Miss Julia to the Rescue (41 page)

“I can’t see doodly,” I said, craning to look where she was aiming the beam.

“Looks like candles or something in a window,” Etta Mae said. “I think I see the Jeep, too—the top of it anyway. So Ardis must still be talking to Nellie.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what’s a fact, Etta Mae, the time for talking and tooling around in the dark is about over. We’ll never find Adam this way, and the boy is dying. We’ve got to come up with something else.”

She turned off the flashlight, surrounding us with a night as black as sin, and slid into the seat beside me. “You think we ought to call the sheriff, I mean our sheriff, and get a search party going?”

“Yes, I do. Where’s your cell phone?”

“In Ardis’s truck. You have yours, don’t you?”

I leaned my head on the little steering wheel, just done in. “It’s in my pocketbook, left in the car.” I
knew
I should’ve brought my pocketbook. I never went anywhere without it, yet here I was, unarmed and unprepared.

“Let’s just go on,” Etta Mae said. “Ardis will have his, and we’re closer to him than the car.” She stood up again, holding on to the bar, and lit the way. “This path ought to swing around and come out where he is.”

Almost in despair, I cranked up the cart and followed the light. The path swung around, all right, but not toward Ardis and the Jeep. It meandered away from the way we wanted to go, up and down small hills, curving and getting bumpier. “We’re getting farther away, Etta Mae. I don’t know where we’re going.”

She dropped back into the seat and swung the beam along each side of us. Trees lined the path with no break that I could see. Total darkness surrounded the light beam.

“We’re in the woods,” Etta Mae said, in some wonder. “How did we do that?”

“I don’t know, but I’d turn around if I had room.” The path had gotten noticeably narrower, and the trees were so close there was no space for such a maneuver.

“Maybe you can back out.”

“In
reverse?
” I was appalled. “Etta Mae, it’s all I can do to back out of my driveway. There’s no way I can do it here.”

“Well, me, either,” she admitted. “Let’s just go on. It has to come out somewhere. I mean we’re still on the Whitman place.”

Yes, we were, but we weren’t on gravel any longer. The path had become a dirt track with mud holes and slick spots.

“Hey, look!” Etta Mae cried, as she steadied the beam off the track during one of her sweeps, leaving me as blind as a bat. I took my foot off the accelerator, bringing the cart to a stop. “There’s a little path. See it? And look, there’s something back there in the trees.”

She aimed the light at a muddy but well-worn footpath leading off the track we were on. Heavy undergrowth bordered the path, but as she played the beam farther along it, I could make out a small weathered building almost hidden in the undergrowth.

“What would be stuck out here in the woods?” I said, not expecting an answer. “We better check it out, Etta Mae. With the rain we’ve had, Adam would’ve looked for some kind of shelter. Come on, we’ll have to walk up. It’s too narrow to drive on.”

We got out of the cart, and Etta Mae handed me the flashlight. “You go first,” she said. “I’ll catch you if you slip.”

I used the flashlight to pick my way around mud holes on the footpath, walking carefully. Etta Mae suddenly grabbed my shoulder, startling me so bad that I swung the beam around among the tree tops. “Look!” she hissed. “There’s a light on. Somebody’s up there.”

It was a dim light from a window, barely visible in the dark, and not at all when the high-powered beam was on it. “Come on,” I said, my heart lifting. “Maybe it’s him.”

The hut, for that’s what it was, wasn’t far, only a few yards from the main path, but a fairly steep few yards. I was breathing heavily by the time we reached what looked to be a one-room outbuilding. The footpath ended at a door made of wide boards.

I tried the doorknob, but the door was locked, firmly. It didn’t even rattle when I rapped sharply on it. “Adam? Are you in there? It’s me, Julia Murdoch.”

With my ear against the door, all I could hear was the sound of rain dripping from the trees. I yelled his name a couple of times, but there was no response.

“Somebody has to be in there,” I said. “There’s a light on.”

“Not much of one, though,” Etta Mae said. “Hey, there’s a little window over there. Maybe we can see in.”

