Smarty Bones (28 page)

“Let’s head out the back and start toward town,” I told Sweetie. We couldn’t walk along the road for fear of being discovered by Jeremiah’s militia. It would be a long, hard hike through the fields, but there were other plantations along the way where I would be received with friendship. While I might not be well known, folks remembered my parents with great fondness. Libby and James Franklin Delaney, though long dead, were still respected.

A strong impulse to check upstairs came over me. What if Graf was there, held hostage or injured? But the upstairs could also be a trap. If I went up there and the men returned, I would be caught. One foot on the first step and my hand on the rail, every impulse in my body urged me up the stairs.

“Graf?” I called softly.

Only silence.

“Graf!” I notched up the volume. If he could hear me, he’d respond.

But there was nothing, just the pounding of blood in my ears and Sweetie’s soft panting. She snagged my shirt in her teeth and tugged me toward the door.

“I can’t leave without making sure Graf isn’t here.” I wasn’t being stubborn; I was terrified what they might do to him.

Sweetie gripped tighter and growled, shaking her head so hard her ears flapped. Then I heard what her keen hound ears had already picked up—a vehicle approaching.

No choice. I had to leave. Immediately.

As soon as I found Coleman, he could get a search warrant and determine if Graf was a prisoner. All I had to do was escape and get to town. I would be no good to either of us if I was captured.

I was moving to the back to vacate the premises when a small chirping noise drew my attention. On the floor beside a ratty old recliner was a small electronic tablet. Technology! Thank goodness Tinkie had insisted I learn to operate electronic devices. I could email Cece! She would alert the cavalry and come to the rescue.

I grabbed the tablet and slipped out the back door, ducking into a huge wisteria. The tangle of leaves and vines offered the perfect cover as I wasted precious time figuring out how to get into the tablet. At last I accessed the Web and sent Cece, Tinkie, Oscar, Coleman, and DeWayne SOS messages.

“Have been waylaid by right-wing militia. At old McCauley plantation—one of their headquarters. Walking toward town. Find me! Graf is missing. Urgent.”

I hit the Send button and started to drop the tablet in the dirt when I realized I held solid gold—at least potentially. I shoved it in my shirt and crawled out of my hiding place like my pants were afire. If I had to hoof it, I might as well haul boogie.

The night was like walking into lukewarm soup—hot, clammy, and unpleasant. Insects hummed so loudly I could have sung the Hallelujah Chorus and been drowned out by the busy little crickets. That was good, though. Using my best internal compass, I found a row of cotton and walked straight down it.

With her keener sense of direction, Sweetie took the lead. My dog would lead me to town. She had an insatiable love for ice cream cones from the Sweetheart Café, and I had more faith in her than I did in most people. It was going to be a long, sweaty night.

*   *   *

Forty minutes later, I drew close to the main road to town. Danger lurked here. But also possible rescue. The trick would be telling them apart. Approaching headlights could be Coleman or Cece, or it could be Arnold or Jeremiah. I wouldn’t really know until the vehicle was too close to escape if I picked wrong.

Almost as if I’d conjured them, a pair of headlights blinked in the distance. Sweetie and I dove into the cotton. I got down on my stomach and elbows and watched the approaching lights. The vehicle crept forward at a pace that told me a search was in progress.

The pickup loaded with men cruised by so slowly I could make out Arnold illuminated by the dash lights. Several men with rifles were in the truck bed. They’d given up searching for me in the cotton fields and figured I was walking to town. They were smarter than they looked.

The red taillights disappeared just as another set of headlights came up on the horizon. This vehicle, too, cruised at a leisurely rate. It could be one of my friends, or it could be Jeremiah.

I couldn’t risk it.

As much as I wanted to jump into the middle of the road and wave my hands and hope I would be rescued, I couldn’t.

When the car was a good fifty yards away, I heard music. A song with personal history for me. The Dixie Chicks belted out “Goodbye, Earl.”

I jumped up and ran screaming into the road. “Stop! Stop! Here I am!”

Cece’s Prius halted right beside me. “Get in quick, Sarah Booth. Coleman said people are all over the place. He thinks they’re looking for you.”

Sweetie and I needed no second invitation. My hound jumped in the backseat and I climbed in the passenger side. Cece was already rolling before I shut the door. And a good thing. Approaching headlights blazed in front of us.

