Grab & Go (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 2) Read online

  I flung the blanket over the tangled lump of humanity and slammed the hatch closed.

  Once in the driver’s seat, I cranked the steering wheel with one hand, jouncing the car through a tight U-turn, and speed-dialed Clarice with the other.

  “Put blankets in the oven,” I barked. “Hot water and stuff for treating a wound.”

  “Walt’s on his way,” she replied. “I got ahold of him at the general store.”

  It was a bone-crunching ride back to the mansion. There was no easing around potholes or slowing for washouts. I took the shortest, most direct route, regardless of the terrain.

  We lugged Dwayne inside and straight to a bed Clarice had made up with warm blankets and hot water bottles tucked into the folds.

  Clarice banished the boys to another bedroom with two more similarly prepared beds. She instructed them to strip to their underwear, dump their clothes in a laundry basket on the floor and get under the covers. She offered them three minutes of privacy then announced she’d be barging in to oversee their treatment. I’d never seen such frigid, shivering boys move so fast. The fact that they could still move at all seemed a miracle.

  “You too.” Clarice jabbed a finger toward my bedroom at the opposite end of the hall.

  “No.” I clenched my teeth against the shaking racking my body — from nerves and adrenaline and fear as much as cold. “Dwayne needs to go to the hospital.”

  “Wait for Walt. You can’t do that by yourself.” Clarice placed two fingers at the corners of her mouth and released a piercing whistle.

  I jumped, and two little girls appeared as if by magic.

  “It’s our signal,” Clarice muttered to me. “They need to help or this will settle into their memories as too terrifying an event.” Then she turned and stood rigidly, her fists on her hips. “Nurses, are you ready?” she barked.

  CeCe and Emmie nodded, their eyes wide.

  She marched to the boys’ room, rapped once on the door, and sailed in, the girls in her wake. Seriously, Clarice should have been a headmistress at a reform school — it was her calling. Or a boot camp drill sergeant. No one would ever dare thwart her.

  I returned to Dwayne’s room and lifted the soggy blankets off his injured leg. I started rolling up his jeans, couldn’t get the unwieldy fabric high enough, and went in search of a pair of scissors.

  I ended up hacking his pant leg off as well as through the laces of both his boots. I needed to disrobe him completely, but the gaping tear running jaggedly nearly the full length of his calf made me wobbly.

  The wound was oozing blood, but less than it should have been. His body temperature was probably too low to provide proper circulation.

  I’d done that to him. I’d inflicted incredible pain. I squeezed my eyes against welling tears and turned my attention to the rest of him — unbuttoning, brushing his beard out of the way, easing his jacket and shirt off, loosening his belt. His limbs were slack and heavy, but his raspy breathing reassured me.

  “Nora?” Walt’s voice sounded in the hall.

  He was at my side in an instant, arm around my waist. “You’re trembling.”

  I pointed wordlessly at Dwayne’s leg.

  “I know,” Walt murmured. “I saw it. You both need to go to the hospital.”

  “No,” Dwayne rumbled from the bed. “No hospital.”

  I stared down at him, mouth open.

  His eyes were bright in spite of the cataracts, brown sparks in his ashen face, and entirely lucid. “I was waiting for you to take off the rest of my clothes. It’s not every day I get a pretty girl undressing me, not at my age.” A rough chuckle seemed to convulse him, and he gave me a half wink. But he twisted his hand, white-knuckled with pain, in the sheet bunched at his side.

  “I’ll take it from here,” Walt said. He gently pushed me toward Clarice, who was standing in the doorway.

  They exchanged glances, and I knew it was hopeless. I’d be swaddled into a warm robe before I was allowed to do anything else. But, I vowed, while stumbling at arm-towing length behind Clarice toward my bedroom, like Dwayne I was drawing the line at going to the hospital. I’d had enough of hospitals to last me forever.

  oOo

  By the time Clarice released me after having been vigorously toweled dry, lectured, examined for injuries of my own and plied with coffee, Dwayne was tucked into his bed with fresh linens, covered from the neck down straight-jacket style, only his injured calf exposed. His head and shoulders were propped up on two stacked pillows. He looked scrawny under the tight blankets, the way a wet dog looks when all its hairy fluff is plastered to its sides.

