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Voices all around me
were speaking Spanish. I didn’t exactly black out. I just lost track of reality for a few minutes. (Actually, I later learned it was more like ten. But who cares?) A brace of hands helped me struggle to my feet. The calloused palms were rough, but the touch was gentle. I swayed and a strong arm held me. The wind had been knocked out of me. I was having trouble breathing.

A crew from the landscaping business at the end of the access road had seen my wild ride and stopped to help. With the rush of business, and the demands of fall planting, they worked seven days a week. While I was busy trying to kill myself on the access road, they’d been returning for another round of trees to plant.

“Okay?
Señora
, okay?” An anxious man in a clean but tattered T-shirt waved his hands in front of my face. He stuck his face close to mine as he tried to determine how with-it I was. I focused on his eyes, liquid brown like Hershey’s syrup.

“I’m … okay.” I unbuckled my helmet and took it off gingerly with my right hand. My
amigo
grabbed it and indicated he’d carry it for me.

A second man braced me on my left. His face was as leathery as a dog’s chew toy. His lips were pursed in concentration. He was careful to use his arms as a ledge so I could balance my weight on him without putting pressure on the raw strip of exposed flesh on my arm.

I took a step. My hip felt stiff. My calf stung where I’d lost another patch of skin. My head felt like it was splitting.

I took another step. I didn’t think anything was broken. My Latino saviors half-carried, half-walked me up the hill, cooing over me and clucking over my bike. One of them opened the tiny knapsack under my bike seat. He ran off with my keys in his hand, and it occurred to me for one wild moment that I was about to be the victim of a car hijacking as well as a bike wreck survivor. Then I felt ashamed of myself.

My new friends made me sit in their truck as they dabbed my arm with clean bandanas soaked in water. They emptied the entire contents of their thermal jugs onto me, a little at a time. They alternated between arguing among themselves and asking repeatedly, “Okay? Okay? Hospital?”

I shook my head no and saw my own car coming up and pulling in behind us. Bless that guy’s heart, he’d run all the way down the road for my BMW. He threw open the passenger door and gestured to his friends.

The fellows loaded me into my car and gently set my mangled bike on the rack. Their workday was over and while they had been kind enough to help, now they were eager to go home.

I made it as far as the parking lot of the large office building at the intersection of the access road and 40. My head was spinning. I wasn’t sure I could drive safely.

I started to whimper. I didn’t want Detweiler to see me like this. Maggie wouldn’t be sympathetic. Dodie and Horace had enough on their plate. Bama was running the store. I couldn’t deal with telling Ben what I’d done—after I’d turned him down for a date. Sheila would throw a hizzy and I’d never make it out of the hospital. Or her home. Johnny worked at a construction site on the weekends until dark. He was making money to pay Mert back for his legal defense of years ago. I opened my cell phone and scanned the directory.

“Mert? I’ve had an accident. Could you come get me? Please?”

___

Mert was across the road with a friend shopping at the super Walmart. That store was bigger than the footprint of the Arch and needed its own Zip Code.

I don’t know how she managed to get me out of my car, back into the passenger side and home, but she did. Her friend—whose name I never did catch—followed behind in Mert’s truck as sort of a hillbilly caravan. Mert stopped at a Walgreens, ran in and bought a huge bag of Epsom Salts. She shoved a bottle of water my way. I swigged it gratefully. Once she got me home, she insisted on drawing a bath for me. I swear she poured in two cups of the salts. I’d been peeled like a banana. My exposed flesh stung like it was on fire. I held myself above the stew and went down slowly. Then I reasoned it would be best to get it over with, and I plunged in. My raw, denuded skin stung like a mother. I now have new sympathy for a pork chop being brined. Bruises were beginning to show up on my shins, my thighs, and my ribs. In addition, my one shin still bore the scab from a previous bad job of shaving. Plus there was that skinned heel. It smarted along with my new owwies.

Mert stood back and surveyed me. “Better cancel that nude photo shoot for
Playboy
. ’Less of course it’s their annual S & M edition.”

“Ha, ha, ha.” I sank lower in the water. “They have an S & M edition?”

“Beats me.” She snickered. “Get it? Beats me? I’ll be back.”

She returned with a glass of ice water in one hand and a cup of hot tea in the other. She handed over the cool drink and a small pill.

“What’s this?”

“Illegal drugs. It’s Bextra. They took it off the market, remember? It’s dang good stuff and I only have ten of ’em left, but I’m willing to share. Where’s the kid?”

