“What’s up, Isabel? You just missed Pete.”
No, Barbie, I’m not missing Pete. Yeah, it’s a bad joke, and one that I keep to myself.
“I believe I found something of yours.”
“Mine?”
I pull the earring out of my pocket.
“Isn’t this your missing earring?”
Barbie’s eyes widen. She’s blinking hard and bringing her fingertips to her lips.
“Where’d you find it?”
“At Chet Water’s junkyard.” I hand her the earring. “I have a question for you. How did you happen to lose it there?”
Barbie is tearing up.
She’s silent.
At this point, I don’t have the patience for any softball questions. I’m getting right to it like a reporter at a five-minute news conference. Answer my questions, damn it.
“I have a few more to ask you. My next is when did you lose it there?”
Barbie doesn’t answer that one either. Instead, she splits for the backroom. And without another thought I follow her into what appears to be the Pit Stop’s storage area and an office of sorts. It’s not hard to find Barbie. She’s backed against the door that leads outside. Her hand is clenched, presumably over the earring.
“Stay away.” Her voice trembles. “Please.”
“I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to hear what you’ve got to say.”
She shakes her head.
“But he will.”
“Pete?”
“He’ll be comin’ back.” Tears run down her face. “He’s gonna kill me if he finds out.”
Yes, my suspicions that Barbie is a victim of domestic abuse are right on. I’m figuring how I can help her when my cell phone rings. I slip it from my pocket. I’m only going to answer it if it’s somebody important and it is. Chief Dutton is calling. I press the red circle.
“Hey, chief.”
“Sorry, it took so long for me to get back to you, but I remember who the woman was that was crying. It was Barbie Woodrell.”
I keep a watch on Barbie. She hasn’t moved.
“I’m right here with her. Chief, I think you should come over to the Pit Stop right away. I believe she needs your help.”
With a bit of a shriek, Barbie charges forward. She tries to wrestle the phone from my hand. I don’t want to hurt her, but I’m not giving up that phone. I glance at the screen. Crap, I’ve lost the chief.
“You’ve ruined everything,” Barbie wails.
She’s still fighting me. I shove her backwards although not hard enough for her to fall. She backs toward the door. I stay right in front of her.
“Pete beats you, doesn’t he?” I soften my voice. “Barbie, the cops don’t have to catch him doing it anymore to arrest him. They changed the law a long time ago.”
She’s pressed against the door.
“You don’t understand,” she sobs.
Damn, now I get it.
“You were there that night. You saw what happened to Chet Waters.”
She makes a deep stuttering breath.
“Please, I’m beggin’ ya.”
A couple of scenarios are possible. I honestly don’t believe she’d be capable of killing Chet on her own. What would be her motive? It’s got to be Pete.
I start with one scenario.
“Did you and Chet have an affair and Pete found out? Then he caught you there with him?”
Her head swings back and forth.
“No!”
“Oh,” I say, suddenly feeling even sorrier for her. “Chet was trying to help you.”
“Yeah,” she sobs. “He was gonna help me get to my mother’s in Ohio. He even bought me a bus ticket.”
“And?”
“Pete was supposed to be at Baxter’s with a couple of buddies that night. But he came home early. He found the letter I left him. I didn’t write anythin’ about Chet, but he figured it out.” She gulps air. “Chet was always extra nice to me. It made Pete jealous and sometimes he accused me of foolin’ around with him. It wasn’t true, but Pete gets things in his head… ”
I touch Barbie’s upper arm.
“You’re doing good.”
“Chet picked me up, and we went back to his place cause he forgot the bus ticket. I was waitin’ in Chet’s truck when Pete showed up and dragged me out. He started hittin’ me hard. That must’ve been when I lost the earring. Chet heard my screams. Then he and Pete went at it. Pete wacked him hard in the head with a shovel.”
She sobs.
“Go on.”
“Chet fell to the ground. He didn’t move or make a sound. Pete checked and said he was dead. He said we had to cover it up.”
