Snakes Among Sweet Flowers (17 page)

“Dad. Dad. Dad, dad, daddaddaddadmom,” Jackson repeated until it was just one word, then he seemed to forget what he wanted to say and went silent.

Cam glanced between Walter and Pamela, wondering how rude it would be to just walk out and never look back. How had asking if he could visit their son started some family thing?

Jackson appeared to be asleep, so no help was coming from that direction.

“Okay, well, like I said, we’re—” But Cam was interrupted before he could finish.

“Go,” Jackson said without opening his eyes, startling everyone. At first, Cam thought he was talking to him, like he didn’t want him there or was warning him to run for his life. Then he continued, sort of. “Don’t cancel, Momma. Cam can take care of me.”

What?
Take care of him? What did that even entail, and why did he have to be the one to do it?

Pamela smiled at Cam like he’d been the one to offer. “That’s nice of you, but I’m not leaving my son like this.”

“I…. What?” Cam was at a loss.

“Pam is the scheduled speaker at a Baptist women’s conference. It’s a big honor.” Walter nodded and it was obvious he was proud of his wife. “It’s not ’til Thursday morning, but she has decided to cancel.” It was also obvious that Walter didn’t agree with his wife’s decision.

It wasn’t like Jackson was going to be much trouble, all laid up in the hospital. “Well, I can come visit him every day if you need me to.”

Walter patted his back. “That’s good of you. But the doctor plans on him being released by then.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here. I’m taking care of Jackson and that is that.” Pamela was frowning at Cam like he was the one arguing with her.

Released? Oh boy. He didn’t know anything about taking care of someone, especially someone who was injured, and all he needed was a cop in the house. Even if it was Jackson Rhodes, all laid up and helpless….

“Yeah, I think that would be best,” Cam agreed, like he had some say in it.

“We can help,” Luanne interjected, then turned to Jackson’s parents. “We go to Mr. Sanders’s house to do yard work.”

“And paint!” Tony added.

“And paint…,” Jackson said, eyes still closed. “Cam’s gonna take care of me, Momma.” Why did he keep saying things like that?

Pamela smiled and patted Jackson’s hand. “We’ll discuss this later, honey.”

Cam nodded, although he knew she wasn’t talking to him. “Sure enough. We’re gonna get.” He waved the kids out and herded them down the hall and past the policemen gathered around one of the other doors. What the hell was Jackson doing volunteering him for this shit? At least his mom had more sense than to put him in charge of a sick person’s care. It was a wonder Cam could even take care of himself. And here he was responsible for three kids too. Speaking of which, he needed to entertain them for the afternoon. It occurred to him then, that prospect wasn’t as bad as he would have thought in the past.

SATURDAY MORNING,
Cam found himself at loose ends. He didn’t have children coming over or any real plans for the day so he took his time getting started for a change. With a fresh cup of coffee in hand, he and Tommasina went out to the front porch for a bit. The afternoon before, he’d taken the kids to a movie after they left the hospital. Cam had enjoyed seeing their faces light up with excitement as the theater had darkened and the movie began. They’d each had their laps full of snacks and sat totally enraptured for the entire show. He smiled as he thought about them now. It was hard to believe how much he had grown to like the kids in just a week. Enough to miss having them around on a quiet Saturday morning. He rocked and enjoyed the cool breeze until his coffee was gone, but soon enough his thoughts got to firing on Harold and what might be happening in Atlanta. That was a topic he needed to keep his mind away from, so he pulled himself up from the chair and headed back inside.

He spent the rest of the morning cleaning the house. He changed the sheets on his bed, did laundry, swept and vacuumed, and deep cleaned both the bathroom and the kitchen. Although the work was hard, it was also mindless, leaving him fighting to keep his thoughts away from things he had no business thinking of. Around noon, he decided to run get some lunch and then spend the afternoon working out in the garage. For some reason, the house seemed too quiet and he needed to get out.

Cam was already halfway through his sub sandwich when he parked his truck in front of the garage and climbed out. A blue Ford Taurus was parked in front of one of the bays, and Dotty Calhoun stood in the open driver’s door waiting for him.

