by Jane Elzey
Smiling at the innuendo, he said, “What do you do? As the Honey Bee Queen? What is the job that goes with the title?”
She giggled into his bicep, leaving her hand to rest on his arm. “My job is to make sure we keep our bees healthy so we can keep making honey. I go around to events—I like to think of it as visiting flowers—helping people understand why bees are so important to our economy here in Arkansas. Did you know bees are responsible for pollinating all our crops? From apples to alfalfa. Without them, our farmers would have to spend billions to pollinate their crops artificially.
“Honeybees in a hive visit more than two hundred thousand flowers every day.” She giggled again, her hand stroking his arm.
He knew it was a speech she had given before.
“I don’t get around to that many flowers, but I do my best to visit as many as I can. I’m available for any engagement anywhere, anytime. Do you have something you need me to attend?”
Pulling the picture of the truck from his pocket, he handed it to her. “I was wondering if you recognize this truck and the owner?”
She took it and frowned. He couldn’t tell whether the frown was because she recognized the truck in the photo or she was disappointed that their conversation had taken a different turn. She was probably not used to being denied.
“I never kiss and tell,” she said, the lust fading from her eyes. “You a cop or something?”
“I am.”
“You’re not dressed like a cop.”
“I’m off duty. I’m down here looking for someone.”
“Oh? And who would that be?”
“This man in this picture for one,” he said and regretted the shortness of his tone. “And . . . also anyone who knew Zack Carlisle. Did you know him? I think he came in here every once in a while.”
Her eyes flashed, and the blue of her irises turned dark. “That redhead can have him all to herself if that’s the way he wants it. He’s a mean old bee killer anyway.”
“Do you know him?”
She smiled, showing all her perfect teeth, but he could tell there was more sting behind the smile than seduction. “Like I said. I never kiss and tell,” she said and moved away.
Ben watched her walk across the room, her bottom swaying in her little black skirt. That was a dangerous little bee, he thought as he left the bar.
Heading for the first dot on the map that marked the closest auto body shop, he received a wary-eyed response, and then the same from the owners at the next two shops on the map. Now about a half-hour away from the bar, he headed north when he saw the County Road sign. The number pinged in his memory. Amy had mentioned this road, he remembered as he turned off the highway and bounced onto the dirt.
He took the road slowly to hold the dust to a minimum, but behind the car was a thick powder cloud. The road turned sharply to the left, and a driveway turned right. The cell tower looming overhead didn’t escape his notice.
Ben pulled in and parked about halfway up the drive, and a man who looked to be in his late sixties met him at the door before he could knock.
“What do you want?” he asked gruffly.
“I’m Officer Ben Albright from up in Crawford County. I’m sorry to trouble you, sir, but we’re looking for the owner of a Ford F-150 pickup truck seen around these parts recently. About a 1985 model. Know anyone around here who owns one?” Glancing at the carport adjacent to the trailer, he noted a shiny John Deere tractor parked but nothing else. “You out here by your lonesome without nothing but a tractor?”
The man didn’t respond. His rummy eyes narrowed, and Ben smelled old liquor leaching from his skin.
“How do you get to town?” Ben asked.
“I don’t need to get to town.” His tone was terse. “I got everything I need right here.” He glanced at his feet, and Ben’s eyes followed. The shotgun leaned against the doorframe.
Ben pulled the picture from his shirt pocket and held it out. “The truck I’m looking for looks something like this.”
The man looked at it briefly. “Where’d that come from?”
“Police business.”
“What kind of police business?”
“We think the driver of this truck may have been a witness to a crime. We’re hoping to corroborate another witness’s account of what happened.”
The man’s eyebrows furrowed in his silence. “I had one like that years ago,” he said finally. “I sold it. Didn’t need it no more.”
“You got a bill of sale?”
“What do I need that for?”
“It would provide me with the name of the person who bought it.”
He shook his head. “I don’t recall the name. He gave me money and I gave him the key. I never witnessed no hit-and-run, and I ain’t been down to Hot Springs in ages. If you got no other business with me, I need to get back to my chores.” He moved to shut the door.
Ben put his foot into the doorway.
The man’s eyes narrowed again. “I said I can’t help you none. Now, you need to get off my land.”
Ben moved his foot and stepped back toward the rusty steps. He turned back quickly. “Sir, do you know a Zack Carlisle?”
Silence crackled between them.
“Never heard of him,” he barked as he slammed the door.
Ben idled in the driveway, his mind thick with thought. The bill of the John Deere hat was pulled low over the man’s forehead in the picture, shadowing eyes that Ben figured had seen either too much liquor or too much pain. Probably both. The man looking at him from behind the curtain of the trailer looked like the same unhappy man behind the wheel of the truck in the picture, sans the hat. The likeness was undeniable. The time stamp put the truck there exactly two minutes after Carlisle’s Hummer had passed through the garage entrance.
But where was the truck now? Were they the same? Or was this as he thought when Amy mentioned it—that Arkansas was as full of John Deere caps as it was old Ford trucks. Could he make that leap?
