Return of the Dixie Deb (12 page)

“It isn’t much, but you can take a look at it.” Etta pushed a trailing mimosa vine away and opened the door. “It’s just the two rooms here.”

“Oh, this is nice.” Jan followed her in. “It’s kind of like a doll’s house.”

“It is small, just this room and a bedroom in through here.” Etta crossed the floor and pushed a door back.

She turned around taking it in as Etta watched, hands on hips.

A rag rug lay in front of a wood-burning, iron stove. There was an old table with a kerosene lamp, two ladder-back chairs, and some shelves in the corner. She moved over to take a look at the second room. A small double bed was pushed against the wall beside a nightstand piled with bedding.

“There’s no running water, but you can use the restrooms up at the café.”

“This is all too kind of you.”

Etta shrugged. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’d be a roof over your head.”

“I don’t know how to thank you. We were planning on sleeping in the car tonight.” She turned around and spread her hands. “Compared to that, this is great.”

“Tell you what. Come up to the café about eleven tomorrow morning, help with the lunch crowd, and we’ll call it even.”

“Of course. I’ll be glad to.”

“Well, I’ll leave you here. Maybe Louis is back with your boyfriend. I’ll send him down here if he is.”

Etta dismissed another attempt to thank her with a wave of her hand and closed the door.

She had been right. It wasn’t a resort, pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum from where they’d been the night before. Still, though, it was a better end to a day that had been nothing but a sheer disaster. She moved around the cabin looking at things.

The shelves held the basics of assorted plates, chipped mugs, mismatched flatware, a teakettle, and some frayed towels. In the bedroom, a mattress had been laid over a rope-strung frame. She shook out the threadbare sheets, pillowcases, and quilt, wrinkling her nose at the mustiness. She made the bed, tucking the corners under and adding the quilt. She was plumping up the pillows when she heard the door open.

“Jan?”

“I’m in here.” She took a look. The old quilt, a double wedding ring pattern in faded pinks and greens, actually looked nice. She scooted around the bed and opened the door.

“So Etta offered to put us up here?” Mac was standing in the middle of the room, surveying it.

“Yeah. I think we got lucky for once. I couldn’t believe it when she offered us a place to stay.”

“We had to catch a break somewhere, didn’t we? If only because of the law of averages.” He pulled a chair away from the table to sit.

“What’d you find out?”

“Maggie’s? It’s quite an enterprise. This older lady, Maggie May, runs a fish farm about a mile down the road. She raises trout from eggs to the point where they’re ready to be sold commercially. I can walk there in the morning so we can keep the car out of sight. She just needs some basic fetch and tote labor. I can pick up a little money while we lay low, catch our breath, and figure out this mess.”

“Etta was curious about us. I let her think I was on the run from a bad boyfriend. Anyway, she felt sorry for us.”

“Works for me.”

“I’m going to be helping out in the café at lunch time. I felt like I needed to do something to repay her.”

“We both do. I helped Louis haul used grease out to the grease trap collector in back. They strain it before turning it in for recycling. They must fry a mountain of fish.”

Mac stood and stretched, groaning as he worked the kinks out.

“Well, I’m going to move the car. Don’t know how vigilant the police are about patrolling this area, but it makes me nervous. We passed some kind of a dumping ground in a ravine on the way to the fish farm. Looks like quite a few old wrecks have been abandoned back in there. I’m going to park the car in along with them and get it out of sight.”

“There’s a bed in the other room.” She nodded toward the doorway. “I got it made up.”

“Sounds good. I’m ready to hit the hay. Why don’t you go ahead and lie down? I’ll crash when I get back from moving the car.”

“I think I will.” She watched as he paused in the doorway. “It’s been a long day. Tomorrow has to be better, doesn’t it?”

He raised an eyebrow and looked skeptical. “Hard to get much worse, right?”

Chapter Ten

Jan arched her back and rolled her shoulders as Etta reached over to empty the deep fryer.

“I think the rush is over, girls. Jan, you were a big help today.”

“I was glad to lend a hand. What can I do now?”

“Oh, you can go on. Rochelle and me have our clean-up routine down pat.”

“Are you sure? I really don’t have anything to do.”

Etta waved a hand. “Go on. And take some of these leftovers. You haven’t had your lunch either.”

