On the Run (35 page)

I showed the officers the safe in the basement, with its accompanying landscape of toilet tissue. In all honesty, I’d have liked to open the safe right then and there, but that isn’t the way the law works, of course.

I wasn’t certain Sgt. Dole and Deputy Hamilton weren’t giving serious consideration to Natalie’s accusations about my sanity level, but it was Natalie, not me, whom they marched off to the police car. Along with the safe, the Saturday night special, the paintball gun, the bullet I’d saved from the deer head, the bag of gold coins and the gold coin Mac had found, two freezer bags of blond hairs, and the gloves off Natalie’s hands. They also assured Natalie a doctor would examine her eye and issued stern instructions that Abilene and I must come in for official statements the following day.

Sgt. Dole never admitted that their earlier conclusion about homicide/suicide may have been mistaken, but he made one final thoughtful observation. “She’d probably have gotten away with it, wouldn’t she, if she hadn’t been so greedy and come back for the diamonds?”

I wanted to bring Frank up to date, but he wasn’t home when I called. After a short consideration, I told Mikki what had happened. I expected restrained glee on her part that the ex-wife was in trouble up to her eyeballs, but I was both surprised and gratified when her first question was a concerned sounding, “What about the kids?”

“I don’t think Natalie is going to be home tonight.” Maybe not for a long, long time, if ever.

“We’ll go up to Dallas and get them right away,” she said instantly.

It seemed anticlimactic now, after all that had happened, but the emus were still on the loose and we had to do something about them. I was feeling rather kindly toward them now, considering that one of them had basically saved my life. Natalie would surely have gunned me down, if not for the distraction of a pecking emu.

I figured we’d be out hunting emus the rest of the day, maybe the next several days. But when we went out, all but two of them were gathered around the outside of the pen, apparently willing to exchange freedom for easy food. The other two came in the next day, one of them missing a considerable number of feathers, although we never did know what happened to it.

Frank and Mikki came two days later. By then there was news. A judge had issued a search warrant for Natalie’s house, and the police had found several hundred gold coins hidden there. She had no legitimate way to account for them, and the authorities were now trying to find out when and where the Northcutts had purchased the coins. Frank also said Natalie’s eye had not been permanently damaged.

“You’re some shot with that paintball gun,” he added admiringly.

“Purely accidental,” I had to admit. Except for considerable help from the Lord, who has control of paintballs as well as everything else in this universe.

And the safe? Abilene and I weren’t allowed to be present for the grand opening, but Frank was. The papers he needed were inside. Properly executed wills, leaving everything to him, with the provision that he see to the care and education of the children. The children were living with Frank and Mikki now. I suspected all would not be smooth sailing there, but Frank seemed hopeful, and Mikki wasn’t grumbling. I knew they’d all be in my prayers for a long time to come.

As for diamonds, it turned out that Natalie wouldn’t have been any better off even if she’d found the safe the first time she searched. Nor would there have been some treasure in gems to divide if we’d gone along with her illicit scheme.

Because there was, to be exact, one diamond in the safe. Set in Jessie’s engagement ring from long ago. Had the Northcutts never actually invested in diamonds? Or were they hidden somewhere else?

A mystery as yet unsolved by the time we put Koop in the motor home a few days later, climbed in ourselves, and headed down the road. The people interested in buying the ranch had showed up, liked it, and made a deal with Frank to rent and live there until the legalities were straightened out and they could buy the property.

“I’m really sorry,” Frank had said apologetically when he told us. “I know you expected to be here for a while, but it’s just too good a deal for us to turn down.”

“That’s okay,” I assured him. “We don’t mind.”

Especially when he gave us an exceedingly generous bonus for our short-term employment, and Mikki actually offered hugs. Abilene was teary about leaving the emus behind, but the future owners, the Andersons, seemed as captivated by the birds as she was. They assured her the green emu egg would stay right in the bedroom until it hatched.

The day we left, when Abilene went out to give a personal good-bye to each bird, she made another discovery that had both her and the Andersons twittering with excitement. An emu was protectively sitting on
something
far back in the pen, huffy about anyone investigating what, although presumably it was another egg or two. “Send us an address, and we’ll mail you a photo of whatever hatches!” Mrs. Anderson said.

