Gone in a Flash (18 page)

Willis Pugh came to the door, napkin in hand. ‘Detectives?’

‘We need to interview Alicia Brooks, Mr Pugh,’ DeWitt said.

‘We’re having dinner,’ Pugh said.

‘We’ll wait. Inside or out. Your choice,’ Mayfair said.

Pugh sighed. ‘Come on in.’ He pointed toward a room with a sectional sofa. ‘Y’all can wait here until we’re finished.’

Something told Mayfair this man wasn’t one to be intimidated and nobody in this house would be rushing through their meal on account of DeWitt and herself.

She was right. Fifteen minutes later, Mr and Mrs Pugh, their foster child, Alicia Brooks, and a boy who Mayfair figured to be Pugh, Jr., from his resemblance to Willis Pugh, came into the room where they were sitting. She was taken aback to see her partner, DeWitt, stand up when the two females entered. She’d never seen him do that before. And he sure as hell never did it for her!

‘Mrs Pugh,’ DeWitt said, shaking her hand. Mayfair stood up and did the same.

Introductions were made around the room, and Mayfair was proven right when Mrs Pugh introduced the boy as their son, Graham, just in from college.

Everybody settled on the sectional sofa, and DeWitt said, ‘Alicia, Chief Donaldson gave us all the information you gave him in his interview, and I hate to go over it again, but we have some questions. Are you OK with that?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Alicia said, and Mayfair couldn’t help noticing that the girl slipped her hand into the hand of the heir to the throne – so to speak.

‘OK. These two guys, they talk a lot while they had you?’ DeWitt asked.

‘Yes, sir, they talked some. Mostly sniping at each other. They didn’t seem to get along. And Mr Jones told us later, after Mr Smith and Mr Brown left, that Mr Smith had shot him in the foot!’

‘Did he say why?’ DeWitt asked.

‘He said Mr Smith seemed tense,’ Alicia answered.

Mayfair shrugged. ‘I guess being tense is
one
reason to shoot your partner.’

DeWitt snuck a quick look at her, but she wasn’t making eye contact.

Sighing, DeWitt said, ‘The dead guy’s been identified as Max Serling, aka Mr Smith—’

‘Aka?’ Alicia asked.

‘Also known as,’ the Pugh’s son answered.

‘Right,’ DeWitt said. ‘He’s a Houston resident with a pretty long rap sheet. Mostly B&E, car-jacking, and burglary. Never anything violent, if you can call car-jacking non-violent, which, personally, I don’t think it is.’

‘No one’s asking for your personal opinion,’ Mayfair said under her breath.

‘Do we really have to do this here?’ DeWitt whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

‘I didn’t say a word,’ Mayfair said aloud.

‘Yeah, you did!’ DeWitt whispered louder.

‘So, Miss Brooks, we faxed the sketch you had done of Mr Jones back to Austin to run against our facial recognition software,’ Mayfair said, ‘but it will take a while and there’s a good chance nothing will come of it. So, can you think of anything he said or did that could help us identify him?’

‘I’m thinking I could probably give a better description of him now. Maybe we should have Calvin come back out here,’ Alicia said.

Inexplicitly, the other two girls, who’d been with the family coming out of the police station, appeared and the redhead said, ‘Good idea!’

‘Redhead’ was a point Mayfair and DeWitt would discuss later – Mayfair insisting the mother was a redhead, but the daughter was a strawberry blonde, while DeWitt countered with red was red and why didn’t she just shut the hell up. That issue, like so many between them, would go unresolved.

‘But I’ll tell you now,’ Alicia said, ‘I won’t say a word against Mr Jones in a court of law. If it wasn’t for him, Bert and I would be dead right now. Mr Jones saved our lives, at great risk to his own. Now he’s off someplace with Mr Brown, and I’ll tell you this, I think Mr Brown is the head guy! He’s the one they called when they got the satchel. Mr Jones is a good man!’ At this point, the girl burst into tears. The boy put his arms around her, patting her back. At one point she looked up, red-eyed and said, ‘And I want my satchel back!’

But that was the last word they were going to get out of her that night.

Willis was true to his word. He came into our room, got his pillow and his new Dopp kit and headed upstairs, sending Alicia down.

As Alicia and I got ready for bed, the inevitable conversation arose.

‘Mom, we don’t have to do this,’ she said.

‘Do what, honey?’ I asked, although I knew exactly what.

‘Keep Graham and me apart at night. Mom, I’m not ready to … You know … do it.’

