Busybody, I wanted to say to Maggie. She set down the sugar. Poisoning complete, Maggie peeled her straw and stuck it in the tea.
The girl whispered behind her hand. “There was people here earlier talking about you.”
“Really?” I scooted my chair back a little. I felt Gertrude get to her feet. “About me writing Gidget’s book?”
She nodded, eyes round. “They said they was gonna put a stop to it.”
“Who were they?” I asked.
She screwed her mouth up, thinking, then said, “Some Houston folks. Dressed up sharp. I didn’t know ’em.”
I said to Maggie, “Probably the attorney for the Houston Arts Trust. She’s the enemy.”
The young waitress made a disgusted noise. “All I know is they was bad tippers. Mad because they got stuck here on account of the freeway shutdown, I guess, and taking it out on me.”
“What are people saying about that? The explosion, I mean,” Maggie said.
She put a hand on her chest. “People is wondering if it was some kind of terrorists. I heard there was a Houston lady in there got burned up.” She headed away, then stopped. “You know what was weird about them people is they wasn’t acting sad about that lady. They was sayin’ she had no business here and wasn’t gonna be missed nohow.” She bobbed her head, emphatic.
“How rude,” Maggie said.
“I know.” She walked to another table at the front of the restaurant.
We had time after our salads to pull the box between us and get out the stack of documents. I started with the yearbook.
“By the way,” I asked Maggie. “What’s the special?”
“Hell if I know. It’s just better not to order from the menu.”
“So you’re saying the food here sucks?”
She picked up a piece of paper, and instead of answering me, her lips started moving slowly, forming words I didn’t understand.
I bent my head toward the document so that I could read it, too. It was the one in the language that I’d assumed was Wendish. “I think that’s Gidget’s birth certificate.”
Maggie didn’t answer. Her lips kept moving and her face folded inward.
The waitress swung her tray from shoulder to hip height and balanced it on a stand a few feet away from our table. Beef tamales with red gravy, rice, and beans. Mexican, at a steakhouse. “Anything else for y’all?”
“Not me. Maggie?”
She shook her head without lifting her eyes from the paper.
As the waitress was leaving, she gave me a look, like what’s up with her? I shrugged.
I perused the yearbook while Maggie read. The old annual fell open to a page with a scribbled notecard with Julie Herrington monogrammed at the top and a cutout piece of fragile yellow newsprint tucked inside. I looked at the notecard first.
Thank you for helping me come to my senses about Eldon. He’ll never leave his wife. I’ll just marry Lester—he’s a true Southern gentleman—and help him get his gallery, and someday you’ll be a famous artist and we’ll have fabulous shows for you there. You are the bee’s knees.
It was signed Love, JuJu in a girlish cursive with flourishes. My vision turned red. Greyhound and Julie? As in Lester’s ex-wife, before she married him? Was this the connection clouding Greyhound’s judgment? If this note was to Gidget, though, she and Mrs. Lester had been pretty close, too. I’d have to talk to Julie ASAP. Right after I killed Greyhound.
I replaced the picture and unfolded the newsprint. The Houston Chronicle. November 2, 1970. “Houston Tycoon Makes Pipelines a Family Affair.” A stern-looking man with heavy eyebrows and hair that looked like it was graying—hard to tell in a yellowed black and white—stood behind two twenty-somethings, a man and a woman. I didn’t recognize the older guy, but the younger two looked familiar.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Maggie breathed.
I put my clipping down. “What’s up?”
She spoke in a flat voice, eyes still locked on the page, but she handed it to me. “It’s my birth certificate.”
I stared at it, confused, then at her. “What?”
She smoothed the paper in front of me, pointing. “There. That’s my name written in Wendish. Myrtle Margaret. And don’t say a word about Myrtle. It’s a family name. And there’s my birth date. There’s not going to be another Myrtle Margaret in the world born on my birthday. But it’s not my mother’s name on it.” She looked up at me, her face pale. “It’s Anna Becker.”
My voice came out in a too-loud screech. “Anna Becker?” I got control of myself, spoke softer. “Your mother is Anna Becker?”
