We waited. I asked if I could sit down. Benny kicked a chair in my direction. Duke retired into a dog bed barely big enough for his heavy body. He’d lost interest in me, the chain apparently signaling to him that he was off duty. I clasped my hands together and pushed back the cuticle on my right thumbnail with my left thumbnail. All trace of the blood blister was gone now. The storm seemed to have moved on, rumbles receding into the distance, but the air still felt humid and heavy. Benny didn’t stare at me, but he kept sending me speculative glances.
I felt that if I were really clever I could coax all sorts of incriminating information about Thrif-Tee out of Benny. But I wasn’t that clever. And I was afraid I knew too much for my good health already.
“May I have a drink of water?” I finally croaked. My throat was so dry that swallowing my fear had ceased to be an option.
He jerked a thumb toward the restroom. My legs felt both stiff and wobbly as I walked over to the tiny room. I found a lone plastic glass there. Neither it nor the sink looked as if they’d been cleaned in this decade. I decided I wasn’t thirsty after all, but I ran the water anyway and came out trying to look refreshed. Insulting Benny about the state of his restroom did not at the moment seem a prudent thing to do.
Twenty minutes later headlights flared outside the office. Benny hadn’t gone out to open the gate, so the person apparently had a key to open the padlock. There was enough delay after the car lights showed that I realized he was taking time to close the gate again. For some reason, that felt distinctly ominous.
The office door opened. By then I was fully expecting Drake Braxton. I’d been doing some heavy-duty thinking, and I thought I had it figured out. The reason my name and address were familiar to Benny was because he and Braxton had been there when they trashed my house over the cemetery deal. Now I was about to learn that Drake Braxton not only owned a building and land development company, he also owned Thrif-Tee Wrecking and Bottom-Buck Barney’s.
Wrong.
Not that I didn’t recognize the tall, lanky, black-haired man who swaggered inside. I did. The man who had almost bowled Thea and me over one night. Kendra’s maybe-married boyfriend.
Harley used to love to play pool, and my brain now felt like a pool table with the colored balls chunking into the pockets as things fell into place. Clunk, clunk, clunk. Debbie had come here to start up a relationship with an oh-so-respectable boss who liked bimbos. To find out who killed her brother. She’d done it, and paid for the knowledge with her life. And the killer she’d uncovered was right now staring down at me.
My life felt precarious too. A spinning eight ball poised on the end of a cue stick.
But one colored ball didn’t click neatly into any pocket. Benny. If he worked for this guy, what was he doing at the cemetery with Drake Braxton?
The first thing Benny did was shove my driver’s license and the photos over to the angular-faced man. The guy studied them carefully, without comment, then used one bony forefinger to poke carefully through the contents of my purse as if he felt something might contaminate him. He latched on to an item Benny had ignored. A matchbook from the motel in Little Rock. I always pick up free matchbooks. Not because I collect them. You just never knew when you might want to start a fire.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked.
A truthful answer wasn’t going to help my case. I detoured with, “I wasn’t hurting anything. I was just sitting in the backseat of one of the cars, until your watchdog … objected.”
“That’s his job.”
“He does it well.” I stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, it is rather past my bedtime, so I should be getting home—”
“You’re not going anywhere.” He appraised me as if I were a used car. Maybe one he was considering chopping up for parts. He flipped the matchbook open. He struck a match, and all three of us watched it burn down to a stub. I wasn’t sure what the symbolism was, or why the tiny flame was so mesmerizing, but it scared me right down to my guzzles, as Colin used to call them. My throat twitched in a non-swallow, and I sat down again.
“What were you doing in Little Rock?” the guy asked.
Did he know that Debbie Etheridge, masquerading under the name Kendra Alexander, had come from Little Rock? Probably. I gave him another string of non sequiturs. “I’m very fond of my niece, who lives in Arkansas. By a lovely lake just outside Woodston. Their twins are starting college this fall.”
