?”
“It was here when I got here, Sheriff. Honest. You didn’t see me carrying nothing, did ya?”
“You could’ve hidden it under your shirt. What’s that I’m smelling?”
“Neck bones.”
“You know what I think, Eric? I think you’re up to no good back here.” He turned the box and read the front label. “Either you were peeking—” He stopped, eyes blinking, going from Eric to the box, to the neck bones, then
