Sarah nodded and Dwight quickly crossed to it. To the left lay the three-bay garage. To the right was the outer door he had noticed when he drove in. It was slightly ajar, and when he stepped outside, he was not surprised to see that the white Hyundai was gone.
CHAPTER 21
Well, I say, I do not see where we are going to get any beautiful gifts at this time of night, what with all the stores being closed, unless we dash into an all-night drug store and buy a few bottles of perfume and a bum toilet set as guys always do when they forget about their ever-loving wives until after store hours on Christmas Eve.
—“Dancing Dan’s Christmas,” Damon Runyon
I drove home in a pleasant state of anticipation that was further heightened when I hung my coat by the kitchen door and Dwight emerged from our bedroom in a fresh dark brown shirt, brown tweed slacks, and a crisply knotted tie in shades of gold and brown. His hair was neatly combed and even his cowlick was temporarily lying flat. He had shaved again and the smell of his aftershave lotion made me weak-kneed as our arms went around each other and our lips met.
He chuckled and looked down at me. “Nothing ol’ married lady about that kiss.”
“A year of practice makes perfect,” I said, kicking off my shoes and unbuttoning my shirt. “Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be ready to roll.”
Tomorrow night would be more formal, but I wanted to look soft and alluring tonight. We had reservations at the Mexican restaurant that had led to Dwight’s proposal. Back then, I had shoved the candle on our table aside because it had never crossed my mind that I might have a romantic relationship with this man I had known my whole lifetime. Candlelight would be welcome this time, though. I changed into a dark red blouse with a ruffled plunging neckline, and added dangly earrings that would sparkle in the flickering flame. My hair was loose, my skirt was tight, and my red patent leather heels were as high as I planned to be by the end of the evening.
I had just slipped the second one on when I heard Dwight say, “Yeah, okay. I’ll call Sheriff Poole and we’ll rendezvous there in thirty-five minutes.”
A moment later: “Bo? Looks like we’ve got ’em!… Yeah, the truck and three of the crew, and they’re heading in… Okay, I’ll meet you at Tinker’s Crossroads in fifteen minutes.”
He had already hung his tie on the back of a chair, and when he saw me standing in the doorway, his face mirrored excitement and regret.
“I’m so damn sorry, Deb’rah, but I’ve got to go. The drug squad’s finally located that panel truck and it’s leading them right back to the area we suspected. If we catch these guys tonight, we can—” He groaned as he took in how I looked. “I wish I could wrap you in cellophane till I get back.”
“Too bad, Major Bryant,” I said, trying to keep it light. “Next time you see me, I’ll be in flannel pajamas.”
Disappointed though I was, I nevertheless reached for the shirt he was shucking off and hung it and his slacks back in his closet while he changed into jeans, pulled on a long-sleeved dark jersey, and fastened his Kevlar vest over that.
There was no point in pouting or stomping my foot. I knew what I was getting when I married him, and this was a case the narcotics squad had been trying to nail down for over a month. They had a tip that the dealers were using a panel truck as a mobile lab to cook up methamphetamine, but so far, the truck had roamed the area undetected.
“Tucker says they’ve been stealing license plates and magnetic signs off other truck doors every few weeks,” Dwight said as he strapped on his gun. “No wonder we couldn’t get a fix on them. Though how they can cook it up in a van and still be able to breathe and drive beats me.”
He shook his head again as he looked at me. “I wish…”
“Yeah,” I said softly, more than mollified by his regret. “Me, too.”
“Don’t wait up. God knows when I’ll get home.”
“Don’t worry about me, darling. I’ll fix myself a ham sandwich and—”
He was shaking his head with a rueful smile.
“What?”
“Good luck on that one. Reese and Annie Sue put a hurting on that ham at lunch, and some of the other kids showed up to polish it off. They did leave the bone if you want to make pea soup.”
He grabbed the navy windbreaker with large white lettering that ID’d him as an officer of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department, gave me a long hard kiss, promised he’d be careful, and then he was gone.
