Karen MacInerney - Margie Peterson 01 - Mother's Day Out (30 page)

I glanced down at what was left of my brand new suit and the shreds of my taupe pantyhose and realized he was right.  With the dog semi-safely at its master’s heel, I relaxed a little bit.  “Could I have a glass of water?” I asked.  “And maybe use your phone?”

“Sure thing, honey.  Those fellas still out there?” The harshness in his voice was gone, replaced by warmth and compassion. 

As the tension seeped from my body, I swayed on my feet. “I think so,” I rasped.

He scanned the horizon.  “Well, Lucy here’ll let us know if they decide to drop by.  Won’t you girl?”  He patted her bristling fur.  “In the meantime, let’s get you inside.”

I edged toward the front porch, and he reached out a rough hand to help me climb the two steps.  My eyes flitted from his friendly brown eyes to Lucy’s cold yellow ones, and I was relieved when the door slammed shut behind us, leaving the wolf-dog on the porch. 

“Sit down,” he said.  “Take a load off.” 

“Thanks.”  I sank into the nearest chair and surveyed the kitchen.  Tacked up next to the ancient fridge was a farming supply company calendar featuring a tractor.  Behind it, faded floral wallpaper peeled from the walls, and the linoleum on the floor had worn away in several places, but no dirty dishes littered the chipped Formica counter.  A woman had lived here in the past, but not now, I was guessing.

“I’m Jess Howard,” he said, rummaging through a drawer and pulling out a couple of safety pins, which he tossed onto the table.

“I’m Margie,” I said.  “Margie Peterson.”  I picked up a safety pin.  “What are these for?”

He nodded toward my shirt.  I looked down. Two of the buttons had torn free, exposing a few inches of rippled flesh and the clasp of my bra.  I grabbed the edges of fabric and pulled them together, blushing, as he turned and pulled a glass from a cabinet. 

By the time he had filled it with water and ice slid it across the table to me, I was decent again.  “Thanks,” I muttered.

“No problem,” he said, pulling up a chair across from me.  “So, you were kidnapped?”

I nodded and gulped down the water. 

He rose to refill the glass.  “I heard kidnapping was big business in Mexico, but I didn’t know it was going on here, too.  Where did they pick you up?”

“Austin,” I said.  “It wasn’t a ransom kidnapping, though.  I found out something I wasn’t supposed to know.”

His thick eyebrows rose.  “Drugs?”

“Nope.  I found a factory that someone’s staffing with slave labor—illegal immigrants.  They caught me before I could get out and call the police.”

“No wonder they wanted you out of the way.  Where were they headed when you got away?”

“I don’t know.”  I shivered as I considered the possibilities.

He glanced at my tattered suit.  “Well, whatever it was, I’m bettin’ it wasn’t good.  How did you escape?”

As I recounted my story, his brown eyes widened.  At first, all I had noticed was the shotgun, but now I realized he was a good-looking man.  Going to seed a little around the middle, and his brown hair was receding a little from his weathered face, but still attractive in a rugged way.  In his fifties, probably.  When I finished, he said, “You want to call the cops? I’ll bet those fellas are still in the area.”

“No, not yet.  There’s one more thing I have to do.”  I gulped down another swig of water.  “Can I use your phone? It may be long distance, I’m afraid…” I looked at him.  “Where are we, by the way?”

“Utopia.”

Suddenly, Lucy began to growl.  Headlights flashed against the fading wallpaper as the sound of crunching gravel eclipsed the crickets.  A shiver ran down my back.  “Are you expecting anyone?”

“Nope.”  Jess grabbed his shotgun.  “Stay in here.  In fact, why don’t you head back down the hall?”

I nodded and ducked down the narrow hall as the screen door squeaked open.  I slipped through the first doorway on the right, into a tiny bathroom, it turned out, and pressed myself against the wall, listening.  Sweat broke out on my brow as Jess’s taut, rough voice filtered down the hall toward me.  I couldn’t make out his words, or hear whomever he was talking to.  Then the gravel crunched again, and when the sound had receded into the distance, the screen door banged shut.

“You okay back there, ma’am?”

I ventured out of the bathroom.  “Fine.  Who was it?”

He grimaced.  “The fellas you got away from, I reckon.”

My heart thumped against my ribs.  “What did you tell them?”

