The PMS Outlaws: An Elizabeth MacPherson Novel

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Another thunk came from the depths of the trunk.

  “You’re staying in there!” Bill yelled, tapping on the lid. “Until I get some answers, whoever you are.”

  That face looked familiar somehow. On a glimpse of less than five seconds, he couldn’t place it, though. With a shrug, Bill climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the car back toward the direction of his office. Let the police sort it out, he thought. So much for his beautiful new client, he thought ruefully. On the other hand, he might have grounds for a lawsuit of his own. He brightened considerably at the prospect, and drove back to the house, keeping one eye on the prisoner in the backseat and weighing legal strategies, while the thumping from the trunk grew louder and more insistent.

  The three history professors had gone. Mr. Jack, still sitting in his battered aluminum lawn chair, looked up at the shadowy figure silhouetted by the dangling lightbulb. He did not seem particularly upset by the intruder. In ninety-two years, he’d had a lot of time to get used to the idea of death, and he found that it didn’t impress him as much as it used to. He had even outlived the threat of jail, because no jury in Virginia was going to send a frail old man of ninety-something to prison, no matter what his crimes. Being ninety was a prison.

  “Well?” he said to the man in the shadows. “Were you looking for me?”

  “I thought you were dead, Jack.”

  “Not quite!” snapped the old man. “And I’m not ready to be installed in any damn museum, neither!”

  The man knelt down so that the light shone on his face. “Do you know who I am?” he said softly.

  Jack Dolan peered into the scarred face of an old man—not as old as he was, but still well past the plump vigor of middle age. “I’ve no idea,” he said flatly.

  “I forget myself sometimes,” said the man. “It’s been decades since I even said the name. I go by Hillman Randolph these days. Most of the time I forget it isn’t who I am.”

  Jack Dolan strained to recognize the voice, but age had changed it beyond anything he would find familiar. The name, though. Hillman Randolph. Just a minute …

  “The lawman?” he said. “The one in the accident?”

  The man nodded.

  “Is that how you got those burns?”

  “It is.”

  The old man shook his head. “It’s a pity,” he said at last. “But you’re a tad late to be coming after me, whether it’s revenge you want or money. Same thing, I reckon.”

  Hillman Randolph looked at the shrunken old man in the lawn chair. He’d heard the three professors offer to make a screenplay of the old man’s life, as if it were already over. The man was a museum piece. Just because he was alive didn’t mean the past wasn’t dead.

  “I wanted to ask you what happened that night,” Randolph said at last. “Just between you and me. I’m retired, you know. No gun. No badge. Man to man. What happened?”

  The old man sighed. “You were there—for the end of it, anyhow. I’ll bet you wish you hadn’t been. The beginning wasn’t all that pretty, either. We were sending out a shipment—sort of a sample. A club in Richmond might put a lot of business our way if we could make bourbon good enough to fool their regulars—only cheaper. A whole lot cheaper, because we wouldn’t be paying any whiskey tax to Uncle Sam. Well, as we were loading up the car, a fellow showed up here. Never mind his name. He never amounted to much, but he thought it was because I stood in his way. You know who he was. He’s the one that tipped you people off.”

  “I remember.” Hillman Randolph didn’t know if that part of the story was true. He had never dared to ask who had tipped off the feds, because they thought that, as one of them, he already knew. “Go on.”

  “I reckon the fellow came to gloat. We had words, anyhow, and he wasn’t nearly as good at taking insults as he was at delivering ’em. After one of mine he went for his pistol. And I went for mine.”

  “Just like the Wild West,” said Hillman Randolph with a sneer in his voice. “A shoot-out at the O.K. Corral.”

  “Shoot-outs aren’t quaint,” said Jack Dolan. “They leave your heart pounding cold blood into what feels like a hollow cavity where your insides ought to be. It’s a feeling you don’t forget.”

  Randolph nodded. “Like burns,” he said. “Did anybody see the fight?”

  “Larry did. No. No, I reckon he didn’t. Larry was outside, filling up the gas tank.”

  “Larry?”

  “Larry Garrison. A fine young man. Like a son to me.”

