2 Fog Over Finny's Nose Page 11

  Evelyn stood at the podium in front of the sparse crowd. It was a quiet, dazed-looking group that gathered in the tent, mostly silent except for the occasional furtive whisper regarding the previous day’s culinary brawl. Behind Evelyn hung a banner announcing The Dog House in red felt letters. As she spoke, she stroked a raggedy bundle under her arm. Occasionally the bundle poked a wet nose into the air and sniffed.

  Ruth waved to Mary Dirisi. With all that had been happening lately, the more police around the better, even if they were out of uniform and on their day off. She turned on the camera.

  She didn’t even have time to raise it to her eye before Bing strode into the tent, taking a position near the entrance. Just as quickly, Ruth saw Rocky in jeans and a sweatshirt march down the aisle to him.

  “You’ve got some nerve showing up here like you’re some sort of dog lover,” Rocky snarled in a not-so-soft whisper. His face was mottled, and his eyes flashed through the thick lenses of his glasses.

  “I can show up anywhere I want,” Bing barked. “And I am a lover of dogs. Normal dogs, not mental cases.”

  Ruth tensed and glanced at Mary. Evelyn continued to speak, her eyes fastened on the two men at the back of the tent. The dogs peered curiously from behind the short fences fastened together in makeshift kennels.

  “Rudy, for instance, would be an excellent dog for a house with older children.” Her words seemed as though they came out on autopilot. “He’s an energetic fellow, but with training he would become a loyal family friend.”

  Heads began to turn toward the ruckus in the back. Mary frowned. “Did you say the dogs are fixed before they are adopted out?” she asked loudly, perhaps to assert her presence, Ruth thought.

  “Yes, that’s a requirement to ensure we don’t increase the number of unwanted animals in the world.”

  “What are you, some kind of stalker?” Rocky snapped.

  “The only person stalking anyone is you, you freak,” Bing said with a laugh.

  “Do you do any consulting on dog training?” Bubby asked between nervous slugs of coffee. “My dachshund, Inky, has the worst habit of trying to eat the mailman. I have to pick up my mail at the post office now. It’s a real pain in the caboose.”

  Evelyn was just opening her mouth to reply when Rocky threw a punch that caught Bing under the chin and sent him over backward. With blood oozing from his mouth, Bing recovered and dove for him.

  They both went over in a heap.

  Evelyn raced down the center aisle. The three penned dogs in front of the podium leaped over their enclosure and followed, their barks deafening the audience.

  “Man,” Mary said. She got calmly to her feet and joined the fracas.

  “Stop! Rocky! Stop!” Evelyn screamed, trying to grab hold of Rocky’s arm. Her brother continued to slam his fist into Bing’s ribs.

  “Get off me, you psychopath!” Bing shouted with a kick that sent Rocky’s glasses spiraling through the air. “Don’t you have any more buildings to blow up?”

  Ruth put her camera on a folding chair and joined Bubby and a few others trying to corral the yapping dogs.

  Mary grabbed hold of Rocky’s ponytail where it connected to the scalp and yanked him upward. He came with a grunted obscenity and fists raised to strike his new assailant. Catching sight of the look on her face, he reconsidered.

  “Sit there,” she commanded, pointing to a chair. To Bing she said, “You, get up. Step outside.” Bing also followed directions and walked out of the tent. “I’ll be back to talk to you in a minute,” she said to Rocky. “If you move, I’m going to have to come after you, and I’m already irritated.”

  He watched her go while Evelyn held a handkerchief against a cut on his eyebrow.

  Ruth finally managed to grab hold of the smallest of the canine escapees. She took a leisurely pace back toward the pen, giving her plenty of time to eavesdrop on the conversation developing just outside the tent opening.

  “What’s the problem between you two?” Mary demanded.

  “There’s no—” Bing began.

  “Can the nonsense. It’s my day off, and this is the last thing I want to be doing, so get to it.”

  “All right. We had a disagreement last year. Rocky blames me for abusing a dog I adopted from Evelyn.”

  Bing saw Mary’s eyebrows rise in disgust and added, “I didn’t do anything to the dog. I gave him back because he was nuts.”

