Sweetheart Deal

by Claire Matturro

  “What about the resort and the marina?”

  “That’s new. I mean, compared to the lake plans. But once the county’s plans got approved, talk ’bout a resort and a marina just started springing up everywhere. Lot a stories in the paper, going back maybe ten months or so.”

  “So, roughly speaking, the county’s real plans to make a big bass lake and the resort’s plans to develop a marina all date back to about the same time Simon came to town?”

  Shalonda looked at me, narrowing her eyes, maybe sensing some kind of trap for Lonnie, though he was well beyond police jurisdiction now. Then she said, “Yeah, ’bout the same time. But Simon, he runs the hospital, he’s not developing the resort.”

  As far as we know, I thought. Often, though, big developers liked to fly under the radar so they could buy up the locals’ inheritances at cheap land prices. One standard trick was to send in different buyers to grab up key chunks here and there before word got out and the prices soared.

  So, yeah, maybe Simon was an advance scout. And Lonnie one of the targets. Maybe my grandmother’s land was destined to be some big, but as yet undisclosed, part of this bass-lake project. And Simon just paid a high price because he knew he could ultimately resell it for a profit to the resort.

  But even as I thought this, I knew it didn’t make a lick of sense.

  The resort corporation wasn’t into overpaying for future lakefront property. They were into stealing it from folks at a lower value through eminent domain. I mean, hadn’t I been listening to Jubal’s discourse on that from my second day in town?

  So, what was Simon up to?

  Poor weird Simon, with his long arms and legs, who wanted his momma’s respect. Poor Simon, who wanted to be the administrator of a big hospital, a big, important job that would catch his momma’s attention.

  Poor Simon, who just wanted his momma to like him.

  Then the sensation of an electrical shot went through me, and my brain pulsed with a vivid color behind my eyes.

  This wasn’t a migraine aura. This was an inspired-idea aura.

  “Lonnie came back to town when? Exactly?” I asked.

  “He came back a good five years ’fore Simon showed up. You can’t go tying him up with Simon in no land scam,” Shalonda said, still defensive of the man she’d had a thing for, dead under suspicious circumstances though he might be.

  “Yes, I think I can,” I said.

  But before I could explain, the phone rang, and Shalonda snatched it up, but after listening a moment, she said, “Oh my God,” and thrust the phone at me.

  It was Rebecca.

  She was sobbing.

  Someone had broken into her house while she was taking a shower, and the kids were gone.

  chapter 50

  Children run away.

  Lord knows Delvon and I had done just that often enough. In fact, Delvon made his first bid for freedom and greener pastures when he was still wearing diapers. Just days after his second birthday, he’d climbed out of his crib, opened the unlatched screen door, and toddled off. He’d made it seven blocks from the house before the postman caught him and took him to our father’s office.

  I made my first break right out of first grade, during recess on the first day of class, having tired quickly of being trapped inside and talked at by a teacher woman with a humped back and plenty of stupid ideas. Delvon, who had been running to third base during the same recess, saw me heading around the corner away from school at a fast trot, and ran straight off the softball field to join me. Despite the attention Delvon caused, we made it to the corner drugstore, where Mr. Gainey gave us each a fountain Coke and a pimento-cheese sandwich before he called our grandmother.

  After that, we refined our running-away skills somewhat, getting farther and farther afield. Until my mother hit upon an idea to stop us. Every time the postman, or a neighbor, or a peanut farmer on the edge of town caught us and brought us home, Willette tied us each to a separate chair. We were still small enough that she could overpower us.

  The two of us, tied to our chairs, in a room with the curtains drawn against the curiosity of town folks. Hour after hour. Willette would untie us when she heard my father’s car in the driveway. We never told our father, or anyone else, what she was doing.

  I guess, in retrospect, Delvon and I were supposed to figure out that if we stopped running away, then our mother would stop tying us to chairs in a dark room.

  But what our little children’s minds had come up with instead of that cause-and-effect paradigm was this: If we kept running away, sooner or later we would actually get away.