My brain is going fast. If Annette said it looked like her father tried to crawl out of the fire, he didn’t die right away. But Pete Woodrell killed poor Chet either way.
“Were you there when he started the fire?”
Barbie makes stuttering sobs.
“He dragged Chet’s body in the house and put him in his chair. Then he made the fire. He dropped a lit cigarette onto a pile of papers at his feet. He made me watch. He said… ”
That’s when the bell on the Pit Stop’s door jingles, and Pete Woodrell hollers, “Barbie? Where are ya?”
Barbie’s eyes grow larger.
“Let’s get outta here,” I whisper.
“He’ll find me.”
“Not if I can help it.”
I grab Barbie’s hand. We are out the back door and I hold on tight to make sure she doesn’t run back. I make like hell for my car, half-dragging Barbie with me. I get the passenger side door open and shove her inside, and then slam it shut. I have my key out and ready when I take my place. I punch it into the ignition.
“Get your seatbelt on,” I say as I fix mine.
She’s fumbling with the belt as I hit the gas. Pete Woodrell races from the store’s back door.
“You bitch, get back here,” he yells.
Pete rushes toward my car, but I manage to dodge him and pull into the road without hitting him or bothering to check too hard to see who might be coming. Barbie’s got her hand on the dashboard. Her cry is more like a scream.
When I check the rearview mirror, Pete is running toward his truck. He’s not going to let us get away. I push the car forward faster.
“Hang on,” I yell.
Minutes later, Barbie’s head whips around.
“He’s right behind us!” she wails.
A quick glance in the rear-view mirror confirms it. Pete’s truck is getting closer fast. I press the gas pedal.
I should be scared to death and, God’s honest truth, I am, but right now I’m a bit thankful the Beaumonts chased me on this road. It was good practice. But while those guys may have been fooling around, Pete isn’t. If he would kill Chet Waters, and there is no doubt in my mind he did and set that fire, he’d kill Barbie and me, or at the very least, me.
“Why didn’t you tell anybody?” I ask Barbie.
“Pete said I was an accomplice cause I saw what happened. I could go to prison. He said I couldn’t say nothin’ in court cause we were married.”
“He was wrong on both counts.” My cell phone rings in the right pocket of my coat. I’m driving too fast to risk it with one hand. “Grab that phone. See who it is.”
Barbie does as I ask.
“It’s the chief.”
“Answer it,” I snap. “Put her on speaker phone.”
“Where are you?” Chief Dutton asks. “I’m at the Pit Stop. There’s nobody here and the door’s unlocked.”
“I’m driving on the main drag, and Pete Woodrell is chasing me in his pickup. He’s the one who killed Chet. I’ve got Barbie with me.”
But before the chief can answer we hit a curve and a dead spot for cell service.
“She’s gone,” Barbie says.
“Don’t worry. She’ll find us.”
Barbie twists around.
“Oh, no, he’s catchin’ up with us.”
&nb
sp; The speed limit sign says fifty. I’m going sixty-five. Sam would be proud of me. He said I drive like an old lady. Move it, he would say. Pete’s big pickup handles this road better than my mother’s big car, so now there’s only ten feet or so between us. How long can I keep this up?
I’m figuring my options. I’m not about to turn off on one of the side roads. Most of them are dirt anyways and likely axle-deep in mud. I’ll aim for Baxter’s like I did when the Beaumonts tailed me.
I press the pedal. We’re going seventy.
“What happened to Chet’s dog?”
“He attacked Pete and bit him hard on the arm. He killed the dog when he broke its neck. Then he dumped it somewhere.” She looks over her shoulder. “Oh, no, Pete’s right behind us.”
“Uh, Barbie, any chance Pete carries a gun?”
“Gun?”
“Yeah, like a handgun?”
“He keeps one under the seat.”
“Shit.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“Well, I’m hoping Chief Dutton catches up with us, but we might have to make a hard right into Baxter’s. We’re gonna reach it soon. We’ll be safe there.”
