by Lee Mims
“Hi, honey,” he said.
“Dad!” I blurted, checking my watch. “Are you off work? What’s the time there, about six?”
“Uh … actually I’m kind of in the middle of something right now. Can I call you back?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. When? Dad? Dad?”
Cyberspace buzzed between us, but not before I’d heard the distinctive sound of a flock of crows. Now, last time I checked, there were no crows fifty miles off the coast of Mozambique. Seagulls? Yes. Crows? No.
Where was my dad and what was he up to?
I put the Hummer in gear and pulled back onto the main farm road. Zipping along, roiling a trail of dry dust, I was contemplating the surreal nature of the events of the past twenty-four hours when I happened to pass an unfamiliar path on my right. Or was it?
I slammed on the brakes and backed up to it. Looking out the passenger window, I realized it was one of the shortcuts I’d taken last night with Luther. Suddenly my memory kicked in and I banged my fist on the wheel. Shit!
I’d forgotten all about my Beretta. It was still in my canvas tote back at Junior’s bomb-making shack. Rerunning last night’s trip through the woods as best I could considering my fatigue, I was pretty sure the shack could be reached using this very path.
If I was right, it intersected with the newer road I’d encountered. The one Junior had used in hiding his shed where he thought no one would find it. In truth a blind man could have found it. Or, in my case, a geologist flagging wellsites.
My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten since this time yesterday when I’d lunched with Bud, Chris, and the Wildlife officers. Deciding it was more important to retrieve my Beretta than feed my face, I backed the Hummer and turned down the path. It wouldn’t take but a few minutes and I take ownership of a gun very seriously. They are a big responsibility. No matter how upset I’d been late yesterday, securing it should have been a top priority.
The shed came into view just where I’d thought it would. Rolling to a stop in front of it, I was surprised to see both doors still hanging from their hinges relatively undamaged. There was, however, a huge hole where the latch had been. I also noted the 2 x 4 board—formally nailing the doors shut—was still where I’d tossed it after taking it off Luther’s chest. I shut off the Hummer but left the door open while I stepped into the dim light in the shed. My first thought: don’t be a chump again. I went back out and, using the 2 x 4 board, I jammed the door open.
Back inside, I was struck at how empty the spot was where I’d left my canvas tote. I blinked in confusion. Where the hell was my canvas tote? Definitely not where I’d left it. I wanted to scramble around through the trash and junk on the shelves but it wasn’t necessary. I could clearly see that the tote was gone, and besides, this was a crime scene.
Evidence samples would have to be taken from the bomb-making materials in case they were ever needed in court. I gingerly lifted the tattered bean bags, one at a time, and looked under each one but I knew the tote wasn’t there. I had a clear memory of where it had been situated when I’d tucked the little gun in it for safekeeping while I napped. There was only one answer as to what had happened to it. Someone had toted it off. But who?
Had the sheriff’s deputies already been here? Logic said no, since there was no tape up yet denoting the area as a crime scene. I was trying to think of how to go about reporting a gun missing when outside Tulip started barking ferociously. Then I heard the rumble of a car with a large engine.
Stuckey! I moved to the shack entrance just as his Interceptor pulled up behind my Hummer. Tulip jumped out and ran to my side, her lips curled over her teeth.
“Nice dog. Friendly too,” Stuckey said as he sauntered over to me, my canvas tote swinging from his fingers. “Looking for this?”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” I said with way more bravado than I felt. “In all the confusion last night, I accidentally left it behind. Since it has my 380 in it, and being the responsible gun owner that I am, I came to retrieve it as soon as I possibly could.”
“Guns,” Stuckey said, nodding in agreement, “are useful and dangerous all at the same time. And for a civilian like you … well, you never know when the dangerous part might outweigh the useful part. You know what I mean?”
“No,” I said flatly.
