An Angel to Die For (26 page)

“I know. I’m Pug, and I honestly didn’t mean to frighten you, but we really do need to talk.” The man looked down at my half-buried tires. “I have a cardboard box in my car back there. We can put some of that under the pine branches—might help a little.”

“Your car?”

“I drove up just as you were leaving and thought I’d try to catch you before you got away. Then when I saw you stop at the cemetery I parked out of sight so I wouldn’t intrude. Car’s just around the bend there; just give me a minute and I’ll get it.”

I waited while the man parked his car behind mine and watched him tear off pieces of corrugated cardboard to line the ruts made by my fruitless efforts to escape him. Together we layered boughs of pine until I had enough traction to get back on solid ground. I heard him give a victorious little shout when I roared free.

If I’d had a black veil I would’ve draped it over my face. Not only did I feel stupid over the way I’d behaved, but I was filthy to boot. My shoes were caked in mud and my hands sticky with pine rosin. Peter Whisonant’s good-looking horticulturist nephew would probably go home and laugh all night and into next week.

On his first visit to Smokerise I couldn’t see beyond the beard when I’d observed him from an upstairs window. Now I realized my visitor was handsome in a rugged,
outdoorsy sort of way. But there was something else about him that puzzled me. Something familiar.

“I wish I had time to talk with you today,” I said, wishing I could disappear as quickly as Augusta, “but I have to go out of town on some family business and I’ve a late start already.”

He stood beside my car and leaned in the window; the tangy scent of fresh pine rose up around us. “Look, I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” he began. “I do want to go over plans for my uncle’s project, but there’s something else more urgent. I’m afraid your mother may be in trouble, and your sister’s baby’s in serious danger of being kidnapped. If you know where they are, I think you’d better warn them, and I wouldn’t waste any time.”

Oh, God. Realization came like a dousing of cold well water and I knew where I had seen this man before. He was the one who had followed Augusta and me when we left Ruby, the one I’d given the slip to in the restaurant.

Y
ou’re one of them, aren’t you?” I was surprised at the calmness in my voice.

He raised a dark brow. “One of whom?”

“The Gaineses. Sonny’s family. I should’ve known! If you’ve done anything to hurt Joey or my mother—”

“Hey, wait a minute!” He held up a hand. “I’m on your side, believe it or not, and you’d better believe it because we’re going to have to work as a team and we don’t have a minute to lose.”

“I don’t trust you,” I said. “I don’t even know who you are.”

He frowned and shook his head. “I’ll tell you who I’m not. I’m not your enemy. I think we both want the same thing—the baby’s safety. I care about Joey too.”

“I doubt if you even come close to caring what happens
to Joey,” I said. “He happens to be my nephew.”

“And mine. Sonny was my brother.”

When he spoke his brother’s name, his expression softened and I could see he was having a difficult time with his emotions. Well, that was his problem. If it hadn’t been for Sonny Gaines, my sister would still be alive, and at that moment I hated him. Hated all of them. “If this is some kind of trick to lead you to Joey, you can forget it,” I said. “I’ll sit here till doomsday before I tell you one thing!”

“That’s admirable of you, I’m sure, but meanwhile my father—who, I might add, is extremely volatile and emotionally unstable—has followed a friend of yours to wherever it is your mother is secluded and he plans to take that child!”

Now my warning bell was gonging big-time. This was what Augusta was trying to tell me! “How do you know this?” I asked. My insides felt like molten lava.

His words came quickly. “I know because he called me, told me what he’d done, what he planned to do. My father doesn’t listen to reason, Prentice. If I don’t know where he is, there’s nothing I can do to stop him.”

“He didn’t say where he was?”

“No, only that he’d followed you to Atlanta where he thought he might find Joey. He didn’t, but he saw you transferring a stroller and some other things to your friend’s car, then waited around until she left the next morning. Stayed behind her all the way.”

Dottie. And she never even suspected it. But I had.
I remembered the drive to Atlanta, the eerie feeling of being followed, but he must have stayed far enough behind so I never got a look at him.

“I tried to trace the call,” Sonny’s brother said, “but the old man’s using a cell phone. He may be unbalanced, but he’s not stupid.”

“Your father is Pershing Gaines.” The name sent a chill through me.

