Countdown Read online

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said.

  Paula shook her head. ‘So you’re the redneck sheriff Jean refused to leave this burg for, huh?’

  I don’t like being called a redneck. Maybe because it’s too close to the truth, but really, it’s just rude.

  Jean closed the door behind her. ‘Remember tonight’s the surprise bachelorette party for Holly.’

  ‘Damn, totally forgot about that. Been a busy morning,’ I said.

  ‘What was the emergency?’ she asked.

  I looked at my son and the stranger – I guess I should say Paula – and said, ‘No biggie. I’ll tell you about it later.’ To Johnny Mac, I said, ‘So what are you up to today?’

  ‘I’m going to Aunt Jewel’s house,’ he said, ‘if you’re gonna be busy. If you’re coming home I’d rather stay with you.’

  Johnny Mac’s been like that since my heart attack last spring. Since I had the attack in front of him, he’s sort of been like my shadow. I’m afraid he thinks I’m going to croak any minute. I keep trying to tell him that the quadruple bypass they gave me means I’m gonna keep going for at least another fifty years. I don’t think he believes me.

  ‘Well, I could be here for a while, kiddo,’ I said. ‘Got me a bad guy in the pokey. And a drunk teenager in the second cell. Kinda standing room only around here today.’

  ‘Two cells?’ Paula asked, then laughed. I bristled.

  Johnny Mac nodded. He was well versed in the priorities of my profession. ‘OK, then. I guess I’ll go to Aunt Jewel’s,’ he said.

  I grabbed his head and gave it a smooch. ‘Dad!’ he said in that way they have of drawing three little letters out to sound like a four-syllable word.

  Holly Humphries sat at her station in the bullpen, doing some paperwork – a little overtime would come in handy for the honeymoon, she thought. The front door opened and Ronnie Jacobs came in, carrying a pizza box. Ronnie worked for Bubba’s Pizza and Pasta on the town square, close to the Longbranch Inn, and was short and skinny, with a pimply face and crooked teeth, wearing too-big jeans and showing off his Calvin Klein’s. He wore a baseball hat backwards.

  ‘Here’s your pizza,’ Ronnie said.

  ‘I didn’t order pizza,’ Holly said, although she thought it might not be a bad idea. ‘Any name on the order?’

  ‘Yeah. Darrell?’

  Holly shook her head and laughed. It wasn’t the first time a prisoner had ordered a pizza from an unconfiscated cell phone in the jail. Milt had put Darrell in the cells before Holly had come in, and she’d assumed Milt had checked him for contraband. She walked around the bullpen, the ring of keys for the cells in her hand. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I just hope he has money, ’cause I don’t think the sheriff will approve this!’

  She unlocked the steel door that led into the cells. That door was supposed to stay locked, but half the time the deputies forgot to do it. Milt, at least, had locked up after depositing Darrell Blanton in his cell.

  There was a knock on the door and Holly Humphries stuck her head in. ‘Milt! Come quick, we got a problem!’ Seeing Jean and Johnny Mac – and the stranger – she said, ‘So sorry, Jean. It’s an emergency. Hi, Johnny Mac!’ She nodded to the stranger and then her head disappeared.

  ‘Go,’ Jean said. ‘We’re going to Jewel’s.’ She gave me a quick kiss and I was out the door, following Holly.

  Holly was right, as usual. The drunk teenager was convulsing in his cell. ‘You call an ambulance?’ I asked her.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Help me.’

  I glanced over at Darrell’s cell. ‘Pizza?’

  Holly shrugged.

  Ronnie, the pizza delivery guy, said, ‘You want I should leave now, or you need some help?’ He was peering curiously into the cell with the convulsing teenager.

  ‘Out!’ I said with some enthusiasm.

  Holly and I went in the cell and she showed me how to hold his shoulders while she stuck a wooden, doctor-type stick in his mouth, holding his tongue down.

  ‘Jeez, what’s with him?’ Darrell Blanton asked from the next cell, chomping on a pepperoni and double cheese slice. ‘Boy sure can’t hold his liquor, huh?’

  ‘Just shut up, Darrell,’ I said, trying to hold the convulsing boy’s shoulders down.

  ‘Why you telling me to shut up? My mama says telling someone to “shut up” is rude! So you’re being rude to me! Why you being rude to me? I ain’t done nothing to you!’

