Hiding Gladys (A Cleo Cooper Mystery) (8 page)

THIRTEEN

I drove straight to
a truck garage I’d seen at the edge of the small town of Stella off Highway 17. I’d noticed it because it seemed a large operation for such a small town and therefore I suspected it specialized in tractor repairs. Which meant they had wreckers big enough to haul tractors. I stepped from the Jeep, noticing that, for the second time in two weeks, my clothes had dried on my body due to a dunking on the job. I tried to brush away dried silt and bits of grass and roots as I made my way across a large concrete parking area and stepped into the cool shade of one of three large work bays.

Several large tractors, looking like giant wounded crustaceans, were being attended to, hoods removed, mechanics on either side working intently. The place smelled of motor oil and sweat. Hydraulic wrenches whirled and bursts of compressed air hissed from hoses snaking in every direction. I threaded my way through these obstacles, headed for the office.

A round-faced middle-aged woman with teased black hair glanced up from where she pounded away on an ancient adding machine. Even when she stopped punching numbers in, the machine clicked and whirred away as if it was totaling up the national debt.

“What can I do for you, honey?” she asked. Instantly I felt a little better and explained my problem.

“Lordy, honey. What you need is
Sweet Thang
.”

“ ‘
Sweet Thang
’?” I repeated dubiously.

She pointed to a photo on the wall of a very shiny electric blue wrecker with flotation tires, each of which would reach my shoulders. The photo appeared to have been taken at some type of tractor pull or truck rodeo.
Sweet Thang
was emblazoned across the side of the wrecker in bold yellow shadow script.

“Wow!” was all I could think to say.

“That’s my Jimmy’s pride and joy. Jimmy’s my husband. Let me call him for you, honey,” said Ms. Jimmy. Without leaving her rolling chair, she scooted to a door behind her gray steel desk, opened it and yelled, “Jimmy!” When he didn’t respond in the next nanosecond, she said, “Be right back,” and sprang up to find him.

A few minutes later, I heard a clattering roar and
Sweet Thang
rumbled around the corner of the building looking just as it did in the photo.

Jimmy pulled the wrecker up in front of where I stood—I was wrong, the tires actually reached to my chin—and climbed out. “Jimmy Purdue,” he said with an outstretched hand.

“Cleo Cooper,” I said. “Glad to meet you.”

His wife came out of the office door and stood beside me as he continued, “Melva tells me you’re in a fine mess and need some help right now.”

“She told you right. Can you help me?”

“Well.” He squinted up at the sun. “It’s about four. We probably have enough light, but we need to get moving. We got bingo at church tonight. Starts at eight and I’m the caller.”

“I understand,” I said. “Follow me.”

I jumped back in the Jeep and drove to the site with S
weet Thang
chained down to a rollback carrier plus an empty carrier right behind me. My luck got even better when Jimmy told me that the situation wasn’t as bad as it looked. Since the rig hadn’t completed a 90-degree flip, the oil didn’t run out of the engine block. According to Jimmy, that was a good thing. Apparently.

I’m pretty good with large machines as far as how they do what I need on a worksite, but their mysterious inner workings will always remain, well, mysterious to me.

In less than two hours, Jimmy and
Sweet Thang
had the rig pulled out of the creek and loaded on the carrier, and he was on his way back to town for bingo night. The crew, having no rig to drill with, headed for their motel.

My cell clanged. Wink. Perfect timing.

After I told him what had happened, we made plans to meet at Purdue’s Garage late the next afternoon, check on the repairs, and formulate a plan to get the testing back on track as fast as possible. When I suggested maybe even getting another rig to the site if Statewide had one available, Wink didn’t make noises as if that was a total impossibility. I was just starting to feel like my mojo was still working. Then my cell phone rang again. I checked the screen. Gladys.

“Gladys, what’s up?” I said.

“Cleo? Is that you?” Her voice trembled and she sounded dis-
oriented.

“You okay, Gladys?”

“Well, I don’t know … ”

“What’s the matter?”

“Well, I talked to that nice sheriff and right after he left, the children drove up. How did they know I was here?”

My guess: they followed the sheriff. I closed my eyes and rubbed my now aching head. “I’m not sure,” I lied.

