May Cooler Heads Prevail (20 page)

I was stunned and couldn’t move until he yelled at me a second time and told me to get a move on. I felt this sudden surge of energy course through me, and I moved to turn off the lights. At the same time, Aunt Connie, with the flashlight already turned on, quickly made her way over to Uncle Rudd, who was kneeling beside Truman. Shining the
light on Truman, she asked with a shaky voice, “Is he dead, Rudd?”

“No, but he’s bleeding pretty bad. Somebody needs to call an ambulance.”

Aunt Nissa had already started toward the wall phone. “I’ll do that. I know the number.” Then, pointing to a drawer, she told me to get some aprons out of it and use them for bandages. I opened the drawer and grabbed three or four.

I folded the aprons into squares, trying to keep my hands from shaking. “Can’t we turn on the lights?”

“Nissa, close the workshop curtain,” Uncle Rudd said. “Then we can turn the lights back on.”

Relieved that I could see what I was doing, I knelt down next to Truman and bandaged him up the best I could. I applied as much pressure as I dared to stem the bleeding.

I felt tears forming in my eyes as I stared at Truman’s still body. I prayed desperately for him to live. This was my fault. I had been so sure he was the murderer.

“The ambulance will be here any minute,” Aunt Nissa said. Then kneeling beside me, she looked into my misery-filled eyes. “Dixie dear,” she whispered, “I can do this. Let me help you.”

I shook my head. “No, I have to do something.”

Still looking at me with her soft brown eyes, she nodded. “Okay, darling, I understand. But you needn’t think this is your fault. We all agreed, remember.”

Yes, we all agreed, but only because I insisted. At the
moment I wasn’t very proud of myself or my arrogance.

Interrupting my thoughts, Uncle Rudd said firmly, “He’ll live, Dixie-gal.”

At those words I felt my heart beat a little faster. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. The wound is too high up on the back of his shoulder to be fatal.”

Knowing that Truman would be all right released me from my own tortured thoughts long enough for me to look around. “Where’s Freedom?”

“After we turned out the lights, he went to the front of the shop,” Uncle Rudd answered. “Odds are the killer left after Freedom shot back. But just in case he didn’t, we figured he couldn’t get through the window in the workshop, and this building is brick, so the only way the killer could get at us is if we opened that back door again, which we ain’t gonna do, or by breaking the door or the windows in the front of the shop. So until the ambulance gets here, Freedom’s keeping watch in front.”

Sounded good to me, but what sounded even better was the ambulance siren getting louder and closer.

Freedom flipped on the lights in the front of the shop and pulled back the dividing curtain before he came back into the workshop. “Ambulance is pulling up outside. How’s Truman?”

“He’s bleeding pretty bad, but he’ll make it,” Uncle Rudd told him and stood up. “Connie, you’d better go ahead and
unlock that front door.”

Aunt Connie grabbed her keys and sprinted to the front. As soon as the EMTs were inside, she pointed them toward the workshop. The rest of us got out of the way so they would have room to work.

I was relieved to see the ambulance team. I wasn’t relieved to see Otis and his deputy, Billy, coming in right behind them.

Otis ignored us and watched the EMTs put an IV in Truman and pack his shoulder. When they had him on the gurney, Otis asked, “Is he going to be okay?”

“Probably,” the EMT said. “The doc can tell you more after we get him to the hospital.”

Otis ordered Billy to follow the ambulance to the hospital, and if Truman regained consciousness to take his statement. Once they were out the door, Otis turned his attention toward us. He eyed each of us in turn, spending a full extra minute with his gaze leveled on the gun in Freedom’s hand and another staring at my swollen face. “Somebody want to tell me how Truman ended up getting shot in the back?” His voice was low and calm.

None of us felt the need to speak right up and tell Otis anything.

Otis narrowed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay… Nissa, you made the call. Let’s start with you.”

Flustered, Aunt Nissa started picking at the ruffle on the collar of her dress. “Oh, well, Otis, it’s—well, it’s a very long story, you see.”

