We found the beauty shop, or as they called it, ‘The Salon’ in fancy script. We went in and I talked to the girl at the reception desk.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘My name is Vera Pugh and my roommate Rachael Donley had her nails done here on Tuesday, but she had to leave the hotel for a family emergency.’ I’m not big on lying, but this was for the greater good, and pretty much close to the truth. ‘She asked me to pick up a copy of her charges here so she could pay me back when I see her.’
And I was right, I was going to be responsible for her manicure, too, along with her half of the room! This was costing me a fortune.
‘Sure,’ the young woman said. ‘Donley?’
‘Yes. D-O-N-L-E-Y,’ I said.
She went on her computer, hit a couple of keys, then smiled. ‘Here it is.’ She hit another key and said, ‘It’s printing. Let me go get it for you.’
She was back in less than a minute – it was a small shop – and handed me the bill. Fifty-two dollars! I almost choked on my own spit! I looked at it closer and saw that, hey, it was only forty-two for the manicure – the rest was tip!
Since I wasn’t able to speak, Gerald thanked the girl for me and we headed off to the lobby.
Dad called Luna and filled her in. She said she was going to call the detectives in Austin covering that case and get back to him. Graham and his sisters sat in the family room, side by side on the sofa, not watching TV for a change. They just sat there, not even talking much. Finally, Mom came in and told Graham the details of the man – James Unger – who had, as was now suspected by the police, been pushed from the top of the Driscoll’s parking garage.
Graham nodded, taking in all the strange happenings since he’d left home only a few days ago. It could have been a year for all that had happened. Back in Austin, not so much. He’d registered, gotten some classes he wanted and a couple he didn’t, at times that were scattered all over the place, making no rhyme or reason. He’d been very careful when designing his schedule to put all his classes in the afternoon so he could sleep late and study before he had to get ready. He’d also planned them according to the U.T. map he was given, so he could walk to all of them and leave enough time to walk from one side of the campus to the other. He had no intention of wasting what little money his parents allowed him on student parking on campus. But now he had one class in the chem building on the west side of campus immediately followed by engineering in another building on the northeast side of campus, then back to the chem building for lab. With ten minutes to traverse the famous forty acres twice.
He’d made one day of classes so far – English 101 and American history 101, both taught by TA’s who didn’t have English as a first language and with accents so thick he only understood every fourth word or so. Every day his stomach had been tied up in knots and he’d puked his guts out just the day before. So far, college had not been the magical experience his mother had claimed it to be. And then he gets the phone call. Megan telling him Alicia had been kidnapped. Right after lunch. He puked that up.
He excused himself and headed upstairs. He needed to lie down. Once in his room he realized something was different. He didn’t know what it was until he laid down on his bunk. He could smell her. Putting his nose to the pillow his mother had put on his bed, he sniffed. Alicia had been in his room, on his bed. He could smell her. For the first time since he was eleven years old, Graham Pugh began to cry.
Alicia woke up to angry voices. At first she had no idea where she was or why her arms and legs wouldn’t move. Then it all came rushing back to her. The sun was coming up. She could see it through the window. The sky was lightening, the trees and shrubs and cattle becoming clearer. Across from her on the sofa, the old man, Bert, lay asleep, his feet tied, his wrists bound in front of him. They had offered her the sofa last night but she’d declined, saying Bert should have it. Right now all she wanted to do was stand up and stretch. Everything ached.
The angry voices were coming from the kitchen, which she couldn’t see from her vantage point.
‘There’s nothin’ in here!’ screamed an angry voice that she didn’t recognize. Maybe this was the Mr Brown Mr Jones had spoken of ?
‘There was nothing in there when we got it!’ Mr Smith said. That voice she’d never forget.
‘Look!’ the other voice said. ‘See this hole you made? You don’t think I can see this, asshole?’
‘I didn’t make that hole! Jones, come here!’
A third voice entered.
‘Yeah?’ Mr Jones said.
