Carolina Crimes

by Karen Pullen

  She wished Vernon would get her one of those cell phones. She’d feel better driving around by her lonesome if she had one.

  Doreen couldn’t shake a feeling that passed over her—like someone had walked over her grave.

  Oh God! Why in the world did I think that?

  She made the sign of the cross, and then felt guilty about it. She was bedrock Baptist, but she’d seen folks on TV do it and found it comforting. It was the same as when her mother said, “Bread and butter!” if they were walking down the street and had to split on either side of a pole. Mama said it out of habit, and, Doreen suspected, superstition. Making the cross was like that—something she needed to do when the hair rose on the back of her neck, as it was doing now. By the time she reached the sign that read “Bebe’s Bee Hive—Full Service Beauty Salon,” her palms were drenched. She wiped them on an old tissue from her purse and parked the car.

  Bebe had done her hair since her first highlights at fourteen. Doreen shoved open the swollen door on the cinder block building. It reeked of permanent wave solution and hair spray. “Hey, Bebe! I’m ready to get this hair cut! Make me beautiful, girl. Old age is chasing me and damned if it isn’t winning.” She plunked into the chair in front of the shampoo sink.

  Bebe stood at the counter combing out what was left of Alma Poole’s white hair. She laughed. “If you’re expecting miracles you ought to go to church, but I’ll do the best I can for you. You got time for me to touch up those roots?”

  “I’m all yours long as you get me out of here before three. Getting my new skirt hemmed at Jeanine’s. Vernon and me are going to his family reunion.” Doreen picked up a magazine and flipped the pages.

  “You know who that little girl is, don’t ya’, Bebe?” Alma said. Doreen looked up.

  “Naw, Alma, who?”

  “Elsie Powell’s great-granddaughter, out at Little Springs. Wasn’t her youngest daughter, Annie Alice, in school with you?”

  Bebe held the comb over Mrs. Poole’s thin crown of hair. “I don’t think so. That girl was a few years behind me. Sorry to hear it.”

  Doreen put her magazine down and chimed in. “The noon report said they’d seen a blue Ford pickup not far from where she disappeared. Had a police sketch of some man, looked maybe late thirties or forty—dark hair, small eyes, kind of like the Hutto family around these parts. How come they can’t tell us more about that truck? How many people you know drive a blue truck? They all look alike to me.”

  Mrs. Poole and Bebe agreed.

  Bebe put her teasing comb down and looked at Doreen’s reflection in the mirror. “My Janie swears someone followed her last night after her basketball practice. Said she thought it was a truck but wasn’t sure cause of the rain. Every time she speeded up, whoever it was did too, and when she slowed down, same thing. Makes my hair stand up thinking about it.”

  Bebe rummaged in the drawer below the counter for a moment. She pulled out a silver pistol and laid it gently on the stained Formica. “Promise not to tell nobody. I’m not taking any chances, especially when J.W. isn’t around.” She carefully lifted the pistol for their inspection, then placed it back in the drawer, covering it with an old towel.

  “Oh, crap!” Doreen gasped. “Bebe, you scared me to death with that thing. I just wish Vernon would get me a cell phone. I hate riding around in the middle of nowhere and can’t even call someone for help.”

  “Well, don’t fret it,” chided Mrs. Poole. “No cell phone’s going to help you out here. None of the cell towers are close. My girl Lonnie Sue’s got one, but it don’t work until she gets almost to Aiken. Save Vernon’s money. Get yourself a baseball bat or a claw-foot hammer. Keep it under your seat where you can get it and put your faith in the Lord. That’s what I do.”

  Doreen laughed. “I guess you’re right.”

  The rattle and bump of a truck coming down the washboard road halted their conversation. Like triplets used to moving in unison, the three heads turned toward the door and waited, frozen. The intruder drove into the driveway and stopped. Doreen sensed Bebe reaching toward the drawer.

  A truck door slammed shut. The three women sat as if suspended in time. No one breathed. When the shop door burst open Bebe slumped against the counter and breathlessly declared, “Holy crap, James William! You scared two years off my life. Don’t you know every woman in the county is jumping out of her skin at the sound of a pickup truck, what with that pervert out there?” She gave her husband a withering look, joined by the others who glowered at him as fiercely as Bebe did.

