Gone in a Flash

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  ‘If what?’ I shouted. ‘They attack one of my children? Break into my home? Kill us all in our sleep?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Any of the above.’

  And the line went dead in my hands.

  Boy, was I pissed!

  ‘Go steal that license plate,’ Mr Smith said to Mr Jones. ‘Front and back.’

  ‘Huh?’ Mr Jones said.

  ‘Go get those fucking license plates, moron! Are you deaf as well as stupid?’ Mr Smith shouted.

  Mr Jones squared his broad shoulders. He’d had just about enough of Mr Smith and his attitude. ‘That was really uncalled for, Mr Smith,’ he said. ‘And if you want those “fucking” license plates stolen, I suggest you do it yourself!’ Mr Jones crossed his arms over his chest and looked out the passenger-side window.

  ‘You are fucking kidding me, right?’ Mr Smith said between his gritted teeth. ‘Tell me I didn’t hurt your goddam feelings!’

  Mr Jones said nothing, just continued to stare out his window, his body language speaking volumes.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ Mr Smith said and got out of the white rental.

  They were in the parking lot of the new Wal-Mart that had just opened in Codderville. The place was packed and they had their pick of vehicles. Mr Smith had picked a fairly late-model white Ford – a Focus, not a Taurus like their rental, but close enough. Using the screwdriver setting on his Swiss Army knife, he unscrewed the front plate, threw it in the back seat of the car, got in, and drove off down the row of parked cars. Mr Jones did not ask what he was doing. Mr Jones was still not looking at him.

  Mr Smith circled the row and came back to the white Ford Focus. Stopping the white Taurus two cars down, he walked up to the Focus, then went round the back and unscrewed that license plate, thinking how much easier this kind of thing was in states that didn’t require a front license plate. Mr Smith threw the back plate in the back seat of the Taurus with the front plate, and took off.

  Several miles later, Mr Smith pulled into the parking lot of an office building, and proceeded to change the Taurus’s plates to those of the Focus. Let it be noted that Mr Jones did not help.

  ‘I’m coming home,’ Willis said.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘The girls are pretty nervous.’ That was not exactly true. The girls were climbing the walls, but more from the excitement of it all than fear.

  I’d called Willis to let him know what had happened, and informed him about the response from the Black Cat Ridge police.

  ‘That’s because I won that contract!’ Willis had said.

  ‘What contract?’ I’d asked.

  ‘The Chemco deal,’ he said. ‘Barry’s son-in-law was also bidding, but Dave always bids way too high. Meanwhile, Barry and his wife are supporting their daughter and Dave and it’s all my fault? I don’t THINK so!’

  Barry Donaldson was the chief-of-police for the small Black Cat Ridge police department.

  ‘Well, just come home,’ I’d said. ‘We’ll sort it out together.’

  And he did. Come home, that is. And he’d stewed in it all the way home. By the time he walked in the door, if Barry Donaldson had been in the room, it’s a possibility he wouldn’t have made it out alive.

  ‘I’m calling that son-of-a-bitch! He can’t ignore you—’

  ‘Honey, I didn’t even talk to Barry! I talked to a dispatcher.’

  He stopped, turned and looked at me. ‘Why didn’t you call Barry directly?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s your friend, not mine,’ I said.

  ‘He’s not my friend – we just shoot hoops once a week.’

  ‘That’s certainly more of a relationship than I have with him.’

  ‘So why didn’t you call me so I could call him?’ Willis demanded.

  I sighed. ‘Because I didn’t think about it! I called Luna first, and she said it wasn’t her jurisdiction, that I should call Black Cat Ridge police, so I just dialed their three-one-one number.’

  Willis pulled out his iPhone and looked at it, then put it back in his pocket and went into my office, coming out seconds later with the tiny Black Cat Ridge phone directory. He sat on the sofa, pulled out his phone yet again, and dialed the number.

  ‘Chief Donaldson, please. Willis Pugh calling.’

  I sat down in an easy chair opposite him. We waited.