‘Did you put this hole here?’ Mr Smith asked him.
There was a short silence, then Mr Jones said, ‘No.’
‘Do you know who did?’ Mr Smith asked.
‘I dunno. Did you?’ Mr Jones asked. To which Mr Smith answered with a resounding, ‘No!’
Then there was silence. Alicia knew who had put that hole in the bag. And now she knew for sure what they were after. The flash drive. Of course, she’d known that somewhere in her psyche as soon as she’d found the damn thing. Now they were going to want to know where it was – and she wasn’t about to tell them she’d left it in her room. They’d go back to her house and God only knows what they’d try to do to her family! Alicia felt the first twinge of panic since the entire ordeal had begun. She tried to take deep breaths, in and out, in and out, trying to conjure up yet again the might of her sister Megan. Her new mantra was WWMD – What Would Megan Do? And she knew exactly what Megan would do.
Mr Smith charged into the room, followed by Mr Jones and another man. The new guy was smaller than even Mr Smith, who was much smaller than Mr Jones. The new man had wispy blond hair and deep-set black eyes that did not sparkle or even gleam. He wore a snug T-shirt that showed off muscular arms, and even his jeans showed off overly-muscled thighs. After so much time with the beautiful Calvin the day before, she found herself describing the new guy in her mind: Roman nose, medium-to-dark complexion, yellowish teeth, firm jaw. He looked nasty.
Mr Smith was carrying her satchel. ‘What’d you do with it?’
‘With what?’ Alicia asked.
‘The thing that was in this hole!’ he shouted, spittle flying across the space between them and landing on her face. With her hands secured behind her she couldn’t wipe it off. She was rethinking that hand-sanitizer bath – maybe it should be Clorox.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. That hole was there when I got the satchel,’ Alicia said.
The new man knocked Mr Smith aside and leaned in to Alicia, his muscled hands resting on the arms of the ladder-back chair, his face only an inch or so from hers.
‘Bullshit, little lady,’ he said, his voice no longer screaming. It was worse. It was soft, quiet, and quite chilling. ‘You cut that hole when you felt something in the lining, am I right? And then you did what with it?’ He looked deep into her eyes, then smiled. ‘You put it on your dresser in your bedroom, didn’t you? Or on your nightstand—’
‘She has a desk,’ Mr Jones supplied.
‘Now that makes sense,’ the new guy said. ‘I bet you have a computer, don’t you, honey? And you put it near your computer because you were going to see what was on there. Did you? Did you stick that flash drive into your computer?’
Alicia remained silent. The new guy picked up her chair with her in it, held it about thigh high, then dropped it. Alicia thought some of her innards might just flop out.
He leaned in again. ‘So where is it?’ he asked.
Alicia refused to answer.
He shoved her chair away from him and turned to Smith and Jones. ‘It’s back at her house. In her bedroom. Probably on her desk near her computer.’ He headed for the front door. ‘Smith, you’re coming with me. Jones, kill them.’
‘I hope she knows we’re looking for her,’ Willis said. He and I were in the living room, sitting on the sectional, holding hands, away from our kids who were in the family room, trying to make their own sense of this mess.
‘Why would she ever think we’re not?’ I asked, squeezing his hand.
‘That business last summer—’ he started.
I rested my head on his shoulder, my arms around his middle. ‘That’s behind us, honey. She knows.’
‘If they do anything to her—’ he started.
‘Shhhhh,’ I said. ‘Don’t go there. Please don’t go there.’
We saw Graham come down the stairs. I wiped a tear off my cheek. ‘Hey, honey,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you’d gone upstairs.’
‘I thought I could rest.’ He shook his head. ‘Not gonna happen. I’m going for a drive.’
‘Don’t,’ Willis said, getting up. ‘You need to stay here.’
Again my son shook his head. ‘That’s not gonna happen either, Dad. I’ve got to be out there. I know it probably won’t do a damn bit of good, but I’ve just got to …’ His voice trailed off. Then he turned and headed into the family room to the back door.
