Unearthed (21 page)

“I’ve got math homework I’m really excited about,” Molly said, and she looked sincere. “Mom, can I have your help with it?”

Lauren blinked. “Uh … sure?”

“Great,” Molly said, shouldering her backpack and tromping up the stairs in a rush. “See you in my room!”

“Well, what the hell?” Vera asked, staring at the ceiling as though the plaster would peel back, the heavens would part, and an answer would be thrown down unto them.

“You’re looking in the wrong direction for hell, Mom,” Lauren said and headed toward the stairs herself. She eased toward Molly’s room but didn’t see her inside. She stepped in, looking around at the wallpaper, saw the discarded backpack on the bed, and started to turn back toward the bathroom to see if the door was closed when Molly emerged from behind the door to her room. Lauren emitted a short, shocked cry. “You scared the bejesus out of me!”

“I hope you saved the ‘A’ Jesus, then, because you’re gonna need him,” Molly said, gesturing for her to clear the door. Lauren took another couple steps into the room and Molly shut it behind her, then locked it. “I found out something out today about … you know.”

Lauren stared at her a little blankly. “No, I don’t know. What?”

Molly rolled her eyes sideways, toward the window. “You
know
.”

Lauren racked her brain. “About the growing habits of your grandmother’s begonias? About the use of trellises as ladders?” Molly got one of those expressions of growing exasperation as she went on. “About condom use? Because I was pretty sure that at your school it’s expected you’ll just find out about teenage pregnancy on your own instead—”

“Like you did?” Molly asked. “Maybe I’m just more advanced than you, but I already know what happens when you insert Tab A into Slot B without protection.”

“Never should have signed you up for the Engineering Club,” Lauren said, “your dirty talk needs a lot of work.” She reconsidered. “Although to a teenage boy, it’s probably like ringing the sexual dinner bell, come to think of it.”

“It’s not about sex, okay?” Molly looked exasperated again. “It’s about … the ‘d’ word.”

“… Douching?”

“Demons!” Molly blurted. “It’s about demons!”

Lauren felt her brow furrow hard. “How did you learn about demons today at your high school where you’re not even supposed to learn about what happens when a boy’s sin stick goes into your hoo-ha?”

“Because we talked about it on the playground,” Molly quipped, “right after we discussed what happens when you ring the devil’s doorbell.”

Lauren just stared at her. “Devil’s doorbell?”

Molly got wide-eyed again, but this time with annoyance. “You know.” She looked downward. “The bean.”

“Oh.” Lauren finally got it. “Is that what kids nowadays call it? I feel old, because we just called it the clit—”

“Demons,” Molly said urgently.

“Actually, devil’s doorbell should have been the ‘d’ word—”

“That would have been the ‘d’
words
, plural—”

“Or double D’s,” Lauren said, chuckling. “God, I’m as mature as a twelve-year-old boy.” She felt her face get stern again. “When the hell did you learn about demons in your school?”

“At lunch,” Molly said, “I was sitting at a table with Frank McKenna. You know him?”

“I know of his family,” Lauren said. The McKennas were a husband/wife real estate sales team that had their faces plastered on half the yard signs in Midian. “Why?”

“Well, he’s the local dealer—” Molly started.

“Why were you sitting with the local dealer?” Lauren asked, back to outrage.

“Because there are six lunch tables in my school and all the cool kids always sit with the guy who’s holding,” Molly said. “Go figure. Don’t get distracted.”

“Do they even bother with a ‘drugs are bad, m’kay?’ speech anymore?”

“Focus on the demons, Mom,” Molly said. “Certain death now, PSA on marijuana’s effects on the brain later. Anyway, Frank got a big request from some new guys in town—”

“I hope they’re DEA agents,” Lauren said. “Maybe he’ll sit at the cool kids’ table in prison.”

“—for a party tomorrow night,” Molly said, finally ignoring her disruptions. “You know where the Venus Plantation is?”

Lauren gave her a wary eye. “It’s out on Suffolk Lane. Hell, they renamed County Road 83 Suffolk Lane just to make it sound more stately for the Venus Plantation. Rich people get married there.”

“You’re a doctor, so you probably shouldn’t sneer about rich people like that,” Molly said. “Anyway, someone rented the plantation. The entire thing, not just for a wedding. They’re staying there, right now, and they’re throwing a party tomorrow night that’s going to have lots of drugs. Not just pot, either, more of the big-ticket drugs—meth, cocaine, heroin—”

“I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. McKenna know that their son is in sales, too?”

