by Jackson, Jay
At the bottom of the staircase, Delroy looked around and spotted Kero seated on the deck. He went out to join him, the calm current of the Bird babbling under them. He sat down across from his friend.
“Well, hey, buddy. How are you? You did a real good job by my cousin today, a real good job. I’m proud of you. Hey, Garo, would you bring us something?”
Minutes later, Garo came out with two pounds of boiled shrimp, a mound of coleslaw, and two pints of Estrella Damm to wash it all down. Kero had loved that beer ever since he visited Barcelona with his bride, ten years before.
The two friends tucked into the shrimp and coleslaw. Before they were done, Garo brought out half a pecan pie for them to split, along with two more pints. Delroy didn’t eat much pie, but the pint was greatly appreciated.
Cutting his second piece of pie, Kero looked up at Delroy.
“Well, what do you think is gonna happen now?”
“Not sure, really. Seems pretty obvious, to me, that Claudia had nothing to do with the disappearance of Ted Johnson, but she’s still a suspect until he’s found . . . alive or not. If he’s dead, and even if she’s not prosecuted, folks are always gonna talk.”
“I know, folks in Gratis always have to talk about somebody. That’s all my cousin needs—more stuff for folks to jaw about her. How about Jewel, what’s going on with her?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure that a couple of guys from Atlanta came down to see her, about selling the house, and it set her off. It’d be nice if we had more than a partial fingerprint, but at least we have that.”
“Do you have any idea what they said or did that set her off?”
“Not a hundred percent sure, but I think they tried to scare her. I think they tried to spook her to motivate her to sell.”
Kero put his fork on his plate, visibly angry.
“Can you get the sheriff to get those two down here? I’d like to spook them. I got a couple of spooky things I can do that’ll make sure they never go south of Atlanta again.”
“Calm down, Kero. It pisses me off, too. Before we get the sheriff to take a warrant, we need to see if we can get them to make a statement. We arrest them, they’ll get a lawyer, and we’ll never get a thing out of them.”
Kero finished his second piece of pie and started cutting his third. “All right, I hear you. What do you think we should do?”
Delroy took a long sip of the Estrella, considering the question. “Right now, not much we can do. I’m going to go talk to Racey Bridges in Atlanta, tomorrow, and after that we’ll see about getting his investigators to roll over on him about Jewel.
Delroy excused himself and went to the bar. He came back with a rum and Coke, already sipping it even as he sat down.
“Here’s the other thing, Kero. What are the odds of these two things happening to Jewel and Claudia at the same time? Before anybody asked about their land, for years they just got by. Nobody bothered them. Of course, Claudia was out saving children, evidently, but no real trouble ever came to them.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m saying that it’s a hell of a coincidence—a hell of one. Do I see a connection between the child missing and folks snooping around Jewel’s and Claudia’s? Maybe not, but there might be more to it than anybody can see, right now anyway.”
Kero considered the answer. He would’ve cut another piece of pie, but it was now all gone.
“Well then, Delroy, it appears you got some more ‘earning’ to do of that retainer I paid you.”
Delroy smiled at his friend and answered. “Yes, it does so appear . . . but not tonight.”
At that Kero yelled to Garo to bring more pie. Eyeing his friend’s already half-empty glass, he also got another round.
45.
Claudia wasn’t one for sentimental reunions. Jewel, however, was.
When Claudia walked in the front door, Jewel starting yelling from her bed in the living room. “Come here, sister! Come here right now! I need my Claudia right now!”
Claudia went to her, and Jewel grabbed her with trembling arms. Her broken leg kept her from standing, but not from bringing Claudia onto the bed with her. Jewel hugged her sister to the point of implosion. A wide smile erupted on her massive face.
Kero’s wife, Annie, and two eldest daughters were there, as was JoJo. They had prepared for the homecoming. The table was laden with fried chicken, mac and cheese, a green bean casserole, and two sweet potato pies. They started out with three pies, but Jewel got hungry waiting for her sister.
