“Sounds like you have a plan,” I said.
“I do indeed,” he said.
Of course, to me it sounded like a flawed plan, if not a downright demented one. About the only sign of gentrification I’d seen in Clay County was the petition they’d been circulating to have the county's first traffic light installed in Clay Hill—and they were doing that only because they didn’t want to be the last county in the state without one, not because more than three cars had ever reached the intersection at the same time.
But maybe I was being short-sighted, and Ray Hamlin was a man of vision, in touch with the pulse of his community. I wished him a good afternoon and went to extract my car from the muddy parking lot.
I stopped for gas at the service station on the corner—it was a good ten cents cheaper than in Caerphilly. Of course, odds were it would turn out to be so low-test that even my faithful Toyota would balk at consuming it, but I could still hope. I was frowning as I watched how rapidly the dollars rolled by and how slowly the gallons crept, even at this cheaper rate, and wondering if Ray Hamlin also owned the gas station, and whether there was any point to going in to find out. I could buy a soda from the grocery end of the little office. Yes, and then—
“Not you too!”
Chapter 32
I looked away from the gas gauge to see Sheila Flugleman standing in front of me with her hands on her hips and an expression of righteous indignation on her face. “Not me too what?” I asked.
“So you’re going to sell your dung to him too!” she said. “First Patrick and now you! Of all the low-down, sneaky things!”
“I’m not selling anything to anyone right now,” I said. I glanced over at the gauge. Should I leave now, before Sheila really lost it, or stick around for the last couple of cheap gallons?
“Oh, so you just came all the way over to the Clay County Zoo to pet the goats,” she said. “Explain this, then!”
She held up one of the little brightly colored bags she sold the zoo dung in. At least it looked like one of her bags, though I noticed that the product name had been changed from Zooper-Poop! to Dung-ho! A catchier name, but the quality of the printed package had gone downhill.
“Ah,” I said. “Is this a rebranding effort or—?”
“That snake in the grass! Ray Hamlin! He pretended he was going to let me collect his dung, and all the time, he was planning this!”
She shook the Dung-ho! package in my face. Its contents rattled unappealingly. I backed up as far as I could without abandoning the gas hose.
“Well, for your information, I wasn’t here to negotiate selling the zoo animals’ dung to Hamlin,” I said. To my relief, the gas pump clicked off, and I pulled the nozzle out of my tank.
“So you say!” she said, shaking her finger at me. “I’ll have you both in court if—”
“Shut up and listen!” I said, gesticulating with the nozzle of the gas hose for emphasis. “I did not come over here to sell dung to Ray Hamlin! I had no idea he was in the market for it, and now that I know, I don’t care. I came to see if his zoo was a suitable place to house the animals that are currently living in highly unsuitable quarters in our backyard!”
She began backing away slightly. I wasn’t sure if she was cowed by the fierceness of my tone, or my waving the gas hose about.
“And we’ll be making that decision based on the animals’ welfare, not on what happens to their dung. And if you want to keep collecting the dung in our yard while the animals are there, go away and leave me alone!”
I hung up the hose with a flourish, ripped the receipt out of the slot, and threw myself into my Toyota. She stepped out of the way, and I pulled out of the gas station a little faster than was quite safe. Fortunately, the road was as empty in both directions as most of the roads usually were in Clay County, and after a mile or two, I calmed down.
And then it hit me. “First Patrick and now you,” she’d said. Had Sheila found out that Patrick was planning to sell his zoo's dung to Ray Hamlin?
Of course, dung seemed an unlikely motive for a murder. But Sheila had been genuinely angry. Livid. If she’d run into Lana-han when she was that mad at him...
Of course, given the peculiar circumstances of the murder, she’d not only have to be mad at Lanahan when she ran into him,
she’d also need to have a loaded crossbow in her hands. Still, probably a good idea to let Chief Burke know that there was bad blood between Sheila and the victim.
And probably an even better idea to see what was going on back at the house.
The cars were the first clue that things had gotten out of hand in my absence. As I neared home, I found myself in a pack of six cars following a tractor for the last several miles of the trip. Normally the tractors and I had the road to ourselves. And cars lined the road for the last half mile leading up to our house. Near the house, a young police officer was standing in the road, directing traffic. Not someone I recognized, so I deduced that Chief Burke had called nearby counties for reinforcements.