Hey! Happy anniversary, Deborah!
* * *
Twenty-five minutes later, dressed now in jeans, a UNC sweatshirt, and ratty old house slippers, I was rummaging in the refrigerator, trying to decide what I was in the mood for, when Bandit yipped and trotted over to the door that led into the garage. A moment later, I heard voices inside the garage itself. None were deep enough to be Haywood’s rumbling bass tones, but I half expected to open the door and see him there. Instead, I found myself looking into the surprised faces of Annie Sue, Reese, and several other nieces and nephews clustered around the fuse box. Or rather, around the fuse boxes. I hadn’t noticed that we now had two boxes where before there had been only one. The second one was open.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Aunt Deborah?” Annie Sue whirled on her cousin Stevie. “I thought you said you saw Uncle Dwight’s truck go by.”
“I did!” He gave me an accusing look. “He said y’all were going out to dinner tonight to celebrate your anniversary.”
“He got called in to work at the last minute,” I said. “So why are y’all here?”
They looked at Annie Sue, who said glibly, “We were on our way for pizza and I got them to stop by and help me test the new circuit breakers. I knew it would go faster if I could have someone flip the wall switches in each room.”
With that, she briskly deployed the kids throughout the house and had them call out their locations to her as they switched the lights on and off while she kept watch on the fuse boxes. For some reason, they seemed to find the exercise highly amusing.
By the time she pronounced that everything was in order, they had talked me into going out for pizza with them even though I offered to order in.
“Why don’t we stay here and watch A Christmas Story?” I said, something we’d been doing ever since enough of them were old enough to drive.
“We can do that after,” Jessica said. “You don’t want us spilling pepperoni or tomato sauce on your couch. C’mon, Aunt Deborah. It’ll be fun.”
I knew that the fun part would be getting me to pay for their pizza, but what the hell?
“I get to pick where we go, though,” I told them and they didn’t argue when I chose Big Ed’s New York Slice, one of the new cafés that has opened up in the same nearby shopping center as the NutriGood grocery store. Big Ed’s is a little more expensive than the pizza chains, but the taste is exponentially better. I might mourn for the farm that this shopping center has replaced, but when one of those incredible pizzas is set down on the table before me, it feels almost like an equal trade.
Heading for eight o’clock on a Monday night this close to Christmas, we had the place to ourselves except for a few people in and out to pick up orders to go. We pushed two tables together and were debating toppings when I realized that Annie Sue, Reese, and Stevie were missing. Counting Zach and Barbara’s daughter Emma, who seemed to have heard about the impromptu party through osmosis, there were only eight of us.
“Oh, they said to start without them,” said Seth and Minnie’s son John. “Stevie’s riding with Annie Sue and Reese and she wanted to drop off the new boxes at Uncle Zach’s and Uncle Robert’s. You know how he and Aunt Doris love to talk. They said if they don’t get here in time, just to bring them one back.”
The pizza maker on duty was a muscular middle-aged transplant from New Jersey—“Ed usually takes Monday nights off”—who was willing to pile a full pie’s worth of anchovies on the three slices that Jane Ann and I planned to split.
“
Just make sure none of that rotten fish juice gets on our slices,” said A.K.
For some reason, Jane Ann and I are the only ones in the whole family who like them. Even Dwight, who eats everything from raw oysters to calamari, thinks they’re an abomination.
“Don’t worry, I’ll serve them separately,” said the chef, who admitted he couldn’t stand them either.
Ruth said she could tolerate their smell as long as she didn’t have to eat any, and she took a chair on the other side of me. “I uploaded pictures of us making cookies Saturday, Aunt Deborah, and I sent you the link. Did you see them? There’s a real cute one of you and Cal.”
“I got the link,” I told her, “but I haven’t had a chance to look at the pictures yet.”