Willis and I followed. ‘Graham,’ I said. ‘Please stay with us.’
He shook his head. ‘Gotta go.’
‘We’re going with him!’ Megan said, jumping up, followed more tentatively by Bess.
‘No—’ Graham started, while at the same time Willis and I were both giving vehement negative responses.
‘We’ll keep an eye on him,’ Bess said and, with his sisters flanking him, Graham left the house and headed for his car.
This mess was really affecting all my kids – my entire family. And I was getting mad. I wasn’t sure exactly what Luna and Donaldson were doing to find my daughter; all I knew was it wasn’t enough. Obviously they needed my help.
Mr Jones stood in the doorway to the living room, alternately staring at Alicia and Bert and then at the gun in his right hand. He’d been given his orders, and orders were orders, but … A kid and an old man? Jeez, he was a criminal, not a barbarian!
‘Mr Jones?’ Alicia said, trying at this point to channel her smart sister, Bess. Bess wasn’t just smart, she knew people, knew how to reach them, and not in a smarmy way, but with understanding and empathy. But Alicia wasn’t sure she could figure out how to empathize with a stone-cold killer, which she assumed to be an accurate description of Mr Jones.
‘Don’t talk to me,’ Mr Jones told her.
‘Do you really want to do this?’ Alicia asked him. She was thinking quickly, wondering what she could say for Mr Bert. ‘Look at Mr Bert, here. He’s spent his whole life working this farm. It’s been in his family for generations. His wife died right here in this house, the same house where she bore him three beautiful daughters. He’s trying to hold on to this land for his grandson, to keep it in the family. Can you really just snuff out his life? Not to mention me, Mr Jones; up until a year and a half ago I was a foster kid, thrown from one rotten foster home to another. Given up at the age of three by a junkie mother. Too old to be adopted. But now I have a family. A real family, for the first time in my life. Please don’t take that from me, and please don’t take me from them,’ she finished, tears in her eyes that were mostly genuine.
She noted with satisfaction that there were also tears in Mr Jones’s eyes. He put the gun down on the table by the door. ‘I don’t wanna kill y’all,’ he said, sinking down onto the sofa next to Bert. ‘I really don’t. But what am I supposed to do?’
‘Untie us and let us go?’ Bert suggested.
Mr Jones nodded his head. ‘I suppose I could do that. But then I’ll be in a heap of trouble.’
‘Well, let’s think of a way you can let us go and save face, shall we?’ Alicia suggested.
It was the middle of the day; the girls should have been in school. Graham should have been in Austin to deal with his second day of classes. His ‘B’ day classes that he hadn’t been to yet – chemistry and engineering. At this point he wasn’t sure if he was ever going back to Austin – not for anything more than to pick up his stuff.
The sky to the east was darkening, storm clouds gathering. They seemed to fit his mood. He saw a lightning strike in the clouds then heard the clap of thunder. The clouds clapping, that’s what Mom used to call thunder. Just the clouds clapping. And then he and his sisters would clap their hands just like the clouds. Jeez, things used to be a lot easier. Back then there hadn’t been anything that Mom and Dad couldn’t fix. Not a boo-boo they couldn’t heal, not a bad grade they couldn’t help you change.
He’d been a smart-ass kid, and sometimes he felt bad about that. Mom had her hands full, especially after Bess came to live with them. He’d been six years old then, and he knew what had happened next door. He remembered it all, quite vividly: his mom carrying Bess in from her house next door where, he eventually learned, Bess’s entire birth family had been killed; Bess, covered in blood and gore from her mother. And then Bess coming to live with them, so traumatized by what had happened that she had been unable to speak for weeks. But eventually it was easy for her to become his sister. It had taken no time at all for him to want to knock her lights out, just like he wanted to with Megan. She was his sister through and through.
