by Celia Roman
Looked like me and the sheriff was gonna have to have a few more words. At the rate we was going, I was liable to use up an entire year’s worth on him.
The District Attorney said, “We’re asking that Mr. Carson be held without bond for two counts of murder. They were heinous crimes, your Honor, absolutely brutal. We believe Mr. Carson is a flight risk and a danger to the state.”
I gritted my teeth. He weren’t the only suspect and the DA knowed it. Far as I could tell, the police hadn’t found a trace of Fame at any of the crime scenes. The only person what had that distinction was Belinda Arrowood, though where she fit into all this, I hadn’t a clue.
‘Cause I was sure, deep down in my gut, that no human had killed them folks, including my aunt and uncle. No human, though if Spearfinger was to blame, I couldn’t rightly say what exactly she was, even with my grandpa’s less than helpful explanation.
The judge peered at Tom over the bifocals perched on her nose. “What say you?”
Tom cleared his throat and smoothed a hand down his tie. “Your Honor, Mr. Carson’s family has been in this area since the county’s inception. He’s lived his whole life in the same hollow, where his only family also lives. He has no reason to flee the county, and even if he did, he lacks the funds to do so.”
The DA protested with some made up malarkey about Fame, Tom countered, and the back and forth betwixt ‘em was worse’n a tennis match. I tuned out for a minute, trying to sort out the tangle of politicking they was both indulging in, and come to on the tail end of the Judge’s pronouncement.
“…set at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” she said. “What’s next?”
Beside me, Riley and the boys and Missy rose, and I finally scooted off the bench and onto my feet whilst that burn in my gut twisted into a knot of roiling sick. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Like I told Tom, it might as well be the moon.
We skeedaddled outta the courtroom soon as the judge moved to the next item on her calendar. I left Trey and Missy to handle Fame’s bond, not ‘cause I didn’t wanna help. ‘Course I did, but an odd restlessness crawled under my skin, like an itch too deep to scratch. I needed to move. I needed to do, and standing around jawing out the details of Fame’s release weren’t enough of either moving or doing to satisfy me.
‘Sides which, I weren’t going far. Soon as Riley slipped off to use the men’s room, I told Missy to text if she needed me, then double timed it upstairs to the Probate Judge’s office.
In a county as small as this’un, some folks done double duty. Fewer now than used to, but enough. The job of junior Deputy Coroner was part-time at best. Angela Hill’s full-time job was as the clerk slash receptionist for the county’s Probate Judge. I weren’t counting on it, but if luck held, I could catch her on her way to lunch and probe a little deeper into the autopsy results from the other folks killed in the same area as Lily and Ferd.
Did they have holes in their chests, too? Was granite present in the wounds like they was in my aunt and uncle, the first found?
If so, then I was nigh on certain they was all killed by the same critter. Irritation joined the restlessness, and I frowned as I opened the door to the courthouse’s upper story. Only, knowing what done the killing and how to kill it was two different ducks quacking two different tunes. Dadgum Johnny Walkingstick and his mystical hoodoo. Ten to one, the old curmudgeon knowed darn good and well how to take down Spearfinger, though I held nary a clue as to why he refused to share.
Two steps into the hallway, an overwhelming whiff of high end perfume stopped me in my tracks, just shy of running over a woman coming out of the County Commissioners’ office. I glanced up and narrowed my eyes even as mean satisfaction drove the restlessness away.
“Why, Belinda Arrowood, as I live and breathe,” I said, not bothering to hide the contempt or the satisfaction, neither one.
Belinda laughed, a high, breathy sorta sound, and fluttered a hand around her bare neck. “Sunny. What are you doing here?”
“Bailing Fame outta the mess you created,” I said, flat as a fritter. “What were your fingerprints doing all over the campsite where Lily and Ferd was killed?”
She huffed and straightened her shoulders, and danged if fire didn’t burn two red spots on her made-up cheeks. “You do go on, Sunshine. That imagination of yours will get you into trouble someday.”
