2 On the Nickel

by Maggie Toussaint

  Jonette’s eyes widened knowingly. “Sounds like a plan.”

  We skirted the edge of the crowd, past the dense tree line that blocked the church parking lot from full view of Linden Avenue. We continued around the block on Schoolhouse Road until we came to the thicket.

  Every Trinity Episcopal kid knew their way through the thicket. Navigating the dense foliage was a rite of passage like baptism and communion. The reward for such courage was an unobserved, secret hiding place with a clear view of the church back yard. The thicket was the ultimate place to spy on the church ladies who hid Easter eggs.

  I led the way through the narrow kid-sized passageway, swatting drooping branches and taut spider webs away from my face. A large black spider dangled in front of my face, and I choked back a scream.

  “Are we there yet?” Jonette whispered in my ear.

  “Shh,” I cautioned. “Britt will skin us alive if he finds out we’re spying on him.”

  My nerves wouldn’t settle. If anything, they were worse back here. My numb fingers and toes barely worked. If Jonette told anyone how crazy I was, I’d deny it with every breath in me.

  When there was only one row of bushes between me and the Trinity grounds proper, I raised a hand to halt our forward progress.

  Jonette squatted beside me, her amber-flecked eyes sparkling with excitement. I rationalized our position. We weren’t being nosy. We were gathering information. Perfectly logical.

  I parted the branches, and the church lot came into view. A knot of police officers stood twenty feet away. Their grim faces and hushed voices added to my unease. The entire parking lot was decked out with yellow police tape.

  Oh no.

  Crime-scene tape.

  They didn’t put that up for fender benders. My investigative nausea had been right on target. A crime had been committed back here. But what crime?

  This area was off limits. It would look bad if we got caught. So we wouldn’t get caught.

  I studied the length of the parking lot. No wrecked cars in sight. There was, however, a heavily draped mound just off the pavement near the paved back loop. With this many cops called to the premises, that had to be a body under the tarp.

  Not another one.

  “Oh God,” I said under my breath. My heart stilled as memories of finding Dudley Davis dead on the golf course flashed through my head. Sightless eyes, rigid limbs, dark bloodstains, and an odor that stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t need to see another dead body. I still had nightmares from the last one.

  “What? Let me see.” Jonette pushed past me for a better view, throwing me off balance and sending me sprawling through the bushes onto the gravel covering this overflow section of the parking lot. Dismay choked the breath out of me as I flew through the air.

  This was going to hurt.

  My arms, which I instinctively raised in protection, scraped along the sharp, spiky edges of the trimmed branches as I sailed through the vegetative cover. Gravel rocks sliced my face, arms, and knees. My teeth crunched the gritty gravel dust. I tried to scramble back to safety, but I wasn’t fast enough.

  A uniformed officer detained me. Officer Eddie Wagner. I’d babysat for him twenty years ago. Below his mirrored sunglasses, his lips pressed into a thin line. He hoisted me to my feet and clamped my hands behind my back. “Detective Radcliffe,” he said. “A present for you.”

  It felt like I was standing on roller skates, my knees were trembling so badly. Looking down, I discovered my navy shorts had split from mid hip to hem on the right seam during my fall. Lacy black underpants were visible, along with a swath of blinding white skin that the sun never saw.

  Mortification lit my cheeks.

  This couldn’t be happening to me.

  I was a sensible woman.

  A pillar of the community.

  I did not wear black undies as a rule, and I never flashed my privates in public. I was a good role model for my kids.

  I don’t know who groaned the loudest, me or Britt Radcliffe.

  Britt stared into the woods. “Come out of there, Jonette, or I’m coming in after you.”

  Jonette squirmed through the hole I’d made. She shot me a wry smile. “Oops.”

  Oops indeed.

  My jaw clenched. Oops was for dropping a penny when you counted out change at the supermarket. Oops was for putting a run in your stockings. Oops didn’t cover falling into an area crawling with cops.

  “What the hell are you two doing in my accident scene?” Britt asked.

  Air whooshed from my lung. My gut had been right on the money. Being right sucked.

