A Table By the Window

by Lawana Blackwell

  He shouted in her face, “I need you here!”

  “We have to call, Dale! I’ll be back in five minutes! I’ll break a window if they’re not home!”

  But he had her by her other arm. His grip was tightening painfully.

  “Oh, Carley…” he groaned.

  The bleak resignation creeping into his face terrified her. They could not give up yet!

  “Please, Dale! We have to try.”

  “I told you not to take her in!” He shook his head. “If you would have just listened!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  But he looked away, muttered, “Just come help me.” With an arm around her shoulder, he began leading her down the slope.

  “No!” Her sodden boots took unwilling steps. “What are you doing, Dale?”

  “Stop fighting me!”

  She started dragging her heels through the pine straw, and then mud of the shallow end. “Please!”

  “I’m sorry, Carley!” he muttered, crimson-faced, forcing her deeper and deeper into the pond.

  The plunge was heart-shocking cold. A hand pushed her head under, causing water to rush into her throat and nostrils. Her lungs burned. Kicking was useless, for she could not gain footing in the soft mud. She clamped both hands around his wrist, but he was much stronger.

  And then, the pressure on her head ceased. She found footing and rose in chest-deep water, coughing and shivering and blinking. Dale still held her arm, but his attention was drawn by something over the bank. A squad car was braking to a gentle stop. The door opened, Marti stepped out and squinted in their direction.

  “Chief?”

  Dale released her, started moving toward the bank where his holster lay.

  “No!” Carley screamed, pushing feet against the sloping bottom, following, reaching out for his shoulders in vain. “He tried to kill me! He wouldn’t let me get help for Brooke!”

  “She’s crazy, Marti!” Dale called. They were in waist-deep water now, the gap between them widening. “I’ll explain, just let me get out of—”

  “He’ll kill us both!” Carley cried. “Don’t let him get his gun!”

  Marti hesitated, drew her revolver, and hustled over to where Dale’s lay in the pine straw.

  “Stay right there for now,” she said with uncertain voice. “Okay?”

  Knee-deep in the water, Dale picked up speed, sloshing forward. “You’re not gonna believe her, are you, Marti? It’s me…Dale. I rescue women!”

  He was going to win. Carley could see it in the deputy’s expression, the slight lowering of her gun.

  Over the sob filling her throat, Carley called desperately, “Please, Marti! Why would I make it up?”

  Dale wheeled around, gave her a thunderous look. “SHUT UP!”

  Carley flinched, gave a little cry, and was backing away, when the rage left Dale’s face as quickly as it had come. He blinked, gave her a brief, stunned look, and turned.

  Marti had crouched to pick up his holster with one hand. Twisting, she flung it underhand, toward the patrol car. She lowered her own revolver slightly. A shot roared, and the water six feet to Dale’s left dimpled. He froze.

  Evenly, the deputy called out, “Come up on the bank and lie face down, Dale.”

  After several tense seconds, he obeyed almost meekly, shoulders slumping. Carley thought she heard a sob as he lay on the pine straw. Still, she gave him wide berth as she came out of the water, trembling with cold and grief. Too late for Brooke. She had to be dead by now.

  “I need you to go to the car and radio Garland,” Marti said gently. She did not take her eyes off Dale. “Crank the engine and warm yourself up. Hurry now!”

  The latter command prompted Carley into action. She jogged over to the patrol car and got inside. Fortunately, she had watched Dale operate his radio.

  “Garland?” she said. “This is Carley Reed. Can you hear me?”

  “What…Marti…wrong?” Carley heard through the static.

  She forced herself to speak slowly, sharply. “Marti needs you right now on Dale Parker’s property on Tent Road. Emergency! Emergency! Can you hear me?”

  “Got…coming.”

  On impulse, even though it was too late, she added, “We need the search and rescue team too.”

  The heater began blowing warm air. Carley closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window. It occurred to her to wonder how the deputy knew to come back here, but she was too drained from the ordeal to ask.

