Three Times Lucky (22 page)

“At least we’ll be grounded together.”

“Great,” he mumbled.

“You in or you out?” I demanded.

“I’m in,” he said miserably. “But you owe me, Mo LoBeau.”

We grabbed Dale’s faded red bike and sprinted across the yard. At the edge of the asphalt, he swung into the saddle. “Hurry,” he said. “Hop on.” I landed neatly on the handlebars. Within moments we flew along the road, Dale standing and pumping the pedals while I leaned back, holding my legs away from the spokes.

We met just one truck on the way to town.

“That was Daddy,” Dale panted. I nodded, trying to ignore the heat of his breath against the back of my neck.

“He wasn’t weaving,” I said comfortingly.

The scorn in Dale’s voice could have curled my hair. “Don’t mean nothing,” he said. “He mostly drives straighter drunk than he does sober.”

Five minutes later, we passed the W
ELCOME TO
T
UPELO
L
ANDING
sign. The wind gusted, shaking dead limbs from the trees and perfuming the air with their scent. “Steer clear of the Piggly Wiggly,” I told Dale. “We don’t want nobody to see us.” Instead of swerving left, as I expected, Dale rocked back hard on the pedals. We skidded
to a halt and the bicycle spit me forward. I landed on my feet, running.

“If you want to decide where we’re going, you pedal,” he said, his face flushed. “What have you been eating, lead?”

“I been eating your mama’s cooking,” I said, trotting back to him. “Hop on.”

I pedaled the rest of the way to the café. “Shhhhh,” I told Dale, lifting the yellow crime scene tape. It was spooky inside, dark and gloomy—partly from the thickening clouds, and partly because the furniture lay sprawled across the room. “This way,” I whispered, heading for the Colonel’s quarters. The door swung open. “The closet’s over here,” I said, grabbing a chair and dragging it across the pine floor.

Dale looked at the jump boots standing at attention by the Colonel’s footlocker. “The Colonel sure is neat,” he said.

“The Colonel says keeping your interior space neat lets you practice creative chaos in your exterior life. Without this sanctuary, he says he’d have to shoot Miss Lana and leave her for dead. Hold my chair, Dale.”

“Creative chaos,” Dale murmured. “That explains a lot.”

I stepped up into the chair and rummaged along the Colonel’s shelf, pushing aside a shoe box, an old checker
set, and a fruitcake left over from Miss Lana’s baking binge three Christmases back. I stretched to my tiptoes. “Ah-ha,” I said, pulling a packet from the back corner. I blew the dust off. “Sorry,” I said as Dale coughed. I rubbed my arm across the dark brown packet. The word scrawled across its front flap stopped my breath. “What on earth … ?” I handed the folder to Dale.

“Slate,” he read. “How come the Colonel has something with Slate’s name on it?”

“I don’t know.” I hopped down and peeked inside. Newspaper clippings? I scanned the headlines:
Slate Found Guilty. Slate Gets Life.
Underneath lay a legal pad of notes—all of them in the Colonel’s scrawl. My mouth went dry. Why would the Colonel have notes on Slate?

I stuffed the folder under my shirt and tucked my shirttail in, the packet making me swell-chested, like an umpire. “We’ll check this stuff out at your house,” I told him, wiggling the packet into place. “Let’s go.”

As we sprinted across the living room, something clunked on the front porch. Someone swore softly.

“Hide!” We bolted to Miss Lana’s suite and slid under her bed like sliding into home.

I held my breath as dusty boots clomped past us, and Miss Lana’s closet door scricked open. “Wigs? This must be the lunatic’s room,” a man muttered. He backtracked, and headed for the Colonel’s quarters. I closed my eyes
as he tore through the Colonel’s closet, cursed, and finally headed for the front door.

“Had to be Slate,” Dale whispered, squirming forward.

“Wait,” I said, grabbing his arm. Was that a second voice? A woman’s voice? I lay still, trying to pan human sounds from the wind. “Let’s go,” I said. We crept into the living room.

I felt the shadow in the doorway more than saw it. I wheeled to find Deputy Marla standing behind us, pistol drawn. “Well, well, what have we here?” she asked.

“Don’t shoot,” Dale yelped, raising his hands.

The pistol didn’t budge.

“Deputy Marla,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest—and the Colonel’s packet. “What are you doing here?”

“I have a better question. What are
you
doing here?”

“Don’t say nothing, Dale,” I warned. He stood quiet and still. Dale hates guns. “We ain’t a danger to you,” I told her. “Ain’t no reason to pull a gun.”

