Sweetheart Deal

by Claire Matturro

  Besides, bribing public officials—the only crime I could figure Simon for until he began to engage in the sport of real and attempted murder—was hardly even a crime anymore, just a routine cost of doing business. Hell, in the next few years, Congress will probably pass a law making bribery of public officials a tax-deductible business expense.

  But then I remembered: Simon was trying to prove to his mother he wasn’t a worthless freak. Losing his job for bribing a public official would have just proved her correct in her assessment of him.

  Plus, I could hear Shalonda when she had said earlier, “White girl, you remember where you’re at.”

  I was in Bugfest, not in Washington, D.C. I was in a county full of people who still believed that right was right, people who posted the Ten Commandments on signs in their yards and believed that was the way you ought to act. A taint as real as a big bribe of a county commissioner in a county this honest and God-fearing would have rippled through the community like real sin. The repercussions would have upset all the resort’s development plans—Lonnie, as a corrupt bribe-taker, would have been kicked off the commission, there would have been a new vote by the governing board, and those commissioners would have bent over backward to avoid the appearance of bribery or bad dealings. Meaning that the commissioners would have voted against joining ranks with the evil, bribe-offering resort.

  Without the commissioners as their partner, that resort would have had to buy the land at whatever asking price the sellers wanted, which would, of course, be hugely inflated now that everybody knew what was going on. That is, if they would even agree to sell it. And if Jubal and the others held strong and refused to sell, without eminent domain to force them off their land, it was entirely probable the resort, the marina, and the half-million-dollar homes could not even be built.

  Further, if the casino rumors were to be believed, that meant all that gambling money could be lost too.

  The whole land-grab scheme, based as it was on cheap land, eminent domain, and a friendly county commission, would have tumbled down in no time at all.

  And there was Lonnie, dimwitted enough to sell a piece of property he didn’t own as part of accepting a bribe for a favorable vote. What did you expect, I thought, from a man stupid enough to use the same pick-up line for two decades? You’re the one that got away, my ass.

  “So Lonnie ended up being a loose end,” I said, thinking aloud.

  “Not anymore,” Simon said. “After that fight he and Demetrious had, I saw how I could kill Lonnie and keep his mouth shut, and everybody would figure it was Demetrious who killed him.”

  “Where is Demetrious?” I asked.

  “Where he can’t help you.”

  Uh-oh. That sounded like dead and buried someplace nobody would find him.

  Poor Shalonda, losing Demetrious and Lonnie both. Not that it hugely mattered if Simon killed her—and me. Which I intuitively surmised was his current plan. And after us, no doubt, he planned to sashay by the hospital and give Willette a triple dose of deadly downers, except that Dr. Hodo had spirited her away to a safe haven in Thomasville.

  I wondered if it would buy Shalonda and me any advantage to point out to Simon that Willette was out of his reach now, and so there was no reason to kill anybody else as she would eventually wake from her roofies vacation and sing a song that would implicate Simon in a host of things that wouldn’t impress his mother. Or, for that matter, Official Law Enforcement.

  While I was debating the pros and cons, Simon, apparently talked-out at the moment, raised his shotgun to my head and told me to “hold still.” But I didn’t particularly aim to go gently into that good night. I bunched my muscles to run or jump or spring or do something, but when I did, Simon swung his shotgun against the side of my head like a baseball bat, and I went right down on the ground in a huddle with Shalonda.

  When I tried to work my mouth so I could tell him about Willette, the pros seeming suddenly to outweigh the cons, I found I couldn’t talk. I pretty much figured this was it, that I was fixing to die with a shotgun blast, and I briefly worried about what an ugly corpse I’d make, but before I could say my prayers, Simon grabbed my arm and pricked me with a needle. I hoped it was a clean one, and then I was out.

  chapter 60

  Someone was butting me in the stomach.

  “Get up, get up, this house’s on fire. I ain’t going to burn up,”

  Shalonda was shouting as she frantically butted me awake with her head.