“I had about decided you weren’t working today, young man,” Dotty said with a smile.

Cam smiled back and wrapped the rest of his sandwich up for later. “Sorry about that, ma’am. What can I do for you?”

Dotty stepped to the back of her car and patted the trunk. “I need your expertise. There is an odd rattling noise when I drive and I’m scared it’s something serious. Can you take a look?”

Cam nodded and held out his hand. “Let me take it for a short drive so I can hear what it’s doing.” Once he had her keys in hand, he headed for the door to his waiting room and unlocked it. “You can wait in here. Turn on the AC if it gets too stuffy, all right?”

She paused once inside the room and turned back to Cam, a worried expression on her face. “If it costs more than a couple hundred to fix, I may have to wait ’til next month to get it done. I don’t like to dip into my savings if I can help it.”

Cam gave her a reassuring smile. “Let’s don’t get worried just yet. Let me see what we’re dealing with first, okay?”

Cam climbed in the car and backed it out into the road, then drove off. The car smelled like a little old lady, with a pine-scented air freshener and remnants of some flowery perfume. There was a travel pack of Kleenex in the cup holder and the radio tuned to some conservative talk station. Her purse still sat on the passenger seat, even unzipped. Dotty was everything Cam looked for in a victim. She was trusting and had already told him how much she was willing to spend in repairs. Well, unless he wanted to let her pay the balance the following month or convince her it was important enough to pull from her savings. Normally, his mind would be spinning with the possibilities of the scam, but he found himself feeling a bit nauseated at the mere thought of putting a fast one over on Dotty. In fact, he was hoping that he’d find the cause of her problems to be a cheap and easy fix.

“I’m getting soft,” he said to himself as he pulled back into the garage parking lot. He unlocked the garage bay door and pushed it up, then turned as Dotty stepped out of the waiting room and looked at him expectantly.

“Let me get it up on the lift and I’ll tell you what I think,” he said before getting back in the car and pulling it into the bay.

Once he’d gotten underneath the car and poked around for a minute, he turned to Dotty, who still stood close by, as if she was waiting for a doctor to tell her what was wrong with one of her kids.

A few weeks ago, he would have made this visit into a moneymaker, and he silently questioned himself one last time if that wasn’t what he wanted to do now. Instead, he waved Dotty over and pointed up at the underside of her car.

“See this right here? It’s the heat shield that wraps around your muffler. And this screw right here? It’s loose. Which is causing it to be able to do this.” He moved the shield with his hand, re-creating the clanking sound Dotty had been hearing.

“So how do we fix it?” Dotty asked, still not seeing how simple the repair was going to be.

Cam sighed at the easy scam he was giving up and reached behind him for a wrench. “Well,” he said, all professional-like. “We take this and twist this bolt right here. And then—” He attempted to move the heat shield again, but it didn’t budge. “Fixed.”

Dotty’s mouth dropped open as she stared at Cam. Finally, she asked, “That’s it?”

He nodded. “That’s it. Now, if it starts rattling again, we might need to replace the bolt, but it’s nothing urgent and still won’t take but a minute to do.” He guided her out from under the car and then lowered it back to the garage floor.

She still seemed in shock, but after Cam had backed her car out, she asked, “How much do I owe you?”

Cam chuckled. “To turn a screw? That’s on the house.”

“Oh no! You are not in business to give your services away for free. No matter how simple, I would never have been able to fix that problem without you. Now how much do I owe you?” Dotty had wagged her finger at him through her little speech, and Cam was grinning when she was done.

“All right. How ’bout another of your pies? That seems like a fair price.”

That put a smile on Dotty’s face, and she offered her hand to shake on the deal. “I’ll plan on doing some baking this week, unless you are in some hurry.”

“No hurry, ma’am. Just when you have time.” Cam shook her hand and then watched as she climbed in the car and backed out. He waved as she drove off, then went and fetched the remainder of his sandwich. Leaning against the front quarter panel of his truck, he leisurely ate the rest, bewildered at his inability to run his usual con.

“HELLO?”

It was after dark when Cam asked to be connected with Jackson Rhodes’s room, but he’d expected Jackson’s parents to answer, not the man himself. Jackson sounded less like a junkie than he had the day before, which made Cam consider hanging up for a second. What was he doing? It wasn’t like he and Jackson were friends or anything.

