What You See (36 page)

Danielle was the youngest of Uncle Bill and Aunt Edie’s three
girls. She always seemed to manage to keep them on their toes with her wild,
teenage shenanigans, while Anita—the middle daughter—dealt with her own demons,
eventually recovering and making a life for herself. The oldest, Belinda was
married to a wonderful guy named Will, and along with their two kids in tow,
traveled all over the
United
States
as professional
storytellers. They seemed to be the all-American family... until Danielle died.
Nothing was ever the same after that. Now this brought it all back. All the
hurt and pain flooded my soul.

“Billy,” I barely got out. “Please take me home.”

He ran his hand across my face and whispered, “Come on, baby
girl. Let’s go home. You don’t need to be here. You need to be at home with
your family beside you.”

Much of what happened next was a blur. All I remembered was
the ride back to Stanardsville in Billy’s truck. The whole way home he tried to
get me to talk. He said he was worried about me because I didn’t look so good.

I hissed at him. “How do you expect me to look? I’ve been
through the mill. I almost died. A poor young girl has lost her life to a bunch
of loony tunes, not to mention the fact that her parents will probably never
get over it, and you’re worried about how I look.”

“I’m just saying I think this has been a little too much for
you. You haven’t been exposed to the underworld of death and destruction like I
have. It’s hard to get used to it.”

“I know the pain of death. This is just a different form of
it,” I moaned. “Who tells the parents? Can you imagine what they’re going to go
through?” I started to cry again. “I remember when my cousin, Danielle died.
She was so young.”

“I’m taking you home,” he replied as he rubbed my arm and
drove his truck through the green traffic light in Ruckersville. “Captain
Waverly agreed with me that it’d be better if someone went in person to tell
the Carroltons about their daughter’s death. I convinced him to let me.”

“I’m going with you,” I declared.

Mom, Jack, and Dennis were in Mom’s van behind us, with Cole
fast on their rear end. I looked into Billy’s rearview mirror and saw his green
Jeep. I caught Billy looking at me.

“What do you think?” he interrogated me. “What’s it going to
be?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you mean.”

“You know what I’m talking about,” he shouted. “What’s the
deal? You gave this man the boot like you were throwing out yesterday’s trash.”

“He betrayed me.”

“Get over it,” Billy demanded. “You have no idea what this
man has been through for you.”

“Why don’t you tell me?” I said with a strange feeling that I
didn’t want to hear what he had to say. “Since when did you become his best
friend, again? I thought you two had become mortal enemies.” I dug at him. “You
said he only cared about himself, and no matter what, in the end he’d do what
he had to do. I see that now. He turned us in. It was from his report that
they learned about the purse and our involvement. I can’t trust him anymore.”

“There’re things you don’t know about,” Billy came back.

“Yeah, like what?”

“Like... he’s the one who called me yesterday after you left.
Those pain pills I took were making me groggy. I was just getting ready to
crawl into bed and go to sleep when the phone rang. It was Cole and he was
acting crazy. He was nuts. He kept going off about a file he’d just gotten. He
said Larry Hudgins was a sex pervert. His wife had lesbian tendencies and the
teenage son was an extremely troubled youth, and then proceeded to go down the
list of the boy’s priors. And he said the Charleston Police Department suspected
the mama was involved in the death of her brother-in-law and his wife, but
never could get anything on her.”

“Are we going someplace with this story?” I sneered. “Are you
going to string me along until I choke on my own rope? Get to the point!” I was
getting tired of listening to him go on with what was obviously to be the last
minute heroics of the boyfriend who had betrayed me. I guess I’m just not a
forgiving person, but to me, when someone betrays you, it’s over. Cole could’ve
been the one, but he betrayed me. That’s something I just couldn’t tolerate.

“I’m trying to make a point.” Billy looked at me with his
eyebrows curled in, like he does when he’s trying to be serious. “He said he
called you when he found all this out and your Mom told him you hadn’t come
back from taking me home. He hurried over to my house and hustled me out of
bed. I knew you were up to something when he told me you weren’t home. We put
two and two together and came looking for you.”

“Are you telling me that if Cole hadn’t come to your house, I
might still be buried in the ground?”

He looked at me skeptically. “That’s a strong possibility.”

“You think I should give him another chance?”

“I think you should do what your heart tells you.”

This gave me something to think about. If Billy was eager for
me to forgive Cole then maybe I should listen to him, and try to put Cole’s
past betrayal behind us. Everybody’s entitled to one mistake, right?
Unfortunately, I’m just not as forgiving as Billy.

