Music to Die For (19 page)

Margaret leaned toward Carrie as if she were going to embrace her, but all she did was brush her cheek against Carrie’s. The aged skin was so soft that the touch seemed more like a gentle breeze than human flesh. Carrie’s natural reaction was to hug Margaret, and, when she did, she felt Margaret’s hands brush the sides of her skirt. She said, “We’ll be here. And... thank you. God speed.”

When Henry reached Carrie’s side, the two of them turned in the direction Margaret had indicated, leaving mother and son together on the porch of the yellow house in the forest.

Following Margaret’s instructions, Carrie and Henry were soon on the main path leading to Dry Creek Lodge.

After they were safely out of Margaret and Nahum’s hearing, Carrie asked, “Did I dream all that?”

“No,” Henry said, “I was there too, but in all my years of police work I never saw anything like this. In fact, I doubt a regular police officer, or anyone who refused to let humanity inform logic, could have experienced what we just did. The whole thing moves me, and gives me hope. Now I believe we will be able to bring the child back safely and get her out of the way before the law moves in.”

“The law? But think of Margaret and Nahum... we can’t.”

“Cara, at least two of Margaret’s sons are involved in a kidnapping. You know that’s a serious crime as well as I do. Would you want them to take someone else’s child next week or next month? They need to be stopped.

“I hope the woman’s right—they wouldn’t hurt Dulcey, but just saw a chance to make extra money. They may have no idea Dulcey is their great-niece, though I think they do know. Why, otherwise, wouldn’t they tell their mother the name of the family the child belongs to? They could even be exacting their form of retribution for the illegitimacy they believe tainted their family. It is convenient for them that Margaret’s radio is broken, isn’t it? She won’t hear local news about Tracy and her family visiting here, or about Farel’s death. His murder must fit in with this somehow. Margaret confirmed he’d been involved in the Culpepers’ business.”

“Oh?” Carrie said. “I wondered. Moonshine?”

“No, today’s version of the same sort of thing. It’s easy to see the signs. I think the Culpepers have a very well developed marijuana growing, production, and distribution business.”

“Well, gracious, how can you tell that? I didn’t see any of that stuff growing...though, come to think of it, I might not recognize the plants.”

“Not quite time for cultivating plants outside. You noticed the old chicken house had light coming from inside?”

“Yes, of course. It looked odd, a glow from within. I wished I had my camera with me to take a picture of it.”

“Good thing you didn’t. We’d have been in big trouble. I’d bet the inside of the chicken house is full of grow lights and small marijuana plants. It’s the right time of year for that. You told me neither the sheriff nor police chief ever sets foot on Culpeper property. Didn’t you also say they can’t decide whether it’s the police or county sheriff who has jurisdiction there? Well, that may be the honest truth, and it may not. It may simply be convenience for everyone. And, the Culpepers probably make enough money to pay several people to look the other way.”

“Henry!”

“It’s true. These days a single marijuana plant can be worth a thousand dollars. It’s my guess the forest is full of those little garden plots like we saw. Almost impossible to see from the air, but big enough for quite a few plants in each one. And they’d have water from the creek just at hand. The location’s ideal. Who would normally walk into deep woods around a sewage plant? It’s a natural deterrent.”

“That’s awful. Margaret’s boys? I’d hate to hurt her.”

“Carrie, she knows quite well what the family business is.”

“What about Nahum? He seems so gentle and kind, very different from his brothers. And, there’s his leg...”

“Probably injured, or broken and improperly set years ago. But he could certainly tend the growing marijuana plants.”

“He can’t read. How sad. Margaret said his father couldn’t read either, though it seems like Nahum’s the only one of her sons that doesn’t. She said Elizabeth was good in school, too. I wonder if he...” She shook her head and changed the subject, deciding she’d think about Nahum’s problems later.

“Henry, tell me this. If their, um, business makes so much money, why on earth does Zeph bother to go out to work driving that bus? It seems odd he’d choose that.”

“Not really. Can you imagine what opportunities his job would provide for distribution of the family’s merchandise without attracting attention? Very conveniently he would usually be working after dark and have long breaks to do what he wanted while the auditorium shows are going on. Besides, just for appearance’s sake, someone in that family should have a legitimate job. Maybe the others did too, in past years.”

