Thirty-Three and a Half Shenanigans

by Denise Grover Swank

  I told a deep breath, then whispered, “What if I see something bad, Neely Kate? Have you thought of that?”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Yes. That’s why I’m so desperate for you to try. My granny read in her tea leaves that I’m gonna lose the baby.”

  I gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I squeezed her hand. “You know she gets almost everything wrong. You can’t believe that.”

  “She’s seen it more than once, Rose.” Her bottom lip quivered. “I couldn’t tell anyone, not even Ronnie. I was superstitious enough to think it might come true if I said it out loud.”

  I lifted my chin. “Then I’m going to have a vision to prove her wrong, okay?”

  She sniffed and nodded, fear filling her eyes before determination replaced it. “Okay. One way or the other, let’s find out.”

  Butterflies swarmed my stomach as I closed my eyes, concentrating on Neely Kate’s pregnancy. What if by some freak of nature her grandmother was right?

  Several seconds later I was standing in a small store filled with baby clothes, standing next to . . . well, me. I grabbed a blue sleeper embroidered with “My daddy is a mechanic. What super power does your daddy have?” off a rack of clothes and held it to my chest. “What do you think, Rose?”

  Vision-me was looking through a stack of baby clothes on a display table. I was wearing my black and cream tweed coat and a cream-colored knit hat. Lots of people were walking past the store’s big picture windows while jazzy Christmas music played overhead. Vision-me glanced up, shaking my head. “I think you’re crazy, but if you really want to do it, we can.”

  “And what about the sleeper?”

  I laughed. “Ronnie will love it.”

  The vision faded, and my eyes flew open. “You’re shopping for baby clothes, and you want to do something crazy.”

  Her red nails painted with little Christmas trees dug into my hand. “Baby clothes?”

  I nodded, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Tell me what you saw.” After I relayed the vision to her, she asked, “Where were we?”

  “Definitely not Henryetta, but the store was playing Christmas music.” I lifted my eyebrows, anticipating her next question. “And I have no idea what you wanted to do.”

  “Hmm . . .” she said, sounding happy. I realized my dream hadn’t been that far into the future, but Neely Kate seemed content, so I wasn’t going to press the issue. Instead, I looked at the computer screen in front of me and resisted a groan of frustration. “You know,” I said, giving her a pleading look. “Since you have nothing but time on your hands, maybe you could help me with this. I was going to pay a bookkeeper to get us set up anyway, so I’ll just hire you, and you can earn money to decorate Ronnie Jr.’s nursery.”

  “Oh, my stars and garters!” she shouted, throwing her arms around my neck. “We can work together! How amazing is that?”

  “Something Bad” by Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood started playing, muffled from the inside of Neely Kate’s purse.

  My eyebrows rose. “You changed your ringtone? To the song you danced to?”

  She gave me an ornery grin as she dug in her purse. “It seemed appropriate after yesterday. In more ways than one.”

  She dug it out and answered. “Hello?” Her forehead quickly furrowed. “Why can’t you tell me on the phone?” She let out an exasperated groan. “Fine. I’ll meet you, but this better be worth my time, Billy Jack.”

  “Billy Jack?” I asked as she hung up.

  “He says he knows something about Dolly Parton that he couldn’t tell us before. He wants to meet us at the Blue Plate Diner down on Highway 82, on the other side of Pickle Junction.”

  “What if it’s a trap?” I cringed. “He wasn’t very happy with us when we parted.”

  “Billy Jack’ll hold a grudge, all right, but he sounded really spooked.” She paused and searched my eyes. “I think he knows something.”

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s meet him. What time?”

  “Eleven-thirty.”

  “That’s less than half an hour from now.” I stood up and grabbed my coat. “Let’s get going. I’ll tell you about my night on the way.”

  She glared at me. “If you’re talking about someone breaking into your house yesterday, I already know.”

  I was bound to pay for that.

  We got in my truck and headed southwest while I told her everything about my evening—minus my visit with Skeeter. I knew she wouldn’t understand, and I wasn’t up for a lecture. The less she knew about Skeeter, the better.

