The light was really getting to me. “Oh, there’s a lot more you don’t know. You don’t know where the boys are now, for instance. And you’re mistaken about the kidnapping. I’m here of my own free will. As to the drug thing, I’ve been having a little trouble sleeping lately, and they gave me a sedative, that’s all.”
He was still calm, which surprised me. “We saw them cart you out of the restaurant. They poisoned you. It might’ve killed you.”
“Naw. Just got a good night’s sleep.”
He pushed. “On a boat.”
“You know I think that did help matters, come to think of it. The rocking motion on a boat is very soothing.”
“They dragged you out of The Hut like a sack a potatoes. They carried Ms. Oglethorpe to her room and took you on a boat. I’m tryin’ to give you a break, Mr. Tucker. I’m willin’ to believe you’re a victim or a dupe of these criminals. But if you like, I can treat you as an accomplice.”
“Accomplice to what?”
He was plain. “The murder of Lowe Acree.”
I smiled. “Except for the fact that there’s not a shred of what we call evidence in the police game. By the way, I’m having the body exhumed.” I thought it was a good bluff — see what it would get me. “Your cousin died of an aneurysm.”
He finally lost his cool, which had been my goal. “Now you’re a doctor?” He swatted at one of the cops standing next to him. “Get those flashlights off him!” He whirled back at me. “Sit down and shut up. You’ll be president before you get an order to exhume my cousin’s body.”
The lights went out of my face; I sat back down in my chair. The phone was still off the hook.
I raised my voice. “So, Detective Acree — where are we, exactly? The boys were a little fuzzy on the geography. I was guessing Cumberland.”
But he was in no mood to give out information. He looked at the cop he’d just swatted. “If he talks any more, shoot him in the head with a really big gun.”
The boy nodded smartly. “Yes, sir.”
Tommy was off, lumbering up the stairs. I looked at the cop standing there beside me. I smiled and whispered at him. “He was just kiddin’ — about that really-big-gun thing.”
The kid didn’t see the humor. That’s my doom: Nobody thinks I’m as funny as I do. I decided to try to give Dally as much information as I could before somebody hung up the phone.
I looked at the kid. “Swell house, huh.”
He didn’t answer.
I looked around. “I don’t think the Turner twins own it, though.”
He rolled his eyes.
My suspicion was that he was just out of high school. He was a small-town assistant deputy who spent most of his day doing what he was told.
I yawned. “I think this house is owned by Lydia Habersham.”
“I don’t really think I should be talkin’ to you.”
“Okay.”
He yawned.
Tommy saved us from further scintillating conversation. From the top of the stairs he called out to me. “Mr. Tucker? Would you mind joining us up here?”
I looked at the kid. I didn’t want to make any sudden moves around him. He might just have had a really big gun handy. Besides, I’ve taken to making funny noises when I get up out of my chair these days. I’m pretty sure they’re the same noises my father used to make. I didn’t want to startle the assistant deputy.
He nodded. I got up. He took my arm, like we were going to the prom, and we both started up the staircase. I glanced at the phone, still off the hook. “Okay. Upstairs.” I was hoping Dally was getting all this.
Tommy had disappeared into one of the rooms. “In here.”
I followed. It was a nice place: antique white, faintly gold, Lincoln bed, hook rug; a marble-topped table supported an ancient wash bowl and pitcher. The bed was messed up but still fresh, crisp. Somebody had laid down, and got right back up, like they wanted to make it look slept in.
Tommy leaned on the foot of the bed. “Which one slept here?”
“I don’t know. This is my first visit to the second floor. We only just got here. By the way, have you had a guy following me since I left Tifton?”
He nodded. “Just about. You’re some detective. Didn’t even notice a cheap amateur tail.”
I shrugged. “The tail picked me up in Savannah. Nobody was following me on the drive over those little roads coming here.”
He stood straight. “Didn’t have to be. Ronnie Tibadeau put a pulse emitter under your chassis. It was real cheap. I bought parts and made it myself. I’m a kind of Saturday inventor.”
