Southern Poison (2 page)

“I’m sure I did.” I was young and green back then, three years into my required six with the marines. At that point in my life, I’d have signed anything to get out early.

“You still have it?”

“Probably.”

“Good,” he said, watching a barge progress slowly beneath the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge. “Read page twelve, paragraphs two through five. You can be called back into service at any time for thirty years after your initial service date, and you can be utilized in a consultant capacity up until your death. As long as you are in good physical health and you’re of sound mind, you belong to the agency on a per-assignment basis if the situation warrants.”

Until death?
Mind racing, I reached for my beer and frantically tried to think of a way out. He’d said something about good health. Surely I could fake an illness if I had to. I have some doctor friends.

“Don’t even try,” Ashton said. “We have all your current medical records, right up to your last doctor’s visit and pap smear results.”

“Crap,” I mumbled to myself.

“Guess you’d better postpone your upcoming shuffleboard tournament,” Ox said, passing by with two frozen drinks. “Might want to cancel your bingo dates, too.”

I glared at him. Wicked grin spread across his face, he kept walking.

Like a bad slow-motion scene in a movie, I felt my hands retrieve a file from the manila envelope. I wasn’t sure if I’d been reading for a few minutes or half an hour, but when I finished, Ashton
was devouring a plate of crab cakes. Ox had served him a small side dish of collards as well.

“What is it that you want me to do?” I heard myself ask after I’d watched him eat for a moment, my ears ringing with a steady buzz, as though the bomb just dropped on me had already exploded.

Ashton sprinkled hot-pepper vinegar on the collards and took a tentative bite before nodding with palatal agreement. “You’re familiar with the Sunny Point ammo dump?”

“Vaguely. The Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, or MOTSU. Largest ammunition port in the nation. Army-owned. About sixteen thousand acres, just south of Wilmington.” I felt myself slipping back in time, to when my knowledge on various subjects was persistently tested. Back then, though, I had a desire to excel by pleasing my bosses and answered their questions with the eagerness of a puppy in training, awaiting praise. Now I was just stuck in a bad dream.

“Right,” he said and forked another wad of collards. “It is the Army’s primary deep-water port and the only DOD terminal set up to accommodate containerized ammunition.”

I waited for the rest.

“We’ve picked up some high-frequency chatter, which may indicate that one of our nation’s ammo dumps is targeted by a terrorist cell. Sunny Point ranks highest on the probability reports and we need you to be a set of eyes and ears. A position in food services has become open, as the current employee will be out on medical leave.”

“You want me to work in a cafeteria?” My afternoon had plummeted from pleasant to dreadful and it still hadn’t hit bottom.

“You’ll actually be working what some folks affectionately term the roach coach. It’s a mobile meal truck run by Mama Jean. Makes the rounds by construction sites in the afternoons and has been a fixture at Sunny Point every morning for years. Just about everyone coming or going stops for breakfast, plus you’ll get some local drive-by
traffic. The truck isn’t allowed inside MOTSU but there is a nice scenic spot near the entrance where Mama Jean always parks.” His Adam’s apple moved rhythmically as he finished the rest of his beer and pushed a napkin across his mouth. “In any event, you will make egg biscuits, hash-brown patties, that sort of thing.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“Negative. The position gives you flexibility and the opportunity to gather information in an informal environment. It’s a great cover, since Mama Jean has already told the regulars about her scheduled hysterectomy. She’ll be out for at least a month, maybe more. And you don’t have to do the afternoon construction-site runs, unless you just want to see some sweaty bodies in hard hats.”

“You’re funny.”

“Seriously. We’re turning over all income to Mama Jean, and she’d probably appreciate the lunch income. So, feel free.”

Yeah, right.
“Am I the only one?”

“Of course not. Other agents are being utilized as eyes and ears in and around Southport.”

“What positions? Anybody I know?”

Ashton frowned. His way of telling me I wouldn’t have access to that information, unless I needed it. The government never did like for its left hand to know what its right hand was doing. God forbid the two should actually hold the bat at the same time and swing at the ball together.

“I’ll need a car,” I said. “Anything armored that’s being pulled from service and going to auction?” It’s how I’d acquired my Mercedes-Benz S-series for a ridiculously low price. Of course, it helped that I am friends with the man in charge of the auctions and had sent him a case of his favorite bourbon.

