The Sisterhood of the Queen Mamas (15 page)

“Get moving
where?
And
why?
” I asked, not taking the car out of Park.

“Out of here,” he said, practically bouncing on the seat, like some overgrown kid. “Because Chloe took my car.”

I blinked at the van a few feet away from us. I believed I had seen the monstrosity in the alley near the tattoo parlor the other day, but I didn’t know who owned it or how exactly it had come to rest in this spot in the Texas countryside. A million questions filled my mind. And given those odds, you’d think a better one would have tumbled out of my mouth than “Why didn’t you catch a ride with her?”

“I tried, but found it difficult to get in with the thing roaring off down the road at sixty miles an hour.”

“Your car went sixty miles an hour on
this
road?” Again, out of the scads of pertinent and constructive questions I might have asked, I had chosen one that had all the relevance of an eggbeater in a modern kitchen.

“Odessa, the girl has stolen the Reverend’s car.” Maxine said it slow and forceful, the way one might explain something obvious to a two-year-old.

“I know that, Maxine, I’m just trying to…” Ignore it. Pretend it’s not true. “I’m just trying to make sense of it.”

“It’s simple, really.” Jake made big, sweeping gestures as he spoke, seemingly unaware of how many times he almost poked Maxine in the eye as he did so. “I figured at some point Sammy would come joyriding down this road in the car he stole from Chloe.”

“Because this is the most
joyful
road in Castlerock.”

“Because this is the most popular road for kids to meet up
outside
Castlerock,” Jake said, ignoring my little jab. “Chloe pointed it out to me the day we went up in the balloon. We couldn’t see it from there, of course, but when I asked her if she and Sammy didn’t have anything better to do that to hang around the closed flea market, she said they usually came out here and hung around with friends.”

“So you figured she would end up here looking for Sammy, too.”

Jake nodded and pointed toward the stalled van. “I planned to wait for them—Sammy and/or Chloe—but instead I found her broken down, and when I jumped out of my car to try to talk to her…”

“She jumped in and took off?” I shook my head.

“You’re a good man, Reverend.” Maxine patted his hand. “Dumb, but good.”

“Sometimes good just looks dumb to people who can’t see the big picture, Maxine,” I reminded her.

“The only picture called for here is a mug shot.” Maxine snatched up her purse and began rummaging through it. “We need to hunker down here at the scene of the crime and call the police.”

“Chloe isn’t a criminal,” Jake protested.

“She stole your car.” Maxine’s hand, her wrist and all of her bracelets disappeared inside her oversize purse.

“She
borrowed
my car. I just haven’t had the chance to tell her I’d be happy to lend it to her yet.”

“And to be fair, have you seen his car, Maxine?” I tsked and shook my head. “Even if she did steal it, I think the worst you could call it would be petty theft.”

“Petty theft is still theft. You don’t help people by making excuses. It’s not your place to say one way of breaking the law is not as bad as another.”

“You have a point Maxine. But I don’t think Chloe meant to break the law. She’s…”

“It’s that Sammy. He’s a charmer, that one.”

“Yes. And he has led her to make some bad choices.”

“Criminal choices?”

“I don’t know. I admit that.” Jake held up his hands in surrender. “But I do presume, from what I’ve seen of the girl, that she can make better choices. My faith demands that I believe she
wants
to make better choices.”

“Mine too,” I said softly at first and then, upon reflection and the pushing aside of my own self-doubt, a bit louder. “Mine too, Reverend.”

“Can I count on you, Odessa?” he asked, his eyes unsure and his mouth showing only a hint of that fabulous smile.

“She has ten fingers and ten toes. You can count on those, young man.” Maxine finally pulled out the cell phone she’d been searching for and held it aloft. “Count on her to use some of those fingers to dial the authorities and some of those toes to stomp on the gas and get us where we belong.”

“You can count on me, Jake. And so can Chloe. Fingers, toes, mind and body. I’ll even mess up my hair for the cause!”

“Odessa!”

I looked at my friend’s earnest face. She meant well, truly she did. But Maxine was a woman who saw things the way she saw them and acted upon them accordingly. Right. Wrong, Left. Right. Black. White. She did not think of things in terms of degrees or shades.

With that in mind, I looked past my friend and asked Jake, “Do you mind if we just run Maxine home first?”

“Run me home?” Maxine bristled. She bristled so good I practically felt porcupine quills sticking me all up and down my back. “Like fire you will.”

“I thought you wanted no part of this.”

She sat silent for a moment, with her face turned straight ahead. Her lips twitched. She stroked the sleek case of her cell phone with her thumb. Finally, she tilted her chin up and narrowed her eyes. “What I want no part of is the two of you coming out of all this with better stories to tell than me. And for those stories to all start off with ‘After we dropped Maxine off safe at home.’”

