Pawnbroker: A Thriller (12 page)

Chapter 45

“Dad, I can’t handle this crap right now. I really can’t. And if I had anyone else to go to on this, I would,” I said into the cell phone.

“Very well. It’s irregular, but if you’re convinced the children could be in jeopardy, I’ll find someone to sign the order. And bring Mandy and Julie with you if you like. I’ll be glad to take some days off and keep them until this blows over.”

“Thanks.” My first thought was that I wasn’t about to send the girls off, but common sense took over. It would take a couple of days to make arrangements for a baby-sitter or day care center, and I had to have immediate. Ten minutes later, I had them in the car, headed for my father’s house. It was the first time I’d made that drive since Mom’s funeral. I don’t keep the girls away from him, but he either comes and picks them up or Abby drops them off. I don’t go to the home of Jonathan Grayson Bolton, Senior, and I don’t call his number. Not even when I’ve been framed and arrested. Some things are worse than prison.

Except now I had no real choice. Abby had obviously freaked out and could be a danger to herself, or more importantly, to Mandy and Julie. She needed help, and since she refused to go to a doctor voluntarily, she was about to go under court order. There was nothing local I was comfortable with, but the hospital in Tupelo had a behavioral health center with a decent reputation, so she would be taken there by the sheriff’s department, forcibly if necessary.

The Judge, as my mom had always referred to him, had balked at first—fearing an unavoidable appearance of impropriety and conflict of interest—at any involvement in the request of his only son to have his daughter-in-law committed. He packed up his hesitation when he learned that Abby was chunking things at the girls. Didn’t matter what those things were. Soft this time. Maybe hard next go-around. Not a chance worth taking. He couldn’t sign the order himself, but a colleague could.

He was waiting on the front porch when we pulled into the wide circular driveway. He stood beneath the glow of the light with his arms crossed, Caesar surveying his empire. The girls saw him and made a beeline. “Pawpaw!” “Pawpaw!”

“Hello, my angels,” he said as he scooped them up, one on each arm.

“Dad,” I said with a nod.

“Hello, Grayson.”

Chapter 46

I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. After an hour, I got up and paced the house, trying to bleed off anxiety, wanting to figure things out. It turned into a one-man pity party pretty quickly. That disgusted me, so I turned on the lights and started straightening up around the house.

Only then did it occur to me how unusual it was that the house needed it. Yet another thing that didn’t fit with the Abby I thought I knew. She’d been a great housekeeper over the years, almost maniacal, in fact. Now a week’s worth of dishes were piled up in the kitchen, I barely had any clean clothes, and the list went on. I stood in front of a dark TV with a dusting rag in my hand and tried to remember when things started changing around home. A week? A month? Longer?

No, not a month. A month ago was when Robby and Susan Stovall had come over for dinner and a movie. The house was spotless, as it invariably was before guests were allowed to set foot inside. And there had been no need for any cleaning binge—it was just in order as it always was. But it had started the next week. Brother Rick had wanted to stop by for a brief evening visit and she declared the house unacceptable and said she didn’t feel like cleaning it. It had been about three weeks.

The biggest question remained: Why? I resumed my cleaning episode and continued to mull it over. Got nowhere, but I did a lot of mulling. Until I got to the exercise room. The room was trashed. I found three drinking glasses, a plate, an expensive looking Discman, and two flower pots, all smashed, their pieces and parts in a heap on the floor underneath the room’s brick wall. Abby had obviously thrown all these things against that wall, I presume in some sort of psychotic conniption.

What the hell?

Chapter 47

I gave up housecleaning, and any hope of getting to sleep, and went to the shop at 4:40 A.M. It was with great anticipation that I turned the computer monitor on, but it morphed into vast disappointment when I saw the message: 0 MATCHES FOUND. START NEW SEARCH? Not good.

A short while later, the sky outside started shifting from black to gray, and my eyelids turned to lead. I curled up on the tattered old couch in my office and was asleep in minutes. In a dream, I heard Penny calling out over and over, “Gray! Gray! Gray, let me in!”

After about a dozen times, my eyelids fluttered open and I realized it wasn’t a dream. She was at the side door, banging away, shouting for me to let her in. I levered myself up from the couch and made my way to the door.

“I was starting to worry,” she said as I let her in.

“Sorry, what time is it?”

“Eight. How long you been here?”

“Since before five. Couldn’t sleep and decided to come check the computer.”

“And?”

I shook my head.

“Damn,” she said.

“Let’s brew some coffee and figure out what to do next.”

