Moon Underfoot

by Cole, Bobby

While looking out the front window, the officer checked his watch and then said, “Okay. The chief just got here. I need to go bring him up to speed.” He paused for a moment, staring outside, and then continued, “Maybe they’ve spotted the perp’s vehicle. I’ll let y’all know what I find out.” He quickly turned away.

  Jake watched him walk out the front door. Turning to Morgan, he finally asked, “Are you okay, honey? Is she okay?” Jake looked at his subdued daughter and then walked over to kiss her on the top of her head.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Morgan answered as she tightly hugged Katy.

  Katy said, “I’m fine, Dad.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t home,” Jake said, wishing his life could return to normal—before two years ago. Last spring, he hadn’t even gotten to turkey hunt. There were no overnight trips that weren’t work related. He had been praying this winter and spring would be different, but now he knew better. He also knew he should put Morgan and Katy ahead of his desire to hunt and fish. Jake’s mind was racing, when he suddenly remembered something. “Hey, that tree where the guy was smoking—I’ve got a game camera near it. I’ve been trying to get pictures of a big deer I saw one morning for Katy. But I haven’t checked it in a few weeks.”

  The officer looked at him curiously. “Will it take pictures at night?”

  “Yeah. It’s infrared. He’d never know.”

  “A few weeks? Won’t the memory be full?”

  “Maybe not. It’s digital and can hold about four thousand images.”

  “Let’s go have a look.”

  CHAPTER 3

  THE THREE OLD men barely spoke as they anxiously sipped coffee and thought of the stolen $116,000 in cash hidden in four cat-litter boxes upstairs in their rooms. Hot cash covered in cheap, generic cat litter. No one wanted to look at cat turds, and since their simple rooms in the retirement center had few places to conceal anything, these hiding spots were ideal. Accurately counting the money had been exhausting, taking almost two hours. Stealing it had been easy and the most exhilarating activity anyone in the group had ever experienced. They hadn’t felt that alive in years…if ever. Thievery had been the geezers’ equivalent of meth; they were hooked after trying it only once.

  For the past six weeks, the retirees had intricately planned to rip off the Kroger in Columbus, Mississippi. Most importantly, they had executed it to near perfection. Now, a little more than forty-eight hours after the crime, they were struggling to act normal and maintain their pre-felony daily routines. They were all full of pride in a well-planned, well-executed venture and their future plans for the money. Each knew the ramifications of loose lips, but they found not talking about it extraordinarily difficult. It’s human nature to brag, but the basis of this desire was foreign and seductive. After lifetimes of never breaking the law, other than a few speeding tickets, the three felt they had just stepped into the big leagues, and they were flying high.

  The gray-haired gangsters were sitting at a table in the Henry Clay Retirement Community’s restaurant, the Point, in downtown West Point and drinking a pot of black coffee, just as they had almost every day for the last few years. Ordinarily the scene would have been best described as monotonous, but not today. The tension at the table was palpable. No one could sit still. Fingers drummed the tabletop, and toes tapped on the tile floors. No one spoke about inane topics now that they had a taste for something more. Their former “everydayness” was now boring.

  The retirement years had not been so golden for them. In fact, they all were concerned that they would outlive their money. Arriving within a few months of each other at the old four-story historic hotel that had been renovated and repurposed into a retirement community, they had become fast friends, spending most of their days together discussing politics and talking about the good old days but mostly worrying about the future.

  At sixty-eight, Walter Severson was the youngest of the three. He worked as a greeter and a grocery bagger a few days each week at the targeted Kroger. It was at the Kroger that he had formulated the plan. Walter was the inside man. He had retired from managing a chain of Minnesota ice-skating rinks that eventually went bankrupt. He was shocked to learn that the parent company had mismanaged his 401(k). His dream of a cabin on Leech Lake wasn’t going to happen. After a massive garage sale, Walter loaded his wife and what was left of their belongings into a rented orange truck and headed south to live out their lives in a rented modular home near Fairhope, Alabama. They never made it. While Walter was driving though Mississippi, just south of Tupelo, his wife died peacefully in her sleep. The good people of Mississippi were so nice to him during that difficult time that he just decided to stay.