“Right, and so am I: Pershing Underwood Gaines. A bit intimidating. I go by ‘Pug.’ ”

“Do you think he’d hurt them?”
Oh, please, say no!

“Not if he were himself, and he’d never deliberately harm the baby, but my dad isn’t himself—hasn’t been since Sonny’s death. And frankly, I’ve seen signs of mental deterioration before that, but nobody would believe me.”

I had discontinued service with my mobile phone when I lost my job, and now I wished I hadn’t. “Do you have a phone in your car? I hate to waste time going back to the house to call.”

He did, of course. I reached across to unlock the door. “Get it and get in!” I said. I punched in the number at Ellynwood before we even turned out on the main road, hoping to hear my mother’s voice on the other end, but there was no answer.

“Nobody’s there,” I said to Pug’s expectant face. “But she might’ve gone to the store or something. She was planning a pork loin for supper.” I swallowed, thinking of my mother humming as she scrubbed the small pink
potatoes, marinated the meat. After the horror of the last few months, Joey had given her the precious gift of hope, and now this madman was out to destroy it. I drove even faster.

“Better hold off on the lead foot,” my passenger advised. “We don’t have time for traffic tickets.”

“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” I said.

“What? Being stopped for speeding?”

“No, getting the police involved. Maybe we should call them, have somebody check on things out there. I’d feel a lot better if we did.”

Pug reached for the phone. “So would I. What town are we dealing with?”

I didn’t know for sure but I’d heard Mom say she bought groceries in a little place called Tanner’s Crossing. But Tanner’s Crossing, we learned, didn’t have a police department. When we finally reached the county sheriff, we were told they couldn’t do anything unless Pug’s father had actually done something, but they would send a car out to check on things at Ellynwood.

I tried Mom’s number again, then again a short time later. Still no answer. The fire in my stomach smoldered, and even though he may not be my enemy at the moment, I could have easily belched flames at Sonny Gaines’s brother. In fact I could barbecue the entire family.

“So all that talk about leasing our land for a nursery was nothing but a smoke screen,” I said.

“Not at all. Peter Whisonant’s married to my aunt
Julia and he really is interested in expanding in your area. In fact, he’s been looking around for over a year now for a place like yours.” Pug Gaines smiled. “I just happened to be the one who found it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Prentice, it may surprise you to know I’ve known where you lived for some time now. In fact, I even came to your house a few times, but no one was there. I knew as soon as I saw it that it was exactly what we’d been looking for, and Uncle Peter agreed. But except for chance, it has nothing to do with our looking for Joey.”

“Then maybe you can explain why your father is running around terrorizing people when you admit he has serious problems?” I asked. “You must know his behavior’s not normal. Why haven’t you gotten some help?”

“As a matter of fact, he’s been under a doctor’s care. He was hospitalized for a while and when they did let him come home we had somebody there full-time. He slipped away while the nurse was in the shower—had another set of car keys we didn’t know about. He’s a crafty one, Dad is, and completely round the bend as far as Sonny is concerned.”

I could sense Pug’s eyes on me, but I kept mine on the road. “Believe me, Prentice,” he said, “I had no idea what my father was up to until he called this morning. We were frantic—didn’t even know where to find him.”

“I’m surprised,” I told him. “Your whole family has
such a talent for surveillance, you should change your name to Pinkerton.”

“I suppose I should be insulted.” Was he smiling? “You’re referring to Aunt Julia, I suppose. She didn’t mean to frighten you by meeting you at the mall. She thought you were expecting her.”

I remembered the woman saying something about her nephew trying to get in touch with me to let me know she wanted to talk. “So
you’re
the nephew,” I said. “Your aunt gave me the impression she thought everything had been arranged, that you were supposed to have prepared me for her showing up like that.” I swung around a creeping vehicle with an out-of-state license plate, pushed the speed up to seventy, and took my chances with the State Patrol. “Well, I wasn’t,” I said.

“Wasn’t what?”

“Wasn’t prepared. You know very well what I mean.” I looked at the clock. It was after three and we were still over an hour away.

“Hey! That was hardly my fault. It’s a little difficult to have a conversation with somebody who hangs up on me, avoids me like I’m foaming at the mouth.” My passenger sighed. “We Gaineses really aren’t a bad lot, Prentice. Honest, we’re more or less a peaceful clan.”