“Me either.” Gladys sighed. “Anyway, they’re both here, saying they want me to come home with them. I told them no, but they brought out that old paper they want me to sign again. They’re in the kitchen now, waiting for me. I’m feeling a little dizzy. I think I’ve had too big of a day.”

“Where are you now?” I asked, worried. She sounded so vul-
nerable.

“In the powder room. I told them I didn’t feel good. I know they don’t mean any harm. I just can’t seem to make them understand that they can’t push me around and now … now I feel so tired … ”

“Gladys. Listen to me very carefully,” I said slowly and deliberately. “Go upstairs to my bedroom. Open the door to the deck and go out to the little gate that leads to the private stairs and the garden below. Open it too. Leave both the gate and the bedroom door open. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Then go to my walk-in closet. Look to the left at floor level. You’ll see a small access panel that leads to the ceiling over the side porch. It has a magnetic fastener like a kitchen cabinet. When I first moved in by myself, I rigged it so I’d always have a hiding place. Just tap the panel and it will open. Crawl through and lock it with the slide bolt on the other side. Understand?”

“I think so,” she said hesitantly.

“See,” I explained, “when Robert Earle and Shirley come looking for you, they’ll see the door and the gate open and think you’ve gone outside. They can look for you all they want. They’ll never find you as long as you stay quiet. You said you were tired. Take a nap. There’ll be a nice breeze through the eaves.”

“Okay. Open the doors and crawl through the little panel door in the closet. I’m so sorry for all this … ”

I interrupted her. “Don’t worry, Gladys. I’ll be right there. Just stay cool. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Almost exactly two hours later, at the edge of twilight, Tulip and I dashed up the stairs to my house. We were met at my front door by Robert Earle, who jerked it open in my face.

“What are you doing here?” Had he somehow failed to notice it was my house?

A startled Tulip burst into a staccato barrage of barking, her jaws snapping like a furry crocodile. I grabbed her collar before she could lunge teeth-first into his crotch.

“Down, girl!” I said to Tulip. “Sit.” She subsided begrudgingly, her eyes glued to her quarry.

“That’s a question more properly put to you, Robert Earle,” I said.

“We came to see Mom,” Shirley said, emerging from the side of the house. Both of them appeared sweaty and winded.

I swept past them into the living room, a still uneasy Tulip following close on my heels. There I noticed a large arrangement of tropical lilies and roses sitting on the coffee table. No Gladys, thankfully. In the kitchen, I sat my keys on the stove island and looked around.

Relieved Gladys wasn’t there either, I said casually, “So where is your mother?”

“Oh, like you don’t know. We’ve been looking for her almost two hours—”

Shirley interrupted, “We were having a nice little chat and then all of a sudden she got up to go upstairs and now we can’t find her. The door to your deck upstairs is open. We think she may have wandered outside and gotten disoriented … you know, she’s old and gets confused easily.”

“Yeah,” Robert Earle chimed in.

“Translation,” I said, “you two were trying to coerce her into signing your Power of Attorney papers—yet again—and any disorientation she might be experiencing is from whatever tranquilizer you gave her.”

“Well! I never!” Shirley sputtered. “We … we would never do anything that might hurt our mother or force her to do anything of the kind. We just want her home.”

“Glad to hear it. In that case, I’m sure she just walked up to Cameron Village for a little shopping.”

I opened the front door and waved them through it. “When she gets back, I’ll tell her you guys had to go.”

Brother and sister stomped down my front steps. Before reaching the sidewalk, Robert Earle turned and growled, “You aren’t taking what’s ours.”

He was getting pretty predictable, I must say.

“I’m not taking anything. I’m paying the rightful owner, your mother, for it. Y’all have a nice day now, you hear,” I said and firmly closed the door.

I unlaced my field boots, which were coated in dried creek mud, pulled them off, then trotted quickly through the house to the back door and opened it a crack. In a few minutes, I heard Robert Earle’s Escalade crank up down the street. He and Shirley had parked around the block so their mother wouldn’t see them drive up. I went back to the front window and watched them cruise slowly by the house before they drove off.

