Bones by the Wood

by Johnson, Catherine

  Alex’s eyebrows climbed a couple of notches. “You know him?” She asked Thea.

  Thea hoped she wasn’t blushing. Not all the house lights were up, but it was plenty bright enough for everyone to see if she was turning beet red. “Not really. We’ve chatted when he’s been in the store.”

  “He said he helped you out with somethin’ the other night.” Annelle was keeping her expression carefully blank.

  “Did he tell you what?”

  Annelle hitched one shoulder. Thea took that as ‘yes, but I’m not talking about it here’. That didn’t leave Thea an awful lot to say, so she shrugged and concentrated on drinking her coffee. “Wasn’t much.” She mumbled into her mug.

  Myla was smiling widely, though. “That man can help me out with anythin’, any time.”

  A sharp spike of jealousy nearly caused Thea to choke on her drink, but she kept her eyes down and concentrated on the muted pattern in the carpet until she was sure it had passed. She’d known that Myla had fucked Dizzy, but she hadn’t been expecting to end up actually discussing it with her. She knew that should she want to do the same, she could probably throw herself at him and he’d be unlikely to say ‘no’. It didn’t seem like bikers were big on self-restraint, but for the sake of her own self-respect she needed to take a step back. She didn’t want to end up with a reputation at the clubhouse; that would make life very difficult. She was just going to have to live vicariously, but she still didn’t want to hear the low down, dirty details.

  Thea had been staring at the carpet so hard that she hadn’t seen Lucy come back to the bar. Her head snapped up when she spoke.

  “Yeah, well, Britney said he wasn’t so fuckin’ legendary the other night.” Lucy stepped behind the bar and helped herself to a refill.

  “Because she got brushed off.” Myla was grinning. “The man obviously has taste.”

  Having filled her mug with more coffee, Lucy rounded the bar on her way back to the dressing room. “More like he’s too old to get it up all the time.”

  “I’d be careful about sayin’ stuff like that, hon.” Annelle advised Lucy. “’Specially when it’s far from the truth.”

  Thea couldn’t figure out why Annelle’s eyes flicked to her when she was speaking. She hadn’t insulted anyone’s manhood, and she knew better than to fling accusations like that around when the dick in question was attached to a body wearing a kutte.

  The moment, which was turning a little tense, was interrupted by the muffled raps of someone knocking on the front door. Lucy, probably to escape further admonishment from Annelle, left her mug on the bar counter and went to answer it. She returned holding two brown boxes. One was larger than other, but neither seemed to be particularly heavy or difficult to carry.

  “What’ve you girls been orderin’ this time?” Annelle asked, as Lucy placed the boxes on the bar.

  “They’re not for us. One’s got your name on, the other is for Thea,” Lucy replied, obviously put out that she’d expended energy in the service of other people.

  Annelle had nearly finished slicing through the tape that bound her box with a small knife that was kept behind the bar. When she registered what Lucy had said, she stopped and looked at Thea, who was equally confused.

  “Why would someone send somethin’ here for me?”

  “You didn’t order anythin’ to be delivered here?”

  “No. Why would I? If I get somethin’ I don’t want Josh to see I get it sent to Clarice across the hall.”

  Annelle pushed her box away, but the movement caused the last strip of tape to give way and the flaps popped open.

  “Guess we know it ain’t a bomb then.” Lucy said dryly.

  “Guess so.” Annelle muttered as she pulled the box back towards her and opened it more fully. Thea had noticed that everyone else had leaned back, away from the counter, but when nothing went boom, and when they saw the blood drain from Annelle’s face, they leant forward.

  “Nell, what is it?”

  Thea’s question seemed to snap Annelle out of a trance. She was staring with wide eyes at whatever was in the innocent-looking box. Annelle closed the flaps and put her palm firmly on top of the box to keep them closed.

  “You don’t need to see what’s in there.”

  Thea grabbed the box addressed to her and the knife.

  “Thea, no!” Annelle shouted, and made a grab for her hand, but she wasn’t quick enough, hampered by the fact that she was still concealing whatever had been delivered in her name.

  Thea ran the knife through the tape swiftly. Her box was slightly larger and flatter than Annelle’s, but still standard brown cardboard sealed with shiny brown packing tape. Her fingers were trembling when she pulled the flaps back, but it was confusion, not fear, that filled her when she saw the contents. She reached in and pulled out the science textbook that was apparently the only contents. She flipped through the pages.

  But even before Annelle’s perplexed “What the...?” cut the silence, Thea’s confusion was replaced by bone-numbing, muscle-freezing fear. Trapped in between the cover and the first page was a snapshot of Josh outside his school. Thea flipped through the rest of the pages again, but there were no further photos.

  The shaking had extended from her hands to the rest of her limbs. She could even feel it in her voice. “Josh said he couldn’t find this textbook. He’s got detention today because he couldn’t find it. How the fuck did someone get hold of it and how... why, did they deliver it here?” Thea looked at Annelle, almost pleading with her to come up with a rational explanation, something that would erase the terror she suddenly felt for her son.

