"Upstairs, then," Jeremy cut me short.
"Those stairs look ready to snap," I pointed out.
"Yeah, they sure do. You lead the way."
"Why not you?" I said.
"Because I've got 30 pounds on you, bro'." He flexed a muscle to show he meant brawn, not blah. I imaged him bench-pressing in the prison gym and immediately saw the better part of valor lay up the flight of rickety steps.
The first step rasped resoundingly, like an empire on the verge of collapse. I shot Jeremy a look, as though to ask if he really wanted me to commit suicide.
He nodded. He did. Jeremy McPherson, my rancid brother.
"Okay, Adolf," I said.
"What?" he said.
I took the second step—and my luck held. It held because the wood cracked, my foot went through, and I slammed my jaw on the stairs as I fell. It held because...well, it could have happened higher up.
"There's no need for that."
I thought at first my brain had been souffléd and Jeremy's words were taking sharp turns through my scrambled synapses. He would not have given up. He would have hoisted me by the scruff and sent me onwards until I reached the top or broke my neck trying. The only explanation for him telling me to back away was cerebral impairment. I was delusional.
I dragged my foot out of the hole and staggered back, rubbing my chin. I tested my injury by speaking. "You didn't say what I thought you just said, did you?"
"I didn't say anything," said Jeremy.
Hearing the tremble in his voice, I turned his way. He had gone bug-eyed, gaping this way and that.
"If you didn't say it—" I began.
"I said it," came a voice.
"Ah!" Jeremy shouted, whirling in a circle.
He could say that again. The voice had come from nowhere, or everywhere—the acoustics of an empty house could be tricky, especially when there was no one in sight.
"Don't ask him where he is," I told Jeremy.
"Why not?" he demanded.
"He might tell you," I said.
Jeremy thought this over and went into 'or else what?' mode.
"Where are you?"
Instead of answering, the voice said, "Where is Ms. McPherson?"
Jeremy and I exchanged glances. Seeing no answers, we exchanged glances again.
"She's—"
"Here," came a timorous voice from the parlor. And then Barbara said, "Either of you guys see a bathroom around here?"
"Is that you, Ms. McPherson?" said the voice. "Can you come around to the stairway so I can see you?"
"I can't see you to see me," said Barbara, poking her head around the corner. Sometimes I couldn't help but admire her logic.
"Indulge me," said the voice. "Stand by your brothers."
Barbara pulled away from the wall, but did not come closer. Her eyes were skeet-shooting all over the place. I knew how she felt, but hoped I was handling my abject terror with a bit more decorum.
"That's almost like Skunk's voice," Barbara whispered.
My God, I thought. Skunk had always talked like someone munching on raw celery. The voice we were hearing was similar, but with an electronic tinge.
On the other hand, Skunk would never have referred to Barbara as 'Ms. McPherson.'
"I want to see Sweet Tooth," said the voice.
"Oh..." Barbara shrank back.
"You can see her when we can see you," said Jeremy, coming to the conclusion that the voice might be bodiless and spooky, but was essentially comprised of hot air.
"Very well," said the voice. "Mute...raise your eyes and look a little to the right."
I followed the speaker's instructions. And there, tucked in the lathing like a raccoon staring down hi-beams, was a little red light, flashing. I pointed and Jeremy turned.
"Well I'll be—" he began.
"I'm sure you are," said the voice.
"What is it?" Barbara asked breathlessly.
"A fucking camera," said Jeremy.
"Of which I'm sure you saw many in prison," the voice said smugly.
"What's the radius of your signal?" asked Jeremy.
"Why do you want to know?" said the voice.
"So I know how far I have to reach to whack you." Jeremy held up a balled fist.
"Will that be before or after I tell you where the money is?" said the voice.
Jeremy lowered his hand. "Uh...if you're doing this for our benefit, why hide?"
"Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?" said the voice.
I received a hard punch in the shoulder for laughing.
The voice continued: "I thought you might come armed, and I wanted to avoid any unfortunate accidents. Might I add that tucking the gun in your belt that way could lead to drastic surgery."