She shook her head. “It can’t be. My mother’s name is Charlotte Killian.” She put her finger on the scratch-outs over Gidget’s name. “Someone tried to cross this out. Maybe they just made a mistake with this one. Maybe Gidget’s baby was born on the same day as me.”
“This is very strange.”
She sat back, rolling her bottom lip in her teeth. “I have a birth certificate. It looks almost just like this. It has my mom’s and dad’s names and—” She jerked the document back in front of her, holding up a finger as she read the words slowly.
“I can’t even believe you can read Wendish.”
“Barely. But enough. See.” She tapped it hard with her finger. “This part’s different. On my birth certificate it says I was born at my parents’ house with a midwife. Here it says—” She shook her head, and her face paled. “No, this can’t be right. No.”
“What do you mean? What can’t be right?”
“It says I was born at the Becker farmhouse. At Gidget’s place.”
Chapter Thirty
Our waitress brought us boxes for our untouched food and expedited our check. Gertrude kept an eye on the to-go boxes for us. And a nose. And occasionally a tongue. We were on the road five minutes later with the birth certificate tucked into the yearbook with the old newspaper article and note to Gidget. It had crossed my mind to post the birth certificate to Her Last Wish, but it felt too personal about Maggie to me.
Maggie left a voice mail for her mother. “Mom? It’s me. I love you. I need to talk to you. It’s kind of an emergency. Please call me.”
Maggie floored Bess, and I clung to the armrest. The yearbook slid off the top of the box between us, landing on Gertrude in my lap. She yelped. I moved her gently to the floorboard and opened the yearbook, touching the birth certificate, then the clipping. So much had happened, so long ago in this sleepy town.
It had grown dark outside. Light from above spilled onto the pastures in front of Gidget’s house in a magical alchemy of mercury moonscapes and occasional white-gold firefly streaks. The light was bright enough that I caught a glimpse of the news clipping again. Pipeline. I squinted at the article. Buck Herrington. His daughter, JuJu. Her twin brother, Tres, fiancé of Helen Connally, true Texas political royalty, according to the article. The man and his adult kids at the diner, I realized. Was this Gidget’s benefactor? Or at least her impetus to leave?
Maggie parked Bess by the side gate. The outside lights were off, either burned out, or maybe I’d forgotten to leave them on. I shut the yearbook and left it on the seat as I scouted ahead for snakes with my iPhone flashlight. Gertrude jumped out of Bess, forgetting about the boxed tamales in an instant. She transformed into the Gertrude that had fetched me from the Quacker before Gidget died. She ran around erratically, barking in a shrill tone. I opened the gate, and she took off like a stubby racehorse toward the house. Whines interlaced her barks. She sprinted back to me, her tail tucked. I pointed the flashlight down at her. She was covered in blood.
“Dios mío,” I whispered.
Maggie bumped into me in the half-light. “What’s wrong?” Her eyes took in Gertrude. “Where are my dogs?”
My chest clenched. Janis and Woody running to greet us, barking and bounding—that’s what was missing. Suddenly I couldn’t get air into my lungs. I huffed in futile little pants.
Maggie was calling at the top of
her lungs. “Janis! Woody!” With nothing to light her way but the moon, she raced around the front yard, then around to the back of the house.
As quickly as it had come on, my emotional paralysis lifted. They were Maggie’s dogs. I had to help her. I sprinted to the back door and flipped on the lights, tossing my handbag onto the kitchen table as I did. That’s when I heard her scream.
It was high-pitched, operatic almost, drawn-out, and agonizing. “No. No, no, no.”
I hurried to her side. Her gorgeous animals, in the prime of their lives, lay side by side, their blood spilling out and pooling black and shiny into one puddle between them.
Maggie dropped to her knees. She put an arm around each furry, bloody neck and hugged them to her, rocking and screaming. Gradually, her cries morphed into rageful sounds. “I will kill the motherfucker that did this. I will kill him. I will kill him.”
I had both hands on her back as I crouched over her and her dogs. Their metallic odor was overpowering. I lifted a hand to shield my nose. “Oh, Maggie, I’m so sorry.” She didn’t seem to notice me.
“Gotta be a sick crazy bastard to hurt a dog. Who hurts a dog?”
