Gone South (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 3) (5 page)

Damn it. I thought I had managed to avoid getting photographed by the
tabloid
reporters or the guys at Sasquatch Watch. I unzipped my coat. Th
ough it was chilly outside, th
e room was sweltering.
Or maybe it was fear sweat. How many tabloids had picked up the Bigfoot story?

“I
t was a blurry picture but I
knew you at once
.
” Dad was trying for carefree and cheerful. “You’ve got your mother’s eyes. Her hair.”

I certainly do, when I
’m not
wearing a wig, and invoking her memory wasn’t helping his cause. From what I remember, my mother’s eyes had had a lot of pain in them because of him. Probably mine did too.

“I like the new name too,” my father said. “You never did seem like much of a Charity to me.”

Me either, but a mother always
hopes for great things
.

Chuck shifted behind me. I bet he didn’t think I was a Charity either.
Especially not just then.

“Who else knows about me?” I asked, not commenting on my mother, Bigfoot, or my
new
name.

“No one.” This was said seriously and I was almost ready to believe him. But my father was a self-serving, congenital liar.

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. No one knows about you.” He really sounded definite
, even gleeful
.
The man was up to something, but
I left it for the time being.

“So whose box of matches have you been playing with that they felt the need to run over you with a car? Was it some woman?
Or her husband?
”

He tried to look affronted but it was too much effort. His injuries weren’t some ploy for attention. He was hurting and someone had done this to him deliberately. Probably because he had stolen from them or in some way pissed them off. My question about a woman was off
base. My father used downtrodden women as meal
tickets, but never anyone with enough gumption to fight back.
Certainly not any with husbands.

“Well?”

He looked away
, slumping into his pillow
. When he spoke again it was in a whisper. Unable to hear, I reluctantly stepped closer and bent down. His hand, the one taped with IV lines
,
moved. The tubes brushed me. Unable to stop myself, I jerked my hand before he could take it, and his finger
s
brushed my coat pocket instead.

“I just wanted to see you once more,” he said. I could swear that he sounded smug
and it raised the fine hair on my arms
. “That’s all.”

“Really? You don’t need money or anything?”

“Not a thing. I just wanted to see your face one more time
before I pass into the veil
.”

More like the fires of Hell. And d
amn him if this was true. If he was going to turn sentimental it should have been years ago when there was some hope of my forgiving him. And before I had dragged Chuck over the border.

“So I should probably leave then,” I tested.
“Since you’ve seen my face.”

“Yes.” My father’s voice went flat. “
We’ve nothing to say to each other, it seems.
You should leave at once. And be careful. Lots of accidents on the roads these day
s
.”

I nodded, zipped up my coat
,
and turned for the door. Chuck stepped back to let me by. He
was wearing a blank face and
didn’t say anything to my father.

Later I would ask him what he was thinking. Or maybe not.
Sometimes it is better not to know.

*  *  *

Lucky
watched as the young woman who called herself Butterscotch left his hospital room.
He offered her a weak smile when she looked back, one last time, over her shoulder.
A devious leer descended over his face the moment she was gone.

He’d actually pulled it off.
He’d managed to get the memory stick out of his room by slipping it into his daughter’s coat pocket.
Now all he needed to do was get well and get out of this hospital room.
Then he would visit his daughter one last time, in Canada, to retrieve the information that he had stolen, the information that
when sold in the right quarter
would put him on Easy Street for the rest of his life.
True, the Feds would be disappointed at this change of plans, but he didn’t plan on staying in the country anyway.

For a moment, he felt a
small
pang of remorse at possibly putting his daughter’s life in danger, but only for a moment.
No one would suspect a connection. She
was disguised and had a man to protect her. She
would be fine.
In a couple of weeks he’d go visit her.
Closing his eyes he breathed a sigh of relief and slipped back into a blissful, guilt-free sleep.

*  *  *

The federal agent sat pretending to read the paper in the waiting area on the third floor of the hospital.
In reality, he was supposed to be watching the hospital room just down the hall to see if anyone unsavory showed up to finish the job they had started, but absolutely nothing had happened.
He got all the crap assignments these days. Screw up even once and they busted your balls to the end of days. He’d be in Duluth forever.

When a man and woman were admitted to the room by the day nurse, he considered rising to challenge them, but decided they didn’t look like mob enforcers. Instead he remained seated, finishing his Danish and coffee.

When the couple left the room a few minutes later, he realized that he had forgotten to take their picture going in.
He’d left the damned camera in his car. He wasn’t supposed to leave the room unguarded, but it would just be for a minute. He could dash down to the parking lot and get a few shots
,
and no one would ever know.