“I ain’t the one with the imagination running amuck here, Belinda. You want, I can knock your nose crooked again and maybe jar your memory loose. I don’t mind a’tall.”
Her eyes went cold and hard, like two sapphires glittering against the tan foundation she wore. “Don’t threaten me, sugar.”
I stepped real close and stuck my finger in her chest, right where Preacher Dryman’s ancestral pearls used to rest after Miss High and Mighty stole ‘em. “I don’t say nothing I can’t make good on.”
A door closed to my right, followed by the rapid patter of high heels against thin carpeting, and a breathless voice said, “Sunshine!”
I held Belinda’s gaze for a minute, long enough for some of her haughty to fade, then stepped back and swung around toward Angela, who was doing her best to jog down the hallway in spite of a tight skirt and four inch heels.
“Howdy there,” I said, like I hadn’t just confronted my age old enemy in the hallway of what passed locally for law and order. “I was just coming to see you.”
“I’m glad you did, but honestly.” She stopped between us and to the side, sucked in a deep breath, and laughed it out. “Sorry. I thought you were going to punch her for a minute there.”
I was, but Angela didn’t need to know that. Come to think on it, Belinda didn’t neither. ‘Twas best to keep folks guessing, far as I was concerned. “We was just talking about how Belinda’s fingerprints was plastered all over the scene of my aunt and uncle’s death. Mighty big coincidence there, don’t ya think?”
Belinda sniffed and stuck her nose in the air. “I have better things to do than stand here and listen to this slander.”
“Ain’t slander if it’s true,” I retorted, and took a great deal of pleasure from the way she flounced off toward the elevator.
The hussy.
Angela shifted around and watched her go, one hand patting the fancy twist holding her auburn hair in place. Soon as the elevator doors slid shut on Belinda, Angela said, “Putting y’all in the same room together is like throwing gasoline on a fire. Always has been.”
There was a reason for that, but that weren’t something I wanted to get into right that very second. I took Angela’s elbow real polite like and led her away from the County Commissioner’s office, where somebody might be tempted to snoop on our conversation through closed doors. To be safe, I lowered my voice and said, “Any more news?”
She shook her head. “Not on Lily and Ferd.”
“Thanks for sending them reports,” I said, my voice gruff. Not many folks was willing to stoop to my level, so when somebody did, I was doubly appreciative of the help. “What about them other folks what was killed?”
“Nothing yet.” She cleared her throat and her eyes went round in a right good imitation of snow-white innocence. “Their causes of death weren’t of such great concern to, ah, folks.”
I grunted. By folks, I assumed she meant Chip Treadwell. “So they’re still with the medical examiner, huh?”
“In Athens, yes.” She glanced over her shoulder, then stepped closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “But word is, all but one had holes in them somewhere, same as your kin. One poor guy had his whole side ripped out. I think his liver was missing, too.”
A lightbulb went off in my skull, like somebody shouted eureka. “What happened to the other one, the one without holes?”
She shrugged and stepped back, and her voice returned to normal. “Won’t know until the coroner gets the autopsy report.”
We chatted for a few minutes more, mostly about family, then I jogged back downstairs whilst she headed for the elevator. Didn�
��t get much of a chance to gnaw on the tidbits Angela shared, nor on the run in with Belinda. Riley was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, looking like he lost his best friend. Soon as he seen me, his expression eased into a smile, and I let him rope me into hunting down Missy and the boys and having a go at sorting out Fame’s bond.
Chapter Twenty
That night, after Missy put up Fame’s bond using nigh on ever bit of property the family owned, we all gathered at Fame’s trailer for a celebratory feast. Well, as big a feast as me and Missy could scrounge together on an afternoon’s notice, which is to say, we rustled up a heaping pot of her special beef stew and teamed it with cornbread cooked in Granny’s cast iron skillet, a coupla sides, and a blackberry cobbler.
