Southern Charm (12 page)

When Max settled into his chair. Connor sat opposite him. "I'm sure Howard Corkille has told you his pathetic little story. He probably even told you some of the truth. But what you should know is that Terrance Hull is not seeking the painting as some sort of retribution upon Corkille for deceiving his grandfather. He never even liked the old man that much. No, Terrance Hull needs to find the painting for the same reason he needed to get his journal back a year ago. They are two of three key charms to a powerful spell. I was to cast that spell, but because of you, Hull is not as confident in me as he once was. When you help me get this painting back to him," she said, her eyes turned toward the ceiling as if peering into the future, "he will care about me again."

"So, what's this spell?"

"Simply to raise Tucker Hull back from the grave with more power than he ever had when alive, to restore him to his place as the head of the Hull family, but this time, with an enormous fortune to wield."

"Is that all?"

Dr. Connor curled her lip. "For now."

"And you actually think I'll help you do this?"

She placed her middle finger on Max's forehead and slid it down to the tip of his nose. "You will be eager to help me."

Max swore she kept speaking, but he could not hear anything. A weight pressed into his body as if a sandbag had been dumped into his lap. At first, he thought it was fear taking over. As Dr. Connor edged back, concentrating on him and mouthing silent words, he knew the weight was not fear but some kind of spell.

"Stop this." He tried to lift his arms but they wouldn't budge from his side.

"I just need to ensure that you won't do anything rash."

"I'm not going to help you," he said, while a voice deep inside questioned his timing for bravado.

"I wonder what your wife will say about it?"

"What?"

"She must be feeling a bit lonely outside, in that cold car, waiting for you to play your little detective game with me. She must be wishing something more exciting would happen."

Max strained against his invisible bonds. Though he knew she would never hear him, Max screamed Sandra's name, begged her to drive away — even as he pictured Dr. Connor's hired hands ripping open the car door and yanking her out. She would struggle. She would fight back with a kick or a punch, but they would overpower her.

The witch had his wife.

Dr. Connor sauntered to her rolltop desk and opened the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel's. She tipped back her head and guzzled for a moment. With a satisfied exhalation, she returned to Max. "Now," she said, "you will help me get that painting, so that I may return to Terrance's favor. If you don't, I'm sure the Hulls will always have need for a good blood sacrifice."

With the coldest, most hateful scorn he ever held, Max nodded. He thought to threaten her should anything happen to Sandra, but he could see in her eyes that she knew. And though Drummond was not in the room, Max could hear his strong voice saying, "There's no way this is going to end up good."

Max slammed open his office door, cracking the glass right across the gold-painted 319, and headed straight for the bookshelf. He grabbed the first book he could reach, opened it, found only pages, and tossed it aside. Another book. Another. And another.

Drummond entered from the ceiling and said, "Um, Max? You feeling okay?"

"What does it look like?" He tilted three books from the shelf and watched them fall to the floor.

"Take it easy. Those are my books."

"You got a gun here and I want it."

"I don't have a gun."

Max grabbed the well-used book that hid Drummond's whiskey bottle. "You got this. And I don't believe at all that you ever went around without a gun when you were alive. So, where is it?"

"Calm down."

"Get me the fucking gun!"

"I swear I don't have one."

Max scanned the room until his eyes rested on the floor. "Of course," he said, and stomped on the floorboards. "Which one is it? Tell me."

"I don't—"

"Damn it!" Max said, hammering his desk with his fist. "They've got Sandra. You understand that? That witch took her from me. So, you tell me where that gun is. I've got to get her back."

Despite the pain of corporeal contact, Drummond concentrated enough to push a chair closer to Max. "Tell me what happened."

Max stared at the chair, his hands itching to rip up the floor, but finally lowered his head with a sigh. He pulled the whiskey from the book and drank. Then he told everything as best as he could remember. Twice he had to stop for another swig. He hoped Drummond would cut him off and reveal the location of a gun, but the ghost only listened until the telling finished.

"This is bad," Drummond said.

"Now you know. Please, where's the gun?"

"What do you think you're going to do? Go blazing into Hull family headquarters and demand Sandra back or you'll start shooting?"

Sheepish, Max said, "Something like that."

"No." The timbre of Drummond's voice caught Max's attention — filled with sorrow and shock. Drummond closed in on Max, his body lacking the usual grace of a ghost and instead moving like he felt every year since his death attacking each muscle. He was worried. That worried Max more. "I've dealt with things like this before," Drummond said. "And we've both dealt with Hull. You know you can't just go running in there. You'll only get her killed and probably yourself, too."

"I can't just sit here."

"You need to get control of yourself so we can plan. Now, you said they want you to find the painting, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, we have found it. Let's see if our seller wrote back to Sandra. If we're lucky, we can get that painting fast, and then we'll have something of value to them."

An e-mail awaited them on Sandra's computer (Max felt weird using her property as if he was already stepping toward the acknowledgement that she might no longer need such things) — the seller wanted to do the transaction by mail. Max wrote back that the painting was meant as a gift, so he needed it right away. The seller replied that for a few extra dollars, he'd use overnight shipping.

"We can't do that," Drummond said. Max agreed. It was too easy to see Hull somehow intercepting the package.

Drummond clapped his hands at a new idea. "Tell him that we'll pay an extra fifty percent if he'll meet us tomorrow."

"In case you forgot, we don't have any money."

"It's going on a credit card, isn't it?"

Max kicked the desk. Then he wrote the offer. The seller agreed to meet at the North Carolina Welcome Center off Route 77, but he wanted to meet right away.

"He thinks we're doing something illegal," Drummond said. "Could work to our advantage. Meet him at two a.m. It'll give you time to get ready but it's so early that he'll still feel secretive about it. That's good for us."

