by Anne George
“Let’s follow the truck tracks,” I suggested. “He turned off a road not too far back.”
So that’s what we did. It hadn’t seemed far the night before in the truck. Walking in the sun was an all-new ball game. The field seemed to stretch forever.
“We’d have died just as well close to the road,” Sister grumbled.
But eventually we did come to a road, one of the farm-to-market roads that Alabama politicians are so fond of building. And whoever they are, they have my vote. I have never been so glad to see a strip of asphalt.
“Now what?” Sister asked as we sank down beneath an oak tree. An acorn landed in my lap. The first sign that summer was ending.
“Wait, I reckon.”
“I’ll bet a car doesn’t come by here once a day. Maybe there’s a house nearby. I’ve just got to have a drink of water.”
“I’m going to wait,” I said. “Fred and the FBI will find us here.”
“Fred?”
“Fred.” Tears filled my eyes and rolled down my sunburned cheeks. “Fred will find me.”
“I’ll bet he is worried,” Sister said. “I’ll bet they all are.”
This just made me cry harder.
I was wiping my nose on the hem of my skirt when an old pickup came around the curve. A man and woman were in the front, the back was loaded with turnip greens. We waved frantically and they stopped.
“What are y’all doing out here?” the woman asked. “Did you have a wreck?”
“We got kidnapped,” Sister said. “And we need some help. Have y’all got any water?”
The woman looked sympathetic. “You poor things. There’s a watermelon or two in the back. If y’all don’t mind riding back there, you can bust one of them.”
“Who kidnapped you?” the man asked.
But we were already heading for the back of the truck. And that’s how we arrived at the nearest gas station, surrounded by turnip greens, watermelon all over us.
Twenty
“I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe it,” Haley said.
I was lying on my den sofa with the heating pad on my back, an ice cap on my head, and various and sundry ointments smeared on my cuts and burns. Fred had pulled a kitchen chair in and was sitting beside me feeding me Jell-O which I was perfectly capable of feeding myself, but, hey, don’t knock a good thing. And it was a good thing.
Mary Alice and I had been checked out at the emergency room, declared fit but slightly dehydrated, and sent home to rest and drink fluids. She was getting the same attention I was; I had just talked to her.
“They won’t get far,” Fred said.
“But smuggling black pearls. That’s wild.” Haley held out a glass of iced tea. “Here, Mama. Take another sip of this.”
I sipped.
“Actually,” I said, “it all fit together. Pawpaw’s a scientist, albeit a rocket scientist, and when he went to work for the company that furnishes the seed material, he saw an opportunity.”
“Probably didn’t have any trouble talking Buck and Kerrigan into going along with him.”
“Probably not.”
Fred held out another spoonful of Jell-O. Bless his heart. I had slept some the night before; he hadn’t. And he looked it.
“I want you to go take a nap,” I said.
“I’ll sleep tonight.”
Stubborn man. Lovely man.
“And it was Kerrigan who murdered the Indian guy,” Haley said.
“Yes. Other than chiefing, Dudley Cross worked at Toddy’s Antiques. Which is how he learned about the pearls and decided to help himself.”
“But what about Sunshine? Was she involved?”
“Not with the murder. I don’t know about the pearls. I think the sheriff and the FBI will have some questions about that.” I looked over at Haley. She looked tired, too. Not surprising considering the last few days. “I’m sorry about your flight,” I said.
Haley shrugged. “Don’t worry about that one minute, Mama. We can go tomorrow just as well. We kept thinking of things we hadn’t done, anyway.”
Fred yawned.
“Sweetheart,” I said. “Why don’t you and I go lie down on the bed for a while. Haley needs to go see about Philip.”
“Do that, Papa. I’ll check on you later this afternoon.”
He agreed so quickly, Haley and I smiled at each other. And he was hardly on the bed before he was asleep.
I had thought I would sleep, too, but I lay there with a “busy mind” as Mama always said. I finally sneaked out of bed, got the phone, and went into the bathroom so I wouldn’t wake Fred up. I sat on the toilet, feet propped on the tub, and dialed Mary Alice.
“You okay?” I asked when she answered.
“Feeling pretty good. I’m surprised. How about you?”
