by J. J. Murray
“What a storm!” she says with a sigh. “The whole world is lit up by lightning tonight, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” And I didn’t see the light until it was too late. I should have listened to Rinaldo. Dodie is a dog-hating stealer of telephones and wedding rings. “What happens now, Dodie?”
“We eat some cookies and drink some tea, dear.”
I look at the cookies on the dashboard. “The cookies are poisoned, aren’t they?”
“No they aren’t. If they were, you’d already be dead. They’re from the same batch you ate from when you visited.”
“How do I know that?”
Dodie shrugs. “You don’t. You know, I have to admit that I had been thinking for the last thirty years about sending Freddy a poisoned batch of cookies. I have some oleander growing out back. I don’t only tend daisies, you know. But in order to kill a horse like Freddy, it would have taken four ounces of oleander leaves per cookie. Who ever heard of quarter-pound cookies? Freddy would have figured it out.” She slides the plate off the dashboard and holds it near me. “Choose a cookie for me, Gio.”
“Why?”
“So you can trust me, dear.”
I pick a thick cookie in the middle and hand it to her. “You’re aiming a gun at me, Dodie. It’s hard to trust you.”
“I’m only aiming it now, Gio.” Dodie takes a bite, chews, and swallows. “See? Not poisoned. Go ahead.”
I pick out the smallest cookie and chew it slowly. It tastes terrible, but at least I’m still conscious.
Dodie smiles. “Need something to wash it down?”
I could use a gallon of water. “Sure.”
She nods at the Thermos. “Pour yourself some tea, dear, but be very careful. I hope it’s still hot. And move slower than slowly, okay? The trigger pull for this Walther is only four pounds.”
Her pistol’s trigger is twice as easy to pull as my Marlin is. “I’ll try, Dodie.” I pick up the Thermos with my right hand and bring it to my lap. It doesn’t feel hot at all. I pull off the cup and unscrew the top to release a pungent cinnamon aroma that makes my eyes water.
“Cinnamon tea is the best thing to warm you up on a cold night. It’s like drinking an Atomic Fireball. You remember those?”
“Yes.” And I didn’t like them. “Would you like some?”
“Oh yes,” Dodie says. “Pour me half a cup.”
I fill the cup halfway and hold it out to her.
She puts the cup to her lips. “Delicious.”
Dodie didn’t drink a single drop. Whatever is in this tea has to be toxic.
She hands the cup to me. “Don’t drink it too fast now.”
I stare at the brown liquid as hail occasionally bounces off the windshield and hood, the wind howling all around us.
Dodie presses the Walther into my thigh. “But don’t drink it too slow either. I’d hate to put a hole in your nice jeans.”
I take a tiny sip, and it burns my lips, gums, and tongue. “It is good,” I say, and my eyes begin to water. I swallow, and fire plummets from my throat to my stomach. “I’m feeling warmer already.” And sick!
“You didn’t drink enough, Gio,” Dodie says. “Drink some more.”
“I didn’t need much to quench my thirst, Dodie,” I say. “I only ate one cookie, right?”
“You’re a good Christian woman, Gio Ferrari,” Dodie says. “Are you lying to me?”
“No,” I say. “You’re a good Christian woman, too, Dodie. You have your own pew at Preston’s Chapel. You play the organ there every Sunday.”
“And I’ll be playing that organ tomorrow,” she says.
“Are you going to kill me, Dodie?”
“Drink.” She taps the cup with the barrel of the Walther. “All of it.”
My upper lip is already sweating! “And if I don’t drink it?”
“I’ll shoot you ten times. I’ll try to aim for the flesh parts, but I might nick a bone or two. I’m sure that would hurt a lot.”
I don’t have much of a choice there.
I sip the burning liquid until I finish the cup, trying to keep most of the “tea” in my left cheek, the cheek furthest from her. It tastes and burns exactly like an Atomic Fireball.
Dodie takes the cup from me. “Good, Gio. Much better. Isn’t it delicious?”
I nod as tears form in my eyes.
