“The ladies! The other ladies! What if they were over there when it happened?” Melanie turned to run to the wreckage.
Emma grabbed her arm.
“Wait, Melanie. Here they are now.” Emma sighed with relief and pointed to Winnie, Ruby, Grace, and Martha as they trudged through the snow toward them. They’d circled around the back of the inn. They waved jauntily and brandished farm implements over their heads.
Melanie sank to her knees and bowed her head. “Thank You, Father.” She reached upward.
Hazel extended her arm and Melanie leaned on her as she rose from the snow. Then she turned toward the band of women. “What on earth do you ladies think you’re doing? You could’ve been killed. We could all be killed. We could still all be killed! Don’t you get it? These are dangerous guys. They’re armed. With guns. They’re after Bristol, and now we’ve given them an excellent reason to be after us. What were you thinking?”
The women looked around at one another, but Emma noticed none of them would look Melanie in the eye.
“I can’t speak for the other ladies, Melanie, but I did this because I wanted to feel useful again,” Sadie spoke up. “I wanted to help out our friend Bristol.” She kicked at the snow around her feet. “No, it wasn’t very smart. But what else would you have us do? Stay inside, scared and cowering, while we waited for these evil men to do what they came to do? We’re not a young town, anymore. Perhaps you and Hugh haven’t noticed that. But we aren’t. We’re past our prime, and there aren’t many occasions to prove our worth.” She looked around at the other women, most of whom had their mouths hanging open. “I think this was one of those times.”
Emma closed her eyes as nearby the flames soared, then plummeted as the wind whipped them into a frenzy high above the ground, then dropped them to skim along the surface of the snow. She was eleven years old again, sitting in the dark on the grand staircase, her head wedged between two banisters like she and her sister used to do when they eavesdropped on the ladies of their Aunt Louanna’s knitting club while they sat primly below them in the parlor. Emma could see the reflection of the flames from the fireplace opposite the parlor windows—flickering, dancing, stretching as if they were just beyond the window outside, leaping from the ground below to gain entrance into the room.
If Emma closed her eyes tight and pretended her aunt was saying something else—anything other than what she was really hearing—she could pretend Rachel was still there; that at any moment the girls would dissolve into giggles and have to bury their heads in the other’s shoulder to keep the gales of laughter from reaching the haughty woman holding court below.
Aunt Louanna’s shrill voice pierced Emma’s thoughts. “Lydia, please don’t argue with me. You know as well as I do that one of those girls was going to come to a bad end, the way they ran around this house—and these grounds, no less—like little heathens. It was that mother of theirs, you know. Too lenient with them, in my opinion. Always letting them run around outdoors like savages.”
Lydia interrupted, which wasn’t like her, but Emma detected a hint of impatience in their housekeeper’s voice. “But Mrs. River, the girls’ mother loved them dearly. She would never have allowed them to do the things they’ve been doing on this staircase lately if she’d…”
“If she’d what, Lydia? If she’d been alive? Well, she isn’t alive, now is she? And the girls were under the care of my husband and me and heaven knows we did the very best we could by them. Are you implying…?”
“No, ma’am, I’m not implying anything. I’m merely defending the actions of a dead woman, a woman who loved those twin girls with every breath she took. And yes, now she’s gone and the girls were under the care of you and your husband and now … now …” Lydia stopped for a second then plunged ahead. “And now it doesn’t matter, does it? Rachel is gone. Forever.”
Emma could see her Aunt Louanna’s reflection in the window beside the crackling flames in the fireplace; she appeared to be sitting in the midst of them. Didn’t she wish. Aunt Louanna rose from her chair and started to leave the room then stopped and faced Lydia. “Well, if you ask me, Rachel was the right one to die. The Lord knew what He was doing when He took that child. At least we have Emma left. Good riddance, I say. Good riddance.”
