Down Don't Bother Me (9780062362209)

by Miller, Jason

  I said, “I promise not to yell.”

  They looked at each other again, and Carla nodded. Patty said, “Two days before Guy disappeared. After dinner. Carla was in the house. I was walking the dog down the hill and having a smoke. It was just before sundown, or near then, but it gets dark up here that time of day, under the trees. Well, we get a few hundred yards from the house, and the dog here starts growling and carrying on, and at first I think maybe she’s spotted a deer or maybe just a squirrel or whatever, but she keeps at it so I go to get a closer look.”

  “Not a squirrel, I’m thinking.”

  Patty shook her head. “A man. And then two of them. Maybe three. I don’t know. Like I said, it was kinda hard to tell in that light.”

  “Any idea who they were?”

  “No.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, I did what you’d ordinarily do. I called out to them, but no one would answer. So I opened fire.”

  “Come again?” I said.

  Carla looked sad again. Or weary. She said, “I’ve tried talking to her.”

  Patty was indignant. “Hey, I’m sorry, but you come creeping around in the undergrowth up here, you’re asking for trouble. I gave them a chance to come out, and got nothing back in return, so I pulled my piece and fired off a couple of rounds.”

  “Warning shots?”

  “Bad shots,” she said. “I missed.”

  “Could have been hunters,” I said. “Or maybe someone just got turned around.”

  “These parts? Not unless they fell out of an airplane.”

  “Okay, maybe not. So what happened then?”

  Patty shrugged.

  “Nothing. I turned the dog loose and checked the bushes, but whoever it was had gone. Run off, I guess. I didn’t see any blood spatter, so I reckon I missed them pretty good, but I tell you I spend a little while on the porch every night now with one of our long guns.”

  I looked at Carla. “I’m glad you’re the one who found me.”

  Patty said, “You should be, too.”

  Anci came back in the room and took her seat. I smiled at her and patted her hand, but she didn’t smile back. She looked a little wan and I worried she’d overheard that last bit about the shooting.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Something I ate at school isn’t sitting right,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  “We’re almost out of here.” I turned again to Carla, said, “Any way you can think of to get a message to Beckett?”

  “I’m sorry. I really am. I just don’t know. And that’s assuming he’s still alive.”

  “I’ve taken up enough of your time, then.”

  “We’re glad to help.”

  We got up and shook hands all around, Anci even. I left them my number in case Beckett reappeared or got in touch, and then they both walked us to the door, Carla smiling tightly, Patty glowering.

  Anci and I stepped off the porch and walked to the bike. Carla rolled back into the house. Patty kept following us.

  “This is some courtesy now,” I said.

  “Just keep walking, dammit,” she said beneath her breath.

  I kept walking, dammit. We made our way down the hill a bit, and I climbed on the bike and hauled her off her stand and waited for Anci to saddle up behind me. She did this with expertise and grace, I am proud to say.

  Patty said, “You really let her on that thing with you?”

  “Well, we’re not a shooting-randomly-at-strangers kinda family, but we do what we can.”

  She didn’t like that. She said, “Hey, I explained that. Tried to, anyway, but I guess I didn’t get my message through. I protect what’s mine, and I’m pretty damn good at it, too.”

  “You don’t say. And just how good is that, exactly?”

  “I got nothing to do with Guy getting lost, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Well, that’s what I mean,” I said. “And I’m guessing you didn’t follow me out here to tell me something so obvious a blind haint would trip over it. So give me what you’ve got or kindly step the hell away from my wheels, please.”

  She went pale and then red-faced and her mouth opened but nothing came out. If she could have she would have crumpled the bike into a ball and kicked the ball down the hill into a lagoon. Instead, she took a folded paper from her shirt pocket and held it toward me.

  “Beckett,” she said.

  I unfolded it. A coupon for baking powder. Expired, too. I turned it over. The backside was better. Words had been scribbled on the page above, now missing, but someone had brought out their ghosts with firm pencil rubs. I looked at Patty.