Then I ran to my bedroom, ducked under the hanging clothes, and pushed the panel. Though I was expecting it to be locked, a moment of panic seized me when it didn’t open. What if she was unconscious on the other side? How would I reach her? Rip open the door with a crowbar? Reining in my runaway fears, I rapped lightly on the door and called out, “Open up, Gladys, it’s me.”

For a few seconds there was only silence. I bit my knuckle as my anxiety mounted. Then, in a voice much stronger than the one I’d heard two hours ago, Gladys said, “Who’s
me
?”

I laughed with relief. “Cleo Cooper. Open up.”

“Oh, thank the good lord,” Gladys said, opening the door and crawling through. “Breeze or not, it’s kinda warm up here.”

We stood up together, me holding her lightly by her shoulders to steady her, as she still seemed a little woozy.

“Come on downstairs,” I said. “The coast is clear.”

I made her a nice cup of oolong tea. Gladys sat on a stool and sipped.

“How do you feel now?” I asked.

“Kind of like I used to after a night of one-fifty-proof daiquiris and three packs of Marlboros.” We both laughed.

Then her face darkened. “I hate to admit it to anyone—including myself—but I think the kids might’ve drugged me.” Her chin trembled. “I keep asking myself over and over, what did I do to ever make them feel I’m incapable of taking care of myself? Especially considering the fact that I’ve been the one taking care of them all these years. Hell, those two have never lifted a finger or asked to be involved in any way and now … now they think they need to take over?”

What could I say? If I knew anything at all, it was that I could say anything about my children, but no one else better do it. I patted her hand, got up, and rooted around in the pantry until I found a bag of Nutter Butters.

“When things seem really screwed up and confused, eat a cookie,” I said. “It’ll all come clear sooner or later.”

I munched a cookie, savoring its salty sweetness and said, “You know, Gladys, I’ve been thinking it might be best to move you someplace the kids would never think of looking. They obviously know where I live now.”

“Oh, my dear, I’m sure you had no idea how much trouble my family and I would be when you started this project. Lord knows, I didn’t either. I just feel terrible about this … ”

“It’s no trouble and I think I might know just the place. But let me make a phone call first. Be right back.” I went upstairs to my bedroom for privacy. I was pretty sure I could count on Bud, but what with the new little girlfriend … I dialed his cell, told him what I needed and why. I could tell he was delighted to have me asking for another favor.

He said, “Of course you can use the beach house, Cleo. You know you can use anything I have, anytime.”

Really? Does that include the pretty young thing I saw you with yesterday? I could use a good cleaning woman.
“I appreciate that,” I said, in prudent mode. “I’ll take her up tomorrow and it will just be until I finish testing and can wrap up this project legally.”

“No problem. Take as long as you need. Maybe you’ll cook me dinner again one night real soon. Maybe even throw in some dessert.”

I clamped my bottom lip firmly between my teeth.

“Did I say something wrong?” he said in reaction to my silence.

“No.” Prudence spoke for me again. “I’m just tired. I had an accident on the site today—”

“Damn! Was anyone hurt? Will you have to deal with OSHA now?”

“Uh, no, to the first question and yes to the second, but OSHA won’t get the reports until after we’re through. I figure we’ll finish up this week, but, look, I don’t have time to go into all this right now. Just thanks again for the use of the house, Bud. Gotta go.”

I could hear him starting to ask if I wanted to get together and talk about it as I closed my cell.

FOURTEEN

Gladys didn’t seem to
mind when I hustled her out the next morning, Tuesday, like I was the Mad Hatter and we were late for the tea party. I practically threw her and her bags into the Jeep. Tulip, ever ready, leaped into her spot in the back as soon as I cracked open the door. By seven o’ clock we were on our way to Bud’s beach house. At best, it would be ten by the time I got her settled in.

Noticing my clammy palms and that I had a death grip on the wheel, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that stress causes wrinkles. I gripped the wheel harder.

“Something wrong, dear?” asked Gladys.

“No, not at all. Just lots to do. I’ve got to meet with my banker later today in New Bern—just thinking about that … Would you like some music?” I said, indicating my iPod playlist.

Gladys scanned it. “Oh goody, Metallica.”

Dear lord.
Henri had complied the playlist for me, hence Metallica. Thank goodness for earbuds. I handed them over to her.

