Double blast, p.9
Double Blast, page 9
It was a full minute before anyone spoke, and when the silence was broken, it was me. “There was a ferret in the washing machine who ate your clothes?”
“Affirmative,” Whiskey said, then asked, “What might be the probability that there’s an operational food establishment in this barren municipal?”
EIGHT
I parked Whiskey, who had the hairiest man legs I’d ever seen in my life, like carpet on his legs, in the perp chair. I told him he would not starve to death before I cloned the hard drive from my father’s antiquated desktop computer and downloaded it to my laptop. Fantasy stayed beside the door, still peeking out between the blinds, stealing views up and down Main Street, no doubt waiting on a casino terrorism task force to roll into town and haul her off. Up until the minute we left the safety of my parents’ house earlier, adrenalin and the relative obscurity of Pine Apple had somewhat tamped down her terror. The goats, my children, the Peppermint Schnapps, and the rain had assisted in distracting her. But the trooper call she knew I didn’t tell the truth about, followed by listening to my end of the conversation about her with my husband, combined with the fact that she’d hit the twenty-four-hour mark as a fugitive had her anxiety level set to turbo. She fidgeted. Checked her phone at least once a minute. And her eyes kept darting to the kitchenette, as if she might actually make a cup of Sanka instant coffee and attempt to swallow it just to have something to do while she waited to go to prison. Where the coffee was probably worse than Sanka.
Without looking up from my laptop as a bar on my home screen slowly filled with new content, patting the boxy monitor of Daddy’s computer, urging it along, I said, “If you’re going to guard the door, Fantasy, tell me what’s going on.”
“Do you mean while I wait for a SWAT team to roar into town and cart me away?”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“I’m not sure how you’ll stop it from happening.”
I finally looked up. Gave a nod to the jail cell. “I’ll lock you up. Claim you as my own prisoner. I’ll say you’re responsible for the hellscape that is my hometown. Which they will all agree is worse than shooting a kid.”
From the perp chair, Whiskey’s head whipped Fantasy’s way. “You engaged in a firearm altercation with an adolescent?”
Fantasy said, “Shut up, Whiskey,” sounding very much like her old self, and her old self must have decided what I’d asked her to do was better than drinking Sanka, because she began reporting the Pine Apple news from between blind slats while Daddy’s slower-than-Christmas computer churned along. “The old ladies are in the street shooting dirty looks this way. Every kid in town is slinging mud at every other kid in town. I can only see their eyeballs. Looks like half of the work crew is still shoveling mud. The other half have water hoses, washing down the sidewalks, which is actually making more mud for the mud crew. The bakery might be reopening. There’s a guy wandering around who isn’t dirty. And a hair-pulling mud wrestling match between two women in front of your sister’s store, one of the women is your grandmother, Davis, the other is a hefty and heavily tattooed fifty-year-old bleached blonde. Your grandmother is about to take her down.” Four or five peeks later, she said, “So far no feds to extradite me back to Mississippi.”
I slammed my laptop closed for the second time that day—finally—then stood. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” both Fantasy and Whiskey asked.
“To our new hideout.”
“Which of you might have cause to hide?” Whiskey wanted to know. “And whom, may I ask, would said person or persons be hiding from?”
“I meant to say our new office.”
Whiskey looked skeptical.
“There’s food,” I added.
Whiskey nodded and stood, ready to go. He smoothed his muumuu. “I sincerely regret there were no alternative wardrobe options at my vacation rental.”
Fantasy said, “We regret it too.”
We left the police station through the back door.
“Which way?” Fantasy asked.
“I’m trying to decide,” I answered.
“What is the anticipated distance to our new destination?” Whiskey asked.
“You two be quiet. I’m trying to think.”
We needed to cross Main Street without crossing Main Street through throngs of disgruntled and muddy Pine Applers. We’d have to circle around. I looked right. The way I wanted to go. But it was nothing but backyards that looked like swamps. I looked left. The way I didn’t want to go. One path would require hiking over a steep hill, if the steep hill hadn’t been washed away by the rain after the goats cleared it—Fantasy’s Valentinos would never make it—but the other path might scar us for life.
Hiking it was.