Jeremy wasn't going to admit the gun was loaded with blanks, thus opening him to the charge of idiocy. An unnecessary precaution, in my opinion, seeing as it was self-evident.
I glanced at Barbara, whose dread clung like Saran Wrap over her face, stretching her skin at odd angles. "Don't worry, it's not Skunk."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"Did you ever hear him talk like this?" I said.
"He never came back from the dead, either," she said, but slowly inched into the camera's viewing field.
"Ah, Sweet Tooth," said the voice, pleased.
"You're really not Skunk?" Barbara asked in a small voice, a child inquiring about monsters in the closet. Her father being the monster, which I suppose isn't all that unusual.
"No," said the voice. "I'm not your father, nor anything like him."
"You say the money's here?" Jeremy stepped forward, hogging the lens.
"A portion of it," said the voice. "Would you mind moving back a little so I can see your brother and sister? This is the only way I have of ensuring all of you get your share. Unfortunately, I have no way of preventing one of you from trying to steal from the others..."
I sensed the electronic eye focusing on Jeremy.
Jeremy gave a small laugh and stood between Barbara and me, wrapping his arms around us and giving a big grin, as though posing for a group portrait. "One big happy."
"That's very reassuring," said the voice doubtfully. "Now please, be patient. I went to a lot of trouble to set this up. I even had to clean out the house because the dust kept triggering the motion detectors."
"Motion detectors?" Jeremy stuttered.
"Is Skunk...alive, sort of?" asked Barbara, unconvinced. She elbowed Jeremy away from her.
"If you qualify it that way, I would have to say yes," said the voice.
"But how—" I began.
Jeremy emptied his other arm by shoving me away. "So the money's here? Or part of it? Where's the rest? Or is that your...your..."
"Commission," I offered.
"There is no commission involved," said the voice, somewhat offended by the suggestion. "But you'll be more than pleased to know that—"
The voice broke off.
"Hey!" said Jeremy, charging forward. "Don't go away like that!"
"One moment," said the voice.
"One moment my ass!" Jeremy could not hide his panic. He reached up in an attempt to wrench the camera out of its hiding place. "One word, that's all! Just tell us where! One word!"
Barbara and I watched Jeremy with a vague, mutual disgust that was not entirely directed at him. This is what we were, if you stripped off the facade. We could be hopping up and down with juvenile greed, and I suspect only the futility of the gesture stopped us from joining in. There and then I was tempted to drop the hunt, even though we were on the verge of finding the money. I've seen people on talk shows looking even more stupid, programs I skipped out of embarrassment for the participants. Did I really want to be one of them? There was a good chance the owner of the voice was taping us at this moment. Imagine Jeremy on the air, his squawking repeated again and again on prime time.
I don't think Barbara was thinking exactly in these terms. She was nonplussed b
y the voice's anonymity. Maybe she had decided that if you're going to make a fool of yourself, it was best to know who the audience was.
"Stop jumping around like that," the voice suddenly chided Jeremy, who stopped on the button.
"Okay, I've stopped. Now that I'm a good boy, will you tell us—"
"I have to go," said the voice.
"What!"
"You will have company in a few minutes," said the voice. "Since there is only one way down the hill, you are bound to encounter them."
"Them?" Jeremy asked quietly.
"Three of them," the voice elaborated.
"Is this a setup?" Jeremy demanded.
"Of course it's a setup, but I'm afraid it's gone awry." The voice was tense and skimped on ambiguity. "These are not my colleagues. Believe me. But I ask you not to shoot anyone unless it becomes unavoidable."
"Hey!"
"Good-bye and good luck," said the voice, and the camera's red light went out.
CHAPTER 13
I recalled the van we had passed before we entered the dirt driveway and wondered if the driver owned the voice that had so abruptly abandoned us. The camera and speakers and motion detectors must all be battery operated. What would be the range for that kind of set-up? Factor in the hills and trees around us, and I figured the man couldn't have been more than a quarter mile away. He had seen someone turning into the driveway. He was either sitting by the road or tucked away in the woods nearby. Whether close or far, he did not seem inclined to lend us a hand with the unwanted visitors.
