“Oh, yes. The polio. I keep forgetting. Nevertheless, you must both come to me at once. If someone is threatening to kill my niece, we must hide her well and protect her intelligently. I will not brook anyone threatening my family, no matter what.
“Bring some of your guns, Stony. All I have is a twenty-gauge shotgun loaded with birdshot and a .38 pistol.” Already her busy mind was arranging rooms, laying out plans to keep both of her kinspeople occupied enough to avoid thinking about their situation. The dogs were important to her, but she had never become so attached to them that she valued them above people.
“We can come tomorrow, if that’s all right?” Stony sounded relieved.
“Come at once, if you want. Can’t have my niece murdered by a burglar, now can we?” She stretched her arthritic knee and set about flexing it, ignoring the pain as she kept it mobile. “You come right on, and I will have things ready when you arrive.”
“Thanks, Auntie. And I’m sorry about Uncle Louis. I didn’t know.” He sounded genuinely regretful.
“My own fault, boy. I should have written you, but somehow, what with the estate and the dogs and everything, I never even wrote his own sister, down in Lafayette. I’ll do that right now, before I forget again.”
She wrote the note before rising from the telephone table, scribbling an abrupt and yet heartfelt message inside a note-card and stamping it for mailing. But her mind was not entirely on her task. She was thinking of Lily, who had been a drug addict and a runaway.
The child had been dreamy and hard to handle, it was true. But Allison felt rather certain that her great-niece’s adventure in her youth had been caused by the sort of romantic nature she recognized in herself.
Her own marriage had been as unexpected and intense, as shocking to those who knew her as a reclusive and intellectual thirty-year-old, as Lily’s abrupt departure had been to her own family. Only a matter of generations had made a difference in the way that trait had cropped out.
She rose, forcing her back straight, and made her recalcitrant knees march toward the kitchen, where her friend and long-time employee now reigned. “Maggie!” she called, as she stumped into the room, “We’re going to have company. My brother’s grandchildren are coming for a visit.”
Not for a moment did she consider letting Maggie know the reason for that visit. The girl had, at seventy-two, settled down a bit, but she still was prone to excited ditherings over what had to be taken as the normal dangers and dilemmas of life.
“The little boy and girl? Miss Allie! What a treat! They must be grown by now.” Maggie’s coffee-colored cheeks stretched into a grin.
“And then some,” Allison said, her tone gruff. “Tell Sissy to make up the two front rooms over the south porch. Livingston is lame—you remember he had polio, back when he was a child? So see that the little stair-rail lift is working, to take him up the stairs.”
Maggie looked smug. “Been wanting to fix it up so’s you can use it your own self,” she mumbled toward the piecrust she was rolling paper-thin on the marble slab topping the work table.
Allison was not that deaf. “I heard that! The day I am too lame to climb my own stairs, I shall move my bedroom down into the sun parlor and forget the house has those upstairs rooms. Until then, you just do as I ask and don’t try to make me feel old!”
* * * * * * *
The day whisked past, and by the time the Toyota pulled to a stop in the drive, everything had been done to her specifications, although she had spent most of that period exercising the dogs. Her staff, rare in these modern times, was middle-aged to elderly, determined to last at least as long as she did, and devoted to their crotchety employer. Things got done at Allison Vernier’s breeding farm, and others in the business could only envy her.
She showered and changed. When the newcomers stepped out of the little car, she went slowly down the steps to meet them, her gait nicely suited to the condition of her knees. “Stony! Lily!” She stretched out her hands to them, noting with unexpected pain that both now showed their age, and detecting the effort with which her great-nephew forced his thin limbs to move as he came to meet her.
“Aunt Allie.” He took her hand lightly into his, and she realized that he, too, knew the agony of a tight handclasp on meeting a stranger unfamiliar with arthritic joints.
Lily stood there, tall and somewhat awkward, her expression uncertain. Though she was every day of thirty-nine, she still had the look of an awkward teenager. Allison put an arm about her waist (being too short to reach any higher) and gave her a little hug.
“Welcome, children. It has been too long—and we are the last of the Frosts. We must do this more often and with happier reasons.” She reached to take her cane from the spot where she had leaned it against the porch railing, and they moved together back into the house.
It was strange, she thought, as she ushered them into the sitting room and placed them on either side of her deep chair. She had all but forgotten these two in her busy round of tasks.
Yet now that she saw them, she felt a surge of protective possessiveness go through her. They were her own flesh and blood, her brother’s descendants. Anyone threatening them would have Allison Frost Vernier to contend with!
But she made herself relax, smiling and chatting and helping her guests to lose a bit of the tension that was so evident in their bodies and faces. By the time Maggie came with coffee in the best china cups and plates of thin tea-cakes, they had all begun to talk easily together in the faded splendor of the sitting room, with the last of the sunset dyeing the sky scarlet beyond the French windows. While Livingston described the burglary, she watched Lily. According to her infrequent communications with Livingston, the girl had been extremely frightened and terribly passive after her return home. Allison felt certain she had been desperately mistreated by the man with whom she eloped.
