by Jane Elzey
“I can’t get away right now. I just can’t,” she said. There was no way she could face Zelda and keep her guilt bottled up. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t,” she repeated.
It felt like the only truth she had told in quite some time.
Chapter Fifteen
Amy laughed so hard she almost peed herself. This was fun. Like Thelma and Louise when they set off on their adventure, except she was in Zack’s Hummer and no one sat beside her. Instead, Dire Straits was turned up loud. The Bose stereo surrounded the cab with its primo sound, and she could picture Mark Knopfler on stage in a smoky bourbon bar.
“Money for Nothing” may have made the band famous, but it was Knopfler’s great guitar and rock-blues vocals that made her dream of another time, a younger time. Music blasting, hands on the wheel beating time, she was twenty-five again and fearless. The Hummer sped down the highway, the GPS guiding her miles, and bluesy rock and roll spurring her on.
A couple of clicks on the Internet told her what she needed to know about the Hummer’s GPS system. The addresses of the destinations Zack visited were listed, and all she had to do was figure out to which destinations he traveled that day. It was easier than she thought. In short order, she had a list of where he most likely traveled on that final day. She keyed in the destinations with the idea to follow in his tracks every mile, turn, and stop.
“I can’t find the keys,” Zelda said when Amy called to see if she could borrow the Hummer to run errands her Miata couldn’t handle. It was not an unusual request.
“I’ll come to help you look,” Amy suggested, knowing where to find them—in her jeans pocket. She hadn’t meant to take them from Zack’s office, but she had put them in her pocket without thinking and discovered them later.
She had been on the road for an hour when the GPS voice ordered her to take the next exit, right. After crossing the Arkansas River, the GPS had her turn east again. The road ran alongside the river and then turned due south toward Paris. There wasn’t much to the town that called itself the Gateway to Mount Magazine, the highest point in Arkansas. From the top of the mountain, one could see a circle view of the Arkansas River, the city of Paris, and the Ouachita Mountains. In the shadow sat Blue Mountain Lake, where the rumors claimed the fish were bigger than the beavers.
Turning onto the highway, she continued west. Another mile down the road turned back north. No wonder it took him all day. East, west, north. This was a winding country. The road was narrow and dusty, throwing up the gold dust of a dry late spring, and the trees were thick with dust on either side of the road. That meant she wasn’t the only one who had traveled the road lately. She drove for a couple of miles before she turned a bend in the road and saw the concrete pad and the tower. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find, but it wasn’t this.
There was no one around, nothing to do, no one to see. What did Zack do when he was here? Check a gauge? Monitor radioactivity? She had no idea.
Amy parked the Hummer in front of the little trailer set about a hundred yards from the base of the tower. It looked like one of the FEMA trailers that had made their way to Arkansas after the hurricane floods down in New Orleans. She climbed the makeshift wooden stairs that led to the door and noticed L91 stenciled above the door with black paint.
L91!
Amy tried the doorknob. It was locked.
She peeked under the floor mat just in case, but there was only a family of roly-poly bugs enjoying the damp shade.
Black plastic covered the glass in the door and kept her from seeing anything inside. She climbed back down the stairs and circled the trailer on foot. There were two windows on either side, both too high off the ground to reach, but they appeared to be covered by the same plastic.
Frowning, she stared at the dark windows. And then, a slow smile spread across her freckled cheeks. She was wearing the same jeans she wore when she drove to Hot Springs. She slid her fingers into her back pocket. The key met her fingertips. The cardboard tag was washed into wadded bits, but the key and jump ring were still there.
She pulled out the key and, tentatively, her hands shaking more than she wanted them to, slid the key to the lock and opened the door.
Her eyes widened. She blinked at the light.
“Oh, my!” she said with a sigh of surprise. She stepped inside and closed the door.
The interior of the trailer held long tables filled with five-gallon buckets full of pot plants all growing under artificial light. She stepped forward and stared. Surprise. Amazement. Stupor. They all ran through her mind in the seconds it took to comprehend what she was seeing. L91 was a pot-growing site. Under cover of the lonely cell tower, where no one might suspect, Zack was growing dope. Is that what all the cardboard tags led to?
Rian knew about L91. Rian was involved in this.
But Rian would never agree to something like this. Rian was a purist. She was pious about pot.
And yet, Rian knew about L91.
And now, so did she. She backed out of the trailer and locked the door.
A rustle in the bushes startled her. Jumping down the stairs, she hopped into the Hummer, slamming the door shut. A family of deer stepped out of the trees to the side of the trailer, tugging on the wild daylilies at the edge of the clearing.
Even though her heart was pounding, she laughed out loud at her fear, hands gripping the wheel. That was a close call. Too many deer in Arkansas. Capital D.
She turned back toward Paris and the next destination on the list, but she could feel her disappointment riding along with her. Whatever she had expected to find there, it sure wasn’t that. If L91 was a growing shed, the others were likely to be the same. Did Rian know about all of them? Was this the mess she was talking about? Or was this a new direction she was taking her botanicals?
And how did this fit into Zack’s death? Rian had met Zack on the road that day. Probably somewhere not too far from here. Rian admitted to that. What else would she admit to when forced to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but?
