Grab & Go (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 2) (11 page)

“Come on,” Thomas groaned.

I was seeing white bursts behind my tight eyelids, and I’d run out of breath a long time ago. And then the resistance just let go — gone — I was fighting empty air. I collapsed forward, but the boys held Dwayne in the net of their arms, his body buoyant and tumbling.

I grabbed one booted foot, then the other. We shuffled with him, tripping, dragging, scraping Dwayne’s heavy body across the creek bed to the bank. The tiniest trickle of blood — red and watery — snaked across the white skin of his ankle.

Bleeding is a sign of life, right? I desperately hoped so.

CHAPTER 13

I don’t know how we made it to the car. I couldn’t stop to think of a plan of action. If I did, my body would simply shut down. Don’t think, don’t think — just do, keep moving.

The boys stumbled along with me, bearing Dwayne’s sagging body between us. We set him down on the dirt track, and Thomas pulled the liftgate open. I flopped down the backseat, and we wrangled Dwayne into the cargo area.

He was too long, and I bent his knees and pushed him onto his side. It was rough treatment, but there wasn’t time to be gentle. I was rewarded with a ragged moan — Dwayne was still alive.

“Get in.” I pointed to Bodie.

Clarice had a ratty woolen blanket in the back, presumably for impromptu picnics. I grabbed it and unfurled it. “You too.” I nodded to Thomas. Even his dark skin had a sickly blue undertone. “Hug him. Lie on top of him if you have to. This is no time to be shy. He needs your heat.”

I flung the blanket over the tangled lump of humanity and slammed the hatch closed.

Once in the driver’s seat, I cranked the steering wheel with one hand, jouncing the car through a tight U-turn, and speed-dialed Clarice with the other.

“Put blankets in the oven,” I barked. “Hot water and stuff for treating a wound.”

“Walt’s on his way,” she replied. “I got ahold of him at the general store.”

It was a bone-crunching ride back to the mansion. There was no easing around potholes or slowing for washouts. I took the shortest, most direct route, regardless of the terrain.

We lugged Dwayne inside and straight to a bed Clarice had made up with warm blankets and hot water bottles tucked into the folds.

Clarice banished the boys to another bedroom with two more similarly prepared beds. She instructed them to strip to their underwear, dump their clothes in a laundry basket on the floor and get under the covers. She offered them three minutes of privacy then announced she’d be barging in to oversee their treatment. I’d never seen such frigid, shivering boys move so fast. The fact that they could still move at all seemed a miracle.

“You too.” Clarice jabbed a finger toward my bedroom at the opposite end of the hall.

“No.” I clenched my teeth against the shaking racking my body — from nerves and adrenaline and fear as much as cold. “Dwayne needs to go to the hospital.”

“Wait for Walt. You can’t do that by yourself.” Clarice placed two fingers at the corners of her mouth and released a piercing whistle.

I jumped, and two little girls appeared as if by magic.

“It’s our signal,” Clarice muttered to me. “They need to help or this will settle into their memories as too terrifying an event.” Then she turned and stood rigidly, her fists on her hips. “Nurses, are you ready?” she barked.

CeCe and Emmie nodded, their eyes wide.

She marched to the boys’ room, rapped once on the door, and sailed in, the girls in her wake. Seriously, Clarice should have been a headmistress at a reform school — it was her calling. Or a boot camp drill sergeant. No one would ever dare thwart her.

I returned to Dwayne’s room and lifted the soggy blankets off his injured leg. I started rolling up his jeans, couldn’t get the unwieldy fabric high enough, and went in search of a pair of scissors.

I ended up hacking his pant leg off as well as through the laces of both his boots. I needed to disrobe him completely, but the gaping tear running jaggedly nearly the full length of his calf made me wobbly.

The wound was oozing blood, but less than it should have been. His body temperature was probably too low to provide proper circulation.

I’d done that to him. I’d inflicted incredible pain. I squeezed my eyes against welling tears and turned my attention to the rest of him — unbuttoning, brushing his beard out of the way, easing his jacket and shirt off, loosening his belt. His limbs were slack and heavy, but his raspy breathing reassured me.

