A Bloodhound to Die for (21 page)

“What a lie.”

He turned to walk away, but I put my hand on his arm. He stopped, but didn’t turn back to me, so I walked around to face him.

“Wayne, what’s going on with you?”

He looked up at me and his eyes were filled with so much anger and hurt that I inhaled sharply.

He tossed the clipboard to the floor. “Donnie Ray been complaining?”

“No, of course not! Look, Wayne, everyone can see that you’re not yourself.”

“Well, you’re certainly being yourself, pushing for information that’s none of your business.”

I was shocked, not at Wayne’s slam about my pushiness—because I knew that was true—but at his vehemence. This wasn’t at all like Wayne.

I signed, “Fine, Wayne. You don’t have to talk with me if you don’t want to. But leave the crappy attitude behind when you’re at work, okay?”

I turned to head back to my office, but apparently I’d awakened an anger in Wayne that wouldn’t easily be put to rest, because he grabbed my arm. I turned to face him. He signed, his hand movements fast and angry. “You want to know what’s wrong with me, Jo Beth? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. What’s wrong with men like me is women like you!”

“I think you’d better explain yourself. I’m giving you three sentences to clarify that statement.”

He grinned—and his grin was an uncharacteristically nasty mock smile. “One—what’s wrong with men like me is women like you and Amy. Two—you say you want decent, kind, loving, basically good guys, but then you say we’re not exciting enough, it’ll never work out, whatever. Three—then you take off and either find yourselves lonely or hooked up with someone no good because you’re just too damned scared of a real relationship that might be nice and kind and lasting even if it’s not perfect or exciting all the time and you wonder why—poor, poor, pitiful you—you’re so miserable.”

I stared at him, stunned. “Okay. Apparently you and Amy have broken up and you’re unhappy. Fine. How does that lump me in with Amy?” I was sincerely confused. Wayne, as far as I knew, had not only been happy in my employ, but had also found my expectations, though high, to be more than fair.

Wayne sighed. “Boss, at the risk of hacking you off and finding myself unemployed, sometimes you can be
pretty damn dense. Why am I lumping you in with Amy? Why don’t you think about what I just said—then go ask Hank.”

Wayne stopped, and caught his breath, as if he realized belatedly that he’d just gone too far. And he had.

“You will turn around and go back to work now. And you will never again discuss Hank with me or any of my relationships, for that matter.”

For a moment, Wayne looked at me, blinking hard. I realized he was fighting back tears. Then he turned and walked away.

I made it back to my office. I sank down into my chair, telling myself I had work to do and that I needed to come up with a clever way to get Jimmy Joe Lane—and his family—to leave me alone once and for all. Plenty to do, plenty to do …

And yet I found myself with my head down on my desk.

What if Wayne was right?

I thought, uncomfortably, of Susan and her unsatisfactory relationships with men like Brian Colby and now her apparent attraction to Lee. Were Susan, Amy, and I really all of a kind, subconsciously sabotaging good, yet imperfect, relationships and exchanging them for those that promised excitement but could never possibly bring anything but pain?

I tried to clear my head of such ridiculous doubts, but then, unbidden, Hiram and Beulah came to mind. Was their secret simply that they’d stuck together, even
when things were tough, because they really cared for each other as individuals? How else to explain the way Hiram looked after Beulah even now when she was only a fragment of the woman he’d married?

And on the other end of the spectrum were Leon and Sara. One had apparently betrayed through infidelity, and the other had murdered.

Where did I fit on that spectrum?

Sometimes the universe delivers answers to such soul-searching questions.

Sometimes the universe just delivers up a wicked sense of irony.

I got the latter.

My phone rang.

I answered.

And on the other end of the line was Hank’s voice, saying, “Jo Beth, we have a call out. Beulah has gotten herself lost again in the Okefenokee.”

