“I’m beginning to realize how difficult this has been for you, having to leave your ballet lessons and your school and your friends and adjust to an entirely different kind of living,” Mom said. “There’s been a great deal of emotion involved, and I think that’s what’s making you feel so caught up in this problem. Believe me, there’s nothing about Lana Jean’s disappearance that you’re supposed to know or do.”
I nodded halfheartedly, and she said, “Wash your face, and you’ll feel a great deal better. I’m going to make cheese tortellini for dinner. Okay?”
“More than okay.” I tried a smile. “Want me to help?”
Mom grinned. “Only after you wash your face.”
In the bedroom I groped through my pockets for another tissue, and pulled out the piece of black cloth I’d found in the woods. I had no idea what it was or what it meant, but I folded it and tucked it into my little jewelry box for safekeeping before I went to the bathroom to wash my face.
Mom’s right. I had nothing to do with any of this, I told myself over and over as I splashed cool water against my swollen eyelids, but there was no way I could shake the creepy, uncomfortable sensation in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to get involved with Travis? Maybe there was something left for me to do.
On Thursday, Mom sent word to school that she’d pick me up. I knew that something was under way, so I raced out of my last class and grabbed my books from my locker. Billy Don suddenly stood in my way, as solid and wide as the front door I’d been aiming for.
“You want to go out Saturday?” he asked.
“I can’t Saturday,” I said. “I—I’ve got a lot to do.”
For a minute his forehead puckered up and he said, “You’re still going with me to the dance, aren’t you?”
I could just imagine spending the evening dancing with this guy, while he mashed my toes with his king-size shoes, but I’d promised, so I smiled up at him and answered, “I’m looking forward to it.”
He grinned like a little kid and said, “I don’t go out much on dates, but my mom taught me to dance, and I’m a good dancer. I really am.”
“Speaking of moms,” I said. “I’m sorry to hurry off, but my mom is waiting for me.”
“Maybe,” he said as he stepped aside, “some time we could go to a movie too.”
“Maybe,” I told him, and dashed out to the parking lot.
Mom held open the door, and I jumped into the passenger seat just as she took off. “What’s the rush?” I asked.
“I got the results of the test on the dirt samples you took from the Boggses’ property,” she said. “Toxic, with a capital T. I won’t go into details, but it’s dangerous stuff.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “What are you going to do next?”
“Interview the Hawkins brothers,” Mom answered. She took her eyes from the road just long enough to smile at me. “Remember, you made me promise I’d take someone with me.”
“That’s right.”
“I made an appointment with Bubba Hawkins,” Mom continued. “Then I called Sheriff Granger and told him about the appointment and asked if he’d come along. He informed me that he couldn’t get involved in private business matters, which is what I expected him to say.”
“Then why did you ask him?”
“So there’d be a record of where I’d be, just in case.”
“Mom!” In spite of the warm day, my backbone turned to ice. “Do you think the Hawkinses would try to harm you?”
“I always take precautions,” Mom said. “I even reported the time and date of the meeting to my Houston investigator.”
I suppose I looked as scared as I felt, because Mom gave me another quick look and said, “Katie, I wouldn’t take you with me if I thought there was any danger. I asked you to come because, primarily, I want a witness. There’s also the chance that you might catch something I’d miss.”
“Like what?”
“Some of my best information I’ve stumbled upon,” Mom said. “It wasn’t freely given. Sometimes it was even withheld or disguised, but people often let things slip without realizing it, or leave something in plain view simply because they’re so used to it being there they really don’t see it.”
I thought a moment and said, “I doubt if they’ll have a stack of labels lying around saying toxic waste.”
Mom laughed. “We may not discover a thing. However, Bubba Hawkins will. Although I obviously won’t make any accusations.”
I don’t know what I expected Bubba Hawkins to look like—maybe a big guy in overalls and a straw hat—but I was surprised at the well-groomed, slender man in a dark blue business suit who politely greeted us as his secretary, a quiet woman who looked too young for the gray hairs at her temples, led us into his office.