  Thankfully, Neely Kate wasn’t one to hold a grudge. “So you think Mason’s gonna lose his job?” she asked after I told her about his strange behavior.

  “I don’t know, but something’s definitely going on with him.”

  “You know,” she said, more reserved than usual. “I think you might be right.”

  This was one instance I wished I wasn’t. Was there something she wasn’t telling me?

  Twenty-five minutes later, we were pulling in front of the diner, the side lot full of big tractor-trailers.

  “Truckers like to eat here,” Neely Kate said as she opened the door. “Billy Jack said he’d find us inside. Come on. I’m starving.”

  The hostess seated us at a table by the window, and the waitress came by to take our orders.

  I glanced out the window. “Is Billy Jack running on West Coast time or something? Because he’s fifteen minutes late.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He insisted he’d be here. He said he’d find us.” The waitress dropped off a basket of rolls, and Neely Kate practically pounced on it. “Besides, it’s not like coming to this place was hardly a waste. They have the best dinner rolls this side of the Mississippi.”

  Our food came, and by the time we’d finished eating, Billy Jack was still a no-show.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  “Let’s go check out Nikko’s place. Then maybe we can swing by Billy Jack’s on the way back to town.”

  “Sounds good.”

  It took us twenty minutes to get to Sugar Branch. I drove into the small downtown and turned to look at my best friend. “How do we go about finding Nikko once we get there? Do you have any idea where he lives?”

  “Nope. But we need to find the local hair salon.”

  “Now doesn’t seem like a good time for a haircut, Neely Kate.”

  She grinned. “Everybody knows the best place to get gossip is the hair salon or the barbershop.”

  “Oh.” Seeing as how I hadn’t spent much time in hair salons, I supposed I wouldn’t know.

  After we drove through the commercial center of the small town—a bunch of small businesses including a gas station—we turned on a side street and found the Cut and Curl. I considered it a good sign that there were a couple of cars in the parking lot.

  Neely Kate reached for the door handle as soon as I parked the truck. “Come on.”

  We entered the four-sink salon and found two hairdressers working on clients, one of them an older woman getting her already poufy hair teased, and the other a younger woman with a head covered in tin foil strips.

  “Howdy,” the hairdresser working on the older woman said as she picked up a can of hairspray. “What can we do for ya?”

  “Hi.” Neely Kate put her hand on her hip. “I’m lookin’ for Nikko. Do any of y’all know where I might find him?”

  The younger woman in the chair sat up straighter, lifting her chin with a bit of attitude. “And who’s askin’?”

  “I used to work with him,” Neely Kate said. “Back before he started at Gems. He never came by to pick up his last paycheck, so I figured I’d drop it off for him.”

  The woman squinted at Neely Kate, suspicious. “Doesn’t his check have his address on it?”

  Neely Kate dropped her arm to her side and took a step closer, lowering her voice. “It’s kind of an under-the-table payment . . . if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh.” The
young woman’s defenses fell, her disappointment replacing bravado. “Nikko said he was gonna stop that nonsense after he got arrested this summer. He stopped working at that garage north of Henryetta and everything.”

  Neely Kate hesitated, so I jumped in. “As far as we know, he did. This is from when he was still at Weston’s.” I added the last part purely as a guess, figuring the more we seemed to know, the better. “That’s probably why he never came back to pick it up. Because he wanted out.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “I told him that Daniel Crocker was no good, but does he listen to his sister? Hell no. He thinks he’s smarter because he’s eleven months older, but he’s dumber than a stump if you ask me. Otherwise why would he be missing now?”

  “What happened to him?” Neely Kate asked, pretending not to know.

  “I don’t know,” the woman said. “The last time I saw him was on Friday evening. He was about to go to work at that Gems place and . . . well, he never came home. He’d told me that he suspected something was goin’ on there, and I told him to quit, but he never listens to me.” She sniffled, and her hairdresser handed her a tissue.

  “Do you think he got into some kind of trouble?”

