Up Jumps the Devil

29

« ^ » … They are in no danger, but may be out late or early, travel by night or day, go the same lengths, and use the same freedoms they were accustomed to at home with equal safety.“Scotus Americanus,” 1773

As word spread through the family that Adam seemed to be missing, everyone turned out to look for him. We scoured the land until darkness forced us to call off the search. Not just our land and along Possum Creek, but both the Stancil and Pleasant farms in case he’d forgotten the old boundaries and strayed across them. Zach thought Adam might have remembered that he was renting a farm on the west side of Cotton Grove and he took some of the kids to search over there as well.

I called Merrilee and Pete, and someone even stopped past Cherry Lou’s. So far though, Dwight was the last person to see either man since the afternoon before.

The last person to admit it anyhow.

Minnie phoned Karen out in California to see if he’d called home by any chance. “And didn’t I sound like an idiot?” she said afterwards. “Saying I forgot to ask him before he went off hunting if he was still going to be here for our get-together tomorrow. But I really don’t think she noticed.”

We couldn’t agree on the details of the car Adam was driving except that it was a blue Taurus. Luckily, Zach found the rental papers in Adam’s carry-on bag. Because it’d been twenty-four hours since any of us had seen Adam, Dwight stretched a point and put it on the wire. After that, there was nothing to do except wait.

And speculate, of course.

A hunting accident?

Murder?

Had Adam seen Allen shoot Dick Sutterly?

Had both of them seen someone else shoot Sutterly?

“What if it’s just something dumb, like pulling a drunk?” asked Seth. “Maybe Adam went juking last night and he’s holed up somewhere drinking or hung over.”

“Never knew Adam to do much catting around,” said Will. “He always walked the straight and narrow.”

All this was over sandwiches at Minnie and Seth’s.

“Well, being back here, off his chain, maybe he’s finally broke loose,” said Isabel as she rummaged in Minnie’s refrigerator. “Anybody want pickles while I have them out?”

Haywood was back to worrying over Adam’s state of mind. “You don’t reckon he’s got money troubles, do you?”

“Don’t know if it’s money or his marriage, but something’s eating at him,” Zach said, taking a huge bite of his cold meatloaf sandwich.

Daddy kept his own counsel and I kept my mouth shut except to nibble at some tangerines a cousin had shipped from Florida for the holidays.

By nine o’clock, we were ready to call it a night.

“If y’all hear anything—”

“—don’t matter how late—”

“Call us.”

“Let us know.”

“We’ll call.”

I drove back through the lane one more time, half expecting to see Adam’s car parked in front of Mr. Jap’s shop, but except for that single dim light bulb that burned day and night on the back porch of the house, all was dark and silent.

As I looked at the shop in frustration, it occurred to me that no one had actually searched inside since it was locked from the outside.

I stopped, turned on my overhead light so I could find Merrilee’s number in my address book, then reached for my cell phone.

“Hello?”

“Merrilee?”

“Deb’rah? Did y’all find them?”

“Not yet. What I was wondering is, do you have a key to Mr. Jap’s shop?”

“Oh, sure. I keep spares of all his keys, just in case. Why?”

“Well, I just realized that we didn’t check inside here. I know it’s after nine and a long shot, but since I’m here, would it be much trouble to let me take a look?”

She sighed. “Well, no, not really.”

“I know I’m imposing, but if Adam is in there, he might be hurt.”

“Or Allen,” she said, tartly defending family honor, even if Allen was family only by marriage. “He’s missing, too, isn’t he, and his truck’s right there? He wouldn’t go far, not if he’s walking.” She sighed again. “Oh, all right. Let me put on some clothes. I’ll have the key up there in five minutes.”

As I sat alone in the darkness, waiting for Merrilee, it was the first time I’d had to think about Dick Sutterly’s death even though my family had turned the known facts inside out and upside down trying to figure if it involved Adam.

If this killing was linked to Mr. Jap’s, why on a public road, so seemingly spur of the moment?

