Road to Nowhere (22 page)

Randy groaned. “I don’t think we’d get on real friendly together, as much as I’d try. We’ll have to call down to Asheville like we usually do.” He was looking at the tax book, just sort of absentmindedly flipping through pages, and then he stopped. “Is that what I think it is?”

Patsy looked over his shoulder. “What do you think it is?”

“Two hundred and forty-five acres, and I think that’s on Ayawisgi Mountain over Wardsville. Now, I should check the maps, but I think that’s the land where the new road would go.”

“That’s it,” Patsy said.

“Owner is Warrior Land Trust. I wonder who that is, because they might make quite a bit of money selling that land for the road if it gets built.”

There was Byron. Louise heard the front door open and close, and she ran out to meet him in the hall.

“You won’t believe it,” he said, before he even got to his chair.

“I will,” she said. She followed him into the television room.

“No you won’t. I wouldn’t have believed it myself.”

“I will believe you, and I’ve been waiting all day to hear.”

“What do you mean you’ve been waiting?”

She sat beside him. “I know that Mr. Coates called for Gordon Hite.”

“Now, how in the world . . . !”

She couldn’t help it, even if it did annoy him purple when she already knew something he was about to tell her.

“Mr. Coates called the sheriff’s office this morning while he was in the salon dropping off my baking pans.”

He just stared at her with the biggest scowl. “What in the world was Mr. Coates doing with your baking pans?”

What was the man talking about? “Well, nothing.” The day
had
been too hard on him.

“Then what was he doing in the salon with them? And what was he doing in the salon anyway?”

“He wasn’t in the salon.”

“Louise!”

But she had finally worked it out. “It was Gordon in the salon. And don’t you yell at me.” Then she started giggling.

“I wasn’t yelling!”

“What I said was that Mr. Coates called the sheriff’s office while Gordon was in the salon.”

“That’s not what you said, you said Mr. Coates was.” He was red in the face from being mad, and being worn out from working a hard day. So she poked him in the side and he started laughing, too.

“Mr. Coates in the salon!” she said when she could catch her breath.

“With your baking pans,” Byron said.

“He doesn’t have any more hair than you do!” Louise said, and that slowed Byron’s laughing but not hers.

“It’s no wonder I’ve lost my hair, worrying over the factory,” he said, “and paying the bills, and making sure we have food on the table, and all your foolishness.”

“Well, there is food on the table right now.” And they were both already up and on their way to the dining room. It was only after they’d settled in and both made a good start into the green bean and tuna casserole that she finally got Byron talking again.

“It was right at lunch,” he said, “and some of us had gone outside to eat, and right there in the front parking lot were Mr. Coates and Jeremy yelling at each other, and Gordon Hite watching.”

“What were they arguing about?”

“I couldn’t hear most of it, until Mr. Coates started just plain screaming at Gordon. ‘What are you waiting for? Arrest him now!’ ”

“
Arrest him?
Jeremy? I don’t believe it!”

“Now, didn’t I say you wouldn’t? Didn’t I?”

“Well, I don’t.”

“But he did.”

“Right in the parking lot?” Louise asked.

“Right in front of everyone.”

“His own son! Gordon didn’t, did he?”

“Of course not. I didn’t hear what Gordon said, but nobody got arrested. And Jeremy just stormed off, anyway, and Gordon stayed and calmed down Mr. Coates. Then they went into the office. And when we were back in after lunch, they were gone.”

“Even Mr. Coates?”

“Him, too.”

“Well,” she said. “Well, goodness sakes. Even before, they never were acting like that.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it,” Byron said.

May 15, Monday

Randy had a million things on his mind. Three client appointments this morning. Sue Ann feeling a little under the weather with a cold, poor thing. The yard needed mowing, and ever since Ed Fiddler next door had got his promotion at the bank, he’d been making comments about appearances being important in the neighborhood.

And now, Roland Coates wanted to see him soon as possible, which meant that afternoon at the latest, no matter what else he might have planned for the rest of the day.

