Southern Poison (13 page)

The electronic hum
of machinery and unpleasant tinny odor of antiseptic penetrated the fog in my brain before I fully came to and realized I was in a hospital room. Ox smiled down at me. “Welcome back.”

I tried to speak, but my throat was too dry to make any sounds. He lifted my head with a large hand and held a cup of lukewarm water to my mouth. I gulped it down and my vocal cords worked again. “Tell Ashton I want my hazard pay bonus.”

Ox laughed. “You just missed him.”

I tried to sit up. A blast of nausea instantly rolled through my midsection, sweat popped out on my entire body, and the walls moved. Breathing hard, I dropped back to the pillow and felt a padded bandage on my back.

“You’ve got a few scrapes and bruises. A piece of sheet metal was lodged in your back, beneath your shoulder blade, but it didn’t puncture anything vital. Nineteen staples to close you up.” He refilled my water cup and helped me drink some more. “The reason
you feel so crummy is the concussion. Took a pretty rough hit to the back of your head.”

“What time is it?”

“Your car exploded at eleven o’clock this morning and it’s now almost midnight. Good job, by the way, pulling into that car wash. Owner’s not too happy. But it contained the explosion and nobody was hurt. Except you.”

“I only pulled in because my car was dirty. That, and to humor you.”

“Well then, that dirty car saved your life.”

I reached for his hand and when our palms met, my body relaxed as though I’d had a shot of morphine. It was his phone call that had kept me alive. Not a dirty vehicle. It wasn’t the first time Ox had saved my life, either. “Thanks,” I said, thinking the single word to be most inadequate but unable to come up with something better.

He squeezed my hand. “No problem.”

I started to apologize for acting like a bitch since his ex had shown up, but he stopped me. “I was being stupid, too, Barnes. Trying to accommodate Louise without considering your feelings. It’s a tough situation for everyone.”

At once, the wall of awkwardness between us crumbled. I wanted to talk more, but there’d be time for that later. “Help me get dressed and drive me home? I hate hospitals. There’s always a dead person hanging around somewhere.” I can handle blood and gore, but completely freak out around a dead person. Totally irrational, I know, but I can’t even stand to be near a crime scene until the bodies are hauled away. My government-appointed shrink labeled the condition necrophobia, back when I was active with SWEET. That aside, she’d given me a clean bill of mental health.

Ox shook his head. “No can do. You’re spending the night so they can scan your brain again tomorrow, to make sure there’s no swelling.”

“Well, crap.”

A nurse entered the room, followed by Spud and Lindsey.

“You’re awake! How ya feeling, Jerz?” Lindsey leaned in to give me a hug and I tried not to grimace when a stab of pain ran through my back.

On my other side, Spud leaned over the bed rails to look at me. He held up some knobby fingers and wiggled them in front of my face. “How many fingers do you see, kid? Who’s the president? What year is it? Do you know your name?”

“My brain is fine, Spud. Thanks for coming to see me.”

His walking cane shrugged. “Doodlebug here wouldn’t go to bed until we came to get a look at ya, make sure you’re still in one piece.”

“They’ve both been at the hospital since Lindsey got out of school at three o’clock,” Ox confided. “Lindsey’s driving Bobby’s van. She just got her California license, so she’s up for driving anyone anywhere, anytime.”

“In this traffic?” I said.

Lindsey whipped out the laminated card to show me. “I’ve been driving in California on a provisional permit for, like, a year before I got this. Trust me, the traffic at home makes Wilmington seem like the kiddie car rides at an amusement park.”

Everyone stood back while the nurse checked my vitals and injected something into my IV line. She asked how I felt—an absurd question considering my condition—and made a quick exit. Ox reminded Lindsey that it was a school night and time for her to go. Spud said he was ready, too, since he had a big day planned at his art studio. After another ten minutes of high-energy chatter and well-wishing, they left and the room was quiet once again.

“His dilapidated workshop is now a studio?” I asked Ox.

“Like I always say, your father is one hell of a thinker.”

A uniformed man poked his head through the door to ask if
there’d be any more visitors for the night. Ox said no. The door shut.

“Ashton put a guard on me?” I asked.

“Round the clock.”

“Well if you’re not going to help me break out of this joint, at least give me an update before you go.”