She couldn’t resist a laugh. “Margaret must be nearly a hundred years old, her youngest son about our age. They’d probably all be eligible for Social Security.”

She stopped laughing as she thought about Margaret and Nahum, because she realized now that she liked them both very much, no matter what their business was. “Henry, what can we do to protect Margaret and Nahum? I think they’ve suffered enough. I don’t care what the family business is or even if Margaret herself started it!”

“I doubt, at her age, that the law would bother her. And Nahum does seem very different. His attitude of innocence would probably save him from trouble.

“But still, Cara, that’s not our decision. We have to think of Dulcey’s safety first, Farel’s murder second, drug business third. When the child is safe, I can’t promise I won’t talk to someone. In case the law here is being bribed, I’d probably tell the Arkansas State Police.”

“Oh, this gets worse and worse.”

“Well, for now it’s beside the point, except it makes the Culpeper place much more dangerous for us and for any outsider. Our Culpeper relationship story is what’s saved us so far.”

“Yes, it did work pretty well, didn’t it?”

She’d been watching the creek bank as they walked and stopped now to look more closely at white blossoms bobbing next to the water. “See, Henry, bloodroot. How delicate the blooms are—they only last one day. I love the shape of the leaves, too. But then, all the wildflowers seem like miniature miracles to me.”

She looked up at him and said, almost whispering, “Here’s another miracle. Margaret talked to me about the gowerow
before
she knew about Dulcey...”

Henry smiled. “Yes, I know.”

After walking a few steps in silence, she asked, “How much of this are we going to tell Chase and Tracy? I’d love to give them the good news, but what can we say? ‘Hey, guess what, you have a whole family you didn’t know existed whose business is drugs, and, surprise, your mean old uncles kidnapped your daughter, and your grandmother is going to help us save her.’ They’d want to go with us, of course, and who knows how either of them would act, and...well, we can’t tell them! We’ve got to do this alone, don’t we? The two of us?”

“I wouldn’t even let you come, Cara, but it does seem the danger tonight will be minimal. Nahum’s house is close to the sewage plant road, and we don’t need to go near anything else the Culpepers own.”

“Thanks for the concern, Henry King, but you need me with you. I’m sure a grandmotherly type will be less frightening for Dulcey than big old you. Besides, you already know you couldn’t keep me from coming along.”

“Yes, I’m afraid I do know that. But you’re right, we can’t tell Chase or Tracy anything until this is all over, and maybe not the complete story, even then.”

“I’ve got it! Let’s just tell everyone that Margaret thinks she might be able to help and is checking her country grapevine...or something like that. That’s kind of hopeful, isn’t it? Oh, this is so awful for Tracy. I keep thinking how I’d feel if it were my child...if it were Rob.”

“Or my Susan or Johnny,” Henry added.

They walked in silence again. Thinking about Rob, Susan, or Henry’s baby grandson Johnny being kidnapped had made Carrie’s eyes start to feel wet again. She reached in her skirt pocket, looking for a tissue.

What on earth? Then she remembered Margaret’s hand near her pocket. She pulled out her own hand and opened it.

A blue hair ribbon, the mate to the one she’d seen in Farel’s house, lay on her palm.

This time the note stuck in the door to their room read, “Phone us, 143A.”

“I’ll be right over,” Jason said as soon as he heard Carrie’s voice. “Eleanor wants to stay here in case either Chase or Tracy needs her.”

It was a subdued Jason who walked in the door this time. Henry already had his shoes off and was sitting on one bed with his back against the headboard, so Jason lowered himself into a rocking chair.

After letting Jason in, Carrie pulled off her own shoes, pushed the pillows on her bed up against the headboard, sat back, and waited.

Jason rubbed his hand back and forth across his forehead. She was sure he didn’t realize what he was doing or care that he was pushing the small amount of hair growing above his ears into bristly spikes.

He looked at her and sighed. “Have you told us all you know about this?”

“Yes,” she said, not looking at Henry.

“Well, things are bad enough, God knows, but Eleanor and I agree there is something besides the kidnapping—an undercurrent of trouble between those two—just like you said there might be.

“After we had Chase and Tracy settled in their room, I brought soup and cornbread from the restaurant. Eleanor got them to eat, and they’re both asleep now.”