  Hillman Randolph hesitated for a moment, but then he said, “So what did you do with the man you’d shot?”

  “Put him in the backseat. We figured on dumping him in the woods somewhere between here and Richmond, and hoping he wouldn’t be found until he was old bones.”

  “But instead you ran into a roadblock just outside Danville, and when you tried to drive through it—”

  “Larry was driving. Poor soul.”

  “Your car crashed into the agents’ cars, and both cars caught fire.”

  “Whiskey,” said Jack Dolan sadly. “It does burn something fierce.”

  “You got away, and the corpse and the other man were burned up in the wreck.”

  “That’s right. I was thrown clear and had a few broken bones and some gashes to show for it, but they were so busy with the wreck, they didn’t notice me in the weeds, and I crawled away.” He sighed. “Wish I could have saved Larry, though.”

  “Larry Garrison.” After all these years the name sounded strange on his tongue.

  “Finest man I ever knew, young as he was. I was going to make him a partner. Oh, you never saw the like of him. Brave. Smart. Son I always wanted.” The old man’s voice quavered. “I go to his grave every now and again just to talk.”

  “He’s buried in Danville?”

  “Paid for the stone myself,” said Jack Dolan. “His family wasn’t well off. But he deserved the best.”

  The lawman said nothing. Mr. Jack thought he saw him wipe away a tear with the sleeve of his jacket. “Now, what was it you came about?” he asked after a moment’s silence.

  The man coughed. “Oh, just that,” he said. “Just to hear what really happened. So it was self-defense, and I wondered about the other man with you. The one who died.”

  “Hasn’t a day gone by that I haven’t missed him,” said Mr. Jack. “Not a day.”

  The stranger stood up. “Well, I’ll be going now,” he said. “I just heard you were still alive, and I wanted to know …” There was a tremor in his voice, and he blundered out of the storage building without a backward glance.

  After the door had closed behind the visitor, Jack Dolan sat in his lawn chair for a good ten more minutes, until he was certain that the man had driven away. That had been a close call. A close call indeed. He leaned back and let out a deep breath, feeling his heart pounding against his ribs.

  Who would have thought that old Larry Garrison had been the one to survive that wreck instead of the lawman? He shook his head. Face like a jack-o’-lantern. Larry Garrison. That good for nothing so-and-so hadn’t even had the sense to die. What a shock to find him back, stupid as ever, after all these years.

  Mr. Jack struggled to his feet. Bound to be time for his afternoon snack, he thought. He must remind them to buy more sugar.

  “I came back to save you,” said A. P. Hill.

  “Your timing was a little off, but thanks,” said Bill. He was sitting at the desk in his new office, composing an account of his statement for the Danville police on his word processor. “So you knew I was going to be kidnapped?”

  “No. Well, I knew that P. J. Purdue was—”

  “Purdue. From law school? Pit-bull Purdue?” Bill’s eyes widened. “That’s who she was. The one in the trunk. I thought she looked familiar. I guess that’s why they didn’t approach me together. She was afraid I’d recognize her.”

  “Yes. The other woman is a prisoner whom Purdue was representing. She helped the woman escape, and as fugitives the two
of them have been robbing men and stealing their cars.”

  “Okay,” said Bill. “But what does this have to do with me?”

  “Nothing. You’re my partner, though, and it had a lot to do with me.”

  “With you?” Bill swung his chair around to face her. “With you.”

  “Yes. The business about leaving guys naked and handcuffed … Well, Purdue and I did that once … back in college.” She did not look at him once as she went through a wooden recitation of the facts concerning the abduction of Milo Gordon.

  Bill said nothing. He appeared to be thinking things over. At last he said, “You think Purdue wanted you to join the gang, and when you wouldn’t, you think she went after me in order to embarrass you?”

  “Something like that.”

  Bill thought some more. “Can I sue her?”

  “No. I’m going to defend her. Before I came in I spoke to her for just a second. She’s out there in the police car, and I said I’d have to go in and talk to you, but that I’d be back to discuss her case.” She sighed. “Purdue was a friend. I can’t let her throw her life away.”