  “What’s in your box?” Lucy was asking Annelle as she made a grab for it. Stunned by Thea’s predicament, Annelle was too slow to stop Lucy from opening it. When Lucy registered the contents, she went white, then green, then shoved the box away from her. It slid down the bar, knocked into Thea’s empty box, and came to rest in front of the other girls. It was impossible not to see the flaccid penis and the attached scrotal sack that were nestled in red tissue paper inside. Thea’s world stopped, tilted and started spinning again on a different axis.

  Myla put the back of her hand over her mouth as she stepped back. She was gagging, but she managed not to throw up.

  “What the fuck? Who? Why?” Lucy stuttered. Her skin was still so white that with her dark brown hair she appeared positively ghostly.

  “I don’t know. I really fucking don’t.” Annelle shook her head.

  “We need to call the boys.” Lyla tipped her head towards the grisly package.

  “Yes. Yes, you’re right. I’ll do it.” Annelle found her bag and fished her phone out of it. She dialed the call and then wedged the phone between her ear and her shoulder while she helped herself to a generous shot of vodka from the bar.

  “I’m goin’ to call the school. Make sure Josh is still there.”

  Annelle jerked her head in a sort of nod at Thea’s assertion and then turned her attention back to the call which had connected. Caught up in her own panicked fact-finding, Thea didn’t hear Annelle’s side of the conversation. Somehow, managing to avoid stating precisely why, but by insinuating that it was related to his father, Thea managed to get the secretary at the school to run and check that Josh was in the classroom that he was supposed to be in. As satisfied that she could be for the moment that he was safe, and desperately wishing she could just go and pick him up, Thea ended the call and returned to the bar. She’d wandered away so that the sound of her telephone call didn’t interrupt Annelle’s. Every motherly instinct within her screamed at her to run to the school and clutch her boy in her arms, but her head was equally adamant that she didn’t know what or who might follow her to the school.

  “Dizzy wants us at the clubhouse. Now.” Annelle told the girls as Thea approached. Lyla nodded, seemingly the most calm of the group. Thea remembered a snatch of conversation, that Lyla was with one of the patches in the new club. It scared Thea to think that this might not have bee
n the first time the perfectly coiffed girl had seen a box containing body parts.

  Thea replaced the textbook and photo in her box and held it close to her chest as she hefted her worn, fringed satchel onto her shoulder and followed Annelle, who was holding her own box as far away from her body as she could, out of the club to their cars. She squinted in the bright sunlight. The glare, after the half-gloom of the club, was oppressive. She was blinded and convinced that an assailant was going to jump out while she had her eyes closed against the brilliance of the clear blue sky.

  The six of them made quite the convoy as they drove to the clubhouse. It was all Thea could do not spin her car into a one-eighty and head over to the school.

  Chapter Nine

  Thea remembered the pretty building well, but it had changed in the months since she’d last visited. It was bigger now, and the additions, particularly the concrete section with the roller shutter doors, made it look less homey than it had before. There were a number of bikes outside the clubhouse, all lined up against the wall, facing away from the building. Annelle, being at the front of their little caravan, parked to one side of the dusty space. The rest of them followed suit, taking care not to block the road that led to the lot.

  As they climbed out of their vehicles, a man wearing a kutte came out of the door and waited for them. It didn’t improve the state of Thea’s nerves any to see that he had a large handgun held loosely by his side. He scanned the area around the clubhouse and waved them inside with his free hand. Thea’s nerves unraveled a little bit further when she got close and saw the scars that crossed his face and his hard, emotionless, green eyes. She tried not to stare, kept her eyes straight ahead, and clutched the box a little closer to her chest as she stepped down into the cool, shaded space. She felt a measure of comfort just being sheltered from the bright light of the day.

  The club members, Thea didn’t know if this was the full club or if here were any missing, were sitting on the stools that lined the bar. Dizzy was roughly in the middle of the lineup, facing the doorway, watching them walk in. A shorter man with curly hair threaded with grey was sitting to his left, and to his left were the two giants she’d seen in the store. On Dizzy’s right was an empty stool, and on the other side of that a man with a thin, wiry physique and dirty blonde, really more light brown hair and goatee. Lyla detached from their group and went straight to that man who ground his cigarette out as Lyla approached and pulled her into a tight embrace. Thea had seen the man in the store and figured he was one of life’s permanently scruffy people like herself. If she had been asked to pick which patch Lyla was with, it would not have been him. The last man on Dizzy’s right had auburn hair, a scruff of beard and bright eyes. A young man that Thea recognized as a local was busy behind the bar, but she couldn’t see exactly what he was doing.

  Thea hung back as Annelle approached Dizzy, still holding her gruesome cargo at arm’s length. Dizzy took it from her without blinking and Thea saw Annelle’s shoulders sag visibly with the release of tension. Dizzy turned and put the box on the bar. Thea couldn’t see, but he must have opened it. The other patches all leaned forward. Lyla leaned as far away as the arm around her would permit. There were no exclamations and no one, not even the man behind the bar, flinched.

  Dizzy turned and looked over their little group. He ran his fingertips around the brim of the Stetson he was wearing before he spoke. “Not what you want to see over your mornin’ coffee, girls, I can understand that. We got two packages ourselves. I won’t tell you what was in one of ‘em, ‘cept I think we know who these jewels belong to. The other was a feather, a big purple feather.”