“Your stomach lining should start burning soon, Gio. I’m sure you’ve had gastritis before, but this will be far, far worse. I used ninety percent cinnamon leaf oil for this tea. They don’t recommend you use cinnamon leaf oil internally. It’s really good for the skin, though. Don’t be embarrassed when you double over from a gut ache and lose consciousness from a severe loss in blood. It should feel like your whole stomach is one big untreated ulcer.”
My stomach already aches from the cookie, and I can’t keep the liquid in my cheek much longer. I lean forward and rest my forehead on the steering wheel, groaning as my eyes overflow with tears.
“You asked what happens next,” Dodie says, “so I’ll tell you. As soon as you’re properly disabled and hopefully unconscious, I’m going to drive you back up the mountain where you will have a tragic accident in this storm,” Dodie says. “It’s only three thousand feet down from the top—unless you hit a tree. It’s a shame I have wreck Freddy’s truck, but what else can I do? It’s also a shame you have to die on the same road where your pa died. What do they call that? Poetic license?”
I want to swallow so badly, but if I do, I’ll pass out from the pain!
“Do you know what they call that, Gio? You’re the smarty-pants here.”
If I spew all this on her, will it burn her skin? I have to do something!
“What’s the matter, Gio? Cat got your tongue?” Dodie cackles. “That’s a good one. Cat got your tongue!”
I center the liquid in my mouth, turn my head, and spew the cinnamon tea into Dodie’s face, grabbing her wrist as three shots sizzle through the driver’s side windshield. “It’s called poetic justice, you old bat!”
I throw my right shoulder into her and pull her gun hand in front of me as she shatters the driver’s side window with two more shots. “Let go, Dodie!”
“I am never letting go!”
I brace my feet against my door, push off, and jam her little body against her door as another shot zings through the cab and out into the storm. “Let go, Dodie!”
I feel Dodie squirming behind me and hear the door lock click. “You let go, Gio!”
“No!”
She drops the Walther and twists her wrist out of my grasp. Then her door opens, and she falls out onto her driveway.
I yank her door shut, lock it, slide to the steering wheel, and turn the key in the ignition.
Nothing happens.
Nonno said he put in a nearly new battery! What’s going on?
I try again, peering through the windshield and seeing Dodie’s hazy little body moving toward the back of her Olds. “Come on, come on!”
Dodie opens her trunk and reaches inside.
She turns toward me with a rifle.
Time to go.
In a truck that won’t start.
Chapter 34
I release the parking brake, shift into neutral, and roll swiftly backwards down Dodie’s driveway onto Route 113, praying no one is behind me because I can’t see a thing through either the windshield or the back window because the rain is so thick.
A shot pings off the hood.
And Dodie is shooting at me.
Another shot bangs into the hood.
With accuracy!
I need to start this truck now.
I push in the clutch, put it in second gear, and as soon as I roll downhill and pick up some speed, I release or “pop” the clutch.
The truck clanks to a halt.
Shoot.
I hear a shot shatter one of the rear taillights.
I push in the clutch, wrestle the gearshift into neutral, and start creeping down the mountain as wate
r seeps through the three bullet holes in the windshield. I shift into first gear this time and pop the clutch.
It starts!
Yes!
While the windshield wiper gives me a somewhat better view, it also pushes water through the glass and onto the dashboard. I watch the speedometer climb from ten to fifteen and shift into second. I need to get to town to the police station as quickly—
I see a pair of headlights in the side mirror.
No way!
Dodie in her tank of an Olds is rapidly approaching my bumper. Her car outweighs this truck by at least a thousand pounds. One bump and I’m going off the road and down the side of Motts Mountain in a hurry.
I shift into third and the speedometer edges toward thirty-five. It’s a good thing I never worked on Dodie’s car, because her carburetor has to be too gummy to go over thirty-five.
I glance in the side mirror to see her Olds cross the center line, and I floor it, the speedometer needle hugging forty before leaning toward forty-five. There’s no way she can catch me—
The back window shatters, and the bullet plows through my side of the windshield, reducing it to a pile of glass fragments while the windshield wiper waves in the air and a waterfall of rain drums onto the dashboard.