“Nora?” Walt’s voice sounded in the hall.

He was at my side in an instant, arm around my waist. “You’re trembling.”

I pointed wordlessly at Dwayne’s leg.

“I know,” Walt murmured. “I saw it. You both need to go to the hospital.”

“No,” Dwayne rumbled from the bed. “No hospital.”

I stared down at him, mouth open.

His eyes were bright in spite of the cataracts, brown sparks in his ashen face, and entirely lucid. “I was waiting for you to take off the rest of my clothes. It’s not every day I get a pretty girl undressing me, not at my age.” A rough chuckle seemed to convulse him, and he gave me a half wink. But he twisted his hand, white-knuckled with pain, in the sheet bunched at his side.

“I’ll take it from here,” Walt said. He gently pushed me toward Clarice, who was standing in the doorway.

They exchanged glances, and I knew it was hopeless. I’d be swaddled into a warm robe before I was allowed to do anything else. But, I vowed, while stumbling at arm-towing length behind Clarice toward my bedroom, like Dwayne I was drawing the line at going to the hospital. I’d had enough of hospitals to last me forever.

oOo

By the time Clarice released me after having been vigorously toweled dry, lectured, examined for injuries of my own and plied with coffee, Dwayne was tucked into his bed with fresh linens, covered from the neck down straight-jacket style, only his injured calf exposed. His head and shoulders were propped up on two stacked pillows. He looked scrawny under the tight blankets, the way a wet dog looks when all its hairy fluff is plastered to its sides.

Both men were scowling fiercely. It appeared as if they’d just had an argument and Walt had won. Walt was probing Dwayne’s gash with a pair of tweezers.

“You gonna stitch me up with dental floss?” Dwayne gritted, and I winced on his behalf.

I knelt beside the bed and laid my hand on the lump at his side that I guessed was one of his hands. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“See?” Dwayne’s bellow tapered into a groan. “A little sympathy’s all I’m asking for.”

Walt raised his head and glared up the length of Dwayne’s body. “Nora has nothing to be sorry for. Her actions, and Thomas’s and Bodie’s, saved your life. Fool thing to do, traipsing through a creek this time of year. Putting others at risk,” he ended in a mutter, jabbing the tweezers back into the wound.

“I did that?” Dwayne’s voice came out small as he sucked air in between his teeth, his eyes searching my face. “I must have had a reason.”

“Don’t you remember?” I asked.

He blinked, his eyes rheumy now. I stroked his cheek.

There was soft shuffling at the door, and Dill entered the room awkwardly, rain dripping off his jacket, a glass quart jar full of a clear liquid in his hands. Dill’s gaze flicked between Dwayne’s face and his leg with a morbid fascination.

Walt took the jar, dismissed Dill with a nod, and said, “You’ll remember even less now.” He grabbed a glass off the bedside table, sloshed a generous amount of moonshine into it and held it out to Dwayne.

Dwayne struggled to pull his arms out from under the blankets. “This stuff, made the wrong way, will kill you. Made the right way, it’ll almost kill you.” He held the glass with both hands, careful, even though at half full it was in no danger of spilling, and licked his lips. “I don’t usually—”

“I know,” Walt cut in, the edges of his voice softening. “But right now you need to.”

Dwayne’s chest heaved, as though he had to psych himself up for the jolt of raw alcohol. Then he tipped his head back and drained the glass in one gulp. He held the empty glass out toward Walt, and Walt dribbled a little more into it.

When that slug had also disappeared down his gullet, Dwayne’s arm dropped heavily to the bed. His eyelashes fluttered then went still.

“Was that necessary?” I whispered.

Walt pitched an eyebrow my direction. “I’ll give him a few minutes, then I have to flush the wound. It won’t be pretty, Nora.”

“What will you use?”

Walt ticked a fingernail against the glass jar. “Best antiseptic in the world.”

“Is that what you two were arguing about?”

“I made him tell me where his stash is.” Walt’s blue eyes fixed me with a hard stare. “When he’s back on his feet, there won’t be a stash. I’ll make sure of that. If he plans on staying here, then he’s out of the business. I can’t have him endangering the boys. Or you.”