The Lord knew what He was doing when He took Rachel? Emma’s thoughts spun in circles, one ghastly thought leading to yet another. God took my sister, and now I’m all alone because Rachel wasn’t the one Aunt wanted? What kind of God was He?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
What on earth was my wife doing? And why were she and the other ladies out in this weather—with armed men all over the place and flaming Hummer wreckage dropping from the sky? What had happened to the cozy little world I’d envisioned not so long ago—the one where I retire in comfort to a charming Virginia village, buy an inn with my beautiful wife, and live a carefree existence devoid of detonations, exotic animals, general pandemonium?
No answers. I could tell my wife and the other women were having a grand old time congratulating one another for something or other—pushing a body out the back door, blowing up the Hummer, or who knows … maybe finally getting all those chicken feathers glued on. None of this made any sense. In the meantime, I had a bad guy locked up in my henhouse with a camel, another guy hog-tied in my backyard, a third one bleeding somewhere out there, several old women running around in a blizzard, their husbands tucked away in the church shooting pieces of that historic building to sawdust, a caretaker next to me with a bull’s eye attached to him, and flaming Hummer-chunks raining down on all of us. And I thought retiring from the military would simplify our lives?
All this took about three-quarters of a second to pass through my mind. My first instinct was to warn Melanie and the ladies to lay low. After all, it didn’t much matter who blew up the Hummer; these guys were in it for the long haul now, with no clear way out of town, and they were liable to be on the grumpy side. But before I could even raise my arm to let Melanie know I was there, I could see the other ladies traipsing toward them. What were they waving around over their heads? It was difficult to tell with the distance between us and the blowing snow, but the flames helped illuminate things. Was that Winnie with a pitchfork? I shook my head to clear my vision. Had we stumbled into hell?
Not quite, but close. The ladies had my antique farm tools. Nice.
Chapter Thirty
Emma’s thoughts were interrupted by Melanie’s voice. “Are you all right, Emma?”
She shook her head and opened her eyes. “Yes, I’m fine. Thank you.”
Mr. Jackson was lying on his stomach again and the ladies took up their positions.
“Let’s get him in the henhouse before those guys lose interest in that fire,” Sadie said. “Ready? On the count of three.” With heads down and shoulders hunched against the wind, the women dragged their captive toward the old shed.
Delbert had long since quit struggling and a couple of minutes later, as he lay face down in the snow, Hazel stood ready to open the door. She gestured toward Melanie and said loudly, “Looks like someone has been here recently.” The wind snatched her words and scattered them throughout the yard along with the dancing snow.
Melanie shook her head and put a hand behind one ear. Hazel pointed to the ground and gestured with her arm to simulate opening the door. The snow had been pushed aside by the outward opening of the door. The wind had whipped some of the snow back into the swath the door had cut into the drift, but clearly, this door had been opened recently.
Melanie looked up at Hazel and shook her head slowly then shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what to do, ladies. We’ve come this far. We can’t leave Mr. Jackson out in this weather without putting him in the shed.” Melanie fell silent, and Emma marveled that none of the ladies had any suggestions. Any other time you couldn’t shut ’em up.
Emma remembered the flashlight she was carrying. She tugged on Melanie’s coat sleeve, tapped the flashlight, and leaned into her. “
Let’s drag him over here.” She pointed to a spot between the henhouse and the outbuilding that stood next to it. “Then all of us get behind the door, open it up, and I’ll shine the light in there. If someone comes out, we clobber him. If not, we toss Mr. Jackson into the shed and close it up tight.”
Melanie looked around at the other women. No suggestions, just a shrug here and there. “Okay, Emma. Let’s do it.”
Mr. Jackson groaned.
Just a while longer, buddy.
They dragged him between the buildings, trudged back through the deep snow, took up their positions on either side of the door, and prepared to launch farm implements at anything that came charging out at them.
Winnie growled like a football player getting ready to tackle someone. Melanie prayed. Emma took a deep breath, quietly pulled the padlock loop from the holes, pocketed it, and yanked. The door swung toward her in short spurts, slowed by the snow that had already begun to drift into the track.
Finally it stood open, a dark hole gaping at them like the mouth of a yawning monster; the snow and wind curled around the edges of the doorway lifting little bits of straw and tossing them around in a whirlwind of activity. The women cringed. Hazel even whimpered, but no one jumped out at them. They took a collective deep breath and turned their attention to dragging Mr. Jackson to the open doorway.
