Bedeviled Eggs (30 page)

“Your
car or mine?” Suzanne asked. She’d arrived back at
the Cackleberry Club
around five thirty to find Toni wait
ing for her.

“Jungle Cruiser is
bigger,” said Toni, cocking a thumb
toward the parking lot out front. “It’ll hold
more pumpkins.”

“Done,” said Suzanne.

Toni slipped on a worn
suede jacket and tucked her jeans into tanned, tooled cowboy boots. “Gonna be
cold
out
there.” She wound a knit scarf around her neck.

“Where are we going
again?” Suzanne asked.

Toni pulled a crumpled
piece of paper from her jeans
pocket and scanned it. “Out Hudson Road. By the old Law
son place.”

“I have no idea where
that is.”

“You don’t remember
old man Lawson? The guy who
drops in once in a while, mumbling about fighting Nazis
in
the Ardennes?”

“Oh sure,” said
Suzanne.

“And you know where
Hudson Road is.”

“Kind of,” said
Suzanne. She had a vague notion that it was north of Kindred, but her own
internal Google Earth program wasn’t pulling up any sort of detailed map.

“Don’t worry,” said
Toni. “Junior drew a map so there
shouldn’t be any problem.”

“Right,”
said Suzanne, although it seemed like every day they’d encountered a new
problem. Time for some
thing to go off without a hitch? Oh, let’s hope so.

They exited the
Cackleberry Club, turning out lights and locking the door, then climbed into
Toni’s car. She cranked the key in the engine, let her car rumble and belch for
a few
moments, then said, “Ready,
Freddy?”

With a
few hard tugs, Suzanne managed to yank the
frayed seat belt into proper
position and snap it in place.
“Let’s
do it”

Toni turned the
heater knob to defrost and clicked on a cassette player that looked like it had
been recently in
stalled. Red, yellow, and green wires stuck out from below
like colorful, techy
spaghetti. “Aftermarket,” Toni told Su
zanne. “It’s not exactly a
state-of-the-art in-dash CD deck
with MP3 and satellite radio, but at least we’ve got
tunes.”
Toni
hit a button and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” by
Cyndi Lauper, suddenly blared
from speaker panels in
the doors. They grinned at each other, then joined in
with
Cyndi,
bouncing and seat dancing their way out of town.

“So
Carmen was a real pain today?” Toni asked, as they
rumbled past Pretty Paws Pet
Grooming and the Video Hut,
heading
out of town.

“Carmen’s always a
trial,” Suzanne replied. “I still can’t
figure how Missy puts up with her.”

“Same way
I put up with Junior.” Toni chuckled. “I
never take him seriously.” She
slowed down as they cruised
across a narrow bridge, the boards crinkling beneath
them,
something clunking in
the backseat

“Speaking of Junior,”
said Suzanne, “is that his stuff
back there?” She turned slightly, caught sight of a
large
cardboard
box bouncing away on the backseat.

Toni nodded. “Annoying,
isn’t it?” Every time they hit a
little
bump there was a metallic rattle.

“What’s he got in
there?”

Toni
shrugged. “I don’t know. Car parts. Maybe a car
buretor or something.”

“Scrap metal?”

“Dunno. Maybe.”

“How’s that working
out for him?” Suzanne asked.
“His ... uh... new sideline.” She refrained from saying
“harebrained scheme,”
even though that’s what it probably
was.

“Things are good,”
said Toni, sounding her chirpiest.

“Seriously?”

“Aw, I don’t know,”
said Toni, her chirpiness crumbling.
“Who knows with Junior? At least he’s trying.
Giving it a
whack.”

“Planning for the
future,” said Suzanne.

“Junior’s idea of
planning for the future is to buy two
six-packs instead of one.” Toni snorted. “In
fact, Junior’s
so darned immature I worry about finding his face on the
back of a milk carton!”

“Funny,” said
Suzanne, although it was partly true.

Toni popped in a
Rolling Stones tape and that kept them
entertained for another five
miles or so, until Suzanne
asked,
“How close are we?”

“Pretty close.”

Gazing out the
window, Suzanne enjoyed the view of rolling fields and blue black starlit sky.
Whenever the road dipsy-doodled, she caught a flash of a fast-moving stream.
“Does Tortuga mean
anything to you?” she asked, suddenly.

Toni hesitated a few
moments before answering.
“Maybe those islands in the Caribbean? Or, wait a
minute,
doesn’t Tortuga mean
turtle in Spanish?”

