Murder Gets a Life

by Anne George

  “Ray, Debbie, Haley.”

  “Our very grown children.”

  I nodded; she was right.

  “And who,” she continued, “got us into this predicament?”

  “Ray?”

  “No, Mouse. We got ourselves into this. We’re still trying to mother our children too much. We need to let go more.”

  I looked down at my bound wrists and ankles. This was because we were mothers? “Listen,” I said. “We may not have to worry about letting go. But if we live, we’ll all go for family counseling.”

  “Even Fred.”

  I didn’t answer that. Instead I asked, “What do you think the Turketts are going to do to us?”

  “Well, they’re not the most polite people in the world.”

  A slight understatement. I wondered what Pawpaw and Kerrigan were doing. I couldn’t hear any noises from outside, but the air conditioner was groaning so loudly, it would have to have been a loud noise.

  It was growing dark. There were no lights on in the trailer, but a mercury vapor light high on a pole lighted the whole compound and cast enough light through the windows for us to see. We couldn’t see outside because of the high windows, but we could see inside the trailer well enough to walk around. If we could have walked around. Fred would be wondering where I was. He would have called Mary Alice’s house. He wouldn’t be alarmed yet.

  “I’m hungry,” Mary Alice said.

  Somewhere along here, I lost track of time. I may have dozed some. So I have no idea what time it was when we heard the car drive in, heard voices outside.

  “Must be Buck and Meemaw,” Sister said. “I’m glad Pawpaw made him get Meemaw. She’d have been so hurt if her stud muffin had gone off without her.”

  “Hmmm,” I agreed. But I was thinking of the two couples, Kerrigan and Buck, and Meemaw and Pawpaw. If they were going off together to start a new life somewhere, wouldn’t the older couple be excess baggage for Kerrigan and Buck? Wouldn’t it be simpler for them to go it alone? Especially if the FBI was after them?

  I shivered, remembering how calm Kerrigan’s voice had been when she said, “Shoot them,” about the dogs. But surely she wouldn’t do Meemaw and Pawpaw any harm. They were her parents.

  “Don’t bet on it.” It was a man’s voice speaking right into my ear. I jumped so, I almost toppled over.

  “What?” Sister asked. “What?”

  “I think I just heard Gabriel.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re dreaming. You’ve been snoring for I don’t know how long.”

  I hoped she was right.

  The trailer door opened and Meemaw stepped in and turned on an overhead light. “Well now,” she said. “Look who’s here.”

  “Kerrigan and Pawpaw kidnapped us,” Sister said.

  “So I understand. They said you’d found out too much about their business.”

  “If that’s what you want to call it,” I said. “What do you know about their ‘business’?”

  “Know it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “God’s truth,” Sister muttered.

  Meemaw sat down abruptly on the sofa.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Still a little weak-kneed.” She ran the back of her hand across her forehead.

  “Shouldn’t have left the hospital,” Sister stated.

  “I’ll be okay. Pawpaw needed me.”

  “Listen, Meemaw,” I said. “I don’t think you and Pawpaw should leave with Kerrigan and Buck.” I hesitated and then said, “Gabriel told me.”

  “Bless his heart. I wondered where he’d been.” She stood and steadied herself against the door. “You tell him I’ll be fine and to stay in touch.”

  “No, I’m serious. Let Kerrigan and Buck go on. You and Pawpaw stay here. I’m sure you can work things out.”

  “Not hardly.” Meemaw opened the door. “I just wanted to ask you to look after Sunshine for me. Tell her I’ll be in touch when I can. Tell her I said ‘A bushel and a peck.’ She’ll know what I mean.”

  I knew, too. That’s how much I had told my own children and grandchildren I loved them.

  “Wait a minute, Meemaw,” Mary Alice said. “We’re hungry.”

  “I’ll send Pawpaw in,” she said. And she was gone.

  “Are you nuts?” I asked. “We’re kidnapped, bound up with duct tape, God knows what’s going to happen to us, and you’re hungry?”