  “And?”

  “And Rocky blames me for reporting Evelyn to the authorities for having too many dogs on her property.”

  “And?”

  “And I didn’t do it. Rocky’s as nuts as the dog. The guy is a few eggs short of a dozen, you know what I mean?” Bing smiled warmly. “You should run a check on him. He’s been linked to some of that ecoterrorism stuff, you know.”

  Ruth thought about her late-night Internet research as she lingered near the tent opening.

  “Go home,” Mary said. “I’ll come and get you if I need to haul either of your butts in.” She turned back into the tent.

  Ruth busied herself making sure the dog’s collar was securely fastened.

  Rocky pushed Evelyn’s hand away from his eye and stood. “Officer, Mitchell is harassing me and my sister,” he said.

  “Sit down. He says you’re mad over the dog thing last year. What’s the deal?” Mary zipped her windbreaker against a breeze that wafted into the now- empty tent.

  “He beat our dog last year and mutilated him,” Rocky snarled. He blinked nearsightedly up at the officer.

  “Did you press charges?”

  Evelyn and Rocky looked at each other. “No,” she mumbled.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he said he’d turn Ev in to animal control for housing too many dogs.” Rocky wiped the blood away from his eye with his sleeve. “Funny how animal control got an anonymous tip a month later anyway.”

  “Okay, so we’ve got your word and his word. What happened just now to make you two lose your minds and start swinging?”

  “He was leering at my sister, smiling in that playboy arrogant way. He doesn’t have any business here. There’s no way he’s coming near my sister or her dogs again.”

  “He has as much business here as any other member of the public. What do you have to do with ecoterrorism?”

  Rocky’s mouth opened and closed. After a moment he said, “Nothing. I don’t know anything about that.”

  Mary eyed him closely. “Okay, for the moment. Now since you jokers have disrupted your sister’s presentation for the day, go home and cool off. Next time you go to jail.”

  Rocky shoved his bent glasses into his pants pocket and stalked off.

  Mary turned to Evelyn. “Has he always been a loose cannon?”

  Evelyn sighed, her thin shoulders hunched. “I guess so.” She looked down at her worn loafers. “It’s just because he loves me. He’s really protective. My parents died when we were young. Rocky has taken care of me since I was seven.”

  “Has he been in trouble before?”

  She hesitated. “No. Not since we were teenagers. He, uh, beat up someone years ago, a boy he thought was no good for me.” Evelyn cleared her throat. “He loves me, that’s all.” She added softly, “He’s the only one who ever has.”

  Mary Dirisi nodded. “Yeah, well, you know what they say, Ms. Bippo. Sometimes love hurts.”

  Ruth thought about the hatred in Rocky’s face when he looked at Bing. She knew that Bing had something of the Bippos that they desperately wanted back.

  Sometimes love hurts.

  Ruth wondered if it could hurt enough to kill.

  Chapter Eleven

  It turned into a ridiculously sunny afternoon as Ruth hurried to the Finny Public Library. She imagined Maude hard at work with her fog machine.

  Ruth found the presentation commencing in the back room. It consisted of a fatigued-looking teacher by the name of Mrs. Finkelstein and a group of twenty-one exceptionally well-behaved third graders. The model behavi
or was due not to the efforts of the weary Finklestein but to the aura of aggressive energy emanating from the six-foot-six librarian.

  Ellen sat in a straight-backed chair, hiking boots planted firmly on the ground, her hair a whirly con- fusion of black frizz that hovered around her face.

  “Well then,” she announced, “let’s move on to the Roaring Twenties in Finny. Does anyone know why they are called the Roaring Twenties?”

  No third grader had the internal fortitude to attempt an answer.

  “Hmm,” Ellen sniffed. “Disappointing. It was due to the exuberance and, I might add, moral degradation that accompanied the constitutional amendment which outlawed the sale or purchase of alcoholic beverages. It was a dangerous time to live here. Plenty of lawlessness and chaos.”

