Hiding Gladys (A Cleo Cooper Mystery) (19 page)

EPiLOGUE

On the phone Gladys
Walton was telling me about her latest adventure—a trip to Italy with Sister.

“That sounds marvelous,” I said.

“Well, why don’t you come with us on our next trip? It’s been long enough since you took possession of the farm. The quarry’s running now. Why don’t you take off a few weeks?”

“Oh, I could never keep up with you two.”

“We’ll talk about it,” she said. “
Ciao
!”

“
Ciao
,” I echoed.

Tulip laid her chin on my knee. She always knew when I was blue. I stroked her silky ears and wondered why I was depressed. I had no reason to be. Gladys was happy. Shirley and Ivan had both pled
nolo contendere
and were doing time in separate prisons. I’d also heard Shirley had filed for an annulment. That pair deserved every happiness the court meted out to them, and more.

Maybe I was still sad because I had to give up on my dream of owning a quarry. Of course, I’d known it would be a tough slog. I used to do it for a living, after all. But in the years since I’d left GeoTech, the reins of government had changed hands and now a
new political ideology was blowing through Washington that, well … let’s just say it wasn’t one to reward rugged individualism and entrepreneurship.

Did you know we have an environmental czar now? Not only that, but particulate emission standards—dust in the air, silt in the water—are now undefined. In other words, if there is no standard, then nothing is acceptable. How do you deal with that?

Once I got the county zoning permits, the state and federal mining permits, the EPA permits, the ATF permits (explosives make that a necessity) all submitted, including all their required flow charts and water-quality diagrams, I’d thought I was close, at least, to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

I was wrong. I was just getting started. I still had the Army Corps of Engineers, the United States Department of Mine Safety and Health, and OSHA to deal with, not to mention background checks on all possible employees.

One day, about eight months into the permitting process, after having to hire two assistants on top of my lawyer and her assistant, I realized I hadn’t seen the woods or felt the rain on my face or the snap of a frosty morning in all that time. Tulip was really out of shape. She’d lie around my office all day and stare at me while I worked behind my desk.

Plus, my bank notes were coming due and Lonnie was getting nervous again. In the end, I sold out to GeoTech and let their army of lawyers and EPA specialists fight the government. Tulip and I were both much happier with that decision.

So, the truth was that letting go of that dream definitely wasn’t what was making me sad today.

Maybe it was the money. Instead of the millions a year I’d dreamed of making as the owner of my own quarry, I would only be getting hundreds of thousands a year in royalties. Still, in the deal I worked, my loan and Gladys were paid in full and my heirs would be financially independent into perpetuity. In fact, financial independence was the only part of my dream that did come true.

I felt as if I had just come from a funeral. What was wrong with me? There was no time, however, to ponder the question because the sound of the doorbell sent Tulip into a barking fit. Scrambling to her feet, she took off, furious that someone had managed to breach her canine security system.

“Tulip!” I called after her. “Knock it off!” From the windows in the sunroom adjoining the kitchen I could see an official-looking car … good ole Sheriff Sonny Evans.

There was a good chance he had come to tell me he had finally found the body of Nash Finley. Although the sheriff wasn’t responsible for the search for Nash following his boating accident in the flooded quarry—different county—he had kept up with it and kept me informed. So far, neither divers nor cadaver dogs had found a trace of him.

“Sheriff Evans,” I said. “What brings you to my door?”

“Sheriffs’ convention in Raleigh,” he said, stepping inside. “Thought I’d take the opportunity to stop by on my way home and give you some new information I just received from NCIC.”

“Okay, whatever that is, I’m all ears. Have a seat.”

Pulling a kitchen chair away from the table, he hooked his hat over his knee and said, “NCIC is the National Crime Information Center. I don’t know how well you knew Mr. Finley, but I learned he was quite a dangerous character.”

“I’m willing to believe you.”

“Did you know he was a Ranger in the Army?”

“Nope. But it explains how he managed to track me without my seeing him.”

“The thing is, he got a dishonorable discharge.”

“I believe that too.”

“You were very lucky.”

“Amen to that.”

Sheriff Evans unhooked his hat and stood to leave, but he seemed uneasy. “Since I’ve been sheriff,” he said, “there have been four bodies dumped into that flooded quarry—all drug-related killings—and four bodies pulled from it. There’s only the one small outlet to the river and no large carnivores in there, like alligators, to dispose of a corpse like Nash’s.”

I waited for his point.

“In other words, you should probably watch your back, Miz Cooper, for a while anyway.”

I opened the door for him and gave him a pat on the back as he walked through. “Thanks for the warning, Sheriff.”

“You’re very welcome. Call me if you need me.”

After he left I hopped to my feet and headed for the garage in search of my gardening tools. I felt like some yard work.

It would be a cold day in hell before I spent even a minute looking over my shoulder for a stupid creep like Nash Finley. I noticed I was feeling a little better. Must have been the adrenaline rush I got when I realized I had outsmarted a very nasty ex-Ranger.

Just as I started to step out the back door, Tulip, who had been leading the way, suddenly turned back, took a few steps past me and stopped. Then she did that dog thing, tilting her head from side to side, listening. Something only she could hear sent her into high-alert mode and she came up on her toes, straight as a pointer.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Maybe I had been a little hasty in dismissing the possibility that Nash was still out there somewhere. Just then, I felt a tiny change in the air pressure in the house and I knew immediately that someone had just opened a door.

My new baby nine was nestled in the console of the Jeep. Deciding that having it tucked behind my back would help curb the heebie-jeebies, I descended a few steps, but inside the garage doorway, I heard a low rumble from Tulip. I turned back just in time to see her stalk, stiff-legged, back into the house and disappear from view.

“Tulip!” I hissed. “Get back here!”