“Ronnie Tibadeau put a bug in my car?”
“Oh, he’s too stupid to know what he was doing. I told him it was something you’d asked for, in case you got lost. He’ll do anything I tell him. Used to kind of work for Lowe. Plus, as you may have noticed, he’s about a dumb as the law allows.”
“They got a law about that in Tifton?”
He ignored me. “So you really don’t know whose room this is?”
“Nope. I just met the boys. I just got to the house. I’m still cranky from the cow juice. And I’m kicking myself for not paying attention when I get paranoid.”
“Oh, so now you’re trying to say you did notice the tail.”
“I’m trying to say I wish I were home in bed.”
“Yeah, well I wish you were too. You’re complicating the situation here.”
I looked around the room. “I’ve got certain talents. I could actually be of some help to you.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I’ve heard about some of those so-called talents, Mr. Tucker. We have no need of hocus-pocus on this investigation.”
I thought about it for a second. “How would you have heard anything about me?”
He looked away. I couldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t want me to see his face or he didn’t care. “Sally Arnold.”
She wouldn’t know, but I didn’t want to get into a thing with the guy. He might get the idea I’m the sort that likes to get into things, and then where would I be?
He turned around to face me. “I’m going to send you back to your hotel room now, and I wish you’d pack and return to Atlanta with Ms. Oglethorpe.”
I shrugged. “Dally’s got business here. She’s starting a club on River Street. She’ll be staying for a while.”
“Is that right?”
“She’s not just a fine person, she’s an entrepreneur.”
He looked right past me to the kid who’d escorted me up the stairs. “Take him back to the DeSoto. Wait for us in town. You know where.” He said it like a spy thing.
The kid hesitated. “Uh ... in-town-Tybee or in-town-Savannah?”
Tommy sighed, his spy lingo blown. “At the place in Savannah.”
The kid was anxious to leave then. “Right, right.” He grabbed my arm and started out, but I stood my ground and he slipped a little on the hook rug.
I fixed on Tommy. “I still have work to do here, Detective Acree.”
He was wry. “You found the boys. Call it a day.”
I shook my head. “I’ve still got to find Lydia.”
He got stranger. “No, you don’t.”
“I promised.”
“I don’t care if you promised. Who’d you promise? The twins?”
“Look, if I said I was going do it, I’ve got to do it. It’s a thing with me. It’s like a sickness.”
He looked at the kid again — seriously mad at that point. “Take him back to his room. Watch him pack. Escort him to his car — that’s very important — escort him to his car. See that he leaves town. Then you can meet us at the place we discussed.” He shot me a glance. “Good-bye, Mr. Tucker. I got to catch me some murdering retards, and you have ceased to be amusing.”
I saw how things were. I nodded. The kid looked at me now, begging me to just come along with him and not make him look any stupider than he already looked — which would have been going some. I shrugged. It’s a good expressi
on. The French do it a lot. When I caught myself doing it, I started thinking maybe there was something to this heritage thing after all.
On the way out I checked again — but somebody had hung up the phone by then.
23 – The Golden Code
The ride back to Tybee in the police boat was swell. It was just me, the driver, and the kid. Nobody wanted to talk, so I had time to reflect. The sun was getting fresh with the western horizon — the sky was blushing red and pink. I was worried about all manner of things, but the sunset was working on me. I was thinking how a long, slow, summer sunset was just the ticket. I was watching the water. I was thinking about my childhood — something I never do. Why was the idea of that scratching at the back of my neck?
We docked just as the last of the light was gone. I never got from anybody what island we’d been on. The kid looked at me like I was a wicked messenger — the personification of bad news.
“You ain’t gonna need the cuffs, Mr. Tucker, huh?”
I smiled. “What am I going to need cuffs for?”
He was relieved. We got to a police car; he slammed me into the front seat, a friendly touch. We drove without talking any more, straight to the motel. I waited for him to get out and open my door, like we were dating in high school.