Carols sung in Italian formed a seasonal backdrop to the happy chatter of my nieces and nephews as the ones who’d been away at college caught up with the kids still in high school. Suggestions were batted back and forth for get-togethers that would include girl-and boyfriends after Christmas, but for tonight they seemed to enjoy just being with each other, part of the close-knit clan we’ve all known since infancy. I know that some of them will eventually scatter to the four corners of the country, like Adam, Frank, Ben, and Jack, who come home so infrequently that their children are like strangers to us. Haywood and Isabel are mildly worried that Jane Ann seems interested in a classmate from Oregon, and who knows where Will and Amy’s Jackson will wind up if he does make it to the major leagues after college?
My bittersweet musings were interrupted by an Italian version of “Jingle Bells” that made everyone laugh.
Our pizzas came, hot and crispy and fragrant with oregano and basil. I went ahead and ordered a final large pie to take home if the others didn’t get there in time. At the rate the slices were disappearing, that would be in about fifteen minutes. A.K. sat on the other side of his sister and could almost eat a whole one by himself. Ruth had to snake a slice of the mushrooms and sausage he was working on before it was all gone. I paid with my credit card, and when my copy of the receipt arrived, she picked it up and said, “I wish whoever threw out that trash last week had paid with a credit card.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my mouth full of hot melted mozzarella and salty anchovies.
“I told you about it. Remember? When the others were fixing the memorial where Mallory crashed? I picked up all the trash I saw along both sides of the road so it’d look nice. One of the things on the opposite shoulder of the road was a Bojangles’ box, and a receipt had blown a little further down the road in the ditch. When we pick up the trash on our road, I always look to see if there’s any way to tell who dumped it, don’t you?”
I swallowed and nodded. It’s amazing how many people will litter without realizing they might be tossing stuff with their names and addresses on it: credit card receipts, sales slips, old bills, junk mail. Our family has adopted the main road past the farm, and one or another of us is out there a couple of times a month to clean the shoulders and ditches. Haywood’s occasionally taken garbage over to the address of the people who dumped it and politely asked them to quit littering on our road. Haywood’s six feet tall and built like a Hummer, so most folks don’t argue with him. Especially when he waves a soiled envelope with their name on it in their face.
Ruth took another bite of her pizza and caught a mushroom that threatened to drop onto her shirt. “The thing is, it was from that Bojangles’ at the edge of Cotton Grove and it was time-stamped ten-something the same night Mallory died. I was thinking that since Mallory crashed around ten-thirty, maybe they were driving past and saw something, but they paid cash, so there was no name on the receipt.”
“Too bad you didn’t save it,” I said.
“I almost did. Along with all the other garbage. I stuck the bag in the trunk of Jess’s car and then forgot about it till we were at your house Saturday morning. I guess I should have mentioned it to Uncle Dwight instead of just dumping it in y’all’s garbage pail.”
Which meant that it was gone, because Dwight always takes our garbage to the dump on Saturday mornings.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told Ruth as Jane Ann slid my half of the third pizza slice onto my plate. “The troopers probably would have picked it up if they’d thought it had any use.”
When we got back to the house around nine-thirty, I saw flashlights bobbing around down by the pond.
“Who’s that?” I asked, pausing on the porch to squint out into the darkness.
“Just Reese and Stevie,” said Annie Sue, who had come out on the porch when she heard all the cars pull up. “Bandit got out and we heard him barking down there so they went to see if it was a deer or something.”
“I hope Reese didn’t have his rifle with him,” I said. “He knows better than to jacklight a deer.”
“Oh, Aunt Deborah!” Ruth said. “You know Reese wouldn’t do something like that.”
The others laughed and I just shook my head at her innocence.
Bandit came bounding up, his paws wet and muddy. I grabbed his collar and reached for the old towel I keep hanging on a nail so that I could wipe him down before he tracked mud into the house.
“What was it?” I called when the two boys were within hearing distance.
“What was what?” asked Reese as he and Stevie came up on the porch.
“What Bandit was barking at,” Annie Sue said quickly. “I told her y’all went to see if it was a deer that got him so excited.”
“Oh.” Reese switched off his flashlight. He carried a screwdriver in his other hand.
I laughed. “What were you going to do? Stab it with that?”