Sutterly had been all over this section of land last Saturday morning. His own death would seem to clear him of Mr. Jap’s, but what if he’d seen someone entering or leaving the shop? And what if he tried to pressure that someone?

Allen?

Allen’s alibi was Katie Morgan and her brother. They’d probably lie for him in a heartbeat.

So say it was Allen that Sutterly saw. What does he do? See Allen out there on the road and say, “I’ll tell unless you—?”

“Unless he what?” asked my pragmatist.

Pays blackmail?

“Sutterly didn’t need small money and Allen hasn’t got big.”

Of course, when (if) Cherry Lou’s convicted, Allen will have the land. Big money potential there. And don’t forget that promissory note Dwight found in Sutterly’s truck. Why was it on top, if not to shake in someone’s face? Maybe Sutterly said he’d keep silent if Allen would honor the terms Mr. Jap had negotiated.

“But Allen thought that was a good deal. He was hoping Sutterly would be legally bound to pay off on that note when he got title. Your trouble is you just don’t want to think Adam’s involved.”

Whoever shot Sutterly killed Mr. Jap first, and Adam had no reason to do that.

“If Cherry Lou had signed the land back to Mr. Jap, he could have sold part of the road frontage right away and then Adam’s land would have been less valuable. No sixty thousand for him. ”

That argument thankfully ended when a car turned into the drive over beyond the house and circled around through the yard to park a few yards behind me.

By tilting my watch to the headlights, I saw it was closer to ten minutes than the five Merrilee had promised. I also saw that she’d sent Pete instead of coming herself.

I might have known. All she needed to do was pout a little about having to go traipsing up to Uncle Jap’s shop and good ol’ Pete would insist upon coming for her, anything to save Merrilee the least bit of aggravation.

Automatically, I pulled my keys from the ignition and met him at the shop door.

“Sorry to drag you out,” I apologized, “but Dwight Bryant said Adam and Allen were here together yesterday afternoon and since nobody’s seen them again—”

“It’s okay,” Pete said. “I don’t blame you for worrying. If Allen and Adam got to fussing, no telling what might happen. Allen used to be worse’n me for drinking and then getting in fights.”

He opened the padlock and left it hanging on the staple. Inside, we found the light switch and lit up the shabby old shop. Beer cans littered the workbench and floor beside two broken-down chairs, but there was nothing to indicate a fight of any kind.

“That Adam’s rifle?” asked Pete, pointing to the .22 propped against the old air compressor.

“Actually, it’s Zach’s.” And I was really glad to see it. “I’ve been worrying that he was lying out in the woods somewhere in a hunting accident.”

“Still could be,” said Pete. “Allen could have brought the rifle back and then took off in Adam’s car.”

“And Dwight did say Sutterly was shot with a small-bore weapon,” I said reluctantly. “Maybe I’d better leave it here till we know better. There might be fingerprints.”

“I hear Billy Wall’s out on bail. Don’t you reckon he killed Dick Sutterly, too?”

I suppose I could have told him. It would be all over this end of the county by next day anyhow, but I just shook my head.

“Sure he did,” said Pete. “He killed Uncle Jap, stole his money, and then he probably shot Dick Sutterly because Dick saw him here.”

“I grant you that’s probably why Sutterly was shot, but not by Billy Wall. Sutterly was up and down all the lanes Saturday. He must’ve seen—”

My mouth was in gear but my brain was on idle. I hesitated, abruptly made uneasy by something feral in the way Pete had gone absolutely still and unblinking, like a cat that suspects a vole beneath the leaves. And just as abruptly, I remembered how he’d tried to prevent Merrilee from coming in here that morning. “Aw, now, honey,” he’d said. “You don’t want to go in there and remember him there like that.”

Like how?

Pete?

He saw it in my face, let out a roar of denial and lunged at me. He was twice my size and if he ever caught me in that bear hug, I’d be dog meat.

