Gone South (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 3)

by Melanie Jackson

  “Was it this bad when you crossed the first time? How long did you feel nervous after?” Chuck asked quietly. Lightning flickered in the distance and rain began to fall in a sheer curtain. Chuck turned on the wipers. “You were only a kid. You must have been terrified.”

  “I was scared witless. And I’ve never stopped being nervous. I’ve spent the last decade looking over my shoulder, waiting for someone to catch up with me.” I didn’t look at Chuck, and I didn’t add what I was thinking, which was why couldn’t my son of a bitch father be dead? “Even in the Gulch I sometimes don’t feel completely safe.”

  Because the Gulch was full of people with pasts that could catch up with them, just as mine had, and some had history that was worse than mine. My life in McIntyre’s Gulch was built on a lie and therefore was fragile. But it was better than where I was that night—exposed without even a current ID. I hadn’t planted the protective hedge of lies and illusions that grew around me back home. McIntyre’s Gulch had been an oasis for runaways long before I was born. But I had cultivated my shelter, living like a mouse in the hedgerow because it felt safe from most predators who were looking for an easy lunch. Now I was flushed out into the open and I didn’t like it. I was visible and danger could come from anywhere.

  It was a good thing that Chuck hadn’t brought a gun along, because in that moment I might have swallowed it, I was so tired and despairing. Then I thought what else I could do with a gun and knew Chuck wouldn’t like that either, though I kind of viewed getting rid of my father as a public service.

  We found a blinking sign announcing an available room about a mile down the road. It was a seedy motel, single story built in the 50s. That much was apparent even in the dark. But they took cash and didn’t check IDs, and I figured that if the roof didn’t leak and the sheets were clean I would be happy.

  Part of me wanted to make things right with Chuck, to try and return our relationship to normal by making love. Certainly I am not above the sins of the flesh, but it had been a very long day and I was running on empty. The need for sleep was at the top of my hierarchy of needs. I’d see how sex looked in the morning.

  * * *

  That night, Inspector Goodhead lay on his back in bed with the covers pulled up to his chin. His eyes were wide. He was thinking instead of sleeping. He could hear Butterscotch’s gentle breathing coming from the twin bed next to his. He considered slipping out of his bed to join her, but knew that would be the wrong thing to do. She was tired and besides, he didn’t relish being rebuffed along with everything else he’d had to endure this evening.

  So instead he lay in bed with the covers pulled up to his chin and let his mind wander.

  Though he didn’t like to admit it, the fact was that when he got near Butterscotch he had all the instincts for self-preservation as a moth near a candle. He wasn’t sure if this was an entirely good—or bad—thing.

  One recurring thought that haunted him was that he was about to meet Butterscotch’s father. The eventual meeting could hardly be compared to the usual get acquainted ritual of dinner and drinks, but still he was curious. And a part of him was still hoping that this would be some sort of deathbed reunion that would make all the bad stuff in Butterscotch’s past go away. Butterscotch’s father would ask for forgiveness and Butterscotch would give it, and then the father would give them his blessing….

  For a moment Chuck wished that he had brought his dress uniform, which he thought made him look dapper, but then realized that appearing in such a getup would only look silly and call all kinds of attention to them that they didn’t need.

  Another thought that intruded was for how he had planned on spending this evening, compared with how it had actually turned out. But such waking fantasies only made him ache with desire, so he quickly chased those thoughts away. There would be another time. Maybe even soon.

  With Butterscotch, life was a daring adventure. And that was what he wanted. Wasn’t it?

  Eventually he rolled on his side to watch the neon “Vacancy” sign blink on and off outside the window. He was still watching when the sun rose early that morning.

  Chapter 4

  Depending on your perspective, the news about my father was encouraging. He was no longer a John Doe and he had been moved out of intensive care and into a room with less restrictive visiting hours. Oh boy. We could see “our uncle” right away.

  Taking a last breath of supposedly sanitary air that choked the cold, tile corridor where the nurse had left us, we entered the small beige room that was filled with a bed, one metal table, and one uncomfortable chair. There was a window but the curtain was drawn. Things beeped and red lights flickered as the monitor kept track of my father’s health.

  My father, the vessel for all things venial, looked up at me and pretended to smile. I didn’t. Frankly I was too shocked at the mileage on his face. They had been hard miles too. This gray-haired man in the hospital bed was old. It was hard to believe that he was the wheel on which my mother’s heart and my childhood were broken.

  Still, for all that there were casts on his legs, an IV in his arm, and liver spots on his bruised hands and face, I was willing to bet those fingers were still clever, still quite capable of palming a card or picking a pocket or stealing a wallet and then sneaking away, even with crutches and plaster slowing him down.

  “You came.” I thought he sounded a little surprised. But also triumphant. My father’s thought processes have always been original and alarming. I had given up trying to guess his true beliefs years ago.

  “So how did you find me?” I asked, stepping a bit farther into the room. My voice wasn’t warm but I wasn’t shouting either. I hate hospitals and would never go to one, but I respect the fact that there are sick people there and quiet lets them rest.

  “And who is this with you?” my father asked, looking over my shoulder.