“Oh, Maxine…” Sentimental old me, my voice got all craggy and hoarse. My eyes even went a bit misty. I patted my pal’s leg. “You don’t want to be an eggbeater, either.”

It might have been a sweet, mushy moment, except Jake clapped his hands and said, way too loudly, “Let’s do this, ladies.”

“You got it, Reverend.” I started up the engine. “We’re not done being of use yet.”

“What about the van?” Maxine was still holding the phone in the palm of her hand.

“Oh, I already called Abner and told him where I’d found it. He said no problem. He knows how to start it and will come get it.”

“That Abner, he is a genuinely nice guy, you know it?” I had to back up the truck to stay clear of the ditch, and in doing so had a chance to catch a glimpse of the Reverend’s face as I added, “Even Bernadette thinks so.”

“Bernadette? And Abner?” Jake leaned forward to peer at me around Maxine. “Really?”

“Life is full of surprises.” I mashed down on the brake and muscled the gearshift into Drive. “You know he’s a Christian, don’t you?”

“So he said.” Jake’s eyebrows crimped down. He touched the rim of his glasses. “And he was really concerned about Chloe.”

“Just goes to show you that God uses all sorts,” I said, feeling a bit too pleased with myself for having planted that seed of a thought about Bernadette and Abner in Jake’s mind.

“Even us out-of-sorts.” Maxine swung her hand around in a circle like a lasso before pointing down the road and ordering, “Drive, Odessa! Drive!”

How do you know when enough is enough? Some people might think two sixty-something wives of retired ministers would have had enough adventure, would have had enough of taking risks on behalf of people who might not appreciate the effort. But as far as I can tell, there is no retirement age for do-gooders. There is no junk heap where we toss human beings and say,
That’s it! She’s too broken. She’s too battered. She’s too old.

We are all redeemable.

We are all useful.

We all have potential.

We may just have to get creative to find it.

E
cclesiastes reminds us there is a time to be silent and a time to speak. The right place, the right occasion, for everything. All things in the right season.

We all have our seasons, too. The stages of a life, the ever-changing landscape of a relationship. God gave us this world of absolute wonder to help us see that even after the hope of spring has faded into the hardened cold of winter, as long as there is still life, rebirth will come.

I am not all used up just because I have seen too many summers. I will only be used up when God has gotten all the good He can out of me and calls me home, saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Until then, it is my job to make myself a blessing to everyone I can. Silent? I can’t be silent about the goodness of my God.

Make a joyful noise! Shout and clap and stomp your feet! some people say. When the Lord is working inside you, you just can’t stay quiet.

“Yeee-haw!” The tires hit the jagged edge of the pavement, the truck bucked and bounced. We were on our way to find our Chloe, and I just had to cut loose!

“Why, Mrs. Pepperdine!” Jake pushed his glasses back into place after my driving jounced them down the bridge of his nose. “I had no idea you had so much genuine cowgirl in you.”

“Cowgirl? Me?” I thought that over for a second. “Why not? I was Texas born and Texas bred, and you know what else…?”

“If she says when she dies she’ll be Texas dead, do you think it would be unchristian of me to smack her one, Reverend?” Maxine spoke low and out of the corner of her mouth.

“If you have something to say to me, say it outright, Maxine.” I led by example, my voice clear and my words plain. “Don’t go whispering as if there were some way I couldn’t hear you in this small truck cab with the three of us squashed in here like…like…”

“Sardines?” the Reverend suggested.

“Oh, don’t be silly, young man.” Maxine gave his arm a motherly squeeze.

“Really!” I laughed and gave him my best bless-your-heart-you-poor-simpleminded-child grin. “What on earth would small salty fish be doing driving around in a truck on the back roads of Castlerock, Texas?”

“Well, I…uh…it’s just a…” He cleared his throat. He
glanced from one of us to the other and back again, as if he thought I really didn’t understand the cliché he had used.

Maxine stifled a giggle. “Take my advice and stop this while you still can. If you let her get you talking about canned fish, before you know it, puns will begin flying about chickens of the sea, and once that can of worms—”

“Tuna, Maxine. Chicken of the sea is tuna,” I reminded her, trying not to snicker. “A can of worms is a whole
other
kettle of fish.”

“See?” Maxine poked Jake, then pointed to me. “Don’t start these things around Odessa. It was bad enough you called her a cowgirl.”

“What’s so bad about being a cowgirl?” The road before us forked, and I squinted at it for only a second before I chose the road less traveled. No, not because of the poem, but because if I were a couple of kids wanting to get up to some misdeed, that’s where I’d go to get up to it. “My Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills, you know. Maybe it’s time I did get in touch with my inner cowgirl.”

