A Bloodhound to Die for (24 page)

Hank stood up then and lifted the tray from my lap. “I’ll get this cleaned up,” he said, walking toward my bedroom door. “And then we’ll get to work on figuring out a plan to find Bobby Lee.”

“Hank?”

He stopped at the door and turned.

“What about Beulah?”

He smiled. “After you were settled in at the hospital and I knew you were going to live, I sent a team down to the spot where you and Jasmine found her the last time. Sure enough, there she was. She’s okay, much to Hiram’s relief, and he’s making good on his word to find a suitable, and permanent, nursing home for her, where he can visit her every day. In the meantime, she’s in the hospital.”

He left then, and I stared at the door. I was, I realized, willing him to come back. Partly because he was so damned sexy and even now I wanted a follow-up to those ten tiny kisses. But mostly, there was his character. Despite all we’d been through—all I’d put him through—he was so sturdy, dependable, dedicated.

A memory echoed in my mind. Hadn’t I thought those very words were perfect to describe Hiram the first time we’d had to search for Beulah? Hadn’t I lamented that while I was sure God must still make
such men, I was sorry that so many women just didn’t know how to find one?

The telephone rang. I reached to answer it, then hesitated. The last time I’d answered a telephone had been at the Quik-Mart, and the call had been from Jimmy Joe and I’d been poisoned.

I couldn’t start hiding from life now—I never had before. I picked up the telephone, answered with a sharp, “Hello.”

“Oh, Jo Beth, thank God.”

It was Jasmine. I smiled at the warm sound of her voice. “I guess you’ve heard what happens to me when I go off searching by myself.”

There was a gasping sound on the other end, and I knew that Jasmine was crying. “Oh, Jasmine, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that to sound so awful. I was just trying to make a joke.”

“I know, I know,” said Jasmine. “Wayne came by and told me what happened. Thank God you’re all right. But Bobby Lee—”

“I’ll find him, Jasmine,” I said. “If it’s the last thing I do.”

“I want to help. If I had been with you, if you hadn’t been alone—”

“Don’t do this to yourself.”

“I’m coming home. I want to help.”

“Are you still at your mother’s?”

“Yes. I’ve set up camp with a lawn chair, a cell phone, an umbrella just in case, and a six-pack of diet soda.”

Despite everything that had happened, I smiled at the image. “Has your mama spoken to you yet?”

A long silence, then a sigh. “Not yet.”

“Then you stay there,” I said firmly. “I’ll make sure Wayne or Donnie Ray or Hank comes by to check on you every few hours, but you stay right there until you wear her down.”

“But, Jo Beth, I want to help you—”

“The best thing you can do for me is to stay right there. You’re on a quest you need to finish. I am too.”

Another long silence. Then, a tiny “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Just take good mental notes so we can share all we’ve been through the next time we can get together for a girls’ night.”

We said our good-byes and hung up.

I had just closed my eyes when the phone rang again. Again, I hesitated. How long before I could hear the telephone ring and not wonder if the soft, insidious voice of Jimmy Joe Lane would be at the other end, begging me to come be his wife—or else?

I picked up the receiver.

“Jo Beth? Sorry if I caught you at a bad time, but I just had to tell you—well, Lee came by my store late this afternoon, and we got to talking, all about Sherlock and everything, and then we went out to dinner and just had the most marvelous time, I mean we really clicked, and guess what? As soon as Lee brought me home, he gave me the sweetest little good-night kiss on the cheek, and—Jo Beth?”

“Yes?” I said, smiling in spite of myself. Susan’s excited rambling was proof that some things in my world hadn’t been rocked. I also wondered where her newfound bliss with Lee would leave Brian Colby. In the dust, I hoped.

“You haven’t interrupted me yet. Are you okay?”

The image of Bobby Lee came to mind. “Yes.”

“You don’t sound okay. Are you sure you’re not mad about me and Lee, because I know at one time—”

“Susan, Bobby Lee’s gone.”

There was a silence at the other end, then Susan’s voice, quivering. “Jo Beth, did I hear you right? You said Bobby Lee is—gone?”