  Both men were scowling fiercely. It appeared as if they’d just had an argument and Walt had won. Walt was probing Dwayne’s gash with a pair of tweezers.

  “You gonna stitch me up with dental floss?” Dwayne gritted, and I winced on his behalf.

  I knelt beside the bed and laid my hand on the lump at his side that I guessed was one of his hands. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “See?” Dwayne’s bellow tapered into a groan. “A little sympathy’s all I’m asking for.”

  Walt raised his head and glared up the length of Dwayne’s body. “Nora has nothing to be sorry for. Her actions, and Thomas’s and Bodie’s, saved your life. Fool thing to do, traipsing through a creek this time of year. Putting others at risk,” he ended in a mutter, jabbing the tweezers back into the wound.

  “I did that?” Dwayne’s voice came out small as he sucked air in between his teeth, his eyes searching my face. “I must have had a reason.”

  “Don’t you remember?” I asked.

  He blinked, his eyes rheumy now. I stroked his cheek.

  There was soft shuffling at the door, and Dill entered the room awkwardly, rain dripping off his jacket, a glass quart jar full of a clear liquid in his hands. Dill’s gaze flicked between Dwayne’s face and his leg with a morbid fascination.

  Walt took the jar, dismissed Dill with a nod, and said, “You’ll remember even less now.” He grabbed a glass off the bedside table, sloshed a generous amount of moonshine into it and held it out to Dwayne.

  Dwayne struggled to pull his arms out from under the blankets. “This stuff, made the wrong way, will kill you. Made the right way, it’ll almost kill you.” He held the glass with both hands, careful, even though at half full it was in no danger of spilling, and licked his lips. “I don’t usually—”

  “I know,” Walt cut in, the edges of his voice softening. “But right now you need to.”

  Dwayne’s chest heaved, as though he had to psych himself up for the jolt of raw alcohol. Then he tipped his head back and drained the glass in one gulp. He held the empty glass out toward Walt, and Walt dribbled a little more into it.

  When that slug had also disappeared down his gullet, Dwayne’s arm dropped heavily to the bed. His eyelashes fluttered then went still.

  “Was that necessary?” I whispered.

  Walt pitched an eyebrow my direction. “I’ll give him a few minutes, then I have to flush the wound. It won’t be pretty, Nora.”

  “What will you use?”

  Walt ticked a fingernail against the glass jar. “Best antiseptic in the world.”

  “Is that what you two were arguing about?”

  “I made him tell me where his stash is.” Walt’s blue eyes fixed me with a hard stare. “When he’s back on his feet, there won’t be a stash. I’ll make sure of that. If he plans on staying here, then he’s out of the business. I can’t have him endangering the boys. Or you.”

  “He’s old. It could have easily been an accident — the creek thing,” I said.

  “Are you taking his side?”

  I’d already learned how uncomfortable Walt’s intense gaze can be. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, measuring out my answer. “No.”

  “He’s still going to feel this. You might need to sit on him. Ready?”

  But I didn’t have to wrestle with Dwayne. He’d started humming, some catchy tune I thought I knew
but couldn’t identify. By the time Walt had completed the second flush, spread antibiotic cream, nudged the ragged edges together with tape and applied a loose bandage, Dwayne was belting out the slurred words to “Amazing Grace” with tremendous gusto but very little musical quality.

  “Seems appropriate. I wonder what proof that hooch is.” Walt flashed me a wry grin. “The tear is deep, but not to the bone. He’ll heal better if the wound is left open. He’ll have a nasty scar with or without stitches, so I’m opting for fewer opportunities for infection.”

  “Thank you,” I murmured. “Where’d you learn how to do that?”

  “Surfing. My buddy got a bad gash across his chest when he hit some submerged rocks. By the time I got him to shore, loaded in the van, and to the emergency room, he was in severe shock. The ER doctor walked me through what to do if it happened again. Never did — till now.”

  “Surfing, huh?” I grinned at Walt and swayed. Ever so slightly, but it was enough to distort the bedposts at the edges of my vision. “Quite a switch—”

  “Whoa,” Clarice bellowed from behind me, and a couple pairs of hands got me stabilized.

