Fox Tracks

CHAPTER 30

After lunch with the girls, Shaker returned to his house for a hot shower. He needed to get the kinks out. Meanwhile, Sister, Betty, and Tootie, still in boots and britches, lingered at Sister’s kitchen table, which Tootie had cleared, putting the dishes in the dishwasher. The dogs gathered below, and Golly watched from her gel pad, now a permanent fixture on the kitchen counter.

Sister was drawing on a notebook page as Betty looked on. “Good thing you didn’t major in art,” Betty cracked.

“Good thing you never went into politics.”

Tootie smiled, wondering if she and Val would wind up like those two: teasing, prodding, bedeviling each other while offering total support. Right now Val wasn’t offering much support. She texted every day ordering Tootie to return to Princeton, filling her in on all the details of everything she was missing.

“That’s the best I can do,” Sister said, giving up. “Tootie, you try.”

Tootie sat back down, took the proffered pencil and the notebook pushed in front of her. She stared at Sister’s sketch.

“You’ve got it,” said Tootie. “It’s just out of proportion.”

Sister poked Betty. “See.”

A minute or two later, Tootie gave the notebook back to Sister. Betty studied her simple drawing.

Pencil now in hand, Sister pointed to the drawing: a square, inside of which was a solid blue soaring bald eagle, head and neck white outlined in blue. It was a strong graphic. Underneath the eagle was a straight thick blue line to indicate water. Curved over the top of this was “American” and underneath was “Smokes” in red.

“Red, white, and blue.” Betty shrugged. “Basic, but we get the message.”

“Okay, can you print this up, Betty? Tootie has the proportions correct, yes?”

“Sure.” Betty was intrigued. “Tell me why I’m printing this up and how many?”

“A pack of American Smokes was placed on the chest of each victim. What Tootie and I saw was a cellophane soft pack, white with this picture on front. I don’t really remember if the pack itself was printed, or if this brand name was a square piece of paper slipped into the front of the cellophane covering the pack.” Sister looked at Tootie, who nodded in affirmation.

“Tell me exactly what you want me to print up.” Betty knew she’d have to clean up the graphic, but that would be easy with her equipment.

“Make me a sheet of squares,” said Sister. “Only need, say, eight. We can cut the squares and slip them into packs of cigarettes. From far away, well, not too far, say three feet or so, the pack will look like American Smokes.”

“Why in the devil do you want to do that?” asked Betty.

“We’re dealing with contraband cigarettes, right?”

“It appears so.” Betty again studied the drawing.

“So, I will carry a pack, and I’ll see if Gray will, too, as he’s always offering cigarettes to others. We just might bolt our fox out of his den.”

“That is flat-out lunacy,” said Betty. “For one thing, you don’t know that the criminals operate out of our county.”

Sister held up her hand. “I expect this covers Virginia and North Carolina. Don’t know about Kentucky, but this has got to be a fairly big operation. No, we don’t grow the stuff in our county, but after standing in Walter’s shed I’ve got a hunch our county is a storage center. Look on a map. Virginia is smack in the middle of the original thirteen colonies. And just north of the Mason–Dixon line are those states with the highest cigarette taxes. Head west, you reach Illinois, another heavily taxed state.”

The two other women thought a bit about this.

Tootie then said, “We are at the edge of what was once great tobacco country and we’re what, two hours from North Carolina? So it’s grown, cured, aged, right?” The two women nodded. “Then shredded and rolled.”

“You can do it by hand or who is to say these crooks haven’t got an old machine,” said Sister. “So much equipment was abandoned by companies gone broke when the crisis hit. The big companies still have the very latest, but the little companies had to bail. It is possible our smugglers have equipment.”

Betty was slowly getting on board. “How do the growers hide their secret stash of tobacco?”

“They don’t. Who is going to go out in the field after harvest or into the shed and weigh the take against what they think it should be? Though I suppose it would be easy to shield some leaf, and it would also be easy to grow more tobacco on a place not near a road. Helicopters don’t fly over to find tobacco, they fly to find marijuana. You can also grow tobacco in the center of a corn field, where no one can see it.”

Betty whistled. “Pure profit for everyone on the pipeline.”

“You got it. I really am willing to bet our county—in the center of Virginia, in the center of the East Coast—is the perfect way station, once the tobacco has been made into cigarettes.” Sister repeated her plan to show off her American Smokes.

“I don’t know,” said Betty. “Are you going to tell Ben Sidell?” She raised a blond eyebrow.

“No!”

“See, you know he’ll tell you not to do it because it’s too dangerous. Let him do your little charade.”

“Betty, if a law enforcement officer pulls out a bogus pack of American Smokes, don’t you think anyone in on the game will know it’s a trap?”

“Ben could give the pack to someone else.”

“Won’t work. And here’s why this is a good plan.” She omitted the danger part. “The cigarettes aren’t sold here. No point. What am I doing with a pack of contraband? That’s the hook.”

“Oh, honey, I don’t know. I don’t like this.”

Sister touched her dear friend’s hand. “I know you don’t like it, but will you do the printing for me?”

Exhaling deeply, looking down, then up, Betty finally said, “Yes, but only if I carry a pack of American Smokes, too.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“Neither do you!”

“Yeah, but I’ll say I’m carrying an extra pack for Gray.”

“Do you want those cards printed up? This is an easy job. Take me maybe three hours. But I won’t do it unless I’m all in.”

Now it was Sister’s turn to breathe deeply, stall. “Damn you, Betty.”

Betty laughed. “Not the first time you’ve blessed me.”

“All right. All right.”

“Don’t tell Bobby,” said Betty. “He’s out of the shop this afternoon trying to drum up business. I’ll bring the graphics back around six.” She quickly made a copy of the drawings.

“You know, if I really had a sick sense of humor I’d slip a pack of our American Smokes into the front seat of Crawford’s fancy car or better yet, his hunt jacket.”

Betty laughed. “Pretty perverse.”

“I shouldn’t waste time thinking about how to get even with him but occasionally, I do.” Sister stood up and stretched. “Let’s do it. Come on, Tootie.” The three women left. Upon hearing everything, Golly left her gel pad to look at the two drawings.

For good measure, she sniffed them, too. “Be much better if this were a cat.”

Down on the floor, Raleigh—irritated that he wasn’t going with Sister—snapped, “No one is going to smoke a cigarette or buy anything with a picture of a mangy cat on it.”

She spit at him, then turned her back.

Rooster, too, listened to everything. “I know you love Sister but, Raleigh, this is a stupid plan.”

Golly turned back around. Although she hated to agree with Rooster, she said, “Nothing will come of it.”