“Like I said, I’ll give it some thought.”

We pulled into the driveway and by the time we got out of the
truck, Claire came rushing out of the house.

“Thank God, you’re all right,” she screamed as she ran up to
me and gave me a hug. “I was worried to death about you! Don’t you ever pull a
stunt like this again. Do you hear me?”

I mumbled a couple of responses, agreeing with everything she
said, while we walked up to the porch. There was no arguing with her when she
got like this. She’d go into one of her lectures and never let up. I didn’t
need that now. I had other things on my mind.

Billy and Cole were standing by the truck having a deep
conversation, while Mom and my other rescuers went inside. I wanted to know
what they were talking about, so I convinced Claire I was fine and got her to
go in the house with the promise that I’d be right in. I swallowed the lump in
my throat and walked up to them. Their conversation stopped immediately.

“Ah, you must have been talking about me,” I joked.

Cole looked at me and said, “We were just discussing what our
next move was going to be.”

“Yes,” Billy added, looking at his watch. “We have until the
six o’clock
news broadcast to get to the Carrolton’s or they’re
going to find out about Helen on the television. Captain Waverly said he
couldn’t keep a lid on it past then. We’ve decided that Cole and I would be the
ones to do it. You’re staying home.”

“I most certainly am not! I’m going with you.”

Billy and Cole exchanged glances.

“We already discussed it once and decided I was going, and I
am going,” I said, determined to get my way. “Nobody is going to stop me from
seeing this to the end.”

“I told you she’d say that,” Billy grunted. “Let’s go to
work.”

Twenty minutes later, after Mom had fed us and given us one
of her long-winded lectures, the three of us got into Billy’s truck and headed
for Poquoson. It was a good feeling to be alive, even though we had a nasty job
ahead of us. I dreaded having to tell the Carroltons their daughter was dead,
but I also knew it had to be done. I hoped that someday, down the road, they
might recover and go on with the rest of their lives. That’s what you have to
do, isn’t it?

The
4th of July weekend
turned out to be beautiful. The weatherman had forecast thunderstorms for both
days and as usual he was only partially right. Each day was sunny and nice all
day long with a light rain both nights. We had long since passed the glory of
witnessing the blooming of the Dogwood and the Redbud trees, but were now
enjoying the full bloom of summer. Flowers of different varieties and blooming
bushes lined just about every house and filled their flowerbeds. When I first
moved to the mountains, the woods and the greenery were just starting to come
to life, but now the trees were full of leaves and the vegetation was at full
throttle. There wasn’t a bare spot between the trees anywhere.

Sunday morning, everybody gathered at our house to prepare
for the big bash at the Blackhawk Meeting Grounds as Billy so aptly put it. He
promised the mood to be festive and the food to be abundant. He swore it would
be an event we’d never forget. He guaranteed nobody would leave hungry and when
they did leave, they’d go away with just a little bit more appreciation of the
Cherokee way of life.

He had a semi-captive audience. Dennis and Jack sat on the sofa
listening intensely, while Aunt Edie, who had arrived two days earlier with
Uncle Bill for their promised visit, threw in a few words. Uncle Bill was
asleep in the recliner as usual and Claire was upstairs doing whatever it is
that mothers do with their children.

“Enough is enough!” I yelled across the room to him as he was
just about to entertain the group some more. “Come over here and help me with
these eggs, please.”

Billy said something about a wife before he joined me in the
kitchen.

“I heard that!” I hissed. “If you were talking about me, you
can forget it. I can’t even cook.”

“You two stop it!” Mom fussed, standing at the counter behind
us frying up chicken in one of those big, electric deep fryers. “Just boil the
eggs for the potato salad, and try to behave yourselves, or get out of my
kitchen!”

“See,” Billy leaned over and whispered. “You’ve gone and
ruffled her feathers.”

“Just be quiet and help me,” I groaned. “How do you fix
boiled eggs? I know you have to do it just right, or they turn out gross.”

He reached down into the cabinet by my legs and pulled out a
pot, filled it with water from the sink faucet in front of us, then sat it on
the stove.

“Just turn on the gas,” he instructed. “You do know how to do
that, don’t you?”

I looked at him and then looked at the stove. Then I looked
back at him. I couldn’t let him know how bad my cooking skills were, so I
reached over and turned one of the knobs. A flame ignited on the front left
burner under the pot, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“You got lucky,” Billy laughed. “I can tell you’re lost in
the kitchen.”