“I thought the plan was to be in charge of everything—and
everyone
—in Castlerock.” Maxine rolled her eyes. A sort of smile played on her lips. Despite always saying things like that, and her reluctance to join us at first, that woman was enjoying this every bit as much as I was. Maybe more. She had suggested I was only now realizing how to become my best self, but I could see that she was doing a little of that herself, growing into more of the person she knew she could become, too. “How are we going to find time to run barrel races at the rodeo if we ever hope to get crowned the right Royal Highnesses of Busybodyness?”

“I just don’t see a conflict in all that, Maxine.” I played it real sober, shaking my head and speaking all solemn even when I added on, “Only I think we should go by the title the Royal Highnesses of Being Ourselves.”

“Odessa, honey, you have got a way of getting away with far too much.” She nudged me with her elbow. “But I have to admit, I like it.”

“Me too, Maxine.” I nudged her right back. “Let’s do it. Let’s us
be
Cowgirl Queens. We can get pink hats and put sparkly tiaras on the front of them, you know, like the flag bearers at the rodeos do?”

She chuckled, but I could tell, deep down she was considering it. “We don’t have to ride ponies, do we?”

That got to Reverend Cordell. I guess the image of me and Maxine in pink cowboy hats and tiaras chasing down car thieves on the back of a couple of fat spotted ponies would tickle even the most righteous man.

“You ladies are wasted spending your free time at the flea market, I tell ya. You need to work up an act and take it on the road.” He put his arm on the edge of the window.

“That’s where we are now—on the road,” I said.

“But the road to where?” Maxine looked around, leaning in and out and to the side to scope out our surroundings.

I slowed the truck down. Only then, when I found us in the middle of nowhere, did I think to ask, “Where do you think Chloe might have got to, Reverend?”

“I wanted to check all around here first.” He, too, bobbed his head and bowed his shoulders so that he could peer through all the truck windows. “Obviously Chloe
was
out here earlier. But since we haven’t seen any sign of her, we
might try some of the places that Abner said Sammy likes to…do business.”

“Business?” Maxine snorted. It was a very ladylike, authoritative, savvy sort of snort, to be sure. “That scruffy kid hardly seems the businessman type to me.”

“What are you talking about? Drugs?” I started the truck rolling slowly forward again. The very notion that anything untoward might have been going on down this quiet country lane made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Of course, I am not naive. Well, I am not
totally
naive. I know that people do all manner of things all over the place. Even in places frequented by cowgirls and ministers. But still, the sheer isolation of this place, with this deserted road that dropped off into overgrown ditches, would lend itself quite nicely to clandestine exchanges. “I guess when I think of young people running afoul of the law, I just naturally think of drugs. Is that what you mean?”

“Actually no. Maybe. But…” He pushed his fingers back through his dark brown hair, which made the few silver strands there stand out all the more. “If Sammy sells ’em, he doesn’t take ’em, and Abner felt almost certain that Chloe is clean, too.”

“That’s a relief,” Maxine said.

I shored it up with a heartfelt “Amen.”

“Abner didn’t know too much about Sammy’s dealings, only that the kid was into something shady and that it involved his interacting with the kind of people that gave Abner the creeps.”

Maxine and I shared a look that said,
The kind of people who give
Abner
the creeps? And
we
are out chasing those people down?

Jake stroked his chin. “No, I don’t know what Sammy is up to, but you can bet it has some connection to the flea market.”

“Our flea market?” I asked.

“No!” Maxine gave a backhanded bat of her hand.

“Yes.” Jake spoke firmly, and with his face turned away from us. “It’s the perfect cover for all kinds of mischief. You read the complaints and the police reports.”

“Actually, I still have them, right…there.” I dipped my eyes to show the man where I had stashed the file folder I had originally planned to dump on Gloria Alvarez’s doorstep—her mailbox, really, but her doorstep in the sense that I had wanted to pawn my problems off on her. “Maybe you can figure out from those what he’s up to and where we can find Chloe.”

“I feel just like Nancy Drew.” Maxine pressed her back to the seat to read the open file over the Reverend’s shoulder.

“Odessa Pepperdine, girl detective. Or better yet—Odessa Pepperdine, agent for the Lord.” I liked it. I liked it a lot. “Let’s see, we could write all this up and call it
The Case of the Dubious Balloonist!
”

“Or how about
The Case of the Felonious Flea Market?
” Maxine suggested.

“I don’t like that one nearly as much.” I did a roundabout, which is a fancy way of saying I worked the truck back and forth on the narrow road until I had made a U-turn and pointed us back the way we had come. “I mean if you think about it…We know that the balloonist is dubious, but do we know that our flea market is felonious?”