  Accordingly, we spent a good part of my first-and second-grade experiences tied to chairs in a room with the curtains pulled, entertaining each other with increasingly outlandish made-up stories. In a strange way, it was ideal training for law school and personal-injury litigation.

  While Delvon and I were honing our imaginations and our bladder control, my grandmother came over one day unexpectedly and found us tied up. She cut us loose, and without a word to my mother, she took us home with her, where we lived for three of the happiest months of my childhood. Grandmother cooked real food for us, she listened to us, and she asked us questions about what we were doing and what we thought of this and that. And we slept in clean beds, with sheets of white cotton, which had dried on the clothesline and smelled like sunshine. Someone always took the garbage out. Our grandfather let us sip from his whiskey, and ride in the back of his pickup when he fed the cows in the evening. Grandmom taught us how to hug and to trust, plus the rudiments of gardening, cooking, and sewing. Even Delvon can make his own clothes to this good day.

  The only thing Grandmom asked us to do in return for our stay in this heaven for kids was to stop running away.

  We stopped running away. The boredom and confinement of school was a minor price to pay for the comfort of sitting at the kitchen table after school in my grandmother’s clean house, eating her homemade ice-box cookies and telling her in great detail about the stupid things our old teachers had done that day.

  Then my father came and shut himself in a room with both Grandmom and Granddad, while Delvon and I paced nervously outside.

  When our father came out, he took us home.

  In short order, Delvon and I backslid to our former bad habit of unsecured flights. But now, when somebody found us alongside a road or in their barn and brought us home, our mother didn’t tie us to chairs. She ignored us. She ignored Dan too, and he kept busy staying off the radar and out of everybody’s way.

  Thus, as much as a form of recreation as of political protest, Delvon and I kept running off as children and as teenagers. Eventually nobody came after us. We had finally gotten away.

  So, with my own history firmly in mind as I listened to a sobbing Rebecca over the phone, I tried to reassure her that since the missing young people were teenagers, and therefore both wild and irresponsible by definition, the kids had just taken off on an adolescent frolic.

  Rebecca made a strangling noise.

  “I’m sure, knowing Bobby, they’ve just…run away. Just for a little while,” I repeated, trying to quell my own rising panic and to comfort Rebecca.

  “No,” Rebecca said, followed by a clear sobbing noise. Then she apparently regrouped. “I was in the shower, and I heard noise, you know, like crashing and blamming, but by the time I got my robe on and got downstairs, the kitchen was a mess.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily rule out running away,” I said. “Maybe—”

  “They put up a good fight,” she said, a tone of pride cutting through her panic. “They didn’t run away.”

  “Did you call 911?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I called 911, and the dispatcher was going to find Rodney and the sheriff, and I’ve called just about everybody else, but I need to talk to Dan and Patti. Now. When I couldn’t get any of you at Dan’s, I figured you might be at Shalonda’s. And you needed to know, because of, you know, that other boy, of yours, er, your son.�
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  “He’s not my son, but I’m glad you told me. Dan and Patti are over at Willette’s house,” I said.

  “Well, go and find Dan and Patti and tell them what’s going on, now,” Rebecca said, and slammed down the phone.

  Shalonda and I looked at each other, and I had the overwhelming urge to scream or throw up or both.

  “Somebody took them kids,” she said. “And it’s got something to do with how come your momma shot that man, and all this mess happening since then.”

  I nodded, unable for once to talk.

  “Whole county’ll be looking for them,” she said, apparently trying to reassure herself.

  “We’ve got to look too,” I said, and jumped up from the table. If I didn’t move heaven and earth, and everything in between, to find those kids, I’d never forgive myself. “We’ve got to find those kids.”

  “Rodney could use some help, I reckon,” she said, and stood up. “And I got me something to help us look.”

  We rushed off to Demetrious’s room to gather up Shalonda’s weapon of choice.

  And it wasn’t pound cake.

  chapter 51

  Ten minutes before my cell phone made that irritating and idiotic metallic ring, I wouldn’t have thought it possible for things to go from bad to worse.

