The Final Arrangement

by Annie Adams

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  I had already made it to the bag and unzipped it. I grabbed the gun and pointed it at Irwin.

  "Don't move!" I yelled.

  "Quincy, what the—"

  "You and your sadistic wife aren't going to kill anyone else."

  "What are you talking about? We haven't killed anyone."

  "You said LaDonna's been busy."

  "Yes, busy with hunting."

  “Hunting! That’s what you call it? It’s called murder you monster.” I kept the gun aimed at him even though my finger wasn't on the trigger.

  “You’re not one of those animal rights activists are you?"

  “What?”

  “Hunting is a perfectly natural thing to do. Our ancestors have been hunting for food and clothing since Adam and Eve. It’s a God given right and Mother and I have been harassed by the fish and game everywhere we’ve lived. A God fearing man or woman shouldn’t have to get a license to provide for their family. I don’t need any cops down here snooping around and getting the Fish and Game in our business.”

  I couldn’t tell if Irwin was just in a state of shock or if he had some form of dementia. “I’m talking about Derrick Gibbons, Irwin.”

  His face darkened. “What about him?”

  “Your wife murdered him.”

  “You’re lying! You really did kill him didn’t you? And now you’re trying to blame a couple of senior citizens. You’re a murderer!” With perfect timing the motor to the drawers clanked off and the sounds of a muffled stuck pig emanated from JoAnne’s drawer that I had left ajar. Irwin looked behind him toward the drawers and then back at me with a confused look on his face.

  “Quincy, what’s going on here? Who’s in the drawer? What have you done?”

  I could see he was genuinely confused, and his eyes glistened with what looked like tears. Maybe he really didn’t know about Derrick’s murder. My arms were getting tired from holding up the gun. I lowered it and Irwin didn’t move.

  “Irwin, I don’t know how she got there, but JoAnne is in the drawer. Your wife forced me in here at gunpoint, and she let me think that JoAnne was dead in this body bag. She came at me with the gun and I knocked her down and she hit her head. LaDonna told me she killed Derrick Gibbons because of how much he hurt your son.”

  “Oh dear.” His voice grew frail and tender as he looked down at his wife. “I’m afraid it’s all unraveling now. Mother. I’m sorry.” He looked up at me, his jaw trembled. “She hasn’t been quite right lately. She’s been imagining things and misplacing other things. She probably put something in that bag thinking it was something else. She’s always been a great markswoman and hunter, she’s got all kinds of trophies. I started to worry about her using guns when she started with her stories, but she always snapped out of it. She loves hunting and camping and fishing, it reminds her of time she spent with her father and me and the kids. I just wanted her to be happy. But she’s been real bad lately. She would see a story on the news and think it was about her. I’m afraid that’s what happened when she told you about Derrick. But she’s carried it much further this time. I’m so sorry, Quincy. I don’t want to lose her. She’s been my sweetheart for sixty years.”

  I put the gun down on the bag and walked over toward Irwin who kneeled, holding his wife. They both looked very small on the floor of the giant barn that surrounded them.

  “We’ve got to get JoAnne out of that drawer.” I said. I extended my hand and helped Irwin up from the floor. LaDonna was still out cold but she looked okay. She wasn’t turning blue or anything. We both pulled on the top of the drawer and rolled out a wide-eyed, red-faced JoAnne.

  “JoAnne, I’m going to take the gag out if you promise not to scream,” I said. She nodded, still looking scared out of her mind. I slowly reached down and gently pulled the gag out of her mouth. I cringed in anticipation of the squeals she might produce. Thankfully, she said nothing; in fact she made no noise at all. Irwin and I helped her sit up. I started working on the knots that tied her hands together, and once those were undone I helped JoAnne bend her knees up, so she could get her legs out of the bottom of the drawer. It took some doing, her movements were stiff and her legs were rather large in diameter and difficult to lift. We finally managed to get her turned around. I knelt and began the work of untying her feet. She said nothing the entire time; she just followed my directions.

  “There,” I said, once I conquered the final knot. “You’re finally free. Can you move your feet?”

  “AAAUGH, Murderer!” She screamed and kicked me in the chest sending me flying backwards. JoAnne had the leg strength of a Clydesdale once she got her range of motion back.

  ###

  When I opened my eyes, everything was dark. I wasn’t sure where I was, but it was too difficult for me to care. I shut my eyes. The memories of what had just happened floated around the periphery of my mind like tiny little puzzle pieces that just didn’t fit together.

  I opened my eyes again. It was still dark. The surface under my back was hard and flat. The end of my nose felt cold like when I was a little kid and my mother had to drag me away from the sledding hill up the street. My fingers were tingling and when I moved them I became aware that my wrists were tied together. I knew where I was.

  The first thing I thought of when I realized I was in a drawer in a mini-morgue was hypothermia. I had spent enough time in my walk in cooler to think that I might have a tolerance to the cold air. This was probably a false belief, but it helped me not to panic until I had my next thought. Air.