  I said, “Where’d you get this?” But I knew the answer to that one already. She’d been in Mays’s house, just like I had, and she’d taken one of my clues. “It’s all right, Patty,” I told her. “You aren’t the world’s first jealous lover.”

  “Maybe just the meanest.”

  “If you want to convince me you had nothing to do with Beckett’s disappearance, you’re not helping your case. Anyway, why give this to me?”

  “Because I think Beckett came to harm through something he was tied up in, and I want her to see it. The sooner she sees him for what he really is, the better.”

  “For you, you mean?”

  “And her.”

  “And what is he, exactly?”

  “Trouble off its leash.”

  She said this last almost sadly, and I confess my heart went out to her. I didn’t know her or Carla, really, and I didn’t know anything about what their relationship was like, but I knew what it was to lose someone you loved more than anything in the world and the hurt that followed. I nodded and again looked at the coupon.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said. “It says Yellow Boy.”

  “Yes, it does. Any idea what it means?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  But I’m getting there, I didn’t say.

  Outskirts of town, we pulled into a Texaco for gasoline and soda pop. Anci sat quietly in her seat while I filled up the tank. Usually, she took the opportunity to move up the saddle and play around with the throttle, but this time she stayed put. When I was done filling, I picked up some colas and snacks. Orange soda for Anci, clear soda for me. I got some cookies for Anci. I gave the boy at the counter some money. He gave me back some change. It was the least complicated exchange I’d had in days. It felt good. I thanked the boy and shook his hand.

  Anci was still sitting quietly when I got back. I handed her a soda, but she refused it with a wag of her head.

  “Okay,” I said. “Enough of this foolishness. Give.”

  “Give what? I told you . . .”

  “Yeah, you told me you ate something at school that didn’t agree with you, but I happen to know that you have an unturnable stomach. I once watched you eat an entire jar of jalapeño peppers without so much as changing color. And now you’re refusing orange soda, which I’ve never seen you do under any circumstance. So give.”

  She sat there, stubbornly I thought at first, but then I realized she was fighting tears. She was such a precocious kid, sometimes I forgot that she really was just a kid. I leaned against my saddle and put my arm on her and softened my voice.

  “Whatever it is . . .” I said.

  She snuffled a little and rubbed her eyes and looked at me and said, “When we were at the house.”

  “Carla and Patty’s, you mean?”

  She nodded.

  “And I went to the bathroom.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, I didn’t really have to go. But I needed an excuse to get out of there a moment and do some poking around.”

  “Poking around? For what?”

  “Guy Beckett. If he really was there, probably the last people who’d tell you would be Carla and Patty.”

  I said, “Why, you sneaky little fox.”

  “Tell me I’m wrong, though.”

  “I admit, it’s pretty good thinking. Maybe you should take up the detecti
ve work, and I can sit back and learn a few things.”

  “Well, I didn’t find him. Beckett, I mean. I looked in a bedroom and in a closet.”

  “Bad men often hide in closets,” I said, but she ignored me.

  “There’s another bedroom back of the house, but he wasn’t there, either, and there weren’t any clothes or luggage or anything anywhere.”

  “Seems like you were pretty thorough. And fast. You couldn’t have been gone more than a few moments.”

  “There was a picture in the hallway, though.”

  “A picture?”

  “Photograph. Looked new to me. Recent, I mean.”

  “How could you tell something like that?”

  “Patty’s shoes. She was wearing those boots with the red toes in the picture. She was wearing them today in the kitchen and they still looked new, so I figured the picture wasn’t taken too long ago.”

  “You’re a genius.”

  “It must have been their group. They were standing outside, in a park maybe, holding a sign.”

  “Friends of Crab Orchard?”

  “Right. Patty and Carla were in it. And a balding guy.”

  “Beckett, probably. I wish I’d seen it.”

  “A couple other people, too.”

  “The college students Carla mentioned, maybe.”

  Anci nodded. She said, “And Peggy.”

