“Maybe I’m smarter than you think,” Cook said. He suddenly stopped and gazed through the trees on the other side of the road. “Is that a water tower?” he asked.
“How the hell would I know? I can’t see my hand in front of my face.”
Cook hurried toward the edge of the trees. “Hell, yeah, that’s the Columbiana’s water tower,” he said in obvious delight. “I know right where we are. My friend Jonesy, or Reverend Jonesy, as they call him,” he added with a laugh, “lives a stone’s throw from it.”
“Great. You can stop in and ask him to save your soul before I put you out of your misery.”
Cook looked worried for a moment. “He’s not a real preacher, and he’s as crooked as my mama’s arthritic finger. He’d sell his mama if he could make five bucks. Trust me, he has spent a time or two behind bars. He’s a traveling preacher. If he’s not on the road he’ll give us something to eat.”
Carl Lee looked doubtful. “There’s probably a reward out for our capture,” he said. “I’m not taking any chances.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Carl Lee. Jonesy wouldn’t turn in a con. It wouldn’t be ethical. Besides, he’s rich. Made a buttload of money scamming truck drivers, leading them to Jesus,” he added. “And guess who showed him how to hide all that money? Yours truly, that’s who. And Jonesy has connections coming out the ying-yang. He might be able to find us a ride to Beaumont.”
Carl Lee seemed to ponder it. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll go by and see your friend, but if he even looks like he’s going to blow the whistle on us I’ll bury a bullet so deep they’ll never find it.”
They crossed the highway and picked their way through the woods. On the other side, they found a brand-new double-wide mobile home. Beside it sat an eighteen-wheeler, the words PRAYER MOBILE painted on the side.
“What’s that?” Carl Lee asked.
“That’s Jonesy’s traveling church,” Cook said. “He holds religious services at truck stops and roadside parks. Goes all over the country spreading the Good Word,” he added. “Truckers are very generous.”
A man’s voice called out to them from the mobile home. A shotgun poked from a window, trained on the men. Cook identified himself. A moment later a gray-haired man in black slacks, black shirt, and priest’s collar appeared at the door. He still held the rifle, even as he and Cook pumped hands enthusiastically. Cook introduced him to Carl Lee.
“CNN has been flashing pictures of you boys all day,” Jonesy said. “A motorist decided to take a leak in the woods along the side of the highway and almost tripped over your pal’s body. They found him several hours ago; ID’d him at the scene from a couple of tattoos.”
“We didn’t kill him,” Cook said. “He got hit by a guard during the escape.”
“Anyway, some kid heard about it and called the cops. Claims he ran into you guys last night.” Jonesy had to pause to catch his breath. He looked at Carl Lee. “Gave the make and model of the car and said you looked like Jerry Lewis in that professor movie,” he added.
“Uh-oh, there goes your disguise,” Cook said.
Carl Lee muttered a couple of four-letter words.
“Hold it right there, son,” Jonesy said. “This is the Lord’s house. We don’t use that kind of language.”
Carl Lee looked at Cook. “Is he for real?”
Cook nodded soberly before looking at Jonesy. “We don’t have the car anymore. The tire blew out. We were able to ride the rim to a dirt road and push it into a ravine. Hopefully nobody will see it for a while.”
Jonesy looked at Carl Lee. “I know what you did,” he said, “but God loves you anyway, and so do I. I’ll invite you in to break bread, but you’ll have to leave your gun outside. I don’t allow weapons in my home.”
Carl Lee looked pointedly at the rifle.
“This doesn’t count because it’s for protection,” Jonesy said. “A man has a right to protect his home.”
Cook pulled his gun from his waistband and put it on the front step. Finally, Carl Lee did the same.
“You boys hungry?” Jonesy asked when they stepped inside. “I’ve got a pot of red beans and rice on the stove.”
“I hear you’ve got a lot of money,” Carl Lee said once Jonesy served up three bowls of beans and rice and thick slices of buttered bread. “How come you’re not living in some fancy mansion?”
“I’m storing my treasures in heaven,” Jonesy said. “There are mansions galore up there, all sitting on streets of gold. Also, I don’t want the IRS asking questions.”