  Chastened, J.W. bowed his head. “Ladies, my apologies. I didn’t think driving into my own driveway would scare you that way.” He looked like a man carrying heavy news in his pocket. “You ought to be scared. I saw the deputy sheriff at the hardware store. They found that blue truck. It ’ud been ditched in a kudzu thicket at Miller’s Pond. The sheriff’s there taking prints. That little girl’s clothes were stuffed back under the seat. No one knows what vehicle he’s driving now. The deputy said they’d just gotten a stolen car report a few miles from the pond. He raced off like a cow with its tail on fire.”

  Doreen sighed a ‘what can a body do about it anyway’ sigh and checked her watch. Bebe was slow today. Doreen didn’t want to be too late heading to Kitchens Mill. There wouldn’t be time for her roots, no way. She felt guilty leaving Vernon with the haying. It was hard, hot work, but hay was their bread and butter. Maybe, if the haying was really good, they might manage a weekend trip to Branson, maybe fire up a little romance. They hadn’t had much excitement since the twins were born. Most times they were too damn tired to feel excited.

  Bebe misted Mrs. Poole with hairspray and walked her to the door. “You be careful, Alma. Call me when you get home. Make me feel better to know you’re safe.”

  “I’ll do that. Get yourself a hammer like I said.”

  Bebe turned to Doreen. “Let’s get you shampooed. I got a new shampoo smells like oranges, brings out the blonde highlights.”

  The smell of citrus relaxed her but not enough to stop thinking about the man in the blue truck and the little girl who’d gone missing. Someone awful lurked in the kudzu shadows or waited out of sight where clay roads met blacktop. Just walking to the mailbox wasn’t safe anymore.

  Bebe sprayed Doreen’s blonde bob and sent her on her way. Feeling rejuvenated, she drove toward Kitchens Mill, winding through the peach orchards. She’d get herself a bushel of Albertas if her friend Peggy’s stand was open and make the girls a churn of ice cream on Saturday. She wanted really ripe peaches. That’s what made a good churn.

  Doreen turned into the little gravel lot at Peggy’s and parked. She almost flung open her car door but hesitated, startled by the crunch of gravel. A battered green Chevy veered toward her, then braked to a hard stop, kicking up dust. Unnerved, she waited until the driver, a man, emerged from the Chevy and sauntered to the counter where Peggy stood. Doreen joined them. He doffed his Allis-Chalmers cap and wiped the sweat from his brow. She felt she ought to know him—he seemed so familiar. He looked like a country boy, a working man.

  Doreen studied him. She wasn’t thinking of the mid-day news, of the women and girls gone missing. She was caught up in the Southern game of “Who’s your daddy and where do your people come from?” She ought to know his name and was embarrassed she couldn’t call it.

  She raised her hand in greeting. “Hey, Peggy. You sold enough peaches to get rich and leave that farmer of yours?” Peggy’s husband was Doreen’s second cousin once removed.

  Peggy laughed. “Not yet. Just got to sell a thousand more bushel baskets and I can run off with the propane man to Dollywood. What’s up with you, girl? Like your hair. Been out to Bebe’s?”

  “That I have. I’m heading out to Kitchens Mill.” She cocked her head toward the man she thought she ought to know. “Afternoon. Hot enough, ain’t it?” She was sure she must know his people. Doreen knew most of the folks in the county and who was related to whom. Vernon said she’d make a good M
ormon. But she couldn’t quite put the peg of this man with his cockeyed smile into its proper hole.

  Impudently his eyes swept from her ankles to her bosom to her face. He gave her a leer no gentleman would ever give a lady. Doreen was insulted and unnerved. Worse, she felt a bit titillated. Good grief, was she that desperate to believe she hadn’t lost her strut? She didn’t need this crude man’s attention. His rough hands made her think of grease pits and wrenches. She turned from his lewd gaze and toward Peggy, whose tight expression and raised eyebrows declared her disapproval.

  “What can I help you with, mister?” Peggy’s voice was all frost. Her arms tightly folded across her chest, her legs planted firmly apart, she made it clear that the man should transact his business and go. Doreen didn’t doubt Peggy had a “guardian angel” like Bebe’s hidden beneath the counter by the cash box.

