“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Kirk replied. “They both probably stayed drunk and high all weekend.”
Michael lit a cigarette and leaned back inside the vehicle. “No, they’ll never be nominated for parents of the year, that’s for sure. That’s why it will be easy for me to be the one to stay at the lake house if either you or David can’t make it. But you know, don’t you, that we can’t keep this up for too long. You need to make a decision this week about what you’re going to do with the two of them. Think about it, buddy.” He closed the door, snubbed out his cigarette, and took his time entering the school building after the last bell sounded.
Kirk exhaled deeply and leaned his head back against the head rest. “What the hell have I gotten myself in to…”
Rae Blankenship stood at the kitchen window and watched her husband back out of the driveway. She wiped his wet kiss off her cheek and said, “Good riddance.” She turned around sharply when she heard the shuffling of feet. “Priscilla! What have I told you about sneaking up on people?”
Prissy stared hard at her employer’s wife. She shook her head and started to walk away. “I heard what you said about Mr. B. I heard you…”
Rae started to go after the old woman, but quickly changed her mind. She doubted, very seriously, if her husband would take his maid’s word over that of his own wife; besides, she could always resort to her powers of sexual persuasion if she had to. She knew that she could control her husband with those powers, even though he had successfully managed to avoid them over the past few days. She poured another cup of coffee and returned to the laptop she had brought downstairs with her. “Let’s see now…how do I look up the Floyd County Property Appraiser site?” She was determined to find out what she could about the mysterious lake house. “Oh, yes, there you are!” She skimmed over several entries until she stopped at an entry for a piece of lake-front property in Cave Spring, Georgia; the deeded owner of the property was Elizabeth Blankenship. “Well, that explains why I didn’t know about this piece of property,” she pursed her pouty lips together. “He put it in his wife’s name, but…she’s dead now, isn’t she, so the property would go to the estate of Ernest Blankenship.” She studied the entry about the lake house and smiled. “Maybe I should have a look at that property for myself…before I decide whether or not if it’s worth the effort of having to seduce my husband to have it put in my name.”
Priscilla had been watching and listening to her husband’s new wife, through the crack in her bedroom door. “We’ll just see about that, missy, yes we will…”
Bertie punched Doug on the shoulder when the angel chimes sounded and Jason and Cheryl walked through the door. “Look at that poor woman—she looks like she hasn’t slept all weekend.”
Bertie rushed over to the couple and put an arm around Cheryl. “We heard about Jimmy, and we want you to know that both of you are in our constant prayer. I just know he’ll be home soon—safe and sound—and will probably have one helluva story to tell us all.”
Cheryl smiled back. “I hope you’re right about that, Bertie.” Her smile faded as she allowed Jason to guide her towards a table in the far, back corner.
Bertie shook her head and looked up at Doug. “Where could he be, handsome? That boy just isn’t the type to disappear like that and not let his mama know where he’s at. He loves her too much. He knows that she would be so worried about him.”
“I don’t know, Bertie,” Doug sighed. “I was hoping he would have returned home by the time we all got back from Home last night.”
“Well, you go fetch them both some coffee, and I’ll get them something to eat. Maybe today will bring them some good news.”
Jason exhaled deeply as he sat down beside Cheryl. It had been a long weekend for them both, but he had not left her side. He had slept on the couch for the past three nights and been there with her each time the phone rang, and it wasn’t Jimmy. “Hey, I’m glad I was able to talk you into leaving the house for a little while,” he reached for her hand and clasped it securely within his own. “You’ve got your cell with you. Officer O’Brady will call if he hears anything.”
“But what if Jimmy comes back and I’m not there? What if he’s hurt and needs me…” Cheryl closed her eyes and shook her head. “No…no…he’s okay. I would know if he wasn’t okay.” She looked over at Jason and laid her head against his left arm. “Thank you so much for staying with me, Jason.”
