“That lady you’s with?”
I lurched up. He stiff-armed me in the sternum, knocked the breath out of me. It was casual. He meant no harm. I sat back. I was in no shape to go a round with this guy. I nodded. “Yeah, the lady. Where is she?”
“Back at her hotel room. She’s fine. Prob’ly just gettin’ up too.”
“What’d you use to knock us out?”
“On you? Bovine tranquilizer.”
I felt like it. “You didn’t use this stuff on Dally?”
He grinned. “Naw. We just used some sleepin’ pills on her. Daddy gets to where he can’t sleep so good? And the doctor give ’im some pills. We let her have five and some alcohol. She be just fine, really. And we didn’t give you all that much of the tranquilizer either. Me an’ Peachy both taken it once, just to see what it was like.” He crossed his legs and looked right at me. “If you jus’ take a little? It’s very relaxing.”
I tried to focus my eyes. “I’m a little too relaxed right at the moment.”
“It’ll wear off. Wanna go swimmin’? That helps.”
“We’re on a boat, right?”
“Yup.”
“Where?”
“On the ocean.”
“Right. Where?”
He looked toward the window. “I don’t know, exactly. Honest.”
I sat up and really tried to get some eye contact. “So you’ve got to be Maytag Turner.”
He was very happy about it. “Yup.”
“Where’d you get a name like that?”
“Aunt Ida said when I was born, I was big as a warshin’ machine.”
“And your brother?”
“Not as big.”
“No, I mean — how’d he get ‘Peachy’?”
He rolled his head. “Ohhhh. He was second? And when he come out, Ida asked Momma was he as much trouble as I was? She said no, he was just peachy.”
“It’s a good story.” A little lighthearted considering it might have been the last words their mother spoke.
He was willing to play along. “How ’bout ‘Flap’? That’s a name.”
I dropped the chitchat. “You know my name. You knew where to find me to knock me out. What’s the story?”
“We know all about you. Daddy told us you was comin’. We called him yesterday.”
“So your daddy knows where you are?”
“Not exactly. But he knows we’re okay. We don’t really like to worry him.”
I nodded. “He seemed kind of sickly.”
The kid got serious. “He’s been thataway since I can remember.”
“Farming. It’s hard work.”
He agreed. Then he brightened again. “Wanna go up on top?”
“Uh-huh.” I shoved myself up from the cot and he caught my arm. We navigated up the little stairs together.
On deck the light was so blinding, even though the sky was overcast and looked like it could rain any second, I had to close my eyes completely. Somebody plopped a cap on my head and put some sunglasses in my hand. I must have looked pretty silly in my rumpled suit and my John Deere cap, but I didn’t care. Even with the cap and the Ray-Bans, I could barely see.
When my pupils finally closed a little, I could tell there was another kid at the rail with a big deep-sea fishing pole in his hands.
He craned backward. “Hey, Mr. Tucker. How’s you head?”
I waved. Pays to be friendly. “Feels like a cow.”
He laughed. Maytag brought me something to drink, a Coke, maybe, and I sat down on one of the hatches. The boat wasn’t huge, but big enough to handle six people very comfortably. It looked like any other charter fishing boat.
Maytag called out to his brother. “Catchin’ anything?”
“Naw.”
“Then come have a little talk with Mr. Tucker.”
He set his pole in a lock at the top of the rail in front of him, and clomped over to us.
He threw his hand at me. “Peachy Turner.”
I shook his hand. “That would have been my guess.”
He sat. “Daddy hired you to find us?”
“Uh-huh. Looks like I earned my dough. Here you are.”
They both thought that was pretty funny. I was wishing I had a way to check on Dally, see if she was okay. They must have seen something in my face.
Maytag shook his head. “We got nothin’ against you, Mr. Tucker. We just wanted to ... talk.”
“Then how come the mickey in the seafood? How’d you do it, by the way?”
Maytag volunteered. “The bovine tranquilizer’s a liquid, went into your sauce real easy. Not much taste, but it’s a little sweet.”