He grabbed my arm and swung me around. I raked his face with my car keys and tried to knee him in the groin. I must have missed the main target, but it did loosen his grip for an instant and I snatched up a hammer from the workbench. By then, he had a lug wrench in his beefy hand, and he swung so hard that both my keys and the hammer went flying. A second swing landed a glancing blow on my hip and I fell to the concrete floor.

As he moved in for the kill, I grabbed Allen’s creeper board and shoved it toward him. He stepped down heavily on it and both feet went out from under him.

I didn’t wait to see how he landed, just sprinted for the door as fast as I could, slammed it and rammed the padlock home.

Ob God, for a car key! There was a spare set in a magnetic case under the fender but Pete was already banging against the door and I knew the hasp wouldn’t hold long enough for me to find them and drive away. The way my hip throbbed from where he’d hit me, I also knew I couldn’t run far.

Thanking the Lord for the moonless night, I dashed down the lane straight for the barn shelter fifty feet away and dived under the wrecked Maverick just as Pete burst through the door. There wasn’t much room and I wiggled through the powdery dry sand till I was under the furthest hulk, a car that rode a lot higher than the Maverick.

From where I lay in pitch darkness, I could see Pete rush around his car and mine, looking for me. Car doors banged and I heard something crash against the shop wall, then he reached into his car and my heart sank as he pulled out a powerful flashlight and began searching more carefully. As he pointed the beam under the cars and all around the shop, I saw that he held the flash in his left hand.

His right hand held a pistol.

I wiggled right up against the cinder block supporting the left front wheel, oblivious to black widows, brown recluses or snakes of any color that might be hibernating in the cracks and crevices. All I wanted was a crack or crevice myself. Or better yet, a deep dark hole.

Instead, I realized that space had opened up above me. Of course! The motor on this old car had been pulled years ago, probably before I was even born. I pushed my hand up through cobwebs and waved it around. There was plenty of room up under the hood, although my hand encountered so many dangling wires and sharp ends of copper tubing, I wasn’t sure if I could get past the axle and the radiator without tearing my clothes—not to mention my skin—to shreds.

But then Pete’s flashlight turned toward the shed and shelters and damned if I didn’t find that terror makes a real good lubricant. I slipped up into the motor housing like a greased monkey and my foot left the ground just as the light swept a long low arc under all the cars.

Pete was so close I could hear his heavy grunts as he stooped to look under each car.

Panicked, I realized there was a gaping hole under the dash where the floorboards had rusted through into the motor housing, and I quickly turned my head so that my face wouldn’t shine back should the light hit it.

Fortunately, it was only a hasty inspection and the light didn’t linger. Through the broken window, I heard Pete move around to the vehicles on the other side of the shelter, then the vibration of running feet, as if it had suddenly dawned on him that I might have headed for my daddy’s house.

I pushed my way through the hole, up into the front seat, and found that I was inside the Hudson Hornet whose racing virtues Allen had sung when Kidd and I met him out here last month. The upholstery was filthy and probably riddled with mouse nests, but all I cared about was keeping tabs on Pete. Maybe if he went far enough down the lane, I could risk a run for my car, at least grab the cell phone and call for the cavalry.

I crawled over the high front seat and into the back. The seat here was hard as a rock, more like a thinly padded church pew than the cushiony springs of the front seat. I knelt on it though and peered through the tiny dirty rear windows.

I might never know why Pete killed Mr. Jap—momentary rage at hearing Merrilee slighted for Allen? Or merely the greedy assumption that Merrilee would split the estate with Allen if Mr. Jap died?—but I was pretty sure the same assumption was what sent Dick Sutterly over to Pete this afternoon with that promissory note. “Don’t tell the Grimeses or Allen Stancil,” he’d said Wednesday afternoon when he was so gleeful over securing Adam’s land. And I’d been too weary of the whole subject to try to educate anyone else about the laws of inheritance. In view of how quickly Pete had attacked me, I had to wonder if Dick Sutterly had really seen Pete last Saturday or if Pete’s guilty conscience led him to believe that Sutterly’s proposition was a prelude to blackmail?