  The door to the cells burst open and two EMTs entered. I knew them both. Jasper Thorne, a fifty-something black guy with a big mustache and a bigger attitude, and Drew Gleeson, who had moved from Tulsa to Longbranch when he was offered the lead position at the fire station for the EMTs less than six months ago, which might have been one of the reasons ol’ Jasper had a big attitude.

  ‘What’s up, Sheriff?’ Drew asked as they maneuvered the gurney into the cell.

  ‘He came in last night drunk and disorderly. Now he seems to be having a seizure,’ I said.

  Drew cocked his head at Darrell Blanton as he and Jasper checked the kid’s vitals.

  ‘Killed his wife,’ I said.

  Drew looked shocked.

  Jasper said, ‘Man, those Blantons. Ain’t nobody safe around them inbred crackers.’

  ‘Hey! I heard that!’ Darrell said from the next cell.

  ‘Let’s roll him,’ Drew said, and he and Jasper got the boy onto the gurney. ‘What’s his name?’ he asked me.

  ‘Larry. He’s seventeen. That’s all we got out of him,’ I told him.

  ‘Let’s go!’ Drew said, heading out the door.

  Holly and I followed them out. Once in the foyer, Drew said, ‘Shit. I left the bag. I’ll be right back.’ He headed back to the cells while I helped Jasper take the gurney out to the ambulance. Before we even got there, Drew was back, emergency bag in his hand, and they got poor Larry in the back of the ambulance, Drew riding with him, while Jasper got in the cab, hit the sirens, and they were out of there.

  It was after four o’clock in the afternoon when Jean dropped Johnny Mac off at his aunt Jewel’s house. Paula came in with her and Jean introduced her to Milt’s sister.

  They shook hands and Paula looked around the opulent foyer, letting out a low whistle. ‘So this is Oklahoma chic, huh?’ she said.

  Jewel laughed self-consciously and looked at Jean. Jean just shrugged her shoulders and proceeded to go over phone numbers and all the other stuff moms did when leaving their children in someone else’s care. Then, after giving her son a big kiss, she and Paula got back in the car and headed off, and Johnny Mac stood staring at his aunt Jewel.

  ‘Well,’ Aunt Jewel said, staring out the window at the retreating SUV. ‘She’s interesting.’

  ‘She wants me to call her Aunt Paula,’ Johnny Mac said.

  ‘Are you going to?’ Jewel asked him.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ He shrugged again. ‘Maybe not. Can I go over to Matt’s?’ he finally asked, mentioning the boy his age who lived next door.

  ‘Why don’t we call him and see if he can come over here?’ Aunt Jewel responded.

  Johnny Mac shrugged. He was always uncomfortable in Aunt Jewel’s house, and knew Matt was too. There were too many things that could break if you breathed hard on them. Aunt Jewel’s house was just too fancy, and what he’d heard his mom call ‘fussy’. That made sense to him. He thought of the mosaic tile floor in the foyer with a ginormous chandelier hanging down from the second-floor ceiling, and the fancy double staircase with the shiny wood railing you shouldn’t touch because it would leave a mark. But there was always outside, and it was nice out today, so he and Matt could play out there on the trampoline, maybe, or even in the pool. He wouldn’t get cold, no matter how much Aunt Jewel might fuss about it. All three of her kids were off now, one in college and the older two out in the world. Johnny Mac guessed maybe she just needed somebody to fuss over, and he was her only candidate.

  Jean and Paula headed back to J
ean’s house on Mountain Falls Road, and Jean had to endure her friend’s strident remarks all the way there. ‘So you got cows here, huh?’ she said upon seeing barbed-wire fences, beyond which were many heads of cattle. ‘Moo.’ And she laughed. Then, as they turned on to Mountain Falls Road, Paula snorted and said, ‘They call this a mountain?’

  Jean, who loved her home at the top of Mountain Falls Road, couldn’t help herself. ‘Better than the mountains there are in Illinois.’

  ‘Ooo! She’s sensitive about her hillbilly home!’ Paula said and laughed.

  ‘That’s redneck. Not hillbilly. Try to keep your vernacular straight!’ Jean said.

  ‘Well, my goodness! Look who finally grew a backbone!’ Paula returned.

  Jean was oh-so-grateful to finally pull into her long driveway. ‘This,’ she said, pointing to the house, ‘is my home.’

  Paula was silent for a moment, then finally said, ‘Very nice.’