  “I know he did, but what am I gonna do?” she asked, wiping tears from her cheeks. “He’s not exactly friendly with the sheriff’s department, if you know what I mean, so I don’t feel like I can call them.”

  I moved closer to the woman and sat in the empty chair next to her. “We’ll help you look for him,” I said. “He disappeared with a woman named Dolly Parton Parker, do you know her?”

  Her back stiffened. “How do you know that?”

  I pointed over my shoulder at Neely Kate. “Because Dolly’s her cousin, and she disappeared too. The same night and place as Nikko. We’re trying to find her.”

  The young woman’s eyes glazed over. “That’s so weird that you have Nikko’s last paycheck and your cousin disappeared with him.”

  If Nikko’s sister was the brighter of the two of them, Nikko was in grave trouble.

  Neely Kate shot me an exasperated glance before she said, “I know, right?”

  “I’m always sayin’ it’s a small, small world.” The young woman looked over her shoulder at her hairdresser. “Ain’t I saying that, Nancy?”

  Nancy released a low whistle. “You sure are, Alaina.”

  “Do you have any idea what was goin’ on at Gems?” I asked.

  Alaina shook her head. “I don’t know. But I know it was illegal. Nikko got mixed up with Crocker’s guys this summer. Then when Crocker broke out of jail and went cuckoo, Nikko quit and said he was done. But times are tough, you know?”

  “I know,” I said.

  “He kept trying to find an honest job, but the bills were piling up. Then he found out that Gems needed a bartender.” She shook her head. “I told him not to take it, but he was desperate. He was gonna lose his trailer, and he swore that Mud promised him the business was on the up and up even though it was a strip club.”

  “But it wasn’t on the up and up? What did he say?’

  “Nothing specific, just that he knew something was going on. There were weekly meetings on Friday nights, but if he knew why, he didn’t say. He did tell me that Mud was taking orders from someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “The owner. Mud’s just the manager.”

  “So who’s the owner?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know if your brother was dating Dolly Parton? She went by Sapphire at the club?”

  She shook her head, emphatic. “No. He had a thing for another girl at the club, Becky. I think she goes by Crystal there.”

  “Is there anything else you can think of that might help?”

  “No. Nothing. Nikko never told me nothing about workin’ for Crocker. The only reason I know as much as I do is because he got drunk one night and told me. The next day he seemed real sorry and told me to forget it.”

  I glanced at Neely Kate, and she looked worried. We had more information, but it wouldn’t get us very far.

  “Do you think we could look around his trailer with you? We know Mud sent some guys over to Nikko’s place. We’re trying to figure out what he was looking for,” I said. “I know you don’t know us, but maybe there’s something there that will help us find your brother and Dolly Parton.”

  She studied us for several seconds. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll take you there after I get done here. It shouldn’t be much longer, should it?” She looked up at the hairdresser.

  “Yeah, you’ve got about five minutes left with the foils. Then I’ll wash it and cut it. Say twenty-five minutes?”

  “Does he live around here?” Neely Kate asked.

  “Yeah, just outside of town.”

  “Say, is there any place around here to get donuts?” Neely Kate asked.

  Judging from the silence that descended on the room, everyone was confused by her question.

  Neely Kate shrugged. “We’ve got twenty-five minutes to kill, and Ronnie Jr. wants donuts.”

  Nancy, the hairdresser, came to her senses first. “The closest place to get donuts is the gas station on County Road 22, but I gotta warn you, they’re not very fresh.”

  “You probably passed it when you came into town,” said the older woman who was getting her hair fluffed to resemble a lion’s mane.

  “Thanks,” Neely Kate said. “We’ll be back.”

  I followed Neely Kate out to the truck. “We just ate lunch. Are we really getting donuts?”

  “Sure we are. Ronnie Jr. likes the jelly-filled kind. Plus, this’ll give us a chance to go over all the facts we’ve gathered.”

  “Well, let’s hope they have what he wants.” I laughed. At least she wasn’t craving spicy Buffalo wings again.

