Murder Gets a Life (19 page)

“And anyway, there were thousands of them already there just waiting to be harvested. That’s why Buck sold Ray the boat, so he’d have more time.” Kerrigan changed lanes and turned to Pawpaw. “I’m going up Old Highway 31, okay? These old fools just might have somebody looking for them.”

Old fool was right.

“Listen, Kerrigan,” I said. “Sheriff Reuse knows about the pearls and he’s called the FBI. Why don’t you let us out? You’re just asking for more trouble.”

“Because you’re lying. Jed Reuse wouldn’t know a
black pearl from a sheep pill. And we’re not going to hurt you, for goodness sakes. We just need some time.”

“Where are you going?” Sister asked.

Pawpaw shook his head. “Hadn’t got biddy brains.”

Sister’s eyes narrowed. “I do so have biddy brains.”

“Just shut up,” I whispered. And to Kerrigan, “How did you get the pearls back here?”

“You mean into the United States? I made a couple of trips to Bora Bora, and Buck came home a couple of times. I swear you can just walk in with them in your purse.”

You probably could if you looked like Kerrigan, I thought.

“But what about when you got them here? What did you do with them?”

“Simple. Toddy Monroe handled them for us. He’s Buck’s half-brother.”

The guy in the antique store. I knew it before she said, “He runs an antique store. That damn fool Dudley Cross worked for him part-time. The only thing we can figure is he heard Toddy and me talking about Sunshine bringing some pearls back.”

“Or that Toddy Monroe fellow sent him out,” Pawpaw said. “Squinty eyes.” He looked disgusted. “Never have trusted that guy.”

“Don’t say that in front of Buck, Papa,” Kerrigan warned.

“Is this Toddy Monroe taking off tonight, too?” I asked.

“I guess he’ll have to now.” Kerrigan turned onto an exit ramp.

Mary Alice grabbed my arm and motioned toward
the traffic light at the top of the ramp. “If it’s red, jump,” she mouthed.

Jump? Ignore old bones, traffic, and a gun aimed at us?

But Pawpaw had also noticed the light. He turned and said, “Kerrigan was lying when she said we wouldn’t hurt you. Try anything and you’re dead meat.”

Neither of us had a hankering to be dead meat.

At some point on the trip to the Turkett Compound, I realized why Dudley Cross had been so well dressed. He’d worked next door to a consignment shop. I don’t know why that struck me as being very sad.

A
s we pulled into the circle of trailers, the dogs came up, wagging their tails at the sight of the familiar car.

“I swear I hate to leave the dogs,” Pawpaw said.

“Shoot them,” Kerrigan said. What a doll she was.

“No way. I’ll leave them some extra food and water. Eddie’ll be out here looking for us. He’ll see about them.”

“Probably shoot them,” Kerrigan said, getting out of the car.

Pawpaw opened the back door for us. “Y’all come on in my trailer. Kerrigan, come help me put some duct tape around their hands and feet. I don’t want to be worrying about these two for a while.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

“Well, I’ve got one right in my trailer you’re welcome to use.”

“And I’m thirsty, too.”

“Well, missy, we’re not mean folks. We’ll give you a glass of water, too.”

A light fog had crept up from the river. The sun was low in the sky, a murky glow. Because of the
thunderstorm, it would be cooler tonight, but as those of us who have lived here all our lives know, when the sky looks like this, the heat will build up again the next day. This had been an afternoon-heat type storm, not a front moving in.

Mary Alice was being very calm. She stepped from the car and walked into Pawpaw’s trailer without protest. Like me, she took advantage of Pawpaw’s bathroom, drank the glass of water he offered, held out her wrists for the duct tape. Her only comment when I asked her if she was all right was a whispered “I’m thinking.”

“What are you thinking about?” I asked her as soon as Pawpaw and Kerrigan left. For some reason, I thought she might have figured out a way for us to get out of this mess.

“I’m thinking about having a child.”

“What?” I practically screeched it. “Listen, Sister, you’ve lost your mind. They did all kinds of things to that sixty-two-year-old woman who had a baby, all sorts of hormones and stuff. And I know good and well she had to lose weight and quit eating things like boiled peanuts that would make her blood pressure go up. And now she’s got to go to the PTA all over again.”

Sister was looking at me as if I were crazy. “I didn’t mean give birth to a baby, Mouse. Lord! How could you even think that? Been there, done that, thank you, ma’am. Three times.”

“Well, that’s what you said.”

“I meant I was thinking about the last few days. Who have we been worried about?”

“Ray, Debbie, Haley.”

“Our very grown children.”

I nodded; she was right.

“And who,” she continued, “got us into this predicament?”