“Thanks, Shirley,” he said as she hesitated, studying Mom with a questioning gaze.
Shirley took the hint and quickly left the office, but I noticed she left the door slightly ajar. Did Shirley think she’d have to run to her boss’s defense?
Mr. Hawkins pulled out two comfortable chairs for Mom and me and seated himself behind his large, highly polished desk. Tipping his fingers together like a tent under his chin, he smiled and asked, “How may I help you, Miz Gillian?”
At least his speech carried the familiar broad coastal accent. Glad that I hadn’t been completely wrong, I began to relax.
Mom seemed perfectly at ease. “I’d like to talk to you about the toxic waste you’ve contracted to dispose of. How is it handled? Where is it stored?”
Mr. Hawkins’s smile spread a half-inch wider. “I understand you were just down in Brownsville, trying to cause some trouble for the manufacturing companies and the farmers in that area.”
Mom didn’t even blink. “Have you ever seen a perfectly beautiful little baby born without a brain stem?” she countered.
“C’mon now,” he said, his accent growing thicker. “Lots of things cause birth defects, such as the babies’ mammas drinkin’ and smokin’.”
“And toxic waste infecting the drinking water.”
He cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter. “Nothing got proved.”
“Not yet,” Mom said, “but there will be an inspection of the water for the next two years.”
Mr. Hawkins actually smirked. “Is that what you’re promising me?”
“Look, Mr. Hawkins,” Mom said. “You know I can make enough of a stir to cause a thorough inspection of your company, even if we have to wait for it. I can also make sure that the truth about your business dealings comes out.”
He had his mouth open to answer, but she broke in. “I’m not trying to put you out of business. What do I have to gain? Nothing. I’m trying to make sure that people aren’t harmed by disposal being done improperly instead of properly. There are safer containers than those fifty-gallon metal drums, which corrode and leak. Landfills can be dug much deeper, and certain toxic materials can be burned, not stored.”
He leaned forward, resting his clenched hands on his desk. His knuckles were stretched tautly and I could see a vein throbbing in the back of one hand, but he spoke carefully. “What do you mean, you’re not trying to put me out of business? Do you have any idea how much more expensive those containers are than the metal drums? Or how much it costs to dig the extra-deep landfill? Or the high cost of incinerating materials?”
“Those costs can be passed on to the companies who hire you to dispose of their wastes.”
His laugh was more like a bark. “Sure. What do you think will happen if I submit a bid twice as high as my competitors’ bids?”
“What do you think will happen to people who drink toxin-contaminated water or who live on toxin-saturated land? I’m sure you’ve heard that the normal brain cells in the body are able to resist absorbing most poisons from the blood for a period of time. It’s called the ‘blood-brain barrier.’ But sooner or later that barrier breaks down, and brain damage begins.”
“Scare tactics,” Mr. Hawki
ns muttered.
“Scientists have found that people infected by toxic waste suffer chromosome damage. Damaged chromosomes can mean a greater-than-average rate of birth defects and cancer. What about Anita Boggs and her family, and the others who live in the houses built over your landfill? Are you willing to cause such suffering to them?”
Mr. Hawkins angrily jumped to his feet. “Get off my back! I don’t know why you picked our company to attack, when nobody around here’s been hurt or even had cause to complain, exceptin’ Miz Boggs, whose mind went kind of strange after she lost her baby. But you can’t lay that on me!” His voice grew louder, and his face turned red. “You want crooked companies cheatin’ on toxic waste disposal? I can give you names! Midnight haulers who drive to remote areas and dump the stuff at the sides of the roads, or in bayous where no one will know! Companies who sell contaminated oil to lay on roads or use as fuel! You want names?”
“Yes,” Mom said quietly as she took a notebook and pen out of her handbag, “I do.”