“I noticed.”
“Uh-huh. Daddy’s sleepin’ pills is real bitter, though. So we had to spice up the lady’s sauce pretty good.”
I looked out to sea. No land anywhere. “Tina was in on it?”
Peachy nodded. “Tina and June both.”
“Why?” At the moment that’s all I wanted to know.
Maytag settled back and folded his arms in front of him. “Lydia.”
I waited for more, but there was none. It was as if he’d made an eloquent speech. He was satisfied with it. I had to have more. “What about her?”
Peachy put his hand over his mouth, just like a grammar school kid thinking of the answer to a math problem. Then: “Lydia is not like anybody else in this world. We’ve been knowing her for a good while on Tybee. When you meet ’er? It’s like meetin’ a wild creature or a angel or a ...” But he was at the end of his field of reference.
Maytag had to take over. “She don’t talk like nobody else, she don’t move like nobody else. She ain’t” — he leaned in and lowered his voice — “we don’t think she’s human.”
I was clearly skeptical. “Uh-huh. So you like her.”
This gave them a laugh. Peachy made it clear. “Everybody likes her. Why you think you’re here with us now? Nobody meets ’er that don’t like ’er.”
I pulled back. “Except her husband.”
That got things quiet. It took a minute for Maytag to form his words. “Lowe Acree ... is one of those men — and I’d say there’s a lots of ’em now days, but Lowe’s one of the worst — that’s bent on wreckin’ up the world. He wanted money and stuff and he didn’t give a damn how he got it. Lydia was just somethin’ else in his treasure chest.”
Peachy was on fire with this idea now. “Like you hear there’s a lotsa rich men that buys up old pitchers and pays a million dollars for ’em and they don’t really care to look at ’em or nothin’? It’s just a investment to them. Beautiful paintin’s they never even look at.” The way he said investment seemed to me the closest Peachy Turner ever got to cursing.
Maytag helped me out. “We went to the High Museum in Atlanta on a school trip once? They got a lot of paintin’s there.”
Off in the distance, there was a little more thunder, and the sky was getting darker.
Peachy squinted hard. “If Lowe Acree had one of those pretty things? He’d just put it in a vault somewheres, never look at it, never let nobody else look at it, just see how much could he get for it. That’s not good.”
I was sympathetic. “Plus, he wanted some land of yours.”
Maytag spit. “He didn’t want no land. He wanted a place to dump poison. He wanted a garbage can. We don’t own one a them.” Then he grinned at his brother.
I ignored it. “So you wouldn’t sell.”
Peachy smiled, back to his friendly self. “Not really, no.”
I pressed. “And he got all bent outta shape.”
Maytag nodded. “He got right mad about it.”
“And you all had an argument in his office and it got outta hand.”
Peachy smiled even bigger. “He called us retarded.”
I nodded. “And it made you mad right back at him.”
Maytag shook his head slowly, surprised. “Lotsa people calls us retarded. They don’t mean nothin’ by it.”
Peachy filled me in. �
��We’re not retarded.”
Maytag agreed. “We’re just simple.”
Peachy sat back. “It’s a gift to be simple.”
Maytag patted his brother’s leg. “It’s the secret a life.”
Peachy agreed. “Life is very easy, Mr. Tucker. Most people don’t realize it, but it is.”
Maytag looked out on the water, then at me. “Life is nothin’ more or less than a little bubble on th’ ocean. It comes up, it gets some sun on it, then it pops and goes back in the sea. That’s all there is to it.”
Peachy shook his head, sorry for everybody alive but himself and his kin. “So why in the world does everybody want to get so riled up about it?”
And for a second everything was still and calm on the ocean and in the air, the sun came out hard from behind a cloud, and I saw the world through their eyes. I’d have to say it was a place I could have lived, but the moment passed. Then, before I could pursue my line of thinking about the death of one Lowe Acree, there was a big splash near the boat.
