“I do, and I need a haircut, but color? I don’t know.”
“They got temporary hair color. Our girls used it for fun when they lived at home, Sally, the youngest, especially. I know they still make the stuff. Haven’t you seen kids, even adults, with green or orange or purple stripes in their hair?”
“Oh, hey, wait a minute.”
“Don’t worry. What the girls used came out—mostly—the first time they washed their hair. And not all of the colors are gaudy day-glow stuff. They got ordinary colors, or did when the girls used it for Halloween and such. How about being a red-head again, Carrie? Henry ever seen you with red hair?”
“Uhhh, well, no. ”
“Gimme a minute. I’ll call Teasley’s in town, see what they have in stock. If something sounds good, Henry can pick it up when he goes to see Chief Trent, bring it back here, and we’ll get you disguised in time to go visit Jo Marshall. You’ll look real different with the grey covered up and maybe wearing one of the girl’s old dresses.”
“I bet I will,” Carrie said, and sighed.
Two hours later Carrie stood in front of the cheval glass in Shirley and Roger’s bedroom. “I feel like Anne of Green Gables with this wild red hair,” she said.
“Wasn’t that older lady’s name Marilla? Matthew and Marilla, the folks who took Anne in?” Shirley asked. “Not sure, never read it in a book, though the name sounds right from what I remember seeing on the television. It’s a pretty name—Marilla. If I’d learned to read before the girls were born and read that story, one of ‘em would have been named Marilla.”
She studied Carrie, looking over her head into the mirror. “Well, anyway, the hair color is pretty, and that dress is long just because Sally’s a few inches taller than you. Was your hair anywhere near that color when you were young?”
Carrie poked at the orange curls. “Not so bright.”
“Here, put this hat on, It’ll cover part of the brightness. I called Jo, and she’s expecting us. All I gotta do is corral Roger.”
“What about my glasses?”
“You’ve got those sunglasses. Did the two men who took you ever see you in sunglasses?”
“No, they had my purse the whole time, and the sunglasses were in it.”
“Okay, put ‘em on and we’re ready to go.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
THIS MUST BE THE PLACE
After Shirley turned the truck onto Marshall Road she slowed to fifteen miles an hour. “They’ll think I’m driving slow because of the rocks and dust,” she said. “Only makes sense on these roads anyway. Now, you can look out the front window kinda slanty, and, as I pass, still see out of the corner of your eyes, can’t you? That way you won’t seem to be paying too much attention. The place is just ahead. Roger, you look too.”
“Oh, yes,” Carrie said, “This could be it. I see the trailer from an eighteen-wheeler in back of those buildings. I don’t see any tractor, but the largest metal building would hold it easily. Too bad there are no people about, it would be helpful if I could identify either of the two men who abducted me. However, remembering when we pulled in and stopped, all I see here now fits with what I heard and felt then. The second building could well be where they parked the van and moved me to the car.”
“Looks to be some kind of office at the side of the smaller building,” Shirley said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay, here we are at Jo’s place.”
Carrie was almost instantly ashamed by her surprise when she saw the elegant house. Well, why shouldn’t people out here have lovely homes? But on this road? She’d expected a simple farm house. A generous amount of money had paid for the large two-story home with shutters and a pillared front porch. The wide porch held a hanging swing, and there was wicker furniture, undoubtedly left out now so the Marshalls could enjoy pleasant fall days sitting there. There was even a ceiling fan to chase away summer heat and mosquitoes. Scarlett O’Hara would be comfortable in this home.
“Shirley, did the Marshalls move here before the trucking business came in?”
“Yep. I don’t exactly know how long they’ve been here, but I don’t think they would have chosen this land—pretty as it is—if any business was close by. No zoning out here, though. You can’t pick your neighbors.”
