Easy as One Two Three (A Flap Tucker Mystery) Read online

  He actually smiled. “That sounds like David.”

  I smiled right back. “Really? Gotta meet the guy.”

  Dally jumped in. “I was thinking the same thing myself. How about a little shut-eye and a visit to Preacher Dave in the morning?”

  Cedar finished his rotten coffee. “I might like to go back up there and look harder for Ginny where Mr. Tucker found this cap.”

  I nodded. “I stuck a pine branch where we found it. I might need to show you, though.”

  Dally took my arm. “If it came from Ginny, seems like she might be doing all right at the moment. Why don’t we just let Officer Duffie go up there and look. You and I? We’re going to get some sleep.”

  I sighed. “Now you’re talking to me like you were talking to Mustard to get him to come here to the hospital.”

  “Right.”

  “And by the way, how’s Sissy … and the baby?”

  “All’s well. They’re all fast asleep. Everybody in town’s asleep but the three of us.”

  I thought about my recent acquaintances. “Not everybody.”

  She ignored. She looked at Cedar. “Where are we going to find a place to crash at this time of night?”

  It only took him a second. “Miss Nina’s got some cots out in the room behind her kitchen. It’s real warm. I’ll leave her a note.” He glanced at his watch. “She’ll be up in an hour or so. I’ll tell her to try and not wake you up.”

  Dally cranked up the charm. “Thanks.” She touched his arm.

  It worked. He blushed. “Sure thing.”

  *

  We were lying down inside twenty minutes. Miss Nina’s pantry was bigger than most hotel rooms, and it opened out onto a back porch, where Cedar had let us in. He seemed to have keys to everything in town. He went to put a note on Miss Nina’s door, and then to see if he could get his Jeep up the logging road. I’d done my best to describe the location of the hat discovery. I still felt I ought to go with him, but Dally was so insistent on my not doing it that I figured she wanted to talk.

  There were three cots. The pantry was warm and dark and silent. The cots were thick with homemade quilts and feather pillows, but I was still wearing my coat. I was thawing out. I was very happy. I was drifting off.

  But Dally, as I had suspected, had other ideas. “So now what’s the deal with these goons from BarnDoor — if that’s where they’re from at all? And what’s with the strange sensation you had that made you stay out in the cold and go down the logging road? Spill.”

  My eyes were closed tight, but Dally’s voice made a kind of candlelight sensation in my head. “I knew there was something out there.”

  “You knew the goons were there?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “The hat? The kid?”

  “Nothing that specific. It was a feeling, like.”

  She hesitated. “You going to do your thing? Your trick?”

  “Here? Now? Naw. I’ve got to be rested up, I can’t be falling asleep. Plus, you’re too distracting. I’ve got to be alone.”

  “I’m distracting?”

  I smiled in the darkness. “Constantly.”

  She shifted in her cot. “Huh.”

  She knew I couldn’t do my trick with her in the room. The trick takes concentration, balance, and maybe a little more information. It wasn’t time for the trick yet.

  I sighed. “That’s not all you wanted to ask.”

  Beat. “No.”

  “Then?”

  She cleared her throat, like she was going to make a speech. “I just wanted to talk it out, you know. I’ve got to say I think Wicher did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “I think he’s got Ginny. Or he’s the reason she’s gone.”

  I turned on my back. “Really? Then what were we doing out in the cold all night?”

  “I think she got away. I think he snatched her, and she escaped, but she was afraid to go home.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Because her mom takes all those pills and her dad iced her sister.”

  I opened my eye. “She doesn’t know any of that.”

  “Yeah, probably not. I’m just thinking out loud, really. Want me to shut up?”

  “No. You know how you say things in a conversation like this, things you didn’t even think you knew. I like this.”

  “Me too.”

  I closed my eyes again. “Still, Wicher is a fairly prime suspect in my own thinking at the moment.”

  She yawned. “Check.”