Otis waited. When Aunt Nissa didn’t elaborate on that very long story, Otis glanced around the room. “I got the time to listen.” His voice sounded chilly. He reached over and picked up the left leg of the plastic skeleton on the center workbench. Looking at it oddly, he added, “I come over here, and not only do I find that Truman Spencer has been shot in the back, I find this place looking like some kind of freak show. So, I’m pretty certain things ain’t quite right. Now, one of you had better talk to me pretty quick before I decide to lose my temper.”

When no one else volunteered to say anything, I did. “Otis, you’ve got to believe us. All of this started because we just wanted to keep Aunt Connie out of jail.”

Otis’s eyebrows shot up “Jail! Why would Connie go to jail?”

“Because someone has been trying to frame my baby sister for murderin’ Aaron Scott,” Uncle Rudd bellowed. “And we don’t aim to let her go to jail for somethin’ she didn’t do. That’s why!”

At Uncle Rudd’s revelation, Otis simply looked dumbfounded.

When Otis finally got hold of himself, he no longer looked like the cheerful, intelligent, easygoing man I had always been around. He looked more like a man in dire need of anger management training.

When he bent down and peered into Uncle Rudd’s face, I was extremely glad that he wasn’t speaking to me. “Murder,
Rudd? Did you say that Aaron Scott has been murdered? I thought he left town. Just how is it that you know Scott is dead?”

I could see that all the bellow had gone out of Uncle Rudd, at least for the moment. Aunt Nissa edged closer to Uncle Rudd and pulled at his shirt sleeve. When Uncle Rudd looked at her, she quietly said, “It’s best that we let Otis in on everything. You and Freedom show him, Rudd.”

“Yes, I think that would be best,” Otis commented dryly.

Uncle Rudd nodded at Freedom, and they started moving toward the flower cooler. Otis followed them. Uncle Rudd opened the cooler door and pointed inside. “In here, Otis.”

Neither Freedom nor Uncle Rudd made a move to go inside. They positioned themselves, one on each side of the door. Throwing them a puzzled look, Otis stepped inside the cooler.

First we heard the crinkling noise of the pink cellophane, then a spate of words that made Aunt Nissa gasp and Aunt Connie blush.

Otis stuck his head out of the cooler, looked around at all of us. “That’s Aaron Scott you got on ice in this cooler!”

When I heard Aunt Connie mutter under her breath, “We knew that, ya big oaf!” I nudged her and whispered, “Now is not a good time to get sassy.”

Otis went back into the cooler for a few minutes. Then he came out and shut the door. Laying his forehead against
the cooler door, he muttered under his breath, “I gotta get outta this line of work. Been saying that for years, but I have to admit, this may do the trick.”

He wasn’t taking this as well as I had hoped he would. I could sympathize, though. Maybe, given time, Otis would warm up to the idea a little more. I had.

Otis rubbed his forehead, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened his eyes. He faced us. “Okay, I see what’s happening. No, no, that’s not true at all. I don’t. But… I will see. So, what we’ll do is this. We’ll take a little trip over to the station. We’ll all sit down, and you people will tell me a lot of things. And, when you’ve told me everything… and I mean everything, I will decide what to do with you. Understand? You’d better grab your jackets. It’s a mite chilly outside. We’re going to be walking over to the station. Billy and I rode over together, and he has the squad car.”

We got our jackets and followed Otis.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

O
nce inside the station, Otis pointed to the coffeepot and a plate of Martha’s homemade cookies and told us to help ourselves. We did. I don’t think any of us had eaten supper, at least I hadn’t.

Once we demolished the cookies, Otis took us into his Spartan-looking office. When we were seated, Otis sat on the edge of his desk. “Okay, one at time. Rudd, you first. Tell me exactly what’s been going on.”

By the time Otis finished extracting the whole sordid tale, the bold-faced clock on the wall behind his desk read nine forty-five.

Even with knowing that we were all probably facing not only this night, but maybe many nights in a jail cell, Aunt Connie could hardly keep her eyes open. It had been a long and bizarre four days. I didn’t blame her one bit. I was beginning to think that a nice stiff cot might be welcome myself.

