War and Peach

by Susan Furlong

  My eyes glued to his finger as it hovered over the trigger of the gun. I had to do something. Something to convince him . . . “You’re right. I’ve got them.”

  Ray started to protest. “I told you to shut up,” Ganassi yelled, whipping Ray on the side of the head with the pistol.

  Ray doubled over, clutching his head in pain. I wanted to go to him, but couldn’t. And suddenly, an anger sparked inside me, growing and building until it overtook my fear. No way was I going to allow this man to take my brother from me. To destroy my family. “He doesn’t know anything about it,” I said. “I didn’t tell him. I found the diamonds in the old armoire in the room I was staying in. I kept it a secret, because I wanted to keep the money for myself. You think I like living in this backwoods town? Peaches, peaches, peaches. That’s all anyone ever talks about around here. I’m planning on using the money to get out of here. Go up North. Buy me a nice place up in the mountains somewhere I never have to think about peaches again.”

  “Oh yeah? Then where are they?”

  “I’ll take you to them, but only if you let my brother go free.”

  He shook his head. “No games, lady. Tell me now, or I’ll blow his head off.” He straightened his arm, once again pointing the gun directly at Ray’s head.

  “They’re back at the house,” I blurted. “In a safe in my daddy’s den. If you kill him, I won’t give you the combination.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me, probably considering his options. Finally, he indicated toward the orchard. “Get him up and let’s go. But you’d better not be lying to me, or I’ll shoot him on the spot.”

  I bent down to help Ray, but as I lifted him, he lost his balance and stumbled forward, falling to the ground again. “Ray!” I knelt down and lifted his face to mine. His eyes were dazed, and blood trickled from a gash on his temple. “Ray,” I whispered. “Get up. You’ve got to get up.” He moaned, his eyes rolling back before his body went limp. He was out cold.

  “Leave him!” Ganassi barked.

  “He’s injured. He needs help.”

  Ganassi tilted his head back and let out an evil laugh. “Help?” He laughed some more, then turned eerily serious. “I’ll be glad to help him.”

  To my horror, he steeled his stance and aimed the gun at Ray’s head. I moved in front of my brother, holding out my hands. Ganassi swung out his free arm to push me aside, and just then, the sound of an approaching siren cut through the air. Ganassi’s head snapped upward, and in that split second, I lunged for the nearby scrap pile and snatched up a large branch.

  In one fluid movement, I jumped forward and swung with all my might, connecting to Ganassi’s head with a loud thunk. He dropped the gun and screamed out in pain. Gritting my teeth, I raised the branch high in the air and whacked him again. This time he went all the way down.

  I dropped the branch and scurried back to Ray just as the sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the site. Right behind her came Cade’s truck.

  Maudy was the first out of her vehicle. She rushed over, immediately secured the gun, and then started placing a call for medical transports.

  Cade rushed over and began tending to Ray. “Hey, buddy,” he said, lightly slapping his cheeks. “Can you hear me, Ray?” To my relief, a low moan escaped from the back of Ray’s throat as he began to move his body. “He’ll be fine,” Cade said. “But he needs to be seen right away. What happened to him?”

  “Ganassi hit him with the back of the gun.”

  “And who hit Ganassi?” he asked.

  I looked over at Ganassi’s limp body and swallowed hard. He looked dead. I rolled my hands over and stared at my palms. Did I do that? Did I kill him?

  Cade leaned over and placed two fingers alongside Ganassi’s neck. “His pulse is weak, but he’s still alive.”

  I breathed a little easier. Not that I wouldn’t have killed him. I’m just glad I didn’t.

  The sound of Maudy’s voice distracted us. “Darn deputy’s been good for nothin’ lately.” She crammed her phone into her pocket and came over to join us. “Ambulances are on their way,” she said. “Now how ’bout someone tells me what happened here?” When we didn’t respond right away, she folded her arms and rocked back on her heels. “Well? I’m waitin’!”

  Cade and I exchanged a look. Explaining all this to Maudy wasn’t going to be easy.