She pushed through a wet shrub to a small high window, barely large enough for both of us to look through at the same time. I followed, getting soaked in the process.

Standing on tiptoes, our heads next to each other, we looked through the dusty window and saw a single candle set on a saucer in the middle of a dirt floor.

“Throw the light on it,” Etta Mae said, and I did. Lot of good it did, though, because the opaque glare against the dust on the inside reflected back at us.

“I can’t see anything,” I said, as I fiddled with the flashlight to dim the beam and cut down the glare. I played the light through the window, casting it around the floor. I kept expecting to find Adam curled in a corner awaiting help.

Then Etta Mae screamed. “Swing it back! Swing it back! Over the candle, oh, my Lord, look at that!”

Aiming at the candle, I could see dangling above it two long bare feet. I thought my heart would stop. Etta Mae’s fingers were digging into my shoulder, but I hardly felt it. Fear of what had happened to Adam almost took me out of myself. Trembling, I tried to aim the light on the body, but I couldn’t keep it steady. Perspiration popped out on my face, or it might have been rainwater. I couldn’t tell.

“He hung himself!” Etta Mae cried, her voice trembling. “He’s just … just hanging there!” She grabbed the flashlight from me and steadied the beam on the body.

My first full look as Etta Mae ran the light up and down the body made me sag against her in relief. It wasn’t Adam. I knew without being able to see the man’s face, for his head was bowed to his ink-covered chest. His long arms hung limply by his side,
and he was as near naked as I’d ever seen outside a bedroom, with only a tiny Lycra brief covering what ought to stay covered.

“Good grief,” Etta Mae whispered, tremors vibrating through her body. “Is that a Speedo?” Then she gasped and stumbled back, the light bouncing around the walls. “Oh, my goodness, he’s not hanging, he’s
suspended
!”

I grabbed the flashlight and saw it all—two leather thongs running from a block on the ground up over a rafter and down to two metal hooks sticking through the skin, one on each side of the man’s chest. Blood dripped from the slits where the hooks were inserted.

One look was enough. Scrambling to get away, my own skin crawling with horror, I jumped back and bumped into Etta Mae. She grabbed me and held on.

“No, wait,” she yelled. “Wait, Miss Julia, we have to do something. He could be alive.” Etta Mae’s limited medical experience was coming to the fore, and I was the better for it. She gave me a little shake to bring me to my senses.

“Okay, okay,” I managed to say. Of course we’d have to cut him down. We couldn’t just leave him there, suspending to death, while we went for help.

We knocked on the window, then banged on the door, but there was no answer and no movement from the man. Etta Mae pushed through the bushes around the hut to look for another way in—even a window big enough to crawl through—leaving me in the dark and none too happy about it.

Thoroughly soaked, she came back around. “Nothing. No way in at all. He’s locked himself in or …” She stopped, took a rasping breath and went on. “Or somebody else hung him and left him locked up.” I could hear her breathing—little whimpers coming with each breath she took. “That’s what happened, Miss Julia, somebody strung him up!”

“Oh, my Lord,” I whispered, looking over my shoulder toward the dark woods. “We better get out of here, Etta Mae.”

“I know it, but he could still be alive. Hold on, let’s try something.”
She pushed her way to the small window again, stood on tiptoe, and aimed the beam at the Hanging Man. “Bang on the door as loud as you can,” she told me. “I’ll watch to see if he moves.”

I did, and she did, but he didn’t. “It’s too late,” she said. Then grasping my arm, she said, “Let’s get out of here. Whoever did it might come back.”

Appalled and terrified, I scurried along behind Etta Mae and the light back down the path to the cart. But the farther we went on the slippery path, the more anxious I became to put some distance between us and the unspeakable sight we’d left. By the time we reached the cart, we were both half sliding, half running, and completely out of breath.

“You drive!” I cried, falling into the passenger seat. “Hurry, Etta Mae, crank it, crank it!”

