Sweet Cherry Pie

by J. D. Monroe

  Georgia’s got to tie up loose ends, so she leaves after making plans to meet up at eleven in the parking lot. Mike’s still half asleep and working on his first cup of coffee when Charity walks into his office and announces that she’s hitting the road.

  “This got something to do with seeing your mama yesterday?” he asks.

  “Something like that,” she says. “You gonna be all right without me?”

  He snorts a laugh and opens up a plastic bank pouch full of cash for deposit. She can’t help but watch hungrily as his thick fingers stuff a wad of ones into the already overstuffed bag. “Cherry-girl, I’ve been fine without you for fifteen years. Been nice having a pretty face around, but I’ll get on just fine. You’ve been itching to go since you walked in that door. You go do what you gotta do.”

  “Thanks, Mike,” she says. “I appreciate everything.”

  It takes her less than twenty minutes to gather all her things from the camper and Mike’s back room. She doesn’t have much to her name. None of it matches: a heavy-duty canvas duffel, a hiking backpack, a plastic Husky toolbox, and a military footlocker. There are a few things that don’t quite fit—shotgun, crossbow and, of course, the blowtorch. All the things a nice girl needs.

  At ten fifty-seven, a vehicle rolls up outside, tires crunching in the gravel. Something big, by the sound of it. She would have pegged Georgia for the type to drive a prissy Volkswagen with the cute little flower vase up front. But the engine is too loud—maybe a souped-up truck? A girl can hope. She slings her two bags over her shoulders and hauls them out of the tiny camper.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” she says. Georgia is full of surprises. Big, shiny ones.

  Parked behind Mike’s bar is a huge, sleek motorhome, a full-on rockstar tour bus painted black and gold. The thing makes Mike’s truckbed camper look like a Dumpster with a futon bolted in. It wouldn’t surprise her to find a washed-up eighties rock star holed up inside with a gaggle of groupies and a weekend supply of Viagra. Hooked to the back of the RV is a tow dolly supporting the front wheels of a small silver hybrid, which would have been Charity’s next prediction after the Volkswagen.

  The side door of the RV swings open, and Georgia steps down with the keys dangling from her fingers.

  “This is yours?” Charity says incredulously.

  “Did I not mention it?” Georgia replies, smiling faintly as she swings her ponytail over her shoulder.

  “I think I’d remember.”

  Holy shit.

  Georgia grabs one of the bags and gestures to follow her up into the RV.

  “Jesus H,” Charity breathes. The interior is nicer than any house Charity has ever lived in, even back when Andy was alive and Harmony was at least half sane. Fake hardwood floors, brown leather couches, flat-screen TV hanging on one wall. It even smells good, like a birthday cake baking in the oven. “Who’d you blow to get this?”

  Georgia shoots her a withering look. “I didn’t— I—” She sighs. “I have a rich uncle who upgraded and sold me this one.”

  “What the hell did he upgrade to, a private jet? And where the hell did you get that kind of money? Do you sell coke out of the back room or what?”

  Georgia just shrugs. She gestures to the couch. “This pulls out into a bed, and we can slide a curtain across for privacy. But the best part is back here.”

  “Okay, Dodgy McDodgerson,” Charity mutters. How the hell does she get the cash for something like this? There has to be a meth lab in the back, or a homegrown porn studio. Or maybe she has one hell of a sugar daddy.

  Georgia slides past Charity and squeezes through the narrow kitchen to the back of the RV. A private bedroom takes up the back third of the vehicle. No porn or meth in sight. Massive cabinets are mounted around the perimeter. Georgia unlocks one of the cabinets to reveal the most impressive weapons collection Charity has ever seen, and she’s run with some serious gun nuts. This would give some of her hunter friends a boner so massive they’d need the hotline for an erection lasting more than four hours.

  She’s got guns of all shapes and sizes, knives in silver and bronze and some kind of engraved wood, even finely sharpened wooden stakes. Little cases of ammo litter the bottom of the cabinet, most brass, but a few silver. There’s still no proof she knows what to do with any of it, but it’s an impressive collection.

