“With Carla for a mother, there probably weren’t a lot of good memories. But I don’t recognize these babies.” She stared at the photo, and I realized Coleman was watching us. It wouldn’t take him long to put two and two together. We had to break up the hen party.
“I need to get a drink and we need to mingle before Coleman is on to us,” I said. “And, no, I haven’t mentioned a thing.”
Cece nodded. “Time for photos for the paper. I’ll think about those two babies and see if my brain drops something out.”
“Cece, she was taken on her way to work, we believe.” I had to give her something. “There’s no indication of foul play. And she had to have driven her car. There’s no sign of it anywhere.”
“She could be in labor without any medical help.” Cece’s face flushed and then went pale. “I can’t stop thinking about that.”
“And she could be sitting on a sofa drinking a glass of tea waiting for us to drop the money,” I responded. “I still think you should tell Coleman, but it’s your call.”
“Please don’t tell him,” she said. “Now let’s put some effort into this party. Harold is watching us, too.”
We smiled and laughed and then I went for drinks. When I handed Coleman another flute of champagne, he merely looked at me, his blue eyes deadly serious as he sipped. He knew something was up. I hoped Cece would do the smart thing and include him, but I couldn’t force her hand on this.
I made the rounds of the party, talking with people I saw only once or twice a year. Zinnia was a small town, but everyone led such busy lives that we headed in different directions.
“You look blissful, Sarah Booth.” Harold kissed my hand. I loved Coleman, but my thumb had a will of its own and gave a sad little throb. I had feelings for Harold, too. But I’d made my choice.
“I am happy, Harold. Really happy.”
“You deserve that for the rest of your life.”
“The party is great. I haven’t seen a lot of these people in months.”
“The holidays are the perfect time for reunions and gatherings. I do love Christmas.” He leaned closer. “What gives with Cece? She’s like a cat on a hot tin roof, to borrow from old Tennessee.”
“Family stuff.” I was determined not to lie unless I had to.
“She only has that brother that stole everything from her.”
“Can’t go into it. Change the subject, please.”
“Whatever you say. I—”
A gasp came from the bar area and I turned to see Cece, her face completely drained of color. She started to step forward, faltered, and then grabbed the bar to stay upright. I hurried to her side. “What is it?”
“Get me out of here.”
I obliged, taking her into the kitchen and out the back door into the cold night. The freezing temperature seemed to revive her. “What is it?” I asked.
“It’s Eve. I got a call. Someone found her purse in the mud on the banks of the river.”
“Where?”
“Fortis Landing,” Cece said. “There’s no trace of her. Just the purse.”
“We’d better go there. Let me get Tinkie.” I looked around. Getting away from Coleman and Oscar was going to be a risky business. “Come on, we don’t have time to waste. Meet me at your car.”
I went inside and caught Tinkie’s eye. A moment later she met up with me and Cece down the street where Cece had parked. As we drove to Fortis Landing, I filled Tinkie in. The purse in the mud wasn’t a good sign at all. But it didn’t have to be a bad sign—or at least that was my argument with Cece.
We’d just left the Christmas lights of Zinnia behind us when Cece’s phone rang. She answered on the car’s speaker system.
“You’d better get that money fast.” The voice had been altered by some device. It was neither male nor female. “And now we need a hundred and fifty thousand. Get it. Don’t call the cops. Don’t act unnatural in any way. We’ll call back with a place for you to leave the money and we’ll leave the pregnant woman.”
“I have the money,” Cece said. “Where should I take it? Just let me speak to Eve. I want to be sure she’s okay.”
“Wait for my call.”
And the line went dead.
6
For the entire drive to the river, Cece was fit to be tied. She white-knuckled it the whole way, and though Tinkie and I did what we could to put the events in the best light, she wasn’t hearing us.
