Charmed and Dangerous (6 page)

The car lurched toward the bank, clanging into the parking lot of the re-purposed former Texaco station. Bobbie
Faye gripped the steering wheel, swearing every curse word she knew under her breath and making up a few new ones as something loud popped under the hood and black smoke poured out in earnest, as if all the previous smoke had been amateur tryouts and this was now the pros.

Then the car died. Deader’n hell.

Four feet away from an actual parking spot, with not even the grace to coast the rest of the way in, and she was blocking the bank entrance. She put the car in neutral, got out, and pushed with every single cell she had to get the car into the spot, then saw too late that it was in crooked and blocked another spot. At that point, she kicked the door. Which fell off.

“You goddamned
fucking
pile of crap!”

There was an audible gasp behind her from the three nuns and four other customers clustered in front of the bank. Bobbie Faye straightened up, tugged at her tight
SHUCK ME, SUCK ME
T-shirt, which was riding up her ample boobs, grabbed her soggy purse, and joined the line forming at the bank entrance as if everything was perfectly normal. She pretended not to notice when everyone edged slightly away from her.

Besides the three nuns, the other four customers were comprised of two geeky twenty-something boys spastically air drumming to music beating through their headphones, a weathered older man in a welder’s cap, and a skinny man hunched into a permanent question mark. She bit her lip to keep from trying to push her way past them to be the first in line; several more customers arrived and lined up loosely around her, everyone having that casual competitive air of wanting to be the first in line but not wanting to appear to be the kind of person who’d push a nun out of the way.

Warning: Bobbie Faye crossing

—homemade sign placed by Bobbie Faye’s neighbors

When the bank opened, the nuns were first inside; this being a heavily Catholic town, Bobbie Faye suspected the likelihood of lightning bolt revenge made everyone walk slowly behind them. This didn’t stop everyone from cutting in front of each other, putting Bobbie Faye farther back in line than she’d begun. On any normal day, she’d have drop-kicked anyone who was being an ass, but Roy had stressed
subtle
and so by God, she was going to be subtle if it killed her.

She examined the check Ce Ce had given her, hoping that the activity made her seem normal. Whatever the hell
normal
was. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d ever met up with
normal
. With the line not even moving, Bobbie Faye craned to see who the teller was, and sighed as soon as she saw it was little Avantee Miller, who was barely nineteen and already thoroughly bored with the world.

The skinny, bespectacled man stood in line directly behind Bobbie Faye. As she bounced on her toes, fidgeting, watching Avantee ever so slowly help the very first nun, the man behind her twitched and flinched and gawked at her as if she was something from another planet. She thought she’d
reassure him with a little friendly banter, because that’s what normal people who are being subtle do, right?

“We’d have to drive a stake in the ground to see if Avantee moved,” she joked, expecting to get at least a hint of a grin from him. Nothing but a blank stare. “You know, create a fixed mark? Something to measure from?” He sort of shuddered, barely grimaced acknowledgment, and tried to avoid meeting Bobbie Faye’s gaze, which made her wonder if she’d even remembered to brush her hair.

She was now officially scaring the locals.

Then she noticed a small puddle of water, thanks to drips from her purse. She tried to look completely innocent and gladly took a step forward when the first nun was finally finished.

Fifteen minutes later, Avantee had just progressed to helping the third nun and Bobbie Faye decided it was a good thing she’d had to wear old clothes, because when she spontaneously combusted, at least Lori Ann could take some of her better clothes and sell them. Bobbie Faye caught herself bouncing again in rhythm to the snores wheezing from old Harold, the eighty-year-old bank guard, and her impatience was definitely not improving the twitchy nerves of the poor nerdy guy behind her.

She noticed Melba, the insect-thin bank manager, darting over to a desk, and Bobbie Faye, filled to the brim with all the patience she could manage for an entire week, much less one morning, said, “I hope you have a good retirement plan, Melba. I’ve been here long enough to apply for one.”

Melba sighed the very long, drawn-out sigh of one who carries the entire weight of the world, which did not faze Bobbie Faye one whit. Melba had been sighing like that since first grade. She sighed again, more resigned this time, and said, “What can I do for you, Bobbie Faye?” in a tone that implied she had met her quota of helping people back in the womb.