  I blinked.

  “Low blood sugar,” Clarice growled. She clamped me to her side in a vice grip, batted Walt’s arms away, and escorted me out of the room. Walt’s worried scowl floated in my peripheral vision. I tried to smile back at him, to reassure him, but my feet were having a little trouble with the uneven floor.

  Clarice plopped me in a kitchen chair with the command not to move and shoved another mug of coffee in front of me. She bustled around the kitchen, whisking eggs in a bowl and jamming a couple slices of bread in the toaster, all the while carrying on a brusque monologue. It was her pent-up release of frustration and worry and anger — what’s left over when all the adrenaline’s gone. I got sleepy after a crash — it was crazy what I was learning about my own body since my husband’s disappearance — and Clarice became more agitated and energized. At least one of us was still functioning.

  “Walt has to see to the boys next. They’re so skinny, especially Bodie. What on earth?” Clarice shouted, slamming the door to the shallow spice cabinet. “What on earth was that man doing in a freezing cold creek in December?”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. If Dwayne couldn’t remember, then none of the rest of us could explain it either.

  She clattered a muffin tin onto the counter. “He hasn’t an ounce of fat to his name. Can’t expect him to recover from a lifetime of malnourishment in a few weeks.” She yanked a bag of blueberries out of the freezer. It took me a few seconds to realize she was railing about Bodie’s health, or lack thereof.

  “And that girl. So scarred by what she’s seen that she won’t utter a peep. Just nods with that little white face of hers.” A cascade of flour sifted to the floor from Clarice’s over-vigorous opening of the bag.

  “Her name’s Emmie,” I said quietly.

  “Bullets,” Clarice hollered. She slapped a wooden spoon down beside the muffin tin and bent against the counter, her back to me, shoulders shaking. “Bullets,” she said again, weakly.

  I scooted out of the chair and grabbed her in a tight hug. I whispered shushes into her spiky silver hair as though she was a fussy baby and held her as hard as I could.

  “All right,” she muttered, growing restless in my grasp. “All right.” She shoved me away. “Your toast’s burning.”

  I pulled the plug from the outlet and fished the blackened slabs out of the toaster slots with a knife. Clarice handed me two new slices of bread to try again. Her eyelashes were wet behind her glasses, but otherwise, her wrinkled face wore its usual expression of determined efficiency.

  “What would I do without you?” I said.

  “Starve.” She turned to stir the scrambled eggs on the stove.

  I gave her another hug while she had her back to me and her defenses down — guerrilla tactics — and held on longer this time. “I’m sorry,” I finally whispered.

  “For what? For dealing with what’s been thrown at you? You’re doing fine, girl.” Clarice sniffed. “It’s just, you know — I care.”

  I tried to choke back a surprised chuckle, but still a grunt escaped. This was as mushy as Clarice ever got. But I’d never seen her worn this thin. “I’m sorry for including you in my mess.”

  Clarice turned to me, her eyes steely. “Everyone I care about, everyone I truly love in this world — they’re here.” She whipped the wooden spoon, dripping eggs, through the air, gesturing to the far reaches of the kitchen. “Right here. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Through many dangers, toils and snares—” wafted, in an operatic, bellowing blast, down the hall and into the kitchen. Dwayne had kicked the volume up yet another notch.

  “Even him,” Clarice muttered.

  I grinned. “Me too.”

  I returned to my place at the table and picked up a grapefruit from the large wicker basket centerpiece, its waxed skin one shade shy of a painful sunburn. A big foil sticker announcing it was a Texas Ruby glared gaudily in Christmas red and green. “What are these?”

  “Walt brought it back from the store. Etherea accepted it on your behalf from another lost delivery driver.” Clarice stopped stirring and stared at me, the meaning of her words sinking into both of us at the same time.

  The last, and only, time I’d received a delivery out here in the boonies, it had been a monstrously large bouquet of red roses from Skip. Who else would send such an extravagant gift?

  “Was there a card?” I breathed.

  “Hello, ladies.”

