by Olive Balla
Lil murmured, “Not good, sis.”
She stuck her head through the shed door and waited for her eyes to grow accustomed to the dark interior. Tools and gardening supplies—no surprise there. But there must have been dozens of the same small footprints on the dirt-covered floor inside the shed she’d seen outside. Though there were none of Dix’s footprints inside the shed, there were several boot prints—some of which were on top of the kid’s.
“Kid?” Lil stepped around a pile of bags and into the shed beyond.
Her glance fell on a rusted-out tool box, the lid of which sat canted at an angle atop a burlap bag hanging half inside and half out. At four or five feet long, the thing was more than big enough to hide a kid’s body. Or Dix’s.
Barely able to control her shaking hands, Lil opened the lid. She gasped, and her knees nearly gave way at the same time her brain refused to believe what she was seeing.
Two gaping eye sockets stared up at her from a crushed skull. Large bones nestled in folds of faded and stained fabric carefully placed along each side of the rib cage. No flesh, and no odor of putrefaction meant old, desiccated bones.
Oh, the head bone’s connected to the (pause) neck bone; The neck bone’s connected to the (pause) shoulder bone…The words and melody of the old song tumbled unbidden through Lil’s head as she fought back an unexpected giggle.
Get a grip, Lil. You lose it, and you’re no use to anyone.
She dropped the lid, hustled back to her car, and pulled Dix’s cell phone from her scabbard. Once in the driver’s seat, she punched in her nephew’s number. Accompanied by periodic bursts of static that sounded like someone trying to straighten a wad of cellophane, the call went straight to voice mail.
“Davie, I’m at the Elliott place. I’ll apologize later, but I’ve got a feeling something bad is going down. Dix’s car is here, but she’s not.” Lil’s voice broke, and she cleared her throat. “The place is deserted, but there’s a shed and a toolbox with a skeleton in it. I think it’s real, doesn’t look plastic. Anyway, I think someone was held captive in the shed, maybe the kid, judging by the small footprints.” Fearing that the phone was nearly out of juice, she hurriedly added, “I’m headed to the Ross farm. GPS says it’s in the sticks, so I may not have a signal. Just wanted you to know.”
Lil ended the call and glanced at the tiny battery icon. Just as she’d suspected, the thing was completely dead. She could only hope at least some of her message had gotten through.
Riving the air with every four-letter word in her repertoire, Lil tossed the useless phone onto the passenger-side floorboard. With what Davie had long ago dubbed her “twin-ESP-thing” shooting canon ball-sized lumps into the pit of her stomach, she cranked up her engine, floored the pedal, and shot down the drive.
I warned you that kid was trouble.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Dix gripped the pickup’s steering wheel so tightly the muscles of her arms spasmed. Jillie sat next to her, unmoving and silent, while Toby sat in the back seat holding the pistol against Dix’s neck.
“You know the penalty for kidnapping, right?” Dix grimaced. Her voice sounded like it could barely squeeze past the invisible clamp tightening around her throat.
Toby didn’t respond.
Emboldened by the silence, Dix added, “You can still back out; it’s not too late.”
Toby shot forward in his seat and brought his mouth close to Dix’s ear. “Shut up. You hear me?”
Dix swallowed hard and nodded.
Toby said, “I hate club cabs. But when my old lady bought this, they’d just come out, so she had to have one. Knees up around my ears, scrunched up in a wad. I’m not happy right now, so you might want to keep your yap shut and just drive.”
“Leave her alone, Toby.”
“I want to, I really do. But life dumps on all of us, it’s just plain reality. And your reality is that your granny friend is going to get hurt if you don’t do what I tell you. Now shut your mouth, or I’ll shut it for you.” Toby turned to Dix. “Exit at the sign and bear right.”
By the time Dix pulled the pickup onto the Ross property, she’d considered then discarded several ideas for escape. If she’d been alone, she might have made an attempt, but any risk to the child was unacceptable.