  You’d think by now I’d know better.

  So, when I heard my phone, deep inside the purse I’d borrowed from Patti, who has really good taste in accessories, I snatched the cell out like a happy idiot, fully expecting the reassuring voice of someone telling me the kids were all safe and sound and somewhere eating pound cake.

  What I heard instead was the voice of Dr. Hodo, finally getting back to me after my hundred and twelve messages.

  “This is not a good time,” I said before he finished the second syllable of hello. Shalonda and I were whirling through space in my ancient Honda, and reception was iffy on the cell, not to mention my fraying nerves.

  “Someone is giving your mother flunitrazepam,” Dr. Hodo said, ignoring my opening as he flung another scoop of disaster into the head winds.

  “What?”

  “Rohypnol.”

  “What?”

  “Lilly, it’s a drug. Rohypnol is the brand name. It’s a pill prescribed in Mexico, South America, Europe, and Asia. It has not been approved for use by the FDA in the United States. It’s illegal in this country.”

  “Let’s save the history for later, okay. What’s it do?”

  “Heard of roofies?” Dr. Hodo asked.

  “Yeah, date-rape drug, right?”

  “That’s the street name for flunitrazepam. But it’s all the same drug, Rohypnol, roofies, or flunitrazepam.”

  “Someone is giving Willette roofies?”

  Who in their right mind would want to date-rape Willette?

  But, yeah, well, who in their right mind wanted to date-rape anyone?

  “It’s a sedative, a sleeping pill, really,” Dr. Hodo said. “And effective. Memory loss is a bit of a troubling side effect—”

  “That’s why she’s…so comatose?”

  “Yes. It’s a potentially dangerous drug on its own, but mixing it with Thorazine is not a good idea. An especially not good idea.”

  “Damn, it’s a wonder she’s breathing.”

  “Lilly, it gets worse.”

  No, it couldn’t get worse. That was scientifically impossible. But what I said was: “What? How?”

  “Somebody also gave her LSD. The thing about LSD is that it wouldn’t routinely show up on the tox screen. I got suspicious about her psychotic reaction when I tapered her off the Thorazine. She acted out as if she were hallucinating, and nothing in her history suggested either that or her psychotic behavior. But it took a while to get the test results. And that’s when the lab found the LSD and the roofies. The thing about the roofies is that they would have shown up in the tox screen, so it’s new. Or else the tox screens from before were wrong.”

  “Or someone altered the results?”

  “That’s possible too.”

  “Dr. Weinstein,” I blurted out.

  “Is arrogant and aloof, but he would not do something like this,” Dr. Hodo finished.

  But I stopped listening to him.

  “Meet me at the hospital,” I shouted at Dr. Hodo, and hung up.

  Someone with free run of the hospital was trying to kill my mother, and that told me that she definitely knew something worth being killed over.

  And that told me that I had to get her out of there.

  Now.

  But, oh, and that would be before or after I rescued the kidnapped trio of Bobby, Becky, and Armando?

  And how did you break someone out of the hospital when they were guarded by a young, earnest police officer?

  chapter 52

  On the spot, I would have made a deal with the devil himself if Delvon could have been transported to Bugfest in the flash of my eye. Delvon would know how to get Willette out of the hospital.

  And when she woke up, he would be there to comfort her.

  Delvon, the creative one. The only one Willette had ever wanted, if Eleanor was to be believed.

  But I didn’t really think I could make a deal with Satan, and that meant it was up to me.

  As Shalonda and I sped to the hospital, I babbled forth what I hoped was a coherent summary of Willette’s plight. Most of it she’d picked up from hearing my side of the phone conversation.

  I was on a mission, and I had no plan, no painfully researched and excessively detailed legal documents, and no court order. I was neither dressed in my warrior colors, i.e., lawyer gray, nor backed up by a whole law firm with an army of law clerks. All I had was anxiety-fueled adrenaline, and a strong sense that immediate, direct action was necessary.

