The Fixer Upper (18 page)

“And if you don’t do what they want, they’ll put
you
in jail,” she continued.

“That’s about the size of it,” I said glumly.

“What’s Carter Berryhill got to say about all this?”

“He’s trying to stall them. But eventually he thinks I’ll have to do what they want, if I’m going to get out of this mess.”

The door to the waiting room opened, and Dr. Shoemaker walked out. She wore blue paper booties over her shoes, and a blue cap over her hair.

“Miss Timmons?”

“Yeah?” Ella Kate sat still. Her face was fierce, but her voice was quavery, and when I looked down, I saw that her time-worn hands were shaking. I put my hand over hers. She didn’t push it away.

“Is he dead?” she asked, ducking her head.

“Not at all,” the vet said with a laugh. “Shorty’s a tough little customer.” She held up a plastic bag, through which we could see a bit of bright pink fabric. “But he really shouldn’t be eating women’s panties.”

I stared. There could be no doubt. Shorty had apparently dined on my thong.

Ella Kate’s narrowed eyes went from the plastic bag to me. “Hmmph,” she said. She stood up. “Can I take him home now?”

“Not just yet,” Dr. Shoemaker said. “We’ll want to let the anesthesia wear off, and then observe how he does. He can’t have any food for a couple of days, so we’ll be giving him IV fluids. If he does as well as I expect, he should be ready to go home by midweek.”

Ella Kate reached into the pocket of her sweater and brought out a worn black leather billfold. “How much?” she asked.

The vet studied Ella Kate for a moment. “Do you mind if I ask your age?”

Ella Kate bristled. “I don’t see why that’s any of your business. I’m old enough to take care of a pet by myself, and old enough to pay his doctor bill too.”

“I see,” Dr. Shoemaker said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but the reason I asked is that we have a special rate for senior citizens.”

“I’m eighty in September,” Ella Kate shot back.

“Then it’s a hundred dollars,” the vet said. “Would you like us to set up a payment schedule for you?”

“No, ma’am,” Ella Kate said. She took a wad of worn-looking bills out of the billfold, and counted out five tens. “You can put that on the bill now, and when we come fetch him later on, I’ll give you the rest.”

“Fine,” Dr. Shoemaker said.

Ella Kate held out her hand. “I’ll need a receipt.”

I
t was nearly noon when we left the animal clinic and headed home. Ella Kate buckled herself into the passenger seat of the Catfish, and stared resolutely out the window at the passing countryside.

“Going to be a beautiful day,” I said, trying to make conversation. The narrow two-lane road wound through lush green countryside. Pale pink wildflowers bloomed in shallow ditches along the roadside, and when I rolled down the windows, the smell of wet dirt and new grass washed over me. We passed fields full of horses, and cattle, and once, a grassy pasture that was full of goats. The sun was warm on my face, and despite everything else that was going on in my life, I was suddenly glad to be experiencing a spring day in Georgia.

“Mighty hot for this early,” Ella Kate said ominously. “It’s that global warming they been talking about on the television. Probably looking at another year of drought too.”

“But it’s rained several times since I’ve been in Guthrie,” I pointed out.

“That don’t mean nothin’,” Ella Kate said. She pointed a knobby finger at a field we were passing. Stunted-looking trees were planted in rows, their outspread branches spiked with pale green leaves. “Them peach trees there, you see how sorry they look? Greening up early now, but if we get hit with a frost, that’ll be the end. Last year’s drought hit ’em bad. Worst peach crop in years. Lots of folks done give up farming altogether after last year.”

“That’s a shame,” I said. “I’ve never seen peaches growing on a tree before. I don’t think I knew they grew peaches in this part of the state.”

“Used to be,” she said gloomily. “Round here was big for peaches.
When I was a little girl, peaches was a big money crop in these parts. Your daddy’s people, the Killebrews, I believe they were in the peach business. Not no more. No money in farming nowadays. Not in peaches, nor cotton, nor peanuts.”

I heard my cell phone ring. I reached for it in my pocketbook, but it wasn’t in the outside pocket where I usually keep it. It rang again, and a third time, before I realized it must have fallen out of my purse and onto the floor of the car. I groped around on the floor and grabbed the phone, answering on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“Dempsey?” It was Carter Berryhill. “Where on earth are you? I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Shorty had a medical emergency. We had to take him down to the hospital in Macon. I didn’t realize my phone had fallen out of my purse.”

“Shorty? Do I know a Shorty? More to the point, how do you know somebody named Shorty? And why didn’t you just take him over to the hospital right here in Guthrie?”

“Shorty is a dog, Carter,” I said. “Ella Kate’s cocker spaniel. He was really sick, and the vet’s office in Guthrie didn’t open until nine, so we had to take him down to the hospital in Macon.”

“Ohhh, Shorty,” Carter said. “Right. Is he okay? I know Ella Kate dotes on that critter.”

“He swallowed, uh, something he shouldn’t have,” I said, blushing again at the thought of the vet holding the pair of panties she’d retrieved from Shorty’s belly. “They did surgery, and he’s fine now. He’ll be coming home in a few days.”

