Salvaged to Death (16 page)

“You’re crushing him,” Sadie said. She pushed at the top of Vaslilssa’s head, shoving it onto Luke’s shoulder instead of his chest, and then she took a turn listening to his breathing. His respirations and pulse were normal, and he appeared to be sleeping deeply.

“I want you to stay here with Luke,” Sadie said. “I have some business to take care of. Call if you need anything, and call me when Luke wakes up.”

“I am not knowing your number,” Vaslilssa said.

“It’s in Luke’s phone,” Sadie said.

“Where are you going?” Vaslilssa asked.

“To seek retribution,” Sadie said.

“Could you be bringing back some cheese?” Vaslilssa asked hopefully.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Sadie promised. She stood and dusted her hands on her pants. She felt sore and bruised; Bo was going to pay for that, and for dosing Luke with an unknown amount of sedative. True, she had repeatedly Tasered him, but one of those had been an accident and the other had been self-defense.

She grabbed her keys, walked out the door, and jogged to her car where she discovered the hood up and wires disconnected. Luke’s car was in the same condition. A closer inspection showed that Bo had taken their spark plugs. Next door in the salvage yard, Tom Tomkins had an almost unlimited supply of spark plugs in various shapes and sizes.

Sadie headed there now, via the back yard. So intent was she on her purpose that it took her a moment to realize she wasn’t alone. Someone stood in the pumpkin patch, half hidden behind Fiona’s largest contender. Whoever it was wore a baseball cap and jacket. Sadie eased closer, wishing for her backpack. Why had she left it inside? Her laser like focus on revenge was making her careless. The figure stared silently toward the salvage yard as if deep in thought. Sadie eased closer until she was a few feet away; a giant pumpkin was all the separated her and the intruder, and she got her first glimpse of a face.

“Laurel,” Sadie said.

Laurel snapped to attention and whirled to face Sadie. “Sadie. What are you doing out here?”

“I was getting ready to go, but my car…” she trailed off with a helpless wave toward her car. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see Fiona.”

“Why?”

“Just to visit. I like Fiona. Everyone does.”

“I see,” Sadie said, but she didn’t really. If Bo knew Fiona was visiting Tom today, it was a safe bet that the rest of the town did, too. There was no such thing as a private life in a place this small. “Nice hat.”

“Thanks,” Laurel said. She tugged at the brim of her cap.

“Do you wear hats often?”

“Keeps the hair out of my eyes, you know?” Laurel said.

“Absolutely,” Sadie said. “These curls drive me crazy.” She pushed one off her face.

“They’re cute,” Laurel said.

“Thanks.” For a few beats, there was awkward silence, and then Sadie continued. “Were you wearing a cap the night you, Argus, and Johnny robbed Tom?”

Laurel blinked at her. “I wondered if you knew.”

“I didn’t until just now,” Sadie said. “But Tom mentioned that a cap was found. He thought it was Johnny’s. Fergus knew it wasn’t, didn’t he? It wasn’t just Argus’s word over Johnny’s because you were involved, too. He couldn’t arrest Johnny with you complicating the picture unless you agreed to roll on Johnny, too. Why didn’t you?”

“I loved him,” Laurel said with a helpless shrug. “Even when he went away, we stayed together. He promised to come back for me, to get me out of here. Then he came back, and everything was different. He thought he was so much better. He promised he had something, something hidden, something great, but he was lying; there was nothing.”

Sadie sensed Laurel wanted to keep talking, to confess. The burden of her crime obviously weighed heavily on her chest. “What happened?” she prompted.

“We fought. I threatened to go to the cops if he didn’t tell me what great and wonderful thing he had--the real cops, not Fergus. Johnny left. I followed him here and confronted him with a gun. He said the treasure was in the salvage yard, so we broke in, but it was another lie, another diversion. He was trying to lose me, to leave me there with the dog and the gun so I’d get caught. All of a sudden it was too much. I was so tired of Bateman, tired of Johnny, tired of being that girl who’s always waiting for a man to take her away.”

“So you shot him,” Sadie said.

“I didn’t mean to. I wanted to feel in control for once, to see him scared, to make him beg. I wanted him to be sorry for all the times he hurt me, for all the lies he told. But he was on his knees, sniveling, and I just…I snapped. All the hurt, all the pain, all the anger, all the unfairness, it came out of me and took over. I shot him, and it was awful. I was afraid and disgusted.”

“Not really, though, because you covered it up. You didn’t throw up, didn’t run away. You hoisted his body into a trunk and took the time to secure it with a wire. That doesn’t speak of confusion and panic; that points to premeditation and rational thinking,” Sadie said.

Laurel shrugged. “A girl’s got to take care of herself.” With that statement, she withdrew a gun from her pocket and held it on Sadie.

Sadie ducked behind one pumpkin and darted to another. A shot rang off, shattering one of Fiona’s precious pumpkins. Even in the midst of self-preservation, Sadie felt sad about that. Laurel pulled the trigger again, and it clicked, empty. She swore and chucked it away before pursuing Sadie on foot.