“Frank’s not handling the heavy stuff,” Molly said, “he’s outsourcing it.”

“It worries me that you’re talking about narcotics like this, like it’s a totally normal business to get into. It’s not. It’s illegal in Tennessee. It’s a criminal enterprise, like running a protection racket or being Suge Knight’s driver.”

“
Anyway
,” Molly said, “big party. Frank said no one’s been invited from around town.”

“So?” Lauren asked, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe a bunch of stockbrokers from Atlanta are driving up for a company retreat and want to paint the town red, the air green, and their noses white.”

“Well, see, I thought of that,” Molly said, “so I stopped by Melina Cherry’s place on the way home—”

Lauren’s eyes almost popped out of her head and her jaw dropped. “You stopped by a
brothel
on the way home? You cheeky goddamned latchkey kid!”

“I didn’t go there for the service,” Molly said.

Lauren pulled her hair back and just barely kept from ripping it out in clumps. “You have got to be kidding me. Is that where you picked up the phrase ‘devil’s doorbell’?”

“No, I got that from the internet,” Molly said like it was nothing. “Anyway, Ms. Cherry invited me in for tea with her and the other girl—”

“I’m living a fucking nightmare,” Lauren muttered to herself. “My daughter lunches with drug dealers and then has afternoon tea with a hooker and a madam. Who are you meeting for dinner, Whitey Bulger?”

“Roman Polanski,” Molly said. “Don’t wait up. Anyway, Ms. Cherry hadn’t heard anything about this party.”

“Did it occur to you that, being involved in an illegal trade, she might have lied to you?” Lauren felt the lightheaded weariness that came from feeling like her whole world had spun in rapid circles in the last few hours. Was she still standing? Probably shouldn’t be.

“Possibly,” Molly said. “But let’s assume for a moment she’s not—”

“Yes, let’s assume that she was totally frank about her dealings and not hiding the fact that she’s going to be there tomorrow night inserting countless Tab A’s into her Slot B for fat stacks of cash.”

“Calm down, Jesse Pinkman,” Molly said. “Let’s assume—maybe this party is outsourcing the hookers.”

“I don’t—” Lauren rubbed her forehead. Her hair was a mess from pulling it back in frustration. “Why do there have to be hookers at this party?” She looked up. “I’ll take ‘Things I Never Thought I’d Say to My Teenage Daughter for $1,000, Alex.’”

“The question is, if you’re throwing an alpha-male to the extreme drugs party so big you dry up the local dealer and make him ply his sources for heavier stuff,” Molly said, patiently connecting the dots, “why
wouldn’t
you want hookers at the party?”

“So maybe they’re outsourcing that, too,” Lauren said. She felt the sudden urge to curl up into the fetal position. “It sounds like Ms. Cherry has a shortage of available merchandise.” She froze. “Do you know what this conversation is doing to me? I just referred to people as merchandise. You’re a bad influence. You’re like the Corleones, dragging me into this with you.”

“So, maybe they are getting their hookers from Chattanooga,” Molly conceded. “Maybe. But then why go local for the drugs?”

“I would like to talk about dollies now, please. Remember when we used to talk about dollies?”

“When I was six? Yeah. Remember when we didn’t talk about how a demon tried to rape me in a Ferris wheel?”

“Just kill me,” Lauren said, finally sinking down to her haunches on the floor. “Kill me now.”

“I think the party is a demon party,” Molly said. “I think they need drugs because—I dunno, demons get high, I guess. But they don’t need hookers because maybe human women aren’t what they go for? Or because they’ve got a different source that meets their needs.”

Lauren looked up at her but kept her voice low. “Seems to me that we know demons go for human girls.”

“Well, then maybe they don’t go for the willing ones,” Molly said hoarsely. “Maybe it’s …” She sank to the bed.

“Maybe,” Lauren said, putting her head between her knees.

They sat like that for a while. “What are you gonna do?” Molly asked finally.

Lauren looked up at her. “I’m gonna lock you in a tower until you’re fifty, and make you grow your hair long so I can climb up it to visit you everyday. I’m going to buy you a chastity belt with the really spikey spikes, the kind that make a man’s Tab A quiver and withdraw to inchworm sized at the sight of it—”

“They do that?”

Lauren just stared daggers at her. “I’m locking you in a metal box in the basement until you develop superhuman powers.”

