by Amy Metz
Martha Maye stood at the front door after Johnny left, wondering what she should do. Then she heard approaching sirens.
“Good heavenly days,” she said, staring at the flashing lights coming up the street.
Velveeta sat with her children in the window of the McDonald’s across the street from the Piggly Wiggly. She wasn’t on duty but had volunteered to stake out the grocery store and let Johnny know the moment Estherlene arrived and the moment she left.
She’d been watching the grocery store more than her children, and Cinnamon’s whine brought her attention back to the table.
“Mama, he stole my French fry,” she wailed.
“Roscoe, give your sister a fry back.”
“You want this one?” he asked his sister, opening his mouth wide to show her the mostly chewed-up fry.
“Ew! No!” Cinnamon cried. “Mama!”
“Roscoe, I done told you to stop. Keep it up, and you’re gonna get a switching.”
Roscoe rolled his eyes and then stuck his tongue out at his sister.
“Son, you roll those eyes at me one more time, and I’ll roll that head of yours.”
Roscoe sulked, and the three ate in silence for a few moments, while Velveeta continued to watch the door of the Piggly Wiggly. She could see Estherlene’s big Buick LeSabre parked near the front of the lot. She looked at her watch and thought it should be about time for Estherlene to be finished with her shopping.
Suddenly, she heard a splash and felt cold wetness seep across her leg. Gasping as she jumped up, she watched orange Hi-C spill across the table, dripping onto the floor.
“Roscoe!”
“I didn’t do it, Mama, I didn’t,” Roscoe cried.
“Oh yes he did,” Cinnamon said. “He was stealing another French fry, and he knocked it over. It serves him right.”
“Uh-uh, she stole one of mine, and she knocked it over.”
“Lands sakes, y’all are both one fry short of a Happy Meal. Literally and figuratively,” Velveeta added under her breath. To the children, she said, “It don’t matter who knocked the drink over. We gotta get it cleaned up.” She stalked off to gather more napkins.
She was in the midst of cleaning up the spilled mess when an employee came over with a mop and bucket. “I’ll get it for you, ma’am.”
“Oh, thank you,” she said, moving out of the way. “Roscoe, tell the nice lady thank you for cleaning up your mess.”
“Thank you, ‘ady.”
The woman finished mopping, and Velveeta gathered up the wet napkins and took them to the trash bin. She filled Roscoe’s cup with more Hi-C and came back to the table. After she straightened the hamburger wrappers and set the French fry containers back in front of her children, she sat back with a tired sigh. As the kids began to eat again, she looked around the room and then outside. Her eyes settled on the Piggly Wiggly sign, and she suddenly remembered Estherlene. She quickly looked at the spot where the car had been parked. It was gone.
Her eyes searched the lot frantically. Estherlene couldn’t have come out and driven away that fast. The car must be there somewhere. She’d only been distracted for a minute. But she finally had to accept the truth. She’d looked away for longer than a minute, and she had messed up. Big time.
She scrambled through her purse for her cell phone.
Johnny flew across the lawn and into Estherlene’s house, calling dispatch for backup and an ambulance, half-disbelieving what Jack had told him. But when he entered the room at the top of the stairs, his heart sank.
A bearded, gaunt Hector Bumgarner sat at the edge of the bed wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a leg iron. He was tethered to the bed and sitting on grimy bedclothes that reeked of urine. His ribs were visible through his skin. The room’s window had been covered with plywood.
“Well, don’t that knock your shirt in the dirt.” Johnny gaped. “I guess he did have something wrong with his leg. Really wrong.”
“I got him some water but didn’t touch anything otherwise,” Jack said. “I knew you’d need to see everything as I found it. He says he’s not sure how long he’s been in here, but the last civilized day he remembers was sometime in September. I didn’t get to look around much. I’ll do that presently.” Jack walked off down the hall.
“What month is it?” Hector asked with a raspy throat.
“Holy crap,” Johnny muttered. “Why’d she do this to you?”
“‘Cause she’s batshit crazy, that’s why!” the man rasped just before Nosmo King and his partner, Cathy Lawson, swept in.