Maytag jumped up. “We got somethin’!”
He ran to the rail, reared back on his pole at nearly a forty-five-degree angle from the deck. Peachy sat with me, smiling at his brother.
I straightened my hat. “Thanks for the brim.”
He nodded. “Gotta keep the sun off.”
“Peachy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why am I here?”
He turned to me, very serious. “You gotta help us. We can’t find Lydia and we’re worried just sick about her. She’s a very strange person and a lot of people don’t understand her the way we do. We didn’t see no need in your wastin’ time lookin’ for us: we’re right here. So now all you gotta do is find Lydia. Okay?”
He returned his attention to his brother. Maytag was making fair progress collecting fishing line on his reel. Something big was at the other end. In spite of myself, and my desire to know what was what, I had to go see.
I lumbered up, and shoved myself over to the rail. The line was straight and tight, right into the sea. After a second the fish jumped up.
“Swordfish!” Peachy was beside himself. “Man-oh-man, I love me some swordfish.”
Maytag looked over at me, very calmly under the circumstances. “It’s great on the grill.”
After another twenty or thirty minutes, there was a swordfish on the deck of our boat. Peachy popped a hatch and we all slid the thing down into a huge refrigerated hold. We were all pretty happy with ourselves, it had taken all three of us to get the thing in. I thought it was about a hundred and twenty feet long, but maybe I overestimated a little.
The boys popped open some beers, and then, without the slightest ceremony, reached into the cooler and slipped out a freezing, opened bottle of the Château Simard.
Maytag handed it over, with a plastic cup. “You had this at Tina’s. She said you’d want it. I guess it was already paid for. We tried to get it nice an’ cold for you.”
True enough, there was ice on the bottle. I smiled. Their intentions were so good, I decided to spare them my usual wine rant. “Thanks.”
Peachy was very happy. “Drink up.”
I popped the cork, poured a full plastic cup, and we all toasted our catch. I had to get back to what I thought was really important. “I’m worried about Dally.”
They nodded. Maytag patted my arm. “Wanna call ’er? We got a phone.”
I must have lurched. I nearly spilled some of my stuff. “Yeah, I wanna call ’er.”
Peachy disappeared below and came back ten seconds later with a cell phone. He handed it right to me. “Mash the code on the front first, then the motel.”
I looked out to sea. “Don’t know the motel number.”
Maytag slugged back his beer. “Check the right coat pocket there, Mr. Turner. I believe you got some matches from the lounge.” He looked down. “Sorry. We had to check your pockets.”
Check for what we didn’t get into. I looked; there they were: DeSoto Beach Motel Lounge matches. I dialed.
The desk answered. “DeSoto Beach Motel.”
“Would you mind giving me Room Twenty-seven, please?”
“Surely.”
There was a long series of ringing noises before she answered. “Uh-huh.”
“Dally?”
She was immediately more alert. “Flap? Where are you?”
“On a boat out at sea — with the Turner twins.”
“What?”
I shifted ears. “Yeah. How do you like that?”
“Not much, right at the moment. Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m recovering from an overdose of bovine tranquilizer.”
She still wasn’t quite awake. “What happened to us?”
“We got slipped a mickey, as they say in the movies.”
“Cow tranquilizer?”
“That’s what I got. You got sleeping pills.”
“Lucky me.”
“Indeed.”
“I kinda remember you goin’ out before me ... but I couldn’t ...” She yawned. “Did you say you’re with the Turner twins?”
“Yup. They’re the ones who popped us.”
“Why?”
I looked at them. They were watching me, smiling. “I don’t know. They say they want me to help ’em find Lydia.”
“Oh.” There was a rustling of sheets, like she was sitting up. “Flap?” There was a long pause. She was thinking, trying to clear her head. “There’s something more about this deal that I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure about it, and I didn’t know whether you’d wanna help, given that I know how you feel about family stuff and all, and it’s not just Sally and Dally and J. D. Turner and the magnificent tapping aunt and the twins who don’t look like twins ...”
