Burntown

by Jennifer McMahon

  Could it be his guy?

  “…not coming back,” Pru says, her voice angry. “Shouldn’t have trusted…should have gone with…”

  Theodora says something about a bag. Pru shakes her head. Theodora looks at her watch.

  Then, Fred’s eye catches on movement off to the left, behind the factory. A figure is moving quickly along the tree line. Pru and Theodora can’t see it; they’re too close to the front side of the building.

  “There you are,” Fred whispers. It’s the kid. No doubt about it. Pale blond hair, black tank top, black pants, messenger bag slung over his shoulder. Tattoos all up and down his arms. Fred waits, thinking the kid is going to make his way back to the car, to Pru and the girl. Surely that’s what they’re doing here, really. That girl Theodora is somehow involved with the mystery man. Has to be. Maybe she’s his sweetheart. But Fred’s gut tells him it’s more complicated than that. And this ain’t no lovers’ lane. Besides, what is Pru doing here? He doesn’t buy that the girl is her niece. Pru Small may be a sweet and charming woman, but she’s a god-awful liar.

  But the guy doesn’t cut over to the car. In fact, he seems to be doing all he can to avoid it and stay out of sight. Determined not to lose the kid a second time, Fred leaves his perch behind the tree and starts walking along the river again until he finds a spot where he can cut back up farther along the driveway. He sees the kid turning left on the road, back toward town. Fred takes one look at Pru and Theodora just in time to see a girl coming out of the mill. Shit—how many people were hiding out in there? This girl’s got long wavy blond hair, sunglasses, and is wearing a blue cowgirl jacket trimmed with fringe. Where on earth did she come from? Was it possible she’d been hiding in there when he’d searched the place? He doesn’t think so. He’d been careful, methodical.

  He watches as the three of them stand talking—Theodora seems agitated; she’s waving her arms around and talking loudly. He catches only one word because she yells it: “Gone!” Then they all get into Pru’s car. Fred jogs ahead, finds a big rock at the very end of the driveway to hide behind as he waits for them to drive past. After they pass, and take a right, he comes out of hiding, sucking in a lungful of dust and car exhaust. He catches a glimpse of the kid crossing the Millyard Bridge over to his left. Good. He’ll be more careful now. He’s not going to lose him again. But he doesn’t want to spook him either. He follows a good distance behind, thinking.

  Fred worries Pru may be in some kind of trouble and not even know it. She’s too good-hearted and naïve, Pru is. All caught up in her tiny circus world.

  Visiting with Pru has become one of the bright spots in his dull delivery week. All the other stops he makes, people are friendly, sure, but there’s something special about Pru—the sparkle in her eye, the lively way she talks about her circus—that makes his heart feel a little lighter. She reminds him that there is goodness in the world. And innocence still, even in these far-from-innocent times. It’s the same feeling he gets being with his birds—that he’s in the presence of a being who is truly honest and pure.

  He gets to the bridge, still watching the kid, who’s reached the other side and has turned left onto Canal Street. He’s walking along the sidewalk with his head down, eyes on his phone. Fred pulls out his own phone, calls his brother.

  “You still tailing our guy?” James asks.

  “Yup.”

  “Learned anything?”

  “No. He’s just walking all over the city. Went out to the old Jensen Mill, had a look around, and is heading back downtown now.”

  “The mill? Weird.”

  “Yeah.” Fred leaves out all the other details, wanting to keep Pru and the girls a secret until he knows more. “Hey, James, can I get you to look up a couple things for me? There’s someone I want info on. Her name is Prudence Small. She runs the cafeteria over at the Catholic school.”

  “Oh, little brother—are you stalking some poor innocent lady?” James says with a chuckle.

  “Can you look up relatives?” Fred says, ignoring the jab. “Like if she’s got a niece? Also, an address and phone number maybe?”

  “Sure, I can get all that, no problem. But you aren’t gonna go all Peeping Tom on me, are you? ’Cause you can get arrested for that shit. And if you tell them I helped you find this poor lady, I’m implicated. Know what I’m saying?”

  “No worries. No stalking, I promise. I’m just curious.”