Over coffee, I brought her up to speed on the events at House Bolton the night before. She tilted her head and scrunched up her face in a way I had come to recognize as her trying to figure something out. “What?” I said.

“It’s just weird, Gray. Abby was involved with Bobby Knight. Bobby Knight was involved in this case. Bobby Knight gets dead. Abby goes nutzoid. A heck of a lot of coincidence in the air, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing, Penny, but I can’t figure out how the puzzle fits together.”

“We’re still missing too many pieces.”

Chapter 48

Penny, LungFao and I were in the shop. Business was slow. “Any word on Abby?” Penny said.

“The doctor is going to call me later today with an update. He asked me not to call or see her for a couple of days, afraid it’ll upset her.”

“What about your children?”

“They’ll be in heaven with their PawPaw until I can get them back home. I’m going to see them tonight.”

“You’re a good daddy, Gray Bolton.”

“It’s important to me.”

“It shows.”

I smiled. “Enough about me. What’d you do last night after...”

“Went to my room. Did a little reading. Crashed.”

“Hey, that gives me an—”

The door chimed and a thuggish-looking black guy burst in through the door, looking all around as he did so, creeping me out in much the same way on John Patrick Homestead had.

“Need to talk to you,” he said, looking my way.

“LungFao will help you,” I said.

“Not you, cracker, her.” He pointed at Penny.

“Cracker?” I started up out of my chair.

Penny touched me on the arm and gave me a pleading, please-let-it-go look. I eased back, and she walked to the counter.

“What?” she said to him.

“I think we need to talk in pri-vate, my sister.”

“This is as private as it’s going to get. Let it out or leave, my bro-ther.” She was just as good at Ebonics the Smartass Version as he was. I walked over, stood beside her.

He scowled and looked around again, being sure no one was lurking out of sight down an aisle. “Yo, word is you been asking questions ’bout Goldie.”

“Word’s right. What’s it to you?”

“Lemme tell you something, homegirl. Goldie is my nigger, you got that?” He punctuated the end of his sentence with a finger jabbed within an inch of Penny’s face. Bad move.

I grabbed his elbow with my left hand, and yanked that finger back with my right.

“Crazy sumbitch!” he screamed. “What the fuck you doing?”

I folded the finger back, just shy of the snap point, and held it there.

“Do we have your attention, bro-ther?” I said.

“Let go my finger, you—”

I eased in more pressure on the finger. His face was wrapped in abject fear. “Do. We. Have. Your. Attention?” I said.

More nodding.

“Okay, if I let you go, you’re gonna be a good little punk, right?”

He nodded again, his face now covered in a sheen of sweat.

“If he ain’t,” Penny said, “just bust a cap in his punk ass, Gray.”

“You got the message yet?” I said.

Emphatic nodding. I released his finger and he grabbed it with his other hand as he backed away from the counter, just out of my reach.

“Who are you?” I said.

“Bump.”

“No street bullshit. I want your name, now.”

“Steve Bumpus.”

“Okay, Stevie, tell me exactly what your relationship is to Leroy Huddleston.”

“He sells product for me.”

“Product, Stevie? Product?” Penny said.

“Rock. He sell my rock.”

“And why are you here?”

“I was afraid he’d start talking to you. Don’t want him rolling over on me.”

“You’d rather him rot in jail than you have to spend a night in jail.” I said, more statement than question. Stevie didn’t answer.

“That’s what I thought. What do you know about the cop killing?”

“Goldie ain’t killed no cop. That nigger’s afraid of everything. Didn’t happen.”

“What did happen? What’s the word?”

“Ain’t no word.”

“You’re lying, Stevie.”

“No, I ain’t.”

All defiance was gone from his face—the sheen of sweat was thickening—he wouldn’t look me or Penny in the eye. Penny reached into the small of her back and came out with a Walther PPK, .380, compact, made famous by James Bond and a way nice pocket weapon.

“I say you are,” she said.

Now Stevie looked to me. “She crazy, man! Talk to her!”

“Me?” I said in my most surprised voice. “I’m just a cracker. She won’t listen to me.”

She had the pistol leveled on him now, and she made a dramatic show of pulling the hammer back. Stevie looked like he might start bawling at any moment.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Word is some new dealer’s man offed Mitchell, white guy.”

“What dealer?” Penny said, weapon still in place.

“New one ain’t nobody knows nothing about.”

“You’re doing better now, Stevie. I knew you had it in you,” I said. “Now, here’s the really important question. What’d the shooter look like?”

“What you mean, I ain’t said nothing—”

Penny burst forward and jammed the barrel of the gun in Stevie’s right ear. “Now, Stevie!”