She did and we trundled off, still following the muddy track we were on and hoping it would lead back to civilization. I was trembling so bad that it took both hands to hold the light beam steady enough to light our way. It didn’t help that the track was unpaved and ungraveled and the trees so close that it was like being in a tunnel.

We hit a bump on a little rise, then swooped down the other side and wallowed through a creek bed. Etta Mae was crouched over the wheel, urging us onward, still whimpering with each breath. Finally, after bucking over more bumps and slewing through the muddy patches, the trees on each side began to thin out and I could see a white rail fence running alongside of us.

“We’re almost there,” I said, and almost lost the flashlight when Etta Mae ran over a rock that tilted the cart to one side.

We both screamed, thinking we were rolling over, but the little cart righted itself and Etta Mae gave it the gas again.

Gradually, darker shadows began to loom out of the general blackness, so I dared to sweep the light around to see where we’d come out.

“Slow down, Etta Mae. I think that’s the pool house over there. If you swing out around it, the garage should be diagonally across the lawn.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said, her voice quavering. “Okay, I just want to get somewhere safe.”

“Look!” I cried. “Look over there.” Some ways off, a moving glow lit up the garage, throwing into relief the huge bulk of the house and dimly illuminating the pool house, which we were passing. “It’s the Jeep coming back. Hurry, Etta Mae, we’ve got to tell somebody about that dead man.”

“Yeah, gotta hurry,” she panted, then sideswiped a bush, overcorrected and almost ran into the rail fence. The golf cart stalled out, leaving us sideways of the fence, while Etta Mae whimpered some more and cranked the thing again.

Just as the motor started, she let out a blood-curdling shriek, levitated from her seat and stomped on the gas. The cart scraped along the fence with Etta Mae yelling, “Something’s after us! Oh, Lord, it touched me!”

The cart bounced on and off the fence until Etta Mae gave it a hard turn to the right, almost throwing me out. Scared out of my wits, I screamed along with her and grabbed her with both hands, letting go of the flashlight. I saw it tumble to the ground, flinging the beam out into the pasture—not the way we were going. Horses thundered away from the fence, but I was too busy holding on and screaming to think of anything but getting to the garage, where there were lights and people and safety from whatever had followed us.

The cart careened across the lawn, bounded up onto a paved surface, struck a patio chair, and came to an abrupt halt. It teetered for a second, rocking back and forth, until the nose slowly tipped over and we hit the water.

The little cart began to sink as water flooded the floorboard and climbed into our laps. “Get out, Etta Mae!” I yelled, scrambling to get myself out. The raincoat billowed out around me as I leaned into the water, thankful for the doorless cart, and started dogpaddling to the edge of the pool.

“Help!” Etta Mae screamed. “I can’t swim!” She thrashed around on the other side of the cart, flinging water everywhere and getting nowhere fast.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” I was paddling as fast as I could, but sinking just as fast. Grabbing the cart to pull my way around to Etta Mae before she drowned, my foot touched the bottom of the pool.

“We’re in the shallow end!” I cried, relief flooding my soul. “Stand up, Etta Mae, we can walk out.”

I finally pulled my way around the cart to reach her, and together we made our way to the underwater steps and climbed out, drenched to the skin.

“Oh, my Lord,” she said, leaning over and gasping for breath, “I thought I’d killed us both.”

“No, I think we’re saved. Somebody’s coming.” I pointed to two flashlight beams bobbing toward us.

“Waites! Is that you?” Ardis’s voice carried easily across the back lawn.

“No,” I called back. “It’s us.”

Ardis and Carl came running up, and Etta Mae, sopping wet, flung herself onto Ardis, sobbing, “I broke it or drowned it or something. We’ll never get it out, and I’ll never be able to pay for it.”

“We’ll fix it, little girl, whatever it is,” Ardis said. “Don’t you worry. What’re you doing out here anyway?”

“Searching,” Etta Mae said. She pushed back her wet hair and pointed at the swimming pool. “We’ve been all over the place in that golf cart and something chased us and licked me on my neck and I got so scared, I drove it into the pool, and I guess I ruined it.”