Home Is Where Your Boots Are

by Kalan Chapman Lloyd

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I need them back,” I announced to Tally, sweeping past her languid form on the sofa where she was reading a trashy paperback from the grocery store. The wooden screen door flapped dangerously on its hinges behind me.

  “Need who?” she inquired, not glancing from her book, still likely irritated with me for ignoring her warning earlier. I skirted the hall table and breezed into her room, heading straight for her closet. My entre had Tally off the couch. “Get out of my room,” she growled, comically menacing. I ignored her and started to dig through the hurricane aftermath littering the floor. I heard her stalk to the closet and glanced up distractedly to see her with her hands on her hips. “What are you doing?” she asked, ticked. I rolled my eyes.

  “Looking for my boots,” I told her, throwing a sweater in her direction. I sensed her soften, and there was a long pause while I continued to dig.

  “Oh sister. Get up,” she commanded me, not unkindly. On all fours, my hands buried deep in belts, I looked up. She gestured upward and grabbed my arm, hauling me to my feet and dragging me out of her room and over the cool hardwood floor to a hallway closet that she flung open with a flourish and Vanna-Whited its contents. I looked inside.

  Pink and purple ostrich. Lipstick red with silver studs. Cockroach killing gold with pink crystals. Shiny black hand-stitched. Baby blue hand-tooled. Fifteen pairs of well-heeled, loudly adorned attestations of good old-fashioned gaudy. I pulled out my favorite grass green pair with cognac snakeskin toes and sat down in the floor to pull them on. I was back. Call me vain. Call me silly. But these boots were the symbolism of my rebirth, reclaiming my reputation, getting a clue, and getting over myself in the process.

  The boots hugged my feet snuggly, and I wriggled one foot in the air appreciatively as Tally stood in the doorway like a proud mama bear. Thank God for cowgirl boots. Thank God for hometowns. Thank God Cash was a prayer that didn’t get answered.

  “I’m back.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  My cell phone started jangling while I was trying to decide which boots I could wear with a pencil skirt the next day. I ran for it, bumping my shin against the coffee table. I saw the name and sank down into the antique shocking pink sofa that Tally loved so much. I answered, crossing my booted feet, one red leather, one yellow alligator. With buoyancy yet unfelt since I’d come back to Brooks, I greeted the caller.

  “What’s shaking, sugar?”

  “What in the world, woman? You want to explain what the hell’s going on. Everyone in town has been calling me, and yet I can’t seem to get a hold of you.” I’d left a short message for Fae Lynn as I was headed toward home and then turned my phone off. In retrospect, I’m sure I had been avoiding her, and the possibility of her thwarting my bad decision.

  If not for having to take care of Hazzard, she’d have made damn sure to park behind Cash’s truck. I was sure she’d heard about the shooting from Scotty and put some facts together, which had probably made her quite agitated, not being able to talk to any real sources.

  “Sorry,” I apologized, “We came home to eat, and Mama made chicken, and then well, there was the pie.” I rattled off quickly.

  “Pie?” she questioned, getting to the real meat. Too late, I realized that Fae Lynn would recognize the subtle innuendo that the combination of Cash and pie seemed to imply. “What happened?”

  “He took me up to the Milner’s old property after dinner.”

  “The one your daddy bought and sold him for more than double the price?’

  “You knew about that?”

  “Of course. It was my idea. So go on, there was pie.” I sighed. I did not relish telling Fae Lynn this part of the story.

  “There was pie. Literally and semi-figuratively.”

  “You and Cash?” She gasped, aghast. I hastened to explain.

  “I’m not proud to admit it. I kissed him before I got ahold of myself. By the time I realized what I was doing, I was knee deep in exchanging saliva.”

  “Why’d you stop?” she asked once I paused.

  “Divine intervention. Guardian angel. Something. I was halfway in and felt like I was being burned alive. And not in a good, hot, sexy way. He’s married, Fae. Married.”

  “Yes, I know, Lilly. I believe we had this conversation. And your name is on the papers for his response to a temporary support request.”

  “Okay, no need to rub it in. I get it.”