Otis wasn’t going to make it easy. After he had asked all the questions he wanted to and we had spilled our guts, he
quietly sat on the edge of his desk, picked up a pencil, and started turning it upside down, then right side up; eraser then lead point, eraser then lead point. It was almost hypnotic.

Uncle Rudd was the first to cave in. Clearing his throat, he said, “If you’re going to throw anybody in jail, Otis, it ought to be me. I’m responsible for this mess.”

Aunt Nissa patted Uncle Rudd on the leg and firmly said, “No, dear, if you go to jail, we’ll all go to jail.”

Otis threw the pencil down and stood up. Hitching his thumbs in his belt, he said, “Folks, you’re so used to taking the law into your own hands that you’ve forgotten it’s not up to you. It’s up to me to decide just who I will or will not throw into the slammer.”

Otis walked around our five chairs. “Now technically, I can put all of you away for a good long time. Let’s see, there’s obstructing justice, withholding evidence, aiding and abetting. Course, that’s just the beginning. I’m sure there must be some kind of law against putting a poor departed soul on ice and carting him all over the countryside. Are all of you getting the picture here?”

I know I was. At this rate I could put off the decision whether to move back to Kenna Springs or stay in Little Rock indefinitely. I hoped my new roomy was a neat freak.

Otis walked around the chairs again, letting us stew in our imaginations. Then he sat down on the edge of his desk again.

“I have a question, Otis,” Aunt Nissa said calmly.

“Yes?”

“Do you think you could possibly arrange to put Dixie, Connie, and me next to each other in jail? And if you could keep Rudd and Freedom together that would be nice also. You see, we’re family. Well Freedom isn’t related, but he’s like family, and we won’t know anyone in jail… so I just thought…”

Otis held up his hand for Aunt Nissa to be quiet. I thought I saw the corners of his mouth twitch, but he got up and turned away too quickly for me to be sure. He walked around his desk and pulled out his desk chair and sat down. Then he leaned back and looked like he was thinking things over.

“Nissa,” he said, “I’m going to answer your question, if you’ll bear with me here.” Then leaning forward and crossing his arms on the desk, he took a long look at us. “You know that I was born and raised in Kenna Springs. I know the people in this town, am related to a good portion of them. On the whole, I’d say that the good people of Kenna Springs generally take care of their own. ‘Course, for quite a few generations now, you Tanners have taken the notion of caring for your own to the point it has become an obsession, and it seems like you haven’t changed your minds any about that. And I think it’s safe to say that the people in this town generally have a sense of justice. We like to see the good guys win and the bad guys lose. ‘Course, ever since old Tenacious rode into town with that dead horse thief and insisted they
hang that thief anyway, you Tanners seem to take it real personal-like that you have to see to it that justice is done.”

Otis leaned even farther across his desk and pointed his finger at us. “But I would like to go on record here as saying that your attitude toward family and justice is just not right. No, sir, it is not right at all. It’s not balanced, you see, not balanced one little bit. And it’s got you nothing but trouble. Are any of you hearing me on this?”

There were a lot of “yes, sir’s,” “uh-huh’s,” and “I hear you loud and clear’s” coming out of all five of our mouths.

“Good!” Otis slapped his hand on top of the desk. “Now, given the general attitude of the townsfolk around here, I know that if I put you folks in jail, then I’ll have to listen to a lot of folks complainin’ that you only did what you had to do. They’ll stop me on the street. They’ll stop me in the stores. They’ll even call my house to tell me that I oughta be puttin’ the real criminals behind bars instead of folks like you, who are just tryin’ to do the best they can. And you know what else they’ll say?”

All of us indicated in one way or another that we hadn’t a clue.

“They’ll say that the Tanners have always been a bit batty, and I shouldn’t put you away for being batty. Of course it won’t occur to them that you broke the law, and I’d be upholding the law. Nope, that won’t occur to them at all. So, I’m gonna save myself a whole lot of grief. I’m not going to charge you folks with one blessed thing.”