"Andrew?" asked Helen, after one of her co-workers finally retrieved her. "Are you okay?"
"Um, no, not really.I'm here with Roger. Do you think you could get off early?"
"I'll have to do some pleading, but yeah, if it's an emergency of course I can. What happened?"
"I'll explain it all when I see you. By the way, could you be a sweetheart and bring stuff to help tend to a couple of arrow wounds?"
After giving the specifics on my location, I hung up and we went inside to buy a few Hershey's bars. The talk with my wife was not going to be pretty, and we were going to need a serious sugar buzz to get through it.
Chapter 5
WHEN HELEN finally made it to the convenience store, I gave her one of the candy bars as a peace offering, though I was pretty certain that the astounding power of chocolate wasn't going to get me out of this one. She reacted to our injuries with no small degree of concern, and insisted on checking out Roger's wounds right there in the parking lot.
"What on earth happened to you guys?" she demanded.
"Maybe you should wait until you're done fixing him before I explain," I said. "I'd really hate for you to make a mistake because you were pissed."
She regarded me intently, and then agreed that might be a good idea and took off Roger's shirt. "Whoever did this certainly wasn't a doctor," she said, unwrapping the cloth. "Can you lift your arms above your head?"
Roger did so with a wince.
"It got you in the shoulder blade. A couple inches to the right and you could've been paralyzed for life. That's why you shouldn't hang around my husband."
She cleaned out the wound and redressed it, assuring Roger that he was going to be okay. The leg wound was also not going to cause permanent damage, though Roger would definitely be on crutches for a while.
"And I'm driving you two to the hospital for x-rays, just in case," she said. "Don't argue."
I'm pretty stupid on a regular basis, but I wasn't stupid enough to argue.
As Helen drove us back to Chamber, Roger in the back seat, me in the hot seat, I told her the truth about what had happened. Okay, that's a lie. If I'd told her what really happened, she would have been an absolute nervous wreck and I would have been dead from the stress of living with a woman in that state of anxiety.
I wanted to stick to the truth as much as possible, unappealing as it was, so I confessed about thegraverobbing bit. However, in the censored version, we'd been caught by a couple of hunters before we could unearth the coffin. Things got seriously out of hand, things were said, arrows were fired, and we ended up getting the crap beat out of us.
The story sounded credible as I told it, but to be honest my thought patterns were so shaky by this time that I could have been telling my wife that a magical turnip had inflicted our injuries and it would have sounded logical. To Helen's credit, she allowed me to finish my story before freaking out.
"What in God's name wereyouthinking? " she demanded. "What kind of sick, twisted, demented, deviant thoughts were running through your minds to make you agree to do that? I absolutely cannot believe that the man I married, the father of my children, would do something so appalling!"
"I had no idea it was going to turn out this way," I said. "I thought we'd dig a hole, grab a key, and go home twenty thousand dollars richer. Nice simple evening."
"This is just...I mean...it's just...I mean...holy shit, Andrew!"
"I agree."
Helen took several deep breaths. "Okay, look, I am so mad at you right now that I can't possibly verbalize it without an aneurysm, but we're not going to get into that right now. You've had an incredibly traumatic experience and I don't want to make things worse for you. But once you're healed, things are going to be very bad for you."
THE HOSPITAL visit revealed that I did not have a concussion and that if I wanted my face to continue to look nice I was going to have to quit letting people punch me. It also confirmed that Roger's leg and back were going to heal fine, and that he was totally incompetent at walking on crutches. Fortunately, Helen agreed not to call the police to investigate the abusive hunters, since we'd have to explain why Roger and I were in the woods.
Instead of dropping Roger off at home, we decided to have him sleep at our place. While Helen took a shower, I opened the foldout bed on the couch and spoke quietly with him.
"We obviously can't go the police," I said, "but we've got to investigate, see what we can find out."
"Why?"
"Because the killer's still out there!"
"Yeah, but he got what he wanted, there's no reason for him to come after us," Roger insisted.
"You're right, but, Idunno , there's some weird instinct inside me saying that somebody who buries a man alive and stabs a woman to death shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. What do you think?"
"My leg hurts."
"Look, you don't have to help if you don't want to, but I'm going to try and find out what the whole deal is. So what do we know? Our suspect is acquainted with either Jennifer or Michael Ashcraft or both.Probably both.Vicious right hook.Decent archer. What am I missing?"
Roger had nothing to add.
"Okay, so it's not much, but it's a start." I took the business card out of my pocket. "First thing tomorrow, I'll find out what this Ghoulish Delights thing is. Maybe we'll get lucky and the killer will be hanging around in bloodstained clothes."
Roger shrugged. "Could I have an extra pillow?"
Helen's shower ended. As I heard the hair dryer turn on, I quickly looked through the phone book and found Michael Ashcraft's name. I dialed the number and got his answering machine. It was a man's voice, presumably Michael's. He sounded a little different when he wasn't shrieking.
"Hi, you've reached the residence of Michael and Jennifer Ashcraft. We're going to be on vacation until the first of September, but if you leave your name and number at the tone we'll get back to you when we return. By the way, we have a state of the art security system and a couple of really vicious Dobermans named Rabid Assassin I and Rabid Assassin II, so any potential thieves may want to find a safer target, such as Fort Knox. Ready yourself, here comes the beep."
So nobody was likely to be looking for them. I hung up.
I sat on my bed and stared at the wall for a few minutes until Helen came out of the bathroom. "Honey, you aren't even undressed. You really should get some sleep."
"Well, I got a little bit of sleep after I was knocked unconscious."
Helen sighed. "Don't make jokes."
I took off my clothes and got into bed, even though in my spooked condition I figured there was no way I'd be able to fall asleep without an elephant tranquilizer.
As it turns out, I was wrong. I managed about three hours of sleep, though with the worst nightmares I'd had in my entire life. And I'm counting the recurring dream of Mr.Boogedy -Bones from pre-school.
AFTER I GOT out of bed and showered the nightmare sweat from my body, I dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. I called the number on the Ghoulish Delights card and got another answering machine.
"Thank you for calling Ghoulish Delights, where we make your worst fears a reality," said Michael's voice. "Our office hours are by appointment only, but if you leave your name and number at the tone we'll get back to you as soon as possible."
I hung up, figuring I'd try back later.