We rounded the corner at the end of the block and landed at the intersection of Wright and Oak Streets, which put us at the edge of the empty lot below the hill that should have been cleared for fireworks by the goats. Only to see that it hadn’t been. And just like my father said, the hill was ten times as overgrown as the last time I’d seen it. The goats didn’t do the very job they were hired to do, and there would be no stomping up, then down, a steep hill through thick kudzu vines up to our knees.
Hiking it wasn’t.
Because snakes.
Scarred for life it was.
Because we couldn’t very well fly over Main Street.
I marched that way.
My troops followed.
We rounded the next corner on Wright Street, which landed us just behind busy Town Square, full of muddy children, hopefully my daughters not among them. We hurried across the street in the opposite direction and took cover beneath overgrown red maples hiding a tall iron gate.
I tried the gate.
It didn’t budge.
Fantasy, a semi-devout Catholic, took one look through the iron bars and crossed herself. “No way, Davis.”
Whiskey chimed in with, “I would prefer not to traverse a graveyard.”
I gave the gate a hard kick and was rewarded with an ear-piercing scream of iron-on-iron. I stepped in, saying, “You chickens come on.”
Whiskey, who wasn’t Catholic at all that I knew of, crossed himself too, or maybe he diamonded himself, asking, “What lies beyond this place of final rest?”
I stopped between two crumbling headstones and looked back to see that neither had moved.
“I want to know too,” Fantasy said. “Where are we going?”
“Bea’s,” I told them. “Bea’s Diner.”
“The individual graciously extending hospitality to me?” Whiskey asked.
The same.
That Bea.
Bea Crawford.
My ex-ex-mother-in-law Bea.
Airbnb Bea.
Swollen ankle and crooked brain Bea.
“What about ghosts?” Fantasy was rooted to the sidewalk.
“Since when do you believe in ghosts?” I asked.
“What if there’s instability from the amalgamation of earth and water and we inadvertently plunge into an interment?”
“You think we’re going to sink into a grave?” I’d just about had it with both of them.
Whiskey was hanging on Fantasy’s arm.
She was trying to shake him off. “Isn’t there an easier way to get to Bea’s?”
“Yes,” I said. “Straight down Main Street where the whole world will see us. I’ll be stopped every two inches. Everyone in town will see you to say, ‘She went that way,’ to anyone with a badge who asks. And you,” I looked at Whiskey in his muumuu, “never mind. So you two can either come with me the back way or march down Main Street and meet me there. I don’t care.” Then I took a Mother-May-I leap onto a relatively mud-free grave marker, hopscotched my way to the next one, passed the crumbling old funeral home on the hill—a sight that horrified Fantasy and Whiskey—and cleared the small cemetery. Four minutes and a dozen muddy graves later, we were staring at Bea’s Diner. Our souls seemingly intact.
A block south of everything and everyone else, Bea’s was set back from Main Street by a deep front yard. Hundred-year-old oaks at the curb provided additional cover. And the gapped path leading to the diner—the concrete sidewalk cracked, raised, and nonexistent at regular intervals thanks to runaway roots from a nearby willow tree—was a winding obstacle course. The diner wasn’t easy to get to; you had to want to go. Very few did when it was open. No one would with it closed. Which made it the perfect place to hole up.
“Can you believe this?” Fantasy, barefoot again with the heels of her Valentino slides poking out her back pockets, jumped over a dirty puddle between chunks of sidewalk.
“Believe what?” I hopped the mud gap right behind her.
“I find the entire predicament difficult to comprehend.” Whiskey wasn’t watching where he was waddling and landed a loafer in the middle of it.
“All the weeds that Bea calls grass look like they’re right where she left them.” Fantasy reached the front door first. “Why didn’t the goats eat here?”
“No one in their right mind eats here.” I joined her, my shoes helping themselves to the welcome mat, leaving long smears of dirty gifts. “Including, it would seem, goats.”