“Hold it, y’all,” Johnny said. “Back up one minute.” He took out his iPhone and opened the camera app. He took several pictures of the room and of Hector and then said, “Okay, go ahead and treat him, but disturb as little as you can in this room.”
Jack yelled for Johnny, who followed the sound of his voice to the master bedroom. Jack knelt in front of the closet and had laid out a towel on the ground. On top of the towel was a pair of pants smeared with bloodstains. “The pants were wrapped up in this towel. She’d stashed it in the back of her closet.”
“Well, I’ll be,” Johnny said, standing with his hands on his hips, not quite believing what he saw. He leaned down closer to the pants. “Looks like she wiped the knife across her pants, doesn’t it? I always thought she was neither left-brained nor right-brained, but come on.” He donned a pair of latex gloves.
“Looks like we got her,” Jack said. “Your gut was right, Johnny.”
“Sometimes I hate my guts,” Johnny said. “Leave everything just like that, Jack. I’ve got to get folks in here to examine the crime scene. What’s that?” Johnny pointed to a piece of paper sticking out of Estherlene’s pants pocket. He carefully reached in and removed it.
“It’s some kind of a letter.” Jack stood to look at the note Johnny held. “It’s addressed to Butterbean. What in the—”
“We’ll bag it and mark it as evidence.”
“But don’t you want to know what’s inside it?”
“All in good time, my friend.” Johnny turned toward the door and hollered, “Hank!”
Hank came around the corner into the room.
“Go cut your lights and move your cruiser around to Walnut Street. Tell Nosmo King to load Mr. Bumgarner as fast as possible and get him to the hospital. I don’t want to scare off Estherlene. Everything has to look normal when she comes home from the grocery.”
“Solid copy,” Hank said, running off to carry out his orders. Johnny’s phone rang. It was Velveeta.
She was talking a mile a minute before he could even say one word. “I’m sorry, Chief. I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t think I looked away that long. If stupidity were a crime, I’d be number one on the Most Wanted List. I am so sorry. Roscoe was bugging his sister, and then he spill—”
“Velveeta!” Johnny snapped. “Just tell me the time, don’t tell me how the dang watch works!”
“She’s gone. Somehow I missed her coming out. I was cleaning up a spilled drink, and the next thing I knew, her car was gone.”
Johnny ran down the stairs and out to the front lawn, scanning the area. And then he saw it—the nose of Estherlene’s old maroon Buick LeSabre, stopped at the corner. He could just make out the silhouette of Estherlene’s big hair. She was leaning forward, craning her neck, trying to see what was going on at her house. Johnny took off running.
Estherlene had thoughts of making pickles as she headed home from the Piggly Wiggly, drinking from a can of Mtn Dew and tapping a beat on the steering wheel. She got ready to turn onto Marigold Lane when the flashing lights caused her to stop. A police car and ambulance were in front of her house. Great day in the morning! How in the world did they find out?
She’d been so careful. Everything had gone so smoothly. Nobody had missed Hector.
She saw the chief’s massive body fly out of her house and stop on the porch. She saw him scanning, searching. She saw him find her car, and their eyes locked for a few frozen moments
. When he started running across the lawn, she stepped on the accelerator and peeled rubber.
A one-eyed mule can’t be handled on the blind side.
~Southern Proverb
Johnny reached the edge of the lawn, heard the squeal of tires on pavement, and saw Estherlene speed off. He wasted no time. In a flash, he jumped in his car, backed it out of Martha Maye’s driveway, and flipped on the lights and siren. Estherlene had a good fifteen-second start on him, but there were two ways to go: to town or to the countryside. He figured she’d head into the countryside where she could drive faster. In his rearview mirror, he saw Hank Beanblossom also in pursuit, as he turned left, then right, and left again, blowing through stop signs. Once he left city streets and turned onto a county road, he called Bernadette.
“I’m in pursuit of a 1974 maroon Buick LeSabre, going south on Route 42. Anyone in the vicinity, please respond. Subject is a suspect in a homicide.”
“Ten-four, Chief. You watch yourself now.” He heard the call go out over the radio and prayed someone was on Route 42 coming north.