Amy looked in the rearview mirror, noticing a blue pickup truck with an old farmer behind the wheel, riding too close to her tail. She glanced at the face in the rearview mirror. The face was set and hard, angry, and impatient with her driving. There was no place for her to pull off the narrow road and let him pass on this highway on the edge of the Ouachita National Forest. She kept her eyes on the road, glancing now and again into the rearview mirror. He rode right on her tail until a turn out gave her a place to safely pull off the road and let him past. The truck sped on ahead.
Pulling back onto the road, she drove on.
When she started this morning, she had the confidence she could make a big loop and cover all the stops Zack might have made that day, plus a visit to Blue Mountain and later the apple orchard guy. Now she knew better. As the crow flies, they weren’t far from each other or far from here. She wasn’t a crow. Back roads and backtracking would make that an all-day mission, and she still had to return home before nightfall.
She went through the phone call in her mind.
Jetson Gregory didn’t mention anything about the police when she called and pretended to be Zack’s new secretary. A heavy silence followed the introduction, and without being face-to-face, she couldn’t tell whether he was confused or cagey. Did he know Zack was dead? She couldn’t tell that either, and she didn’t know how to ask without tipping her hand. In the end she asked about his apple orchard–- the only clue she had –– and that set him off on a tirade of foul language and spite. Listening to him bellow about the damage, she could hear there was no love lost between Jetson and Zack. There was no love lost between Zack and anyone, it seemed.
As he recounted the story with fire under his collar, the construction of the cell tower site in his apple orchard had come to a halt when he barred the way of the backhoe with his body and his pickup truck. The backhoe operator had s
talked off in a huff, leaving the backhoe running, which meant the tab was still running on his dime. He was vehement as he retold the story.
The road the backhoe was supposed to take was at the farthest end of his orchard, but not very clearly marked. That was something Zack was supposed to have taken care of.
Zack didn’t.
Instead, the machine plowed through Jetson’s apple trees, and she imagined the machine going through the trees as if plucking toothpicks from a bowl.
Before he could stop it, the backhoe had destroyed a good quarter of his orchard and twenty beehives, along with the wife’s prize-winning rose garden.
He blamed Zack for the damage and he was holding a grudge. Was that enough to run Zack down and leave him for dead? Had he run him over like the apple trees?
“Had he been to Hot Springs recently?” she had asked.
“What business is that of yours?” he snapped in response.
His rudeness took her by surprise, but she had to keep him talking.
“I wondered if you were able to keep your appointment with him?”
“Appointment?” he sounded confused.
“At the Bennfield Hotel?”
He scoffed into the phone. “Lady, we’re done, here. My lawyers are on that lease contract like white on rice. I’m going to own this cell tower when all is said and done.”
No, she couldn’t mark Jetson Gregory off the list just yet.
The church lady from Blue Mountain was also on her call list—the voice that dripped ice. She was still like a winter chill when Amy spoke to her, and she didn’t seem surprised that Zack Carlisle had not attended her church board meeting. She ended their conversation with a click.
The third caller never picked up, and Amy didn’t bother to leave a message.
Tired and weary of driving, she perked up when the robotic voice of the GPS called her attention to a zigzag in the road. Slowing to the speed limit, she followed the directions coming from the device. From the hard pavement, she turned onto a dirt road marked County Road 214 and drove in the dust until she saw the base of another cell tower.
The tower was in the center of a patch of land that looked like someone shaved off the top of the mountain. For some reason, it reminded her of Sam, the sad bald eagle on the Muppets, majestic yet glum. Amy slowed as she approached the dusty driveway that led to a mobile home not far from the tower. The name on the mailbox said “Crawley,” and something sizzled in her head. The name seemed familiar.
The driveway led to a dirty white trailer with a set of metal steps outside the door. Someone had made planters from old paint buckets and then left them to wither and die. The homestead had a forlorn look to it, and suddenly she felt miles away from safe.
Slowly she drove up the driveway that ended at a metal carport with an old blue truck parked beside what looked like a brand-new John Deere tractor. The truck looked familiar, too.
Don’t they all? Old work trucks looked like old men, hunkered down and weathered.
The curtain in the door window shifted.
Pulling in a little more than halfway up the drive, she stopped a moment before she got out. Hillbilly protocol and all. The curtain’s swing let her know they knew she was there. Engine running, gear still in drive, she waited for them to make the first move.
When the door opened and the man stepped out on the step, she knew she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He lifted a shotgun to his shoulder in one smooth move and sighted the gun in her direction.
He moved down the steps slowly, the gun still at his shoulder. Her heart beat against her chest while her hands gripped the wheel.
There was hostility in his stance, in the set of his jaw, in the grip on his gun.
She wasn’t welcome. That was clear.
She turned off the music and listened to the logic of her thoughts.
This was one of Zack’s cell tower sites. And she was in Zack’s Hummer. The thought struck her. This man thought Zack was behind the wheel of this Hummer. And everything about his stance said that Zack wasn’t welcome here, either.
How could she reveal herself from behind the tinted windows? She needed to let him know who she was. If she opened the car door, he might shoot her in the leg. If she rolled down her window, he might shoot her in the head. If she moved closer, she’d only put herself closer to the range of the gun.