But that had never happened with Alicia. Neither of them were kids, like he and Bess had been – she had only walked into his life a year and a half ago. And of course, part of that time he’d been with Lotta, his old girlfriend. But even then, after Megan and Bess gave Alicia that make-over and he saw for the first time what was under that mass of hair covering her face and that awful gray wool jumper she wore every day, even with Lotta still in his life, he was amazed at how the new Alicia made him feel. And it wasn’t just the attraction part of it, although that was definitely there. It was much more. He wanted to protect her. Not in the way he wanted to protect his other two ‘sisters,’ (as if he could ever think of Alicia as a sister) but to keep her safe in every way possible. He wanted to take away her past, change it from the horror it had been to something that she deserved, but there was no way he could do that, and it bothered him.
Graham was still trying to figure out what manhood was all about. How much of the world he could control. And every day it seemed as though fate was telling him how little control he had over anything. He knew he couldn’t change Alicia’s past, but he’d be damned if someone else was going to change her future.
They’d taken the old man’s pickup truck. Parked on the side street, they could see the house where the brown-haired girl lived, and the driveway. They watched as a tall young man and two girls came out and got in a Toyota.
‘Who are the players?’ Mr Brown asked.
‘The two girls are the brown-haired girl’s sisters. I don’t know who the boy is,’ Mr Smith said.
‘Which leaves who in the house?’ Mr Brown asked.
‘The mom for sure, and maybe the dad because of the missing kid. One of my kids goes missing, I don’t think I’d go to work, know what I mean?’
Mr Brown did not respond. If Mr Smith had children, which he found difficult to imagine, he really didn’t want to know about it. They ducked down as the Toyota turned their way, came to a stop at the end of the street then turned left, right by the old truck. Mr Brown listened for the car to pass, then sat up.
‘OK,’ he said to Mr Smith. ‘You carrying?’
‘Absolutely,’ Mr Smith said, pulling a revolver from its resting place at his back, stuck in the waistband of his jeans.
They exited the pickup and started down the street, turning into Sagebrush Trail. Just as they did, a car passed them, turning into the corner house. Mr Smith made an about-face and headed back to the pickup.
‘What the fuck?’ Mr Brown hissed to Mr Smith’s retreating back.
‘She’s a cop!’ Mr Smith hissed back.
Mr Brown quickly joined his colleague and both climbed back into the pickup. Mr Brown started the engine and they drove away, just as the sky opened up and spilled the rain.
Mr Jones removed the bonds that held both Alicia and Bert. Alicia stood up and stretched. Bert sat on the couch and rubbed his wrists and ankles.
‘Sorry about all that,’ Mr Jones said.
‘You only did what you had to do,’ Bert said, shivering a bit at a huge clap of thunder outside the window.
Mr Jones nodded his head. ‘I didn’t mean for all this to happen. I mean, Max – ah, Mr Smith says he’s got a job, gonna pay me twenty-five grand, and I need the money, you know? I got an ex-wife and two kids, and I’m behind in my child support, and I’ve been out of a job for more than six months! But I didn’t count on all this stuff going on. I mean, I’ve done some stuff I’m not proud of, and I’ve done time, but I never killed anybody and I don’t wanna start now! And Mr Smith keeps threatening to shoot me! All the time!’
Alicia walked over to where Mr Jones sat on the sofa next to Bert and patted him on the shoulder. ‘I know this can’t have been easy for you,’ she said.
‘Not at all!’ Mr Jones said, tears in his eyes.
‘OK, scoot,’ she said, getting between the two men on the sofa. ‘Now we need to come up with a scenario that will pass Mr Brown’s inspection. One where Bert and I get away, but you’re not blamed for it.’
‘Anybody else notice it’s storming out there?’ Bert asked, his eyes focused on the window where a bolt of lightning had brightened the storm-darkened sky.
‘We have to do it, Bert,’ Alicia said. ‘Do you have any raingear? Like umbrellas or slickers or anything?’