Mr. Hawkins stopped abruptly, flopping into his chair. He poured himself a glass of water from a carafe on his desk and stirred through his desk drawer until he pulled out a bottle of pills, dumped a couple into one hand and popped them into his mouth. He took a long drink of water before he calmly answered, “You got me upset, and when I get upset I talk too much. I’ve got nothing more to say.”
“You aren’t going to give me the names?”
“What names?”
“There’s no reason to single you out. All the waste disposal companies should obey the laws.”
Mr. Hawkins didn’t answer. He and Mom just stared at each other for a couple of minutes. Then Mom said, “Before we leave, may I get a look at the drums you have stored behind this building?”
His smile barely sneaked onto his face. “Why? So you can see how they’re labeled?”
Mom nodded, and Mr. Hawkins laughed. “Sure, you can see the ones close by if you want, and you’ll find their labels are all in order. I can’t let you down into the lot, though, because you’d ruin your pretty clothes.”
“I understand,” Mom said without a hint of sarcasm.
He looked surprised, but stood and motioned us to follow him.
As he led us through his outer office I noticed Shirley get up from her desk and watch us pass. I saw that her face looked as if she were watching a funeral procession. Whose funeral? I thought.
We walked through the building with people either staring or glaring at us. Out at the back, we stood on a sort of loading dock. We could see for quite a distance down the low, sloping hill—every scrap of space covered with metal drums.
Mom had her handbag clutched to her chest. She slowly looked around, facing first one direction then the other. I was careful not only to keep out of her way but to keep Mr. Hawkins from getting in front of the hidden camera Mom had put inside her handbag. It was a clear day, and she was going to get some good pictures, which could easily be enlarged.
Impatiently, Mr. Hawkins ushered us down concrete steps and across a driveway to an area in which fifty-gallon drums were arranged in neat rows that stretched half a block wide. “Take a look at the labels,” he said.
Mom obediently looked and secretly snapped her photos. I looked, too, but label after label listed the contents as iron filings from some manufacturing company. “Iron filings?” Mom said. “What else is in these drums?”
“Iron filings,” Mr. Hawkins said with a grin.
“I got a glimpse of the drums down at the foot of your property,” Mom told him. “They were corroded and oozing something that wasn’t from iron filings. Have you got anything here that’s correctly labeled? Such as contaminated fuel oil from the chain of garages you haul waste from? Maybe radiator coolants? Or Freon from air conditioners?”
Mr. Hawkins’s manner changed abruptly. “I think you’ve been here long enough, Miz Gillian,” he said. He put one hand on Mom’s right elbow and one hand on my left elbow and propelled us up the steps, through the building, and out the front door. People stopped their work to watch, and a couple of them followed us to the open doorway. Shirley was among them, and for the first time I thought I understood the expression on her face.
“Don’t ask for any more cooperation,” Mr. Hawkins told Mom, “because you aren’t going to get it.”
“Thank you for the help you did give me,” Mom said formally.
He took a step toward her and lowered his voice. “In case you’ve got a tape recorder going, which I wouldn’t put past you, I want to make clear that what I’m going to say isn’t a threat. It’s the simple truth. There are plenty of folks in town who depend on our company for jobs. If we’re put out of business the whole town’s going to suffer. The people of Kluney don’t take kindly to what you’re trying to do to us.”
Mom’s back stiffened. “I’m not trying to put your company out of business. I’m simply trying to get you to run an efficient, legal operation. Think about what you’re doing to your fellow townspeople. Slowly, but surely, you’re killing them. You have your responsibilities, and I have mine. I know I can live with my conscience.”
Mr. Hawkins didn’t answer. He just gave Mom the hardest, meanest stare I’ve ever seen one person give another. Mom didn’t flinch, but I was scared. All I wanted was to get away from that place as fast as possible!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On the way home I asked Mom, “Do you think the labels on the drums were phony?”