“I
think so.”

“Why are you asking?”
asked Toni.

Suzanne took a deep
breath. “Here’s the thing... I had
a wild idea and did a little snooping today.”

Toni
glanced at her sharply. “Snooping. Meaning you
broke the law? Not that I’m a
staunch defender of the law
or
anything.”

“It
might have been a criminal offense,” said Suzanne,
“except I had Sheriff Doogie’s
endorsement.”

Toni giggled. “Seriously?”

“I
asked Doogie if he could use a
fresh pair of eyes,”
said Suzanne. “To take a look-see inside Chuck Peebler’s
house.”

Toni’s jaw dropped. “Doogie
let
you? You actually
snuck
in there?”

Suzanne nodded. “All
by my lonesome.”

“Eeyeew,” said Toni. “You
creepy-crawled a dead guy’s
house? I would have been totally weirded out.”

“When you put it that
way...”

“Doogie must be
really nervous to let a civilian get in
on the act.”

Suzanne nodded in the
dark. “You saw how depressed
he was this morning. And with Deputy Halpern’s funeral
set for tomorrow, he’s
really down on himself.”

“So where is all this
going?” Toni asked. “You found
something
to do with Tortuga?”

“Oh... yeah. Peebler
had scrawled the word Tortuga
on
a Post-it note.”

“Maybe he
was planning a nice warm-weather island
adventure?”

“Maybe,”
said Suzanne. “Or maybe he just liked
turtles.”

Ten
minutes
later, Suzanne was beginning to squirm in her
seat. “How far have we come anyway?”

Toni
squinted at her dashboard. “According to my handy-dandy trip meter, almost
twenty-six miles.”

“Long drive just for
pumpkins.”

“We’re
almost there.” Toni tromped down on the accel
erator, edging up to almost
seventy miles an hour. For Toni,
the posted speed limit was the equivalent of suggested re
tail price. It could fluctuate widely.

Suzanne watched more
woods and fields fly by, think
ing back to the other night, when she and Petra had
gotten
turned
around out here. When she’d stumbled upon Wilbur
Halpern. “I feel like I was just
out this way.”

“Aw, these roads all
look the same,” said Toni. “Farm
fields,
woods, streams, and stuff.”

“I think it’s called
nature.”

Toni
slowed her car, rolled past a dark, deserted inter
section, then said, “Horse
pucky. I think I’m lost.”

“Let’s stop and look
at the map,” Suzanne suggested.

Toni eased the car
onto the shoulder and clicked on the
overhead light. Suzanne held up the map so they
could
study it.

“What do you think?”
asked Toni.

Suzanne puzzled over
the hastily drawn map. “It’s hard
enough to decipher Junior’s handwriting, but the
map itself

is sketchy. Like
something the Hardy Boys drew to show
the way to their fort.”

“Aside from that,”
said Toni. “Aside from the fact that it
looks like a three-year-old did it.”

“Nothing’s drawn to
scale,” said Suzanne. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think
cartography is Junior’s strong point.” Her fingernail scratched at the paper.
“And what’s this
humpy-looking line supposed to indicate?
Hills?”

“River,” said Toni. “Catawba
Creek.” Toni cocked her
head. “Too
bad we don’t have GPS.”

“Instead of JPS,” said
Suzanne. “J being Junior.”

Toni grabbed the map
and turned it upside down. “Aw, we’re not so far off, ya know? I think the
pumpkin patch is
down the road
we just Tolled past”

“You think?”

Toni was
already backing up the car. “Sure. We’ll be
there in a jiffy.”

They left the asphalt
road and turned down the gravel
road, creeping along at ten miles an hour. Rocks crunched
beneath their tires, something made a low, guttural sound
off in the distance. An owl?

“And
here we are,” said Toni, pulling onto a flat patch
of grass.

“Deserted,” said
Suzanne, glancing around.

“We follow a short
trail through this cornfield, then the
pumpkin patch is the very next field.”

“We gotta schlep
pumpkins all the way back here?” Su
zanne asked.

“We’ll just scope it
out,” said Toni. “If the land’s flat
enough, I’ll drive the Jungle Cruiser in and we
can load up
in ten minutes
flat.”

“I like your
optimism,” said Suzanne, as they started
down the path.

“Chilly,” said Toni,
pulling her collar up.

“And dark,” said
Suzanne. “I can’t believe we forgot to
bring a flashlight.”