Hiding Gladys (A Cleo Cooper Mystery) (2 page)

Apparently Bud took my smile to mean a maybe because he slapped his palms together, gave them a little rub, and said, “Alrighty then. Let’s get you on your way.”

TWO

In less time than
it takes me to make a pot of coffee, Bud got the snake out of the Jeep and the Jeep out of the ditch. He just opened the passenger door and slapped the windshield a couple of times. I held tightly to Tulip’s collar as the intruder slithered out and into the grass. Then Bud chained the Jeep to his truck and I steered while he pulled me out.

Well, he definitely wasn’t getting dessert for something
that
easy.

A quick good-bye wave and I was off again. My Jeep now resembled a camouflaged combat helmet with clumps of broom straw and black mud covering it, but it still ran. I’d deal with the mess later.

Little over an hour later, after leaving Highway 70 for 58, I turned onto Morristown Road, then Wetherington Landing Road, heading deeper and deeper into lowland farming country in Onslow County. I passed through the town of Stella and took a right onto Belgrade Swansboro Road before reaching the settlement of Silverdale, then navigated a few more backcountry roads. Finally I reached Gladys’s five-hundred-acre farm. A little research had revealed that the old two-story farmhouse was once the hub of an even larger working farm back in the early 1930s. Though Gladys kept the house in fairly good condition, it would need a ton of upgrades and renovation to make it marketable. Marketability wasn’t a concern for Gladys, however. She was in her seventies and planned to use the money she’d get from me to set herself up in a very nice assisted-living facility.

Shutting off the engine, I noticed that neither her car nor her housekeeper’s, who cleaned daily, was in its usual place.
Should I come back later?
I decided to soldier on. I wanted to get this show on the road. After all, I’d waited a lifetime for a geological break like this and now my ship was finally coming in.

There being no doorbell, I tapped the heavy pine door with the brass knocker. No one answered. I tapped again, humming an impatient little tune. A gentle breeze ruffled the leaves in the old oaks that overhung the wide porch but gave little relief from the stifling July heat. Just as I lifted the knocker to tap louder, the door flew open, making me jump like a startled rabbit. Standing in his socked feet—explaining why I hadn’t heard his approach—was Gladys’s thirty-four-year-old, live-in son, Robert Earle.

He was resplendent in plaid boxers, a sweat-stained wife beater, and a buzz-cut. Tattoos wiggled on his biceps as he braced his arm against the door. I knew that his pumped-up physique wasn’t the result of manual labor that might have done him some good and made him a little money, but rather the result of his hobby: pumping weights recreationally. I curbed the impulse to tilt my head down to the spot where his gaze had come to rest: my breasts.

“Hi, Robert Earle, is your—”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Though he’d never been even the tiniest bit friendly, such flat-out rudeness almost threw me off my game. Almost. I said pleasantly, “I’m here to see your mother. Is she here?”

“No, she’s not,” he snapped, taking a step back to close the door. “Now get lost.”

“May I ask where she is?”

“Are you deaf, retarded, or what?”

“Look,” I said, ditching Miss Manners, “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think of me, but your mother, besides being a friend, is also a business partner of mine.”

“What kinda business partner?” said Shirley, who’d now come up behind her brother. She was also a thirty-something, live-at-home adult. Her plain face was less than enhanced by the heavy-framed glasses and the trench they’d worn into the bridge of her nose. She adjusted the specs with her index finger and sneered, “She didn’t mention any partnership to me.”

“Be that as it may,” I said with commendable patience, “I have a signed option to test this property, all nice and legal, and I intend to do just that starting next week. I wanted to speak to your mother about what to expect once the drill crew’s here.”

Robert Earle’s eyes bulged and I saw the tendons working across his jawbone. His fists clenched. Apparently alarmed, Shirley put her hand on his bunched biceps. “Now, Robert Earle … ” She didn’t get any further.

“You’ve got nothing of the kind. Now get off this porch before I toss your fancy butt over that railing.”

He was dead wrong, of course, but I had no desire to be tossed into the sticker bushes. So undignified. I backed up a step and said, “Tell your mother I’ll be by in the morning to see her.”

Somehow I managed to affect a leisurely stroll to my Jeep. Well, my fancy butt may have been the tiniest bit tucked. Tulip let out a low growl as I slid behind the wheel. One thing about my new hound, she knew a varmint when she saw one.

“Good girl!” I told her. Waving cheerfully, I headed down the drive. At the intersection with the main farm road, I stopped.
Who else might know where Gladys is?
One person came instantly to mind. I turned right and headed her way.

