Christopher told me to stay put at that motel until he showed up there, and I did exactly what he said.
It took forever to fall back asleep, but when I did, I slept like the dead. I felt horrible using that expression, but it was true. Christopher’s loud knocking on my door woke me. I checked my cell phone and noticed it was almost ten o’clock in the morning. Clearly, I needed the sleep.
The motel wasn’t a five-star hotel, but it wasn’t a weekly rental one either, but it would have been nice if it had a window and maybe a peephole to see who was at the door. “Who’s there?” I asked.
“Housekeeping,” the woman answered.
I opened the door, and Boone Mableton pushed the woman aside. She whacked his arm. “Don’t got to be such a jerk about it,” she said, but she walked away.
“Boone? What’re you doing…” My feet took root in the dingy gray carpet of that cheap motel. “Miss, wait.”
“No way honey, he’s all yours.” She pushed her cleaning supply cart down the hall. “Good luck with him, too.”
Boone shut the door behind him. His face lacked expression, and his droopy shoulders were no longer droopy. Instead, they stood erect and proud. The dumber than a box of rocks Boone had disappeared entirely.
My limbs went weak, and I shivered. It was him all along, the one I thought wasn’t smart. He’d just played dumb. How could I have missed that? “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“I was wondering when you’d figure it out, Mayme.” When he said my real name, he practically spit it out.
“What do you want?”
“I want the needle.” He closed the space between us.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“’Course you do. You give it to me, and nobody gets hurt. I won’t even tell no one you ain’t really Ivy Sawyer.”
He strolled over to my bag and searched through it. As he did, I carefully snuck my cell phone off the nightstand next to the bed and stuffed it into the pocket of my pajama bottoms.
“How many times do I have to say I don’t know what you and that loser are talking about. I told him that, too.” I walked toward the bathroom.
“Now, where you goin’ missy?”
“I need to use the ladies room.”
He moved swiftly toward the bathroom and opened the door. He glanced in the musty smelling room with peeling wallpaper.
“There’s no window. It’s not like I can escape.”
“Don’t lock the door.”
“Then don’t come in.”
“Then hurry up.”
“Gosh, I sure hope you never get married. You don’t know how to talk to a lady.”
“When one shows up, I’ll talk to her right.”
“I’m going to the bathroom, Boone.” I made an effort to make a little noise while I quickly pulled out my phone and tapped out a text to Christopher letting him know what was going on.
“It’s Boone. He’s here. Come quick.”
Then, I hit the voice memo on the phone and began recording. I put the phone on silent and put it back into my pocket, praying God wouldn’t let anything happen. I flushed, washed my hands and went back into my motel room.
He poked me in the chest with his long, skinny forefinger as I walked out. “Now Miss Buckley, or do you like to be called Buck? Ain’t that the name you went by in New York? When you tried to be a big-time actor?”
He’d done his homework. I gulped down breaths. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do. My hands were clammy, and my head hurt. I was dizzy. I thought I might pass out. I wasn’t acting scared. I was frightened. “I…I…”
He used that finger and lightly trailed it down my arm. “You weren’t Buford’s type. Too classy for him. Knew that the first time I saw you. But me, I could do right by you. You ought to think about that.” He sauntered over to the bed, sat down and motioned for me to sit next to him.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
He stood then and walked around the room touching everything with his grimy hands. “We’re the same, you and me.”
I had the sudden urge to shower and use steel wool to clean myself just from being near him. “Really? How is that?”
“We’re both actors. You played Ivy Sawyer, the fiancée, and I played the dumb cousin, the idiot brother, and the stupid son, but really, I ain’t none of those. I’m the mastermind of this whole thing.”
“And what thing is that?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” He leaned back on the bed. He was right. The dumb lug of a guy he’d been before had completely disappeared. In his place was a confident, devious, almost evil man. One that scared me bad.
“Tell you what?”
“What I did to my cousin.” He pushed himself to the pillows and crossed his feet. “Go on. I’m looking forward to hearin’ this.”
