She tilted her head innocently, letting her very long hair tumble down at an angle. "We�ll be sleeping in the same house. All together, like a slumber party. You guys are spending the weekend here, right?"
"Yeah. We are."
"Where�s everyone else? Are they still in the cave?"
"Uh, no."
"Are they on the road?"
"Uh �" I actually had to think about this one. "Yeah," I finally got out. "Yeah, we were driving Jed�s truck back, and I got out to walk. It was quicker."
"You guys have a good time caving?"
"Yeah, it was a good trip." I opened the screen door to see her better. "First time in Devil�s Hollow for Gunther and Marv. First time for anyone in two years. Of course, you probably know that."
"Oh yeah, Mom told me all about it." So she�s Mrs. Coten�s daughter. "I�m glad she let people go back in there."
"Us too. It�s a great cave."
"I�ve been inside there a few times, but not really to any other cave," she said. "You guys probably know more about them than-" she looked down at her leg. A small boy was holding onto it, probably four. "Hey, R.J., you want to meet our guest?"
He stuck his face into her jeans and shook his head. I knelt down to his eye level. "Hi, I�m Ted. What�s your name?" I always feel like a grandmother when I talk to kids, but it usually seems to work.
This time, it didn�t. "Come on, say hello, R.J." Sheila nudged him with her arm, and he reluctantly looked at me.
"Hello." Then he ran off to a beat up couch to watch a beat up TV set. Sounded like cartoons.
"He�s kinda quiet," Sheila said.
At this moment a very loud curse snapped both our necks to the bottom of the driveway. Gunther was at the bottom of it, picking himself off the ground. No sign of Jed�s truck. He walked another few feet, tripped on my loose pant leg, fell again, and cursed again. "Quiet. What�s that like?" I joked.
She giggled. "It�s nice. You should try it sometime."
"Yep, that�s vintage Gunther," I said as he tripped a third time. "We�ve got two more in the truck, Jed and Marv. Plus Harry, but he won�t be here until tomorrow."
"Wow, we�re going to have a full house tonight," Sheila said.
"Who�s here normally?"
"Mom, Taylor, R.J. and me."
Nuts. Taylor must be her husband. "Is Taylor the guy with the," I was going to say �fatal case of hockey hair� but decided against it, "mustache?"
"Yeah, that�s my brother." Brother?! Not living with a husband! Bingo! "Taylor gave you the key, right? Mom said something about you leaving without it, so she sent Taylor after you."
Gunther finally reached the porch, breathing like someone who was just held underwater for two minutes. "We don�t have the key," he managed to gasp.
Sheila wrinkled her brow. "Maybe he didn�t give you the key."
"We had it," Gunther panted out, "but it was in the Lexus."
"Wow, you guys have a Lexus! That�s a nice car. Why can�t you get it out?"
"The car�s gone!" Gunther said, sending a blob of spittle to its death on the screen door.
"You drove it away?" she asked, her brow puzzled.
Gunther shook his head. "No, stolen."
"Sheila looked at Gunther, a little frantic. "Stolen? You mean, like, someone broke in and hotwired it?"
"No, the keys were hidden under the back tire. Someone must have spied on us." Gunther looked at me. "I saw you talking with her for five minutes. What the hell were you two talking all about, you didn�t think to bring up Marv�s car?"
"You know, just talking. I was going to bring it up," I said.
"Do you have another key?" Gunther asked Sheila. "Marv and Jed are stuck at the gate. We took two cars over there."
"Mom�s should be inside," she said. "Come in, you�re letting all the heat out."
It felt as cold in the house as it was in the cave, but Gunther and I hopped inside and closed the door. Up close, the couch looked worse, like something the Salvation Army wouldn�t accept as a donation. It looked like it was covered in dog hair, but I didn�t see a dog. "Hope you brought your lice shampoo," Gunther whispered to me.
Sheila went into the kitchen, and came back with a key hanging off of a strip of red bandanna. "This should open it."
Gunther took the key, inspecting it as if he could eyeball if this was the right key or not. "Hey, you don�t know some guy with stringy hair and a mustache who lives around here, do you?"
"That�s my brother, Taylor. He left a note, said he went to Kroger with Mom." So that�s why she was alone in the house. Didn�t question my good luck on that matter.
Gunther went toward the door with the key, then turned around. "Hey, you don�t know who could have done this, do you? Any car thieves or criminals around here?"
She thought for a second. Three or four of them, actually. Then, "No idea. This stuff doesn�t happen here."
"You didn�t see or hear anything suspicious over the past couple hours?"
"I was at work until an hour ago. Picked R.J. up from kindergarten, came over here, didn�t see anything that could have been a car thief."
