Miss Julia Stirs Up Trouble: A Novel (28 page)

So stunned by his sudden exit, I just sat there watching his shadowy figure race up the block, dodge between parked cars, bypass the loiterers on the sidewalk, and head for the soup kitchen. He didn’t give Miguel’s a glance, just plowed on toward Brother Vern’s mission.

Except . . . I sat up straight to see over the parked cars, peering through the dark . . . he didn’t go to Brother Vern’s mission. I couldn’t be sure, but he seemed to swerve off the sidewalk, then he was gone. I stared, not daring to blink, at the front door of the soup kitchen. There were lights on inside, as well as upstairs in the apartment, so I should’ve been able to see him go in. But I hadn’t. He’d disappeared beside the building.

I knew from my earlier inspection of the building that there was an alley along the side, and I knew there was a back door for access to the Dumpster. But why would he be going to the back door? That didn’t make sense. And, most important, what had he been doing, drinking coffee here in the dark, in the first place? Why would he do that, and what had he seen that was so urgent that he’d left me high and dry?

I vacillated between staying put and going to see what he was up to. My hand edged toward the door handle, then stopped. I’d get soaking wet, my poor bent and broken umbrella unusable and unavailable. And those muggers? Or rather, undercover agents—where were they? And what were they undercover for? I’d been so intent on venting my anger that I’d failed to get some basic answers.

There was only one way to get them, so I pulled on the door handle, unlatched the door, and had it snatched out of my hand. The door swung open and a sizable body crawled in on top of me. A rough, rasping voice said, “Get over! Get over and drive!”

The woman—for it was a woman and a hefty one at that—shoved and pushed as she squeezed herself in, ending up practically on my lap. I yelled, she yelled and kept on pushing. Not being able to sit on the console for long, I tumbled sideways into the driver’s seat, my feet snared by the gear shift. I clawed for the door handle.

“No, you don’t!” the woman screamed, pulling my shoulders around. “Crank this car and MOVE.”

“Who are you? What do you want?” Trying to fight her off, I pushed her away but her fingers clamped down on my neck in a pinch so sharp that I screamed. “Stop, stop, let me out. You can have the car!”

“You’re driving,” she hissed right in my face, her breath reeking of onions, as her fingers clamped down tighter. “They’re not looking for an old woman, so they won’t stop you. Get me out of town, somewhere away from here, I don’t care where.”

Barely able to move, those pinching fingers biting into my skin, my eyes watering, taking note of a head of straggly hair—another of Mr. Pickens’s girlfriends? She didn’t look his type, but what did I know?

“Uh, miss,” I said, “I think I’m a friend of a friend of yours. Mr. Pickens? J. D. Pickens? This is his car and . . .”

“I know whose car it is,” she growled, breathing hard. “The low-down, lying, two-faced, under-handed . . .”

“Miscreant?” I supplied, wanting to be helpful before she pulled a plug from my neck.

The car’s interior suddenly lit up, startling me and her, as four patrol cars with blue lights flickering swished swiftly and silently past like a ghostly convoy. Two of them slid to a stop in front of the soup kitchen, while the other two bounced into the alley beside it.

That did it. She gave my neck a vicious twist. I screamed and she shrieked, “Crank this car!”

I did, in wonderment that Mr. Pickens had left the key in the ignition. Of course he had expected it to be safe, locked in with me.

The car roared to life. I reached for the gear shift on the console and pulled at it, but it didn’t move. I tried again and heard a grinding noise. “I can’t find DRIVE,” I said. “I can’t find the lights, I can’t find anything.”

“The clutch!” she screamed.

“The what?” Oh, Lord, it had a straight-shift gear stick. No wonder Mr. Pickens wouldn’t let anyone else drive it—no one could. But years before, I’d tried a straight-shift, so as my passenger reached for my neck again, I stomped on the clutch and rammed the shift stick into some kind of gear. The car shot forward and crashed into the back of the car in front. Glass tinkled onto the pavement.

The woman screamed in my face, calling me all kinds of outlandish and completely unearned—I was trying my best—names.

Stomping on the clutch again, I tried another gear, this time smashing into the car behind. A few more back-and-forth tries later, I was able to get the car out of the parking place.

We were out on the street, the car growling along in first gear because I couldn’t find the next one, headed toward the soup kitchen and the brace of squad cars out front.

