Girl Squad

by Kim Hoover

  “We have to hope whoever sent that envelope was a good guy.” Jane gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

  “And keep our wits about us,” I said, glancing at the other two.

  Just then, we heard a huge bang that sounded like an explosion and the car leaned toward the front passenger side and bumped hard against the pavement. We all screamed at the same time.

  “What was that!”

  “Oh, God,” Jane said, slowing down and pulling off to the side of the road. “I think it’s a blowout.”

  “The tire?” Rachel asked from the floor in the back, where she’d been thrown when the car careened to the right.

  “What do we do now?” I got out and looked at the ripped rubber.

  “Well, we have to get the spare on,” Jane said with a grimace.

  “Do you know how to do that?” Rachel asked.

  “I do,” Jane said, “but it’s not easy and I’ve never done it without my dad or my brother.”

  We had to empty all our stuff out of the trunk to get the spare tire. Jane put the jack together and placed it on the bumper. She started to pump the lever, lifting the car up off the ground. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as the sweat gleamed on her muscles and poured in rivulets off her shoulder. Rachel gave me a shove.

  “We should be doing something,” she said.

  “Should we pull the old tire off?” I asked.

  A truck full of teenage boys drove by us and slowed down.

  “Hey, y’all need some help?” They grinned at us.

  “Maybe,” Rachel answered, grinning back.

  “I think we’re okay,” Jane said, “but thanks.”

  “C’mon, Jane, would it hurt?”

  “We have to stay focused, Rachel,” I said, waving the boys on.

  She let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know how much I like having a girl who can do all this. It’s like we don’t even need boys anymore.”

  We left the trashed tire on the side of the road and took off with the spare in place.

  “We’ll have to get this fixed eventually,” Jane said, “but it will get us there tonight.”

  We were behind schedule, but by seven-fifty, we were pulling off Texas State Highway 217 and up to the canyon’s main gate. We paid the fifty cents to get in plus another two-fifty for the campsite. The gatekeeper was a chunky woman with rough reddish cheeks and stringy gray-blond hair. Her khaki-colored park ranger uniform looked two sizes too small. She smiled at us as she taped our ticket to the windshield.

  “Y’all be careful in there. There’s been some coyotes runnin’ round the last few months. It’s been dry, ’course, so they’re lookin’ for food.”

  “We’ll watch out,” Rachel piped in from the backseat.

  We drove on the cracked concrete road past the rim cabins and the visitor center. The Sagebrush Camp was across from the Pioneer Amphitheater.

  “That’s where they do Texas,” Rachel said.

  “What’s that?” Jane asked.

  “It’s a musical. Kinda like Broadway,” Rachel said.

  “I don’t think it’s as good as Broadway,” I said.

  “Well, anyway, it’s really great.”

  As we pulled into the camping area, the road turned to red dirt. It was dark by then and we left the headlights on as we unpacked the car and set up camp. There were only a few other campers there, so we had our pick of sites.

  Rachel and I did most of the setup while Jane found some firewood. I was grateful to have so much work to do. It kept me from thinking too deeply about what all of this really meant. I had a thousand questions in my head about what my mother could be involved in, and whenever it was quiet, the questions would hit me like I was a punching bag. So it was better if I worked myself to exhaustion.

  We laid out a tarp on the ground, then set up the three-person tent, struggling to drive the stakes into the hard, dry clay. We turned on all of our camp lanterns and flashlights so we could shut off the headlights. It got chilly in the canyon at night, so we wanted to get a fire going in the firepit. Jane took the ax and split some of the logs. Rachel gave me the hairy eyeball when Jane stripped down to a T-shirt so she wouldn’t catch anything with the ax. But I couldn’t help it. I had to stare as her muscles flexed in the lantern light when she swung that ax over her head and split a log with one stroke.

  “Nice arms, Jane,” Rachel said, glancing at me when she said it.

