A Fortune to Die For (White Oak - Mafia Series Book 1) (4 page)

“Oh…then you’ll want cash?” She had six hundred on her, but honestly, it was for emergencies, and before she could get more, she’d have to find a bank and have funds transferred. Given the price, Bob clearly made a profit on his gas, card or no card, so she decided to hold her ground. She focused on the credit card device by his register.

He followed her stare. “I prefer cash, but I can swipe a card for you. It’s just they take a large bite out of my profit…and profits are small enough as is.” He paused and waited to see if she wished to pay in cash.

She handed him her card. With a heavy sigh, he swiped it and gave it back to her.

When he handed her the receipt, she signed
Mega
, stopped, rested the pen on the
a
until it became a blob, and then wrote Williams.

He stared at the signature. “Never seen such a strange signature before. Do you always leave a dot in the middle?”

“No, I was about to add my middle name and remembered this card doesn’t use it.”

“Well, Andy is waiting for you outside. Just so you know, his wages are whatever you tip him.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Neither is taking half my profits every time I swipe a card. Life is rough.” He then turned his back on her as he rearranged his stacks of cigarettes.

She stormed from the store and hurried to the tiny car Andy feared wouldn’t be able to make the trip. Why didn’t the car rental place just give her what she wanted? A Subaru had no trouble going on rough roads.

Once the car’s engine came to life, Andy’s old faded pickup truck tore out of the parking lot and was gone from sight by the time she followed. Now she worried Bob hadn’t truly made her Andy’s only wages for the day, and he didn’t care if she followed or not.

By the direction the pickup truck had disappeared, she knew she hadn’t missed the turnoff, but simply hadn’t gone far enough. Thus, her directions still might be good.

When Meg crested the small hill, she spotted Andy’s truck stopped in the middle of the road with the left blinker going. As her car neared, he turned and drove the speed of a turtle up the road. She was trying to figure out some way to let him know there were other reasonable speeds above twenty miles per hour. Fifty would be good.

Then they took a hairpin curve that went on for what seemed three hundred and eighty degrees, and upon completion dropped her left tire in a cavern of a pothole. Okay, twenty was reasonable, but she really needed to stay off his bumper so she had more time to avoid the potholes.

Unfortunately, when she dropped back, Andy slowed down. She waved him forward, but instead of speeding up, he slowed down more. She struck the wheel and yelled, “Damn it! Why is everything so hard?”

Now they crept along at five miles per hour. “Helen will be dead by the time I arrive,” she yelled.

Andy stopped his truck, causing her to stop as well. A moment later, he climbed out, ran back to her car and handed her a rectangular block of gray plastic. “I didn’t mean to upset you, but I don’t know how fast you can go in your rental. So press the button and tell me what you want me to do.”

She stared at the brick-size object in her hand. It sure as hell didn’t look like a phone. “What is it?”

“A walkie-talkie.”

Honestly, it looked like a refugee from a recycling center. “And it works?”

“Did last week. Hopefully, it still does.”

“Couldn’t we just use phones?”

“We could, but I’m out of minutes, and my mom will kill me if I run over. Besides, phones don’t work further up.”

“Okay, we’ll try this.”

He ran back to his truck, and a moment later, the little square refugee in her hand yelled at a painful level, “Can you hear me?”

She set the plastic in her lap, fearing if it were closer, she’d be too deaf to hear Helen when she arrived. “Yes, can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear. I’m starting my truck now.”

She waited.

“Have you started your car?” he asked.

God help her! “I never turned if off. Let’s go.”

He slowly accelerated at the speed of a turtle crossing the road.

“You can go faster,” she prompted.

“Okay, you tell me when the speed is good for you.”

She settled on forty miles per hour with some caveats. “Slow down on the curves and warn me about potholes.”

“Okay, one’s coming up on your left.”

She tensed, ready to maneuver around it, but saw nothing. “I never saw it.”

“It was on the other lane. Should I not tell you about those?”

Patience. As Steve would no doubt observe, the boy was doing her a colossal favor. And Andy’s desire to please was no doubt making him annoyingly cautious.

“I just need to know about the ones I might hit.”

With his responsibilities clarified, Andy improved immensely. Given the various unmarked country roads they crossed, Megan was very glad he was leading her to Helen’s because, honestly, she would have never found the way.

Why had the woman given her such horrible directions? “Does Helen go down to Donatus often?”

“Where?”

He lived there, why was he asking “where”?

“Donatus, the town we just left.”

“Oh, St. Donatus. She never comes down to either St. Donatus or La Motte. If she buys anything, she has it delivered to Sam’s store, then I drive it up for her.”

Okay, so the kid couldn’t recognize his town without the “Saint” before it. And Helen had no clue how to get to her house anymore because she hadn’t left it in the last century.

She breathed in. These are just normal things all traveler’s encounter. This did not mean her Lottery Curse followed her to Iowa. If it had, she would have never stopped at Bob’s, who just happened to have a kid driving up to Helen’s.

She was not cursed. This was just life.

She relaxed a bit. Not too much because Andy kept calling out potholes to watch for. “Pothole right, move to center. Pothole center, straddle it. Pothole right, move right and straddle. Huge pothole, slow the fuck down…excuse my language.”

She managed to stop before hitting the two-foot deep crevice in the road. “Andy hold up. My car will fall inside this cavern.”

Andy not only stopped, but it turned out he had lumber in the back of his truck. He grabbed two twelve-by-three inch planks and laid them across the crevice before guiding her over. Then they came to a creek flowing over the road. Andy got out and walked it to determine its depth. “It’s only three feet deep in the center. My truck can make it, but your car will suck water into the fuel line, so I’ll chain your car and pull it through. That way your car won’t suck.”