Up the stairs I stopped at the door.
He sighed. “You ain’t got the key?”
I smiled again. “Just don’t want to surprise Ms. Oglethorpe. She may be indisposed.”
He nodded, quick. “Right, right.”
I tapped on the door. No answer. I tried again. Nothing. I reached into my pocket and hauled out the key. I popped the lock, cracked the door, peeped in.
“Dally?”
Still no answer. One of the lamps was on, and underneath it was a notepad with some writing on it. I stepped in and headed for it before the kid could get a look.
It was a note from Dally:
Gone Over Loading Dock. Everything’s Negotiable. Come. Urgent: Remember Tell Aunt Ida Now.
D.O.
P.S. After all that, we need to talk about the other stuff,
Or maybe by then you’ll know.
I had to laugh out loud. The kid snatched the note and read it himself. He didn’t see the humor.
“What’s funny?”
I took the note back from him. “I’m just glad she’s okay; back to work and all.”
But the truth was: Using a code as ridiculous as the first letter in every word of the message, and capitalized at that, to tell me what she thought I ought to do — that was pretty funny indeed. Even the kid could have figured it out. But if he had, Golden Curtain wouldn’t have meant anything to him anyway. The whole deal was her corny little joke. Dally loved the spy talk. Not the James Bond, more the John le Carré. Spy talk is largely for people who’d like to think their lives are more interesting than they actually are. In Dally’s case, however, it was always a comedy routine: talking in pig Latin like it was a secret language; leaving notes like this one. Once she just about slayed me faking a distraction so that she could slip an extra pack of sugar in my coffee, like it was a mickey. I couldn’t stop laughing. It was when we were in high school, before the world got old. But I reminisce.
So why did she do it? Why did she leave me a note like that one? She could have just said, “Do the Golden Curtain thing, then we’ll talk.” Nobody but I would have known what she was talking about anyway. She wanted me to think about the sugar-pack mickey. She wanted me to think about goofy covert activity, like Detective Acree and his secret rendezvous place that the kid had messed up. She wanted me to think about the past — my past.
Why? I had no idea. And why did she sign it with her initials? Why sign it at all? She was the only one in the room who’d be leaving me a note, and I knew her handwriting as well as my own. I considered it just might have been her penchant for a good story, but for some reason I got the idea it was a little more urgent than that. I mean, it said, “DO.”
I looked at the kid. “Look, you’re a youngster, and you’ve got energy to burn, but me, I’m getting past my prime and I need a minute to rest up from my hectic day. I’ve been drugged, kidnapped, busted, lied to, and hustled outta town. I need a little time to lie down, change clothes; freshen up before I drive back to Atlanta. Okay? You can wait right out here in this nice little room. I won’t be more than half an hour, forty-five minutes. Then I’ll pack and be outta your hair. If you hear the slightest noise that bothers you, come busting in on me with your really big gun quick as you please. What do you say?”
He hesitated, peered into the bedroom to make sure there wasn’t an exit door, looked at the window to see was it locked, looked out at the ocean from the nice big bay window where he was standing.
“An’ after that you’ll leave nice?”
I nodded. “I’ve just got to have a break.”
He thought about it one more minute. “Okay, then.”
He crossed his arms, kept standing, and watched me walk into the bedroom and close the door. He was a good kid after all.
I couldn’t figure why Dally thought it was so important for me to do my thing right that second. But she did, and I was bound to go along with it. She knew what she was doing — nearly all the time.
I took a moment or two so as to splash a little water around and change the old outfit. Then I sat on the edge of the bed looking out at the sea. This little trick of mine, it’s not so particular, really. I’d like to think nearly anybody could do it if they’d give it half the chance. It’s probably nothing more than a way to relax enough to let your mind tell you the stuff it’s been trying to tell you all day but you’ve been too busy to listen. So you have to be quiet and relax.