  “Thanks for noticing,” Jane said, smirking back at her.

  “You’re like a puppy,” Rachel whispered to me.

  “Whatever,” I whispered back.

  We were all hungry by then, so we decided to eat something before looking around any further. We had boiled some hot dogs, stuffed them in buns and wrapped them in foil. We heated them up on the fire.

  “Not bad,” said Jane, pouring on the mustard.

  “How about s’mores,” Rachel said, taking a Hershey bar and some marshmallows out of a bag. “Where are the graham crackers?”

  “Over there,” I said.

  “This is pretty nice,” Jane said, looking up at the clear sky full of stars.

  “Did you hear that?” I said as I raised my hand toward the brush where I thought I heard something.

  We got quiet, listening.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Rachel said.

  “I’m a little jumpy,” I said.

  “Let’s take a look around,” Jane suggested.

  We put on our jackets and took flashlights with us as we inspected the area right around the site. We walked back out to the main road, passing a few tents on our way.

  Suddenly, Rachel grabbed both of us and whispered, “Look out!”

  In the beam of her flashlight was a coyote.

  “Be still,” I said.

  We stood like statues until the animal trotted off, ignoring us. Then we headed past the Trading Post and the Old West Stables and eventually came to the entrance to the Hackberry Camp. It had much larger sites and there were several big RVs parked and running their generators. We walked around the camp, saying hello to folks who were sitting outside enjoying the evening.

  “All seems pretty normal,” Rachel said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nothing suspicious yet.”

  “Back to our camp?” Jane said.

  When we got back to the tent, we were all exhausted.

  “I am worn out,” Rachel said. “I haven’t had this much brain work since geometry.”

  “Yeah, I’m beat,” I said.

  “Me too,” Jane said. “I’m turning in.”

  We pulled the sleeping bags out of the car and made sure all the food was in the trunk, away from prying paws. I’m pretty sure we all fell asleep the minute we laid down.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next morning we showered in the camp restrooms, ate breakfast, and planned out the day. We decided we would go back to Hackberry Camp and look at it in the daylight. If we didn’t find anything, we’d spend the rest of the day hiking and head back to town.

  “What are we looking for, anyway?” Rachel asked.

  “I have to believe there was a good reason why someone sent me that picture of Hackberry,” I said. “If this guy Hank is involved in whatever this is, someone at that camp may know him.”

  “True,” Jane said. “We should interview people.”

  “Interview?” Rachel said.

  “You know, just ask them if they’ve seen anything suspicious. If they’ve noticed anything strange or out of place.”

  Rachel nodded. “Okay. I got it.”

  When we got back over to Hackberry, we split up. I struck up a conversation with a family that turned out to be from Colorado. They were a couple with two little kids. They had only been at the camp for a day or two and didn’t have much to say about anything they’d seen. I kept moving and found a man, probably in his forties, wearing jeans and cowboy boots. He was working on his truck.

  “Hi,” I said, waving as I walked up.

  He
looked at me but didn’t say anything.

  “Just wondering if you know much about the canyon.”

  He gave me a look like I was bothering him. “I been around.”

  “Have you ever met a guy named Hank?”

  He put his tools down and turned toward me. “No,” he said, “and I don’t think you want to either.”

  “But you know who he is?”

  “Let’s just say I know enough to know where I shouldn’t stick my nose.” He turned back to his truck. I stayed put, thinking he might have more to say. He looked back at me again. “You still here?”

  “I just thought, if you know him, or something about him, maybe you could tell me.”

  “Look, what’s your name?”

  “Cal.”

  “Look, Cal, you need to stay away from that guy.”

  “But who is he?”

  “His last name is Hart. He’s into some very shady stuff. Criminal stuff. It’s about oil and gas. That’s all I know.”

  “Really?”

  “Now, go on. Get out of this canyon.”

