The Walking Bread Page 3

  I stayed on alert as I approached the mouth of the zombie again, zeroing in on the makeshift body presumably being eaten alive. The tableau reminded me of the scene from The Wizard of Oz after Dorothy’s house fell on the Wicked Witch of the West. All that remained were two legs and feet, the toes pointing up toward the roof of the mouth.

  Agatha continued to growl. I nodded at her, patting the air to calm her down. “It’s okay, girl,” I said, but something deeper than the disturbing image was bothering me, too. I moved closer to the open zombie mouth and peered in. The feet were attached to a pair of pants. I’d expected them to be flat against the pink tongue, but they were stuffed and disconcertingly lifelike.

  Who was behind this monstrosity of an art car? I had just depressed the button to snap another picture when something from underneath one of the legs caught my eye. I moved closer. Adhered to the gray and mottled tongue, and only partly visible under the khaki pant leg, was the corner of a registration tag.

  Agatha was barking, alternately trying to spin around in circles and break free of her lead, but my dad held tight. I ignored her, instead directing my camera, zooming in, and depressing the button to take a picture of the inside of the zombie’s mouth. After I’d captured several images, I brought up the digital images. I’d expected the faux body being swallowed to flatten into nothing, but it didn’t. I hadn’t noticed it with my naked eyes, but enlarging the image on my camera screen revealed much more. The figure in the art car display had a torso. Shoulders. A head. I zoomed in and drew in a sharp breath when I realized what Agatha had already sensed. The figure wasn’t a fabricated body at all. It was flesh and blood.

  I acted quickly, digging my cell phone from my back pocket and dialing 911 as I simultaneously hiked my leg up to one of the gaps in the zombie’s mouth. I pushed myself to a crawling position and got my bearings, putting my camera near one of the rotten zombie teeth, pressing SPEAKER on the phone, then tossing the cell down as I navigated the pliable foamy flesh of the giant tongue.

  “Ivy!”

  I turned my head to see my dad standing in front of the open mouth and calling to me, but before I could tell him anything, a woman with a calm voice answered my call. “911. What’s your emergency?”

  I drew in a mouthful of air, breathing out to steady my voice. The words poured out of my mouth, telling her where I was and what I was doing. “He’s not moving.”

  The operator didn’t miss a beat. “Can you see if he’s breathing?” she asked, her voice unruffled.

  “Hang on.” My knees sunk into the soft substance of the tongue, slowing my forward movement. I clawed my way forward, finally able to reach out my hand to place on his chest. No movement.

  “We have your location, ma’am,” the operator said after I told her. “We have a team en route.” As I exhaled, she continued. “Is he breathing?” she asked again. “Can you check his pulse?”

  I was way ahead of her, but before I could check for a beating heart, I had to be able to reach a wrist or his neck. His head wasn’t visible, but I had already backed up, grabbed his legs, and tried to pull him, feet first, toward the opening of the zombie’s mouth. Because of the squishy tongue, I wasn’t making much progress.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard the operator’s composed voice still talking, as well as the faint sound of sirens. I couldn’t focus on either. I grunted, exerting as much effort as I could, but the limp body only moved an inch or so. After another try, I sat back on my haunches, but then, from out of nowhere, two male hands reached past me and grabbed hold of one of the man’s legs. I jerked in surprise, but didn’t bother to look around to see who it was. Instead, I grabbed hold of the man’s other leg. As if we’d counted down in a quick one-two-three, we pulled together and suddenly, with our combined effort, the man’s body sprung free of its trapping. I lurched back, but quickly recovered, able to see his neck. I reached out to put two fingers to the carotid artery. I waited, holding my breath, hoping for some sign of life, but there was nothing. “No pulse,” I finally told the operator. In the next moment, three things happened: The sirens that had been distant a few seconds ago now blared from the street outside, my brother’s voice came at me saying, “What the hell . . . ?” and I finally registered the face of what I now knew was a dead man.

  It was Max Litman.