  Charity can’t imagine what something like this costs. A hell of a lot more than she makes pickpocketing drunk assholes in dive bars, that’s for sure. Even if Georgia doesn’t know a damn thing about hunting, Charity can work with this. Of all her options, Georgia seems to be the least threatening. And truth be told, Charity’s tired of being alone. Going the way she’s been, she’ll end up a miserable drunk and probably die with her throat ripped out in a dark parking lot somewhere.

  “So you’re in?” Georgia says.

  “Let me sign on the dotted line.”

  10. ON THE ROAD AGAIN

  CHARITY LEARNS SEVERAL THINGS about Georgia Browning very quickly.

  One: Georgia has weird-ass taste in food. The cabinets and fridge are stocked with free-range, organic, cruelty-free, gluten-free rabbit food. Charity may well be the first hunter in history to die of starvation.

  Two: Georgia does not appreciate road trip karaoke, no matter how many times Miranda Lambert comes up in the rotation. It also doesn’t seem to matter how many times Charity declares, “But this is my song, Georgia.”

  Three, and worst of all: Georgia drives like an octogenarian on sedatives. If the speed limit is fifty-five, she will not go one tick above fifty, no matter how many senior citizens speed around them with middle fingers raised high.

  However, Charity hates a backseat driver, so she bites her tongue and lets Georgia drive as slow as her little heart pleases. It gives her ample time to keep researching to connect the dots in Brentwood. Georgia has a WiFi hotspot and two high-end laptops in the RV, which beats the hell out of waiting for tiny text to load on her phone with no signal in the asscrack of nowhere.

  “Did you find anything?” Georgia asks.

  “Yeah, listen to this,” Charity says. The local papers are full of stories and editorials about the Thomas Crane case, but they’re all embellishing the same details to conceal the fact that they have no real answers. However, she finds something promising from about two weeks back. “Big robbery at this university professor’s house.”

  Georgia flicks her eyes to Charity, then back to the road. “Blame my relative inexperience, but I’m not seeing the connection.”

  Charity sighs and reads from the article. “Professor Thomas Calloway estimated the value of the stolen items at over one hundred thousand dollars. He reported several pieces of art stolen, as well as several rare items from his collection of crime memorabilia. It goes on about him teaching classes on criminology.”

  “Still not seeing it.”

  “Crime memorabilia, Georgia. Your stalker research should have told you that I’m not your usual hunter. I look for cursed objects. The ghosts and shit are incidental.” She hadn’t started that way, but she’d found herself something of a niche over the last few years. “And in my experience, there are three major things that absorb bad mojo by accident. Weapons used to commit violent crimes, religious relics, and jewelry that belonged to evil assholes.”

  “Evil assholes. Is that the technical term?”

  “Shut up.” Georgia’s lips quirk up in a smile. “Violence always leaves a mark. So anything used to kill picks up a touch of something unfriendly. Christina once found this old Winchester rifle they used in a firing squad down in Mexico. That thing was haunted as hell. No matter what you aimed it at, the bullet would always strike a person in the right eye. Crazy, right?”

  “That is crazy. Who’s Christina?”

  “Long story,” she says. Family friend turned foster mother turned hunting mentor? It was Christina who got her focused on the curse-breaking. Any dumbass with a shotgun can take out a ghoul, she said. It takes a brain to dismantle
a curse. “Call her my Yoda. And this one time, me and Patience had to deal with this old antique electric chair that had deep-fried, like, seven serial killers. It was—”

  “I get the point,” Georgia says sharply. “So where do we start?”

  “Scene of the crime,” Charity says. “Best place.”

  It’s just past six in the evening when they arrive in Caywood, North Carolina. The sun dips low on the horizon, leaving a peachy tinge on the feathery clouds over the quaint, outdoorsy town. She doesn’t see the neon uniformity of chain stores and fast-food joints, but a smattering of outdoor outfitters, canoe rentals, and campgrounds galore.

  “I thought we needed to go to Brentwood,” Charity says.

  “I checked there, but there’s nowhere to park the RV,” Georgia says. “This is the closest campground. The college is about a fifteen-minute drive from here.”