  The man took a step back. His eyes ogled Doreen’s bosom and her face exploded scarlet when he said, “I’d like me some ripe peaches—two perfect ones. This is a peach stand, ain’t it?”

  Peggy didn’t flinch. She plucked two unblemished Albertas from a basket, placed them in a small bag, and thrust them toward the man.

  He took his time reaching for them. “How much I owe you?”

  “Nothing, if all you want’s them two. You better get ’em home before they get bruised.” The man flashed a lecherous grin and strutted like a bantam rooster to his car.

  Peggy and Doreen waited for the Chevy to pull away. The man leaned out the window and waved at them, a little four-fingered wave, like “La-de-da! Catch you next time,” then accelerated slowly until the car disappeared around the bend.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Doreen said. “Who in the world was that? He looked familiar—one of the Hutto clan maybe. They got some Indian blood. He’s dark like them.”

  “Never saw him. Good riddance to bad baggage. What can I get for you?”

  “I need a ripe peck. Gonna’ make ice cream.”

  She wedged the peach basket into the back seat and turned the car toward Kitchens Mill. Once she lost sight of Peggy’s, that lonesome feeling settled again into the front seat with her. She kept an eye on her rearview mirror and popped in a Shania Twain cassette to soothe her nerves. It was awful they were so poor they couldn’t afford a car with a CD player.

  Doreen checked her mirror as Shania sang “Feel like a woman!” A car behind her was coming on fast. She couldn’t tell what color or what make, but it wasn’t a pickup truck. Even though the sheriff had found that blue Ford, trucks still made her edgy. It’s a shame they hadn’t got the man. All those little girls and women. God knows what awful things he must have done to them.

  When she reached the crossroads at Chapin’s store, the car pulled within a few hundred feet of her. She turned left toward Jeanine’s. A glance in the mirror confirmed she wasn’t alone on the narrow road. The car had turned too. The sun threw a strong glare on her mirrors, so she couldn’t be sure whether it was green or aqua blue.

  Every time she looked, the car still tailed her, maybe two hundred feet or so behind. Nobody lived out here except Jeanine. The timber companies owned everything else. She wondered who it could be.

  Doreen sped up a bit. So did the car. Anxiety plopped into the seat next to her. The turnoff onto the clay road leading to Jeanine’s lane was just ahead. Her palms felt warm and moist. She turned onto the rutted clay and willed her mirror to be empty, but it wasn’t. There was the car—green—she was sure of it. The man at Peggy’s, his car was green. Maybe he lived out this way. She signaled her turn into Jeanine’s long gravel drive that wound its way down the hill to the old farmstead. The driver—a man—doffed his cap and waved. She felt certain he was the man at the peach stand. She gripped the wheel a little tighter.

  She hoped he’d go on down the road. As she jounced her way between stands of turkey oak and scrub pine hugging the lane, she saw in her mirror a flash of chrome, heard the sound of tires on gravel. The green car—coming up fast behind her, bursting around a bend, almost on her bumper. She recognized the man from the peach stand for sure. Anxiety grabbed the wheel and floored the accelerator. She took the last curve toward the house with horn blaring, again, and again. The car was right on her bumper until they lurched into Jeanine’s dirt-packed yard where—Thank you, God!—where Jeanine was standing in her front door with an old double barrel pointed at the porch boards.

  The man slammed his brakes, sending the Chevy skidding across the yard. He cut a tight circle around a pecan tree and headed out the way he’d come in, so fast the car fishtailed, spewing gravel. But somehow he managed a little wave of his hand—all four fingers waving one right after the other—like he was saying, “Gotta go! Catch you next time.”

  And, as if lightning had struck and illuminated all things, she understood why she felt she knew him—he was the man in the police sketch, the man in the blue Ford truck. She had no doubt he’d snatched that little girl. She rolled down her window and shouted, “For God’s sake, Jeanine, call the sheriff! That’s the man who kidnapped that little girl!”

  The two women huddled with the shotgun in the locked house until the sheriff and a deputy arrived, sirens wailing. The sheriff dispatched the deputy to fetch Vernon and drive him back to Jeanine’s. After draining Doreen of every detail she could remember, the sheriff had his deputy follow her and Vernon home.