My mind raced, and I processed my thoughts aloud. “Could it be about Gidget? Or me?” I stood up. My brain pricked with a delayed thought. My wildlife cam! I’d put the chip back in it. We’d be able to see who did this. I ran to it, knocking into the painted birdhouse, fumbling with the camera case latches. The chip was gone. I walked back to Maggie, processing, processing.
“They were everything to me.” Maggie had laid her upper body across the animals, so her voice was muffled.
Tears leaked from my eyes. “Cops first or a vet?”
She shook her head. “A vet won’t do any good. Cops not much better.” She sat up. Dark splotches covered her face. Even in the moonlight, I knew it was blood.
Gertrude sidled in between Maggie and the two dogs and laid her muzzle against Janis.
A calmness settled over me like a suit of armor. My focus sharpened as Maggie’s functionality deteriorated. I heard my voice like I was listening to dialogue in a movie. The general had to take command of the troops. These animals were dead, the chip was missing, but we were alive. Something was wrong, though, and we needed to get it together. “Somebody was here and murdered your dogs. I’m going to call it in and get Gidget’s shotgun.”
Maggie stood, wiping her eyes with her forearm, smearing blood like war paint across her cheeks. “Do you have a sheet? I want to put them in my truck.”
“Oh, Maggie.” I put my arms around her and hugged her. She melted, and I propped her weight on me.
The blood from the dogs was sticky, and now it was all over me, too. Keeping one arm around Maggie, I half-carried, half-dragged her into the house. When I turned on the lights, I didn’t scream, even though it was a shock. The place was trashed. Papers and photos were strewn everywhere. Cabinets stood open with broken dishes and glasses on the kitchen floor. Artwork was tossed around the house, and the walls were bare.
I steered Maggie toward Gidget’s room, for the shotgun and the sheet. In the master bedroom, clothes had been thrown all over the floor. Someone had shoved the mattress and box springs off the bed frame. The shiplap was broken in places, ripped down, hammered, or drilled, or maybe all of the above. Whoever had been here had worked fast. And probably had been watching us, waiting for us to leave. We’d only been gone—I looked at my watch—forty-five minutes. An hour, at most.
“Holy shit!” Maggie breathed, rousing enough that I let go of her. She picked up a picture.
I waded over Gidget’s possessions and picked a sheet off the floor, thinking aloud as I did. “This has to be about Gidget. But why now? And what are they looking for that they couldn’t have found when she was alive or in the last two weeks?”
I dug between the mattress and box frame. Eureka, the shotgun was still where I’d shoved it the other night, with the shells. I loaded the gun and stuffed shells in my pockets. On the other side of the room, a window was broken outward. Shotgun in hand, I inspected the window. Shards of glass still hung in the frame in jagged teeth, but there was enough space that a person could have exited this way, painfully. I leaned out. Glass littered the ground along with the wooden crosspieces from the window. From close range, I saw bright red blood running down one of the shards. A tiny scrap of denim hung from the point of the glass.
“Look at this.” My voice sounded normal in my own ears, even though I should have been scared out of my mind.
“I’ll kill the son of a bitch!” Her wild eyes flitted in every direction, looking out through the window.
I took the picture from her hand, intending to put it on the bedside table. “We have to get out of here.”
I glanced down at it. I’d seen it before. Lester, Gidget, and a plain, brown-haired woman. I did a double take. I’d seen her before. Mierda. I’d seen her more than once. She’d been at the gallery in Houston. She’d been in the courtroom today. She’d been in a picture with Lester I’d pulled up online. She was Lester’s imminently forgettable ex-wife, Julie. Julie Herrington. Julie Herrington.JuJu Herrington. Daughter of Buck. Pipeline heiress. Pipeline . . . Lonestar Pipeline. Oh God. I’d been so stupid not to see it sooner. A return address handwritten on an envelope lying on the table the day Gidget died. From the office of Julie Herrington Sloane, campaign manager for Boyd Herrington. Was Boyd Tres? So much made sense in a heartbeat, but so much still didn’t. Most importantly, I didn’t know who had been here or what they wanted. Or whether they’d left.
