Muffin But Trouble

by Victoria Hamilton

  “Nathan, shut up!” Gordy yelled, his hands on his head, pushing back his wispy hair.

  But Nathan was not about to be silenced. “You got no right to be here,” he screamed at Zeke, shaking a finger in his face. “You with your precious cripple girlfriend and stupid computer job!”

  Nobody spoke slightingly of Hannah to any of her friends, least of all her boyfriend. Zeke punched Nathan so hard he fell backward and curled up, blubbering like a baby. Zeke turned to Gordy, rubbing his knuckles. “I love you, buddy, and I hope we can still be friends. Let’s get together. Maybe we could take a road trip to Rochester to the World Video Game Hall of Fame.”

  “Just you and me?”

  “Just you and me.”

  Gordy stared at his friend open-mouthed. “Okay, yeah . . . I’d love that.”

  “We’ll do it!” Zeke smiled. “Next week. You free on Saturday?”

  Gordy nodded. Nathan had scrambled to his feet, tears in his eyes, his nose red and bloody.

  “But not while that jerk is your pal,” Zeke said, gesturing to the other fellow. “No one who talks about Hannah like that could be a friend of yours. You’re too nice a guy, Gordy.” He clapped him on the shoulder. “And I know you love Hannah too, as a friend.” He turned on his heel and walked away, back to the gate.

  Meanwhile, some of the young girls had clustered together, and a bunch of them came to me. Peaches was their spokesperson.

  “Merry, we w-want to leave, but we’re scared,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself and looking over her shoulder at Mother Esther, then swiftly back to me. “Can we go with you? Like, now?”

  I smiled. “How many of you are there?” There were six, plus Peaches, and one older woman, Mariah. We could fit four in Isadore’s car and four in mine. “We’re good to go,” I said. “By the way, Peaches, what’s your real name?”

  “Madison Pinker,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I took in a deep breath and nodded. “How do you do, Madison? I think your parents are going to be glad to see you.”

  She started crying, her chin down on her chest, her whole body shaking.

  Gordy, distraught, came to her. “Peaches, no! What about our plans? Don’t you want to stay with me?”

  “Gordy, I can’t live like this anymore!” she cried, her whole body shuddering. “I’m tired. I’m done with washing clothes and looking after kids and running away from creepo Nathan! I w-want my mom!”

  “It’s okay, Madison,” I said, patting her shoulder. “Gordy, let her go. Her parents have been worried sick for months. They want her back. And Gordy . . .” I stared at him, but decided I had to tell him like it is. “Look, she’s underage, barely sixteen. You could be in a whole lot of trouble, my friend.”

  “We didn’t do anything!” he stormed. “What do you think I am?”

  The kind of guy who’d marry a sixteen-year-old? “Just let her go. Madison, get your things together. We’re leaving.”

  I found Zeke and asked him to help get Doc, who had clearly used up every bit of his strength, out to Hubert’s car. He readily agreed and we went to fetch my old friend. Between us we made a sling of our arms for Doc to sit in. He didn’t weigh much more than a hundred and twenty or so, and I’m a strong woman. He put his stringy arms around our necks and we carried him to Hubert’s car, putting him in the front seat. I kissed his cheek and gave him his quad cane. Hubert grumpily agreed to make sure the doctor had a look at Doc when he got back to Golden Acres. I could tell the old dude was upset at his great-nephew, but after seeing Zeke work his magic, I thought there might be hope for Gordy yet.

  As Hubert revved his motor and took off down the dirt road, I turned to my young friend. “Zeke, how did you know to say what you did to Gordy?”

  He grinned, blinking, his eyes owlish behind his glasses. “Come on, Merry . . . how do you think?”

  I put two and two together. “Hannah told you what to say.”

  “Kinda. Yup. She said if you can’t push someone with anger, sometimes you can lead them with kindness.”

