She pulled her car around to the rear of the building, out of sight of the road, and retrieved her parcels from the floorboard. It was a moonless night, but she knew where there were obstacles to avoid as she made her way.
One of them was the chicken coop, which reminded her of that malicious rooster. Before moving into town, she had made good on her threat to throw him into a stewpot—Ernie’s. She’d given the laying hens to an old folks’ home, the staff of which had been most grateful for the contribution.
Thinking of the rooster reminded her of the altercation she’d had with him the day she’d met Thatcher. And the reminder of Thatcher made her “truculent.” That was the word Irv had used to describe her mood since their last encounter.
She’d neither seen nor heard anything further about Chester Landry, either to substantiate or dispel Thatcher’s warning. When she’d asked the twins if his name was familiar to them, they’d told her they’d heard of the shoe salesman through their friend Randy. But Randy hadn’t been around lately, and they’d never met his pal Chester.
The twins had begun delivering to Lefty’s, so far without incident. Although, they’d told Laurel, since the raid, the sheriff’s department had begun patrolling the roads around the roadhouse with regularity. Lefty had complained about the increased vigilance keeping customers away.
Since that night in the yard, Thatcher hadn’t sought her out.
She considered the matter closed.
Out of politeness, she tapped on the door to the shack and softly called Corrine’s name. Getting no response, she pushed open the door and went inside. As expected, Corrine wasn’t there. Laurel set the parcels she’d brought on the table, leaving it to Corrine to put away the items where she wanted them.
On her way out, Laurel noticed two things about Irv’s old bureau. To support the legless corner, Corrine had rep
laced the stacked catalogues with blocks of wood. And on top, along with her hairbrush and other personal articles, was the primer Laurel had given her.
She thumbed open the cover and was pleased to see that Corrine had been practicing. She’d copied several lines of the alphabet on the first page. The letters were imperfect, but by page three she was showing improvement. On page four she’d doodled a drawing. Beneath it, she’d printed ERNIE.
Laurel laughed softly. Maybe Corrine’s drawing was an indecipherable death threat. Their relationship was still prickly.
She returned the primer to its place on the bureau, then stepped out and pulled the door closed. As she was retracing her way to the back, she heard the sound of an approaching automobile on the road. A set of headlights topped a hill. Another set of lights followed close behind the first. Then a third vehicle. All were traveling fast, maintaining their distance from each other, looking very much like a convoy with a mission.
Laurel’s heart lurched and didn’t stop pounding until they had passed the turnoff to the shack. She could easily have talked her way around being here. It was still Irv’s property. She could say she had come to retrieve something he had left behind when they’d moved.
But then, a worse thought occurred to her: If the shack hadn’t been their destination, where were they going in such an obvious hurry? Beyond here was no-man’s-land, nothing out there except—
Not thinking twice about it, she began running toward the hill behind the shack. She forgot all the safety precautions she had hammered into Corrine. Her pistol was in her pocket, but she didn’t have a lantern, and she wouldn’t have lit it if she did. She didn’t tread carefully. She didn’t think about turning her ankle or slipping on loose rocks and plunging down a steep incline into a crevice where she could die of thirst before being found.
She heard the yap of a coyote, but it was far away, and the only predator that concerned her was Man. Lawmen. Or angry competitors. She didn’t know which posed the greatest threat, and was loath to speculate on the consequences of the stills being discovered by either element. If indeed that’s where the convoy was headed, she had to get there first. The stills might have to be abandoned, but Corrine and Ernie could escape.
Over the months that she’d been making this trek, she’d found routes that weren’t so steep, that curved up the incline gradually. But they meandered and took more time, and she was aware of time running out. She went straight up.
She stumbled once and fell to her knee. Her skirt and petticoat helped to pad her kneecap, but she’d struck it hard enough to jar her teeth. She would bear a bruise.
Losing her footing a second time, she reached for a bush to break her fall. The brittle foliage scraped her arm. A night bird swooped low directly in front of her, its screech causing her to cry out in fright despite the need for stealth.
Her lungs began to burn, her heart felt near to bursting, but she pushed on, upward. If she was wrong, they would all have a good laugh over her frantic climb later. Much later.
But for now she must assume that her friends were in danger of being caught, captured, punished to the extreme. If she arrived too late, they might even pay with their lives.
Even in the darkness, she knew she was approaching the crest that overlooked Ernie’s camp. She was panting hard as she scrambled up the last several yards. Sweat dripped into her eyes, causing them to sting. As she topped the hill, she closed her eyes to blink away the sweat, but also to postpone, even for a millisecond, what she would see below.
Praying for the best, expecting the worst, she opened her eyes.
What she saw caused her to stagger backward. She gasped for breath through her mouth, which hung open in disbelief.
Because there was nothing to see below. The clearing was empty.
Forty-Two
The sheriff stood at the edge of the clearing with his hands on his hips in a pose of disgust. He watched while deputies used flashlights to search the area, which obviously had been recently vacated.
“Goddamn it.”
Thatcher came alongside him in time to overhear his muttered blasphemy. “They just left with Tup. His given name is Thomas.”