The Girl from Felony Bay (29 page)

I realized my mouth was still open, but so far no words had come out, because, of everything I had thought of, not a single shred of it was proof.

“Well?” the policeman prodded.

I felt so angry and frustrated that I thought I might burst into tears.

“What about the ring?” Bee suddenly blurted out.

I looked at her in amazement. I had completely forgotten about the ring we had found in the crack in the cabin floor underneath the plywood table. I stuck my hand in my pocket, hoping desperately that I hadn't lost it crawling through the pluff mud when we escaped from One Arm Pond, or riding Clem into Charleston, or doing any of the other crazy things we had done in the past twelve hours. At first my fingers felt nothing, and I had a feeling like panic.

But then I jammed my finger all the way to the very bottom of my pocket, down where it ended in a narrow point. I pulled it out and held up the ring for the policeman to see. “Here,” I said. “We found this in the cabin where they melted down all the gold. It belongs to Miss Lydia Jenkins.”

I said that as if I knew it for sure, even though I really didn't. But in my heart I was positive that I was right. There was no way that ring belonged to anybody else.

The policeman took the ring and held it up as the other policemen stepped close. “Where did you find it again?”

“In the old abandoned cabin down at Felony Bay. That's where they melted down Miss Jenkins's jewelry and tried to make it look like old Confederate gold. They're all down there right now, trying to convince the press that they found the gold from the
Lovely Clarisse
, but they didn't.”

The policeman didn't say anything, because right then a couple other policemen with different uniforms showed up, and the first policeman stepped away to talk to them. When I looked to see where the new policemen had come from, I saw a couple of black-and-white police cars that said City of Charleston on the doors.

“That's weird,” I whispered to Bee.

“Yeah,” she said. “So's the ambulance.”

I looked again, and for the first time I noticed that an ambulance was parked behind the Charleston police cars.

After he spoke with the Charleston police for a few moments, the policeman who had Miss Jenkins's ring went over to the back of the ambulance, where we couldn't see him anymore. He spent several minutes back there, and I started to worry about what was going on.

Finally the policeman came out from behind the ambulance. He told Bee, Skoogie, and me to sit tight; then he called all the policemen together and spoke to them in a voice too soft for us to overhear. When he finished talking, all the policemen turned around and went to their cars.

The car with Bubba drove off toward the mainland, but all the other police cars, including the one with Bee, Skoogie, and me, all headed toward the dirt track that led down to Felony Bay.

T
he policeman who was driving
put the windows down, and all the way back to Felony Bay I felt the warm air blow across my face. Whenever I looked back, I could see the ambulance following us, but so far no one had said a word to explain why it was there.

In spite of the fact that I knew we were now safe, I worried that Uncle Charlie would find a way to convince the police that he and Ruth were telling the truth and that Bee and I were lying. As it turned out, I didn't need to be concerned.

We drove down and parked as close to Mrs. Middleton's old cabin as we could, given the number of other cars and news vans that were already there for Uncle Charlie's news conference. The ambulance pulled up right behind us, and the attendants opened its rear doors and set up a ramp that sloped to the ground. The sight of the ambulance made me curious, so as soon as the policeman opened the rear door for us to get out, I walked around the ambulance and spotted Miss Lydia Jenkins in her wheelchair.

My breath caught in my throat, and right away my head began to swirl with questions. Why was she here? Was she going to accuse my father of some other awful crime? Was she going to help Uncle Charlie somehow?

As I looked at her, I realized that Miss Jenkins seemed to be staring at me out of the corner of her eye. As she struggled to turn her head in my direction, the man in the doctor's coat who was pushing her wheelchair seemed to notice, and he swiveled her around so she was facing me head-on.

One of the Charleston policemen came up behind me. “You ought to go talk to Miss Jenkins,” he said in a gentle voice.

I looked at him like he'd just told me to go jump off a cliff, but he put his hand on my back and gave me a gentle prod in Miss Jenkins's direction.

“It's okay,” the policeman said. “She's the reason we're here.” He gave an encouraging nod. “Go on and talk to her. It's okay. I promise.”

I turned toward Miss Jenkins, and when I took a halting step, she nodded, as if to say that was what she wanted. Even from a distance I could tell that something about her had changed.

Miss Jenkins's eyes were fixed on me, and they had that same intense look I had seen the other day. In spite of my reluctance I took another step forward. The policeman's hand was still on my back, but he was no longer pushing, just encouraging me.

I don't know how long it took me to walk up to Miss Jenkins, but at some point in the process I realized that Bee was right beside me. Just like the great friend she was, she seemed to understand my reluctance, and she was with me for support.

Finally the two of us came to stand in front of Miss Jenkins's wheelchair. Just like the two previous times I'd seen her, she reached for my wrist. This time I saw it coming, but in spite of wanting to, I didn't pull my arm away. To my surprise, when she gripped me, her fingers were soft. They no longer felt like desperate talons the way they had before.

She stared at me for a long second, and her eyes widened as if she was trying to tell me something Important. She only let go when doctor took a small whiteboard and slid it under her wrist. He put a felt-tip marker in her hand and wrapped her fingers around it. That's when Miss Jenkins started writing. It took a while, and her letters were like chicken scratches, but I could make them out.

You found my ring.

My own eyes were probably as big around as saucers, but I managed to nod. “Uncle Charlie and Ruth and Bubba Simmons had it.”

I know.

“You do?” I exclaimed.

So sorry I couldn't say what I meant. Mind has been fuzzy.

