Bootlegger’s Daughter (26 page)

The Vickerys left, and Duck and I passed a few words while we waited on the veranda for Denn to have a final time alone with Michael. It was almost ten before he emerged, clutching his handkerchief, red blotches under his eyes.

“Thanks for waiting, kiddo,” he said and then didn’t speak again until we crossed Possum Creek and headed south on Forty-Eight.

“I just wish Michael could somehow know how nice his family were tonight. Mrs. Vickery… You know how much she hated it when Michael brought me down.”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “People thought it would absolutely kill her to admit Michael was gay.”

I flicked my beams and the oncoming driver hastily dimmed his. On such a dark night, brights were even more dazzling than usual.

“Perversion is abomination unto the Lord,” said Denn. “That’s what she told Michael when she came up to New York and realized I wasn’t just an ordinary roommate. She almost won, too, did you know that?”

Despite an emotionally draining day, he seemed keyed up and anxious to talk, as if he needed to put his years with Michael in perspective.

“How?”

“That time he left me and came home. She almost owned his soul. See, she comes to New York, finds out for sure her only son is gay and just about flips out. The abomination. The shame. She goes berserk and does such a head job on Michael that he gets schizoid about it; starts to think maybe she’s right and New York is a bad influence. Lots of people are AC/DC and maybe he can be straight in an all-straight community. So he comes back, starts to date a debutante, takes over the barn, lays every brick of the kiln himself till he falls into bed exhausted every night.”

“And it didn’t work?”

“Well, here I am, aren’t I?” he said simply. “Mrs. V. hates it when he sends for me, but you know something? Once I get here, even though she never pretends to like me, every time I see her, she’s always polite. But nothing like tonight. She’s a real class act, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” I said, turning into the Pot Shot’s lane. “She certainly is that.”

A minute or so later, I pulled up beside the pickup and Lily trotted over to greet us.

“I hate to drive this truck, but I sure don’t want the Volvo back either,” Denn mused, as he opened the door and rubbed the dog’s ears.

“Were you going out again tonight?” I asked.

“No, no,” he said hastily. “Just thinking out loud. I guess I’ll have to file an insurance claim on the car.” He sighed. “Michael always took care of stuff like that. I never even had to balance a checkbook.”

He sighed again. “Thanks for everything, Deborah. I’d invite you in, but I’m really beat. The only thing I want is to just go upstairs and fall into bed.”

I was thoughtful as I drove back down the lane, and the ceramic pitcher on the backseat only fueled my speculations. So many loose ends, so many unanswered questions, starting with did Denn think I maybe only scored a 380 on my SATs?

As I neared the intersection of New Forty-Eight and Old Forty-Eight, I met a sheriff’s patrol car that passed and headed on south. Too dark to recognize the driver, but Jack Jamison was probably home watching television at this hour.

The sensible thing was to go on home to bed myself.

“Better to confirm a suspicion than let it fester,” said the pragmatist.

“Right on!” said the preacher.

Back of Possum Creek Theatre, a rough drive circled down to the edge of the creek, and I stuck my car in amongst some tall bushes. There was friction tape in the glove compartment and I used it to tape the light button closed so the overhead wouldn’t come on every time I opened the door, then I kicked off my leather sandals and put on the beat-up sneakers I always keep in the trunk next to the locked tool box.

Inside the box, on top of the usual screwdrivers and pliers, was the loaded.38 Daddy gave me when I told him I didn’t need a man to take care of me. I checked to make sure the safety was in place, then strapped on the leg holster that I occasionally use when I’m out on the road late at night by myself. Carrying a concealed weapon without a license is against the law, of course, but one advantage of being a white, well-dressed female in this part of the country is that if you get stopped for a traffic violation, you’re never going to have to submit to much of a pat down. Especially if you’ve made it clear up front that you’re an attorney.

Putting penlight, pocketknife, and keys in my pocket, I locked my purse in the trunk and leaned against the car till my eyes got used to the darkness.