“Not too bad. How’s Debbie?”
“She’s okay. She spent the night in the hospital, so she didn’t know about our disappearing act.”
“Just as well. How about Ray?”
“He and Sunshine are closeted in his room. They’ve been there about an hour. The sheriff was here questioning her for a long time.”
“I figured as much. Did she have any interesting answers?”
“I don’t know. They were in the living room with the doors closed. Tacky.” The call-waiting beep sounded. “Wait a minute, Mouse,” Sister said.
The minute turned into five, but the bathroom was cool, and an emery board was on the counter. My fingernails needed work, Lord knows, from that Plexiglas skylight. So when Mary Alice said, “Mouse?” I jumped.
“That was Sheriff Reuse. Buck and Kerrigan were arrested while ago in Kentucky. Kerrigan’s being charged with murder.”
“And Meemaw and Pawpaw?”
“Weren’t with them.”
“Dear God,” I said and hung up. I shuffled over to the kitchen, got out a quart of Baskin-Robbins pralines and cream from the freezer, and tried to straighten things out in my mind. Ate almost the whole damned thing and still felt like I’d been hit over the head with a two-by-four.
“Sunshine came in that?” I pointed toward the old green car parked in Sister’s circular driveway. “That’s Dwayne’s car, isn’t it?”
Sister nodded. “She and Ray are still talking. Come on back to the sunroom.”
I followed her down the hall. “I’m stiff as a board. How about you?”
“I’m feeling pretty good. I’m surprised Fred let you out, though.”
“He doesn’t know I’m gone,” I admitted. “He had to go over to the plant to check on some things and I took off.” I sat down in a wicker chair. “Actually, I don’t feel as bad as I look.”
“Good,” Sister said, looking me over.
“And no Meemaw and Pawpaw?”
“That’s what the sheriff said.”
“I was afraid of something like that.”
Mary Alice stood up. “You want some Coke?”
I followed her into the kitchen and patted Bubba Cat, who was asleep on his heating pad. He stretched and yawned. “What about the pearls?” I asked.
“I didn’t know what they were,” Sunshine said. She and Ray had walked into the kitchen so quietly we hadn’t heard them. Sunshine looked as if she had been crying. “Dwayne had to tell me. He’d just seen an article about black pearls in National Geographic while he was waiting for the dentist.”
Sister handed me my Coke and offered one to Sunshine and Ray. They both said no.
“Here, Aunt Pat.” Ray pulled out a chair for me. “You look like you need to sit down.”
“I feel better than I look,” I said again. But I sat down at the kitchen table. Sunshine and Ray pulled out chairs and sat, too.
“Sunny’s been telling me what happened,” Ray said. “How she got involved in the murder.”
“I wasn’t involved in the murder, Ray.” Sunshine frowned at him. “I told you that.”
“Well, I’d like to hear about it.” Mary Alice sat down with a Coke. “The whole time we were
locked up in that truck I kept telling myself there was a logical explanation for how I got there. But I couldn’t figure out what the hell it was. One minute I was delivering an atomic bomb wedding cake and the next minute I was halfway through the pearly gates.”
“I’m sorry.” Sunshine took a paper napkin from a holder and began to pleat it like a fan. “I’m sorry about hiding the pearls at your house, Mrs. Hollowell. It just suddenly seemed like a good safe place for them while we tried to figure things out.”
“Not safe for us,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, wiping her eyes with the corner of the napkin.
I wasn’t letting her off that easy. “Kerrigan and Pawpaw said you told them where you’d hidden them.”
“I had to. They found me at Dwayne’s and said they would do something to Ray if I didn’t.” Tears overflowed Sunshine’s eyes.
“What I want to know,” Mary Alice said, “is how long this pearl thing’s been going on.”
“I don’t know.” Sunshine began to cry in earnest. Ray, who hadn’t said a word, handed her another paper napkin. “I should have known I hadn’t won a free trip to Bora Bora, though. And now everything’s all messed up.”
I looked over at Ray. There was a deep sadness in his face I had never seen before. Whether his golden girl was telling the truth or not, and I seriously doubted it, things would never be the same.
“Start at the beginning, Sunny,” he said.
