Down & Dead In Dixie (Down & Dead, Inc. Series)

by Vicki Hinze

  “Definitely.” I speculated reasons aloud, and Mark circled the block.

  On the second round, he pulled into the drive.

  I panicked. “What are you doing?”

  He covered my fisted hand with his. It felt warm and comforting, and he softened his tone to match his touch. “We can drive around and guess all night, but we won’t know anything until we go in and ask him, Daisy.” I opened my mouth to object, but Mark stilled me, lifting his hand to my shoulder. “Listen, if what you told me is fact, Lester would never put you in jeopardy. If he’s here, he’s either convinced it’s safe or so scared he has to warn you of something.”

  “Maybe.” My mouth went dust-dry. “I’m really not a hundred percent sure he isn’t a brick short of a full load, Mark.”

  “He’s not crazy. He’s sly. Busting you out of jail—”

  “In his underwear and a ski-mask.”

  “Which he didn’t wear inside.” Mark put the Honda in park and killed the engine. “I’d think he has a compelling reason or he wouldn’t have come. Let’s go in and ask him what it is, okay?”

  “You’re right. Of course, you are.” Mark was good for me. Calming. Rational. From the moment Jameson Court had blown up, I’d left rational in the dust. It amazed me that he hadn’t. How did he do that? “Okay. Let’s go.” I opened the door and got out of the car before I could change my mind.

  We didn’t have to wait to get inside to hook up with Lester. The car door shutting echoed in the still night and before the sound settled, he came rushing out of the funeral home’s front door.

  “Daisy girl.” Relief flooded his lined fine. He looked back to the open doorway and raised his voice. “It’s them. They made it.”

  I walked with Mark up the sidewalk and saw a brass sign: Paul Perini. Then below his name: Funeral Home. Justice of the Peace. Taped to the wood siding underneath the brass sign, someone had taped a note scribbled in black marker. It was bold and I read it easily in the dim porch light. No live bait this week. Pete Ladner’s gone hunting. Charlene at the corner store’s got some.

  What kind of hole-in-the-wall was this place? Who bought bait from a funeral home or went there for a justice of the peace? From Mark’s wary glance, he felt equally uneasy about this whole Dixie plan.

  Lester grabbed me in a bear hug. Thin and wiry, he shook hard. When he finally let go, he nodded at Mark then extended his hand. “You sure you wasn’t followed?”

  “Actually, we were followed. But we lost whoever it was before we left the city.”

  “Not to worry, then. That was Emily and me. You’re safe for now.”

  I didn’t feel safe. When the people after me stop following, you’re anything but safe. Of course, they had just bombed Jameson Court. They’d want a little distance from that for a short time. But as sure as they’d backed off to avoid authorities on the bombing, they’d be back after me—us. They were after Mark and me now. “Why were you following us, Lester? And what are you doing here?”

  “I wasn’t following you exactly, I was trying to rescue you,” Lester said, sounding urgent and more than a little grumpy.

  The mothball smell of Emily’s car—and Lester reeked of it—could do that to a hearty soul, much less to Lester. Poor man probably had a wall-banger of a headache. “Rescue me from what?”

  “Not here or now, girl.” He motioned toward the door. “I’ll tell you inside. Just so you’re sure as certain no one else followed you here.”

  “It’d take a guide with GPS or a satellite, Lester,” Mark said. “The roads leading into Dixie are deserted, and I was extremely cautious.”

  “There’s a reason we like our roads empty. We want to know what’s coming.” A short man, thin and about Lester’s age with bright blue eyes and silver hair stepped out on the porch and extended his hand. “Glad you got here in one piece, Mark. I’m Paul Perini.”

  Mark shook his hand. So did I.

  “Daisy.” He spared Lester a glance. “Every bit as beautiful as you said, Lester.” Pivoting to me, Mr. Perini added, “He always did have an eye for women.” A smile curved his full mouth. “Now, I understand from Lester that the two of you want to get married tonight.”

  Mark choked. “What?”

  “Married?” I darted a look at Mark to make sure he hadn’t fainted. Still upright. Frankly, I was grateful he hadn’t tossed me out of the car on my foolish elbow. That was a major score in my book. Nobody had said anything about marriage. “Lester, why would you tell Mr. Perini that?” I couldn’t make myself repeat the “m” word.

