We gotta hurry,” she said. “The girls’ll be home from school in twenty minutes. We gotta have everything together by then.”
She threw a roll of duct tape into the brown canvas bag on the kitchen table.
“I’m telling Gordie I’m taking you to the airport in Chicago,” she said. “Gonna have to spend the night. That way he won’t be looking for me till he gets home tomorrow night and wants his dinner.” She waved a hand. “Even then, he won’t worry none. He’ll just figure I broke down or something and go over to his mama’s for supper.” She looked over at Tommie. “You bring your gun?”
“Two.”
“Better bring ’em along,” she said. “We gotta try to wipe the slate clean before we fly away. Best as we can anyway.”
“We gonna kill ’em?”
“Not till we find out who else knows I’m here. Then we’re gonna take ’em out in the woods and bury ’em deep, where nobody’s ever gonna find ’em.”
“We gonna leave Gordie and the kids be?”
“We’re not organized enough to do anything about them. His nosy-ass mother’ll know something’s wrong in a minute we mess with any of them.” She looked around the kitchen. “This is Mama May’s house. Mama May’s land.” Her eyes darkened. “And she never let either of us forget it. Not for all these years. Brought it up every damn time money was mentioned.” She caught herself. “Besides that, even if we did…you know…there’s no way to cover our trail. Nope. We take care of those other two busybodies, and then Gordie and the girls just wake up tomorrow morning and find me gone.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Way things been going around here lately, I expect they’ll be glad to see me gone. God knows his mama will.”
She crossed the kitchen to the phone on the wall. Dialed. “Mama May,” she said after a moment. “I’m taking my brother to the airport in Chicago tonight. He got a good deal on a midnight flight.” She listened. “Yes,” she said. “I will.” Listened again. “I need you to look after the girls. Send ’em off to school in the morning.” She rolled her eyes. “Yes. Yes. I’ll leave him a note. I’ll have them ready.” She hung up and headed for the stairs.
“I’m gonna pack a bag,” she said. “You get your stuff together, and then we’ll load the car.”
The voice on the phone was a hoarse whisper. “How much is the reward?”
“Depends,” Corso said.
“I wanna see the money up front.”
“You give me the information. I check it out. Then you get the money.”
“By then she’ll fly away.”
Corso sat up straight. Pointed at the phone. Dougherty stopped painting her nails and held her breath.
“Fly away, you say?”
“Sure,” the voice rasped. “Like a bird.”
Dougherty set the nail polish on the nightstand. The arrows and vines and words that decorated her shoulders and chest gleamed Technicolor in the harsh overhead light.
“How’s she gonna do that?” Corso asked.
As he listened, Corso’s face moved from rapt attention to mild amusement.
“I see,” he said finally. “Thanks for calling. No. No. Yeah. I’m taking it down, don’t worry. We’ll be in touch. Yeah.” He used his thumb to break the connection. Dougherty resumed breathing and cocked an eyebrow. “She’s one of a coven of witches living way up on the peninsula,” Corso said. “We got to be careful or she’ll fly away on us. Seems she’s got this magic broom.” He pointed at the phone. “He’s personally seen her do it.”
“Where do these people come from?”
“The Jerry Springer Show,” Corso said.
The phone rang. Corso picked it up and pushed the
TALK button.
A woman’s voice. “You the one’s looking for that woman?”
“Yes.”
“I know her,” she said. “You meet me ten o’clock tonight. Downtown. Out at the back of Emerson Park. Down by the river. Bring the money.” Dial tone.
She stood with the phone in her hand, looking out through the dirty front window as Sarah and Emily walked down the half-mile driveway toward the house.
Something in the ditch had attracted Emily’s attention. She’d fallen behind her sister, who returned now and pulled the little girl upright. She watched as Sarah wagged a finger in Emily’s face and then slapped her hard; she turned away as the girls again began trudging in her direction, Sarah striding out ahead with a smile on her face, Emily wiping the tears from her cheeks.
Dougherty puckered her lips and blew on her nails. “Another loony?”
“Could have been her,” he said.
“She say something?”
“Just a feeling.”
“So?”
“She wants to meet across the street at ten tonight.”
“In the park?”
“All the way at the back, by the river.”
“I thought we were only meeting in broad daylight in public places.”
“She didn’t give me a chance.”
“We don’t have to show.”
“No…we don’t.”
“But what if it’s genuine?”
“Could be the only lead we get,” Corso mused.
“You figure that’s just a coincidence?” She waved her bright red nails. “You know, being right across the street from our motel and all.”
“What else could it be?”
“You tell me.”
Corso paced as he mulled it over. “Maybe it’s the only secluded place in the downtown area,” he offered. “Maybe it’s—”
“This place is a graveyard after dark. Besides that, why downtown? Why not somewhere out in the boonies?”
“You might be right,” he said. “We’ll get ourselves out there real early. Get the lay of the land. Make sure we’re not walking into anything we can’t handle. We see anything remotely scary, we hit the road and call Molina.”
She eyed him. “You’re really spooked, aren’t you?”
His eyes got hard. “All we’ve done so far is find out who she used to be. Her past is scary enough. Imagine who she is now.”
“I don’t want to go to Grandma’s,” Emily whined.