“Well, that’s good,” Carter said. “When do you expect to be back here?”

“Maybe forty-five minutes or so?” I said. “Is something wrong?”

“Our friends from Washington have been by to see me this morning,” Carter said. “I imagine they’ve been by to see you too. They really are an annoyingly insistent presence. I think we should put our heads together and come up with a strategy, if you’re up for it.”

“Of course,” I said, my pulse racing. “I’ll come over as soon as I get back home.”

“Well, no big rush,” Carter drawled. “There is one thing you might could do that would be helpful in dealing with these people.”

“What’s that?”

“See if you can come up with some kind of timetable that reconstructs all of your dealings with Alex Hodder and the honorable Representative Licata. Anything at all will help us—notes, or files, or memos, anything like that.”

“I’ll try,” I said, “but I don’t have anything on paper. The feds took the hard drive from my computer, and they seized literally all my files at work.”

“They took everything?”

“As far as I know,” I said. “But I wasn’t at the office when the FBI agents showed up, and the next thing I knew, our office manager called to say that I’d been let go. She told me not to bother coming in again. They boxed up all the personal effects from my desk, and had them messengered over to my apartment.”

“Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry,” Carter said.

“Exactly.” The memory of it still stung, all these weeks later.

He sighed. “Well, in that case, we’ll have to rely on your memory.”

“I’ve got my laptop back at the house,” I told him. “When I get home, I’ll try and make some notes about all my dealings with Licata.”

“Good,” Carter said. “Don’t worry about form or structure. Just get it down on paper, stream-of-consciousness style, if that works for you. Give me details. What Licata was like, how Alex Hodder interacted with him, all those kinds of things. Think carefully about that weekend in the Bahamas, if you would. And your dealings with those women.”

“I’ll try,” I promised.

I closed my phone and glanced over at Ella Kate to see her reaction to my phone call. But I needn’t have worried. Her eyes were closed and her head drooped forward. She snored softly.

I felt a sudden pang of pity for the old woman. Dr. Shoemaker had assured us that Shorty would heal quickly, but I knew Ella Kate had endured a night of terror, watching helplessly while her beloved pet suffered. He was all she had.

When we got back to Birdsong, she was still sleeping. I tapped her shoulder gently. “Ella Kate?”

Her eyes opened slowly. She blinked rapidly. “What time is it?”

“It’s one,” I told her. “We’re home.”

“Good.”

I got out of the Catfish and went around to open the passenger door for her, but she hopped out on her own. She thrust a fistful of dollar bills into my hand.

“There,” she said.

I looked down at the crumpled bills. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I’m obliged to you,” she said stiffly. “Shorty coulda died.”

“I was glad to be able to help,” I told her.

She nodded curtly. “Good. You’ll carry me back down yonder to fetch him when they say he’s ready to come home?”

“Of course.” I bit my lip. “Look, Ella Kate. About those panties Shorty ate. They were mine, of course. I really am so, so sorry. I don’t know how he got hold of them.”

Her eyes crinkled at the corners. For a second there, I thought I glimpsed something like a mischievous twinkle.

“You mean you wear them things as drawers?”

I blushed. “Well, yes.”

“I ain’t ever! That thing ain’t no bigger ’n a rubber band. No wonder all you gals walk around like you got a hitch in your gitalong.”

As I set up my laptop on the kitchen table at Birdsong, I realized that it had been nearly a month since I’d used it. The last time, in fact, had probably been the week after I’d been fired. After Alex refused to return my phone calls, I’d e-mailed him countless times, and obsessively checked my e-mail in-box, both on my BlackBerry, and on my laptop, over and over again, to check for any replies. There’d been none, of course, only a slew of messages that first week, from friends and colleagues on the hill, wondering how I was faring in the aftermath of Hoddergate.

I hadn’t bothered to check my e-mail since arriving in Guthrie.
Ruby had asked me to turn in my company-issued BlackBerry. And Birdsong, with its antiquated wiring, certainly didn’t have Internet access, and besides, with the exception of my roommates, and the FBI, nobody else in Washington seemed to realize I was still alive.

Just out of curiosity, I clicked on the wireless button on the laptop, to see if there were any networks in range. There were two, one called BeeBop and the other SpaceCadet, but both were secured networks requiring a password I didn’t have and couldn’t guess.

Just as well. There was no time to wade through the month’s worth of spam I surely would have amassed by now. I opened a blank document and paused. Carter wanted me to write down everything I could remember about all my dealings with Licata, especially my memories of that weekend down at Lyford Cay. Stream of consciousness, Carter had said. Fine. I started typing.

I paused in my typing here. Just how honest should I be with Carter Berryhill? He was courtly and honorable and for some inexplicable reason, he seemed to think that I was somebody worthy of his respect. Did he really need to know about my pathetic crush on my boss? Should I admit that if Alex had asked me to go away, I probably would have gone?—God help me. If it came up, I decided, I would tell Carter about my feelings. I prayed it would not.