  My physical equilibrium waffled. Officer Wagner strengthened his grip on my arms. I fought the encroaching mental fog. I needed a clear head to talk myself out of this mess. Although my mouth was so dry I didn’t think I could even croak a word out right now.

  Jonette recoiled from Britt’s question. “I didn’t do it.” She raised both hands in surrender. “Cleo had to see what was going on. I followed her. That’s all.”

  I groaned again. “Thanks a lot, Jonette.”

  “Didn’t I tell you to go home and stay out of trouble?” Britt’s angry gaze locked on me.

  I nodded my head and hoped for the best.

  “Then why are you here?” he growled.

  “I needed to know what all the fuss was about.”

  “Why didn’t you wait and read it in tomorrow’s paper like the rest of the world? Why contaminate my crime scene?”

  “Cut us some slack here, beefcake, and call your muscle-bound friend off of Cleo.” Jonette dug her index finger into Britt’s chest. “It was an accident that Cleo fell through the thicket.”

  Tendons strained in Britt’s neck. Clearly, our fate hinged on his goodwill. “If you let us go, we promise to stay out of your way,” I said. “We didn’t mean to intrude.”

  Britt considered my impassioned plea for a second. Then, he growled at the officers behind us. “Cuff ’em.”

  I gasped as metal bands secured my wrists. My face itched, and a stray strand of hair tangled in my eyelashes. Could I do anything about it?

  No.

  Between the unyielding cuffs around my wrists and the beefy hand gripping my forearm, I was pretty well stuck. I blinked away my tears. We’d pushed Britt too far, and he’d snapped. Brand-new problems tumbled through my head.

  How much jail time would I serve for contaminating his crime scene? Would I have to submit to a body cavity search? I quaked with fear.

  Britt caught Wagner’s eye. “Escort them out the front way, Wagner. Make sure everyone sees them in handcuffs before you turn them loose.” Britt turned to me, his granite face cold and harsh. His sharp teeth flashed before my eyes. “If you do this again, Cleo, I will arrest you for obstructing a police investigation. Consider this your one and only warning.”

  Wagner shoved us forward.

  I stumbled into motion, doing my best not to inhale the thick miasma of death clogging the parking lot. Like a sponge, my senses registered each environmental cue, from the pungent smell of crushed leaves in my hair to the trickle of blood down my leg to the heat boiling up from the asphalt pavement.

  Adrenaline surged into my bloodstream, demanding release. Trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, I couldn’t fight or run. I glanced over at the draped object, my unfortunate curiosity the only outlet for all that energy.

  Who was under that tarp?

  A glittering object to the left of the tarp caught my eye. I squinted to identify it and wished I hadn’t. A chorus of oh-Gods shrilled through my head.

  There was no mistaking the gold-sequined sandal on the grassy lawn. That flashy shoe belonged to a woman I knew well, a woman whose ancestors had founded Trinity Episcopal. A woman with enough blue blood to start her own social register.

  My empty stomach twitched, turned, and heaved. The hairs on the back of my neck electrified, and my heart hammered in my ears. I couldn’t feel my feet strike the ground, though when I looked down my legs were moving
.

  Run, my subconscious urged. Get as far away from here as you can. I strained forward, but a two-hundred-pound tether held me to a turtle’s crawl. My lungs burned.

  We passed the back entry into the Sunday school and strolled under the portico entrance of the parish hall. With each step, my body grew heavier. Everything blurred together like an impressionist painting. I tripped over the uneven sidewalk, startling my frozen lungs into action.

  Air.

  I needed air.

  The sea of swimming faces parted to let us through. Prying eyes penetrated my soundless bubble. A car horn blared from down the street, and I jumped. Behind me, overloud laughter pealed above the murmured voices. Were they laughing at me?

  “What’s this?” Joan stepped out of her beauty shop, scissors in one hand, a black comb in the other. With her short, razored haircut, dark coloration, and ruffled sundress, she looked part elf, part gypsy, and thoroughly angry.

  “Police brutality.” Jonette tried to wrest free from our beefy captor. He held fast to the squirming tangerine dynamo.