Well, if she couldn’t say it, maybe she wasn’t ready to
do it.

‘I think your dad just wants to keep the temptation to a minimum,’ I said.

‘But Graham and I haven’t even gone on a date! Much less … you know.’

I sat down on the bed, pulling her down with me. ‘Honey, how do you
feel
about him?’

The poor girl turned scarlet. She shrugged. ‘You know,’ she finally got out.

‘No, honey, I don’t. I have an idea, but I need you to tell me,’ I said.

Alicia sighed and the extra color in her face began to fade. Finally, she looked at me and said, ‘I’ve been in love with him since before I moved in here. Maybe it was just a crush at first, but it wouldn’t go away. Even with Lotta in the picture. I love him, Mom. I can’t help it.’

I hugged her. ‘And you shouldn’t have to. The problem is, he loves you, too—’

She grinned big. ‘I know! I can tell!’

I laughed. ‘And it doesn’t matter if you’ve ever been on a date or not, the feelings you have … Well, sometimes … often times … that is …’

‘If we’re close to each other at night without supervision, we’re liable to do it,’ she said.

I let out my held breath. ‘You said it, honey.’

‘But, Mom, he said he’s not going back to school, and if he doesn’t, I can’t stay down here forever. You and Dad need to be together.’

I hugged her again. ‘We’ll have to work something out, sweetie. And we will. I promise. Now, go brush your teeth.’

Megan slipped into Bess’s room, making sure her dad didn’t see her. He’d left the door to Alicia’s room open, but he was a heavy sleeper, and the truth was they could have an orgy up here and he’d never be the wiser. But she was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen. Graham, for all his faults, had a lot of respect for their parents, and, seeing how he felt about Alicia (of course, she’d known about it for a long time, but to actually see it was something else!), she knew he would respect that. Maybe, she bet, somewhere deep in his heart, he was glad Dad had done this. Even Graham, a boy (and you know how
they
are), had to see that Alicia wasn’t ready for that. And Dad’s move had taken that temptation away.

Bess was awake, reading her world history homework, of all things. ‘What?’ she said in a not unfriendly tone, but not a friendly one either. She didn’t take her eyes off her book.

‘We need to talk!’ Megan said, jumping on Bess’s bed and crossing her legs.

‘Huh?’ Bess said, acting like she was
so
engrossed in freaking world history!

Megan put her hand on the top of the textbook and pulled it down, thus exposing her sister’s eyes. ‘You really think we’re not going to talk about this?’

Bess sighed. ‘I suppose you mean the whole Graham and Alicia thing.’

‘Ah, duh!’ Megan replied.

Bess smiled. ‘I think it was really sweet the way he came running to the rescue like that. It was a good idea for you to call him.’

‘Again, I say “duh!” If I hadn’t called him, he never would have forgiven either one of us.’

‘True,’ Bess said. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think to call him. I guess I was just so overwrought by the kidnapping.’

‘Overwrought?’ Megan picked up the world history book and shook it.

‘What are you doing?’ Bess demanded.

‘Looking for the romance novel you have hidden in here. Overwrought? Only Mom uses that word, and then only in her historical romances.’

Slightly embarrassed, Bess took the offensive. ‘I was worried, OK? I happen to like Alicia a lot!’

‘Are you saying I don’t like Alicia?’ Megan demanded.

Holding her head high and not looking at her sister, she said, ‘I didn’t say that, but obviously you must think it, or why else would you go there?’

Megan hit her with the world history text. Bess grabbed it away and hit her back with it.

‘Ouch,’ Megan said.

‘Yeah, ouch! Stop hitting me!’ Bess said.

‘I just came in here because I’m worried about the family dynamic,’ Megan said.

Bess laughed. ‘And you made fun of me saying “overwrought”? “Family dynamic” my ass!’

‘I’m serious,’ Megan said, ‘and tease me all you want, but that is
exactly
what I’m worried about! Graham said he’s not going back to Austin, Dad won’t let him and Alicia be on the same floor at night, because of, you know,’ she said, using a fairly descriptive and unpleasant hand gesture that used the index finger of one hand and a circle made of the index finger and thumb of the other. ‘So does Alicia stay downstairs with Mom forever? You know Mom and Dad just made up after Dad leaving, so this can’t be good for their marriage—’

‘Mom and Dad will figure that out. They’re tighter now than they’ve been in a while,’ Bess said. ‘Meanwhile, we still have those bad guys out there.’