But the best part for me was that I’d called Mac to tell him our job was over, and he’d enthusiastically said, “Come on down here!”

So that’s where we were headed on this crisp and lovely fall morning as we drove down Dead Mule Road for the last time. I’d called Margaret Rau to say good-bye, and she told us to be sure and stop to see her if we got back this way. Her dog Lucy had given us a good-bye bark into the phone too.

Now Koop was purring, the radio was on, and Abilene was tapping her toe and thumping her thigh in time to the bouncy rhythm of a new Alan Jackson song.

And me, I was feeling an exuberant sense of freedom. The Braxtons hadn’t found me. Maybe they’d given up and were out of my life for good! I’d be seeing Mac again by evening, I had a good traveling companion, and all was well.

Abilene stopped tapping her toe when a pickup passed us going the opposite direction. She leaned forward and peered intently at the pickup in the rearview mirror, but I could see in the mirror on my side that a cloud of road dust obscured the truck.

“Someone we know?” I asked.

She hesitated, still watching. “Maybe those people with the birdhouses on the island. They have half a dozen old pickups.”

“Or the Andersons mentioned some relatives coming.”

“I hope they take good care of the emus.”

“I think those birds are going to be treated like the kings and queens of the emu world.”

We decided to stop in Dulcy to pick up a few groceries before heading down to Hugo. Frank had loaded our small freezer and cupboards with everything from steaks and roasts to cans of corned beef and jars of marinated artichokes. Plus enough toilet tissue to carry us on a round-the-world excursion. But we still needed some fresh items.

A school bus was parked in the grocery parking lot, and the store was unexpectedly busy with the busload of kids loading up on chips and other snacks for a field trip, so it was a good twenty minutes before we headed out to the motor home with our plastic sacks of eggs and milk and lettuce.

Halfway there, Abilene stopped short. Two men were walking across the parking lot. One was short and wiry, the other big-bellied and burly. Abilene’s head swiveled as she frantically looked for some route of escape, but it was too late. Both guys looked up and spotted her.

I didn’t need to be told who the wiry guy with the visored cap and nasty smile on his face was. Abilene’s expression said it all as the two men changed direction and headed toward us. Our ploy with the Texas postmark apparently hadn’t worked to detour Boone, because here he was.

“Well, well, if it isn’t my loving wife,” Boone Morrison said in a mocking tone. “The one who walked out on me, stole my car, and totaled it.”

Not a word about concern for her, I noted. No inquiry about whether she’d been hurt in the accident. Not even a question about what had driven her to leave him. Only the Porsche mattered.

“I’m sorry I wrecked the car,” Abilene said. She could have mentioned that this wouldn’t have happened if he had been a decent husband so she wouldn’t have felt she had to run for her life, but she didn’t do so. Instead, though her voice wobbled a little, she pointed out what we’d already discussed. “But you can buy yourself another one with the insurance money.”

“Insurance money? That’s a laugh. The insurance was expired. I didn’t find the notice until after you were gone. Because you’d hidden it.”

“You always picked up the mail.” Abilene sounded panicky. “I didn’t know anything about insurance—”

“The Porsche is totaled, it wasn’t insured, and all thanks to you,” he interrupted flatly, making the pronouncement like some lofty judge rendering an unchallengeable decision of guilt.

I wanted to kick him in the shins. Blaming someone else for his own laxity with the insurance! Yet at the same time I knew how guilty Abilene felt because she
had
wrecked the vehicle.

Then Boone proclaimed sentence in addition to judgment. “And you’re not gonna get away with it.” He took a menacing step toward her. “You’re gonna pay—”

“Not here,” the other man warned with a glance at the parking lot swarming with kids. “Not now.”

Boone looked around as if only then becoming aware that he and Abilene weren’t alone here. “Yeah, right.” He clenched his fists. “But I will get you, Abilene. Don’t ever doubt it for a minute. I will get you. And you’re gonna be mincemeat when I do.
”

Then his face moved in the mechanics of a smile. He lifted a hand in mocking salute. “So, see you on down the road.” He gave me an odd look that made me feel as if fishhooks were ripping through my skin. “You too.”

