'Til Grits Do Us Part Read online

  “Yep. A hay bale will do it. Works every time.” Shane pointed over a tree-lined ridge as the rain let up. “My brother-in-law’s got a couple. Hold on. I’ll see if he’s home.” And he picked up his cell phone, still snickering.

  I was pacing back and forth in the bed of the truck, livid and fuming under my breath, when somebody jumped out of the parked Chevette and rushed up to the truck.

  Ahem. Meg West’s Chevette.

  “Shiloh?” Meg, photographer at Staunton’s News Leader newspaper where I worked, gawked up at me, shielding her eyes from the police lights. “Shiloh Jacobs? What on earth are you doing?” She wrinkled her freckled nose. “You’re filthy!”

  “I can explain.” I put my hands up. “It’s all a misunderstanding.”

  Meg raised an eyebrow and put her palms up. “You know what? I don’t even want to know. But I’ve been paging you for forty-five minutes, and nada.”

  “What?” I yelped, patting the top of my mud-spattered jeans for my pager. “My pager’s gone! It must have fallen off.”

  “Well, get in the car! What are you waiting for?” Meg tugged on my arm, her long hair tied back with an Indian-print headband. “I’m driving! We’re late.”

  “Now? Like this?” I tugged on my dirty Japanese kanji-print T-shirt, horrified. “Look at me! I can’t interview anybody looking like I crawled out of a sewer.”

  “Too bad. You’re the only writer left. Kevin will have both of our heads if we’re not there in ten minutes.” She checked her cell phone. “Make that five minutes. Now hurry up!”

  I really, really hate this town.

  I gripped the dirty tailgate, searching for a foothold, while Shane guffawed over his shoulder at me.

  Meg stood there strangely silent, clicking through her cell phone.

  “Shiloh?” she looked up.

  I stepped over the tailgate and onto the bumper. “What?”

  “I just got a picture from your friend Becky. Is that you with a…cow?”

  Meg drove at the speed limit until Shane’s squad car disappeared around a bend, and then she stepped on the gas—flattening me against the passenger’s seat with both arms outstretched.

  “I didn’t know a Chevette could go seventy miles an hour,” I chattered as she bumped over some bad paving. I tugged vainly at the passenger’s seat belt, which hung limp and stained with something that stunk of herbs.

  “Oh, it can go a lot faster than that.” Meg swiped a peace sign dangling from her rearview mirror out of her way as she roared around a wet curve, tires squealing. “My boyfriend, Cooter, swears he’s had it up to a hundred and twenty on some funky fuel mix he concocted.” She glanced over. “Oh, and that seat belt doesn’t work. Sorry.”

  A Dalai-Lama bobblehead grinned at me from her dusty dashboard, its head whapping back and forth.

  “So what’s the big deal about this story?” I hung onto the armrest as Meg punched the accelerator harder.

  “The big deal?” Meg took one hand off the wheel to turn and shake a finger at me, and my stomach lurched. “Some drunk ran his SUV through a guy’s bedroom window. It stopped about six inches over the guy’s bed.”

  “Yikes.” I winced.

  “Nobody hurt.”

  “Huh?” I spun my head around. “How’s that even possible?”

  “I know, right?” Meg chuckled and jerked to a screeching stop at a STOP sign, turn signal clacking, and then squealed around the corner. Streetlights, some lit and some dark, glimmered like a broken necklace past quiet houses and porch lights. “We’ve gotta get there before the clean-up crews put everything back together, or I won’t get a single good photo. And trust me, this one’ll run front-page spread if I do it right.”

  The Chevette swept under a streetlight, and a giant turquoise ring sparkled on Meg’s index finger. “But there’s something even bigger about this story.”

  “What could be bigger than an SUV through somebody’s bedroom?” I shook out my damp hair.

  “Ray Floyd.” She reached a patchouli-reeking arm in my face and fiddled with the dash. “Get it?”

  “Who?” I tried again to click the seat belt into the lock as she swerved around a very dead squirrel. “Never heard of him.”

  “The guy who nearly got creamed by an SUV is Ray Floyd.” Meg glanced over at me. “Ray Floyd, Jacobs! Doesn’t his name ring a bell?”