I groaned. “At Jennifer Moore’s house.” I made a move to get out of the tub. Everything hurt. I moaned.

“You might want to give that Bextra a chance.” Mert motioned me to sit while she perched on the edge of my tub and put the tea on my bathroom counter. She was wearing a T-shirt with the logo of Cheers, a south county bar. Five gold earrings marched up the outside of each of her ears, and I wondered idly if she was pierced in other parts of her body as well. I knew she had a butterfly tattoo on her right ankle and an angel on her lower back. She also had a degree in history from Southern Missouri. Go figger.

“Why the tea?”

“Don’t know. They always drink it in those English novels when a body’s had a shock. How come you didn’t have on any panties?”

While I thought this a bit personal, heck, I was sitting here naked as a jay bird and sprouting black and blue marks before her very eyes. Didn’t seem like the time to complain.

“You don’t wear panties with bike shorts. They make the seams real flat. No chaffing.”

“Huh.” Mert snorted as she scooped up my bike shorts, bra, and jersey and tossed them into my dirty clothes basket. “Never been chaffed in my life. Won’t happen if you wear your undies inside out. Put the smooth side next to your girlie bits. My momma taught me that.”

You learn something every day.

She studied me critically. “You got that Angelina Jolie thing going on with your lips. Puffy? Whoowee. Forget collagen, girl. Of course, you’re moving like the Tin Man before they oiled him, so I guess you won’t be strolling down the catwalk any time soon. You still planning to go to that meeting with the Gartners?”

She gave me a long, appraising look, and said, “If you’re wanting to do that, we better trade my truck for your car. A fancy-shmancy convertible won’t fit in with that crowd.” I allowed as how she was probably right. I rose out of the tub and the water that had turned cold. Mert said nothing as she watched me towel off.

InStyle Magazine
doesn’t offer fashion suggestions for white supremacist gatherings. I was on my own. I figured Walmart chic was my best bet. I positioned large gauze bandages over my oozing patches of flesh with Mert’s help before I pulled on a long-sleeved button-up blouse and a below-the-knee jeans skirt. I slid my arms into a navy hoodie by Hanes. Even though the temperature outside was on the high side of seventy, a testimony to the Indian summer we were having this fall, I shivered and my teeth chattered A delayed sense of shock was settling in, my bravado was quickly being replaced by nerves.

I had nearly died. If I’d continued my descent toward Highway 40, I might have wound up under the wheels of a motorist busy on his cell phone. I could have been hauled off in a body bag. I swallowed hard to keep from retching.

Mert watched me, her head tilted to one side the way a cat does when regarding a bird outside the window. I half-expected her to reach up and paw at me.

“You stop to consider that weren’t no accident?”

I froze. Okay, yes, the thought had flitted through my addled brain. Primarily as I hobbled around the back of my car and got a gander at my bike. It was a crumpled mess. Bloody, too.

This was the second time a big black car had nearly done me in.

Coincidence?

I didn’t think so.

I’d managed an invitation
to the inner sanctum, sort of, of the local white supremists. All my journalism training told me this was a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity.

Once-in-a-lifetime because I might not live through it.

After I cleared Danny Gartner as a potential killer, I could tell Detweiler about Mrs. Toad’s Wild Ride. If I told him now, he’d lock me up rather than let me go to the barbecue. If he locked me up, I’d never have the chance to study up close the people who hated my late husband and daughter for no reason at all.

There was no time for second thoughts. I had a murderer to catch. Or a party to attend. Whichever. I was a bit unsure. (Maybe that Bextra was kicking in.)

On my feet were simple, scuffed-up flats. My clothes were drab and modest. I flicked a layer of mascara on my lashes, rubbed in a dot of blush, and slicked lip gloss on my mouth. I looked like a woman who’d been beaten by her husband. Bet I’d fit right in.

Mert studied me critically. “I got half a mind to call that detective and tell him what you’re up to.”

“Don’t you dare. Mert, do you think I’m chasing him? I mean, is it that obvious?”

“I think you’re confused as a polecat raising a black and white kitten. I know this thing with Dodie’s got you all het up.” She sighed. “I know how much that Detweiler means to you. And I can see why. He’s got a good heart. I’d like to slap him silly for leading you on, though. Hon, I know you two were made for each other. I can see it in your faces. But I also know you can’t have him. It’s hard to stay away from candy, especially when you’re on a diet, in’t it?”