She’s driving and shooting at me?
Who is that crazy woman?
Route 113 straightens out as I pass The Swinging Bridge doing forty-five, and Dodie’s Olds is somehow less than one hundred feet behind me. She isn’t using the brakes! What little old lady doesn’t ride the brakes! Maybe she doesn’t have any brakes!
I grab the Walther, extend my arm through the missing back window, and aim at Dodie’s right front tire. I squeeze the trigger.
Missed.
I face forward as the road snakes uphill toward the trout hatchery. I reach back again, aim, and fire.
Dodie’s right front tire explodes, and her Olds veers down the embankment and plows into Gray Creek near the bridge.
I pull off the road, put the safety on the Walther, and slide it into my pocket. I load Dodie’s Winchester with the bullets from my other pocket. Part me hopes Dodie is unconscious because that Olds doesn’t have airbags, but I have a feeling that deranged woman could survive anything.
I get out in a crouch and stay low as I stalk toward the back of Dodie’s car. I wade into the rushing creek and approach her door, aiming the Winchester through the open window at her forehead. “Please put your hands on the steering wheel, Dodie.” I see her other rifle, a Marlin, lying on the seat next to her.
She looks at the Marlin. “You won’t shoot me, Gio.”
“I don’t want to, Dodie, but I will,” I say.
Dodie laughs. “But you need me alive to clear your name, don’t you? I’ve heard the rumors. I’ve even been on the phone spreading a few. People in this town will believe just about anything.”
“Put your hands on the steering wheel now, Dodie.”
She looks up at me. “I can’t believe you shot at me, Gio. What would your grandpa say about that?”
“I shot at your tire, not at you,” I say. “And you were trying to kill me.”
Dodie frowns. “But I’m a defenseless old woman, Gio!”
“Hardly.”
She moves her right hand toward the Marlin.
“Don’t.” I press the barrel into her cheek. “You won’t be able to have an open casket if I pull the trigger now, Dodie.”
Dodie moves her right hand to the steering wheel. “I have to have an open casket. Otherwise, who will see Freddy’s ring?”
I open her door, grab her by the elbow, and pull her out of the car into the creek. I hurl the Winchester downstream.
“Hey!” Dodie shouts. “That’s a seven hundred-dollar rifle!”
“Your hunting days are over, Dodie.” I drag her out of the creek and up the embankment to the truck, help her inside, and lock and shut her door.
When I get behind the wheel, I see her clutching a pile of soggy letters to her chest. “My letters! They’re ruined!”
“I thought you didn’t want the letters, Dodie,” I say. I turn the key, and the truck starts immediately. I’ll bet it didn’t start before because I was on an incline. I may have to get a new fuel pump. I turn up the heat as rain pours off the dashboard onto my legs.
“I’m so cold, Gio,” Dodie says.
“The tea will warm you up,” I say. “Why don’t you drink a cup or two for me?”
“I’m … sorry about that,” Dodie says.
“Right.”
I back out and head for Kingstown as rain pelts us both in the face.
“I truly am sorry, Gio,” Dodie says. “Can’t you just take me home?”
“No.”
“Like you said, it was all only an accident,” Dodie says.
“And accident that you could have prevented,” I say.
“But the coroner said Freddy died of natural causes,” Dodie says. “He’s not going to change his mind again.”
“He will, Dodie, and I have plenty of proof,” I say. “Delmer has your hubcap, and I’m sure the phone in your kitchen has Freddy’s fingerprints on it.”
Dodie sighs. “Gio, they can only charge me with depraved indifference, you know.”
“What?”
“That’s all they can charge me with. I saw it in an episode of Law and Order, and Mrs. Wilcox helped me look it up at the library. Depraved indifference. It’s what they should have charged Freddy with. He led me on and broke my heart. He was, let me get this right, ‘deficient in a moral sense of concern, lacking in regard for the life of another.’ He should have married me and not Blanche.”