  And Shalonda.

  The police chief’s wife. Maybe that would count for something.

  So it was that after a squealing-tire parking job, Shalonda and I bailed out of the Honda, sprinted past the nurses’ station, and plowed smack into a young police officer whose face seemed familiar. He spoke to Shalonda in a tone of respect, and eyed me like I was a crazy disheveled woman bent on breaking some hard-and-fast rules. In other words, he seemed to see me for what I was.

  “She all right?” I asked.

  “Of course. Miss Eleanor is in there with her,” Young Lawman said.

  Eleanor, Shalonda, and me. Not the typical SWAT team, but one thing I’ve learned in this life is this: You use what you are given.

  So thinking, I dashed into the room, Shalonda right behind me, and I exhaled. Sure enough, there was Eleanor Spivey, sitting in a chair, knitting a long, brightly colored something.

  “My word, Lilly, you look—”

  “Someone is trying to kill Willette. Dr. Hodo found roofies and LSD in her blood, and enough downers to kill a normal person.”

  Okay, so maybe a broad interpretation on the “kill a normal person,” but Eleanor was one of those unflappable, slow-to-action sorts, and I wanted her adrenaline to pump.

  “I’m sure you are—”

  “She ain’t lying,” Shalonda said, and stuck her head right down into Willette’s face, as if she could discern some valuable piece of information a half-inch from Willette’s nose.

  “She’s still breathing,” Shalonda said.

  “Why, of course she is. All that equipment, and—”

  “Somebody in the hospital, some doctor maybe, is trying to kill her and they might have done something with the equipment,” I said, nearly snapping at Eleanor.

  “I assure you I would notice if Willette died,” Eleanor said, and put down her knitting and stood up, advancing on Willette as if to test her own words.

  “We’ve got to get her out of here. Dr. Hodo is on his way, but I’m not waiting, not another moment.”

  “I’ll get a wheelchair,” Shalonda said, and fairly ran out of the room.

  “I don’t think they will let you just take her,” Eleanor said, slipping her fingers down on Willette’s
wrist and taking her pulse.

  “Watch me.” I mean, come on, how would they stop us? Young Lawman wasn’t going to shoot us, and between Eleanor, Shalonda, and me, we could probably whip him in a fair fight.

  I started yanking wires and IV lines and sticky things out of machines, and plugs out of walls, and a whole caterwauling of beeps and flashing lights rewarded me for my efforts. I left the ends of the things attached to Willette as they were, and left the IV in her arms, not wanting to mess with needles in her paper-thin skin, but was careful to make sure the IV was disconnected from the hospital paraphernalia. Then I lifted Willette’s body out of the bed. She was that light. But though I could pick her up, I didn’t think I could carry her all the way out of the hospital, especially if irate nurses and a possible murderer chased me.

  Shalonda, my hero, whipped back into the room with a wheelchair.

  With an angry-sounding nurse on her tail, yelling at her to stop, or some such nonsense. Followed by a young nurse, no doubt tracking the bells and whistles on the monitor I had ripped asunder.

  That brought in Young Lawman, who tried to bring order by talking louder than Shalonda and the nurses. Soon enough the yelling-begets-yelling rule was at play.

  Eleanor and I decided to ignore them all, and I put Willette into the wheelchair, where she slumped as if she would fall out of it. While I held her, I scanned the room, searching for something to tie my mother into the wheelchair. But then Eleanor pulled the scarf she was knitting around Willette’s waist and tied it in a bunch at the back of the wheelchair. “Ought to be good for something,” she said, and patted Willette’s hand as if somehow Willette might know what was going on.

  I got behind the wheelchair and started pushing and had Willette in the doorway before this registered on Young Lawman, Younger Nurse, and Yelling Nurse, all of whom turned in force on me, shouting orders, telling me things like I couldn’t take Willette, I couldn’t take the wheelchair, et cetera, et cetera. Ignoring them, I kept pushing, turning around only once and quickly, to make sure Young Lawman wasn’t pulling a gun.