Still Life in Brunswick Stew (31 page)

He rolled his eyes, folded his arms on the table, and buried his head in his hands. “You got anything to eat?”

“No,” I said. “I never have anything to eat. So keep that in mind. Now, answer my questions.”

“I couldn’t think where else to go.” He propped his chin on his arms. “I hitched a ride to Halo. My mom is missing.”

I set aside the lecture on hitchhiking for another time. “I thought Miss Marion was putting you up. And maybe your mom is just finding a place to settle.”

“Miss Marion is okay, but it’s weird to be at Cotton Pickin’ by myself. Mom doesn’t answer her phone. She might be really pissed at me.”

I handed him a cup of coffee and paced the kitchen. By helping Hunter, not only would I break that last straw held by Luke, I’d also defy Uncle Will.

“Why do you think she’s mad at you?” I asked. “For almost getting the tar beat out of you by Bruce Gable?”

“No.”

“You want to give me a clue?”

“You can’t call the cops,” he said and jerked to sitting. “Promise me.”

I sank onto a chair next to him. “Hunter, what did you do?”

“I did it. I put something in Lewis and Miss Parker’s stew.”

“Oh,” I said, while my brain screamed several obscenities. I hopped up and resumed pacing. “Okay. We’ll find your momma and get this sorted out. It’s better if you come clean.”

“I don’t want to go to jail,” his voice cracked. “I didn’t mean to kill them. It was just a prank. Miss Parker gave me a hard time at school. And I wanted to get back at Lewis for taking up with my mom. I hate him.”

“I know you didn’t mean it, honey. Don’t worry. Just let me find your mom. You’re going to need her. Have you called your Aunt Belinda? Has she seen Janine?”

“Aunt Belinda said she and Uncle Bruce decided to get out of town for a few days. They took off Thursday night, after calling the cops on you. They haven’t seen her.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Do the police know the Gables have left town? They were suspects. They should know better.”

“Doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“I’m calling the sheriff’s office. I won’t tell them about you, Hunter. But they can put an APB out on your truck and find your mom. They also need to know your aunt and uncle skedaddled. As far as the police are concerned, three of their suspects are missing. They’ll find your mom fast. And then we’ll figure out what to do.”

I walked into the front room and snatched my phone from the charger. Hunter followed me and watched while I left a message on Uncle Will’s voice mail.

“You’re pissing me off, Scarecrow.”

“Let’s get you something to eat, Hunter.” Hopefully food would placate the boy. “I’m taking you to the farm. You’ll get a good breakfast, and we’ll figure out what to do next.”

The lane to the farm remained blessedly clear of goats and other creatures. I parked under the leafy oak and hopped out of the truck, suspicious of the unnatural calm.

Hunter banged his door shut, and I heard his grunt of surprise. I couldn’t help a smirk.

“Don’t worry, Hunter,” I called. “They’re relatively harmless. Which one is it?”

“Cool,” said Hunter, circling the Datsun’s front end. “They’re just like dogs. I never had a pet.”

“What?”

I scowled as two goats—one brown, one white—trotted behind Hunter in their very best goat behavior. I scrutinized the turncoats and caught Snickerdoodle’s eye. Tater turned tail and shot toward the porch. Snickerdoodle stopped, lowered her head, and pawed the ground. I spun and ran for the house, leaving Hunter behind.

A few minutes later, Hunter sat at the table.

A plate of eggs, biscuits, and sausage and a steaming bowl of grits lay before him. Intent on their breakfast, Grandpa and Cody barely gave Hunter a glance. I eased into a seat across the table and began loading my plate.

Relieved that Pearl didn’t grace the farm with her presence this early in the day, I chose not to bring up the events of the previous evening. No one remarked on the shiner on my chin. I figured Cody and Casey had already conferred, and as the offender was Shawna, they chose not to report the news to Grandpa.

Casey ambled forward, a pot and ladle in her hand. “Gravy,” she yawned and dumped a pool over Hunter’s biscuit.

He stared in openmouthed wonder at the goddess before him. As Casey stumbled to the stove, his eyes did their best to peel off her boxer shorts and Braves t-shirt.

Janine Adams did not show at the viewing. I paid my sympathy to Miss Marion, who seemed surprised at my bruised countenance and disturbed by my attire. My chin and scraped lip probably dropped me a couple notches down the social ladder onto the riffraff rung. I made it worse by wearing the purple fringed sundress, but considering the state of my remaining dresses, it couldn’t be helped. I certainly wasn’t wearing the ass-pot dress again.

During the funeral, I hung out in the parking lot of the Episcopal Church, idling the Datsun so she wouldn’t stall out. The church lot overflowed with vehicles from Sidewinder. Plenty of folks eager to pay their civic duty to the home-wrecked matriarch of the town. The sheriff’s team had sent some representatives to the services as well. Luckily, I didn’t recognize the officers and hoped they didn’t know my yellow pickup.

By the time the funeral lunch began I had given up on Janine’s attendance. My next destination would be the Maynards’ farm. If Janine was too chicken to attend the funeral, she might use Marion’s absence to pack up the apartment in privacy. Last stop would be the Gables’ since their departure might also be a plus for Janine. After that, Hunter would have to trust the police to find her. Or I’d talk him into confessing to Uncle Will. And hoped he wouldn’t be too hard on the boy.

I drove through the beautiful cotton blossom gate and followed the lane toward the Maynard place. At the education center and sales office, I left the Datsun’s engine running and ran around to the side of the building. Stairs led to the second floor apartment. I scampered up the steps and beat on the door to no answer. After peering through the apartment window, I decided I was not beyond a breaking and entering. A key hiding at the top of the door jamb helped me to skip the breaking part. I took it as a good sign.