  Chapter 3

  The next fifteen minutes were a blur. The EMTs were suddenly there, elbowing me out of the way. I looked around for Emmaline Davis, Deputy Sheriff of Santa Sofia, my best friend since forever, and after years of unrequited love, my brother’s girlfriend. After a few minutes, I spotted her walking toward the zombie car, grim determination in her stride and her expression. Clearly she wasn’t pleased with another murder happening in her town any more than I was.

  She was in civilian clothes—jeans, a fitted T-shirt, and sneakers—and her black hair hung in tight spirals, framing her mocha-colored skin and her heart-shaped face. She was clearly off-duty, and second in command, but when something happened in Santa Sofia, Em was the go-to person.

  She raised her arm when she saw me, turning her open palm to me so I’d stay put. She needn’t have worried; I’d found the body so I wasn’t going anywhere. As if out of nowhere, a crowd of people formed. I peered outside the huge opening to the hangar and saw a line of art cars waiting as if they were stopped at a red light. I flipped my wrist to check the time on my watch. 10:30—the prearranged time the hangar would be open to allow more finished art cars into the protected space. Or maybe it was just that people sniffed out murder like mosquitos smelled blood.

  “Ivy.”

  Someone called my name as the EMTs started their emergency process on Max Litman, taking his vitals and trying to resuscitate him. One of them, a middle-aged woman, shook her head, but the other, a young man, wasn’t willing to give up. He proceeded with chest compressions, the woman squeezing the rubber sphere on a resuscitator, forcing air into Max’s lungs.

  Again, the sound of someone calling my name echoed in my mind, but I was mesmerized, hoping Max wasn’t actually dead. I hadn’t liked him much, and he’d been a thorn in Billy’s side forever, but none of us wished him ill, and certainly not dead.

  “Ivy!” Billy’s voice in my ear yanked me out of my thoughts, and his hands on my shoulders practically wrenched me off my feet. I grabbed the strap of my camera as Billy hauled me off the zombie’s tongue and back onto solid ground, catching me before I could fall.

  I didn’t know why Billy was here, but it didn’t matter. I nearly fell into his arms in relief. “It’s Max Litman,” I said. Since I’d entered the mouth of the zombie, I had ceased to hear Agatha’s barking, but now that I was safely away from Max’s body, I registered her frantic yelping. She hadn’t seen me yet, and when she did, her yowling stopped and she spun herself in circles, twisting herself up in her leash. Her tail curled and she abruptly sat and tilted her flat face up to me.

  I reached down and scratched her head, all the while watching the EMTs from the corner of my eye. They had given up their resuscitation efforts. There was no question; Max Litman was dead.

  From behind me I heard a man’s voice. “Murder.”

  I spun around, hoping I’d heard wrong. The sheriff spoke to Emmaline in a low voice, but I was close enough to make out some of what they were saying. “Ligature marks on his neck . . . no more than twenty-four hours . . . keep everyone out. . . .”

  Murder. I repeated the word over and over in my mind. Violent loss of life was becoming an unwelcome reoccurrence in my life, For such a lovely coastal town, lately Santa Sofia had become a hotbed for unsavory death, and somehow I seemed to be in the thick of it once again.

  Time seemed to stretch as I told my father and brother what had happened. The rest of the police had arrived, hot on the tail of Emmaline, red and blue lights circling from atop their cars, the quick burst of a siren cutting through the air. A moment later, two officers were cordoning off the area. I’d watched enough crime television to know
that they wanted to prevent any contamination of the scene.

  Once again I heard my name. This time I didn’t recognize the voice. While Em made her way to the zombie car and Max Litman’s dead body, I searched the throng of people, looking for familiar faces. The crowd had swelled to more than thirty or forty folks, but no one seemed to be focused on me.

  Still, I heard it again. “Ivy Culpepper? Is that you, darlin’? My God, but you are a sight for sore eyes!”

  I zeroed in on the direction of the voice, and it suddenly dawned on me who it belonged to. Dixie Mayfield. I’d photographed a lot of people over the last fifteen years, trying to capture some truth about them, something underneath the persona they put on for the world. The pictures I’d taken of Dixie were among my favorites. When I’d first met her, she’d been medicated, lost inside herself. She’d exuded sexuality, but she was melancholy at the same time. Despite the juxtaposition, there was nothing hidden—no masked version of herself that she showed to other people. She was authentic. Unique. An old soul. She could have been the reincarnation of Rita Hayworth with her contoured jawline and sultry eyes.

