David shrugged. “He said they was property of the store.”
“Did you fight him on it?”
He snorted. “That would have been a waste of time. He’s hated me ever since he took the assistant manager job a month ago.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “We used to be friends ten or so years ago. Then he got married and moved away to be closer to his wife’s family. They had a couple of rugrats and then they split. I told him not to get hitched, particularly not to her, but he didn’t listen. Instead, he wasted all them years, and now look at him.” He spread his arms on the arms of his chair, a lazy grin spreading across his face. “I think he’s jealous of me.” He looked like a king surveying his kingdom.
I took in the dingy paneling, the matted carpet, and the musty smell that was making me gag. It was apparent his standards were pretty low.
Neely Kate choked on her lemonade.
Carla reached over and patted her leg. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, trying to hold back a laugh. “I’m fine.”
“So if you took them all, how did the bank robbers get them?” I asked. “What did you do with them?”
“I brought some here to Carla’s. She was having a party and a bunch of people took them.”
“Like who?” Neely Kate asked.
He shrugged. “I dunno, I was kind of out of it that night.” He gave me a wobbly smile.
“Moose took a bunch,” Carla piped up. “He said he could use them out at the ranch.”
“I didn’t think he was working at the ranch,” I said.
Carla shrugged.
“Speakin’ of Moose,” I said, taking a sip of lemonade. “I saw Samantha Jo at church with him today. He looks like quite the catch. How long have they been dating?”
She looked lost in thought for several seconds. “I don’t know—she’s been dating Moose two, maybe three weeks.”
“So about the same time she started working for the bank?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“How’d she meet him?”
“Who knows how Samantha Jo meets her guys. It’s a wonder guys still go out with her after what happened with Toby’s boat. They stick around until she goes all psycho, and then they dump her like a hot potato.” She grinned. “Now that I think about it, I’m kind of surprised Moose is still puttin’ up with her. She’s flipped her shit more than a couple of times with him.” She rolled her eyes in disgust. “From what I’ve heard she’s not that good in bed.”
“Good to know,” I murmured.
Neely Kate looked pale and a few drops of sweat dotted her forehead. “I don’t think those wings are agreeing with me now.”
“We better get going.” I stood. I couldn’t think of any more questions to ask and I was eager to get home and check on Mason.
Carla stood when Neely Kate did and pulled her into a hug. “Don’t be such a stranger, little miss!”
“You too, Carla. We should get together and have lunch someday—when I can keep it down.”
“Yeah, sounds good.” She opened the front door to let us out. As we were descending the steps—Carla and David following us out the front door—an old car slowed to a stop and Samantha Jo hopped out of it, moving faster than a toad on hot pavement. Moose climbed out of the driver’s side a second later.
“I can’t believe you!” Samantha Jo screamed. “I was right there, you pus-covered boil!”
“I swear to God I wasn’t lookin’ at her!”
“I saw it with my own eyes, Moose! You wanted to screw that bitch.”
“You have to believe me, baby. You’re the only bitch I want to screw!”
Neely Kate and I stared at them in disbelief.
Samantha Jo started to stomp right past us when she stopped next to me. “Hey, I’ve seen you before.”
“Samantha Jo,” Carla said, “this is Rose Gardner.”
“We went to school together,” she murmured, looking down her nose at me. “But you weren’t cute then and you were definitely weird.”
Neely Kate’s hands tightened into fists. “Well, at least she’s not incredibly rude, which can’t be said for you.”
I grabbed Neely Kate’s arm and pulled her back. “Neely Kate, it’s okay. She’s right.”
Neely Kate’s face reddened and she looked like she wanted to hit someone, preferably the woman in front of me. But we needed information from her, and Neely Kate punching her wouldn’t help our cause.
“Samantha Jo, I was at the bank last week. During the robbery.”
Her eyes widened with a fear that quickly faded. “Oh, yeah. That’s why I remembered you. You don’t look anything like you used to back in school.”