  Vern never let go of her hand. He wouldn’t let her out of his sight. He’d never told Doreen that he loved her so much as he did in the hours after bringing her home. Vernon couldn’t seem to say it enough. A lucky thing the twins stayed the night with Memaw.

  * * * *

  The sheriff called early the next morning. They’d caught the man—a drifter come up from Florida. He’d blown a tire and was riding on the rim when some deputies happened across him. They cornered him a few miles from Peggy’s peach stand. Little Louise Hardwick’s pink sneakers and blood-stained socks were in his knapsack. The sheriff hoped Doreen could ID the man.

  Vernon drove her over to the county jail. The men in the lineup did not know who stood on the other side of the viewing window, but still, she was afraid she’d lose her breakfast when she saw him. “Number three. That’s him. I’d know his eyes and those Elvis cheekbones anywhere.” The truth, for sure. She suspected she’d see his face in her nightmares. Doreen and the sheriff watched as the men filed out. Number three paused and turned toward the mirrored wall. He grinned, and then lifted the fingers of his right hand—all four fingers waving one after the other—as if to say, “Gotta go! Catch you next time.”

  Doreen’s knees trembled and her hands shook, but she stared right back and whispered, “Don’t you just wish, you pervert—don’t you just wish.”

  THE FOURTH GIRL, by Karen Pullen

  When the principal told me he wasn’t going to renew my contract, I smiled numbly and slouched out of his office, saving my tears of humiliation for the walk home. Weeping, cussing, I almost didn’t answer my cell phone.

  “Reenie Martin?” Speaking in a crusty solemn voice, the man identified himself as a lawyer. “Your Aunt Peggy died. She’s left you her entire estate—her house, her car, and liquid assets.”

  Life is fair! The universe does care! Visions of stock portfolios, a cottage surrounded by white picket fence, and a life far, far away from the New York City public school system danced through my head. I brushed away the tears of the recently-fired and shrieked with glee. Scooping up Mango, my orange tomcat, for a furry hug, I danced around my coffee/dining/desk table, bounced on the daybed that also served as my sofa, then rummaged through my tiny fridge for a beer, the closest I could get to bubbly.

  OK, back up. I wasn’t ecstatic about Aunt Peggy’s death, but not saddened either, as our relationship consisted of a card exchange at Christmas. I lived in Brooklyn, she in North Carolina, and our paths hardly ever crossed. She was my father’s much older half-sister. So this windfall, this unexpected bounty, wasn’t accompanied by grief. Curiosity, mainly. What kind o
f life had she lived? What life would I be stepping into?

  I was eager to leave New York. A, I couldn’t afford to live here. B, nearly all my friends had married, moved to the suburbs, and produced two-point-one kids. C, my most recent romance had ended in a shouting match worthy of the Jerry Springer Show. (Did you know there’s a Blackberry app that tells his wife his exact location—not his office on Broadway, where he’s supposed to be working late, but a restaurant on West 43rd, where he’s eating sushi with me? No? He didn’t either.)

  I’d come to the conclusion, based on personal experience, that any New York City man interested in me was either a cheater or a mouth-breather. But getting fired was the straw that broke this thirty-two-year-old’s ties to the Big Apple. I shoved my clothes and books into a dozen boxes and called UPS for a pick-up. Said adieu to my studio apartment, a twelve-by-twelve space with one grimy window overlooking an alley of dumpsters. Slid Mango into his carrier, took the subway to Penn Station, and boarded a train for the twelve-hour trip to Raleigh, dreaming Martha Stewart fantasies of a real house. With a garden. Maybe even chickens. Martha has chickens. And goats. I could make cheese.

  * * * *

  “Why me?” I asked.

  The crusty solemn voice belonged to a spare, white-haired man with a benign expression of lawyerly rectitude. “You were her only living relative, Reenie. She was once an English teacher, like you. She was adamant women should have financial independence.”

  I’d forgotten Aunt Peggy had been a teacher too. My concept of the size of her “estate” fizzled. “What can you tell me about her?” I could hardly wait to see my new house and let Mango out of his carrier, but this man had known my aunt for years, would know her friends, her life.

  He tapped his lips then appeared to choose his words. “A very private person. You’ll meet her friends; I’m sure they’ll stop by. What are your plans for the house? Going to sell it?”