“No telling what spooked him,” Stevie said. “Is that pizza I smell? I’m starving.”
We went inside and unboxed the food. In addition to a whole pizza, we had brought back several uneaten slices from our supper. Emma’s brother Lee had turned up while we were gone and he dug in, too. Some of the kids played with Dwight’s train while I made fresh coffee and brought out the jug of iced tea I keep in the refrigerator. A.K. and Lee asked to microwave some popcorn. When everyone had a beverage of choice and a bowl of popcorn within easy reach, I slid the DVD of Jean Shepherd’s sweet tale of boyhood Christmas yearning into the player and we settled down to watch, some on the couches and chairs, others stretched out on the floor with cushions under their chins. We know all the best lines and a running obbligato echoed the soundtrack—“You’ll shoot your eye out” and “You stay away from that turkey.” It still cracks us up when Ralphie comes downstairs in those bunny pajamas.
At the final fade-out, there were yawns and stretches and a general movement toward the door with thanks for the pizza and hugs all around.
When the last car and truck had left the yard, I whistled for Bandit and began stacking the dishwasher with the glasses and mugs.
Dwight came home as I sat at the coffee table with my laptop to download the pictures Ruth had posted on one of the photo sites. He noted the cushions all over the floor and sniffed the air. “Popcorn and pizza? The kids must’ve been over again.”
“Hey, you should’ve been a detective,” I teased.
“Hope you saved me a slice.”
“Actually, there’s one with pepperoni and meatballs and one with pepper and onions,” I told him. “How it escaped A.K.’s notice is beyond me. That boy’s got hollow legs. How’d it go tonight?”
“Six arrests, several grams of crank, and we confiscated some unregistered guns and a van that’s got to be decontaminated. Guess how they sealed off the front seat from the fumes in the back of the van.”
“Duct tape?” I asked.
He laughed. “How’d you guess?”
“Oh come on, Dwight! You know perfectly well that my brothers would have to give up farming if they ever quit making duct tape. That and baling wire’s the only thing holding half their equipment together.”
I set my laptop on the dining table, then stuck the pizza in the toaster oven to reheat while he d
rew a glass of his homemade beer from the tap Daddy had given him last year so that he could keg his brew instead of bottling it.
“What’s that you’re looking at?” he asked, peering over my shoulder at the computer screen.
“Pictures that Ruth posted from Saturday. Awww. Look at Cal and Mary Pat!”
He pulled up a chair beside me to eat his supper and watched while I flipped through the thirty or so pictures from this year’s cookie-baking session. Dwight wanted to linger on the one of Cal and me that Ruth had mentioned. She had snapped the shutter at the exact moment that Cal was cracking an egg while I watched in amusement.
“Get her to make me a copy of that one, okay?” he said.
As I moved the cursor up to click off the album, he stayed my hand. “What’s that?”
“That?” I clicked to begin again in full-screen mode the slide show I had downloaded from Ruth’s site. “This was the other morning when the cheerleader team and some of Mallory’s friends went out to the crash site and put up their memorial to her.”
Ruth had documented every aspect of the morning: the cars parked along the shoulder, the plastic flowers and little wooden cross being taken out of the car trunks, and the girls as they arranged it all on the ditchbank where Mallory’s car had gouged out raw hunks of earth when it flipped. There was a picture of the short skid marks and then a long view of the whole scene from further back.
As everyone had commented, the road there was straight and level. Woods rose up on one side, the trees draped in dead kudzu vines. On the side where the car had flipped lay a fallow field.
“Why’d she take a picture of that stuff?” Dwight asked when we came to the one of some beer cans and a yellow Bojangles’ box.
I explained Ruth’s decision to clean up the litter and described how she had found a receipt that was time-stamped within a half hour or so of the wreck.
“Yeah? Too bad she didn’t bring it to me,” he said.
“That’s what I told her. And she almost did. The bag was still in the trunk of Jess’s car when they got here Saturday morning, but she threw it in one of our garbage cans.”
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