  “Well, everyone isn’t anorexic like you. I was just thinking while you were snoring that I’d like to be at the Redneck in Destin having boiled shrimp and slaw. And then a big piece of their key lime pie.”

  I had to admit it didn’t sound bad.

  The door opened and the light came on again. This time it was Buck Owens who stood there grinning. “Well, well,” he said. “You’ve stepped in a whole pile of it this time, haven’t you, ladies?”

  “Not as much as you have,” Sister said.

  “Hah. Tomorrow Kerrigan and I will be sleeping like babies in Toronto.”

  “Any particular hotel?” Sister asked. “We want to be sure and tell the FBI right.”

  “Sarcasm,” Buck said. “I declare.”

  Pawpaw came into the trailer behind Buck and announced that everything was ready.

  “Come on then, ladies,” Buck said.

  “Where are we going?” Sister asked.

  “Not far.”

  “Because I have to go to the bathroom.”

  Buck looked at Pawpaw.

  “I think they’ve got bladder problems,” Pawpaw said. “But let them both go. Give them some water, too.”

  Buck laughed, but he took the tape off first Mary Alice and then me. My hands tingled as I held the glass of water; my legs shook as I walked to the bathroom.

  “Okay, potty break’s over,” he announced as I came back.

  “I’m hungry,” Sister said.

  “Dear Jesus,” Buck said. “Ray always said you were a pain in the butt. He just didn’t say how much.”

  Sister bristled. “Ray never said that.”

  “If he didn’t, he should’ve.” Buck took the tape from Pawpaw and secured our wrists again. But he left our ankles free.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Mary Alice and I didn’t move.

  “Want me to encourage them?” Pawpaw asked.

  “No. They’re going to cooperate.” Buck leaned over and grasped my right shoulder and Mary Alice’s left with his huge hands. “I said, let’s go.” We could smell butterscotch on his breath, so unexpected that we each hesitated, but only for a moment. The fingers clamped into our shoulders. We got up and walked out of the trailer.

  Kerrigan and Meemaw were nowhere in sight. A white delivery truck with TODDY’S ANTIQUES painted on the side was backed in between Pawpaw’s and Meemaw’s trailers, though. This was where Buck led us.

  “Get in,” he said, opening the back door.

  “Where are you taking us?” I asked.

  “I told you. Nowhere much. Just a couple of cotton fields over.”

  “But why?”

  “Neither one of them’s got biddy brains,” Pawpaw told Buck.

  “Call the dogs,” Buck said.

  Pawpaw whistled, and Mary Alice and I made a dive for the truck. The double doors slammed shut behind us, and we could hear the men laughing and the dogs yelping.

  “Mouse.” Sister’s voice was shaking. “They’re going to take us out and shoot us, aren’t they?”

  “I’m not talking to you,” I said. “I’ve let you push me around for sixty-one years, you hear me? Sixty-one years. And where do I end up? Dying in my bed like a nice decent person? Of course not. I end up on the floor of Toddy’s Antiques delivery truck in some cotton field out in the middle of nowhere. And of course they’re going to shoot us over some black pearls that when they first talked about them I thought was that perfume they sprayed on me out of the testing bottle at Rich’s. Damn it to hell! And the skin’s off both my elbows to boot.”
/>   “Lord, you don’t have to be so snippy.”

  Someone, probably Buck, opened the front door of the truck and got in. We couldn’t tell who it was because the body of the truck was enclosed. If someone had broken into the cab, they still couldn’t have gotten to the antiques. Smart for Toddy; not smart for us.

  We heard gravel hitting as we went down the compound road. Then there was the smoothness of the highway, a left turn, and what could only be the rows of a cotton field. The bouncing and rocking brought us the knowledge that Toddy had been preparing a delivery when Buck took the truck. He also had not tied the delivery down well.

  “Cover your head,” Sister said, unnecessarily. My behind was already in the air, and my head covered with my still-taped arms.

  Finally the truck stopped. Now, I thought, Buck will open the back door and take us out one at a time like that guy in the Tombstone Pizza commercials.

  “I forgive you, Sister,” I said. My last words on earth.

  “I forgive you, too, Mouse.”