“I was actually hoping to ask you a couple of questions about the robbery.”
She blinked. “Why?”
I hadn’t been prepared for that, but it made sense that she wouldn’t want to talk about it if she was in any way involved. “Because I thought you might like to talk with someone who was there and understands what you went through.”
She looked at Moose, then shook her head. “Well, you’re wrong. I don’t want to talk about it. Especially with you.”
She turned to leave. We hadn’t gotten any information from her, so I decided if I was actually going to try Neely Kate’s crazy idea about forcing visions to solve the case, it was now or never.
I stretched out my hand and grabbed her arm, closing my eyes to concentrate.
“What the hell?” Samantha Jo shrieked, trying to jerk her arm free.
“Rose?” Neely Kate asked, but she must have figured out what I was doing because I felt her move closer. “She’s trying to comfort you through prayer, Samantha Jo. Just give her a moment.”
Samantha Jo didn’t seem to appreciate my comfort and jerked on her arm again. The distractions were making it hard to concentrate, so I tightened my grip. Finally, the darkness behind my eyelids gave way to a stained ceiling.
Moose stood naked at the bottom of the bed. “I know how you like it, baby.”
“You know it, tiger,” I said.
He lowered to the mattress and it sank in the middle as he started crawling on his hands and knees toward me.
Pure panic rushed through me as I realized what was about to happen, and I fought the vision, trying to escape. But escaping a spontaneous vision never worked and it turned out it didn’t work for voluntary ones either. Seconds later, just before Moose was about to make the big plunge, I was finally freed, my eyes flying open as I blurted out, “You and Moose are gonna have sex.” My hand dropped her arm like it was on fire.
“What?” Samantha Jo asked. “What are you? Some kind of pervert?” She stomped toward the trailer.
I stumbled backward and turned to Neely Kate, who was staring at me with wide eyes. She’d clearly cottoned to what had happened.
Carla glanced from Neely Kate to me as Moose ran after his girlfriend. “Well, anybody with any sense in their head knows they’re gonna have sex later.” She shrugged, unconcerned. “It’s what they do.”
The buffalo wings in my stomach started a protest.
“It’s no surprise she didn’t take to your comfort. She hasn’t been herself lately,” Carla said. “She’s been meaner than a one-eyed snake.”
“Lately,” David snorted, then choked, leaning forward and coughing.
Neely Kate rolled her eyes. “And with that we’ll be goin’…”
She had started walking back to the car, dragging me with her, as Moose stormed back to his vehicle, his phone in his hand. I overheard him as he got into his car. “If I stay with this bitch much longer, I’m gonna kill her and that ain’t no lie.” He door slammed shut, muffling his voice.
When I got into Neely Kate’s car, she was clutching the steering wheel, shaking. “Did what I think just happened actually happen?” she whispered.
“If it’s that I just forced a vision of Samantha Jo and she and Moose were about to have sex, then yes, that’s exactly what happened
.” Unable to contain my nausea any longer, I opened the car door, leaned out, and vomited on the dead grass.
I sat back up and shut the door. “I’m never doin’ that again.”
Neely Kate had the sense to be quiet for a moment. “So…that didn’t go exactly according to plan…”
“You think?”
“Okay, calm down. It could have been worse.”
“How could it have been worse? Did you see Moose naked?”
“But they didn’t actually have sex?”
“No, thank God, but it was really close.”
“So I can’t ask if he was any good.”
“Neely Kate!”
“Moose has really big feet, and I’ve heard guys with big feet have big—”
“Drive.”
She turned to look toward the trailer, her eyes narrowing. “She was really rude to you. I feel like going in there and snatchin’ her bald.”
“Neely Kate, go.”
“At least tell me if she was wearing one of them fake leather bustiers from Frederick’s of Hollywood.”
“Neely Kate!”