Fame, Riley, and the boys eat like it was going outta style whilst Missy just sat there shaking her head ever so often, looking like she been poleaxed or something. I tucked in, too, but I couldn’t hardly eat around the odd feeling in my gut. Nothing was settled, I reckoned. Fame was still in a heap of trouble, there was still something out there killing folks, and I still didn’t know how to stop it, though I was nigh on certain I could track it easy enough, whether it struck again or not.
It was the struck again part what had me shoving food around in my bowl with the tip of my spoon. Didn’t do a lick of good knowing what was doing the killing if I couldn’t catch it, nor if nobody believed me. How exactly was I gonna get the blaming finger pointed away from my uncle toward a supernatural critter straight outta Cherokee folklore?
I couldn’t answer that question, and until I could, maybe it was best to leave the monster be.
After the menfolk near about licked their platters clean, they give their all to cleaning ‘em the old fashioned way, with soap and hot water and elbow grease. Me and Missy sat at the table chatting quietly around the men’s rowdy bursts, me mostly listening. She was full of the goings on, as she usually was. It tickled her pink to share how so and so’s baby was walking, and so and so else’s young’un got a scholarship, and on and on. I never met nobody so well informed as to local gossip, nor so willing to wag her tongue about the good and never the ill.
Later, we all settled down around the table again for a rousing game of Monopoly, me squeezed in between Riley and Fame. Under cover of the play, Fame leaned over and whispered, “Thank you, Sunny.”
I glanced over at him, met them wild blue eyes of his with my own coon crazy brown’uns. Fame was the kindest man I knowed. Hang what he done for business. That weren’t no kin to personal, and when it come to personal, Fame always done what was right. Look at the way he took me in after Mama done what she done to Daddy and that poor ol’ vacuum cleaner salesman, God rest ‘em. He coulda let me go to the foster system, like Sheriff Treadwell threatened, but he hadn’t. In spite of all the troubles I added to the fair share he already carried, Fame’d done right by me.
Didn’t feel like I was doing near enough right by him.
I sighed and patted his hand real gentle. “Don’t thank me. I ain’t finished the deed just yet.”
“But you’re working on it.” He tilted his head and kissed my forehead, then said, “Have some faith, Sunny girl.”
I shook my head and laughed, though it was half-hearted at best. Faith’d always been a hard row for me to hoe. No reason for it to get easier now, no matter how much I might need its reassurance.
A few days later, I let Riley talk me into accompanying him to a work shindig. Now, I weren’t too keen on rubbing elbows with the Squirrel Police, as Trey called the folks working in Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources, but it was Riley, and let’s face it. I didn’t rightly know how to turn him down.
So along I went in nice jeans and a dressy shirt Missy and Fame give me for my last birthday. Seeing as how it was a holiday party held by nature lovers, I balked at wearing anything fancier’n that, or would’ve if Riley’d made a fuss. Instead, he turned up at my front door in jeans and a long-sleeved collared shirt under his jacket.
Lordy, did that boy look good in tight fitting jeans.
The holiday party was being held in a conference room at one of the local wineries out in Tiger. Somebody’d done the place up good. A giant Christmas tree stood in one corner, decorated to the nines in red and gold do-dads. Fake snow was sprayed on the windows in the shape of snowflakes. Mistletoe hung from odd places around the room, snaring the unwary. Holiday music drowned out all but the loudest conversations, which was fine by me. I spent my time mingling at Riley’s side, nodding to them I knowed, playing nice with them I didn’t, and doing my best not to speak more’n polite dictated.
Whoever laid out the spread done a good job, too. Tiny puff pastries filled with cream cheese and more savory fare jockeyed on a long table with a cheese ball and crackers, pigs in a blanket, fruit and vegetable trays, and all other manner of finger food. A smaller table held eggnog, pitchers of sweet tea, and cans of soft drinks stashed in a melting bowl of ice.
If folks snuck out for a sip or two of hooch, I didn’t catch ‘em, but I weren’t rightly looking neither. I was too preoccupied trying to wiggle outta conversations, ‘specially them concerning local gossip. The problem of Spearfinger buzzed around in my head, how to find her and, more important, how to kill her. I didn’t need nothing else adding to them worries.
