Still, despite my tendency to over-prepare, wouldn’t you know it? I didn’t have a chain saw with me when I needed it.
But there, under a tarp, on the ground, exactly where and when I needed it, God put me a chain saw, one that worked.
And gave me a woman who knew how to use it.
Thus it came about that Shalonda and I, in our quest through the graveyard, searching for kidnapped kids, in short order had found a small shack, apparently used to house lawn mowers and such, from the look of the garden tools scattered outside of the building.
“Looks like somebody emptied it out,” Shalonda said.
We looked at each other a second when she said that, then ran like jaguars after prey toward the shed. Naturally, the plywood door was locked.
And there were no windows to break out.
And my lock picks were back in my Honda.
While I gave voice to this, figuring I’d have to run back through the woods after the lock picks, and not looking forward to that, Shalonda nosed around in the scattered lawn tools and pulled up a chain saw from under a tarp.
“I reckon if it’ll cut through trees it will cut through this old door,” she said, and tossed me the shotgun to hold for her. “Got to be careful with these things,” she said, and pulled on the cord.
Well, yeah. Careful being an understatement. If a chain saw would cut through trees, it’d cut through arms and fingers and hands pretty quick too.
The chain saw did not start. Shalonda yanked at the cord again.
“I cut up some trees ever winter for wood for our fireplace. How ’bout you? You put up any wood for winter?”
“Shalonda, I live in southwest Florida. We don’t have winter.” Which sounded better than admitting that hurricane-preparation queen that I was, I was still afraid of chain saws.
“Well, I got right handy with chain saws the last few years, what with all those hurricanes coming up at us from the Gulf. Picks up the pace some for the Electric Co-op boys if you can clear up your own downed trees.”
Not wanting to discuss the use, or nonuse, of chain saws much further, I hoisted the shotgun and pretended to use it while Shalonda gave that cord another hard tug. The chain saw roared to life, and Shalonda said something I couldn’t hear over the racket, and she grinned.
I took a play shot at the door of the shed. Practice at making believe you could use it, I told myself, in case you need to use an unloaded gun to fake out a bad man—and when I looked back at Shalonda, damn if she didn’t have a hole cut through that door. Of course, she had also made enough noise to wake up all the glorious Confederate dead and, not incidentally, warn anybody lurking in the woods that we were around.
After enlarging the space some, Shalonda turned off the chain saw and stuck her hand through the hole, messed around with the door handle, and the next thing we knew we were inside the shed, and she shut that door behind us as nicely as if we were visiting at Eleanor’s.
What we found inside was not the kids, not Demetrious, not Simon, not a mule, and not a ferret.
What we found instead were deep freezes.
A room plumb full of deep freezes. I counted them—four deep freezes. And they were all just humming away, keeping whatever was inside icy-frozen. As the church didn’t even have a garden, no one in its congregation needed to be putting up peas or corn for Jesus.
“Why you reckon somebody dumped all those good garden tools outside to make room to put these deep freezes in here?” Shalonda asked.
A good question, and one I figured we could answer by opening the deep freezes and taking a look.
But we stood right where we were, frozen on the dirt-and-straw floor.
My guess was that there were about four choices for what was in those freezers. Dead teenagers. Dead Demetrious. Dead human body parts. Or illegally smuggled exotic meats, turtle eggs, and caviar. Some version of the same idea must have hit Shalonda too, from the way she was dragging her feet.
Okay, sorry, PETA, but I was pretty much hoping for turtle meat and sturgeon eggs.
“Damn, we gotta look,” I said, and each of us took a few steps forward.
Shalonda the Bold then jumped at one of the freezers, snatched it open, and cried out, “Eggs. Little eggs. What would a graveyard want with freezers of frozen little eggs?”
We checked all the freezers. Two had turtle eggs, one had beluga caviar, and the fourth one had turtle meat. All with nice labels, including the date frozen, the country of origin, and what it was in the wrappers.
I slumped in relief against a cobwebby wall, and exhaled.
Wherever Becky, Bobby, Armando, and Demetrious were, at least they were not frozen in parts in a shed in a graveyard.