The old man had made that leap.
Ben had not mentioned a hit-and-run. He had not mentioned Hot Springs.
Backing out of the driveway, Ben made a note of the address and name from the faded stickers on the mailbox at the end of the drive, where a little cemetery with a homemade cross stuck out of the ground.
He had no evidence and he had no truck. If there was a truck, it could be anywhere by now. He didn’t believe the story that it had been sold months ago, but he had no evidence otherwise. A truck of that age in ruined condition would barely make the salvage yard let alone the auction block. It could be in pieces or set in motion and rolled off the mountain, left to join other junk cars that sat rusting at the bottom. The hill folk considered a deep holler as good a dumping place as any, especially for something they wanted to hide.
Was he hunting for a truck in a holler? That really would be a needle in a haystack.
Chapter Thirty
“What is this?” Amy screeched as Zelda held up a shopping bag.
“You certainly couldn’t go out in those rags you were wearing when you came in,” Genna said, the twinkle of mischief in her eyes.
“We did the very best we could under the circumstances,” Zelda said sweetly. “Our very best. There’s not a Macy’s for miles!”
Zelda pulled the underwear and bra from the bag and held it up. Amy snatched it from her hands. “This is the best you could do? Hello Kitty thong underwear? A purple polka-dotted bra?”
“They’re adorable. Sexy, even.” Genna snickered. “Rian picked them out.”
“Don’t blame this on me. I only pushed the cart.”
Amy winced as Zelda reached for the next item. A jumble of bright red material unfolded to a pair of sweatpants. Zelda held them up for her to see. The design splayed across the butt looked like a dragon pooping bowling balls, its forked tongue placed
obscenely up the seam.
“That’s the real deal,” Rian said. “It’s the local high school mascot, believe it or not.”
“A pooping dragon?”
“It’s a sand lizard. And their baseball team is in first place in this region.”
“Isn’t that nice for them?” Amy said acidly.
“Oh, no, not even.”
Zelda pulled the next item from the bag. “But it’s so you.” Zelda flashed her a giddy grin as she held the sweater up to her chest. It was a pale pink cardigan with a matching shell. Bright green-and-pink Easter eggs and a fuzzy rabbit were appliquéd to the front, one paw raised in a permanent high-five.
“It was a bargain,” Genna said. “It was in the Easter clearance bin.”
“For good reason,” Rian agreed.
“I’m not wearing this. No way.”
“Oh, and these,” Zelda added, pulling a pair of bunny slippers from another bag. “Look, the ears flop up and down when you walk!”
Genna giggled. “You’ll be perfectly dressed for a Looney Tunes convention!”
Tears came to Amy’s eyes. Were they making fun of her or showing their horrible, sweet, irreverent love? She touched the bunny on the sweater, and the tears fell harder.
“Hey,” Zelda said and touched her shoulder tenderly. “We just wanted to make a lousy situation more fun. We wanted to make you laugh.”
“No, you just wanted to make me look silly. Is this my penance for wrecking the Hummer?”
“And for going off without telling us where you were going.”
“And for winning the domino game three times in a row,” Genna added. “I told you I would get you back in due time.”
Amy sighed with resignation. What was she going to do otherwise? She couldn’t put on the filthy clothes she came in wearing. Genna pulled out a pair of scissors and a box of safety pins, and between her and Zelda, they managed to cut the material to accommodate the cast and then pinned it back together. They draped the sweater over her shoulders and buttoned the top button to keep it in place. Genna pulled a barrette from her purse and worked at smoothing Amy’s curls into submission with her fingers.
“I look ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.”
“Yes,” Rian agreed. “You do.”
“You can be captain of the ugly sweater club,” Genna said.
“I’ll be captain of the revenge club, thank you very much, and you’ll all get yours. When you least expect it, you wicked women,” she threatened with a growl, but she couldn’t help but smile.
Zelda touched her arm. “We love you, too. We do.”
They walked down the hall, strained faces hiding their amusement, with Zelda pushing Amy the Easter clown in the wheelchair out the hospital door, out to the curb, and into a bright white sunny day.
“We need a plan,” Genna said to Amy in the rearview mirror as she pouted in the back seat of the Mercedes. They were still sitting in the car in the hospital parking lot. “We are still suspects, you know. We still need to find the rightful owner of this crime before they try to put us behind bars. We’ll go back over your day and work backward until we make our way home.”
Amy was sullen. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to go back over that day. I just want to go home.”
Rian turned around from the front seat. “Don’t be scared. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
“Oh, that’s a real comfort. You’re the one who picked out pooping lizard pants!”
Rian turned away so Amy wouldn’t see her smile.
“And where do I fit in?” Zelda asked. “Where does the fat worm dangle?” She glared at Genna in the rearview mirror.
Genna glared back. “I’m just trying to be helpful in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t hear you coming up with any brilliant epiphanies about who killed your husband.”
“Oh like you really hit a deer?” Zelda spat. Her eyes didn’t stop piercing Genna’s in the rearview mirror.