  She heard a vehicle racing up the lane. Garland, she thought dully. Only, she had radioed barely a minute ago. Sirens were sounding, but faintly, far in the distance.

  Carley turned to look through the dusty far window. Mildred Tanner’s red truck was braking to a stop. The only thing she could make out about the driver was a familiar head of blonde-orange hair.

  Incredulously, Carley opened the door and stepped out. She was seized by a pair of young arms.

  “I heard a shot!” Brooke sobbed. “I thought Chief Dale was out of town! Oh, Carley, I’m so sorry!”

  “Brooke?” Carley could only mumble as her mind made the transition from one reality to another. “You’re here.”

  ****

  “You mean you staged this whole thing?” Garland said, somber-faced, after leading a sullen, handcuffed Dale Parker to the back seat of his patrol car.

  “I thought she wouldn’t wake up until after Chief Dale was gone.” Brooke swiped her knuckles across her sodden makeup-free eyes. “Then she’d call you, and you’d have to drag the pond when you saw the raft.”

  Draped with a blanket someone from the search and rescue team had brought over from the fire truck, Carley asked the girl, “Where were you?”

  The girl looked to the ground. “In my dad’s shed. I walked back after I put the boat in the water.”

  Marti’s hands rested on her hips. “Tell me why we shouldn’t arrest you for criminal mischief?”

  No kidding! Carley thought, but then something clicked into place. “Dale tried to kill me only after I tried to go for help. He didn’t want anyone else going into that water. Shouldn’t that tell you something?”

  The two deputies exchanged looks. Garland looked over his shoulder at the fire truck, “As long as they’re out here, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give the boys a chance to practice.”

  ****

  The air had warmed to the midsixties when, a few minutes after 11:00, one of the pair of divers bobbed to the surface and pushed back his mask. “We got a car down here!”

  Ten feet away at the outer edge of the ripples, the second diver surfaced. “We got a car down here!”

  “Are you talking about the same car?” Garland shouted back.

  The divers looked at each other, lowered their masks, and submerged. Both came back up holding up two fingers.

  “Two!”

  All eyes went to Brooke. The girl shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Automatically, gazes shifted to the back of Garland’s patrol car. Dale, apparently lying down, was no longer visible.

  “It’s gonna take some time to get them up,” Garland said. “I’ll book him and come back.”

  As Garland started the engine, Marti said to Carley, “And I may as well drive you on home so you can change. We’ll come by later for statements.”

  “I’ll be able to drive,” Carley said.

  “I’d like to stay,” Brooke said. She gave Carley a worried look. “If you think you’ll be okay?”

  Carley understood. “Yes, sure.”

  “No,” Marti said. “Go on back with Carley. It might not be a pretty sight.”

  They decided Brooke would drive Carley down the lane to her car, and they would ride home together after dropping off the truck. But Carley had just opened the truck’s passenger door when her earlier question struck her again. She turned to ask Marti, “How did you know we were back here?”

  The deputy gave her an apologetic smile. “Blake Kemp called, asked me to check on you. I
would’ve gotten here sooner if he’d said it was urgent. I don’t guess he had any way of knowing.”

  “But how did he know we were out here at all?”

  She shrugged. “Something about a note. We’ll have to ask him.”

  The truck bounced across ruts in the wake of the dust from the patrol car. Gripping the armrest, Carley could not stop looking at Brooke.

  “You’re furious, aren’t you?” the girl said. “I don’t blame you.”

  “No.” Carley shook her head. “I still can’t believe you’re alive.”

  “Thank you, Carley,” she murmured. When they reached Tent Road, they got out to load the bicycle into the truck bed.

  “Maybe Mildred’ll drop it off at the house for me one day, when she gets over her mad,” Brooke said.

  “Why do you think she’s angry?”

  “Well, after I heard the shot, I didn’t exactly ask permission to use the truck.” She slammed the tailgate.

  Carley started the GL and took the lead. A half mile up the road, a man was hustling toward them, red-faced and unshaven, with the gait of a fifty-year-old and skin of a seventy-year-old. She eased down on the brake pedal, but he ignored Carley and waved down Brooke.