He slid himself into his car and felt something under his shoe on the floorboard. Another piece of broken glass.

That was a dozen or so he’d found since the windshield had been broken. He might even mention to Roland, while he was out there this afternoon, that his trucks should maybe drive a little more gently on Hemlock.

Probably Everett had already pointed that out.

Randy looked at the little pebble of glass. He’d been thinking about broken car windows lately—now, what had that been about?

Well, Wade, of course.

He hadn’t seen Wade’s car, but from what Gordon Hite had said, it must have been a terrible mess.

Sort of a strange thought, two windshields broken between the two of them, him and Wade, like one more little connection they had together.

The whole thing was playing on his mind in a funny way, and uncomfortable. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it—all that glass shattered.

Gabe should have vacuumed out the car better when he replaced the glass. Randy ran his hand down the passenger seat, underneath, around, in the cracks, to find any other pieces he could. He didn’t want to keep having them show up every time he sat down in his car.

His finger caught something on the seat. Just a hole, over on the far side. What was that? The car had been through a lot, but he hadn’t noticed that hole before.

And there was something down in it. He slid over to sit in that seat so he could get his finger down better. Something . . . he got it fished out and looked to see what in the world it was.

For goodness’ sakes, it looked like a bullet. Of all things. How would that have gotten in there?

“What does that mean?” Of course, no one answered. No one else was in the house. But Louise didn’t mind talking to herself if she didn’t have anybody else. She was trying to work out what the pages said.

Goodness, it was hot! The first hot day of the year.

But time was getting on. She had laundry to finish and sweeping and vacuuming and no time for all those big words in little tiny print. Some of the words were marked with yellow.

She’d have to work them out, though. A letter with no return address, mailed to Louisa Brown, and two pages of some kind of state laws. They’d wait until she and Byron could look at them together. And she’d have him put the air-conditioner in the window for the summer.

She only took one afternoon a week off for housework, and time was wasting.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Coates, and here I am. What can I do for you?”

Randy was trying to be real friendly and helpful, because Roland Coates looked about ready to spontaneously combust. His face was red and his neck was bulging out over his white collar and his eyebrows were squeezed down toward his nose like two white wolves going after a rabbit hole.

“I’ll tell you what you’ll do for me.”

Randy started working out just what might come of losing Roland’s account, as that seemed to be the worst that Roland could do, and he was looking like he wanted to do the worst he could. And even if there wasn’t really much profit in the account, there was still a tidy sum of cash involved, and also the honor of handling the furniture factory.

“Tear up the contract from March,” Roland said. “That thing’s worthless.”

“Well, I’ll do that, Mr. Coates. I’m sorry that—”

“And make a new one.”

Randy had taken in a breath, but now he wasn’t remembering exactly how to breathe it out again. “Now, I don’t think I quite—”

“I want the best. You said that last one didn’t have any bells or whistles. Well, put them all in. And double everything.”

“I’m not quite sure I understand . . .”

“
Not quite sure?
How can I make it any plainer?”

“What I mean is, there are some questions I’ll need to ask, and there are laws about over-insuring. I don’t know if I can double everything in the policy, as that’s likely to exceed the 150 percent of replacement value . . .”

But Roland had used up all his forcefulness, like a balloon out of air.

“Then just do what you can. Especially fire. What if there’s a fire? What will that policy do for me?”

“It’ll pay back the cost to replace whatever’s been destroyed. Up to the whole factory.”

“Make the fire damage as much as you can. Triple it. I’ll pay whatever it takes. If there’s a fire I want it to pay every cent it can.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Randy said.

And now Roland was even more done in, limp and slack and weighted down like a wool blanket out of the washing machine. Randy started getting up. It didn’t seem like Roland even knew he was there.

Then his inside fire suddenly burst out again and Roland jumped up and reached right over the desk and took hold of Randy’s necktie and pulled his head to just two inches from Roland’s own.

“McCoy. Make sure they build that road. Do you understand?”

It was a little hard to talk. “I understand, Mr. Coates.”