  Groggy, with an intense headache, but coming back to consciousness, I looked around me and saw that I was in my own mother’s house. Everything was pitch-black night.

  Except for a glow of red coming in around the cracks under the door. A red glow accompanied by the acrid smell of smoke.

  Oh, mierda. Shalonda was right. The house was on fire. Smoke roiled up under the door, though there were no flames in the room where we were tied up. But the idea that the main fire was still on the other side of the door only encouraged me for about a half-second. Terror replaced that feeling in a blink.

  Shalonda and I were both bound up, with ropes around our ankles and our hands tied behind our backs, our butts on the uncarpeted floor.

  “Armando, my God, is he in here? Jubal? Are they here?” I shouted.

  “I don’t think so, that nasty man dumped us in the car ’fore he even looked for them. I wasn’t all the way out till he stuck that needle in me in the car.”

  Shalonda flopped over on her side, and lifted her hips off the floor just enough to pull her tied hands under her butt, and then in front of her. Then she rolled and squiggled until she could shove her bound wrists in front of my face. “Use your teeth and get me untied,” Shalonda commanded.

  I tried my best, but the rope was too thick, or my teeth too small. “Wait a minute,” I said, and followed her lead on rolling on my side and lifting my butt till my hands were in front of me. But with my fingers limited by the rope ties, I couldn’t untie her hands either.

  Though I was gasping now, and scared nearly beyond reason, I thought of that big plate-glass window behind the curtain. And wondered, just how thick was it?

  “Shalonda, the window. It’s a plate-glass window, nothing but a big sheet of glass. No bars or cross ties or—”

  “Get up,” Shalonda said.

  “I’m trying,” I said.

  We flopped around on the floor trying to stand up, until finally I found that by rolling once more to my side, I was able to work my feet under me, and push myself up. Shalonda quickly followed suit.

  We were standing, but we were standing with tied feet and tied hands.

  In a house that was on fire.

  More smoke was filling the room and taking the place of the oxygen we needed to be breathing. Flames would soon eat away the door between us and hell.

  “I bet I can plumb get through that big ole plate-glass window all tied up,” Shalonda said. “And, white girl, you bests be right behind me ’cause I ain’t coming back for you.” With that declaration, Shalonda hopped, her feet still tied at the ankles, toward the plate-glass window that was the barrier between safe outside and burned-alive inside.

  Holding my breath now against the smoke, I gathered all my strength for a life-or-death hopping contest with the agents of the devil.

  Shalonda hopped toward that window with amazing speed, her head down like a charging bull. With her fingers, she dragged the curtain to the side, went into a three-point stance like a football player, and lunged, leading with her broad, swim-competition-tough shoulders. In a loud minute, she shattered her way through the window.

  Perceiving no reasonable alternative, I followed her, though I have to say that hopping with my ankles tied was pretty damn hard, but then I was pretty damn motivated. Lunging through the busted glass, I went careening down from the window on top of Shalonda, who was cursing the idiot who planted roses under the window.

  Old roses, I thought. My grandmother had planted them once as a birthday present to Willett
e, who never much cared about gardening. Idly, I wondered who had tended them all these years, and then I rolled off Shalonda and decided we should put some distance between us and the house. I discovered I could still do a somersault. And with my hands and feet tied.

  But then Shalonda showed me up, doing a series of somewhat crooked somersaults past me in the grass, but making excellent time, and screaming obscenities as she rolled.

  Behind me, I felt the heat of the fire, and in front of me, I saw Eleanor running screaming toward us. Watching Willette in Thomasville must have gotten old, I guessed, as Eleanor pulled us to our feet. An older man who seemed vaguely familiar came running up beside her.

  Now that I wasn’t consumed with terror at the thought of burning to death, I was consumed with terror that Armando and Jubal might be fixing to burn to death.

  “There might be somebody else in there,” I cried. “Jubal and a boy.”

