Overhead the wind whipped and a low roar seemed to throb in the air. “Oh, crap,” Winnie murmured, “here it comes.”
“No, oh, no,” Jesse moaned. She wrapped her arms around the trunk of the nearest tree, closed her eyes, and buried her cheek against the rough bark. “I’m not ready for this.”
“No one ever is.” Winnie’s voice was barely audible. The roar increased until it was almost a physical presence. From all around them came the groans and creaks of trees twisting in the wind, followed by sharp cracks as they snapped. The tips of the willow branches whipped like a cat-o-nine-tails, and Jesse slid lower on the tree trunk and hunched her shoulders, burying her face in the shelter of her raised arms.
Rain took the place of the hail, stinging like rock shards as it hit bare flesh, slamming hard and heavy against the thin cotton of Jesse’s shirt. Within seconds, she was soaked through. Tickling paths across her scalp, running in rivulets onto her face, stinging her eyes, dripping from the tip of her nose, water was everywhere. Driven by the force of the storm, choking her as she tried to breathe, it was pounding, cold and inescapable.
The sudden loud rending of metal on metal, glass shattering, and the thud of impact was followed by another more distant, hollow crash that echoed as the breaking tree limbs cracked like gunshots. Then silence, breathless with its weight, dropped over them.
Rain dribbled away, stopping as suddenly as it had come. The awful, endless roaring was gone, and the feeling of pressure that Jesse hadn’t even noticed was released. She took a deep breath, the first in a long while and lifted her head to look around cautiously. Everything was quiet.
Small branches were strewn along the sides of the levee. Clusters of leaves still attached to twigs were scattered all around, the tips of limbs that were wrenched and tossed aside. Looking out of place amid the wreckage, the sun peeped from under the edge of a pale gray cloud. In not more than a few minutes, it was over… gone… past. They had survived. Jesse grinned and fought the urge to dance an inappropriate jig in celebration. The joy of being alive sang through her.
Out of the underbrush already and halfway up the incline to the roadbed, Winnie stopped and appeared to stare. Her arms dropped to her sides, limp. Her mouth opened, and a cry shattered the new silence.
“No!”
Then she started to run, up the embankment and onto the flat ground at the top. Legs churning, arms flailing, she headed down the road toward her truck.
Jesse’s newfound joy shaken, she hurried out of the wooded area that had sheltered them and followed after her friend. Within seconds, she saw the source of Winnie’s distress as well as the cause of the rending metal and shattering glass she had heard.
The windshield of the pickup was caved inward with a large hole punched through the center. In the passenger door, through part of the window and part of the door itself, something large and metallic stuck out by at least a foot. Which meant that probably even more was embedded inside the truck itself, on the passenger side, along with whatever it was that had punched through the windshield. And, boy, was Jesse happy that they hadn’t managed to reach the pickup before all hell broke loose, because it would appear that a lot of that hell had broken loose on the truck itself.
“Good God,” Winnie shouted to all mankind, “it’s a trolling motor!” She stood barely a yard in front of her wounded vehicle, her fingers buried in her hair, shock and outrage in her voice. “A #*@&!! trolling motor!” she repeated for anyone who might have missed it the first time.
Jesse approached cautiously from the rear. The storm had passed, but they would still seem to be a long way from safe. “What exactly is a trolling motor?” she asked gingerly. “And have you seen what took out the windshield yet?”
Winnie swung around. “It goes on a fishing boat. That little tornado,” she sputtered indignantly, “apparently touched down long enough to pick up a freaking outboard motor and hold onto it just long enough to dump it on my freaking truck.”
Incensed, she turned back to the pickup, stomped closer, reached out and snapped a coiled black cord that wound from the motor that was sticking out of the door, around the corner of the hood and in through the hole in the windshield.
“Cable,” she explained, leaning against the fender to look into the hole. “And a battery!” She threw her hands into the air for emphasis. “A freaking battery!” She turned back to face Jesse again, even more outraged. “Do you know what a #*@&!! battery weighs?” Winnie shouted.
