I ran a brush through my hair and put my wallet in my hip pocket. Bobby Lee took off for his leads, hanging on the back porch, and Rudy stretched, then came out to watch. He knew he was not welcome in the common room while meals were being served. He was banned because he circled each table, abandoning all dignity and begging piteously for food. He didn’t enjoy riding in the van or the car. He only tagged along to see if Bobby Lee was going or staying.
I slipped on a pair of gloves as Bobby Lee stood on his hind legs and gently unhooked both leads from the large nails in the post rail. He pranced back to me trailing leads and drooling slobber. I kept the six-foot lead and carefully placed the twenty-foot lead, where the hook protruded the correct distance, back in his mouth and told him to hang it up. He raced back and worked it over the nail after several tries.
I knuckled Rudy’s chin and told him to guard the fort, then Bobby Lee did his jiggle dance all the way to the garage. I had grown so protective of him that it was influencing my decisions about using him for dangerous searches. He couldn’t understand why I seldom took him with me and why he was banished to languish on the porch, awaiting my return. I loved all the bloodhounds in the kennel, but Bobby Lee was special. He owned my heart and we were soul mates. I couldn’t force myself to put him in a dangerous situation, which meant I wasn’t using the best talent that would ever be available in this kennel.
Today I was going for an interview with Jimmy Joe’s parents and would take Bobby Lee along to enjoy the ride.
21
“You Can’t Choose Your Relatives …”
September 4, Wednesday, 9:00 A.M.
Bobby Lee sat in the passenger seat next to me in my truck, alert to every sight passing by us. He really did need to get out more, I thought, with a pang of guilt over how protectively I’d been treating him. But I couldn’t deal with it if ill came to Bobby Lee because of wrong choices I might make.
Wrong choices … like the choice I’d made to welcome Hank back into my bed—and my heart?
I pulled over into a Quik-Mart parking lot and sat for a moment, hands braced on the steering wheel. Where the hell had all this emotion come from? Just this morning, I’d been competently—more than competently—overseeing breakfast of day three of another training seminar. Now, unforeseen, unbidden, and unlikely emotions were welling up in me.
What I needed, I told myself, was to clear up the clutter in my life. That included forgetting Hank on a personal level, once and for all, although I knew I’d still have to work with him professionally. That also included making sure Jimmy Joe Lane didn’t intrude any longer on my hard-won freedom—the task at hand with this morning’s visit to his parents. Then I could focus on my work. That would be enough to see me through this life, right?
“Right?” I said aloud, looking at Bobby Lee. He looked back at me and drooled. I grabbed a cloth from under the front seat, mopped up the drool, and made a decision. I needed a cup of coffee and another look at the map to figure out how to get to Jimmy Joe’s parents’ house. It wasn’t as though they lived in a neat, trim little house in town that had a mailbox bedecked with large neon numbers. The senior Lanes—Obediah and Netty—lived farther out from Balsa City than Beulah and Hiram Burton, off one of the dirt roads on the edge of the Okefenokee swamp.
I tried to remember which red pushpin signified their home on the map of Lane family members I’d created on my office pegboard. The fact that when I’d talked to Obediah the night before his directions had included a “then turn left at the big rock and you’ll see our place” didn’t inspire much confidence. I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. I needed more caffeine to see this through.
I clipped Bobby Lee’s lead on his collar and we went on into the Quik-Mart.
As I was pouring myself a cup of coffee that smelled burned, a woman, her hair piled high up on her head in a woolly-looking beehive, and wearing a blue-and-green-plaid cotton dress and yellow house slippers, came over to me. She peered at me with cloudy, gray eyes, and said, “No animals in the store.”
I ignored the comment, and walked over to the counter. There she was again, behind the cash register, peering at me with those eyes. “No animals in the store,” she said again.
“This,” I said, “is a highly intelligent, talented bloodhound.”
“Still an animal.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You want me to just leave now or should I stay long enough to pay for the coffee?”
She took my money. I put the change in a collection can for the Humane Society. “A donation,” I said, “from my bloodhound.” I made sure to emphasize that last word. Cloudy-eyed Woman said nothing.
