“You can’t go,” I said gently.
“Can,” he replied without making eye contact—something he refused to do.
“Please get out.”
“I can,” he said again but not forcefully. It was more of a request.
I looked at my cell phone to check the time, aware the sun had already begun its slide west. “Levi, you don’t even know where I’m headed.”
“Don’t matter,” he responded, staring at nothing beyond the windshield.
It was five miles to the Helms place, a spooky-looking house in the mangroves at the end of a shell lane. Because the last stretch of road was bad, getting there would take awhile. Levi wasn’t wearing his earbuds, I noticed, which was unusual, so I made him an offer. “Don’t you miss your music? We’ll go for a ride another day when you’re better prepared.”
The man shrugged but didn’t budge.
I sighed, thought about it for a moment, then started the engine. “Put your seat belt on,” I told him, “and keep your hand inside the window once we get moving.”
Levi didn’t speak again until we had crossed the line into Sematee County, driving north.
“You’re nice” was all he said.
• • •
“THE NEIGHBOR LADY threatened to hire Mexicans to shoot the owl,” I told Marion Ford, cell phone cradled to my ear as I drove. “Then she threatened me. Said she’ll have me arrested if I pick up clients at Loretta’s dock because it’s not zoned commercial—doesn’t matter Uncle Jake chartered out of there before he died. Fifteen years? Longer—he was only forty when they retired his badge. Scariest thing is, the neighbor lady didn’t sound crazy, just mean. One of those women who’s used to getting what she wants.”
The biologist had called to ask if I would be at Dinkin’s Bay before dark, but his voice had assumed the role of comforter and counselor now that I was sharing details about my afternoon.
“I wouldn’t worry about the owl,” he said. “Mexicans, especially the illegals, are too smart to risk jail or their jobs. And the neighbor, it’ll dawn on her a sheriff’s deputy was there listening. She’s a physician? She’ll think it through and that’ll be the end of it.”
“A doctor of some type,” I responded. “I was tempted to do a background check through the office, but it seemed sneaky.”
Ford found me amusing. “It’s a poor private detective who lets ethics get in her way.”
The agency had been part-time even for Jake, which is why I replied, “I’m already the poorest one around. It hasn’t cost me my principles, though. And it gives me something to do when the wind’s blowing too hard to fish.”
“Good, keep your license current,” he agreed. “Personally, I wouldn’t hesitate to check out someone harassing your mother. First the vegetable garden, then the dock. You want me to have a talk with her? Tomlinson says Loretta’s a lot of fun, and it’s about time we met.”
Tomlinson, of course, smoked weed and said, “Float on, honey!” to charm-addled women. He didn’t mind escorting Loretta to the mounds at night to eavesdrop on her conversations with an Indian king who had been dead a thousand years. Ford, thank god, was from solider stock, which meant my mother would hate him at first sight.
“As soon as Loretta’s feeling better,” I lied. “She’s still all torn up about that little dog.”
“Sounds as softhearted as you, Hannah.”
There was no way for me to reply to that without another lie. Fortunately, the biologist in Ford saved me by inquiring, What kind of owl?
As we chatted, Levi watched the scenery of Sematee County flow by: raw land that had been clear-cut decades ago, then had gone wild with palmettos and melaleuca trees, awaiting the next small-time developer to go bankrupt. Lots of billboards—Chatham Subaru & Honda, I noticed—then walls of vegetation that were interrupted by ATV trails or small housing developments, a couple of nursery farms, and a trailer park or two. The turnoff to the Helms place wasn’t marked, and I hadn’t been there in a year, so, after another few minutes, I had to tell Ford, “Mind if I call later?” Because Levi was sitting right there beside me, however, my words came out sounding formal and abrupt. It created a silence between us.
“You doing okay?” Ford asked. “After last night, I mean.”
“Never better,” I assured him, giving it all the warmth I could. Then abandoned my concern about Levi and said, “I bought something today I want to model for you. But maybe I should wait. The doctor was serious about no strenuous exercise.”