Ashton grinned. “First of all, we’re making a few revisions to the mobile meal truck to give it surveillance capabilities and offer protection,
just in case you find yourself in an unpleasant situation. Second of all, you’re not in a position to bargain. But just out of curiosity, what happened to the Benz?”

It was my turn to grin. The government obviously hadn’t been keeping that close of tabs on me. “It got shot up last month by a crazy woman and her boyfriend.” I didn’t mention that the fellow had also been my boyfriend. The betrayal still stung, if I let myself think about it too long. “Bullet-resistant glass and armored plates did their job, but the hood and door panels look like Swiss cheese and the windshield is a connect-the-dots puzzle. Car’s not worth what the repair bill would cost. Anyway, I’ll need something to drive when I’m not slaving away over a hot grill in the back of a truck.”

He pushed his empty dishes back and drummed some fingers in thought. “Tell you what. I’ll authorize you as a bidder on any current auction vehicles. Get what you want, but you pay out of your own pocket.”

“Floyd still running things there?”

“Affirmative. I’m sure he’ll take good care of you, just like he did with the Mercedes.”

“At least buy me a set of new run-flat tires with Uncle Sam’s checkbook.” When the set that came with the Benz wore out, I replaced them with much cheaper, regular passenger tires. But I’ve since decided that there is no use tooling around in an armored car if your tires could easily be shot out.

Frowning, Ashton shook his head.

I twirled a strand of hair around my forefinger, arched out my chest, and produced a sexy bimbette look, complete with fluttering lashes. “Puhlleeeze?”

Ashton held my raised eyebrow stare. He nearly smiled. “I taught you that look and it doesn’t work on me. You report for work on Monday. Your name is Jill Burns.”

“Can’t it be something a little more exotic like Marilyn Tulika or Giana Brenneka?”

He dropped some bills on the counter and stood to leave. “Good to see you again.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

Peggy Lee Cooke
leisurely opened her eyes and rolled over to face the rays of early morning sun that pressed through the miniblinds. Enjoying the flood of warmth that hit her cheeks, she smiled, and, catlike, stretched her entire body, starting with her toes. She couldn’t remember when she’d last awakened happy and now that she thought about it, maybe she’d never before had anything worth being happy about. But now that a meaningful project sizzled on the burner and she had the love of an amazing man, she couldn’t imagine
not
feeling cheerful.

No longer did she feel like a childless outcast. She wasn’t even bothered by her three-year-long failed attempt to find a cure for her type of infertility, working with the wild leafy shiff bush found in South America. She used to think that a man would never marry her if she couldn’t give him a family. Men wanted heirs to immortalize their name and she planned to mother hordes of children. Two or three, anyway. But like a promising slot machine that pays off just enough to keep the gambler from moving on to the next
flashing machine, her research project ultimately ended up a loser. It sucked up all her energy and left her barren and dry. Until
he
came along, that is. Her lover and life mate. Chuck was a surprise jackpot.

A good chemist, he told her, didn’t accept failure. He’d held her face between his strong hands and explained how a fruitless research project could be redirected—and resurrected—as a winner. Which is exactly what he did with her wild leafy shiff bush research. She’d chosen the right slot machine, after all, and it promised to pay handsomely.

Pushing herself upright on the edge of the bed, Peggy felt beautiful, despite her plainness. The genetic outcome of her mother and father’s union hadn’t bestowed her with alluring physical features, but it hadn’t been totally unkind. Her skin was blemish-free, her eyes were set apart by seven-point-four centimeters, pupil to pupil, and her thick hair grew fast. Using how-to tips from a magazine, she’d tried applying makeup before her dates with Chuck, but the result was always clownish so she no longer bothered. Even so, he had called her brainy and gorgeous, and she’d been pleasantly giddy since. She was the best of both worlds, he proclaimed, as they’d made love in his hotel room and watched a movie and made love again. He was a visionary with big dreams and now she was a part of something that might change the world. She was
someone.

Stripping off a T-shirt and shorts, Peggy stepped into the shower and thought back to her geeky high school years, when nobody—not even the other girls—wanted anything to do with her. Fueled by a craving to learn more about chemistry, the only subject that made perfect sense of the world that surrounded her, Peggy plodded steadily through years of higher education until she could put the word
doctor
in front of her name.

She gloated in the proof that her stepmother had been wrong all those years ago to scold her for growing crystals in a brand-new
Easy-Bake Oven. She didn’t even cry when she got spanked over the incident, because seven-year-old Peggy knew that Santa Claus would have put a chemistry set beneath their scraggly tree, had he only known. A career in chemistry was her destiny, as sure as beautiful crystals will grow from simple charcoal, ammonia, and salt.