“Pull around the back,” Toby said. “A little privacy is in order.”
Dix did as commanded.
“What the hell…?” Toby shot forward in his seat.
Two pickups, one rusty brown and the other sun-faded red, sat parked near the back porch. A woman and two men stood between the vehicles, deep in conversation. All three heads jerked toward the newcomers; then, the woman broke away from the group and strode toward them.
“Say anything, and the kid gets it. Clear?” Toby hissed in Dix’s ear. The hand holding the pistol was withdrawn and the back window powered down.
“Hey, Aunt Margo, what’s up? Didn’t know there was a party going on.”
Unspeaking, the woman stomped around the pickup to the passenger side and yanked open the door. Her hand shot out, grabbed Jillie’s wrist, and gave it a painful twist. “So glad to see you’ve finally decided to come home.” Her voice sounded more like a hissing snake than a human. As if she suddenly realized there were others present, she dropped Jillie’s arm, stooped, and smiled through the open window. “Toby, dearest,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I found the kid and grandma snooping around your place. The kid set up a whine to come home, and grandma suggested it would be therapeutic. What about you?”
“The place needs some cleaning up. We figured today’s as good a day as any.” Margo glared at Jillie and her lips twitched. “You’ve made the police take an interest in us, and that’s something I just won’t tolerate.”
“And you told me Beth was dead, that makes us even.”
“The way that policeman looked at us.” Margo shook her head as if she couldn’t believe her own words. “The police would treat us like criminals, you know that? But you’re the guilty one. We’re the victims.” She took a deep breath. “And yet here you are, just going about your business as if you’d done nothing wrong, as if you hadn’t killed my Digger.”
“Digger was hurting Beth.”
Margo cocked her head and studied Jillie’s face. “Well now, we can’t ask him for his side of the story, can we?” She looked at Dix and sneered. “And you must be that policeman’s old aunt.”
Before Dix could respond, the man she figured to be Cleg, judging by the oxygen tank slung over his shoulder, started toward Toby’s pickup.
“What’s up, Lotus Blossom?” he said. “Is that our little Jillie?”
Margo ignored her husband. “Mort,” she hollered over her shoulder, “bring the shovel.”
Cleg’s face wore a worried expression. “What’re you going to do, Babykins? Shouldn’t we go home now? We could come back later. Maybe we should just go home—”
Margo emitted something like a growl and whirled on her husband. “I’ve come too far to stop now we’re so close.” She hauled Jillie out of the pickup.
Dix reached out as if to pull the child back inside the vehicle. “Stop that, you’re hurting her. Haven’t you horrible people done enough to her?”
Margo glared at Dix then snorted. The skin tag Jillie had described flapped like a bed sheet in gale force winds. Veins standing out on her neck, she shrieked, “Mort, get over here.” She whipped her head around toward Jillie. “Now you’re going to pay for what you did. It’s time for a little home-grown justice.”
The young man Margo had called Mort approached the pickup. “What’s up?”
“A meeting of the minds, that’s what.” Margo laid a hand on Toby’s forearm.
Toby instinctively jerked away, as if his aunt had just wiped a snot-coated finger on his arm. His nostrils flared; then he instantly replaced the look with one of mild boredom.
Margo pretended not to notice the rebuff. “There’s more than enough to share. If we stick toget
her, we can get this done and be out of the country before anyone’s the wiser. You in, or out?”
Toby chuckled, all pretense of being a disinterested bystander dropped. “Well now, it’s like I told the kid, I’m not greedy.”
“You packing?” Margo said.
Toby lifted his pistol, its barrel pointed upward. “Always.”
“Good. You cover grandma. If the girl gives us any grief, shoot the old lady.”
Toby’s eyebrows lifted in an unspoken question.
“You don’t have to kill her,” Margo said. “Just pop her a couple of times.” She shot a look at Jillie and Dix to make sure her words had the desired effect.