  “Sure you are,” James says, laughing unpleasantly. “I’ll let you know what I find out about your new ladylove. In the meantime, you lemme know the second you have anything to report on our friend.”

  “Will do,” Fred says, but James has already hung up.

  No doubt about it. His brother’s a prick. But he’s paying Fred twenty-five bucks an hour to tail this kid around town. And Fred needs the money. He wants to move out of his one-bedroom apartment. Get a real place, a little house with a porch and a yard. He wants to build an outdoor aviary for the birds; give them more room, fresh air, sunshine. He imagines himself sitting out there every evening, watching the sun set with the birds. Maybe he could invite people over—someone besides his asshole brother, who comes over for chili, beer, and football once in a while and spends the whole time bitching about the birds, says they’re noisy, that they stink. Maybe he’d invite Pru Small over. He imagines introducing her to the birds, taking them out, placing them gently on her shoulders. Wouldn’t Pru love that? Hearing their talk, the soft flutter of wings. He smiles at the thought of it.

  Fred follows his guy to an old-fashioned greasy spoon on Stark called the Koffee Kup. The sign in the window advertises BOTTOMLESS CUP OF COFFEE ONLY ONE DOLLAR! There’s an old MG convertible parked in front with a glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary statue on the dash. The kid goes into the diner, sits down at a booth with an older man. Fred stands behind the MG and has a good view of them through the window. This other guy is gaunt in the face, but he’s well dressed in a pair of neatly pressed pants, a white polo shirt, and a navy-blue sport coat. The kid rummages in his messenger bag, pulls out an olive, military-surplus-looking satchel decorated with pins. The waitress comes over, takes their order, and when she walks away, they start talking. The older guy is looking through the satchel.

  Fred takes a chance and goes in, heading straight for the counter to take a seat on a beaten-up black vinyl stool that is just close enough to hear their voices behind him. They’re talking so low, it’s hard to catch every word. It doesn’t help that some guy in the next booth has just dumped quarters into the jukebox to hear some old Waylon Jennings song.

  In front of him, the big grill sizzles as a cook in a white apron flips two burgers, puts squares of orange cheese on top, pops fries into a basket and lowers them into bubbling oil.

  “She walked right in?” the older man asks.

  The kid mumbles a response.

  “You must have been a sight for sore eyes.” He says something else that makes the kid chuckle nervously.

  “Lucky I heard her coming,” the kid says.

  “But you didn’t find anything? There was nothing else?”

  “No. And I was thorough. The only thing hidden was this bag.”

  “So what’s she doing with this stuff? It’s got some other girl’s ID in it…let’s see, here it is…Theodora Sweeney. She’s a senior over at the Catholic school. The place across the street from where Eva and her boyfriend were camped out.”

  The name pings in Fred’s brain: Theodora. The girl Pru was with and a student at the school she works in. It has to be the same girl—how many teenage girls named freaking Theodora could there be?

  And “Eva and her boyfriend”—that has to be the governor’s son who got killed, and the homeless girl everyone, he and his brother included, is looking for.

  He pulls out his phone, sends his brother a quick text as he listens to the conversation behind him: Another person for you to look up: Theodora Sweeney. Student at the Catholic school.

  “I don’t know,” the ki
d says. “Maybe Eva stole it or something? Or maybe they’re dealing drugs together?”

  “Whatever it is, it doesn’t help us, does it?”

  The waitress brings them coffee and pie. “Cherry for you,” she says. “And chocolate cream for you. Y’all let me know if you need anything else.” They thank her and she walks away. Once she’s gone, they start talking again.

  “Hey, there, what I can get you?” the waitress asks Fred, popping up on the inside of the counter and smiling at him. SHARON, her name tag says.

  “Just coffee, please,” he tells her, even as his stomach rumbles. No time for a cheeseburger now.

  “You sure, hon? We’ve got six kinds of fresh homemade pie. It’s all over there on the board.” She points to a blackboard with white letters that has the lunch menu: CHICKEN AND STUFFING, MEAT LOAF, LIVER AND ONIONS, FRANKS AND BEANS, PATTY MELT. PIES: CHERRY, BLUEBERRY, PUMPKIN, LEMON MERINGUE, CHOCOLATE CREAM, RAISIN.