  “No!” I grabbed the bobblehead as it toppled sideways, sliding across the dash. “I have no idea who he is.”

  Meg lowered her voice to a mysterious near-whisper. “Amanda’s former fiancé.”

  “Amanda? Amanda who?”

  As soon as I said her name, a ripple of something eerie flashed through my stomach. “Amanda Cummings?” I asked, sticking the bobblehead back in its stand. “The girl who disappeared?”

  “That’s her.” Meg slowed a bit as we came into city limits, her Chevette flashing past a darkened Food Lion and Dollar General—their signs still glowing blue and red into the night sky. Country music blasted from a pool hall next to a lighted Shell station, clogged with jacked-up pickup trucks in various states of mud splatters.

  “Amanda’s that woman who turned up missing twelve years ago, Shiloh.” Meg jerked in the other lane around a slow-moving minivan. “Remember? ‘You were my first’? That’s what they found spray painted in red outside her old mailbox, in some weird loopy handwriting with funky A’s. Probably written by a lefty.”

  She jerked to a stop at a red light then looked both ways and ran it.

  Ohhhh, God…. If a bull from Ron’s pasture doesn’t cream me tonight, an oncoming turkey truck might.

  “Plus flowers and letters and a bunch of weird ranting gibberish.” Meg waved an arm. “Whoever’s doing this is nuts. I’m telling you.”

  “So…why is this a big deal?” I raised an eyebrow, trying to understand. “So what if Ray is Amanda’s former fiancé? I guess he still lives here, right? From what I understand, they cleared his name years ago.” I crossed my arms stubbornly. “But I’m not doing this story anyway. I’ve already told you that.”

  “You might not do the story, but you’ve gotta know why it’s so important.” Meg slowed again and turned down a rain-shiny side street near Gypsy Hill Park. “I’ve got a hunch Amanda’s killer really might be back.”

  “What? Come on.” I made a face. “That’s what they said when this same stuff happened five years ago, and nothing came of it.”

  “Oh, it’s way bigger this time.” Meg glanced up at me. “And this time he’s after Ray.”

  She craned her head in the dim streetlights to read house numbers, checking them with the directions she’d scrawled on the back of a napkin from Thai Diner in Charlottesville.

  “You’re not making sense, Meg. Nobody left Ray flowers or letters or spray painted his mailbox.” I leaned sideways to see past a long crack in Meg’s windshield. The crash site must not have been far because caution cones and flares already lined the street. Floodlights glimmered up ahead, and I glimpsed two red fire trucks through the spreading oak trees. “Spell out your theory for me.”

  “First, somebody who might be Amanda’s killer seems to be resurfacing, leaving all those creepy messages and threats related to her. And then somebody narrowly misses flattening her former fiancé by six inches and a piece of wallboard. What if somebody actually meant to kill him?” Meg looked over at me, a glow of police lights illuminating her pert, turned-up nose.

  She pressed on the brake, slowing as another police car zipped past us toward the fray. “I dunno, but it makes sense to me. And it makes me wonder something else.”

  “Wonder what?” I untangled the lifeless seat belt and stuffed it behind the passenger’s seat, feeling my hands grow cold despite myself.

  Meg jerked the car over to the side of the road and threw it in PARK. “Who’s next?”

  Chapter 3

  So, do you dig my theory?” Meg shook whatever so-called herbal brew she’d concocted, tipping her stinky mug dangerously close t
o my cubicle desk. Even under the glow of fluorescent lights in The News Leader office, she looked exactly the same as she did last night—down to her spacy expression and the same old stinky sweater with the hole under the arm.

  I, on the other hand, had wasted an hour and a half of precious sleep time scrubbing manure off my tennis shoes and showering several times with antibacterial soap. And then ironing my best silk pantsuit that the dry cleaners had left, wrinkled, in a Kroger’s paper bag with my name scrawled on the side in pen.

  If the Japanese laundry tag didn’t stump them, the kimono-style top with cute side-tied bows probably did. Because they looked like a bunch of Boy Scout knots when I opened the bag.

  Note to self: buy one of those at-home dry-cleaning kits.

