Disappearance at Hangman's Bluff (3 page)

“Your dad doesn't have a bullwhip,” Bee said.

I stopped and spun on her. I
hated
the way she is totally rational at times when I wanted to go totally crazy. “Well, we have to do
something
!”

“Did you even see which way the truck turned when it got out to the road?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Well, if we don't have any idea who they were or which direction they turned, there's no way we're going to catch them, is there?”

I threw my hands in the air. “So what are we going to do?”

“Go back home and tell Grandma Em.”

“And what's she going to do?”

“Call the police.”

I scowled. Even though I saw the sense in what Bee was suggesting, I liked my idea of crotch kicking and bullwhipping a whole lot better. Still, we did what she suggested, meaning that we jumped on the ponies and raced back toward Bee's house.

Bee's dad owned a lot of companies, but his newest one was in India. He was over there a lot of the time, making sure everything was set up right, and Bee's grandmother took care of her at home. Grandma Em was a big deal in both our lives, because neither Bee nor I had a mother. Bee's mom and brother died in a terrible car accident just about a year earlier, and my own mother died of cancer when I was very young. Grandma Em was always there for us, and she always knew what to do when something would go wrong.

We barreled back along the dirt path and up the plantation drive, and the ponies were slick with sweat as we skidded them to a stop in back of the big house. We tied the ponies by the fountain, where they could get a drink, and we went boiling up the back porch steps and into the kitchen. Grandma Em was at the stove making meatballs in tomato sauce for dinner.

“Whoa, there,” she said as we threw open the door and let it slam behind us. “Take off those dirty boots before you go another step.”

“Forget the dirt!” Bee cried. “We were over at Judge Gator's and we saw two men in a truck drive up and shoot Yemassee!”

Grandma Em was tall and imposing. My father said she had a regal bearing, meaning that something about her reminded him of a queen. She was very kind and loving most of the time, but when Grandma Em got angry, her voice was as hard and scary as a marine drill sergeant's. Also, when people didn't do what Grandma Em wanted, her eyes got a steely glint that could make an alligator turn tail and run away. I think Grandma Em got that way from being an elementary school principal for all those years when she lived in Atlanta.

Right then her eyes went ice-cold. “They
shot
his dog?” she asked in disbelief. “Are you girls making this up?”

“No! We have to call the police!” Bee insisted. Her face was slick with a combination of smeared tears and sweat from the afternoon heat and our hot, dusty gallop back from Judge Gator's. “Tell them to come right out.”

Grandma Em never panicked or got rattled. Even then with Bee racing off at the mouth about a pickup truck and a gun and Yemassee getting shot, she just held up a hand to quiet us down.

“
Exactly
what did you see?” she asked.

“We
told
you what we saw!” Bee's eyes were starting to spill tears again. “Yemassee got shot!”

“Okay, okay,” Grandma Em said in a soothing voice. “Is that what you're going to tell the police?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed.

“Now, girls,” Grandma Em said, “didn't you two start a business sometime early in the summer?”

I threw up my hands. What did that have to do with anything? “Yes, ma'am, but—”

“And what was the name of that business?”

“Come on, Grandma!” Bee cried. “Just call!” She rolled her eyes in frustration.

“Answer the question, please.”

“Force and Force Investigations,” I said. It was the business Bee and I had started in June, after we solved the Mystery of Felony Bay. It had seemed like a fun idea at the time, but as the summer wore on and Bee got a pony and we rode together every day and swam in the river off the plantation dock, we hadn't thought about investigating a single thing, other than spying on some baby ducks that lived on one of the plantation ponds.

Grandma Em went on. “So, if an investigator calls the police to report a crime, what kind of information would the police expect them to provide?”

Bee and I shrugged.

Grandma Em threw up her hands in frustration. “What were they driving?”

“A pickup truck.”

“What color?”

“White.”

“What make?”

Bee and I looked at each other then shook our heads.

“Any lettering on the side?”

“It kicked up too much dust to see,” Bee said.

“Was there anything else unusual about the truck that you can recall?” Grandma Em prodded. “Light bars on top? Rust? Dents?”

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the truck, and after a second I nodded. “It was one of those trucks that have double back tires on each side.”

“That's good,” Grandma Em said. “There aren't as many of those as there are regular pickup trucks. What about the men in the truck? Had you seen them before?”

I shook my head.

“Were they Caucasian, Hispanic, African American . . . ?”

“White,” Bee said.

“How old?”

Bee and I looked at each other. “One was maybe forty or fifty,” I said.

“He had dark hair and a big belly,” Bee said. “I could see that much.”

I nodded, remembering how the man's navy-blue T-shirt bulged out over his belt like he had a watermelon in there.

“What color hair?”

“Black,” Bee said.

I closed my eyes. “But shiny bald on top,” I added.

As we were answering her questions, Grandma Em had grabbed a pad of paper and was jotting everything down. “What about the second man?” she asked.

“He was younger,” I said. “Maybe in his twenties or thirties.”