  Maybe I should take this waiting period to explain the existence of Black Cat Ridge, the town in which we lived on the north side of the Texas Colorado River. It is what they call a ‘planned community.’ Codderville, on the south side of the Colorado River, was more haphazard. It came about as a cattle-drive stop back in the 1800s, then got bypassed by the railroad and almost died out, only to have a highway come through in the 1930s, which perked it up again, only to be bypassed once more by the freeway system in the 1960s. But by the 1960s, people had dug themselves in: there were some businesses, lots of churches, retail, etc. Codderville, although sleepy, remained.

  Then came a developer who saw an expanse of wooded acreage on the other side of the Colorado, and thought: trees! Must destroy now! But, of course, being a smart developer/tree killer, he opted to keep enough trees to make the homes costly. And not only homes: churches and grammar schools, and retail. Lots and lots of retail. From the beginning we had a fire substation, manned by two firemen from the Codderville station and one junior fire truck. The real fire truck would come over the river and through the former woods if needed. Which would only take like twenty minutes or so. Not enough time for the entire subdivision to burn down, but close. Luckily, the few fires the substation dealt with were small. They mostly tended boo-boos, rescued the occasional loose-riding lawnmower, and drove people to the emergency room at the Codder Memorial Hospital.

  That was at the beginning. We now had a middle and a high school, a full fire station that employed four full-time firefighters and a list of eighteen volunteer firefighters (of which, I’m proud to say, Willis and I are two), and a full-time police department with a police chief and five police officers, backed up, when necessary, by the Codder County sheriff’s department. And the fire station has an ambulance and two ENTs to drive people to the emergency room at Codder Memorial Hospital. We don’t have our own hospital. Yet.

  I perked up when Willis perked up. I told him to put his iPhone on speaker and he did. He said, ‘Barry? Hey, got a problem here and I’m hoping you can help out.’

  ‘Yeah, you backing out of tomorrow’s scrimmage? I wouldn’t be surprised the way we beat your asses last week.’

  ‘Yeah, good game. But tomorrow’s gonna be a totally different story, my friend.’

  ‘Ah, you fire guys got no balls,’ the police chief said.

  ‘Hey, drive by sometime – you can hear our balls clanging all the way out in the street.’

  ‘Sheee-it!’ Barry said. ‘You calling just to harass me, or you wanna gloat about taking the food out of my daughter’s mouth?’

  ‘Sorry, Barry. I’m just a better engineer, what can I say?’ Willis said.

  ‘No, son, you’re a better negotiator. Dave’s an asshole when it comes to bidding. Ah, hell, let’s face it: Dave’s an asshole all the time.’

  ‘True,’ Willis said, and I gave him the move it along signal. ‘Reason I’m calling, Barry, is that we got a problem here.’ And he went on to explain about Luna seeing the guys parked across the street two days straight and them coming up the driveway to our back door on the second day. And how, today, the same two guys were seen by our daughters in a different car following them to the movies and then following them home.

  ‘What the fuck’d you do, Pugh?’ Barry said.

  ‘Me? I didn’t do squat!’ Willis said, his voice rising in tenor as well as volume.

  ‘You get the license number on the new car? I know Luna got the one on the blue car.’

  I handed Willis the slip of paper I’d written the plate number down on. He read it off to Barry.

  ‘OK, great,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna call Luna, see what s
he says, just to confirm everything, then I’m gonna come out and talk to the girls. That OK?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s fine.’

  And they rang off.

  ‘He doesn’t trust you?’ I asked my husband.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘He has to call Luna to verify?’

  ‘Let it go, babe,’ he said.

  ‘What? He thinks we’d lie about this?’ Now my voice was rising in tenor as well as volume.

  ‘Of course not,’ Willis said in that condescending tone he gets when he thinks I’m being unreasonable. God, I hate that. Then he put his arm on my shoulder, which is condescending squared. ‘I think he just wants to get it all first hand, that’s all.’

  ‘First hand this!’ I said, removing his hand from my shoulder and showing him a well-known hand gesture most of us learn as kids.

  FOUR

  TUESDAY

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Megan said, coming in to Bess’s room. Bess and Alicia were sitting on the bed playing liar’s poker.

  ‘Ummmmm?’ Bess inquired, not looking up from her game.

  ‘Listen!’ Megan demanded. When neither sister looked up, she plopped herself down between them, thus stopping any gamesmanship that might have been going on.

  ‘Get your fat ass up!’ Bess said, shoving Megan.