The man laughed as if we were conspirators, then replied with a suggestion so bawdy I was taken aback—but only for a moment because secretly, in my mind, I had already pictured that very thing happening. Ford, whom I had never heard speak crudely to a woman, or even to a man, had just opened a private door to me, it felt like. Better yet, his intimate thoughts mirrored my own, which encouraged me to speak freely about my own secret wants when and if the chance came. I’m picky about men, I seldom date, so what I felt was new in my experience.
“Did you just say what I thought you said?” I smiled.
“You’re offended.”
“I’m not!” I said. “The doctor ordered you to stay in bed, so someone needs to be handy. And I’ve got some ideas about tonight myself.”
Because my ears were warm when I put the phone away, I sat stiffly, both hands on the steering wheel. Didn’t risk a glance at Levi, who rode in silence, while I downshifted into second and watched for landmarks. Ahead, opposite a hand-painted Acreage for Sale sign, a mailbox gathered weeds at the intersection of a shell road. The box, which looked too small to hold mail-order wigs, had been shotgunned, the pellet holes rimmed with rust. Same with a yellow Deer Crossing sign and another that read Dead End.
“Redneck graffiti,” I muttered, turning onto the shell road, then downshifting again. The road was a mess of potholes and ruts. It hadn’t been graded for years—not since I’d brought Loretta to console Mrs. Helms after her son, Mica, had been sentenced to prison for operating a meth lab. Her daughter, Crystal—the sweetest, quietest girl in my fourth-grade class—was already in jail for other drug-related crimes, so Loretta had treated the occasion like a funeral, bringing along a basket of baked goods and a pan of lasagna. My mother’s actual intentions were to convince her childhood friend to move into the village, which Mrs. Helms had done, but she had recently returned to live alone in the family home. No idea why—the bay-front cabin she’d inherited was the nicest in Munchkinville.
After several hundred yards of zigzagging, I told Levi, “Hold tight!” because we were approaching a hole deep enough to hold water. It hadn’t rained for two weeks, so I expected the truck to bang hard and it did. Levi, still in a trance, seemed not to hear but awoke when his head banged the roof.
“Ooh-ee!” he said, which is the equivalent of Ouch! to a Southern child who had not progressed beyond the age of ten. Then his eyes widened and his head began to swivel, taking in details as if trying to figure out where we were.
“Tighten that seat belt,” I advised. “We’ve still got a quarter mile to go and there’s another big hole ahead.”
“No,” he said. “Stop!”
I couldn’t stop. Water might have killed the engine, so I spun the wheels and worked the clutch until we had cleared the second hole, Levi repeating, “No! . . . No! . . . No!” the whole time.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, when we’d reached a smooth stretch.
The poor man was terrified. “Can’t,” he said. “I want to go back.”
It had taken us twenty minutes to travel a few miles; the sun was now above the trees, which didn’t give me time to waste. “We will,” I said patiently. “Soon as I’m done with my business. We’ll stop at the marina, too, and I’ll buy you a bottle of pop. How’s that sound?”
“No!” Levi yelled, fighting with his seat belt.
I reached to
comfort him by patting his arm, but that only scared the poor creature more. There was nothing I could do but sit and watch as he kicked open the door and took off, running. Not toward the main road either. He bolted into a thicket of buttonwood trees that signaled the beginning of mangroves where, a hundred years ago, the Helms family had homestead a piece of high ground on what had once been a cattle trail that led to the bay.
“Pay Day Road,” locals still called the shell lane. The name dated back to the 1990s when off-loading marijuana bales required a remote place that was hard to find by land or water. Pot hauling, as it was known, had saved some fishermen from going broke, had made a few others wealthy, but had spelled trouble for the Helms family, particularly their young children, who had learned the trade too early to save themselves.
I thought about getting out and calling to Levi but decided against it. The decision wasn’t purely selfishness, but my eagerness to get to Sanibel Island played a role. By truck, it was several miles to Sulfur Wells, but there was also an old horse trail through the backcountry that cut the distance in half. Walkin’ Levi would know the trail, so he’d probably be home long before me.