  “Nothing in the Columbus or West Point newspapers.” Bernard Jefferson cracked a smile as he cocked his head down to peer over the top of his bifocals. “And not even a mention in that small weekly paper—the one that prints all the arrests. I like looking at all those mug shots.”

  “You’d have a better chance to make it in there if you beat someone with a baseball bat,” Sebastian Snead stated.

  “Guys, we don’t want to be in the paper. No news is a good thing,” Walter said, shaking his head.

  Bernard nodded and then said, “Did y’all know that back in the 1920s West Point, Mississippi, was the smallest city in the world with a daily newspaper?”

  “I reckon I didn’t know that,” Sebastian said, “and I’ve lived here all my life.”

  Walter was ignoring the trivia discussion. He was the only one who seemed nervous.

  “Be sure you double-check to make sure you don’t miss a small article,” Walter directed.

  Bernard didn’t answer except to take an annoyingly loud slurp of coffee. The arrival of the newspapers was highly anticipated at the retirement community and a source of much discussion, since newspapers were all rapidly going digital. After the heist, Bernard had been tasked with scouring the papers and the Internet for information. So far, it had been just as Walter expected. There was no mention of the robbery—nothing.

  Because they hadn’t stolen all of the cash, the theft was not as obvious, and Walter hoped, therefore, that it might take Kroger a week to establish with concrete certainty that money was missing. Every employee and the management trusted Walter, and he moved throughout the store without raising any concerns. Most importantly, he knew of one lazy store manager who was more interested in a certain curvaceous young cashier than in the daily business operations. The way Walter designed the crime, that store manager would likely lose his job. The group decided this was an acceptable consequence, since the guy was cheating on his pregnant wife.

  Missing from the table was their fourth partner in crime and the only woman, Lucille Garrett. At sixty-eight, she looked like your average grandmother and could blend seamlessly into a crowd, which they determined could be an asset at some point. The men also loved being around a woman they trusted and respected.

  “Tonight, when Lucille gets back with the MRI, we’ll go eat and discuss it. Y’all in?” Walter asked. He chuckled to himself, surprised at how quickly he had picked up the word y’all.

  “MRI?” Sebastian asked.

  “Most recent information,” answered Walter.

  “Oh. Gotcha.”

  “I thought if everybody agreed, we’d take a couple hundred dollars, have the first meeting of our new organization, and eat some really good food. Kinda celebrate a bit.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” Sebastian said.

  “What time are you gonna go see that lady lawyer?” Bernard asked, with obvious interest. “I’d really like to go with you.”

  Bernard Jefferson had been a traveling salesman for a chain-saw manufacturer and had been married and divorced more times than he could count. He still claimed to have girlfriends scattered across three states. He loved the ladies, though the many divorces had cost him everything.

  He was a source of humor at the retirement center for the females, who complained that he bathed in Old Spice. Always dress
ed in a starched JCPenney-brand dress shirt, he prowled the halls of the retirement center like a college boy at a sorority house. He imagined himself one day marrying a rich widow or divorcée. Bernard was often overheard saying, “Every man’s gotta have a dream; might as well be a big’un.” None of the best Internet dating websites could find him a match…except one, and judging from the photo, “her” gender was questionable. She was a middle-aged French Canadian lumberjack from Nova Scotia. Bernard had immediately closed the account, losing a great deal of hope for the future.

  “The lawyer’s not your type,” Walter explained as he poured another cup of coffee. “For one, she doesn’t know anything about chain saws…and she doesn’t appear to have a whole lot of money.”

  Bernard grunted. The group chuckled and nodded their agreement.