That woman started screaming again. “Turn on the lights, you fool! Turn around! Don’t go past the cops! The other way, go the other way!”

I’d about had enough. “If you don’t stop yelling in my ear,” I said, “I’m going to run this car up a telephone pole. And if you pinch me again . . . well, you’ll be sorry.”

“Just get me out of here,” she said, but she kept her hands to herself. “And shift gears! Don’t you know anything?”

So I tried for the next gear but the car didn’t like that one bit.
Find it or grind it,
I remembered, and I was not finding it.

“The clutch!” the woman screamed again, giving me a back-handed slap on the arm, which made me slam on the brakes. The motor died right there in the middle of the street.

“Don’t you touch me,” I said, as I quickly cranked the car, found first gear again, and revved the engine. “I’m doing the best I can.”

Limping along in first gear, with the engine pulling hard and me searching for the light switch, I almost clipped a man running across the street from Miguel’s. Dodging him, I sideswiped a pickup, then heard a chorus of yells from the loitering men watching the action at the soup kitchen. I wished they would stop me. I wished they’d call 911 and report me. I did not want to go off somewhere with this woman—no telling what she’d do.

At the thought of actually driving off into the night with this lunatic when Mr. Pickens and a whole bunch of police officers were right there in front of me, I knew what I had to do. So I did it.

It would’ve worked so much better if I’d been able to find third, or even second, gear to give me some speed, but that big engine growling along in first had the power of a truck. When I got abreast of the rear bumper of one of the parked cop cars, I turned the wheel, pressed the gas pedal to the floor, and sent Mr. Pickens’s beloved car full on into
WE PROTECT AND SERVE
—and kept pressing the gas pedal. Metal squeaked and screamed as the squad car crumpled, and I kept pressing. The woman screamed bloody murder, slapping at me and trying to wrest away the steering wheel. I wanted to smack her good, but I had my hands full as I kept my foot on the gas pedal, that big engine groaning and growling as it pushed the squad car up onto the sidewalk and scraped it against Brother Vern’s rented building. Flinching from the woman’s slapping hands, I turned the wheel so that her side of Mr. Pickens’s car scraped along the side of the squad car. She wouldn’t be getting out that way.

Men—in uniform and out—poured from the door of the soup kitchen, Mr. Pickens leading the pack. I didn’t wait for them. I was out of the car in a flash, tumbling out onto the pavement, unmindful of the drizzling rain and what it would do to my hair.

Screaming was all I heard—screaming and yelling and shrieking and some really bad words. The woman was crawling over the console, her mouth wide open and her face contorted, as she tried to follow me out.

Big hands helped me up as cops swarmed around the car and dragged out the woman, kicking and screaming and cursing. I think I was the object of her stream of profanity, but I just tuned her out. Mr. Pickens was there.

“Are you all right?” he yelled, his voice frantic with concern. “Are you hurt? Are you hurt?”

“Oh, Mr. Pickens, I’ve put a dent in your car, but I’ll have it fixed. I didn’t know what else to do—she made me do it. I wouldn’t have driven it for the world, but she pinched me so hard I had to do it. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll get it fixed.” I looked over the scene of the accident. “And the police car, too.”

Mr. Pickens took me by the shoulders and gave me a little shake. “Are you all right!”

“Why, yes, I think so. Maybe a little shaken, but, Mr. Pickens, I have to tell you, that woman is no friend of yours. You should’ve heard what she called you. Who is she anyway?”

“That’s Trixie. She’s the cook.”

Trixie?
She didn’t look like a Trixie to me.

Pointing to the woman as an officer put her in the backseat of the undamaged squad car, Mr. Pickens said, “She’ll have a few more names to call me before the night’s over. She’s going to jail.”

“Well, no wonder she was in such a state.”

Several police officers were standing around surveying the damage to their property and to Mr. Pickens’s, some half grinning and others scratching their heads.

“Let’s get out of the rain,” Mr. Pickens said, taking my arm. “Then I want the whole story.” As did I.

He walked me around the accident site and we edged in through the front door of the soup kitchen. Loud yells and crashing noises were coming from the apartment on the second floor, a few feminine shrieks and ugly words mixed in with them cascading down the stairs.