  Charity shrugs. “Fine by me.” She watches out the window for where she wants to eat. Her first priority—after solving the case, of course—is finding a decent place to eat and a good cold drink. A Mexican restaurant festooned in neon pennants blurs by outside the window. “Teresita’s,” she murmurs. “You like tacos?”

  “Everyone likes tacos,” Georgia says. “You want to eat now?”

  “Let me clarify,” Charity says. “Do tacos turn to liquid death in your stomach? Because the bathroom is real close to where you’re expecting me to sleep.”

  Georgia sputters, face flushing red. “I don’t want to—that’s kind of—seriously?”

  “Georgia, you’re a grown-ass woman,” Charity says. “I think we can talk about these kind of things. My last partner was forbidden to eat Mexican for this very reason, and while I love a good chimichanga, I’m willing to—”

  “I will not stink up the RV,” Georgia says through gritted teeth. “Are you hungry now?”

  “Priorities. First we work,” she says. “Then tacos. And tequila. Not necessarily in that order.”

  Georgia drives through the main part of Caywood and finally stops on the far side of town. The road wraps around a forested hill with billboards advertising zip-lining and kayak rentals. On the other side of the hill, they pull into a wide entryway and drive under a sign that says Welcome to Sunshine Campground! The sign is even painted with a smiling yellow sun. Adorable.

  Georgia leaves the RV idling while she walks into a tiny cabin office. When she comes out ten minutes later, she’s got a receipt in one hand. She hands Charity the receipt as she settles back into the driver’s seat. “Put that in the folder.”

  As she drives slowly through the campground, Charity gapes. “Folder?”

  Georgia leans over and pulls out a drawer in the console. There’s a red expanding file inside. “Receipts go in there.”

  Jesus. She may have found the most anal-retentive hunter alive. But it’s Georgia’s dime, and if the cost is a little organization, she can bite her tongue once in a while. She pulls out the file and unwinds the elastic tie. “Where exactly?”

  “Well, it’s October,” Georgia says. “So you should probably put it in October.”

  “My, my, someone’s got her sassy pants on,” Charity says. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Georgia rolls her eyes and wheels the RV down the winding road. The campground is a wooded area, cast in cool shade by a dense green canopy. The campsites are spread out from each other. Maybe some people find the privacy appealing, but trees all around and the distance from the main road make her uneasy. If things go tits-up, that’s a long way to run for help with something snapping on her heels. Eventually, the trees thin out, opening onto a small artificial lake that glitters in the late-day sun.

  “This is us,” Georgia says, easing the RV to a rumbling halt and cutting the engine. She peels off her white button-down to reveal a plain white tee shirt, and deposits the long-sleeved shirt in the driver’s seat. It’s the first time Charity gets a scandalous glimpse of anything but her wrists. Georgia’s thin, but her arms are wiry with muscle. Between the armory in the back and the impressive triceps, Charity’s starting to wonder if there’s more to Georgia than the expensive, polished exterior.

  “You need help?” Charity asks as Georgia walks down the steps and hops down to the asphalt parking pad.

  “Got it,” Georgia replies without looking back.

  Charity follows her anyway, stretching as she steps out onto the old asphalt. The late afternoon air is warm and humid, and the campground buzzes with road noise and dueling stereos from the neighboring campsites.

  Charity watches, fascinated, as Georgia opens the side panels on the RV to pull out wires and hoses. She deftly connects the electrical and sewage connections to sockets on a metal fixture on the corner of the parking pad.

  For the first time in a very long time, Charity feels useless. Normally she’d be hauling their gear into a motel room, stomping muddy bootheels on stained carpet to scare off the six-legged squatters. There’s nothing for her to do but stand here with her thumb in her ass.

  Georgia finishes and brushes past silently, heading for the kitchen. She scrubs her hands clean in the sink with antibacterial soap.

  Charity trails after her like a puppy and blurts, “I think the obvious starting point is the theater. See if we can find anything there.”

  “Agreed,” Georgia says as she dries her hands. “I also want to talk to the other people who were in the play, especially the ones who weren’t on stage at the time. Maybe they noticed something and just haven’t been asked the right questions yet.”