“I wouldn’t be anywhere else right now,” Jason smiled. “Hey, here comes Doug with some coffee. I want you to try to eat something, too, okay?”
Cheryl nodded. “I will.” She smiled up at Doug when he placed two steaming mugs of coffee on their table. “Thank you, Doug. I could really use a cup right about now.”
“Has there been any more news about Jimmy?” Doug asked. He knew that Max and Bertie would be listening in on the conversation. Bertie had told him that Max knew more about the situation than he was willing to reveal to them, so that meant that he would have to find out answers for himself. “Is there anything we can do to help find him?”
Cheryl shook her head. “No, but thank you so much for wanting to do that. I honestly don’t think the police have taken it seriously…until today. I waited until I knew school had started before I called to see if Jimmy was there. He wasn’t, so the first thing I did was to call and tell Officer O’Brady. As it turns out, he was already at the school, waiting for it to open, so he knew a few minutes before I did that Jimmy had not reported for class. He thinks his department will act more quickly on it now that it looks like it wasn’t just Jimmy getting away from home for the weekend.”
Jason took a sip of the energy-boosting coffee and stared at Doug. “Officer O’Brady, also, said that he would be checking out the lead I gave him regarding Stella Sieber. He has a few officers delegated to riding the streets, searching for Jimmy, but he wanted to follow up on that lead personally.”
“I guess you heard the news about PJ and Skipper?” Doug grinned.
Jason returned the grinned and nodded. “Yep, best news ever. Officer O’Brady said it looks like PJ’s testimony about what happened that night is enough to clear Skipper of any crime. That’s why he’s so intent on finding Stella, and to find out why she lied. He’s sure that she knows more about what happened than she’s telling the police.”
Bertie marched toward them with plates balanced on both arms. “Make yourself useful, handsome, and take some of these.” She smiled at Cheryl and said, “You need to eat, to keep your strength up, young lady.”
“Yes ma’am,” Cheryl smiled back. “I didn’t think I would be able to eat anything, but, this all smells so good. Thank you, Bertie.” She reached first for the plate of fried potatoes, smothered with Max’s famous sausage gravy. “Especially this one!”
“Thanks, Bertie,” Jason looked at the two café employees, who had quickly become so much more than that to all of them since Norman was killed. “We’ll be heading over to the police station after we finish here. I have a feeling they’ll be sick of us before the day is over, but Cheryl wants to make sure that they’re taking all this more seriously now.”
“I don’t blame her one bit,” Bertie clucked. “Not one bit. You give them hell, young lady, and don’t let them give you the runaround, you here?”
Cheryl swallowed the large bite of savory potatoes and nodded. “I intend to do just that, Bertie.”
Thomas closed the door to the small office of the Roadway Inn and looked up and down the street. He had questioned the manager and found out that only one of the eight rooms at the inn was currently filled. The manager had winked when he informed the officer that most of his customers rented his rooms by the hour. Thomas held the key to Room Number 8 in his hands and took a deep breath. He knocked on the door. “This is the police—open up!” He put his ear to the door, but did not hear any movement coming from within. He put on a pair of vinyl gloves and used the key to unlock the door and opened it to a darkened, musty room that reeked of st
ale cigarette smoke. He flipped on the wall switch and took in the unmade bed, the towels on the floor, an empty pizza box on the small table, and an ash tray filled with cigarette stubs.
He walked through the room and looked into the bathroom. The sinks were dry, as were the discarded towels. He turned and looked at the disheveled bed. There was a hairbrush on the nightstand; he instinctively bagged it as evidence and sat down on the lumpy mattress. He could hear the loud music already coming from the Pickled Possum, and it was barely ten o’clock in the morning. He stood up to leave and the toe of his shoe got hooked on the handle of a bag that had been shoved under the bed. He pulled the bag out and unzipped it. The rank smell from the clothes inside the bag almost made him gag, but he was sure the clothes belonged to Stella. He found a knotted sock in the bottom of the bag; when he loosened the knot, he counted out almost four hundred dollars in cash. “How did you come on this kind of money, Stella?” One last look around the room convinced him that Stella Seiber had not been in this room in the past twenty-four hours. He returned the money to the sock and re-knotted it, zipped the bag, and locked the door behind him. He tossed the bag into into the back seat of his car, and returned the key to the manager. He looked toward the Pickled Possum and rubbed the back of his head. “Where are you, Stella?”