“You mean winning the trip?”
Ray nodded.
“Well, I got this letter from the Wheel of Fortune people that I’d won a trip to Bora Bora. Meemaw and I had entered one of their viewer games and I just thought now that’s good luck, things evening out because I’d just lost the Miss Alabama contest and was down in the dumps.” She glanced at Ray. “And I really believed it. The letter was registered and everything. I had to sign for it, and it said Wheel of Fortune.” Sunshine took another napkin and began pleating it. “It was the grand prize and all I had to do was call a 1-800 number and claim it. So I did, and the tickets and all came in the mail with a certified check for $2,500 for expenses.”
“And you didn’t question any of this?” Sister asked.
“No, ma’am. Everything was registered and certified so I just went on the trip. I had a great time and I met Ray and fell in love, hook, line, and sinker.” Again she looked at Ray, but he was picking at some invisible spot on the table.
“Anyway, after we’d been out a couple of days, Buck came up and asked if by any chance I was kin to Kerrigan Dabbs. He said he saw on the roster that I was from Locust Fork and he used to be in love with a girl from there named Kerrigan Turkett and he thought she was married to a man named Dabbs for a while.
“Well, of course, I was tickled to think what a small world it was, and when I left, after the wedding, Buck gave me a present to take to Mama, a box about the size that thank-you notes come in, all wrapped up pretty. He said it was a necklace for her to remember him and the good times. And he said it was right nice, so I should put it in my carryon bag.”
I looked over at Ray to see how he was taking this story; he had his arms folded and was drumming the fingers of each hand on the opposite arm.
“Is that what you did?” Sister asked.
“Yes, ma’am. It was wrapped like a present. Had a pink ribbon on it.”
“Which you unwrapped,” I guessed. Actually, it wasn’t much of a guess.
“I did. When I got home.” Sunshine fanned herself with the pleated napkin. “I just wanted to see the necklace and, instead, it was all these old pebbles. I thought Buck was being ugly to Mama because maybe she’d ditched him. I showed them to Meemaw and she thought so, too. So I just put them back in the box, most of them. Meemaw kept several of them to glue on a lamp. She makes real pretty lamps, you know. Gets them at garage sales and dresses them up.”
Ray got up and got a can of beer out of the refrigerator. “Tell them about the murder, Sunny.”
“I was there.” Sunshine pulled her hair back as if she were going to put it in a ponytail. “Dwayne and I was there.”
For a moment there was silence. Then, “Dwayne? Is that why you sent Meemaw for the soup? Because Dwayne was coming?” Mary Alice asked.
Sunshine’s grip tightened on her hair. It gave her a defiant look. “Well, he called that morning so sad about the party the night before and me marrying Ray and I said come over and we’d talk. But I knew Meemaw wouldn’t like it. So Dwayne parked in the woods and came in as soon as Meemaw left.” Sunshine let go of her hair. It fell around her shoulders as blonde and shiny as a Nice ’n’ Easy ad. I wondered what color it was.
“And there we were just talking when we heard a car drive up. I thought it was Meemaw, that she’d forgotten something, but it was Mama’s car. She and a man got out and went to her trailer. Dwayne said he’d better go, but I said she didn’t know we were there and wouldn’t come in Meemaw’s trailer anyway. So we kept on talking.” Sunshine paused. “He was real upset.”
Ray turned up his beer and drained it. “I think they can figure out the rest, Sunny.”
“I can’t.” Mary Alice leaned forward. “How did the man get killed in Meemaw’s trailer instead of Kerrigan’s? And what were they doing there together?”
“Well, Dwayne and I were in the bedroom because I wasn’t feeling well, you know. And I was showing him the pebbles and he was saying ‘God, Sunny, these are black pearls!’ when we heard Mama and the man coming across the yard and up the steps. The man was yelling that Mama was holding out on him and she was yelling that she was sick and tired of being blackmailed by a pissant fake Indian.”
Sunshine paused. “And then we heard a whump and someone running down the steps and Mama’s car starting. When we looked around the curtain, we saw the man. That Dudley Cross.”
“And you ran,” I added.
“We didn’t know what else to do. We were so shocked, we couldn’t think.”
“And you took the pearls.”