"Crap. That doesn�t help us." Gunther left that as his goodbye, and ran out the door to the locked gate.
Sheila slowly began pacing the kitchen. The broken linoleum creaked. "So you guys really had your car stolen? Here?"
"Yep. Kinda hard for me to believe right now, like we�ll find it behind a tree and just go back to the weekend plan."
"I guess you guys are kinda cool about this in New Jersey, but this is, uh, new for me."
"I never knew anyone who had a car stolen before, either."
"God, right out from under you? When you were in the cave? I guess it could have been, well, anyone. Right?"
I thought for a couple seconds. "No."
"Why not?"
"Because of the gate. It�s still locked. Even if a random stranger walked down the road and took Marv�s car, he�d hit the locked gate and be stuck. There�s no way around it."
Sheila spoke slowly. "So the thief had a key to the gate."
"Yeah. So who�s got a key?"
Her eyes grew huge. "Just us."
Jed immediately sniffed something wrong with this. Gunther got the key to him, and he got Marv and the truck back without any problems. As Marv was calling the police, Jed began grilling Sheila.
"That�s peculiar," Jed said. "Your own road is gated and you don�t bother keeping a key for it?"
"Well, Mitch is a peculiar guy," Sheila said. "Mom takes him food sometimes. I think he�s got some, uh, mental issues to deal with."
"Maybe he�s been setting this up," Jed said. "Get the alibi that you don�t have a gate key, then wait for a nice car to drive into your lap, and POW!"
"Mitch isn�t like that at all," Sheila said. "He doesn�t hurt anyone, and he�s definitely not involved in this."
"I�m sure he seems like a nice guy, but the two remaining keys are with him and your mom -"
"My mom didn�t do this either!"
"I�m not saying she did, I�m just �"
"Guys?" Marv said, cupping a hand over the phone mouthpiece. He had been very subdued since his initial boulder-tossing reaction to having his car stolen. "Whoever watched me hide the key could have also watched me put the gate key in the glove compartment."
"Damn, you�re right," Jed said. "That felt like a good lead, too."
The police didn�t show until two and a half hours after Marv called. We all took a slow walk of the entire path, checking for some clue. I found a lot of cigarette butts, at least a hundred, but nothing else. Jed walked back up Mitch�s driveway and looked around by himself for a few minutes, then ran back down the driveway. I doubt Mitch noticed. I doubt Mitch could see out his windows.
It took two and a half hours after Marv�s call for a police cruiser to arrive. Marv explained what happened, and the cop jotted down notes. He was surprised that we left the keys right out in the open. The cop walked with Marv to the cave entrance, where the Lexus got snatched. He left the cruiser, because he didn�t want to trash its underside. He looked all along it for something suspicious, but he didn�t even find the cigarette butts I spotted.
The cop said there were mixed chances on retrieving the car. It was an expensive car and would stand out more, especially in the wilds of West Virginia. On the other hand, it didn�t have Lojack, and whoever took it might be hiding it, taking it to a chop shop, or shipping it out of the country. He didn�t know of any car theft in the area, but he�d call Mrs. Coten�s number if anything came up in the next few days. Otherwise, he�d call Marv�s home phone.
After a second lecture about not leaving keys in easy access areas, the cop pulled away. He passed Taylor and Mrs. Coten coming in, their pickup loaded with groceries. Mrs. Coten was apparently cooking for us all weekend. I figured we�d be going to Shoneys the whole time.
"What was the police doin� here?" she asked, hopping out of the passenger seat of the pickup before it even stopped. When she found out, she was in silent shock. She finally managed to get out "I�m sorry," as if she was responsible. I saw Marv give her a glare she didn�t notice.
Taylor was more vocally shocked. "What! Someone took your car? That sucks, man! Oh! That just sucks! That was the Lexus, right? And here? Man, no one�s ever had a car stolen around here! You got insurance on it, right?"
Gunther poked me hard at this, and pointed to Taylor, nodding his head. "Worst acting I�ve ever seen," he whispered.
"What time did you guys leave for shopping?" Jed asked. "We want to figure out the timeframe this could have happened in."
"I don�t know exactly when, but it was a good couple hours after you all left. Wish those pine trees weren�t blocking my view. Coulda been a parade on that road and I wouldn�t seen it."
"I didn�t see anything, but I was taking a trail above the road," Taylor said. "It�s shorter than walking the road. "The damn guy could have driven right by me in the woods. Wish I was walking it that day."
"The two of us went shoppin� when he came back," Mrs. Coten continued, "that was � uh, I don�t know what time, but somewhere early afternoon. Shoppin� always takes me a time, I like picking out all my food. After that, Sheila comes back from work with R.J., you guys come back, you call the police, and then we come back."