  Ruth noticed the children’s eyes beginning to glaze over and roll back into their youthful heads as the librarian continued her historical diatribe. The glaze seemed to have infected Ruth’s own eyes until a particular word caused her to start upright.

  “—murder,” Ellen said.

  Mrs. Finkelstein sat up straight also, as though someone had slapped her. She adjusted her wire- rimmed glasses and swept the short bangs out of her eyes to get a better look at the speaker.

  “I’m sure your teacher has told you about the Pickle Jar, which used to stand just below the tip of Finny’s Nose. It was run by a woman named Pickles Peckenpaugh who came to Finny from San Francisco in 1922.”

  A tiny voice ventured out from a boy in the front row. “Who got murdered? Was there bodies and everything?”

  Ruth looked over the children’s heads to see Mrs. Finklestein gesturing wildly with a slashing motion across her throat and violent head shaking.

  “Well, for goodness’ sake, they’re old enough to know the truth. It was a pretty brutal way to die, I’ll admit.”

  The children were warming to the subject, encouraged by the fact that their classmate had not been slain. A chubby girl with a complicated array of braids spoke up. “How did it happen?”

  “Oh, it was a mysterious case. Two terrible crimes occurred on Finny’s Nose in 1923.”

  Crimes? Ruth leaned forward.

  “The first was a young girl, tied to a tree and nearly burned to death in September of 1923, if I recall correctly. She was a dancing girl at the Pickle Jar. Rescued just in time. Terrible thing having someone try to set you on fire. Seems like shooting or strangling would be more humane.”

  Ruth noted Mrs. Finkelstein squinching her eyes together as she slipped down in her chair. There was a buzz of excitement from the kids.

  “Then exactly one week later, there was a body found in the very same spot. A man, with his neck broken. He was believed to be the ringleader of a gang. The killer was never caught. What have I told you about gangs, children? A sure way to get your throat slit.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, they looked at grainy slides that Ellen projected onto the wall.

  Ellen slapped her hands on her thighs. “Well then, that concludes my presentation, and it’s time to check out a book before you leave. Except for you, Hugo.” She pointed an accusing finger at a gangly boy in the back row. “You will not check out another thing from this library until you return The Ultimate Adventures of Spider-Man.”

  Since the teacher appeared to be out of commission, no doubt mentally reworking her résumé, the librarian rallied the troops and had them line up at the door to leave. Ruth joined her caboose to the end of the line. “What happened to the Pickle Jar?” she asked over the gabble of voices.

  “It closed down after the murder and fell into disrepair. All that’s left is a pile of foundation stones halfway up nose.” She turned her attention to the hapless Hugo as the class began to file out of the meeting room. “You, young man, will have to dust the shelves while the others are checking out books. And there’s a bulletin board that needs the staples removed.” Then the ferocious librarian was gone, leaving a wiggly bunch of lined-up third graders and a dazed-looking woman feebly trying to rise from her chair.

  Over a cup of coffee with extra cream and sugar, Ruth opened the diary again.

  August the 27th, 1923

  Received a letter from Slats today. He is on his way to Finny and I am to expect him tomorrow. He says he knows who pinched his money and he’s coming to settle the score. My blood runs cold and I haven’t been able to swallow a morsel. I must get word to Soapy Dan somehow. He must take to his heels before Slats arrives. I simply must reach him before Slats does.

  August the 28th, 1923

  Slats arrived this morning with two of his thugs. He asked Janey most politely if she knew of Dan’s whereabouts. Janey told him things had ended between them before Dan skipped town. Slats spoke to all of us calmly as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Maybe things will be all right if Soapy Dan does indeed disappear for a while. Perhaps things will be all right after all.

  September the 7th, 1923

  I cannot even force my horror into words. What I saw last night is burned into my brain and will stay there forever. I came down to open the doors in the morning, and Hazel met me in the kitchen.

  “She’s gone, Pickles!”

  I threw on some clothes and woke Roscoe. By then most of the other girls were there and we headed up Finny’s Nose, following the awful shrieking. We were almost to the top when we saw her there, tied to a pine. She looked so small and white in the midst of that poisonous fog. I almost didn’t see her at first until the needles under her feet caught.