Patches of sunlight dappled the dirt path that led to a modest 1950s cinder-block tenant house on a corner of Gladys’s farm. I steered carefully between pines and pin oaks and thought back to a conversation I’d had with Gladys one morning when she told me that Irene Mizzell wasn’t really a housekeeper.

She was, in fact, Gladys’s first cousin. When Irene’s husband, a shrimper from Harker’s Island, passed away, Gladys had offered her the tenant house and some money to tide her over until she got a job. Chuckling, Gladys had told me how the first morning after Irene moved to the farm, she’d turned up in Gladys’s kitchen, making breakfast. Irene had been cooking, cleaning, and helping with the chores ever since. I searched my memory for how long ago Gladys had said that was … maybe twenty years.

My knock on the front door of Irene’s house startled a barn swallow out of the mud nest she’d built in the corner of the green and white aluminum awning over my head. I looked around the prim little yard. I was sure the Honda Accord parked in the dirt drive was Irene’s. Everything was neat as a pin. Bedding plants bloomed in front of a low hedge of compacta holly. Three hummingbirds battled for the meager drops of sugar water left in the feeder hanging from a window awning that matched the one over the stoop.

How long did it take for birds to empty a feeder? Hours? Days? I’d met Irene a few times and she didn’t seem to be one to let her feeders run low. I knocked on the door again, paused a beat, then walked over to a picture window and peered in.

What I saw was just your average modest little den, with a La-Z-Boy facing a portable television that sported rabbit ears and a jarringly modern converter box. The recliner was topped by an afghan crocheted in a zigzag pattern that faded from deep maroon to pale pink. I walked around to the back of the house, looked in a few more windows, and checked the back door.

It was locked too. Well, hell, it was a good idea to try Irene, but it really didn’t matter that she wasn’t here, maybe off for a walk. Gladys was bound to be home tomorrow. I had plenty to do in the mean-
time.

Tulip and I got back in the Jeep and headed for the back of the property to start laying a grid for testing.

THREE

By the time I
got to the site it was nearly two o’ clock and I hadn’t eaten any lunch. I felt around in my field bag and came up with a pack of Nekot cookies and a bottle of water. Peanut butter for protein. Sugar for energy. What more could a girl want? I wolfed down a couple cookies then opened the cargo door for Tulip. She leapt out and took off for the woods at the edge of the open pasture. I waited until she dove into the thick underbrush, then whistled her back.

Like magic she was at my side. I gave her half a cookie just to reinforce rules she’d apparently never understood. Come when you’re called so you don’t end up abandoned in the woods by a feckless owner with a whole kennel full of hunting dogs just like you. “Aw, no one could be just like you, girl,” I said, giving voice to my thoughts. I gave her ear a playful tug and sent her off again.

Finishing my lunch, I took in the base line of surveyor’s flags I’d staked out on a quick trip last week. The row stretched across the 150-acre pasture, flags set at intervals of two hundred feet. I hadn’t seen Gladys then either. Actually I’d tried to call her several times over the last two weeks, but she hadn’t answered. Still, I wasn’t worried, I had only wanted to give her specifics on the testing and let her share in the excitement. She already knew everything she needed to know: initial testing would take about two weeks and the option she had signed allowed me to conduct this testing to confirm that rock of marketable quality and in sufficient quantity was present. She’d been raring to go.

A soft gust of wind passed and the little three-inch, orange plastic flags vibrated merrily on their wire stems. I needed to place additional rows of flags parallel to my base line. Once the drill crew got on site, they’d drill a hole at each flag. Data from these holes would tell me the number of feet to the top of the rock. Assuming the rock was there, of course, although all my instincts and prior field work told me it was.

In fact, I was relying heavily on my instincts and only somewhat on field indicators. But that didn’t matter. I could feel it in my bones: the rock was there.

Very hard rock, the kind of rock used in almost every kind of construction on the planet, lay just under my feet. The most important thing to know, however, was where my feet were planted. This location was very rare indeed for this type of rock. If my predictions were right—and I was betting every dime in my savings account they were—I had found the easternmost deposit of granite in the United States.

It didn’t matter that no major construction or new highway was scheduled nearby—my usual prerequisite for prospecting—I was close enough to Morehead City, a major port, to move the stone anywhere it needed to go up and down the East Coast.

A jolt of electricity shot through me at the notion of everything this meant. Certainly money. But fame too. In geologic circles anyway. I could already see my name in boldface on important scientific papers in prestigious journals.

Hours later, I had covered about half of the field, working my lines back and forth from the edge of the pasture to a creek deep into the woods. At one point as I reached the edge of the pasture, I heard Tulip crashing through the trees beyond me. Probably chasing a squirrel. I flagged the last drill hole on the line, then stepped back into the woods and whistled for her. More crashing about let me know she was down by the broad, shallow creek that fed off the White Oak River and ran through the back portion of Gladys’s farm.