  Bill frowned. “Are you even going to comment on the new house?”

  A. P. Hill barely glanced at her surroundings. “It’s great, Bill,” she said. “I’ll just go talk to Purdue, and then you can give me the tour.”

  She walked out into the front hall and opened the door. A second later she was back at Bill’s desk. “You’d better call the police,” she said. “The police car is gone.”

  “They’ll be at the station,” said Bill. “Just go and interview her there.”

  “I don’t think so,” said A. P. Hill. “There’s a uniformed policeman out there handcuffed to a tree.”

  Bill ran for the window. “Is that a gag in his mouth?”

  A. P. Hill nodded sadly. “Pantyhose.”

  “We came to save you,” said Elizabeth MacPherson. Her medication had worn off during the long drive north from Georgia, and now she was suffering from nothing more serious than bereavement and an overdose of Louis L’Amour.

  “I have been saved, thank you,” said Bill. “The two ladies are still at large, but they are believed to be headed for Canada.”

  “Ladies?” said Elizabeth. Geoffrey, who had escorted her into the house, was slumped in an armchair by the fireplace, too exhausted to speak. He kept closing his eyes, and his head jerked as he tried to force himself to stay awake. “What ladies?”

  “Some outlaw friends of Powell’s,” said Bill. “Blondes with handcuffs. Sounds like a movie of the week, doesn’t it? Never mind that. What exactly were you going to save me from?”

  “One of the patients at Cherry Hill …”

  “An escaped mental patient. Oh, good.” Bill sighed.

  His sister winced. Technically she was an escaped mental patient, but she wisely refrained from pointing this out. “He was pretending to be a federal agent. Well, a retired federal agent. But he knew Jack Dolan, who he claims was a murderer, and we think he came up here to kill him. He’s about seventy with a badly scarred face.”

  Bill nodded. “Oh. Him. He was here.”

  “He was?”

  “Hours ago.”

  Elizabeth opened her mouth and closed it again.

  “He left,” said Bill.

  “Where’s Jack Dolan then?”

  “In the kitchen,” said Edith from the open door. “He’s stealing sugar.”

  “Stealing …”

  “He thinks I don’t know. I figure it’ll keep him busy though. Every man should have a hobby. I think there’s a still in the storage building.”

  “That’s illegal!” said A. P. Hill.

  “Not unless he tries to sell it,” said Edith. “Let’s leave him alone. I’ll watch him. I think we ought to let him cater the Christmas party.”

  Bill turned back to Elizabeth. “You’re supposed to be in Georgia,” he said, with the air of one who has found one certainty in a haystack of ambiguities.

  “Umm … yes.”

  “Did Cherry Hill release you?”

  “Not exactly. Geoffrey got permission to take me out to dinner … yesterday.”

  “Oh.” Bill sighed. At this point he didn’t think he could cope with any more. “What are you going to do?”

  Elizabeth considered it. “I think I’m going to go back,” she said. “I have some issues to work through. I’ll let Geoffrey get a good night’s sleep first, though. And this time I’ll do the driving.”

  Chapter 15

  “You’re back,” said Emma O., glancing up from her notebook. There was no surprise in her voice. Either Emma O. always knew everything, or else she was very good at pretending she did.

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth. “I’m back. I thought as long as I’m paying for this, I might as well finish out the month.”

  “So they didn’t bring you back in a straitjacket?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. We all thought you’d flipped out when you finally realized that your husband was really dead.”

  “No,” said Elizabeth. “I think I knew it all along, really. It’s just easier to cling to false hope than it is to pick yourself up and start over with nothing. Right now, the rest of my life looks like a long, empty tunnel, and I didn’t want to face it.”

  Emma O. nodded. “Yeah. They tell me something always turns up, though, if you hang in there.” She looked at her scarred wrists for a moment, and then she went back to writing in her notebook.

  “Did anything happen while I was gone?”

  Emma O. looked up with her customary smirk. “Anything happen? Well, let’s see … Seraphin gained thirty pounds, and Rose lost thirty. Mrs. Nicholson became engaged to Prince Andrew, and I was voted Miss Congeniality in the Miss Georgia Pageant.”