Megan shrugged. ‘But that’s all over for us, right? I mean, they got what they wanted. We don’t have to be involved anymore.’

‘Ah, excuse me?’ Bess said, sarcasm dripping off her tongue. ‘Have you met our mother? No way is she going to leave this alone.’

‘But that’s why Dad left in the first place! Surely she won’t get involved in this kind of thing again!’ Megan said, distraught at the thought of her dad moving out again.

‘Cheer up, Megs,’ Bess said, playfully hitting her sister on the arm. ‘At least we’ll have Calvin the Beautiful again!’

Megan did immediately cheer up. ‘Ooo, that’s right! Yay!’

It was after ten when they finally left the restaurant in Columbus, and Mr Brown figured he really didn’t want to deal with the Houston problem when he was this tired, so they spent the night in a motel and, bright and early Friday morning, nine a.m., Mr Brown and Mr Jones were finally on their way. It was a long trip, about three hours total from Black Cat Ridge to Houston, if you counted the traffic in Houston, and who wouldn’t count that? And as far as Mr Brown could tell, Mr Jones hadn’t stopped talking once. Mostly he complained about his ex-wives. At first Mr Brown thought he was talking about just one, but then it dawned on him that – since Mr Jones complained about two different names – there might have been more than one wife. He wasn’t really paying much attention, and he really didn’t care how many wives Mr Jones had had.

He couldn’t help thinking that since Mr Smith was dead, the fifty gees from his boss he was supposed to pay these two could easily come to him, especially if Mr Jones were to have an accident somewhere between where they were at the moment and their final destination.

It was a tad problematic, however. He couldn’t shoot him and have it look like an accident. He wasn’t big enough to strangle and/or smother Mr Jones. And he didn’t have any poison on him. For a while he fantasized about slamming Mr Jones on the head with something, then faking a car accident, but there were problems with that scenario, also. Like, what if the accident was worse than he planned and he got knocked out too? And, even if it went perfectly, how would he get the rest of the way to Houston? And wouldn’t the Highway Patrol keep him around for questions, especially with a stolen car?

Mr Brown considered opening the passenger-side door and pushing Mr Jones out while going seventy-five miles an hour down the interstate, but there was the problem with reaching over Mr Jones to do it, and then unlocking his seatbelt. As stupid as Mr Jones was, even he was liable to catch on to that.

Considering he still had some time, Mr Brown decided to keep thinking about it. A solution was bound to come to him.

It was a rough night. After almost twenty-five years of marriage, you get used to your partner’s sleeping habits. Willis snored at about a medium decibel, and loved to throw his arm around me in his sleep and pull me close. Almost always woke me up. But sleeping with a teenaged girl was a whole different ball of wax. For one thing, she seemed to think her half of the bed was in the middle, and with those exceedingly long legs of hers, the middle became the entire bed. She didn’t snore. What she did was grind her teeth and mumble. In my opinion, for what it’s worth, that’s much worse. I was exhausted when the alarm went off.

Even though it was Friday, we’d decided to get the girls back in school. As there apparently was no longer any danger to them, now those men had got what they wanted, there was no reason to keep them out. And I figured the sooner Alicia got back into a routine, the sooner her life could get back to normal. I’d called Luna the evening before and implored her to find Alicia’s satchel. Personally, I never wanted to see the damn thing again, but Alicia loved it for some reason, and wanted it. I was determined to get it back for her.

As I came out of the bedroom to start the coffee, there was a knock on the back door. It was still locked, so I opened it. Luna stood there with the satchel.

‘I had to promise Donaldson I’d bake him a cake, so you owe me. Specifically one homemade cake. You know I don’t cook.’

‘What flavor?’ I asked, taking the satchel from her.

‘Chocolate with cherries and pecans,’ she said. ‘Do I smell coffee?’

‘Come in. It’s almost ready.’

She came in and we interrupted the flow of the coffee machine to snatch two cups, doctored them, and went to the kitchen table.

‘So I heard there was some drama at the station last night,’ she said. ‘The stars of which were Graham and Alicia.’

‘Oh, God, don’t start. We’ve got a problem on our hands. They’re in love.’

Luna grinned. ‘That’s what you get for taking in cute strays, Pugh.’

‘I heard that,’ Alicia said as she shuffled in from my bedroom, hair disheveled, wearing a man’s pajama top (Willis’s, not Graham’s), and panties. She poured a cup of coffee and came and sat down with us.