  Fred’s thinking that the very idea of raisin pie just seems wrong. He wishes he could order a patty melt, but if the kid bolts, he’ll have to get up and follow. The waitress fills his coffee cup.

  “Thanks,” he tells her, “just the coffee’s fine,” and goes back to trying to listen to the men behind him.

  “…can’t hurt to keep it. Could come in handy.”

  “Sure, whatever,” the older guy says. “Are you going to eat that pie or what?”

  “Not all that hungry,” the kid says.

  “Slide it over here, then. We can’t let good food go to waste.” There’s the sound of a fork hitting a plate, scraping.

  “So tomorrow, when she comes,” the kid says, voice small and nervous sounding. “I mean…you’re not gonna hurt her or anything, right?”

  The older man laughs. “Not if you can get what I need from her first. I’ll be right there listening. If you do your job, I won’t even come out to say hello.”

  “But what if she doesn’t have it? What if—”

  “Of course she’s got it! We’ve been over this a thousand times. Miles didn’t have it. Lily didn’t have it. You don’t have it. If she doesn’t have it, no one does. And we’ve gotta do this fast. Gotta get her off the street and get what we need before the cops catch up with her.”

  There’s the sound of the fork scraping the plate, a mug being picked up and set back down.

  “I’m gonna go have a smoke,” the kid says.

  “Okay. I’ll pay then meet you outside. I can give you a lift,” the man says.

  “That’d be good,” the kid says. Thirty seconds later, the door opens and closes.

  Fred glances to his right, where the older man is paying the check at the register. His gray hair is combed straight back, held in place with oil or pomade.

  “Everything okay?” the waitress asks the man.

  “Everything was just fine, sweetheart.” He reaches for his change, and Fred notices an old, crudely done tattoo on his wrist: a pair of dice, each with one dot in the center.

  Theo

  They’re back at Pru’s apartment and Theo is pacing, Pru’s little dog, Emmett, making excited circles around her heels. “Shit,” Theo says. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  It had been an awkward ride back to Pru’s, after Necco told them she’d gone to where she’d stashed the stuff and the bag was gone.

  “Gone?” Theo had asked. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

  “Someone’s trashed my place. They found my hiding spot…” Necco shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe it herself.

  “Who the hell is they?”

  “I don’t know,” Necco said miserably. “Maybe whoever killed Hermes? Maybe someone followed me yesterday? I was so careful…but I guess I wasn’t careful enough.”

  “No vitamins?” Pru asked.

  Necco shook her head. “No vitamins. No bag. No money. Nothing.”

  “Oh my God,” Theo groaned, clasping her hands behind her neck and gazing out the chipped windshield. “Do you have any idea how fucking fucked I am now?”

  “Theodora, language, please!” Pru said. “It’s hardly Necco’s fault that her hideaway was ransacked, now is it? Necco, was there no sign at all of who it might have been?”

  Necco shook her head. “Nothing. I got there, the whole place was completely wrecked, the bag was taken. I looked around for a minute, to see if there was anything I could salvage, but I had to get out of there—it wasn’t safe.”

  Necco’s voice was even enough, but something about the way she avoided eye contact made Theo feel like she was lying.

  “But what took you so long, then?” Theo asked. “You were gone forever.”

  “It just took a while to get in,” Necco said, still not meeting Theo’s eyes. “I had to take a certain route, be sure I wasn’t being followed.”

  Theo had given up. There was no point grilling Necco; the bag was gone, she knew Necco wasn’t lying about that much. Pru had suggested they return to her apartment to regroup, and neither Theo or Necco had a better idea, so here they were.

  She has no way to pay Jeremy back. And now the cops are after her, waving around a photo of her and Necco. She’s probably murder suspect number two.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she continues, her own useless mantra.

  “We’ll figure something out, dear,” Mrs. Small tells her.

  “Bullshit!” Theo snarls, feeling both furious and helpless—not a winning combination. “There’s nothing to figure out. It’s gone. I’m screwed. Jeremy went to my house looking for me. What if he comes back? What if he does something to my mom?”