  As I live and breathe, I will never forget the sound of that whooshing flame, or the look in her eyes as she watched her skirt begin to burn.

  Roscoe and I ran forward to try to undo the ropes. We managed to drag her away just before the fire exploded everywhere. Her face was untouched, but her arms and legs were burned. I could see terror and anguish in her eyes. We could all feel the terrible evil settling into the air around us. Only God can mend the horror in our hearts.

  This place will forever echo with the screams of that poor girl.

  The ruins of the Pickle Jar could have been passed over completely unnoticed by the casual observer. As it was, Ruth almost missed them. The charred beams were nearly covered by a scalp of brilliant green grass, a tint of green found only in rare tropical frogs and play dough. Here and there a pile of crumbling bricks dotted the small plateau, and a fallen tree surrendered to the onslaught of decay.

  Ruth and Cootchie trudged almost to the top of Finny’s Nose for their pre-dinner outing in order to get a more aerial view of what used to be Finny’s most infamous eating establishment. Ruth planted her bottom on a spongy trunk and hoisted Cootchie up next to her.

  “Juice?” the little girl inquired.

  “Okay, sweet pea.” Ruth fished around in her backpack and found a sippy cup full of pomegranate juice. She handed it to the child along with a handful of soybeans. Cootchie slurped away, picking long stalks of grass with her free hand.

  Looking downslope, she saw that the plateau ambled along for several hundred yards before it dropped away gradually into a wooded depression with a creek running through it. In the spring, the creek swelled to a respectable width until summer came and reduced it to a series of shallow puddles. Now it barely burbled along. Cootchie hopped off her perch and put down her juice cup before beginning to further excavate a gopher hole nearby.

  Ruth’s thoughts turned to a diary entry she had read earlier. She had not yet finished reading it, but the horrendous description of Janey’s attack stayed in her mind, along with Ellen’s retelling of the murder. A cluster of pines above her head made her wonder if this might have been the spot where the unfortunate girl had been tied.

  “Enough of this. Let’s go home, Cootchie.”

  There was no answer.

  Ruth jumped up. She looked behind the log and scanned the slope in all directions for the child. “Cootchie, where are you?” she called.

  The only sound was the wind against the leaves.

  She c
ontinued to call out with increasing volume and intensity until she was screaming louder than she ever had in her life.

  A paralyzing panic squeezed her heart and lungs. “Cootchie! Cootchie, where are you? Cootchie, answer Nana Ruth!” she shouted. Her frantic cries echoed among the trees.

  “Dear God, please let me find her.” Her legs pounded over rocks and branches as she ran down the slope to the spot where she left her backpack. Grabbing her cell phone with shaking hands, she dialed 911.

  “Please help me. It’s Ruth Budge. I’m at the top of Finny’s Nose and Cootchie has disappeared.” Her shaking fingers almost lost their grip on the phone. “Please, please help me. I can’t find her anywhere.”

  As she stood with the phone pressed to her ear, her eyes scanned desperately for a glimpse of the girl’s blue checked shirt.

  The only splash of color was the tiny cup, sitting on the log, the juice gleaming blood red in the sun.

  The next several hours passed in an agonizingly slow creep. There were lights and sirens, people in uniform and one in an apron. They asked her questions, came and left with radios and phones. Someone made her sit down once again on the spongy log. The aproned person with a ladle in his pocket sat next to her. It took her a minute to realize it was her husband.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Monk said, putting a beefy arm around her shoulders. “They’re going to find her.”

  His voice seemed to come from a long way off.

  The sun was behind the trees, and a chill fog rose to meet it.

  A car wheezed up the slope and came to rest in a cloud of dust several yards from the log. Dimple and her mother stepped out.

  Meg held Dimple by the arm, leading her as one would an elderly person. Dimple’s face was very white.

  As the two women approached, Ruth rose to her feet like a marionette controlled by some unseen hand. She looked into Dimple’s eyes and saw a horror that took the words out of her mouth. There was no anger there, but a look of such profound fear that it made Ruth’s throat go dry.