They ate in silence. Jonesy refilled their bowls. “Where are my manners?” he said. “I’ll bet you boys are thirsty.”
“A cold beer would be nice,” Carl Lee said, only to receive a look of warning from Cook.
“Then you’ve come to the wrong place,” Jonesy said. “I don’t allow alcohol, drugs, cussing, or poker playing.” He pulled several soft drinks from the refrigerator and passed them around.
“So how are you fellows planning to make the rest of the trip without getting caught?”
Carl Lee looked up. “Cook said you might be able to hook us up with a ride.”
“Depends on how much you’re willing to pay,” Jonesy said. “I understand you got a quarter of a mil waiting for you in Beaumont. I might be willing to help for a fair cut. First thing I’d do is get you two out of those clothes.”
“What do you consider a fair cut?” Carl Lee asked after a moment.
Jonesy considered it. “Takes a lot of gas to fill up an eighteen-wheeler,” he said. “I reckon twenty-five will do it.”
Carl Lee’s eyebrows shot up. “Twenty-five thousand! Are you crazy?”
“I’ll take you right down I-20 to Atlanta, go through Augusta, turn south in Columbia, South Carolina, then on to Beaumont. All in all, I’ll have you there in about seven hours.”
Carl Lee shook his head. “Forget it. I can charter a damn jet for less than that.”
Jonesy reached for his gun.
Carl Lee sighed and looked at the ceiling. “I meant to say ‘darn.’ ”
Cook stared at Carl Lee in disbelief. “Take the deal, man! We don’t have wheels, and now the cops have a description of you.”
“I’ll give you ten,” Carl Lee told Jonesy.
“Fifteen.”
“No.”
“Okay, make it twelve,” Jonesy said, “and I’ll let you take a well-needed shower, put you both in a priest’s outfit, rub a little black shoe dye in your hair, and ask the Lord to speak to your hearts.”
“I’m out of here,” Destiny told Vera, grabbing her purse and pushing her chair from her desk. She gave a sudden squeal that startled Vera so bad the woman dropped a file folder, scattering papers across the floor.
“It’s Freddy Baylor!” Destiny said, dropping to her knees and scrambling beneath her desk. “Don’t tell him I’m here,” she hissed.
“Oh, I’m going to enjoy this,” Vera said.
A man with longish blond hair and a scruffy reddish-blond beard walked through the front door wearing ragged jeans and a torn T-shirt with the words BORN TO BREED on the front. He walked up to Vera’s desk. “How are you today?” he said politely.
“Why, I’m just fine, thank you.” Vera gave him her best smile.
“I’m Freddy Baylor. Is Destiny—”
“Freddy Baylor!” Vera bolted from her chair and held out her hand. “It’s so nice to finally meet Destiny’s new beau! Why, she can’t say enough wonderful things about you. I’m Vera, by the way.”
He arched both brows, but took her hand and shook it. “Destiny has mentioned me? I’m glad to hear it.”
“She’s wondering why you haven’t invited her to go fishing.”
“I had no idea she enjoyed that sort of thing. But then, I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to her since she’s always in a hurry.”
“Oh, she’s just playing hard to get,” Vera said, giving him a wink.
He grinned. “Is she around, by any chance?
”
“As a matter of fact, she is,” Vera said. “She’s hiding under that desk.” She pointed. From where Vera stood, she could see Destiny clearly, but Freddy, on the other side, could not.
He chuckled. “Destiny never mentioned she worked with somebody so personable and funny,” he said.
“Destiny, come out from under that desk right this minute!” Vera said, only to receive a menacing look from the woman scrunched beneath it.
Freddy laughed again. “You ever thought about doing stand-up comedy?” he asked, as Vera continued to talk to the desk. “How about telling Destiny I stopped by?”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Vera said. “Why don’t you wait for her? You just make yourself comfortable on the sofa over there and help yourself to a magazine. I have a feeling she’s going to pop up any moment.”
“Thanks.” Freddy turned for the sofa, just as Mike Henderson pushed through the front door.
