Saving Grace (What Doesn’t Kill You, #1): A Katie Romantic Mystery

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Chapter Forty

  Oso sat with his head in my lap as I drove from the bail bondsman up to Annalise, careening down the center of the road like a local and steering with one hand while I used my other to deliver a cold Heineken to my central nervous system. If someone came around a corner in the center too fast, I’d probably die. Oh well. Whatever. Dead. Broke. They were about the same thing.

  Not broke, I reminded myself. Only at the risk of becoming broke. As long as Ava stayed and faced trial, I was still flush. Ava. The super reliable one. At least I had a friend like Emily that didn’t sleep with married guys, flirt with my sort-of-boyfriend, get thrown in jail, and put all my money at risk. And was super understanding to boot. I’d had a couple of text exchanges with her during the day, and she kept telling me that she was having a perfectly wonderful time, with no problems. Sounded awesome. Where could I buy that kind of day? I took another chug of Heinie.

  I made it home without dying or spilling my beer. No Junior-mobile, again. Three days: late, absent, absent.

  As I opened my truck door, I heard wailing from inside the house. Shouting. The dogs were running around yelping instead of rushing to greet me. Oso scrambled over me and jumped out the driver’s side door to join in their melee. I didn’t know if I could handle any more stress, and I didn’t have any more Heineken. But it didn’t seem I had a choice, which felt all too familiar lately. I slammed my truck door behind Oso and ran into the house, calling out as I ran.

  Egg met me at the entrance to the great room and grasped my arm, pulling me forward. “Oh, Ms. Connell, Ms. Connell, the scaffolding fall. He coulda die, he coulda die. Come quick.”

  I wished my parents had raised me a good Irish Catholic girl instead of a lapsed Baptist. I wanted a rosary right now. Something to touch, to hold, to tether me to the earth. I was afraid of dissipating into the atmosphere. I twisted my hair instead, something I hadn’t done since I was six years old, but I didn’t break stride.

  One of the workers I’d met yesterday was lying on a mattress in the center of the great room floor, with about three hundred pounds of metal scaffolding and wooden planks scattered on the floor around him. The tower above him listed perilously. I covered the distance between us in three leaping steps. His co-workers made room for me, and I crouched beside him.

  He babbled excitedly, eyes closed. “Come back. You save me. Come back.” His eyes popped open. “Did you see her catch me?”

  We shook our heads and looked at each other. No one knew what he was talking about.

  “Sir, are you all right?” I asked.

  “Yah, I fine. I fell.”

  “I know,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Mahatoo. Joey Mahatoo.” His voice sounded clear. His answers made sense. Those were good signs.

  “Do you know what happened?”

  He sat halfway up on his elbows. His co-workers gasped and protested. He looked around me, behind me, everywhere, for something. Then he spoke.

  “I hear this creakin’ noise, and a scrapin’ one. I standin’ on the top of the scaffold, on my platform, and then I’m fallin’, fallin’, but slow-like. I know I gonna die when I hit that concrete, but then these soft arms catch me. Soft and warm, a woman.” A surprised look came over his face. “She smell good, too. And she lay me down on the mattress, here. I try to see her, but she gone. And all a’you here instead.” He shook his head. “The jumbie save me. The jumbie did it.”

  Egg touched my shoulder. “No mattress in here before he fell.”

  I recognized it. “It was downstairs,” I said. “Some kids used to sleep on it when they camped out here.”

  The men talked all over each other. They knew they’d witnessed a miracle, and their excitement bubbled up fast, like a pot of spaghetti right before it boiled over.

  “Do you need a doctor? Are you hurt at all?” I asked the young man.

  He felt of his own arms and legs, of his head. He stood up, so I did, too. No blood. Not even a scratch. “Nah, ain’t nothing wrong with me. I saved by the jumbie.”

  I didn’t doubt it for a second. I wished I could find her, so I could tell her thank you, but there was no sign of the woman I’d seen the day before. I mouthed the words anyway. I walked toward the kitchen. Rashidi was there.