That had, to an extent, disgusted her, for she felt that any Frost worth her salt would have left the son-of-a-bitch, or killed him, or both.
But now Lily seemed reasonably relaxed. She even described the men who broke into the house, though in years past she would have left all the talking to her brother. Her eyes had lost the look of terror that lived there for so long, though by rights this new danger should have left her terrified.
Allison found herself growing angry. What right had a bunch of toughs to come pushing in and upset the recovery of this niece of hers, who had lived through so much pain and fear?
“Did you bring some guns?” she asked Stony, when Lily was done. “I called the sheriff after we talked, and he said he’d do what he could, but this is a poor county, and he hasn’t enough deputies to set a guard or anything like that.”
“I shipped them UPS,” her nephew said. “A Toyota isn’t built for carrying long guns. But I brought this one with me—it isn’t good for a fire-fight, but it can surprise the heck out of one person, one time.”
He offered her his cane, and she chuckled as she recognized her brother’s rifle cane. “Good thinking. I wish I had one myself. You just use that cane as if it were nothing but a walking stick, and I’ll load my .38—you remember it, Stony?—and keep it in my pocket. We’ll surprise the hell out of anybody who thinks he’s going to run over us!”
Somewhat to her surprise, Alison felt a surge of excitement. It had been too long since she had been faced with danger, and she felt her blood warming, her heartbeat picking up its pace. Not since that long-ago feud with the crooks running her parish had she needed to prepare for war, and it amused her to find that she was no more civilized now than she had been forty years ago.
CHAPTER TEN
Septien Carrefours
Septien Carrefours was not a wicked man. He had always assured himself that he was a thief—the best in the business—but not someone that the old grandmères would use to frighten children. Now he was growing uncomfortable.
Myron Duson was a violent man; there was no getting around that fact. He had the reputation for being one who left no livin
g witnesses, though Septien had discounted that when he was told about it. Surely nobody would be so foolish as to kill without a driving need. But this first job with Duson had shaken that assurance.
The man had a flair—that was undeniable. Yet this particular job had gone sour from the moment they walked into that old house and found the skinny woman making bread in the kitchen.
Septien had a weakness for tall, slender women, and he particularly liked domestic ones. He had been secretly relieved when it turned out that David Crowley hadn’t bashed in her skull after all.
When he discovered that the guns were almost worthless, it had filled him with a sort of wicked amusement. Duson was so cock-sure, so domineering, and so harsh that this proof of his fallibility was something Septien savored. Nobody was as good as Myron thought he was.
At that moment, Septien had been ready to bail out of the deal and go his own way. A thief with his expertise was always in demand, and he didn’t have to stand hitched with this man who seemed, more and more, to be crazy.
This was a proof of that. After getting away clean from that disaster behind them, was he sane enough to head for the tall timber? Anyone with sense would have done that.
But no! He was going back to Texas to try to kill that woman again. It made no sense to Septien; he wanted badly to stop the car, get out, and walk away across the flat fields alongside Interstate 10.
He had, however, a nasty feeling that Duson would shoot him in the back if he did. Whatever his scruples, Septien had no desire to die. Life was good, and his Emilie waited patiently for him to come back still again to Grosse Tête, down in the swamp country.
She was, he realized, much like that woman Duson wanted to kill. Perhaps that was why he objected so strenuously to the present job in hand.
That made another good reason to want to slip away from this madman and make a trail for Cajun country. But he drove and drove, with Duson sitting, sleepless and wordless, beside him, making the incredible return from Alexandria, where they had retrieved money from a secret stash Duson had left there. Duson was planning what? Septien would have given a lot to know just what was going on behind those flat, cold eyes. Still, he knew he was going to have to step carefully, if he was going to get away from this with a whole skin. The first step was to disable the car.
They stopped, of course, for gas and food and restrooms, from time to time. Septien had always been meticulous about checking the oil in any car he drove, owned or stolen, for he had seen too many careful planners brought down by a lack of attention to such details.
This was the fourth stolen car since that first one in which they had escaped the capture of the van. It was an unobtrusive gray Olds—an eighty-nine model, old enough not to arouse attention, and yet still powerful and dependable. He hoped its former driver had survived the crack on the head Duson had delivered when they liberated the car in Alexandria.
He had developed his usual affection for the vehicle, as it purred along the Interstate to Lake Charles, turned north toward DeRidder on Highway 171, and sped northward. When they were far from any convenient source of stolen cars, his planning began to go into effect. The gas was low, as he had intended.
“We mus’ stop at the nex’ Mom and Pop station. We need gas, and I got to stretch or I be going to get too stiff for anything,” he said, his tone casual.
Duson grunted. He had been dozing for the past half-hour. He had, Septien hoped, no suspicion that his henchman was getting restless.
“I stop at Ragley. Little place ahead. Get plenty travelers through, so they won’ notice us, I think. You stay in de car, jus’ in case.
“Right there, you know, there be a state road, turn off toward the wes’—save us gas and there ought to be no patrolmen there at all. Nothin’ out there but pine tree for miles.” He glanced aside at Duson.