  I spun around to see Matt Jarvis, my dedicated FBI special agent. He had just pushed open the kitchen door, his silhouette framed against a backdrop of sheeting water that poured off the little overhang over the cracked concrete patio.

  CHAPTER 14

  I would say that Matt was raised in a pig sty because he has never learned how to knock, except I liked our resident pot-bellied pigs, Wilbur and Orville, too much to compare them to such a nosy and unprepossessing special agent. He had a way of showing up, uninvited, at the worst possible times.

  And when I really needed him, like when I’d found a disembodied finger in a plastic bag attached to the kitchen door handle, where was he? Exactly.

  Actually, I guess the finger was my first delivery. Then the roses. Now grapefruit. Just what a girl needs — a bushel of grapefruit.

  I guessed Matt wasn’t accustomed to stunned silence greeting his entrances, because he flushed a little and almost looked apologetic.

  I held my breath and hoped upon hope that Dwayne would keep a lid on his vocal aspirations. Clarice plunked a plate of runny scrambled eggs in front of me and jerked the grapefruit out of my limp hand.

  “Little late for breakfast, isn’t it?” Matt shook water droplets off his sleeves, ran a hand through his short dark blond hair and flopped into the chair at the end of the table.

  “I didn’t know my dietary habits were a concern of yours,” I muttered around a mouthful. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Believe it or not, I have other cases.” His hazel eyes narrowed, and I knew my rudeness had removed whatever traces of a pleasant mood he might have been in when he entered.

  Clarice thumped a mug of coffee in front of him so hard some sloshed on the tabletop.

  “I see you’re still using my French press.” Matt anchored his forearms on the table on either side of the mug and dipped his head, puffing a few breaths across the steaming surface of the liquid.

  “Thank you.” I nodded and tried on a conciliatory smile for size. “As you can see, we’re boring around here these days. I’m sure your surveillance crew has better things to do as well. Like you said, there are other cases. Besides, it’s almost Christmas. Don’t they want time with their families?”

  “You’re sick of being babysat?” Matt smirked and plucked a grapefruit out of the basket.

  “Something like that. It’s starting to feel creepy.”

&nbs
p; Matt launched a game of one-handed catch with the grapefruit, tossing it gently in the air and palming it on the way down. “They don’t like it any more than you do. But what if your friends from the drug cartel come for another visit?”

  “They know I don’t have their money.” I scowled, watching the grapefruit make silent arcs.

  Clarice leaned over the table, quietly piling grapefruit into a cradle she’d made with her arm crooked across the front of her ruffled apron. She dumped the armload on the counter and began hacking each grapefruit in half with a serrated bread knife, flicking the seeds into the sink.

  Matt aimed a toss higher in the air but caught the fruit with his other hand this time. “That’s the feeling at headquarters too. I’ve been sent to negotiate a withdrawal of the troops.” He lifted an eyebrow in my direction. “But you know revenge is motive enough for these guys, Nora. Beheadings, execution-style murders — it’s all over the news. That stuff doesn’t just happen in Mexico. It happens here too. They do it to save face in their own circles and to make a statement to everyone else. So you don’t have any objections?”

  “None,” I said firmly.

  Matt slammed the grapefruit on the table and snorted softly. “I have objections on your behalf. But my supervisor wants to pull in our resources.”

  “It’s all right.” I patted his arm.

  Clarice snatched the grapefruit from in front of Matt, then finished emptying the basket with another nearly toppling armload. I stared at her broad back bent over the cutting board, trying to figure out her sudden urgency to dissect fruit.

  I felt warmth against my side and turned to find Emmie standing close, peeking at Matt from around my shoulder. She was incredibly proficient at creeping silently — probably had learned from difficult experience that it was better not to disturb the adults in her life.

  But CeCe was fairly bursting with importance and nowhere near as quiet. She pushed an empty chair back from the table, scooted her bottom up onto it, then rose on her knees for a better vantage point. Fixing her bright gaze on the newcomer, she announced, “Mr. Walt said we did a good job. I want to be a nurse when I grow up.” She adopted a tone of worldly-wise responsibility and seriousness. “My daddy will need a nurse when he comes home.”