She blinked slowly. “No,” she said, lowering the weapon. “Of course not. I just … didn’t know who I’d find,” she said, her eyes moving to the Colonel’s quarters.

“It’s just us,” Dale said, breathless.

“Rising sixth graders,” I added, staring at the pistol. “Unarmed kids.”

She holstered the gun. “Well? What are you two doing at my crime scene?”

Surely she’d seen Slate—hadn’t she?

I faked a smile. “We’re looking for clues, like any detectives worth their salt. If we found anything, which we didn’t, we thought we’d turn it over to you. You could get a promotion out of it. We hope so.”

She stepped forward, her eyes hard. Dale and I backed up, into the Colonel’s quarters. “Starr might have missed something,” I continued. Her eyes flickered to the Colonel’s bunk and boots. “Plus I miss my family,” I continued. “I’m homesick.”

“I told you to stay where I could see you,” she replied.

Who did she think she was, using that teacher voice on us?

She kept herself between me and the door, her hand close to her pistol. I looked up into her eyes. It was like looking into the eyes of a snake. The Colonel had warned me not to trust Starr, but maybe it wasn’t Starr I needed to worry about.

Maybe it was Deputy Marla.

“I know it might look like we disobeyed you, but that’s black-and-white thinking,” I said. “Miss Lana says nothing’s really black and white, except zebras and old movies. Even dreams aren’t black and white unless you’re a dog.”

It was a cheap trick, but like most cheap tricks, it worked. I needed to think, and Dale has never, in the eleven years I’ve known him, passed up a chance to talk about a dog. He didn’t disappoint. “Queen Elizabeth II dreams quite a bit, Deputy Marla,” he said, relaxing. “You ever watch a dog dream?”

“I don’t have a dog,” she said, keeping her eyes on me.

“Sometimes Queen Elizabeth prances in her sleep,” he said. “Her paws flit. Or she grins and tosses her head like she’s in a field of butterflies. One time I think she caught a dream rabbit. I know she caught
something,
because she shook her head back and forth, but it could have been a squirrel. I’d rather not think it was a rat,” he said, lowering his voice. “Still,” he said, turning to me, “I don’t know where you get off saying Liz dreams in black and white. I mean, she didn’t actually tell you that, I’m pretty sure.” He hesitated. “Did she?”

“No,” I said. “I think Miss Lana told me, maybe. She listens to NPR and unless I’m mistaken, NPR is saying black and white for dog dreams.”

Deputy Marla interrupted. “Well, Miss Lana’s wrong.”

“You think dogs dream in color?” Dale asked, his face brightening. “Me too.”

“I
mean
Miss Lana’s idea of black-and-white thinking is psychobabble poppycock,” she snapped. “There are absolutes in life, and the sooner you learn that, the better.
Take you, for instance,” she said, glaring at me. “I’ve caught you on the wrong side of the law. That means you absolutely have a problem.”

“On the wrong side of what law?” I asked. “All I did was come home.”

“All you did was lie to a law officer, escape protective custody, and disturb a crime scene,” she said. “That, plus dragging Dale into trouble.”

“Dale just came along to keep me company,” I said. “He’s polite that way.”

“He pedaled you over here,” she said. “That makes him an accomplice.” Her glance raked Dale. “Your daddy told me he saw you on the highway. He’s lucky I didn’t arrest him for drunk driving.”

Dale shifted. “Daddy’s home?” he said. “Where’s Mama?” He looked at me, his eyes scared. “I got to get back home.”

“What’s wrong?” she sneered. “You afraid of a storm?”

No,
I thought.
I’m afraid of you
.

I took a step toward the door. “Well, this has been real nice, but we got a couple more errands to do.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, grabbing my arm. Her fingers pinched mean as a rusty bicycle chain. She gave me a sharp shake.

“You ain’t supposed to shake a kid,” I told her, clamping my elbows to my sides to keep the Colonel’s packet
from sliding loose. “You can cause brain damage.”

She put her face close to mine. “Who called you at the house?” she demanded. “What are you doing over here?”

“Nobody called me. We ain’t doing nothing,” I said, and she shook me again, snapping my head back.

“Hey!” Dale shouted, moving toward her. “Leave her alone!”

Anger raced across her face like fire across a wheat field. “I’m tired of your redneck mouth,” she said, pushing Dale with her free hand.

“Calm down, Dale,” I said. “She won’t hurt me. She ain’t stupid enough to get herself a child abuse charge.” Doubt flickered across her face, and her grip loosened—barely.

Why so angry? Not because a couple of kids gave her the slip. I wiggled my arm to test her grasp. “How did you know where to find us?”