  I walked away feeling anxious and a little panicky. My mother was involved in something way over her head as far as I could tell, and I had no idea how I was going to help her out of it. I looked up and saw Jane, coming from the other side of the camp, almost running toward me, her eyes bright with excitement.

  “What did you find?”

  “That couple over there,” she said, pointing to a big RV with Illinois plates, “said they saw something strange here about a week ago.”

  “Okay, sounds promising.”

  “It was late one night. After midnight. An RV pulled in here and a little while later another big truck pulled in beside it. They sat there idling their engines for a couple of hours and then the truck left. About an hour after that, the RV left.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It was all over and done by four a.m., well before daylight,” Jane said. “What could you be doing out here in the middle of the night, except something you shouldn’t be doing?”

  “Were there any markings or names on the truck or the RV?”

  “Nothing they could see in the dark.”

  Just then, Rachel rode up on a horse—a big gray mare.

  “What the heck are you doing?” I said.

  “The people I talked to were horse people and I told them I love to ride, so they offered me Bessie here,” she said, giving the horse a love pat. “And don’t worry. I got some info, too,” she said, sticking her tongue out at me.

  “Okay, but get down off that horse. I don’t like having to look up at you like this,” I said.

  She slid off the saddle and jumped to the ground. “They said they come out here from Amarillo almost every weekend this time of year. They’ve noticed that once in a while on Saturday night, there’s a lot of truck noise coming from somewhere way out in the canyon. Sometimes it goes from midnight until before sunrise.”

  “Sounds like what Jane heard.”

  “These folks complained to the rangers, but they say the trucks have a permit for whatever it is they’re doing.”

  “Let’s find out who got the permit,” Jane said.

  “We need to be extra careful,” I said. “I talked to a guy who said Hank—his last name is Hart—is some kind of criminal mastermind. Oil and gas. If Hart is the one behind all this middle of the night stuff, we need to watch it. We’re getting in deep.”

  Rachel returned the horse to her owners and we all headed back to the tent. We were just sitting down to talk about what to do next when the woman who had been at the guard station when we first came in drove up in her pickup.

  “Just checkin’ on you gals,” she said. “Everything okay over here?”

  “Actually,” I said, “we were wondering about something.”

  The woman threw her truck into park and got out. “Okeydokey,” she said. “What can I do ya for?”

  “If someone gets a permit to do something here in the canyon, is there a way to find out who they are?”

  The woman looked at me like she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer me. “Well, yes, in theory.”

  “What does that mean?” Rachel asked.

  “Well, this is a state park and permits are public information. It’s just that the records aren’t always…real nice and neat.”

  “Would you mind if we took a look?” I asked.

  “What exactly are you looking for?”

  I told her what we’d heard from the folks in the camp.

  “Well, it’s true they have a permit and it would be on their vehicles. Are you wanting to know who they are?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Why do you need to know, if I can ask?”

  “It’s for a school project,” Rachel said. “We have to research how the state processes permits, how they decide to say yes or no.”

  “Well, I don’t know their names, but you’re welcome to come over to HQ and look through the permit applications. That’s where you’d find it, if it’s there, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  “Could we go now?” I asked.

  “I can ride you up there now, if you want. You’ll have to walk back.”

  We all jumped into the pickup, Rachel riding in the bed.

  “Nice job,” I whispered to Rachel, who gave me a thumbs-up.

  “My name’s Missy, by the way,” she said to me and Jane, who squeezed in next to her.

  When we got to HQ, Missy showed us into the file room, which was dark and dank and smelled of molding paper.

  “Gross!” Rachel choked through the dust that rained down on her as she pulled a manila folder off the top of a tall metal filing cabinet.

  We must have been at it for two hours when Jane found something. “Look. This is a permit application for tanker truck storage. It says it was approved last year.”

  “Who applied for it?” I asked.

  “It says Brazos River, Incorporated. It’s signed by—oh my god! By Hank Hart!”

  “Whoa,” Rachel said. “Pay dirt.”