More important, they’d cleaned the house. Claudia noticed the bracing scent of bleach when she entered, a remnant of the buckets used to wash all the superficial grime away. Try as she might, Claudia didn’t like to clean. She never gave the house the deep treatment it received while she was gone. Even her bed looked nicer than usual, the pillows smoothed in a way she could never manage herself.
They ate in the living room since Jewel was still confined to her bed. There was no way she would let Claudia out of her sight. She only just got her sister back, and there was so much to tell her.
“JoJo, put on that Mr. Glen Campbell record, the one with ‘Galveston’ we like, and come eat with us. Claudia, we missed you so much, but JoJo has been here to help. We watch shows every day. He likes Magnum, just like I do. You know, those two dogs that chase Magnum never catch him, and I like all kind of dogs!” Jewel went on this way for almost an hour, her mind taking the conversation in circles and loops. The rest of them listened, glad to see her so happy after the last few weeks.
Annie and the children left after washing the dishes. Claudia and Jewel stayed up late, Jewel relating every development she thought her sister may have missed. Finally Jewel tired, the excitement of the day too much for her. Before letting her settle down, Claudia made sure Jewel brushed her teeth. It was a tricky maneuver, Jewel leaning over a bowl to spit while Claudia held that same bowl. Eventually, task accomplished, Jewel rested her head. She murmured “my sister is home” and “I’m glad you found it” over and over until she went to sleep.
Claudia waited a few minutes, making sure Jewel was fully settled. She then went outside and sat on the front porch swing. She looked toward the road, watching the rare headlights on Cap Jackson Road as they passed by. This was something she had done as a child, assigning each car a make-believe destination as it rumbled into the dark.
Tonight, though, she made up no plans for those random motorists. Tonight, there was only one thing on her mind. That thing wasn’t her recent jail stay, or the fact that she was still under some suspicion for a very nasty crime. A singular thought jangled around her mind, accompanied by the night song of the frogs and crickets all around.
I have to find that little boy, out there without his momma. I have to find him, and I have to bring him home.
She sat on the swing past midnight, going over all the clues she picked up before she got arrested. As it got later the clues crashed and morphed into each other, so she went inside. Soon, Claudia was sound asleep in her own bed for the first time in days. In the morning, she would walk.
46.
Racey turned east onto I-16 after driving through Macon. He was bored and trying to find something on the radio besides gospel and “new country hits.” Failing to do so, he turned the radio off.
I-16 was an empty stretch of road, its only saving grace being that it led to Savannah. The hardest thing about traveling it was keeping the speedometer south of the speed limit. The local sheriffs’ offices patrolling their sections knew this. While most of the state’s sheriffs’ departments staffed DUI task forces, these counties maintained speeding task forces. The revenue kept most of them afloat, or at least barely treading water.
In an hour, he pulled off the interstate at Dublin, Georgia. The town didn’t have the pubs of its namesake, but a traveler could find good burgers at Jack’s. Racey stopped and got three doubles with chopped onions. He ate them in the Audi as he tried to find the address of the man he had come
to see.
After driving around for thirty minutes, he finally arrived at his destination. It was a small ranch house converted into a pest-control business. A large sign advertised “Hoss the Bug Doctor” in front. On the sign, a cartoon man, his foot on a walrus-size cockroach, greeted those who pulled into the driveway.
Great, I get to go talk to a Technicolor bug murderer.
A Highland Tap martini flashed in Racey’s mind. That the same martini was at least two hours from this place heightened his disgust with the good doctor.
A buzzer announced his presence when he walked in the door. Moments later, Hoss came to greet him.
The depiction of Hoss on the sign did little justice to the man. He was much rounder in real life, his belly bulging against his stained work shirt. The middle button of his shirt had already lost its war against that belly, and a white ripple of fat poked through. His face was incongruous shades of sallow yellow and red, divided by a handlebar mustache sprouting from cratered pores.