“Janine?” I called and stepped inside the apartment.

Someone had spent a lot of money for a place that should have been a glorified bonus room. Granite counters and stainless steel appliances graced a kitchen open to a living room with plush, modern furniture. I wrinkled my nose at the Richard Nagle knockoffs and detoured to the bedrooms.

The first revealed a mess of nudie magazines, tobacco cans, clothes, and video game equipment. I closed the door on the smell of Hunter’s sweat-socks and moved on to the next bedroom. The headboard of the king size bed aligned with Hunter’s bedroom wall. The thought of his mother and Lewis entertaining each other with the child next door made my stomach hurt. The mess of slick sheets and flattened pillows showed someone might have slept there, but I couldn’t determine when. I glanced in the walk-in closet. Clothes packed the walls and covered the floor. I pawed through the mess and found suitcases.

With Janine’s obvious lack of housekeeping, it was hard to tell if she still lived here or had taken off. She obviously hadn’t heeded Marion’s warning to pack up and get out. I left the bedroom and approached the master bath. If Janine had left, she would have taken her makeup and hair stuff. Women liked Janine wouldn’t leave without their beauty kits.

The marble and granite tiled bath would have been impressive if Janine had cleaned it. Her makeup littered the counter. Still, the mess made it hard to know if she had run. But if she still lived at the apartment, Hunter wouldn’t have thought her missing.

I left the apartment confused. The Datsun would run out of gas soon, and I needed enough to make it back to the farm. I hopped in the rusty truck and headed toward the fancy entrance gate. A quick perusal of the Gables’ place before heading back to Halo, then let the police do their job. I felt I somehow let Hunter down, but he had to face his sins, accidental or not.

As I turned onto the county road, a black sedan approached and slowed, readying to turn through the Cotton Pickin’ gates. The darkened windows didn’t show the driver, but I guessed Marion. She didn’t get many visitors.

Anxious to find Janine, I accelerated down the road instead of stopping for a neighborly chat. I hurried the truck, chewing my busted lip as the gas gauge dipped.

“Last stop,” I said to the Datsun as we turned down the corn packed lane of High Cotton Farm. “Then we go back to Grandpa’s, borrow some farm gas, and you can cool off under the oak.”

Tall stalks and the long gravel lane extended along my horizon. A rush of wind pushed through the corn, and I shivered at the emerald wave of razor-tipped leaves. The lane emptied into the blacktopped clearing ready to handle parking for the nonexistent cotton education center. I drove past the framed shell of the museum and stopped before the red barn. A yawning gap stood between the large, rolling doors. No self-respecting farmer would leave his farm in July, let alone forget to close and lock his barn doors. He may as well have left his house unlocked. I kept the truck running and hopped out to glance into the barn.

Hunter’s beater truck rested inside.

My hunch had been correct. Janine must have gotten wind of her sister leaving town and decided to squat for a few days. I stomped to the Datsun and drove across the parking area to the brick house. I had a few words to say to the woman whose son broke into my home so as not to sleep alone in his mother’s den of iniquity. If Hunter poisoned these people, I hoped the defense would do some finger pointing at Janine.

With a glance at the gas gauge, I cut off the engine. Explaining Hunter’s situation to Janine may take time, and I had better wait out an overheated engine than run out of gas in the middle of Children of the Corn country. I hopped from the truck and strode to the front door. I pressed the doorbell, then buzzed it twenty more times just to irritate the woman. After a few minutes wait, I cursed and stalked to the fence. The high latch gave me a struggle, but I opened the gate and propped it with a nearby rock. Skirting the crater for the swimming pool, I hiked across the churned earth to the patio. I peered through the sliding glass doors, yanked on the handle, and ripped a nail for my effort.

“Janine,” I yelled, hammering on the glass, “I know you’re in there. Hunter’s in trouble. Open this door.”

No response, which made me feel even less charitable toward the woman.

“Dammit.” I turned to tramp back to the gate.

Picking my way through the yard, I tripped over a stake that marked a flower bed. I stood up, dusted my hands, and felt some pity for the Gables and the money pit of their garden. If they hadn’t banked on grants for their cotton museum, they would have had a small piece of backyard paradise. The Gables took a big gamble and lost to Janine and the Cotton Pickin’ Good Estate.

Maybe Belinda Gable was correct. Perhaps Janine was no promotion genius, but had stolen the marketing ideas from the Gables. And maybe Lewis had stolen the Gables’ recipe for the Brunswick Stew cook-off. Janine and Lewis deserved each other as connivers and cheaters. They had certainly trampled on the innocent. The Gables, Miss Marion, and poor Hunter. A child turned serial poisoner.

My irritation with Janine led me away from the house to march across the steaming blacktop to the open barn. Now I had to wait for the Datsun to cool down. I would get the license plate number from Hunter’s truck and report her location to the sheriff’s office. Anonymously.

I slipped through the cracked barn door and stood before the old Chevy pickup. I noted the plates, then glanced in the back. A large, plastic jug, half-filled with liquid, sat in the bed. Having grown up on a farm, I recognized the size, square shape and label as a kind of chemical treatment for weeds or pests. Why Hunter would have it in his truck gave me pause, unless this was the noxious substance slipped into the stew. He could have bought the stuff at a farm store or stolen it from Cotton Pickin’s supply. But why not something easier to haul around? Something less complicated?