“You’re going to be charged with more than depraved indifference, ” I say. “You could have saved his life, Dodie.”
“Yeah, I suppose, but he was old, and he made me wait too long. Any woman on any jury would understand that. No. I’ll only get second-degree murder at most. Mitigating circumstances. I did try to save him didn’t I? I tried to give him water twice, but he kept coughing it up. I tried to lift him, but he was too fat.”
“Dodie, all you had to do was call nine-one-one and Freddy would still be alive.”
“I wasn’t calling on Blanche’s phone, no sir.” She stuffs the letters into the glove box. “I have my pride, you know.”
“You could have used the green phone in the guest room,” I say.
“Yeah, I guess I could have done that. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, huh?”
I hope Dodie gets a minimum of twenty years.
“You know, a Gray County jury might be harsh on me,” Dodie says. “I might have cost them their lake. But no matter what they give me, it will be a life sentence, won’t it?”
Probably. “I don’t know, Dodie.”
I splash onto Front Street as sheets of water slash the road and flood the cab. I see water sloshing at my feet.
“At least it’s raining,” Dodie says. “My daisies will rise from the dead while those buffalo trample Blanche’s. Do buffalo eat daisies?”
“I don’t know, Dodie.”
“I hope they do,” Dodie says. “Gio, would you be a dear and do me a favor?”
I am afraid to ask. “What would you like me to do?”
“Could you plant daisies around Freddy’s grave for me? I was going to, but it’s such a long walk up that hill to the cemetery. If you want, you can dig up the ones in front of my house and transplant them up there.”
Not in this or any other lifetime, Dodie. “I’ll think about it.”
When I lead Dodie into the police station, I see Thomas behind his desk. “You’re working nights again?”
He shakes his head. “Working a double. But what happened to you two?”
Oh, just a near poisoning, a shootout, and a low-speed car chase that made my truck a convertible and sent an Oldsmobile into Gray Creek. “Dodie has something to tell you.”
Dodie flips back her dripping shock of white hair. “I do?”
“Yes,” I say.
“You do.”
“Where am I?” Dodie says. “Is that you, Sheriff Morris?”
“Dodie,” I say, “this is no time to fake having Alzheimer’s.”
Dodie winks at me. “It would make a dandy defense, huh?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” I say.
Dodie stands up a little straighter. “Thomas, I am here to confess to the murder of Freddy Simmons.”
Thomas smiles. “Right, Miss Loney. No, really, Gio, what happened?”
Dodie turns to me. “He doesn’t believe me. Does this mean we can go now?”
“No, Dodie,” I say. “Thomas, listen to her story.” I pull a chair from behind another desk and set it near Dodie. “Have a seat, Dodie.”
“It’s not the electric chair, is it?” she asks as she sits.
“No, Dodie,” I say. “Thomas, you might want to read Dodie her rights first.”
“Oh, I waive my right to remain silent,” Dodie says. “After what I’ve just been through, I want to tell my story. I nearly drowned in Gray Creek, Thomas. After Gio shot my tire.”
“You what?” Thomas says. “Did you—”
“Yes,” I interrupt. “I shot her tire because she was shooting at me.” I narrow my eyes at Thomas. “Thomas, read Dodie her rights.”
Thomas pulls out a card from his shirt pocket.
He doesn’t even have the Miranda Warning memorized. I guess we do need Sheriff Morris after all.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Thomas says.
“But I don’t want to remain silent,” Dodie says.
“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law,” Thomas says.
“I certainly expect it to,” Dodie says.
“You have the right to talk to a lawyer and have him or her present with you while you are being questioned.” Thomas takes a breath.
“I don’t really need a lawyer,” Dodie says. “I suppose I could get Curtis Daniels. He’s quite an attractive man.”
“If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer,” Thomas continues, “one will be appointed to represent you before any questioning if you wish.”
“But I doubt I could afford that Mr. Daniels,” Dodie says. “He’s as much of a bloodsucker as all the rest.”
“You can decide at any time to exercise these rights and not answer any questions or make any statements,” Thomas says.