  “Dixie!” I sounded more enthusiastic than I was, not because I wasn’t glad to see her and to know she was okay, but because I was focused on the police milling about and Em crossing the parking lot and heading our way.

  Dixie wove through the group of people between us until she stood in front of me. I’d photographed her wearing a full slip, listening to Billie Holiday, looking like a pin-up girl from the 1930s.

  The dress she wore now reinforced that image. It boasted cap sleeves, a sailor collar and necktie, a beautifully placed drop waist with a wide black band, and an array of romantic ivory flowers gracefully cascading over the black fabric. It was either a meticulous remake of a dress from the 40s, or it really was vintage. Either way, it suited her. Her T-strap, round-toe black shoes and the gentle finger curls in her tawny hair completed the outfit.

  She wrapped me up in a big hug as if we were long-lost friends, and I realized that a physical connection with someone else could feel like a jolt of energy and a reaffirmation of life. I also realized that that reminder was exactly what I needed after seeing Max Litman’s lifeless body. I released her after a moment, her warmth sticking with me as if I were wrapped up in a flannel blanket. “What are you doing here?”

  I looked over her shoulder at the growing crowd. It had been just a spattering of people a short time ago, but had somehow multiplied. Morbid curiosity, I thought, shaking my head.

  “I had to come, darlin’. Word is all over town.”

  “How?” I gawked, although I knew the probable answer. Nearly everyone had a cell phone, which meant that word of Max Litman’s death had been nearly instantaneous.

  She flashed a coy grin. “Cell phones,” she said, confirming what I already suspected. “And truck drivers, of course. Those Smokey and the Bandit–era CB radios? They might as well be a phone tree.”

  “They’re still around?” I had no specific knowledge, but I’d have thought they’d gone the way of the dinosaurs.

  “They are alive and well in the trucking world.”

  I didn’t know how she was privy to such information, but I also didn’t need to know. The people were here and they weren’t going anywhere. Dixie was talking again, filling me in on her life since I’d seen her last. The medications she’d been on at the boardinghouse where we’d first met had aged her face and her mind. Now that she was on new medication, the cobwebs in her head were gone, her skin glowed radiantly, and her eyes shone clear and bright.

  “I’m in my own place now. And I have a job! I’m a receptionist. Small local business, but I am gainfully employed, which is something I couldn’t say a few months ago.” She flipped her hair and gave a suggestive smile. “It has its perks, too. I’m going to buy a house, Ivy. My own place. It should have happened a long time ago, but I’ve been at the mercy of others for far too long. I’m taking my life and my destiny into my own hands.”

  Dixie was a success story. Sometimes things didn’t go as planned, and sometimes murder got in the way, but as long as the innocent bystanders didn’t turn into collateral damage, I’d count that as a win. “You’re resilient and pretty amazing, Dixie,” I said, meaning every word of it.

  “Why, thank you, darlin’,” she said, preening; then she added a healthy dollop of sultry attitude into her voice. “As I always say, ‘You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.’”

  Where had I heard that before? I searched my memories and then snapped my fingers. “Mae West!”

  She put a dramatic hand on her hip. “She may have said it first, but I’m living proof.”

  The commotion from all around us had faded as we’d talked, but now it came back into sharp focus. A car door slammed. An engine revved. “Quite the calamity,” Dixie said, drawing out the last word. She threw a look over her shoulder toward the crowd behind her, turning back to me with a hurried whisper. “I heard that you discovered the body? Is it Max Litman? That’s what people are saying.”

  Traveling with the lightning speed of a small-town rumor, the story would be in the newspaper by the end of the day. I had no reason not to fill her in, so I did.

  “He had it coming, I guess,” she said after I confirmed it, more to herself than to me.

  I looked at her, startled. “Why do you say that?”