‘I got one umbrella,’ he said apologetically, ‘but it’s in the truck.’
‘Well, we’ll manage somehow,’ Alicia said. ‘Meanwhile, back to the problem of getting out of here and saving Mr Jones from Mr Brown.’
‘I can only think of one thing,’ Bert said. ‘We bash Mr Jones here over the head with something and tie him to that chair there,’ he said, pointing at the ladder-back chair, ‘and then you and I take off.’
Alicia grimaced. ‘I don’t want to hurt Mr Jones,’ she said, having realized he wasn’t quite the stone-cold killer she’d assumed.
‘It’s the only way to do it, like Bert said,’ Mr Jones said. ‘But first you tie me to the chair, then hit me on the head. Y’all wouldn’t be able to move me if I was unconscious.’
‘Good point,’ Bert said. He stood up and began looking around the mostly empty living room. ‘I just don’t see nothing here to bash your head in with. I mean, I got a cast-iron skillet in the kitchen, but how’re we supposed to get that and come in here and bash your head in if we’re both tied up?’
‘Yeah,’ Alicia said, ‘and how are you going to explain to Mr Brown how Bert and I got you in that chair?’
Bert looked at Alicia. ‘He’ll have to be sitting in the chair when we hit him,’ he said.
‘Wait!’ Alicia said, jumping up. ‘Mr Jones, are you hungry?’
‘Ah, now? Well, I could eat—’ he started.
‘Of course you could. And you’d order me to cook for you, wouldn’t you? Me being a girl and all—’
‘Oh, no! I’ve been cooking for myself a long time now—’
‘Noooo,’ Alicia said. Then succinctly, ‘You ordered me to cook you breakfast. I got out the cast-iron skillet to cook eggs and—’
Both men grinned at her. ‘Good one!’ Mr Jones said, standing up and high-fiving Alicia.
‘I love it when a plan comes together,’ Bert said.
They drove aimlessly around, with no idea where to go. ‘They wouldn’t keep her here in BCR,’ Megan said. ‘They’d either take her to Codderville or someplace else.’
No one responded. ‘I’m just saying,’ Megan tried.
Still no response. Megan, riding shotgun, turned to look at Bess in the back seat. They both shrugged their shoulders.
Suddenly Graham slammed on the brakes. Megan, who’d been turned in her seat, slammed her head against the passenger-side window. ‘Ow!’ she yelled.
‘Sorry,’ Graham said, but his tone said he couldn’t care less. ‘You think Codderville?’ he asked Megan.
‘I just think they’d try to go further than just here – BCR, you know?’ she said.
He nodded his head, put his foot down on the accelerator and made a U-turn in the middle of Black Cat Ridge Blvd., only losing traction for a moment due to the slick road.
Alicia had tried to hit Mr Jones in the head with the cast-iron frying pan, but her effort had been weak and only managed to elicit an ‘Ow’ from Mr Jones. Bert had to take over. The ladder-back chair from the living room was one of a set of four that went with his kitchen table. He had Mr Jones sit in one of those, then whacked him a good one on the side of the head. Mr Jones started to say something, then his eyes rolled up in his head and he fell out of the chair.
‘Oh my God!’ Alicia yelled. ‘Is he breathing?’
They both knelt beside Mr Jones and felt for a pulse. Alicia found one, beating strong. She sighed with relief. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘let’s tape him up.’
She and Bert managed to get Mr Jones taped up, grabbed a couple of granola bars out of the cupboard and some bottled water out of the fridge and headed outside.
The deluge had trickled down to a light sprinkle. As they walked, Bert said, ‘I like that story you told Mr Jones. You know, about the farm being in my family for years and all that. Truth is, I just rent the place. Somebody else works the fields. And me and my wife, well, she up and left me like twenty-something years ago. And I don’t have daughters. Got one son, and last I heard he was in prison up in Huntsville for manslaughter.’ He sighed. ‘Wish I’d had me a grandson, though. Carry on the name.’