“Well, the box was still in my purse.”
“And, of course, you remembered to get your purse,” I wanted to say. “And did Dwayne know you borrowed someone’s pickup to come see what Toddy would give you for them?” But the look on Ray’s face stopped me. Right now he didn’t need anything else. It would all come out in time. Instead I asked, “And the dead turkey and the note threatening Ray?”
“Dwayne’s idea. We were hoping y’all would be scared away while we were trying to decide what to do.” Sunshine wiped her eyes again. “We didn’t want anything else to happen.”
A call to the sheriff would have sufficed, I thought. I also thought, very generously, that those two kids in that trailer would have been scared to death, and that, given the circumstances, running like hell must have seemed the only thing to do.
The kitchen was quiet. Bubba Cat hopped down from his heating pad and got in Sister’s lap, purring loudly. Down the valley we heard the first rumble of late afternoon thunder. The four of us were caught in a moment of waiting.
And then Sister said, “Sunshine, Meemaw said to tell you ‘a bushel and a peck.’”
Sunshine held out her hands, looked at them, and then brought them to her face.
Twenty-one
“You let me know everything that happens, now, as soon as it happens,” Haley said the next morning as we were waiting for their plane to be called. “And how Ray’s doing. We’ve got a phone in the apartment. I’ll call you as soon as we get there and give you the number, and Philip’s got e-mail at the university. Or you can fax us. I’ll give you that number, too, when I call.”
“Ray’s going to be okay,” Sister said. “I think he’s feeling right now like he stepped in a bed of fire ants, but he’s going to be fine. He says he’s going back to Bora Bora soon as he can. Without Sunshine, of course.”
“Think she’s in much trouble?” Philip asked.
Sister shook her head. “Nothing she won’t slide right out of.”
“I’m just glad Meemaw and Pawpaw are okay,” I said. “I was so relieved when the sheriff called and said they were in Muscle Shoals.”
“Pawpaw’ll probably slide right out, too,” Sister said. “You watch.”
The man was a smuggler, had kidnapped us and left us to die. But, for Meemaw’s sake, I was hoping her old stud muffin did get off light. He had refused to leave without Meemaw and, in my book, that earned him a lot of points. As for Kerrigan and Buck, I hoped they threw the book at them. And they probably would. And Toddy? I thought of the pleasant, handsome young man in the antique store. I hoped he sang like a bird for the authorities. Toddy in prison was not something one wanted to picture.
“If you’ve forgotten anything, I’ll mail it,” I promised. “And Muffin will be fine.”
Philip shook hands with Fred. “I’ll take good care of Haley.”
“Your uncle took good care of me,” Sister said. “Of course he died real early. He had a mint of insurance, though. A mint. It never hurts to have a lot of insurance. You know?”
Philip laughed. “I’ll take care of it, Aunt Sister.”
“Where’s Ray this morning?” Haley asked. “I was hoping he’d be here.”
“I didn’t wake him up. At three o’clock, he was still in the den watching TV.”
“Well, I’m so sorry about Sunshine and the whole mess,” Haley said.
“I wish we’d gotten the chance to see her fly-fishing and dancing,” Fred said. I looked to see if he was serious; he was.
The plane was announced, and there were the last hugs, the last kisses, the last promises to take care of Muffin. And then our Haley was gone with her new husband to a foreign country.
We walked back through the airport slowly. “Let’s stop and get something to drink,” Sister said. “There’s something I want to show you.”
We sat in an Orange Julius booth. Fred held my hand.
“Here,” Sister said, handing us an envelope.
“What’s this?” Fred asked, taking it.
“Your Christmas present. Open it.”
He handed it to me.
But Sister was telling us what it was before I could get it open. “We’re going to spend Christmas in Warsaw. It’s tickets on the Concorde, three seats together. They’re little, but, Mouse, you’re little, and, Fred, you and I can scrunch up. We’ll be over the Atlantic in nothing flat. And then we’ve got two whole weeks in Warsaw, the three of us. I’ve got all sorts of stuff planned for us to do besides seeing Haley and Nephew. We’ll go to museums and concerts and on day tours. Won’t it be wonderful? Can you think of anything more exciting?”