  “He was a liar and a scoundrel,” she said. “I don’t imagine too many people will be sad that he’s dead.”

  I had limited knowledge about the man’s interaction with others, but her words struck me. Billy wasn’t the only one with a grudge against Max Litman. “Did you know him personally?” I asked.

  “I knew him once upon a time,” she said. “We dated, if you could call it that.”

  “Really?” I asked. My curiosity piqued. Dixie was so sophisticated and belonged to another era. Max Litman, on the other hand, had been rough around the edges. They seemed a very unlikely pair.

  From the wry curve of her lips, I knew she’d heard the disbelief in my voice. “He used to be more Johnny Cash than Willie Nelson, you know. Back in his younger days. Fancied himself a ladies’ man, you know—at least when it suited him. Wined and dined and generally did his best to sweep a woman off her feet. I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Shame on me. I didn’t know the depth of his inability to care for other people or what was truly inside of him.”

  I pulled up a mental image of Max Litman, not as the dead man I’d found in the zombie mobile, but as the man who’d been the thorn in Billy’s side for so long. He was unnaturally tan, had shoulder-length gray hair that he kept in a ponytail, matchstick legs stuck out from the wide legs of the khaki shorts he always wore, and his portly stomach made him seem a bit off balance. As if it had a mind of its own, my hand cupped the side of my face. I shuddered at the memory of him leaning in to give each cheek a slobbery kiss with his gray peppered scruff. Who could ever see him as a Casanova? It just didn’t quite compute. And Max Litman as Dixie’s first love was an idea I really couldn’t get my head around.

  Dixie seemed to read my mind. “He was a good-looking man in his younger years. His appearance changed quite a lot. But one thing I’ve learned over the years, my dear, is that one rarely changes who they are inside, and even if they try to hide it, they end up revealing themselves one way or another. Max didn’t much care about other people. If it didn’t benefit him, he simply did not—does not—invest.”

  “Narcissistic?”

  She nodded slowly. “I would say so, yes. Everything was always about him. His self-worth always seemed to come from the outside. How much money he accrued. How much property he held. How many women. Typical scenario of an insecure man.”

  “But he wasn’t . . . he didn’t look—”

  Her expression changed, as if she’d just realized something. “The way he looked, with his shorts and his hair and all that, I think it was like a test. If he could make all these high-profile business deals
and get all these women, no matter what he looked like, then it boosted his ego even more.”

  I considered Dixie’s point. “So he thought that if he could still get beautiful women to be with him, then it would tamp down his insecurities. Prove he was worthy somehow.”

  “Yes, exactly. His life, you know, has always been about show. Do you want to know what I think?” she asked, her hand pressed dramatically across her chest.

  “Absolutely,” I said, glad to be getting such insight into who Max Litman was instead of focusing on the picture of his dead body I had in my mind.

  “He never cared if women were with him because of his money. In fact, I think he preferred that. Real emotions were never his strong suit. I saw that early on. I was his eye candy, even back then. He thrived on people admiring him, whatever the reason. His money made him feel powerful. From my recollection, he felt his bank account let him control the women he was with,” she said, then gave a matter-of-fact shrug. “Which I guess he did. He could dangle the purse strings and they’d jump, or he could yank them closed to punish them.”

  Dixie’s gaze drifted back to the zombie car. The paramedics had Max Litman’s body on a stretcher. As they lifted it slightly, sliding it into the back of the ambulance, it hit me again how final death is. Max had been here, alive, smarmy with his kisses, devoting all his energy to best my brother and win the Art Car competition—and now he was gone. It was cliché, but I couldn’t help internalizing how fragile life is.

  “Did you know him?” Dixie asked, but before I could answer, Emmaline walked toward us, her face grim. The sheriff was by her side. From what Em always said, Sheriff Lane had hung up his proverbial handcuffs when he’d inherited a tidy sum from his grandparents. He no longer felt the need to work terribly hard and preferred to do his job from behind his desk. But for better or worse, Max Litman was a Santa Sofia icon. His death brought out the big guns. Em and Lane came right up to me and the sheriff cut to the chase. “What happened here?”