  
23
“Once More … with Feeling”

M
y conversation with Hank was crisply professional and to the point. Beulah Burton had again slipped from the house. Hiram had slept late and just woken up around ten-fifteen A.M. He’d searched the house and immediate grounds for her several times before calling Hank, in a panic. Please, Hiram had begged Hank, help me find her one more time … and then for her own safety as well as Hiram’s peace of mind, he’d do what he realized he should have done long before, and find a nearby nursing facility for Beulah.

I said that of course I’d do the search. Hank stated that he would be by my compound shortly so that we could caravan over to the Burton place. I started to argue that that really wasn’t necessary—I remembered the way to the Burton place and could easily find it
again on my own, thank you. But I didn’t trust my voice, given my emotional state at the time of Hank’s call, and so I said that would be fine.

Focusing on an urgent task helped snap me out of my earlier wallowing in self-pity and soul searching. Of course Hank was an idiot. And so was Wayne. Hiram, I told myself, was the last remaining decent guy living on the face of the earth. In fact, he was probably the only decent guy who’d ever lived on the face of the earth—a guy created by God in Her infinite wisdom to serve as an example to all the other men about how they should be, but weren’t. So of course I’d find Beulah for Hiram. Hah.

I was trying to decide which bloodhound to take this time—probably Gulliver, since he’d done the earlier search—when there was a tap at my door.

“Open,” I said.

Jasmine stepped in.

“I was just going to come for you,” I said. “We have a call out. Believe it or not, poor Beulah Burton has wandered off again, and—”

I stopped. Jasmine looked distraught. “What’s the matter?” I asked her.

“Mama. My mama. She’s had a bad diabetic reaction. I just heard about it from someone at church. She went to the hospital last night.” Jasmine sank down into one of my visitors’ chairs and put her face in her hands. “Oh, Jo Beth. I didn’t even know she was diabetic.”

Relationships. It wasn’t just the ones between men and women that were thorny.

I sighed. “Jasmine, I’m sorry to hear this. I’m sure she’ll be all right, though, and—”

Jasmine looked up, wiping away tears. “I know, that’s what I keep telling myself. But this is the last straw. I’m going over to her house right now.”

“I thought you said she was at the hospital.”

“She is. But she’s supposed to be coming home sometime today, then have in-home nursing care. I’ve decided, Jo Beth, that I just have to sit myself down in front of her house until she’ll at least talk to me. I’m sorry. I don’t know how long it will take, but I’ve got to do this.”

She looked at me then, awaiting a response.

Jasmine hadn’t even heard me say we had a call out, I realized.

I looked at her, considering all she’d been through in her life, and all she’d done for me. This was clearly important to her.

“Of course you have to do this,” I said. “Go. Take all the time you need. This training session is going the smoothest of any we’ve ever had, so we’ll be fine.”

And, I told myself, I knew the territory around the Burton property pretty well by now. My suspicion too was that for whatever reason, Beulah had taken off again for the river. Maybe, in what was left of her reasoning, it represented something of great importance. In any case, Gulliver and I could do the search by ourselves.

“Thank you, Jo Beth. You don’t know what this means to me. Someday, I’ll find a way to repay you, and—”

I waved a hand at Jasmine, signaling that she should stop talking. “I have one condition for letting you off—with pay, of course—on this mission of yours.”

Jasmine lifted her eyebrows at that. “Yes?”

“Don’t get hurt,” I said, emphasizing each word carefully. Jasmine knew I wasn’t referring to physical injury. “If you realize there’s no point in continuing your vigil, do yourself a favor. Give it up. And come home.”

Jasmine looked at me for a long moment, weighing, I knew, the implications of my “condition.” Perhaps her mama, given her brush with serious illness and possibly death, would finally soften and give Jasmine a chance to talk to her. Or perhaps her mama had become so hard-hearted that she’d want nothing to do with Jasmine, even in these circumstances. The latter possibility would be hard for Jasmine to accept, I knew. But she needed to, for the sake of her own mental health.