Then I heard her toenails as she skittered on the hardwood floor. Despite the intense jolt of panic that shot through me at the sound I marched back into the kitchen.

Just when you think you have gotten over something, damnit, you haven’t. Things creep back up on you, and it takes less than you think to get you going.

Like a shell-shocked warrior, I got flashbacks of the sight of Nash pointing his Smith and Wesson and, most unpleasant, the vision of blood dripping down the front of my shirt.

I stopped beside the antique kitchen table, slid open the utensil drawer built into the skirt and quietly removed a knife. I hesitated a few moments, straining to hear something to give me a clue as to what I was dealing with.

Was that Tulip whimpering?

“Tulip!” I called out to her again. What the hell was going on? Where was she? My poor baby. Instantly rage that someone would hurt an innocent pet flew over me. I took off for the dinning room, knife raised.

Then, a familiar voice stopped me.

“Hey, babe, what are you up to?” Bud asked as Tulip the wonder dog, sitting at his feet, practically passed out with delight as he rubbed her ears.

“Goddamnit, Bud. You never heard of ringing a doorbell or knocking?”

“Of course I have, but why would I do that? It’s just me. Jeez, you’re jumpy as a squirrel. That a knife? Are you okay?”

“Considering you almost scared the pants off me, I guess I am.”

Bud pulled his Ray-Bans down his nose and peered over them at my still-clad lower half. “Almost only counts with a scatter gun. Let me go out and come in again … take another shot at it.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “You’re a jerk, you know that? Sit down and tell me why you’re here,” I said, realizing that, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I had a ten-pound weight sitting on my heart.

“Couple of reasons. Mostly just to see how the other half lives,” Bud said, his head stuck in my refrigerator.

“Beer’s in the door, bottom rack.”

Bud cracked open a can and I realized something else: I’ve missed that sound. I keep beer just for him. Never touch the swill myself. Strictly wine for me, unless there’s Jack Black to be had. He pulled a wine glass from the cabinet, poured a Pinot for me, and sat down on the other side of the table. I had missed that too. The way he knows what I want without asking. I sipped the wine.

Bud slugged down half his beer and said, “Man, it’s hot out there.”

I marveled at his ability to pick up right where we left off, as if he’d just seen me a day ago. He had been in Europe a lot recently, doing deals for his company. I had been behind a desk, struggling with government bureaucracy and working with GeoTech to open the quarry.

“Will and Henri told me about you getting squeezed into a sellout to GeoTech, Cleo. I’m sorry. I know how much you wanted to be a quarry owner … show ’em how it ought to be done and all.”

“No biggie,” I said. “Didn’t you say you were here for a couple of reasons? In my book, that means three.”

“You think a couple means three? I’ll have to remember that.” Bud gave me one of his wicked grins and sucked down the remainder of his beer.

He cracked open another and, having quenched his thirst, took a polite swallow this time. “Well, I was just wondering … ” Pausing, he seemed to be trying to collect his thoughts.

“You were wondering … ” I prompted.

“Yeah. Well, you’re rich now … and that is, after all, what you really wanted. In fact, I remember a conversation with you where you said that money was the only thing that would let you be yourself. First you wanted to be independent, to make your own way. Then, nothing would do but you had to be fabulously rich—”

“I’m still not fabulously rich. But what’s your point?”

“I’m trying to tell you,” Bud said, his exasperation showing. “I’ve been waiting all these years for you to get what you wanted. Now you’ve got it, so I’m here to ask why I’m still waiting?”

I took another sip of wine, nodded yet again, and thought back to my recent confinement behind a desk. Horrible. Then I thought back even further to my confinement as Bud’s wife. A deeper shade of horrible. But that didn’t mean I didn’t love Bud. I did.

Problem was, I loved my life better, my independence, my career with its mental and physical challenges—prospecting in the woods, the deserts, the mountains, and the oceans of the world. God. I couldn’t give that up to wait at home for him to come back from who knows where, doing god knows what.

If only there were some way … some place in the middle.

Bud laid his hand on my arm. “You’re not coming back, are you?”

I gave him direct eye contact and told him the straight truth. “No, Bud, I’m not.”

He withdrew his hand. “I didn’t think you would. That brings me to my last reason for being here.”

“Shoot,” I said.

“I want to hire you.”

I leaned back in my chair and stared at him. “For what?”

“To be the head geologist on a project I want to take on. I’ve been in Europe doing research, finding partners, working out details.”

I tilted my chair onto its back legs. “What kind of project?”

“Natural gas exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf … off the coast of North Carolina. Could be big. Very big.”

“Could be expensive. Very expensive.”

“Hey, there’s more stimulus money out there than even you could spend. All we need to do is put up a few wind turbines … we could use those to power our deep-sea drilling … ”

I laughed. “Maybe they’d power the security lights on the derrick—but go on. I admire your enthusiasm. As a matter of fact,” I said, feeling an excitement I haven’t felt since I found my granite mountain, “did you know this is one of my favorite daydreams, to find a commercially viable pocket of oil or natural gas off our coast? I’ve been collecting deep-sea topographic maps of the coast, all the latest data on the Manteo Prospect in the Carolina trough.”

“Me too! I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“Did you know that the Prospect is estimated to contain
five trillion
cubic feet of dry natural gas?”

“Why the hell do you think I’m interested? Of course I know that.”

I looked at Bud. “Had dinner yet?”

“Any spaghetti sauce in the freezer?”

“Of course.”

“How about dessert?”

“Maybe.”

The End

About the Author

Debut author Lee Mims holds a master’s and bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, and she once worked as a field geologist. Lee is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. Currently a popular wildlife artist,
Hiding Gladys
is her debut novel. She lives in Clayton, N.C. Visit the author online at LeeMims.com.