Dark water rising, p.18
Dark Water Rising, page 18
Haley laughed. “That is a sad substitute, but yes...for you...anything for you.”
* * *
Ledbetter was not celebrating. This job was going to get dicey. It needed to be over now. But now she was thinking shooting Sam Quaid first to get him out of the picture might not be a good idea. By the time she had him down, it would have given Haley Quaid all kinds of time to get away...or fight back. Didn’t she hear on the news that she shot both intruders before they took her down? The man didn’t look like anyone’s pushover, and she knew the woman wasn’t, but letting Santos down wasn’t going to happen, either. Ledbetter had a reputation to consider and didn’t want it tarnished. It was a good four hours before dark.
Plans were made to be changed.
Rules made to be broken.
Ledbetter was a master at both.
Mae Arnold sat quietly in a chair beside Pete’s casket, as visitors came and went. Carytown was a small community, and by now, almost everyone knew what had happened. They’d all been braced for Hershel’s funeral. His reputation was well-known, as was his recent demise. But no one had expected this. No one knew what to say to Mae, and there was nothing to say to Pete.
When the first floral spray showed up in the viewing room, George turned the card so that all of the visitors could see the sender’s name. It was from Preacher Riley and the church, nothing out of the ordinary.
But when multiple flower arrangements began to arrive, and the deliveryman from the florist wouldn’t look at her, and didn’t read aloud the names on the cards, she felt something was wrong.
As soon as he left, she got up and looked at the cards for herself. They were all addressed to Pete and signed “With love.”
Two of them were from ladies at their church. One was from the redheaded checker at the grocery store, and one was from a woman who lived less than five miles from Pete and Mae. And the one thing they all had in common? They were single.
Mae felt the world tilting at her feet. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t enough that her son had turned into a criminal, but all signs were pointing to Pete being a philanderer.
She walked to the coffin and looked inside. Pete looked innocent enough, but he was dead, and she wasn’t a woman who assumed, so she left to verify the facts.
The first place she went was to the grocery store, then straight to Millie’s register. Millie was checking someone out when she felt a tap on her back. She was smiling as she turned, and then she saw Mae. A red flush ran up her neck two shades redder than her hair.
“Uh...my condolences, Mae. Pete was a good man.”
“Just how good was he?” Mae asked.
Millie’s eyes widened, and she began looking around for help, but the whole front of the store had gone silent.
“Uh...why, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean!” Millie cried.
“Don’t lie. How much did you charge?”
Millie gasped. “How dare you? I’m no prostitute.”
Mae’s heart was beating so fast she thought she might die.
“So you just gave it away for free,” Mae said. “Well, I hope you didn’t love him, because you’re just one of four.”
Millie’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You lie! He said I—” And then she stopped. She’d just given herself away and Mae Arnold was already out the door.
“Well fuck,” she muttered, and went back to scanning groceries.
Mae’s next stop was one of the women from church. The woman usually sat with them at church dinners, and not once had Mae ever suspected it was so the bitch could sit close to Pete. She knocked on the door, heard footsteps and then the door opened.
“Evening, Rita. I got your flowers.”
Rita tried hard to find something to say that wouldn’t give herself away, but she suspected from the look on Mae’s face that she already knew.
Mae stared, trying to figure out what Pete saw in this little dried-up thing. She rarely smiled and her lips were in a perennial moue of disapproval.
Finally Rita got herself together. “You know how fond I am of you two. Of course I sent flowers.”
“Addressed to Pete, signed ‘Love, Rita.’ I’m thinking you were fonder of Pete than you were of me.”
Rita’s eyes welled. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I know in my heart we were meant to be together. I’m sorry.”
Mae sighed. “Just so you know, Pete was poking his prick all over town. There are four of you. I hope you all get SIDS.”
Rita frowned. “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome?”
“Maybe I meant STDs,” Mae muttered.
Rita grabbed at her crotch as Mae walked away, then closed the door and ran to check herself out.
Mae was in so much emotional pain she couldn’t focus, but the anger in her was stronger as she drove straight for the house of the third woman on her list, Doris Wakely, who liked to be called Miss Doris.
Doris was on her knees in the front yard, weeding her flower bed when she heard a car pulled up in her drive. She looked over her shoulder just as Mae Arnold exited her pickup and was so startled by her appearance that when she tried to get up, she fell sideways.
“Don’t get up on my account,” Mae said. “I just came to tell you I got your flowers. And Millie’s flowers. And Rita’s flowers. And Connie’s flowers.”
Doris gasped. “What? What are you saying?”
“Why, Miss Doris, I am saying that you shouldn’t have wasted your money...or your time with my husband, because he was screwing all of us. You might want to have yourself checked for psoriasis.”
Doris was pale and shaking...then confused. “For a scaly skin condition? What on earth?”
Mae cursed. “Obviously, I am not current with hooker diseases. I suppose I meant to say syphilis. Pete was plowing a whole lot more than the rows in my garden.”
“Oh my God,” Doris cried.
Mae shook her head. “And you, flat as a button. Pete always liked boobs. You must be hot to trot in bed.”