We were nearly there when Gladys removed the ear buds and sighed loud enough that I knew something was on her mind. “What we were talking about yesterday, Cleo … The kids trying to get me to sign a Power of Attorney or have me committed or whatever … ”

“Yes, yes, I remember,” I urged her on.

“I’m embarrassed by their behavior and at the same time, I question myself. Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe I should go home and tackle the issue head on and get this behind me.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

She sighed. “Not really. The older I get, the more I try to avoid scenes and unpleasantness at all costs. Also, they’re continually pointing out how forgetful I am, showing me little things around the house I haven’t done. Things I know I did, like turn off the sprinkler or the television or the stove. After awhile, it can get to you and you start getting confused. Sometimes I’ve … well, I’ve even thought they’re trying to gaslight me because when I’m by myself, I don’t forget things. But then, they are my children. They wouldn’t do that … ”

Gladys gloomily looked out the window as neat rows of lush corn blinked by, then turned back to me and said bluntly, “A few days at home with them and I feel like I belong in a nuthouse.”

“Gladys,” I said, “let me tell you a quick story about a lovely, gentle, little black lady—Opal was her name. I met her when I worked for GeoTech. She owned a small five-acre parcel of land near New Bern, which was in a line of similar-size parcels that backed up to GeoTech’s property in that area. They were actively mining the marine limestone in that area in a dragline operation called slot mining, and it was my job to purchase all those parcels of land as the dragline came within reach of them.

“Now, the dragline is an enormous excavating crane. This Jeep would easily fit into its bucket. It is so big, in fact, that it can only mine the land directly within the reach of its boom. The bucket drops from the end of the boom and as cables drag it back toward the crane, it scoops up tons of limestone and leaves a slot. Hence the name. After the slot is mined out, the dragline is moved backwards in a complicated and time-consuming operation to the next location.

“Point is, once the dragline has gone past a location, there’s no returning for small parcels. Opal’s children thought GeoTech was out to cheat her. They convinced her to hold out for more money. No amount of proof I showed her about what the other landowners had been paid or logic on my part could persuade her that she needed to take the deal offered her.

“I think she really
wanted to, but her children pressured her to the point that she got confused. Anyway, the dragline moved on and left her parcel of land behind. A year later, the company flooded that section and left her sitting on a little peninsula of land in a five-hundred-acre lake.”

“Did she continue to live there?”

“For a while. Her original plan was to buy a small house in town from the proceeds of the land sale. Make life easier for herself. But because she took her children’s advice, she couldn’t. I felt sorry for her, and at the time I was divorcing Bud and needed a place of peace and quiet, a hideaway, if you will. So I bought the parcel from her. She took the money this time and got to move into town after all.”

“Opal … Did she ever sell daffodils out by the dirt road that ran in front of her house?”

“Yes. She did,” I said, amazed. “How did you know that?”

“Irene loved her flower stand. How she knew about it, I don’t know, since it was way back off the main highway. Every spring, we’d make a trek to a favorite tackle shop of hers down that way. She was quite the fisherman, you know. On the way back, we’d always leave the highway, wind back through the woods on those sandy dirt roads—I was always scared we’d get stuck—and buy jars and jars of those daffodils. I can smell them now … ”

Gladys grew silent. I patted her hand on the console and said, “I didn’t mean to make you sad. I was only trying to point out how once you get yourself in a situation where you control your destiny, you’ll be much happier and you’ll never question your sanity again. You can trust your own judgment.”

“I know you’re right. I guess I’m just impatient to get to that point.”

“We’ll get there,” I said. “Don’t you worry. And speaking of getting there, here we are.”

Bud’s family had been part of the South since before the Revolutionary War. A large family, they had spread from Georgia to North Carolina and amassed great wealth growing, selling, and ginning cotton until the 1950s, when they diversified into other, even more profitable areas. Back in the 1930s, Bud’s grandparents bought the house on Wrightsville Beach that now sat before Gladys and me. It was nestled among other grand old dames built during a time when planning and zoning boards allowed for construction right behind what’s called the fore-dune ridge, the leading line of sand dunes before reaching the beach proper.