“Both their families had big cotton plantations in Georgia before the war,” Roger said. “Lotsa money. His family sold out after the war and came to Arkansas, her’s stayed in Georgia. Them that stayed didn’t do well at first. The daddy was a bitter man, and had lost one son in the war, but the younger son accepted the change, and caught up after a few years.”
Experience had taught Carrie what war they meant. “Slaves?” she asked.
“Yes,” Roger said, “a terrible thing to do to anyone, but they must have been among the better owners, because Ben Marshall told me most of her family’s slaves stayed on. They were given bits of land for a garden and materials to make a house, and then paid to work for the son. Thank the good Lord those times are behind us now. The Marshall people here are great-great-grandchildren of the Marshalls that left Georgia, and Jo and Ben have one daughter-in-law who’s African-American. The two grandkids are the color of honey. Both have big brown eyes and brown curly hair.”
“Plenty cute,” Shirley added.
“Where do the son and his family live?” Carrie asked.
“Seattle,” Roger said. “Ben Junior and his wife are engineers that have something to do with the airplane business. Jo can tell you about it. Good place to start conversation if you need a starter, which, with Jo, I doubt you will.”
Shirley pulled into the asphalt circle drive in front of the porch, tooted the horn, then got out.
Carrie, suddenly embarrassed by her fiery red hair, pulled her hat down as far as it would go, and was sliding out of the truck when a generously-sized woman came out on the porch. Picture-perfect grandma.
“You’ll explain about the disguise, won’t you?” she whispered to Shirley.
“Already have, on the phone,” Shirley said, “and I forgot the dang recipe. No matter, she knows we’re here on more serious business.”
“Welcome. This is sure a nice surprise,” the woman said as she jiggled across the porch. “I see Roger’s here, too. Come on along, Roger, unless you object to some girl talk. Ben’s away. He’s got the idea he wants a new baler, so he’s visiting dealers.” She bent, peering in at Roger. “I have fresh applesauce cake.”
“Mighty kind, but I’ll stay out here. Catch up on my reading.”
“Oh-oh, oh, my,” Jo said, “I get it, you’re the watch dog. Well, since the sun’s warmed the porch, why don’t you sit up here? I often do that of an afternoon. I’ll bring some cake out.”
“I’m okay here for now, thanks, Jo. Maybe in a bit.”
The three women went into the house and Carrie’s amazement deepened. Furniture in the entry hall and parlor might, indeed, have come from what she imagined Scarlett’s Tara to be like. Some of the pieces must be quite valuable by now.
“This is beautiful,” she said, speaking more from her respect for antiques than an admiration of actual beauty, since heavy, dark wood and horsehair were not her taste. Her nose even detected the faint mixture of mothballs and mustiness she associated with antique upholstery.
As Jo Marshall directed them through the parlor and into a more comfortably furnished sitting room, she said, “Thanks. That furniture came west from Georgia in 1866. We don’t use the room, so it’s mostly a family museum. The couches and chairs are terrible to sit on, but, well, who could get rid of family antiques?”
She shrugged, and her whole upper body wobbled.
“Sit,” she said. “How about some applesauce cake and coffee?”
Carrie said “Thanks, not for me. We just finished a delicious lunch at Shirley’s.”
Shirley spoke at almost the same time. “No thanks, Jo, though I do remember how good your cake is.” After a pause, she said, “You understand that no one m
ust hear of our visit and its reason. Truth be told, people’s lives may well depend on secrecy. Might be best if you didn’t even tell Ben, if that doesn’t bother you.”
“It doesn’t. We’re close, as you know, but I don’t run to him with everything that happens in my day, and he can keep secrets, too. Such doesn’t bother either of us.”
“Okay, then. I told you some of the story on the phone, but here’s all of it. Carrie has experienced the worst part, and can correct me if I go wrong. Things are bad enough that we had to disguise her to even think of letting her out of my house, but I thought she should see your neighbor’s business and hear your account of what you’ve noticed about the place. She’s already told us that what she now sees fits with what she felt when they took her there, blindfolded.”