  “What the heck are they doing with those tankers? It’s not just storage if they’re running the engines all night,” I said as we made our way back to camp.

  “Yeah. They may have a permit, but it’s not for what they’re doing. If the guy you met is right, whatever it is, it’s probably illegal,” Jane said, “but how are they getting away with it?”

  “This is a little scary,” Rachel said.

  “Let’s just take the night off and start over in the morning,” I said. “Maybe we’ll wake up with a brilliant idea.”

  But before we got a chance to get back to our camp, a woman wearing a khaki-colored western-style uniform, stopped us.

  “Girls,” she said. “Hold on. My name is Officer Gillette. I’m a Texas Ranger and I’d like to have a word with you.”

  We stopped in our tracks, looking at each other like we’d been caught shoplifting. I stared at the gun on her hip and the cowboy-style hat on her head.

  “What did we do, Officer?” Rachel asked.

  “Nothing. It’s not that. I just want to ask you a few questions. Let’s go over to those benches and have a seat.”

  What choice did we have? We followed her to the picnic benches and sat in a row on the same side of the table facing her. She looked to be in her late twenties. She took out a notepad and a pen.

  “First let me have your names, addresses, and ages.”

  We gave her the information and she hesitated when I said mine, making what seemed like extra notes next to my name. Then she continued.

  “Missy in the guardhouse said you girls have been poking around in the headquarters office, looking for permits. Could you tell me why?”

  I cleared my throat and sat up as straight as I could. “We are investigating my mother’s disappearance,” I said, mustering all the sternness I could.

  Officer Gillette stayed silent for a few seconds, like she was sizing me up. A drop of sweat slid down my bac
k and into my underwear.

  “I see,” she said. “But you must have reported this to the police?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not sure she isn’t just off on a trip somewhere. So I didn’t want to bother the police just yet. I figured I might find her on my own.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Officer Gillette said, closing her notebook. “You should leave this kind of thing to the authorities. And you should get back home.”

  “We have clues,” Rachel said insistently as the officer stood. “We’ve interviewed people. We know some things. Like there’s this guy Hank Hart who’s supposed to be a bad guy. And he has a permit for tankers in the canyon and we think he’s up to something. And we think Cal’s mom knows this guy. So we’re worried about her.”

  She paused and sat back down. She spoke in a hushed tone, almost a whisper. “Okay, girls. I’m going to tell you as much as I can, but you have to promise me that you will leave this canyon and get back home first thing tomorrow.”

  We nodded in unison, our eyes wide, waiting like three chicks in a nest, waiting to be fed.

  “Hank Hart is a very bad man. He runs an organized crime ring. And your mother is involved with him.”

  I gasped. Rachel and Jane both grabbed for my hand.

  “They’re having an affair,” she said, glancing sheepishly at me. “We don’t know whether she’s part of the criminal operation or not.”

  “I don’t believe Joyce could ever do something like that,” Rachel said. “They must have kidnapped her.”

  “I’m sure that’s it,” Jane said.

  “Why would you even think she could be a part of it?” I asked, my voice cracking.

  “The truth is, we just don’t know. The investigation is ramping up. We think they’re about to make a big move. We have a team meeting at the courthouse in Amarillo tomorrow. I may know more after that. I’ll stay in touch with you and update you as much as I can.”

  As she left, she took a card out of her pocket and handed it to me.

  “Call me if you need anything. If you see or hear anything.”

  I looked at the card. Beverly Gillette, Staff Lt.

  “Okay, L..lew..tenant?” I said.

  “Just call me Bev.”

  She took off and the park ranger gave us a bumpy ride back to camp. As the sun began to drop and a chill filled the air, we built a fire and tried to relax. I stared into the fire, rocking back and forth with my arms tightly around my knees. I had the weirdest feeling, like maybe this was all a dream and I would wake up any minute with my mom yelling at me to clean up my room.