  “Then what happened?” she ignored my defensiveness, “You get into a epic fight? That’s usually how you all end it.”

  “Not this time. I left. Took off walking. He never even followed me, which I think I can take as another sign.”

  “You walked all the way home?!”

  “I needed to get my shit together. And I didn’t have a cell phone. And I was too embarrassed to stop to ask someone to call.”

  “Huh, so is it all glued back in place?”

  “My shit?”

  “No, your rodeo tiara. Yes, your shit.”

  “Mostly. I did discover those damn peep-toes don’t work on a dirt road.” Fae Lynn laughed. “It’s funny,” I said, “how finding myself brought be back to where I started.”

  “You have on your boots, don’t you?” She got it; she had her own nine pair, although hers tended to be slightly more functional than mine.

  “Damn straight.”

  “About time,” she replied with a laugh and without any other need for explanation, “You do a good job bossing everyone else around, but you know you need this town and all of us to lean on.” She got it. Of course she did, and I’d hazard a guess that everyone in this town I’d thought I was too good for got it too.

  “So,” I turned the conversation to another, less happy, topic. “Something creepy is going on at the hospital, and we need to figure out what it is,” I told her.

  “Creepy how?” she asked. I proceeded to frankly inform her of my conversations with both Ronnie Duvall and Kelli Ames.

  “Oh no,” she responded when I was finished.

  “I know,” I commiserated.

  “No really, oh no,” she explained.

  “What?” I asked, confused. She let out a dry laugh.

  “Scott came home just the other day and was complaining about the Oklahoma Agency of Investigation coming in and causing a ruckus at the station. Apparently, there’s some smuggling that’s been going on in Oklahoma and they’ve traced it back close to here.” I considered the implications of this as she continued. “I guess the director of the OAI called Sheriff Clay. Told him he was sending men out, and if Clay interfered, he’d have the governor on his head. Supposedly, this is something the FBI should be handling, but they’re swamped. They’ve sent in a former agent to head the investigation.” She finally paused to give me a chance to catch up.

  “Who is it? I didn’t know anyone here in Brooks worked for the FBI.”

  “Don’t know. They’re undercover. Scotty’s not willing to give that up, no matter how hard I’ve tried, if you know what I mean.”

  “Stop,” I said, not interested in their bedroom habits.

  “What kind of smuggling?” I asked, already having a hint in my pinballing brain. Fae Lynn took a deep breath.

  “Bodies.”

  “Agh.”

  “Parts, mostly,” she went on. “I was cooking dinner when Scott was talking, but apparently big drug companies and medical schools need dead people to study and test.” I was getting severely grossed out and wished I’d not had that bite of pie. Whatever leftover traces of Cash uneasiness I’d had were replaced by an idea of what might be happening at the hospital and why Mr. Duvall and Kelli had the issues they did.

  “So they steal dead people and then sell them?” I asked. Fae Lynn paused.

  “Not the whole bodies,” she informed me; and I drew my feet up off the floor to hug them to my knees, the soft floral décor of my great-grandmother’s parlor blurring and swirling around me in a haze. “Like I said, sometimes they just take
parts. I have to admit I did an Internet search after Scott told me, which by the way, this is on the quiet.” I nodded silently and she continued. “Sometimes they just need certain parts, like hearts or kidneys or lungs for transplant, or bone marrow for cancer patients. Sometimes they want like fingernails and hair for testing.” A wave of nausea hit me, and I put my head between my knees, hoping to calm the clanging in my head. Fae Lynn knew I was a puker and waited patiently. I spoke from upside down, the phone between my knees too.

  “So hospitals and drug companies are doing this illegally and immorally and getting away with it?” I was indignant. Another dry laugh.

  “Kind of. But it’s only illegal if they know they’re stolen. They’re supposed to get all their stuff from donors. Problem is, the body smugglers claim that their bodies and organs are donors too, and demand is so high that the schools and drug companies don’t check it out; they just write big checks.” Fae Lynn had always had a taste for the macabre, but I was surprised by how much she knew, which let me know that this was something serious if Scott had shared it with her and it hadn’t come through the dispatch office. I asked the question and was both dying and dreading to ask.