He frowned at my snow job of irrelevant information. “You live on Madison Street. Not far from where a …” He paused and then spun the photo toward me. “A young woman named Kendra used to live.”
“Yes. She’s dead, did you know?” I said, hoping to suggest that no suspicions of him lurked in my mind. “It’s been most upsetting. Especially since I also just lost my very best friend, Thea, and now we’ll never be able to celebrate our birthdays together again. We always went to Victorio’s Seafood. Have you ever been there? Their lobster is awesome.”
He frowned again. Or maybe that was his permanent expression. “What do you know about Ray Etheridge?”
“I’ve never met anyone named Ray Etheridge.” True.
“You’re carrying a picture of him.”
“Oh. Him.”
“Why were you flashing this picture of him around Bottom-Buck Barney’s?”
Oh dear. So that’s what had gotten me sucked into all this. “I didn’t know who the young man in the picture was. I found it in Kendra’s apartment and thought he might be the person who’d killed her.”
“She knows a whole lot more than that or she wouldn’t be here or carrying those pictures,” Benny cut in, squeaky voice rising almost to dog-whistle range. “Even if we didn’t find anything in her house—”
“Shut up, Benny.”
I looked at Benny with shocked realization. Drake Braxton hadn’t trashed my house. The destruction had nothing to do with the cemetery. Benny and this guy had done it. Someone at Bottom-Buck Barney’s had told them I’d come in with that picture of Ray. Then they’d used the phone number on the back of the picture to track me down so they could search the house for any other connection to Ray Etheridge.
The thought struck me that when you’re being a busybody in more than one area, it’s harder to know who’s out to get you.
I also wondered which one of them had been the artist on my bedroom mirror. Benny, I decided. Not that it mattered at the moment.
“You know Kendra wasn’t her real name, don’t you? That she was really Debbie Etheridge. Ray’s sister.” The lanky guy’s tone was soft, speculative, even mild. Which somehow made it all the more ominous. Like a rattlesnake quietly coiling for a strike. I doubted he’d be discussing this with me if he intended to let me stroll out the front gate.
I wasn’t about to admit to anything, however. “My neighbor Thea and I thought she was a very sweet young woman.”
“Sweet?” He laughed cynically. “Conniving little schemer, that’s what she was. Leading me on, making me think—” He broke off abruptly. “What did she tell you?”
“About you?”
“About anything.”
“Nothing! Kendra was a very … private person. She kept things to herself.”
“How’d she get here?” He spoke to Benny now, but his head jerked toward me and his eyes never left my face. “I didn’t see a car.”
“I dunno. I never saw a car either. I thought she was just some bag lady looking for a place to spend the night until I found the name on the driver’s license. And those pictures. Then I figured she must be on to something and snoopin’.”
“How’d you get here?” the guy demanded of me.
I didn’t think his knowing my Thunderbird was parked two blocks away would help my situation. He could dispose of a vehicle easily enough. He’d apparently done it with Kendra/ Debbie’s red Corolla. “If you’re asking how I’m going to get home, you needn’t concern yourself about my transportation.” I made my tone lofty, as if I could quirk a finger and
summon a limousine on a moment’s notice.
He was not impressed. “Kendra leave anything with you? Papers or anything?”
So that was why they’d gone through my place! A search disguised as vandalism. He thought Kendra may have made a written record of everything she’d uncovered, and left a copy with me for safekeeping. Oh, if only she had!
I tried a bluff. “What would it be worth to you if she had?”
That brought a laugh from him. “You trying to blackmail me?”
For the first time I noticed a heavy sag in the pocket of his light jacket. He was packing something more lethal than a purse, I was sure of that. Could I make him think I had incriminating evidence against him stashed somewhere? And would it be helpful, or a death sentence, if he did think that?
I didn’t know, so I opted for lofty again. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
A sharp blast of thunder made us all jump. Even Duke looked up. The storm had circled around and returned. The thunder sounded as if all those junked cars out there had come to life and were advancing on the office.