  ‘Say what you want, but my ass ain’t moving!’

  ‘Why must you use improper grammar, Megan? You know it makes my ears bleed!’ Alicia said.

  ‘Do y’all want to hear what is going to happen to us in the very near future?’

  ‘What?’ Bess said, as she stopped shoving her sister.

  ‘The police chief of Black Cat Ridge is coming to interview us,’ Megan said in as dramatic a voice as she could conjure up.

  ‘Why?’ Bess demanded.

  Alicia rolled her eyes. ‘About the white car, dumbass,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not sure, Alicia, dear, but is “dumbass” actually proper English?’ Megan said.

  ‘Bite me,’ Alicia said.

  ‘Oh, you mean because of those guys. Well, good,’ said Bess. ‘We need the police on this and there’s not much Mrs Luna can do since she works for the Codderville force.’

  ‘You would think her living in BCR, she’d take a job here,’ Megan said.

  ‘I’d venture a guess that BCR doesn’t pay nearly as much as she’s making in Codderville, especially now she’s been promoted to lieutenant,’ Alicia said.

  Megan shrugged. ‘Yeah. That’s probably right.’

  ‘So when is this interview going to happen?’ Bess asked.

  Megan shrugged. ‘All I heard was “he’s coming by later.” I have no idea what constitutes later.’ She turned to Alicia and grinned. ‘How’d you like that one? Constitutes. Good word usage, huh?’

  ‘Piss off,’ Alicia said. ‘Even better word usage.’ She hopped off the bed and headed for the door. ‘I hope he doesn’t come too late. We have school tomorrow, remember?’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ Megan said. ‘I’ve been trying to forget. What are you wearing?’

  ‘That new black-and-white-striped tee with black leggings and that new red mini,’ Alicia said.

  ‘Oh, that’ll look good,’ Bess said. ‘I’m thinking about that tie-dye maxi with the blue shrug.’

  ‘I’m going old skool,’ Megan said. ‘Jeans and a tee. Probably the one from that Taylor Swift concert.’

  ‘Can’t,’ said Alicia, heading out the door. ‘New rule: no tees that advertise anything, even bands, etc.’

  ‘Well, that sucks!’ Megan said.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Alicia said as she headed down the stairs, followed by her sisters.

  The girls found their parents in the kitchen: Willis at the stove stirring a pot and E.J. at the bar, cutting veggies for a salad.

  ‘What do you have there, Dad?’ Alicia asked. She still felt a little uncomfortable calling him that, after the drama of the summer when Willis had left E.J. and Alicia had found out it was partially her fault, but now he seemed to preen every time she called him dad, so she figured it was all good.

  ‘My two-alarm chili, without beans, of course, and a small batch of no alarm for the ladies,’ Willis said.

  ‘I guess I’m no lady,’ Megan said. ‘Bring on the two-alarm for me!’

  ‘You know, Dad,’ Bess said, taking the plates from Alicia, who had pulled them down from a cupboard that was too high for Bess to reach, ‘it’s now three against two, what with Graham off at college. The small batch should be the two-alarm, not the no alarm.’

  ‘She’s got a point, Willis,’ E.J. said.

  ‘Who eats seconds around here? AND takes leftovers to work for lunch? Me, that’s who!’ Willis said. ‘The big batch will, as always, remain two-alarm. Thank you very much,’ he finished with a bow.

  Megan applauded.

  ‘Megan, use your hands for something more useful – like setting the table,’ her mother suggested.

  ‘They’ve got it taken care of,’ she said, head-pointing at her sisters.

  ‘We need napkins, or really a whole roll of paper towels. This is going to get messy,’ Alicia said. ‘And pour drinks, please.’

  ‘Jeez, you’re needy! And bossy!’ Megan said, but set about doing her chores.

  By the end of the meal they all agreed that their respective chilies had been great, even though there might have been a bit more heat than advertised in the no-alarm chili. The salad and the plate of fruit dealt with that successfully.

  The girls were cleaning the kitchen and arguing when the front doorbell rang. E.J. and Willis went to the front of the house and all three girls looked at each other.

  ‘That’s him, I bet!’ Megan stage-whispered.

  ‘Should we go in now?’ Bess whispered back.