  Reaching behind her for her crutches, Jean responded, ‘Yes, it is.’

  Once inside with Paula’s luggage, Jean continued, ‘The guest room is upstairs. There are two bedrooms up there – one is John’s and the other, closest to the stairs, is the guest room. The guest bath is right across the hall. John was supposed to clean it for you. Let me know if it’s not satisfactory. There’s a large open area at the head of the stairs that’s mostly John’s play space. He was supposed to clean that up, too, but again, let me know if it’s a mess.’

  ‘I take it you don’t get up there often,’ Paula said, picking up her bags.

  ‘I can do it. I’d just rather not,’ Jean responded.

  Paula smiled – a genuine smile this time. ‘I know you can do it. You could always do whatever you set your mind to.’

  As Paula headed up the stairs, Jean removed herself to the first-floor master suite she shared with Milt. Jean was not a clothes horse – far from it. She liked to wear pants to cover the brace that she still wore on her left leg, and had a uniform of dark pants and lighter, button-down shirts that she wore to work – brown pants with a tan-striped button-down, black pants with a white button-down (and in the winter she had a nice black blazer she wore with it), and navy blue pants with a light blue button-down. She had ten long-sleeved button-downs for winter and twelve short-sleeved button-downs for summer. Around the house she usually just wore blue jeans and a T-shirt – often ones formerly worn by Milt.

  But tonight was a special occasion. Tonight she wanted to please the guest of honor, Holly Humphries, soon to be Holly Pettigrew – if she made up her mind to take Dalton’s name when they got married in two weeks. As far as Jean knew, that decision hadn’t been made yet. But because this party was for Holly, Jean had decided to get a little reckless with her wardrobe. She’d actually gone to Tulsa two weeks prior and invested in tonight’s garments.

  Holly was an adventurous sort – although she’d stopped cold turkey wearing the Goth-white makeup and had let two of the five holes in her ears heal-up, she still preferred fishnets, tutus and Grateful Dead T-shirts, and dyed her hair many varied colors. For that reason, Jean had decided to branch out – in honor of Holly. She’d bought a multicolored peasant skirt and a hot-pink lacy peasant blouse. She could do nothing about her footwear – stuck as she was with the orthopedic shoes that could strip even Marilyn Monroe of her sex appeal. But she was ready to strut her stuff tonight – and she might even get a little bit high. She could always sleep in the hotel room if she wasn’t able to drive home.

  She put on more make-up than she generally wore, added earrings and bracelets, and headed into the foyer as Paula was just coming down the stairs – in the same baggy cargo shorts, Birkenstocks and camp shirt she’d worn on the plane. Jean decided to ignore it. Why get things started up again? She wanted to get to know her old friend again, not just trade snipes with her. But, she thought, Paula was going to have to stop with the Oklahoma bashing for that to happen.

  Holly Humphries was from Oklahoma City and had been raised in various foster homes. She had no relatives and most of her former friends were still on the streets of that city. So the bachelorette party invitees were almost exclusively from the sheriff’s department – Jean, wife of the sheriff, Jasmine, the sheriff’s deputy, Nita Skitteridge, also a deputy, and Maryanne Dobbins, wife of a deputy. Paula Carmichael, Jean’s friend, Loretta Hawkins, waitress at the Longbranch Inn, and June Pettigrew, Dalton’s cousin and the only one in Dalton’s extended family that Jean and Jasmine felt was young enough to enjoy such an event, were the only real civilians. With Holly, that totaled eight females and what turned out to be a great deal of booze that Jasmine had procured from the liquor store on the highway to Tulsa: four bottles of wine – two white, two red – a case of Bud Lite, a quart of vodka, a fifth of tequila and an assortment of mixers and fruit. Loretta had arranged for appetizers to be delivered from downstairs every hour on the hour, and Jean had brought bowls to fill with nuts and chocolate to put around the room. It was going to be a grand affair.