“Stop your sniveling,” her mother said. “Mama May will be here in just a minute to get you two.”
“I wanna stay here and see Papa.”
Her mother grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a shake, sending the child’s head bouncing back and forth like it was on a string. The woman raised her hand but stopped short of using it when a loud bang startled her.
She turned her head. The new stove inlet pipe lay on the floor at Sarah’s feet.
“How many times do I have to tell you? Leave that damn thing alone before I bash your damn head in with it!” she yelled.
Sarah reached to pick it up, but her mother was on her before she could close her fingers around the cold metal. Sarah took a step backward and watched her mother snatch the pipe from the floor, carry it across the room, and lean it against the wall, where it would be behind the door when it opened.
“There,” she said. “It’s out of the way now.” She pointed at Sarah. “Get your coat on. Mama May’s coming to get you.”
“Where you going?” the girl wanted to know.
“I’m taking Uncle Tommie to the airport in Chicago.”
“Good.”
When her mother started across the room toward her, Sarah turned and ran up the stairs. “I’ll smack your mouth,” her mother said to her back. Emily scampered upstairs after her sister. “You get your coat on,” their mother shouted.
When the girls disappeared around the upstairs corner, she turned back toward the kitchen window just in time to see Mama May’s blue Ford Torino bouncing to a stop in the yard.
She watched impassively as the older woman struggled out of the car and limped her way up the walk toward the door. Mama May had undergone hip replacement surgery three years earlier and, even with a new ceramic joint, had never regained her normal gait.
She’d seen the pictures. Three dead husbands ago. Way back in the fifties when May and Homer had first inherited the farm from his parents. May Galindo hadn’t been attractive then, and she wasn’t attractive now. A tall, hawk-faced, wide-hipped woman whose puckered, disapproving mouth and glowering countenance spoke of a lifetime of dour disapproval.
She always entered without knocking. The house belonged to her; she didn’t want anyone to forget. Once inside, she gazed at her daughter-in-law with all the warmth of a snake. “Gordon working late again?” she asked.
“Till midnight.”
She had immovable Margaret Thatcher hair and a look of contempt strong enough to wilt flowers. “It’s good your brother’s leaving.”
She swallowed the wave of anger that flooded her. “He needs to get back.”
“The girls don’t like him. They say he touches them. They tell you that?”
She shrugged. “You know how they are. Especially that Sarah.”
“That’s no way to be talking about your own kids.”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that? I was going to be taking parenting lessons, it sure as hell wouldn’t be from you.”
The women stood a yard apart on the worn linoleum, locked in mutual loathing, until the younger woman broke away and walked over to the foot of the stairs.
“Let’s go, you two. Mama May’s here.”
“Name’s Teresa Fulbrook. Least that’s what she calls herself now.”
Dougherty held her breath. “Oh?”
“I don’t mind other people’s business. I’m not that kind.”
“Of course not,” Dougherty said.
“This is something different, though.”
Dougherty reached over and slapped Corso on his bare stomach. He sat bolt upright in bed. She pointed at the cell phone pressed to her ear, bobbed her head up and down. “This is different,” she said softly. As Corso swung his legs over the edge of the bed and got to his feet, the woman went on.
“Like I said…woman you’re looking for calls herself Teresa Fulbrook now. Got white spiky hair sticking straight up. Got a couple of little girls. Seven and fourteen. That’s who I’m worried about here…those girls.” The voice cleared its throat. “Couldn’t give a damn about that Fulbrook woman.”
Dougherty used her thumb to jack the earpiece volume all the way up. Corso leaned in close, resting his head against hers, listening to the tinny amplified voice.
“How do you know her?” Dougherty asked.
“Her oldest girl—Sarah’s her name—she’s in the same class as my son Billy. Southshore Junior High. They’re at that age…youknow…where boys start noticing girls and the other way around.” Dougherty could sense her discomfort. “Anyway,” the woman continued, “I guess this woman—I seen her there a few times before—I guess she sees Billy and her Sarah holding hands.” She hesitated, as if to keep herself under control. “To hear my Billy tell it, she come running down the sidewalk like a banshee, starts screaming at the two of them, drags the girls back to the car, and drives off.”
“Really?”
“That’s not the part, though. Girl don’t come to school for a week. She gets back, and somebody’s cut all her hair off. Right down to the nubs. Sarah tells Billy it was her mama done it.”
“For holding hands?”
“What kind of woman would do a thing like that to a teenage girl? All the problems girls that age got anyway, and you cut off all their hair?”
“You know where this woman lives?”
“Out east someplace on Route 10. I gotta go,” she said suddenly. “Kids are home.”
A soft click announced the terminated connection.
“Bingo,” Dougherty said.
“The hair bit sounds about right.” He made a face. “Eyewitnesses are always dicey, though.”
“The name’s right.”
“Teresa Fulbrook?”
“Teresa Thomes. That was the other woman who died back in Avalon about the time Sissy disappeared. I never followed up on her, because I struck it rich on the Nancy Anne Goff alias. I’m betting we do a little checking, we find out she took over both identities at the same time.”
“Smart,” Corso said. “One name to leave town with. Another to settle in under. Make it doubly hard for anybody to trace you.”
“What now?”
He held out his open palm. “Molina.”