  “Chuck. He’s a friend,” I said briefly, not wanting the Mountie to give any information to this man. My father wasn’t above blackmail. “So how did you find me?”

  “Hello, Chuck. You can call me Lucky.”

  I snorted. Lucky. That came from an older nickname, Irish. As in the luck of the Irish. Which I suspect was sarcasm because the Irish, historically speaking, were not all that lucky.

  “How did you find me?” My voice was harder but not louder, and I knew Chuck was looking at me though I couldn’t guess what he was thinking. Maybe that I was being a bitch, speaking sharply at a sick man.

  “Newspaper,” he finally said. “I was picking up some stuff—” Stuff. In this case, since they sold newspapers, that meant alcohol or cigarettes, not illegal drugs. “And there you were right by the cash register. Did you really find Bigfoot? There could be some money in that.”

  Damn it. I thought I had managed to avoid getting photographed by the tabloid reporters or the guys at Sasquatch Watch. I unzipped my coat. Though it was chilly outside, the room was sweltering. Or maybe it was fear sweat. How many tabloids had picked up the Bigfoot story?

  “It was a blurry picture but I knew you at once.” Dad was trying for carefree and cheerful. “You’ve got your mother’s eyes. Her hair.”

  I certainly do, when I’m not wearing a wig, and invoking her memory wasn’t helping his cause. From what I remember, my mother’s eyes had had a lot of pain in them because of him. Probably mine did too.

  “I like the new name too,” my father said. “You never did seem like much of a Charity to me.”

  Me either, but a mother always hopes for great things.

  Chuck shifted behind me. I bet he didn’t think I was a Charity either. Especially not just then.

  “Who else knows about me?” I asked, not commenting on my mother, Bigfoot, or my new name.

  “No one.” This was said seriously and I was almost ready to believe him. But my father was a self-serving, congenital liar.

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely. No one knows about you.” He really sounded definite, even gleeful. The man was up t
o something, but I left it for the time being.

  “So whose box of matches have you been playing with that they felt the need to run over you with a car? Was it some woman? Or her husband?”

  He tried to look affronted but it was too much effort. His injuries weren’t some ploy for attention. He was hurting and someone had done this to him deliberately. Probably because he had stolen from them or in some way pissed them off. My question about a woman was off base. My father used downtrodden women as meal tickets, but never anyone with enough gumption to fight back. Certainly not any with husbands.

  “Well?”

  He looked away, slumping into his pillow. When he spoke again it was in a whisper. Unable to hear, I reluctantly stepped closer and bent down. His hand, the one taped with IV lines, moved. The tubes brushed me. Unable to stop myself, I jerked my hand before he could take it, and his fingers brushed my coat pocket instead.

  “I just wanted to see you once more,” he said. I could swear that he sounded smug and it raised the fine hair on my arms. “That’s all.”

  “Really? You don’t need money or anything?”

  “Not a thing. I just wanted to see your face one more time before I pass into the veil.”

  More like the fires of Hell. And damn him if this was true. If he was going to turn sentimental it should have been years ago when there was some hope of my forgiving him. And before I had dragged Chuck over the border.

  “So I should probably leave then,” I tested. “Since you’ve seen my face.”

  “Yes.” My father’s voice went flat. “We’ve nothing to say to each other, it seems. You should leave at once. And be careful. Lots of accidents on the roads these days.”

  I nodded, zipped up my coat, and turned for the door. Chuck stepped back to let me by. He was wearing a blank face and didn’t say anything to my father.

  Later I would ask him what he was thinking. Or maybe not. Sometimes it is better not to know.

  * * *

  Lucky watched as the young woman who called herself Butterscotch left his hospital room. He offered her a weak smile when she looked back, one last time, over her shoulder. A devious leer descended over his face the moment she was gone.

  He’d actually pulled it off. He’d managed to get the memory stick out of his room by slipping it into his daughter’s coat pocket. Now all he needed to do was get well and get out of this hospital room. Then he would visit his daughter one last time, in Canada, to retrieve the information that he had stolen, the information that when sold in the right quarter would put him on Easy Street for the rest of his life. True, the Feds would be disappointed at this change of plans, but he didn’t plan on staying in the country anyway.

  For a moment, he felt a small pang of remorse at possibly putting his daughter’s life in danger, but only for a moment. No one would suspect a connection. She was disguised and had a man to protect her. She would be fine. In a couple of weeks he’d go visit her. Closing his eyes he breathed a sigh of relief and slipped back into a blissful, guilt-free sleep.

  * * *

  The federal agent sat pretending to read the paper in the waiting area on the third floor of the hospital. In reality, he was supposed to be watching the hospital room just down the hall to see if anyone unsavory showed up to finish the job they had started, but absolutely nothing had happened. He got all the crap assignments these days. Screw up even once and they busted your balls to the end of days. He’d be in Duluth forever.

  When a man and woman were admitted to the room by the day nurse, he considered rising to challenge them, but decided they didn’t look like mob enforcers. Instead he remained seated, finishing his Danish and coffee.

  When the couple left the room a few minutes later, he realized that he had forgotten to take their picture going in. He’d left the damned camera in his car. He wasn’t supposed to leave the room unguarded, but it would just be for a minute. He could dash down to the parking lot and get a few shots, and no one would ever know.