Max wrote back and the deal was set.

"Get some rest," Drummond said when Max turned off the computer. "You'll be on the road in a few hours. I'll come as far as I can, but I suspect the border is a bit longer than my leash will allow."

Max threw back a last shot of whiskey, barely feeling the burn in his throat, and propped his feet up on the desk.
Just like an old detective,
he thought, picturing Drummond back in the 1940s. It almost felt good. But with Sandra in such danger, good feelings, like sleep, would not come.

* * * *

The Welcome Center had always struck Max as more than a glorified rest stop. Situated on the slope of a mountain, Highway 77 barely audible from the distance thanks to copious trees, the place reminded Max of a lovely park. In fact, were it closer to home, he might have considered it a nice place for a picnic, though the terraced land had been designated mostly for parking. At the top of a series of stairways, the open building sat providing bathrooms to weary travelers.

Max stood by his car and watched as the few people on the road this late at night stretched and walked. The lot below rumbled with the sounds of numerous trucks — most set up for the driver to sleep for a few hours. A heavyset man paced at the top of the stairs leading to the bathrooms.

Max waited as two groups of travelers arrived, used the facilities and left. For the moment, the Welcome Center was empty except for Max and the heavyset man who still paced atop the stairs. With a final scan of the area — too dark to make out much at all — Max climbed the stairs.

"You Max?" the man asked.

Max nodded. "Where's the painting?"

"In my truck. Come on."

The man wore a yellow windbreaker that made an odd shushing sound as he walked. He checked out Max a few times, bashful when caught, and wiped his hands on his coat several times. Max glanced around as they walked.

Nothing in this man's behavior signaled a threat. If anything, the guy struck Max as somebody who came upon the painting and now hoped to make a quick buck selling it. The late-night exchange made the guy nervous but not enough to turn down the cash. And since no matter how many times he looked, Max didn't notice any danger, he felt better about the situation.

They approached a rusty Ford pickup, and the man said, "Y'know, we've had this painting for years. Just catching dust in the shed. I would never have found your ad 'til my brother phoned me up. You suppose it's worth something?"

"Not really," Max said. "It's not famous or anything. Just an old family painting that got sold off long ago by accident. In fact, we always thought we had it until my grandfather died and we learned that it was gone. That's why we put out the ad." Drummond would be amazed at how smoothly the story slipped off his tongue.

The man nodded with regret as if to say that things always turned out this way for him. He pulled out a smartphone to run Max's credit card. "Well, I can't say I don't wish it were something worth millions but I'll take what I can get."

"Millions would be nice, wouldn't it?"

The man laughed, a big rosy-faced grin, and then his lips formed a small O. A little red trail leaked from his hairline. Only when the man's eyes rolled up did Max's brain register the sound of a gunshot. The man dropped to the ground dead, and Max dropped, too. His mind raced to catch up with events.

The gunshot had sounded far off. A sniper? And the bullet had struck the man somewhere on the side of the head — which meant Max had no real cover at the moment. As if to illustrate the point, a bullet shot through the side of the truck just above his head.

Max rolled underneath the truck and shimmied behind the dead man's body. Now he had cover — for the moment. He was impressed with himself for not panicking and for acting with some thought. Not too long ago, he probably would have ended up dead. Now, at least, he had a chance. Except waiting to be shot again while congratulating himself wasn't going to save his life. He cleared his mind and focused on the present.

He needed to get out of there, get to his car, get to safety. But he needed that painting, too. Without that, Sandra had no hope.

Max reached forward and patted the man's pants.
Stop being a tentative prick and get the keys.
He shoved his hand down the pockets nearest him. Neither one had a key. With a deep breath, he reached over the body and fumbled for the far pocket.

Another shot popped into the truck above. Max's hands shook but he worked for the pocket as best he could. Trying to keep some cover, his face buried into the lifeless man's stomach. The man smelled of aftershave and alcohol — not a bad scent but a combination Max hoped never to smell again.

He felt a wallet but no keys. Another gunshot popped in the distance, and the dead man took a bullet in the shoulder. Max jumped at the hit, smacking his head against the underside of the truck. He hurried back underneath, rubbing his head. That's when he heard the jingle of keys.

Without exposing himself to the sniper, Max placed his foot on the dead man and gave a soft push. Again, the jingle of keys. Not a pants pocket, then, but a jacket pocket.

He rolled closer to the body and reached into the near-side jacket pocket. With closed eyes and a silent prayer that he wouldn't have to go over the body to the other side pocket, his finger felt around. And he found it. A ring with five keys.

He snatched the keys free, rolled to the passenger side of the truck, and crouched beneath the door. One by one he tried the keys. The first two wouldn't go in. The next three went in but wouldn't turn the door. Before he let despair take over, though, he heard Drummond in the back of his head — "You're nervous. Try again."

The first key failed, but the second key actually slipped in and turned. Max opened the door. In the back of the cab, behind the passenger seat, he found a painting wrapped in brown paper. It wasn't large — all of two feet long and a foot-and-a-half wide. He pulled it from the cab and crouched back down.

His pulse hammered as he clutched the painting. He kept expecting a shot to hit him. But the sniper hadn't done anything for the last few moments. Why? "He's a sniper," Max told himself, his words coming out in shaky breaths. "He's going to reposition."

Max looked down at the brown-wrapped painting. An idea popped into his mind. Without debating himself, he dashed across the parking lot with his body in a low crouch like soldiers did in the movies — and he held the painting like a shield. Whoever hired this gunman to kill him wanted the painting. Anybody willing to kill for a painting wants it undamaged — no excuses. As long as Max didn't provide a clear target, as long as the sniper risked hitting the painting, he would be safe. At least, that's what he hoped for.