Ashton’s people were going through the remains of my X5 looking for evidence, Ox told me, but it appeared that a car bomb had been strapped to the underside and remotely detonated.

“I knew it! I mean, I obviously didn’t know about the bomb. But I knew I was getting close to uncovering something. I could feel it, and this proves it.”

A frown flashed on his face. “It does appear that you’ve made someone nervous.”

“How did you know about the bomb?”

“Difficult to explain,” he said. “But I saw—or rather I felt—it happening. I sensed an emptiness, like you were gone, and I knew something bad was about to happen.”

Tokens, or toat’ns as the Lumbees call them, are signs that a spirit is present. Such experiences are a regular part of Ox’s life and can be as simple as an unusual smell or as intense as a full-out vision. My best friend also has an uncanny sense of future events that borders on psychic. I don’t understand it, but I certainly can’t argue with it.

“Was the explosive military-issue stuff?” I asked.

“Made from common industrial stuff. It just so happens that a road construction crew reported a theft of several sticks of explosive to ATF last week.”

That didn’t necessarily rule out someone who had access to MOTSU inventory. It just meant they chose not to use it. “Who would want to blow me up? Who have I met recently that might think I’m anything other than a woman filling in for Mama Jean?” I asked aloud, but kept the answer to myself: John.

“They swept Mama Jean’s truck and found a bug, just inside the little push-out triangle window on the driver’s side. Ashton said it had to have been placed while you were parked and on the job.”

My whole body throbbed and it hurt to think. “He left the table for about ten minutes when we were eating at Elijah’s the other night.”

“Who?”

“John. The security guy that I’ve been out with a few times.”

“You really need to be more careful about who you date,” Ox teased, but the comment hit close to home. My last boyfriend was involved with the woman who shot up the Block and nearly killed me.

“John said he had to take a phone call, but he could have easily gone to the parking lot. Working beneath my car to strap on the bomb, he’d have gone unnoticed, since it was nearly dark. As for the bug, he could have popped that in place anytime I was parked and cooking. From the serving area, the driver’s seat is blocked from view.” My breaths were coming short and fast and I felt helplessly weak. But I’d take weak over dead any day. “I always locked the front doors, but left those little windows cracked for some air circulation. They’re just big enough for a man to get his forearm through.”

“You served a lot of coffee and biscuits to a lot of different people in two weeks’ time,” Ox said.

“Right, but I only voiced suspicions about one person—John. I called Ashton from Mama Jean’s truck. Whoever planted the bug could have been listening in.”

“When was that?”

“Yesterday, after I finished the morning shift. Once I spoke with Ash, he pulled me off mobile meal truck duty. Told me to stay away from John and the ammo dump until I received further instruction.”

“Where were you driving this morning, when your car blew up?”

“To check out John’s place.”

While I ate some applesauce, Ox told me that John—along with several other supervisors—had been interrogated by the local police chief and one of the head honchos at MOTSU, with an AJAT Security representative and Ashton looking on. Again, John had come up clean. He had an answer for everything, including why there wasn’t a paper trail for the flowers he took Mama Jean. He’d cut them from his yard.

The bosses at AJAT and supervisors at the ammo dump claimed that John’s work ethic had been exemplary and they stood behind the man 100 percent. John continued to work his scheduled shifts and politely offered himself to be questioned further if he could help in any way.

But Ashton was not one to buy into seemingly friendly cooperation and, based on the teeny little detail that I’d almost been car-bombed, was in the process of obtaining a warrant to search John’s home. When it comes to terrorism and public safety, traditional rights don’t always apply to suspects. Even though there was no real evidence, Ashton would have his warrant within hours.

“Where’s the best place for a guilty person to hide?” I said, my eyelids suddenly leaden.

“Out in the open,” Ox said. He dropped a soft kiss on my mouth and disappeared.

My head pounding as though clamped in a vise, I flipped on the wall-mounted television and barely caught a glimpse of Jay Leno before heavenly sleep overtook me.

John Leaned against
a wall to watch while a swarm of important-acting people searched his house. Just as he thought, Ashton was too much of a coward to join them.