He locked the police cruiser and walked the few hundred feet it took to reach the Pickled Possum. He didn’t expect to get any useful information from anyone inside, especially at this hour of the morning, so he was excited when the bartender told him that he had last seen Stella walking toward town on Friday morning.
“Friday, huh—the same day that Jimmy Crennan was last seen,” he was talking to himself as he began walking down the same road Stella would have taken toward town. “Nah, there couldn’t be any connection between those two. There’s no way that Jimmy would have known the likes of Stella Seiber.” He had walked about a half mile when he spotted it—a woman’s shoe. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered. The shoe could have belonged to anyone, but he dropped it into an evidence bag just the same. He spent another few minutes searching the woods on both sides of the road; he half expected to find Stella’s dead body in one of the ditches. When he didn’t find any sign of Stella, he walked back to the spot where he had found the shoe. “It probably isn’t even be her shoe,” he spoke out loud, “But, then again—there’s a fifty-fifty chance it could be.”
He turned to his left and glanced down into a small ditch. “What is that?” he wondered as he made his way down the small incline. He picked up the small, metal can. “Pepper spray.” He dropped it into an evidence bag, too, and turned to walk back to his car. That is when he spotted the imprint of a shoe—a much larger shoe than any Stella might have worn. He pulled his phone from his pocket and took several pictures of the area. The imprint was faint and smudged, but, Thomas thought that there might be enough of it for the forensic inspectors to use as—what—evidence?
David stood outside the lake house, staring off into the distance. He wished he was anywhere but here, standing guard over two people that probably wouldn’t live to see the week’s end, if Kirk had his way. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “What the hell have I let Kirk talk me into?” He paced the length of the back porch and stopped again to look out over the 3-acre lake. “This isn’t right,” he shook his head. “I can’t let this happen, but I can’t really do anything to stop it either.”
He paced for another ten minutes before the frigid cold finally forced him inside. The old woman and Jimmy were both sitting on one of the large sofas—as far away from each other as possible—pretending to watch television. David stared at them for a long time, taking in the clothes they had both had on since Friday. “There’s a washer and dryer upstairs. If y’all want to give me your clothes, I’ll wash them for you.” He fumbled through his backpack and pulled out two pairs of sweats. “Here, you can put these on while I take your clothes upstairs.”
“I ain’t taking my clothes off in front of you!” Stella yelled. “You’re crazy as hell if you think I’m gonna let you see me naked!”
David tossed the sweats onto the couch. “Trust me, old lady, seeing your naked body is about the last thing on my bucket list. Go on into the bedroom and change—don’t forget your underwear and socks, too.” His gaze moved slowly over both of them, and stopped suddenly when he stared at their socks and shoes.
Their socks and shoes…
David’s head snapped back up and his panicked voice creaked when he jumped toward Stella and roughly shook her shoulders. “Where’s your other shoe, old lady? Where is it?”
CHAPTER 29
Ernest Has Second Thoughts
Ernest Blankenship sat in his glass-encased office, located on the second level of his largest car dealership. He had not been able to focus on work the entire day; if he was honest with himself, it had been several months since work had claimed his full attention. Another review of the last quarterly sales sheets, this morning, had only reinforced that fact.
He stood up and paced the circular office. He watched while his salespersons, dressed professionally in business suits, greeted customers from all walks of life. He looked down at his own three-piece suit and shook his head. He closed his eyes and briefly remembered the early years—the poverty years—that he and his first wife, Elizabeth, had made it through. Those were what he laughingly referred to as his blue-jean years.