You stare out. If you’re lucky enough to be at the beach, you stare out at the ocean. You breathe in, you breathe out. You see how your breathing is like the sound of the waves. You see how your breath and the waves and the whole wide world are all pretty much the same thing. After a while, there’s nothing but the breathing. That’s the touchy part. You can’t make it happen. You just have to let it happen. If it does, you can’t congratulate yourself: “Look, I got a vision!” That’s the last thing you want to do. It goes away if you do that. It goes away if you mess with it at all. But if you’re quiet, and if you’re still, it comes to you easy, like breathing out and breathing in.
And there it was, a kind of gold fog. Dimly at first, I could see people walking back and forth through it. Lots of people. They were all greeting one another in a very friendly fashion. They were all families. It was a family reunion. Old friends, old acquaintances, distant relatives, new babies — everybody was there, sitting around tables, eating fried chicken.
At one table were the Turner twins and their family, Ida tapping out a complicated rhythm with her knife and fork. Next to them was Pevus Arnold and a woman I took to be his wife, a little like a plump Joseph and Mary; Sally Arnold hovering over them with more fried chicken.
At the far end of the yard Dally was waving me over. She was at a table with Lydia. I still couldn’t see her face, but I could tell it was her from the wispy blond hair drifting all around her like the light of grace.
From a distance she waved, and said, “Hello, Flap. Good to see you again.”
Then, sneaking around the corner of the church, I saw two young girls — I had the impression they were sisters. They were playing with a doll — a magic doll that could talk. They held it up, and one girl said, “Say hello to Lydia.”
Then, from behind me I heard another voice. I turned around. It was Horace the curbside drug tradesman from Atlanta. I nodded. He seemed to want something from me.
He was motioning me over to the graveyard by the church. It was dark and filled with open graves and magnolia trees. Lowe Acree was popping up out of one of the graves, like a strange repeated act at a carnival haunted house. Lydia was standing by a stone angel, laughing and laughing and laughing.
After a minute she and Horace went to Lowe’s graveside. Lowe sm
iled and slid back down in the grave. Horace wandered off in a northerly direction. Lydia ran over to the Turner table, laid on it facedown, and pretended to be swimming.
I came over to stop her, since no one else seemed able to do it. When I got there, still with her face turned away, she said, “Hello, Flap. Good to see you again.”
The voice sounded so familiar, it set me spinning.
24 - Songs of Shakespeare
I was startled from my reverie. The kid in the other room had gotten impatient. Apparently he’d knocked quietly on the door, but when I’m in the middle of my trick, I can’t hear much unless it’s really loud.
He’d slipped open the door, caught sight of the back of my head, tiptoed in to tell me it was time to go, and seen me staring blankly out to sea.
He was shaking me like a rag doll. “Mr. Tucker! Mr. Tucker!”
I blinked; sighed. He stopped shaking me. I squinted at him. “A simple ‘wake up’ would suffice.”
He was pretty well flustered. “You was asleep? You sleep with your eyes open?”
I rubbed my face. “Sorta.”
“Well ... Lordy, mister.” I could still see the panic on his face.
I had no sympathy. “You woke me up out of a kind of important dream.”
“I thought you was dead.” He leaned back against the windowsill.
“I wasn’t.” I bobbed up out of the chair. “So. Guess I better pack.”
I got all my stuff together in a hurry. He watched, still a little shaky. I finished, straightened my tie, hoisted my coat over my shoulder like Sinatra, and smiled at him.
“Guess we’ll leave Ms. Oglethorpe’s stuff to her.”
He nodded.
I started out. “I gotta stop by the bar. Gotta pick up my potables.”
“Huh?”
“My comestibles.”
“Mr. Tucker ...”
“I’ve got some bottles in the bar downstairs that I’m not leaving behind.” I opened the door to the room. “Coming?”
He sighed like it was the end of the world, and we headed downstairs. June wasn’t busy.
Too Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 2) Page 11