Now, twenty-five years later, Peggy Lee gleefully acknowledged that it was also her destiny to become a wife. There was a reason she remained lonely for so many years, because just as the best crystals use more advanced ingredients and take the longest to develop, the best relationships happen in due time. Chuck was elated to learn of her virginity and wasted no time in teaching her precisely how to please him. Since her first gynecological exam at age thirteen, she’d known of her sterility—one category in which the DNA crapshoot had been unreasonably cruel to her—but now she felt feminine for the first time in her life. Her defective eggs didn’t matter anymore, and in hindsight, they hadn’t mattered all along. Chuck didn’t want children. The world was already overpopulated, he’d said. It was fate that put the two of them in the same hotel for a weekend conference. Fate that seated them side by side at a keynote speaker luncheon. Fate that merged discussions of two entirely separate projects, hers and his, both of which flopped during field trials. One pharmaceutical dud and one commercial-glue fiasco that, merged together, had changed futility and frustration into promise and progress. Peggy wasn’t sure whether she believed in God or not, but a higher power of some distinction had to be at work. Everything happened for a reason, she learned, and her life was meant to be exactly the way it was turning out.

Chuck had been so impressed with Peggy that he built a satellite laboratory in Wilmington and hired her to head up the first stage of Project Antisis. She’d been willing to move to Roanoke, Virginia, where ECH Chemical Engineering&Consulting resided. For privacy reasons, though, Chuck chose to run Project Antisis
from a satellite location and found the perfect spot right in Wilmington. Peggy Lee manufactured the synthetic plant-based chemical, which she added to a nontoxic adhesive, and shipped the raw material to a production and packaging facility in Virginia.

The pieces were rapidly and efficiently falling into place. Chuck traveled to Wilmington almost weekly, and she anticipated his visits like a military wife waiting for her soldier to come home. Even though they couldn’t truly be together until phase one of Project Antisis was fully implemented, she was happy. Blissfully happy, she realized, toweling dry, deciding what she would wear to the lab that day. As she pulled a pair of jeans and cotton top out of a drawer, Peggy Lee’s mind wandered to other clothing. A wedding dress, for starters. He was simply waiting for the right time to propose. She just knew it.

“When are they
gonna haul away that damn hunk of junk, for crying out loud?” Spud complained, asking nobody in particular. People think he looks like a much older, shrunken version of Wolfgang Puck. Except my father’s demeanor is much different from the famous chef’s, and right now, agitation was the flavor of the moment. “That stupid car is still causing me headaches.”

Spud and Bobby, one of my father’s poker buddies, had joined Ox and me for a midday snack at the Block. It was well past lunchtime and too early for the happy-hour crowd, and a smattering of low-maintenance customers sat around eating peanuts and drinking beers. Ruby tended to everyone and still had plenty of time to catch up on local gossip with the regulars.

“The insurance adjuster was a young kid, and once he took a look at your Chrysler, he wasn’t sure how to write up the report. Said he had to send a senior adjuster out,” I explained to my father for the third or fourth time. “Should be sometime this week.”

After deteriorating eyesight claimed Spud’s driver’s license, he’d
embarked on a mission to get rid of his Chrysler LHS. Unfortunately, his valuation of the vehicle was much higher than anyone else’s and he couldn’t sell it. Mad at the state of North Carolina and obsessed with getting rid of the car, he’d schemed ways to lose it so he could collect the insurance money, right up until a local cop offered to buy it. When Spud finally snagged a buyer with cash in hand—a buyer willing to pay the full asking price—my father had an epiphany: he would keep the car so his friends could tote him around in it. Minutes later, somebody drove a garbage truck into the Block, ripping right through one of the giant metal garage doors. Spud’s car was parked outside said garage door and the huge truck’s front-end forks had pierced it like toothpicks going through a fat olive. After being forked and crushed, the Chrysler was peppered with incoming rounds from no fewer than twenty handguns. When the firestorm ended, the tow-truck driver couldn’t figure out how to safely haul away the garbage truck with Spud’s car attached—and suspended a foot off the ground. A forward-thinking kind of guy, he called a welder to cut through the metal prongs, effectively amputating them from the truck. Victorious, he towed the garbage truck away, leaving the impaled, smashed, shot-up Chrysler sitting in a patch of grass outside my bar, two long forked rods protruding through its belly.