“Tall and thin with lousy posture,” Bee added.

“He was the one who shot Yemassee,” I said.

“Hair?” Grandma Em asked.

“I think it was blond,” I said. “But it was hard to tell for sure, because he wore a baseball cap.” I closed my eyes and recalled a pair of wraparound sunglasses on a narrow face. I fixed both of the men in my mind, and I imagined having a bullwhip in my hands when I ran into them again.

Three

C
yrus Middleton was our new
Leadenwah Island deputy, since the old deputy, Bubba Simmons, was in prison. Cyrus was very tall, with shoulders that reminded me of big fence posts. He had a dark face, as round as a full moon, and not a bit mean like Bubba's had been. He had huge hands, and he moved slow and talked even slower, so it would have been easy for someone who didn't know him very well to think Cyrus wasn't very smart. That would have been a big mistake. Cyrus might have moved slowly, but he didn't miss anything that went on around him.

Cyrus was on the front porch of the big house interviewing Bee and me and taking notes when Daddy and Judge Gator drove up the plantation drive. Daddy must have called him after I told him what happened. Judge Gator jumped out of his old Mercedes station wagon and strode up onto the porch, looking like someone I'd never met before. With his gray hair, bright blue eyes, his easy way of talking, and his deep, gravelly laugh, Judge Gator is one of the kindest people I've ever known. Today his mouth was a hard line, and his blue eyes were flashing so bright, they reminded me of sunlight glinting off the blade of a freshly sharpened knife. Today he looked as mean as his nickname.

Daddy came limping behind the judge, moving a lot slower, still using a cane to walk and looking as if his day at the office had tired him out. Bee and I stood up, and Cyrus also stood.

“They shot my dog?” was the first thing out of the judge's mouth.

“Yessir,” I told him. “I'm sorry.”

“Not as sorry as they're gonna be,” he growled. He glanced at Cyrus. “Excuse me, deputy. I apologize if you have already covered all of this, but I need the girls to tell me everything.”

Grandma Em had written down all the details she'd made us recall, and Bee had typed them up on the computer and printed them out. We handed our report to Judge Gator, and he read it over fast, then pointed his finger at one line in the report and raised his eyes to us.

“You said their gun made some kind of funny noise. What kind of noise?”

When Grandma Em made us think hard about all the details, Bee and I remembered that we had never heard a gunshot. “I didn't hear anything,” I said. “But Bee said she thought it sounded like somebody spitting.”

The judge frowned. “Was Yemassee knocked backward by the shot?”

Bee shook her head. “No, sir. She just sat down and then keeled over.”

The judge rolled his jaw around, and his eyes got very small. “Sounds like it was some sort of tranquilizer gun,” he said quietly. He looked at Daddy and at Cyrus. “I bet they wanted my puppies.”

Cyrus nodded. “Last year we had about five Boykins stolen right here on the island. I wonder if it could be those same people stealing dogs again.”

The judge nodded. “I think that's got to be it. And I'm betting it's somebody local.”

A few minutes later, having promised to put out a notice to all the local police departments to be on the lookout for a heavy-duty white pickup with the two men we had seen, Cyrus left. Grandma Em invited Judge Gator, Daddy, and me to stay for dinner and share the spaghetti and meatballs she had made earlier. We accepted in a blink, even Judge Gator, because nobody, and I mean nobody, turns down a chance to eat Grandma Em's cooking. Not even somebody whose heart is breaking because his best friend has been stolen.

While the grown-ups sat on the front porch and had cocktails before dinner, Bee and I walked out onto the dock and watched the tide go out and the fiddler crabs scooting across the pluff mud. For a time neither of us said a word. I kept thinking about what it was like for me when I almost lost Daddy, and I knew Bee was probably thinking the same thing, maybe what it was like when she lost her mom.

“The judge's wife died a couple years ago,” I finally said. “Now Yemassee is all he's got.”

Bee nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. I mean, losing a relative is terrible, but if you lose the only living thing that helps fill an empty house, is it any less bad because it's a dog?”

“Know what I think?” I said.

“What?”

“Grandma Em said there aren't nearly as many six-wheeled pickups around as standard ones. And Judge Gator said he was sure someone on this island stole Yemassee. There are only so many places where someone could park a truck like that . . .”

Bee scowled and nodded and threw a stick in the water and watched it float out of sight. “Force and Force,” she said, after a long silence.

I looked at her, and suddenly I got it. My eyes widened, and I snapped my fingers. “Yes!” I said. “Force and Force Investigations. We'll find Yemassee.”

 

Nobody said much at dinner because, in spite of how good the food was, we all felt the judge's sadness. Afterward the judge drove Daddy and me home to our tenant house, and when we got out of the car we stood outside and watched the judge's old Mercedes disappear down the drive.

“I feel terrible for him,” Daddy said.