Johnny remembered seeing the frightened look on Martha Maye’s face just before he pulled out of her driveway. No worries, Bernadette, I got a mighty good reason to be careful.
Route 42 was a curvy, hilly road with a speed limit of forty-five on the straight patches and twenty-five on the curves. Johnny barreled down the road at sixty, taking the curves at thirty-five with Hank right on his bumper. He’d seen Estherlene up ahead, but now he lost sight of her taillights. He guessed she was maybe a quarter of a mile up ahead. He punched the accelerator and heard a warning in his head: You can’t catch her if you wrap your car around a tree.
Speeding past farms, Johnny barely noticed cows behind barbed wire fencing, grazing amid hay bales. Purple asters and ironweed growing wild alongside the road blurred as he raced down the sun-dappled country road. He passed empty cornfields on his left, and to his right jimsonweed and chicory mingled with pumpkin patches still dotted with orange. The road was resplendent with greens, oranges, reds, yellows, maroon—his mind screeched to a stop.
Maroon. He’d just passed a flash of sunlight gleaming off of something maroon.
He’d lost sight of Estherlene’s car, which was hard to do, considering it was the size of a barge. When he saw the color maroon and the flash of light out of the corner of his eye, he knew she must’ve ducked into one of the farm driveways. Seconds after he came to this realization, he heard a crash. In his rearview mirror, he saw the LeSabre had T-boned Hank’s cruiser and was pushing it—and Hank—off the road.
Johnny made a split-second decision. He pulled the steering wheel to the left and slammed on the brakes, feeling his car skid. He veered sideways, coming to a stop diagonally across both lanes of the country road. Estherlene had succeeded in pushing Hank’s car off the road and into the ditch. Johnny could see the smoking car, nose down amid the ragweed and goldenrod.
Now she backed up, turned, and headed straight toward Johnny.
As Estherlene’s car barreled toward him, he flashed back to playing chicken as a kid. He could see his friend Peter coming at him on his ten-speed bike. Peter thought Johnny would dodge, and Johnny thought Peter would chicken out. Neither did, and they’d crashed head on.
As her car sped toward his and he realized she wasn’t going to stop or veer around him, his hand flew to the gearshift, but he was out of time. He felt the impact as her car slammed into the side of his cruiser. Big hair, blue sky, orange and yellow leaves, the white of the air bag, and the image of Martha Maye’s smiling face were the last things he saw before blacking out.
Jack, Tess, and Honey were at Martha Maye’s house when she got the call. As soon as Johnny had left to find Estherlene, Jack called Tess, asking her to come be with Martha Maye. Honey had come over when she heard the sirens and saw the commotion. The little house was full of tension as they waited for word from Johnny telling them everything was all right.
When the phone sounded, Martha Maye lurched for it, answering it on the first ring. She listened, said, “Thank you,” and then hung up and headed for the door.
Tess and Honey were at her side in a flash. “Wait. What happened?” they asked together.
As if in a trance, Martha Maye patted her pockets, realizing she didn’t have her keys. “I have to get to the hospital. Johnny’s been in an accident.” Her face was tight with fear. “I have to get to the hospital,” she repeated.
“Okay, Martha Maye, settle down, we’ll get you there,” Jack said. “What did they tell you?”
“Johnny’s been in an accident,” she repeated, too stunned to say anything else. She went to the kitchen and came back with her purse.
“Hold up, Martha Maye! Don’t get your cows running. Johnny’s a tough old bird; he’ll be all right.” They all rushed after her. “Let’s get you there in one piece, okay?”
When they arrived at the hospital, Hank was sitting sideways on a gurney in the hallway, one leg dangling off, the other in an aircast on the hospital bed. He had cuts and scrapes all over his face. Stitches sewed together a five-inch gash over his right eye. His arm was in a sling, and when he saw Martha Maye, he swung his injured leg down and limped toward her and her entourage.
“Hank, how is he?” she asked, grabbing his good arm.
“I’m fine, thanks,” he said, as he smiled and hugged her.
“Well, shoot fire, I’m sorry, Hank. It’s just that I can see you. You’re alive and walking.” She swallowed hard. “What about Johnny?”