Out in the field, the powerful beam of that flashlight swept across the fallow field, up and down both sides of the lane. If he would just go on over the rise and down toward the creek—

The light disappeared. I waited a few seconds, but saw nothing. Just as I reached for the door handle, there was a burst of light, then darkness. He was coming back, straight across the field to Mr. Jap’s house, trying to catch my silhouette between the lane and the dim porch light, hoping to flush me with his flashlight.

The old frame house sat up on low brick pilings with a lattice skirting that gapped in places. Pete circled the house, shining the light up under every corner.

Eventually he stood up and I rejoiced to see the slump of defeat in his shoulders as he trudged back over to his car. I was just starting to take big breaths of relief when his hand banged down on the hood and he straightened purposefully.

Oh, dear Lord, he was heading back toward the sheds! There was no way I could scrabble across the front seat and under the hood in time. As I ducked down below the windows, my weight shifted, the seat tilted and I was almost dumped to the floor.

I instantly remembered all the bottlegging lore I’d ever heard. Praying it would be empty, I tilted the padded board all the way over and a darker crevice appeared. In the old days, the hollowed-out backseat would have held at least four dozen half-gallon Mason jars of my daddy’s best white lightning. No reason it wouldn’t hold his daughter now.

I slid inside and pulled the padded board back over me like a coffin lid.

A moment later, I felt the car rock as Pete stepped on the running board and ran the light over every inch of the Hornet’s interior. His breathing was ragged from exertion.

I myself had quit breathing and had no intention of starting again any time soon.

There was a thin crack where I hadn’t quite pushed the board into the backrest as far as it was meant to go and so much light after such darkness terrified me. Any second now I would hear his triumphant cry and feel the explosion as he fired down through the board.

Then the car rocked violently as Pete jumped from the running board. I heard his feet pounding across the lane as a wash of headlights played across the shed and I came up out of my hidey-hole just in time to see Pete’s car roar across the yard and turn out onto Old Forty-Eight on two wheels. At the same moment, car doors opened and slammed over at the shop.

Two male figures circled my car and called my name through the open shop door.

The adrenaline high that had kept me at fever pitch for the last half-hour abruptly evaporated and I was almost too weak to wrest open the rusty hinges and totter down to the shop.

I must have looked like the devil’s playmate, torn, scratched, filthy dirty, but my appearance sent Adam and Allen into gales of raucous laughter.

Both of them clutched beer cans and both were drunk as skunks, but I couldn’t see what was so damn funny.

“Reckon we showed you, darlin’,” said Allen.

“Take the wind out of your sails,” Adam said. A sudden hiccup made him giggle.

I hadn’t seen my uptight, upright brother this wrecked since the night of his bachelor party.

“Where’ve you been?” I demanded. “You scared the hell out of us, disappearing like that.”

He gave me a foolish grin. I spotted my car keys on the floor, grabbed them and headed outside. I didn’t get three steps toward my car though when I saw my smashed cell phone. Damn that Pete Grimes!

Allen and Adam followed me, still strutting and bragging.

“Thought you’d sic the law on me ’cause of that phony blood test Diana did?” asked Allen. “Ha-ha on you, darlin’. She called me yesterday, told me all about what you done to her.”

He was slurring his S sounds and that struck Adam as even runnier than the look on my face.

“Me and Adam, we drove up to Greensboro last evening and Katie and me got married today in Fort Mill, South Carolina.”

Adam beamed at me. “Bes’ man,” he said happily. “Chauffeur, too.”

“I’m just here to get my truck, pick up my stuff and head on back to Greensboro tomorrow.”

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” I said as I loaded my sodden brother into my car and dumped my smashed phone in his lap.

Five minutes later, Seth was putting Adam to bed on the couch in the den and I was phoning Dwight.