Dumping Grounds (Joshua Stokes Mysteries Book 1)

by Lila Beckham

  “Yeah, me too… Susie’s hung in there and been with me longer than any woman ever was. I don’t know what I would do without her, that’s for shore.

  It took several days, for me to find Brown Sally.”

  “You still got Sally!”

  “Yep, I shore do; she’s parked around front,” Boone replied. “They said I was skint up like this when they found me, but at the time, I couldn’t remember why.

  It all comes back to me a couple a days later and I remembered where old Sally was. I finally talked one of the deputies in ta taking me there after they released me.

  When we got there, Sally was a sittin’ right there where I’d left her. She is a faithful old gal too. Her, and me, we have been many a mile together. Her and Susie have both been faithful,” Boone lit another smoke and took a sip of the whiskey.

  That was his way, and had been for as long as Joshua had known him, which was at least 30 years. He would take the cap off the first bottle of whiskey and throw it away, immediately drinking all of it. When it was gone, he would open the second bottle and just sip on it while telling a story or two.

  “Like I was saying,” Boone began “I remembered where I’d left old Sally and how I ended up, up there along the highway. When I got out to take a dump, Susie wanted out too, so I let her out with me.

  I tripped over some vines and fell down several times while trying to find a spot to use the bathroom. While I was squatted down out there in the woods, doing my business, I reckon she done got mad at me and wandered off, back toward the main road. When I was finished and got back to Sally, Susie was nowhere to be seen, so I started a walking up the road, a calling her.

  When I made it to the highway, Susie was just a sittin there as if she was a waitin’ on somebody to come along and pick her up. She ignored me for the most part. That was when I realized she was upset about something.

  The older Susie gets, the more ornery she gets and the more she reminds me of an old woman. She seems to dislike me taking a drink, same as most women do when their husbands are a drinking. See, she’s puffing up like an old hen now,” Boone said, pointing the bottle toward Susie.

  “She’ll want a divorce,” Stokes said, chuckling, “Just like most women do when their husbands drink too much.”

  “Well, I hope not. She has to stick with me, she don’t have any other choice. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go, besides, I’m the one who takes care of er,” Boone said limply, and Joshua felt sympathy for him.

  As far as he knew, Boone had never married. He had always said that women “weren’t worth the bullet it’d take to put em down, except for his mama and grandma.” Both of them had been dead since he was a little boy.

  Joshua tended to side with him on the matter of women. In his opinion, women were usually the cause of his problems, not a solution to them. At least, that had been his experience in life.

  “You know, I’ve had me a craving for some chinkapins” Boone said, and Joshua’s mind went back to their last hunting expedition.

  “We need to go pick us a mess of em. I haven’t had none since the time we was a huntin out there in Wheelerville, around Pierce Creek,” Boone reminded him.

  “You know, I haven’t had any since then either, Boone, but we was mighty hungry that day. Those things are good, but I don’t know if they’re worth digging through all those prickly assed clusters to get to.”

  “My daddy worked for the railroad; he was gone a lot,” Boone said solemnly. “When I was a little feller, my mama would take us, my brothers and me, out into the woods to gather nuts and berries to supplement our diet of beans, greens, and cornpone. You know, her maw, my grandma Christopher, was a full-blooded Choctaw Indian. In their culture, the womenfolk teach the boys how to hunt small game, gather berries, nuts, and such, until they get old enough to hunt with the grownups. Then the daddy’s take over the raising of the young bucks.

  There was a red-clay pit where Mama would take us to eat clay. Now, I ain’t a saying that we made a meal out of it or nothing, but Mama said the clay contains lots of minerals. It is good for you that a way and it is good for certain stomach ailments.

  The point I was a getting to was that Mama showed me how to get them chinkapins outta their shells without bloodying up your fingers, other than the picking part. You have to put them in a flat pan, heat them boogers up; roast em over a fire. They open right up and the nuts fall out. They’re real tasty like that too, much better than raw.” Boone raised the bottle to take another swallow of whiskey.

  Seeing the tattoo of the hula girl on Boone’s forearm, brought Joshua back to his present situation and what was going on in his county. The roasted nuts sounded good and although he enjoyed reminiscing with Boone, he really needed to think about getting down to the tattoo parlor on Dauphin Street and see if those boys remembered who they had put the tattoo on, if indeed the girl had gotten the tattoo in Mobile.

  “Where’d you get your tattoo done, Boone?” he asked.

  “Aw, heck, it was another of those times when I was drunk. I got this jewel over in Hawaii, World War II,” he said, flexing his arm to make the hula girls hips sway, “While I was in the Navy. Always did like those hula girls,” he winked.

  The phone ringing interrupted their conversation and Joshua figured he had better answer it, in case it was the office trying to get a hold of him, and sure enough, it was.

  Boone could only hear Joshua’s side of the conversation, but from what he heard, he concluded it was official sheriff’s business. He decided it was best for him to be moving on. He collected Susie and left, leaving the half-empty bottle of whiskey.

  When Joshua walked back out onto the porch, he saw the back end of Brown Sally going up the driveway.