  THIRTEEN

  You should have told me.”

  Peggy hugged her teddy bear tight. The black button eyes bulged. She was squeezing the life out of him. We were in the bedroom at her house in Zeigler. She didn’t look so happy. Still beautiful, but wrung out. Her eyes were puffy where she’d been crying, and her face looked tired and scared. I wanted to tell her it was all going to be all right. Only problem, I didn’t know what “it” was. Not yet. She was on the bed, and she’d backed herself flush against the painted headboard like she meant to push through it and the wall into the yard. I was leaning on a chair, still feeling faintly stunned. The lights were turned out, but sunlight leaked through the blinds and gave the room an unearthly orange glow.

  She said, “I tried to. Wanted to. Really I did. The night of Anci’s birthday party.”

  “So that’s what it was.”

  “That’s what it was. The right time never presented itself, though. Or, hell, probably I was just chicken.”

  “But I don’t understand,” I said. “Why keep it a secret in the first place?”

  “Well, darlin’, I figured my admitting that I was trying to put you out of a job might not exactly throw a log on our romantic flame. A lot of people don’t like what we do. Think we’re anti-union or anti-American, even. Trying to steal the bread from their kids’ mouths. Things can get kinda ugly.”

  “I can see that,” I said, “But I’m not one of those people, and you still should have told me.”

  “I know that. But listen, Slim, the truth is, I’d already walked away from that. I didn’t like lying to you, even by omission, and I didn’t want some secret to wreck our life together. I quit a while back, but then this business with Dwayne happened, and it was like I got dragged back into it. It was too late to quit.”

  “Too late why?”

  Peggy said, “Because everyone in the group who’d been in contact with Mays and Beckett at any point was in danger. No one was going to care that I’d turned in my resignation. Too late because Dwayne was dead and Guy really was missing. We thought at first he was just hiding out after Dwayne was killed, and would come home again when the coast looked clear.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “And now he’s dead.”

  That sucked a little of the air out of the room.

  “You think so?”

  “I really do,” she said. “For about a year there, we were what you’d call a tight-knit group. Especially after that business with the incinerator. If Beckett was alive, he’d have found a way to get in touch.”

  “That’s what Carla and Patty said, too. I’m guessing you might also be the reason they didn’t open fire as soon as they saw me today.”

  Peggy nodded. She said, “I called up there, told them you might be along one day. I figured no harm would come to you, but . . .”

  “But Patty is nervous.”

  “Nervous and jealous as a jilted rattlesnake. I don’t know that anything ever happened between Carla and Guy, but Beckett did everything but bring out the violins.”

  “This is quite a fella I’ve been busting my ass to find.”

  She said, “He wasn’t without his charms.”

  “Not you, too?”

  She almost got hot about that, but then she remembered where we were. “No. Not me. Not that he didn’t try.”

  “I bet. Dammit, I had Anci with me today.”

  “I know, Slim. I . . .”

  Just then Anci came into the room and went to the top of the bed and sat down. Peggy rubbed her head and kissed her hair.

  “Maybe not the best time, squirt,” I said.

  Peggy said, “No, let her stay. Please.”

  Anci looked at me. “Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay.”

  Peggy said, “Good. She’s part of this, too, and she should hear it. It’s because of me she was in danger the other night.”

  “Those men on the street,” I said. “They didn’t belong to Jump Down.”

  “No,” Peggy said. “They were Galligan’s. And they weren’t shooting at you, Slim. They were shooting at me.”

  A little more of the air went out. I had to sit down. I sat down.

  “That’s not funny,” I said.

  “It’s not, no. But it is the truth.”

  “My God, it’s true then. It really is Roy Galligan. I’d half thought everyone had taken leave of their senses.”

  “Maybe they have,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t right about Galligan.”

  “But why? Why would he get himself involved in something like this?”