  Lester pursed his lips to explain but, before he could get wound up tight, Mr. Perini answered me. “Because he knows you need a reason for coming through Dixie at all, much less this time of night. One that won’t raise suspicion. People come here to marry in the wee hours now and then.”

  While I absorbed that, I primed to ask again why Lester was here.

  Mr. Perini snatched the opportunity to divert focus. “Lester says the two of you drove over from Sampson, Alabama to get married.” Hiking a slim shoulder, he hand-signaled his brass sign. “Before you say anything, think. You got two possibilities in this situation,” he told me and Mark. “Either you’re here for a wedding or because you’re dead. I don’t suppose I need to remind you that corpses don’t drive or wed.” He scratched at his neck and squinted. “Marriage is common sense, really. Anything but a wedding creates a dilemma.”

  “Muddles things up good and proper,” Lester agreed. “Good and proper.”

  Justice of the Peace and funeral director. Logical, but problematic. I didn’t dare look at Mark to see how he was taking this development. “I see.”

  “The wedding was my idea,” a woman said from behind me.

  I recognized her voice. “Emily?” I turned to see her still dressed as Cinderella, as she had been at Mark’s party. “What are you doing here?”

  “Lester and I had to come for the wedding.”

  I did glance at Mark then, and he looked reasonably calm. He slid me a questioning look I well understood. Lester and Emily . . . maybe they were both crazy. I cringed my uncertainty and asked Lester, “Is that your cover? This wedding?”

  “Well, yeah, sort of,” Lester confessed, lumbering a couple steps closer to the door. “But I’ve been noodling on the matter, Daisy girl, and if you two are going to die together and then run together to start over, you ought to be married or kin.” Lester spared Mark a sharp eye. “He sure don’t look at you like no brother, and you don’t look at him like no sister neither. Ain’t no help for it. We need a wedding, and that’s all I got to say about that.”

  I didn’t know what to say about any of this, and Mark apparently didn’t either. He didn’t utter a sound. What was he thinking? Oh, how I wish I knew.

  “What’s the problem?” Mr. Perini hiked his shoulders. “It’s a solid cover.”

  No one answered.

  He went on. “Daisy, Mark. You need to understand. In small towns, there are no secrets. That’s not an opinion, it’s the way of things. You need a plausible reason to be here for your protection, and we need a plausible reason for you being here for our protection.”

  Emily piped in, clearly hoping to make the idea more agreeable. “I brought you a wedding dress.”

  Hopefully it didn’t include a ski-mask. “This wouldn’t be a real wedding though.” I struggled to slot this new wrinkle into Lester-logic and to give Mark and myself a little reassurance. “I mean, Mark and I won’t legally be married. It’s just a cover, right?”

  “Actually, I’d prefer it was real.” Mark looked at Lester then at me. “When you were Lily, we were heading toward serious relationship territory anyway, Daisy. Before all . . . this.”

  Mark wanted to really marry me? That totally boggled my mind.

  Lester, Emily and Mr. Perini all spoke at once. I couldn’t untangle their conversation to make sense of it. Frankly, I couldn’t grasp a thought or sift through anything.

  The uncertainty in Mark and
the way his body tensed and he spread his feet, he seemed more like a man girding his loins for battle than a man seriously interested in marrying a woman.

  Tired of waiting for a reaction from me, he pulled me off the sidewalk and onto the lawn, then looked me straight in the eye. “Everything between us—I thought it was real. Was it?”

  That, at least, I could answer easily. “It was, yes. But I didn’t think it put us on a relationship express lane to an altar.”

  “Put that way, marriage doesn’t sound so appealing to me, either.”

  I’d hurt him. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not enough.” He stiffened even more and his expression hardened. “Before tonight, I had a home, an apartment, a successful business, money and no significant worries. Speaking bluntly, you’re the reason I’ve lost everything. Even my life is in jeopardy.”

  “Mark, I didn’t mean—”

  He lifted a hand, motioning me to stop. “I know, and I’m not judging you. I’m just stating the facts. They are what they are, Daisy.”