“Fine! Jeez, Louise,” she grumbled as she turned the key and started the engine. “You never tell me the good stuff.”
Neely Kate didn’t say anything else until she was heading out of the trailer park. “I think she did it.”
“You’re only saying that because she was mean to me. She didn’t do it, but she may very well have been a part of it. Moose started dating her around the time she started to work at the bank and she didn’t want to talk about the robbery.”
“Although that part may have been because she didn’t like you.”
“Well…that’s true.” I twisted my mouth to the side. “And what about her shopping trip the day the bank was robbed?”
“As much as I hate to defend her,” Neely Kate grumbled, “she may have been stress shopping.”
“True. But Moose was groveling with her to her face, then threatening to kill her out of earshot.”
“Yeah. So was Moose the guy you had the vision of? It seems logical.” She turned to me and grinned. “Too bad he wasn’t naked in the vision this morning. You know, so you could compare.”
“Shut up, Neely Kate,” I grumbled, but then I couldn’t help laughing.
Neely Kate’s hand twisted back and forth on the steering wheel. “So David took the hats from the Piggly Wiggly and Moose took some of them. Is there any chance Moose and Mick are the same person?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m certain of that, but he could have been the guy from church whose head I was in.”
“So Moose gets the caps, takes them to his buddies, they rob the bank, but what do they need the money for?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I think we need to take a think break.” She pushed out a huff. “Plus I’m hungry. Let’s get ice cream.”
I laughed. “Is that what I have to look forward to if I’m pregnant? Alternating between barfing and eating?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“I just threw up less than five minutes ago,” I protested.
She turned to me and playfully lifted an eyebrow. “So…ice cream?”
I checked my phone for any messages from Mason, and was disappointed when I saw none. While I was eager to get home, if Mason wasn’t there, I’d go stir-crazy wondering where he was. I’d rather hang out with Neely Kate. And at least we seemed to be making some progress. “Sure.”
She drove to the Burger Shack, which was in better structural shape than Big Bill’s Barbeque. The paint job was worse, if that was possible. The Sunday afternoon crowd had thinned since it was two o’clock, so we walked right up to the counter.
No one was at the register, but one of the four guys from church—Eric—stood in the opening to the kitchen, talking on the phone.
“You came here because of him,” I whispered.
She shrugged. “We need to check them all out and he seemed the easiest to talk to next.”
“How’d you know he’d be here?”
“Jonah said he worked here and I really was hungry for ice cream, so what did we have to lose? I took a chance.”
Eric seemed to be alone other than a guy at the grill, and he was oblivious to our entrance. “No, I can’t get away right now. You’ll have to do it without me,” Eric hissed into the phone. He looked up and noticed he had customers and confusion flickered in his eyes. “I gotta go,” he said as he hung up and approached us, looking around. “Austin!” he shouted toward the back, but no one came out. Eric stepped up to the counter, close enough that I could read the name tag on his striped shirt: Eric, Assistant Manager. “You can’t find good help these days. I’m pretty sure he’s makin’ out with his girlfriend behind the vegetable oil can by the Dumpsters.”
The thought made my stomach cramp.
“So…” Eric said. “What can I get you?”
Neely Kate leaned her hand on the counter. “I want a banana split and a hot fudge sundae.” She looked back at me. “What do you want, Rose?”
“Um…a small Sprite.” Ice cream didn’t seem like the best idea right now.
Eric filled our order and I struggled with how to get answers from him. Neely Kate, on the other hand, seemed to be a pro. Maybe this was why she knew so much about everything.
“Eric, you look so familiar. Didn’t you go to Eastern Fenton County High School? You graduated four years ago?”
He shook his head. “I’m from Magnolia. I moved here a couple of years ago.”
“You’re really good at your job. No wonder they pulled you down here to work.”
He laughed. “Oh, no. I came down to work in the garage north of town. Then they laid off a bunch of mechanics and I was stuck.”