  “How big a check?”

  “Four thousand dollars for a box of fingernails,” she told me.

  “Ugh.” I forced my head further toward the floor and then determinedly sat up to focus. I may be a puker, but I was no fragile flower. “So you think that’s what we’ve got?” I asked her. She didn’t hesitate.

  “Sounds like it.”

  “And Cash?”

  “I don’t want to go there.”

  “Go there,” Fae Lynn said, “for the sake of argument.”

  I went.

  “That means he killed Mark Ames, or told someone to,” I forced myself to say it out loud. “But I just cannot see him doing that. Even if he had the stomach, he doesn’t have the motivation. And wouldn’t put his career in jeopardy.”

  “Tina was a nurse at the hospital,” she told me. “If anyone was going to help with something illegal, it’d be her.”

  “So what do we do?” I asked and then went on, “I agreed to these investigations thinking I would have a possible negligence case and that Mr. Ronnie had been nipping a little more than normal.”

  “Maybe we should go look at the morgue, since that’s probably the place where the breakdown’s happening. And I did talk to Sherry Colms after you called today. Apparently Tina hasn’t been doing much real nursing these days. She’s been working in the pharmacy and working the desk at the morgue.” I recoiled, as Fae Lynn only served to further implicate Cash. Ugh. I pushed myself off the couch resolutely and began to pace.

  “Well, seeing as how she’s AWOL, what with being accused of Cash’s murder, now would be the perfect time to go check it out.” I told her.

  “My thoughts exactly, sister,” she agreed. “Let’s get an early start, before Cash arrives.”

  “How about seven?” I asked.

  “Pick me up.”

  Tally came in later as I was reading the book I’d stolen from her. She curled up on my bed and I told her the latest, and her lips curled in disgust. She offered to come with us the next morning, but I figured the less conspicuous we were the better. Tally wasn’t great at inconspicuous. She got up and went to her room after a while, and I tried to reconcile my erratic thoughts, but I drifted off fitfully, my brain thrashing around the visions of a dead Cash, pie, and tagged toes.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next morning I avoided any real food and swigged some Diet Coke instead, swinging into Fae Lynn’s driveway at six-thirty. I had on black leggings and a sleeveless chambray button-up, with my black ostrich and lizard cowboy boots with cream colored stitching and heart-shaped cutouts. I needed a pick-me-up. You can pick your own magic talisman, but I’ll stick to my boots.

  I’d put my hand on the door handle to go get her when she stepped on the porch and closed the door softly behind her. We were hoping no one would be there this early. She got in and stuck her red monogrammed cup in my holder. I started the engine and motored toward the hospital in the center of town, just two besties, out for a pre-dawn ride about town.

  “Why didn’t you tell me I’d gone off the deep end?” I asked her, filling the apprehensive silence. She laughed dryly, and I saw her smile out of the corner of my eyes.

  “I didn’t need to.” I shook my head questioningly. She waved her skinny, ringed fingers dismissively. “I love you, Lilly Kay, right down to the bottom of your perfectly pedicured toenails. I know who you are deep down. You may be a little slow on the uptake, but you figure it out in the end.” I smiled at her description of me. “Besides, that’s the kind of friends we are. We just wait each other out. Same as how you knew I was hell-bent on screwing up my life with that loser in high school, and instead of getting mad at me, you just held me and prayed for me. I’ve been praying for you, sister. I knew you’d come out of it, the same way I knew you’d be home eventually.” I took a deep breath.

  “Thanks for believing in me. But next time, can you tell me it’ll be okay?”

  “I hope there’s not a next time. But no, you need to figure it out. A character-building experience and all that.”

  “I feel like I’ve had enough of those to last a lifetime.”

  We rode the rest of the way in silence, and I parked the car. We took deep breaths and steadied our hands on the car doors. She got out first, giving me a little wink as she swung her Julia Roberts’ legs onto the pavement. I got out to stroll beside her toward the entrance.