  On the sidewalk, Emily nodded, obviously weary of pretending to be as deaf as a stone. “I have to say, he’s right about that, pet.”

  “Sure is,” Lester agreed from beside her. “Though I can’t say you’re selling the idea of marrying by pointing it out, son.”

  I shot the two of them a glare that’d stop a clock, then shifted to Paul Perini. “Well, don’t you have an opinion?”

  “Do I need one?” He sniffed and plucked a leaf from a squatty bush. “Seems to me, Mark has the matter well in hand. Guilt is a powerful motivator, and the fact is, you are guilty, Daisy. No disputing that.”

  Lester nodded emphatically. “Absolutely, no way to see it otherwise.”

  “Will you guys please stop helping me? The woman will run until she lands on a different planet.” Mark’s admonishment sounded more like a plea. He turned his back to them and faced me on the grass. “If I’m allowed to make my point . . . I don’t want to make you feel guilty.”

  “Well, what’s your point, then? Because guilty is exactly—”

  “No,” he cut in. “Everything I said is reality. Intentional or not, I have lost everything else at your hands, Daisy. Since I have, I think it’s fair that you should at least do this for me.”

  “Marry you?” Who could have expected this? From Mark? I couldn’t absorb it.

  “It’s one little thing.”

  Marriage? Little? One little thing? At the moment, he sounded as fickle as Lester and Emily. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “You want to marry me because I owe you?” I couldn’t believe this was coming from him.

  “Seems fair,” Emily said. “Like the man said, he has nothing else.”

  “Appears right as rain to me,” Lester added. “It’s one little thing, Daisy.”

  Mr. Perini opened his mouth.

  I lifted a hand. “Don’t.” He snapped it shut and I looked at Mark. “Is this because of what Lester said about marriage or kin, because you don’t have to—”

  Mark went quiet. Everyone did. I held my breath and waited, knowing the next words Mark uttered would forever alter the direction of my life. One way or another, a major change was upon me.

  “With all due respect, no. Lester has nothing to do with this. It’s about you and me, Daisy. You talked about your dreams and what you want. This is about my dreams and what I want.”

  His dreams. His wants. Since losing his family in Katrina, Mark had been alone. He didn’t want to be alone again. Suddenly his reasons for wanting to marry me made sense, and they touched something deep inside me. Something so deep I couldn’t pinpoint where it started or ended but it was there and real and it ignited a yearning in me so strong it nearly buckled my knees. Mark wanted me to be his home. His family. Could a person do that? Be that? I had never before considered the possibility.

  “Now this,” Emily said, “I’m afraid, I don’t quite understand.”

  “No need to.” Lester patted her arm. “Look at her, Em. She understands.”

  Stepping closer, Mark took my hands. “Daisy, think of it this way. What difference does marrying me really make to you? It matters to me, but even if you object, marriage is only ’til death us do part, and we came here to die—at least, legally.” His hand trembled on my arm. “I’ve tried to be good to you and I’ve never asked you for anything except to spare me from having to ever touch computers. But I am asking you for this. For me. Because I need it. Marry me, Daisy.”

  The truth slammed into me and stayed put. It wasn’t living alone, Mark wanted to avoid. It was dying alone. After losing his family, he couldn’t bear to die alone—even if that death was figurative. I mulled a bit. Having lost my family, I understood what this meant to Mark. And after a little thought, I sorted it out in the deepest recesses of my soul.

  Emily let out a sigh and leaned into Lester. “Isn’t he romantic?”

  Lester covered her hand on his arm.

  It was romantic, though I didn’t say so. But more romantic was a lovely twinkle in Mark’s eye. Only he had ever looked at me with that twinkle, and my gut alarm warned me it was beyond rare and special. Only the very blessed saw it, and likely only once. I can’t explain it, but I trusted that twinkle.

  My heart seconded my opinion, beating hard and deep. Still my head hadn’t caught up with what was happening here and, until it did, it wouldn’t agree and come along for the ride. “Why do you want to marry me, Mark?”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt—especially there,” Mr. Perini said. “We’d all like to hear the answer to that one. But we need to move this inside.” He jerked his head, motioning across the street to where a woman in a bathrobe had come outside, looking for her dog. “You can finish your debate there—but keep it short—Lester needs to update you on some important information.”