“They said they was lookin’ for a woman. Said she got lost.  Said there was a big cash reward out for her.”  He shrugged.  “I told ’em I ain’t seen no one.  They said they’d come back later, maybe.  I told ’em not to bother.”

I slumped against a wall.  “Thanks for covering for me.  I can’t believe they had the balls to come up the driveway and ask you.”

“Well,” he said, “This house is the only one for miles ’round here, so I guess they figgered this is where to find you.”  His lips twitched into a mischievous smile.  “I got somethin’ from ‘em, though.”

“What?”

He held up a scrap of paper.  “Plate numbers.”

“You’re kidding me!”  I resisted the urge to run up and hug him.  “You know, if I weren’t already married, I think I might propose.”

He laughed.  “It ain’t worth
that
much.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said.  “Now, before they come back, can I borrow your phone?”

He smiled.  “It’s all yours.  And when you’re done, can I interest you in a bite to eat?” My stomach gurgled, and he chuckled.  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

#

An hour and a half later, not long after I finished a third bowl of chili, the driveway crunched again.  I slunk back down the hall while Jess picked up his gun.

A minute later, I heard a familiar husky voice, and burst into the kitchen.  “Peaches!”  My boss stood in the kitchen, one hand on her hip, her generous curves clad in a lime green spandex minidress. 

She ran an eye over me.  “You look like hell.”

“Thanks.”  I grinned.  “Jess, this is my boss, Peaches. 

Jess smiled big and swept an imaginary hat off of his balding head.  “Pleased to meet you, miss.”

Peaches’s eyes swept up and down Jess’s tall frame, lingering at his dark brown eyes.  “Likewise,” she purred.

“I hate to run,” I said, “but we’ve got somebody else to rescue.  Jess, I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done…”

“Don’t forget this,” he said, handing me the scrap of paper with the plate numbers.  “I put my number down there, too,” he said, glancing at Peaches.  “Margie here tells me you’ve got a little rescue operation going on.  Anything I can help with?”

“Jess,” I protested, “you’ve done so much already… I can’t ask you…”

Peaches put her hand on my arm.  “Hold on there, sugar.”  Then she turned to Jess.  “That shotgun there might come in mighty handy.”

“Peaches!”

Jess smiled at Peaches.  “Why don’t I just follow you all into Austin? I could be there as backup… just in case…” 

“But…” I stammered.

Peaches just looked at me.  “Honey, we need all the help we can get.”

TWENTY-FIVE

 “He’s cute,” Peaches said as we bumped over the cattle guard in her Buick Regal.

“I thought you were already seeing someone,” I said.

“Yeah, well, that ended last night.”

“What happened?”

“I ran into him down at the Broken Spoke with a twenty-year-old.”

I winced.  “What a jerk.  Are you okay?”

She glanced at the rearview mirror, and the reflected glare of Jess’s headlights lit up her carefully rouged cheeks.  “It’s just like my mama said.  Men are like buses.  They come around every twenty minutes, but you have to get off one before you can get on another.”

I eyed her dress.  “I guess that means you weren’t sitting home moping tonight.”

“Nope.  Good thing, too.  You don’t want to meet a man like Jess wearing a t-shirt and a ratty pair of shorts.”

“Thanks for coming to pick me up,” I said.

“No problem.  You did a good job getting out of that truck.  I’m just hoping we can get to the warehouse before they clear everything out of there.”

“I didn’t think about that.  You think they’ll do that tonight?”

She glanced at me and shook her head.  “Of course.  They figure the first thing you’re gonna do when you get to a phone is call the cops.  As soon as those goons call in and say you got away, they’ll empty the place.  I’m just hoping they’re afraid to call and tell their boss they lost you.”

“They stopped by Jess’s place.”

“I know.  And it’s a good thing you hid.  If they knew you were there, they probably would have killed him and taken off with you.”  She grinned.  “They must be scared shitless to tell their boss they lost a little
gringa
like you.  I’m guessing they won’t be getting their Christmas bonuses this year.”

“So what are we going to do about getting Eduardo out?”

“See that bag there?” She nodded toward a canvas bag on the floor between us.  “Take a look inside.”

I opened it and peered inside, but it was too dark to see.  I slid my hand inside and felt something cold, hard and slick.  “A gun?” I whispered.

“Yup.”

“What do I do with it?”

Peaches rolled her eyes.  “Jesus.  What do you think you do with it? You shoot people with it.  If you look underneath, you’ll find a couple of stun guns, too.”