“That must be where I saw you!” she squealed. “When I took my car out to Weston’s Garage. My car never ran better than after you worked on it.”
He beamed.
“So what are you doing here?”
He smile fell. “There aren’t many mechanic’s jobs around here.”
“Why not move back to Magnolia and work there?” Neely Kate leaned closer. “Only be sure to let me know what garage you end up at so I can be sure to bring my car to ya.”
He shrugged. “I’ve got a girl here. We’re getting married, and she doesn’t want to move away.” He spread out his hands. “So I’ll just keep being the assistant manager of the Burger Shack until I can find something else. But not to worry, I’ve got something promising on the horizon.”
We took Neely Kate’s ice cream and my drink to a table by the window and Neely Kate scooped out a huge bite from her banana split. “What do you think?” she asked.
“I don’t know. He obviously needs the money, but does he really seem like the bank robber type?”
“No, Moose fits the bill more than he does.”
“Agreed.”
We sat in silence for several minutes until I saw a car streak by.
“My word, Neely Kate! Did you see that car? It’s the gold Charger!”
She was out of her seat faster than I’d expected, throwing out what was left of her banana split but keeping her sundae.
Though I’d barely put a dent in my drink, mostly because of my stomach, I threw mine away too and ran out the door behind her. As soon as I had my door shut, she was peeling out of the parking lot and heading in the direction in which the car had disappeared.
“Neely Kate, what are we going to do if we catch up to it?”
“Let’s just find it first and then decide.”
My stomach seized when we saw the brake lights of the car at a stop sign. Neely Kate pulled up behind it and I tried to peer through the back window.
“I can’t see who’s in there.”
“Should I pull up alongside the car so we can look in?”
“No! What if one of the bank robbers is in there and he recognizes me?”
“So what do we do?” she asked as the car started to pull away.
“Get the license plate number. Follow it but not close.”
We had to wait for two cars to go through the stop sign before we could get through the intersection. The road forked a half mile down the road. The right fork went into town but the left fork headed to an abandoned plant. We saw the car disappear down the road to the left.
“It’s the old fertilizer plant,” Neely Kate said. “What are they doing here?” She pulled to the side of the road and we watched the Charger pull around the side of the building.
“I don’t know, but we can’t go back there. They’ll see us.”
“But if we—”
“No.” I sounded harsher than I’d intended, but it scared me how tempted I was to let her follow them, no matter how great the danger. “Neely Kate, they killed Mr. Sullivan and obviously stole his car. It’s not just us we need to think about. You’re pregnant. You have to consider your baby.”
She gripped the steering wheel and nodded.
“Let’s park across the street at the gas station and wait for them to leave so we can get their license plate number. Then I’ll give it to Mason.”
She groaned. “Since when did you become the voice of reason? That’s my job.”
I rolled my eyes and squeezed her arm. “Maybe you’re rubbing off on me…and I’m rubbing off on you.”
Laughing, she made a U-turn and parked in the gas station parking lot, the car’s windshield facing the road. We stood watch for several minutes before Neely Kate released a groan. “I need to find the bathroom.”
I looked down at the melting sundae in the cup holder in the console. “Now?”
“I can’t wait. You sit in the driver’s seat so you can follow them and get their plate number if they leave.”
“I can’t leave—”
She bolted out of the car before I could finish my sentence. I got out and walked around to the driver’s side, then pulled out my phone and checked it for a message from Mason. Instead I found a text from Joe.
I WILL arrest you for obstruction of justice if I find you investigating this case.
Watching for a car to get its license plate wasn’t investigating, was it? I was just being a good citizen. Once I got the number, I was definitely going to give it to Mason.
Neely Kate took longer than usual. She walked toward the car, her face pale, a hand on her stomach. She slid into the passenger seat and groaned. “Next time I decide to mix hot wings and ice cream, smack me upside the head.”
Thirty-Two and a Half Complications Page 21