I told her what had happened since I’d last seen her.

“I’m so sorry,” Susan finally said, quietly. “I want to help. What can I do to help?”

“Why don’t you start by telling me what you came over to tell me this morning?” I said.

Long pause. I could feel Susan tensing up on the other end. Finally she said, “I will, Jo Beth. But now is not the time.”

For once, I didn’t argue.

“Okay,” I said. “How about this—check in on me every now and again. I think my trainers can wrap up this week’s seminar without much needed from me. All my concentration is going to be on finding Bobby Lee. That means I’m going to probably let small but important things slip or not have time to take care of
them. Can I count on you to occasionally run errands for me, that sort of thing?”

“Absolutely,” Susan said, some of the bubbliness back in her voice. I realized, with a pang, that the sudden loss of Bobby Lee seemed to have opened up a part of me where I’d stored away an understanding of relationships. It was as if I’d learned the art through Bobby Lee, and just hadn’t realized it or needed to tap into it until I lost him—and had to fight to get him back.

I finished the phone call with Susan, then leaned back to rest. I’d drifted off to a peaceful dream—me, edge of a field, watching Bobby Lee chase butterflies—when there came another knock at the door.

I startled awake, straightened up, and watched Hank, Donnie Ray, and Wayne all come plowing through my door, carrying the bulletin board from my office, the bulletin board with all of the pushpins that signified where each and every one of Jimmy Joe’s relatives lived.

Hank grinned at me. “We decided to bring the battle planning to you.”

“Operation Recover Bobby Lee,” signed Wayne.

“You can count on us,” said Donnie Ray.

And I knew I could.

  
27
“Operation Recover Bobby Lee: Rough Beginnings”

L
ess than forty-eight hours after I returned home from the hospital, I—with the help of Hank—had exhausted every possibility of getting a lead on Jimmy Joe’s whereabouts and, therefore, on Bobby Lee.

Mona Estelle Lane, Jimmy Joe’s cousin and Quik-Mart employee, was only too proud to admit to poisoning my drink on Jimmy Joe’s suggestion. She proudly admitted, also, to calling him each time I’d been in the Quik-Mart. But even threats of prosecuting her to the full extent of the law for attempted murder wouldn’t get her to tell Hank one more thing, even when her state-appointed attorney urged her to do so. Hints that the prosecution might be willing to accept a lesser plea if she’d cooperate in helping us find Jimmy Joe did no good.

Her exact words were, Hank told me, proclaimed with a self-satisfied grin: “Jo Beth Sidden can go to hell before I’d help her out. No one calls Jimmy Joe Lane a liar and gets away with it. He told me she’d been writing him all this time with promises of love, and I believe him. She’s not good enough for him. Besides, escaping from prison is a Lane trait that doesn’t necessarily run in just the menfolk. I’d like a song written about me too.”

Not much of a career track at the Quik-Mart for Mona, apparently, and she had never married or had children. From her point of view, she wouldn’t lose all that much by going to prison on Jimmy Joe’s behalf, and if it made her a secondary Lane legend, so much the better.

Warden Sikes, from Monroe Prison, where Jimmy Joe had been incarcerated, wasn’t much help either. The few personal items that Jimmy Joe had left behind had been washed, disinfected, and stored away pending his return. There was no way one of my bloodhounds could pick up a scent from any of those items in order to track Jimmy Joe.

“You didn’t want to track him before, Ms. Sidden,” Sikes said. “Too bad that now that you have a personal reason for wanting to do so, it looks nearly impossible that you’ll be able to.”

I hung up on him for that comment.

Next, Hank and I paid a visit to Jimmy Joe’s parents. Netty started howling obscenities at me as soon as she
saw me. When Obediah finally got her calmed down, he looked at Hank—refusing to look at me—and said, “Why would we help this woman? She’s broken our boy’s heart. Now, seeing as how you don’t have no paperwork making it official to be here, I suggest you get off my property, Sheriff.”

