Miz Scarlet and the Bewildered Bridegroom (14 page)

“Here you
go.”

“Thanks.” He took it
from me and slipped it behind his back. As he lifted his shirt, I
saw the dark bruises and heard him groan as he tried to get
comfortable. I left him to his resting. There wasn’t much else I
could do for him.

On my way back to the
kitchen, I collected the dirty dishes from the dining room table
and piled them in the sink, making a couple of trips. Once the
dishwasher was loaded, I got to work scrubbing my pots and
pans.

A tiny Carolina wren
busily chirped outside the window, gathering nesting material for
the spring brood. I saw little bits of grass in its mouth. Just
then, I spied a sudden flash of white in the garden. It was too
large to be a four-legged animal -- it was far more likely the
two-legged variety. The unexpected visitor had me rattled. I poked
my head into the living room.

“Bur! Come quick!
There’s someone in the garden!” I hissed. We both hurried back to
the kitchen window, and sure enough, there was someone poking
around the blueberry bushes.

“I’m going out the
front door. Call Kenny and have him meet me
outside.”

“Sure.”

My hands trembled as I
tried to work my cell phone. I hit the wrong icon three times,
flashing back to my nightmare, as my fingers let me down. By the
time I finally got through to Kenny, I was in a panic. My words
jumbled together as I hastily spit them out. The result was
complete gibberish.

“What?” Kenny sounded
confused. “Take a breath. One word at a time,
Scarlet.”

“Someone...is...in...the...garden....Bur...wants...you...to...meet
him there. Hurry!”

“Oh, crap. I’m at the
garage, three minutes out. I’ll be there as soon as I
can!”

Something told me I
should get my fanny out to the garden, just in case the injured Bur
needed some backup. I went out through the sun porch, expecting to
see him reading the riot act to the trespasser, but there was no
sign of him. I gazed around, baffled. Where had my brother
gone?

“Bur, is this a joke?
Where are you?”

I searched high and low
for him, but to no avail. I even dialed his cell phone, but it went
to voice mail. This development didn’t fill me with confidence.
Maybe I should wait for Kenny, I told myself. It’s not like I had
something to use as a weapon if I got jumped.

“Get a grip,” I
growled, chastising myself. “You’re acting like a complete
nincompoop. Bur probably just went back to his place and forgot to
tell you.”

I marched up those
stairs and pounded on his door. I pounded until my knuckles hurt,
and then I pounded some more, but my brother never answered my
summons. I wanted him to be home, because if he wasn’t, something
was very wrong. My thoughts went wild, conjuring up images of Bur
as the victim of a horrible crime.

I heard a car door slam
as I exited the carriage house.

“Scarlet!” Kenny joined
me. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Bur told
me to call you and he came out here, but now he’s
disappeared!”

“He can’t have gone
far. Tell me what you saw.”

“Someone wearing a
white shirt was in the garden, over there,” I pointed, in the
general direction of the blueberry bushes. “Hey, what
the....”

Where there had been
budding blueberry bushes the day before, there were now only short,
leafless twigs poking out of the soil. A path of ravaged branches
was strewn across the ground; it looked like the aftermath of a
freak tornado, only the culprit here wasn’t the wind. I stared at
the damage with dismay. Three years worth of careful tending and
nurturing was now for naught.

“How could someone do
this?” I wondered. I reached down to pick up the pruning clippers
lying there.

“Don’t touch them!”
Kenny instructed me. “There might be fingerprints. Come on! We have
to find Bur!”

We searched the
grounds, poking among the spirea, weigela, azalea and rhododendron
bushes for some sign that my brother had passed this way. We even
scanned the edge of the wood, wondering if he had chased the
intruder into the woods. We found nothing.

“Scarlet, when Bur came
outside, which door did he use?” Kenny wanted to
know.

“He went out the front
door. He wanted the element of surprise.”

“Let’s retrace his
route.”

We hurried through the
shade garden, where the big copper beech tree kept the house cool
in the summer months. Hosta plants of every shape and size mingled
with bleeding hearts on either side of the brick walkway. My gaze
went beyond those, to the taller plants along the stone wall. Even
as I moved forward, I knew something didn’t look right with the
ferns. Was that a pair of running shoes I spied poking out from
under those delicate fronds?

“No, Scarlet. Wait
here!” Kenny cautioned me, as he carefully stepped through the
thick, verdant ground cover on his way to examine what lay on the
other end of the rubber-soled shoes. My throat seemed to close up,
anticipating an involuntary scream. I remembered the dead body I
found up on White Oak Hill in winter. Kenny had been with me then,
too.

Please don’t let Bur
be dead, God.
I bit my lip, trying
to stifle a sob. Kenny reached down and touched the right leg. That
foot attached to it pulled back and kicked him hard on the
shin.
Wham!

“Son of a....” he
howled, like a wounded bear. “Son of a stinking...son of a
stinking, stupid-assed....”

“Captain Peacock!” I
sprinted over to him. “Are you okay?”

Hopping on his good
leg, poor Kenny stumbled backwards, losing his balance, and the
next thing I knew, his long legs were splayed under the Solomon’s
seal. Disturbed by his graceless tumble, the fronds bobbed their
heads up and down in a delicate, almost exotic fan
dance.

“Kenny!” Even as I bent
over my injured hero, those running shoes three feet to my right
began to kick madly, wildly. Why didn’t Bur just sit up? What was
going on?

“Stop it!” I hollered
at my brother. “I’m going to help you!”

“Careful, Scarlet,”
Kenny warned me, a scowl on his face. “There’s something very wrong
with him!”