Boone thought I’d figured it out, only I hadn’t, not entirely anyway. “I think you killed your cousin. Granted, I didn’t know it was you until just now. I figured you were too dumb, but obviously, you had me fooled. I know he didn’t die from a wasp sting.” I knew it had something to do with his allergies, but I didn’t know what. “You did it to get the money for the truck. I thought it was to get money for your momma’s medicine, but I’m not so sure. You’re fooling yourself though if you think Tucker’s going to sell the truck for more money and share the money with you.” I tried to sound like I knew something he didn’t, so I laughed. “Good luck with that.”
“You’re only half right. Tucker’s just acting like he’s buying the truck. I’m brokering the deal, not Tucker. I’m paying him to act like he is, and that’s it.”
“So you did kill Buford.”
He nodded. “You might could say that. Not my fault the boy’s got allergy problems. That’s why he stopped staying at Momma’s. You saw her place. Ain’t nobody in their right mind would want to live there. Heck, even the pig we used to own ran away. The dust in there got so bad, he couldn’t stop sneezing, and when she got sick, the only thing she could eat for a while there was peanut butter. Didn’t know he was allergic till he nearly died from it one day. Had to start living in his rig after that.” He laughed.
“You know even the tiniest bit of peanut in the air can kill someone that’s allergic? If you got an allergy to it, you gotta do is touch something that’s got peanut on it and you could die. It ain’t actually murder if it’s an allergy now, is it?”
“It is if you intend to kill someone with it.”
“Ain’t my fault if something with peanut on it got misplaced in his rig. Maybe a little too close for comfort, and maybe he was sleeping and had taken something to help him sleep. You know, Buford, he was known to do that ‘cause of those back problems of his. Seems to me his fiancée ought to know that, right, Ivy Sawyer?”
I pressed my lips together. I’d totally forgotten about Buford’s back problems, but to use his weakness as a means to kill him was incomprehensible to me, and it was far beyond any IQ level I thought Boone had. “You murdered your cousin by manipulating his allergies? I didn’t think you’d be smart enough to figure that out.”
He laughed. “That’s the best part of it all.”
“You have everyone fooled, don’t you?”
“I ain’t as dumb as I look.”
Oh, Boone, I thought. If you only knew the truth. I kept my arm as close to my chest as possible, worried I’d move too quickly and my phone would flop out of my pocket, and I’d be toast. I wanted everything he’d said on the recording. I knew there was probably some law against recording him, but it wouldn't matter when my life was in danger, and I wasn’t a reporter or anything, so there had to be some exception to the law anyway. It didn’t matter. If he did kill me, at least my family would know I fought, because if it came down to it, I would. I’d fight hard.
Mayme Buckley wouldn’t go down without a fight.
“You give me what I’m looking for, and I won’t have no need for killing you, Mayme Buckley.”
I swallowed hard.
“I don’t have anything you want, Boone Mableton.” My tone was curt, my voice steady, even though I didn’t even believe myself.
“I think you do, or you wouldn’t have gone and hidden the rest of Buford’s things. Where’d you hide them, Mayme? I’ve got Tucker over at your dad’s shop checking things out for me, but you might could make it all easier by just telling me where the needle is.”
My eyes widened, and my heart sank. My dad would be at his shop already. “What’d you do to my Daddy?”
“Gimme the needle, and your daddy’ll be just fine.”
I clenched my hands and pounded them into the sides of my legs, and then I took a deep breath and recalled a role I’d played in a small play Off-Broadway back during my first year in the city. It wasn’t a big hit, and I couldn’t even remember the name of the play then, but I knew the part well because it gave me my start, and I’d been forever grateful. A young girl had been accused of killing her mother. She’d ground a dozen sleeping pills, put them in her glass of champagne, and then drawn a bath for the depressed woman. When her mother was on the verge of slumber, the sociopathic girl gently shoved her mother’s head underwater and held it there until the bubbles stopped, and her mother died. All without blinking an eye. All without raising her heartbeat, without feeling any angst or fear. I channeled that character. Her stoic expression, the hollow, emptiness of her eyes, the blankness of her soul, the soullessness she’d felt inside.