Back in the truck, Bobby Lee settled down in the passenger seat while I sipped my coffee—which tasted a lot better than it had any right to, given its burned smell—and stared at my county map and the instructions I’d written out for myself the night before. When I got my bearings, I pulled out of the Quik-Mart and headed toward the Okefenokee.
The Lanes’s house looked much like I expected it to, modest, grayish-brown clapboard, single story. A screened porch ran the length of the house and was filled with rockers. I understood that. The Lanes had no air-conditioning, most likely, which would drive people out onto the porch to try to cool off, or at least to seek relief from the stifling inside heat. The screening would be necessary to protect porch sitters from dive-bombing bugs.
Towering moss-laced cypress trees overshadowed the cabin and other trees, oak, mostly. I never fail to be impressed by cypress trees.
There were more than a dozen trucks and cars—all older—filling the front yard. No other junk, though. If Jimmy Joe ever needed to make a clean getaway from here, he’d have plenty of options to choose from, assuming he knew which options ran and which were just for parts. Scruffy grass grew tall around the tires of about half of the vehicles.
So why, since the Lane homestead fit the image I held of it in my mind, did something strike me as … off? The house, yard, trees, cars shimmered in the midmorning heat. Even though it was early September, this was still going to be a hot day.
Too hot, even at ten in the morning, to sit in my truck.
I clipped the lead onto Bobby Lee’s collar and we got out of the truck and headed up to the house.
I hollered out a “hello” at the porch steps, and when there was no answer, let myself and Bobby Lee in through the screen door. I knocked on the wood door to the house. Again, no answer.
I checked my watch—I was on time. I frowned. Obediah Lane had been excited the night before to hear from me, more than eager to welcome my visit. He’d even called out messages to his wife, Netty, as we’d talked: “It’s that Jo Beth Sidden woman, Netty. Says she wants to come and visit a spell.”
I was muttering under my breath, about to knock again, when the door jerked open. Standing in the door frame was a large man, and the sight of him made me inhale sharply. I’d expected a potbellied good old boy in a T-shirt, overalls, and working boots, with a craggy face and two days’ worth of beard scruff.
I’d gotten the good old boy part right—there’s something unmistakable, and undisguisable, about the type—and the craggy face. This man was a bigger, beefier version of Jimmy Joe, a vision of what poor Jimmy Joe might have looked like had he not existed all this time on prison fare. None of this was surprising.
The pin-striped navy suit, white dress shirt, and red tie certainly were. As was the cleanly shaved face, dotted here and there with toilet-paper spots where an unpracticed hand had brought the razor too close to skin. Did I mention we only dress up for church and funerals? Unless Obediah had a midweek service to attend, or someone in the Lane clan had just passed away, I couldn’t understand why he was so dressed up. Suddenly, my T-shirt and jeans seemed inadequate.
Obediah peered at me for a long moment. I was just about to explain who I was when he suddenly broke into a wide, toothy grin and pulled me to him in a viselike hug that clamped my arms to my sides, squeezed all of
the air out of my lungs, and pulled my feet up off the porch floor. I couldn’t even find my voice to protest.
“Netty, Netty, come quick! She’s here! She’s finally here!” Obediah hollered. The scent of Obediah’s breath was an odd mixture of moonshine and mint mouthwash.
“Well, lawd, Obediah, put the poor girl down afore you squeeze the livin’ daylights out of her.” I couldn’t see the source of the tinny, chirping voice because Obediah’s hug had pressed my face into his chest.
But Obediah obeyed the voice, setting me down carefully, then stepping back. I caught my breath and a view of the source of my rescuer’s voice at the same time.
Netty was as tiny and slender as Obediah was tall and beefy. She looked more like a doll-woman, although her thin face was well striped with wrinkles. She had on a fifties-style belted navy blue dress that was crisp yet shiny from repeated ironings. That Obediah and Netty had mated to create Jimmy Joe seemed humorous, in a surreal sort of way.