“I’ll call the cops.” Maggie pulled her phone from a pocket of her overalls.
The front door creaked opened, chasing all thoughts of JuJu and Tres out of my head.
“Sam? Annabelle?” I called.
Maggie moved to the bedroom door, her finger poised above the screen of her phone, her eyes moving toward the front of the house. I heard a pop noise and then a thud in the back wall of Gidget’s room. Maggie dropped her phone and yelped. Everything moved in slow motion for me. I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the window, kicking the last of the glass out. I tossed the shotgun through, a little past the blanket of glass below. With one arm, I pulled Maggie after me and dove, releasing her in midair and landing with one hand on the gun and the other right on a big sharp chunk of glass. My knees were next, and they caught glass, too. It stung. Hijo de puta. Maggie landed on top of me, and her weight dug the glass deeper into my palm.
No time to think about the pain. Time to get the hell out of here. “Get up! Run!”
I leapt to my feet, grabbing the shotgun. Maggie struggled up, too. I looked through the yard, back at the house, and into the trees. The cars. But I had tossed my handbag onto the kitchen table when I’d turned on the outside light. I had no Jetta keys. And no phone, either. Mine was in my bag, and I’d just watched Maggie’s fall to the bedroom floor.
“Are your keys in the truck?” I whispered, moving toward the back gate.
“No. I dropped them. When we found Janis and Woody.”
Caca. Big piles of caca. But my calmness stayed with me, and I didn’t panic. “This way.” I pulled her toward the darkness of the forest, flicking off the safety and pumping a shell into the chamber as I ran down the trail I’d first seen a week before and never taken. I cursed my priorities, reset the safety, and tucked the shotgun tightly under my armpit, one hand holding it for dear life, the other one dragging Maggie.
“Black mask,” she panted. “Man,” she panted again.
I didn’t want to give him sound to follow. “Shh.”
Maggie crashed through undergrowth I was taking pains to avoid. My sandals weren’t good running shoes and were even worse protection from snakes. Maggie was wearing her boots. She was loud, but still I envied her. I steered us down the widest opening between the thick trees on either side. Maggie slowed, then stopped. She was completely winded, and I couldn’t budge her.
“Do you think he followed us?” she said betwe
en heaving breaths.
I didn’t answer. When Maggie stood, I jerked her forward again. Suddenly we all but smashed into the shed we’d discovered that afternoon.
“I can’t go any farther,” Maggie gasped.
“Get in here.” I pushed the shed door open with my sandal, analyzing like a supercomputer as we went inside. The SS 1 was the only possible hiding place inside. We could hole up with the gun ready for anyone who came through the door. I opened the passenger door. A raccoon chittered at me, an angry sound. Her body rose up and exposed the nest of babies she was protecting and the overpowering odor of urine and feces. I shut the door.
The “Jaguar” had a rumble seat, though. I’d seen it in the pictures. There was a tarp covering the back end of the car. I pushed it to the side, uncovering the rumble seat. The latches were rusty and resistant, but adrenaline spurted through me, and they gave way to me. Holding on to the tarp and going by instinct and common sense, I pushed the rumble seat back and into position. Dust billowed into my nose, and I coughed. No critters jumped out, though.
“In here.”
Maggie climbed in first. I handed her the shotgun, then I got in and pulled the tarp over us. Pitch blackness descended.
“I don’t want to think about what might be on this floorboard.” I shuddered.
Maggie stuck her boot downward and kicked. “Nothing crawling around.” She pushed to rearrange herself and her boot slipped. “There’s something down there, though.”
I heard noises in the woods. “Shh.”
I rearranged the shotgun pointed up and away from us and flicked off the safety. Our breathing slowed, but I was sure anyone within a hundred yards could hear my thundering heartbeat. Quiet footsteps growing louder approached. They entered the shed. We held our breath. They circled the car, and someone opened the driver’s side door, pissing off mama raccoon again.
“Shit!” The voice was androgynous, but muffled.
I put my finger over the shotgun trigger. The tarp whipped back, and a spotlight shone in our eyes.
“Well, hello, ladies.” He raised a handgun with a fat silencer at the end of the barrel.
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