I pushed my way downhill through greenbriars and honeysuckle, following the sound of her barking. She was standing on her hind legs, front paws on a massive pine trunk, looking up into the branches, letting me know she’d done her job. She treed something.

Placing my pinky fingers between my lips, I curled my tongue and let out a shrill whistle that caught her attention. “Tulip!” I called. “Get over here, girl!”

She stubbornly didn’t respond, so I walked over and looked up into the tree. A squirrel scolded me from high in the branches. “Good girl,” I said, giving her a pat. Then I moseyed over to the creek bank and looked down at the water, gurgling and swirling about three feet below me. Here was some of the highest ground on the farm, and actually the place I’d first seen the outcrop of in-place granite. The rock lay exposed under an unusual twist of pine tree roots and was just barely visible. I’d never even have spotted it had I not stepped in the creek to retrieve a piece of trash.

For years, any time I could spare a few days from my private consulting work to do a little prospecting for myself, I’d head down east and look for my Holy Grail: granite. To actually find some left me breathless. I remembered how excited I had been, splashing up and down the creek looking for more outcrops. Though I only found a few and they were extremely weathered, the strike and dip of the planes in the granite were unmistakable, all with the same orientation. Each time I took a reading on my Brunton compass I got goose bumps, confirming each outcrop to be just like the others, all trending in a northeast/southwest direction. I was giddy as a schoolgirl.

But that was then, this was now. Back to business. I tied a marker of plastic yellow flagging tape to a small sapling, pulled a black indelible marker from my pocket and wrote “core #1” on the tape. The proximity to water, needed to cool the drill bit as it grinds through rock and flushes debris from the cased hole, made this a perfect location for the first of many core samples I hoped to take. Meanwhile, Tulip, tired of aggravating the squirrels, trotted up and sat at my feet. I bent down on one knee to give her a hug.

At that moment, above me, right on a line of where my head had just been, the tree trunk exploded in a shower of bark and splinters. Now maybe it was because I watched lots of Westerns as a child, but I knew the whine of a ricocheting bullet when I heard it. And, just like in the Westerns, I instinctively dove toward the creek bank for cover, yelling, “Stop! Stop! Don’t shoot!”

I scrambled under some undergrowth, frantically looking for Tulip.

She was in front of me, splashing through the shallow water at a dead run. Like all good hunting dogs, she was racing ahead upon hearing a gun fire to finish off or tree her master’s quarry. Then the rifle cracked again. With an agonized yelping noise, Tulip collapsed and lay very still.

I stared, paralyzed with shock and fear, at the underside of her body. Blood was seeping from somewhere near her shoulders and slowly turning her mostly white belly a bright red. I wanted to go to her but was afraid to raise my head. One of her feet twitched. She raised her head and struggled to rise but was unable to. She just looked at me pathetically, then fell back.

“Easy, girl,” I said, stretching out my arm to her. “Stay. Stay there. I’m coming. Just hold on, girl.” I lay still about a minute longer before calling out again.

No one answered.

I heard no movement. Nothing except the trickle of the creek and birdsong. I pushed up on my shaking knees and crawled to Tulip. She was still breathing. Carefully, I lifted her limp body, scrambled up the slippery bank, and slogged my way back through the dense undergrowth to the open pasture, then ran for the Jeep. Jeans wet from the knees down and soggy boots made me feel like I had exercise weights on my ankles.

I gently laid Tulip on her side in the cargo area, dug out a T-shirt from my overnight bag and tied it around her chest. I realized the front of my shirt and jeans were soaked with bloody water. It had even spattered on my boots. My hand shook as I pushed Tulip’s lip over her teeth to expose pale gums. I mashed a spot with my index finger; very little color returned. She’d lost so much blood. I slammed the cargo door shut, jumped behind wheel, and gunned it for a veterinary hospital I’d passed a couple of times on my way into town.

An agonizing hour after the veterinarian and her assistants took Tulip from me and disappeared into surgery, the waiting room door opened. The vet, a nice young woman with a pretty smile and hugely pregnant belly, walked over quietly and slipped into a chair beside me.

She patted my knee.

My heart squeezed.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “She’s going to be just fine. I know it looked bad, but it’s just a flesh wound. She did lose right much blood, but you got her to us quick so she didn’t go into shock. We’re sewing her up now and giving her some blood, some antibiotics. With a little rest, she’ll be good as new.”

I felt tears pool and looked away.