  She walks into the bedroom and stoops to pull a clean shirt out of one of the long drawers under the bed. Charity plops on the edge of the bed and leans back. The mattress is soft and plush. She has to admire Georgia’s taste, even if she’s stuck on the couch outside. She rests her head on her folded arms. “No telling what we might actually find,” she says. For a minute, it’s like being with Patience again, at least before things turned sour. As much as she’d resisted, it feels good to have someone to talk to about these things. Careful, she thinks. Friendly or not, Georgia’s barely more than a stranger. “On the safe side, we should have some silver and iron. What do you usually carry?”

  Georgia is silent, and Charity cranes her neck to see her standing in the doorway with her arms folded. A pale blue-and-white shirt is draped over her thin arm, pressed tight against her chest.

  “What?”

  “I need to change,” she says, as if it should be obvious.

  “So? I’m not looking,” Charity says, throwing her arm over her eyes. What is she, twelve?

  “So, I’d like some privacy,” Georgia says hotly. “Can you please…” She gestures to the door.

  Charity’s cheeks burn as she slides off the bed. The door scrapes shut behind her. A lock clicks, and it sounds like a massive fuck you. What the hell, anyway? Does Georgia thinks she’s going to stare at her tits or something? It’s not like she has anything Charity hasn’t seen before. She’s almost offended, and she doesn’t offend easily.

  “This is not going to work,” she announces to the empty living room. The polished wood and modern appliances that seemed so appealing suddenly seem sinister and uninviting. For better or worse, Georgia is definitely not her sister.

  She plops down on the couch and roots in her big, faded duffel bag for clean clothes. The smell of detergent is comforting as she lays out a clean pair of jeans and a pale blue top with bouncy ruffles cascading down from the bustline. The fluffy decorations perfectly hide the knife and gun at her waist.

  She peels off her T-shirt, biting back the impulse to ask Georgia if she wants to watch her change. Modesty died on the vine in their family tree. If the Dupree women had a coat of arms, their motto would have been if you got it, flaunt it. Instead she pulls up the age-softened jeans and buttons up her top. She leaves the top button undone—persuasive technique and all—and pulls on her favorite boots, brown leather worn soft and supple by years of wear.

  Georgia is still changing in her fortress of
solitude when Charity heads out of the RV to start picking out weapons. A dark gray awning is stretched out over the shaded area, cast all in blue-gray as the sun sets. A chorus of bullfrogs croak, echoing over the lake’s murky surface.

  “What are you even doing?” she mutters. She just has to get through this one hunt, which will surely send Georgia Browning running and screaming. In the meantime, she’ll find some dive bar and let her hips do the talking. When she gets enough petty cash, she can get her truck fixed, and then she can figure her shit out. Maybe she’ll head north for a change. She’s heard crazy stories about what shuffles out of the woods in the long winter nights in Canada. And she’s always been intrigued by this mysterious poutine.

  Between the RV’s front and back wheels are a trio of deep storage wells. She crouches and opens the first one. Her weapons trunk and toolbox are inside, and she hauls both of them out onto the concrete.

  Secured with a heavy combination lock, the olive-drab footlocker is covered in bumper stickers from the different cities she’s visited over the years. There are so many that the actual surface of the locker is visible only in slivers between the patchwork of bright vinyl. Patience used to roll her eyes every time she handed over change for a new one, but Patience would have rolled her eyes at the second coming of Christ if it looked like her baby sister was getting too excited about it.

  After twirling through the combination, she lifts out a tray of ammo and other loose items. The trunk is full of memories; nearly every weapon her father owned is in here. There’s the engraved Colt Commander, of course. The silver flourishes gleam against the black enameled barrel. There are a dozen knives, from a pocket-sized switchblade to a foot-long hunting knife with teeth like something from a nightmare.

  Wrapped in a soft blue chamois cloth is her father’s favorite silver knife. The smooth blade curves gently away from a scratched ivory handle. The initials ARP are carved into the yellow-cream surface. She brushes her fingers over the warm ivory, where her father had shined and polished what must have been thousands of times over his hunting years. She clips a sheath at her hip and slides the knife into it.