  I began to cry. Now I really couldn’t breathe, especially since I had a gag tied around my mouth. Crying while you’re gagged is not conducive to helping you feel like you can breathe. I allowed myself the crying indulgence for a few seconds until I thought to myself, No. Get yourself under control, Quincy. Crying would probably use up more air. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I realized the light was uneven around me. I tipped my head back and saw an illuminated line above and behind my head. The drawer hadn’t been closed all the way. Okay, I could breathe.

  My fingers weren’t tingling anymore, they were numb. Would they have to cut my hands off when they found me? Would someone find me? I had to find a way to escape. I kicked my feet to see if they were tied together too. They weren’t tied, but I hit my knee on the metal above. I kept my legs straight as a board, just like when we played the “Straight as a Board, Light as a Feather” game in junior high school. I flexed my ankles and tried to inch the drawer open by pushing on the metal ceiling with my toes. No traction. The tread on my cross trainers had been worn off completely. I kicked wildly at my cold metal tomb. Now my toes were tingling.

  All I could do was yell for help.

  “Help!” That didn’t do any good. I couldn’t even hear me yell with the gag in. I would just have to lay here until someone found me or until I thought of some other idea for escape. I lay there with my eyes open, because it seemed to help me think. Suddenly, the light in my drawer brightened. I tipped my head back and saw that the crack above my head was much brighter than before. I listened intently, but all I could hear was the groan of the compressor motor. Soon, I heard other noises. Someone was yelling. They were close enough that I could hear them over the motor. I kicked my legs robot-style so my toes made noise on the ceiling. It really hurt, but I kept at it, harder and harder.

  I heard a loud rumble and my eyes were blinded by a flash of light. When I opened my eyes again, a beautiful pair of warm chocolate drops stared down at me. Alex scooped me into his arms and pulled me out of the drawer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The emergency room isn’t usually the first place that comes to mind when you think of romance. But I’m not the most usual person in the world, nor is my life. I decided to give Alex one more chance, partly since he rescued me and probably saved my life and all, but mostly because of what he revealed to me after the rescue.

  “That ought to do it,” said the nurse, as s
he finished wrapping my foot. “You’ll probably need the crutches for a few weeks, but the physical therapist can give you more specific directions.”

  “All this for a toe?” I asked.

  “All this for a big toe, yes. You’ll be surprised how much you use that thing. Now tell me, did you really break your toe by kicking the ceiling?”

  “Yep.” I looked at Alex, who sat in a chair opposite the examining table. He winked at me.

  “She kicked it pretty hard, that’s how I found her.”

  “Uh-huh,” the nurse said. I don’t think she believed me. She turned to Alex. “The doctor will have to come back in and see you one more time before Quinella can leave.” Stupid medical records with full names printed on them. “You’ve been given the care sheet for someone with a head injury, right?”

  “Right. I’ll keep a close watch. I won’t take my eyes off of her.” Alex gazed at me while he spoke to the nurse. He flashed his melt-my-insides smile.

  “She didn’t sound too convinced,” I said.

  “She didn’t have all the facts. As far as she knows you were messing around in the back seat of an old Scout.”

  “What?”

  “Where else are you gonna be able to kick a metal ceiling?”

  “You didn’t tell her what happened to me?”

  “Only the necessaries." He grinned mischievously. "I might have just made up the part about the Scout.”

  “Thanks for rescuing me while tarnishing my reputation.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “I’ll forgive you for disappearing, since you made this one really big, unexpected appearance. But only if you tell me how you found me.”

  He leaned forward in the chair, elbows on knees and fist under his chin. “You know, you look pretty cute for a girl with a black eye and a broken toe.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere. Well—maybe it will get you somewhere—we’ll see. But don't change the subject. How did you find me?”

  “Rusty and Dusty Stephens.”

  I gave Alex the do-you-seriously-expect-me-to-believe-that, look.

  “The guys in the red truck," he said.

  “It wasn’t a red truck following me this time.”

  “I know. It was a rental car being driven by Rusty and Dusty…"

  "What?" I interrupted. It made my head hurt.

  He held his hands up defensively, "Hold on, let me explain. It was a rental car paid for by me, which you caused to bottom out. They had to haul it off on a tow truck. That’s why it took so long for me to find you. You’re really lucky, you know.”

  “I know. I'm sorry to have caused all that. And I hope you bought the extra insurance."

  "Very funny," he said

  "But seriously, Rusty and Dusty work for the police?”

  “Not exactly.” Alex looked around then got up and shut the door to the hospital room. “Okay,” he said in a hushed voice. “First of all, I need to tell you that I’m not a regular police officer.” Well, duh. “I’ve been working in undercover affairs for the last nine months on a case involving a bad cop.”

  “Arroyo?”

  “Yes. Until last night I was working undercover to find out if departmental suspicions were true about him and his involvement with a crime boss of sorts.”

  “Landon Powell.” I said.

  “How did you know?”

  “I know many things. Continue.”

  An appreciative smile curled the corners of Alex’s mouth. “I couldn’t find anything on Rusty and Dusty until your delivery driver called me after she roughed them up.”

  I smiled, thinking about K.C. taking down those “Two young bucks.”