“Amen on that thought,” Shalonda said. “Now get back here, and let’s study on this.”
“Willette’s voodoo eggs,” I said, easing off the wall toward the freezers and picking up a package in clear plastic. “Shalonda, you know anything about sea-turtle eggs?”
“Sure, Demetrious told me ’bout them. I mean, the sea turtles are protected from poachers and smugglers. He was pretty hot ’bout hearing rumors on that kind of smuggling passing through here.”
It occurred to me suddenly Shalonda didn’t know about my Deer Den adventures. So, Demetrious had kept a secret from Shalonda—he’d never said a word to her about my acting like his spy to try to close down the Deer Den. ’Course, neither had I.
But Demetrious keeping secrets from his wife was more important, I thought, because it opened up the idea he might have kept other secrets from her.
Of course, she kept secrets from him. Like that seeing-Lonnie thing.
I wondered if all husbands and wives kept secrets. Did it go with the territory? Was it the inevitable cost of living day in and day out with someone?
But contemplating the secret lives of husbands and wives was something I needed to save for a saner moment.
“Yep, Demetrious told me something about the smuggling he thought was going on around here, or through here, I guess,” I said. “I think this stuff was bound for the big cities, but maybe just being stored here temporarily. Maybe a little of it was sold around here. Who knows?”
“Oh, yeah, don’t even get Demetrious started on stuff like that. Bad enough that man thinks he’s gotta feed the damn buzzards in the backyard, like they ain’t got the God-given sense to find their own roadkill. But get him started on the Caribbean turtles and those Russian fish, and he gets plain worked up.”
Then she stopped and looked at me, and little tears puddled up in her eyes.
“He’s a good man, a mighty fine man, and here I didn’t…appreciate him. Loving all the little things, like he does.”
And loving you, I thought but didn’t say. We didn’t have time to get mopey. And maybe Demetrious was all right and would come home with Big Beauty and a good explanation. I switched gears so I wouldn’t have to calculate the odds on that. “What’d Demetrious tell you about stuff like this?”
“There’s a big illegal market for the shells, the meat, and the oils, and people are just so mean and greedy they don’t care if they’re wiping out a whole species. All so rich folks can have a bunch of stuff they don’t even need. I mean, you really need a tortoiseshell comb? Isn’t wood or plastic good enough?”
Well, at least there was no monkey meat in the freezers, I thought, though, of course, who was to say that a turtle was any less deserving of being saved from extinction than a primate.
“How about the eggs?” I asked.
Before I could answer, the sound of the chain-sawed door dragging across the floor made us both jump, and we swung around to the sound. Shalonda was quick on the uptake, shifting the unloaded shotgun into a menacing stance.
We had company.
And it wasn’t Becky, Bobby, or Armando.
chapter 57
When you break and enter a building in daylight in search of a murderer and kidnapped kids, it is best not to stand around chatting with your girlfriend.
>
I made a mental note to add that to my list of rules to live by.
Assuming I got to continue living.
Shalonda and I had been so busy breaking into the freezer shack, we hadn’t heard Jubal come up behind us, not until he pushed the big, heavy door across the rough floor.
But evidently he had heard us talking.
“Easy smuggling,” he said. “Feds so busy looking for cocaine or terrorists with nuclear bombs that eggs and turtle oil and meat slide right on through. Poachers sell ’em to smugglers who bring ’em into Miami. After customs is done with our appliances, Ray Glenn’d meet the smugglers down near the Everglades, load the eggs up in the deep freezes with dry ice, and haul ’em back. I let him use this old place to store ’em. He’d hold some here till the folks next in line sent trucks for ’em. Most of ’em make their way to New York and L.A., but a tiny bit stays right ’round here. Ray Glenn give me a cut for letting him use this place, and helping him drive to and from Miami. Easiest money I ever made.”
“Jubal, damnation,” I said, and got that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’d screwed up, that I’d been chasing the wrong man.
While I was listening, Shalonda had been pointing that shotgun, the one I sure did wish actually was loaded.