  “So … nothing changed.”

  “Nothing ever changes.” Shrugging, Emma went back to her notebook. “There’s probably more drama in state mental hospitals, but we’re an exclusive private place. Not much excitement. Besides, this isn’t life. It’s the green room. Sometimes people get out of here, but they don’t get better.”

  “I’m going to get better,” said Elizabeth. “Whatever it takes to stop feeling like this, I’ll do it.”

  Emma O. nodded. “Whatever,” she said, still scribbling.

  “Are you writing another letter of apology?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Nah. Dr. Shokie had a new brainstorm. Now I’m making a list of my friends,” she announced. “Or trying to. It’s hard to know if you have any, isn’t it?”

  “No, Emma,” said Elizabeth, thinking of Geoffrey’s long drive back to where he had just come from in Virginia. “It’s easy. Try asking someone to do something extremely inconvenient for an insane reason, and if they do it, they’re your friend. But, here’s the tricky part: You have to be prepared to do the same thing for them whenever they ask. So most people’s list of friends is pretty short. But even one is enough.”

  It was as good a reason to go on as any.

  “I should have told you,” said A. P. Hill. “I should have trusted you. I guess I did trust you, really. I was just afraid you’d laugh at me. I was too proud to tell you what an idiot I had been as an undergraduate.”

  “Well, I’m not giving you my blessing for your terrorist activities,” said Bill. “But in Milo Gordon’s case, you may have done some good. He wasn’t nearly that much of a jerk by the time I roomed with him. In fact, my sister dated him, did I tell you?”

  “I knew that. I was afraid you’d never forgive me for what we did to your friend.”

  “You’re my friend,” said Bill. “Try to remember that.”

  A. P. Hill nodded. Time to change the subject, she thought. “Where do you suppose Purdue and Larkin are now?”

  “Canada, I hope. There must be some places where you can cross the border without an I.D.”

  “They may have I.D.s by now.”

  “True. Anybody who wears handcuff keys for earrings wouldn’t let a little thing like
an international border stop her.”

  “They didn’t hurt anybody,” said A. P. Hill.

  “Aside from dignity,” Bill pointed out. He realized that if he had been one of the PMS Outlaws’ victims, he might be feeling less charitable toward them.

  “I haven’t even seen the new place yet,” said A. P. Hill, looking around her at the old money elegance of Bill’s office. “Will you give me that tour now?”

  “The upstairs isn’t finished yet,” Bill told her as they walked out into the hall. “So if you want your apartment’s color scheme to be pink, you just say so.…”

  “Pink!”

  Group therapy still took place in the sunny ground-floor conference room overlooking the flower garden. Hillman Randolph had not returned, and Lisa Lynn was gone, but otherwise the group seemed unchanged. Petress was the last person to arrive, and the men and women still sat in segregated bunches, as if they were schoolchildren.

  “Now that you have accepted your loss,” Warburton said to Elizabeth, “I think it is time for you to try an exercise that will help you get in touch with your feelings.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “I took pills to keep from getting in touch with my feelings.”

  “Yes, but now you have to face those feelings.”

  She looked uneasy. “What did you have in mind?”

  Warburton smiled. “It’s a role-playing exercise. I want you to choose someone from the group to be Cameron. You may select anyone, for any reason. But during the exercise you must react to that person as if he were Cameron. Do you understand?”

  “I guess so. I don’t see where you’re going with this, though.”

  “Try it.”

  Elizabeth studied the faces of her fellow patients. She eliminated the women without a second glance. That left Petress, Matt Pennington, the amiable lawyer whose name escaped her, and Clifford Allen, the sullen burglar. Without giving herself any time to analyze her choice, Elizabeth said, “Clifford. I choose Clifford.”

  As she said it, she noted a fleeting look of surprise on Warburton’s face. The nurse must have been expecting Elizabeth to select the gentle, friendly Matt Pennington as her surrogate loved one, but as soon as she’d said Clifford’s name, Elizabeth felt the rightness of her choice. “Clifford.”