'Til Grits Do Us Part (2 page)

“Initiated into what?” I yelped.

“The South.” Becky dug in her pocket and pulled out a bandana. “G'won! Close yer eyes.”

And before I could dash off, she grabbed me by the arm while Tim tied the bandana around my eyes. Tight. I stumbled around and hollered, groping for the bed of the truck. Then I boosted myself up onto the bumper, stomach bent over the tailgate.

“Hey! Come back here!” Becky tried to pull me by the waist, but I wiggled free and plopped into the hard metal truck bed, rubbing my banged knees and elbows.

“Forget it! I'm not going.” I wrestled with the knot at the back of my head, which had swallowed several tender strands of hair.

“You're really gonna stay in the truck?” Tim leaned over and peeled my blindfold off, his mustache and shaggy brown mullet grinning back at me from under his battered NASCAR cap. “With that killer on the loose? The one that knocked off that Amanda gal a few years back?”

“Cut it out!” I tried to smooth my hair back in place, suddenly feeling chilly in the night breeze that blew in from across the deserted fields. “You watch too much
CSI
. There's no way her killer could be back—if someone actually murdered her. It's been what, eleven years? Twelve?” I rubbed my arms. “Forget it. It's just a bunch of kids pulling pranks. Leaving notes. Silly stuff.”

“Hey, you're the crime reporter.” Tim shrugged, taking a few steps back as Christie pulled at the leash. “Not me.”

“I'm not doing that story. It's a hoax anyway.” I peeked over my shoulder at the desolate country road, winding into a blue-black distance, figuring the lunatics I knew were better than the ones I didn't.

Nobody did much in Staunton but smash mailboxes and spin tires, but Tim's stupid “killer-on-the-loose” business creeped me out.

“Fine. I'll do whatever you guys planned. But no blindfold. And you've got to tell me what we're doing.”

“And then you'll come?” Becky put her hands on her hips.

I sighed and nodded. “So what is it?”

“Cow tipping.”

Hands down, this topped the list of the most ridiculous things I'd ever done. The night glowed with moonlight, still and soft, and a velvet breeze swelled up from cornfields and pastures that teemed with the hum of crickets. We slipped across Faye's yard, past the grassy spot where we'd set up her wedding arch and decorated it with flowering redbud and dogwood branches, and up to the barbed-wire fence that separated her yard from her neighbor's cow pasture.

Whew!
I could smell the cows already.

“Okay, now quiet, y'all,” whispered Tim. “Grab yer dog while I hold the wire for ya.”

He stuck one cowboy-booted leg on the barbed wire and pulled it open, leaving a space for us to squeeze through. Becky shimmied between the rusty strands with a practiced air, not catching her jean jacket on the barbs. (A
nice
jean jacket, thanks to me, the so-called Fashion Nazi who saved her from rumpled overalls and too-big NASCAR T-shirts). She gestured for me to follow.

Crickets chimed in low throbs across the darkened hills, and I thought of Amanda's case files sprawled across the mess of my desk. The way she'd supposedly vanished without a trace twelve years ago, from right here in town, and the recent rash of spray-painted messages and letters the police thought might be related to her.

Please. This was Staunton, Virginia, not New York. From the little I'd heard about the case, nobody could prove anything—including foul play. Amanda probably skipped town and moved to a place where rednecks didn't shoot the deer in the public park.

And if you asked me, the vandals were probably one of Tim's sixteen first cousins out on parole with spray paint and nothing to do.

“I'm a
crime
reporter!” I whispered as Becky helped Christie under the fence. “If we get caught cow tipping, what's everybody going to say?”

“Aw, quit being a baby! Nobody's gonna find out,” fussed Becky, tugging on Christie's leash. “Who knows? If ya did get arrested, might be Deputy Shane Pendergrass again an' ask ya out on another hot date. He sent ya roses a couple times, didn't he?”

“It wasn't a date! I've told you that a hundred times. And I'm engaged anyway.” My silver ring glinted in the moonlight, stoneless. The best Adam could afford in our current financial famine, but good enough for me.

“So…where's that gorgeous child of yours? Who's got Macy?” I blurted, doing my friend Kyoko's famous split-second subject change on Becky. “You guys are supposed to be responsible parents now.”

“Mama's keepin' her. She's awful hooked on that little gal.” Becky shook a finger at me. “And if Macy'd come tonight, I guarantee she wouldn't whine half as much as you, an' not even a year old. Shucks, woman! You'd think you was scared of some li'l ol' cows or somethin'.”

“I'm not scared! But this is just…just…” I threw my arms up.

“I don't even see any cows!”

“ 'Course not! They're over yonder. Now git!” Tim shoved the barbed wire open in frustration. “I ain't holdin' this all night!”

I sighed and rubbed my face. As long as nobody found out, maybe I could do this. Just this once.

I stuck one leg through the wire.

Tim's flashlight bobbed a weak beam along the ground. “Watch yer step!” he whispered as we hurried through the grass. “Ain't much fun washin' that stuff off yer shoes!”

“Exactly!” I minced carefully around a brown cow pile, wondering if Kyoko back in Japan had the right idea. I'd lived here too long, and I was turning half nuts like practically everybody else. What, was I supposed to start craving those pale, soupy grits Becky kept harping about or spit in a cup or something?

I fell in step nervously behind Becky, scrutinizing every suspicious spot.

“So how's yer weddin' plans comin'?”

“Huh?” I lurched to a stop just inches from a brown pile.