“I ain’t no killer, and I ain’t no kidnapper,” he said, nodding toward Shalonda and her weapon.
“What’re you doing here?” Shalonda said, and jabbed the shotgun toward Jubal till it was pointed right at his gut.
“I’m looking for those kids, same as you. That boy’s Willette’s own grandson, and I’m not aiming to let anything bad happen to one of hers.”
“Really?” Shalonda said.
“Swear to God.”
Shalonda put her weapon down, but I reached over and snatched that shotgun up, and pointed it back at Jubal. After all, I’d been a lawyer for a long time, and I expected people to lie to me. Given Shalonda’s love life with Lonnie the low-life liar, you’d think she would be less trusting. But there she was, willing to take the word of an admitted smuggler’s assistant that he only wanted to help.
I shook the gun just in case Jubal had missed my point in snatching it from Shalonda and pointing it at him.
“No need of that,” Jubal said. “I told you, I’m just looking for those kids.”
“Well, let’s get to looking,” Shalonda said, and cut her eyes over to me like I was being rude.
“Those kids being gone, it doesn’t have anything to do with this,” Jubal said, and kicked one of the freezers. “This was just Ray Glenn and me. Lonnie weren’t no part of it. With Ray Glenn outta it, I’m waiting to sell this load sometime next week.”
“But there can’t be that much money in it?” I said.
“You’d be surprised. Folks’ll buy that exotic meat and them eggs at upscale restaurants in New York City and Atlanta and L.A. It’s all trendy, and then there’s those who think they’re aphrodisiacs. One restaurant in Atlanta gave Ray Glenn five dollar an egg if they’re fresh. Frozen ones go for less, but it all adds up, ’specially what with the aphrodisiac buyers.”
Couldn’t they just eat oysters or take Viagra, I wondered, and leave the turtles alone?
“Man’ll do just ’bout anything make his dick stand up,” Shalonda said.
“But not enough money to kill anybody over,” Jubal said, and shook his head. “I’m sorry I let him talk me into this, but Ray Glenn needed a safe place to run the freezers. Couldn’t be having the freezers just sitting there in Lonnie’s store, all full of illegal meat and eggs.”
“So Lonnie wasn’t in on this,” Shalonda said, and gave me a triumphant look.
“Nope, he wasn’t. He could’ve been, but Ray Glenn thought his boss was too dumb to deal in. Lonnie’s been…that is, he was planning on running for state senate. Then on to Washington. Man needs a lot of money for that, but…” Here Jubal stopped, but I could have sworn he had something else important to say.
“But what?” I said. “You might as well come clean now. Maybe you know something that’ll help find Bobby, Becky, and Armando.”
“I’ll help find those kids, even if it means me going off to jail awhile,” he said, and looked first me and then Shalonda in the eyes.
It was a good show, but I didn’t drop the shotgun.
“That man, Lonnie, made some money out of his store, sure, but mostly ’cause of Ray Glenn. But Lonnie kept angling for getting more money. So when Lonnie up and sold that house of your grandmom’s for four hundred thousand, Ray Glenn and me figured he and that Simon were up to something big. Ray Glenn and me made a good profit right there,” he said, gesturing toward the freezers, “but Ray Glenn was anxious to get in on whatever else Lonnie had going.”
“How’d you know about the four hundred thousand?” I asked.
Jubal shook his head. “Ain’t I supposed to protect my sources?”
“Only if you’re a reporter protected by the First Amendment,” I said.
“Stop your yammering,” Shalonda said, “and get to the point. We got the kids and Demetrious to find.”
“Jubal?”
“Well, awright. Truth is, nobody exactly told me. I kinda found out when I went to see that lady lawyer about a legal matter, and she left me alone in her office for a couple of minutes. And I, er, snooped.”
“So you found out Simon overpaid on that property. And that’s how Willette got in all this, isn’t it? Through you?”
“Yep. And I feel right bad about all that. We had to keep the freezers at the store for a little bit, after we got ’em back from Miami. They were in the back, out of sight, jes’ till I could move ’em out here at night. And some idiot deliveryman took the wrong freezer to Willette’s. Put it on her porch full of turtle eggs.”