“I told you. Dale’s father.”

“Bull,” I said. “We didn’t tell him where we were going.”

“That’s right,” Dale said. “And I kept the bike on the pavement. So you didn’t track us either.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What I know is none of your business.”

Deputy Marla didn’t follow us here. She couldn’t have. She came on her own. Either she overheard the Colonel on the phone, or Slate tipped her off. She was mad because we got here first.

She shook me again, and the Colonel’s packet slid out from under my shirt. “What the heck?” she muttered, reaching for it.

“Dale!” I shouted. “Set! Down! Hut-hut-hut!”

He sprinted toward the door. I dropped back three paces as Dale did a neat buttonhook. The Colonel’s packet sailed up, over Deputy Marla’s hands, toward Dale’s outstretched arms. She whirled toward him and when she did, I picked up the Colonel’s steel-toed boot and swung it with all my might. She threw an arm over her face and ducked as she twisted on the waxed floor. Her feet flew up, and her head cracked against the corner of the bunk. She crashed to the floor like a sack of rotten onions.

“Shoot,” Dale gasped, skidding to a stop. “You killed her.”

“I did not,” I said, hoping it was true. She moaned. “See? She ain’t dead. Help me tie her up.”

“No,” he said, backing away. “You can’t hit deputies and tie them up. Even my people know that.”

“I didn’t hit her, I missed,” I said. “She fell down. Help
me, Dale. Miss Lana needs us.” I rushed to the closet and plucked out both of the Colonel’s neckties. “Here,” I said, tossing the one with flamingos to Dale.

“The Colonel wears
this
?” he said, holding it at arm’s length.

I grabbed the light-up clip-on featuring Charleston’s Rainbow Row and tied it over Deputy Marla’s mouth. “Miss Lana, Christmas before last,” I told him. “Hurry!” We lashed her hands behind her with the flamingos and knotted her shoe strings together. Finally, I snagged the packet and the Colonel’s bayonet. By the time I scampered down the steps, Dale had already rounded the side of the building. “Dale!” I shouted. “You forgot your bike!”

He didn’t look back.

A gusty wind rattled the maples and shook the pines as I dropped the packet by Deputy Marla’s car. It’s harder to flatten a tire than I expected, but by the time I got to the car’s fourth tire I had my technique down: Place the point of the bayonet just so, and slam the handle with a landscaping stone. As the car sank to its rims, Joe Starr’s voice crackled through the radio: “Marla! Come in.”

I stared at it. If no one answered, he’d come to Miss Rose’s for sure. I grabbed the radio. “Hey Joe,” I said, making my voice low.

“Marla, is everything okay there? Why aren’t you by the phone?”

I tried to deepen my voice. “I’m securing the vehicle.” In a way, it was true.

Starr’s silence crackled. “I’m riding out the storm at Priscilla’s. You stay put, and keep those kids safe. Over and out.”

I hope she
does
stay put, I thought. I looked for the Colonel’s packet. “No,” I breathed. The wind had pried it open, and articles skittered toward the creek. I pounced, cramming all I could reach inside the packet, and looked at the sky.

“Hey Dale,” I shouted, running for the bike. “Wait for me!”

Dale pumped like he could out-pedal the storm, me balanced on his handlebars, the storm’s flat, angry hands shoving us along the blacktop. Dale stood up on the pedals, panting as the front wheel began to squeak. There was something about that sound, the sound of metal, the whirring squeak. …

“Stop!” I shouted. “I know where Miss Lana is!”

He slammed on brakes, catapulting me off my perch. “Where?” he panted.

“Right under our noses.”

Dale looked down, then out across a pitching ocean of corn, its green leaves going silver beneath a rolling sky. “I don’t see her,” he said. “Get back on.”

“The Old Blalock place,” I said, pointing to a sandy path etching its way through the corn. “It’s the perfect hiding place. Ain’t nobody been there since Miss Blalock died last winter—nobody except us hunting daffodils, and maybe Redneck Red to check on the still everybody pretends
he ain’t running. Miss Lana’s down that path. I know it.”

“Starr’s already searched the empty houses. Get on.”

“
Deputy Marla
’s already searched,” I said.

He braced against the wind. “Daddy might be home, Mo. I got to go.”

“Just a few minutes,” I begged, stepping in front of the bike. “Remember how Miss Blalock’s old water tower squeaks when the wind blows?” I said. “That’s the sound I heard when Slate called.” The wind raked his hair. “I got a foolproof plan. Take us five minutes is all. Five minutes to save Miss Lana’s life.”