  For the first time that day Thea saw that Lyla was visibly affected. “One of my purple fans went missing the other night. I was at a gig in LA, and when I finished changing it had gone. I thought it had been stolen.”

  “This look like it came from that fan?” The man that had overseen their entry to the building leaned over the bar, when he stood upright again, he was holding a feather that looked exactly like the ones in the ostrich feather fans that Thea had seen Lyla and Myla using that morning, although it was a different color.

  “Yeah, that looks like it’s from one of them.” Lyla nodded.

  “What did you get, sweetheart?” It took Thea a beat to realize that Dizzy was speaking to her.

  She stepped out from behind Annelle and handed Dizzy the box, although she was strangely reluctant to part with it. “It looks like it’s one of my son’s school books. There’s a photo of him outside his school inside it.”

  A look of surprise crossed Dizzy’s face like a flash of lightening before his expression settled back into friendly, but benign, concern. He set the box down on his knee and pulled the book out of it. He found the photo, held it up and took a good look at it, and then placed the book back in the box, set the photo on top of it, and set the box down on the bar next to the other one that had been delivered to the club.

  “Who signed for these?” The shorter man on Dizzy’s left asked.

  Lucy spoke up. “Me. ‘Cept I didn’t need to sign for them. I didn’t realize it was odd at the time, I wasn’t thinkin’, but the guy just handed them over.”

  “What did he look like?” The short man asked.

  “Dark skin, dark eyes, kinda a little beard.” Lucy shrugged.

  “You think he could have been Mexican?”

  “Yeah, I guess. He had an accent, but he didn’t say much. He might not have been, though.”

  The patches all nodded, and then stilled as a phone chimed. Dizzy snagged a handset that had been on the bar behind his elbow. “Hey, Samuel. What did Shark say? Yeah. Uh huh.” Dizzy motioned to one of the other men, one of the giants that Thea had seen in the store, the one with the buzz cut. They held out another box, keeping the flaps open so Dizzy could see the contents, but they obscured Thea’s view. “Yeah, a set of scales, the old fashioned kind.” Dizzy put his hand into the box and moved some of the contents around. “A star, yeah like on a compass, and a ship, like a pirate ship. Yeah, a lot of nautical stuff. Yeah, yeah. No I agree, it ain’t likely. We got a cock and balls here, too. Reckon they’re his. They were sent to one of the clubs. Thanks, brother, sorry about this. Yeah, I know.”

  As Dizzy ended the call the other patch closed the box up and put it back on the counter. The man behind the bar handed Dizzy a towel, he wiped his hands and handed it back.

  “I’m goin’ to be honest with you ladies ‘cause I want you to understand what’s goin’ on. We got some people from across the border that ain’t overly happy with us. Nothin’ we’ve done, just business. Either way, they sent us the feather, that book,” he inclined his head towards Thea, “and some pieces of an old member of the Rabid Dogs. That gentleman would have been about seventy-three, and we’re assumin’ he’s not survived the takin’ of these souvenirs. So we’re goin’ into lockdown. The fact that somethin’ got sent to the club and that you personally got a box, means you’re all targets, as well as us, and for that I’m sorry. It’s not our way of doin’ business, but these folks across the border don’t got the same morals. We’re goin’ to need y’all to stay here for a few days so we can keep you safe while we make sure these guys are dealt with appropriately.”

  Thea shook her head. The fear that had filled her hadn’t exactly disappeared, more that it had sharpened into a firm focus. She had stopped shaking like a leaf, for which she was infinitely grateful. “I can’t stay here. I have to go.”

  “Go where, sweetheart?” Dizzy was no longer looking particularly friendly, despite the endearment. Thea figured he wasn’t used to people, women, disagreeing with him right off the bat.

  “I have to go get Josh.”

  Dizzy’s expression softened, slightly. “He can stay here, too. But you’re not goin’ anywhere on your own. They’ve sent you a direct threat, you and your boy. You understand that, right?”

  Thea’s head snapped round at the sharp sound of Lucy’s voice. “Not bein’ funny Thea, but
how come you get your own box? What makes you so fuckin’ important to these guys?” Lucy took a step back as some of the expressions around her turned hostile, but she kept her chin up.

  “They’ve threatened people close to the club.” Dizzy explained patiently. “They knew Thea was with y’all this mornin’, which means they’ve been followin’ her, so they’ve probably seen her with me.”

  Some highly curious faces turned towards her, but Thea had no intention of elaborating with any explanation of what Dizzy was implying.

  When Alex spoke up, her voice was quiet and soft, and Thea had to strain to hear what she was saying. “Why send you pieces of an old man who’s not even from your club?”

  The man to Dizzy’s left answered. Despite the riot of curly hair, he was the epitome of seriousness. “It’s an example of how far their reach is and the lengths that they’re willin’ to go to.”

  Dizzy’s voice was conciliatory when he addressed Thea. “Look, there’s no point goin’ to the school yet. Your boy’s safe there. Stay here. We’ll get him when it’s time for him to come home.”