  “They were so scared of what would happen to them once Landon Powell heard how an old lady took them down, it was easy to convince them to help me out. I couldn’t have you officially watched, because I was afraid Arroyo would find out. So I struck a deal with Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee, and I paid for the rental car myself. They still think they have diplomatic immunity for helping out the police.”

  “Diplomatic immunity?”

  “So they’re not the sharpest tools in the shed.”

  “So, basically, you’re telling me that I evaded two men who were being instructed by you, to follow me around, and that I could have kept this whole concussion, broken toe thing from happening?”

  “Pretty much, but you did solve Derrick Gibbon’s murder.”

  “Well, that's great, I suppose, but you had me followed by thugs.”

  “Nah, I checked them out. They’re harmless. As a matter of fact, once they thought they were protecting you, they took their job pretty seriously."

  “But why were they following me in the first place—I mean in the beginning, with the red truck?”

  “After the murder, Greg Schilling figured people would be snooping around the mortuary, and that they would learn about the shady favors that were being traded with Landon Powell. Schilling knew about the incident between you and Derrick, so he told Powell about it. Powell then sent Arroyo to redirect the investigation toward you. We think it was a diversionary tactic until they figured out for themselves who had really committed the murder.

  I shifted around on the examining table and grimaced when I moved my foot. The pain pill the nurse had given me wasn’t working yet.

  “Are you okay?” Alex said.

  “I’ll be fine, I just wish the doctor would get here so we can go." I squirmed on the table until I found a slightly softer spot for my bottom. "So what about Camille LeFaye and JoAnne and Irwin and LaDonna?” I asked. “What happened to all of them?”

  “It looks like Camille LeFaye was hit hard on the head.” He knit his brows and shook his head. “Poor lady. Her death is still an ongoing investigation.” He leaned forward and reached for my hand, “Sorry I couldn’t be there for you after you found Camille. I was watching Arroyo.”

  “I don’t understand. If you were watching Arroyo, how did he slip a dead body into my van?"

  "He didn't put her there himself. We think he’s involved, and we have plenty of other evidence of wrongdoing in other cases, so he’ll be locked up for a long time even before he’s charged in Camille’s case."

  “It was a bit of a shock, landing on a body in my own van.”

  “You’ve got to quit falling on top of dead bodies. People are going to start to wonder...”

  I threw a rolled up Ace bandage at him. “What about the others?” I asked.

  “JoAnne is the reason we finally found you. She called 911 in hysterics and gave a description of you as her captor. She was at her shop when somebody knocked on her back delivery door, and the next thing she knew, you were opening her drawer."

  "Is it wrong that I'm not sure if I want to thank her?" I said, as I gingerly put my hand to the sore spot on my head.

  Alex looked at me sympathetically. "LaDonna’s in protective custody upstairs, in the ICU. Irwin brought her here and turned her in.”

  “If Irwin turned his wife in, and JoAnne called 911, how did I end up in the drawer?”

  “JoAnne. She said she ran away from the barn, but then waited around until Irwin left with LaDonna. She was still freaked out thinking you had put her in the drawer, so she returned the favor. I guess she was worried that if you died, she could be put in jail for murder, so she called for help.”

  “What a gal.”

  “Well, the end result was getting you back. So, I’m forever grateful to JoAnne.” My heart fluttered in my chest as he flashed a smile at me. “You told me you got LaDonna talking. Did she tell you how she killed Derrick?”

  “Not exactly. I asked her if Derrick was a diabetic.”

  He raised one eyebrow, “And?”

  “And, her reaction told me I had figured it out.” Alex looked puzzled. “Irwin is a diabetic. While I was standing there trying to stall, I remembered. LaDonna knew what would happen if she gave someone too much insulin.”

  “My sweet, clever Quinella.”

  I glared at him. �
��Ooh, if I had something else to throw…”

  He laughed and held his hands in front of his face. “Okay, okay, sorry. Did you find out why LaDonna did it?”

  “Derrick took advantage of her youngest son, which eventually led to his suicide. I think in her mind, Derrick basically murdered her son. She was avenging him.”

  Alex shook his head. “Wow, a mother’s protective instinct…” He stood then came over and sat next to me on the examining table. “I was so glad to see you when I opened that drawer, Q.” The nickname was much better than the real thing. “Let me take you home and take care of you. Just for a little while,” he said softly, coaxing.

  I started to protest but was interrupted when he caressed my cheek with the back of his hand and turned my chin toward him with his fingers. He brushed his lips over mine, then pulled back. It felt like a feather tickling my skin. I sat up straighter, and tilted my head to meet his lips again with my own.

  “Quincy!” We were both startled enough to stop short of what I’m sure would have been the Greatest Kiss Ever, by the grating, high-pitched voice of a woman yelling my name. “Quincy, where are they keeping you?”

  “Oh hell. Speaking of motherly instincts—Alex, you’re about to meet my mother.”

  ###

  “Quinella Adams McKay, don’t you dare step foot in that kitchen again. You’re not supposed to be walking around, crutches or not.”

  “Mom, it’s okay. They want me to start walking on it a little bit. Besides, we need to get all of this food outside on the table. Everyone will be here soon.”

  Mom pulled out a chair at the dining room table and pointed to the seat. I obliged her and sat down.