Doris pressed her hands over her flat chest at the slight about her lack of woman parts. Then she heard the words hot to trot, and the world began to spin. She tried to put her head between her knees to keep from passing out, and instead went headfirst into the ground.
Mae drove away as Miss Doris was picking grass out of her nose. Three down and one to go. But before that last stop, she had one more visit to make.
No one was more surprised than George when Mae strode back into the funeral home. Everyone was talking about the scandal, and no one had expected Mae to come back, yet here she was.
Mae sailed past George with her nose in the air, and went straight into Pete’s viewing room. She looked down into the coffin, then jabbed Pete’s chest with her finger.
“You better be glad you’re already dead, Pete Arnold, or I would have killed you myself. Someone else is going to have to see you to your grave, because I’ve seen all of you I ever care to see.”
Then she spun on her heel and stomped out.
“Oh my,” George said. “Oh my, oh my, oh my.”
Mae drove out of Carytown as dry-eyed and mad as she’d been the day Hershel was first arrested, and when she left the blacktop and hit the many miles of dirt road between Carytown and home, she stomped the gas, leaving a rooster tail of dust in the air behind her as she went.
She was five miles from home when she took the turn going down to Connie Hibbard’s house. Gravel was rattling in her hubcaps and there was a wild look on her face when she stomped the brakes just shy of the front gate.
The ruckus set the dogs to barking, and Connie came out to see what was happening, yelling at the dogs to be quiet. They slunk away as Connie walked to the edge of the porch and shaded her eyes.
She recognized Pete Arnold’s pickup. But since Pete was dead, she could only assume it was Mae. Then Mae got out, and when Connie saw the look on her face, she knew that Mae knew, and started screaming and shouting.
“Don’t you hurt me! Don’t you dare! I’ll sue you!”
Mae stopped at the bottom of the steps, her hands fisted, her gray hair wild, windblown and standing up all around her face like the puff on a dandelion.
“Hurt you? You’re the one who caused hurt, you horny heifer.”
Connie gasped, but Mae wasn’t finished. “I came to tell you I got your flowers...or I should say, Pete got your flowers...but he didn’t get the message because he’s dead!”
Connie blustered her way down to the second step, which put her within striking distance, and then waggled her finger at Mae.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she snapped.
Mae’s pale green eyes widened, and then they narrowed in a snaky kind of way.
“No, you’re the one in the dark. Pete had women all over town. He was pokin’ women faster than he could fart. Likely that’s what caused him to drop dead at my feet. I’m going to the clinic tomorrow to get tested for diseases. Fucking all you hookers, then sleeping with me in our bed. Lord only knows what I might have caught.”
Connie was still trying to absorb the fact that Pete hadn’t been true to their love, when Mae just accused her of having the clap. Then it dawned on her that she might. If he was poking other women, there was no telling what he left behind.
She burst into tears as Mae Arnold drove away. This was a fine mess she’d gotten herself into.
Fourteen
The little one-doctor clinic in Carytown opened at 8:00 a.m. sharp, just as it had for the last thirty years. They’d seen all kinds of illnesses and injuries during that time, and everyone in Carytown, including the employees at the clinic, was talking about what had happened yesterday, and how Mae Arnold had called out every one of Pete’s women and put them to shame.
There were mixed feelings about what Mae had done publically by facing down Pete’s harem, but they all agreed the fallen women should be ashamed. Then as the clock on the wall chimed eight times, a billing clerk left the conversation to open up the clinic, and strode through the lobby to unlock the door.
Before the clerk could get out of the way, five women marched over the threshold and straight up to the check-in desk, with Mae Arnold in the lead.
The receptionist had just taken her seat and was fumbling for her glasses when Mae leaned across the counter.
“I need to see Dr. Irick.”
“What is your illness?” the receptionist asked.
Mae glared at the four women behind her. “I had a cheating husband. I need to be tested for STDs.”
The receptionist gasped.
“So do I,” Millie said, glaring at the other three.
“So do I,” Rita said, and then started crying.
“So do I,” Doris whispered.
“I guess I do, too,” Connie said, then slunk into a chair in one corner of the room, while the other three also chose to sit alone.
Mae chose not to sit down in a room with any of them, and tapped on the counter.
“Someone take me back to an exam room now. I don’t want to breathe the same air as these whores.”
The receptionist buzzed the nurse. “First patient is ready,” she said.
“I’m not ready for her,” the nurse snapped.
“You need to get that way fast, before all hell breaks loose up here,” she whispered.
The nurse came up the hall with a frown on her face, then read the room, grabbed Mae Arnold’s chart and gently took her by the arm.
“This way, Mrs. Arnold, and please accept my condolences,” she said, as she put Mae in a room and closed the door behind her.
* * *
Haley was curled up on Sam’s sofa, watching television in the living room when he came in from outside.
“Hey, honey, I’m through checking the chlorine levels in the pool. I’ll be down the hall in my office. I won’t be long, okay?”