  He’s angry about the truck too. Carley watched in the rearview mirror as he jerked open the door. She would have to help explain. Slowing to a complete stop, she shifted into park.

  But the side mirror told the rest of the story. Melvin Kimball held his daughter in his arms, weeping profusely.

  As Carley waited in the Kimballs’ driveway. Mildred, wearing a wrinkled housedress, slammed the door, stalked across the porch and down the steps.

  Carley rolled down the window. “Brooke’s okay.”

  “That girl took my truck! I aughter call Chief Parker!”

  “Suit yourself,” Carley said, nodding her head forward. “He’s probably at the station by now.”

  Chapter 35

  Two Mississippi state troopers on motorcycles manned a roadblock at the end of Tent Road, and waved Carley on through. But almost immediately after making the right turn onto Highway 49, she noticed a white Roadmaster and silver minivan parked on the shoulder. She pulled in line behind the van, and she and Brooke got out. Hurrying toward her were Aunt Helen and Uncle Rory, Sherry and Patrick.

  “We’re fine,” Carley said as her aunt embraced her.

  It was nice to be fussed over.

  “The sirens have the whole town astir,” Uncle Rory said.

  “But how did you know it was us out here?”

  “With the police and firemen involved, word gets back.”

  “And we checked your house after Blake called me,” Sherry said, punching buttons on her cell phone.

  Carley wondered again, How did he…?

  “I SAID…THEY’RE ALL RIGHT!” Sherry shouted into her phone with a finger in her other ear.

  Brooke, obviously assumed to be the one who had been in the gravest danger, was passed from one set of arms to another. Even Patrick patted her shoulder. Still, there were confused expressions.

  “What happened?” Aunt Helen asked. “And what’s going on now?”

  Carley looked over her shoulder and felt a chill go up her spine. “May we talk about it at the house?”

  “Good idea,” Uncle Rory said. “But let Helen drive you. I’ll take your car and go help Pam in the shop.”

  In the midst of the drama, all thought of Annabel Lee Café had been pushed aside. Carley fully expected it to be closed, with no one to let in her staff. But ahead to her right, she could see a group of women entering.

  “It’s open!” Brooke said from the backseat.

  “After word got out you were in some kind of trouble out there, Emmit White came and unlocked the door,” Aunt Helen explained, slowing even beyond her normal snail’s pace to give them a good look. “Would you like to stop in for a second?”

  “No, thank you.” Carley had not the energy for explanations en masse, especially with so many questions of her own. Beneath a hanging English ivy in the window, she recognized three of her regular patrons. The dark-skinned man and woman sat across from each other, while the little girl with braids stared out at the street, an arm draped over the back of her chair. Meeting the child’s eyes, Carley touched the glass of the car window. The girl smiled and lifted her hand.

  ****

  While Brooke explained as much as she could in the living room, Carley took a long hot shower. It felt good to dig her fingers in her scalp, wash away the lingering feel of Dale’s forceful hand. She turbaned her head in a towel and wrapped herself in her robe. Sherry made room for her on the sofa, and Aunt Helen brought her a mug of tea.

  Sherry had a piece of the puzzle. Determined to clean out the catchall basket on their entrance table, she had asked Blake to deliver the To Kill a Mockingbird video and Carley’s extra house key on his way to the barbershop that morning. He had gotten out of his car in her empty driveway, intending to leave the tape at the door, but then he realized he could not do the same with the key. The teakettle was whistling when he let himself inside. After turning off the burner, he was curious enough to look around the house. The open medicine chest, toothbrush in the sink, and note he picked up from the floor made him uneasy enough to call the police.

  “It’s probably nothing serious,” he had said to Marti. “But if you have time to run down there and check it out…”

  When Blake came over at 4:10 after closing up shop, Carley stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheeks, and then Brooke did the same.