Genna turned in the seat. The expression in her eyes was alarming. A vein on her neck pulsed with anger. Amy found herself drawing back against the seat as if seeking protection from a storm. “All this time you thought I was the one who ran Zack down? After all this time, you thought I killed him?”
Zelda leaned forward, her face inches from Genna’s. “You expected me to believe that stupid deer story? And then you had Amy break into Zack’s office. What were you after? Your business agreement? Your insurance papers?”
“What? Amy broke into the office? I thought you made that whole thing up to take the suspicion off yourself!”
Amy groaned. “You knew it was me? You knew I broke into the office?”
She hadn’t realized their guilty suspicions were still alive and well, and kicking their friendship’s butt. She had come to an understanding herself. Maybe she had a little help with some painkiller meds, but she had reconciled their innocence in her mind. Almost. Some pieces niggled her, questions that provoked her peace about the friends she loved like family. There were still remnants of reality that didn’t fit comfortably enough to let slide, and now she could see they had them, too.
Zelda turned to face her. “I knew it was you. But why? Because you thought I killed him?”
“You had blood on your shoes!” Amy cried. “You had Zack’s blood all over your Jimmy Choos. They were in the bathtub in the hotel where you tried to wash it off! I threw them away!”
“You took my favorite Jimmy Choos?”
“I had to! They had blood on them!”
“Blood? It was paint! I stepped in wet paint outside the lobby bar when Genna went out for a smoke.”
“It wasn’t blood?”
“That’s why you thought I killed Zack?”
“I thought you were there when it happened!”
Zelda exhaled and sat back against the leather seat. Her chin trembled as she tried to keep back the tears. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe I was so naïve, so gullible, so trusting, so stupid!”
The tears loosened and they began trailing down Zelda’s face. It was the first sad tears Amy had seen since Zack’s death. There had been many a tear since then, but to Amy, they had been trauma tears, shocked tears, frustrated tears, even angry tears. But not grief, and because of this, she held on to the shoes as evidence even when she wanted to put them away. Even though she had thrown them away. Out of sight. But never far out of mind.
Zelda put her head in her manicured hands and wept. Amy pulled her close and held her. Silence filled the car.
“I didn’t want him dead. I wanted him gone. I wanted him out of my life because he wasn’t the man I married. At least, he wasn’t the man I thought I married. He wasn’t the man I wanted him to be. He wasn’t. He was a con man, and I was his mark.”
She looked up, tears rimming her dark lashes. “I didn’t want him dead,” she said again. “I just wanted him to go away. When I asked for your help in getting rid of him, I was talking about helping me through another divorce. But then we started talking about dead bodies, and I thought it was a joke. It was a fantasy that made everything seem easier.”
“And then you thought we killed him to help you,” Amy said. “Because we love you. And because we would do anything to make you happy again. To keep you safe.”
“Then we need to find the rightful owner of this crime,” Genna said quietly and turned back to the steering wheel. She cranked the engine, put the Mercedes in gear, and maneuvered out of the parking lot and into the Hot Springs traffic flow.
“Where are we going?” Rian asked.
Genna shrugged. “I’m driving. I’m thinking. I’m plotting, all at the same time. I’m an excellent multitasker.”
“I know where we need to start,” Amy said. “I’ve been dreaming about that truck for days.”
“Another psycho vision?” Genna asked as she glance
d in the rearview mirror.
Amy ignored her. “We need to go to that cell tower site at County Road 214. There’s something I need to see for myself.”
“I know that road,” Rian said. “That’s where I met Zack.”
“Yes,” Amy said. “There’s a mobile home site there, too. That’s where I drove up in the driveway and the guy came out with a shotgun. I think he’s the one who was riding my bumper off Highway 7 on this side of L91. I didn’t think anything about it then, but it can’t be a coincidence that I showed up in his driveway a few minutes later. It was one of the frequent destinations on Zack’s GPS.”
“That’s why Zack wanted to meet me there that day. He was making his tower site rounds.”
Amy leaned forward and put her hand on Rian’s shoulder. “Ben showed me a picture of a truck from the hotel garage. I want to see if I recognize it. I want to see if it was the one that followed me. Followed Zack,” she corrected. “Or so he probably thought.”
Genna sped along the highway a few miles over the speed limit, as was her norm. Amy watched the familiar sights zoom past. The redwood and dogwood blooms that filled the woods with splashes of white and pink were giving way to the bright green of summer leaves. The sky was a brilliant blue overhead, dotted by clouds that looked like popcorn had been scattered in the sky. The air was fresh, and she rolled down the window to take in a breath of crisp air. She’d never forget the stench of that dump. She’d never take a sweet, clean breath of air for granted again.
They soon passed Cooley’s Bar & Package, and she glanced at the cars scattered in the parking lot in the middle of the day. They drove on and then passed the county line.
“It’s right up here,” Amy said. “I recognize all of this.”
Genna turned off the highway at the blue-and-yellow County Road sign.
“Drive on down, Genna,” Rian said as they bumped along on the dusty dirt road. “I know where we are, too. Here. Turn here.”