Mountain Ice (David Dean Mysteries)

"It's orange roughy," she offered. "Perhaps Fred could help you."

"Come on! Fred thinks orange roughy is a hoodlum from Northern Ireland! I'll cook for all of us. Go in there and keep Gladys company. I just saw her come out of hibernation."

"There's some rice..." she offered, "and the carrots…" but he continued to shoo her out of the room.

Fred wandered into the kitchen as Dean was reading the label of a Campbell's soup can in hopes of creating an exotic sauce for his broiling fish. "Are you off to Miss Worthington's again?" he asked.

"No. She begged off. She's been a mite tired lately. Are you cooking supper?" He opened the door of the stove to peek.

"You got a problem with that?" Dean asked.

"Nope. It'll seem like old times. Besides, I still have some of my old supply of Tums." He smiled when he said it, and added, "Just don't go trying to get fancy. Where's Cynthia?"

"Feeling out of sorts." Dean explained the phone call from Indiana and Cynthia's general displeasure, particularly with Jerome Shipton.

Fred looked over his shoulder before speaking. "I been trying to find out some poop about that guy on the Internet but it's a whole lot easier checking out hundred year old folks than living ones."

"Any luck?"

"There was a biography on him from some local storage shed association that made him some kind of muck a muck a few years back. It didn't say much more than what we already knew." He withdrew a piece of paper from his pocket. "This here's the phone number of the current muck amuck. His name is Able Whitehouse. I know Cynthia don't fancy you snooping after our guests but I thought you might...."

Dean grabbed the paper, gave a glance to the parlor and picked up the portable phone.

"I hope it's not too late on the east coast," he said as he dialed.

A grumpy man answered and Dean tested his sweetest voice. He adlibbed a ridiculous story of wanting do a magazine piece on Shipton and began to flatter the listener, saying he was recommended as a prime source of accurate information. After a lengthy pause, the man asked. "You a cop or something?"

"Oh, no!" Dean answered, "I just want...."

The man cut him off. "Listen. Don't tell the bastard I talked to you, but here's the short version. Shipton is a son of a bitch in anyone's book. He was raised on a South Carolina farm by a red neck father who didn't have two cotton balls to rub together. He used to beat the shit out of his shack full of kids just to keep in shape. Jerry took off at about age thirteen. The rest of 'em are all still down there, eating grits and keeping away from the law."