Mind Your Own Beeswax (7 page)

“Afraid to, I bet. Maybe she came into the store planning to greet you, or thinking you’d recognize her. When you didn’t, she chickened out.”

“That makes sense. And Rita didn’t want to force the issue.”

“Exactly. She was letting Lauren take as much time as she needed to adjust.”

“I have so many questions. Bullet point number one: Did she just get out of prison?”

“Probably,” Holly guessed.

Sixteen years had gone by since Lauren was dealt a life sentence, which everybody knew wasn’t really for life but long enough to count as forever when you’re eighteen years old. “Bullet point number two: Why come back now? And three: Where is she right this minute?”

“She didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Holly said, stating the obvious answer to bullet point number two.

“She got drunker and drunker that night,” I said, remembering remarkably well considering how many years had passed. “She started arguing with T. J., saying he didn’t care about her enough. Then she ran off. None of us even tried to stop her.”

“You can’t blame yourself for what she did.” Holly sighed loudly. Feeling more generous toward my sister, I picked a burdock burr from her hair and flicked it away.

“It’s getting dark,” she said, looking around. “Are we totally insane or just plain stupid?”

“Lantern Man never hurt anybody.”

“But he vandalized property.”

“That could have been a teenage prank that got out of hand.”

Holly shook her head. “No way. He exists. What were you guys doing in The Lost Mile that night, anyway?”

“The only reason we came here was because T. J. and Hunter started talking tough about how we weren’t afraid of things that didn’t exist, and some of the other kids dared us to walk through.”

“How dumb was that to actually go?”

“The dumb part was bringing booze with us. Lauren had her own personal flask of vodka.”

“I remember you guys went in right after Lantern Man’s first attack.”

“It could have been a prank by other kids,” I repeated, not really believing it.

“Yeah, right,” my sister said.

What had happened was this:

“These woods belong to Lantern Man,” Holly said, standing up. “And he doesn’t tolerate trespassers. Let’s go home before he realizes we’re here and comes for us.”

Just before I made up my mind to abandon Patti to her fate, we heard thrashing in the brush to the north.

“OMG (
Oh My God
)!” Holly shouted, loud enough to wake the dead.

“It’s Patti,” I whispered, not sure at all. “Quit screaming.”

Sure enough, my nosy neighbor came into view just in time to save both of us from totally flipping out, since I’d started feeding on Holly’s anxiety and was on the verge.

“I didn’t find a thing,” P. P. Patti said. “Absolutely nothing. But I’m probably going to break out in a rash from tromping through all this brush. I bet poison ivy is everywhere. One time, I squatted in the woods to tinkle and got it all over my heinie.”

“Thanks for sharing that,” I said, thinking I’d be howling with laughter at the thought of poison ivy all over Patti’s butt if the darkness of the woods wasn’t starting to spook me.

“Remember Hetty Cross?” Holly asked me, bringing back more scary memories. “That time she caught us on her property?”

“Where was that?” Patti asked.

“Across that way.” Holly pointed up the logging road and a little to the north. “When we were kids, we used to call her the Witch. I could run faster than Story, so I always got away. But she grabbed Story once.”

“What did she do to you?” Patti asked me.

“She hauled me off her property by my ear.” I could picture the Witch as vividly as if it had happened yesterday. “And warned me never to come back or she’d make stew meat of me.”

Holly laughed. Patti cackled.

“Have you ever been pulled by your ear?” I wanted to know. “It really, really hurts. Quit laughing.”

“After that,” Holly added, “we made sure we avoided the Witch’s property lines whenever we played in the woods. She’s an awful woman. I can’t imagine what her husband has to put up with.”

Hetty’s husband, Norm, did most of the shopping in their household. He was a regular customer at The Wild Clover, so we were on casual small-talk terms, while I hadn’t seen Hetty in the store more than half a dozen times. Which was perfectly fine with me.

An animal howled in the not-so-faraway distance.

“Let’s get out of here,” Holly said. “While we still can.”

“That was just somebody’s dog,” Patti said.

“I’m right with Holly,” I answered back, because very shortly, if we didn’t hightail it out of The Lost Mile immediately, my imagination was going to get as wild as Holly’s. Between the Witch—who still lived nearby—and Lantern Man, my bravado was slipping away.

We stumbled out of The Lost Mile, crossed the bridge, and retraced our steps. After making our way back through the fog and darkness, we walked to the business end of my short, dead-end street, turned left, and ended up on bar stools at Stu’s Bar and Grill.

Right into the middle of major drama.

Saturdays at Stu’s are all-you-can-eat chicken wing nights from four o’clock until ten. The place was hopping. Stu made the best wings on the planet and it wasn’t just my personal opinion. He’s won awards. First he marinates his wings in several different kinds of special secret sauces, then deep fries them until they’re golden brown before heaping them onto steaming plates. Tonight he had three different kinds—BBQ wings, honey mustard wings, and toasted sesame wings.

The three of us couldn’t decide which kind to share. I’d eat any or all of them, so I wasn’t the problem. But Holly and Patti couldn’t seem to agree. Finally, I stepped in and ordered for us.

“A sampler plate of all three kinds,” I said to Stu. He set three Leinie Honey Weiss beers on the bar in front of us and went to fill our wing order. I shoved the lemon wedge down the neck of the bottle and sipped while studying the action.