“What’re we gonna do, Bo?” Benny asked, his voice hitting plaintive now. He repeated what he’d said before. “She knows somethin’ or she wouldn’t be here. This ain’t good.”
The guy named Bo repeated himself too. “Shut up, Benny.” He touched the sag of the gun in his pocket, his angular head tilted thoughtfully. “Go bring your pickup over to the door. I don’t want to use my car this time.”
This time. Not like last time, when he’d used his car to dump Kendra’s body?
“Maybe we oughta—”
“Just get the pickup,” Bo growled.
I swallowed hard. Did he mean to shoot me here and carry my body out to the pickup? Or were we going for an end-of-the-line ride in the pickup?
Benny disappeared out the door.
“Get a rope too,” Bo called after him, and for a split second his eyes weren’t on me. I dashed for the door to the shop.
Locked. An explosion of noise, and something crashed into the door just below my hand on the knob. I stood frozen for a split second as I realized what had happened. This guy named Bo had shot at me!
I couldn’t get around him to the front door. I ran for the other door, the one to the bathroom. Another shot. Something crashed to the floor as I slammed the door behind me. I threw the bolt that fastened the door. Which would crumble under one good kick. And even if it didn’t, what had I accomplished? I was trapped in here.
Trapped like a duck on a rail in a shooting gallery, I realized as another gunshot ripped through the door and thudded into the wall behind me. I pressed my back up hard against the wall by the toilet stool, trying to make myself as skinny as a grease smear.
Didn’t he care that he was shooting up his own property? Apparently not. Wasn’t he afraid someone would hear gunshots? No problem there. In the general deluge of industrial noise and traffic on the boulevard, plus the thunder, not even a machine gun would have been heard.
So he could just keep shooting until he nailed me. And he couldn’t miss many more times.
Another bullet. This one hit the sink, and a shard of porcelain flew across the room. It wouldn’t even matter if I managed to dodge every bullet until he ran out of shells, I realized. All he had to do then was crash through the gun-splintered door and grab me. Or let Duke do it.
I closed my eyes for a bare second. I trust you Lord. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If this is my time …
Maybe not!
Frantically I climbed up on the stool and then on the tank at the back of it. Another bullet. This one grazed the mirror over the sink and sprayed splinters of glass around the tiny room. Carefully, or as careful as I could be when I was shivering and shaking, I stepped from the porcelain tank over to the sill below the small window, balancing myself with a clutch on the flimsy paper towel holder beside the window. I kicked out the screen and, blessing my scrawny frame, slithered through the narrow opening. I didn’t give any thought to what was below, just dropped as a bullet sang out the open window.
I hit something that boomed hollowly—another of those blue barrels, like the ones beside the other fence? Had Bo heard that? How could he not hear it? I rolled into a ball beside the barrel, listening as if my whole body were an ear. Two more shots whanged into the wall above me.
I unrolled and blindly crawled away from the office shack, my eyes not yet adjusted enough to see anything. The shop and office blocked the area back here from the yard lights, but a yellowish beam shafted from the bathroom window behind me. Then a flare of lightning lit up a metal jungle of barrels between me and the fence, some lying sideways on the ground, some stacked two high by the wooden boards. If I can just reach those, climb up and over the fence before Bo and Benny realize I’ve escaped from the bathroom …
Another crash, this one different from the gunshots. Bo breaking into the bathroom. An outraged yelp. “Hey, she’s not in here! Where’d she go?”
Benny squeak-yelling something indecipherable. A flare and crack of lightning. Ping of raindrops on the barrels. Heart churning in my chest like some out-of-control cement mixer, heartbeat clogging my throat and ears.
A shape blocked light from the window as Bo peered through it. A sudden burst of rain blurred the figure. I huddled against a barrel, hoping he’d think I’d disappeared into thin air. But even if Bo thought it, Duke would know differently. A Bible verse plopped into my head: A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it. Was that me, simple and now about to suffer for it? Like Mac said, a Bible verse for every occasion. But no time to contemplate my errors now. If I was going to get out of here alive, I had to get over the fence before they turned the dog loose.