  * * *

  Boy, was I ever right. “Of all the stupid things!” Maudy yelled, slapping her hand down on her desk. Papers went flying, but she made no move to pick them up. Then she pushed away from her desk and started pacing the floor. “I should throw you both in a cell right now. Interfering with my case like this. Of all the idiotic things. Someone could have gotten killed because of you two.”

  Cade and I solemnly nodded. She was right. We were ever so lucky that Ray wasn’t more seriously hurt. As it turned out, both Ganassi and Ray had been transported to County Hospital—Ray checked over and admitted for a concussion and Ganassi admitted for much more serious injuries, for which I still had no regrets. Cade and I were at the sheriff’s trying to explain ourselves.

  “It’s just that it seemed like such a good idea at the time,” I said. “The rumor that we had proof of Clem’s murder had already spread all over town, so it seemed logical that we could use it to draw out the killer.”

  “Yeah. Frances Simms even managed to work it into today’s paper,” Cade added, reaching across the sheriff’s desk and picking up a folded copy of the Cays Mill Reporter. “It’s all right here,” he said, holding it up for us to see and pointing to the front page headline: “Local Storekeeper Stashes Evidence of Father’s Innocence.” Which was just the top headline. Right below it was the real kicker. “Past Love Affairs Motive for Murder?”

  My jaw clenched with rage. The nerve of that woman!

  The sheriff shifted in her chair. “Is that so? I haven’t had a chance to read that yet. It’s been a little busy ’round here.”

  Cade nodded and tossed the paper aside. I resisted the urge to snatch it up and see for myself what lies Frances had printed this time. Instead, I refocused on the conversation at hand. “Only, our plan didn’t work,” I continued telling the sheriff. “It was your deputy that showed up instead of the killer. He probably overheard Cade’s conversation with Ginny at the diner this morning and hoped to get the evidence for himself.”

  Maudy frowned. “Which just goes to prove that you two aren’t the only ones with mush for brains. Travis knows better. He should have come to me if he thought there was evidence hidden out at your place. Not gone traipsin’ off by himself to play hero.”

  “That’s true,” I said, thinking that Travis probably couldn’t help himself. Being fairly new to the department, he probably wanted to prove himself to the sheriff. After all, pleasing someone like Maudy would be no easy feat, even if she did seem to favor the boy. Then, something else came to mind. Something that didn’t quite add up: Travis had been out at the farm, taking that lockbox full of false evidence, and left just minutes before Ganassi showed up. Then, I sent my emergency text to Cade. He’d told me that he put in a call to the sheriff the second he received it. So Travis should have still been nearby. He could have simply doubled back and come to our aid immediately. He should have been the first on the scene.

  “Why didn’t Travis respond to our emergency call first?” I asked. “He’d only left the farm minutes before Ganassi showed up. He would have been the closest responder.”

  The sheriff frowned. “Couldn’t reach him, that’s why. I swear, that boy’s been good for nothin’ lately. Half the time he’s got his head in the clouds.” She shook her head. “I reckon it’s a girl who’s got him so distracted.”

  Next to me, Cade chuckled. “That would explain that new truck he bought. The thing must have cost as much as a small house.” While Cade and Maudy went on about the truck’s leather upholstery, supercharged hemi engine and c
hrome wheels, the wheels in my own head started turning. That new truck was expensive. Much too expensive for a deputy’s salary. Unless he had another source of income. Like maybe from scrap metal? That would explain why Lucas was so afraid to come clean. I remembered Carla saying that he and some of the other kids had been caught with alcohol a while back, but no charges were pressed. That didn’t seem like the sheriff, but maybe the sheriff didn’t know anything about it. Maybe it was Deputy Travis who broke up the party that night. And Lucas, with a prior record and all, well, he’d be easy to manipulate.

  There were other things, too, but before I could put it all together, the front door opened and Deputy Travis sauntered inside, whistling a tune as he juggled a red-and-white boat of vinegar fries—probably from one of the food trucks parked outside the courthouse—and hung his Stetson on a metal tree rack by the front door. Upon seeing us, he stopped whistling, his brows shooting upward. “What’s wrong? Y’all look like your dog’s died.”