  We waited. Buck banged on the side of the truck, making us both jump. “Enjoy yourself, ladies.”

  And then there was silence.

  After a few minutes, Sister whispered, “You think he’s gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A few more minutes passed.

  “I guess he is,” I said.

  “You think he really did what he said he was going to? Leave us in a cotton patch?”

  “Buying time.” I felt around. “Where are you?”

  “Here. I think I’m under some kind of little table.”

  “I’m coming over there.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Keep talking,” I said. “I think we can get this tape off of each other’s wrists.”

  “I’m over here. And what did you mean by you forgive me? I haven’t done anything.”

  “Well, you forgave me back. What for?”

  “Just in general.”

  “Me, too.” My outstretched arms hit something soft and squishy. “What’s that?”

  “My stomach, you fool.”

  “Hold your arms out, then. If I can find the end of the tape, I think I can get it off.”

  It took me about fifteen minutes since I was working with taped wrists. Sister had me loose in about five.

  “Now we need to get out,” I said. I crawled toward what I thought was the back door, lucked out, and touched the handles. They wouldn’t budge. I rattled and shook them. Nothing.

  “They won’t open,” I said.

  I heard Sister crawling toward me. Whump. Right into me.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Let me try it. There should be a button you push.”

  I moved to the side.

  “Here it is,” she said.

  I could hear her pushing the button, jabbing at the button. Nothing. We both knew the truth before Sister voiced it. “We’re locked in. They’ve fixed the door so we can’t get out.”

  The rest of the truth hit us about the same time. We were locked in an enclosed truck parked in a cotton field, therefore in the full sun, during an August heat wave. How diabolical. By ten o’clock the next morning, we would be dead.

  “Someone will find us soon as it gets light,” I said. But I knew better. No one would be looking for a white delivery truck. And even if they got a helicopter out to search, and they spotted the truck and sent someone to look into it, by that time it would be too late.

  We talked about a lot of things that night, my sister and I. We talked about Mama and Papa and Grandmama Alice. We talked about old loves, old grievances, childhood trips and traumas. We didn’t talk about Fred or Haley, or Ray, or Debbie. We couldn’t. We didn’t talk about tomorrow, or about how we had ended up in this truck. We simply talked about a shared lifetime, swimming at Blue Sink, how I got caught on a tree root while I was sliding down the clay slide and ripped off my bathing suit. Trips with Pukey Lukey. Aunt Lottie’s peach cobbler.

  And sometime during the night, we went to sleep and slept deeply on the hard floor of the truck. There was nothing else we could do.

  I was dreaming I was jitterbugging with my high school friend Cynthia Collins. I could hear “In the Mood” plainly. “My turn to lead,” I said. Cynthia grabbbed my shoulder. “Mouse, wake up. We can see.”

  “I’m not asleep,” I said.

  “Then open your eyes. We can see.”

  For a second I was confused, still dancing to “In the Mood,” and then I was back in the truck rubbing sleep out of my eyes and trying to sit up. Every bone in my body ached. “I don’t think I can move,” I groaned. “I need aspirin quick.”

  But Sister was poking me. “Look, there’s a skylight.”

  I looked up very carefully, having to move my whole body since my neck seemed frozen in place. She was right. Light was pouring through a small skylight toward the cab end of the truck. “How come we didn’t see that last night?” I asked.

  “We were under a ton of furniture.”

  I looked around. Tables, chairs, hat racks. Toddy’s business must be doing well.

  “You can climb through it and get us out,” Sister said.

  “No, I can’t. I told you I can’t move. Try the door again.”

  Mary Alice crawled by me. “We don’t have much time, Mouse. It’s already hot as a firecracker in here.”

  She was right. The back of my neck was wet with sweat. I watched her jiggle the door handle, push against it, even kick it. She must be in better shape this morning than I was.

  I looked back at the skylight. It wasn’t very large, but there was a possibility. “Didn’t some UPS guy win an award for coming up with the idea of skylights in their trucks?”

  “What?” Mary Alice gave the door a final vicious kick.