Jillie cried out, “No. If you hurt Miss Dixie, I’ll never tell you about the treasure.” She glanced sideways at Dix, the imploring look on her face begging for understanding.
Cleg chose that moment to clear his throat. “It’s almost dinner time, Sweetums. This might take some time, and we’ll need our energy.”
Margo whirled on her spouse. “I’ve heard about enough from you. If you’re not careful, I’ll leave you behind with the old lady and the girl.”
Cleg flinched as if his face had been slapped. He muttered something apologetic, ambled back toward the house and stood on the porch, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, a troubled look on his face.
Dix swallowed hard. She’d have to step up her game. The look on that hideous woman’s face left no doubt as to what she had in mind.
“Mort, take Grandma into the house.” Margo turned toward Toby. “You got any rope in your truck?”
“Some nylon cord,” Toby said.
“Thick enough she can’t chew through?”
Toby smiled and shot a smirk toward Dix. “Not unless granny has a chainsaw hidden in her britches.”
“Good,” Margo said. “Tie her to the kitchen stove or a chair, anything heavy.”
Toby ran the pistol’s barrel up and down Dix’s neck then turned and looked at Jillie. “Time to learn a life lesson.” He looked toward his cousin. “Let’s go. I’m right behind you.”
“I didn’t sign on for violence,” Mort said. “I just want that to be understood.”
“All that’s required for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.” Dix looked pointedly at Mort.
Refusing to look directly at her, Mort grabbed Dix’s forearm and pulled her toward the house. Toby followed, his pistol held at waist-level.
“No more lies,” Margo said to Jillie. “Time to pay the piper.”
Dix moved slowly, willing Toby to get close enough for her to make a grab for his pistol. As if he sensed what she intended, he kept his distance.
Nearing the house, Dix looked at Cleg. “You need to make this stop.”
Cleg opened his mouth to respond, but Toby interrupted, “Oh no.” He held his left hand up to his mouth in mock terror. “Not the dreaded divide and conquer tactic.” He snorted. “You’ve been reading too much Sun Tzu.”
In a last-ditch effort, Dix pretended to stumble in front of Cleg, forcing him to look at her. “Please—”
“Shut it.” Toby jabbed the small of Dix’s back with the pistol.
Cleg moved his lips like he was chewing gristle. Then he frowned, dropped his gaze, and studied the tops of his shoes.
Dix’s stomach sank. If she and Jillie were going to get out of this mess, it would be up to her.
Chapter Forty-Eight
David stopped at every all-night gas station and convenience store on the road between Albuquerque and Belen, but no one had seen either his aunts or a runaway. As he drove, his eyes moved back and forth, alert to signs of a road mishap. With one ear tuned to his police scanner and the other to his phone, he tried to keep from thinking of all the things that could have happened to his aunts and the little girl.
He walked into the last all-night gas station before Belen just as a young male employee was clocking out. The tired-looking young man pulled a backpack from under the counter, slung it over his shoulders, and headed for the door.
“Excuse me,” David said. “Are you the night clerk?”
The young man nodded. “I’m on my way home. If you need something, you’ll have to talk to the manager. She’s in the back.”
David pulled out his identification and held it up for the clerk’s benefit. “Actually, it’s you I need to talk to. Have you seen two elderly women, one in a red sports car and the other in a tan coupe? That would have been either last night or this morning.”
“Yeah, the one in the red convertible. Nice ride. Is she your grandma?”
David’s heartbeat sped up. “Did you talk to her?”
“Not really. She fell asleep in her car over by the air pump. Scared the hell out of me.” The young man eyeballed David. “Did she do something bad, like rob a bank?”
“She’s missing. When did you see her, at about what time?”
The kid grew thoughtful. “Oh, I’d say it was about five or six this morning. I thought she was in trouble or something, so I went out to her car and tapped on her window. I think I woke her up.”
“Was she alone, no little girl in the car with her?”