Netty also had her hands on her hips, a dust cloth in one hand, and a stern expression on her face as she gazed at Obediah, who was looking sheepish. Now that I could breathe again, I saw that she was clearly in charge, and I saw the humor in that as well. I suppressed a smile while thinking, Good for you, Netty.
Netty gave me a sweet smile. “Now you come on in, sugar pie, and make yourself at home.” She suddenly remembered the dust cloth in her hand, stared at it for a moment in horror, then tucked it behind her back while waving me on in with her free hand. That’s when it hit me—she and Obediah had dressed up, and cleaned up their house, solely on account of my visit. I felt my heart drop into my solar plexus. Surreal—and scary—was only beginning to describe the scenario that I’d created by my phone call the previous night, and into which I was now walking.
I stepped into the neat, wood-paneled front room, which smelled heavily of pine-scented cleanser. The overstuffed couch and two side chairs were covered in faded rose chenille that was now patchy with threadbare spots, many of which had been covered by crocheted doilies in a rainbow of colors—purple, white, blue, red, green, yellow, pink, and even brown—giving the furniture a bizarrely polka-dotted appearance. There was one coffee table of rough-cut pine, one end table with a lamp. No rugs, no books, no magazines or newspapers, no knickknacks, no decorations beyond the doilies.
A wood-paneled wall, punctuated by a shut door, formed the back of the room and divided off the rest of the house, which I guessed would be a kitchen, two bedrooms, and, I hoped for the Lanes’s sake, a bathroom The back wall was covered with newspaper clippings that had been cut out and tacked up. None of them were framed—just tacked up with a single tack at the top. As a result, they were all yellowing. And, I guessed, they were all about Jimmy Joe.
I wanted to go over and look at them, but decorum—and Netty’s voice chirpily urging me to “take the good seat”—kept me from it.
By “good seat,” I reckoned she meant the chair with the least number of doily polka dots, so I sat down in that chair. The Lanes sat down on the couch across from me, and beamed their wide grins at me, so I guessed my chair choice had been correct.
I cleared my throat, about to launch into my reason for being here, a plea for their help in getting Jimmy Joe to understand that he and I did not have a romantic relationship—in fact, we didn’t have any relationship at all—and that he needed to stay off my property and away from me entirely. But before I could speak, Obediah started talking.
“Just look at her, Netty,” he said, beaming at me. “Prettier even than Jimmy Joe said.”
Netty looked at me appraisingly. “She’s fine. Good bone structure. I expect their younguns will get Jimmy Joe’s cheekbones, though. Seems to run in the Lane family, no matter what the womenfolk bring to the party.” She laughed, blushing suddenly at her own reference to the concept of Jimmy Joe and me mating and creating future little Lanes.
“And that hound of hers,” Obediah said. “You can see it’s fond of her. Just like Jimmy Joe said.” Then his face collapsed into a frown of worry as he looked at Netty. “You think it’s right, though, a woman bonding with a dog like that? I mean, training bloodhounds might be fine for a man—”
Netty gave him a reassuring pat on the arm. “Don’t you worry, now, Obediah. Once she’s settled down with Jimmy Joe, she’ll want to give all that up, like a good and proper wife.”
Netty looked at me then. “Course, now, it’s going to be hard for Jimmy Joe to settle down, him on the lam from the law. So you can stay here with us. Or in our special hideout—”
“Shh, Netty. You know Jimmy Joe don’t want us telling her about that till after the wedding.” Obediah looked at me and beamed, all his worry about my “unnatural” bonding with Bobby Lee apparently forgotten for the moment. “Did you know there’s a song about Jimmy Joe? We thought it would be nice to have that sung at you-all’s wedding—after ‘Amazing Grace’ of course.”
“We hope you don’t mind us picking out the music, but we want to go all out. It’ll have to be a secret swamp wedding, what with Jimmy Joe on the lam again,” Netty said. “We’ve got the date set for next month, the twelfth—Jimmy Joe’s birthday! Did you know he picked that date and planned his escape just to have your wedding on his birthday? Isn’t that sweet? Maybe there’ll be another verse or two added to his song, about your wedding, then you can be in the song too.”