“Your weddin' plans! You are gettin' hitched in August, ain't ya? Or did ya call that one off, too?” She tittered.

“What do you mean, ‘too'?” I scowled, slapping aside some ticklish weeds.

Becky tugged Christie away from something stinky. “Well, ain't this your second time to plan a weddin'?”

I froze in midstep, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that (1) Becky Donaldson was talking about my upcoming wedding while we ran through a cow pasture and (2) she'd brought up my ex-fiancé.

“That's it!” I turned and stomped back toward the truck. “I'm going home!”

“Aw, I'm just kiddin' ya.” Becky grabbed my arm between laughs and pulled me back, Christie's leash wrapping around my legs and nearly knocking me over. “Don't be mad, Shiloh! Yer jest awful uptight lately.” She put her arm around my shoulder and steered me around a muddy low spot. “I'm only tryin' to make ya laugh.”

I untangled my left foot from the leash. “Well, talking about Carlos sure isn't the way to put me in a good mood.”

Especially now that I'd found Adam. I twisted my ring back and forth on my left hand, missing him. He was working late tonight at UPS, and after that, helping take care of his older brother, Rick, a double amputee.

And even if he wasn't busy, I guarantee he wouldn't be tramping through cow pies. Although he did drive a pickup truck. And…he owned an alarming number of plaid shirts.

Maybe I should do more walking and less thinking.

“So what time is it now?” My eyes puffed, bloodshot, from two all-night story write-ups and a court hearing, taking Christie for her shots, plus wasting hours vacuuming and Pine-Sol-ing Mom's house for a prospective buyer who “decided to go in a different real-estate direction.”

I'd like to show her another real-estate direction, all right. One right under the local train tracks.

“Time for you to start gettin' yer weddin' together, woman! Yer family comin'?”

“Family? You mean Dad and Ashley?” I made a face. “I don't think so. Dad wouldn't come if his life depended on it, and Ashley will be sure to come and make herself the star of the show. Bossing me around. No thanks.”

“Aw, come on. You're invitin' 'em, ain't ya?”

“I don't know.” I shrugged. “Why should I? They never change. Dad doesn't care one bit what I do now that he's got a new family. An apology for leaving me and Mom all those years ago? Fat chance. I know how he is.”

Becky pursed her lips. “Well, ya never know. Might be like Jerry and all his highbrow books and surprise ya.” She winked. “People ain't always what ya think. And life ain't neither.”

“Right. And I'm Garth Brooks.”

Becky tittered. “Well, how's the weddin' plannin' comin', anyhow?”

“Planning? You think I know anything about planning a wedding?”

“Tell me about it! When Tim asked me to marry him, my mama carried around a satchel full a magazine clippin's like I was Princess Diana or somethin'. It's all she could talk about right up to the honeymoon. Shucks, I didn't have to do a doggone thing 'cept sample cake an' try on weddin' gowns!”

I stumbled slightly, feeling my stomach contract as I reached down to rub my leg. “Well, it's not like I have a mom to help. So if I'm a little slow in the wedding department, you'll have to excuse me.”

I didn't mean for my voice to turn bitter, but it did. Everywhere I looked I saw reminders of Mom's death—her gaping absence, like a hollow in a cow field filled with nothing but muddy water.

Becky clapped a hand over her mouth. “Aw, Shah-loh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean nothin'. But you ain't gotta worry—we'll he'p ya! Ya got what, two months or so left?”

“That sounds right. Adam starts classes in August, so we picked the fourth. No. The third. I forget.” I rubbed my bleary eyes. “I've got it written down somewhere. Besides, it's not like we have money for a wedding anyway.”

“What about your book you wrote? Ain't you gettin' some cash for that?”

“Enough to pay for Adam's first year of college, since he sold his business to pay my back taxes.” I fingered my ring. “And that's all it'll pay for. It's a small publisher.” I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe I'll pick up some royalties when it goes to print at the end of the year, but not in time for August third.”

“Well, you could always have your weddin' at the gun range. I reckon they'd let ya have it for free for the afternoon.”

I tripped on a rock, laughing. A sound that felt good in my ears. “Right. And Jerry can play the banjo for the reception.”

“Tim does fiddle. How 'bout it?”

We chuckled together a few minutes, and then I looked over at her, night wind blowing strands of pale hair across her face. “Do you think I can do this, Becky?”

“Do what? Git Jerry to play at your weddin'?”

“No! Live here in Staunton. Without family. Without…well, anything but you guys.” I rubbed my arms, shivering not just because of the cold. “A city the size of a MoonPie. Nothing ever happens here.”

“You crazy? You just said there's a killer on the loose!”

“I didn't say that. Tim did.” I rolled my eyes. “I promise you, nothing big happens in Staunton. Nothing.”

“What do ya mean nothin' happens? We go squirrel huntin' sometimes. That's pretty excitin'.” Becky stifled a smile.

“Don't start.” I glared. “The most that happens out where I live is people squealing their jacked-up trucks and that petty theft I had to write up a while back. People stealing lawn ornaments, Becky! There's no theater here. No subways. No…anything. Please don't be offended. It's just a lot different from Tokyo, where the city whirls all night long.”

My fingers tightened in an almost palpable ache at the memory of steaming noodle shops and street crossings jammed with fashionable urbanites chirping into high-tech cell phones. Cities crisscrossed with whirring subways and sleek JR trains, all going somewhere. Pushing higher. Reaching into a future gleaming with concrete and glass—while I tromped through cow-bitten grass.