If Mashed Potatoes Could Dance (15 page)

I looked at her a long time, but she didn’t betray any hidden feelings or knowledge, at least not that I could interpret. “Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry,” I said, switching gears. “I should have introduced my friend when we got here. This is Jake Swanson. Jake, this is Leroy Norton and Georgina Carlisle.” As I made the introductions, I kept at least part of my attention on Georgina. I wanted to see her reaction when I mentioned Jake’s name. She bent her head down and put the tissue to her nose,
which meant either she was trying to avoid looking at him or her nose was running.

“Oh, you’re the man I talked to on the phone, the one who helped with the cooking school sleepover,” Leroy said as he stood, shook Jake’s hand, and then sat down again.

Georgina finally glanced at Jake and nodded but didn’t say anything. She didn’t act like she recognized him at all. I didn’t know what I’d expected her to say or do, but based on her indifferent response to Jake, I couldn’t be sure if she knew what her brother had done to him when we were younger, or cared at this point. She appeared to be nothing more, nothing less than a grieving widow. I switched gears again.

“How did it come about that you called Jake?” I asked Leroy.

Leroy scratched his head. “When our hotel rooms got messed up, I called the police. Jake answered.”

Jake was the fake sheriff, not the real one. There had to be a crossed wire somewhere.

“How did you get his number?” I said.

“The Internet. I searched for Broken Rope police.”

I’d have to repeat that search later, but for now his story kind of made sense. Maybe. Maybe Jake’s reputation as our fake sheriff had given him some sort of notability that had led to him being mistakenly tagged in that vast Internet universe as an officer of the law.

“You called the police? Must have been important.”

“It was. I didn’t know who else to call, and I thought they could direct me to someone who could help.” He nodded at Jake. “It worked.”

I didn’t point out that if the hotel can’t help, people usually call the tourism bureau or the travel council, either of which might have put him in contact with Jake anyway since Jake
often helps work the phones for those agencies. Nevertheless, Leroy had done what he thought he should do, and he was right, it had worked. However strange the circumstances had been, the foodies had stayed in Broken Rope overnight.

I didn’t know if what I wanted to do next was okay to do. I thought it might be mean, or that it might constitute interfering with the official investigation; perhaps it was just stupid. If Jim and Cliff hadn’t told Georgina about her brother, I thought they would soon enough, though.
I
wasn’t a part of the official investigation, so therefore I was doing nothing improper, but something bit at my gut and told me I wasn’t making the right choice when I spoke next. Still, the desire to dig for more information was too strong to resist.

“Georgina,” I said as I leaned forward and put my hand over hers, the one that was on her thigh, “I have something distressing to tell you. I hate to add to your trouble.” I really, truly did. “But it seems that Damon has escaped from jail. They haven’t been able to find him.”

Stuart sucked in a gasp, and Leroy made some sort of rumble noise. Georgina, on the other hand, kept her gaze steady on mine as she said, “I know, I know he’s escaped. I didn’t want to worry Stuart. The Kansas authorities contacted me immediately. I don’t like to think about Damon. He’s the evil mark on the family. I don’t like to think about him, and I don’t like to talk about him. And I didn’t want to worry Stuart,” she repeated.

She had known and she hadn’t been honest with her own cousin. She’d lied to all of us. I really wished I knew why.

“But, Georgina, don’t you think his escape could possibly, maybe have something to do with what’s happened here?”

“No! I mean, no, Damon’s not a killer.”

“But think about it, have you talked to the local police
about your brother, about the escape?” They knew, but she didn’t know I’d learned it from them.

“No, of course not.”

Stuart and Leroy exchanged glances.

“Georgie, I’m sorry, but you need to tell the local police,” Stuart said. “Honestly, I didn’t even think about Damon. I didn’t know he was in jail. I didn’t know anything about an escape. I just thought he’d left town all those years ago. You need to tell the police,” Stuart said.

Tears started to run from Georgina’s eyes, a steady stream down her cheeks. “You’re probably right. Oh, you’re right, of course. I just don’t want to…” She didn’t finish.

“You need to talk to them right away,” Stuart said. “I can take you there now.”

Jim’s office was only a few doors down. If he wasn’t in, someone would be. I hoped they wouldn’t figure out I’d been involved in her taking this information to them. Stuart, Leroy, Georgina, none of them questioned how I knew about Damon. Maybe they thought I or Jake really did have some official role in the investigation.

Jake!

I looked at him. I hadn’t told him about the escape either. He was handling it well. He blinked at me but kept a strong posture as he nodded. I’d apologize later.

“All right, then.” Georgina stood but didn’t seem to know which direction to move her feet until Stuart took her arm and helped her out of the shop.

For a long few beats, Leroy, Jake, and I watched the back of the door. It seemed so much quieter in the lobby without them.

“You know,” Leroy finally said, “we’ve had some crazy stuff going on on the bus. Things missing.”

“What kind of things?” I asked as Jake took Georgina’s seat, I thought maybe to recover from the shock I’d delivered a moment ago.

“Money, a wallet, other things. I’ll talk to the others.”

“Did you tell the police?” Jake asked, his low, even voice surprising me.

“No, I didn’t think it mattered much considering there are worse things happening. I should tell them now, though, shouldn’t I?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Immediately.” In the back of my mind, I thought I should let Jim and Cliff know how helpful Jake and I had been in getting people to talk to them. I was on a roll. I wondered who else we might convince to talk to the police.

It took Leroy a second to process that
immediately
meant right now. He needed to get in line behind Georgina. Finally, he left, too, presumably following the other two.