Now Stevie was bawling. Like a baby. “Oh please, lady. These people’ll kill me.”

“They ain’t gonna have the chance, because I’m about to kill your sorry ass right here.”

“Okay, okay! I was there.”

“And what did you see?” Penny said.

“Seen it all. I dropped Goldie off, went and took care of another transaction a couple blocks over. When I turned back onto the street, I seen a cop car pulled up on the curb where Goldie was, so I eased over to the side of the street myself, laid back. Goldie, he was giving Mitchell his juice. This great big sumbitch—”

“White or black?” I said.

“White guy, damn near seven feet tall, he comes out of nowhere, pops Mitchell. Goldie turns to run and this guy pulls out a pistol, big chrome job, whacks Goldie on the head with it. Goldie hit the ground, he was out, you know what I’m saying? Then the shooter takes the gun he shot Mitchell with, wipes it off real good, then puts it in Goldie’s hand, high-tails it out of there. That’s it. That’s all I know.”

“So you just let Goldie sit in jail, knowing he didn’t do it,” Penny said. “Really taking care of your homey, huh, Bump?”

“What I’m supposed to do? ‘Oh, hello, Mr. Po-lice-man, my friend Goldie here didn’t do it. What you say? Oh naw, I didn’t do it, neither. It was this big white guy what done it.’ Yeah, right. I ain’t saying shit.”

“You know what, Stevie?” I said. “You are shit. Get the hell out of here.”

With him gone, I looked at Penny. “Big white guy,” I said.

“With a shiny gun.”

Chapter 49

“Q
uit skating the issue and tell me what’s going on with my wife,” I said to the doctor on the other end of the phone.

“Can you hold for a moment, Mr. Bolton?” the doctor said. The music-on-hold kicked in before I could object.

“Found out anything?” Penny said. I shook my head. The music ambled along in my left ear, a Muzak murder of some Beatle song. We have this big dump table, maybe ten feet long, four wide, filled with loose tools, and a customer was on the hunt, digging through sockets and wrenches and making a staggering amount of noise. Metal-on-metal noise, the kind that jacks right into your nervous system. This wasn’t just any customer, either. Oh hell, no. This one had been in many times before and he had stamina. He’d dig until I was teetering right out there on the edge of sanity, then bring a handful of tools to the counter and get offended and put them back when we priced them at two dollars. My head pounded.

“Mr. Bolton?” The doc was back.

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose anything about your wife’s condition to you right now.”

“And why the hell not?”

“Mr. Bolton, you didn’t mention the fact earlier that you’ve been charged with murder.”

“It was none of your damned business and it sure doesn’t have anything to do with my wife. If you won’t tell me what’s going on, I’ll be down there to find out in person.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that. The police are here, sir.”

“What are you saying?”

“The police have ordered me not to talk to you, and not to allow you near your wife. And just in case you’re considering coming anyway, do know that they have a guard outside her room.”

The doctor hung up, and at that moment Tool Man ended his dig, leaving a weird quiet hanging in the air. He walked to the counter, yellow-toothed grin gaping from a greasy face. “Hope you got your heart right today. I ain’t payin’ store price, neither, tell you that right now.”

Then he dropped his booty. Right on top of a showcase. The glass splintered with a loud crack as the wrenches and shards of glass fell down into a display of our nicest diamond jewelry. The alarm system’s glass-break detectors, ever listening for that one sound, triggered. The siren was deafening.

“Call Central Monitoring,” I yelled at LungFao as I punched in the code to shut off the alarm.

“Sir, please don’t do that,” I heard Penny say. I turned and saw Tool Man reaching into the showcase, gathering up the wrenches. Oblivious to the notion that perhaps I didn’t want his greasy hands molesting—or worse, abducting—my diamonds.

“I ain’t got time to wait,” he said, glancing at me and still rummaging. “Things to do. You want my business, you better hurry up. And I ain’t—”

“Get out,” I said.

He froze. “Don’t think I heard you right.”

I was back to the showcase by now, so I leaned in nice and close so he could hear me well. I spoke very quietly. “You know, it’ll be tough to get by without the five dollars a year you spend here, but I’m gonna give it a go. So, get your nasty hands off my jewelry. Then get your cheap, rude, obnoxious, filthy, rather stinky ass out of my store. Never come back. In fact, don’t even think about coming back. I’d rather you didn’t even drive by. Take another street. Hell, move to another town. Join the Old Asshole brigade and put in for a transfer to the other side of the world.” I paused, tilted my head. “Did you hear that clearly enough, or shall I repeat it?”