Bobbie Faye rushed to Melba’s desk and handed over the check that Ce Ce had given her.

“I need to cash this,” she said, trying to sound entirely
normal, like her brother’s life didn’t depend on it. Before the words
you have to wait in line
could form in Melba’s plodding thoughts, she added, “And I need to, um . . .” She slid a glance around, then dropped her voice. “Check on my safe-deposit box.”

Melba arched a painted eyebrow so high, it stabbed her hairline. Bobbie Faye tried not to flinch.

Melba asked, “You have your key, of course?”

Shit. Key.

Bobbie Faye rummaged in her soggy purse, knowing it had to be in there, that was the last place she put it, and please God don’t make her have to go home and try to find a
key
in the middle of a trailer lying on its side, with most of her belongings strewn in the middle of her lawn. She tossed all the debris from her purse out of her way. Finally, from the bottom, she pulled up a box full of hairpins and various important things and lo, there was the key. Melba cleared her throat and Bobbie Faye looked up. She’d covered Melba’s entire desk with the wreckage from her purse; most of it was wet and already leaving water marks on Melba’s prized leather blotter.

“Oh. Sorry, Melba.” She raked the contents back into her purse and ignored Melba’s sour expression.

The safe-deposit boxes were stored in the former oil change pit, which still smelled like mud and oil decades after it had been converted. Bobbie Faye sat at the little student’s desk the bank used for a table and stared at the box, her hands shaking. Melba turned her key and waited for Bobbie Faye to put her own key in.

When the box was unlocked, Melba said, “I’ll go cash this for you while you visit your box.” She turned to hurry out, then paused a moment at the door. “Your mamma would have been tickled pink to see you takin’ such good care of her tiara. I always figured you’da lost it.”

Bobbie Faye frowned at Melba as she left. She turned to the box and, holding her breath, opened it, moved the tissue aside, and lifted out the tiara. It was made from iron, molten
and beaten into shape with four odd half-moon curves at the top, two on each side facing each other, and a star in the center, taller than the half-moons. Nary a gem, diamond or otherwise, not a single ounce of precious metal, just iron. Slightly rusted, scratched and plain. Bobbie Faye stared at it, flabbergasted that someone could put so much value on something her great-great-grandfather made as a toy for his daughter; save that it was old, it had no more value than an antique horseshoe.

She held it tight to her chest a moment, getting a few rust marks on her white T-shirt. She closed her eyes, her thumb absently running across the first half of the inscription, the only part still visible:
TON TRÉSOR EST TROUVÉ
. The rest of the lettering was so worn, only faint marks remained. Her mother had made a little ceremony out of “passing the flame” when she first crowned Bobbie Faye with the tiara. There were flowers for their hair and beads and silly costumes. Her mom read the inscription, saying, “My little treasure,” and Bobbie Faye had imagined that’s what her great-great-grandfather would have said to his daughter when he first crowned her.

It was the only thing her family had passed down besides the gene that made them all screwups, and the tiara was worth more to her than gold. She remembered her very first parade as the Contraband Days Queen, stepping into her mother’s place, feeling wrong, out of sync. It was the first time she’d been forced to acknowledge that the cancer was going to win and her mother wasn’t always going to be there. Then she remembered her mother’s delight when she had first worn the tiara, and she blinked away the tears.

I’m sorry, Mamma
. She lifted her face to the ceiling.
Roy’s in trouble, and I need this
. “And then I’m going to beat the crap out of him,” she said, aloud. Catching herself, she looked back up at the ceiling and amended, “I mean . . . help rehabilitate him.”

By the time Bobbie Faye made it back to the lobby, Melba stood motionless at her desk, one hand holding out Bobbie
Faye’s cash from her check, the other hand hovering midair, holding a telephone receiver halfway to her ear.

“ ’Bye, Melba.” Bobbie Faye grabbed the cash and shoved it into a plastic bag with the tiara. She tied the bag closed as she hurried across the lobby floor, eyes down on her task, until she bumped into the twitchy guy, who was now standing in front of the line, twittering with nerves.