Not wanting to aggravate the situation, Jesse shook her head “no” and remained silent.
“One hell of a #*@&!! lot!” That said, Winnie dropped her chin to her chest and seemed to sag inward, growing quiet. “I guess I should call my insurance agent,” she mumbled. “It’s probably drivable, but I don’t think you’d fit in there.”
Jesse shook her head again and backed away. She had no intention of trying to share the passenger seat with the propeller that was surely buried in it, nor with the battery that was somewhere inside there. She was probably just going to buy a new picnic basket as well. But soon she was going to have to figure out how to retrieve her purse from inside the mangled cab of that pickup, and she was not looking forward to it.
“Have you got a phone on you?” Winnie asked in resignation.
Jesse pointed to the wreck in front of them. “It’s in my purse.”
“Ouch! I hope it’s not buried under that battery.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Jesse said, quoting one of her mother’s favorite sayings and hoping some of Sophia’s good luck would cling to it because today her own luck didn’t seem so hot. She accompanied the wish with a roll of her eyes, which brought them around to something she was sure had not been there earlier.
At the end of the spit of land, where the lake surrounded the levee on three sides and the thorn tree lurked in the watery stillness of the steep lagoon side, what looked like an aluminum fishing boat appeared to be half buried, upside down, in the gentler slope leading to the lake itself.
“That wasn’t there earlier, was it?” Jesse pointed toward where the dirt road dead-ended. “Do you suppose that could be the boat that belongs to the motor?”
“Good grief,” Winnie said, catching sight of the fishing skiff in question. “Oh, good heavens, I hope there wasn’t anybody in it!” Her voice held sudden urgency and she began to run down the now-slippery road toward the upturned boat where nothing was visible other than its dented, mossy, mud-encrusted bottom.
Chapter Five
Catching the urgency of the moment, Jesse broke into a jog. Puddles lingered in the ruts of the road after the brief downpour, and she was careful to stay to the middle where grass clumps and gravel offered traction on the treacherously slick, Oklahoma clay roadbed.
Drenched through, her clothes clung to her, chafing as she ran. The insides of her shoes made soft sucking sounds with each impact. She slid down the embankment behind Winnie, and the two of them came to a stop almost simultaneously next to the upturned boat.
Winnie reached down and dug her fingers under the rim of the skiff where it was buried in the muddy hillside. Her face turned red and what started as a grunt turned into a groan as she tugged.
Jesse climbed a few steps back up the slope toward the wider stern. Bending, she grasped the edge firmly and heaved, making a sound almost identical to the other woman’s. The heavier-than-it-looked boat rocked, but refused to lift more than a few inches.
Pounding on the flat metal bottom with her fist, Winnie leaned in and shouted, “Is anybody in there? Hello?”
Jesse gave one more futile tug before she straightened in frustration. As aluminum fishing boats went, this one was on the small side, but there was a trough dug where it had apparently landed nose first and skidded toward to the lake’s shoreline, burying itself in the mud as it went.
“Honestly, Winnie, unless someone was tied in, I can’t imagine anyone still being inside there after it flipped upside down and plowed a five-foot f
urrow in the dirt.”
Winnie lifted her head and sighed. “I hope you’re right, ’cause it’s not budging.” She arched her back and rubbed the muscles just above her waistband, then pointed to the bottom of the boat. “Looks like someone was using this for target practice anyway.”
“What?” Jesse moved closer, squinting until she saw the three small holes along the center channel on the boat’s bottom. The aluminum curved outward in perfect circles, the jagged silver edges of the holes shining fresh and clean. “Those are brand new,” she observed. “No mud or moss like the rest of the bottom. No discoloration at all.”
“It looks like a perfectly good boat to me,” Winnie said. “Why would you shoot up a perfectly good boat?” She shook her head, puzzled and clinging to the idea like a bulldog. “These things don’t come cheap, and there’s always someone looking to buy one. And you damned sure don’t shoot up a boat you’ve got rigged with an outboard.”