Finally, Jasmine nodded, her face composed in a grim expression. “I understand what you’re saying.” She stood and went to the door, opened it, started to leave, then stopped. She looked over her shoulder at me. “Thanks.”

I felt a crack in my heart from the gratitude—and fear—that Jasmine managed to convey in the delivery of that single word.

I waited a few moments after Jasmine left. Then I stood up, and headed for the kennel. Jasmine had to do what she had to do. And now I had to do likewise. Duty—and a meeting with Hank—called.

Five minutes later, I was in the kennel, snapping the lead on Gulliver’s collar and talking quietly with him about our pending assignment.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I froze at the sound of the voice—Hank’s voice. The sudden tight feeling in my chest was not the reaction I’d anticipated. I was going to be cool, right? Because I didn’t care about Hank anymore… .

Hank’s angry words and tone of voice were also not what I’d anticipated. He was supposed to be conciliatory and groveling, humble and begging my forgiveness.

Reality somehow never jives with my expectations of it.

I stood up, looked at Hank, felt anger at the unbidden thought of my God, he really is as sexy as I thought, and the anger came out in my words. “I know what I’m doing,” I said, emphasizing the “know” coldly. “I’m getting Gulliver ready for our call out to search for Miz Beulah.” I gave him a small, cool smile. “Or were you just making that up to come over here and apologize?”

I regretted the words the minute I spoke them.

“And what the hell would I have to apologize for?” Hank asked, with a mixture of amusement and anger
that infuriated me further, and destroyed any chance at all that I could act cool or detached.

“If you don’t know, maybe the little floozie who was at your house when I called a week ago can explain it to you,” I said.

I moved away from him, toward the door. Gulliver and I had an elderly lady to find. To hell with Hank.

But Hank was not one to be walked away from easily. He put a hand on my arm, stopping me. I jerked away, ready to warn him to never use physical means to control me. True, his touch had been light, a brush of his hand against my arm, really—but suddenly I was in fighting mode. Any excuse to have it out with Hank would do.

He spoke before I could, though, his amusement quickly gaining on his anger. “That floozie you refer to happens to be Marietta Mae Jones, a second cousin twice removed on my mama’s side. I haven’t seen her in twenty years. But she thought she’d stop by on her way from Florida to Ohio and say howdy.”

I glared at Hank. “We’re not exactly a direct stop on the interstate between Florida and Ohio. Am I really supposed to believe she just wanted to say hi to her distant cousin?”

Now Hank gave me a full-fledged grin. “Nope. She wanted to say hi, spend the night, and borrow a few hundred bucks.” He shrugged. “I gave it to her.”

“Lovely. I’m so glad you’re so damned generous with your kin. I’d like to get over to the Burton place now—”

“Why didn’t you just tell her who you were?”

“Why haven’t you called?” It was the question I’d promised myself I’d never ask, but there it was. And I wanted to know—much, much more than I was willing to admit.

Hank sighed. “Because I knew that sooner or later, something like this would happen, Jo Beth. You not trusting me. You doubting me.” He paused, sighed again, then gently traced a finger along my cheek. “You finding a reason to break us apart, because I know you, Jo Beth. You’re afraid of real relationships.” He shook his head. “The night we were together was so … good. I don’t think I can handle having that ripped away from me again and again.”

His words were so much like Wayne’s that I flinched. But before I could react—and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to defend myself or castigate Hank for not at least talking with me about this issue—he abruptly changed the subject.

He pointed down to Gulliver. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” It was the question that he’d opened with.

“I’m getting a well-trained bloodhound prepped to go on a search,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Why
this
bloodhound?”

“Gulliver do something to offend you?”

“Oh, come on, Jo Beth. You know what I’m getting at. Are you ever going to take Bobby Lee out on a search so he can exercise his God-given talents? Or are you just going to keep hiding and protecting him too?”