Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing

by Morgan James

  The first few feet were the most difficult. I slipped, pealed the skin up on my shin. Blood ran down my leg into my sock. I stood still with the pain for a moment, and then pushed on. By climbing crosswise with the rocks, instead of struggling to lift my weight straight up, I finally managed to gain some height. I inched up, almost to the top, Susan’s hand no more than two feet above me. Then I was stuck. Couldn’t reach her hand and couldn’t find a foothold in the rocks to push myself higher. Tears pooled up again and I felt ashamed and weak.

  “Hold on,” Susan soothed. “Don’t panic. Just keep your balance. I’ll get a branch or something you can reach.”

  I rested my forehead against the wall and clenched my fingers around the rocks. From up top, singing drifted down to me. I looked up through my tears to see Missy leaning into the hole. She nodded her head, keeping time with the tune, but her lips weren’t moving. Ring around the roses, pocket full of posies. Upstairs, downstairs. We all fall down. It’s the snow, I told myself. I can’t see her singing through the curtain of falling snow. I closed my eyes and waited.

  The pine branch Susan extended down to me was prickly and scratched my face, but I held on to it for dear life and pushed up against the rocks while Susan pulled. I know I must have felt like dead weight, but she pulled me up. Once my shoulders were free and through the hole, the last task was to wriggle my widest body part through. It wasn’t easy and I’d have bruises on both hipbones to go with my scratched face, but with Susan tugging and me pushing, I was standing on the snowy ground. “If you ever paint your father a verbal picture of how I looked getting out of that hole, I will never, I repeat, never, speak to you again.”

  Susan laughed and hugged me. We both hugged Missy. She stomped in her yellow rain boots with excitement and clapped her hands. Then Susan wrapped her coat around the child as best she could, and we turned into the snow, walking across the ridge in a direction we hoped would take us far below the entrance to the cave and well away from the Goddard twins. Instead, we found ourselves descending a snow slick incline ten feet from January’s dry falls. A camouflage painted ATV was parked just off the path.

  A Perry County Sheriff’s deputy was standing on the far side of the falls beside the two monolith stones marking the entrance to the cave. He was cuffing together, back-to-back, two dirt covered somewhat dazed and somewhat singed men. “Now ain’t that something?” We heard the deputy saying. “Us out hunting a little girl and what do we find? Jerry and Larry Goddard. You boys done saved us half a day looking for your sorry asses. The sheriff is real anxious to talk to you boys about some fingerprints we got off a mica rock a week or two back of this. Something to do with your old friend Shane Long? Bet you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  The deputy gave the twins a shove to move them forward. They dropped to their knees, one falling against the other in a heap. He bent over and quickly patted them down. Finding keys to the ATV, he stood up and called to us. “Susan, you know how to drive that thing, don’t you?”

  Susan nodded yes and he tossed her the keys. “Get on out of the cold then. I already called in my location to the sheriff. They’ll come on up here directly to take me and these scumbags down.”

  As we lifted Missy into the passenger seat of the ATV, I heard one of the twins whining, “I need a doctor. Just look at my burned up arms. One of them bitches set fire to my jacket. She tried to kill us.”

  After Susan maneuvered down the narrow, snow packed trail, we rounded the corner of January’s cabin and turned toward home. A couple of minutes later, she slowed to a crawl and said, “I’m having trouble with exactly what happened. The twins killed Shane and cut Fletcher’s brake lines. I got that. They wanted Fletcher gone so they could steal whatever they were mining up there in the cave. But why Shane? And what does any of it have to do with the book about Lewis Redmond?”

  I wasn’t sure I knew exactly what happened either, but I gave her my best idea. “I think, and I’m just guessing, the Goddard twins must have trespassed on Fletcher’s land up here and stumbled on the mine. I guess Fletcher’s getting some pretty good size rubies, or something, out of the mine and selling them on EBay. You know, like he does other stuff. Maybe the twins began to dig for themselves, and Shane saw them coming down the mountain with digging tools. They lied and told Shane they were looking for the Redmond gold. Then he decided to study up on the story, maybe find the gold first.”