“Huh! Less is what I’ve heard!” I swerved to avoid a hubcap in the middle of the road.

“Who told you that?” Pug Gaines kept the roar in his voice to a minimum, but it was there just the same.

“If I tell you, promise you won’t go after him with a lynch mob?”

He grunted. “I honestly don’t know where you get these notions.”

“The funeral director in Athens, Tennessee. I spoke with him a few weeks ago and he gave me the distinct impression your whole family was out for blood. Our blood.” I glanced at him as I spoke. “That tended to make me a bit leery, if you know what I mean, especially since there was no rational explanation for it.” I almost bit my tongue to keep from ranting further.

“I’m afraid our dad would be the reason for that,” Pug said. “When Sonny was killed, he just went berserk; we couldn’t do a thing with him. Aunt Julia—she’s Dad’s sister—and I finally got him calmed down, and my brother gave him a sedative. Willis is a general practitioner.”

I nodded, trying to keep the relatives straight. “Just how many of you are there?”

“I have a younger sister in grad school and Willis, my older brother, is married and lives in Chattanooga, but I guess we seem like a crowd when we get together,” he said with a laugh.

His voice sobered. “And then there was Sonny, the baby, and Dad’s favorite. Always was—he made no bones about it. Sonny could do no wrong. Wild as a stallion and just as headstrong. I’m afraid Dad spoiled him rotten.

“That was his undoing,” he added softly.

“Your father seemed to blame my sister for the accident,”
I said. “They said Sonny had been taking drugs, but I can’t see where that was Maggie’s fault. After all, he was the one who was driving.”

Maggie had stayed away from drugs in high school, but I couldn’t vouch for what she did after she left home. However, if my sister had anything like that in her system the day she was killed, it hadn’t shown up in her autopsy report.

Pug Gaines touched me gently on the shoulder. “Now you see why I wanted to reach your mother and Joey as quickly as possible. There’s no reasoning with my father where Sonny’s concerned.”

“How did your father know where to find me?” I asked.

He stretched his long legs and leaned forward, as if that would make us get there faster. “My dad has more eyes than a seed potato. I expect somebody told him, probably somebody back in Ruby. He has some old hunting buddies there.”

I thought about the woman at The Toy Box Child Care Center who seemed a little more than eager about locating Joey. “Jackie Trimble,” I said, glancing at my passenger.

“Ah, yes! Named after her old man. Jack Trimble and Dad went to school together. The guy has a lot of cousins . . . and they have cousins, and so on.” He smiled. “Comes in handy, don’t you think?”

“It certainly helped your aunt Julia track me to that mall. Poor Tisdale Humphreys! He had no idea he was harboring a spy in the man hanging his wallpaper.”

Pug chuckled. “That was just a happy accident. I’m surprised you figured it out.”

“Actually Ola Cress did. Besides her, Mr. Humphreys was the only one who knew where we planned to meet.”

“I guess we do seem a sneaky bunch,” Pug admitted, “and maybe we’ve handled this all wrong, but damn it, Prentice, this baby is important to us too. We were afraid we would lose him, that he might just disappear and we’d never know where to find him. We may have resorted to what seems like desperate measures, but you, of all people, should understand that.”

I couldn’t argue with him there.

We both grew silent as we got closer to Tanner’s Crossing. Pastures became greener the farther south we drove, weeds straggled tall around fences, and the sun streamed in through the windows so brightly I had to turn on the air conditioner. After a while we left the main road for a straight and narrow lane where dark pine thickets pressed in on either side with their suffocating creosote smell.

“There oughtta be a covered bridge about a mile down the road here,” Pug said, reading Mom’s directions. “Turn left at the next road and it should be about a half mile on the right. There’s a tabby wall, she says . . . that’s that plaster made of crushed shells, isn’t it? And a wrought-iron gate.”

We thundered over the dark, narrow bridge and turned onto a sandy road lined with live oaks. Soon I saw the crumbling, vine-covered walls of Ellynwood
and came to a stop in front of the gate. I don’t know what I had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. The place looked like Sleeping Beauty’s garden after the grounds-keeper had taken a century-long snooze. Maybe it once had been landscaped, but now nature had draped it thick with vines, smothered it in dense green foliage.