“Get down,” Cece said. She rolled up the windows and pressed the accelerator harder.

I ducked onto the floorboard and held my breath as we passed the other vehicle. Cece stared straight ahead, never acknowledging the other car.

“I should just kill that bastard,” Cece said vehemently. “I should.”

“Was it Jeremiah?”

“It was. Dirty lowlife.”

She might call her brother names—and mean them—but he was still blood. I understood this. When the time came, she would stand for him even as he spit vitriol at her. His actions hurt her—had hurt her for many years—but he was her brother.

“Any word from Graf?”

Cece sighed softly. “No, Sarah Booth. Coleman and DeWayne are on it.”

“And Olive?”

“It’s a long story. I’m taking you to the courthouse. Olive is in jail.”

It was the first bit of good news in a long time, but I had better things to do then probe Olive’s legal issues. “I need to go home. Pluto is somewhere in the fields between the place where I wrecked and Dahlia House.”

“I can’t take you there. Jeremiah has men on the lookout for you. We’d be sitting ducks.”

As much as it dismayed me, I couldn’t argue. Her logic was … logical. “What if Graf is at the old McCauley house? I should have checked upstairs. I didn’t have time. Someone came back.” I was working myself toward a righteous case of hysteria and guilt.

“Snap out of it!” Cece didn’t backhand me, but she brought me around to my senses.

“Where could Graf be? I just have this horrible image of him bleeding out and thinking I’ll be there to save him—and I don’t find him.”

“You’re letting your imagination render you useless. Stop it this instant. I think you’re right. He’s been taken hostage by the Heritage organization. He’s useful as a pawn to control you. So calm down. The best thing you did was to escape. Had they gotten their hands on you, they’d have no need to keep Graf.”

Put that way, I felt better. “I still should have searched.”

“And if you’d been trapped? At least now Coleman, DeWayne, Tinkie, Oscar, Madame Tomeeka, and Millie are all looking for him. And for you.”

All of my wonderful friends were beating the bushes hunting for me and my man. If something bad had happened to him because of my work … I couldn’t even finish the thought. Of all the times he’d been mad at me because I put myself in danger, I finally understood the emotional load he carried. An intellectual understanding of fear and worry couldn’t compare to the visceral emotion I now felt. Emptiness and dread shadowed my every move, and the sensation was debilitating.

“Where have they hunted?”

“Graf isn’t at Magnolia Grove. That’s the first place Coleman tried.” She cleared her throat several times. “They found his Range Rover hidden on the grounds of The Gardens.”

Graf had been abducted before he even left The Gardens. He was taken only moments after he left me. His vehicle was moved so no one would notice. He’d been captive for hours, and I’d never suspected a thing. I’d gone about my business feeding and grooming the horses, futzing around with my leads, oblivious to the danger hanging over the man I loved.

“Do you have your phone?” Cece asked. “We haven’t called it for fear they had it. We didn’t want them to know we were on your trail.”

“It’s either on the floorboard of the car or in the cotton field. Unless they have it.” I wouldn’t be guilty of underestimating Jeremiah and crew ever again. What I’d learned about their willingness to harm people had given me a whole new respect for their lawlessness.

I shifted in the car seat and a sharp jab in my gut reminded me of the tablet I’d picked up in the house. “And I have this!” I pulled it from between my torso and shirt.

“That’s what you sent the email on.” Cece eyed it. “Anything good on it?”

“We’re about to find out.” Except we had no Internet connection in the middle of cotton fields.

Cece drove straight for the courthouse, where there was a strong high-speed, public Wi-Fi. I booted up the device. This was obviously Jeremiah’s personal tablet—who would guess the old coot had the latest technology. Then again, he had a highly trained brain—he just didn’t bother to use it.

It might be fascinating to track Jeremiah’s Internet travels, but a cache of files looked more interesting. I’d just opened up one titled Tilda Richmond—History, when we wheeled into the courthouse lot.

Coleman and DeWayne chatted beside a cruiser, a sign that didn’t bode well. A security light filtered through the branches of an oak, checkerboarding the two men in shadows and light. The image struck at my soul. It spoke of so many things, of the past, the duality of life and nature, that clarity of sight or mind exists only if both light and dark are accepted. Life and death. A foreboding omen.