She turned and looked back toward her pickup, where the trolling motor prominently protruded from the passenger door. Frowning, she gave her head another disgruntled shake. “Something’s not right here.”
Following Winnie’s gaze, Jesse thought again of her cell phone buried somewhere in the chaos of the truck’s cab. “I think I’m going to try to retrieve my purse so we can call for help. I’ve had about all the fun I can stand for today.”
“I’ll give an ‘amen’ to that. I think I’m going to walk back along this embankment and make sure there’s nobody lying injured in all this underbrush.”
Jesse suppressed a shudder but realized it was a wise precaution. “As soon as I get my phone, I’ll help you do a thorough search all along here. I guess while we’re at it, we ought to be looking up, too.”
She pointed to the battered tree limbs overhanging the slopes of the levee. Then she left Winnie to her slow walk through the weeds, shrubs and honeysuckle growing at the base of the trees along the lakeshore. If there was anything to find, the most likely area would be between the boat and its motor, but when things dropped out of a funnel cloud, there wasn’t much logic to where they were going to land, not that anyone had been able to figure out, anyway.
Putting aside the gruesome possibilities of the search going on behind her, Jesse reached the pickup and stood studying it for a minute before deciding a frontal assault was the only way. One foot on the front bumper, palms flat on the top edge of the hood, she hoisted herself up until she was firmly balanced with both feet on the bumper. Then, leaning forward with one hand curled around the hood ornament, she braced her knee on the low spot next to the fender and half pushed, half pulled until she was up and over.
Safely landed in the middle of the hood, sprawled on her belly like a freshly caught fish, Jesse shoved herself up onto her hands and knees, grateful no one was watching. If climbing up was this graceless, she didn’t even want to think about getting back down.
Eyes fixed on the gaping hole in the windshield, she carefully moved forward. Metal flexed under her as she crawled, dents forming where her knees rested. As each leg lifted, the dent popped back up. When her weight shifted to the other knee, a new depression formed with a dull thud for emphasis. Pop, thud, pop, thud.
She ignored the annoying sound effects and focused on her target, cautiously brushing aside the pebbles of safety glass that littered the hood as she inched her way forward until she was close enough finally to see inside. Balancing on both knees, she rocked forward, her fingers curled into the well that housed the windshield wipers, and peeked over the curved edge of shattered glass to the interior where it looked like a bomb had gone off.
Her gaze skimmed past the twin missiles of the boat’s battery and outboard engine, searching for the picnic basket where she had left it on the floor in front of the seat. The jaunty red-and-white check of the folded tablecloth peeked through a pile of splintered wood and one identifiable wooden handle.
Under the edge of an exploded plastic container of salad, she spotted the denim of the purse she used for outings in the woods and gave a huge sigh of relief for her habit of packing the salad dressing separately. Only then did she turn her attention to the devastation elsewhere.
The cab of Winnie’s well used and dearly loved truck was destroyed. An impressive hole was gouged through the driver’s side of the bench seat and seatback by the battery, which didn’t seem terribly large considering the damage it had done. The outboard’s propeller shaft and the propeller itself had been driven through the passenger side of the seat, taking much of the cushion with it. Daylight peeked through where the bottom of the truck should have been closed.
Having assessed the damage and still needing to retrieve her purse, Jesse swung around and sat down on the hood. Feet together, knees bent, she began to pound at what remained of the fractured windshield with the heels of her canvas tennis shoes. Grateful for her sturdy jeans and heavy socks, she slowly kicked in enough of the glass to clear a hole she could safely reach through and pull up her purse by its strap.
That done, she scooted back across the protesting hood on the seat of her denim pants until she could ease herself over the edge, feet first, sliding faster as she went until she was firmly upright and standing on wet clay soil once again. Pent-up breath escaped with a gust, and she lifted her purse in triumph as she scanned the area for her companion. They had no choice now but to call for a tow truck, because no one was driving that pickup anywhere, possibly ever again.
Finally catching sight of Winnie, who had apparently finished her search on one side and begun a return trip down the other, Jesse held her purse aloft and called, “Hold up a minute. Look, I found it.”
