June Bug (18 page)

“I gotta go mow my lawn now. You stay out of trouble.”

He tried to pull himself out of the hammock but winced when he attempted to bend his bad leg. “I can mow your lawn, Mira. I do all our grass here.”

I’ll bet. “That’s okay, Jed. I need the downtime to think through some things. You get that cut looked at, all right?”

“My mom’s taking me to the doctor this afternoon.”

“Good. Oh, one more thing. You don’t have a criminal record, do you?”

“Not me, but I do think I’m being watched. I can feel it. Makes my baby hairs stand up sometimes.”

I sighed. He was just high, dopey Jed. He hadn’t arranged for anyone to pretend to get shot. He couldn’t even arrange to bring himself to the doctor. “Thanks, Jed. Bye!” I waved at him and trotted back to my car. One mystery solved. I loved tying up loose ends, although I still didn’t have the jewels or know where Peyton was, and I had a nagging hunch the two were connected somehow.

I splayed my fingers outside my window as I drove, riding the air like waves. My radio was cranked and crackled out a passable version of 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up.” I chanted along in my tinny, off-key singing voice and felt empowered and capable. I loved it when meteorological forces converged to send me a decent radio signal. First, I stopped at Gina’s and tended to the animals. Leif had already walked Luna when he got off work, but I took her out again and made her promise to play nice with Tiger Pop.

After I showered cat and dog with attention, I hopped back into my brown Toyota and cruised the three miles home. I pulled into my driveway and quickly checked my house for more vandalism or excrement. I had about four hours of daylight left, and I had a lot to do. My house seemed untouched, so I quickly watered my plants and checked my caller ID. No one had called, not even a telemarketer. I felt a little bit sorry for myself, and for a second I was grateful that I had all this excitement in my life. It was better than being lonely. I quickly dismissed that thought, though. I wasn’t lonely, I was alone, and there was nothing wrong with that.

Not that it hadn’t occurred to me more than once that a government-sponsored dating program wouldn’t be a welcome addition to the tax rolls. I was a cynic about men, but I never stopped hoping that there were some good ones out there. I just didn’t have the time or patience to sift through the chaff looking for them.

I had a theory that if Big Brother got involved, the whole process could be streamlined. When a person turned eighteen, s/he would sign up for the Selective Service. (The military would have to get a new name for their deal, since “Selective Service” is too perfect for a dating organization.) Entrants would have to enter and keep current basic information—education level, one joke they think is funny, profession, where they stand on performing oral sex, whether or not they like or want kids, why their last relationship ended, et cetera. They would also have to come up with at least three previous relationship testimonials, unless they had never dated or had dated fewer than three people.

Not only would this hold us more accountable in how we acted in current relationships—because we would know the person we were with could be writing a dating reference for us tomorrow—it would also provide a database of people who are single and looking not to be, thus broadening our search area. After all, what are the odds of your soul mate living within sixty miles of where you are now, and of accidentally running into him or her in some leg of your daily routine? I wondered how one would go about getting legislation like that passed. I’d have to add it to my to-do list.

Meanwhile, I had some lawn to mow. I had always liked cutting the lawn. The hum and snort of the engine was soothing, and the results were organizationally breathtaking, particularly on this property with the rolling hills and sprawling trees. It would give me some downtime to riffle through my thoughts on the jewels and Peyton.

I switched to jogging shorts and a tank top and trotted down to the leaning red shed where I housed the mower. I gassed up the old Snapper rider, checked the oil, and cleaned out the area around the blade. I also loop-knotted my purse to the square handlebars so I could grab the tape of Nikolai and listen to it once I found my rhythm. I revved up the mower and started juicing grass, missing the familiar form of Luna jogging alongside. I couldn’t wait to get me and my animals back here.

I jostled and purred around the lawn in front of the house for about an hour, being careful to reverse direction when I rode close to my gardens so I wouldn’t shoot weed seeds into them. While steering, I held the tape recorder up to my ear and listened to the interview again. Nothing caught my attention except the confirmation of what I already knew—that Jed was the body planter and neither he nor Nikolai knew what had happened to Peyton. I regassed after about an hour and a half of mowing and moved to the area between the barn and sheds.

When I finished, the mosquitoes and gnats were starting to circle like sharks and the sun was setting, drawing shades of lavender across the horizon. I puttered the mower back into the shed and stretched, my legs shaky from three hours on a vibrating vehicle. I started to untie my purse when it occurred to me that I hadn’t mowed the little patch of lawn down along the shoreline that led to Shangri-La. I hated backtracking, but it would be a nice feeling of completion to have it all freshly mown.