"Can't we just hide in the woods?" Barbara wailed.
I considered this a viable option, but Jeremy disagreed.
"We know the money's here, or part of it," he said. "What if these guys tear the place apart and find it?"
"So you're going to stand out front and shoot blanks?" I asked.
"They don't know they're blanks."
"They will when you shoot and they don't fall down." I was feeling queasy. I hoped Barbara's helicopters weren't catching.
We went out front. We had about two minutes to get ready. We spent thirty seconds in general dithering, thirty seconds speculating on where we could hide the Sentra, thirty seconds hiding behind a large forsythia bush, and thirty seconds sheepishly emerging and listening to the aggressive crash of gears as the newcomers roared up the slope. We weren't exactly resigned to our fate, but there wasn't much else we could do—or think of to do.
"It's got to be that Kendle creature," I said.
Jeremy made an odd sound. "Creature...?"
"The man said there were three of them," said Barbara, her voice stronger. Now that there was no hope, she was preparing for battle. The small purse slung over her shoulder could have held a nickel-plated Derringer, but Annie Oakley she wasn't. It was more likely that she was sugar-coating her tongue. In her alleged profession, I'm sure she had sweet-talked her way out of trouble on more than one occasion. It was likelier that she had talked her way into trouble on even more occasions.
"No cop would come up here without backup," said Jeremy.
"What'll happen if they catch you with a gun?" I asked.
He had already thought of that and was searching for a place to hide it when a lurid-green 4x4 pickup topped the slope and roared into the clearing. It was a gear-head's dream, with a light bar out of Close Encounters and jacked so high on oversized tires it looked like a houseboat in choppy water. There were three people in the cab, their silhouettes herky-jerky as they submitted themselves to this totally unnecessary high-speed intercept. It was a show of intimidation, as though the engine noise alone would crumple us into feeble lumps. My legs wobbled. I was perfectly ready for feebility.
"Carl," said Barbara through gritted teeth.
"You know these guys?" Jeremy asked, deciding to hold onto the gun.
"Yeah, and be careful." Barbara stood at attention, ready to spit. "He brought Dog with him."
"What, a hunting dog?" I asked. I wasn't a dog person. Well, I wasn't a cat person, either. And certainly not a people person.
"You could say that," Barbara answered with livid irony.
As the truck pulled up I found my eyes drawn to the airbrush work on the flank nearest us. It was an iconic image. The Last Supper. Then I did a doubletake. All of the disciples were women, and their biblical robes more dropped than draped. I guess full nudity would have gotten the truck banned from the road, but there was some severe dishabille going on here. I waited for lightning to strike, especially after I noted the main course: a man in a toga, stretched out on the table and leering with glee. Glancing up at the cab, I saw the original model sitting in the passenger seat...leering.
A cloud of dirt erupted when the driver slammed on the brakes. The driver door swung open and something like a comet launched out of the cab. The blur landed flat-footed and resolved into a gnarly little comic book character with a straw hat flipped up at the front. In tattered jeans and polka dot shirt straight off the Appalachia Salvation Army rack, he only needed a corncob pipe to take up residence in the ramshackle house behind us.
Barbara drew a sharp breath. "Now Dog, don't you start any trouble," she said to the runt.
'Dog'? Well, if the collar fits....
Jeremy snorted mockingly, then gave Barbara a questioning look. Even a runt could be packing. He began to draw out his pistol.
"No!" Barbara cried.
Dog shot forward. With his knees pumping chest-high, you would have thought he'd be running backwards. His dirty rope sandals flapped audibly in a parody of an Olympic sprinter. It was the weirdest thing I ever saw outside Jackass.
But parodies don't often accomplish much, and Dog covered ten yards before Jeremy had the gun out of his belt. My brother had height and weight all over his attacker, but Dog had momentum...and something else: unadulterated deadly intent. This guy had as many qualms as an ant on dead meat. You wouldn't want him in your back yard, and I'm speaking globally.