“Wounded hunting dogs are my specialty,” said the sweet vet, thank-
fully ignoring my emotional state. “We get a lot of them around here.”

“Really?” I sniffed.

“Yeah. Not so much this time of the year though,” she added pensively. “It isn’t deer season. Probably someone poaching.”

Taking a deep breath of relief, I said, “Thanks so much for helping Tulip without her even being one of your patients. I’m sure you saved her life.”

“Now, not a bit of that, sug,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “We’re just glad you got her here in time. Didn’t I hear you tell my assistant you’re working nearby?”

I rose to leave and said, “Doing consulting work,” my pat answer that basically says nothing and usually stops further questions. “I’m staying at the Morning Glory Inn. I gave my cell number to your assistant. Give me a call if you need me.”

“Okay, sug, you go get yourself cleaned up,” the young vet said, struggling to heave herself to her feet. I gave her a hand. “And don’t worry,” she added. “She’s had plenty of painkillers and she’ll rest easy here.”

It was almost six o’ clock when I left Tulip in the vet’s capable hands. Deciding I’d had about all the fun I could stand for one day, I headed for the Morning Glory. A little painkiller for myself sounded like a capital idea.

I dug out a pint of excellent Kentucky whiskey, Jack Daniel’s, black label, from my overnight bag. I always carry one in case the need arises and, by my way of thinking, a hitchhiking rattlesnake and a dog who took a bullet were need enough. But the mini refrigerator humming away in the corner had no freezer, and thus no ice. So I picked up the ice bucket to head for the ice machine that lived on the far end of the second-story porch running along the full length of the old mansion turned inn.

I pulled the door open, and there was my tall, beautiful daughter, her fist raised ready to knock.

“Yikes!” she said.

“Yikes back at ya,” I said. “What’re you doing here?”

“Dad told me about the rattlesnake, so I thought I’d come down to see for myself that you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” I said and shoved the bucket into her hand. “Go get some ice.”

She was back in a flash. I plopped a few cubes in two tumblers, poured a generous splash of Jack Black in each and handed her one. Then I collapsed with mine in one of two overstuffed chairs.

“So tell me what happened with the snake,” she said, plopping down in the other.

I told her about the rattler and also about Tulip’s “hunting” mishap and all the other little events of the day that kept nagging at me and threatening to become big ones. Like not finding Gladys or talking to her for weeks.

Henri—she’s been called that since a few minutes after she was named Henrietta Gail twenty-three years ago—sucked on her ice, studied her glass, then got up to add fresh cubes and another splash of Jack.

I wrinkled my brow. “You know how I feel about more than one drink without food, especially if you’re planning on driving.”

“Not to worry,” Henri said. “I’m going to stay here with you tonight. Let’s order Chinese and get drunk.”

“Fine by me.” But I knew she wasn’t here out of concern for my emotional state or for idle chitchat. She had another reason for being here, likely her usual reason. I waited her out. We drank, ordered, plied our chopsticks, and talked about her business. She’s a talented photographer when she’s not being a student.

Finally, on her third glass, Henri revealed her primary mission. “You know,” she said, “Dad was so happy he was able to do something for you today. You should do something nice for him in return.”

A twinge of guilt pricked me. I’d told Bud I would cook him dinner tonight. However, it was a very small twinge, considering how many times I’d cooked for him only to hear, “Oh, I forgot to tell you, babe, I have a meeting,” as he dashed out the door.

I twirled the ice in my glass with my finger, sighed noisily and said, “Henri, I’m not interested in excerpts from
Henri Cooper’s Complete Guide to Etiquette for Divorced Parents
. Your dad and I get along perfectly fine the way we are. When are you going to stop trying to turn back the clock?”

“I’m not trying to do any such thing,” she said huffily. “And besides, you said it yourself, you get along fine. So why can’t we just be together as a family?”

“Because you and your brother don’t even live at home anymore, for one thing, and because I really don’t want to do thirty to life at the Women’s Correctional Institute in Raleigh, which is exactly what would happen if I tried to live full-time with your father again. You and your brother have got to give up this fantasy.”

“But … ”

“No
buts
. I’m not going to discuss it another second.”

“Okay.” She took another sip of her drink and moved on to her second-favorite topic: her love life. How the latest
amour de jour
just wasn’t working out, how she planned to extricate herself from the relationship and still remain friends, yadda yadda yadda.

Around midnight I pulled two old oversized T-shirts from my bag, threw one to Henri and headed to the bathroom to change. I don’t remember ever actually owning any pajamas. When I came out, Henri was sprawled on her side of the king bed snoring softly. I slipped under the covers on my side, turned out the light, and smiled at the promise of teasing her with the snoring thing later.