Pete’s pickup is close enough I see him sneering behind the wheel. I don’t believe I can drive much faster on this winding road, but I believe I have no choice. I’m doing eighty. A pickup coming the other way blasts its horn but stays in its lane. Where in the hell is that police chief?
We make it around one steep curve and halfway around a second, when the front bumper of Pete’s pickup hits the back of my mother’s car. I push the car forward, but Pete does it again harder.
It’s then I know we’re not going to make it, and the car careens off the road, barely missing a tree before it heads into a snowy field, rolling over and over like it will never stop, but it does, on its wheels, mercifully. Barbie and I are screaming our heads off. The air bags deploy.
Beside me, blood streams down the side of Barbie’s face. She’s crying. I feel sharp pains in my shoulder and ribs.
I try to open the door, but I can’t.
“Barbie, you okay?” I ask her.
She whimpers when her hand comes away bloody from touching her face.
“I dunno. I think so.”
I hear a siren. Finally.
“Where’s that fucker?” I ask out loud.
But a painful look to my left gives me an answer. Pete Woodrell’s pickup is on the side of the road, wrapped around that tree my mother’s car barely missed.
I glance up when somebody knocks on the windshield. Holy crap, it’d better not be Pete.
Instead, I hear a man’s voice I’d recognize anywhere. Gary Beaumont is talking.
“Isabel, what the hell you doin’ in there? Is that Barbie with ya?”
“Yeah, it is. I can’t open the door.” I turn toward Barbie, who tries to open hers. “Barbie can’t either. We’re kinda stuck in here.”
Gary whistles sharply.
“Hey, Larry, run up and grab a crowbar from the truck. We gotta get ’em outta there.”
Gary wanders around the car, checking out the damage. When I turn toward the road, I see the flashing lights of the chief’s cruiser. Cars and pickup trucks are stopping.
This is likely my last chance to talk with Barbie before she meets Chief Dutton, who surely has to press charges against Pete Woodrell for harassing and forcing us off the road. Maybe he’ll be charged with attempted vehicular homicide or something like that. At the very least, driving to endanger. I’ll insist.
But I want to be certain where Barbie stands. Too often, I’ve learned, abused women just can’t break that forgive-and-forget cycle.
“Barbie, I want to say something. Pete’s gonna have to answer to what he just did to us. But it’s up to you that he’s found responsible for what you said he did to Chet Waters. The man tried to help you, and he lost his life because of it. You owe it to him.”
Her bottom lip quivers.
“But Pete… ”
I don’t let her finish. I’m not up for being polite and understanding.
“Oh, he’ll post bail and get out after they patch him up. Think about that. He knows you told me. You think this is gonna get any easier? He’s hurt you before. What do you think he’d do to you this time? Where are you gonna hide?”
Barbie makes a stuttering sigh. Tears pour down her face along with the blood. So, Barbie what’ll it be?
Outside the car, Gary yells for his brother to hurry up. Chief Dutton knocks on my window.
“You all right in there?”
I turn toward Barbie.
“What should I tell her?”
“Tell her yes.”
The Aftermath
The town of Caulfield has only one ambulance, so Chief Dutton makes the right call and lets it take Pete Woodrell, who’s in rough shape, to the hospital. That’s what you get when you drive eighty miles per hour to terrorize two women and you don’t wear a seatbelt. Yeah, I’m not being sympathetic. Why in the hell should I be? I’m hurt. The EMTs, all local guys, including one who’s a Rooster True Blue Regular, have checked me over. They suspect I may have a broken left collarbone and a few bruised ribs.
I told the True Blue Regular, “How am I supposed to pour beer with one arm?”
“Aren’t you right-handed?” he replied. “Piece of cake.”
Now I sit in the cruiser’s backseat with the door open, Chief Dutton insisted, while I watch the EMTs load Pete’s stretcher into the back opening. His wife, Barbie, who seems to have survived the crash with only a nasty cut on her forehead and maybe a broken or badly sprained wrist, stands beside the ambulance. She bites her lip. I’m wondering what’s going through her head. Will she conveniently forget everything she told me when we were stuck in my mother’s car? I hope not. Her scumbag husband doesn’t deserve to get away with it.