  “Lord, have mercy,” the older man said, and I turned and really looked at him in the glow of the streetlamps, and recognized the very same man whose car I had hit on the way into town, the one who proudly declared himself a member of the Greatest Generation and a veteran of the Great War, who was for some reason with Eleanor this night. But before I could say “Call 911,” this man took off and dashed inside the burning house. Another old man—this one I recognized as Rodney, the acting chief of police—took off after him, lickety-split.

  I didn’t think that was a good idea, letting old men dash into a burning house, but then how else was anyone going to find out if Armando and Jubal were inside.

  Eleanor went screaming after the two of them to be careful, and I figured the veteran, having survived the Great War, probably had “careful” down about as pat as a man who rushes into a burning building could get it.

  Eleanor stopped on the porch, and switched from shouting “Careful” to screaming “Hurry.” I doubted Mr. Veteran or Rodney needed to be told that.

  Another neighbor came running up, made a quick assessment of the situation, took out his pocketknife, and cut Shalonda and me free of our ropes. And ambulances and fire trucks and official vehicles with loud sirens converged upon us like gnats at dusk.

  Just as trained firemen began working at their hoses, Rodney and the veteran of the Great War came staggering out the same door they’d gone in, and between them, they were half-holding and half-dragging Demetrious, tied up and half knocked-out.

  “Found him in the kitchen,” said the veteran, and the entire collection of EMTs in Bugfest rushed to the men as they collapsed in the ill-kept yard.

  “With a can of gasoline right by him,” Rodney said, gasping between his words. “But his hands’s all tied up. So I know he didn’t start no fire, but somebody sure ’nuff wanted us to think he started it, that can of gas sitting right there.”

  Yep, somebody had wanted everyone to think Demetrious had started the fire, after killing Lonnie, and taking me and Shalonda out with him. The why would be a puzzlement—was it an accident, a suicide-murder, a love triangle with me as the innocent bystander, or what? My guess was that Simon assumed that folks would be so busy trying to figure out a rhyme and reason for all the bodies in the fire, they’d naturally not conclude that he had a thing to do with it. Then, after he OD’d Willette and covered it up as a natural death—why, he could just keep right on helping the resort cheat people out of their homesteads.

  Except for Bobby and Becky, who could connect Lonnie and Simon with bribery and murder.

  “Where are Bobby and Becky, did they get back safe?” I shouted.

  No one around me knew.

  But in no time at all, old Otis Lee, the second acting chief of police, pulled up in a police cruiser. Like Rodney, he moved right brisk for an older man, and before I could ask him anything about the kids, Patti and Dan drove up—I figured in another minute pretty much the whole town would be here—the door to Patti’s car burst open, and Bobby and Becky and Rebecca all stumbled out and made a beeline right for Shalonda and me.

  Apparently almost getting killed together was a real bonding experience for the kids, and they started hugging and kissing us. Pretty quick, everyone got in on it. Of course, I noticed Rebecca kind of hung back on hugging me, though Patti and Dan took hold of me like they weren’t ever going to see me again in this lifetime and this was the last great hug. Then Becky and Bobby had another round hugging us like we’d saved them from a burning house.

  Well, maybe we had. Maybe Simon meant to burn us all up.

  It didn’t matter too much now, I thought, and grabbed an extra hug from Bobby.

  “I best get you gals to the ER, get you looked over,” Rodney said. “And that was a bad thing y’all done, stealing your momma out the hospital. If you’d just called me and tolt me what was—”

  “Wait, what about Jubal and Armando. Where are they?” I asked.

  My reward for having asked an entirely appropriate and important question was another round of nobody knowing.

  But they were safe, weren’t they? Maybe lost, but surely not in Simon’s hands.

  I started babbling forth my fears and theories to Rodney and Otis Lee, till out of the corner of my eye I saw a battered Demetrious, one eye swollen shut and a gash on his lip surely needing a stitch, break from the paramedics and limp toward Shalonda. I turned to watch them.