“I do all right!” I boasted as I picked up the first egg,
cracked it open on the corner of the pot and then let the contents drop in the
water. I laid down the shell, picked up another egg and started to do it again
when I noticed Billy and Mom were standing behind me, laughing their fool
brains out. They thought I was hilarious.

I turned around, still holding the egg in my hand, and said,
“Do we have a problem here?”

“No, of course not,” Mom replied. “But I think it might be
better if you left the egg in the shell, honey. That’s what I would do if it
were me.”

This brought the house down. Even Uncle Bill woke up.

I regained my composure and said, “For your information, this
is the way the rich boil eggs. I saw them do it on television.”

Billy threw his hands up in the air. “Well, what does that
tell you folks?” He shooed me aside and started all over, explaining the
process as he went along. He refilled the pot with water, put the eggs in and waited
for the water to come to a boil. He let them boil for exactly three minutes and
then tuned off the burner.

“Now we’ll let them sit for fifteen minutes, and then they’ll
be ready to peel.” He looked at me and grinned. He pulled a colander out of
another cabinet and placed it in the sink. While the eggs were resting, he went
to the refrigerator and removed the mustard, mayonnaise, pickle relish and a
bottle of vinegar. He took the pot of potatoes Mom had boiling on the stove and
poured them in the colander to drain. Twenty minutes later, he had a bowl of
potato salad sitting on the counter ready to take to the party.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked. I was
impressed with his cooking ability, and thought he would make someone a fine
husband.

“In our tribe all the children were taught how to cook,” he
replied. “We were taught to hunt, fish, and prepare our meals. It was a lesson
in survival we all had to learn.”

“Fortunately,” I said, smiling, “I grew up with a mother who
did all that for me.”

“And look at you now,” he said as he turned to Mom. “No
offense Mom, but your daughter would be in a world of hurt if she had to eat
her own cooking for a week. She’d starve to death.”

Everyone thought that was just hilarious. Aunt Edie got up
off the sofa and came into the kitchen. She put her arm around my shoulder and
said, “But she has so many other good qualities. Not everybody has to be a good
cook, do they, Jesse?” Bless her heart. Aunt Edie was always the first one to
rally to the aid of the underdog.

“That’s right,” I agreed.

“This fall when I take my week off to go hunting, I’m taking
you with me,” Billy said. “We’ll camp in the woods for a week, kill our own
food, and I’ll teach you how to cook. You’ll love it. Trust me. It’ll be fun.”

“I live for the moment,” I sarcastically replied. I hated to
tell Billy, but this was just not going to happen.

Cole
arrived at
noon
,
and by then, the food Mom wanted to take had been prepared and we were ready to
go to the party. Claire loaded the kids into the van while we helped Mom carry
the food. Jack and Dennis talked Uncle Bill and Aunt Edie into riding with them
in the Camaro—which wasn’t hard because Uncle Bill had a fondness for
high-performance cars. Dad’s truck and my Jeep had been repaired and returned a
few days before, but I still couldn’t bring myself to get in either one. I rode
in Billy’s truck with him and Cole.

Once Billy pulled out of the driveway and was heading down
South River Road
, he reached down under his seat and
came up with a box wrapped in newspaper from the comics section. The package
was tied with a red ribbon.

“What’s this?” I asked as he handed it to me. “What did I do
to deserve a present?”

“After the trip to Poquoson, Cole and I had a long talk,”
Billy said.

“Wait a minute,” I butted in. “I know I missed work this past
week, but that doesn’t mean I’m not coming back. If this is a retirement
present, you can just keep it. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“Chill out,” Billy demanded. “Like I was going to say, after
your ordeal in the woods and the way you handled yourself with the
Carroltons... well, that took a lot of guts. You’re a strong `ge ya, and we
know it.”

“Billy, get to the point!” I yelled.

Cole leaned over and said, “We came to the conclusion that if
you could survive this ordeal you wouldn’t let anything stop you anymore.
You’ve had a taste of blood and now you’re hooked. You have that look in your
eyes. Doesn’t she, Billy?”

“What look?” I asked.

“The look of someone who has been exposed to the evils of the
world and now you want to do something about it,” Billy answered.