Normally Sadie was fleet and fast, more so when she was in survival mode, but the tussle with Bo that morning had depleted what little energy she’d started with. There was no food in her belly to give her strength; what little she’d had left over from the night before was already gone. She was slow and cumbersome; her brain felt muddled. Laurel caught up to her and tackled. The two women tumbled to the ground and rolled, locked together in hand-to-hand combat. Unlike the rumble with Bo, this was a catfight filled with scratching, biting, and hair pulling. Worse, Sadie was losing. Laurel was tough and angry and it was a safe bet that this was her first fight of the day. Sadie began to fear that she might die ignominiously at the hands of another woman when Laurel was roughly pulled off her.

Vaslilssa towered over them like a Valkyrie. Laurel tried to stand, and Vaslilssa clocked her with a right hook. With a crunching sound of shattering bone, Laurel went down and didn’t stir again. Sadie lay on the ground staring up at her savior in wonder.

“Vaslilssa, that was awesome. Thank you.”

Vaslilssa nodded and put down a hand to pull Sadie up.

“How come you hit her and not Bo?” Sadie asked.

“Is woman,” Vaslilssa explained.

“You hit women?”

“I am having five sisters. If I don’t hit woman, I don’t survive,” Vaslilssa said.

“You would have done well in my sorority,” Sadie mused. She pulled out her phone and held it aloft for a signal. When she found one, she dialed the state police and explained the situation. If they had any familiarity with Fergus, they might be willing to bypass their customary unwillingness to step on jurisdictional toes. When the call was completed, she checked Laurel again and found her still unconscious.

“Do you mind keeping an eye on her while I check something?” Sadie asked.

“Is no problem,” Vaslilssa said. She leaned against a pumpkin looking regal and unrumpled. If not for the unconscious woman at her feet, she might have been in the middle of a modeling shoot. Sadie left her and walked to Marge, running her hand over the incision in the stem. If Tom hadn’t messed with Fiona’s pumpkins, who had? And why? Laurel said she followed Johnny to Fiona’s and
then
he took her took the salvage yard, but it had been a diversion. What if the “treasure” had actually been hidden at Fiona’s all along?

Sadie pulled Marge’s stem and it popped off. She wasn’t tall enough to see inside the pumpkin. After retrieving a stepladder from the back porch, she climbed up and peered inside the gourd. At the bottom was a small box labeled with a glaring red biohazard sticker. With regret, she plunged inside Marge, destroying her from the inside in her effort to remove the container. A few minutes later, she emerged victorious, albeit covered in sickly sweet pumpkin juice and squishy seeds.

There was a part of her—the evil, vindictive part—that wanted to rat Bo out and humiliate him. If she called the media or even handed the vial over to the state police, then the world would know what had happened. Perhaps it was professional ethics on her part, or maybe a secret, small part of her actually liked Bo. Whatever the reason, she decided to handle things as quietly as possible, but not without having a little fun first.

She called the DHS and gave her location and a fake name. “Yeah, I just found this vial of fluid with all these funny stickers on it with a stamp that says ‘Property of Plum Island,’ and I was wondering something. If I open it and all my cats die, how much can I sue the government for?”

Five minutes later, Bo came screeching up the long gravel drive.

By the end of the day, the case was closed. When Bo arrived, he took over without a word of thanks to Sadie. He simply held out his palm for the vial, expecting her to hand it over just like that. She tucked it behind her back.

“I want to hear you say I won,” Sadie said.

“I can come and physically remove that from you, if I have to,” Bo said.

“I can call a press conference, if I have to,” Sadie said.

He gritted his teeth and squeezed his fists until his knuckles turned white. “You won,” he croaked. He put his hand out again. Sadie took a step back.

“I would say I worked this case as well as any man, wouldn’t you?” she said.

“Is that what you want? To be as good as a man?” Bo asked.

“No, hotshot, I want to be better.” She dropped the vial into his open palm and walked away, taking up her post as an observer. Unlike Fergus, Bo ran his scene with precise attention to protocol and detail. The state police arrived and fell reluctantly under his command. An ambulance was called for Laurel. The medics took a look at Luke while they were there and declared him to be fine. He roused sometime a few hours later, groggy and confused.

Fiona arrived home and immediately began cooking for all the people who were mysteriously combing her house. She didn’t say how the visit with Tom went, but she was smiling and her cheeks were rosy; Sadie interpreted that as a good sign.

She gave a statement to a man in a suit who then fixed her car with the sparkplugs he retrieved from Bo. Sadie ran an errand in town. She owed Vaslilssa; a custom cheese in the shape of her head seemed like a good idea. When she returned to Fiona’s, the house was clear. Even Luke and Vaslilssa were gone, which seemed odd. Luke wasn’t likely to leave Sadie alone after such an eventful day, but Fiona explained that when he fell asleep again, Vaslilssa carried him to the car and drove away without a word of goodbye.

“An odd duck, that one,” Fiona said. “And strong.”

“Freakishly so,” Sadie said. She suppressed a shudder at the memory of Vaslilssa breaking Laurel’s jaw. Perhaps in the future it would be wise to give Vaslilssa a wider berth.

