“I’m sorry!” I shout after her. I pick the phone tree off the ground, shoving it into my backpack. I feel like maybe I should run after her and reassure her that I appreciate the gesture, but there isn’t time. I’ve got to get to Mrs. Klitch’s.
At first I think I’ll have to climb Mrs. Klitch’s fence. I even get one of the floor mats out of Rhonda to toss over the barbed wire. But then I remember there’s more than one key on the rabbit’s foot, so I try a couple till I find one that opens the front gate.
Bingo.
Inside, Mrs. Klitch’s place is startlingly perfect, aside from smelling a little musty. The walls are bare and the carpets are straight. All her coats and scarves are on the coatrack. All her boots and sneakers are lined up by the door, by height. She might have sat outside in snow boots drinking Beast and made lumpy, childish sculptures out of concrete and garbage, but it looks like Mrs. K was a little OCD.
That is, until I get into the living room, where there’re books flung around and a lamp tipped over on the carpet. It looks like someone tried to catch themselves on the bookshelf and took down half the library with them.
More signs of struggle. It’s a crime scene all right.
Two cans of beer are on the coffee table in front of the couch, each of them on a coaster, as if Mrs. Klitch was entertaining a guest right before she died. I think of how she invited me in that time and my heart jumps, thinking about how her killer must have been the next visitor.
I go into the kitchen and grab some sandwich baggies for evidence, then kneel down by the coffee table and put on my gloves to investigate further. Sure enough, both of the beer cans are half-full. Mrs. Klitch was definitely not the kind of person to leave half-finished beers. One of these cans probably has incriminating fingerprints all over it.
Just then, there are police lights on the wall and I look out the window to see the sheriff’s smiley-faced car approaching. There’s no point in trying to escape. Rhonda’s right outside and if I run they’ll just tow her and keep her as collateral. So I walk out through the front door with my hands up in surrender, still holding the two beer cans. “Don’t shoot!”
“Goddamnit, Bushman,” Staake barks. “Are you drunk?”
“I can explain,” I say, as he pushes open the unlocked gate.
“I can, too,” he snaps. “Kippy Bushman, you have the right to remain silent, anything you say . . . blah blah blah.” He snaps the handcuffs on my wrists, not even bothering to take the beers from me.
“Hey, what are you even doing?”
“Theft, obstruction of justice, breaking and entering, and battery—we got a call from Libby Quinn plus some hot tips from a concerned friend of yours. Looks like it’s my lucky day. Gonna finally get you out from underneath my coattails, you gall-danged nut.”
“Okay, I can really explain,” I blurt, rattling the beer cans. “But first of all you probably need to fingerprint these. It looks like Mrs. Klitch had a visitor and—”
He snatches the beers from me and dumps their remaining contents onto my head, then tosses the empty cans into the bushes. Rivulets of old Beast sneak into the corners of my mouth, leaving a chalky taste. I can’t help but think I might be tasting a dead lady’s backwash.
“Why don’t we add a DUI to the list of charges, eh?” he asks, licking his lips.
Which “concerned friend” called with the hot tip? Mildred? I didn’t tell her where I was going, though. Did Rob notice the keys missing? No. It doesn’t really seem like Rob notices much of anything. “What, were you following me again?”
Staake grunts. “Not this time.”
The hair on my arms stands up. “Well someone’s definitely following me.”
“Get in the car,” he barks.
“There’s a crime scene in there, you know,” I plead, stumbling toward the vehicle. “One that you maybe should have looked at, if you cared about anything.”
“Watch your head,” he says, and cradles my head as I duck into the backseat.
I bite my lip. I know that somewhere inside Sheriff Staake is an okay man, a father who doesn’t want his daughter hanging around with guys like Colt. I know that Mildred’s okay, too, and that Libby’s probably fine in certain ways as well—or at least innocent—despite being kind of crazy. Not that I can really say anything about irrationality at this point, having tongue kissed two different boys in twenty-four hours, one of them being my dead friend’s brother and the other her boyfriend.
But as I slump in the backseat of Sheriff’s Staake’s car and try to wipe the stale beer out of my eyes with my shoulder, it occurs to me that there are just too many distractions—too many people who are mean or vindictive without being all the way evil. I mean, I’ve cleared Libby, who I really don’t like—and I don’t think Staake’s guilty of anything except laziness, really. Uncle Jimmy’s still dubious, I guess. But it still feels like I’m missing something. And, like, maybe no matter how hard I investigate, I’ll never find one real murderer among all these decoys. There’re just so many different kinds of bad.
Uggh, Ruth here. “Everyone is a bitch and I’m a sweetheart”—that’s how Kippy acts. “Oh I put my foot in my mouth sometimes and it’s cute, look at me.” It’s so friggin annoying. She lets her dad control her whole life, but she and I could be such a dream team if she’d loosen up. We could dress up skanky and start partying, practicing for college, all the boys would friggin love us. Big Daddy says she’s probably like everyone else in this town, brainwashed into being docile and polite, but the thing about Kippy is she’s smart—like not just straight-A smart, but like, sneaky smart, not that I’d ever give her that kind of compliment face-to-face. All I mean is, if she ever decided to kick the sweetie-pie routine, she’s definitely got it in her to be a badass friggin psycho.
SNARED
I’ve been sitting in this cell for about an hour now and it’s frigging cold. Luckily I’ve got my coat. The young guy at the desk even let me keep my backpack and stuff, though he did take away my cell phone, flashlight, and bear spray. “Attack objects,” he muttered, sounding like a robot. Anyway I’ve already finished all my math homework and now I’m decoding Ruth’s diary, which is taking forever, but there’s nothing else to do.
I’ve only made it through like one entry and I’ve already got to take a break. Ruth’s handwriting hurts my eyes—but also, if Jim Steele was as obsessed with her as it sounds, all she had to do was reject him a little and his strings would snap. I’m kicking myself thinking I didn’t look hard enough at his place because he definitely had something to do with this. He was probably the one following me around and ratting on me, too. He’s a schemer with a temper. Ruth was probably just another animal for him to stuff.
I take off my scarf and wrap it around my legs to get a little warmer. They forgot to give me a blanket and the cot mattress is totally bare. But no matter how many times I yell, nobody comes to see me. Colt’s up in the Lady’s Cell—the one in the break room—for his own protection, so I’m down in the basement with the general population, which doesn’t really make any sense. Granted, it’s not like there’re tons of prisoners rattling their bars like in some pirate movie. It’s just me and Bart, the town drunk, who I hear gets put in here regularly for reaching behind the counter after bar close. He’s sitting in the cell across from me with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, staring at me.
“You’re very pretty, Miss Lady,” he slurs. “You betcha.”
“Hi Bart.” I really need to go to the bathroom, but the toilet in my cell is out in the open and I don’t want to pee in front of him.
I’m contemplating public urination when I hear footsteps on concrete and Sheriff Staake comes sauntering into view. “Well, well, well,” he says. Looking at him, I just know he’s pretending he’s in some sort of old Western movie. “If it isn’t Little Miss Diane Soy Sauce.”