her phone was out. But if she came home Sun-day morning after a big fight with an unknown assailant, couldn’t she have walked over to a neighbor’s for help? Wouldn’t you do that?” “I don’t know,” I said .miserably. He made it all sound so plausible. Was Marla lying? “I’m not done,” Armstrong went on. “What she says was in the trunk of the Mercedes and what was actually in there. Looks like whoever put the shirt in the trunk ? and Shockley’s thinking is that she did ? dropped the keys in there by accident. That’s why she had to walk out to the road. She locked herself out of her own car. And … there was a fishing knife in the trunk, too. Covered with blood.”
I said, “Was there a gun in the car?”
Armstrong shook his head. “No gun.” I turned to my husband. “Tom, you know Marla. You know this can’t be true. Please tell me you’ll be able to help her. You can’t imagine how rough those cops were with her.”
He said earnestly, “Shockley won’t let me touch this case. Goldy, look. Tell me this. Do you really believe Marla’s story?” His eyes challenged me. “Why wouldn’t she ask that family to bring her to our place, where we could have taken care of her? She always wants you to get involved in her crises. What could possibly be her explanation for not coming to us that morning, if what she says is true?”
I stared at the grimy linoleum floor. Tom was right. Marla involved me in every aspect of her life. This had been true since her divorce from the Jerk, when we became best pals. But on Sunday, maybe she’d wanted privacy. She took great care with her appearance, and perhaps she’d been too humiliated by the way she looked. On the other hand, I’d visited her numerous times after the heart attack. She’d never looked great in the hospital, but she hadn’t once shunned my company. I shook my head. There didn’t seem to be an answer to Tom’s questions.
“I hope she has a very good lawyer,” Tom said quietly. He took my hand. “Because I will not be able to help her, and neither will you.”
I looked at him for a long time, long enough for Armstrong to pad out of the room. Long enough for a quartet of loud detectives to come in and buy vending machine cinnamon rolls, which they heated in the microwave while they chatted about a ring of thieves stealing credit cards.
“I need to go,” I announced stiffly. I pulled my hand from his.
“Goldy, I’m telling you,” Tom warned in a low voice, “Shockley will put me on suspension if I muck up his investigation. If Lipscomb, or one of the investors, or some enemy of Royce’s, framed Marla, we’ll find him. Please be patient. Forensics is out at the site right now. Maybe they’ll find something to clear her. I doubt any jury in this county would convict her on what we have at this point. There’s just not enough evidence.” He hesitated. “Can you talk to me about a motive she might have for fighting with Royce? Were they getting along?”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t think they were. He told me he was going to ask her to marry him, but it certainly doesn’t sound as if he proposed.”
His face was unreadable. Finally he said, “I’ve seen a thousand nutty cases fall apart. Please. If you really care for Marla, if you really want to help her, don’t land yourself in jail for obstruction of justice. Don’t get in that kitchen and start cooking and think, Oo, oo, I’m gonna hatch something up. Please?”
I said evenly, “You have no idea how badly De Groot and Hersey treated her. She cried out to me to help her and I couldn’t. Shockley is up to something, I’m telling you. This stolen-watch theory, for example. How lame can you get? He’s out for her blood, and he’s going to get it.”
“She’ll hire a good lawyer to get her out of this,” he assured me.
Beg to differ. I stood. Something Tom had said about the Mercedes had sparked a glimmer of an idea: a matter of life or death. That’s why the cops had broken into the trunk. And something Sam Perdue had related to me connected with it: They have to do that when it’s a matter of life and death. What I was thinking was bizarre beyond words, but at least it represented a glimmer of hope. And I had to get Marla out of Shockley’s clutches. “Would you do one thing for me? Actually, for Marla? Please?”
He looked dubious. “I can’t imagine what this is going to be.”
“You know how I worry about… what she eats. Her diet. Would you just bring up the jail menu for me on your computer? For lunch and dinner today? I’d feel better… knowing that she had some healthful options.”