  “And the pills and the dead sibling, they’ve got something to do with all this.” I yawned.

  “Ya think?”

  I rolled over. “Plus, there’s a lot more to Cedar Duffie than meets the eye.”

  “Oh, I’m convinced of that. The diction alone …”

  “… is too Marine?”

  I could tell she smiled. “Or something. And what about this Preacher Dave?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got to meet him.”

  “I want to see ’em pick up the snakes.”

  I was drifting. “Mm-hmm.”

  Her voice was very soft. “’Night, Flap.”

  “Sweet dreams, kiddo.”

  And we were both out before we took another breath.

  14. Food

  Twenty minutes later I was awake. Okay, maybe it was longer than that, but that’s about how rested I felt. What with the rattling of pots and pans and the sizzling of this and that, I was out of dreamland and into the world of too much coffee again.

  I sat up. Dally was still out. She could sleep through an avalanche. I slipped out of bed and peeped through the door. There was Miss Nina, making with the country cuisine.

  I entered her kitchen as politely as I could; nodded. I was still wearing my heavy coat, but it was giving new meaning to the word rumpled.

  She nodded too, turned away, and when she came back, there was a little tray with sausage biscuits and a mug of coffee on it. She shoved it my way. I took it. Words were unnecessary. Would have been utterly superfluous.

  I made my way into the dining area. There were all manner of locals wreaking havoc on grits and red-eye gravy. They took little notice of me. What’s more important, after all, a goofball stranger or fine dining? They were also distracted by some other dapper out-of-towner who was making with the hearty farewell.

  “Bye, y’all. See you tonight!” He was smiling to beat the band. Nearly everybody in the joint was ignoring him. City folk.

  I took a seat at an empty table, slugged back some of the coffee, burned my tongue, and plowed into the first biscuit. I was midway through the third or fourth chew when the guy at the next table spoke up.

  Without looking my way, he made himself known. “You Tucker?”

  I kept on chewing.

  He insisted, a little louder. “I say, you Tucker?”

  I swallowed. Kept a tight gander at the rest of my breakfast. “Ordinarily I’d be Mr. Tucker in a situation like this. But since I’ve just about had it with the introductory behavior of all and sundry here about” — I turned up my own volume just a notch — “because you all seem to be unacquainted with a little thing they invented called manners — I’ll just pretend I have no business with you at all and finish my food, okay?”

  He seemed amused. “Cedar said you was a mean ’un.”

  “He was right.”

  “He also said you were going find Ginny McDonner. Done that yet?”

  I blew on the coffee, took another sip. “Found her hat. Found her little red jumpsuit.” I shot him a look. “And while you were home, I’m assuming, asleep last night, I was roaming down that logging road out back of Wal-Mart trying to help out. So excuse me if I seem a little mean, but I got no sleep, and no time to chat. You finish your grits. I’m going to go get me a little kid.”

  Just for emphasis I swallowed the rest of the biscuit whole, tossed back all of the coffee, and stood.

  His voice only got sunnier. “Why would you want to be so riled this early in the morni
ng?”

  I looked at him good then. “One of the very best things there is about the South is the manners. It’s not an affectation, it’s a way of life. Southern gentility is something for the rest of the world to learn. I don’t much care for your wreckin’ the curve.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve visited in this county before, and it’s behavior like yours that makes the rest of the country think that Deliverance wasn’t just a movie.”

  He went back to his grits. But he smiled. “It wasn’t. It was a book first. James Dickey, the Original Buckhead Boy, the poet.”

  That gave me pause. “Okay — you got me there.”

  He smiled even bigger. “Have to admit you’ve got me too … Mr. Tucker. Had no intention of being rude. Sorry it seemed like it.” He offered his hand.

  I took the few steps over to his table, stuck out my hand. “Maybe I’m a little too quick to jump into it myself.”