  “Aw, it wasn’t anything,” he said, but then repeated his part in the saga for Gayle and Mrs. Templeton, and then again for Uncle Rory. Carley did not mind. She would probably be dead right now if not for him; saving a person’s life covered a multitude of personality quirks.

  ****

  Only Aunt Helen remained at the house when Marti and Garland arrived at 5:30 to take statements.

  “There were…remains of two people in the Dodge,” Garland said over a bowl of potato soup from the pot Troy Fairchild had delivered from the café. Neither deputy had eaten for hours. “They’re on their way to the crime lab in Jackson.”

  Brooke’s green eyes filled.

  “And the second car?” Aunt Helen asked, while the girl blew her nose.

  The significance of that one had escaped Carley. Had Dale planted other bodies?

  “I’m afraid we can’t discuss that one until the lab looks it over.” Garland hesitated. “We suspect it was used in another crime.”

  “Did you ask…” Carley could not say his name.

  Garland nodded understanding. “He’s not saying anything. By the way, we’re going to transfer him to Hattiesburg after we take your statements. Just a precaution. We suspect everyone’s gonna be upset as more information comes out.”

  “And maybe knowing he’s out of town will help you sleep better tonight,” Marti said.

  “It will,” Carley agreed.

  Marti turned to Brooke. “How did you know Chief Parker’s secret?”

  The girl told them everything: the two shots, the speeding patrol car, the gate and Posted signs. “But mostly, it was the way he looked at me whenever I saw him in town. I just knew.”

  “You didn’t tell anyone?”

  She shrugged. “Who’d believe me?”

  Carley felt a stab of regret.

  “What gave you the raft idea?” Garland asked.

  “When I thought it might be Chief Dale who turned on the gas—”

  “Whoa,” he said, lowering his soup spoon. “Let’s backtrack. What made you assume that?”

  “Because I know Carley and I didn’t turn the lever, and neither did Brad. That’s what woke me up that night; he called from a pay phone in Phoenix. I noticed the gas smell while he was talking, and hung up on him.” She turned to Carley. “I’m sorry I lied about it being a wrong number. I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “It’s okay,” Carley said, and reached out to cover her hand.


  “Go on?” Marti said.

  Brooke nodded. “A couple of days later, when I got home from my shift, Brad called from Las Vegas. I thought if I talked to him, he’d leave me alone. He was laughing about how Chief Dale was a sucker for giving him fifty dollars to help him get a new start, not figuring that if he had money in his pocket he would hitchhike to his cousin’s.”

  “I’m sorry, Brooke.” Garland rubbed his forehead. “I’m lost. Dale gave him money?”

  “That’s what Brad said.”

  The deputy sent Marti a bewildered glance. “Go on?”

  “Well, I told myself Chief Dale should have known that that’s what Brad would do with the money. We told him Brad wanted to go to Las Vegas. And so I got to thinking…what other reason would he have, other than just being nice? I remembered that Carley had asked him about taking Dad’s canoe on his pond just a few days earlier, and realized he knew what we were thinking.”

  “What you were thinking,” Carley corrected, to give credit where it was due.

  The girl gave her a grateful look. “Anyway, I figured he needed Brad to be out on the road just in case the gas didn’t catch fire, so everyone would think he did it. That was why I started pretending to trust Chief Dale, so he wouldn’t try anything like that again.”

  Apparently out of questions, both deputies stared at Brooke. Garland blew out his cheeks. “You’re studying to be a nurse? You ought to think about the police academy, girl. You could become a detective.”

  “You mean like Columbo?” Brooke asked.

  Marti looked bemused, but Garland laughed. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Once was enough.”

  ****

  By Monday noon, all of Tallulah knew Tracy Knight and Rick Bryant’s fates, and of the dented Mustang with enough red paint remaining in the rust for the crime lab to link it to Gweneth Stillman’s hit-and-run death.

  Averil Stillman knocked at Carley’s door that evening, carrying a bouquet of pink camellias. “These came from a bush Gwen planted by our church steps,” the pastor said in the living room with glistening eyes. “She loved her flowers.”