“Thanks, I will.” Jan peeled off the hairnet Etta had provided. “I’ll make something for Mac, too. I don’t know what he’s doing for lunch.”

“Go right ahead. I’d rather see it used than thrown away. Maggie’s is down about a mile and a quarter on this side of the road if you want to walk. You can’t miss it.”

She made up a couple of fried catfish sandwiches, added some of the hush puppies she’d been frying, and put everything in a plastic take-out bag.

In the restroom, she filled the sink with water and scoured her face and arms. Even after rinsing off, she still smelled of fried food. And her hair!

She shuddered and dunked her head under the faucet, reaching for the pink stuff in the soap dispenser. She scrubbed her hair vigorously, digging her nails into the scalp. She rinsed it off, wringing as much moisture out of it as she could and using paper towels to dry it. Standing up, she ran her fingers through it to de-tangle it.

She looked at herself in the mirror still wearing the shirt and jeans she’d worn for the last two days. Her face was free of make-up after days of impersonating the Deb, her hair falling in wet waves around it. She didn’t resemble the genteelly-dressed Dixie Deb any more than the terrified accounting professional she’d been in her tailored suit back in the Atlanta office of the I.R.S. But, the thought of being hard to recognize did bring a certain sense of relief.

The smell of grease still permeated her clothes. Maybe she could do some laundry when she got back to the cabin.

It was another hot sunny day. The early morning mist drifting up from the river had burned away. She waved at Louis as he carried something out to the barrel-shaped container beside the back door. All in all, it had been a stroke of luck to find shelter at the Alabama-Rama. How long would they have to stay before things got straightened out with the F.B.I.? Was there any further word about Jake Derossiers? The possibility he might not recover was one she couldn’t bear thinking about. Who had set them up? If she hadn’t locked their keys in the car, the two of them would be the ones in the hospital. At best.

She chose the shady side of the road as she walked. The moisture from the river and the lush vegetation combined with the afternoon’s heat to increase the humidity. She swatted away a cloud of gnats. In the pines ahead, she could hear a redheaded woodpecker at work. How was Mac, here from the big city, adjusting to day labor in the rural South? If she didn’t resemble the person she’d been back in Atlanta, the federal agent in shirt and tie was a thing of the past for him too.

Something glittered off to the side, catching her eye. She left the road and pushed her way through waist-high clumps of cornflowers and Queen Anne’s lace. A set of tire tracks led down the backside of a hill to a gully where she could see the rusting hulks of old cars. So this was where Mac had stashed the pizza delivery car they’d appropriated. She thought she could recognize the roofline beyond an old station wagon.

Climbing back to the road she glimpsed a white frame cottage with a number of buildings beyond it in the distance. Approaching the house, she could see the pick-up parked in front, displaying a picture of a leaping fish below the legend Maggie May’s Trout Farm. From a greenhouse in back of the house, a figure in trousers emerged, walking briskly with a clipboard.

“Excuse me, s…” She choked back the last word as she got nearer the lean, rangy figure in work clothes and boots. Something about the short salt and pepper hair, weathered face, and blue eyes gave her pause.

“Hi.” She caught her breath. “I’m Jan Thimmons. I’m looking for my friend, Mac. I understand he’s working here.”

“Sure.” The voice, although gravelly, was clearly female. She pulled off a work glove and extended a hand. “I’m Maggie. Mac said you all were staying down at Louis and Etta’s for a while. Glad to meet you.”

“This is quite a place.” Looking around, she could see movement in the water filling one of the elevated cement block rectangular enclosures.

“Let me show you around,” Maggie offered. “I’m grateful as all get out to Mac for the extra hand. Fish farming is a 24/7 business. Trout don’t do well if someone isn’t around to take care of them.”

She followed her guide to one of the tanks.

“In here are the nine-inch rainbow trout. They’re ready for delivery. We stock fishing ponds and breeding tanks in this part of the state. Most public waterways in Alabama are too warm for rainbows. These here are fed a special diet twice a day from the automatic pellet dispensers.” She reached over and clicked one. The shower of granules brought a swarming crowd of young fish. “Mac’s bringing me some sacks out of storage to load the dispensers now. Over yonder in that pond…”

The older woman moved over to another of the rectangular enclosures.

