Clyde jammed the cell phone back in the case that hung from his black leather belt. He had dreaded calling Jimmy Ray. The guy was just plain nuts. He’d unleashed a stream of cuss words on Clyde before slamming the phone down. Why hadn’t Clyde told the boss to call Jimmy Ray himself? But Clyde knew the answer: he plain didn’t have the guts. If he bucked the boss, refused to do as instructed, the big money would stop rolling in, and his wife’s supply of drugs would cease. Clyde knew too much, and if he didn’t follow orders, his life wouldn’t be worth a damn. He’d seen it happen too often to poor suckers who crossed the boss. If the boss didn’t kill him, Clyde’s wife would destroy everything when he couldn’t supply her with the meth she craved. She said they were just diet pills, but he was no idiot. He knew she was addicted to them, as well as to crack.
The sound of squealing brakes startled him. Jimmy Ray, dressed in faded jeans and a black tee shirt printed with buxom topless women astride motorcycles, pulled himself out of the black four-wheel drive pickup truck, slammed the door shut, and leaned against it. He stuck his hand in through the open window and pulled out a beer, popped open the can, and took a long swig.
“Clyde, Clyde, Clyde. Why’d ya do it, man? Do you have the foggiest idea how good it wuz gonna git? That chick was hot. Real hot. Not a good time for a phone call, man.”
Jimmy Ray’s angry red face scared Clyde, but the look in those cold, squinty eyes frightened him the most. Moving a drowned man from the bottom of the lake didn’t appeal to Jimmy Ray, and Clyde knew he had to think smart and fast to prevent Jimmy Ray from blowing out of control.
“The boss needs you to help with this big-deal job for one reason only—he knows you’ll get it done right. He says to me, he says ‘Git Jimmy Ray. He won’t screw up. I can depend on the man. There ain’t a better team anywhere than Jimmy Ray Thompson and Clyde Perkins.’” Clyde hesitated, afraid to push his luck, but finally added, “So you ready to get to work?”
Jimmy Ray gnawed off a hangnail, pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket. He lit it, took three long drags, and tossed it to the ground. “Think I’ll just check in with the boss myself,” he said, yanking a cell phone identical to Clyde’s from its holder.
“What’d he say?” asked Clyde as Jimmy Ray finished talking to the boss. He wiped at the sweat trickling down his face. Jimmy Ray and the boss had talked for several minutes, although all Jimmy Ray had said was an occasional “Yep,” “Okay,” and “Will do.”
Jimmy Ray shrugged his shoulders and said only, “Let’s do it.”
Aurora lowered the binoculars. Hoping to glimpse Sam and Little Guy, she had scanned the shoreline on both sides of Spawning Run. Dejected, she walked away from the window just as King growled. Aurora whirled around to see a boat slowly motoring to the opposite side of the cove. “It’s Bad Boat, the boat that almost rammed Luke’s boat!” she said. She watched through the binoculars as the two men maneuvered the craft beyond her line of vision. Trying to spot the boat from a different angle, she stepped out on the deck. Good, I can see better now. The boat bobbed gently in the water. She panned the binoculars to the registration number on the side of the boat, but couldn’t read it. Her hands trembled too much.
She focused on the boat’s occupants. The larger man unbuttoned his shirt, folded it, and placed it neatly on the seat. He removed his shoes, then stuffed each with a brown sock. Aurora sucked in her breath when he unzipped his pants. Relieved when she saw a yellow and black bathing suit, she studied the man’s face through the binoculars.
Where have I seen him before? They’re up to something. She quickly ducked back inside the house and returned with the video camera and her digital camera. Whatever it is, I’m not going to miss it.
Aurora filmed as the man in the swimming trunks pulled on a diver’s wet suit. Next came the scuba unit—the buoyancy control device, scuba tank and regulator.
Aurora shivered as she remembered a long-ago dive. Several years back, Sam had treated both of them to scuba diving lessons in Augusta and, after becoming certified, the two had enjoyed numerous dives in the Savannah River, the Charleston Harbor, the Atlantic Ocean off Edisto Island, the Florida Keys, and even the Caribbean.