“Sadie, thanks,” Fiona said.

“Just doing my job,” Sadie said.

“Figuring out what happened to my pumpkins was your job. Saving Tom from jail wasn’t.”

“Is he going to move back in here?” Sadie pressed.

“You never know what might happen,” Fiona said. “Bateman’s funny that way. Maybe you could come back and visit sometime. I never knew anyone from Atwood before. Y’all aren’t so bad.”

“I think you’re pretty great, too. Maybe this is the start of something big. Maybe someday Atwood and Bateman will learn to get along.”

“Nah,” Fiona said.

Sadie laughed and gave her a hug. Fiona patted her back with enough force to clear the mucus from her lungs.

When she walked outside, a strange man stood leaning on her car. As she moved closer, she vaguely recognized Bo, but he was clean-shaven and wearing a suit. Sadie stopped a couple of feet away and studied him, tipping her head to the side. Without the beard covering three quarters of his face, he was decidedly nice looking. He reached out and grabbed her wrists, snugging her tight against him so their chests bumped.

“You couldn’t let me leave without saying goodbye, huh?” Sadie said.

“Would it hurt your feelings if I told you I hope I never see you again?” he asked.

“Only if I thought you meant it,” she said.

“You’re conceited,” he said.

“I’m a realist,” Sadie replied.

“If you ever need anything, anything at all, I want you to call DHS and ask for Bo.”

She searched his face. He returned her gaze unwaveringly. “That’s not your real name, is it?” she guessed.

“Nope,” he said and let her go.

“You have no honor,” Sadie told him.

“I used to have honor. It was Tasered out of me.”

Sadie laughed and blew him a kiss. He caught it and threw it away but remained watching her as she drove away.

When she arrived back in Atwood, the house was dark. Sadie let herself in and found Luke asleep on the couch. Vaslilssa sat in the chair reading a
Highlights
magazine.

“Protip: Gallant is good and Goofus is bad,” Sadie said. Vaslilssa peered over the top of her magazine but didn’t comment. “How is he?” She perched on the edge of the couch and ran her hand over Luke’s head.

“He is sleeping long time,” Vaslilssa said.

Sadie wanted to stay, to see for herself that he was okay, to be there for him when he woke up. But she had no right to intrude on Vaslilssa’s territory, and that was the problem that had sent her running to Bateman in the first place. She took Luke’s hand and held it close, tucking it under her chin.

“Vaslilssa, I appreciate what you did today with Laurel.”

“Is nothing,” Vaslilssa replied.

“No, it was something. You basically saved my life, and I won’t forget that. But Luke and I go back a long way, forever really. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not going anywhere. I’m back in his life, and I intend to stay that way.”

Vaslilssa peered over the magazine again. “I have intendings, too,” she said. Their eyes locked and a flicker of womanly understanding passed between them, a universal communication that surpassed language barriers. Vaslilssa nodded once and returned to her magazine. Sadie kissed Luke’s hand and returned it to its rightful position beside his cheek. For now, she wouldn’t stay; it wasn’t her place. But someday soon that was going to change.

She carried her luggage to her room and found a gift from Abby on her bed, an expensive bath set. Abby’s flowing penmanship advised that it was to, “Wash the Bateman stink off of you,” but Sadie recognized it for the peace offering it was. Since necessity had lately forced her to buy her toiletries at the drug store, she stripped and took a long bath with the new soap. After she was finished, she visited her father.

“Dad, it’s me,” she called as she let herself in. Gideon and Barney met her at the door. Barney yipped with delight. Sadie bent to pick him up, relishing in his sweet puppy kisses.

“You’re in one piece, I see,” Gideon said. His eyes swept over her with barely disguised relief.

“Nothing wounded but my pride,” Sadie said.

“I doubt that,” Gideon returned. “Your pride is invincible.”

“Maybe so,” Sadie agreed. “I ran into Fergus McGee while I was there.”

“Sheriff McGee now,” Gideon said. “I sort of gave up on the human race when he got elected.”

“Not until then?” Sadie said.

“Ha, ha, my daughter the comedienne. Looks like the dog missed you.”

“I missed him. And you,” she added hastily. “I missed you, Dad. I thought about you a lot while I was away. You were a good cop, and you taught me a lot.” She shoved Barney into his hands and left before the situation could become more awkward. She had said what she needed to say. There was always the undying hope that some little something would settle near Gideon’s heart and thaw the relationship between them. Sadie didn’t have the stamina to stick around and see if that day was now. Instead she went home, dug through her suitcase, and pulled out her first embroidery hoop and cross-stitch pattern, a gift from Fiona.

With Vaslilssa staked out in the living room, there was nowhere to go but her room, but it felt empty and cold after the coziness of Fiona’s cottage. Sadie gathered her materials and went to Luke’s room. The room was sparser than hers, but somehow it felt more welcoming. Her hand ran lightly over his various collections—rocks, robots, feathers. Then she sat, pulled out her embroidery hoop, and started to sew.