“There’s always been
something wrong with Bur,” I replied. “What else is
new?”

Reaching down carefully
into the foliage, I expected to find a hand or an arm to lift, but
my brother was trussed up like a turkey at a frat house toga party,
a cotton sheet covering him from head to knees, silver duct tape
pinning his arms to his sides.

“What happened to
you?”

A very surprised Kenny
joined me, still nursing his sore shin, and together we lifted Bur
up from the ground.

“I’ll go grab some
scissors.” I turned to go back into the house.

“No need. I’ve got my
Swiss Army knife.” With that, Kenny took the tip of the blade and
carefully cut at the fabric, until he had a hole large enough to
insert a couple of strong fingers. From there, he ripped the cloth.
Once my brother’s head was unwrapped, we discovered his mouth had
also been covered in duct tape. With little mercy, Kenny picked at
a corner of the adhesive gag and ripped it off. The words that came
out of Bur’s mouth surprised even me. I didn’t know he had such a
extensive and profane vocabulary. When he got done swearing, he
shook himself off and nodded to us.

“Thanks. Now get the
rest of this crap off of me!”

It took the better part
of ten minutes to free my brother. By that time, he had shared his
tale of woe. Coming out of the house, he was making his way around
the side of the house, in the hopes of sneaking up on the garden
invader, when two pairs of hands grabbed him from behind. He never
got a look at either suspect.

“Why would someone do
this to Bur?” I wondered aloud. “What would be the
point?”

At that moment, a
terrified scream alerted us to trouble on the second floor. I
shivered at the sound, imagining the worst. “That
was....”

Lacey’s face appeared
in the window above us. “Help me! Someone, help me!
Please!”

The three-dog chorus
joined the call for assistance, barking their little heads off.
From the third floor came Jenny’s worried voice. “What’s going
on?”

“Crap! Call the cops!”
Shaking himself off, Kenny hobbled towards the front door, followed
by his limping cohort, on their way to rescue the senior citizen.
Me, I sprinted past them. This was a matter of life or
death.

Chapter Eleven --

I took the stairs, two
at a time, surprised I could actually run that fast. Must be all
the hiking I do, I thought to myself, even as my brain tried to
process the sight at the top of the stairs. Lacey, dressed in a
practical cotton nightgown, was being restrained by a man wearing a
ski mask.
A ski mask in
summer?

“Stay where you are or
I’ll toss her over the railing!” commanded a gruff
voice.

“You do that and I’ll
toss your sorry ass over the railing,” I countered, with far more
bravado than I felt. “You let her go now and I might let you
live!”

“Aw, geez!” I heard a
voice in the vestibule below. It sounded like
Kenny.

“Is she freaking nuts?”
That was Bur. I recognized the disgusted tone. “What the hell is
she doing?”

“I mean it!” the masked
intruder insisted.

“I do too. You let her
go right now!”

He inched Lacey closer
to the railing, but I stood my ground. Don’t ask me how I knew he
was bluffing, but I did.

“I’m going to do it,”
he warned me.

“No, you’re not. Want
to know why?” Judging from the silence in the hallway below us, I
knew Kenny and Bur were already on their way up the back
stairs.

“Miz Scarlet!” Jenny
popped her head around the corner. “What’s going
on?”

“Yeah, I want to know
why.”

“You won’t do it
because as we speak, the cops are on their way. You murder her and
you’re eligible to serve a life sentence. That is, if I don’t get
my hands on you first, Neil Kradic!”

“Wha-a..what?” Now that
I knew Neil was involved, my fear seemed to fade away. I was fired
up and ready to drop kick his keister over the goal
post.

“You heard me, you
little cheese weasel! You thought I wouldn’t recognize you, after
all the times you sat in my room for after-school
detention?”

“But
I....”

“Scarlet, look out!”
Jenny screamed at me. Even as I was turning around, I felt a
powerful hand at my back. Neil’s accomplice gave me a hard shove
and I went flying. Desperate to save myself, I reached out my arms,
my hands clutching at nothing. A moment later, I landed face down,
with my nose buried in the woven woolen blossoms of the faded
Sarouk runner. There were sounds of a scuffle behind me, followed
by heavy footsteps on the stairs. I wondered if Kenny and Bur were
up to the task, given their injuries. I found out a moment later,
when I got to my feet and turned around.

Kenny was nursing his
jaw, flexing the muscles of his mouth. Bur was clutching his
shoulder, grumbling about his rotator cuff. Neil Kradic and his
accomplice were already on their way out the front door, chased by
a scrappy pack of small canines with more bark than
bite.

“The dogs are loose!” I
hollered, pointing. “Don’t let them run into the
street!”

Jenny and I took off
after them, followed by our lurching backup team.

Luckily, Huck and
Mozzie were more than happy to end their pursuit at the end of the
driveway. Tails wagging, they were proud of their success in
chasing away the intruders. But January’s territorial instincts had
her convinced it was her duty to cuff the bad guys, even if that
meant pursuing them down the sidewalk and grabbing hold of the
bottoms of their trousers.

“Get away from me!”
Neil’s companion hollered, swiping at the tiny terrier as he tried
to sidestep her. January paid him no mind. She latched onto his
pant leg with fierce determination, refusing to let go despite the
barrage of hands. He stopped, shook his leg like it was a maraca in
a mambo band, and sent the little dog flying. Before she could
charge again, the two men inserted themselves into a dented Ford
pickup. As the engine started, I saw the man turn and look out the
back window. He shifted the red truck into reverse, aiming for
us.