“Hello?”

“Oh, hey,” Cam finally said. “I, uh….” He got stuck there and went silent again.

“Cam?” Jackson asked. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, I just, you know, wanted to….” What? What did he want to do?

“Thanks for bringing the kids by yesterday. Mom said you were here. I don’t remember much of anything that happened, but….” He chuckled and Cam found himself smiling.

“You were pretty fucked up there, Sheriff. I was wondering if that truck didn’t hit you in the head or something.”

Jackson laughed harder, then groaned and got quiet. “Shit. Don’t make me laugh,” he grumbled, but then chuckled again, although a bit more carefully. “Sorry if I said anything crazy while you were here.”

“No problem. I’m thinking I might could blackmail you with some of it, though.” Cam grinned. “So how you feeling?”

“Better. I’m still pretty loaded on pain meds, though. I’m sure I wouldn’t be half this good if I weren’t.” Jackson got quiet, and Cam searched for something to say, but then Jackson sighed and added, “The state patrol officer who was standing right next to me…. He died this afternoon. I, uh….” Again with the silence.

Cam grunted and struggled for a response.

“Do you ever think about dying, Cam?”

Whoa.
Hadn’t this conversation taken a turn for the morbid real quick? “Yeah. Not looking forward to it.”

“That guy was thirty-two. He had a kid and a wife.” Jackson’s voice cracked, and it took a minute before he continued. “I just…. Why was it him and not me?”

And now they were on to philosophy, not his strong suit. Cam scratched his head and frowned. “Why does anything happen, Jackson? I know you believe in a God and all that. But do you think he sticks his fingers in everything that happens down here? Maybe it’s all just a game of chance and we can’t control anything, you know? So we do the best we can and hope it’s good enough.” He shrugged. “I’m sure you’d get better answers from someone else. I just wanted to check in on you, you know?”

“Yeah. Sorry for going all weepy. This is screwing with my mind.”

“No, I get it. I wish I could give you answers, but obviously I got no clues, right?”

“Actually, what you said made a lot of sense. I think I just need more sleep and things will even out some.”

“Yeah. You get some sleep and I’ll check in with you later, okay?”

“Night, Cam.”

“Night, Sheriff.”

SUNDAY MORNING
was another quiet one, and Cam found himself looking forward to having the kids back the next day. He sat on the porch again with his coffee, and once it was done, he had no idea what to do with himself. It was unlike him to need constant interaction, and it wasn’t like he didn’t have tons to do around the house, but he was feeling itchy that morning for some reason.

He went back inside, poured another cup of coffee, and grabbed his cell phone on the way back out. Cam stared at it a good long time before finally dialing his mother’s number and putting the phone to his ear.

When he heard his mother’s voice on the other end, he said, “Hey, Mom, just checking in.”

“Hey, baby,” she responded, and then he heard the click of her lighter and pictured her lighting her first cigarette of the day, or maybe her tenth for all he knew. On an exhale that he could imagine producing a halo of smoke around her head, she asked, “Everything okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah, pretty good. I like it here. It’s… different, you know?”

“Mmm, that’s good, but what you gonna do about the people calling here for you? One man came by. He looked mad that I didn’t know anything. Maybe you shouldn’t have left your car here.”

“What did he look like? And what did you tell him?” Cam leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. Maybe he shouldn’t have called his mom. He’d be better not knowing this shit, right?

“He was crazy-looking, Cam. And one of his eyes was all wrong, like it didn’t work or something. I told him I didn’t know where you were and he said I better find out.”

Cam’s heart was pounding. His mother hadn’t been the best in the world, but he hadn’t meant to leave her in this kind of situation, and he was pretty sure Harold would have no problem whatsoever messing up his mom.

“Listen, Mom. You been wanting to go visit Aunt Mary, right? Why don’t you pack up and go up there for a visit? It’d be a good time, you know?”

“You think he’d do something to me, Cam?”

Cam let that hang in the air a moment as he thought about all the things Harold had done. Finally, he answered simply. “Yeah.”