Bobbie Faye glanced over to Avantee, who held a wad of cash intended for the twitchy guy. She had paused there with her arm stretched halfway out, as if all of the synapses regulating efficient motion had finally short-circuited. Bobbie Faye rolled her eyes, snatched the cash from Avantee’s hand, said, “For God’s sake, how hard can it be to hand it over?” and turned to hand the cash to the twitchy guy.

Who was holding a gun. On Avantee.

“Thank you,” the twitchy man said. Then he yanked away her plastic bag and, waving his gun at her, added, “I’m very sorry. I’m going to be needing this as well.”

“Oh, you have so got to be kidding.”

He indicated his chest, beneath a lightweight windbreaker, where sticks of TNT were strapped.

“This is your first time,” she said, and he blushed.

“I didn’t know whether to use a gun or dynamite.”

“Well, next time you paint your paper towel rolls, try to make sure ‘Bounty’ isn’t showing through.”

When he looked down to see if she was right, she grabbed for her tiara bag, and what she’d assumed was a fake gun went off—shooting the ceiling—all while Harold the guard slept soundly.

Plaster fell and smacked Bobbie Faye in the head, coating her hair with white dust. She gaped at the bank robber.

“That’s not my fault,” he said, pointing at the ceiling dust.

“Fine. Give me back my ti . . . uh.
Lunch
. Now.”

“Hey, Professor Fred,” one of the two geeky boys said from the front door. “I think I hear sirens. We need to go!”

Fred turned to run just as Bobbie Faye lunged again for
the tiara, and it seemed like the next moment took a billion years.

The welder guy edged closer as—

Professor Fred slipped in the puddle from Bobbie Faye’s purse—

And as the Professor fell, he threw the bag-o’-tiara-and-cash to the two geeky boys freaking out at the bank door, next to a still-sleeping Harold. The tiara arced high, way beyond Bobbie Faye’s reach, and she leapt up—

Tripping over the Professor just as the welder guy pounced on him, knocking the gun from the robber’s hand.

The gun slid one direction on the concrete floor and Bobbie Faye rolled in the other.

She scrambled across the welder and Fred, grabbed the gun, and ran out just in time to see the geeky boys climbing into a white Saab. They sped out so fast, she didn’t have time to even get a plate number, and she spun around in the parking lot, desperate, her brain chanting
no no no no no no no
.

Sirens screamed a few blocks away, heading toward the bank, and there was her car, dead to the world and no hope of reviving it, much less managing a high-speed chase. There were several other cars in the parking lot—an old station wagon with a harried dad and four kids; a Volkswagen Beetle piloted by the librarian; a silver Ford Taurus helmed by a nattily dressed blond guy; a couple of work trucks, one obviously belonging to the welder inside; a red tricked-out Ford step-side that gleamed in the morning sun, whose driver hunched down at the wheel; and, beside it, a blue Porsche, whose owner was nowhere in sight.

Bobbie Faye picked the logical and obvious choice. For Bobbie Faye. She ran to the passenger side of the tricked-out step-side, knowing that it was going to be occupied by some sort of testosterone-fueled gangly, pimply teenage boy who measured manhood in just how many inches the truck could be jacked up on supersized tires. This kid apparently had a deeply insecure ego because the Monster Mudders were at least three times any normal tire size. A kid like that was usually persuaded easily enough by breasts, but on the off
chance that hers might not do the trick, she held Fred’s gun on him.

Except he was so not a teenage boy. Instead, the guy was about mid-thirties, weathered hard, tall, muscled. His hottie factor jump-started her hormones with a vengeance, especially the really nice biceps, which unfortunately led to a hand holding a gun on
her
. One glance at his expression soured every single surging hormone, because Bobbie Faye knew instantly he was the type of guy with the mean pit-bull attitude of someone who was ex-military, ex-cop, ex-husband, and seriously lacking in the patience department.

Shit. Why couldn’t he have been a wimp?

“I need your truck,” she said, keeping her gun on him. “I need to follow that Saab.”

“You need a psych exam.” Then he saw the Jolt Cola he’d knocked over fizzing all over his jeans. “Sonofabitch! Look what you made me do.”

“You drink that? That stuff will kill you.”

He nodded pointedly at both guns, facing off.

“I don’t have time to argue.” She moved the barrel of her own gun slightly and shot the truck over his head, putting a crisp hole just inches above him, and then just as quickly had the gun aimed at his face again.