  “Did you hear?” I asked.

  He nodded slowly, as much in amazement as in answer to my question. “Yah, I come in a minute ago and hear it all. You got a hell of a jumbie, Katie. A hell of a jumbie.”

  “A hell of a jumbie,” I agreed. “And a really crap contractor. Scaffolding doesn’t just fall. If it’s in proper condition, if it’s put together right, it doesn’t just fall.”

  “For true,” Rashidi said.

  “I wish I had fired him yesterday,” I said.

  “Yah, best do it quick today.”

  I’d decided Egg was the foreman, official or not. He was standing nearby, so I asked him, “Where’s Junior?”

  Egg flinched at the word Junior. “I call him when Joey fall. Junior come soon.” He motioned me closer, his voice dropping to a level the other men couldn’t hear. “What he doin’ ain’t right. He workin’ a job for some rich doctor. I guess he skippin’ out over there instead of takin’ care of his business here. He not doin’ what you pay him for. But please don’t tell him I said so, miss.”

  “Thank you for telling me, Egg. I won’t repeat a word of this to Junior.”

  I heard an engine outside. Egg’s eyes widened. I peered out the kitchen window. Junior was pulling in the drive. Egg hightailed it back to the great room. Rashidi still stood beside me.

  “I’ll handle this,” I said.

  Junior was moving his bulky midsection faster today than last time I’d seen him. His face-splitting grin was still there, though. Not for long. I met him outside, trying for less of an audience.

  “Ms. Katie, good to see you,” he said.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said.

  He stopped short. “Wah? Something wrong?”

  “Yes, Junior, you know that there is something very wrong. One of your men had a serious accident here today. Joey could have been killed.”

  “Nah, I hear not a scratch on him.”

  “No thanks to you.”

  “Me? I not even here.”

  “Exactly. And you weren’t here yesterday, either, when the guys dem were smoking ganja instead of working. And you were late the day before, when they put the scaffolding up.”

  He face was blank. “Men dem work better if I let them relax, leave them be.”

  “If by relax you mean get stoned, then I beg to differ. You have to do some work in the first place in order to work ‘better.’ And they weren’t working.”

  “I had to go to town for supplies,” he said. He held up two paintbrushes, as flimsy as his story.

  He wanted me to believe he had gone all the way to town for two cheap brushes he wouldn’t need for weeks? I’d had enough. “You won’t need those for Annalise anymore.”

  “Wah?” he said.

  I went to my car and got my checkbook out of my purse. I wrote Junior a check marked “payment in full.” I held it at shoulder height as I spoke. “When you waste the time I pay you for, that is stealing from me. When you don’t supervise your men and they don’t work, you’re all stealing from me. When serious accidents happen at my house that you could have prevented, you are putting me at risk along with your men.”

  “It not my fault. The jumbie break the scaffolding,” he said.

  “Oh, no. The jumbie, if there is one, saved Joey.” I handed him the check. “I want you to pack up everything today, and get off my property. Please don’t come back.”

  He studied the check, his lips moving. “This not enough. This not what you owe me.”

  “This is all you will get from me. You’ve done no work, accomplished nothing. Please leave.”

  He glared at me through his clouded eyes. Continental transplants like me always wore sunglasses, but for some reason most of the locals didn’t, a
nd many developed premature cataracts. Junior chuptzed loudly and spat on the ground, then walked inside. I heard low growling behind me and turned to see Oso and Sheila, their teeth bared, moving after Junior on silent feet.

  Rashidi was right about me needing a pack of dogs. I loved them.

  Mere minutes later, Junior and his guys came out in a big hurry and tossed their tools haphazardly into their trucks. Egg looked at me as he passed by, an apology in his eyes.

  “I come back for the scaffolding,” Junior fumed. “You crazy, and this house the jumbie. You be sorry, lady. You be sorry.”

  He drove off in a huff and a cloud of dust.

  ~~~