As we left, I stared back at the Lane property. There was something about it that struck me as just… off. And there was something in my heart, which raced at the thought that Bobby Lee and Jimmy Joe were nearby, even if there was no evidence of either of them in the tiny house or on the property immediately surrounding it. Once I did get an article of Jimmy Joe’s to use to start my search, I’d start near this property, that much I knew.

But finding someone to help me wasn’t going to be easy. In two days, I called or visited or both called and visited every single Lane resident on the list Little Bemis had provided for me. And every single one told me, in some form or another, to go to hell.

Jimmy Joe had a whole extended network of family that was proud of him for catapulting into local fame as a man on the run from the law. Somehow, even among the religious zealots of the group (and I ran into a few who told me that uppity women like me would burn in hell), his lawlessness and ability to thwart imprisonment conferred on all of them a sense of status and accomplishment. In a nutshell, thanks to Jimmy Joe, Lanes everywhere could say, “Ha!” and thumb their noses at
those in town who had long seen them as backwoods swamp rats who couldn’t do much more than breed.

I understood their feelings.

But I needed to get Bobby Lee back.

That’s why, on a Friday afternoon, I was in my office, contemplating a detailed map of the area surrounding Netty and Obediah Lane’s property. Normally about this time I’d start looking forward to our traditional girls’ night, but on this Friday that wasn’t even an option. Susan, who had been by or called many times in the past forty-eight hours, was out with Lee, and I was glad for her. Jasmine, whom I’d checked in with several times via Donnie Ray and Wayne, was still on her mama vigil.

And I had a search to plan. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have the item I needed from Jimmy Joe—yet.

Somehow, I’d get it, even if I had to break into the Lanes’s house. All those newspaper clippings hanging on the wall told me that his parents had probably created a mini shrine to Jimmy Joe in the second bedroom. And I was pretty certain that Jimmy Joe wouldn’t have neglected to visit his mama and daddy. I was giving the universe twenty-four more hours to deliver what I needed, and then I was going to become Jo Beth Sidden, burglar. I wasn’t motivated as much by desperation as by cold, calculating necessity.

I had turned myself into a completely focused machine, with one goal, and one goal only: Find Bobby Lee. Wisely, no one had commented about my
crisp attitude and commanding tone. The inner drill sergeant had become an exterior drill sergeant. Everyone understood that that was the only way I could keep myself together.

My office door swung open and Hank came in. I didn’t look up as he sat down across from me. I kept staring at the map.

“I think you’ve got that map gridded to perfection by now,” he said softly.

“Just about.”

“Jo Beth, we have to talk.”

I kept looking at the map.

“We have to talk about what we’re going to do about Bobby Lee now that it’s clear we’re not going to get a personal item of Jimmy Joe’s for our search.”

I had my back-up plan, of course. But I wasn’t about to tell Hank, although I was curious to know his.

I smiled at Hank.

“Somehow, I didn’t think my statement would amuse you.”

“I’m smiling at the fact that you were referring to ‘our’ search for Bobby Lee.”

“We’re in this together,” Hank said.

I nodded. “I know. And I’m grateful. What do you suggest we do?”

He sighed. “I know you’re not going to like this.” He shook his head. “I don’t much like it either. But, Jo Beth, I think we’re just going to have to wait Jimmy Joe out. Sooner or later, he’s going to get tired of waiting
for you, and he’ll either set Bobby Lee free or return him to you in the middle of the night.”

“You mean—just do nothing.”

“What option do we have?”

Suddenly, I was angry. “If you’re going to say ‘we’ in reference to finding Bobby Lee, then you’d better get rid of such an apathetic attitude. I don’t wait for what I want. I never have. And I want Bobby Lee back—now. Sooner than now. How do I know Jimmy Joe won’t hurt him, or hasn’t already hurt him? What if you’re right and he does set Bobby Lee free—what if a gator gets to him before he can find his way home?”

Hank stood up, slammed his hands against my desk. “God, Jo Beth, you make it sound as though I don’t care about Bobby Lee when you know damned well I do. Just what are we supposed to do now, though?”