“Look at me!” Mike all but shouted to Vera, motioning wildly at his face. “I’ve got this rash all over my body.”
“You’ve got chicken pox,” Vera said.
Mike shook his head. “No way! That voodoo woman, Queenie Cloud, did this to me. I’m going to report her to the police.”
Freddy Baylor suddenly looked anxious and backed away from the other man. “I have to get back to the bait shop,” he said. “Would you tell Destiny I came by?” He was gone.
“Who was that?” Mike asked Vera.
“Destiny’s new boyfriend.”
“What!”
“Stop shouting,” Vera said. “If you think you look bad now, just wait until Jamie gets her hands on you.”
“Uh-oh. I shouldn’t have added that part about Dr. Davenport in my article.”
Vera arched one brow. “You think?”
A relieved Destiny crawled from beneath her desk, startling Mike so bad he jumped. “What is going on here?” he asked.
Destiny shot Vera a dark look. “You’re going to pay.”
“Was that man your lover?” Mike demanded. “Are you actually having sex with a bait store owner? After turning me down three times! Do you know what that does to a man’s ego?”
Destiny ignored him.
The phone rang and Vera grabbed it. “You called in the nick of time,” she told Jamie. “Mike just walked in. I would slap him for you, but he’s under the weather. Has the chicken pox,” she added.
“I do not have the chicken pox. I’m telling you, I’m hexed!”
“He claims Queenie Cloud is responsible for it. Says he’s going to call the police. He’s gone wacko. Flipped out. Lost it. Gone off the deep end. You need to get back here fast.”
Jamie hung up the phone and looked at Maggie. “I have to get back to the office.” She relayed the message and Maggie closed her eyes and shook her head. “I have no idea why he thinks Queenie did something to him,” Jamie added, “but the police aren’t going to take him seriously.”
“Queenie made threats against him last night,” Maggie said and told Jamie about Mike’s visit. “He could report threats. I’d better ride over and take a look at him. Maybe calm him down.” She turned to Mel. “Would you please go outside and see how much longer Zack and Ben will be working on the pen for Butterbean? Tell Zack I need a lift to the newspaper office as soon as they’re done.”
Mel nodded and hurried out.
Jamie reached for her purse. “You don’t really think Queenie, um—” She paused. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. I’ll see you at the office.” Jamie stepped out the back door and called Fleas several times.
“He’s back here with Butterbean,” Mel shouted from behind the house.
Jamie hurried to the backyard. An amused Zack and Ben were using a heavy-duty staple gun to fasten the chicken wire in place on the wooden poles. Mel grinned at Jamie and pointed. Standing on opposite sides of the makeshift fence, Fleas and Butterbean were trying to rub noses through the octagon-shaped holes in the wire. “I think they’re in love,” Mel said.
Jamie shook her head sadly. “Just when I think my life is as strange as it can get, my dog gets the hots for a goat. Okay, Romeo, time to go.” Jamie grasped his collar and tugged gently, but Fleas wouldn’t budge. He was too busy making goo-goo eyes at Butterbean.
“Oh, great,” Jamie said, as Mel continued to laugh and the men’s amusement grew. She reached into her purse and pulled out the leash she kept on hand. She hooked it to Fleas’s collar and tugged.
He gave a huge hound-dog sigh, gave Butterbean a lingering look, and followed Jamie toward the car.
“We’re going in that?” Mel asked a half hour later as they were getting ready to go to the newspaper office. “Your hippie van?”
Zack grinned. “Yeah. I wish I had thought to put on my tie-dyed T-shirt.” He unlocked and opened the doors for them. “Ladies?”
“I’ll die if anyone I know sees me,” Mel said once they were on their way.
“Hey, look,” Zack said, reaching for several cassette tapes on the dashboard. “We’ve got Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, and Jimmy Hendrix. Hey, Mel, I’ll bet you fifty cents you don’t know the words to ‘Bobby McGee.’ ” He put the tape into the cassette player and sang along.
“Oh, brother,” Mel mumbled and scooted down in the backseat.
