by Sharon Dunn
“Your girlfriend is right; you are a hippo crit,” Kindra said.
“I might be a hypocrite, but I’m a rich hypocrite.” He gathered up his titles, tapping them on the table to straighten them before turning back toward Ginger. “So I have your word that you won’t let this leak? I can write you a check right now. Just name the amount.”
“I don’t want your money, Mr. Lustrum.” Ginger was confident that the French woman would do any dirty work required.
Keaton squared his shoulders and tucked his shirt back in his pants. His attempt at regaining some level of dignity backfired. The follicle explosion on his head made that impossible. The polyester pants cinched up to his pectorals didn’t help either. “What do you want?”
“Your girlfriend has to tell us what she knows about Mary Margret.”
Renata glued her eyes to Keaton and made a sound that resembled hissing. He shot her a threat-filled look, eyebrows drawn together, head shaking.
“Did you…did you hurt my friend?”
“Keaton said I could not tell. He said people would find out about the box. I not thinking; I not mean to do it. I only try to get his box back.”
“I think we should go.” He grabbed Renata’s wrist and waved the titles in the air. “A word of this to anyone, and I can find a legal way to make your life miserable.”
Renata turned back around and opened her mouth as if to say something.
Ginger stood, unable to speak, processing what Keaton had said. No one had ever threatened her in that way.
Pressing the titles against his chest, Keaton yanked Renata toward the door. She neglected to close the door behind her, which afforded all of them the bonus feature of watching her break free of Keaton’s grasp and yell at him in French. Ginger didn’t speak a word of French, but she was pretty sure Renata wasn’t paying him any compliments. They both got into the Lexus, car doors slamming.
Suzanne spoke through the screen door. “Just like the nonsugar babies.”
“The what?” asked Kindra.
“I have friends who don’t feed their kids any sugar. So when the kids get around sugar and away from the parents…” Suzanne mimed stuffing her mouth. “Maybe if Keaton had just taken a moderate position and given himself permission to buy one aboveboard motorcycle, he wouldn’t think he had to have twenty hidden ones. He’s out of control. What did he think he was doing threatening Ginger like that?”
Outside, Keaton gunned the engine of the Lexus and performed a turn that sprayed gravel across the yard.
Stunned, Ginger continued to shake her head. She picked up the tote bag Renata had dropped. Empty. They must have thought they would locate the box and simply shovel it in the bag while Keaton distracted her with the life-changing message of the Organized Bible Society.
Arleta came and stood beside Ginger. “Do you think his threat was real?”
“I think he has an exaggerated view of how much power he has,” Suzanne said.
“They both know something about Mary Margret. We have to find a way to make them talk.” She massaged her temples. “I just don’t know how.”
Ginger picked up the broken shell box and tossed it in the garbage.
Ginger sat in Earl’s easy chair wearing her fuzzy slippers and a large purring cat on her thighs. She had spent the day and into the evening thinking about Keaton. If they confronted him, he would just make more threats. She could threaten him with blowing his cover about the motorcycles. That might be the leverage she needed. She had no idea how to threaten someone to get them to talk. Maybe Tammy could help in an unofficial capacity.
From where she sat, she could see the night-vision goggle catalogs she’d gotten for Earl sitting on her desk.
Her tingling leg threatened to fall asleep from the weight of Phoebe’s body. “Come on, baby, get off Mama’s lap. You’re cutting off all the circulation.”
In an effort to remove Phoebe from her thigh, she turned her head sideways. The chair smelled like Earl, the faint scent of musk and sweat and just plain Earl. She buried her face even deeper in the chair.
“Hey.” Earl stood in the doorway dressed in the Carhartt overalls she’d given him for Christmas. The ranch supply place had had a sale in July. The thought deflated her. She had never paid full price for a gift. Not even for Earl.
He rubbed his head. “I didn’t know you were still up.”
The cat jumped off Ginger’s lap, sauntered over to Earl, and rubbed against his leg.