  I shifted uncomfortably, thinking of Roscoe. Now that I sort of had a dog in my life, I hated that expression.

  “Where ya been, Travis?” Maudy asked. “We had a call a little while ago.”

  Travis seemed surprised. “A call?” He glanced down at the two-way radio clipped to his belt. “Sorry, Sheriff. Must not have heard it come in. I was patrollin’ the parade like you asked. Darn noisy with those bands and all. Sorry about that. Just bad timing, I guess.”

  Timing? That’s why my daddy was in so much trouble in the first place. Timing. There was only a short amount of time between when Daddy left Clem’s farm and the barn fire was spotted. Travis had admitted he was the one who called in that fire. Something about that gnawed at my mind, but what was it?

  Across the room, Travis was going on about the day’s events: the floats, the high school band, the Jaycees’ tent, and on and on. He finally paused and lifted another fry from the container. He pointed it our way. “And good news. The polls are ’bout closed and it looks like Jack Snyder’s goin’ to be our next mayor.”

  Maudy sighed and shook her head.

  Travis squinted with confusion. “You don’t seem too happy ’bout it. Thought you’d be thrilled, considerin’ y’all are kin.”

  “That’s because I’m not wonderin’ about the election. I’m wonderin’ what my deputy was doing hiding evidence from me.”

  Travis turned bright red. “Hiding evidence? I don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout, boss.” His eyes slid toward us as he spoke.

  Cade looked between Travis and the Sheriff, his brow furrowed with confusion. “But we’ve got you on tape,” he said, holding up the camera that Ray had been carrying earlier that morning. “Taking the lockbox from our shed.”

  Travis’s jaw went slack. “Oh, that. I, uh . . . well, I overheard people talkin’ and I thought I’d go out and see for myself.” He looked at the sheriff. “I didn’t want to bother you with it until I knew it was legit. Turns out it didn’t amount to nothin’. Just a couple rocks in an old lockbox, that’s all.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “What type of game are you playin’ anyway, Nola? Putting me on a wild-goose chase like that?”

  “Sorry, Travis. We were just trying to draw out Clem’s killer,” Cade started to explain.

  I held up my hand. “Wait a minute.” I turned to the sheriff. “There might be a few other things Travis has been keeping from you.”

  The sheriff tipped back in her chair and folded her arms. “Oh yeah. Like what?”

  “Earlier when I mentioned that a bunch of folding chairs had gone missing from the church, you didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.”

  She scrunched her brow. “Folding chairs? What the heck—”

  “And there’s been other stuff,” I continued. “The downspouts from the library? Scrap piping missing from Jack Snyder’s place? The air-conditioning units?”

  “Shut up, Nola,” Travis said. Cade sat straighter in his chair.

  Maudy glanced at Travis and held up her hand. Looking back at me, she asked, “I knew about some of it. Just what are you saying, exactly?”

  “Have you been looking into any of those thefts personally?” I asked her.

  “No, I put Travis on it.”

  “Did he tell you about the evidence we found in the back of Lucas Graham’s truck? A piece off of an air-conditioning unit? I reported it to Travis.”

  The sheriff shook her head. “In Lucas Graham’s truck?” She stared with disbelief at Travis. “The kid has a record, doesn’t he? Why didn’t you mention this to me?”

  “I talked to Lucas,” I told her. “He pretty much admitted to being involved in the scrap metal thefts, but he wasn’t working alone. He’s afraid of something . . . or someone,” I said, looking directly at Travis.

  Cade leaned in and asked, “What exactly are you saying, Nola?”

  I looked his way. Saying. It was something someone said . . . Then it came to me. My eyes grew wide as I then glanced across the room. “I’m saying that we know Travis had called in that fire. And he would have had to have been close by to spot it so quickly. He’d said to me that he was out that way responding to a call from Candace. But when I saw her at the funeral the other day, Candace had told me that she was away at a doctor’s appointment the day of the murder. I’d dismissed it as some sort of mix-up. But now . . . I don’t think our plan failed. I think we did draw out Clem’s killer.”