  He caught up with them at the elevator. While they waited for the door to open, he raced down the stairs and out into the lot. He arrived at his unmarked car parked across the street from the main entrance just as the couple exited the hospital. Climbing inside his car, he grabbed his camera off the backseat and snapped several pictures of the couple walking to their car. He continued to take pictures as they drove away and was particularly happy to catch a close-up of the license plate. It was Canadian. He hadn’t expected that.

  Due to his attention to the Range Rover that was driving away, the agent failed to notice the sleek black car that stopped at the curb just long enough to drop off a heavyset man in a black suit and sunglasses and a nasty scar at his jawline. That man slipped into the hospital unmolested, to finish the job he had started.

  Chapter 5

  “Tell me something nice you remember about your childhood,” Chuck said suddenly, staring out the windshield at the gray sky and grayer road.

  This wasn’t as surprising a request as it might seem. Yesterday and that morning had been pretty damn negative and Chuck wanted something positive to think about. The Mountie doesn’t do despair well. At heart he’s an optimist and I wanted to keep him that way.

  It wasn’t easy though. To begin with, I don’t think about the past much. The reality was mostly unpleasant and playing what-might-have-been can be as addictive and destructive as crack for people who have regrets. I was already way over my memory limit for the week anyway. But it was difficult not to think at least a little about all the events that had brought me to where I was and the man who starred in so many of them.

  I have a catalogue, a file cabinet, of emotional injuries. But there is also a small jewel box of happy memoirs, so I dug into the small pile of shining moments and found a happy memory for Chuck.

  “My grandfather built me a playhouse for my fifth birthday. He worked on it out in the garage for several weeks.”

  An honest smile crossed my face and I relaxed back into the seat as I remembered aloud.

  Grandpa worked with his hands, so it was a wonderful playhouse he made, with two glass windows that opened and a half door, also with glass on top so there was lots of light. It had a shingle roof, linoleum floor, and Grandma had painted sunflowers on the whitewashed walls so I would have a flower garden even in winter.

  Together, my grandparents had built me a small sofa and a square table with four milk stools so I could have guests in for tea. There had been enough material leftover from when Grandma had upholstered the bench of Grandaddy’s truck that she could cover the little couch in my favorite green Naugahyde vinyl. She made a counted cross-stitch for the wall. It said: Bless This House.

  Since they were still trying to get my father involved in my life, my grandparents had told him what they were doing and suggested he bring some treats for the house. Like some animal crackers, a small vase or tea set, or biscuits in a tin.

  My father, for a wonder, actually grasped the concept of miniatures for the playhouse and brought me a tea set and a fine selection of mini liquor bottles. With the liquor still in them. He also had two matching shot glasses from a casino in Reno.

  My grandparents were horrified, but I was actually pleased with the gifts. We crammed ourselves inside my little house after we had lunch. My grandparents and I sipped tea out of little cups and ate birthday cake while my father crouched on a milk stool on the other side of the table and drank his way through the little bottles. He fell asleep soon after.

  It was my best birthday ever.

  “What about you, Chuck? Tell me something about your childhood. You went to regular school, right? Were you a good student?”

  I wanted to hear about something normal, something happy, some piece of Chuck that I didn’t know and couldn’t guess from his adult behavior.

  Chuck thought for a while and then gave a small laugh.

  As Chuck told it, he was raised in the suburbs of Toronto with a mom and a dad and a station wagon where everything was as nice as p
ie and might have been photographed for some home and garden magazine—except for the kids. Though every house was tidy and every lawn mown, there were always skateboards and bicycles and chalk drawings marring the perfect setting.

  Rather than forming a gang, as kids might do nowadays, the group of boys he hung out with was just a group of kids involved in innocent forms of mischief to while away the hours between the last bell at school and mothers calling them in at supper. One of their favorite pastimes was harassing the neighborhood grouch, old man Harbottle.

  Mr. Harbottle lived on a corner lot and he hated it when kids cut across his property on the way to and from school. Some mornings he would lie in wait with the garden hose and jump out of hiding to douse anyone found treading across his precious lawn. In retaliation, the local kids would pull pranks on him, such as leaving burning bags of dog poop on his porch and ringing his bell in the hope that he would rush outside and stomp on the bag. But old man Harbottle was too wily to fall for such obvious ploys.

  One day, Chuck heard of a prank from his older brother that he knew he and the guys had to try. To pull it off, all they needed was his dad’s fishing rod and a damp cloth. Both were easily obtained, and after gathering his friends they walked to the corner to set in motion the greatest prank ever.

  The first step in executing the trick involved letting out enough fishing line to stretch across the street to Mr. Harbottle’s home. Danny, the smallest and sneakiest of the group, was assigned to run the line across the street and attach the hook on the end to the screen on Mr. Harbottle’s kitchen window. This was the trickiest part of the operation since Mr. Harbottle was presently in his kitchen washing dishes. However, Danny was nimble and executed his assignment flawlessly and raced back across the street to rejoin the group.

  The prank was now ready to be set in motion.