Ginger jerked her head away from the chair. Had he seen her bury her face just so she could smell his scent? “I’ve just been up thinking.”
She wanted to tell him he had been right about how it would be good for her to buy a dress at full price, to quit being so cheap ’cause it hurt his feelings. Instead, she said, “Your dinner is in the refrigerator.” She leaned forward. “I can get it for you if you like.” She slipped back into domestic busy mode, the safe place. That’s not what Earl wanted. That’s not what she wanted. It wasn’t what soul mates did.
Earl held up his hand, indicating she didn’t need to. He tilted his head sideways. “Penny for your thoughts?”
Ginger crossed her legs at the ankle. “I charge full price now.”
She was stalling. She didn’t think she could even put her thoughts into words. Despite the slight paunch and thinning hair, Earl’s strong features were still handsome. The way the chair smelled like him, the thought of him, flooded her system with emotion. The power and the smoothness of his voice made her heart beat faster.
“I picked up some catalogs for night-vision goggles for you.” She pointed toward the desk. How trivial. That’s not what she wanted to talk about.
Earl walked the few feet to her desk and picked up one of the catalogs. He flipped through it. Ginger couldn’t gauge his reaction. His expression hadn’t changed. She wanted him to know she was thinking of him, of what he liked to do.
“I thought maybe I could get some for you, for when you go hunting, but I—” She wrapped the belt of her bathrobe around, her hand. “They cost a little more than I expected.” And I was too tightfisted to get them for you.
“Oh.” He nodded and smiled. “Nice. For hunting.”
Not exactly the over-the-top reaction she’d hoped for. Of course he probably would have jumped a little higher if she had put the actual goggles in his hand.
Earl dug into his overalls pocket. He walked the few feet to where Ginger lounged, grabbed her hand, held it open, and pressed a quarter into it. “Full price, for you.” His hand encompassed hers, warming it.
“I—I—don’t know if I can say what I need to say.” The longed-for conversation lay just beneath the surface of their words.
“Why don’t you come out and give me a hand with some stuff I’ve been working on? Don’t worry about talking; we’ll just, you know, hang.”
Memories of the previous disaster made Ginger’s chest tight, and she wasn’t sure if she knew how to hang. “Oh, Earl, I don’t think… Didn’t Trevor help you today?”
He leaned close and squeezed her hand even tighter. “Trevor isn’t my wife.”
Ginger sank deeper into the chair and relished the touch of his hand on hers. With all the mean things she had said to him, he hadn’t given up on her. “Oh, Earl.”
He winked at her. “Come on, take those fuzzy slippers off and get out of that bathrobe. Come see what I’ve been working on.”
Ten minutes later, Ginger found herself dressed and outside in the evergreens that surrounded their property. Being outside was a little less foreign than going into his shop…and he had said such sweet things.
Earl chattered as he walked through the trees. “Since I’m a hunter, I’ve been thinking that my inventions should have something to do with hunting. So I’ve been working on a couple things.” He held up one of the night-vision goggle catalogs. “That’s why I thought it was funny that you were thinking about my hunting, too.”
So that’s what that neutral expression had meant.
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br /> “We’re thinking along the same lines.” Earl grabbed her hands. “It’s because we know each other, Ginger.”
She felt light-headed. “Is that what it is, Earl? Is it really?”
They came to a small clearing where something was hidden under a blanket. The blanket was one of their good ones from the house. She hadn’t said he could take that outside and get it all dirty. She was here to be with him, ‘to hang’ as he put it.
She exhaled slowly. It was just stuff. Let it go. Just let it go. “What’s under the blanket?”
Earl waved his arms and annunciated as if he were presenting to the board of directors at Microsoft. Had he been waiting to share with her, planning a little presentation? “I was looking through one of my books on past patented inventions. And there was this guy who invented a decoy cow that you hid in until wildlife came close enough. Then you burst out of the cow and shot the wildlife. So I thought to myself, a cow? You don’t use a decoy beaver to attract ducks to a body of water. So here’s what Trevor and I came up with.”