But what was it about Pay Day Road that had scared the poor man? The Helms family had once kept pit bulls, I remembered. Not fighting dogs—not since old Mr. Helms had died, anyway—but for protection.
Levi’s afraid of dogs, I thought. Shy people who traveled on foot had every reason to fear pit bulls. It made sense.
Even so, I felt a creeping uneasiness that caused me to take a precaution. My cell phone showed only one bar, but it was enough to include a locator map when I messaged Marion Ford and another friend, Nathan Pace, who is a bodybuilder but a sweet man nonetheless.
Here checking on Loretta’s friend. Will text again in 30.
I signed the note H4, a signature I reserve for friends, and also to remind myself I’m the fourth Hannah Smith in my family, so have more reasons than most to be cautious. My great-great-grandmother—known as Big Six because of her height and strength—and my wild aunt, Hannah Three, had both come to violent ends due to their own recklessness and their poor judgment in men. The history inherited with my name, although I’ve never admitted it, is a secret reason I’m careful about dating. The fear that history repeats itself is silly and superstitious, I suppose, but I’m also aware that my own judgment is often less than perfect.
I sent the text, waited for the message to clear, then put the truck in gear.
Ahead, mangrove trees leaned in to form a tunnel that sprinkled sunlight on the windshield. The shell road became sand and showed tire tracks coming or going. Both maybe. Definitely fresh.
A UPS truck, I hoped, delivering the wig Loretta had mentioned.
The house where Rosanna Helms’s husband, Dwight, had been born, and where his mother had been born, resembled a tobacco barn on pilings that, for a hundred years, had been jettisoning the junk that now surrounded the place. Oil drums, trailers, crab traps, pieces of Mica’s Harley-Davidson scattered around a hot-water heater, rusting near a satellite dish, and a bicycle frame perched trophylike atop a sheen of glass fishing net—Crystal’s bike, I remembered the pink streamers.
Crystal and I had played in this yard as children. She had been a shy, big-boned girl who enjoyed Barbie dolls, which I’d tolerated out of boredom more than politeness. But she was also game enough to paddle a canoe I’d found in the mangroves, then patched with roofing tar. We had never been close, but childhood is a powerful link, so it felt strange to be here alone, an adult woman sent to check on a playmate’s mother, a mother who had chosen to live amid the wreckage of her own shattered family. I had never liked the feel of this place. I didn’t like being here now.
Like a few other outposts on the coast, the Helms property had prospered when commerce was conducted by water, but the first roads had bypassed it, and better roads had left it as isolated as an island, the acreage not worth much because it was the only high ground in a tract of mangroves now protected by law. Yet the house remained as I remembered, a resolute structure two floors high, wood black as creosote, with four small holes cut for windows and a fifth added for a door.
From the truck, I could see that the front door was open now, hanging lopsided on its hinges—unusual in a place where mosquitoes swarmed.
I considered getting out to check but was reluctant. Instead, I honked the horn to get attention, then honked again, expecting Mrs. Helms to appear in the doorway. She didn’t.
After another minute, I hollered out the window, “Miz Helms? It’s Hannah Smith!”
Overhead, an osprey whistled. A mosquito found my ear, whining the good news, while trees filtered a gust of wind, then clung to the silence that was my answer.
It made no sense. Rosanna Helms’s car was parked beneath the plywood shed—an old Cadillac as swaybacked as a horse but still hinting at the wealth her family had enjoyed during the pot-hauling years. She was a competent driver—better than Loretta, anyway—and had no trouble getting around. Unless the car wouldn’t start, which was possible considering its age and the years of abuse dealt to it by Pay Day Road.
I recalled the fresh tire tracks I’d seen on the way in. Maybe that explained the woman’s absence. Even so, the possibility didn’t excuse me from checking inside the house—but what about the pit bulls I remembered? They hadn’t come running at the sound of my truck, which suggested I had nothing to fear. On the other hand, the dogs could be a hundred yards away, where the shell road dead-ended, enjoying sunlight and water on the commercial-sized dock that had been rotting there since Dwight Helms had died—shot by drug dealers, most believed, even though the murder had never been solved.