“Okay, go on,” Jo Marshall said, and wiggled herself into a more comfortable position on the couch she had chosen for her seat.
Shirley told the story, emphasizing safety for Carrie as the reason no one must know she hadn’t died in the woods, rather than any need to protect the man who saved her. When she finished the story, uninterrupted by Carrie, both women looked at Jo expectantly, and waited.
“What a truly terrible thing to endure. Carrie, I feel right honored to have someone I’d call a heroine visiting my house. I don’t know if I can help you much, but I’ll try to recall all I can, as well as what I’ve seen the last few days, which may be of some interest to you.
“It’s my practice on pleasant days to enjoy sitting in the swing on our porch with a bite to eat and a glass of sweet tea. Ben often joins me there of an evening, since we aren’t big on watching television.
“Most of the trees between here and the truck place have leaves that drop in the fall, so we can see it pretty well for much of the year. Ben keeps saying we should have planted a row of some sort of evergreens as a screen years ago, but we just never got around to it, which, for your interests today, is a good thing.
“The business was called “Specialty Hauling” for years, and all we ever saw was trucks coming and going. I reckon customers phoned the office here and arranged for someone to pick up their load and deliver it where they wanted. I think it was short hauling, since we could tell trucks weren’t often gone more’n two days, and most just one. The rigs were all painted the same yellow, but we could see differences in them after a while watching from the porch. It kind of got to be entertainment for Ben and me, guessing what they were hauling, and so on.”
“Sounds like you’re good observers,” Shirley said. “Did they ever bring loads back here?”
“Not often. You can tell from the sound of a truck whether it’s loaded or not. We got to know how to tell that. Most of the time, the trucks were empty when they came and went from here.
“Well, a few months ago it was obvious the business had changed hands. All the yellow trucks left, and those two new metal buildings went up. They have only one big truck there now, and two smaller ones—you know, the kind that has a separate cab in front with a big closed-in box on the back like furniture stores might use. They have a couple of big vans, too. All of them are painted white. No company name anywhere and, as you saw, none on the buildings.
“The big truck sometimes goes away for a week or more, and we’ve known the two smaller ones to be away for several days. The vans stay pretty close, but, on occasion, they are gone overnight.
“I’ve seen four different men around the place pretty regularly, most of the time getting in or out of trucks, or backing a smaller truck or van into one of the buildings. They also get a few visitors. Most are men, a few women, and they come in SUVs or pick-up trucks. The trucks usually have covers over the bed or large tool boxes behind the cab. Most of the time they drive into one of the two new buildings so we never see what they’re picking up or delivering. Ben says some kind of repair work or vehicle enhancement, like adding darkened windows or lifts, could be what goes on inside, but we haven’t seen evidence of anything like that driving away yet. Most of the time the visitors don’t stay more than an hour, so I think he’s wrong.
“UPS stops there almost every day, and the driver goes to that office door on the side of the smaller building to leave packages. Sometimes there are a lot of boxes in a shipment, which is kind of unusual for UPS, isn’t it? Don’t they mostly carry smaller shipments?”
“Ones I’ve noticed or received are small,” Carrie said.
“That’s what I thought. Well now, all this activity picked up speed about the middle of August, and has stayed steady ever since. And, here’s something that will be of special interest to you since Shirley mentioned you hearing a woman’s voice. Over the last week or so I’ve seen a woman come out from that small door several times. Looked like she came out to talk with people who’d just driven in. After a few minutes the big door there would open and they’d drive inside, the women walking in behind them, then the door would go closed. I never saw her before last week, though she could have been in and out before then, and I missed it. But for sure she wasn’t around as much as she is now.”
“What’s she look like?” Shirley asked.
“Oh, well, let’s see. Dark, straight hair, cut short, almost manish. Hard to tell from this distance, but my guess is she’s around forty-five and good looking. She’s skinny except for big bazooms. Kind of tall, maybe five foot eight or nine.”