  ‘Maybe we should wait until they call us in,’ Alicia whispered.

  So the three dried their hands and stood in the kitchen, waiting. They could hear talk from the living room – mostly two male voices, their dad’s and another man’s – with an occasional female laugh. Then they distinctly heard their mother say, ‘I’ll just go get them.’ And in she came. ‘The police chief is here to get your statements about that white car,’ she said.

  The girls nodded and walked single file into the living room, like stair steps going up – first Bess, then Alicia, with Megan at the end.

  Willis and the man were both standing up. ‘Girls, this is police chief Barry Donaldson. Barry, my daughters, Bess, Alicia and Megan.’

  The chief was shorter than their father, maybe just six foot, with snow-white hair and skin darkened by years in the sun. He was just a little overweight, mostly in the stomach, but still wore his uniform well. He had bright blue eyes that sparkled.

  ‘Ladies,’ he said, and bowed slightly. ‘Why don’t y’all have a seat while I ask a couple of questions.’

  They all sat down on the long part of the sectional sofa, with Willis and E.J. taking up one end and the chief the other.

  Chief: ‘Now when did y’all first notice this car following you?’

  Bess: ‘I was driving and I noticed the car pulling out of our street as we left, but didn’t really pay any attention. I noticed it because there aren’t any white cars on our street.’

  Chief: ‘And when was the next time you noticed it?’

  Bess: ‘We were talking, you know? So I wasn’t really paying attention until we pulled into the shopping center. I saw the car behind us and it didn’t really mean much at the time, but I’d pulled into the wrong driveway – the theater is the second driveway not the first, and I had to go all around Kohl’s and Academy to get to the Metroplex and, when I found a parking place, I saw that car again. It was right behind us.’

  Alicia: ‘She called it to our attention, and Megan and I both looked and it looked like the two men Mrs Luna had described the day before.’

  Chief: ‘Dark hair, swarthy complexions. Is that right?’

  Alicia: ‘Yes, sir.’

  Megan: ‘Yes, sir.’<
br />
  Bess: ‘Yes, sir.’

  Chief: ‘Did any of you notice the make or model?’

  Alicia: ‘It was a white Ford Taurus. Fairly new.’

  Everyone in the room turned to look at Alicia. She turned pink and said, ‘I like cars. I notice these things!’

  The front door opened and a young patrol man burst in. ‘Chief! A white car just came up the street, saw us, and went speeding off!’

  ‘Well, follow ’em, for God’s sake!’ the chief said.

  ‘Morris went after ’em. He sent me in to tell you.’

  The chief sighed. ‘See that thing up there on your shoulder, boy?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘What is that thing?’

  ‘It’s a radio,’ the patrolman said, his face turning red.

  ‘Now you and I are both stuck here without transportation and Morris’s driving solo after two miscreants. Is that about the situation as you see it, boy?’

  The patrolman hung his head. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  Willis stood up. ‘Come on, Barry, we’ll take my truck. You can deputize it.’

  You!’ the chief said, pointing a finger at the patrolman. ‘Stay here. On the front porch. Anybody, I mean anybody, comes by this house, you radio me, you got that boy?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  The chief sighed. ‘Let’s do it, Pugh.’

  VERA’S STORY

  TUESDAY

  OK, so the Smithsonian isn’t just a museum. It’s like a hundred and fifty museums. Well, maybe not that many, but a bunch. Monticello was very nice – that’s the house Thomas Jefferson lived in – and took up the morning, then we had lunch at a cafeteria that was very good, but a tad expensive, then we headed to the Smithsonian. And that shot the entire afternoon! I’m not kidding! The whole baritone section didn’t come with us when we left the Air and Space building, wanting to see everything, not just the interesting stuff, and we lost a few more in the Lifestyles or whatever building – the one with Archie Bunker’s chair from All in the Family. I wasn’t really interested in any of that fal-de-ral, but then I found this building that had this big walk-in display of the dresses worn by the first ladies over the years. Now that was something! Me and Rachael sorta got stuck in there, discussing the intricacies of some of the hand work. Who knew? Rachael sewed, just like me, and she didn’t need a pattern either. There was a bench, and we just sat there for the longest and oo’ed and aw’ed over those dresses.