At each lesson, the instructor had stressed to his students that conditions differed in every body of water, but Aurora had not been prepared for the hazards awaiting divers in Smith Mountain Lake. Before this lake began to fill, construction crews cleared numerous hillsides, but trees in some low-lying areas were left standing. Those too tall to be covered by water were simply topped instead of removed. Dilapidated farmhouses, abandoned automobiles, barbed wire fences, and even a bridge slowly disappeared from view as the water level in the lake gradually rose. Now these unseen secrets of days gone by waited on the lake bottom as silent sentinels, providing safe havens to fish and other aquatic creatures.
But these same sentinels could kill a diver.
Once, in her eagerness to explore Spawning Run, Aurora failed to adhere to strict diver’s rules. And it nearly killed her. Never dive alone. Always carry a cutting tool. Even as she entered the water, those words rang in her head. But she dismissed them. After all, she rationalized to herself, this was her cove; she’d swum in it for years, knew nearly every inch of shoreline. The instructor’s words of warning screamed out to her again, but by then she had become hopelessly entangled in fishing line caught in a tree on the bottom of the lake. Even if she’d had an underwater light, she couldn’t have seen more than eighteen inches in front of her. At first she struggled. Then she willed herself to calm down to prolong her air supply and to think through her predicament. Her air nearly exhausted, Sam miraculously found her. He’d seen Aurora enter the water and had hurried after her. With his cutting tool, he’d freed her from the fishing line. With the search line he’d attached to the boat’s anchor, he’d guided them both safely back to the surface.
Aurora had never dived again.
Jerked back to the activity on the lake, she watched the boat’s diver pull on diving gloves and a mask. He grabbed a light and stepped off the gunwale, the flash of a large knife in his hand briefly visible as he disappeared into the lake.
As soon as Clyde descended into the murky depths, Jimmy Ray pulled out his cell phone. He placed a bet with his bookie and hung up. He surely did like cell phones; that was a big perk in this job. Why, he could call chicks any time he wanted, could make obscene phone calls while being paid to work. No, he never again would be without a cell phone. He glanced at his watch, then dialed again. He would call that sweet young thing he’d been harassing for a couple of weeks. The fear in her voice always excited him. And he liked the change he’d noticed in her when she darted outside her trailer home to check the mail, the way she shot frightened glances up and down the street before hurrying to the presumed safety of her home. Little did she know he could get her any time he chose. She hadn’t the foggiest idea her caller lived right across the street. He finished dialing, then got a better idea. He hung up and grinned, and dialed a new victim. The chance that Clyde’s wife would recognize his voice or that Clyde would catch him talking to her only excited him more.
Intent on recording the man in the boat, Aurora almost didn’t hear the incessant ringing of her own phone inside the house. She considered letting it ring, then thought it could be Sam. She left the camera running and stepped into the house.
“No, I’m not interested in changing long distance telephone providers,” she said. “Why? Because my husband is a vice president of your biggest competitor.” When the caller stammered her apologies and hung up, Aurora smiled. Yes, she had lied, but this particular lie was the only one she ever told, and she told it almost every time she received a telemarketing call. It just felt so good, so right.
Before she could return to the deck, the phone rang again. Still smiling, she expected the same telemarketer.
But she was wrong.
“Lady, a man just paid me $100.00 to read this message to you. Please don’t interrupt me. Here goes.
Bring the diamond and ruby necklace, pictures, negatives, and any undeveloped film your father took before he drowned—and you know the ones I mean—to Cabin 171E in Smith Mountain Lake State Park. Enter the cabin, place the items inside the white Styrofoam cooler to the left of the entrance door, and leave. Do not look back. Do not bring anyone with you or tell anyone. Then drive to Hales Restaurant, take a seat by a window, and await further instructions. Do this by 4:00 p.m. today. If you fail to deliver as instructed, your husband will die the same way your father did. This is not a joke.
“This is a joke, right, lady?” the caller asked.
But Aurora had dropped the phone.