“Well,” he said, removing the belt and holster from the tote before letting it fall to the ground. “It would be very easy for a person in your line of work to trip over a branch way back in the woods and have the gun fly out of its holster and go off accidentally. A thing like that happen … no telling where the bullet would go. Why, it could hit you in any number of places that would be fatal.” He withdrew the Beretta from the holster, which he let drop on the bag. Then he pointed the gun right at me.
“Stuckey … ” I said with as much don’t-do-it inflection in my voice as I could muster.
“Why, you could accidentally be hit in the groin,” he said, adjusting his aim to hit mine. “You know, a direct hit to the femoral artery and you’d bleed out in eight minutes. Or,” he shifted his aim up to my chest, “a shot through the heart and it’s lights out instantly.”
I was standing in the doorway to the shed and got that feeling—the one you get when a confrontation with someone is inevitable. You try to avoid it, but suddenly, for whatever reason, you just can’t anymore, the time has arrived. Well, this was the time for Stuckey and me. Deciding to force his intentions, I hopped out of the doorway and took a few strides toward him. Sure enough, he swung my little Beretta right up in my face and took a two-handed stance. With my Krav Maga training in mind, I stopped a foot from the muzzle of the gun. “I’ll take my chances,” I said. “Now give me my property.”
“I don’t think you fully appreciate the severity of your predicament, here, Miss Margot...”
“Cooper,” I corrected him. “My name is Cooper.”
“Right, how could I forget that fancy pants smart aleck who paid for another fancy pants smart aleck to get your dad off with only a few years in the pen when he should have gotten the big sleep.”
“You know my dad didn’t kill Francis Gary Wayne. You know it today same as you knew it back during the trial,” I said. “Why’d you do it Stuckey? What was in it for you? Sure, you two had a little high school vendetta going, but that was hardly reason to send a man to die like a dog by lethal injection.”
“Why don’t you ask him? He and his buddies think they’ve got all the answers. They just keep nosing around. I tried to send him a message by letting him know how chancy life is, how one minute you have it and the next it can be taken from you. Apparently he didn’t get it. Maybe he needs for me to send a clearer one … ”
“You crazy bastard, you shot my tire, didn’t you?”
“I’m not the one who’s crazy,” Stuckey growled. “Pete’s the one who’s crazy. He should’ve heeded the message that something might happen to you if he didn’t end his ignorant quest to clear his precious name. Like anyone around here would care! My reputation is the one that counts, missy, and whatever it takes to make your dad see that and back off, I’m willing to do!”
“I’ve got news for you, old man. You most definitely are crazy.” Then, thinking a quick dose of reality in the form of a sarcastic insult would let him know he wasn’t scaring me and cause him to back down, I added, “You’re as crazy as your daughter. Now holster my gun, place it on my bag, and go back where you came from.”
Stuckey’s face turned three shades of purple and instead of doing what I asked, he firmed his stance and stiffened his arms. Not exactly what I had in mind. Time to find out if all those Krav Maga lessons were worth it. I’d already taken step one. I’d assessed my situation.
I was facing an attacker with a gun pointed at my face. I had to count on two things being certain: If I touched the gun, it would go boom! And, Stuckey would back up a few steps.
With those two things in mind, I dropped my head below the level of the gun simultaneously grabbing it with both hands and kicking him in the balls with my right foot. As promised by my instructor, it went off, straight in the air, but I didn’t let that slow the forward momentum of my right leg.
I kept pushing Stuckey backward, while rotating the gun and shoving it downward toward his belly. The instant I felt his fingers give, I jerked my Beretta free of his grasp, threw a fresh round in the chamber and opened the distance between us. The entire maneuver took less than five seconds.
Seeing Stuckey crumpled in a ball on the ground didn’t make me feel much better … well, maybe a little, but I imagine it would have made my instructor proud as a peacock. With baby nine aimed to kill, I commanded, “Let go of your balls. Take your Glock out of your holster. Hold it straight out using thumb and forefinger.”