She was talking wacky. “Sugar, you’re not awake yet.”
“I know, but I gotta try an’ tell you what’s goin’ on.”
I could be patient. “Okay, tell me.”
But she didn’t get a chance. There was a crack of lightning, and more thunder, and the sky got darker all of a sudden, and the phone went dead.
I looked at the thing. “Damn.”
Peachy looked around. “Lost your connection. It’s a storm comin’ up good. We best get on in.”
Both boys got up and went to work. I tried a couple of times to redial, but there was nothing but static.
19 - Bleak House
The rain came. The boys seemed to know what to do, and there wasn’t much I had to offer in the way of help. So I let nature take its course. Its course seemed to take me where it wanted me to go anyway. That’s a little lesson in the great Tao. I can’t remember who said it, but the quote is, “Destiny leads those who will follow — and drags those who will not.”
Whoever said it, I got the point: You’re going whether you want to or not. You can walk along your path pleasantly enough, or you can go kicking and screaming. Either way, you’ll end up in the same place when the day is done.
Anyway that’s the way my thoughts were going when we pulled into a little dock under the black afternoon sky. There was nothing there but the dock and a path that curved into invisibility in the woods.
Peachy was tying up. “I believe that cold storage’ll keep my fish all right. Reckon?”
I looked at him. “I dunno.”
Maytag stepped onto the dock. “Whose fish, now?”
Peachy hopped. “You comin’, Mr. Tucker?”
They both stood still, waiting for me to move. Was it just a bizarre trick of the light, or did these two look more like Pevus Arnold and Ronnie Tibadeau than they had out on the ocean? Whatever. Everybody’s related to everybody else one way or the other.
I skipped off the boat. They both turned and headed up the path. I guess if I’d had the gumption, I could have zipped back on board, cast off, and set the boat west, hoping to bump into Georgia. I figured we were on Ossabaw or Cumberland or some smaller island off the coast. I couldn’t help but hit the continent if I just headed west
.
But the boys were my object. They were the prize. I was getting paid to find them — didn’t seem right to try hard to lose them now. So I pulled my coat collar up around my neck to keep the rain out — and followed along the path.
After about five minutes or so we came to a very nice little house. It was all glass and exposed beams, a post-Frank Lloyd Wright job from the fifties or so. It was built right into the nature all around it, the kind of shack that probably had a name like Mandalay or Bleak House.
“Keen digs.”
Peachy turned around. “Hmm?”
“I like the house.”
“Oh. It don’t belong to us.”
Maytag was more helpful. “It’s one that belongs to the Habershams or somebody else rich, and Lydia stayed here awhile. We thought we might find her here. It’s where she’d usually come. But she ain’t.” He was doing his best to explain. “Here, I mean.”
Peachy was opening up the front door. It wasn’t locked. “This is where we called Daddy from first, but we didn’t talk long.”
Maytag nodded. “We seen that TV show where they trace the calls.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I love that show.” I had no idea what he was talking about.
We were in a neat living area with a stone fireplace and studied folk antiques. Maytag patted my shoulder and talked to me like I was a kid. “You hungry?”
I hadn’t thought about it. “As a matter of fact.”
He headed for the kitchen. You could see it around the edge of the hearth. “I believe we got some barbecue left. You like barbecue?”
“By the fifth or by the rib?”
He was baffled. “We just got sammiches.”
I plopped down in a heavy overstuffed chair. “Okay.”
Peachy came over to me. “You’re kinda tired.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Takes awhile for the stuff to wear off.” He patted my shoulder too. “Sorry.”
Maytag was back in a hurry with the food; handed it to me: two big sandwiches, potato salad, slaw, and beans on a paper plate. All cold. All unbelievably edible. I think I had the first sandwich done before either brother sat down.
Peachy was laughing. “That bovine tranquilizer makes you hungry, too, don’ it?”
I nodded, but I was too busy with the slaw to completely answer.
Too Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 2) Page 9