  “It’s an interesting theory, Meg, but I don’t know if somebody’s really trying to knock off Ray Floyd.” I stuck The News Leader labels on press packets while we talked. “That drunk seemed like a pretty random guy. He didn’t even know his name—much less whose house he hit.” I pressed on a label and smoothed it with my palm. “I guess I’ll see what the intern does with my interview notes when he writes up the Amanda bit.”

  “Right. As if you can actually get Matt to do work.”

  “Tell me about it. His idea of work is rearranging his Facebook icons and making up excuses for why he can’t help me.” If Kevin ever decided to hire Matt Tellerman full-time, so help me, I’d make his life a living nightmare.

  “Well, anyway, I have a hunch this Amanda thing is gonna be big.” She nodded toward the blue folder on my desk labeled Amanda Angela Cummings. “If I were you, I’d go through that folder and start calling people.”

  “I’ve looked at it. Thanks. But I don’t want that story.”

  “Chicken.”

  “If I have time between trying on wedding dresses and showing my house, I’ll think about it. I’m getting married in August, remember?” I shook my index finger at her, a label waving from the end of it. “Which doesn’t give me time to chase dead-end stories like this one.”

  “I’ll say. Why don’t you just elope?”

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered it.” I slapped the label on the envelope then rolled up my sleeve and twisted around to see my elbow, swollen with two red dots. “You know what’s really bothering me now? These horrible bug bites.” I scratched at them in frustration. “I must have gotten them last night.”

  “Chiggers.” Meg nodded firmly. “They’ll getcha every time. And if you were really out there tipping cows, I bet you’re full of them.”

  “Shhh.” I put my finger fiercely to my lips. “Keep quiet about the cow stuff, okay? So what did you call those bugs?”

  “Chiggers. They love old logs and rotting wood. During the larval stage they burrow into human flesh and—”

  “Ugh. Stop!” I clapped my hands over my ears. “Just tell me how to get rid of them.”

  “Bathe in bleach water.” Meg sipped her tea as if she dispensed chigger advice every day. “That’ll kill the critters. And it’s about the only thing.”

  “Bleach? Like the kind we clean toilets with?”

  “Yep. Welcome to the country.”

  I groaned, scratching at my elbow and another welt that had since risen on my knee.

  “You better check for ticks, too, if you were really out in a cow pasture,” Meg added. “They carry Lyme disease, you know.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I said, feeling crawly all over. “Today’s my birthday. Did you know that? I’m going home early. And my next-door neighbor Stella made this amazing sushi cake and left it on my front porch. She—”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” Meg put her hands up. “You can’t mean what you just said.”

  “About my birthday?”

  “The sushi cake. Please tell me that’s a figure of speech.”

  “Oh, that.” I resisted the urge to scratch my bug bites and peeled off another label. “No, I mean coconut cake in the shape of a sushi roll, with a carved slice of watermelon for the raw fish. A green band around the whole thing and chopsticks on the side. You should have seen it.”

  “No thanks.” Meg the Vegan looked suddenly pallid. “I’ll stick with my tofu and bean sprouts.”

  I stuck the last label on the stack of envelopes and pushed them aside. “So do you have the proof sheet from last night?” I held out my hand. “I need to write the captions before I leave.”

  “The what?”

  “The proof sheet. The photos from last night.” I raised an eyebrow. “That’s why you came over here. Remember?”

  Meg looked blank then jerked a shiny page from under her arm and gave it to me with a sheepish look. “Oh, these. I forgot. Sorry.”

  Meg, Meg. I hid a smile. I sometimes wondered how she stayed employed, living as she did in a virtual utopia of “everybody’s-happy-don’t-rush-me.” Which is why our editor Kevin kept a bottle of Maalox in his desk.

  I studied Meg’s sheet of photos: Ray Floyd’s smashed wooden siding, neat boxwood hedges ripped in half, and the gaping hole crisscrossed with yellow police tape. Broken glass and uprooted clumps of sod. A shiny new Jeep Cherokee protruding from the mess of broken plaster and drywall, and the drunk driver being led away in handcuffs.