Darker than usual, too. The moon wasn’t due up for another hour and there wasn’t even any starlight with the sky still socked in. If it hadn’t been for Raleigh ’s lights reflected off the low clouds, it would have been pitch black. I shivered in the clammy night air and wished I’d kept Denn’s jacket.

Down here by the rain-swollen creek, I heard no sounds of traffic from the highway. A dog barked way off across the creek like he’d treed something, but mostly it was the insistent repetitive call of chuck-will’s-widows in the near underbrush and cricket chirps from all around that filled my ears.

When my eyes were fully adjusted, I walked up the lane to the theater, now a bulky white shape against the darker pines. If I’d been thinking clearer earlier in the evening, I’d have left a window unlocked or slipped the bolt on the theater door so that it’d close without actually locking.

No cars and no movement. I slipped across the concrete loading area on the off-chance Jack Jamison might not’ve locked the door.

Fort Knox.

So it was to be breaking and entering? And me with nothing but a pocketknife to jigger a lock.

“Go home,” said the pragmatist. “If Minnie and Helen think you’ve got troubles now, what’re they going to think when you appear before Perry Byrd for burglary?”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” the preacher said nervously.

As I went around the old wooden building testing windows, I heard a snatch of human sound and froze. Silence. Wait. Cautiously circling the west side, I saw car lights flash back and forth on the highway and realized the noise must have been someone’s loud radio.

An instant later, I got lucky. Like an invitation to a naughty world, not only was there an unlocked window on this side- the men’s room, if I remembered rightly-it was already open a crack at the bottom. I wouldn’t have to use a rock after all. Standing on tiptoes, I gave a mighty push and cringed at the raucous squeak of wooden window against tight wooden sash. Once it was open, I was further chagrinned to discover I couldn’t swing myself up as nimbly as I’d once shinnied up trees and clambered around on rooftops. Evidently morning stretches weren’t enough anymore. Going to take something more strenuous to get back my upper torso strength.

I wound up doing an undignified scramble over the window ledge and landed with a crash in a bank of urinals. Thank God, there was no one there to see.

Inside was blacker than Satan’s unwashed soul, but I fumbled my way out into the windowless hall and closed the door before risking a quick flick of my penlight. Once I got my bearings, I went straight down to the prop room, every nerve taut, all my senses quivering.

As I opened the door, I heard a rustle somewhere near and every red corpuscle in my body ducked down behind the nearest white ones.

Remembering that the light switches were just inside the door, I reached down for my gun, flicked off the safety, and switched on the lights all in one fluid motion.

The big cluttered room sprang into sharp focus.

Empty.

I let out the breath I’d been holding for the last week. A mouse, no doubt, and here I was like Dirty Harry ready to blow it away. I put the pistol back in my leg holster. Time to quit scaring myself with imaginary goblins and look for a good hiding place. If I was right, I probably wouldn’t have very long to wait.

The open shelves offered no cover. Behind the costumes?

Too Abbott and Costello. Besides, my sneakers were sure to be noticed beneath the hemlines.

Several pieces of furniture were stacked on top of one another at the far end of the long room, and off in the corner stood that one item indispensable to comic farce-a Chinese screen.

Perfect!

I turned off the lights and used my penlight to keep from banging into worktables or tripping over clutter as I worked my way back into the corner where the screen stood.

Suddenly, a sense of danger overwhelmed me and the closer I got to the corner, the stronger it was.

Just as I reached over to pull the screen out enough to slip behind, I heard an indrawn breath.

My penlight swept over big male boots, long male legs and I almost screamed when it touched his leering face.

“Boo!” said Dwight.

You scared the holy shit out of me,” I raged.

“Well, how do you think I felt when I saw you waving that pistol around?” Dwight asked. “Bo Poole give you a permit to carry that thing?”

Before I could think of a misleading answer, he thumbed his walkie-talkie and it crackled into staticky life. So much for a radio up on the highway.

“Blue Jay to Baby Bird,” he said. “I’m back on the air. Over.”

“ ‘Blue Jay to Baby Bird’?” I hooted.

“Shh!”

Immediately I heard Jack Jamison’s voice. “Baby Bird to Blue Jay. The Snowball’s rolling. Just passed my position, heading north on Forty-Eight. Over.”