  I had to think for a minute about what would push the twins to kill Shane. “Maybe the twins felt Shane would find the mine eventually and they didn’t want to share? Or maybe Shane did find out what they were doing and threatened to tell Fletcher? I’m not sure. But I know the twins were at Fletcher’s house this morning looking for whatever Fletcher had taken out of the mine. Somehow they figured out he was selling the stones. If they were willing to kill Fletcher, the stones must be worth a lot of money.”

  Susan stopped the vehicle and turned to look at me. “Believe it or not, I actually follow your convoluted story. So, the bottom line is Larry and Jerry were willing to kill two people for a bunch of red rocks. My Lord, those guys are truly worthless. And to think, their mother worked herself to death at the mill to raise those boys up right, and neither of them worth a tinker’s damn. That is purely sad.” The brakes of the ATV released and Susan drove on, shaking her head. “You just never know about kids, now do you?”

  She was right. You don’t ever know. I stared at the back of Missy’s blond head and wondered at all the things we didn’t know about her. What a strange child. How did she ignite the fiery ball in the cave? She seemed to pull it from the darkness itself. Perhaps something incendiary was left in the cave? Something Missy ignited with matches she brought with her? I didn’t think her pajamas had pockets. What could remain dry enough to burn in a damp cold cave? We saw her hold the fire, and then throw it. Yet her hands weren’t burned. Was Missy singing? Or, did another child chant the nursery rhyme—the child Mrs. Allen told me she’d had heard years before.

  As we came down the mountain, we met two ATVs climbing up. A deputy drove one vehicle; another deputy and Daniel were in the other. Did everyone in Perry County own a four-wheeler for snow trekking? Daniel switched vehicles and climbed in beside me while the other two vehicles continued uphill. He removed his jacket and wrapped it around Missy before he sat back and gave me a satisfied smile. I smiled back and kissed his cold cheek.

  Pulling me to him, he said, “You know they got the Goddard twins for Long’s murder?” I nodded yes and snuggled in. “I reckon you’ll be extra hard to live with from now on. Probably rub it in every day how right you were.”

  I knew he was teasing me, but I didn’t feel very playful and certainly couldn’t summon up any self-righteousness. Sure, I was glad Shane Long’s murderers would be brought to justice and very grateful the twins had not succeeded in killing Fletcher Enloe. At the moment though, I was so cold, ragged tired, and shaken to the core, I was more focused on other issues. Before this afternoon, I’d had only suspicions about what my great grandfather had done after he removed his family from the Methodist cemetery. Now, after being in the cave and seeing Ezekiel 37 scrawled on the wall, there was proof. I feared that small, cold room, the stone ledge where January surrounded his dead wife and child with burning candles, and January’s ghastly belief that he, like Ezekiel, was summoned by God to raise the dead, would haunt me forever.

  27

  The kitchen was warm, smelling of cooked bacon and fresh coffee. The afternoon sun, made brilliant by the white of the snow, cast a stripe of light across my face as I wiped my boots on the bristled doormat. The light reached past me and defined a long sunny rectangle on the wood floor. It felt better than wonderful to be here. Mrs. Allen sat across the kitchen table from a female deputy who was pecking away on a laptop. “Yes, ma’am. Can we go over it one more time? That all right with you?”

  Mrs. Allen looked up at us when we walked in with Missy. Her eyes said thank you. I noticed the shadow of a brui
se forming on her cheek, and a slight wince as Missy bolted over and jumped onto her lap. “Well now, I sure am glad to see you, Sugar. You can sit here with me while I tell my story to this nice lady.” And she did, while Susan and I defrosted our feet against the woodstove in the far corner.

  “It was afore daylight. I come out of sleep cause I heard that windy chime on the porch making a racket. I knowed there wasn’t no wind a-blowing, so I got up and put on my chenille, thinking I better check the back door to make sure it was locked. I come out here as far as the hallway over yonder and sure enough I saw there was two folks in the kitchen. They was walking real slow like, feeling their way in the dark toward Missy’s little room.

  “Well sir, they sure was up to no good. Had no business in my kitchen. I reached for my broom from over there in the corner and hit one of them as hard as I could across the back. I think it was the man. He yelled and turned around. Fell over one of the kitchen chairs. I got the woman good then by poking her in the middle with the broom and pushing her on the floor. She grabbed me by the tail of my chenille and tried to pull me down, but I kept on swinging the broom. Course they got up throwing fists like any one thing. One of them punched me in the face, knocked off my glasses, and Lord a-Mighty, when they done that, I was blind as a bat.”