“He’s old. It could have easily been an accident — the creek thing,” I said.

“Are you taking his side?”

I’d already learned how uncomfortable Walt’s intense gaze can be. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, measuring out my answer. “No.”

“He’s still going to feel this. You might need to sit on him. Ready?”

But I didn’t have to wrestle with Dwayne. He’d started humming, some catchy tune I thought I knew but couldn’t identify. By the time Walt had completed the second flush, spread antibiotic cream, nudged the ragged edges together with tape and applied a loose bandage, Dwayne was belting out the slurred words to “Amazing Grace” with tremendous gusto but very little musical quality.

“Seems appropriate. I wonder what proof that hooch is.” Walt flashed me a wry grin. “The tear is deep, but not to the bone. He’ll heal better if the wound is left open. He’ll have a nasty scar with or without stitches, so I’m opting for fewer opportunities for infection.”

“Thank you,” I murmured. “Where’d you learn how to do that?”

“Surfing. My buddy got a bad gash across his chest when he hit some submerged rocks. By the time I got him to shore, loaded in the van, and to the emergency room, he was in severe shock. The ER doctor walked me through what to do if it happened again. Never did — till now.”

“Surfing, huh?” I grinned at Walt and swayed. Ever so slightly, but it was enough to distort the bedposts at the edges of my vision. “Quite a switch—”

“Whoa,” Clarice bellowed from behind me, and a couple pairs of hands got me stabilized.

I blinked.

“Low blood sugar,” Clarice growled. She clamped me to her side in a vice grip, batted Walt’s arms away, and escorted me out of the room. Walt’s worried scowl floated in my peripheral vision. I tried to smile back at him, to reassure him, but my feet were having a little trouble with the uneven floor.

Clarice plopped me in a kitchen chair with the command not to move and shoved another mug of coffee in front of me. She bustled around the kitchen, whisking eggs in a bowl and jamming a couple slices of bread in the toaster, all the while carrying on a brusque monologue. It was her pent-up release of frustration and worry and anger — what’s left over when all the adrenaline’s gone. I got sleepy after a crash — it was crazy what I was learning about my own body since my husband’s disappearance — and Clarice became more agitated and energized. At least one of us was still functioning.

“Walt has to see to the boys next. They’re so skinny, especially Bodie. What on earth?” Clarice shouted, slamming the door to the shallow spice cabinet. “What on earth was that man doing in a freezing cold creek in December?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. If Dwayne couldn’t remember, then none of the rest of us could explain it either.

She clattered a muffin tin onto the counter. “He hasn’t an ounce of fat to his name. Can’t expect him to recover from a lifetime of malnourishment in a few weeks.” She yanked a bag of blueberries out of the freezer. It took me a few seconds to realize she was railing about Bodie’s health, or lack thereof.

“And that girl. So scarred by what she’s seen that she won’t utter a peep. Just nods with that little white face of hers.” A cascade of flour sifted to the floor from Clarice’s over-vigorous opening of the bag.

“Her name’s Emmie,” I said quietly.

“Bullets,” Clarice hollered. She slapped a wooden spoon down beside the muffin tin and bent against the counter, her back to me, shoulders shaking. “Bullets,” she said again, weakly.

I scooted out of the chair and grabbed her in a tight hug. I whispered shushes into her spiky silver hair as though she was a fussy baby and held her as hard as I could.

“All right,” she muttered, growing restless in my grasp. “All right.” She shoved me away. “Your toast’s burning.”

I pulled the plug from the outlet and fished the blackened slabs out of the toaster slots with a knife. Clarice handed me two new slices of bread to try again. Her eyelashes were wet behind her glasses, but otherwise, her wrinkled face wore its usual expression of determined efficiency.

“What would I do without you?” I said.

“Starve.” She turned to stir the scrambled eggs on the stove.

I gave her another hug while she had her back to me and her defenses down — guerrilla tactics — and held on longer this time. “I’m sorry,” I finally whispered.

“For what? For dealing with what’s been thrown at you? You’re doing fine, girl.” Clarice sniffed. “It’s just, you know — I care.”