  He looked me in the eye. He was quite the clear-eyed gentleman after all. “I’m David.” He tipped the brim of his cap. “Came to talk with you.”

  “You’re Preacher Dave?”

  That smile just kept getting bigger. “David.”

  “Right.”

  “And did you know … Won’t you have a seat?” I sat.

  He went on, kind of a fast talker. “And did you know that in most polite English-speaking societies, the use of the last name without the formal address is actually considered friendlier than anything else, until you’re on a first-name basis with the acquaintance. Are we on a first-name basis?”

  I nodded. I was impressed with the precision of his speech given the speed of it. “Since you don’t seem to have anything else but a first name, I’d be okay with it.”

  He finished his grits. “Your first name’s Flap, they tell me. What kind of a name is that?”

  “It’s the word that most accurately describes the relationship between my parents.”

  “I see. Although you were something of a troublemaker yourself at one time, I’d imagine.”

  I shrugged. “You can imagine anything you like.”

  He slid the plate away from him. “You didn’t get enough sleep last night.” He looked at my clothes. “And you’re not dressed for trompin’ around in the woods much, are you?”

  “Everybody wants to criticize my threads.”

  He shook his head. “They don’t want to, they have to.”

  “Oh, really?”

  He let it drop. “Cedar said you’d want to talk to me. I thought I’d oblige — and get breakfast in the process. A waste of time is worse than an insult to God.”

  “Ah, now come the pithy religious bon mots, I’m guessing.”

  He just kept on with the smiling. “Oh, some are much more long-winded than pithy. I can go on quite a stretch when I get wound up.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Slug back a little lye and you’re bound to have a few things on your mind that bear expressing.”

  He nodded. “I’m more of a battery-acid man myself.”

  I just shook my head. “Brother.”

  He winked. No kidding. “All a part of the show.”

  I thought I was wise. “Show, huh?”

  But he didn’t want me to misunderstand. “No. Not like show business. I mean the Big Show.”

  “Big Show?”

  He looked around the room, but he seemed to be looking around the universe. He held out his hands. All of a sudden his face was angelic. And I’m not lying, the whole joint seemed a little brighter. Whatever it was, I got the picture. The Big Show.

  I was a little unsteadied, but I didn’t want him in on it. “Nice nonverbalization.”

  Still with the face. “If you can say it in words — it’s not it.”

  All I could do to that, of course, was nod.

  I was just about to get into some serious prying, when the door to Miss Nina’s nearly came off its hinges, and Cedar Duffie blew into the room like a man on fire.

  “Flap!”

  “Cedar?”

  “Now!”

  And he was back out the door.

  I looked over to David. “I’ve got a lot more to hear from you.”

  He nodded. “Amen.”

  15. Days

  Cedar’s Jeep was already starting to roll back out into the street as I was climbing in the passenger side. He looked wild.

  I slammed the door. “What?”

  “Old man Wicher.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s gone. I went over to ask him a few questions of my own — and he’s flat gone.”

  I blinked. “Gone?”

  “Bunch of stuff cleared out from his house, including the toys and all for Ginny, and nobody knows where he is. You all were the last ones to see him — last night.”

  “Couldn’t he just be … I don’t know … shopping, or out in the fields or …”

  “He hardly ever leaves the house. He … he says he doesn’t like to leave his wife alone.”

  “So you think …”

  He nodded very heavily. “I think he’s fled with Ginny McDonner.”

  *

  We made it to Wicher’s house in under five minutes, despite the snow in the streets. The front door was unlocked.

  Cedar poked his head in. “Mr. Wicher? You in here? It’s Officer Duffie.”

  I noticed that. Not Cedar Duffie.

  After another couple of seconds he turned to me. “See?”

  I shook my head. “I’m still not convinced this is anything. The guy might be out for a walk, even. Or maybe he got up early to help us all find the little kid.”

  Cedar looked at the floor. “All I can say is that it’s not like him. You yourself pointed out last night how strange you thought he was.”