I scrambled toward the barrels as Bo let go with three shots through the window. I bumped into a barrel lying on its side, and pain hammered through my knee. Now, in the deluge of rain, I couldn’t see anything but shapeless blurs of barrels.
Rain was good. If I couldn’t see them, maybe they couldn’t see me. Thank you, Lord.
My reaching hand found an upright barrel. Above it another one, with the fence right behind them. But no way could I get on top of the barrels stacked two high. Okay, then I’d have to knock a top barrel off. With all the junk around here, there had to be something I could pry with.
“She’s around back here, Bo!” Benny screeched. “I seen somethin’ moving.”
I peered in the direction of the voice. Even in the veil of falling rain I could make out a blurry figure standing at the corner of the office, on the line between light and shadow. Then another bigger shape joined the first one. Bo was outside now.
Random shots bonged hollowly into the barrels. Whatever happened to the good old six-shooter with a limited number of shots? Bo’s gun seemed to have an unlimited supply of ammunition.
I slithered farther into the haphazard stand of barrels, trying to put one between me and the gun. A barrel should at least slow down a bullet.
“Get in there, Benny! Run her out so I can get a clear shot at her!”
“I’ll go get Duke.”
“She’s going to try to go over the fence. We’ve got to get her before—”
“She’s an old lady! She can’t go over the fence!”
She’s going to give it a good try, I thought determinedly. But all the barrels by the fence seemed to be stacked two high, unclimbable as the sheer face of a mountain cliff. Could I roll one of the other barrels up to the fence and stand it upright so I could climb on it? No, no time.
I tried to shove one of the top barrels off, but it wouldn’t budge. A bullet hit the barrel right next to me, close enough to vibrate the metal against my shoulder. Was Bo shooting randomly or was he zeroing in on me?
I got partway around two stacked barrels, right up next to the fence. Bracing my back against the fence I put my shoulder to a top barrel and pushed, straining like ol’ Atlas trying to lift the world. And over it went!
&
nbsp; “She’s right over there!” Bo yelled as the barrel crashed to the ground.
“I’ll get ’er!” Benny yelled back.
I heard a crash that sounded as if Benny had run headlong into the rolling barrel. I scrambled on top of the barrel below the one I’d just shoved. If I could just get over the pointed ridge of boards …
“I can’t see nothin’, Bo!” Benny yelled. “Don’t shoot until—”
I grabbed the peaked top of a board and tried to swing my leg up, but it had been a long time since I was a tomboy playing backyard pirate and climbing fences. My foot hit another barrel, and this one toppled as if balanced on a needle point.
And then the whole junkyard world came unglued. The falling barrel hit another one, and that crashed into two more. Moving barrels everywhere, crashing and colliding and booming and bonging. A new game: bowling with barrels. Screams. Shouts. Shots. I lost my footing, tumbled to the ground, and saw stars and lightning when my head hit something.
Did I lose consciousness for a few seconds, maybe more, in the sea of moving barrels? I wasn’t certain. But it felt oddly peaceful just lying there with rain pattering my face as the storm deluge softened to a gentle drizzle. Sounds of the industrial plants and traffic had receded, and the junkyard was almost silent as the barrels stopped rolling. Or maybe the silence was only in my head. My mind felt as if it were looping gently overhead, too disconnected and distant to make my muscles move.
This would be a good time to be all-the-way invisible, I thought dreamily. I had a nice vision of Bo and Benny and even Duke dashing around, asking themselves in bewilderment, “Where is she? Where’d she go?”
But I knew I wasn’t that invisible. In another minute Benny or Bo or Duke would find me. And then I’d be looking into the barrel of a gun.
31
I waited. The wooziness in my head slowly cleared, and still no one had shoved a gun in my face. How come? Did Bo and Benny think I was dead, killed in the avalanche of barrels? Were they even now inside conferring about where to dump or bury my body?
Invisible Page 25