‘What is your last name, Bert?’
He laughed. ‘Funny you should ask. It’s Smith.’
Bert led her off the driveway and through the thick brush that paralleled the dirt road she’d come down the night before with Mr Smith and Mr Jones. They made their way through that to the farm to market road, when they saw the old blue-and-rust pickup truck coming toward them. They hid in the wet bushes and watched it turn onto the now muddy road that led to the old farmhouse.
‘Should we make a run for it?’ Alicia asked.
‘Honey, you go. You’re young. No way I can make a run for anything,’ Bert said.
‘I’m not leaving you,’ Alicia whispered and settled down in the little hollow they’d formed in the weeds and grasses. A weeping willow shielded them from the dirt road and a small grove of oaks shielded them from the farm to market.
‘What if they come looking for us in the bushes?’ Bert asked.
Alicia looked around her, found a nice-sized stick, and hefted it. ‘Let ’em come,’ she said.
Bert laughed quietly. ‘That’s what I like about you, kid,’ he said. ‘You got balls.’
They were there for no more than twenty minutes when the blue truck came roaring back down the dirt road and turned on the farm to market road, heading back to Codderville.
‘Glad we waited,’ Alicia said.
‘Yeah, no kidding,’ Bert said and stood up, stretching his legs. ‘Hard to get up off the ground when you get to be my age.’
Alicia bounced up like a young colt. ‘I guess we should start walking,’ she said.
‘What the fuck? A goddam cop?’ Mr Brown hadn’t stopped yelling since they’d driven off from Sagebrush Trail, and kept slamming his fist repeatedly on the steering wheel. ‘You forget to mention the little bitch lives next door to a fucking cop?’
‘You missed the turn,’ Mr Smith said, his voice relatively quiet, at least in comparison to his companion’s.
Mr Brown’s right arm shot out sideways, his fist colliding solidly with Mr Smith’s jaw, throwing his head against the side window of the old truck. The window cracked. ‘Shut up!’ Mr Brown yelled.
Stunned, Mr Smith straightened up. ‘Jesus!’ he moaned, rubbing his jaw. ‘What’d you go and do that for?’
‘Because you’re an idiot! And I hate idiots!’ Mr Brown yelled.
Mr Smith wished Mr Jones had been in the truck with him so he could have shot him again. The thought alone seemed to relieve a lot of tension, and, truthfully, he was feeling quite tense. Maybe Mr Brown would shoot Mr Jones, and save him the job. If he hated idiots, he sure as hell would hate Mr Jones.
‘So now what?’ Mr Smith asked, feeling a bit woozy.
‘We go back tonight. Late. And we kill everybody! Including that bitch cop!’
Mr Smith nodded his head, which hurt like the devil. It was a plan, he thought, then felt a very sharp pain in his head, followed by his vision blurring as he slumped in his seat; the only thing keeping him upright was the seatbelt.
Without the ceremony of knocking, Luna burst in our back door, cell phone pressed to her ear. ‘I want an address and I want it now!’ she yelled into the phone. ‘Call me back and make it quick!’
She closed her phone and fell on the sofa.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘Don’t ask,’ she said.
‘But I just did,’ I said.
‘When I turned onto Sagebrush there were two men walking toward your house. One of them was the short guy from the other day. When he saw me he turned tail and ran. I don’t know who the other guy was. It wasn’t the big one though, that’s for sure—’
Willis jumped up. ‘Why aren’t you chasing them? Jesus Christ, Luna—’
‘I saw the vehicle they were in. An old blue-and-rust Chevy pickup truck. I got the license number.’ She held out her cell phone. ‘I’m waiting on a call now.’
Willis sat down in his chair, slumped over, hands clasped between his legs. He looked dejected. I don’t suppose I looked much better. The three of us were quiet. The minutes felt like hours and I was ready to crawl out of my skin when Luna’s cell phone finally rang.