He lifted the nice blanket and threw it on the ground, getting dirt and pine needles on it. Ginger trapped accusatory words by clenching her teeth. She was here to be with him, not clean up and alphabetize his life. In front of her stood what resembled a cross between a moose and an elk made out of leather, papier-mâché, and chicken wire. Earl had mounted some real elk antlers on the animal.
Ginger swallowed and tried to think of something supportive to say.
“Now this is just a prototype. It still needs work.” Earl mimed holding a rifle. “It’s designed so your shotgun goes up into the head. And come around this way.” She tiptoed to where Earl was pointing. “See, there’s a door so you can crawl in easily. What do you think? Very realistic, huh?”
“I don’t think most elk have doors, Earl.”
He dismissed her comment with a wave. “The elk never sees the door.” The hatch creaked when he opened it. “Try ’er out.”
Ginger stepped toward the beast. Earl tapped her shoulder before she slid all the way in. “Oh, and I got a gift for you, too.”
A gift? He had been thinking about her?
Right before the door squeaked shut, Earl said, “If you look out through her neck, there’s a 180-degree view.”
Earl’s voice was muffled. Being surrounded by chicken wire and plaster reduced sound. She sat on the chair inside the elk, which she noticed was their brocade footstool from the house.
“Pretty comfortable in there, huh?” Yes, she had always thought the brocade footstool was comfortable…for her feet. Ginger sighed. It was just stuff.
“Can you see?”
She leaned forward toward the elk’s neck. A colossal view of Earl’s eyes and nose caused her to jump.
“I installed the same kind of glass they use in spotting scopes. It enlarges everything. Works good, huh?”
Enlarges indeed. Earl’s pores looked like moon craters. She made a mental note to encourage him to wash his face with something other than Ivory soap.
“The gift is under the footstool.”
Ginger felt around and pulled up what looked like an ordinary leather purse. Her expression was probably just as blank as Earl’s had been earlier.
“It’s a travel purse,” Earl shouted into the elk. “It’s got a secret pocket for traveler’s checks and stuff. For our life of adventure. We are going to go places and do things.”
Ginger may as well have been holding gold and diamonds. The gift was that precious to her. “Yes, Earl, for our life of adventure…together.”
She decided then and there that she would go to the mall and pay full price for a dress to show Earl that she could be adventurous. Maybe she’d get him those night-vision goggles, too. No. Scratch that idea. She’d have to work up to that.
“Let’s pretend like you see an elk, and he is close enough for you to shoot. See that button on the side by his upper thigh?”
“I see it.”
“Push it.”
She pressed the button and was treated to a sudden abundance of light and wind and sensory information.
Earl shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth. “See, the head opens up, and you got your meat for the winter.” He grinned, looking at her in hopeful expectation.
“It’s really nice, Earl. Really.” She stepped out of the elk to stand beside him. “Well thought out.”
He rubbed his hands together. “This might be the one I get the patent on.”
His excitement about the future prospects for his invention, not the invention itself, made her laugh. “That would be so wonderful.” Honestly, she wasn’t that enthused about a papier-mâché elk, but his joy was infectious.
“I got something else to show you. Look inside the purse in the secret compartment.”
She stared at the inside of the purse. In the dim evening light, she had to study the lining for a long time to see that what she thought was a seam wasn’t a seam but a tiny hidden zipper. She unzipped the pocket and pulled out what looked like an ordinary flashlight with a spray nozzle on one end.
“When you hunt, you want things that are lightweight and multipurpose. One end is a light.” He pointed to a small button on the device. “And the other end contains pepper spray. In case you encounter a bear.”
“Or a creepy guy in a dark parking lot.” She turned it over in her hand. “Women would love something like this.”
“I hadn’t even thought of that.” He leaned a little closer to her face. “You’re good at the marketing end of things.”
“You just need a clever name.”
“We’ll work on that together.”
