What on earth could have induced this boy, who'd been so scared of his parents and his coach, to attempt something like this? What had he been ordered to do? Kill me, or beat me up?
"Paid," I said. Hollis stopped, halfway through pushing the handcuffed boy up into his truck. "I'll bet someone paid him to do this."
And I saw by Scot's face that I'd struck oil. "Were you supposed to break some bones?" I asked him, conversationally. "Or kill me?"
"Shut up," he said, turning his face away from me. "Just don't talk to me anymore."
"Coward," I said, and I remembered that Harvey Branscom had called him the same thing the morning before. Harvey had been right.
"Burn in hell," Scot said, and then Hollis slammed the door on him.
Vernon was still standing there when they pulled away.
"You do anything but take my key when I leave, I'll slap you with a lawsuit that will bankrupt this motel," I said. I knew damn good and well I'd locked the interconnecting door. "If any harm comes to me, my brother will see to it. Any harm comes to him, our lawyer will do it."
He didn't say anything, but he watched me with old, hostile eyes while I shut and locked my door. I picked up the bag of food from Subway. Luckily, I hadn't gotten a drink, since I had bottled drinks in the ice chest in my room. Vernon probably would have had me arrested for defacing his property if I'd spilled a Coke on his green carpet.
I shoved a chair under the doorknob and moved the ice chest against the connecting door. It wouldn't hold the door, but it would slow down an entrance and provide noise. I used my cell phone to call Art in Atlanta, and I left a detailed account of what had just happened on his answering machine. Just for the record.
I was so lonely I cried.
Then I ate the food in the bag, not because I wanted it (it was nasty and cold by that time), but because I had to have fuel. I peeled off my clothes with shaking fingers. I was a mess; I'd had sex and a fight in the same evening, and I needed a shower. I looked at myself in the mirror over the sink. My ribs were already turning blue on my left side where Scot had gotten in the two good punches. I breathed deeply, trying to decide if I had any broken ribs. I didn't think I did, after a few experimental movements.
It gave me some satisfaction to think that if it had been a bad day for me, it had been a worse day for Scot. He'd turned from being football team quarterback and suitor for Mary Nell Teague into a soon-to-be felon. Hurt pride had done it; that, and a bribe, I figured. I could conjecture he'd felt embarrassed after the morning incident. The coach had probably made him feel like a fool, after the sheriff had called him a coward. Instead of taking their words to heart, he'd gotten angry, and when he'd been offered money, he'd jumped at the chance to recoup his self-esteem. It was one of those situations where you learn what you're made of. Unfortunately for Scot, it turned out he was made of lesser things.
Hollis called after he'd booked Scot into the jail. He wanted to find out how I was and to reassure me that nothing would disturb my night. "We'll figure out what the initials mean," he said. "I knew my wife, and I'll understand it sooner or later."
I didn't think we had "later," and I didn't know if understanding Sally would help or not. She'd known exactly what she meant, and she'd been referring to something simple and obvious. With all due respect to Sally, if a girl who'd graduated from Sarne High could make some significant discovery after a glance at her biology textbook, then I should be able to figure it out. So should any number of people, and that was what had me worried. "SO MO DA NO" I wrote on the little pad of paper kept by the phone. I wrote it as one word. I wrote it backwards. I tried to make a word out of the letters. I fell asleep with the pencil clutched in my hand.
thirteen
A pounding on the door woke me up. I rolled an eye toward the clock on the bedside table. It was seven in the morning.
"Who is it?" I asked cautiously, when I'd stumbled over to the door.
"Mary Nell."
Oh, wonderful. I moved the chair to open the door, and she strode in. "We've got to get him out," she said dramatically, and I felt like smacking her.
"Yes," I said. "I want him out, too." If there was a little sarcasm in my voice, it was lost on Nell Teague.
"What have you done about it?"
I blinked, sat on the side of the bed. "I've hired a lawyer, who'll be here tomorrow," I said.
"Oh," she said, somewhat deflated. "Well, I called Toby Buckell, but he just laughed at me. Said he wouldn't take a case unless a grown-up called him."
I could just imagine. "I'm sorry he treated you with disrespect," I said, trying hard to sound like I meant it. "I appreciate your effort. But Tolliver is my brother, and I have to be the one who works on this." I wanted to be nice to this girl, whose only fault was that she was sixteen, but she was wearing me out. Talk about drama. Then I reminded myself she'd lost her brother and her father in a very short period, and I forced myself into a more hospitable mode.
"Would you like some coffee, or a soda?" I asked.
"Sure," she said, going over to the ice chest and pulling out a Coke. I brewed a little pot of coffee from the motel coffeemaker, and poor coffee it was, but it was hot and contained caffeine. I looked at my visitor. Mary Nell's face was bare of makeup, and her hair was pulled back into a very short ponytail. She looked her age, no more. She should be at home working on her English composition paper, or on the phone with one of her friends about last night's date, rather than in a motel room with a woman like me.
"You said you called another lawyer," I said. "Why not Paul Edwards?"
She said suddenly, "I think my mom might marry Mr. Edwards."
"You don't like him?" I was groping around for what to say.
"We get along okay," Mary Nell said. "He's always been around. He and my dad were friends, and my mom always got his opinion on everything. Dell never liked Mr. Edwards much, and they had a big argument before Dell died."
"What was that about?" I asked, trying to sound casual.
"I don't know. Dell wouldn't tell me. He'd found out something, and he went to Mr. Edwards to talk about it, but Dell didn't like whatever Mr. Edwards said."
"Something he'd found out about Paul?"
"I don't know if it was about Mr. Edwards, or someone else. Dell just thought Mr. Edwards would be able to help him out with it, give him an answer."
"Oh." None of the letters had been a P or an E, assuming the letters Sally had written referred to a person. Damn, why didn't people just write what they meant? To hell with shorthand.
"I thought you and Dell were so close," I said, which was tactless and stupid. "I'm surprised he didn't tell you what he was mad about."
She gave me an outraged stare. "Well, for brother and sister we were close."
"What does that mean?"
"There's stuff brothers and sisters don't talk about," she said, as if she'd been requested to explain snow to an Eskimo. "I mean, there's stuff you and Tolliver don't talk about, right? Oh, I forgot. You're not really his sister. So you wouldn't know."
Touché.
"Brothers and sisters don't talk about sex, I bet not even when they're grown up," she instructed me. I remembered how shocked she'd been when she'd told me her brother had said Teenie was pregnant. "Brothers and sisters don't talk about which of their friends are doing it, either. But other stuff, that's what they talk about."