“Jimmy Joe said you’d be the best birthday present ever,” Obediah added, with a wink, chortling until Netty elbowed him, at which point he winced and started to redden. Netty took his renewed silence as an opportunity to start rattling on again, this time about possibly letting out her wedding dress for me to borrow, and all the foods the clan would bring in for the post-wedding feast—which would have to be held in a secret location, of course—and her one cousin who played good banjo music and her other cousin who played harmonica, so we could also have a dance, and so on, and so on.
Looking back, it would probably have been easier—and saved a whole lot of trouble—if I’d just seen the absurdity of the whole situation and excused myself from the Lanes’s house, laughed all the way back to town, then sworn out restraining orders on the whole clan.
But I didn’t want to have to do that. It brought back too many memories of being pursued by my maniac ex-husband, Bubba. And I didn’t want to swear out a restraining order as that would have meant calling Hank, who I’d decided I’d never voluntarily talk to again. And I surely didn’t see the humor in being discussed as if I were some fantasy come to life—a female commodity—for Jimmy Joe Lane.
“Mrs. Lane,” I said, startling her a little with my interruption. “You’ll need to contact your cousins and cancel the wedding music—”
“You have someone else you want to do the music?” Netty said, looking alarmed. “Oh, Billy and Jeb will be so disappointed—”
“Please! Listen to me!” I ground the next words out between my teeth. “Listen carefully. I. Am. Not. Marrying. Your. Son. Not next month. Not ever. Do you understand?”
Obediah and Netty stared at me, eyes wide with shock. Clearly, they didn’t understand—at least not fully. I sighed, went on with what I hoped would be an explanation that would clear everything up. “Look, I don’t know quite why Jimmy Joe has this fascination with me. But it has got to stop, okay? I’m not in love with Jimmy Joe. I never even met him until a few weeks ago. I am not marrying him. In fact, I came here because I hoped you’d get him to understand he has to get over this obsession with me. He must leave me alone.”
They continued to stare.
“Now, look,” I said. “I refused to do a search for Jimmy Joe after he escaped from Monroe Prison. I figure that means you owe me one. Please, save us all a lot of heartache and get it through to Jimmy Joe that he needs to forget about me and leave me alone.”
Obediah started shaking, looking for all the world like a little boy who’s just been told that no, he’s not going to get a coveted toy after all. “But—but—he told us about all
the letters you and him sent to each other. Poems. Love poems. How your tender words got him through all those awful nights in the prison, giving him the courage to break out again and again …”
I swear, the man actually sniffled and wiped a tear from his eye.
“Mr. Lane, I don’t know what all Jimmy Joe told you, but I’ve never corresponded a single word with Jimmy Joe. Your son is living in a fantasy world and the best thing you can do for him—”
“Are you calling my boy a liar?”
I turned my attention to the woman who a moment ago was swooning over the chance to become my mother-in-law. Now, she stared at me with hard, glittering eyes. Under different circumstances, this was a woman I could admire for her sheer grit.
She stood up, hands on hips. “No one calls my boy a liar,” she proclaimed, spittle flying from the corner of her mouth. “You—you—hussy. You—you—whore of Babylon!” Her bird’s chirp voice turned into a shriek. “You get yourself and that slobbering hound from hell out of my house, now! You’ll pay for this—”
“Mrs. Lane, I came out here to reason with you—”
Obediah put his face in his hands and started crying. Netty put her fingers to her ears and squeezed her eyes shut in a hear-no-evil, see-no-evil pose. “Jezebel! Man hater!”
I didn’t want to see what would happen if Netty Lane ran out of names to call me and decided to find a rifle and come after me.
I stood up, walked out, with Bobby Lee following me, and went back to my truck. Running would have been a more proper response, but I didn’t want to give the Lanes the satisfaction.
When I got back to paved road, though, I broke the speed limit by more than a few miles per hour.
22
“… But at Least You Can Choose Your Friends”
A Bloodhound to Die for Page 14