Once they had him where they wanted him, Emma stepped forward, and hesitating just for a moment while she gathered her nerve, leaned forward and pointed the flashlight toward the floor a foot or so into the gloomy depths. Nothing.
“Good enough, Emma,” Sadie said. “Okay, ladies, let’s get this over with. I’m getting tired.” She turned her attention to Delbert and nudged him with her foot. “You lucked out, Mr. Jackson. If it weren’t so darned cold out here, you’d be getting the third degree about now. But I’m too cold to give a rip.” The ladies took their positions, grabbed Mr. Jackson by the shoulders and pant legs, and dragged him forward.
Despite her numbness, Emma felt a tingle travel from the base of her neck to the bottoms of her feet. Something wasn’t right. Could it be the guilt of tossing a trussed-up man into a dark shed in the middle of a blizzard? Naw. After all, he was the one who started it all by driving the ghostly gang, as she had begun to think of them, to Road’s End in the first place. No, this prickle of terror had nothing to do with guilt. It was deeper than that. It sprang from an innate knowledge that everything was not as it should be, that there was something yet to be discovered, something—or someone—wanting to do them harm.
Emma thought she heard a moan.
Was that Delbert? No. Probably just the wind. But could there be someone in the shed? She convinced herself she was just worrying about nothing. She’d been alone too long. That was her problem. She worried about everything under the sun.
Everything it seemed, except a camel.
Like most people, Emma had never given a thought to camel-mauling on a personal scale, so she was woefully unprepared when a long, dry, purple tongue snaked from the shed’s creepy depths and grazed her face from chin to forehead.
Her ear-piercing scream elicited an eerily similar response from the camel and between the startled animal’s bawling and Emma’s screeching, the night came alive—as if gunfire and an SUV explosion hadn’t done that already.
Emma heard a screech. She turned around just in time to see Winnie sink to her knees, topple head first into the snow in a heap of green plaid and beige wool, clutch her chest and quite robustly for a woman in the throes of a heart attack, moan, “My heart, oh, my heart.”
Sadie bent down and cuffed the perky tassel bobbing at the center of Winnie’s stocking cap and said, “Shut up, Winnie. You’re not having a heart attack. You said the same thing last week, remember? There wasn’t a thing wrong with you then and there’s not a thing wrong with you now. So get up. We’ve got a monster to kill.”
“Ladies, please,” Mel said. “Emma, are you all right? What was that? It looked like a camel! Didn’t that look like a camel?” She pointed toward the open doorway. “Someone shut that door.” She turned to Winnie and leaned over. “Breathe slowly, Winnie. You’re going to be fine. You were just startled.” She straightened up and turned to Hazel and Martha. “Let’s get her up out of the snow, and we’ll get back to the house, okay?”
Melanie turned and tripped over Delbert lying in the snow. “Oh, my goodness. We forgot about Mr. Jackson.”
Emma looked around at her comrades—their faces expressed varying stages of horror—with the exception of Winnie, who was still in the throes of faux death.
“What’s it going to be? Do we drag him back to the house or toss him into the shed?” Melanie asked.
Delbert, who’d up until now had been lying low during the ruckus taking place all around him, shook his head vehemently. While he couldn’t have seen the animal from his angle on the ground, he was certainly privy to the commotion it caused, and Emma didn’t think he was keen on joining it. But nobody asked him his opinion and before they could lose their collective nerve, Hazel yanked the door back open, Emma aimed the flashlight toward the back of the shed, and the ladies charged forward with their terrified captive. The string mop that dangled from Delbert’s mouth slapped him across both cheeks as he wagged his head this way and that in protest.
“Hold still, Mr. Jackson,” Sadie said. “I don’t think camels eat humans. Just sit in there like a good boy, and we’ll get you out as soon as we can.”
The camel seemed even less enthusiastic about Delbert joining it than he did about being tossed inside. It brayed loudly when the door reopened, but the ladies—with the exception of the still faint Winnie—were braced for the noise and didn’t flinch. What none of them could have expected, though, was to see yet another trussed-up man in there with the animal. He wasn’t easy to see, all curled up in the corner with his head to the wall, but he was there all right.