  She imagines it: Jeremy showing up, forcing her mom to the ATM at knifepoint. Worse still, she imagines him telling her mom everything: about Theo and Hannah, about selling the drugs, all of it.

  “That seems a bit drastic, Theodora,” Pru says.

  “Well, he seems like a drastic kind of guy. And he’s pissed off.”

  “Maybe we can talk to him,” Pru suggests. “Maybe we can go there and give him the little bit of money I have, and promise to pay him the rest later. And maybe he can get me more vitamins?”

  This is the last straw. The absolute last freaking straw.

  “Don’t you get it?” Theo snaps. “Don’t you get how totally fucked I am? I owe some scumbag drug dealer two thousand bucks. The one person I actually truly care about in this world was only pretending to give a shit about me so I could make some money for her and her boyfriend. And now, now the cops are after me because they think I had something to do with what happened to Necco’s boyfriend, who just so happens to be the governor’s son! And all you can think about is your fucking vitamins, which we all know aren’t really vitamins, right? They’re fucking speed! You’re a fucking drug addict!”

  She watches Pru’s face go from cheerful optimism to devastation. The large woman’s eyes tear up, and then she lets loose and starts to cry.

  “I know,” Pru says, through a large sob. “You think I don’t know, but I do. I know how pathetic I am. The fat lady who needs her pills to get through the day. I know.”

  She’s crying hard now, and it makes Theo’s chest ache. Shit. She wants to tell Pru how sorry she is, but it all feels too late. The damage is done. How could she be such an insensitive fucking idiot?

  “Pru,” Necco says, shooting Theo a furious how-could-you glance before going to comfort the sobbing woman. “You’re not pathetic. I think you’re one of the most creative people I’ve ever met. I mean, look at what you’ve built here. Look at this circus!” She looks at it as if seeing it for the first time. “You’ve created a whole world in your living room.”

  “But it’s not real,” Pru says.

  Necco walks over and picks up the ringmaster. “Sure it is. In some ways, it’s probably more real than anything else because you’ve put your heart and soul into it. My dad, he was an inventor. He made windup animals and talking dolls, and sometimes, sometimes I swore they were real, they had souls, just because my father put so much of himself into each one. That’s w
hat your circus is like.”

  Pru rubs at her eyes, gives Necco a weak smile.

  Necco smiles back, but before she can say anything more, her eye catches on something else.

  “That elephant,” Necco says, dropping the ringmaster to pick it up, and knocking the dancing bear over in the process. “Where did you get this?”

  The elephant is different from the other animals in Pru’s circus. It’s not made of wire and papier-mâché. It’s a brassy metal, and has a little loop on its back like it was once hung from a piece of jewelry.

  “That’s Priscilla,” Pru says, wiping her runny nose with the sleeve of her dress. “The golden elephant. She’s saving the circus.”

  “But where did she come from?” Necco asks, desperate, her eyes fixed on the tiny pachyderm.

  “She was a gift. Just yesterday, Mr. Marcelle gave her to me.”

  “Mr. Marcelle? The little strongman in your circus?” Baffled, Necco looks down at the little doll in the center ring.

  “Oh, he’s more than a little man with a papier-mâché head, isn’t he, Mrs. Small?” Theo says, smiling sheepishly at Pru. “The real, in-the-flesh Mr. Marcelle is a private detective. We actually ran into him this afternoon. He was out at the mill.”

  “There was a private detective at the mill?” Necco asks, voice raised.

  “Well, actually, it’s Mr. Marcelle’s brother who’s the private detective,” Pru admits. “Mr. Marcelle just works for him from time to time.”

  “The strongman and Pru are a little sweet on each other,” Theo explains.

  “So what was he doing at the mill?” Necco asks.

  “He said he’d followed a guy there but then lost him. A dangerous man who might be involved in what happened to your boyfriend.”

  “What? And you just decided to tell me all this now?” Necco says. “Did he say anything more about this guy? What he looked like? Why he thought the guy had anything to do with what happened to Hermes?”