Mr. Pickens ignored the uproar but, as he led me into the main room, his face grew grim and tight. I’d realized by then that I might have stumbled into an official operation, but I intended to claim a familial interest in both Brother Vern and Mr. Pickens. I was, after all, almost their next of kin.

In the main room of the soup kitchen, fitted out now with tables and chairs, I saw Brother Vern seated at one of the tables, a police officer leaning over him. Open packages of tiny Hershey’s candy bars, Reese’s peanut butter cups, and Milky Way and Snickers bars were strewn across the table, waiting for trick-or-treaters who probably wouldn’t be coming.

Brother Vern’s normally florid face was so pallid it was almost gray, but when he saw me his eyes lit up. He tried to stand but the officer put a hand on his shoulder and kept him down.

“Mrs. Murdoch!” Brother Vern called. “Tell them. Tell them who I am. Tell them I don’t have nothing to do with this, that I’m a minister of God and here only to minister to the needy. Oh, this is awful, jus’ awful. All my good work gone right before my eyes.” His voice breaking, he leaned his head on his hands in despair.

I thought he was going to cry, moving me to pity. But not a lot of it, for he had been so obnoxious to Hazel Marie.

Turning to Mr. Pickens, I asked, “What is going on? Is he in trouble?” Then flinched as something heavy fell or was thrown upstairs. Another shriek, followed by several masculine yells and the sound of thumping feet from upstairs. Mr. Pickens hadn’t answered me—he was too busy running for the stairs while yelling back for me to sit down and stay there.

Those of us who were left looked up at the ceiling as something heavy fell again, then turned toward the door as the thumps and screams descended the stairs. Two officers were half-carrying, half-dragging a wild-haired, struggling, half-naked woman out the door. I stood watching in shock, my mouth open at the sight. She was going neither gently nor quietly into the night, screaming abuse and insults specific enough to set my teeth on edge.

Brother Vern looked plaintively from the officer to me. “I don’t understand,” he said, plainly bewildered. “What’s wrong? Why are they arresting her?”

The officer didn’t respond and, heaven knew, I didn’t know, so I couldn’t. Nor did I know what happened next, for two more officers escorted a man in a raincoat—a Burberry, if I wasn’t mistaken—down the stairs and out the door. He wasn’t struggling, but he had his face half covered with the raincoat’s collar. More thumps on the stairs followed as another man was quickly rushed through the door. Then Mr. Pickens and another officer led a sullen-faced woman with Texas-size blond hair past us. She was in handcuffs and didn’t seem happy about it.

I was shocked. That could’ve been the woman I’d seen Mr. Pickens with at the mall and—of course! The first woman they’d led out, the brunette, was the one Lillian had seen. The
friends
of Mr. Pickens! And of Brother Vern? And who had been the woman forcing me to drive? Did that mean Mr. Pickens had been consorting with three of them?

I marched myself to the front door, watched as the two men and two women were put into squad cars, fully expecting Mr. Pickens to be shoved into the backseat with them. If they were involved in something illegal, he had to be up to his neck in it, too.

Instead, the officers shook his hand, got into the remaining drivable squad cars, and, making U-turns one after the other, left the premises. Mr. Pickens looked up from the sidewalk, tightened his mouth, and came toward me. His tie was crooked, a shirt button was missing, and his jacket pocket was hanging by a flap.

As he came fully into the light, I gasped and held out my hand. “Mr. Pickens, you . . .”

His hands on his hips, he addressed me coldly. “I thought I told you to stay inside.”

“Oh, you did, but you’ve been injured. Your eye is swelling.”

His hand flew to his right eye, covered it, then grimaced. “She’s got a mean left. But you see what you stepped into. It could’ve been your eye.”

He took my arm, swung me around, and marched me back into the main room. Brother Vern and the officer were still there, along with the leftover Halloween candy, which, from his quick swallow, I suspected the officer had been sampling.

“Oh, Brother Pickens,” Brother Vern said, again attempting to rise and again being pushed down. “What is going on? I don’t know anything—they just come bustin’ in here, creatin’ havoc an’ not tellin’ me anything an’ takin’ Junie an’ Janie away an’ all they was doin’ was workin’ for the Lord. Look at this place, just look at it. They did it, they cleaned it an’ didn’t charge me a cent. It was all done for the love of the Lord and for the love of mankind. An’ I don’t understand what y’all are doin’ here.”