  He stepped over the threshold.

  I followed. “I have to admit, Dally and I were thinking he was the one … Shoot.”

  “What?”

  “I left Dally asleep over at Miss Nina’s. She won’t know what’s what.”

  He took another few steps. “David’ll wait for her. He’ll tell her what happened to you.”

  “He will?”

  “He wants to talk to her.”

  “About what?”

  “Sissy’s new baby, he said — or somethin’ about a baby.”

  I followed him into the inner sanctum, toward the sitting room. “What about it?”

  He just shrugged.

  We were in the room where Mustard and Dally and I had been the night before, but all the litter that had been on the floor, the whittling and the toys and whatnot — all that was gone. The room was spic and span.

  I looked around behind the chair the old man had sat in, just to make sure. Everything was gone. “I see what you mean.”

  He tilted his head. “Same thing upstairs.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Not everything, but some clothes, toothbrush, razor — all gone.”

  I nodded. “So he’s not out hiking.”

  He looked very worried. “I should have kept a better eye on the old guy. I mean, I knew he was …” But he couldn’t finish his sentence.

  I looked at him. “Still … seems like a big jump to think he’s got Ginny.”

  He wouldn’t look at me. “Probably right. I just want … I want something more than a wool hat and a vague hope to go on.”

  “Me too,” I told him. “Feel like going back over to the McDonners’?”

  “What for?”

  “Now that my head’s a little clearer, what with the three hours’ sleep and the weak coffee in me, I got a couple extra questions for ’em. About the night Ginny disappeared.”

  “I feel a necessity to poke around here for a minute, maybe scare up something that’ll tell me where Wicher is. Maybe even find something of Ginny’s.”

  I lifted my shoulders again. “Don’t go jumping to any conclusions. She was over here a lot. Probably some of her stuff here from her normal visits.”

  He was icy. “I’m unsure,
now, if there were ever anything like normal visits to this house.”

  “I see.”

  “Why don’t you just hike it over to the McDonners’? I’ll come by in a minute, after I’ve had a good look around here.”

  “Sure. I really didn’t get enough of walking around in the snow last night.”

  He was irritated. I was guessing he hadn’t gotten any sleep at all. “Fine, then have a seat and wait for me to finish up here.”

  I finally figured out what it was about the guy that made me a little uneasy. Everybody else I’d met up in Lost Pines was what you might call a character. Cedar had nothing of the sort in his own makeup. He was absent any distinguishing marks — or remarks. He was Marine stiff and government-issue bland. He was the most normal, boring guy in the community — which, in the very oddest of ways, made him unique in his environment. There had to be something under that tight surface. But I was more interested in other puzzles at that moment.

  I pulled my coat around me. “Nope. Think I’ll walk on over to the McDonners’. You’ll come get me?”

  He nodded, headed toward the stairs.

  I watched him ascend, then I popped open the front door.

  The air was clear outside. Seemed like it was finished snowing. Still plenty of clouds, but they didn’t seem tough.

  I had to think for a second which way to head, but once I got my bearings, I was certain of the way to walk. I decided to trudge down the main road. Seemed like that would be easiest going.

  It wasn’t long before the road curved and the McDonner place was up in front of me. Even in the new-fallen snow, I could tell where Mustard’s truck had torn up a part of the landscape. I stood there awhile, breathing in the clean air and staring at the place on the road where Ginny had been, playing in the middle of the road in the middle of the night. That’s what I wanted to know about.

  I was halfway down the driveway when Mr. McDonner came out on the porch.

  “That you, Mr. Tucker?”

  I called back. “Sure is. Mind if I talk to you for a minute?”

  “You find anything?”

  “Not much — but it’s something. You haven’t spoken to anybody this morning?”

  “About what?”

  I was nearing the porch, and we lowered our voices. “Nobody told you? We think we found her jumpsuit and maybe a wool hat she was wearing.”