Everyone had questions they wanted to ask, but most of them weren�t the sort that could be politely asked. We were planning on spending the weekend with them. So we ate dinner, pretended nothing was wrong.
Dinner was a huge chicken Mrs. Coten carved slices off of like a turkey. Little potatoes, green beans, black eyed peas, and dinner rolls. Plus an apple pie from the market she slid in the oven to warm up. "I always like cooking big, but I don�t have enough people here to eat it all." That oven put out a lot of heat, enough to make the kitchen feel only semi-frigid.
Her oblong kitchen table only sat four, so Marv, Gunther, Jed and I were at it. I was looking forward to having dinner with Sheila, and an excuse to talk with her some more, but I got stuck with my usual gang of idiots. The Cotens all ate off TV trays in the living room. I felt weird about displacing the table�s regular inhabitants, but Mrs. Coten said it was no big deal. "We end up just watching TV most days, so it�s no problem for us." They were watching one of R.J.�s videos, Aladdin, I think.
More importantly, it put a wall and sound barrier between them and us. Jed was halfway through his chicken, when he leaned into the middle of the table. "So who do you think did it?" he whispered.
Gunther leaned in equally far, his head almost touching Jed�s. Gunther stuck a thumb toward the living room. "Taylor. Poor redneck sees a real nice car, sees where the keys are hid, and takes it. End of story. He�ll probably never see $60,000 in his life, much less on wheels."
"That car was sixty thousand dollars!?" I hissed at Marv.
"I was paying it over five years," Marv muttered, staring at his untouched chicken. "Four and a half to go."
"Taylor was right there with us," Gunther continued. "He could have watched us hide the keys real easy. He said himself that he put the gate in last year. Comfort zone for trapping us."
"But he�s too obvious," Jed said. "If I was stealing a car, I wouldn�t introduce myself half an hour before I did it."
"This guy�s got an I.Q. of 12," Gunther said. "He�s not exactly Einstein. Probably got the full benefit of the West Virginia school system. Reading, writing, and railing your sister."
"You wanna shut up?" I shot at Gunther.
"Mitch is the better bet," Jed said, eating the last of his green beans. "He�s right there, he�s obviously got a screw loose, and he�s got the gate alibi set up real well. At least in his mind."
"Mitch makes Taylor look like a rocket scientist," Gunther said. "He wouldn�t have the brains to put a key in the ignition, never mind put it in gear and drive it away."
"He�s already a criminal. I was looking around his place, and I think I saw a still."
"You mean for moonshine?" I asked.
"I think. I�m no expert on moonshine manufacturing, but it sure as hell looked like one."
"Bootlegging�s not really a crime since that whole twenty-second amendment thing," Gunther whispered.
"Twenty-first," Marv said. "Twenty-second was on term limits."
Gunther rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Some sheep-diddler wants to make hooch, so what. Doesn�t make him a car thief."
"But it does mean he�s operating outside the law," Jed said, stealing some green beans from Marv�s plate. "Moonshine could be a gateway crime for him."
"That�s the stupidest thing I�ve ever heard," Gunther said.
"This from the expert on the twenty-second amendment?" Marv asked.
"You�ve been quiet this whole time, Marv," Jed said. "This is your car, after all. You think it�s Mitch?"
"Mrs. Coten let us all come down here," Marv replied, quieter than even the rest of us. "This could be her revenge."
"Don�t buy it," Jed said flatly. "We may be getting some comeuppance later down the line, but she doesn�t even know it was Ted and I yet."
"Does she?" Marv asked. "She was �grocery shopping� for about four hours as I figure. She could do a lot of things on that time, stash a Lexus pretty far away."
"Taylor was with her the whole time," I said. "That either means that both of them didn�t do it, or this is some sorta Ma Barker crime family. And this isn�t a Ma Barker crime family."
"Well who do you think did it?" Jed asked. "It�s got to be someone?"
I had been thinking of Sheila all afternoon, so I hadn�t thought about suspects. "Why does it have to be someone in this house? Strangers steal cars all the time. Could be someone followed us out here and got lucky."
Jed made a sour face. "Even with the gate key?"
"I�m just having a hard time thinking someone here�s a thief."
"Who�s a thief?" We all whipped our heads to R.J., standing in the kitchen in Jacksonville Jaguars pajamas with feet. He got changed to his pajamas for dinner.
"Uh, the bad person who took Marv�s car," Jed said. "That�s the thief, R.J."
He stood there silently for a few seconds. "Oh." He ran back into the living room.
"How much did he catch?" Gunther asked.
"The question is, how much did he understand?" Jed added. "That kid could rat us out."