Ernest had left the small television in the office playing while he sorted through the quarterly reports; background noise always helped him focus on the task at hand. He walked over to it now and turned the volume up to listen to a report by a local newscaster.
“This is Paul Wilshire reporting. We are interrupting your regular-scheduled program to bring you some important news about a recent murder involving a homeless man, Norman Weissman. Another homeless man—a decorated Vietnam Veteran—Gordon Whiting, was charged with the January 22, 2016 murder of Mr. Weissman. Mr. Whiting has done little to cooperate with the police involving this case; however, another homeless person in their group—a woman by the name of Peggy Jensen—has come forward to clear Mr. Whiting of this murder charge. Ms. Jensen was severely injured when she was hit by a car on January 23, 2016; as a result of that accident, her memory was affected. That all changed yesterday when Ms. Jensen spotted Mr. Whiting at the Floyd Memorial Hospital, and her memories of that night resurfaced. The police are not releasing any information provided by Ms. Jensen—all they are saying, at present, is that all charges against Mr. Whiting have been dropped, and he will be free to go once he is released from the hospital. We will continue to update you on this story as we receive further information from our local police department.”
Ernest smiled and closed his eyes. “Well, thank, God for that. I remember reading about you, Mr. Whiting.” He sighed and shook his head. “It’s good to hear some good news for a change.”
He didn’t hear the door to his office open.
“What do you mean, Ernest?” Rae Blankenship closed the door behind her and waited for her husband to assist her with her fur coat. She glanced at the television. “What was that all about?”
Ernest hung her coat up on the iron coat rack that stood next to the television. “Nothing you would be interested in hearing about, Rae?”
“Well, if it was something you considered to be good news, then I most certainly would be interested, dear.” She sat down on the leather sofa that faced his desk, and crossed her shapely legs. She may have been forty-nine, but she worked hard and extensively to maintain the body of someone much, much younger. Good familial genes, also, played an important part in her success along those lines.
Ernest sighed and sat back down at his desk. “What brings you by, Rae? Shouldn’t you be at some yoga or Rhumba class?”
Rae flinched at the bitterness she detected in his voice. “Well, I certainly don’t know what has you in such a sour mood today, Ernest, but whatever it is, there’s no reason why you should be taking it ou
t on me. I was in the neighborhood and I haven’t had lunch yet, so I thought I would stop by to see if you wanted to join me.”
Ernest stared at the beautiful woman before him and understood why he had jumped into marriage so quickly with her. He, also, was not a fool. He knew that his money was probably the only attraction that Rae Sanchez had initially felt for him. He sighed again and shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m in the middle of quarterly reports. Sales are down…”
Rae jumped up and approached his desk. “Sales are down? How can that be? What’s wrong? Are we in trouble?”
“No, Rae—we are not in trouble. We took a large cut in profits this quarter, but things should turn around once warmer weather arrives. Don’t worry, dear, your life style will not have to change.”
“You must think of me as being very materialistic, Ernest. You do, don’t you?”
He thought about lying—about placating her enough for her to leave so that he could get back to work. He changed his mind. He stood up and walked around his desk to where she still stood. The closer he got, the more determined he became to say what was really on his mind.
Rae saw something in her husband’s eyes that she didn’t recognize—it appeared to be determination. She truly never thought he had enough backbone to become determined about anything. “What are you looking at me like that for, Ernest?”
Ernest sat on the corner of his desk and lifted his wife’s chin so that they were eye-to-eye. “To answer your question, Rae—yes—I do. You are one of the most materialistic people I’ve ever had the misfortune to know.” He removed his finger from her chin but continued to meet her challenged stare-down. “We made a mistake—no, let me rephrase that—I made a mistake when I asked you to marry me four years ago.” He saw that she was about to interrupt him, but he held up his index finger and shook his head. “No—let me finish—and, then you can talk.”
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