  “That SUV stopped two feet over Ray’s bed.” Meg quit spinning my little Japanese lantern hanging in the corner of my cubicle and tilted the photo sheet toward the light. “Did you see the big piece of wallboard that could have skewered him like a bug?”

  “Gross.” I tried not to think of it. “He’s a nice guy, you know? He gave me coffee, too—some of the best I’ve had in years.” I perked up slightly, remembering steam curling up from the white porcelain mug. “A really good Colombian roast, if I were to guess.”

  I pulled my crisp navy-blue jacket tighter in the over-air-conditioned office. “What I wouldn’t give for another cup of that right now.”

  “Coffee? He didn’t give me coffee!”

  “You don’t sit in cushy chairs and do interviews.”

  “Right. I squat in broken hedges and get rained on while you drink coffee. Thanks for bringing that up, Jacobs.” She rolled her eyes. Meg squinted at me a second as if trying to remember something. “What am I forgetting?”

  “Something related to the crash story?”

  “No. Something else.”

  I flung out my arms. “How am I supposed to know?”

  I wondered if maybe Meg should get herself tested for ADD. When I needed her for a story, I usually had to hunt all over the building—eventually finding out that she’d gone across town to buy a new lens and come back instead with a mushroom farm.

  “Oh, I remember. Hold on a second.” Before I could comment, Meg had ducked around the corner to her cubicle. I heard shuffling, a drawer opening, and then she headed back to my desk. Her baggy, bell-bottom-style pants dragged on the carpet. “Happy birthday. I almost forgot.”

  She dropped a pile of brown carob chips and a plastic spider ring in my inbox.

  “Don’t,” I said, separating the two and picturing cow patties. “If you put them together, that looks… Just don’t.”

  “What? Carob’s good for you. And it’s not carcinogenic.”

  “You think dryer lint’s carcinogenic.”

  Meg didn’t answer, even to rib me back. She still stood there. Staring at something. I looked up and followed her eyes.

  “That’s Mom.” I took the faded photo down off the cubicle wall and handed it to her. “Her high school graduation picture.”

  Meg froze. Mug at her lips. I saw her eyes slip down from Mom’s picture to the blue Amanda Cummings folder splayed partially open on my desk—Amanda’s high school senior picture sticking out, her wheat-colored hair glowing.

  And Meg promptly choked on her tea, spattering it all over the carpet.

  “Oh my word!” Meg fumbled for the tissue box, and I jumped up to help her sponge the mess. “I just…wow. They look alike. Your mom and…Amanda.”

 
I kept my eyes down, mopping up chunky bits from the tea-soaked carpet. I sniffed. “What is this? Garlic?” I drew back, holding my squashed tissue a good distance away.

  “Of course. I used like eleven or twelve cloves this time,” she replied proudly. “I smash them with a spoon, add some ginger, and just enough alcohol to clean out the old ticker. Whatever’s in the cabinet.”

  Her long strings of beads jingled as she bent over to wipe something off the back of my chair. “Once my maple syrup fermented, and it made some pretty good stuff. I mean, I didn’t know maple syrup could ferment, Shiloh, but when I took the top off, boof! It hit the ceiling.”

  My hand holding the tissue halted partway to the trash can. “You mean you drink…” I dropped my voice to a horrified whisper. “At work? Are you crazy?”

  Meg jiggled the grayish liquid. “What? I’ve got enough antioxidants in here to fertilize an entire cornfield. Want some? I never get sick.”

  Sickness sounded strangely welcome compared to whatever brew Meg had in that mug. I scooted back a few more inches and pointed to my Japanese teacup. “No thanks. I’ve got my antioxidants covered right here.”

  “Well, the next time you get the flu, don’t come crying to me.”

  “Believe me, I won’t.” I shook the folder and photos to make sure they were tea-free. “Sorry.” Meg sponged the side of her mug. “I just didn’t expect… I mean, they look like sisters. I can see why you might not want this story, huh?”

  “Yeah.” I smoothed the corner of Mom’s photo on the cubicle wall. “It’s silly, but the resemblance is a little overwhelming.”

  “I don’t blame you. They’re not related, are they?” She held the two photos side by side.

  “No way. Mom only had a younger brother—and died at age forty-nine. Amanda was what, twenty when she disappeared?”