“Unless we’re wrong,” Cole added. “If you’re going to
continue doing this kind of work, you have to learn how to do it right. The
best way to do that is through training. There’re classes at the college you
can take and when you finish you can apply for your private investigator’s
license. There’s a one-day class you have to take to be able to get a concealed
weapons permit, so I won’t have to haul you off to jail for carrying that gun
in your purse.”

“For your information,” I said. “I don’t have a gun in my
purse.”

“Yeah,” Billy whispered. “We went back and found your
peashooter.”

“Excuse me, it is not a peashooter. It’s a great gun. I want
it back. Who has it?”

“It’s at my house,” Billy said. “You can pick it up when you
get back to work. Get it, take it home and clean it, and then store it some
place safe. You need a real gun if you’re going to do battle with the criminal
elements that are out there now. I want you to...”

“Can I open my present now, or do the two of you have more
plans for my future I need to hear first?”

“Go ahead,” Cole answered. “Billy and I went in half on your
present, and we’re both going to help you practice using it.”

My curiosity piqued as I tore open the present. Inside the case
was a Glock 9MM. I recognized the handgun immediately. Billy and Cole both had
one exactly like it.

“It’s beautiful!” I exclaimed, turning it over in my hands
and then looking down the barrel. “Wow! This is so cool!”

Cole reached under the seat and came up with another present.
“This is for you just in case you’d rather wear it instead of carrying it in
your purse.” The package contained a holster that was threaded through a
leather belt, and it was just my size!

“You guys are too much,” I cried, leaning over to give both
of them a kiss on the cheek. “When is my first lesson?”

“Today,” Billy said. “One of the activities planned is target
shooting.”

“I told you,” Cole said. “When his family throws a party,
they really throw a party. They’ll have games for the kids, dancing, horseback
riding, and much, much more. At the end of the day we’ll sit around the
campfire and smoke the peace pipe.”

“Is he joking about the peace pipe?” I asked Billy as he
laughed and shook his head. “Forget it. I’ve had enough of the evil weed.”

Cole looked at me skeptically. “I think this falls under the
category of things I do not need to know.”

Billy’s
parents
owned a large,
sprawling ranch on a hundred acres of land south of
Charlottesville
. He explained that his great
grandparents bought the land when there wasn’t much in the county but a couple
of farms.
Charlottesville
was the size of Stanardsville back
then.

“They lived off the land and eventually were buried in the
family graveyard, like the rest of us will be when we die.”

He said his folks had divided out sections for their
children, but so far, Daniel, Robert, and Jonathan were the only ones who still
lived on the property.

“Ruth and I built our house when we first got married, but
now the only ones who ever use it are the boys when they come for the weekend.”

“You mean to tell me you have a home on this beautiful land
and you don’t even live there? It just sits empty?”

“Maybe when I decide to retire, I’ll move back,” he sadly
proclaimed.

We followed the long graveled road deep into the woods until
we came to a clearing filled with cars. In the background sat a house the size
of a shopping mall. I’d never seen a house this big in real life, and couldn’t
wait to go inside and have a look around.

“Oh, wow!” I shouted with glee. “This is magnificent, Billy.
I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s so... so... big.”

“It’s been added on to a few times,” he explained as he
parked the truck behind one of the cars. “Chief Standing Deer always insisted
on having plenty room for the whole family.”

“I would say so,” I replied as I crawled out of the truck and
took a deep breath. “The air smells so good. I love the mountains. There’s
something special about living here that no one can appreciate until they do.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Mom said as she walked up to us.
“Your dad called this place God’s country.”

She pulled Billy aside and I heard her ask him, “Did you give
her the present, yet? What did she think of it? I’m so curious.”

“Yes, he did,” I said. “I take a few days off from work and
everybody treats me like I’m a china doll. I won’t break, and I’m not going to
sit up against a wall just because life got a little rough.”

“Of course, you’re not,” Aunt Edie came to my rescue. “You’re
a tough guy, but even tough guys have mothers who worry about them. Believe me,
I know.” She gave me a wink and locked her arm in mine.

“I guess you do,” I murmured. “You have more courage than I
could ever hope to have.” We both knew what I was talking about.

Uncle Bill was the last one to walk up as we gathered
together for our assault on the party.

“I’m hungry,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “When is this big
ho-down going to start?”

“Uncle Bill,” I slapped him on the back and said. “You have
to stop sleeping so much or you’re going to miss out on a lot of stuff.”

“Ignore him,” Aunt Edie whispered in my ear. “He can’t help
it. It’s those pills he has to take. They make him fall asleep at the drop of a
hat.”