So, she hadn’t been hallucinating when she complained the freezer that mistakenly landed on her porch had been full of voodoo eggs.
“And, look, I done got too old to cut trees for a living, but I ain’t old enough to be living off that boy of mine. And all that part-time work don’t add up to spit. I wasn’t no kind of daddy to that boy when he was little, so I aim to leave him enough to go and see the world, I do. Me, I ain’t never been more than five hundred miles from where I was born, and even that’s only ’cause Ray Glenn needed me to drive them old trucks. I’m going to do right by Hank, make it up to him. Boy smart as he is ought to get to see Paris. Or at least California.”
I didn’t think Hank would want the money once he knew where it came from.
But Jubal looked so beat down, I didn’t say so.
“I swear, I messed up real bad, I did,” he added. That, plus the sheer weariness, and maybe the shame in his eyes, finally made me believe him. I put the shotgun down, but I didn’t let go of it.
“What else?” I asked, but my voice was softer now that I suspected Jubal would be his own worst punishment.
“I shouldn’t’ve told that Ray Glenn about the four hundred thousand. That got him real worked up. See, Ray Glenn figured somehow Lonnie was blackmailing Simon and he set out to find out why, so he could blackmail him too. But what I did, was call up Willette and tell her that Simon had bought that house of her momma’s for four hundred thousand.”
“Why’d you do that?” I asked, thinking Jubal had pulled Willette into not one but two big, dangerous messes, and Ray Glenn was just one of the common threads.
“Hell, I thought the woman ought to know.” But Jubal cut his eyes away from me.
“Tell me the real reason.” I took a step toward Jubal, and he backed up.
But after a few seconds of wrestling with his demons, he looked back at me and said, “See, I was your momma’s legs when she needed something she didn’t want Dan to know about.”
Like her narcotics, I thought, but kept my mouth shut, letting Jubal finish his story.
“She had me do some photocopying for her when she sold that place off to Lonnie. So, naturally, I took a look at what it was I was copying at the library. I saw she
was using a contract for deed, and so I asked that lady lawyer what that was, and she told me. This was way back before Simon came to town, when she and me was getting along okay. ’Fore, you know, she caught me snooping through her stuff and got all ugly to me.”
Shalonda said, “Y’all need to hurry this up so’s we can get back to looking for those kids.”
“I’ll finish quick then,” Jubal said. “When Lonnie paid your momma monthly, I’d take the money to the bank for her, and…pick up her some…supplies.”
Yeah, I knew what at least some of those supplies were.
“But then he stopped paying her. I didn’t ask her about her business, I just did what she needed me to do. So I didn’t know what she was going to do about it. But I did know from what that lady lawyer explained to me, that if Lonnie didn’t pay up, your momma still owned her momma’s place.”
“Why’d Willette keep quiet about him not paying her?” Shalonda asked.
“See, that’s ’cause Lonnie took over getting her some of her…supplies. I was having some problems at the…Tru Blue, and I, er…had to slack off some.”
“So you told Willette that Simon paid Lonnie four hundred thousand for a house he didn’t own, that she still owned, right? And you were thinking that she might get some money out of Simon to hush up about things while he and Lonnie got it all straight, and Willette would give you a…a what? A finder’s fee?”
“Yep, that’s it, the whole sorry story, least the parts of it I know.”
“Not quite,” I said. “Lonnie took the money he owed Willette to her house that night, money he got from Simon’s payoff, and he wanted Willette to take the money and sign the deed. Only she wouldn’t. Ray Glenn went along to force Willette, right?”
“I didn’t have nu’thing to do with that, I swear. Ray Glenn knew how I felt about that woman, and he didn’t tell me nu’thing about him planning to go over there. Why, I wouldn’t a hurt a hair on that poor woman’s head, not ever, not for no money.”
“You didn’t know about the sixty-five thousand? You weren’t just helping us at Willette’s house so you could look for it?”
Sweetheart Deal Page 30