  Dalton’s cousin, June, was escorting Holly to the event, telling her they had to go by the Longbranch Inn to check on her mama, who had just had surgery and was staying there to recuperate. June watched a lot of Law & Order reruns and had seen an episode where a rich lady had stayed in a fancy hotel after having a facelift. June thought that was very high class, even if the lady did end up dead. June and Holly were supposed to be on their way to the movies, which translated to Holly as ‘dress so you can be seen in the dark.’ Her hair had a new bright yellow rinse, and she wore a tie-dye T-shirt of yellow, pink and green that fell almost to her knees, and hot pink leggings, both of which stopped at her red high-top sneakers. It took June, in her sensible stretch pants and polyester top, more than a minute to talk Holly into going upstairs with her, as Holly felt it would be best for her to wait in the car. She wasn’t all that crazy about June’s mother, who’d been Dalton’s daddy’s baby sister and had treated Dalton’s mother poorly. But with a sigh, the good-natured Holly left the car and took the elevator up to the rooms of the Longbranch Inn.

  Having been signaled by June, the rest of the women were hiding behind furniture when the door opened and Holly and June walked in. All jumped up and yelled ‘Surprise!’ at the top of their lungs. Holly burst into tears.

  We were having a quiet afternoon, finally. The drunk teenager, Larry, had gone and was all but forgotten, and Darrell Blanton was being uncharacteristically quiet. I was thinking of heading home in a while to bask in the quiet of my empty house, leaving Anthony Dobbins, the first African-American deputy in the history of the Prophesy County sheriff’s department, in charge of the prisoner. I’d watch a Cowboys game I had on tape and drink a few beers. My idea of fun.

  I’m not sure what time it was when Anthony came into my office and said, ‘Sheriff, we got a problem.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked him.

  ‘Looks like Darrell Blanton is dead,’ he said.

  It took a while to calm Holly down. She kept saying, ‘I’ve never, ever had a party before! I can’t believe …’ sob, sob, ‘y’all did this for me!’

  Jean sat beside her on the sofa in the living room of the suite and patted her on the shoulder. She knew Holly’s history, the fact that she’d been raised in foster homes since the age of three, had run away from the last one when she was sixteen and lived on the street for two years. But she’d pulled herself up, gotten her GED, taken some courses at a local community college and learned how to do make-up for films, which is what led to her meeting Dalton in the first place. But that was an entirely different story.

  As far as Jean was concerned, Holly was one of the most well-adjusted women she’d ever met, not just one of the most well-adjusted former foster kids. She appeared to know who she was and what she wanted, while at the same time possessing a great big heart that tended to accommodate most people who crossed her path. Add all that to the fact that she was as smart as a whip and you had a great foil for Dalton Pettigrew – a big puppy dog of a guy wi
th lots of love but not a lot of smarts. While not one to bet on other people’s happiness, in Jean’s professional opinion theirs would be a good marriage.

  ‘What’s with the waterworks?’ Paula demanded. ‘This is a goddamn party, right?’

  Jean said, ‘Paula …’

  ‘Holly, you need a drink!’ Jasmine said. ‘What’ll it be? Beer, wine or a mixed drink? Loretta used to be the bartender at the Longbranch Inn before the county went dry – she can fix most anything, right, Loretta?’

  ‘You bet,’ Loretta said. ‘What’s your poison, Holly?’

  Holly gulped in some air, wiped her eyes with a tissue and said, ‘Can I have a tequila sunrise, please?’

  Loretta grinned. ‘One tequila sunrise coming right up!’ and headed to the wet bar where everything had been set up. ‘You want some of these stuffed mushrooms to go with it, or how about a jalapeño popper? That should go well with tequila!’

  Holly nodded. ‘Yes, please. One of the poppers. Hey, everybody,’ she said to the other women there, ‘y’all get started on the booze and the food! I don’t want to be the only one here drunk and fat!’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me twice,’ Paula mumbled and was the first in line at the drink station.

  The other women laughed, got up from their seats and headed to the wet bar. Loretta brought Holly her drink, two poppers and a mushroom. ‘Thank you,’ Holly said, and took a big sip. She sighed. ‘OK, I’m feeling better.’

  Jean laughed and hugged her. ‘And this is just the beginning.’

  As Paula came back with a bottle of red wine and a glass, Holly asked her, ‘So how long have you and Jean known each other?’

  ‘Ha!’ Paula said, sitting down on the other side of Jean. ‘I’m not about to give out how many years; suffice it to say, we met on our first day in college. We were assigned the same room.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jean said, a smile on her face. ‘You should have seen me. Too tall and too awkward, embarrassed about my braces and crutches, trying to slink into the room without anybody actually seeing me. And then there she is—’ Jean said, pointing at Paula. ‘This beautiful blonde girl with big boobs wearing the shortest skirt I’d ever seen, and legs that went on forever—’