Seahaven was a stately three-story house made of weathered cypress. Its bright, orange-red canvas awnings had to be replaced every ten years or so unless a hurricane blew them away first. It was situated facing the ocean on the third of three inline lots. The first two were empty except for a parking area by the road and a long wooden boardwalk that skimmed the tops of the dunes. I’d fallen in love with the house’s quiet dignity and endearing charm the first time I’d seen it and have to say that it is the only trapping of a wealthy marriage that I missed.

Just like me, Gladys was thrilled by Seahaven, which made it easier to leave her there alone to explore it. She’d have Tulip as her companion. In fact, the arrangement worked out well for Tulip. I’d been worried about her recovery progress and yesterday’s excitement with the bridge couldn’t be what the doctor ordered. More time off was the therapy Tulip really needed.

After I made sure they were well settled in, I got back in the Jeep and checked my cell before heading for New Bern. Damn. Wink had called but left no message. A twinge of anxiety crept up my spine. Why was he trying to reach me? Was there going to be a serious delay in testing? I tried to return his call. When he didn’t answer, I simply closed my cell. Whatever the problem, I’d see him this afternoon. Right now it was time to fight another battle: a meeting with my banker.

Like a lot of women who divorce after a decades-long marriage, I found that most of my friends went with my marriage. Lonnie Harris, my banker, was an exception. He’d remained neutral. When I approached him with a loan request to start a quarry, he was sincere about wanting to see my business plan. After he saw it—which, if my geology proved correct, would net his bank a tidy profit—he was glad to lend me the cash I needed.

In truth, poor Lonnie was desperately trying to steer his small independent bank through the treacherous waters of bank failures and bailouts that ruled the day. To accomplish that, he needed to think out of the box while still maintaining the number one rule of banking: only make loans that are sure bets with big returns.

Right now, everything was contingent on the geologic data. I’d figured on another week to get what I needed to calculate the volume of rock available for mining and back it up with core samples. Because of the delay with the overturned rig, I was a little worried I wouldn’t make it. Yet, I had faith in Wink. Together, we’d figure something out.

I joined Lonnie at his golf club, and from the beginning of the meeting in the clubhouse restaurant, I could sense that he was a little reserved, not his usual jovial self. He didn’t even perk up when I told him I was right on schedule and would be ready the first of next week with a presentation for his bosses. I figured there was no sense bothering him with frivolous details about overturned rigs and delays.

As I went through the information I thought Lonnie ought to know, he’d nod his head occasionally or readjust his position in the tan leather booth. When I finished, he quietly promised he’d take care of rounding up all the big wigs that needed to be there. And then he let me know what was bothering him.

“Cleo, I’ve known you for a very long time and you’re a very smart woman, but … ”

“But what? I knew there was something.”

“But business is business,” he said, swallowing hard. “And I was thinking—is there any way you could get Bud—”

“Lonnie, stop right there. I’ve put everything I have into your past assurances that you and your bank would be looking forward to working with
me
—not my former husband or his family—on this project. And, I might add, making a large profit for the privilege.”

“That was before over three hundred banks failed nationwide, Cleo. Globally—well, I don’t even know how many. Hell, this is the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Damn it. There’s no credit flowing anywhere.” He slumped back in his chair.

I glared at him. I didn’t care if my homicidal impulses showed on my face.

Shaking his head, Lonnie said, “For Christ’s sake … I’m not saying no, you know.”

“No?”

“It’s just that everything, and I mean
everything
, has to be to the bank’s benefit. Times ten. There cannot be the slightest risk for us. Do you understand?”

“There won’t be. I told you that months ago,” I said, and stood up before he could say anything else. “So we’re still on for next week’s meeting?”

“Yes,” he said, barely looking at me. “I’ll call you with the time. And that brings me to another thing. You positively have to have your presentation ready by Tuesday.”

“Why?”

“Because the executives required to approve the four-million-dollar term loan will be down here that day on another matter. Trust me, Cleo, in times like these, we’ll need to include your project with several others, rather than have it considered alone.”

Moving my agenda up by several days after everything that had happened? Gosh, no pressure there. I looked down at my nervous banker as he finger-combed his prematurely thinning salt and pepper hair.

“Right. Always a pleasure, Lonnie,” I said. As I stormed out, trying to appear casual, all I could think was that Wink better have some good news for me.