He caught up with them at the elevator. While they waited for the door to open, he raced down the stairs and out into the lot.
He arrived at his unmarked car parked across the street from the main entrance just as the couple exited the hospital.
Climbing inside his car, he grabbed his camera off the backseat and snapped several pictures of the couple walking to their car.
He continued to take pictures as they drove away and was particularly happy to catch a close-up of the license plate. It was Canadian. He hadn’t expected that.

Due to his attention to the Range Rover that was driving away, the agent failed to notice the sleek black car that stopped at the curb just long enough to drop off a heavyset man in a black suit and sunglasses
and a nasty scar at his jawline
.
Tha
t man slipped into the hospital
unmolested, to finish the job he had started.

Chapter 5

“Tell me something nice you remember about your childhood,” Chuck said suddenly
, staring out the windshield at the gray sky and grayer road
.

This wasn’t as surprising a request as it might seem. Yesterday
and that morning
had been pretty damn negative and Chuck wanted something positive to
think about
. The Mountie doesn’t do despair well. At heart he’s an optimist and I wanted to keep him that way.

It wasn’t easy though.
To begin with,
I don’t think about the past much. The reality was mostly unpleasant and playing what-might-have-been can be as addictive and destructive as crack for people who have regrets. I was already way over my memory limit for the week
anyway.
B
ut it was difficult not to think
at least a little
about all the events that had brought me to where I was
and the man who starred in so many of them
.

I have a catalogue, a file cabinet, of emotional injuries. But there is also a small jewel box of happy memoirs
, so I dug
into the small pile of shining moments
and found a happy memory for Chuck.

“My grandfather built me a playhouse for my fifth birthday.
He worked on it out in the garage for several weeks.
”

An honest smile crossed my face and I relaxed back into the seat as I remembered aloud.

Grandpa worked with his hands, so i
t was a wonderful
play
house
he made,
with two
glass
windows that opened and a half door, also with glass on top
so there was lots of light
. It had a shingle roof
, linoleum floor,
and Grandma had painted sunflowers on the
whitewashed
walls so I would have a
flower
garden
even in winter
.

Together, my grandparents had built me a small sofa and a
square
table with
four
milk stools
so I could have guests in for tea
. There had been enou
gh material leftover from when G
randma had upholstered the bench of Grandaddy’s truck that she could cover the little couch in
my favorite
green
N
augahyde
vinyl
.
She made a counted cross-stitch for the wall. It said: Bless This House.

Since they were still trying to get my father involved in my life,
my grandparents
had told him what they were doing and suggested he bring some treats for the house. Like some animal crackers
, a small vase or tea set, or b
iscuits in a tin.

My father, for a wonder, actually grasped the concept of miniatures for the playhouse and brought me a
tea set and
a
fine selection of mini
liquor bottles. With the liquor still in them. He also had two
matching
shot glasses
from a casino in Reno
.

My grandparents were horrified, but I was actually pleased
with the gifts
. We crammed ourselves inside
my little house
after we had lunch
.
My grandparents and I
sipped tea out of little cups and
ate
birthday
cake while
my father crouched on a milk stool on the other side of the table and drank his way through the little bottles.
He fell asleep soon after.

It was my best birthday ever.

“What about you, Chuck? Tell me something about your childhood.
You went to regular school, right? Were you a good student?
”

I wanted to hear about something normal, something happy, some piece of Chuck that I didn’t know and couldn’t guess from his adult behavior.

Chuck thought for a while and then gave a small laugh.

As Chuck told it, he was raised in the suburbs of Toronto
with a mom and a dad and a station wagon where everything was as nice as pie and might have been photographed for some home and garden magazine
—
except for the kids
.
Though every house was tidy and every lawn mown, there were always skateboards and bicycles and chalk drawings marring the perfect setting.

Rather than forming a gang, as kids might do nowadays, the group of boys he hung out with was just a group of
kid
s involved in innocent forms of mischief to while away the hours between the last bell at school and mothers calling them in at supper.
One of their favorite pastimes was harassing the neighborhood grouch, old man Harbottle.

Mr. Harbottle lived on a corner lot and he hated it when kids cut across his property on the way to and from school.
Some mornings he would lie in wait with the garden hose and jump out of hiding to douse anyone found treading across his precious lawn.
In retaliation, the local kids would pull pranks on him, such as leaving burning bags of dog poop on his porch and ringing his bell in the hope that he would rush outside and stomp on the bag.
But old man Harbottle was too wily to fall for such obvious ploys.

One day, Chuck heard of a prank from his older brother that he knew he and the guys had to try.
To pull it off, all they needed was his dad’s fishing rod and a damp cloth.
Both were easily obtained
,
and after gathering his friends they walked to the corner to set in motion the greatest prank ever.