  They studied each other, wary and no doubt exhausted, for a long moment. Just as I was about to give up on the happy ending for them, Demetrious held out his arms toward Shalonda, and she went to him. After a long embrace, Shalonda backed out of his arms, looked up at his battered face, then pulled his head against her chest and sobbed.

  It was too private to watch, and I turned back to Rodney and Otis.

  “I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of that boy of yours, not of Jubal either. But we found that place in the graveyard with the freezers and we got law scattered all over the place around Simon’s and the graveyard, and about ever place in between. The kids done tolt me what happened and I got ever body, even the off-duties and the retired law, out there looking,” Rodney said. “What for, you reckon, caused that man to go on a killing binge like that?”

  It was a long story. And I didn’t want to take time to tell it. I wanted to find Jubal and Armando. Oh, and Johnny too.

  Shalonda had finished her cry and finished hugging her still-living husband, and she came up beside me and said, “We need to get Demetrious to the ER.”

  But I ignored Demetrious’s need for medical attention for a minute, and I asked her, “What woke you up?”

  “Lonnie. I seen him big as day, he shook me till I woke up. He told me to get my butt out a that house ’fore I burnt up. Said being dead’s better’n you’d expect, but he wanted me live so I’d kill that sonabitch Simon.”

  I would have laughed out loud at that, except my worry box was filling up again. Because it wasn’t over. The last we’d seen of Jubal and Armando and Johnny was them dashing off into the darkening woods.

  And Simon, the man without a soul, was still out there.

  chapter 61

  Poor old Rodney had done just about all the reassuring he could do for two women who’d been through what Shalonda and I had been through, and finally I said I wanted to lay my own eyes on Jubal and Armando, and I was going back out to the woods behind the cemetery and staying there until I, or somebody, found those two.

  “Hadn’t I done finished telling you? We got ever body already out there,” Rodney said. “Besides there’s still a bunch of stuff I don’t understand and I need you to explain it to me.”

  “Armando is missing. Find him. Simon is the bad guy. Get him,” I said, wondering why the fine details mattered at this point.

  The radio in Rodney’s police car squawked to life, and he ran toward it like he wasn’t an old man, and Demetrious limped toward it faster than he probably should have, given the beating he had obviously taken. I turned to do a visual check on the continuing safety of Bobby and Becky, and saw, to my surprise, on a day
I didn’t think I could be surprised again, that Eleanor and the veteran of the Great War were still hugging. Long, long past the breakup of the group hug.

  I stared at them, yeah, yeah, it was rude. But so what.

  And then they started kissing. And groping.

  While I was watching Eleanor make a public spectacle of herself for what was surely the first time ever, Demetrious let out a whoop—a good noise. I turned back to the crowd at the police radio, hoping Jubal and Armando had surfaced.

  “BB,” Shalonda said to me. “One of the deputies found him in an old orchard of sand pears on the back ten of Lonnie’s land. Finishing off the last of the fall pears. Deputy reports he’s fine.”

  After that piece of good news, we turned back to the burning house only long enough to see it was still burning despite the efforts of the firefighters, and then back to Eleanor and the Great Veteran, who were still making out. Watching Eleanor was more fun than looking at Willette’s house burning to the ground. “Reckon we ought to get the firemen to hose ’em off,” Shalonda said, and then giggled. The old Shalonda giggle.

  But before that giggle died on its own, there was a terrible noise. The loud bang and clank of metal against metal, machine against machine. The reverberation of a car crash.

  “Oh, Lord, now what?” Rodney asked, and we all turned toward the sound of the accident as if we could see through the houses and the trees and the nighttime. The accident sounded close, but not close enough that we could see it. Maybe a few blocks away.

  In no time at all, the police radio squawked again, and Rodney and Demetrious both leaned into the car to listen.

  I didn’t see any reason why Shalonda and I couldn’t stick our heads in as close as we could, so I tugged on her arm and we pressed into the men by the police car.

  “Bad accident over to the hospital,” Rodney said. “Come on, Demetrious, let’s get, and I can drop you off to the ER.”