Winnie paused in her inspection of the steep hillside down to the standing water and marshy edges of the shallow inlet. She seemed tired as she turned to wait for Jesse. “How was it inside?”
That was not a question Jesse had been looking forward to, but this appeared to be a day of unpleasant truths. “An unholy mess. That battery did almost as much damage to the driver’s side as the outboard did to the other side.”
Winnie threw her head back and buried the fingers of both hands in her hair while seeming to have a short, intense and entirely silent conversation with herself. Then she dropped both arms limp at her sides. “Not drivable, huh?”
Among the things the two women had in common was a shared love of the unglamorous vehicles they drove. Jesse had a sentimental attachment to her inherited Chevy, and she was sure that Winnie cherished hers for reasons just as personal.
“I’m really sorry, Win.” Regretting her friend’s sadness, Jesse wished the news was better. “I’m not sure it’s even going to be fixable.”
Winnie lowered her head and stared at the ground for a long moment of silence. “I guess you’d better give me your phone then, and I’ll call the tow truck,” she said finally.
Jesse fished the phone out of her purse and handed it over, then wandered on down the levee, giving Winnie the solitude needed to make funeral arrangements for her pickup.
As she walked, Jesse scanned the area from the abrupt incline down to the still surface of the estuary, with its tree trunks jutting straight and tall from the water. Spring rains had already filled the waterways and their catch basins more than normal. Later in the summer, when the rain stopped and the heat started, the shoreline would recede and the underbrush and tree trunks would slowly emerge onto dry ground again. But for now, the grass and shrubs tickled the fishes’ bellies, and the ghostly trees became the archipelagoes of the lake.
This side of the levee was easy to search. Here there were only the fallen leaves left over from the winter, the stones that jutted from the limestone bedrock, and the water itself, dense and murky from the undergrowth beneath its surface.
Slowly, Jesse made her way toward the drop-off at the end. Winnie had stopped talking into the cell phone and walked a solitary distance behind, grief etched on her features. Jesse contented herself with a quick glance over her shoulder and then left the other wom
an to work out her own peace with the events of the day.
Soon, Jesse would retrieve her phone and put in the call to Joe Tyler about the bone that no longer seemed so important. It had become just one more thing that had to be attended to before the day could be put to rest.
Just then, the sound of a motor caught her attention, and she turned in time to watch a dark van slide to a halt at the base of the levee, effectively blocking the one road in or out, not that Winnie’s disabled pickup wasn’t already doing a fine job of that on its own. Not sure if she should feel rescued or trapped, Jesse turned and hurried back to where Winnie stood, phone clutched in her hand, staring blankly toward where the land met the still water below.
Slipping the phone from her friend’s unresisting hand, Jesse said, “Why don’t you check on down to the end. I’ve got all but that last little bit done.” Still talking, she found the sheriff’s cell number on her contact list, silently grateful she didn’t have to explain why he was a contact. “I’ll go see who that is and why they’re here.” Jesse nodded toward the new arrivals.
Winnie looked up, startled. “When did they get here?”
“Just now.”
“Maybe they can give us a ride.”
“Maybe we can find out who they are before we go getting into a van with strangers,” Jesse said with a frown. “Besides, we have a tow truck coming, and I’m getting ready to call the sheriff.”
“About that tow truck…” Winnie caught her lower lip between her teeth and nibbled at it like a set of worry beads. “They may be awhile, they said. Apparently, there were several tornadoes around the county, so…” Her voice trailed away.
“Define ‘awhile.’”
From the corner of her eye Jesse watched two men exit the driver and passenger sides of the van. They seemed excited, almost cheerful. It was then she noticed the equipment on top of their vehicle.
“Tomorrow,” Winnie answered.
“But you have to be here when they come for the truck,” Jesse protested, her attention squarely on Winnie and not the men she had decided were either storm chasers or a news crew. “Are they out of their ever-loving minds? Do they understand where we are? Because, God knows, I don’t.”
Murder Most Thorny (Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mystery Book 2) Page 3