“Good afternoon, sir. Pleasure to meet you. I’m Hoss, and I kill bugs deader than hell. What can I do you for?”
Racey smiled at Hoss and replied. “Well, some of my best friends are bugs, nasty ones at that, you could say. I’m here for something a little different. What can you tell me about chlordane? Where can a man find some of that here in Dublin?”
Hoss frowned, his mustache framing his swollen lips like a furry horseshoe. “Well, I haven’t used chlordane since the eighties, when it was banned. Seems that it causes cancer. So your answer is that you can’t find it here, at all.”
“You sure you didn’t use it after that? You treated all those houses in that subdivision built a few miles from here, on the Oconee River, if I recall. Hmm, let’s see, I believe that was only a few years ago. Yes, I do recall, being that the chlordane you used washed into that same river. Reckon how many folks drank that stuff mixed in with their morning coffee?”
Hoss’s frown deepened, now a chasm of drool and suspicion. “Asshole, you need to get the hell out of my place before I put you in that same river.”
Racey kept smiling, and replied, “I could do that, but then I’ll have to make sure everybody finds out about those hundred-dollar bills you gave to that state inspector. You know, the special one they sent down from Atlanta? Seems he found there was no chlordane used at those houses . . . But we know better than that, don’t we? We know there’s another report that differs significantly from the one that was presented in the final investigation summary. Might be that I have a copy of it.”
Hoss sat down in one of the waiting-room chairs, his girth barely wedging between the cheap wooden arms.
He looked at the stranger, wondering how his day had led to this. “Well then, Mister Knows-Every-Damn-Thing, sounds like you came here needing something from me. Just get to it.”
“Hoss, I don’t need much from you at all. Not today, anyway. I do need the name of the person in Gratis you gave my number to. Give me that, and that little report stays in a locked drawer.”
Hoss looked over at Racey, his grimace now colored by surprise. “So you the one, ain’t you? You’re that fixer-man who I never got to meet even after I paid you thousands. I figured you’d come by sometime, for something. You don’t look like I thought you would. I didn’t know that someone so young could be such a dirty, sneaky son of a bitch.”
Racey steadied his gaze and looked into Hoss’s eyes. “Hoss, it seems that you were wrong about that. I was born a dirty, sneaky son of a bitch. I crept out of my mother’s womb before the doctor knew I was gone, and stole his wallet before he could slap me on the ass. Now, you got that name?”
Hoss gave him the name, huffing out every syllable as he did so. If it was up to him, he’d take this stranger to his shed in the woods. He had barrels of Guatemalan-made chlordane there, and would love to seal this smug jerk in one of them.
But damn, he’s got that report.
Upon receiving the name, Racey left Hoss stuffed in his chair. The trick to successfully pushing one’s luck was knowing how far to push. Racey figured he’d pushed the Bug Doctor far enough.
The Audi sped west a moment later, toward Macon, where it would start its northern trek to Atlanta. Racey still drove in silence, his own thoughts entertaining him as the pines slid by on the side of the highway.
Well, he fell for it. Probably would have been a problem if he knew I didn’t have any original report. Dumbass.
Of course he didn’t have any report. Said report would be incriminating evidence, and the last thing he wanted was to be prosecuted by the Feds. He was lucky that Hoss was meaner than he was smart, and lucky that Hoss had a name to give him.
The trip to Dublin was total speculation. Racey only guessed that Hoss gave his name to his Gratis client. Other than the Bug Doctor, Racey had no other clients in this part of the state. Hoss had found Racey through an old high school friend. This friend ran a string of convenience stores in middle Georgia, the kind where you come in, buy a Coke, and sit down to gamble at the machines in back for a couple of hours. Hoss was one of his biggest customers, often losing more money in a day than most did in a week. Bottom line: the trip was a total sham, an ambush of lies and empty threats. This time, it worked.
I love when things come together. I love it when people are so much dumber than I have any right to expect them to be.