Whiskey brought up the rear. “The marriage of soil and moisture has created a mire that I find myself weary of traversing.” He was out of breath and bent over, palms to knees, studying his shoes. A dark puddle radiated around his right loafer. “Does this region regularly experience atmospheric anomalies that produce sludge?” He tried to squeeze more out of the muddy shoe by placing his dry shoe on his wet shoe, thus standing on his own foot. Wobbling like a bowling pin. And still wearing a muumuu. “Do either of you know if the meteorological conditions we find ourselves in are archetypal for this geographic location?”
Neither of us bothered to respond because, first of all, we barely understood a word of it, and second of all, we were busy reading the sign on the door. “OFF ON A HONEYMOONS. WHEN I GET BACK ALL PLATE LUNCHES WILL BE ON SALE A DOLLAR OFF. MAYBE THREE DOLLARS OFF. DEPENDS ON HOW LONG I’M GONE AND IF THE DEEP FREEZE HOLTS UP. DAMN DEEP FREEZE. IF THE DEEP FREEZE DON’T HOLT UP THERE’LL BE A ALL YOU CAN STUFF IN YOUR FACE LASAGNAS SPECIAL.”
The front door was locked.
I took off.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Fantasy asked.
“Around back,” I answered.
“I’m not walking through more mud,” she said.
“Whiskey,” I said over my shoulder, “give Fantasy a ride.”
She was taller than him. He was stouter than her. It took them a minute. Her long legs were everywhere. The extra weight produced a deep slurping noise with his every step, and the mud ate both his loafers before we made it around back to a terrifying sight riddled with broken kitchen equipment, busted dining room furniture, and a beaten-up collection of garbage cans under a metal canopy in various states of tenancy. Scarier than that, we found the backdoor not only unlocked, but ajar. I held Fantasy and Whiskey back with one hand and reached behind me for my old service revolver with the other. I announced myself. No response. I clicked on the flashlight mounted to my gun, stepped in an inch, sprayed a beam around the room, and scared up a screeching cat. Whiskey, barefoot and high stepping in a circle, splashing mud everywhere, yelled, “Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!” when the cat, who most likely lived in the kitchen under the guise of pest control, circled his muddy legs before whizzing past him.
“The cat smelled your soap. Or maybe it saw your dress,” Fantasy said. “Thought you were Bea.” She stepped in, batting for a light switch, until I caught her hand. “Right,” she said. “We’re hiding.”
We made our way through the gelatinous cold grease smells of the kitchen to the rancid sour mop smells of the dining room by the light of my service revolver’s flashlight. I clicked it off, trading the blaring announcement that someone was nosing around the closed diner for the modicum of daylight peeking above and below the pulled shades.
“This restaurant isn’t operational,” Whiskey said. “How are we to find sustenance without a staff to prepare and serve?”
“Dig around behind the front counter,” I said. “It’s help yourself day.”
He spun that way, mud caked on his hairy legs to mid-calf, the ruffled hem of his muumuu spinning too. “I am at an unfortunate disadvantage in the food preparation department.”
“Look in the coolers under the grill. Find something you don’t have to cook.” By then, I’d landed on one side of a lunch booth farthest from the front door. Fantasy took the bench opposite me.
“The miniature refrigeration unit is bare of all but one container of mustard,” Whiskey let us know.
With a tug, I raised the rolling window shade a foot—dust danced through the air—giving me a broader view of the twisted sidewalk leading to Main Street with a sliver of a view of the action there. “Then make yourself a mustard sandwich.”
“I’d prefer breakfast,” he said. “Farm raised eggs. Over easy. With warm buttered biscuits and sausage gravy.”
Our heads turned in time to stare him down.
Whiskey raised both hands in the air as if to keep us in our seats. “I’ll continue my nourishment quest and find a suitable alternative.”
I opened my laptop and navigated to Daddy’s swiped hard drive. My eyes landed on a folder marked Memorial Day. I clicked it, did a quick search and found fourteen additional Memorial Day folders, and with two more clicks I’d combined and sorted them by date. I minimized everything. Tucking it all away for later. Because in addition to Fantasy drumming her fingers on the table, she had a muddy foot going. I needed to take care of her first.
“What manner of foulness might this be?” Whiskey plopped a plate on the counter sending mysterious liquid splashing. On the plate was something round and limp. It was various shades of unpleasant colors ranging from pea-soup green to fungal brown.
“That might have been a head of lettuce at some point,” I said.