  The only donuts the Feed and Fuel had were dried-out glazed donuts and hard long johns. Neely Kate settled on a package of powdered sugar donuts instead, along with a bottle of milk. We sat in the parked truck, looking out the windshield at the cars passing by on the county road.

  “So the last people to see Dolly Parton and Nikko were at the club on Friday night—or rather early Saturday morning,” I said. “But neither one has been seen since.”

  “That’s nothing new,” Neely Kate groaned. “I feel like we’ve beaten that dead horse to death.”

  “But something’s bothering me.”

  “What?”

  “Billy Jack said that Nikko came and picked Dolly up from his house. Why would Nikko do that? It doesn’t sound like they were friends, and Alaina said her brother was running late. He wouldn’t have had time to run to Pickle Junction to pick her up before heading to Gems.”

  “But why would Billy Jack have lied?” Neely Kate asked. “What happened at Gems doesn’t seem to have anything to do with them.”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t believe him. It’s really suspicious.”

  “Maybe that’s why he wanted to talk to me.” Neely Kate’s words were mumbled around a big bite of one of the donuts. “Maybe he lied and feels guilty.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Between the thing with the TV and his claim that he saw Dolly Parton and Nikko after Friday, his story is suspect,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s not adding up. We really do need to track him down and talk to him.”

  “Maybe we should tell Joe.”

  She snorted. “You remember what he said. He’s not gonna listen to a thing we have to say until tomorrow. And then he’ll try to find someone to investigate her disappearance. And it’s not like Billy Jack is gonna volunteer any information to the sheriff’s department. We need to find him ourselves.”

  Unfortunately, I suspected she was right.

  “I’ve felt uneasy about this whole situation from the start. But I always thought I’d find her shacked up with someone. I haven’t given much thought to findin’ her in . . . in a bad state.”

  “I don’t think she’s dead, Neely Kate, if that’s what you’re thinki
ng. I bet she’s hiding with Nikko for some reason. Mud obviously thinks the same thing. Otherwise why would he have sent men to Nikko’s house?”

  Tears filled Neely Kate’s eyes. “Maybe they were looking for something they thought Nikko had. He told his sister he was getting out of trouble, but what if he just said that to get her off his back? Maybe he stole something from them.”

  I took her hands in mine. “Maybe. We definitely need to check out his trailer.”

  “Don’t you think Mud’s guys would have found what they were looking for if it was in there?”

  “Maybe not.” I shrugged. “Maybe Nikko hid it good enough that they couldn’t find it.” I gave her a hopeful smile. “His sister might know where it is. Or maybe she can help us figure out where Nikko and Dolly are hiding.”

  “Thank you for helping me.”

  “Of course.” I gave her a hug. “We’re best friends. If you need my help, I’m there for you. No questions asked.”

  We drove back to the salon, where Nancy was finishing up Alaina’s hair.

  “You actually came back,” Alaina said, her tone not quite as friendly as before.

  “We said we would,” Neely Kate said.

  “How do I know you really have a cousin who’s missing? How do I know you’re not working for Mud?”

  Neely Kate pointed to me. “Does she look like the kind of girl who’d work at Gems?”

  Alaina scrutinized me for several seconds. “No, I guess not.”

  Part of me wanted to protest, but then I reminded myself that that was a good thing.

  “We’re trying to find my cousin. I swear it. If we can just look at Nikko’s house to look for any clues, it might help. Both of us.”

  When Alaina didn’t look entirely convinced, Neely Kate dug out her phone and started scrolling on her screen. “Look.” She moved closer to her and showed her the screen. “This is Dolly Parton. She’s my cousin, and I’m scared to death something awful has happened to her.” Neely Kate’s voice broke. “So I’m beggin’ you, please help us.”

  Alaina looked up at Neely Kate and nodded. “Okay, but if I find out you’re lyin’, I’m gonna snatch you bald.”

  What was it with women wanting to rip out Neely Kate’s hair? But she took it in stride and lifted her chin. “Well, just in case you screw up my intentions, it’s a good thing I have a lot of hair. Now let’s go.”