“Me too,” I said, but I kept the news to myself that Bee and I were going to find Yemassee and get her back. If I'm being honest, I had a feeling Daddy wouldn't want me poking around in strange backyards, and I didn't want him to squash our investigation before it even got off the ground.

When the judge's car finally disappeared, I looked up. It was one of those clear nights when the stars lay bright in the sky and seemed closer than they really were.

“I'll let Rufus out, and then we can spot constellations,” I said as I ran up on the back porch.

Rufus is our black Lab, and he was standing right at the door, whapping his tail against the wall and the refrigerator. When I opened the door, he bounded out, racing around and watering the trees, the tires of Daddy's Suburban, and all the corners of the house. Just in case anyone forgot exactly which dog owned the property.

“In a few minutes,” Daddy said. “I have some work I have to do.”

“It's Saturday night,” I said. “Today was only your first day back at work.”

He nodded. “And I'm already busy, honeybee.”

I didn't want to hear that. Before Daddy's coma we used to play a game to see which one of us could identify the most constellations. Daddy always used to win, but I had been getting better.

Before he could go inside, I lay on my back in the grass and looked up at the sky. “There's Aquarius,” I said, pointing at some stars that ancient sky watchers thought looked like a man pouring water on the ground. To me Aquarius looked more like a sad dog with a big head. Rufus came over to me for a scratch, and I pointed his head up at the sky.

“There's a sad dog,” I told him. “Maybe it's Yemassee.” Rufus apparently did not care about sad dogs. He gave his head a quick shake and nosed me for more scratching. “There's Cepheus,” I said, pointing up again at a constellation named for some old king but that looked to me like a kindergartner's drawing of a house.

“They're the only ones I can see,” Daddy said, but I could tell he wasn't thinking about constellations.

I sat up and looked at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “But I've got a bail hearing and motion I've got to prepare for.”

“Bail?” I said. I didn't know much about law, but I knew bail was money that got posted to get people out of jail after they got drunk or in a fight. “Who's in jail?”

Daddy gave me one of those looks that said I should know better than to ask. “A client.”

He turned and went up the steps and into the house, and I sat there feeling scared. I tried to tell myself it was stupid to feel like that, probably selfish too, because I could tell he was excited to get back to work, but sometimes feelings and facts are just different.

When I walked in the house a few minutes later, Daddy was already hard at work, sitting at the kitchen table, his glasses perched on the end of his nose as he read from a law book and made notes on a yellow pad. He had turned on the TV and tuned to the local evening news.

“Hey,” I said. “I guess I'll go to sleep.” Bee and I had a big day planned for tomorrow, because we were going to start looking for Yemassee.

“Okay,” Daddy said, sort of half paying attention, but then the news lady on TV said something about the “recent Leadenwah County crime wave.” She said there had been no progress in finding the stolen armored car, but the police expected breaks very soon because, “You just can't make an armored car disappear.” The news lady switched to the robbery at the Old South Bottled Gas Company, and suddenly Daddy's head jerked up and he grabbed the remote control and hit the record button.

According to the announcer, police believed the thieves had been looking for money, and when they didn't find any, they had stolen a truck loaded with tanks of gas. She said a man named Willie Smalls had been arrested in connection with the robbery.

I knew a man named Willie Smalls who lived in a little tumbledown cabin not too far from Reward. The Willie Smalls I knew was slow talking and very slow thinking, but he was nice and honest. I was sure he couldn't be the person they were talking about on TV. That was until I looked at Daddy again.

“Is Willie who you're bailing out of jail?” I asked.

Daddy glanced at me, hesitated, and then nodded.

My jaw dropped. “Willie wouldn't steal anything.”

“I happen to agree, but Willie was the night watchman, and the robbers used his keys to get into the building, so it doesn't look good.”

My brain was suddenly moving in a different direction. What kind of risks was Daddy taking getting involved in something like this? What kind of bad things could happen? “I didn't think you did that kind of law, you know, where people get arrested.”

“Criminal law,” he said. “I usually don't, but Willie's dirt-poor. If I didn't take his case, I didn't know if anyone would.” He must have seen the worry on my face, because a second later he said, “Don't worry, kiddo, I'm not taking any risks with a bail hearing. I'm just trying to make sure Willie gets a fair shake.”

He turned his attention back to the TV, where the announcer was saying the thieves hadn't been very smart, because all the tanks had Old South Bottled Gas written on the sides, and the truck had the same thing written on the doors. She said the police expected to find it pretty soon.

A second later the television showed a clip from a security camera of two men wearing clown masks as they came through a door and walked toward a parked truck. The clip also showed a third man slumped on the ground with his back against a wall and what looked like a bottle of liquor in his hand. Even though the camera was up high on a wall, I recognized Willie Smalls. He appeared to be sleeping.

But that wasn't the amazing thing. That came when one of the men took off his mask in order to get into the truck they were going to steal. The picture was grainy, but even so there was no mistaking who it was.

“That's him!” I shouted, pointing at the tall, skinny man on the television. “That's the guy who shot Yemassee!”