The two men stalked off toward an old blue pickup. We stood there watching them go. So, I’d made it onto Boone’s hit list too. For a reasonably pleasant, inconspicuous LOL, I do seem to rack up an unusual number of murderous enemies.

“Who’s the other one?” I asked finally.

“Boone’s cousin.”

“The sheriff?”

She nodded.

“You recognized the pickup back there on Dead Mule Road?”

“I thought it might be Boone’s cousin’s pickup. But then I figured I was probably just being . . . overly jumpy.”

Boone hadn’t mentioned catching up with us in Hugo, but he obviously knew our plans. How? With a Titanic-sized sinking in the pit of my stomach, I knew. Because of the Braxtons, I’d been careful for months not to tell anyone where I was headed, but Frank had been so concerned about us, and feeling so guilty about cutting off our jobs, that I’d assured him we’d be fine, that we were going to take a leisurely drive down to Hugo and just relax for a while.

I hadn’t warned him not to tell anyone. He and Mikki were supposed to leave the ranch only a couple of hours after we did. But apparently Boone had gotten to them first with one of his wily stories about needing to find Abilene because of her parents’ sudden deaths. Or maybe he’d used a nonexistent brother or sister’s death this time. Whatever, it had worked. Boone knew we were headed for Hugo, and he had mincemeat on his agenda.

Abilene was still staring after the now-disappeared pickup. I nudged her with a carton of milk.

“Let’s get going before they come back.”

“To Hugo?”

“To any place but Hugo.”

Abilene looked alarmed. “Oh, you can’t do that. You want to see Mac again, and I don’t want you in danger if Boone finds me. I’ll just catch a ride—”

“Remember what you told me once? That alone you’d survived Boone, and alone I’d survived the Braxtons, and together we could survive anyone and anything?”

“Yeah, but—”

“But nothing.
Together
still holds.” Along with some help from the Lord, of course. “Get in the motor home and let’s go.”

Abilene still hesitated.

“You get in the motor home or I’m going to pick you up and dump you in there,” I threatened.

She looked at me. “You couldn’t—” she began, scoffing at my LOL stature. But apparently she also took a second look at my determination. “And then . . . maybe you could.”

We headed out of Dulcy in the opposite direction from Hugo. A dozen miles up the road a sign showed a town named Piggett off to the west. We took the road. Beyond Piggett I whipped down another gravel road, and at the next town we angled off in a different direction.

Where were we going? I didn’t know. Neither did I know if Boone knew what we were driving, or what resources his sheriff cousin could use to find us. But I had no intention of leaving an easy trail for them to follow, and we zigged here and zagged there.

I drove until I was too tired to keep going. Abilene kept apologizing for not being able to do her share of the driving, and I assured her that one of our first priorities after we got settled somewhere would be getting her a driver’s license.

I wasn’t sure where we were when we finally stopped at a rest area for the night, but it was brightly lit and several RVs were already parked there. A couple of people standing by a travel trailer gave us friendly waves. As safe a place as we were apt to find.

After a quick supper I went looking for a phone to call Mac and explain our change of plans, but when I found the phone it wasn’t working. I wondered what to do now. Mac would be really worried because we hadn’t showed up. It was at least 30 miles since we’d passed through a town, and I didn’t relish the idea of driving all that way back.

A woman about my age was just dumping a plastic sack of trash into a can by the restrooms.

“Do you by any chance know how far it is to the next town?” I asked. “I need to find a phone. One that works.”

“I have no idea. But you’re welcome to use our cell phone.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—”

“We have one of those plans with more minutes than we can possibly use. C’mon over to the motor home and I’ll get it.”

I was gratified by her generosity, but not totally surprised. RVers are a helpful lot.

Her husband had the generator running and was watching TV in the motor home. The woman handed me the phone and told me to take it somewhere quiet.

I got under one of the rest area lights and punched in the numbers. Mac picked up immediately, confirming that he was worried.

“Hi, it’s me,” I said. “We aren’t going to—”