“Ray?”

“No, Mouse. We got ourselves into this. We’re still trying to mother our children too much. We need to let go more.”

I looked down at my bound wrists and ankles. This was because we were mothers? “Listen,” I said. “We may not have to worry about letting go. But if we live, we’ll all go for family counseling.”

“Even Fred.”

I didn’t answer that. Instead I asked, “What do you think the Turketts are going to do to us?”

“Well, they’re not the most polite people in the world.”

A slight understatement. I wondered what Pawpaw and Kerrigan were doing. I couldn’t hear any noises from outside, but the air conditioner was groaning so loudly, it would have to have been a loud noise.

It was growing dark. There were no lights on in the trailer, but a mercury vapor light high on a pole lighted the whole compound and cast enough light through the windows for us to see. We couldn’t see outside because of the high windows, but we could see inside the trailer well enough to walk around. If we could have walked around. Fred would be wondering where I was. He would have called Mary Alice’s house. He wouldn’t be alarmed yet.

“I’m hungry,” Mary Alice said.

Somewhere along here, I lost track of time. I may have dozed some. So I have no idea what time it was when we heard the car drive in, heard voices outside.

“Must be Buck and Meemaw,” Sister said. “I’m glad Pawpaw made him get Meemaw. She’d have
been so hurt if her stud muffin had gone off without her.”

“Hmmm,” I agreed. But I was thinking of the two couples, Kerrigan and Buck, and Meemaw and Pawpaw. If they were going off together to start a new life somewhere, wouldn’t the older couple be excess baggage for Kerrigan and Buck? Wouldn’t it be simpler for them to go it alone? Especially if the FBI was after them?

I shivered, remembering how calm Kerrigan’s voice had been when she said, “
Shoot them
,” about the dogs. But surely she wouldn’t do Meemaw and Pawpaw any harm. They were her parents.

“Don’t bet on it.” It was a man’s voice speaking right into my ear. I jumped so, I almost toppled over.

“What?” Sister asked. “What?”

“I think I just heard Gabriel.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re dreaming. You’ve been snoring for I don’t know how long.”

I hoped she was right.

The trailer door opened and Meemaw stepped in and turned on an overhead light. “Well now,” she said. “Look who’s here.”

“Kerrigan and Pawpaw kidnapped us,” Sister said.

“So I understand. They said you’d found out too much about their business.”

“If that’s what you want to call it,” I said. “What do you know about their ‘business’?”

“Know it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“God’s truth,” Sister muttered.

Meemaw sat down abruptly on the sofa.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Still a little weak-kneed.” She ran the back of her hand across her forehead.

“Shouldn’t have left the hospital,” Sister stated.

“I’ll be okay. Pawpaw needed me.”

“Listen, Meemaw,” I said. “I don’t think you and Pawpaw should leave with Kerrigan and Buck.” I hesitated and then said, “Gabriel told me.”

“Bless his heart. I wondered where he’d been.” She stood and steadied herself against the door. “You tell him I’ll be fine and to stay in touch.”

“No, I’m serious. Let Kerrigan and Buck go on. You and Pawpaw stay here. I’m sure you can work things out.”

“Not hardly.” Meemaw opened the door. “I just wanted to ask you to look after Sunshine for me. Tell her I’ll be in touch when I can. Tell her I said ‘A bushel and a peck.’ She’ll know what I mean.”

I knew, too. That’s how much I had told my own children and grandchildren I loved them.

“Wait a minute, Meemaw,” Mary Alice said. “We’re hungry.”

“I’ll send Pawpaw in,” she said. And she was gone.

“Are you nuts?” I asked. “We’re kidnapped, bound up with duct tape, God knows what’s going to happen to us, and you’re hungry?”

“Well, everyone isn’t anorexic like you. I was just thinking while you were snoring that I’d like to be at the Redneck in Destin having boiled shrimp and slaw. And then a big piece of their key lime pie.”

I had to admit it didn’t sound bad.

The door opened and the light came on again. This time it was Buck Owens who stood there grinning. “Well, well,” he said. “You’ve stepped in a whole pile of it this time, haven’t you, ladies?”

“Not as much as you have,” Sister said.

“Hah. Tomorrow Kerrigan and I will be sleeping like babies in Toronto.”

“Any particular hotel?” Sister asked. “We want to be sure and tell the FBI right.”

“Sarcasm,” Buck said. “I declare.”

Pawpaw came into the trailer behind Buck and announced that everything was ready.

“Come on then, ladies,” Buck said.

“Where are we going?” Sister asked.

“Not far.”

“Because I have to go to the bathroom.”

Buck looked at Pawpaw.

