Seven Sisters - Earlene Fowler [109]
“But it’s very important I talk to her as soon as possible. It’s a long drive out here. Does she have a phone? Can you call her?”
Lukie hesitated for a moment, then said, “Sure, I’ll try.”
She punched the number in and waited. “There’s no answer. Guess she’s out back in her greenhouse. She can’t hear the phone out there. Like I said, I’ll give her your number.”
I bit my lip in frustration. “Isn’t there any way I can convince you to tell me where she lives?”
“Like I said we feel real protective of Eva.”
“Please, if I...”
Her eyes widened slightly as she peered over my shoulder. “Well, that would do it. Let me write down her address for you.” She turned back to her gray metal desk and started hunting through a Rolodex.
I whipped around to look at Detective Hudson. He was holding up his badge and wearing a smug grin.
“Smart-ass,” I muttered.
“Now, now,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “Let’s not be a sore loser.”
After the captain showed us on the huge wall map where Eva Knoll’s house was, she said, “Please be careful. Eva’s very fragile these days.”
“I promise,” I said, glancing over at Detective Hudson, who was expressionless, “we will do our very best not to upset her.”
“WE’D HAVE THIS interview done and eating lunch back in San Celina if I’d done that sooner,” he said.
“Oh, pipe down,” I said halfheartedly, staring out the window. At the side of the road a gray pronghorn antelope, its stomach open and raw, sat waiting for the elements to clean it to bones. No animal control officer out here to shovel up death and dispose of it neatly. “And I meant what I said to the fire captain. If Eva Knoll shows any signs of getting upset, I’m going to stop you.”
He just shook his head and started humming the Dwight Yoakam song “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere...”
It took us forty-five minutes to find her place. For a little while we drove along the edge of Soda Lake. A silvery-white layer of water glimmered, miragelike, across the flat lake. The surrounding prairie mounds covered with bunch-grass were mirrored perfectly in the lake’s glassy surface.
“Read somewhere that was an alkaline lake,” the detective said.
I nodded. “Usually it’s dry this time of year, but we had a rainy summer. In the winter, you should see the sandhill cranes. It’s quite a sight.”
Eva Knoll’s house sat at the end of a half-mile dirt road. With only a lone cottonwood for shade, the tiny slat-board house and the occupant seemed defenseless against the frightening expanse of prairie. When we pulled up, a huge rottweiler mix bounded off the front porch, its large, powerful teeth bared. The dog jumped against the side of the detective’s truck, its claws scraping down the passenger door with a sound like chalk on blackboard. I instinctively scooted across the seat away from the growling dog.
“He’s scratchin’ the paint!” Detective Hudson cried. “Dang it all, this is a custom job!” He leaned over me to pound flat-handed on the window. “Get back, you sorry piece of taco meat!”
“Maybe you should get out and stop him,” I said, pressing myself against the seat and laughing.
The look on his face could have melted cheese. “You wouldn’t be laughing if it were your truck he was clawin’.”
“You’re right,” I said cheerfully, then instinctively jerked back against him when the dog hit the side of the truck again. I cracked my window and called to the woman standing in the porch’s shadows. “Mrs. Knoll? Mrs. Eva Knoll?”
“Who wants to know?” her cracked voice called back.
“Benni Harper.”
“Okay, then, come on out. Lukie called about you.”
She moved out of the shadows, dressed in a flowered housedress and holding a double-barrel shotgun. So much for Mrs. Knoll