  The sheriff slapped her hand on the table. “That’s a lie! No deputy of mine would do such a thing.” She stood and moved toward Travis. “Tell ’em, boy. Tell them that they’ve got it all wrong.”

  But instead of telling us we were wrong, Travis moved his hand toward his gun belt. Maudy reacted quickly, stepping back and drawing her own gun. “Don’t move, Travis.” She stood her ground, the gun bobbing slightly in her hand as she tried to make sense of it all. “What were you thinking? Stealin’ from our neighbors? The folks we’ve sworn to protect? Why?”

  Travis’s expression turned dark and bitter. “Why do you think? This job doesn’t pay crap. How do you expect me to make a livin’ with what I get paid? Besides, plenty of folks around here have more than enough to spare. Think of everything we do for them. They owe us.”

  Maudy stared in disbelief, her voice hard. “Clem, too?”

  Travis grew still. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on his hairline and upper lip.

  “Answer me, Travis. Did you kill Clem Rogers?”

  Travis’s eyes darted our way. He swallowed hard. “I . . . I didn’t mean for that to happen. I swear. You’ve got to believe me, boss—”

  “Don’t ever call me ‘boss’ again,” Maudy bit out. The vehemence in her voice scared me. It must have scared Travis, too, because he flinched and turned even redder. Maudy reached toward him. “Give me your gun belt, Travis.”

  I watched the scene unfold before me, holding my breath: How would Travis react?

  “Come on, Travis,” Maudy repeated. “Give me your gun.”

  Travis’s right hand trembled as he reached across his body, his fingers connecting with the buckle on his belt. He started to unfasten it. His eyes, wide with fear and moist with regret, looked straight at Maudy. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, jerking his hand back and drawing his gun.

  “No!” Maudy screamed, raising her own gun. Shots filled the air. I ducked and covered my ears as Cade covered me with his own body, holding me so tightly I thought my bones would break. When we finally unraveled and looked up, Travis was on the ground, blood pooling around his body.

  The room felt strangely still for a few seconds, until an animal-like moan sounded from Maudy. “What have I done? Oh, Lawd, what have I done?” Maudy fell to her knees, her gun still in one hand, the other reaching out, trembling, to touch the body of the young deputy.

  I immediately went to her, crouched down beside her, uncertain what to do. “You did what you had to
do,” I said. “He drew on you. You had no choice.”

  I saw her shoulders shudder. “But I knew him. Should have known he wouldn’t let me take him in . . . I should’ve been able to stop this. And . . . and I shot him,” she whispered. Her broad shoulders seemed to shrivel. “How am I going to tell his family?” She shuddered once more, then stiffened, her moist eyes turning dark and flat as she looked at me in a silent plea for answers. I knew that she wanted me to say something that would make sense of all this. Something to take away her pain. But I was at a loss for words.

  For a second or two, the room remained eerily still, until the sound of Cade’s voice cut through the silence. “I’m at the sheriff’s office in Cays Mill,” he told the 911 operator. “There’s been a shooting. Deputy Travis Hines is dead.”

  * * *

  Later that evening, I went to the hospital to fill my parents in on the latest news. Ray was still there, too. He’d suffered a mild concussion, but the doctor agreed to release him to my care as long as I watched him closely for the next twenty-four hours. Which meant that I was going to miss going to the inauguration dance with Cade. Not that it really mattered. After everything that’d happened, neither of us was in the dancing mood.

  “I still can’t believe that young man is no longer with us,” Mama was saying about Deputy Travis. “So very sad, really. How’s Maudy taking it? This can’t be easy on her.”

  “She’s not taking it well at all,” I said. I felt sorry for Maudy. I truly did. Learning the truth about Travis was devastating to her. Especially since she’d hired him straight out of the academy, trained him and taken him under her wing. At times, I’d thought she’d even felt somewhat motherly toward Travis.

  “I never would have thought Travis was capable of thievin’, let alone murder,” Daddy said. “And you said he was stealin’ from about everyone in town?”