No . . . it was safer, I decided, to try dialing again from my cell and hope the woman answered. At the very least, I would hear her phone ringing through the open door, which would have been a comfort because my mother had used the absence of an answering machine as evidence her friend was in trouble.
Twice I hit Redial before realizing the problem: No service. I moved the phone around, touched it to the windshield, even held it out the window, before finally giving up. No way around it, I had to go inside that house.
Please, God, don’t let Loretta be right about this. That’s what I was thinking when I slid out of the truck and hurried across the yard to the porch. Every step, my eyes were moving, worried about those dogs. When I got to the door, I had something new to worry about. The door was leaning on its hinges because someone had used a crowbar to shear the doorknob off, then rip the dead bolt free of the framing.
No . . . not a crowbar, I saw when I looked closer. The door, which was plain but solid, had been split down the middle by a single blow, only weather stripping joining the two pieces.
An axe, I thought. A strong man with an axe did this.
I took a step back. Where was the man now? Where was the axe?
“Miz Helms! Pinky! Are you there?” I had never used the woman’s nickname before and embraced the absurd hope it would shock her into responding. It did not.
The house was as dark inside as it was outside, just as I remembered. Through the open doorway, in the shadows of the living room, I could see a mix of antique furniture and modern appliances, a wide-screen TV that was on but muted. A game show, one of my mother’s favorites, same with her bingo partners. A topic they squabbled about on the phone.
Eyes scanning the trees to my left, to my right, I backed to the porch railing and checked my cell. Still no service—but why was the Helmses’ satellite dish working?
Does it matter?
No, it did not. My brain was avoiding the real question, which was: Should I bolt for the truck and get help or go inside the house to see if Mrs. Helms was hurt?
What if it was Loretta in there? my conscience argued. Your own mother injured, maybe dying? Then it asked a more painful question: What if it was you thirty years from now? A helpless widow un
able to cry out!
My pounding heart urged Run! Get out of here now! but I couldn’t do that. Why is the most difficult choice almost always the right choice in a tough situation? The good and decent person in me ignored a final reproach—You have only yourself to blame!—then took charge of the situation. I had to find a weapon. Something I could swing or throw to fend off a strong man carrying an axe.
Propped against the porch steps was a shovel I hadn’t noticed until now. It seemed a handy discovery until I hefted it and saw that the blade was soiled with dog feces. Which caused me to notice other unseen details in the yard: a bucket nearly empty of water; a galvanized chain clipped to a tree where the earth had been trotted into a circle; a second tree and another chain where there were mounds of dog spore fresh enough to draw bluebottle flies. Midway between the two dog runs was a cushion that had been shredded and a bone the size of a steer’s leg that had been gnawed in two.
My hands began to shake. I held the shovel tighter to steady them, then cleaned the blade by jamming it in the sand. Pit bulls. Mrs. Helms still owned pit bulls. She had lost her husband, Dwight, to drug dealers, and her children to drug dealing, but the progeny of the family’s dogs had survived it all.
Where were they?
Not in the house. I was certain of that—they would have charged me by now. Suddenly, the house seemed a safer choice than standing alone on the porch.
I slipped past the door and went inside.
• • •
MRS. HELMS used snuff, Peach Blend, which wasn’t uncommon for women her age. “Rubbing snuff,” Loretta calls the practice, and believes it relieves menstrual cramps and gives energy, which is why the odor was familiar when I entered the living room. But why so strong?
The muted television darkened the room, so I flicked the wall switch and my question was answered. A can of Peach Blend lay open on the floor, the sweet tobacco spread on a shattered coffee table. Within easy reach was the woman’s vinyl recliner. The recliner had tumbled over backward hard enough to crack the wood floor, landing amid a litter of what looked like pamphlets. Glass from a china closet crunched beneath my feet—its walnut facing showed the divot from a single blow of an axe. Mrs. Helms had used a frozen orange juice can as a spittoon. It was there, too. Or was that sticky black mess beneath the can blood? I couldn’t be sure, and the possibility caused me to freeze for a moment.
Deceived (A Hannah Smith Novel) Page 4