At last we pulled to a stop by the boat landing where there was a paved boat launch, a bait shop, and, about a hundred yards up the road, a juke joint. Scattered up and down the river were camps and houseboats where those who disdained unexpected visitors lived. I knew where I wanted to go—the jukebox in the bar was playing a tune I knew. I hadn’t had a chance to drink nearly enough at Harold’s party before we left. I’d walked out the door without even telling Coleman I was leaving. Same for Oscar. The menfolk were going to be on the warpath, and I didn’t blame them one bit. Not much of a Christmas party if you were dumped and left behind.
“Who found the purse and how did they know to contact you?” I asked Cece. It hadn’t occurred to me earlier that this was a pertinent question. We’d been so hell-for-leather to get to the river.
“Mr. Bromley. A man named Curtis Bromley. He lives right along the river around here somewhere. He recognized the Falcon name and figured Eve was a relative. He called the newspaper and they gave him my cell phone number.”
I looked around and didn’t see anyone. “Is he meeting us here?”
“He said he would.” Cece didn’t sound nearly as sure as I would’ve liked her to sound.
“Any time specifically, or just when he shows up?” I was a little snarky because I knew I would have hell to pay from walking out on Coleman. And I was standing in the freezing December cold in the mud beside a river in my mother’s fancy holiday dress and heels. I knew I should have worn jeans. I would get even with Jitty, too.
“He said he would be here.” Cece rounded on me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you and Tinkie. It’s going to make trouble for you, I know.”
“We can manage our men,” Tinkie said. “If Sarah Booth needs help, I’ll just go visit the Harrington sisters and get another charm for her.”
Tinkie referred to three Wiccan sisters who’d moved to the area to start a boarding school. Even months later, they were still the talk of the town. Yet their school was developing a terrific reputation for academics and nature-based learning programs. Tinkie had bought a charm for me to lure Coleman into my bed, and it had worked. Or something had worked. Now she’d never let me forget that I’d had help from “the other side” to land Coleman in my bed.
“I can handle Coleman on my own,” I said, and I was about as uncertain as Cece had been. “Look, headlights.”
We turned to face the road and waited as an older model pickup came right down to the water. We couldn’t see who was driving, but in a moment the lights were cut and two people exited the cab. A middle-aged couple came toward us.
“Mr. Bromley,” Cece called out.
“Yes, it’s Curtis and Matilda. We have that purse.”
Cece walked to meet them and Tinkie and I fell in behind her. My teeth were chattering to the point I didn’t think I could talk, so it was good Cece was taking the lead. Tinkie, in her beautiful white and glittering cocktail dress, was also shaking with cold. We’d been foolish—and in too big a hurry—not to bring our coats.
Matilda took one look at the three of us and nudged her husband. “Let’s go to Bullwinkle’s. These girls are freezing.”
“Good idea,” Curtis said. “Ladies, let’s take this inside. It’s cold out here.”
“Where did you find the purse?” Cece asked, and her desperation was clear.
“Right here.” Curtis knelt on the apron of the boat launch. “Right in the mud there. It was almost covered up, but I saw the pink leather. Then when I looked inside, I saw the driver’s license for the young woman. Eve Falcon. You
were the only Falcon in the area I knew about.” Curtis stood up and put a hand on Cece’s shoulder. “Wherever this young woman is, we’ll find her. Now I’m not saying another word until we’re somewhere warm.”
There was nothing to see at the riverbank. Whatever evidence had been there was now washed away by the wakes of boats coming and going. And we were freezing. Without complaint we walked up the hill to the juke joint we’d passed. Bullwinkle’s was ablaze with strings of bright blue Christmas lights. There wasn’t a band, but someone was playing Christmas blues on an old jukebox. Thank goodness the sound was low enough to talk over.
We took a table in the corner and I got a good look at Curtis and Matilda. They were salt-of-the-earth farmer types, or maybe river rats. The good kind. Folks who had grown up on the local waterways and knew them inside and out. The Tallahatchie River was a part of Delta legend and some families had lived on its banks for generations.