“I think they’ve got bladder problems,” Pawpaw said. “But let them both go. Give them some water, too.”

Buck laughed, but he took the tape off first Mary Alice and then me. My hands tingled as I held the glass of water; my legs shook as I walked to the bathroom.

“Okay, potty break’s over,” he announced as I came back.

“I’m hungry,” Sister said.

“Dear Jesus,” Buck said. “Ray always said you were a pain in the butt. He just didn’t say how much.”

Sister bristled. “Ray never said that.”

“If he didn’t, he should’ve.” Buck took the tape from Pawpaw and secured our wrists again. But he left our ankles free.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Mary Alice and I didn’t move.

“Want me to encourage them?” Pawpaw asked.

“No. They’re going to cooperate.” Buck leaned over and grasped my right shoulder and Mary Alice’s left with his huge hands. “I said, let’s go.” We could smell butterscotch on his breath, so unexpected that we each hesitated, but only for a moment. The
fingers clamped into our shoulders. We got up and walked out of the trailer.

Kerrigan and Meemaw were nowhere in sight. A white delivery truck with
TODDY’S ANTIQUES
painted on the side was backed in between Pawpaw’s and Meemaw’s trailers, though. This was where Buck led us.

“Get in,” he said, opening the back door.

“Where are you taking us?” I asked.

“I told you. Nowhere much. Just a couple of cotton fields over.”

“But why?”

“Neither one of them’s got biddy brains,” Pawpaw told Buck.

“Call the dogs,” Buck said.

Pawpaw whistled, and Mary Alice and I made a dive for the truck. The double doors slammed shut behind us, and we could hear the men laughing and the dogs yelping.

“Mouse.” Sister’s voice was shaking. “They’re going to take us out and shoot us, aren’t they?”

“I’m not talking to you,” I said. “I’ve let you push me around for sixty-one years, you hear me? Sixty-one years. And where do I end up? Dying in my bed like a nice decent person? Of course not. I end up on the floor of Toddy’s Antiques delivery truck in some cotton field out in the middle of nowhere. And of course they’re going to shoot us over some black pearls that when they first talked about them I thought was that perfume they sprayed on me out of the testing bottle at Rich’s. Damn it to hell! And the skin’s off both my elbows to boot.”

“Lord, you don’t have to be so snippy.”

Someone, probably Buck, opened the front door of the truck and got in. We couldn’t tell who it was
because the body of the truck was enclosed. If someone had broken into the cab, they still couldn’t have gotten to the antiques. Smart for Toddy; not smart for us.

We heard gravel hitting as we went down the compound road. Then there was the smoothness of the highway, a left turn, and what could only be the rows of a cotton field. The bouncing and rocking brought us the knowledge that Toddy had been preparing a delivery when Buck took the truck. He also had not tied the delivery down well.

“Cover your head,” Sister said, unnecessarily. My behind was already in the air, and my head covered with my still-taped arms.

Finally the truck stopped. Now, I thought, Buck will open the back door and take us out one at a time like that guy in the Tombstone Pizza commercials.

“I forgive you, Sister,” I said. My last words on earth.

“I forgive you, too, Mouse.”

We waited. Buck banged on the side of the truck, making us both jump. “Enjoy yourself, ladies.”

And then there was silence.

After a few minutes, Sister whispered, “You think he’s gone?”

“I don’t know.”

A few more minutes passed.

“I guess he is,” I said.

“You think he really did what he said he was going to? Leave us in a cotton patch?”

“Buying time.” I felt around. “Where are you?”

“Here. I think I’m under some kind of little table.”

“I’m coming over there.”

“Be careful.”

“Keep talking,” I said. “I think we can get this tape off of each other’s wrists.”

“I’m over here. And what did you mean by you forgive me? I haven’t done anything.”

“Well, you forgave me back. What for?”

“Just in general.”

“Me, too.” My outstretched arms hit something soft and squishy. “What’s that?”

“My stomach, you fool.”

“Hold your arms out, then. If I can find the end of the tape, I think I can get it off.”

It took me about fifteen minutes since I was working with taped wrists. Sister had me loose in about five.

“Now we need to get out,” I said. I crawled toward what I thought was the back door, lucked out, and touched the handles. They wouldn’t budge. I rattled and shook them. Nothing.

“They won’t open,” I said.

I heard Sister crawling toward me.
Whump
. Right into me.

“Sorry,” she said. “Let me try it. There should be a button you push.”

I moved to the side.

“Here it is,” she said.

I could hear her pushing the button, jabbing at the button. Nothing. We both knew the truth before Sister voiced it. “We’re locked in. They’ve fixed the door so we can’t get out.”