He raised one eyebrow, but nodded. I followed him to his desk, where he punched a keyboard and finally came up with the day’s menu at the Furman County Jail.
For lunch at noon, the inmates were having tuna salad sandwiches, corn chips, and cookies. No help there.
For dinner at six, they were having chipped beef on noodles, green beans, rolls, and lime Jell-O for dessert.
Bingo.
14
I told Tom I needed to visit Macguire, do a few errands, check on Arch, and try to call Marla. He said he might be home late. He was still working the soccer arrests. I squeezed his hand and left quickly. I tried to 1 will away a pang of remorse. I wasn’t deceiving him yet, I told myself I just needed to help Marla. I drove away from the sheriffs department in a thick mist. When I saw the orange and green lights of a convenience store, I parked. The day Marla had had her heart attack, I’d been away catering. I’d always felt guilty for my absence, as if her lonely physical ordeal, the Flight-For-Life helicopter ride, the surgery, were events where I should have been beside her. Now, almost a year later, she’d been savagely beaten, accused of murder, and jailed. No amount of lowfat cooking and: cheery company were going to help her now.
I rummaged through my wallet, found the number I was searching for, then used the pay phone.
A crisp voice answered and I identified myself. I said, “I need to speak to General Bo Farquhar. ASAP.”
The voice responded flatly: “The general’s out in the field finishing trials on some equipment. You’ll have to call back later. Say,” ? I envisioned a bored glance at a blinking, state-of-the-art digital watch ? “fourteen hundred hours?”
“Listen up,” I retorted ominously, “don’t give me that baloney. Bo won’t want to know you were the one who prevented him from learning about a life-and-death situation affecting a family member. Because that’s what I have to report to him right now—”
There was so much immediate static that I thought I’d gotten the Marconi version of Go to hell. then the line crackled.
“Farquhar here.”
“It’s Goldy,” I began. The enormity of what I was about to tell him almost made me light-headed. I plunged ahead. “I have some bad news about Marla. She, I, we … need your help. We need to get her out of danger and clear her name.” Then I quickly outlined, through the crackling static, what had happened. Or what I thought had happened. How Marla had gone on a fishing trip with her boyfriend. How she’d been attacked at night and had to hitch a ride home. How it looked as if the assailant had also attacked Marla’s boyfriend, Tony Royce. Now Tony was missing, the police had found some bizarre evidence both in Marla’s car and strewn around the campsite, and Marla had been charged with murdering Tony Royce. I told him about the high water at Grizzly Creek, about the signs of a scuffle, the knife and the bloody shirt in Marla’s car. “Formal charges,” I concluded, “are going to be filed within two days.”
General Bo swiftly digested all this. “My dear,” he said promptly, “what can we possibly do?”
“My idea is illegal,” I said bluntly. “But I’m going to need you, a four-wheel-drive vehicle, camping equipment, and food for” ? I counted mentally ? “five people for two or three days, I think. And, uh, a good map of the back roads and the trails along Grizzly Creek.?
“Can do,” Bo Farquhar said.
I looked at my watch: eleven o’clock. “Can you be at my house with all that by five tonight?”
“You know,” he observed wistfully, “I’ve always wanted to help my sister-in-law. I’m very fond of Marla.”
“So you’re willing to help?”
“We’ve just finished our equipment trials here. My ankle’s healed up. I’ll be at your house at seventeen hundred hours,” he said crisply. His voice bristled with the authority that had become familiar when I was working for him. “I’ll bring the supplies.”
I hung up. My stomach growled fiercely. The mundane ? in this case, no food all day ? invariably intrudes when you least want to take care of it. I’d call Arch and then get over to the hospital. A place that made marvelous spring rolls was on the way. I’d take some to Macguire, too. Every time I’d been in the hospital, I’d spent a lot of time fantasizing about food.