“Give him plenty of slack, Baby Bird. Out.”

Dwight flicked on his own flashlight and stepped from behind the screen. I followed and put on the overhead lights.

“Who thought up those names?” I teased.

Dwight just looked at me and shook his head. “The first thing most women would ask is what I’m doing here.”

“Obvious,” I said. “You’re waiting for Denn McCloy. Soon as I called you about a tapestry panel missing off Michael Vickery’s wall, you remembered how Denn stopped off here this afternoon. And then you figured that he’d probably sneak back tonight to get it.”

“You don’t?”

I’ve got to start remembering that Dwight knows me too well.

“Oh, he’s coming back for something,” I said, “only I think it’s something he left here himself Friday night.”

“Yeah?” He glanced at his watch and walked over to the door. “Come on. Let’s go where we can see him coming.”

Using our shielded flashlights, we walked through the aisles of the theater out to the front lobby where double glass doors overlooked the main drive in from the highway.

I didn’t need to have Dwight draw me a picture to know that he’d stood right here and watched me drive in and hide my car down on the creek bank.

“ ’Preciate the open window,” I said.

“I was afraid you were going to bust one before you found it. Hey, you know something? I always thought cat burglars were supposed to be quiet.” He was a dark shape against the white walls, but I saw his teeth flash in a mocking grin as I punched his shoulder.

“So what’d McCloy leave here?” he asked, turning serious.

“Whatever it was he was going to give me.”

“A pitcher?”

“Made a pretty story, didn’t it?” I said sourly. “Only when we walked upstairs together for him to change clothes for the funeral home, that particular pitcher was sitting on a shelf at the top of the stairs. He thought I wouldn’t remember that he was supposed to’ve had it with him on Friday night when he drove out here to meet me. Kinda insulting, isn’t it?”

The walkie-talkie burst into sound again. “Baby Bird to Blue Jay. The Snowball should be in your view any minute now! Over.”

Up on the highway, headlights slowed, then turned into the drive. Instinctively I drew away from the door as Dwight said, “I see him, Baby Bird. Proceed as planned. Out.”

As the pickup’s headlights flashed through the pines, Dwight turned off the receiver and took my hand and we rushed down the aisle. He tried to get me to hide behind the curtains on stage, but I said no way, José, and there wasn’t time for him to make me. As it was, we barely got ourselves stationed behind the screen again than we heard the outer door thump to. No hiding the truck or cautious reconnoiter for Denn.

A moment later, the prop room door opened and lights came on. The Chinese screen had four hinged panels, and Dwight and I both had our eyes up against the narrow cracks. We saw Denn framed in the doorway, still in his white shirt, but now wearing his usual black jeans and black leather cap.

“No!” he said sharply. “Come on in here and behave yourself.”

A familiar clicking sound pattered along the hall and then, to my utter dismay, Lily trotted past him and began sniffing the air.

Dwight and I both froze.

“Good girl,” Denn said absently and walked over to the racks of costumes.

Lily quartered the room, poking her nose under the dust sheet, checking out the boxes under the worktables.

As Denn started to pull back a dust sheet, Lily suddenly caught our scent. Her hackles rose and a low rumble started in her chest.

“What’s the matter, girl?” asked Denn, hesitating with the sheet in his hand.

Stiff legged, the dog slowly stalked across the room toward our hiding place. Her growl became a snarl and then she was barking fiercely and looking to Denn for instructions.

Without waiting to see who we were, Denn took off through the door.

“Stop!” Dwight roared as the screen fell over with a crash.

Confused, Lily didn’t seem to know whether to run or attack and I used her hesitation to call out, “Good girl, Lily. Come on, you know me. Right? There’s a good girl.”

I don’t know if it was because she did remember that I’d scratched her ears earlier in the evening or because she had always been more Michael’s dog than Denn’s, but she lowered her hackles and came over to me with her tail wagging while Dwight chased after Denn.

It wasn’t much of a chase since Jack Jamison-ol’ Baby Bird-had blocked the pickup’s exit again.