Roland let go and sank back into his chair, but his eyes still had the fire in them.

“Don’t let anybody stop you. Just make sure they build it.”

Supper was over and the dishes were done. Here it was, her favorite part of the day, when she could sit down next to Byron and watch a little television and not have to think about anything. And while she’d been in the kitchen, Byron had brought the air-conditioner up from the basement and set it in the window. It wasn’t as hot as in the afternoon, but they had it on anyway. Just because.

“Oh, I forgot. I got something in the mail today.”

“What was it?” He hadn’t really heard her. It was more just a reflex.

“I don’t know. Let me get it.”

She found the envelope and plopped back into her chair, and plopped the papers onto his lap.

“What’s that?”

“What I got in the mail today. Now does it make any sense to you?”

He had to get his reading glasses on, and then he squinted, just like she had.

“Where’d these come from?”

“It didn’t say. See the envelope? They even have my name wrong. Louisa.”

“I can’t hardly make sense,” he said. “But I think I don’t like it.”

“I could hardly make sense of it, either.”

He put his finger on the yellow paragraph. “Well, it’s about county boards, and it’s about voting on roads.”

“State-funded road projects.”

“And board members ‘serving by appointment.’ ”

“Good,” she said. “That’s what I thought it was talking about. Now what does that mean about six months?”

“They have to wait six months to vote.”

“
Serving by appointment
—I think that means when they’re appointed instead of being elected.”

“Like you’ll be doing to fill Wade Harris’s place,” Byron said.

Suddenly it made more sense. “Well, yes, we will.”

“How do you do that, anyway?”

“I should ask Joe. I think we just pick someone and vote. But when we vote on a road, they can’t vote till six months later?”

“That’s not what it says.”

“It says six months right there.” She pointed at the words.

“That’s not what that means. It means they have to wait till they’ve been on the board six months before they can vote on these road projects.”

Now it made complete make sense. “But if we appoint someone to take Wade’s place, they won’t be able to vote on Gold River Highway.”

“No.” Byron was adding up months. “You’ll vote on it in December. So you’d have to appoint someone by June.”

“But that’s our next meeting. Well, I had no idea there was such a law. They can vote on anything else, but not on state road projects.”

Byron was scowling at the papers. “And here . . . here’s somebody wanted to make sure you knew about that.”

May 16, Tuesday

“Gordon?” No one at the front window, so Randy was just poking his nose down the hall toward the office in back.

“Randy?” The sheriff himself came lumbering out. “Is that you?”

“Not anyone else. I’m just stopping in for a second, and I hope I’m not disturbing you.” He was feeling sort of nervous.

“No, just sitting back there.”

“Good, good, I’d hate to be an obstacle in your line of fire, and . . . no, I’m sorry. I meant to say in your line of duty.” Of all things to slip up on, to say such a thing. “Well, either of them, to tell the truth.” Now he was feeling all the way nervous.

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Don’t mind me one bit.”

“Well, why’d you stop in then?”

“Oh. I had a question, and I don’t know if you can answer it but I thought I’d stop in and try.” Randy took a moment and got himself calmed down, and he tried to sound natural and not use too many words. “You mentioned back in February, I believe it was, at the basketball game, that Everett Colony had got himself a gun.”

“I guess I did. Way he was acting, I thought you should know. Foolish thing for me to say.”

“Now, I’m wondering, would you know what kind of gun it was?”

“What kind? Why would you want to know that?”

This was the point Randy had been wondering about himself, whether he could really believe such a thing at all, let alone say it to someone else. “You see, I found a bullet. And—” he was thinking as fast as he could—“it wasn’t far from my house, and I thought that was sort of strange, of course, in a neighborhood like Mountain View, until it just occurred to me it might be from Everett target practicing or such, and I didn’t want to ask him, thinking that he might ask how I knew he had a gun, and when you’d told me he had that permit maybe you hadn’t meant for him to know you—”

He’d been talking faster and faster up to as fast as he’d been thinking,. But Gordon had cut right in.