“I think maybe it is,” Jake muttered as he shuffled through
the papers in the file. “Look, there are three complaints here about ‘unsavory’ sorts—that’s the word used by one of the people filing the report.”

“Let me guess. Jan Belmont?”
Unsavory.
It was a Jan kind of word.

The Reverend did not answer me, and rightly so. Once again, the man went up in my estimation, and he didn’t even realize it, I would guess.

He just went right on reading from the pages. “Unsavory sorts and suspicious types hanging around the east side of the flea market when it’s not in operation.”

“The east side?”

“Isn’t Jan’s house east of the drive-in?” Maxine pointed to her left, then to her right, and then raised her gaze skyward as if that might help her get her bearings.

Jake, too, raised his eyes. “That’s the side where we parked when we went to do the tour, right?”

Fighting the temptation to check and see if there was a map printed on the ceiling of my truck, I glued my eyes to the road and said, “Yes, the owner didn’t want to have a bunch of cars there when it was closed. Thought it might start rumors.”

“About what?” Maxine crinkled up her nose.

“About anything.” The truck thumped over a rut, and I hung onto the steering wheel with both hands. “It’s Castlerock, midweek on a summer afternoon. Lots of people have nothing better to do than to speculate about all sort of things, and a bunch of cars parked at the drive-in is as good a fodder as anything.”

“I bet the landowner realizes he’s on borrowed time with all this.” Jake closed the file and tapped the edge of it against
his leg. “Only a matter of time before somebody gets fired up and holds him accountable for some of the things that go on there.”

“Better someone does that than throws eggs at Jan,” I murmured, thinking back to my own worries over what might happen if our resident unsavory-sort detector got the wrong people riled up. And, of course, as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew how it would sound to the others. And rather than try to explain it all, I decided to just go on talking to cover it up. Yes, it’s a pride thing, and not pretty, but that is what I did. “I suppose that’s why the drive-in owner had us park on the east side, too. The angle of the screen, and the trees and fences, they all hide that spot unless you’re right up on it.”

“Then that’s where we have to go,” Jake said. “Get right up on it, too, and see for ourselves.”

“I am already on my way.”

And I not only was—on my way, I mean—I got us there in good time, without so much as bending the speed limit, though I can’t say the same for Maxine.

By the time we came bouncing into the pocked and furrowed entryway by the old Satellite Vista sign that once posted movie dates and times, Maxine looked truly and sounded totally bent out of shape. “Odessa, I liked it better when I was driving this heap.”

“Shh.
I
liked it better when we were being quiet.”

“When did
that
happen?” Maxine asked, in complete disbelief that we had ever known a time like that.

“We’re starting it right now,” I said, putting my finger to my lips. “We’re doing the Nancy Drew thing, remember?”

“Only it’s not Nancy Drew, is it?” Jake’s open, kind fea
tures clouded. “I shouldn’t have gotten you two involved in this. I should have sent you both home. We have no idea what we might find in there.”

“Well, we are not going to drop down out of the trees on anyone like ninja church ladies!” I kept the truck rolling as quietly as possible toward the east side of the old structure. “We’re just going make a pass by that secluded lot and see if either Chloe’s car or the one she stole from you is sitting there.”

“She didn’t really steal—”

“Oh, give it up, Reverend. She did.” I didn’t mean to snap, but really, the man already had some gray hair. “You are too old for pretend games. Sure, you want to think the best of the girl. We all do. But sometimes the only real way to do the best thing for someone is to stop thinking the best and start speaking the truth.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said softly.

The truck’s tires rolled over the loose gravel strewn across the old pavement. In the silence of the cab, we heard every crunch like some crazy extra-amplified breakfast cereal.

Jake sat forward, placing his hand on the spot where Maxine usually braced herself against my enthusiastic way of negotiating the roads. Slowly, that wise and comforting smile that changed the nature of his normally normal face emerged. “And, Mrs. Pepperdine…?”

“What, Jake?”

“I think you’d make a real good ninja church lady.”

I opened my mouth to laugh, or maybe it was to say something terribly, terribly clever, I don’t know, because at that same instant Maxine let out such a violent, startled gasp that it completely cleared my mind.

“What is it? Do you see my car?” Jake asked.

“No,” Maxine whispered. “I see…We should just go.”

“What? What do you see?” I craned my neck, but at first I didn’t see a thing except the trees and the heavily shaded spot beneath them where only stray shafts of light came through and fell upon…

“I’ve seen that cane before,” I said softly.

“What cane?” Jake asked.

I stopped the truck.

“Morty Belmont’s cane.” Maxine raised her hand to the indicate the pale-colored staff propped against a large tree.

“It’s just a cane.” Jake frowned. “Anyone could have left it there. Maybe someone left it when they came to the flea market. How do you know it’s Morty Belmont’s?”