  “Have you decided yet?” Sebastian asked. “You know, whether or not to tell her?”

  Sebastian Snead had been at the Henry Clay Retirement Community longer than his two buddies and most of the other thirty or so inmates, as he called them. He had been a gunsmith by trade. He was a widower with a married son who was currently deployed in Afghanistan, and he had recently lost a daughter in a car accident. Sebastian was full of grief but still retained a zest for life. He also had prostate cancer but wouldn’t do anything about it, and he hadn’t told anyone. Sebastian was about a hundred pounds overweight, but, all things considered, he was extremely agile. He constantly surprised everyone with his strength. No one suspected he was sick. He’d watched his wife die from breast cancer years before, and he wanted no part of chemo or radiation. When the time came, he planned to fly to Alaska, walk out into the wilderness, and disappear. He didn’t want to burden anyone. Unfortunately, he didn’t understand modern medicine like he did firearms.

  “I’m gonna lay all the cards on the table and tell her about our proposed foundation. She’ll be stunned, but she’ll be bound by attorney-client privilege. I really like what I know about her. She’s not your typical lawyer. She’s perfect for us. She’s been through some tough winters. She knows that the legal system fails good and right people too often, but she hasn’t given up her ideals. She still thinks she can save the world one client at a time,” Walter explained

  “Sounds good,” Bernard offered.

  “Her true passion, though, is trying to save the endangered Florida panthers,” Walter added.

  “Panthers?” Bernard asked.

  “Yeah, they’re down around the Everglades; big long-tailed cats that look like small mountain lions. There are supposedly less than a hundred alive in the wild, and she’s really into protecting them and preserving their habitat,” Walter continued.

  “So what does that tell you about her?” Sebastian inquired.

  “She’s capable of caring about a cause, something way bigger and way more important than just her own needs. Something she can’t even see or probably even win, but she tries. I like that level of commitment,” Walter said, watching the guys as they considered his analysis of the attorney. He continued, “It’s been my experience that very few people and even fewer lawyers have her attitude. I don’t know if it’s nature or nurture. Maybe it’s genetic? She’s got something that causes or allows her to care about something she doesn’t directly benefit from.”

  Sebastian’s cynical side came out. “Anybody can write a check.”

  “She does more than send money. She gives her time. And we all know how lawyers value their time.”

  “No they don’t. Lawyers overvalue their time,” Sebastian said with a huff.

  They all grunted their agreement.

  Walter’s charisma and ability to effortlessly elicit trust naturally made him the group’s leader. All of it—the robbery, their future plans for the money, everything—had been his idea. He had brought excitement into their otherwise uninspired lives. He had demonstrated (or possibly conned them into believing) that he was brilliant, and he could quickly and accurately determine what really made people tick shortly after meeting them just once.

  One day they were drinking coffee, discussing the weather; the next, there they were, planning to rob the local Kroger grocery store.

  The group got quiet as they watched a few residents meander in to order breakfast. Sebastian and Walter thought about the money and what it represented. Bernard looked around at the women in the room and wondered how and when he was going to meet and marry his future retirement fund; it was pretty much always on his mind.

  It was Bernard who broke the silence. “Come on, Walter, let me go. I’ll buy lunch, wherever you want.”

  Walter turned to look at him and then shifted his gaze to Sebastian, who nodded slightly. “Okay, but don’t try to flirt with her. You’re old enough to be her grandfather.”

  “I won’t…I’ll just ask about panthers.”

  Walter rolled his eyes.

  Sebastian said sincerely, “Oh, she’ll love that.”

  CHAPTER 4

  SAMANTHA OWENS REGRETTED signing a one-year lease on the small office in downtown Columbus. Apparently the previous tenant, a new-age marriage counselor of some sort, had offered more services to her male clientele than just marital advice. Since Sam had moved into the office two months earlier, hardly a day had passed without some guy walking in to request an appointment…for counseling. Their enthusiasm and desire for “counseling” peaked when they saw Sam.