  The sheriff’s deputy interrupted. “Since you lost your glasses, don’t guess you could identify your attackers if you saw them again?”

  “Oh, I could do that, right enough. I flipped on the overhead light and picked my glasses up off the floor. It was when I was rooting on the floor for the glasses that she got the broom away from me. The woman commenced to hit me time and again with the thing. That was when I reached for the iron skillet on the stove and got her real good on the arm that was a-holding the broom. She yelled a string of cuss words. About that time, the man opened Missy’s door and turned on the light. ‘Nobody there,’ he hollered, real angry like. ‘Son of a bitch lied to us.’

  “The woman went in the room after him like she didn’t believe what he said. Even the quilt was pulled up on the bed like there hadn’t been nobody sleeping there for a long time. Yes ma’am, I got a good look at both of them before they ran on out the kitchen door. They was both about forty or forty-five. She was kind of a stringy blond. Over permed if you ask me. Not as tall as me. Look like she’d been rode hard and put up wet. You know what I mean? He’s shorter than her. Wide shoulders, skinny waist. Had on silly looking pegged blue jeans that made him look like a stick-person. Looks like he dyes his hair black. Wears it combed back.”

  “Can you describe the car they were driving? Maybe the license plate number?” the deputy asked.

  “Well, it was still pretty dark outside and fog had set in. I can tell you it was like one of them small vans some of the churches drive around to get old folks to services. Light color. They’d parked at the bottom of the drive and walked up, so it was too far away to tell much of anything else.”

  “What did you do after they left?”

  “I locked the kitchen door and called 911. Then I went to looking for Missy. I thought for sure she was hiding in the closet, but she wasn’t in there. Wasn’t nowhere in the house. Then I realized she could have climbed out one of them little windows in her room. I checked her closet again and noticed her yellow rain boots was missing, so I figured she was outside. Most likely she heard the commotion and was getting some distance betwixt herself and those folks.”

  She hugged Missy and patted her pale hair. “That’s what you did, wasn’t it? Took off for the high ground?” Missy nodded yes and twisted her face into a frown. I thought for a moment she was on the verge of blurting out her part of the story; but she said nothing.

  Mrs. Allen continued. “The bad thing is, unless Missy can tell us, I don’t have no idea who the man and woman are.”

  Susan stood up straighter and stepped forward—no doubt ready to identify the would-be kidnappers as Nan and Pokey Fantell—when Mac walked in, followed by a small man wearing a dark brown suit, yellow tie, brown and white tooled cowboy boots, and a camel overcoat I knew had to be cashmere. He was definitely the most elegantly dressed person in the room, maybe in the county.

  Missy’s eyes lit up when she saw the man in the brown suit, and she left Mrs. Allen’s lap to run over to him. “Dicky!” she cried out, “Dicky! Dicky!”

  Dick Jest grinned, folded his right arm to his chest, and exaggerated a courtly bow. “My princess. My princess. You are found at last.”

  Missy took two steps back and turned a perfect double-front cartwheel on the kitchen floor. Jest clapped. We all clapped. I looked at Daniel. He winked at me and we both looked at Susan. She shrugged her shoulders as if to show she was as surprised as the rest of us.

  Mac took charge. “I take it this is the little girl in question, Mr. Jest?”

  Jest replied that she was and Mac continued. “All right folks, let’s all sit down and sort this thing out. Mr. Jest drove over from Hiawassee to tell us what he knows. Seems he got information that Missy was in Perry County, and he was concerned for the child’s well-being.”

  Mac turned his attention to the deputy taking Mrs. Allen’s statement. “If you’re done, I need you to go on back to the office. Those sorry Goddard twins will need processing in at the jail. We’ll be holding them for the murder of Shane Long. Call me if we get anything on the van or the man and woman. Mr. Jest confirmed we are probably looking for a couple by the name of Fantell. They may be driving a rented cargo van. That should help narrow the search.” The deputy replied with a, yes sir, closed the laptop, and rose to leave.

  When Mrs. Allen thanked her for being so kind, the deputy smiled. “No problem, ma’am. We’re grateful you and the child are safe. You take care now, and when you get a chance, call me and tell me where you bought that overly stout broom. I need to get me one.”