  “UPS or somebody had a contest to make delivery more efficient, and this guy came up with skylights so they could see what they were doing. They also have the locks fixed so you can’t be locked in.”

  Sister was rubbing her foot. “Then tell me the secret, Miss Jeopardy.”

  “Buck and Pawpaw rigged the lock. They’ve got it plugged up or something.”

  “I figured that out.”

  We sat on the floor and looked at each other. Then we looked at the skylight.

  “I don’t have a choice, do I?” I asked.

  “Not much time, either. It’s hot in here.”

  “Well, let me study it a minute. I’m not even good and awake yet.”

  “You can stand up on that table”—Sister pointed in the general direction of some jumbled antiques—“put a chair on top of it and go right out.”

  “That skylight doesn’t let up and down. Besides, you broke my arm last year. I don’t think I can pull myself up.”

  “We’ll bust the glass out.”

  “Burst, not bust.”

  “Like I said, we’ll bust the glass out and I’ll get up on the table and shove you. And how the hell was it I broke your arm? I wasn’t even there.”

  “It was your fault.”

  Mary Alice grabbed the arm I had broken and snatched me up off the floor. “Crybaby. Mama always said you were the crybaby. Now get up off your crybaby butt and let’s get out of here.”

  “I’m up.”

  We extricated the table from the pile of antiques and cleared a place for it under the skylight. It looked like a sturdy table. It would have to be. Mary Alice’s two hundred fifty pounds and my hundred six was a considerable amount of weight.

  I climbed up on it and felt the skylight. “I think it’s that Plexiglas stuff. We’ll still have to hit it with something hard, though. And it’s going to fall back in here and cut us.”

  “Wait a minute. I’ll find something.” In a moment Sister was back with a tin tray and a hat rack. “Hold this over your head and hit it with this.”

  “Damn it, Mary Alice. This is a two-woman job.”

  She climbed up on the table with an agility that surprised me. The table wobbled but held. “Okay,” she said,
“I’ll hold the tray over us. You jab the skylight.”

  “I can’t see with the tray over me.”

  “Dammit, Mouse. Just aim.” Which I did. The end of the hat rack went through the skylight with a loud popping sound. No Plexiglas rained down on us.

  I looked up. There was, indeed, a hole in the skylight. The plastic had been pushed upward and out around the hole the hat rack had made. It took a lot more work and a lot of sweat to clear the whole opening.

  We sat down on the table and rested a few minutes, but we knew we didn’t have much time to waste. I got a straight chair, placed it on the table, and put my hands on either side of the skylight. It should be big enough, I figured. But the metal was too hot for me to hold.

  “Hand me your slip or something,” I said. “This is burning me.”

  “It’s a new one. All silk. I paid a fortune for it.”

  “Dammit.”

  “Well, I did.” In a moment Sister handed me her panty hose. “These’ll work better, anyway. They’ve got two sides.”

  I grasped the sides of the opening and pushed my head out. My shoulders made it okay. “Shove!” I told Sister.

  I came out of that truck like a jack-in-the-box, slid down the windshield, bounced off the hood, and landed on a couple of cotton bushes which sound soft, but which are nothing but sticks and sharp bolls.

  Dear Lord, I might never move again. I lay there with the bright Alabama sun shining down on me from the deep blue Alabama sky and thought, There it is, Patricia Anne. You didn’t think you’d see it again.

  “Mouse!” Sister beat on the side of the truck. “Are you okay? Come let me out!”

  “I’m okay,” I yelled. I wasn’t, of course. I was burned, cut, bruised, dehydrated. You name it. But I was looking at the blue, blue sky.

  Getting Sister out turned out to be a problem. I finally found a couple of rocks and was beating on the locks when I heard something click.

  “It’s the safety button,” she yelled. “Move. I think I can open it now.”

  And she did, crawling out into the cotton field. Hugging me. Wanting to know what I’d done with her good panty hose.

  We stood in the shade of the truck for a few minutes, trying to decide which way to go.

  “Maybe Buck left the keys in the truck,” Sister said. It was a great idea, but, of course, he hadn’t.