“Don’t eat it,” Fantasy added.
I logged into NCIC again, the National Crime Information Center, and used my father’s credentials to get to the good stuff. “Here we go,” I said, as the database of reported criminal activity and apprehensions appeared.
The top half of Fantasy shot up and across the table to have an upside-down look. “What’s it say?”
“I don’t know.” I sat back. “I can’t see through your head.”
I scooted to the window to make room for her to sit beside me. She did. I placed the laptop between us. She zeroed in on the busy screen so loaded with cryptic law enforcement communique, then pushed it right back to me. “Go, go, go, Davis.”
I went, went, went, narrowing the website’s search clock to the past twenty-four hours, then narrowing down to the state of Mississippi, then Harrison County, then typed Bellissimo Resort and Casino in the search bar. Before a list could populate, from behind the counter, Whiskey said, “Is this a prepared steak of the pork variety?”
Fantasy craned her neck for a closer look. “Do you mean ham? Ham isn’t white. And it doesn’t have big holes in it. I don’t know what that is.”
Without looking up to see for myself, I said, “Toss it, Whiskey.”
NCIC reported two vehicular incidents during the night at the Bellissimo, one in the parking garage, the other at the main entrance, and four D&Ds. (Drunk and disorderly.) Nothing was posted about a reward being offered for Fantasy’s hide, which meant so far the Bellissimo hadn’t thrown her under the bus.
“Go back and search my name.”
“I don’t want to, Fantasy. Yesterday you were a new listing. Plenty of bored precincts might have clicked out of curiosity. Today you’re old news. If anyone’s paying attention, a second click from the same precinct will be noticed. One more click would track the hit to an unauthorized device. As in my laptop. I’d go to prison with you. Do you want me to go to prison with you?”
“Yes.”
“No. But I’ll tell you what I will do.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ll buy you a little time.”
“Buy me a lot of time, Davis.”
I opened a new screen and busted through Biloxi Police Department’s firewall. And not for the first time. In my defense, I only breached their system when I needed answers to questions they didn’t have time to answer. The way I looked at it, wouldn’t they rather I look it up myself as opposed to bothering them with endless phone calls? I clicked the outstanding warrants tab. Knowing Fantasy’s would still be active, since she was right beside me rather than in custody, and not wanting her to see the gory details, I clicked through to get to the police reports behind the warrants. I found her case and clicked the evidence tab. The boys were naked, so there were no personal effects confiscated past eight senior rings and two smart watches, but all the paintball guns were in an evidence locker. On a longshot whim, three clicks later, I’d ordered ballistics tests on the paintball guns. For authorization, I borrowed our favorite detective, Sandy Marini’s, credentials. Something I felt certain Biloxi PD and especially Sandy would prefer me not do, but desperate times and all.
“Ballistics on paintball guns? Sandy’s going to kill you, Davis.”
“She’s going to need to get in line.”
“For sure, you’re going to prison with me.”
From behind the counter, Whiskey said, “I hereby volunteer to be your incarceration associate solely for the three-square-meals amenity. Because the peanut butter at this locale is both a strange consistency and an unfortunate hue not native to the peanut.” He landed the open end of a day camp-sized container on the counter for our inspection. It was shiny. And gooey. And gray. Dark gray. Almost black.
“Check the refrigerator and the freezer in the kitchen,” I suggested, as I toggled back to NCIC and clicked ALABAMA from the pull-down menu on the home screen looking for anything that might be happening closer to where we were, like maybe the offices of Graze Away Goat Rental, Home of Hassle-Free Brush Removal and Weed Control, had burned to the ground during the night. No such luck. Although Graze Away could still be further down the list, because the main event was so spectacular. And not in a good way. There’d been a prison break at Federal Correction Institution in Talladega. Three male inmates were on the lam. Everything else that had happened in the great state of Alabama during the past twenty-four hours was run of the mill by comparison, if multiple vehicular fatalities, even more vehicular thefts, even more drug and gang related incidents, seven solicitation arrests, six major property damage reports, five grand larcenies, four new missing persons cases, three suspected kidnappings, two significant fire events, and one confirmed homicide could be called run of the mill.