I left my purse untied on my lap and cruised down the driveway, bumping along the gravel. The trees formed a natural archway, and the fairy light of dusk shimmered through the leaves and made the path surreal. I could smell pollen in the air, and I was happy to be outdoors, tending to the earth.

When I reached my destination, I killed the motor so I could pick up some Diet Coke cans and candy wrappers that had been tossed onto the patch of grass. I glanced back into the deepening woods, away from Shangri-La, to where I had been carried during the magic show on the island. I was curious to see whether the bongo that had been my transport was still there, so I switched off the mower and tracked through the trees and brush, prickly ash and raspberry branches grabbing at my skin like hungry children.

I realized I was still holding my purse and the pop cans, so I shoved the cans down in the hobo bag, crinkling a stack of construction paper. It was the pictures Peyton had given me—one of the house, one of the animal, and one of the math lab. Tears burned in my eyes as I was reminded of her, and something scratched at the back of my head. I was overlooking a clue, I knew it, but I couldn’t quite get at it. It was a dancing finger pointing at an ever-moving fog, and I could only catch brief glimpses of the image it was trying to show me.

I shook my head, stashed the drawings back in the purse, and slid the strap over my shoulder so my hands were free to push aside branches. When I reached the spot where first I and then the ringmaster had been deposited, there was no sign that we had ever been there. I only knew it was the right spot because it was at the base of the intertwined elms, the ones that looked like two people making out. Then I realized it: I was looking at the kissing tree that Regina had referred to in her code!

I dug around in my purse and pulled out Ron’s translation, my hands shaking with excitement:

With your back to the kissing tree walk seven steps northwest kneel 23 left 12 right 11 left.

I backed against the kissing tree and shimmied around until I was facing halfway between the campground on the north side of the lake and the setting sun. I walked seven long steps and knelt. On my right was an oak tree and on my left was a rise covered in rotting leaves and poison ivy. Shit. For all I knew, there was nothing but dirt under there, or maybe a rusting piece of farm machinery, a common sight in Minnesota woods. Were the potential jewels enough reason to dig in a nest of poison ivy?

My best bet would be to go back to the house and fetch a long-sleeved shirt and some gardening gloves so the ivy wouldn’t smack me, but I didn’t have the patience for that, and it would be dark soon. I scoured around for a nice long stick and went back to poke at the pile. I heard the scrape of wood on metal. At least I knew that the pile was more than just dirt. I hooked an arm of the branch on the base of a poison ivy plant and pulled, hoping to remove enough so that I could get at what was underneath. I managed to pull up the ivy, along with about twenty feet of root spreading in each direction. The bastard was here to stay.

I dropped the branch and calculated how long it would take to reach the lake to rinse the poison off me if I just dug in real quick and peeked at what was buried there. I had the trip clocked at about three minutes if I used sand to scour the poison oil off my skin once I reached the water. I knelt down and stretched out my hand into the glistening leaves of three. That’s when I heard voices coming down the road from Shangri-La. It was Sam and Jason, and they were headed straight for me.

I had three options: run, hide, or stroll out and act like hanging out in the woods was no big deal. I didn’t think I could outrun Jason, and I figured I could always try the strolling thing if hiding didn’t work, so I darted away from the kissing tree and toward the lake, crouching down and hugging my back to the wide base of an oak. My heart was hammering like a hummingbird’s, and my fear level rose as I heard Jason’s voice coming close enough to make out what he was saying.

“What sort of dumb bitch leaves a lawn mower out? She could at least finish the job.”

“Maybe she just stopped to take a leak.”

“Maybe I’ll put a leak in her head if I come across her.”

I bit my lip and felt my eyes get hot. That’s when I remembered I had my purse, which meant I had my stun gun. I reached in, careful not to disturb the cans and paper and draw attention to myself. I felt the hard plastic and slowly drew out my weapon. I looked down gratefully and was shocked to see I had grabbed the tape recorder. I almost tossed it back in, but instead set it on the ground, timing my movement with Jason and Sam’s footstep so I could hit the record button on a downfall.

If they were going to maul me, at least it would be on tape for some savvy police officer to find. Maybe, in an absurd punch line to my life, Ody and Gary Wohnt could stumble across it in some flurry of teamwork and talk about what a lousy date I was while they listened to it.

I set the recorder down, turned the volume knob as high as it would go, covered the non-microphone part of the small unit with some rotting leaves, and dug my hand back in my purse. This time I found the prize: the Z-Force, which had worked so well on Jed and his accomplice when they first carried me back here. I cradled it in my hand and concentrated on making myself disappear.

“So who told you that’s what the code said?” Jason’s voice sounded about twenty feet away. Judging by the intensity of his tone, he was excited.