  He did not take offense at Boone’s unannounced departure; it was his way. Boone never seemed to want to get too close to folks or to say goodbye.

  Joshua reckoned that was one reason Boone had never married. He was a free spirit.

  Boone once told Joshua that he did not ever want to be in the position of not being able to come and go as he pleased. He learned how precious a gift freedom was, after his stint in the Navy, and the five years he spent in the state penitentiary for accidentally killing his father.

  Boone was drunk, and fighting with his brother, it got out of hand. He chased his brother into the house with a gun, his father stepped into the way when he pulled the trigger to shoot his brother.

  Joshua understood perfectly what Boone meant about the freedom to come and go as you pleased being a gift. He treasured it himself, but it sure could get lonely at times, “mighty lonely” he thought aloud as he sat back down.

  Joshua leaned back, propped hid feet on the railing, lit another smoke and then took a swig of the whiskey.

  12

  Dressed to Kill

  Emma could hear the sounds of the Rolling Stones song, “Sympathy for the Devil” began to play loudly upstairs, the sound echoed through the house. The vibrations floated down to where she was in the dungeon.

  After what seemed an hour, she heard her captor return as he strode across the floor above her. She had nearly given up hope that he would bring her some food before the other one returned from wherever he had gone; if indeed he had gone anywhere.

  Emma, was not sure if they worked jobs or if the place above her was some sort of business of theirs.

  Emma heard the door at the top of the stairs open, the music became louder, and then the door closed and the music became muffled.

  She anxiously waited as his feet came into view. Watched his boots as he came down the stairs, and she was glad that he had left the overhead light on, instead of the black lights above the stair rail.

  Heel, toe, sole; backstay, vamp, cap; Emma watched his boots descend. Top, pull-strap, laces, her growling stomach, begged him to hurry.

  Ankles, legs, thighs, appeared. Then, buttocks, waist, chest. Come on, man, hurry, her mind screamed. She needed food and she needed it as soon as possible. His
pace seemed slow and deliberate.

  Am I delirious, Emma wondered, remembering when she had thought she would never beg? However, she wanted to beg, and she wanted to beg, badly! She felt as if she were going to die if she did not receive sustenance.

  “Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name.Tell me what’s my name; tell me what’s my name. Whoop woos.Whoop woo!” the music played on and on, getting louder and echoing through her head.

  His chest appeared, then his shoulders, and then his neck appeared. Next, his chin, nose, and forehead appear.

  For the love of God, do hurry, her thoughts screamed. Then the paper sack he was carrying caught her focus. Once she saw the bag, Emma became so intent on what was in his hand, that she did not notice anything else about him.

  The bag was now within reach. If her hands weren’t tied she could reach out and touch it.

  “You hungry now, Girly?”

  “Of course I’m hungry; I’m starving to death” Emma whispered as loud as she could. He waved the bag in front of her nose, the aroma of the food heavenly in her nostrils.

  “What ya gonna do for it… you gonna beg like a good little doggie” he asked. It was then that Emma realized it was Earl holding the bag.

  “You’d do whatever or say whatever you thought would get you this burger. Now wouldn’t you, Gal? You ain’t no different than the rest of em. Spread your legs for everything you want. You’re just a whore.See, Vern, All women are whores, the old man was right.”

  If Emma’s hands were free, she would grab the bag and scarf down what she could before he took it away, but her hands were not free. She thought quickly and said, “No, I won’t, I promise. I am different. I’m just very, very, hungry. How long has it been since I ate anything?

  You would beg too, wouldn’t you, if you were starving to death? You would say whatever it took to get something to eat, the same as I am,” she reasoned.

  Earl stood there a moment staring at her. Then he sat the bag on her stomach and began loosening the straps. Emma’s hopes soared, and she thought, maybe he does have feelings after all… but Emma’s hope was premature. Earl had no intentions of giving her the food just yet. In fact, he was just transitioning from one level of torture to the next.

  He yanked Emma off the table and began dragging her up the stairs and into a room that was dark and stuffy.

  There was a suit of clothes and a pair of shoes laid out on the bed. He ordered Emma to put them on. Once she was dressed in the outfit, he forced her back into the room where the big spinning wheel was mounted.

  In the center of the room was a small table. Earl sat the bag on the table and when music began to play, he ordered her to dance. Emma did as told, hoping if she did, he would let her eat whatever was in the bag.

  Emma knew the food was now cold, but she did not care. She felt she could eat anything that did not eat her first, and she hoped he was about through playing his games with her.

  The blank-eyed one was also there. He was sitting alongside one wall, looking humiliated.

  He looked as if he was a child caught stealing from the cookie jar, scorned for being bad.

  “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s a man with gun over there. A telling me, I got to beware. You’d better stop children, what’s that sound, everybody look what’s going round,” the singer sung and Emma danced to the music.

  She danced around and around the table, as he wanted, the paper bag of food sitting on the table in the middle of the room.

  She knew that Earl was the alpha male. It had been clear to her from the beginning. That was why she was hoping to befriend the meeker of the two.

  She had to wonder if maybe they were brothers. They did resemble each other. Yes, they could be brothers.

  Earl was probably the older of the two, but not much older. Emma could tell there was not much of an age difference between them.