He was solid, too. He ran into Jeremy like a rock hitting dough, bowling him over and giving him a stomp or two as his legs kept pumping. Jeremy was stretched out and gasping. When he raised his head to see what had hit him, he found himself staring down the barrel of his own gun.
"Shit," was all he managed to say before Dog pulled the trigger.
Bam!
"Dog, no!" shouted the man slouching and spilling out of the truck cab.
Dog didn't hear, or didn't care, or misinterpreted the injunction, or was struck dumb blind by hidden rage. I say hidden because not a muscle twitched in his flat face as he chugged at the trigger.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
Barbara and I stood stupidly. I hope we would have done better had there been live bullets in the gun. As it was, while Jeremy squawked and rolled on the ground in a convincing display of a man convinced he was being shot, we did nothing to stop the fusillade.
Surprised by the lack of human wreckage, Dog sniffed at the gun barrel, then tossed it aside. A slight twitch of his upper lip betrayed the notion of going after Jeremy with his fangs, but by then the man from the truck ran up and put a stop to his antics.
"Dog! What have you done! Get back!" Then he saw Jeremy sit up, unbloodied except for a small dribble from where his nose hit a rock. "Well suck my cock," the man said. "I thought you were a goner."
"Thank God for creepy Dalton Bowen," said Barbara with a malicious sneer that said she would have preferred dumdums. Then she turned on the newcomer. "Carl, what the hell are you doing here?"
Jeremy, still sitting, checked himself over for lethal punctures, scowled at Dog, and turned on Barbara and me a look of amazed life-affirmation. "I've stared down the jaws of death."
"You'll get over it," Barbara said, giving him a sharp tap with her foot. Jeremy winced and struggled to his feet.
Barbara was right. It didn't take him long to get over his brush with mortality. "You suck," he said to her.
"Does she ever!" said Carl enthusiastically. The portrait of him as the main course
for a dozen female acolytes was fairly accurate, so far as airbrushing goes. Chubbiness and thinning hair went well with the image of a roué who could afford to broadcast his defects. He had what mattered, right? Money and...well, as dirty-minded girls say, it's in the jeans. He was gratifyingly pleased that Jeremy had not been blown away by his deadly human pet, although he may have just been relieved to avoid the inconvenience. His red face was bursting with all the glad tidings that had come his way. I had no doubt these included his presumed acquisition of the Brinks/McPherson Trust Fund.
"I didn't tell you nothing about where we were going," said Barbara, putting the best face possible on her betrayal. "In fact, I didn't tell you anything. I only mentioned it to that fat bitch in the truck."
The bitch she was alluding to had shimmied out of the cab, landing delicately on her CFMP heels like a lunar Lander in low gravity, the shock absorbed in a series of succulent vibrations. I don't have a great eye for sartorial detail, but in this case I didn't need one. Thin strips of spandex that seemed to be painted on prevented legal prosecution, but she was only a small step away from finishing a stage act. The 'fat' Barbara referred to must have been in her head. Otherwise she was a perfect redneck pinup.
"Enchanté," said Carl with leering familiarity at Barbara. "Be reasonable. Monique is your friend. She didn't want you to be harmed. She came to me to keep an eye on you."
"Enchanté?" I asked.
"My stage name," Barbara sighed bitterly. "Remember? I told you. Don't make me repeat it."
"'Enchanté Chanel," said Carl informatively, with a barbarian Gallic inflection. "Her backstage name—"
"Carl!"
Sensing a threat from Barbara's extended fingernails, Dog moved closer to protect Carl's eyes.
"'Possum Butt'," said Carl, ignoring my sister's warning. "You'd be amazed what some sickoes will pay for. Sadistico, masochistico, stink bomb-o..." He laid a plump hand on Barbara's shoulder. "Now apologize for those hard words. You know the effect the word 'fat' has on poor Monique."
Skunk Hunt Page 15