“These guys require more care.” Maggie took a seat on the edge and trailed a hand in the water, her voice growing soft. “They’re big enough to be outside, but they don’t really feed on their own. They need to be hand-fed and encouraged.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“It’s constant. I’ve got a back-up generator in case the power goes out. You’ve got to keep the oxygen circulating. There’s your boyfriend.” Maggie pointed to a figure carrying something out of a shed to a wheelbarrow.

“I brought him some lunch.” Jan held up her sack. “Etta is letting me help out in the café since we’re living in her old fishing cabin.”

“She’s a good soul. Tell Mac he can rest now. He’s more’n earned it.”

She crossed to where Mac had stopped with the wheelbarrow watching her.

“How about some lunch? Maggie said you’re due for a break.”

He was dressed in brown coveralls with a Maggie May’s Trout Farm and a fish logo on the shirt. He pulled a handkerchief from a back pocket to wipe his face.

“I won’t argue.” He looked around. “How about over here at the picnic table?” He pushed the wheelbarrow into the shade of a sweet gum tree and took his time lowering himself down on a bench.

“I helped out with the lunch crowd.” Jan seated herself across from him. “They do quite a business at noon. I didn’t realize how much of a crowd they get out there off the beaten path, but we probably served over a hundred people including take-outs.”

She unpacked the sack, laying out the sandwiches and opening the packet of hush puppies.

“I didn’t bring anything to drink, but I do have these cups.”

“There’s a hose around back. Let me get some water.”

She had started on her sandwich when he returned, crunching the crisp lettuce, the soft white bread and flakey cornmeal breaded fish. She could see why people made a special trip out to the café.

“Looks good. The candy bars I brought didn’t go far.”

“The hush puppies are mine. I worked the deep fryer today.”

“Picking up all kinds of new job skills, aren’t you?” He picked up a handful to pop in his mouth. His arms were sun brown now.

“Maybe I have a career at the Alabama-Rama?” She watched the breeze in the leaves ripple shifting lines of sun and shadow across his face. A lazy piece of Spanish moss floated from a branch. “How long do you think we’ll have to stay here, Mac? We need to get back to our real lives.”

“I don’t know. Maggie has asked me to go along when she delivers a load of young fingerlings to a finishing plant north of Montgomery tomorrow. I thought I could use the opportunity to make a call. The Bureau has a 1-800 tip line. I’ll leave a message explaining the situation from our point of view. Then we’ll wait for a public response. I don’t want to make a call from around here and give away our whereabouts before I’m convinced they won’t come in with guns drawn.”

“Do you think our pictures are in the papers yet?”

“I’m sure they’re showing the footage from the surveillance cameras. You know I forgot to spray paint the one back in Titusville.”

“There was a lot going on.”

“Yeah. I don’t know if they’ll show my file photo from the Bureau. They’re not going to be eager to publicize the fact one of their agents has gone over to the dark side. As for your picture…”

“It wouldn’t be that hard to get one.” She lay her sandwich down on the wrapper and propped her head up on a hand. “I hope they haven’t contacted my parents. That worries me. They don’t know that the I.R.S. audited me, or my business folded. In fact, they aren’t aware of this whole undercover thing. They used to be proud of me. I told them the wedding was off and I was busy with the accounting practice. I can’t bear the thought of them seeing me staring up from the front page of their paper.”

“The papers will probably just use the footage from the bank. Hopefully, no one will I.D. us from that.”

“Do you think there’s a reward out for us?”

“Oh, count on it.”

“Go ahead and have the other sandwich. I’ve had enough.” She used her napkin and put trash in the sack. She’d lost her appetite.

“Thanks. It’s been a long morning. I’ve got to say it feels good to be back doing something physical though, working out some tension.”

“So what have you been doing?”

“Moving feed, cleaning tanks, hauling trash mainly. Maggie has a big operation. The trout are hatched out in the greenhouse and kept there until they’re big enough to be put outside. The little ones have to be hand fed.”

“That’s what she was telling me. What’s that like?”

“Different. You put the feed in the water and the minnows come up and nibble it. Some of them are determined to suck on your fingers. Maggie had two high school girls come out to help us today. They’ll be here while we transport the bigger fish to the trout finishing plant in Montgomery tomorrow.”