All three of us jumped to our feet. Luna opened her phone. ‘Hello?’ She motioned to me for pen and paper. I obliged. She began to write. ‘Got it!’ She stuffed the phone in her pocket and looked at us.
‘Get in my car,’ she said and, again, without ceremony, went back out the back door as flamboyantly as she’d come in and jumped in her car.
We followed her, Willis riding shotgun, me in the backseat behind Luna, still not sure where we were going. She put her flasher on top of her car, turned on her siren and we sped out of BCR, over the river to Codderville. She didn’t speak and Willis and I just stared straight ahead. A few minutes later, Willis finally asked, ‘Where are we going?’
‘Wait,’ was all she would say.
She got off the highway just south of downtown Codderville, and followed a farm to market road to the west for about five miles. By then we were in deep country, passing empty fields of corn and cotton that had been recently harvested. The heavy wind produced by the speed of the car blew clouds of cotton bolls in the air. Luna slammed on the breaks, coming to a complete stop.
In front of us was our daughter Alicia, holding the arm of an old man, as the two limped toward us.
I burst into tears as I exited the vehicle.
I grabbed my daughter and held her tight, almost as tightly as she held me. Luna had taken the arm of the old man and was leading him to her car. Willis was behind Alicia, one arm on her shoulders, the other holding his cell phone to his ear.
I heard him say, ‘We’ve got her. We’re going home.’
Mr Brown drove back to the farmhouse, noticing that Mr Smith was being pretty quiet the entire way back.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘we’re here.’
Mr Smith did not reply. ‘Hey, Smith! Wake the fuck up!’
Mr Smith did not move. Mr Brown shook him, and Mr Smith’s head rolled in Mr Brown’s direction. The right side of Mr Smith’s head had been bleeding. A lot. But it seemed to have stopped. Mr Brown knew that wasn’t necessarily a good sign. He felt for a pulse in Mr Smith’s neck. There wasn’t one.
‘Well, shit!’ he said, pushing Mr Smith’s body away from him. ‘Goddamit! This sucks!’
He got out of the truck in disgust and went in the back door of the old farmhouse. It wasn’t Mr Brown’s day.
‘What the fuck?’ Mr Brown yelled. Mr Jones was lying unconscious on the floor of the kitchen. He walked up to the still body and kicked it. Then kicked it again. Feeling some relief of anxiety by that action, he kicked him a couple of more times. Then he walked to the sink, grabbed a pot, filled it with water, and threw it on Mr Jones’s head.
Mr Jones sputtered, choked, and attempted to move, only to find himself taped up. He struggled against the tape that bound him, but anyone who knows duct tape knows that is for naught. Finally his eyes fell on Mr Brown, who was sitting in the ladder-back chair Mr Jones had been sitting in before he fell to the floor.
‘Hey,’ Mr Jones said.
‘Hey,’ Mr Brown said, fuming.
‘Can you get this tape off me, man?’ Mr Jones asked.
‘Maybe in a minute,’ Mr Brown said.
Mr Jones looked around the room as best he could from his position. ‘Where’s Mr Smith?’ he asked.
‘Funny you should ask,’ Mr Brown said. ‘He appears to be dead.’
‘Huh?’ Mr Jones said.
Mr Brown kicked Mr Jones in the stomach. ‘Idiots! Nothing but idiots!’
‘Stop that!’ Mr Jones said, attempting to move his body away from the reach of Mr Brown’s foot.
‘Where are the girl and the old man, Mr Jones? Or should I ask, where are their bodies?’ He lifted his head to look at the ceiling, then brought it back down to look at Mr Jones. ‘Aw, no, now, if they were dead, as I instructed, then who in the world knocked you out and taped you up, Mr Jones?’
‘Look, it wasn’t my fault— Did you kill Max – I mean, Mr Smith?’
‘No, I didn’t. He hit his head against the side window and I guess something inside his brain just went flewy,’ Mr Brown said, and then laughed. ‘Who would have thought a tough guy like Mr Smith would have such a fragile head?’