  Brooks Regional Hospital was a big hospital. While Brooks itself was a small town, there were several surrounding communities and mini-towns, and thus the hospital played host; it was bigger than most for a town this size. Cash had graduated from medical school and come to work in the ER, and then when the Chief of Staff had retired the year he’d been official, the hospital had turned the job over to Cash. It wasn’t as odd as it sounded. If I’d come to town and wanted to be a judge, the same thing would have occurred.

  Fae Lynn and I filed through the automatic door and checked the directory, taking the elevator down to the basement, which apparently housed supplies and dead bodies. We got an unexpected surprise when we stepped off the elevator. No one was manning the desk in front of the long corridor that led to the door marked MORGUE. We exchanged glances, and I took it as a silent blessing from God that we were doing the right thing. Because, really, it was for a good cause, and if He didn’t want us to do it, he’d have stopped us by now, right? We started down the hall, fluorescent light flickering overhead and the stench of antiseptic leading the way.

  It had been some time since I’d been afraid. As a type-A, high-strung child with an overactive imagination, I’d scared myself silly a time or two with thriller mysteries and gory movies I’d been too young to read or watch. But as I’d gotten older and learned some deep breathing techniques, I no longer was afraid of the dark.

  I’d never been in any situations that had set my adrenaline pumping or my teeth on edge, save for the times we’d had to seek retribution on some unsuspecting cheaters and liars. So the clammy-handed, stuttery-hearted, icy-skinned state I was currently in had me a little on edge. I tried a little psychobabble justification, attempting to attribute the chills to the meat locker temperature, but that reference was contradictory to calming my nerves. I tried to blame the wild beating inside my chest on my earlier Diet Coke, but I had one of those every day. I gave up on an explanation for my sweaty palms and tried some deep breaths instead. When I started to hyperventilate, Fae Lynn slammed me against the concrete corridor and shocked me enough to stall the hiccupping breath.

  “Stop it,” she instructed me, exasperated.

  “Suh, suh, sorry,” I burbled. Fae Lynn rolled her eyes and looked down the blue-grey concrete hallway to our ultimate destination. Sighing and bracing her shoulders, she looked in my pop-eyed eyes.

  “Take stock, Lilly. We are in a morgue.” My s
tomach dropped. “We are going to look at dead bodies.” The whites of my eyes stretched even more. “They will smell. They will be dead. It will be gross.” I fought the urge to throw up all over Fae Lynn’s oversized sparkle hoodie from Target. She shook me before I could, and her voice softened a bit. “I’m well aware of the fact that you don’t consider brave your strong suit. But it’s apparent that the rest of the world does,” she eyed me, “So I’m going to advise you to do what you go around telling everyone else to do. Be brave. You just told me you had a life-changing epiphany yesterday. Where is it now? We’re here to help people.”

  Sufficiently shamed, I took a steely breath and pasted on my best rodeo queen smile. Linking arms with her, I propelled us down the hall, fueled solely by the knowledge that as far as this town knew, Lilly Atkins never failed, damn the circumstances or the consequences.

  The air grew chillier as we reached the door marked MORGUE. I fought the urge to giggle at the irony of the situation. Lilly Atkins, SMU Law graduate, real estate attorney extraordinaire, former cheerleader and Brooks Independence Day Rodeo queen, winner of the Brooks citizenship award (twice), and multiple student of the month nominee was currently sneaking into the county morgue in the hospital with her childhood best friend who happened to be employed by the police department.

  Fae Lynn turned as she reached for the shiny door handle and gave me her trademark mischievous grin. She recognized the moment and waggled her eyebrows comically. We both stopped short inside the room; the heavy metal door thudding resoundingly behind us. Simultaneously, we turned back to regard the closed door and then swung back to survey the stainless steel rows of drawers.

  I wasn’t really sure what we were expecting to find. I was praying for some quick incriminating evidence implicating someone cleanly and clearly, but now that we were actually here, I had begun to think that while we might be at the scene of the crime, there wasn’t likely to be anything out of the ordinary. And even if there was, who were Fae Lynn and I to recognize it? I could tell Fae Lynn’s thought process was on the same track and she finally said my reluctant thought out loud.