“Sounds good. Just do it and get on with it,” Duson growled. “The sooner we get that bitch quieted down for good, the sooner we can go about our business. Just let me sleep!” He hitched himself around, put his hat over his face, and went silent.
Just right. If the car happened to go dead somewhere between Ragley and Merryville, there’d be nothing to steal for miles. Duson might get rattled enough to give him a chance to slip away into the woods, and once among the pines, Septien Carrefours could not be caught by any man, unless he wanted to be.
* * * * * * *
Ragley consisted of one store and a sign pointing toward the state road to Merryville. Septien pulled to a stop beside the pumps and got out to stretch. Duson didn’t move, and a muffled snort told him that the madman was sleeping.
A cheerful-looking old fellow came out of the store, accompanied by the tinkle of an old fashioned bell over the door, and asked, “What kin I do for you?”
“Fill up de gas, will you, while I check de oil?” Septien pulled the hood latch and went around to open the hood. While there, he quietly punctured the oil line, punching a carefully gauged hole that would let the oil escape slowly enough to allow them to travel a certain distance.
When the tank was filled, the hood went down softly, so as not to wake his passenger, and Septien doled out bills into the old man’s hand. The fellow didn’t seem a bit curious.
With a nod, he got back into the car and cranked it carefully—Duson would not hesitate to confiscate the ancient pickup truck parked at the side of the store building if the car showed early signs of demise. The man had never learned anything about cars, and that was an ignorance that was about to cost him dearly.
Septien turned onto the road. To his surprise, it had been black-topped since he last detoured in that direction. That might mean a bit more traffic than the road used to carry, but he intended to leave this vehicle before they hit Merryville, that was for sure and certain.
* * * * * * *
It didn’t take long to pass all the houses that were strung loosely along the road near the hamlet. Then they were in pine timber country. Cut over time after time, the young trees were coming back strongly, and he smelled the pine straw scent with pleasure.
It was spring! The woods were beginning to leaf out, the stands of hardwoods showing a mist of green and the dogwoods beginning to gleam with white among the dark tree trunks. It would be no problem to make his way to a suitable highway, going as straight through the woods as any arrow, guided by his sure instinct for direction.
The miles passed, and he almost dozed himself, for the road was contained between walls of trees, without any break to make for interest. And then a deer darted from the hedgerow on the right, directly in front of the car.
Septien jammed on his brakes, sending Duson flopping onto the dash, his head thumping on the windshield.
“You damn fool! You trying to kill me?” Duson was rubbing his head, looking about with the dazed expression a sudden awakening brings to a sleeper.
“Better bump your head than bash our radiator on a deer!” Septien pointed off to the left, where a blur of brown and a pale scut were disappearing into the trees.
“Well, start the goddam car and get us out of here!” Naturally, the engine had died, much to Septien’s satisfaction. The oil gauge, which had been indicating trouble for miles now, died with the engine. When he tried the ignition, nothing happened—the thing was probably frozen up tight.
“What’s the problem?” Duson opened his door and went around to the hood.
Septien smiled as he pulled the latch. Duson wouldn’t notice anything less than an engine that was entirely missing. “We see,” he said.
Standing beside his partner in crime, Septien bent over to peer into the workings of the motor. Oil was spattered all over everything, stinking to high heaven, but of course Duson didn’t know that such a condition wasn’t normal.
“I can’t tell you. I see nothin’ wrong, but this, it is a car I don’ know. Maybe there was something wrong when we take her, eh? It finally come apart, and leave us stranded here. Miles from anyplace!” He managed to make his voice sound despairing.
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“Where’s the nearest town?” Duson sounded ready to kill, and Septien stepped back.
“Maybe five—six miles. Not too far to walk. I do it many time back home.”
He knew with wicked amusement that Duson thought feet were made for the purpose of displaying expensive shoes. The idea of walking more than a couple of blocks on them would turn him pale. And it did.
“Six miles?” The man’s tone was furious. “Septien, when I told you to steal a car that wouldn’t be noticeable, I thought you knew enough not to lift a junker. Six miles!”
He turned back the way they had come. “How far back to Ragley?”
“Ten mile, maybe.”
“Did we pass any farms along the way?”
“Nothin’ but the pine tree for a long time now.”
“Shit!”
It was all the Cajun could do to keep from grinning openly. But he said, “Maybe there be a house up ahead. We gettin’ closer to de nex’ town than you think. You want to go see while I check out dis car? Maybe I can fin’ what is wrong, while you go.”
Muttering something obscene, Duson trudged away without answering. If there were a house up ahead, Septien pitied anyone living there. The mood Duson was in, he would have pitied a bear or a panther that met him on the road.
But that was not his concern. He would have time to get well into the woods before the madman returned, and Duson in the woods would be even more inept than he was under the hood of a car. The Cajun waited until a long curve up ahead took the departing shape out of sight.
Then Septien reached into the car for the bag of candy bars he always carried when he traveled. This was wet country, and he’d find water, he knew, though he also knew that it wouldn’t be that long before he emerged onto some road that would supply a ride or a vulnerable car to take him back toward Grosse Tête and his waiting Emilie.
Born Rebel and The Guns of Livingston Frost - Two Short Novels Page 11