  “Because of what Dwayne and Guy were up to,” she said. “Investigating what’s been going on up at the King Coal and Grendel. Dwayne had been following whispers for a while. He brought Guy in on the story, and Guy talked to us. I think at first he was hoping it would make a better story, the scrappy environmental club versus a local captain of industry. Like that. But then it all got out of hand.”

  “Wait. What got out of hand? What in the hell are you talking about?”

  Peggy said, “Anhydrous ammonia. At first, Dwayne thought it was meth dealers tapping the Knight Hawk’s supplies, using it to make meth and sell it back to the miners, like what’s happened in other parts of the country. But then they stumbled onto Galligan’s involvement.”

  I said, “I suppose I don’t have to ask whether you know Tony Pelzer.”

  She made a face and nodded. “Know him. Don’t like him. And that’s understating it a little, really. A friend of Guy’s and a bit of a strong-arm. Promise me, Slim, you deal with him, watch your six.”

  “Been there, done that, won the hat,” I said. “But Pelzer said Dwayne had a theory that Galligan was using meth to juice the King Coal’s production numbers.”

  Peggy said, “I think maybe Dwayne ran that up the flagpole at one point. Truth was, none of us believed it. Anyway, it’s a fantasy, Slim. There’s nothing to it.”

  “Then what? If he’s not using the ammonia to make meth, what’s he doing with it?”

  Anci broke her silence. She looked at Peggy and at me and said, “Water.”

  I said, “Half-pint . . .”

  But Peggy nodded and kissed Anci’s head again.

  “No. She’s right, Slim. She is exactly right. Galligan isn’t stealing ammonia to make drugs. He’s stealing ammonia to clean up dirty water.”

  Just then, the phone buzzed in my back pocket. I got up from the bed and went out into the hallway and answered. It was Pelzer.

  “We might have a problem here, Hawkshaw,” he said.<
br />
  “Just the one?”

  “Big one, maybe. I’m at Temple’s place. Door’s kicked in, and there’s a busted window. I tried calling, but no one’s answering.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good.”

  “It sure doesn’t. Doesn’t look so good, either.”

  “Did you go inside? Look around a little?”

  “Thought I’d wait on you for that,” he said.

  “Thanks a million,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

  “I’m a statue,” he said. “Oh, and Hawkshaw? It’s okay to bring a piece this time.”

  I hung up the phone. Peggy was still on the bed, now hugging Anci to her. The teddy bear was finished.

  She said, “What is it?”

  “Beckett’s wife has gone missing.”

  “Run away?”

  “It looks like someone might have taken her,” I said.

  Peggy blanched. She said, “My God. Temple. They’re killing everybody.”

  “That’s what it looks like, anyway. But I’m hoping no one’s been killed tonight.” I turned to Anci and said, “How’d you know, by the way? About the water?”

  “I guess I just thought it had to be that. If they’re not using it for drugs, they might be using it to do what it’s really for.”

  “Cleaning up acid drainage.”

  Anci nodded, “They teach us about it in school. We even did a class project.”

  “That’s pretty good detective work, squirt.”

  “Thanks. Got an A, too.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Anci hopped down from the bed. “Then I’m coming along.”

  “Not this time,” I said. “But I don’t think you two can stay here, either. I’m assuming Galligan knows exactly where you live, Peggy, and you just can’t stay.”

  She looked at me, her eyes bright and hard. A bit of her toughness came back. Maybe it was Anci’s presence. Anyway, I considered it a good sign. If any of us was going to live through this foolishness, we were going to need all of us to pull weight.

  She said, “Where, then?”

  “The Vale,” I said. “It’s probably the safest place now.”

  I didn’t want to leave them. I wanted to protect my daughter. And I wanted to stay and try to understand where things sat between Peggy and me, but there was no time for relationship healing right then. I kissed them both and put them in Peggy’s car and watched them drive away, checking to make sure no cars slipped out of dark corners to follow them down the street. Then I got on my bike and hauled ass to the Estates, but these were country distances, and even hauling ass it took a half hour. By the time I roared down the hill toward the gates, it felt like someone had been tying Christmas bows in my guts.