  Once the deputy closed the kitchen door and the room was silent, we waited for Mac to say something. He sat at the table tapping his pen on a note pad he’d taken from his coat pocket. I suppose he was thinking. Mrs. Allen looked from Dick Jest to Mac, to Missy, and then to Jest again. If I read her narrowed eyes and pursed mouth correctly, she had questions she wanted to ask about the Fantells, and suspicions that Jest was here to take Missy away from her. When Mac failed to volunteer any information, she slowly lifted herself out of the chair and announced, “I’ll put water on for tea and make a fresh pot of coffee.”

  Susan intersected her MaMa after a single step. “No you won’t,” she told her, and eased her back down onto the chair. “I’ll do it. And soon as we’re done here, you’re going to the hospital to be checked out.”

  “Hospital?” barked Mrs. Allen. “Only way that’ll happen is I’ll be dead as a opossum done run over by a tractor-trailer truck. You can make the tea, but you hush up about hospitals. I got poultices and herbs to take care of myself.”

  Susan made coffee and tea in silence. Mrs. Allen kept her seat at the oak table and held Missy in her lap. Jest sat to her right. Mac to her left. Susan and Daniel across from them. Being technically the outsider, and since Missy had burned the sixth chair anyway, I propped on a wooden stool by the woodstove.

  Mac finally convened the round table meeting. I hoped his long silence was because he was considering the best way to soothe Mrs. Allen’s fears. “Well now, MaMa, there’s some things we know already, some we just think we know, some we don’t know, and some Mr. Jest can probably help us with knowing.” What in the world was Mac saying? He sounded like an Abbot and Costello comedy routine? He cleared his throat and continued, “I’ll ask Mr. Jest a few questions, and we’ll all be real quiet and let him answer. That sound reasonable to everyone?”

  Heads nodded all around. Tea and coffee cups were filled. Dick Jest extracted a slim cigar from his suit coat breast pocket. He carefully removed the outer cellophane wrapper, slid the gold foil ring from the cigar, and gifted it to Missy. Mrs. Allen flared, “I hope you don’t think you’re gonna light that nasty thing in my kitc
hen.”

  Missy smiled, holding up her ring for Mrs. Allen to see. Daniel sat up straighter in his chair, his boots scuffing on the worn wood floor. Mac was poised with his pen and pad—a schoolboy ready for Thursday’s spelling test—but unwilling to proceed until Mrs. Allen’s temper blast was spent.

  Jest replied with an almost imperceptible twinge of sarcasm, “No ma’am. I wouldn’t even think of it.” The peaty aroma of fine tobacco wafted my way as he stroked the unlit cigar, put it in his mouth, and bit down on the tip. Outside, the wind had quieted. Sand dollar sized snowflakes parachuted from the late afternoon sky like billions of fairies sailing home.

  Dick Jest willingly answered questions about Missy. Several he said he couldn’t answer, that he didn’t know, and he seemed to be telling the truth. For instance, he knew her name was Alba, not Missy. He was pretty sure she came from Hungary because the Fantells had taken the circus there this past summer to pair resources and performers with a struggling circus from Budapest. It was there he first met Alba. Nan introduced her as their daughter; no one questioned the statement. When they left Europe, Alba sailed with them. He had no idea if the Fantells adopted the child in Hungary. He had not seen a passport for the child, nor did he know her exact age.

  “Wait a second,” Susan broke in, “your son told me he didn’t meet Alba until Knoxville. He didn’t say anything about last summer—or Hungary.”

  Dick Jest gave Susan a defiant glare and quipped back, “That’s because the little shit was in jail most of last summer. Didn’t I tell you his mother was Basque? Liars, every one of them.”

  I had the feeling Susan was about to ask what being Basque had to do with Tempi’s character, when Mac commented that getting copies of international adoption records would be difficult but not impossible. He made a few notes on his pad and then faced the child who’d stared wide-eyed at Jest since he began his story. “Little Missy, look over here at me,” Mac said gently. She kept her eyes on Dick Jest. “It’s okay. You’re safe here with us. No more reason to run off and hide.” Jest nodded to her and she slowly turned her eyes to Sheriff Mac. “Is your name Alba?” Mac asked.