‘Long about halfway through the planned evening, right when whoever was in charge deemed it time to pass around the gag gifts ever body brung, nigh on half a dozen buzzers went off in the crowd, signaling an emergency. I cocked my head toward the nearest person wearing a radio, likely one of the local volunteer firefighters, and caught scattered words of a dispatcher’s conversation with what sounded like a policeman. Two words caught my attention over a caterwauled rendition of “Mary, Did You Know?”
Another body.
The breath froze in my lungs as my hands went limp around a can of coke. Well, crap. Fame’d just got out on bail. The last thing he needed was somebody else ending up dead. God save their souls and all, but I was more worried about the living, ‘specially my own kin.
Riley sidled up beside me and said, real low, “Did you hear?”
I nodded, then shrugged. “What’s going on?”
“A hiker was found in the woods not far from where Lily and Ferd were killed. She went missing a week ago.”
My shoulders relaxed a mite. A week ago, Fame was in jail. No way this’un could be pinned on him without somebody contorting the truth into knots. Unless… “When did she die?”
Riley’s lips pressed together, real tight. “In the last day or so.”
Maybe while Fame was still alibied, but even then, there might be a non-supernatural cause. “Anybody know what of?”
“I don’t know.” Riley glanced around, then lowered his voice. “There was a lot of blood, Sunny. Do you think it was that thing you and Dad saw?”
I didn’t even have to think twice. My instincts took to buzzing so loud, they near about drowned out the speculation passing from mouth to ear around the company. “Yeah, I do.”
His hand lashed out and wrapped itself hard around my upper arm. “I know that look, and I’m telling you flat out, you’re not going after it, not tonight.”
Anger stiffened my spine and I opened my mouth to protest. He rolled right over me with a hissed, “You’re not even healed yet from that fight with your grandmother.”
“I know that,” I snapped, and yanked my arm hard, what good it did me. He clung to me like a burr to cloth. “Somebody’s gotta stop that thing before it kills again.”
“Yeah, sure, but why you?”
A series of memories flooded me then, of Henry’s innocent face smiling up at me, of the day I sent him into the deep wood on an errand I shoulda run myself, of his blood splashed across the trail. Sorrow sprang into my heart, softer now, but still potent for all the days between this hour and that’un.
“You know why,” I said, more gentle’n I meant to.
Riley’s expression softened into his own b
rand of heartache. “How many times are you going to avenge his death, Sunny?”
The words hit me hard, knocking a response right outta my head, and hurt joined the sorrow. How could he say that? How could Riley, him what knowed me as well as anybody could, not understand why I did what I done?
“He wouldn’t want you to kill yourself,” Riley added. “And I don’t want you to either. Doesn’t that count for something?”
I shook my head amidst the fierce ache filling me from head to toe. “I won’t.”
“You can’t promise that.”
He huffed out a sigh and pulled me into a hug, surrounding me in that solid way he had. I was safe here, and if not loved, then cared for in a deep and abiding manner. That’s what I felt ever time Riley held me like he was doing now, and that’s exactly why I had to go. I had to protect him, had to protect what was left of my family and all them people wandering around in the woods, unsuspecting of the monster hungering for their blood. If not me, then who?
“Let me go with you,” he said.
I shook my head against his chest and uttered a muffled, “No.”
He held me for a while as Bing Crosby crooned about dreaming of snow for the holiday. Finally, Riley said, “Take Trey, then.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think. Do.” Riley’s sigh puffed into the crown of my head. “I’m of a good mind to take you home and tie you to my bed.”
The grumpy note in his voice touched off humor in me. “You can try.”
“I’m still bigger than you,” he said, kindly gruff. “You’re not going out there tonight.”
Now, that was something we could both agree on. Only a fool’d hunt down a critter in the dead of night ‘less he had to, and my mama didn’t raise no fool. “In the morning.”
“Good. I was afraid you were going to miss the white elephant part of the evening.”
I tilted my head back and grinned up at him in spite of the solemn situation. “That’s why you kept the car keys, ain’t it?”