In her indecision, she gripped the wheel with both hands.
The Hummer. She was in a Hummer. It was impervious to the gunshot, wasn’t it?
The thought was so pure it made her laugh. That’s why Zack had a Hummer. It made him feel safe. Behind the dark glass of this tank of a vehicle, he felt protected against whatever bad business he was up to.
The thought boosted her bravery. She lifted her foot off the brake, and the Hummer rolled forward a few feet. The gun barrel followed.
She wasn’t brave enough—or stupid enough—to face a gun. Gearing the Hummer into reverse, she pressed on the gas. The discharge from the gun echoed against the mountain behind her, and she heard the ting, ting, ting as the buckshot met its mark. She slammed the pedal to the floor and sent a cloud of dust into the driveway.
The old man ran into the yard and fired another round. Instinctively she ducked, turned the wheel hard, and jammed the gear into drive. As she floored the gas, she spun in the dry dirt and the Hummer careened from the drive, almost clipping a homemade grave marker as she spun from the driveway and out on the road. The car held steady as she flew around the curves and bucked over the potholes in a flurry of road soot. Her hands were white-knuckled and gripping the steering wheel like a lifeline in a flood.
Now turning onto the main road, her speed as fast as she dared, she drove sixteen miles and across the Garland County line before she felt safe enough to stop. Her chest ached as if she had held her breath every mile.
The sign above the bar said Cooley’s Bar & Package. That had been on Zack’s destination list, too. It’s where he bought the champagne for his and Zelda’s weekend celebration.
Now seated in the coolness of the bar, she was eager to douse her fear and drench her panic with something cold and foamy. Reaching for the beer, her hands shook around the sweating chill of the mug.
If this was the kind of reception Zack faced on his cell tower route, she had to rethink her plan, because this plan was more dangerous than she had ever imagined it might be. How stupid could she be! She was on the trail of a killer. Not on a pleasure cruise. Of course it was dangerous.
Proof she hadn’t thought this through. Proof she hadn’t really made a plan that fit this. Instead, she had just driven off on a mission.
Should she go to the police? And say what?
Not that she could say she was nosing around in a dead man’s business. Or reveal she had tossed out evidence and lied to the cops. Nor could she share that she broke into her best friend’s house and burgled for clues. Or even report a man for protecting his property from a stranger, or defending himself against someone he knew and didn’t like. She didn’t recall seeing a “No Trespassing” sign, but she had been trespassing just the same.
How was she going to explain the gunshot dings to Zelda?
Amy blew into the beer head, gulped down a third of the mug, and felt the alcohol’s calming buzz. Adrenaline waned, and suddenly she realized that she was empty, hungry, and a long way from home. Reality hit. She was as far away from the comforts of home and a warm bed as she could be. How foolish to think she could cover Zack’s trail and be back in time for dinner.
Glancing up at the bartender, she smiled. He was leaning against the cooler with his arms crossed over his barreled chest and a vintage Razorback shirt. She hadn’t given him much more than eye contact and a request for his cheapest beer since plopping down on the one barstool that gave her a view of the door. He was looking at her, a question in his watered-down blue
eyes. His face had been quite handsome years ago, before age and the sunless din of a bar took its toll. A heavy graying beard disguised his mouth and chin. A Charlie Daniels hat sat on his head.
“Want another one?” he asked, walking the few steps toward her and her empty mug. She nodded.
“This is a perfectly drawn mug of the worst beer in the universe,” she said as he set the beer in front of her. “I hate Old Style.”
“Darling, I got it all. Name your brew.”
The sign above the bar said, No Credit. Don’t Ask.
Amy pushed four quarters across the bar, separating them from a short stack of small coins at her elbow. “What will a buck buy?”
“Old Style,” he said with a grin, the weight of his whiskers rising on his cheeks.
She groaned and rolled her eyes.
“That’s all you got, sugar?”
Amy nodded. “I have no cash.”
The bartender chuckled and shook his head. “Like I never heard that one before,” he said with amused sarcasm.
“No, really. I left my wallet in Bluff Springs. All I have with me is a credit card and some change I took from the ashtray.” In her mind’s eye, she saw her wallet resting beside the keyboard of her computer at home, where she had checked her credit card balances with disappointing results. She grabbed the one card with enough credit to fill up the Hummer’s gas tank, but her wallet, with cash and a driver’s license, was still where she left it.
Here she was, flirting with disaster. Driving a dead man’s car as a murder suspect without a lick of identification and no money.
“Bluff Springs, huh? I haven’t been there in a while.”
“Same old place. Hasn’t changed much since you were there, I’m sure.”
“Still got that big rock looks like Jesus?”
“Yep. Still got Rocky top Jesus.”
“Still got crooked streets?”
“Yep. But no stoplights. Not a single one. And I’m moving out if they ever put one in.”
They both laughed, and Amy felt her discomfort subside. She reached into her pocket and fingered the wooden casino coin snuggled deep in the seam. She pulled it out and fingered the worn wood, darkened by sweat and skin oils. She dropped it on the bar in front of her.