“What time of day have you seen her?” Carrie asked. “Or does it vary?”
“Varies. I think she’s been there most all the time since I first noticed her. I never saw her drive off, so I figure there must be a living space inside that smaller building. I haven’t smelled food cooking, but, who knows, she may live on microwaved dinners. Or the wind could have been a direction to take the smells away.”
“What does she wear?” Shirley asked.
“Oh, just jeans and a shirt that looks like a man’s dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I bet she wouldn’t wear a polo or t-shirt any more’n I would. There are those bazooms.” Jo laughed. “A shirt suits her better. She never has on anything like a mechanic’s overalls, if that’s what you’re thinking about.”
“Not really, just tryin’ to get a picture. I guess you’ve never seen her dressed up—you know, like going to church or out to dinner?”
“No, but I could have missed something like that.”
“What do you remember seeing during the late morning and early afternoon yesterday? Was she around then?”
“I didn’t spend much time on the porch yesterday, Shirley, and I’m sorry, because I know what you’re getting at. Did I observe anything around the time you think Carrie was there? No. I was inside, working in the kitchen and tending to laundry. Ben was working in the pastures, except for having lunch.”
Carrie asked, “What about the four men you mentioned? When you see them, what are they doing?”
“Before the woman showed up, they talked to those that came, and directed them inside like she’s doing now. But they didn’t hang around all the time like she is.” Jo laughed again. “After all, someone has to do the grocery shopping, even for TV dinners, right? Maybe she has them go shopping for her. It’s almost like she’s hiding out here.”
“What about nighttime? Is anyone around then?”
“We aren’t on the porch after dark this time of year, but if our lights are out and I’m near the front windows upstairs, like when I’m going to bed, I’ve noticed light over there, and, one or two times, headlights coming or going.”
“If you don’t mind,” Carrie said, “could we go sit on the porch? I’d like to look the place over more carefully “
Shirley shook her head. “Uhh, I don’t know about that. Might not be safe for you.”
“There’s still some spotty cover from the trees, especially at the north end,” Jo said, “and they never pay any attention to us anyway. I took over a box of cookies right after they moved in, partly because I was curious to see what was inside those buildings. No one was outside, so I knocked o
n the small door. One of the men came, and I told him I wanted to welcome them to the neighborhood, which, of course, was baloney, more-or-less. The man did act real glad to get the cookies, and he thanked me, but he sure didn’t invite me in, and I haven’t gotten so much as a wave from any of them since. Anyway, I think it will be okay to sit there, since guests during the day often sit outside with me in pleasant weather like today. I insist on bringing out some coffee, though, unless y’all want sweet tea.”
Both Carrie and Shirley accepted the offer of coffee, and Jo told them to go on out while she got a tray ready to bring.
When the three of them were settled, Carrie asked, “Since guests do sit with you on the porch, and the truck people are used to that, how about the possibility of someone official—say a deputy sheriff—coming here to observe? Sounds as if they could drive a plain vehicle, wear plain clothing, and sit here without it looking suspicious.”
“I think that would work fine,” Jo said, “but of course I’d have to tell Ben about it then.”
“I understand. Can he be trusted to keep this quiet for a while? No talking to anyone?”
“If he knows the possible consequences to you, or even to Shirley and Roger if he blabs, you bet he can,” Jo said, and I think . . . oh, look! There’s the woman and one of the men I’ve seen before. Just came out of the small door.”
Carrie said, “Shirley, you keep talking and looking at Jo, any kind of conversation you can think of. Jo and I can glance toward the buildings. We can’t stare, but I want to see those two in case I might recognize anything about either of them. I sure wish we could hear their voices.”
“Way too far for that,” Shirley said, “and they can’t hear me, either, so I’ll tell Jo about the time Henry planned a camping trip to the Buffalo National River as a surprise for you, and . . .”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE OBJECT OF A SEARCH
A Fair to Die For Page 20