Work on that together. She liked the ring of that. She put the pepper spray/flashlight back in her purse.
“I have one more thing to show you.” He pulled two silver squares out of his pocket. The metal was only slightly larger than a credit card. “I’m still working the bugs out of this one.” He placed one in her hand.
“What is it?”
“A lightweight long-distance walkie-talkie. Sometimes when you’re hunting with a partner, you need to let him know the herd is headed his way. Cell phones aren’t reliable in the mountains, and walkie-talkies are too bulky.”
She stared down at the tiny silver box. “That’s a really good idea.” Way better than the elk and almost as clever as the pepper spray/flashlight. “You built this?”
“It’s still got some problems. Want to test it?”
He was like a little boy showing off his new toy. “Sure.” She giggled.
He held her hand in his. “This is your antenna. This is where you talk, and here is your on-off switch. Press it down when you want to talk. Let up when you want to listen.”
Ginger smiled at the truth of what Earl had said. “I let up when I want to hear you.” True, in more ways than one.
“Yes, that’s correct.” He stroked the back of her hand. His touch electrified her skin. “Walk that way into the trees, and listen for a clicking sound.”
After slinging her new purse over her shoulder, Ginger trudged on the thick undergrowth, holding Earl’s invention and enjoying the coolness of the summer night air. She looked behind her. Earl had disappeared. Branches shook where he must have gone. She kept walking. They had bought five acres with the house. Most of it was still forest, so she would have to walk a long time before she came to the end of their property line.
The silver card made a glitchy noise, and then she heard Earl’s voice. “Ginger, are you there? Over.”
“I can hear you, honey. It’s a little fuzzy.” She lifted her finger from the button.
Silence.
She pressed the button. “Earl?” She let up.
“You forgot to say over. Say over when you’re done.”
“Oh, sorry.” She walked without looking up, focusing on pushing the right buttons at the right time. “Still fuzzy, but I can hear you…over.”
“Keep walking. Over.”
When she gazed
upward, the sky had turned from light gray to charcoal. She pulled Earl’s clever flashlight out of the purse and clicked it on. The trees took on a dark shadowlike quality. Branches creaked. She shone the light on the walkie-talkie to see the buttons. “Earl, are you there?” She walked a few more steps. Oops. “Earl, are you there? Over.”
Nothing.
She stopped in the middle of a large clearing. “Earl, can you hear me at all? Over.” She walked a little faster. Come on, Earl, say something. Maybe this was one of the bugs he was trying to work out. It only worked for a couple of transmissions. She trudged through the trees. A branch brushed her face. She drew a protective hand up to the stinging scratch on her cheek.
She entered a meadow that sloped down. The sky had darkened in the ten minutes she had been walking. The flashlight only provided a small radius of illumination. She stopped and then turned in a slow half circle.
A bud of panic blossomed inside her. Trees stood motionless. Silence made her heart beat faster. Was someone watching her? Just like they had when she’d gone to Arleta’s? When she’d been with Suzanne and Kindra? Had Keaton come back to do more than threaten her? Ginger took in a ragged breath.
Again she pressed the button. “Earl, are you there? Over.” Her voice quivered. Static came across that may have had a voice hidden in it. She waited for the noise to stop. “I can’t hear you. All fuzzy. Over.” Goose bumps formed on her bare arms. She hadn’t brought a jacket. “I need to hear you,” she whispered.
She turned in the direction she thought was home. This forest wasn’t that big.
“Ginger, are you there?” His voice was faint. “Over.”
She felt a sense of relief that was bigger than the event seemed to warrant. It wasn’t like she had been lost in the woods for days, but her joy at hearing his voice made it seem as if she had.
She spoke into her husband’s invention. “I can hear you. I can hear you.” She gripped the walkie-talkie even tighter. “Oh, sorry. I can hear you. Over.”
“Tell me when your reception clears up. Over.”
“I can hear you, but I’m still losing words. Static too. Over.” She strode forward focused on the conversation. “Earl, say something. Over.”