Jason held his hands up in frustration. “They aren’t talking to each other at all and will barely speak to us beyond saying ‘thank you.’ They’re wrapped inside two separate balls of misery. It’s way beyond what you’d expect, even from parents whose child has been kidnapped. This is a time they’d need each other most, wouldn’t you think? Are they blaming each other? Do they think their child is dead?”

After a pause, he continued, “Chase finally fell asleep on top of one of the beds, but Tracy couldn’t settle down until Eleanor sat by her on the other bed, rubbing her back like she sometimes did for our daughters. Finally, Tracy fell asleep too. And that’s it. That’s all.”

Henry asked, “I guess you got away from Brigid Mason’s house without problems?”

“Oh, yes, that part was okay. It worked pretty much like we planned. Chase and Tracy did look a lot like us after his mother was through with them. She knows how to do stage make-up. The clothing and Tracy’s face stuff all went in that suitcase of yours and a big paper bag. Mrs. Mason packed some cookies she insisted on sending with us in a large priority mail box, then, after Chase and Tracy were in the car with their things, we rushed out with the box, hollering about getting to the post office before the mail went out.

“The reporters looked at us, of course, and there were video cameras, but the car was always between us and the reporters, and the windows were rolled up when we drove through the crowd. Fortunately none of them followed us. One possibility we hadn’t thought of was that they might follow, planning to catch us for an interview at the post office. As it was, I doubt a single one of them suspected what we were really doing.”

Carrie resisted the urge to ask what Brigid Mason’s house was like. “Didn’t Chase or Tracy say anything interesting at all?”

“No. That’s what I mean, nothing. Tracy has been restless—mumbling something about Farel in her sleep, so Eleanor is staying close by. I’ll hate to wake either of them to go to that bird box, but I don’t think they’d forgive us if we went without them.” He paused a moment before asking, “How long have they been married?”

Carrie shrugged and looked over at Henry, who said, “They were singing as a married couple when I moved to Arkansas, so it can’t be less than five years.”

She said, “Dulcey is four. I suppose Tracy is somewhere around twenty-three. From what Bobby Lee Logan said, she hadn’t been out of high school long when she married Chase. Why? Is it important?”

“Well, I guess we’d all react to the kidnapping of our child in different ways, but it’s like those two are living in separate worlds, not a team at all, not partners, and I doubt it began with the kidnapping. It’s like they’re frozen apart and had been for some time before this happened.”

“There’ve been rumors about troubles recently— temperament, that sort of thing,” Henry said. “That’s been going on for five or six months...long enough for a few tabloid-type magazines to pick up on it at least.”

And, thought Carrie, it’s been about that long since Farel went to tell Tracy they weren’t blood relations and could have married.

Aloud, she said, “Brigid Mason did say Bobby Lee was telling people Dulcey was really Farel’s daughter. I found out he made the story up simply because he doesn’t like Chase. But it’s a story Brigid didn’t want her children to hear.”

“Well, they heard it,” Jason said, “or at least Chase did. While we were changing clothes, he turned the radio on. Some reporter mentioned it. He just laughed, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh sound that people make when they really think something is funny. Know what I mean? Chase Mason didn’t think that story was funny at all.”

Carrie had pulled Dulcey’s blue hair ribbon out of her pocket and was busy untying and re-tying it.

“What’s that?” Jason asked.

“Oh!” She shoved the ribbon back in her pocket. “A piece of ribbon.”

“A piece of ribbon? It’s a girl’s hair ribbon, isn’t it? Is it Dulcey’s?” Now Jason was leaning forward in the rocker.

Carrie didn’t dare look at Henry. She couldn’t believe she’d been dumb enough to take Dulcey’s hair bow out of her pocket. Now they’d have to trust Jason and Eleanor with more of the story than they’d planned. Otherwise, how could they explain the ribbon?

“So you did find out something?” Jason asked. “Good news?”

Carrie only nodded and stared at the quilt on her bed so, after a moment of silence, Henry began to give Jason an abridged version of their afternoon’s adventure.

She sat there, feeling incredibly stupid and wondering what poor Henry would say when he got to the part of the story where the presence of the hair ribbon must be explained.