  “The long arm of the law finally caught up with you?” The mayor stepped in our path and sneered at Jonette. In his dark suit, white shirt, and narrow red tie, Darnell Reynolds looked like a permanent advertisement for the Fourth of July.

  Jonette’s chin shot up in the air.

  Darnell waggled a pudgy finger in my face. “I told you to watch the company you keep, Cleo.”

  “It was an accident,” I explained, humiliation and embarrassment heating my chilled skin, triggering a shudder. The body tremor knocked me off balance again, and I would have fallen without Officer Wagner holding me up.

  “Step aside, sir,” Officer Wagner said to Darnell. The mayor oozed out of our way.

  “Let them go.” Buck sounded breathless after running across the street from the gas station. Grease dotted his thin face, hands, and jeans. “If you arrest my accountant, who’ll do my taxes? And the Tavern wouldn’t be the same without Jonette.”

  Officer Wagner maintained silence.

  My personal trainer, Evan Hodges, hove into view. His blond curls were the constant envy of someone with straw-straight hair like me. His white running gear accented his sculpted and tanned body. Masculine approval blazed in his eyes. “Never figured you as the black lace type, Cleo. Nice.”

  My ears steamed. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Evan.” Appalled, I wished I could rescind those spoken words. Tears brimmed in my eyes.

  Oh, dear. Evan. That mound back there was his mother. And he didn’t know. I wished I didn’t know. I couldn’t look at him again for fear of what else might rocket out of my mouth. Clamping my jaw shut, I trudged onward.

  Hammers pounded in my head. My torn shorts flapped in a sudden gust of wind. I counted ten pairs of sandals, six sets of sneakers, two pairs of pumps, and four wing-tipped Oxfords on my march of shame.

  Officer Wagner halted beyond the crowd and unlocked both sets of cuffs. “Scram.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. Ignoring the pins-and-needles sensation in my arms, I clamped one hand over my torn shorts and caught Jonette’s eye. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Roger that,” she said.

  Flashes of pain radiated from the skin abrasions on my knees with every forward step. If a sidewalk crack opened up, I would gladly slither right down into another universe. Britt had made his point. I’d never fall into another crime scene.

  I snuck a glance at Jonette. Did she see the gold sandal? Did she know that Mama’s archrival was under that tarp in the parking lot?

  Could I tell her what I’d seen, or would that make everything worse? Jonette shared no love for Erica, but would she blame Mama? I hated that I had doubts about Mama. If only she hadn’t been acting so odd lately. What a mess.

  Jonette’s car sputtered to life, and she executed a hasty U-turn on Main Street. “You know something.” She punched me in the arm. “What is it? What do you know?”

  I shoved my fingers through my tangled hair. I decided to keep my suspicions to myself. “The whole world saw me in black underwear and handcuffs.”

  My friend smirked. “You swore you’d never be caught dead in that black lingerie. Now I know you’re all talk.”

  “I had an underwear emergency this morning.” My nose twitched. “These were the only clean pair in my drawer.”

  The pounding in my head intensified. That gold sandal tap-danced into my thoughts. I shuddered. “I don’t feel right.”

  “Me, neither. And that rat-faced weasel got in my face and implied bad things about me.”

  In the past, Britt gave me the benefit of the doubt. For him to act otherwise was out of character. Even though I was still angry with Britt, I wouldn’t let Jonette disparage him. “Britt was doing his job.”

  “Britt’s Mister Straight-Arrow all right, but I wasn’t talking about him. He’s not a rat-faced weasel. Darnell is. And I’m going to get him back. He’s had it in for me since day one, and I’m sick and tired of his snide remarks.”

  Relief warred with bewilderment in my head. “Darnell is a total jerk.”

  When Jonette’s car slowed to pull into my gravel driveway, I breathed easier. I was home. I would get a cup of hot tea and relax and figure everything out. But before I could gather my purse to hop out of the car, Charlie’s sleek black BMW edged in right beside us in Mama’s empty spot.

  I closed my eyes and groaned. I needed peace and quiet, not an ex-husband asking questions. “Wonderful. Just wonderful. Why don’t I take a sharp stick and poke myself in the eye?”

  “Because it would hurt like hell,” Jonette said. “We’ll get rid of him.”