  The outfit Earl had made her dress in was a woman’s suit, which consisted of a skirt, jacket, blouse, and patent leather shoes. They look much like a woman would have worn to church years ago, thought Emma as she dressed.

  The clothes smelt old and musty and she wondered whose they could have been. She even ventured in her mind that the clothes once belonged to their mother, or maybe even their grandmother, because of the scent of them and of the convenience of them being there in the house.

  Emma wondered if they were reared in the house.

  Twirling around the room, Emma tried to make her dance look sensuous with the ribbons Earl had given her to dance with, but soon tired of the attempt. She simply wanted something to eat.

  The odor of marijuana caused her to focus her eyes in on Earl, and yes, he was sitting on the sofa, watching her intently and smoking pot.

  The song ended and Emma stopped dancing. She stood there waiting on his instructions, but he just sat, leering at her. After what seemed like several minutes of standing there waiting, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  “Did I say you could move!” he hollered loudly, the suddenness of it scaring her, causing her to jump.

  “I’m sorry. Please, just let me eat something and then I can do it better, I promise” Emma pled.

  “Earl, just let er eat. It’s my fault anyway. I shouldn’t have listened to her and I shouldn’t have went to get the food for her,” her other captor implored.

  “Yeah, Vernon; I ought to make you get up there and dance with her. It’s all your fault she’s a beggin’ for food anyways. If you’d fallored my instructions, she never would a woke up a beggin’ for food in the first place.

  Now, you get out there and dance with her. Just pretend you’re dancing with Mama, like when we was kids.

  Don’t she look like her now that she’s dressed right?” he asked, more as an observation than a question.

  “No, no, it’s not his fault,” Emma heard herself suddenly say. “If you would feed me, none of this would have ever happened. It’s your fault if it’s anybody’s fault.” Emma did not like the expression on his face, but once she started talking the words kept spilling out. She could not help herself; it was like word vomit.

  “Why don’t you let me go and we will pretend that none of this ever happened,” Emma suggested, “I promise, I will never tell a soul, not even my own mama.” Emma tried to sound convincing.

  He looked as if he was thinking about something, maybe considering it, so she took it as a good sign and continued her imploration.

  “I don’t want anybody to know what has happened to me or where I’ve been. It would be too embarrassing,” she said, hoping he would understand her logic.

  All of a sudden, Earl screamed at her to shut the fuck up, and then he got up and walked out, leaving her standing there in the middle of the room.

  Emma looked over at Vernon who was still sitting across the room from her. He looked intimidated, as if he did not know what to do either and he slumped even lower in his chair, biting on his thumbnail.

  Emma’s focus was no longer on the food, but on a way out of there. She took a moment to look around.

  The room did have windows, but they were boarded up with sheets of plywood cut to fit inside the casings. She got a peek of them where thick dark drapes that covered the expanse of the wall had parted slightly.

  Several doors opened off the room.

  One, she knew was the door that led to the stairs down to the dungeon. There was another that led down a hallway and then there was another that led to another stairwell. Briefly, she wondered where it went.

  She looked back over at Vernon, but he was not looking at her. Earl was nowhere is sight. He had gone down the other hallway.

  She again looked over at Vernon, and then she looked at the bag on the table in the middle of the room.

  Emma caught herself thinking of escape.

  She darted to the middle of the room as quickly and quietly as possible, grabbed the bag, and then swiftly headed for the other stairwell.

&nb
sp; A split second later, Emma was in the stairwell hallway and was about to go up the stairs when common sense intervened and she turned right down the hallway. It led into the kitchen.

  She stood there a moment looking out the windows into what she assumed was the back yard.

  Emma grabbed a hold of the door handle; it turned easily. She quickly decided to get out of there. With several steps, she was out the back door and running across the screened in porch. Once through the screen door, she headed straight for the wooded area ahead of her.

  Emma was tempted to look back when she heard the screen door slap against the doorframe, but was afraid of what or whom she might see. She kept running, as fast as her weak legs would let her and quickly reached the trees.

  The underbrush was thick and briars snagged at her clothes, but it did not deter her from her quest. The only thing slowing her down was the shoes she wore.

  The heels of the patent leather shoes sunk down into the soft earth beneath the trees and Emma felt they were a hindrance, but she knew if she took them off, the sticks and berry briars would surely be worse.

  Emma yanked the shoes off her feet and then broke the heels off on a fallen tree by bashing it against it as hard as she could. She hoped to make it easier to run.

  Just as she slipped the heelless shoes onto her feet, a loud yelling stopped her in her tracks, causing her to look back from where she had come.

  The house was no longer visible through the trees, but in her moment of stopping to listen, she became disoriented. Emma did not know which direction led away from the house nor did she know which way to turn, but she knew she needed to be moving, not just spinning around in circles looking.

  13

  Inception

  The ringing phone brought Joshua back to the present and into the house to answer it. It was the sheriff’s office calling again to let him know that the garage had a car ready. They wanted to know if he was coming in to get it or if he wanted it delivered. He told them it would be easier on him if they delivered it, and if he was not home when they came, just to leave the keys under the floor mat.