I relaxed my shoulders and sighed. “What is it with you? Sure, I can understand Tucker Hyut. I mean, really, that man is not my type, not one bit, but you?” I gave him a long, slow once over, letting my eyes trail over his body like it was a one pound Hershey candy bar Daddy and Momma used to leave in my Christmas stocking.
“If I had something that was anything of value, do you really think I’d hide it from you?” Of course, I would. Why did I even say that? I casually walked back toward the bed, trying hard to act like I didn’t have a care in the world. I glanced down at my pocket to make sure my phone wasn’t visible.
He cut the distance between us. “Now Mayme Buckley, or wait, is it Buck? That’s the name you used in the big city, now ain’t it? Too bad that didn’t work out for you. I hear busting through the floor ain’t the way to make it in the movies.” He laughed. “Are you making a move on me?”
I tried not to cringe, but I just couldn’t stop my face from doing what it naturally wanted to do. “It wasn’t movies, Boone. It was theater.”
He waved his hands near his chest. “Oh, excuse me, ma’am. I’m so sorry I got that wrong. Miss High Society over here, she’s offended by my mistake.” He straightened his stance and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “Tell ya what. You gimme the needle, and we’ll call it even. I’ll get what I need, and your dad’ll be fine.”
“I don’t have any needle. I don’t know what you’re problem is, Boone, but I’ve had enough. Now you need to leave before I call the police.”
He charged me then, all of his six foot plus, probably two hundred and fifty or so pounds of anger and frustration came at me. I had nowhere to go, nothing to protect myself with, and an overwhelming desire to bolt before his big burly body landed on me, crushing me and any chance of my survival. His sweat flew off him like rain flicking off a car windshield from the fast speed of the wipers. I yelped, knowing my life’s end was imminent.
Seconds before Boone Mableton’s looming, sweat-smelling mound of clammy thick bulk collapsed on top of my notably smaller and softer frame, the door to the cheesy, one-star motel room crashed open, and Christopher Lacy aimed his gun directly at my head. It might have been aimed at Boone’s head, but tears clouded my view, and I’d been screaming like a crazy woman, so things weren’t all that clear in the heat of the moment, and maybe my memory was a tad bit off. Either way, both me and Boone froze, per Christopher’s direct order of, “Freeze, or I’ll shoot.” I was ninety-nine percent sure he meant that for Boone, but a girl should never take chances when a detective pointing at gun her direction yells something like that.
Two uniformed officers pushed past Christopher and threw Boone Mableton, face first, onto the bed, grabbed his arms and cuffed them behind him. One of them read him his rights while Christopher wrapped me in a hug and asked me no less than one hundred times if I was okay.
“I’m fine.” My entire body shook, and my teeth chattered as I spoke, but otherwise, I was good to go. And by go, I meant get as far away from Boone and the rest of the Mableton’s as I could, and fast. “What about my daddy? Have you checked on him?”
“Your dad is fine. He’s at the station, your mom’s with him. I’ll take you there. I’ve got officers at his shop now. He’d already called in a break-in, but nothing was taken except the one bag we’d left. I’m assuming those were Buford’s and not yours. The years’ worth of magazines with scantily dressed women on the covers.”
“Obviously you haven’t seen women’s magazines at the grocery store checkout line lately.”
He smiled.
“I want that needle,” Boone screamed. The two officers dragged him out by his armpits, and his heels made this digging, scrunching sound on the old, tattered carpet. “If you give me the needle, we can just forget this ever happened.”
Christopher eyed me. “Yeah, that’s the way this thing works, Mableton.”
“I was right,” I said.
We left the hotel room as they crammed Boone into the police car kicking his long, gangly legs and screaming all kinds of inappropriately foul words as they did. He was so belligerent, he smacked his head on the top of the door frame.
I flinched. “Ouch, that had to hurt.”
“Happens a lot. It’ll hurt more when they tack on the resisting arrest charge though.”