After the police first questioned him, John figured it was only a matter of time before they would show up with a warrant. They’d already searched some of his coworkers’ houses. They showed up at his place sooner than he would have guessed, but he didn’t really care. If these assholes wanted to dig through his underwear and search the packaged goods in his freezer, then so be it. He didn’t even mind when they took the tank lids off the toilets, removed air vents from the ceiling, and pawed through his tools in the garage. They would leave a mess for him to clean up, but that was a minor inconvenience.

Watching a stern-looking woman with a clipboard who was apparently taking inventory, he grinned, thinking that they’d never find his underground supply room. An old root cellar a few hundred yards from the house, John only found it by accident, when he
was clearing brush and heard a hollow sound beneath the tractor. The cellar was dug by the original farming family who owned the land. But as the house was handed down, the younger generations no longer worked the land, and the cellar was forgotten. John lined his secret place with bricks, replaced the rotted shelves, and made a new camouflaged entry door—which he covered with pine straw and leaves. The reinforced door was thicker than the original and actually held a layer of dirt, complete with weeds growing out of it. His small team of men kept supplies in a separate storage facility, but the root cellar was known only to John.

Yes, they could spend the entire morning rummaging through his belongings for all John cared. There wasn’t a thing to link him to Mama Jean’s murder. Or the Jill Burns bitch. He’d planted the car bomb as an insurance policy and, after he heard her voicing accusations about him, he was glad he’d had the foresight to do so. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the BMW suddenly pull into a car wash and saw her jog into the parking lot to chase something during the ten-second remote detonation delay. The blast hadn’t killed her as planned, but right now, John had more urgent matters to deal with. Just two days away, the big wedding would be here before he knew it. He’d deal with Jill later.

My father could
play a role and Sally Stillwell
of Eclectic Arts&Leisure
magazine hovered around him as though Spud were a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci. Once he learned that he was going to be on the cover, he threw himself into character: charming, eccentric ex-cop turned brilliant creator. Enamored by the concept of emblematic human frailty, the magazine writer bought into the explanation that, for confidentiality reasons, Spud couldn’t reveal the details of where and how the Chrysler had been
transitioned
from reliable transportation into a bold, artistic statement. Which was good, since publicizing the deadly shootout at my pub would not have conformed to Wilmington’s Southern, genteel image.

Dirk, Ox, Ruby, and I looked on while Sally interviewed Spud at the Block. Only Ruby had trouble keeping a straight face. The rest of us were stupefied and listened in amazement at the words coming out of my father’s mouth.

“Excellent, excellent,” Sally said to herself and scribbled on a pad. “This is really good stuff. So then, Spud, how did your group
get together? And are any of the other law-enforcement artists coming today? We’d love to get their photos, too.”

Spud’s walking cane waved back and forth. “No, the other officers are active duty and they like to keep a low profile. But, see, we’re like a rock band and I’m the lead singer. The helpers might change, but I envision the sculptures.
Road Rage
was actually my personal vehicle.”

“Really? How interesting.” She scribbled. “What do you drive now?”

Before Spud could launch into a rampage about the state of North Carolina taking away his driver’s license, Dirk intervened. “He’s decided not to drive at all, to reduce his carbon imprint.”

Spud is about as environmentally conscious as a Texas oilman toting himself around in a Hummer. The original Hummer.

“Er, right,” Spud agreed, trying to figure out what a carbon imprint was. “My friends carry me to appointments and such. And to my studio. We carpool.”

When asked why his work hadn’t been on display in any galleries, Spud told her that nobody wanted his work because he is too old. Gallery owners just didn’t have any respect for aging artists, he said, even though eighty was the new fifty and he had plenty of good years left in him.

“The shit’s getting thick around here and these are new shoes,” Ruby whispered and sashayed off, shaking her head.

Asking me a question about what it was like to live with such a talented man, Sally mistakenly thought I was Spud’s granddaughter. She didn’t realize that he’d impregnated my mother when he was twice her age, and I didn’t mention that he’d walked out on both of us several years later. I gently declined to be interviewed and tossed her questions back to Spud. Ox and Dirk did the same. If Sally thought it odd that nobody wanted to talk with her except the artist himself, she didn’t show it. The interview went on for
another hour, with Sally quizzing Spud about his views on everything from global warming to crime prevention.