Emma, who had put her arm up over her face before braving the great, long tongue lurking in the depths of the henhouse a second time, pointed her flashlight at him and hollered, “Who are you?”
“He can’t answer, Emma,” Sadie said beside her. He’s gagged, too.” Emma looked around at the other ladies crowded around the opening of the building. One by one, the ladies peered in and nodded. Yep, he was gagged all right. “Must be one of the bad guys. Wonder who brought him here.”
“Him?” Melanie said. “There’s a camel in there. Doesn’t anybody wonder how it got there?”
Winnie, who had managed to haul herself upright with the help of Martha and Lorena, raised her hand and said, “Sherman.”
“Sherman?”
Winnie nodded and stepped forward, still hanging on to Lorena with her left arm and patting her heart with the other. “Well, I can’t say for certain, of course, but I think my great-nephew Sherman DeSoto brought it … well, her. That’s probably Sophie.”
Melanie’s mouth dropped open. “You think that’s where this camel came from? How many camels come to Road’s End, anyway? And you know this camel? By name?”
Emma had slowly sidled her way back to the doorway.
Winnie joined her and they peered in at the occupants of the henhouse. Two of them—the human ones—were struggling to beat the band, flopping around like a couple of recently-reeled-in salmon. Sophie seemed to have settled back down into the straw again. She stared at them solemnly and lazily chewed her cud.
“Yep,” Winnie said. “That’s Sophie. My brother owns an exotic animal farm, and I called him about using Sophie here for our live Nativity. Never expected they’d bring her in this storm, though.” Slowly, she took a step forward, held out her hand, and wiggled her fingers. “Hi, Sophie. How are you? I haven’t seen you in a couple of years now.” She turned back to Melanie. “My brother and his grandson—that’s Sherman—live in Pennsylvania, bless their hearts. When my brother found out we’re trying to raise funds for our church, he let me have Sophie at half the usual rate, and of course, mileage.” She ste
pped back out of the building and smiled at the circle of women standing around her, evidently waiting for accolades and applause.
Neither came.
“Let me get this straight, Winnie,” Sadie spoke up first. “We’re trying to raise money, and we’re paying for a camel? How’s that help?”
Winnie opened her mouth then closed it abruptly. She appeared to mull that over, then said, “Won’t folks pay to see a real camel? I mean, how often do ordinary people get to see something so … so exotic?”
Sadie clucked in disgust. “I’ll tell you who’s going to pay for that camel. The church is! Why doesn’t your brother, bless his heart and all, let us use Soapy for free?”
“Sophie.”
“What?”
“Her name is Sophie … with an ‘f’ sound, not Soapy.”
Sadie waved her hand dismissively. “Soapy, Sophie, no matter. I don’t care if her name is ‘The Actual Camel That Mary Rode on the Way to Bethlehem’. And I know, I know. Don’t say it. Mary didn’t ride a camel. I’m just saying that paying money for her is going to take a big bite out of our profits.” She shook her finger at Winnie. “You shoulda asked us, Winnie. You just shoulda asked the rest of us.”
Winnie sniffled and clutched her chest again. “Well, I never, Sadie Simms. How could you? I was only trying to do what I thought—”
“You were only trying to do what you thought would make you look good, Winnie Wyandotte. Like always.”
Melanie stepped between the two ladies and put her hands on their shoulders. “Ladies, let’s not worry about this right now, okay? I’m sure Winnie was just doing what she thought was the best thing to do.” She patted Sadie’s shoulder. “And Sadie, I know you’d like to have had a say in this. So why don’t we just agree to disagree and settle it later, okay? Besides, we’ve still got some men with guns running around here. We can’t afford to be dilly-dallying around.” She turned to the other ladies. “Who’s cold? I’ll bet I can rustle us up something hot to drink even if we don’t have any electricity. How about it? Ready to go back inside?”
Misstep (The Road's End Series Book 1) Page 16