  That was Hannah in a nutshell, leading with kindness. I should pay more attention to how she gets things done. I motioned to the gathering of girls and led the way to my car as Isadore silently trudged along with a gaggle of teens and young women behind her, a grumpy Mother Goose. I talked to those who would speak as they walked, trying to find out if any other girls on Urquhart’s list were present. Some of them had only recently joined the compound, a couple from other states who had been hitching or taking the bus and had been convinced by Barney to come stay at the camp. The most recent to join I sent along with Isadore. All of these girls had been here too long to be the most recent missing teen. But the young women would be interviewed by the police, I was sure, and if she was among them, she would be discovered.

  When we reached the cars, Isadore and I sorted things out. Her car full, she chugged away, headed to the women’s shelter. I texted Shilo and asked her to meet them there, knowing that my good-hearted friend could help acclimate the girls to their new situation, and help the shelter managers. I texted Reverend Maitland, too, because I knew he could help with finding them suitable clothes and other items from the Methodist church clothes cupboard, something they kept stocked with items for families burned or flooded out of their homes. I hurriedly texted Virgil with a few questions that had come up from Zeke’s friend’s drone footage.

  “Zeke, could you do me a huge favor?”

  “Sure,” he said. “You know I’ll help any way I can, Merry.”

  I wanted to hug the guy. He’s such a sweetie. “Can you take some of the girls in your car?”

  His eyes widened, and he looked alarmed. “Look, I’ve already set up help through the women’s shelter. You just have to take them and drop them off.”

  “O . . . okay.” Some piled in his car and he followed Isadore down Marker Road toward town.

  But I had cut Peaches and Mariah from the herd. I wanted them to myself, with no distractions. We got in my car, and I turned to view the women in the backseat. “Madison, why don’t you introduce me to your friend?” I said, eyeing the woman, who was stroking the seat leather and examining the details. “Even though we have kind of met before.”

  “This is Mariah.”

  I nodded. Barney’s plural wife. “Your sister works at the hospital in Ridley Ridge.” She looked up quickly and frowned. “You told her you liked the idea of having a sister-wife; it was someone to share the chores with, and talk to.”

  She eyed me with suspicion. “How do you know that?”

  “I’m a mind reader,” I said lightly. “Were you taken to clean and cook at a man’s place . . . a man named Bob?”

  She nodded.

  “Was there anything weird going on there?” I caught a moment of shrewd calculation in her pale eyes as I asked.

  But then she looked down at her clasped hands. “Not there, but . . . but at the other place—”

  “The other place?”

  “Yeah. Another trucker’s house. It’s just back on Quarry Road, off Silver Creek Line.”

  “A trucker?” I thought of the other trucker, the guy named Mack. I described him. “Is that who you mean? Did you go to his place, too?” She shuddered. “You can tell me the truth, you know,” I said. “I’m not a cop.”

  Peaches frowned and stared at her in puzzlement. “I never heard of any other place,” she said.

  “Mother Esther wasn’t going to tell you little girls about it,” Mariah said. She then described in shocking, salacious detail what went on at the place.

  I turned and stared at her. “Are you . . . are you positive?” It was everything I had feared.

  “Would I make something like that up? It’s horrible.”

  She told me how to get there, and she told me who might be there.

  My alarm grew as she talked. Panicked and disgusted, my hands shaking and my stomach lurching, I texted Virgil and Dewayne and told them to have police there to mee
t us. Virgil texted back immediately.

  He had acted swiftly on my information. In a joint operation with both counties’ cooperation there were two simultaneous raids occurring at the Taggarts’ farm and Prophet Voorhees’s shack. Drugs had already been found stored in the truck trailers hidden back in the woods. My surmise was absolutely correct, he said. Now I knew more about how some of it was connected. Those truck trailers were not only in that clearing as storage, they were also being converted to cunning drug-carrying vessels, with hidden compartments welded into place by crafty Walt Taggart. That’s why there was a huge fuel tank and a big industrial generator on Bob and Walt Taggart’s land; that was their hidden work area in the woods.

  Also . . . Voorhees—Bardo Voorhees, if my logic was correct—had been taken into custody. Virgil didn’t think Urquhart or Ben Baxter would be available to meet me, but he’d make sure someone was. If I was right yet again, they would need multiple units. I was shaking, worried about what we’d find next, but I did text him back that I had seen both Nathan and Barney at the Light and the Way Ministry encampment. I didn’t know if there were any police available given all that was going on, but I hoped they’d be able to catch the elusive two.