‘How come his head hit the window?’ Mr Jones asked.
‘Is that really the important question here?’ Mr Brown asked in return. ‘Isn’t the really important question here how did the girl and the old man get away? Oh, and here’s a good one: why aren’t they dead?’ Mr Brown stood up and walked up to Mr Jones, still helplessly taped up on the floor. ‘LIKE I TOLD YOU TO DO!’ Mr Brown screamed and kicked Mr Jones in the head.
Luckily for them both, and for Bert, Mr Jones did not have a fragile head. However, the steel tip on Mr Brown’s steel-toed boots caught Mr Jones at the lower base of his eyebrow, splitting it open and gushing blood. Mr Brown lifted his left jean pants leg and removed a hunting knife. Mr Jones flinched, but Mr Brown went for the tape, not parts of Mr Jones’s anatomy.
After Mr Jones was freed and standing, a paper towel from the kitchen counter sopping up the blood from his eye, Mr Brown said, ‘We’re leaving. Gonna steal another ride. Get in the truck.’
The two men walked out the back door of the old farmhouse and went to the pickup truck parked nearby. Mr Brown went to the driver’s side, while Mr Jones went to the shotgun side. He opened the door and Mr Smith’s head rolled toward him, his body still in place from the seatbelt.
‘Just unbuckle it and toss it on the ground,’ Mr Brown said.
Mr Jones was offended by Mr Brown’s use of the ‘it’ pronoun. If Mr Brown couldn’t see fit to call him Max or Mr Smith, at least he could have called him ‘him,’ for crying out loud. They might not have got on, but Mr Jones knew that Mr Smith had his own loved ones and would have needed the money too; he didn’t deserve to die. Mr Jones unbuckled the old-fashioned seatbelt and grabbed Mr Smith’s body under his arms, gently releasing him to the ground. ‘Bye, ol’ buddy,’ he said to the body. ‘I’m glad you didn’t kill me.’
We ended up having a confrontation with Luna, who heard Willis say we were headed home.
‘No,’ she said.
‘No what?’ Willis asked.
‘Just wait a damn minute!’ Luna said. ‘Alicia, where were you being kept and how did you get out?’
‘At my place,’ the old man said, pointing toward a dirt road maybe half a mile away.
‘We made a deal with Mr Jones—’ Alicia started.
‘Who’s Mr Jones?’ I asked.
‘He’s the tall one. He’s really nice,’ Alicia said. ‘He untied us and let us knock him out with a frying pan and then tie him up so we could get away and so Mr Brown won’t kill him.’
We all just looked at her. Alicia pointed in the same direction the old man had pointed in only moments before. ‘He might still be there. When the truck left again—’
‘The truck came back here?’ Luna demanded.
‘Yeah, there were two of ’em in it,’ the old man said. ‘When they left again, like, what, Alicia, twenty minutes?’
‘Yeah, Bert, that sounds right,’ Alicia answered.
‘Yeah, twenty minutes later there were still two of ’em in the truck. Or there coulda been three. My eyesight’s not so good anymore.’
Alicia laughed. ‘Bert, do you have anything that works anymore?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ he said in a sad voice. Alicia patted him on the back.
‘I think we should go check on Mr Jones,’ Alicia said. ‘I sure hope Mr Brown didn’t kill him.’
Luna looked at me, then Willis, then back at me. Willis and I shrugged. ‘Sure,’ she finally said. ‘Let’s go find Mr Jones.’
We all piled in Luna’s car and headed down the dirt road, directed by Bert. Bert suggested we pull up to the back of the house. When we did, we saw the body. Luna turned off the engine of the car, and we all sat there staring at the dead man.
‘Well, the good news is that ain’t Mr Jones,’ Bert said. ‘That’s Mr Smith. Mr Smith was a rotten SOB and pretty much needed killing, so everything’s copacetic.’