Racey kept turning the name over in his mind, and turned off the highway at an exit a few miles short of Macon. Turning around, he headed back the way he came. He hated to do so, to steer the Audi away from the martini that was so loudly calling his name back home. Still, he had to.
Racey had valuable information. He was going to use it to help Jewel and, hopefully, himself. Whether it worked or not, he was ready to bring the situation to a head. He already had one successful ambush this week. It was time to go for two.
I’ll just push this luck a little further, and we’ll just see what happens. Either way, I’m not making another trip down here if I can help it. Too many Hosses.
47.
The next morning, Claudia gently wakened her sister for the first time in weeks. When Jewel opened her eyes and saw her, she again pulled her down onto the bed. She hugged her tightly, saying, “you’re back” and “I’m glad you found it” over and over for five minutes. Claudia didn’t fight it. She loved her sister and missed her, too.
She made breakfast and put on a Glen Campbell gospel album. Claudia felt it appropriate. Being together again deserved a proper hallelujah.
After breakfast, she waited until midmorning for JoJo to arrive. Being a Saturday, he should get there earlier than normal. Claudia was eager to start watching, but Jewel needed her. Anyway, she didn’t have to walk too far today. Today’s walk would be closer to home.
JoJo got there, a few minutes late but with two more sweet potato pies from his mother. Ten minutes after he put those pies on the table, Claudia left.
Her wig was pulled up in a bun, an old John Deere cap crammed on top. The usual dress was replaced by jeans and an extra-large women’s western-style shirt. She was going to have to go off-pavement today. A dress would only get torn in the brambles she would have to fight through. The jeans were better suited to her task, and the green-and-black-piped shirt was sturdy.
Instead of heading toward the road, she went the other way, toward the river. Once there, she turned and followed it for a few hundred yards. Finally, she came to a large fence.
It sure would help if I had my carriage.
With her carriage, she could have concealed a rope and hook, or even a small ladder, and approached the fence from the road. People were watching her now, though. They would definitely notice her walking down the road with anything unusual. That would conjure up a few sheriff’s cars, and quickly.
Instead, she had to stay out of sight. Until now she had possessed the advantage of being a discounted person. Wear a dress and push a toy baby carriage when you’re supposed to be a man? Folks believed that was cra
zy, but they didn’t stop her, or notice her for too long. She faded into the background, just another oddity who made others feel more normal. Now, with her recent arrest and the subsequent revelations from the court hearing, she was something else altogether. Now, others would definitely pay attention.
Today, the last thing Claudia wanted was attention. She turned at the fence, now walking away from the river. This part of the woods was old-growth hardwoods. The forest floor was cleaner, with no small pines cluttering the way. Claudia came to an oak with gnarled limbs—perfect for climbing. She went up the tree and onto the top of the fence. From there, she dropped to the mossy ground on the other side.
She stayed where she landed for five minutes, listening and watching. Then she slowly crept forward.
Claudia grew up moving quietly in the woods. She and Kero were always outside, always exploring some new part of the county. They crept everywhere, and regarded “No Trespassing” signs as more of a challenge than a warning.
Now, she crept with a purpose greater than mere curiosity. She was keenly aware of every twig that broke underfoot, every leaf that betrayed her as she passed. The house she knew to be just ahead was waiting for her, if she could get there quietly.
After an hour of slowly moving forward, she stopped at a clearing. There, in front of her, was the house she sought. The yard was immaculate, its green grass unmarred by weeds. That same grass led up to four very large air-conditioning units, their low hum calling to her where she stood.
Four units. That house only needs two units, at most, not four.
She made her way around the perimeter until she was in the back. Making sure she was hidden from sight, just beyond the wood line, she examined the rear of the house. It was somewhat plain, with only a large patio and a bank of azaleas challenging the monopoly of grass. The blooms blazed a fiery pink against the span of green. On the patio a single chair sat, and a golf cart was parked beside it. It was at an angle to her. Claudia was unable to make out the object in its seat.