  Virgil texted that he’d get whoever he could to meet us and for me to stay out of sight until they arrived. I couldn’t guarantee that, not when someone was in danger. With Peaches and Mariah in my car, I followed Mariah’s directions. I was tempted to take Silver Creek Line, the most logical route, but it would be swarming with police and I wasn’t sure I could get through. I had to go back to Connaught Line, and head to Quarry Road that way, to a lonely farmhouse.

  It looked every bit like a country house out of a slasher movie, a sagging, peeling clapboard house, two stories, with overgrown grass and weeds growing wild. I pulled up the long lane and sat staring at it, waiting, wondering what to do. Dare I do anything? Virgil had told me to wait.

  And yet, given everything Mariah had told me, how could I not do something, now, before it was too late? I could be saving someone’s life if I found a way into that farmhouse. It looked so tranquil on the outside . . . run-down, yes, but in a kind of charming way, with a sagging porch, a swing hanging from the porch rafters, and a tumble of flowering weeds rambling up and over the railings. And yet . . . it concealed such darkness.

  I turned and looked at Mariah and Peaches. Mariah was huddled in her heavy handknit sweater, her graying hair tied back in a kerchief. Peaches was wide-eyed and frightened, shell-shocked by what Mariah had told me. With great dramatic flair she had told me that the trucker named Mack was the owner, and ran a house of perversion for other men using kidnapped girls, even one or two who had run away from the harsh conditions of the Light and the Way Ministry camp.

  “We’re supposed to wait for the police,” I said. “I guess I can tell you this now . . . Prophet Voorhees has been arrested.”

  Mariah nodded and sniffed. “I think he’s behind it all! Such an evil man,” she said, her voice shaking. She let her head sink down until her chin was resting on her chest. Hands clasped, she began praying for the prophet’s salvation.

  It must be hard for a believer to see their prophet’s feet of clay, I thought.

  Peaches, aka Madison, finally said, in a small voice, “How did I not know any of this was going on? I thought . . . I thought the prophet was genuine, that he r-really cared about us. I thought, like, those long meetings were meant to . . . to break down our walls and let love in.” She sniffed. “Gordy said we were . . . uh, trailblazers, or something like that. That we were ready for the trouble to come, while everyone else was sleepwalking through life.”

  I twisted in my seat again and opened my mouth to say something, but Mariah spoke instead.

  “The prophet also said it was up to us to take back America and repopulate it with godly people who would be ready when the end-times started.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine,” I said, resisting rolling my eyes. I turned back and watched the house, still tangling with my growing desire to bust in there and break up whatever could be going on this very second. I thought of what Isadore had discovered in the ledgers she had found, all the money flowing in. I eyed the farmhouse, still waiting, but it was beginning to get on my nerves. “So, Peaches . . . Madison . . . were there girls at the camp who disappeared?”

  She nodded, tears in her eyes. “There was a new girl who came a few weeks ago. I met her, and we talked, and then the next day she was gone.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Cara.”

  Cara Urquhart! I texted Virgil, telling him what I had discovered.

  Mariah looked up from her prayers. With a panicked expression, voice still shaky, she said, “We should leave. What if the trucker comes out with a gun?”

  “I don’t think he’s here,” I said. “I don’t see a vehicle.”

  “It could be parked anywhere . . . behind the barn. Somewhere else. We should leave. Let’s go back.”

  I eyed the house again. I saw someone moving inside, whisking back a curtain. Screw it. I couldn’t just sit and wait. “You two stay here,” I said, opening the car door. “I’m going to see if there is someone here. I won’t go in, I’ll just knock.” I walked slowly up the drive, then up the creaky porch steps and to the door, my heart hammering in my chest. This was crazy, maybe, to be doing this, but it didn’t look to me like the guy who owned the house was home.

  That moment a pickup truck roared up the drive and a guy jumped out and charged toward me, leaving his truck door open, the open-door signal pinging. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” he hollered.