Maggie chuckled as Zack sang to the music, obviously unaware that he couldn’t hold a tune. She liked that he had a sense of humor; it would go a long way toward easing the tension over the next hours or days as they waited for Carl Lee’s appearance.
They arrived at the Gazette, and Maggie hurried inside, with Zack and Mel right behind. Maggie followed the sound of voices and found Jamie and her staff trying to calm Mike. “Okay, I’m here,” she called out.
“Finally!” Mike said. “I’m going crazy with all this itching. It’s everywhere!”
“Men are such babies,” Vera said.
Maggie noted the rash on Mike’s face and arms as she opened her bag and pulled on her latex gloves. “Have you ever had the chicken pox, Mike?” she asked.
“When I was about three years old,” he said. “This isn’t the chicken pox.”
“Sure looks like it. Have you been exposed to anyone within the past couple of weeks who had chicken pox?”
“No.”
“When did your symptoms begin?”
“My head started itching like crazy last night. I thought it was my new shampoo. I woke up this morning to this,” he added, pointing to himself.
Maggie doubted it had come on quite that fast. The rash had probably started on his back where he couldn’t see it. She followed up with more questions, slipped a thermometer beneath his tongue, and reached for a vial containing an antihistamine. “I’m going to give you something to stop the itching,” she said, drawing the medication into a syringe and giving him an injection. The thermometer beeped. One-oh-one. “And something for your fever,” she added.
“You don’t have a cure for what I have,” he said, sounding hopeless. “Queenie Cloud is the only one who can stop it.”
“She’s in Savannah for the day. Sorry.”
“I could be dead before she gets back. Is there something you can do to break the hex?”
Maggie looked at him. He was genuinely afraid. “I promise you’ll feel better in a few minutes, Mike.” She tore open another package and shook two tablets into his palm. His hand trembled so badly he almost dropped them. Jamie went for water.
“You’re being silly,” Vera told him. She looked at Maggie. “He’s the worst hypochondriac I’ve ever seen. If he gets a headache he swears it’s a brain tumor and won’t shut up until the doctor does an MRI.”
“May I speak with you for a moment, Maggie?” Jamie said.
Mike’s eyes widened. “Uh-oh, it must be bad if they have to talk in private.”
“Try to relax, Mike. I’ll be right back.” Maggie followed Jamie out of the office. Zack and Mel sat on the sofa in the reception area reading a magazine.
“You have t
o do something,” Jamie said, once she and Maggie reached the small kitchen at the end of the hall. “Mike will end up making his condition much worse if he doesn’t get a grip.”
“He’ll feel better once his fever goes down.”
“Not if he continues to think Queenie put a hex on him. I’ll have to take him to the ER and sit with him day and night like when he had the flu and was sure it was acute leukemia.”
Maggie had no time to think about hexes and poxes and root work, what with the threat of Carl Lee looming. “I’ve tried to convince him otherwise. What do you want me to do?”
“You’ll have to remove the hex.”
“What hex?”
“The hex he swears Queenie put on him.”
“Even if it was a hex, which it isn’t, I don’t know how to remove them,” Maggie said. “Queenie uses some kind of Uncrossing Oil, whatever that is, and a bunch of other weird stuff.”
“You’re not really going to remove a hex; you’re just going to make Mike think you removed one. Do like Queenie. Use weird stuff.”
“I don’t have any weird stuff on me at the moment, and I don’t have time for Mike’s weirdness.”
Mel came to the door. “Mom, Miss Vera says you’d better check on Mike. His face is red. Miss Vera says he’s burning up.”
“See?” Jamie said. “In an hour he’ll be dead.”
Maggie tried not to show her annoyance as she rechecked Mike’s temperature. She was stunned to find that it had gone up two points.
“I feel so weak,” Mike said, falling sideways on the sofa. His voice was barely audible. “Where is that pretty music coming from?”
“Oh, brother,” Maggie said under her breath.
“You have to do something!” Jamie said.
“What he needs is a good kick in the behind,” Vera told her. “He’s nothing but a big baby.”
Maggie could not remember feeling more frustrated. “Okay, you want to help me uncross this hex?” she asked Jamie. “Fine.”
Vera gave Maggie a funny look.