“No, she was by herself. I thought, you know, she might be senile or something and just forgot where she was, but she seemed okay.”
“Did she happen to say where she was going?”
The kid shook his head. “Like I said, we didn’t really have a conversation.”
“Did you see her leave, notice which direction she went?”
“She drove south, towards Mountainair.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“No problemo.” The young man headed for a motorcycle chained to an upright metal pipe cemented next to the door. “Good luck.”
David hurried back to his car. A southerly route meant his aunt had either been headed to the Elliott place or the Ross farm.
I’m right behind you, Auntie Dix.
He pulled his cell phone from the holder attached to his dashboard. He needed to update his aunt Lil as well as find out where she was.
He prepared to punch in his aunt’s number, but his phone’s flashing green light announced he’d missed a call. Berating himself for forgetting to take his phone out of silent mode earlier, he tapped the screen to retrieve a message from his Aunt Dix’s phone.
But static and an occasional dead interval made his aunt’s message nearly impossible to decipher.
…at the Elliott place…Dix’s car’s here…deserted…held captive in the shed…
His stomach doing a pirouette and heart pounding, David replayed the message several times in hopes of making sense of it. Then he tried to call Dix’s number again, but it went immediately to voice mail.
…held captive in the shed…
The snippet of message sent a chill up his back. Had that garbled message been Aunt Lil’s call for help? Had his aunts been locked in that shed during his visit? No, that didn’t make sense given neither of his aunts’ cars had been there at the time of his visit.
David sucked air through his teeth. Had he been so caught up inside his own head that he’d driven past one or both of his aunts’ vehicles on the highway?
He’d noticed that shed earlier, had even considered looking into it. But because of the Elliott woman’s offhand attitude about it, he’d dismissed it as being inconsequential.
David pounded his palm against the steering wheel. One step forward, two steps back—like fighting his way up the side of a steep sand dune. If anything happened to his aunts or that little girl because of his short-sightedness, he’d never forgive himself.
David called dispatch and gave Betts an update.
“What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to find my aunts and the runaway.”
“Do you need backup?”
“If I do, I’ll be in touch.” David ended the call
He pulled onto the road that would take him back to the Elliott house.
Chapter Forty-Nine
One day she and Beth were happily planning to go away; the next, Beth was in the hospital, and Jillie was eating lunch on top of a skeleton while everyone in the world was looking for her.
All she wanted was for her life to go back to the way it was before Pops died, before someone started that stupid rumor about a treasure. But like in Pandora’s Box, all the evil had been let out, and nothing could put it back.
Once the treasure rumor had caught on, everything changed. Kids at school suddenly wanted to become Jillie’s friend. People they hardly knew invited the family to dinner and talked about the weather for a second or two before asking pointed questions about Pop’s trips, while pretending only passing interest. Then as time went on and Pops didn’t magically produce a treasure trove to share with everyone, the rumor mill turned nasty.
And now, with what she’d discovered in the shed, it was obvious the Elliotts were playing by a different set of rules than the ones by which Jillie’d been raised.
One thing was obvious: she couldn’t keep denying there was a treasure. Even if that were true, it wouldn’t work with those people. And neither she nor Miss Dix would be able to talk their way out of the fix they were in. Just like in the true crime stories she and Beth used to watch on television after Pops had gone to bed, she and Dix could be made to disappear. And they’d never be found in the miles and miles of open desert—at least not by anything human.
Unwelcome scenes from those television episodes flashed into her mind—images of sun-bleached bones scattered and carried off by predators, of dried, leathery skin and crushed skulls, made not so horrifying by the calm, matter-of-fact voice of the narrator. And, of course, on television there’d been no smells.
The worst part of those episodes was that a lot of the murdered people had willingly gotten into cars with their murderers. And many of them had been killed by people they’d once loved.
Searing pain and the taste of blood made her aware she’d started chewing her nails again. Gingerly, she wiped the pads of her fingers on her jeans and thought about the skeleton in the toolbox.