The waitress stopped by and took our orders—Jack Daniel’s all around. This wasn’t a bar that offered fine wines or martinis. It was a beer-and-bourbon kind of place. Someone put Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” on the jukebox.
Cece made the introductions, and Matilda reached over the table and touched my hand. “You sure do look like your mama. Miss Libby was a wonderful person.”
“Thank you.” It was good to hear. “How did you know her?” My mother had been dead better than two decades. I was glad some people still remembered her.
“Everyone knew your mama,” Matilda said. “She was a good person who went out of her way to help others.”
“Tell me about the purse,” Cece said. She was frantic, and I didn’t blame her.
Matilda reached into her big coat and brought out a pink clutch. “Here it is. Everything that was in it is still there.” She pushed it across the table to Cece, who fell on it like it was a treasure.
Cece opened the snap and dumped the contents on the table. A lipstick, a pen, a billfold, some change, nothing else. She opened the billfold and saw Eve’s driver’s license and one credit card from the Bank of the Deep South. She flipped through several empty slots meant for photos or other forms of ID and found one photo. When she pulled it out, I recognized it instantly. It was a duplicate of the photo I’d found in Eve’s bedroom drawer in the little cottage she rented in Cleveland. The same two babies, newborns, squinted up at the camera as a woman in a hospital gown held both in her arms.
“Who are these children?” Cece asked aloud.
Everyone at the table shook their heads.
“Did anyone happen to see anything at the landing?” I asked.
The waitress brought our drinks and for a moment no one said anything. The Elvis tune wound down and Koko Taylor cranked up with “Merry, Merry Christmas.”
“We didn’t see anything, but we asked around,” Curtis said. “There was a boat here early this morning when it was still foggy. Came from upriver, and pulled into the landing. The man piloting it tied up and went up to the store for some supplies. When he came back, a truck pulled down to the landing and the two men unloaded something from the backseat. Looked like a rolled-up carpet.” He hesitated. “Could have been a body.”
Tinkie gripped Cece’s hand and held it. “What did your eyewitness see?”
“The men put the bundle in the boat. It didn’t make a sound. They unwrapped it, but it was down in the bottom of the boat and the witness wasn’t close enough to see. The boat pilot took off upriver like the devil was on his coattails. The other man got in his truck and drove off. About ten minutes later, Matilda and I came down to the river, and I found the purse mashed into the mud by the launchpad.”
“Who is your witness?” Tinkie asked.
“They don’t want to get involved. They told me everything they saw. And they did say the men were very careful of the bundle—that they took care with it.” Curtis was uncomfortable. He was caught in a bad spot, trying to do the right thing without giving up his friends. This was the time Coleman would have been invaluable. He could have gotten Curtis to give up the names of the witness or witnesses. Tinkie and I had no leverage to make him talk.
“Did they recognize the pickup that delivered the … bundle?” Tinkie asked.
“It was really early. Not quite light. They didn’t recognize the truck, the boat, or the men. The bundle could have been a rug or something.” He drained his glass and signaled for another. “No one gave it a second thought until I found that purse. Then we got to wondering.”
And I was wondering if Curtis was the actual witness and had fabricated the ruse of his “friends.” I wasn’t in a place where I could make the accusation and gain a single thing. “How tall were the men?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Average, I guess. No one remarked that they were tall or short or fat or thin. Just average.”
That didn’t help at all. “Any chance your friends overhead them talking? Maybe they had an accent.” I tried another tactic.
“They didn’t talk. Or at least my friends didn’t overhear them.”
“And they headed upriver?” Tinkie asked.
“Yes, the one piloting the boat did.”
“And the boat was what kind?” she continued.
“Flat bottom fishing boat. Had an 8 horsepower Mercury motor, like most every other fishing boat around here.”
Matilda spoke up. “Look, Curtis just wanted to do the right thing and return this purse. And he knew Cece Falcon would be worried. We don’t know anything else. If we hear or see anything, we’ll call. You have our word.”