  The woman neared her sidewalk and shouted. “Everything okay over there, Paul?”

  “Just fine, Mrs. Baker. A couple from Alabama, wanting to get married.”

  “Glad it ain’t a funeral,” she shouted back. “They sober?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Come here, Dutch.” She yelled at the tiny, fluff-ball dog. He came running to her, tail wagging and tongue lolling. “Good luck to you, kids.”

  “Thanks,” I called back and, still mired in a mental fog of uncertainty, I edged toward the front door. Mark Jensen wanted to marry me. Me? I’d cost him everything and he wanted to marry me. He knew we didn’t have to marry to start over together, and that we’d be fake-dying together either way, so his reason for wanting to marry me couldn’t be living or dying alone. Those were givens. It couldn’t be that we had been moving in that direction anyway, either. We had a bond, to be sure, but it was leap between a bond and matrimony. So what was his reason?

  The fact that I’m crazy about the man makes me wish he’d insisted because he had fallen madly in love with me, but I’ve never seen proof that kind of love exists, so I’m not sure I believe in it. Doubtful I’d know it, if I did see it. I puzzled through it all anyway, but in the end, my money was not on that horse in this race.

  Marriage.

  The word alone set me to trembling. People I know and marriage hadn’t worked out so well. It certainly hadn’t been a bundle of bliss for my mother.

  Marriage?

  Mark had to be giving me a hard time. Didn’t he? I wasn’t sure. I’d explained everything, and he hadn’t come unglued. I’d expected he would and prepared for it despite the fact that him coming unglued didn’t fit in with a thing Craig Parker or Jackson had said about Mark. So maybe he wasn’t giving me a hard time. Maybe insisting on marriage was just his way of venting. Needling me like Jackson had when he went through that he-man stage. He certainly had just reasons for venting. In his shoes, I’d be a raving maniac.

  Venting. That had to be it. I’d cost Mark huge and he wanted me to pay huge. But even then, shackling himself to me hardly seemed the way to do it. Not even in a short-term until-we’re-dead-kind-o
f-marriage shackle. Or maybe it was a control thing. The man had lost everything and all of that had been out of his control. This he could control. Yet that only made the logic cut, if he demanded I marry him. He hadn’t demanded, he’d asked. So that couldn’t be the reason. I mentally searched for another.

  Was he protecting me? Protection would be like him, but it certainly didn’t require marriage. Punishing me? That’s so not his style. What was left?

  I had no idea—and no further time to ponder on it.

  Mr. Perini led the pack of us into a large reception area that was tastefully decorated and informal. A large desk sat on the right side of the room, several chairs lined in a straight row on the left. “Barry,” Mr. Perini called out, stretching then grabbing a car tag from a stack on a shelf behind the desk filled with books. When Barry joined us, Mr. Perini said, “Replace the plate on that Honda with this one and bring me the old tag.”

  Barry could have been twenty or fifty. He stood slightly taller than Mr. Perini, but with the long hair and gnarly beard, wearing jeans and a faded t-shirt for some rock band, guessing his age was impossible. He mumbled a greeting to us, then took the plate and eased out a side door.

  “This way.” Mr. Perini led us through a reception area to a large, comfortable room filled with groupings of cushy sofas and little tables. “Have a seat.”

  We all sat on the sofas. Mark and me across from Lester and Emily.

  Mr. Perini eased down into the lone chair he clearly preferred, gauging by the dents in its seat. “You’d better tell her now, Lester, so she understands exactly where she is before she decides whether or not to accept Matthew’s proposal.”

  “It’s Mark.”

  Paul stared at Mark long and hard. “For now. Soon it’ll be Matthew, if you like it. Matthew Green.”

  Mark thought a second, then nodded. “I’m good with that.”

  “Tell me what, Lester?” Surely the news this night couldn’t get any worse. I mean, what was left? Then it hit me, and I gasped. “Is something wrong with Jackson?”

  Mark flinched. Before he could object, I spared him a glance. “I told you Jackson was my brother.”