The doctor who was handling her wheelchair put his hand on her shoulder. “You're doing great,” he said. “Take your time.”

Miss Jenkins nodded, but she kept trying to write. I watched the letters she struggled to form with her shaking hands.
Never meant your father stole.

Something exploded inside me. “You never meant to say that my father took your gold!” I exclaimed, unable to keep myself from finishing her sentence.

She raised her eyes to me and nodded, and something like a smile flitted across her frozen features.

The doctor spoke. “When Miss Jenkins arrived for her therapy session this morning, she was very agitated. She has always worked hard to communicate with us, but frankly she had made little progress. Apparently this morning she had seen you and your friend with your uncle, and she felt that something was terribly wrong. We gave her the marker, and she tried harder than ever, didn't you, Miss Jenkins?”

Miss Jenkins blinked a nod. She might even have smiled again.

“For almost a year, Miss Jenkins has been unable to tell anyone what really happened when her money was stolen. This morning, however, she was so worried about you and your friend that she made a tremendous breakthrough in her recovery and found a way to communicate much more than she ever has since she had her stroke.”

I looked down at Miss Jenkins. “So you were trying to say something different every other time I saw you?”

Couldn't say his name.
She had tears in her eyes, and she added,
Sorry.

I reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Thank you for working so hard to say it today. You helped to save our lives.”

The next hour or so passed in a big blur. A police car went back to Mrs. Middleton's trailer and brought both Grandma Em and Mrs. Middleton. They came running toward us and threw their arms around Bee and Skoogie, and then after a few seconds, Grandma Em grabbed me as well. Both of the old women were crying and darned near beside themselves with relief that we were safe.

It turned out that when Bee didn't show up for breakfast, Grandma Em had decided she was sleeping awful late. She finally checked Bee's bed and, finding her gone, walked down to the dock to see if Bee and I had taken an early swim. But the dock was deserted, and because it wasn't like Bee to leave the house without telling her, she started to get worried. She tried to call Uncle Charlie's house to see if Bee was with me there, but her phone was out of service because Uncle Charlie and Bubba had cut the line. When she tried to drive to Uncle Charlie's, the tractor and manure spreader blocked the drive.

Not knowing what else to do, Grandma Em walked to Uncle Charlie's house but found it locked and empty, because by that time Ruth and Charlie had gone down to Felony Bay for Uncle Charlie's press conference. From there she walked to the barn, and when she didn't find either one of us there, she started to get really worried. Not knowing the property very well, Grandma Em started walking out the plantation drive, intending to head toward Mrs. Middleton's to ask to use her phone. On her way she saw One Arm Pond in the distance and the dirt track that led to it, and on the chance that Bee might be there, she walked in that direction. When she got near the pond and spotted the half-sunk canoe, she freaked out and decided she needed to call the police right away, because she was worried that something bad might have happened to us.

Grandma Em hurried down the road to Mrs. Middleton's trailer, where she found Mrs. Middleton also frantic because Skoogie hadn't returned from going to spy on what was going on with Bee and me. The two women jumped in Mrs. Middleton's pickup and drove far enough toward Charleston to get a cell signal. They called the police to report their grandchildren missing, then went back to the trailer to wait.

After Grandma Em and Mrs. Middleton calmed down, I also learned that the second phone call that helped save us really had come from Jimmy Simmons, who to my surprise had turned out to be a friend after all.

The police took statements from Bee, Skoogie, and me, and we told them about the broken canoe at One Arm Pond, and showed them where we had found Miss Jenkins's ring in the cabin. We also pointed out the fresh ashes in the fireplace. Finally Bee and I remembered one other thing, and we took them around the side of the cabin, where Bubba had tossed the straps into the bushes. The straps were still there.

“They used those straps to lower the crate down into the hole,” Bee said. “I bet if you check the bottom of the crate, you'll find some of that material caught in the splinters.”

After the police finished taking our statements, we watched Uncle Charlie being led toward the back of one of the Charleston police cars. Uncle Charlie never looked at me, and when the police put him in the car, he sat hunched forward and stared at the floor. He looked like a man who knew his life was ruined. Even though he was my uncle, after everything he'd done, I couldn't find it in my heart to feel sorry for him.

Ruth was also in handcuffs, and as I watched they led her to another police car. Unlike Uncle Charlie, who seemed to be feeling sorry just for himself, she was crying and looking totally shamefaced. I was betting that it wasn't going to take long for Ruth to start confessing everything that she and Uncle Charlie had done.

We had just finished watching Ruth get led away when another car came down the dirt track toward the old cabin, moving pretty fast. The car skidded to a stop, and a second later Custis hopped out.

“Abbey!” he said. “You okay?”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, happy to see him but also surprised.

“Mr. Barrett said that the hospital had called him and told him that there was a development with your dad and that he was going there, and that I should come out and make sure you were okay.” He looked around at all the police cars and the satellite trucks that were just now putting everything away and getting set to leave. “What have I missed?”

I hadn't really listened to any of what he had just said. “The hospital called Mr. Barrett, and he told you to come here?”

He looked at me and shook his head. “That's what I just said.”

“Did the hospital call you too?”

“I assume they just called the office, but Mr. Barrett took the call. He just told me to come here.” Curtis shrugged.

“Why would he tell you that?”

Custis gave me a funny look. “What are you getting at, Abbey?”

I didn't answer him, because my mind was moving way too fast for me to speak. I had that funny feeling that you sometimes get when you're working on a jigsaw puzzle and you haven't found any pieces for a while, but then all of a sudden you see where a bunch of things fit.