Hank led them to a waiting room set aside for consultation with family members. They all crowded into the little room, and Hank sat down gingerly.
“I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, Martha Maye. It’s bad. He was unconscious when they brought him in. He’s in surgery now. He has a subdural hematoma, which is something like a tear somewhere up here”—he motioned to his head—”and there was hemorrhaging compressing his brain. He also has a break in his right tibia. Plus some minor sprains and lots of scrapes and bruising.”
“How did it go down, Hank?” Jack asked.
“She T-boned both of us. First she backed into me as I passed the drive she’d ducked into. I figure she was waiting for Johnny and didn’t know I was behind him. She was just gunning it out onto the road when I started to pass. She wasn’t going that fast, but she floored it after she rammed me and pushed me into the ditch. And then she righted her car and drove smack dab into the side of the chief’s car.”
“Where was he at that point?”
“He’d pulled his car diagonal across the road to try to block her in. I could hear sirens coming from town. She knew her goose was cooked. She lit into him at maybe fifty miles an hour and kept going. Man alive, that LeSabre is like a tank. Skeeter was right behind us, as was Northington, and they got there and took over. Skeeter chased her, and she was going too fast for that curvy road. She went into a curve and didn’t come out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say she owes Old Man Crider a new fence.”
“How’s Hector?” Honey asked.
“He’s got a tough row to hoe. He’s dehydrated and malnourished. Looks like he’ll be in the hospital for quite a while.”
“That poor man.” Martha Maye shook her head. “And what about Estherlene?”
“She’s got a sprained ankle, but other than that, she’s fit as a fiddle. Velveeta’s upstairs now questioning her.”
“Velveeta’s done questioning,” the officer said from the doorway. All heads turned toward her. “Hey, y’all. I was passing by and heard you talking. Martha Maye, I’m so sorry. I feel like this was all my fault. If I hadn’t looked away, maybe none of this would have happened. I’m sick about it. I’m so, so sorry.”
Martha Maye went to Velveeta and patted her arm. “Hush now. You just make sure the case against her is airtight. You hear?”
“Oh, it’s airtight. She confessed to everything. Didn’t have much choice. We had her dead to rights. Appa
rently, she’d been after Lenny for a while. He wasn’t interested and kept blowing her off. Said he liked a woman whose skin fit her better.”
“That sounds like Lenny. But how did she get in my house? She killed him with my kitchen knife, after all.”
“Yeah, she said she saw someone over there, and she thought it was Lenny.”
“Lenny was in my house?”
“I’ll bet it was T. Harry,” Jack cut in.
“No, I’m thinking it was Lenny,” Velveeta said. “She said she walked through the backyards and saw the back door open, so she went in. She found a pumpkin with a heart carved out of it, along with a note sitting on the table, but no Lenny. She figured he’d left it, and figured the note was for Martha Maye, so she put it—”
“In her pocket,” Jack interrupted. “I found it in the bloody pants in her closet. It was addressed to Butterbean. I turned it in as evidence.”
“Oh my goodness.” Martha Maye’s eyes teared up.
“Estherlene must’ve been blind with jealousy and rage,” Velveeta continued.
“What on earth for?” Martha Maye cried.
“Like I said, she’d been after him for weeks, but he always shot her down. The last time he said no, he wasn’t exactly whatcha call a gentleman. He told her he’d rather stare directly at the sun with binoculars than have carnal knowledge of her.”
“Oh my.”
“Yep. That didn’t sit too well with her, which was why she was going over to find him. She’d gotten it in her mind to blackmail him. She knew about all the women he’d picked up at the bar, and she was going to threaten to tell you, Martha Maye, and/or the judge. She was going to force him to sleep with her or else. But once she found him, her plans changed.”
“Lawzie, that woman was ate up with him.” Martha Maye, eyes wide, shook her head.
“She said she walked back out and around the side of the house, where she found him and confronted him. He told her, uh . . .” Velveeta looked at her notes. “She looked like three pounds of ugly in a two-pound sack.” She looked up. “And then he turned his back on her and began to urinate in Martha Maye’s garden—you know, the one by the front door. She stabbed him in the neck and walked away.”