“Some old couple staying on the island. I saw them doing a crossword puzzle and asked them if they’d solve a puzzle I had. They knew right away what it was.” I sensed pride in her voice, but it was lost on Jason.

“A bunch of bullshit nonsense is what it is. What sort of dumbass leaves a heap of jewelry in the woods for eighty years and then leaves some secret message to find it?”

Sam’s tone was defensive. “She wasn’t a total dumbass. She was just a little wacko. What’s a rich lady supposed to do with a bunch of stolen jewelry, anyhow? She couldn’t wear it, and she couldn’t sell it with it being so hot. She just never got around to coming back for it. Leaves more for us.”

They were about fifteen feet away now, and they had stopped walking. I guessed they were near the kissing tree. I prayed that
Jason knew which way was northwest and didn’t accidentally lurch across me. Outside of the woods, the sun was still halfway above the horizon, but in here, there was more shadow than light. I tried to calm myself with the hope that the darker it got, the harder I would be to see, but the more I focused on breathing, the harder it was to breathe at all.

“Okay, walk seven steps northwest. I’m sure it’s seven girl steps.”

“Which way is northwest?”

I could almost hear him point, the tension dripping in the air. He was trying to be stern, but he was desperately excited.

“You see anything?”

“Gawd, Jason, you’re right behind me.
You
see anything? Huh?” She sounded angry, and her gum snapped in the air. “Like that big pile under the weeds? Duh?”

There was the smack of hard skin on soft, and I heard Sam squeak. He must have slapped her. “Hold this,” he growled. I heard the thump of someone heavy dropping to the ground and then the sound of roots being pulled and dirt being moved. He apparently didn’t notice that the plants he was ripping up were poison ivy.

“Do you see anything?” Sam’s voice was overly eager as she tried to compensate for upsetting him.

“It’s a goddamn safe the size of Fort Knox.” He laughed, more startled than happy. “How did the old bag get this out here?”

“She said the Addamses ordered it when all the jewelry was disappearing but decided to sell the whole damn place instead. Her husband and some workers she paid to keep quiet moved it and buried all but the front of it, but she never told me where.”

“Crazy bitch.”

“Yeah, crazy bitch.” Sam laughed childishly.

“It’s a good thing you got that job nursing her, honey. That was a good thing. Can you shine that light over here? I got the lock uncovered.”

Suddenly the forest was lit up. They must have brought a torch light. I felt big and obvious and ground my shoulder blades into the tree. I even considered closing my eyes on the time-honored principle that if you can’t see them, they can’t see you.

“What’s the code, baby?”

I heard the crinkle of paper. “Twenty-three left, twelve right, eleven left. Is it turning okay?”

“Not hardly. Hand me the weasel piss.” A squirting sound like juicy hair spray was followed by the whirring noise of a lock turning. “There she is!”

“Lemme see!”

“Back off! Give me that light!”

There was the groan of a door opening, yet fighting to retain inertia. Then, Sam’s scream pierced the fading light of night, and the disorienting flash of brightness followed by dark told me she had dropped the light.

“There’s a person in there!”

Cripes, I thought. How many fake dead bodies could one small area house in a week? Odds were, if there was really a person in there, she could pull the mask off it like it was a Scooby Doo villain to find out who the real crook was.

“A dead body can’t hurt you. Goddammit!” The brightness from the flashlight steadied, and I heard the sound of something dry scraping against metal, followed by a grunt of a laugh. “Geez, I can’t believe he still smells. There’s even some body juice in here yet. Must be the old bag’s husband.”

Sam retched. “Gawd, that reeks. How come he’s not just bones?”

“I dunno, but that Mrs. Krupps was a piece of work. She has him help drag the safe out to hide her stolen jewels in, and then she buries him in it. Real nice. The crazy old coot deserved what she got.”

“She didn’t deserve to die. She was an old lady, not hurting no one. She wasn’t going to live much longer anyhow.”

“I made sure of that, didn’t I? And ‘harmless old lady’ my ass. She was a crook and a murderer, no better’n me. I think the two of us would have gotten along just fine.”

“If you hadn’t killed her.”

“Shut your pie hole. Why can’t you let anything drop? What the . . . here it is!”

“What?”

“Whoo-eee! Look at this pile! Would you look at it? Jesus. There must be a million dollars worth of jewels in here. It’s like a goddamn pirate’s treasure.”

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I peered one eye around the corner of my hiding tree, hopeful that Jason would be too distracted by the jewels to notice any movement in the darkening woods. I was right. He was kneeling over a rotting cloth bag, all but drooling as he stared inside. Sam was leaning over his shoulder and shining the light in the bag, causing green, red, and white reflections to dance off both their faces. Off to the side was a dark crumple of shape. The body technically could be anyone, but given that Mrs. Krupps’s husband had disappeared about the same time she left the area, it was a safe bet that Jason was right and the corpse was indeed Mr. Krupps. The sweet, poisonous smell of rotted flesh wafted over to me.