Then Barbie looks my way. She raises her head and gives me a nod. I believe Barbie’s going to do the right thing after all.
Naturally, a crowd has assembled along the side of the road. News like this spreads fast on the hilltown network. It’s a Saturday after all, so most folks aren’t at work. One of Caulfield’s part-time cops directs traffic and keeps nosy bystanders herded on the road’s shoulder.
Gary and Larry Beaumont stick around. I laugh to myself that of all the people living here, they were the ones who hauled ass down to the field and got us out of the car. They were feeling proud of themselves when they finally pried open the doors and dragged us out of there.
“You okay, Isabel? You okay?” Gary kept saying as if we were best buds.
Larry made a goofy laugh.
“We passed you on the road back there. Looks like you were goin’ a hundred miles per hour,” he says.
“Nah, only eighty.”
I thanked him and his brother a million times. You should have heard them go “Aw shucks, Isabel.”
Yeah, I’ve had a change of heart about Gary and Larry. They aren’t the only ones in this case. As it turns out, Chet Waters wasn’t the complete son of a bitch most said he was. Yeah, the man had his faults, but he tried to help Barbie Woodrell when nobody else did. And he died because of it. Annette should be proud of her old man. Maybe her brothers will be, too.
Speaking of Annette Waters, I turn when I hear the Tough Cookie holler my name. She sweeps through the crowd with her son, Abe, trailing several feet behind.
“Isabel, thank God, you’re alive!”
I raise my hand.
“Yeah, I’m alive. Got some bruised ribs and I might’ve broken a collarbone. Other than that, I’m okay. Not much you can do for them. That’s what the EMT told me, but they want me to get checked out at the hospital just in case.”
Annette peeks over her shoulder before she lowers her voice.
“Is it true what I heard?”
“What did you hear?”
“That Pete Woodrell chased you in his truck and ran you off the road.”
“Yeah, he did. Looks li
ke he and his truck got the worst of it. Same goes for my mother’s car. See it down there? I believe it’s totaled.”
“Holy shit. What an asshole. Why’d he do something like that?”
I glance around at the crowd. The chief is busy, so I get to my feet slowly.
“Come with me.”
Annette dutifully follows me to a place that’s away from everyone.
“What’s going on?” she asks. “Abe and I came back and saw your note.”
“I did find something. One of Barbie Woodrell’s earrings.”
“Huh? What the fuck was… ”
“Shh, please keep your voice down. Barbie told me your father was going to help her get away from Pete that night, but he caught them. She told me it was Pete who killed him and set the house on fire. I was trying to get Barbie outta there when he showed up.”
“Shit, I don’t believe it.”
I grab her arm.
“She confessed to me. But the only way Pete will answer for it is if Barbie testifies in court. She said in the car she would, but I’m not sure if she’ll go through with it. Her telling me isn’t enough to put him away. I’ve already talked with Chief Dutton.”
Annette forgets what I told her earlier. I yelp in pain as she hugs me.
“Sorry, sorry. I’m just excited. You did it. Shit, I can’t believe it.”
“You’re going to have to sit tight and keep this to yourself. No Marsha. Do you understand? It’s important. Let the chief do her job. Hopefully, Barbie’s conscience will do the same.”
One of the town cops asks us to move out of the way of the wrecker. Annette whistles as it uses a winch to haul my mother’s car from the field.
“I bet your mother’s not gonna be too happy about that.”
“Eh, she was okay with it when I called. She said it was easier to replace a car than a daughter.”
Annette folds her hand into a fist for a playful jab but catches herself.
“Your mother cracks me up. Hold on. I’ll tell ’em to take it to my junkyard.”
Yes, I called Ma, who was concerned, of course. I talked with Ruth, too, but downplayed the seriousness of the chase and crash. I was expecting a lecture, especially after the recent sit-down, but instead she said she and the boys would meet me at the hospital’s emergency room. Eventually, she’ll learn the truth, and then I’ll be in for it.
Redneck's Revenge Page 24