The bar was busy for two reasons. First, there were the customers who were there because of chicken-wing night. Stu always drew a big crowd for that event. Customers came early, drank enormous quantities of beer, and stayed at least until the clock struck ten when the all-you-can-eat ended.

Second, and more important, the Kerrigans had turned Stu’s Bar and Grill into their unofficial missing-person head-quarter as they organized the hunt for their family member. Kerrigans swarmed the place, equipped with walkie-talkies instead of cell phones, since cell reception could be spotty in our hills and valleys. Lauren’s brothers passed out radios to anybody who stepped forward to help with the hunt.

Lauren’s mother, Rita, walked by me, looking dazed and barely staying upright on her bad knees. I tagged her shoulder.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” I said, not sure of that at all, but wanting to give her as much encouragement and hope as possible.

“Oh, Story, I don’t know. She had terminal colon cancer,” Rita said, which explained Lauren’s deflated, aged appearance and the wig on her head. “She got a medical parole from that women’s correctional place. They do that when a prisoner is close to the end. I was looking into hospice care for her.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “She did look awfully sick when I saw her.”

“You didn’t recognize her. She thought you would. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you in advance, but she made me promise to let her do it her way.”

“We’ll have plenty of time later, once she’s found.”

“I’m afraid she might have done something drastic, like . . .” Rita paused as though she couldn’t bear to go on. Even though she didn’t finish, she didn’t have to. I knew Rita was worried that her daughter had committed suicide. “Coming back to Moraine was a terrible mistake,” she continued. “I could see as soon as she got here yesterday that she was having trouble handling the strain.”

“The search party will find her soon. Look at all the friends who turned out to help.”

“If it isn’t already too late.” Rita licked her lips and spit out the words she feared the most. “What if she used that gun on herself?”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t do that,” I said. “There’s a logical explanation, I’m sure.”

Patti’s eyes were wide like dinner plates and she opened her mouth to start blabbing. I knew exactly what she was about to tell Rita. That we’d heard shots and they might have come from the missing weapon. “We heard—” was all she had time to say, because right then I stepped down from the bar stool and stomped on her foot as hard as I could, considering I was wearing flip-flops.

Patti’s eyes stayed wide and her mouth made a little round circle. “Owwww,” she said, “that hurt. What’s wrong with you? You did that on purpose.”

I glanced over at Rita, but she’d turned away to talk to someone else, and hadn’t noticed our little exchange. I took the opportunity to bark at Patti. “We aren’t going to tell Rita about the gunshots. She’ll only worry more than she is already, if that’s even possible. Promise you won’t say a word to her.”

“Okay,” Patti said, after thinking it over. “You’re right.”

“But one of us should let Johnny Jay know. And it shouldn’t be me.”

“I’ll call the police chief in a little while and inform him personally. Until then, my lips are sealed with superglue.” Patti slid off the bar stool and wandered off where I couldn’t keep an eye and ear on her in case she couldn’t find the glue. I noticed Holly had vacated the seat on the other side of me as soon as the wings were gone and was mingling with the other customers.

Just then the room went so quiet you could hear a single chicken bone drop onto a paper plate. All eyes turned toward the front of the bar.

Our police chief Johnny Jay, decked out in his full uniform, had entered and everybody who hadn’t realized beforehand was suddenly struck with a remembrance of the past—that it was Johnny’s dad who had been killed by Lauren Kerrigan, struck down and run over by her, not just once, but two times.

And here Johnny was, forced to deal with her as a potential victim because of his position in law enforcement, having to decide when to officially step in and do something about her disappearance and possibly get involved in his own organized search party.

I’ve known our police chief since kindergarten, and we’ve gone rounds all the way through high school and beyond. Raptors and rodents would become best friends before Johnny and I learned to tolerate each other. Unfortunately, because of Johnny Jay’s position of power, he got to be the hawk most of the time, leaving me to scamper for cover like a mouse.

How was I to know the big bully (aka major jerk) would become the police chief?

But right now, I actually felt sorry for him. Or at least I could sympathize over his loss.

To preserve his public image, Johnny Jay would play it by the book, wait the allotted time according to textbook rules before making a decision on Lauren Kerrigan’s alleged disappearance. But on a more personal level, I suspected he wouldn’t look too hard for answers. I also wondered if handling this missing-person case was a conflict of interest for Johnny, considering the past. Although it wasn’t like the town had the option of replacing him. Johnny Jay was pretty much it in the way of law enforcement.

For all I knew, he was responsible for Lauren’s short stay in town. She could be staggering around on the shoulder of the interstate with lumps on her head from Johnny’s police baton, and tar and feathers plastered all over her body.

“What’s going on here?” Johnny Jay wanted to know. I heard the menace in his tone.

“We’re going out to search for Lauren,” Gus Kerrigan, her uncle, said. “And you know it.”

“Maybe she snuck out of Moraine the same way she came in,” Johnny Jay said, really warming up the crowd.

Everybody started talking at once. Some of the comments back and forth got too ugly to repeat. A few of the Kerrigan men looked angry enough to lose self-control and punch the police chief in the face. Especially Terry, Lauren’s younger brother, who was the tallest, bulkiest Kerrigan of the bunch. If he managed to dodge Johnny Jay’s assortment of weapons and got his hands on him, our police chief would end up ground dog meat.