“Did you find Graf?” I asked, climbing out before Cece came to a full halt.

“There’s not a trace of him.” Coleman delivered the bad news with a clenched jaw. “He can’t be far. But it’s like he disappeared into thin air.”

Coleman’s words evoked scenes from
Ghost Whisperer
where the reconciled spirit sees the portal to the next dimension and then walks into nothingness. I choked back a sob. Coleman’s arms came around me, supporting me against his chest.

“Call Tinkie here right now,” he said to DeWayne or Cece, I couldn’t be sure. With the lightest pressure, he guided me toward the trunk of the oak. How many hours had I played around the root system of that old tree when I was a child? I’d strung fantasies and built caves and created waterfalls with an old mop bucket and water from the fountain.

In those glorious days of remembered childhood, the light softened the edges of the hard things, the painful things. I was a child in braids, singing “Tom Dooley,” a song my mother taught me, and playing in the oak’s shade, until my father finished work so I could ride home with him. At nine, I’d been oblivious to the pain life meant to deliver. I’d been cocooned in my parents’ love.

I would have given a lot to look up and see my father walking down the courthouse steps.

“Sarah Booth, we’ll find him.” Coleman held me tight against him, otherwise I might have melted to the ground. “Buck up, girl. This is no time to lose your grit.”

The strongest impulse to run came over me. I pushed hard against Coleman’s chest, intending to break free and sprint away. I had to move. If I didn’t run as hard as I could, I might burst into flames. Or tears.

But Coleman anticipated my reaction. His arm clamped down around my waist and he used his chest as a bulwark. I fought with everything I had in me. And he held me with as much tenderness as he could afford.

We struggled in silence, neither saying a word. The only sound was my harsh panting as I fought him.

Behind me, I heard Cece’s sharp sob, and DeWayne’s murmured words of comfort. The shrill cry of a hawk came from high in the oak tree, another omen of doom.

I had to break free. I was suffocating in Coleman’s hold, but I couldn’t budge him. At last, I collapsed against him and grew still. He magically released me, knowing there wasn’t an ounce of fight left in me.

“We’ll find him, Sarah Booth.” He said it twice.

“Those people are dangerous. I thought they were a bunch of ridiculous kooks. They’re a lot more than that. They could have killed me when they spiked my car tires. I think they
meant
to kill me.”

His hand cupped my elbow. “Let’s go inside and review what we each know. I think Cece gave me the time frame for Graf’s disappearance. His car hidden on the grounds of The Gardens tells me he was abducted there, probably on his way to the parking lot.”

I felt as if a muddling fog had begun to clear from my mind. The things Coleman said sharpened the time line. Graf had been gone for nearly seven hours. They’d taken him without so much as a scuffle that anyone witnessed.

I forced calm into my voice. “I want to go to The Gardens. Maybe Sweetie can pick up his trail.”

“Good thought. But let’s go to my office first. I want you to speak with Olive.”

“To hell with Olive.” I’d had enough.

“She might be able to help.”

“Seriously?” I couldn’t believe it. “I should never have gotten involved with her. She came here to start trouble, and she sure has. For me, for Cece, for Tinkie and Oscar. For everyone I care about, even you.”

Coleman had the grace to look away, which sent a flood of fury through me. “I’ll find Graf, and anyone who tries to stop me will be sorry.”

“And the quickest way to get there is to talk to Olive.” Coleman’s patience was running thin. He, too, felt the pressure of time. Each hour without a ransom call whittled away the possibility of a happy ending.

“Loan me a patrol car. I want to go to The Gardens.”

Coleman slowly shook his head. “Tinkie’s on the way, Sarah Booth. She and Oscar went out to the place where you wrecked and found your cell phone. Oscar’s arranged to have the car towed to the garage. They went by Dahlia House. Pluto’s safe and sound. Tinkie fed him.”

Pluto’s safe return to Dahlia House was one worry off my plate. “Thank them when you see them, but please give me the keys to a vehicle.”

Coleman sighed. Before he could respond to my request, Cece pushed forward. Her slender arm circled my shoulders and she marched me toward the courthouse. “Twist may have information. Before you go running off and get yourself abducted, at least talk to her. If you want to help Graf, use your head, not your heart.”