  She was a thirty-five-year-old recent divorcée who was trying to put her life back together, and thanks to her mama’s genes, she didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Sam had moved to Columbus, Mississippi, from Tupelo in hopes of a clean start. Her ex-husband had made the last eight years of her life miserable. She had been a victim of abuse from a scheming, well-connected, old-moneyed bastard who had orchestrated every advantage available to hide assets and influence the judge so that, after ten years of marriage, she was left with little more than her car. Sam was glad simply to get out, but she was upset that her husband had walked away financially unscathed due to questionable legal maneuvers and quite possibly judicial manipulation. All she had wanted was an equitable settlement. What she got was shafted.

  With her law degree from the University of Mississippi and recent admittance to the bar, she was anxious to get to work. As one of the oldest in her class, she considered her age an advantage—more life experience and such. After the bad marriage, her success in law school had helped her regain most of her self-esteem and self-reliance. Sam was now hell-bent on helping others, and although she might not admit it, she wanted a little payback on her ex-husband.

  Taking the vacated office space of a high-dollar call girl posing as a marriage counselor wasn’t in her plan, but she didn’t have the cash to break the lease and move. Apparently the local married-male population really appreciated marriage counseling, and word had not spread successfully that their favorite counselor had been run out of town by a pack of angry wives. Sam and the secretary, whom she could barely afford, finally found the humor in the situation and began handing out business cards to the men with instructions to give the cards to their spouses. Confused looks followed.

  Sam needed clients, and each time the door opened, her hopes rose. More often than not, she was disappointed. She joined the local Rotary Club to network, but they met only once a month. Yesterday she’d had one appointment, and although she was giving this one client world-class treatment, the project wasn’t going to generate many billable hours. Ole Miss Law had taught her to understand and apply the law but not how to generate clients. Last month she had scraped together enough cash to buy commercials on a local cable-television channel. Freshly filmed and quickly edited, the commercials had been running for almost three weeks, with very limited trackable results. She could afford one more week.

  Samantha Owens said a silent prayer that her efforts would translate into business.

  CHAPTER 5

  JAKE AND MORGAN had spent several anxious days and sleepless nights since the man had been spotted in their backyard.<
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  The police, along with assistance from the sheriff’s department, finally had determined that the Peeping Tom had not driven himself into the neighborhood or been dropped off. Law enforcement had carefully followed his tracks and determined that the perp had boated Tibbee Creek, which ran near the back of the golf course, and then walked in. This really perplexed everyone. To do this took an enormous amount of effort and a tough thousand-yard hike through dense woods and thick undergrowth. “Not typical of a burglar,” said one deputy. “They’re usually lazy. Opportunistic.”

  Security was heightened. All the community’s residents were on edge. Security alarms that had had never been used were suddenly being activated and monitoring contracts signed. The sheriff’s department had an undercover team working, as hunters patrolled the large creek, which in some states would have been considered a river. Law enforcement of both West Point and Clay County were doing their best to protect their citizens.

  Jake’s motion-sensitive game camera had several profile images of an unidentifiable man from seven different nights. The photos confirmed Morgan’s account of the man, but they didn’t establish his identity. All that the police knew about the man was that he was white and probably thin, but winter clothing made it difficult to be certain. He was obviously knowledgeable in nighttime navigation of both woods and waters. He also smoked Marlboro Lights.

  Morgan’s initial response was that the family should move again, but they couldn’t afford it. “How and to where?” Jake asked.

  They’d sunk everything they had into this house after they had taken a bath on the one they had just sold to move quickly. The housing market was now almost another two years in the tank, not to mention that no one would buy a house with a recent history of a stalker in the backyard.

  Jake and Morgan owned a small cabin on the Tombigbee River that they could sell if absolutely necessary. It had been in Jake’s family for decades, so he wasn’t too keen on that idea.