“Can I touch ’em, Jason?”

“You can wear ’em, baby!” He spanked a tiara on her head, and she performed the beauty queen walk that every girl over the age of four can execute in her sleep. Jason nodded approvingly and fondled the gems in the bag. “These are just the beginning, baby. We invest these in the shit we need to get the meth lab going, and we’ll never have to work another day in our lives. Hot damn, we can probably hire people to run the lab for us!”

The fog the finger in my head had been pointing at cleared. I saw Peyton standing behind Jason as he talked on his cell phone at the turtle races. Next to that was an image of her drawing of the math lab, only it wasn’t a math lab, it was a meth lab. Of course that term would have no meaning for a little girl, so she had reworked it into something familiar. Jason must have found out she knew about the lab and snatched her. Now that I had a lead on Peyton, my armor fell away and I realized I didn’t care about the jewels at all if I could find her. In fact, I’d trade all the money in the world to save her, but first, I needed to get out of here so I could tell the police what I knew.

That’s when a finch flew right into the oak tree two over from where I was hiding. Those damn little birds must be the Jerry Lewises of the avian world, or else I emit some disorienting signal that only birds can hear. I pulled my head back and clamped down on my breath.

The bird’s impact made a tiny noise, more like the pop of a knuckle cracking than the bang of a collision, but it was enough to burn the smile from Jason’s voice and get him to his feet. “If any-goddamn-body is hiding over there, they best speak up and save themselves some bones!”

I slowly levered myself up using only my feet and the tree and prepared to run. If Jason walked in my direction, I would scream at the top of my lungs and take off like a banshee. I carefully dropped my purse off my shoulder and gently rested it on the ground to increase my aerodynamics. The zapper I kept in my right hand.

Jason tromped over toward me, and I could hear him scratching himself. The poison oil was beginning its assault on his skin. “Fe, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of somebody whose ass I’m gonna kick!”

I had an inappropriate, crazy urge to pee or sing. As he came closer on my left, I wiggled around the right side of the tree, staying just out of his peripheral vision. I was a quarter of the way around when Sam shrieked. “There’s someone behind that tree!”

I charged out from my not-so-hiding spot and beat cheeks for the road. If I could get near Shangri-La, I could attract enough attention to stop Jason. If I didn’t escape these woods, Peyton was as good as dead. There were about forty feet of forest before the clearing, and I devoured them like a fat man at a Chinese buffet.

Unfortunately, Jason was hungrier than me and grabbed me by the hair, snapping my head back, before I covered even twenty feet. I was hopelessly deep in the woods and it was too dark to see more than dim shapes.

Jason whipped me around until we were face to face and slapped me open-handed. The force was so strong it made everything a blank, and I was surprised to find myself crumpled on the forest floor, my stun gun lost. He kicked me in the stomach, and my diaphragm locked up, unable to pull in air for my lungs. I thought I heard Sam screaming, but it could have been me.

“That good enough for you, Mira?” He towered over me, his voice jarringly calm. “You think I’m insane? You think I’m a crazy man? Everyone has some insanity in them. Some of ’em hide it good, like old lady Krupps, and some of ’em don’t, but we all got it. And now it’s your turn to get it.”

He kicked some dirt in my face, blinding me, and I pulled myself away from the sound of his voice. I bumped up against a tree and tried to drag my body erect. I felt nauseated and my mouth was salty with blood, but there was surprisingly little pain. I sucked at little bits of air as my diaphragm spasmed.

“Where you going in such a hurry? We’ve saved a little room here for you. Sam, open the front of the safe.”

I heard the creak of the safe door and threw up, not able to swallow it back before it leaked out the corners of my mouth. I was beyond terrified. He was going to bury me alive in the safe, and no one was going to stop him. I hobbled a little away from the tree in my hunched-over position and pulled myself up. Jason slapped me again, returning me to the forest floor.

“Fucker,” I grunted.

“What’s that, Mira? You got something to say to me?”

A picture of Peyton formed in my mind, smiling up at me as I read her
Prince Cinders
. We were both safe in the children’s section of the library, far from this madman. I concentrated on this image to remain conscious and reached deep into my reserves. My hand scrabbled around on the ground until I connected with a rock about the size of a grapefruit. My eyes had cleared enough to tell me that it was a white rock, and I hoped it wasn’t too obvious in the dark. I dug at it, peeling my forefinger and thumbnails back in my desperation to hold it. “You’re a fucker.”