Stuckey groaned but did as requested.
Using my left hand, I took away the big revolver, tossed it in the underbrush on the other side of the path where it’d take him a while to find it, and said, “What now, maniac? Where should I shoot you to make it look like you were checking out the bomb shack with gun drawn, tripped coming out of the shed, and accidentally shot yourself? Maybe the stomach? Does a nice slow bleed out sound like a good way to spend a beautiful fall afternoon?”
Stuckey didn’t respond, just remained wadded in a ball, his face red as a beet. Still taking dead aim with arms outstretched, I sidestepped to my tote, picked it and the holster up, and draped them over my shoulder. Then I moved closer to the door of the Hummer and said, “Or, maybe I should just drive off and leave you to consider the fact that you are crazy. You’ve done crazy things. Maybe ponder what to do about it. What do you think?”
His words were muffled, but it sounded like “drive off” to me.
So I did.
I couldn’t put down the miles between me and the insanity that had become the Lauderbach Dairy Farm fast enough. That I had just escaped being killed by a lunatic sheriff that had hated me and my father for over half my life was more than I could take in at the moment. All I could think of was Bud and the deep feelings of safety and peace I got whenever I was with him.
Had it really taken being back here in the same area where he and I first met and experiencing yet another living nightmare to make me realize this? Apparently so. And still, there were so many hurdles to jump before we could be together again. Not the least of which was the wedding itself. I shuddered at the thought as I pulled into my drive. It was a little after one in the afternoon and I was exhausted. Thank goodness no one was home.
Foregoing food or drink, I passed through the kitchen, Tulip dragging behind me—she was whipped too—and headed upstairs to my room. Slashes of sunlight beamed through the plantation shutters and played across my bed. I flopped face down on them and closed my eyes gratefully.
I heard Tulip spring into her favorite chair. She scratched her mohair throw to suit her exacting specifications and exhaled a contented sigh. I sighed too. Then my iPhone rang. I opened one eye to see who it was. Bud.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he chirped. “You won’t believe everything that’s going on in Cooperland!”
“Bud,” I said, smiling in spite of my fatigue. “Right now, I’d believe anything. I’m so tired and I have so much to tell you about what happened today and I want to hear all about your adventures as a big game hunter. I just need to rest for a few hours.”
“Rest?” he asked. “You mean you’re home? I thought you’d be busy making arrangements for the paleontologists to come in, and setting everything up so your replacement can take over as wellsite geologist while we’re on our honeymoon. You said you’d need days to do all that.”
“I will,” I yawned. “And I’ll get it all done. Just not today. Like I said, right now I need a few hours rest.”
“Do you need me to come over and help you … rest,” he offered provocatively.
“No!” I insisted. “You can come over later. Say around suppertime.”
“Well, that’ll work perfect then. We’ll all get together at your house for a Cooper family spaghetti dinner, okay? But first, before I let you go, you’ll never guess who’s sitting here in my office.”
“Uh … ” My one open eyelid drooped.
“Pete!” he chirped, unable to wait for my guess.
“Who?”
“Your dad, babe!”
I knew it! “I had a feeling he wasn’t in Africa,” I said. “When did he get in?”
“Oh, he’s been here for about a week and does he have a tale for you.”
“I want to hear it now!” I sat up. The room spun and my head pounded. Ugh. “On second thought … ”
“Get your rest, babe. Your dad and I still have a lot to talk about. We’ll be over about seven with Will and Henri and Chris. Henri has some news for you too.”
I laid back down. “More wedding news, I bet,” I said, trying to stifle another big yawn.
“Yes, more wedding news. Rest now. We’ll see you later.”
I went to sleep, smiling, already knowing what Henri’s news would be. She had been agonizing over whether to spend $800—the sale price—for a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes she desperately wanted for the wedding. My guess: she had.
I woke six hours later to the aroma of spaghetti sauce. I showered and spruced up before going downstairs. Bud met me on the landing with a big hug and a kiss. “I was just coming to get you. Your dad’s in the den.”