  I turned to face him. “Your name is Mack, right?” I said, my heart thudding. I felt sick. I had hoped to have everything resolved before he came back. I examined his face, thinking he had seemed kind of nice when last I saw him in the coffee shop in Ridley Ridge.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I just . . .” Crap. There was no way to ask what I needed to ask, or say what I wanted to say, or do what I needed to do. I took a deep breath, considering my options. I looked over to my car; the two women sat watching. I needed to be brave, to show them courage, like they were exemplifying by leaving the encampment. I thought, to hell with it. I took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. “Do you have a girl here, a missing girl?” I said, hitching my thumb over my shoulder, indicating his farmhouse. “One who Barney convinced to join the Light and the Way Ministry, and then gave to you?”

  “Mack, if you’re keeping one of the girls here, you gotta give her up.” Unbeknownst to me, Mariah had approached from behind and spoke, her tone harsh, her voice trembling as she joined us. Her anxious gaze flicked back and forth between me and him.

  “You can identify him, right?” I said, turning to her.

  “Like I told you, I came here to clean sometimes, like we did at Bob’s place. I thought Mack was okay, but last time I was here . . .” She shook her head. “He’s dangerous.”

  “What the good goddamn are you talking about, woman?” he said, his wild gray eyebrows drawn down together.

  I looked at her, and then turned to Mack. I didn’t see a weapon. He looked harmless and baffled. “Last time Mariah was here she found out that you were giving drugs to girls, and abusing them. And I’m here to tell you . . . you had better let the girl you have inside go, or you’ll be in big trouble.” He was going to be in trouble anyway, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “What the living hell are you talking about?” He turned to Mariah. “You’re mad ’cause I wouldn’t sleep with your bony, ugly ass!” Mack blurted out, glaring at the woman. “I told you then, and I’ll tell you again,” he said, poking his finger at her. “I don’t like no flat-chested woman.”

  “What does he mean?” I said to Mariah.

  “He’s lying!” she yelled, red-faced.

  “Am not! You said Voorhees sent you to please me, and I said you couldn’t please me if you was the last woman on earth.”

  At that m
oment an Autumn Vale PD car roared up the drive and Sheriff Urquhart pelted from the driver’s seat, followed by my husband from the passenger’s side. “What’s going on here?” Urquhart said, hand on his gun, but the holster still domed shut. Other sheriff’s department vehicles roared up the lane, too, and officers got out.

  The farmhouse door burst open and a young woman raced out and directly at Urquhart, throwing herself at him. “Uncle Cam!” she shrieked. “Will you take me home?”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Cam? So that was Urquhart’s first name? In the years of knowing him, I had only ever called him Urquhart.

  “Cara!” Urquhart exclaimed as the girl dashed at him. He hugged her to him, tears streaming down his chiseled cheek and jaw. It was a touching reunion.

  It seemed to me that Cara seemed perfectly fine, just peeved. I had an aha moment; I had seen this particular young woman before, when I went to watch hockey at the arena. Mack had his arm around her. But because I had only known her as lackadaisical Millicent, working at the coffee shop, I hadn’t recognized her out of uniform except for a vague I should know this girl sensation. When I saw her at the arena she had slunk away because she knew Urquhart was on the team, and she hadn’t wanted to see her uncle. Not then, anyway. She was not a prisoner, and never had been. This was her choice, but she was tired of her new life and wanted out.

  As Virgil approached, I turned and glared at Mariah. “Was anything you told me true?”

  She glared right back, and slunk away to the other side of the car.

  “What was this all about?” Virgil asked.

  I sent a frightened and bewildered Madison—the girl had followed me, timidly, when I went closer to the house—back to sit in the car and related to my husband what the woman had told me. Mariah’s lurid tales of bizarre sexual practices and girls held against their will by the devious trucker Mack were clearly not true. Officers were searching the trucker’s farmhouse, but one came out shrugging. They not only didn’t find any other girls, they soon learned, as the girl babbled her story to her Uncle Cam, that Mack had actually sheltered Cara Urquhart at his farmhouse when she ran away from the Light and the Way Ministry encampment.