“You know how to clear a room,” Jake said after the door closed behind Leroy.

“I’m so sorry, Jake. I forgot to tell you about Damon. Sally distracted me, and then we hurried over here…”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said as he held his hand up. “It’s fine.”

“I wish I knew if we learned anything from those three. I’m not even sure how I got to the questions I got to.”

“Instincts. You might want to consider a life in law enforcement, or maybe as an attorney.”

“Na, you gotta sell your soul to be a lawyer. As a cooking teacher, I get to feed souls. Much better.”

“I see.”

“Come on, I don’t know what else to do downtown. Let’s
go to the Monroe House and get that over with. You promised Sally you’d search that terrible place for her,” I said.

“Let me cancel my next show, and we’ll go,” Jake said with a big sigh.

I switched the sign on Stuart’s door to
GONE TO LUNCH
and closed it behind us.

The Monroe House was located on the eastern outskirts of
Broken Rope. At one time it had been the first landmark of Broken Rope for travelers moving west through the country. It was big and intimidating, and Abel Monroe would greet people with a shotgun in one hand and a whiskey bottle in the other. He, along with a group of men whose names Jake could recite but I couldn’t, founded Broken Rope. Abel had apparently been the money guy and had built the mansion and farmed the land with the hope that there would be more mansions built and more huge plantation-like farms in the area. But it wasn’t to be. Broken Rope turned into a true Old West town instead of one that espoused southern hospitality. Abel’s greetings along with his abolitionist leanings made him a Broken Rope legend. It was thoughtful of him to die in a gruesome and mysterious way, as did most of the other Broken Rope legends.

Unlike the land around Suzi Warton’s bed-and-breakfast,
the land around the Monroe House was only sparsely developed. In Sally’s day, a smattering of other homes had dotted the area, but they had been cheaply built and hadn’t survived the test of time. Like Sally’s house, they were gone, but a new developer had recently built five homes down the road from the Monroe House. I didn’t know who the developer was, but I suspected he was licking his chops in anticipation of the day the Monroe House came down and he could begin building more neighborhoods in its place.

To get to the area, you had to maneuver a sharp downhill curve. The turnoff to the curve was camouflaged enough that I always had to slow down substantially to make sure I didn’t miss it. The Monroe House was so off the beaten path that even the tourists who’d heard of Abel Monroe didn’t really want to take the trip out to see it. I knew Jake had visions of restoration and a big tourist draw, but even without my prejudice, I wondered how well it would play.

The mansion’s remote location and somewhat treacherous route of access as well as the fact that no one had really lived there for years added to its Halloween appeal. Teenagers could go to the Monroe House and scare themselves and each other without much interruption. I knew Jim didn’t let things get too out of hand, but I was glad I was well past having any desire to act on such silliness. In fact, the noises I’d heard and shadows I’d seen when I was sixteen had kept me far away ever since. I’d probably driven by it only a few times since my high school days. I hadn’t even taken the time to look at the new houses down the road.

Today, though, there was more happening than we’d expected.

“She doesn’t look pleased. She’s sitting over there,” I said to Jake as I parked the Nova.

Sally was seated on a patch of open grass across the street from the house. She looked unhappily at the two big machines parked in the side yard and the official-looking men in construction clothes in the front.

“These machines weren’t here just this morning,” she said as we joined her.

“Sally just said that the machines weren’t here this morning, Jake.”

He bit at his bottom lip. “I can’t believe I haven’t been able get the Historical Society to help me on this. I’ll get a hold of someone about the diary this afternoon. No matter what, though, look at that place. It should never be destroyed.”

I made a sound that could be interpreted as either agreement or not. Truth was, I didn’t think the house could come down quickly enough. It was huge, two or three stories, depending on whether you included the attic level. Nothing about it had been straight or even planed in the time I’d known of its existence. I had no idea what color it had been originally; now it was a chipped and faded something–or–other. The windows and front door were in just the right position to give the house the look of a jack–o–lantern face—and not a fun, cute one.

“Tell Jake he’s got to get in there right now,” Sally said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Please,” she said.

“She’d like for you to check out the place,” I said.

“Most particularly the attic. There are window boxes in the attic. Check those,” Sally said.

I relayed the rest of the message to Jake, who nodded agreeably.

“Wait here,” he said before he jogged across the street and toward the front door, which hung at an angle from a single hinge.

Jake was stopped before he could get much farther than about halfway up the front walkway. Two of the big construction men literally stepped in front of him and halted him with their larger bodies. Sally and I moved closer, and I could hear a heated exchange but not specific words. Before we could make it all the way across the street, we (well,
I
—Sally continued on) had our own construction-man encounter.

“Can I help you?” he said, his big arms made bigger as he crossed them in front of his chest.

“I’d like to join my friend.”

“Can’t let you. This place is condemned. You can’t get any closer. It’s coming down in a week.”

“I know it’s coming down, but I didn’t think it was condemned. Do you have the paperwork on that?”

The big man rubbed at his nose. “Don’t need papers, you’ve got my word.”

Though technically his word wasn’t good enough, I got the message loud and clear: go any farther and we’d be forcibly removed. I nodded at him and took one step back. This was pure intimidation. It wasn’t right, but it was threatening enough that I didn’t want to push my luck. I didn’t want to go into the house anyway, but there was most definitely something about not being allowed to that made me think twice about it.

Sally was on the front porch. I couldn’t make out exactly what she was doing, but it seemed she was trying to go through the front door. Every time she tried, she bounced backward. I might have thought it humorous at another time and place. Now, I just felt goose bumps rise as I wondered what was going on.