  Woodenly, I stumbled from the car. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so I glued my gaze to the front door and marched forward. The only silver lining in this was that the girls weren’t home. Today was the first day of school, so I had the afternoon to come up with a plausible explanation for my behavior.

  I swallowed hard. I could explain my black underwear. I could even explain being cuffed. But I couldn’t explain what had happened to Erica Hodges.

  “Clee, you’re hurt,” Charlie said, his voice softening as he followed me inside the house.

  Traitorous tears welled up in my eyes.

  Not now.

  Sampson women were strong. They did not run from trouble. Mama had drummed that into me from the cradle. Those words haunted me, and I shivered. Was Mama in trouble? Had she stared it down the throat? Why was she being so secretive?

  I couldn’t fix Mama’s troubles until I got myself right. “Nothing that antiseptic and a few bandages won’t fix.” I busied myself filling the tea kettle with water. My hands steadied, but my insides quivered like pudding. Charlie’s familiar masculine scent wafted over, bringing with it a confusing glut of memories. I steeled myself against them.

  Charlie was just my size, the same five-foot-six height, same slight build. I knew exactly how blue his eyes went when we made love. I’d traced the freckles on his face and arms so often I could map them in my sleep.

  After he cheated on me, I put our closeness in the trash where it belonged. No matter how much I wanted comfort, I didn’t want his version of it.

  He headed for the cabinet that served as our household first-aid cupboard, but Jonette beat him to it. “I get to be the nurse,” she said, snagging the Inspector Gadget lunch box of supplies.

  Charlie’s voice cracked with intensity. “Give me that. She’s my wife.”

  “No, she’s not.” Jonette cradled the blue box and motioned me to the kitchen table. “She’s my best friend, and I’m taking care of her.”

  His face contorted. His hands fisted at his sides. “Dammit, Cleo. I want to help.”

  “I don’t need your help.” I flinched as Jonette dabbed antiseptic on my cuts and scratches.

  Charlie hovered over me. “What happened? Did Britt do this to you?”

  His closeness irritated me more than the stinging
antiseptic. “Leave Britt out of this,” I grumped. “I fell through a bush.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right? Should I take the girls this afternoon so you can rest?”

  “Go back to work. I’m fine. I can handle the girls.” Charlie would seize control in a heartbeat. The only way to win was to freeze him out of my private life. Easy in concept, harder to do in person.

  Charlie’s gaze snagged on my ripped shorts. His gaze heated. “Since when did you start wearing black underwear?”

  The pounding in my head intensified. “I will not discuss my underwear choices with you.”

  He drew closer, and I resisted the urge to tug my shorts back together. He’d seen it all before. The only thing new was the underpants.

  His fingers stroked the top of the ladder-back chair next to me. “Very nice. Buck didn’t mention black panties when he called me at the bank.”

  I’d wondered how Charlie had gotten here so quickly. “Buck called you?”

  The kettle whistled, and Jonette tossed in the tea. She took down three mugs, even though Charlie never drank hot tea.

  Charlie’s fingers tightened on the chair. “He wasn’t the only one. I swear it’s getting so that as soon as I hear there’s trouble, I know you’re in the middle of it. It’s not safe to have you living here in town, Clee. I want you and the girls to move back home with me.”

  We’d had this discussion before. Charlie was quite intelligent about banking practices, but he was absolutely dense when it came to his chances of winning me back. In his mixed-up mind, it was a matter of time until I caved. I waved off his concern. “Forget it. I will never move back into that house.”

  “Yeah.” Jonette stepped between the two of us. “Forget it.”

  Charlie glared at me over the top of Jonette’s head. “Call off your pit bull, Cleo.”

  Jonette’s interference had riled him. Too bad. The volatile moods of Charlie Jones were no longer my concern. My priorities consisted of my children, my mother, Jonette, and my house. My business came next. Then Rafe. And my dog. Charlie was no longer in my top five. He wasn’t even in my top ten.

  I laid my palms flat on the table. “I’m okay. My skinned knees will heal. So will my pride. You’ve got to step back, Charlie. You’ve got to move on. I have.”