“This car sucks a great deal, but we’ll do what you say. Mind if I ride in your truck?”

By his happy smile, she guessed not.

She grabbed her computer case from the floor and got in the pickup as Andy chained her car. Turned out he needed her car key, which she handed over without a qualm. Honestly, if Andy destroyed the car, she didn’t care. They should have given her the Subaru she’d asked for.

He slowly drove his truck across the flooded road, breathing out a sigh of relief when he made it. Revving his engine, Andy pulled her crap rental through the water and climbed the rather steep hill at the same time. Water ran across the bottom of the next hill as well, but Andy ran the newborn creek without checking.

Three hours later, they finally pulled onto a rutted, single-lane, dirt road, guarded on each side by a row of ancient trees.

“My dad says they’ll cut all these white oaks down the moment Helen’s buried. No doubt why she refuses to die. She must be a hundred and something by now.”

Meg stared at the beautiful trees with massive branches stretching across the road, creating a tunnel effect as Andy chatted on.

“When they do, they’ll smooth out the land so people can live here. Then La Motte will have lots of jobs to choose from.” He sighed heavily. “Still, it’ll break Helen’s heart. She loves these trees. At one time, all of Iowa was forest land, but then the Wisconsin glaciers came and flattened everything. Afterward, it was plains, perfect for farming by our ancestors. Except for here. This section got a bunch of wind-driven dirt from Illinois dumped on it. We also had a giant asteroid hit Iowa seventy-four million years ago. They used to think it killed all the animals, but it didn’t. The mass extinction happened later.”

This conversation surprised the hell out of her. “Are you planning to become a geologist?”

He sighed heavily. “No money there. I wanted to be a programmer…writing apps for phones and stuff, but we don’t have the money for college. I don’t know what I’ll do when I graduate from High School. I lack the strength to do road construction.”

“How are your grades?”

“There okay. B’s mostly. No point in killing myself for As. Not like I need them.”

“If you have really good grades, you might get a scholarship for college.”

He snorted. “Not a chance. My parents aren’t poor enough for charity money, and you wouldn’t believe the stuff kids have to do to get a real scholarship. And those only pay half or less. So even if I got one, I still couldn’t go.”

“Do me a favor. I work with different groups who give out money for worthy causes. Get your grades to As, and I’ll see if I can find you a free ride.”

He snorted. “My parents don’t think I’m college material. They say I have to face reality and learn a skill people around here need.”

“Not terrible advice, but I think you’re giving up too soon. Write down your number in case I can find something.”

He sighed heavily. “I don’t mean to offend you, but I’ll catch all sorts of hell if you call my house and my mom answers. I’ll probably still be working at Bob’s, so could you call there? If not, ask around town. Someone will know where I am.”

Wow! First time someone had refused their number when she wanted to help them, but then Andy didn’t know she had the ability to actually provide assistance, and evidently his mother didn’t like older women calling her son.

She would have loved to ask him if he got hit on by older women a lot, but couldn’t find a reasonable way to phrase her question without sounding like a cougar herself. Nor did she wish to be called such. She hadn’t even hit thirty-one yet.

Finally, they arrived at an honest-to-God log cabin. If it didn’t have running water and a toilet, there was no way in hell she’d stay here.

“Whoa! Where’d all the cars come from?” Andy asked, then smiled. “Looks like Helen invited a lot of people to come see her.”

A gray-haired woman wearing hiking pants and T-shirt stepped out to the porch. Andy picked up a box from the back of his pickup. Seeing a second one, Meg picked it up.

“You don’t have to help me.”

His panicked voice confused her until she remembered her tip was going to be his pay for the day. “I want to help.”

“If you want to, okay. But you don’t owe me anything for bringing you up here. I was coming all the same.”

His words were like balm to her soul. Finally, a person who didn’t expect a dime from her, when, in fact, he’d earned far more.

She had definitely made the right choice about starting her life over.

As they climbed up the gray, weathered steps, the old woman eyed her with caution.

“Miss Campbell, this lady says…”

“Hush. Take the groceries in the kitchen like a good boy.” She stuffed a dollar bill in his shirt pocket and then focused on Meg. “And you go with him. I’ve got a house full of angry relatives right now. Somehow they got wind of my plans to sell my land.”

Meg nodded and hurried to catch up with Andy. She entered the main room of the small cabin, presently filled with half a dozen angry people.

“Just the locals bringing up the groceries,” Helen said and pointed her to a door. Meg hurried through.

The hand pump at the kitchen sink didn’t bode well for a toilet, neither did the small round-edged antique Frigidaire.

“Just put the vegetables in here. I’ll handle the rest of the stuff,” Andy whispered.

She hoped so because the inside of the fridge was only a foot and half wide and two feet tall. She passed the vegetables in her box over to Andy and let him put them away.

When she handed him the tomatoes, he set them back in the box, same thing with the onions and potatoes.

“Out of room?” she teased.

“Yeah, but you don’t put those in a refrigerator.”

“Says who?”

“My mom.” He lifted his box, then frowned at the kitchen door they had come through. “Lean on the door so no one can get in.”

“Why?”

“So no one can get in.” He rolled his eyes and stared at her until she finally did as he asked.

It bothered her he now thought she was an idiot, but pleased her that he clearly had forgotten all about his tip. With her head against the wood, she could actually make out the angry words of Helen’s guests on the other side.

“Momma, you aren’t thinking right,” a man said. “We’re your family. You can’t value a bunch of trees over us. When you die, do you really think the trees are going to give a damn you’re gone?”