“Not on the drums we saw close at hand,” Mom said. “But it stands to reason that the Hawkinses wouldn’t keep toxic waste close to the place where they work.” She sighed. “It’s going to be a long, hard job to get the Hawkins brothers’ company to shape up.”
I thought again about Shirley. “What if you got some help from Bubba Hawkins’s secretary?”
Mom looked at me sharply. “Shirley? Did she say or do anything to give you the idea she’d help?”
“It was the expression on her face,” I said, “and the way she listened in to our conversation. At first I thought she was ready to protect Bubba Hawkins, but I changed my mind when I saw the look in her eyes. I think she was scared, Mom, and I know she was really unhappy.”
Mom smiled at me. “Thanks for picking up on that,” she said. “You’d make a good reporter, Katie.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I told her.
“Tomorrow morning,” Mom said, “I’ll take a plane to Austin. There are some state officials there who need to hear what I have to tell them. I can catch a commuter flight from Hunterville and be back by dinnertime.” She glanced at me again. “Will that be all right with you, Katie? You’ll be okay while I’m gone?”
I laughed. “Mom, I’m not five years old. I can take care of myself all day long. Honest! Besides, it’s Friday. During most of the day I’ll be at school.”
The air was thick and muggy the next morning, and I didn’t envy Mom her hour-plus flight in a small prop plane that would probably bounce all the way to Austin.
On the school bus Tammy expressed surprise that I’d go to the Future Farmers dance with Billy Don. “He’s not exactly the brightest guy in the world,” she said, and we both giggled.
I winced as we went over a bump and bounced against the uncomfortable seat. “I agreed to go with Billy Don because of B.J.,” I admitted. “B.J. was smirking and snickering and made me so mad, because I thought he’d hurt Billy Don’s feelings. So I told Billy Don I’d go with him, and then I wished I hadn’t, but it doesn’t make that much difference, because no one else is going to ask me anyway.”
“I thought Travis might.”
“Well, he hasn’t.”
“What if he does?”
I had to change the subject. “Are you going?”
“Laura told Julie that Stan told Marcus he was going to ask me.” Tammy went on, explaining the chain of gossip.
Everyone at school seemed to be in a good mood—even B.J. News got around fast that the night before, a fight had ta
ken place between two carnival workers down in Harlingen. One had shot the other and was being held on murder charges. Since it was the same carnival that had been in Kluney, Sheriff Granger was crowing about being right. “It’s out-of-towners causin’ all the trouble,” he’d told the local radio reporter, who expressed the opinion that now everyone in Kluney could relax.
But what about Lana Jean? I thought.
By the time I got home the weather was even worse, and by five o’clock a drippy fog had crept in from the sea. The phone rang, and I knew before answering that it was Mom.
Her voice was high-pitched with worry as she said, “Katie, I’ve been sitting in Austin for a couple of hours while the pilot waited to see if the weather would clear up. Now he tells me that the coast is fogged in, and he can’t fly back to Hunterville until the fog lifts sometime tomorrow morning.”
I didn’t like the news any more than she did, but I said, “Don’t worry about me, Mom. I’ll be okay.”
“I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I had no business leaving you there alone, especially after …”
I had to interrupt. What she said was scaring me. “Mom, hold on! You had no way of knowing we’d get fogged in. And it’s silly to worry about what might happen. Nothing’s going to happen. I promise.”
Obviously, Mom wasn’t counting on empty promises. “I’ve been thinking, Katie,” she said. “Can you ask Tammy to spend the night with you? Or go to her house?”
An immense feeling of relief swept through me. “Sure,” I said. “No problem, Mom.”
“Good,” she said, and I could hear her begin to relax. “Write down this number in case you need to get in touch with me. I’ll be at the Sheraton.”
I did as she said, and as soon as she finished asking me a million times if I’d be all right I said good night, hung up the phone, and immediately called Tammy.
It was Tammy’s mother I spoke to, not Tammy, who had gone to visit her aunt for the weekend.
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