“Stranger things have happened around here lately.”

Lauren leaned back, slowly, until she was flat against the floor, staring up at the ceiling. She took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t exactly call Sheriff Reeve and ask him to bust the party. I just—”

“What?”

“I met a guy this afternoon,” Lauren said, thinking it over. Belzer might know something. “He … well, he
knows
. Maybe I’ll ask him.”

Molly was quiet for almost a minute. “Are you gonna … you know … go to the party?”

Lauren lifted her head to look at her daughter. “Am I going to go to a party that’s possibly filled to the brimming with demons who are high on cocaine and bereft of hookers? Gosh, that sounds like a ball.”

“A prison ball,” Molly snorted.

“More like two balls,” Lauren said, “times however many guys are in the room.” She looked at the white plaster ceiling. “Should I be worried that you know all these things?” She raised her head to look at her daughter. “That you’re out investigating demons via prostitutes and narco-businessmen? Are you planning to be Michelle Pfeiffer in the inevitable reboot of
Scarface
?”

“I’m just …” Molly said, and she looked troubled. “I can’t just sit in my room and watch everything go to shit.”

“Language,” Lauren said. “This is what happens when you hang out with hookers and dealers, you start cussing.”

“Mom,” Molly said, and there was a plea in her eyes, “we have to do something.”

Lauren felt her throat get tight and her skin chill at the thought of her sixteen-year-old daughter—her baby, dammit—and all that was coming to town here. “Running seems like a good idea.”

“I don’t wanna run,” Molly said. “This is my home.”

Lauren took a ragged breath. “Yeah.” She looked out the window and saw birds in the tree beyond, frolicking like they didn’t have a care in the world. “I don’t want to run either.”

Sundown came and Bill appeared, truck rattling down the ruts in the driveway. Arch watched him from the window. The house had been quiet since the blowup that morning; Duncan had stayed out in the barn all day, and Alison had taken to going out to visit him every hour or so, to see how he was doing. Arch was a bit skeptical about how that’d go, but he didn’t say anything to her about it, of course.

The sun was hanging low, just above the trees when the truck came to a halt. It shot a glare across the hood of the truck, a blinding flash of light in Arch’s eyes that he felt compelled to look away from. He opened the door and stepped out onto the porch; if it had been up to him, he’d have kept the windows and doors open all day long. It wasn’t like they had air conditioning to waste, after all. Though he supposed the flies would drive them half mad.

“Got some news,” Bill said as he quietly closed the door and then used his rump to shut it the last inch. “Might want to get the team together.” He paused. “Feels like we ought to have a name, doesn’t it?”

Arch considered it. “Feels like we got more important things to worry about than voting on a team name. Besides, what would fit? The Cougars? Chargers? Swordsmen?”

“Leaves Alison out, and you know how that’d end,” Bill said. “How’d it go after I left?”

“Fourth of July,” Arch said. “Like a string of firecrackers, but with a little more oomph.”

“Everyone still got all their fingers?”

“For now,” Arch said. “Duncan’s out in the barn. You get him, I’ll get everyone else?”

“Sho ’nuff,” Bill said. It was something he said regularly, and Arch’s mind automatically translated it to “sure enough.” His father-in-law made for the barn while Arch headed back into the house.

“Bill’s here,” he said to Alison, who still had her rifle disassembled on the kitchen table. She didn’t look keen to start dinner and was tinkering with something in the receiver. Arch didn’t go in much for gunsmithing, tending to clean his piece quickly about every five hundred rounds or so. Alison did hers almost daily if it had been shot.

She looked up, and that reserve she’d had all day greeted him as he looked in her eyes. “He’s got news?”

“Yep.”

“You should get Hendricks.” She looked back down at her rifle. She had a toothbrush in hand, its once-white bristles turned grey and unusable, at least for its original purpose.

“Next item on my list of things to do,” Arch agreed and headed for the stairs. “Hendricks?” he called. “Got a meeting, cowboy.” He waited for a response and got none, so he ascended a few steps, listened to the protest of the stairs. “Hendricks?”

He waited for an answer and got none. He hesitated before going any further. As far as he knew, Hendricks didn’t get the room to himself very often, and the man could very well be up to anything up there. On the other hand, he could just be sound asleep. It was a back-and-forth, Arch trying to decide how much he wanted to bet that the cowboy wasn’t doing anything he didn’t want to know about.