I nodded. Time to change the channel. “I am worried about what Anya saw. Really, I am. I’m not just chasing after Detweiler. It’s bad enough that goon who killed my husband is still out there. I can’t live with the worry that another someone’s out there. I can’t stand the idea that two different people might want to hurt Anya.”

Mert nodded. “I hear you. I know you think you’re doing what’s right. But I ain’t sure why you’re doing this. Sissy Gilchrist Gartner was low-count. Nobody’s sad she’s gone. Somehow she managed to take a good man with her when Coach Johnson died. If I knew what you were thinking, I’d feel a heap better about this whole thing. I mean, I think whoever done her in, well, he or she ain’t after your kid. You know? Besides, it weren’t only your daughter. There was two of them, right? So your kid has a one-in-two chance of being picked on.”

Yeah, I’d thought of that. And I’d asked myself in those crucial moments as I waited for Mert to come rescue me, why did I care so much?

Well, actually I had several reasons. But I knew one of them would totally explain why I thought Sissy Gilchrist deserved justice.

I went over to the pile of papers I’d tucked in a folder. I withdrew Sissy Gilchrist’s essay. Mert read it slowly. Out loud she read Sissy’s explanation for wanting to work at CALA. Her voice cracked and grew husky as she spoke Sissy’s words: “Honestly, I’d like to work here because of my son, Christopher. He’s the most important person in the world to me, and I love him with all my heart. I want to be around to protect him. He’s all I have in this world that is true and good.”

Mert handed the papers back to me. “And now she’s gone.”

“Yes. Now she’s gone.”

“And you think Danny Gartner’s behind this?”

“Detweiler and the Major Case Squad can’t get good information about his whereabouts. You can see why: It’s small-town cops protecting their own against big-city cops. If I can find out where Danny was, Detweiler can take it from there.”

“But they say that coach shot himself. Don’t you see? You’re wasting your time, girl. He killed himself because he felt guilty.”

I couldn’t take having yet another friend angry with me. I told her about Detweiler’s news. “Corey Johnson was shot with a revolver. It wasn’t a suicide. The ballistics came back. Cops favor revolvers. They never jam.”

“I know that about them guns.”

“So who’s the best suspect? Danny Gartner. Danny who might not have an alibi. Danny who hated blacks.”

“How’d he get into the school?”

“I’m betting he was disguised as one of the workers laying bricks for the new cafeteria. We still don’t have an accurate list of who attended the sports booster meeting. Lots of people roamed that hall, but the kids were accustomed to seeing the workers. You know how it is. You see people all the time. But if they are in service—”

“Like me when I’m cleaning.”

I wasn’t going to say that, but she was right. “Like you when you’re cleaning. You become invisible. In fact, I remember reading about a hospital CEO. He paid all this money to trainers to teach teambuilding. To test the results, he dressed as a housekeeper for a week. Not one of his management team ever spoke to him.”

Mert snorted. “I could’ve told him that’d happen.”

“At CALA, the cops ignored Mr. Beacon. They didn’t even interview him. Why? Because he’s a worker bee. So, logically, anyone who was dressed to blend in, could have. Just like I’ll do tonight. But the person with a motive—revenge—and a weapon—a revolver—would be Danny Gartner.”

Mert’s eyes swept over me. “You need a touch-up on that bruise on your face.” She dabbed a bit of cover-up on my temple and tamped it with her ring finger. Now she studied me. “Something’s missing. Here,” she reached behind her head and unclasped her crucifix.

“I couldn’t—”

She latched the clasp and adjusted the gold cross with the dying Jesus right below my throat. With cool fingers, she reached inside my collar and pulled up the Star of David I wore under my clothes. Once she unclasped it, she folded the Jewish symbol into my hand. “You put this away. That cross has seen me through a lifetime of troubles. I’ll send it with prayers for you.”

“I appreciate the sentiment. But I’m not sure it’s right. I mean, it’s been a long time since I wore a cross. Since I promised George we’d have a Jewish household. I don’t want to be disrespectful. I mean, it’s one thing to borrow your truck and another to take something that’s sacred to you.”

“Ain’t nothing as sacred as our love for our friends. Love thy neighbor as thyself, right? Besides, this here’s my philosophy: Jews, Christians, Muslims. As long as we all believe in Jesus, what’s the difference?”

My sentiments exactly.