And there was no reason to doubt them. They’d come forward of their own volition. We’d gotten what we could from them.
“If you see that boat or those men again, please call. And if you see Eve, please let me know.”
“Sure thing,” Curtis said. “You ladies stay warm. It’s bitter tonight.”
Tinkie went to the bar and took care of the bill, and we left Curtis and Matilda at the table. We high-stepped it back to the car because we were cold. The moon had come up and glinted on the narrow river.
“I hope Eve is okay,” Cece said, and she was near to breaking down.
“We don’t know anything worse than we did before we came here,” Tinkie said. “And we know the kidnapper can get in touch with you. We just need to have that money ready for the drop when they call back.”
“I’ve got the original amount. Now I’ll need twenty thousand more,” Cece said.
“First thing in the morning I’ll go by the bank,” Tinkie promised.
I knew it was not going to happen, but I had to try. “Please tell Coleman about this. Please. He has experience in these matters, and I know he wouldn’t do anything to risk Eve’s life.”
“No,” Cece said softly. “I can’t. I’d never forgive myself if something happened.”
“We’re out of our depth,” I said. “We don’t have a clue who took Eve, and she’s ready to give birth.”
“That’s the problem,” Cece said. “I’m hoping to get her back before she goes into labor.”
“Her due date is Christmas Eve,” I reminded her. “And we’re all expected to be at the pageant at the Methodist church. Coleman, Harold, and Oscar are playing the wise men. There is no way in hell we can miss that and not be strung up.” I wasn’t kidding. It had taken all of Tinkie’s persuasive abilities to get the men to participate in the church pageant. We’d had other pageants in Zinnia, and some had gone terribly wrong with spitting llamas and runaway pigs, not to mention bad boys stealing the baby Jesus. This year the church had opted for adult players in the Christmas pageant that portrayed the birth of the baby Jesus. Now I wasn’t certain involving the men had been such a smart idea.
“We still have a little time to find her,” Cece said.
“Very little time, if her delivery date is accurate. I wish the kidnappers would set a drop place and time.” I might be tempted to include Coleman if we knew far enough ahead of time.
“Do you think Eve was in that
bundle?” Cece asked. “Mr. Bromley said they were careful with it. That’s a good sign, right?”
“I don’t know.” Tinkie was firm. “We can’t know. We can’t speculate, either.”
“How did her purse get dropped right at that place?” Cece persisted.
“We don’t know that either,” Tinkie said. “No one has found her car. Maybe she took some time off and she’s fine.”
“Then who’s asking for a ransom?” Cece asked.
“I don’t know.” Tinkie sighed. “That’s our problem. We just don’t know much. Now let’s get back to Harold’s before they get a search and rescue out for us. It’s too bad Curtis and Matilda cleaned up the purse or we could have tried for fingerprints.”
“We still can,” I said. “It won’t hurt to try.”
“But we’d have to ask Coleman, DeWayne, or Budgie to dust for prints, and we’re not doing that.” Cece’s jaw was clenched. She was going to hold firm.
7
Our return to Harold’s party was met with raised eyebrows and glares from the men in our lives. I judged that out of 100 percent, we were about 75 percent in the dog house. Tinkie and I would have some ’splaining to do. Cece’s main squeeze was out of the country, and he was also in the loop. Jaytee knew about Eve’s disappearance and had sent money, as had Scott. Oscar suspected something was wrong—I knew that because Tinkie had hit him up for a lot of money. To Oscar’s credit, he never said no to Tinkie, and he didn’t press her. Only Coleman couldn’t be told what was going on, because, as a lawman, he would be obligated to do something.
Harold was curious about our departure, but not judgmental. He put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a word of advice. “I sent Coleman to the kitchen. He’s in there alone. It might be wise for you to address this head-on. Right now.”
The party was winding down. I followed Harold’s sage advice and found Coleman in the kitchen, where he was getting more ice for the punch.
“I do have an explanation,” I told him.
A Gift of Bones--A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery Page 7