Though I hadn’t seen my dad, Pete Margo, in years, he hadn’t changed one bit. He still stood straight as an arrow and was fit as a prize fighter. I ran into his embrace.
“Daddy,” I murmured into his chest.
“My little Cleo,” he said, rocking me in his arms and kissing the top of my head.
“Let’s have a toast,” Bud said, holding out three tumblers, each with a healthy dose of Jack Daniels. “Here’s to you and your dad being together again.”
“Here, here,” my dad and I said. We all took a sip.
“Here’s to you and Cleo and your upcoming marriage,” my dad said, raising his glass.
“Here, here!” Bud and I said, and we all took another sip.
My turn. “Here’s to Bud and me getting married for the right reason this time,” I said.
“Here, here!” the three of us said in unison, then slugged down the remainder of the booze.
“Arrgh!” my dad grimaced and growled like a bear, “That’s good stuff!” He motioned for me to sit with him on the couch. “And your toast brings us to what we need to talk about before the kids get here.”
“Okay,” I said. “But it isn’t necessary. Bud and I have come to grips with why we first got married and why we are now—”
“Yes,” Dad said, “but I want to have my say in light of what I’ve been doing the last several years to clear my name.”
“Clear your name … is that why you came back, when Johnny Lee saw you and Buster together?”
“Yes, but let’s go back a little ways,” he said. “Buster Gilroy and I have stayed in touch since I first went to prison, and after, when I got out and went to work overseas. You may not remember this, Cleo, but Buster’s sister was a very close friend of your mom’s and a clinical psychologist at the Mary Hill Institute.”
“I remember her and mom being friends,” I said, “but I never knew what she did and I just found out this morning that Sheriff Stuckey and his wife had a criminally insane daughter who was hospitalized there. Did you know that?”
“A small number of folks in our community knew about her, but she was never seen. Buster’s wife was working at Mary Hill when they finally got her committed. Thing was, she had home visits. They were on a limited basis at first, then more often as she proved herself not to be a problem. Everything went pretty good for a while, until she got a secret boyfriend. She’d sneak out
while on home visits and see him. One night she became wildly unstable and killed him … ”
“Oh my God. Who was it and when did that happen?” I breathed, already knowing the answers.
“Francis Gary Wayne, and she killed him in February of 1987 … ”
“Dad,” I said sadly, feeling the tears pool in my eyes. “Why didn’t anyone know what happened? Why wasn’t she charged? Why did you get blamed? I don’t understand.”
“Sure you do,” Dad said, rubbing at the tears that escaped down my cheeks with his rough thumbs. “Think about it. Stuckey was sheriff. He could manipulate facts and plant evidence all he wanted. When his daughter came to him after she’d killed Gary, all covered in blood and needing help, he’d helped her. Seems she’d taken her mother’s car and met Gary at the drill site where no one would see them. Things got out of hand, she went nuts and killed him, stabbed him to death with a nail file, so she told Buster’s sister.”
My dad stood up restlessly and made himself an iced water at the wet bar, then continued. “When Stuckey saw where Gary’s body was situated and realized he could implicate me, he jumped at the chance. He put some of Gary’s blood on a wrench from the toolbox on my rig and tossed his body in the hog pen, where he knew the hogs would make short work of any evidentiary wounds. Then he got rid of the car and refused to let his daughter come home ever again.”
“Then all he had to do was talk to your crew,” I said. “Everyone knew about you yelling at the kid the day before.”
“And don’t forget, he had to find the murder weapon in the toolbox on my rig.”
“Right,” I said. “Mom used to say your temper would be your undoing one day.”
“She sure did,” Dad said wistfully.
I smiled thinking of her and, though he’d never turned his temper on us, how she’d worried about him. “She called it your famous temper. And turned out, she was right,” I said honestly and gave him a crooked grin.