“Can’t I just take a stun gun?”

She shook her head.  “Not with these people.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart.  I’ve got it all worked out.  Now why don’t you get a few minutes of shut-eye? I’ll wake you up when we get to Austin.”

I sank back into the bench seat and relaxed, watching the fence posts flash by in the headlights and drowsing while a singer on the radio crooned about a woman in Tennessee.

#

“Margie! Margie!” Somebody was shaking me.  “Wake up!”

I swam up through a dream about snakes wrapping themselves around my wrists, their forked tongues darting out to caress my skin.  “What?”

“Where exactly is this place?”

I looked around, disoriented.  The fence posts were gone, replaced by darkened storefronts and a few people in baseball caps slouching on street corners.  “Where are we?”

“East Austin.  Where did you think we were, New York?”

I rubbed my eyes and sat up straight, suddenly remembering why we were here.  “The warehouse.  It’s on Seventh Street.  Over by Chicon.  But what are we going to do when we get there?”

“You said you only saw a few heavies, right?”

I thought back to the guards I had seen in the main room of the warehouse.  “Yeah.  Three or four of them.”

“Well, I’m guessing at least one of them is out looking for you now, so that puts us at two or three.  Maybe even just one.”

“Okay.  So?”

“So.  We knock on the door…”

“We knock on the door? You’re kidding me, right?”

“How else are we going to get in? You said the windows were boarded up, right?”  I nodded.  “Okay,” she continued.  “So, we knock on the door and yell ‘Immigration!’  When someone answers, we take him out with the stun gun, and then go in and secure the place.”

“That’s it? We ‘take him out’ and then ‘secure the place?’”

She beamed at me.  “Yup.  Piece of cake.”

“Forgive me for sounding dense, but how exactly are we supposed to secure the place?”

“Take out the other guys.”

“What do you mean, ‘take out the other guys?’”

“Remember the guns?”

“Yeah.  But I thought we were going to use the stun guns.”

“Yeah, well, they only work at short distances.  You gotta have the guns for longer-range stuff.”

“So I’m supposed to use a gun—which I’ve never even
held
before, much less used—to take out a few, possibly several, members of the Mexican mafia.”

Peaches’ eyebrows rose.  “They’re involved with the Mexican mafia?”

I threw up my hands.  “I don’t know! I just don’t think this is a good idea.”

“You want to call the cops instead? Because if you do that, Eduardo is going straight back to Mexico on a one-way ticket.”

I sighed.  “There’s no other way to do this?”

She shook her head.  “Not unless you can come up with something better.  Besides, we’ve got that hunk Jess looking out for us.  I’ll bet he’s real good with a shotgun.”

“Let’s just get it over with,” I groaned.

“You worry too much,” Peaches said, patting my leg.  “You’ll be fine.”

#

Five minutes later, we pulled up across the street from the warehouse.  Peaches parked the car behind my minivan, and as Jess pulled up behind us, dug through the bag and tossed me a gun and a stun gun.  “How does it work?” I said.

“See that? That’s the safety.  You flip that back, and then all you gotta do is pull the trigger.”

I flipped it back experimentally and held it out in front of me.  “Like this?”

She grabbed my hand.  “Careful with that thing! I just got the windshield replaced last week.”

I replaced the safety.  “Sorry.  And what about the stun gun?”

“You just press this end—the one with the metal pointy things—up against the guy and hit the button, and they go down like a sack of potatoes.”  She checked her makeup in the rearview mirror.  “Do I look okay?”

“We’re about to go raid a warehouse filled with armed men, and you’re worried about your lipstick?”

“Hey.  Once this thing is over, I’m planning on taking that handsome man out to the Spoke.  Show Buck a thing or two.  I’ll bet he’s a great dancer.”

“Let’s just hope we get a chance to find out.”

We climbed out of the car and met up with Jess, who was leaning against the front of his truck and eyeing Peaches’s legs appreciatively.  “What’s the plan, ladies?”

When Peaches told him, he nodded.

“You think it’s okay?” I said, relieved that he wasn’t rolling around in the grass laughing.

“It’s all you got, so it’ll have to be.  I’m coming with you.”

“Oh, no,” I said.  “We couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“If there are three of them and two of you ladies, you’re going to need help.”

“What a man,” Peaches purred.  Even in the dim light of the streetlamp I could see Jess blush.