Haley was riveted to the ongoing updates about Hurricane Gladys and nodded. It was the first time she’d seen the footage of her own rescue and was horrified at how high up in the air she’d been before they got her inside the chopper. And then she saw the footage of Lee Tolson rescuing Sam, and grinned at the now famous “thumbs-up” he’d given the cameras trained on him at the time.
Down the hall, Sam was at his desk reading email. The one he’d been waiting on wasn’t there, so there was no way to proceed further on one of his open cases until it came.
He thought of Louise again, and knew she had to be in Wyoming by now, but the PI in him needed confirmation. So he pulled up her number in his contacts, and made the call.
It rang and rang, and with every subsequent ring, his concern grew. Something was wrong. Despite what that house sitter said, something was wrong with Louise.
Without knowing what airline she’d chosen to fly, the only starting point he had was her morning departure, because the house sitter was already in place when he went over just after lunch. But that didn’t stop him. He wasn’t going to bed tonight until he knew where Louise was, so he used a little trick a hacker once showed him, and began going through passenger lists on flights going anywhere in Wyoming before noon of this day.
It took a little over an hour for him to find out that no women by the name Louise Bell boarded any flight to Wyoming today, and the realization dawned that the only explanation for this would be the house sitter lied. And if the house sitter lied about where Louise had gone, then it stood to reason that person might not have been house-sitting at all.
Sam got up from the desk and then peered through the blinds in his office. From where he was standing, he could see Louise’s house. As he was watching, the garage door went up, and he saw the house sitter come out, get something out of the car, then go back into the house through the garage. Just as the door was coming down, Sam caught a glimpse of the back end of Louise’s BMW.
It was still in the garage!
Why wouldn’t she have taken herself to the airport? Another question without a satisfactory answer.
And that’s when Sam remembered Special Agent Gordon’s warning about Santos. What if he’d hired someone to snatch Haley? Sam’s thoughts were spinning. What the hell was Santos even doing in Dallas? It’s understandable that he might be unable to get back to his place of residence in Houston, but if that was the case, why come back into the States at all when he was in his home in Cozumel? And why come to Dallas only a day or so behind Haley, unless he was still chasing that money?
This was getting scary. But he wasn’t ready to put the fear in Haley just yet. He scanned through his contacts again until he came to Special Agent Jack Gordon, then made the call.
Jack answered on the third ring.
“Hello, Special Agent Gordon speaking.”
“Jack, this is Sam Quaid. I have a question.”
“Hi, Sam. Ask away.”
“Do you have anymore intel on Dude Santos that would lead you to believe he might have hired someone to get to Haley?”
“Not right offhand, but it wouldn’t take me long to find out. What’s going on?” Jack asked.
“My neighbor Louise Bell, who lives across the street from me, seems to have gone missing, and there’s a house sitter in her place. I found out all this when I was making a welfare check on her at the request of her friend, when Louise didn’t show up for their weekly bridge game.”
“A house sitter? Is this a regular thing for Louise to do?”
“Not in the three years I’ve known her,” Sam said. “She doesn’t have pets, and we water each other’s plants and get each other’s mail when one of us is out of pocket on a regular basis. So I circumvented proper procedure and did a little digging and found out there was no woman named Louise Bell listed on any manifest, on any airline flight from Dallas, to anywhere in Wyoming this morning. And the house sitter came out of the house through the garage a few minutes ago. I saw Louise’s BMW still parked in the garage, and no, that’s not like her, either. I can’t completely rule out her traveling by other means, but I was going by what this house sitter said.”
“I don’t like this scenario,” Jack said. “Let me make a few calls and then we’ll talk more. We are building a case to issue an arrest warrant for him, but we need more than Haley overhearing Baker and Arnold talking about betraying him.”
“Thanks,” Sam said, and then dropped his phone in his pocket.
He made a side trip into the kitchen for cookies and cold drinks, came back into the living room and plopped down beside Haley.
“Dessert, if you’re in the mood,” Sam said, and set her cold drink on the end table near her elbow.
Haley hit Mute on the remote and took a couple of cookies from the jar. “What’s going on, Sam? And don’t tell me it’s nothing, because I’ve known you too long.”
“Right now, it’s just a case of someone missing.”
“Oh...related to your work,” Haley said.
“No. It’s Louise, my neighbor across the street. She’s gone missing, her car is still in the garage, there’s a house sitter on duty, which she’s never had before. Louise’s friend called me this morning while you were asleep and said Louise never showed up for their weekly bridge game, and she couldn’t contact her. That’s how I even found out about the house sitter.”
Haley frowned. “This doesn’t sound good. Where did the house sitter say Louise went?”
“She said she flew to Wyoming this morning, but I did a little digging, checking all of the airline manifests with flights going to Wyoming and she wasn’t on any of them.”
Haley put the cookies down and sat all the way up.
“The house sitter is lying. We had a house listed a year or so back that the client was still living in. One day we called to set up a showing, and he didn’t answer, but when we went by the house some woman came to the door. We told her she needed to be gone from two to four for the showing and she had a fit, told us she wasn’t leaving and not to come.”
