P Deutermann - Spider mountain

Carrie had returned my call first thing Monday morning and said she could be up there by one or two. She arrived at the lodge at five thirty instead, having been delayed by the usual Monday morning crises in Raleigh. I called Greenberg over, went out for beer, and ordered in pizza, and then we debriefed her on our exciting excursion to Robbins County.

“How much of this have you told your bosses in the DEA?” she asked Greenberg immediately. He said he hadn’t reported anything. Yet.

“And you?” she asked me. “Have you talked to Sheriff Hayes?”

I shook my head. The sheriff had been unavailable all day, and my status as a potential manslaughter suspect had apparently lost a lot of traction.

She popped the top off another beer and sat back in her chair. She was wearing a dark business pantsuit and looked older than when I had first met her, but still entirely streetable. Older is a relative term.

“Sheriff Hayes reported the business of the fight at the Creigh cabin to SBI headquarters,” she said. “But less to indict you than to report the unorthodox way M. C. Mingo was handling it.”

“Fireproofing himself?” Greenberg, the bureaucrat, asked.

She nodded. “As you know, we have standard procedures for dealing with incidents like this between county jurisdictions. Mingo’s off the reservation on this one, so reporting to SBI was a smart move.”

She turned back to me. “Hayes did tell you to stick around?”

“He did, but so far, nothing seems to be happening. What about our little adventure? What will SBI do with that?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” she said with a bright smile. “But that’s why my boss gets paid the big bucks. You guys sure that was Mingo standing there when she crumpled the kid?”

We both nodded.

“We can’t exactly take this before a judge,” I pointed out.

“But surely you can fold what we’ve told you into any ongoing investigation of Robbins County, right?” Greenberg asked.

She gave him a cool interagency look. “Assuming there is such an investigation,” she said.

“Oh, c’mon, Carrie,” I said. “This guy Mingo the governor’s long-lost illegitimate brother or something? What’s the big reluctance in Raleigh to just going in there and kicking over the anthill?”

Carrie appeared to choose her words carefully. “Because some senior people in the SBI think that the meth business is a cover for something a lot worse.”

We looked at her expectantly, but she shook her head. “I can’t tell you any more than that right now.”

We groaned in unison.

“Look: Let me make some phone calls. In the meantime, don’t tell anyone what happened up there this weekend.”

“What if Mingo delivers up a corpus delicti between now and the meantime?” I asked.

“Call me if that happens. You do not want to be taken into custody in Rob-bins County.”

“Then I should get out of Carrigan County,” I protested. “If there’s going to be an extradition hearing, I’d want that to be held back in Triboro, not here.”

“Let me make my phone calls,” she repeated. “I’ll get back to you tonight.”

After she left, Greenberg asked if me we could make some coffee.

“This is not the SBI I know and love,” I said, as I fixed up a percolator. “When it comes to local sheriff’s operations, they’re usually more of a consulting organization. This definitely sounds like they’re running an op of their own.”

“Well, I’m not comfortable keeping my office out of the loop,” he said. “Her boss calls my boss, catches him off base with this story, he’s gonna want to know why I didn’t brief him first.”

“No longer having a boss, I don’t have that problem. On the other hand, I’m all alone out here, so I may talk to Sheriff Bobby Lee Baggett back in Triboro.”

“She told us not to talk to anyone.”

“I don’t work for her,” I said.

Greenberg nodded. “Me neither,” he said.

My phone rang at ten thirty that night. Greenberg had gone back to his motel a few hours ago to make his own calls, and I had talked to Bobby Lee, who’d suggested that I get the hell out of there as soon as possible, as in tonight. He’d pointed out that Sheriff Hayes had no evidentiary basis for holding me, I hadn’t been charged or even arrested, and I could always drive back if they did produce a corpus, but this time with shyster in tow. Or, if I elected to turn myself in to the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office back in Triboro, I could force an extradition hearing, which would be conducted back on my turf and not in Robbins County, where the magistrate was reportedly yet another Creigh.

After hearing about the events of the past few days and now this SBI mystery, Bobby Lee had been even more emphatic. “You did what your friend asked you to do,” he’d said. “Now get out of there while you still can. Let the alphabets play their games.”

It had all sounded perfectly reasonable to me. On the other hand, I was curious now, and decided to wait for Carrie Santangelo to call back. I had heard that curiosity killed the cat, but, of course, I wasn’t a cat.

Carrie was on the line when I picked up. “You’re a licensed PI now, correct?” she began.

“Yup. And also, let’s see, president, CEO, chairman of the board, secretary, and chief hygienic engineer of Hide and Seek Investigations, LLC.”

“Wow, all that. Listen, the SBI wants to hire you, as an operational consultant.”

“We’re terribly busy,” I replied, Bobby Lee’s good advice still echoing in my ear.

“If Mingo produces a body, Sheriff Hayes will have to act,” she said. “If, on the other hand, you have been working for us, your status would be different. They’d have to come through us to get to you. Ultimately, of course, we’d have to produce you. Which, of course, we would, in the fullness of time. Emphasis on the ‘fullness.’”

“Have been? As in, for some time now?”

“The start date may be left somewhat vague. Look, Hayes doesn’t want to turn you over to Mingo, and he doesn’t want to get into any more pissing contests with that crowd, especially if some black hats decide there’s the possibility of getting a genu-wine mountain-man feud up and running.”

“I’m really expensive,” I said.

“We’re really cheap,” she replied. “But you get a badge and a secret decoder ring. And more importantly, you might be uniquely positioned to stop something really bad from happening.”

“Which is?”

“Which will be the subject of a formal briefing.”

“In the fullness of time?”

“There you go. And not on the damned open telephone, Lieutenant.”

“How quickly one forgets,” I said. “Okay, let me think about it.”

“Take as long as you want,” she said. “But once Mingo produces an arrest warrant, we can’t make this offer.”

“My instincts are to pack up and beat feet,” I said. “As Bobby Lee Baggett pointed out earlier, I’ve done what I came up here to do.”

“But aren’t you just a little bit curious?” she asked.

The lady was a psychic. “Not fair,” I said.

“Hee-hee,” she said, and hung up.

Damn all women and their intuition, I told myself. I dumped my coffee and steadied up on the scotch. I called the shepherds in, and we all went out to the creekside porch. The night was clear and cool, with a waning full moon trying hard to light up the hills. The creek was shiny black and somewhat subdued because of the lack of rain. Frick sat watching the creek; she’d hidden that damned dog leg somewhere in the cabin and I had to find it before housekeeping did. Or worse, didn’t. Frack curled up at my side and went back to sleep. He’d been limping a little after our noisy jog through the mountains, and I had given him a pain pill. I sipped my own version of one.