She smiled and leaned forward. “We appreciate your community spirit. No lesson. Not as long as it’s corrected. Now.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He scribbled furiously and pushed the check across to her. “I put next week’s contribution in there, too.”
Serenity kept smiling but said nothing and waited until he became uncomfortable enough to talk more.
“Unless you think that maybe this should just be a special contribution today, and we still make a payment next week.”
She looked at the check. Twenty thousand dollars, with the payee blank.
She stood up and extended her hand across the wing. “What do you think?”
He reached across and shook her hand vigorously. “I’ll make sure we have our contribution on time next week.”
They both watched the checkbook slide off the wing and hit the floor.
Franklin glared at it. “Goddamned army desk.”
forty
truckin’
SERENITY CUT THROUGH the Bridge Street shopping area, grumbling at the speed bumps and the wealth of stop signs designed to keep shoppers at least fifty-miles-an-hour slower than the speed she wanted for the trip back to the MAD.
That wasn’t all she was grumbling about. “I have to beg ’til my knees are bleeding to get a hundred dollars, but hint that you’re in with the big dogs and the money taps open up and drown you.”
She stopped at the light that was the boundary for Bridge Street and sat there gunning the engine and tapping on the wheel. The light turned green, she stomped on the gas, and diners on the sidewalk outside the brewpub were treated to the sight of the world’s fastest drag-racing minivan from hell burning rubber as it screamed as loud and fast as it could up the hill.
“I am so goddamned mad at all of this,” she screamed.
The spectators had probably figured that out, and were staying out of her way.
Except for one. A scratched-up pickup truck with big wheels pulled up beside her in the turn lane of the three-lane road. She glanced over and caught a quick image of a figure in a baseball cap and a camo shirt at the wheel. He tipped the hat and grinned at her.
She screamed, “That’s not a goddamned passing lane.” He didn’t look over. As she was holding down the button to roll down her window so he could hear her words of wisdom, the truck tapped her minivan and she had to fight for control.
She screamed, “Jesus Christ,” but he ignored her even with her window down.
The truck slammed her harder and two wheels of the minivan slid off the road.
This was real. She got cold and calm fast.
She fought the urge to jerk the wheel, and instead eased off of the gas, gently turning the wheels until the minivan bumped back onto the road. She caught a quick glance down the long, steep hill to the right. Nothing to stop her until she hit bottom.
The truck separated a few feet from her van but he was just trading space to gain power. He came back hard for the knockout punch.
Serenity stood on the brakes as hard as she could and fought to keep control. As soon as the truck’s bed was even with the front of her minivan, she released the brakes and swung the wheel as hard as she dared to the left and smashed the heavy front of her minivan into the lighter bed of the truck.
The truck spun as if in slow motion, dropping tail-first down the hill with the cab clawing at the edge of the road like a man clinging to a cliff, clinging until he lost his grip and the truck slid down the hill. She slowed and watched as the truck picked up speed, not quite flipping until it slammed into a small stand of pine trees next to the huge Cabela outdoor store.
Serenity pulled over and watched the truck’s door, not sure whether she wanted someone to come out or not. The door opened and a man got out and ran for the store.
She sat watching for a minute, then turned around and went back down the hill to the store. She parked in the lot and examined her crumpled front fender before heading inside.
She stepped in the door and stopped, staring at a gigantic cavern of shirts, jeans, guns, fishing poles—basically, anything you might need to kill any animal.
A young man came up to her. “We have a very fine lady’s deer rifle on sale today, ma’am.”
“Uh, no. I’m looking for a man who just came in here. Average height, a little heavy. Kind of nondescript. Wearing jeans and a camo shirt and a ball cap.”
The young man sighed. “Like everything else in here, if we’ve got one of them, we’ve got a hundred.”
He waved his arm at a store full of men dressed in camo, with a flannel shirt here and there for variety.
forty-one
me and mr. jones
SERENITY TOOK HER MINIVAN to Zell’s Auto Repair and Discount Tobacco Store out in the woods down Stockard Road. Roger Zell looked at it and pulled on his tobacco-stained beard.
“Roger, I’ve got to get this fixed, fast. A day or two, no more.”
Roger was a small, skinny man. He squinted up at her skeptically. “And you can’t tell Joe that I… uh… hit the mailbox.”
He spat a long brown stream. “Looks like you hit the whole damned post office.”
She looked at him pleadingly as Doom pulled up.
“I’ll do the best-est I can. Tomorrow. End of the day. But the paint will still be wet.”
She kissed him on top of his head and dashed to Doom’s car.
“What the hell?” said Doom.
“Drive.” She told her about the Good Government fund.
“After that,” Serenity said, “Franklin’s answers to questions about the Good Government fund were mostly ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘No, ma’am’ and polite groveling evasions. No more information, but at least I didn’t raise any suspicions. Maybe, at least until he realizes that the other check didn’t bounce.”
“And then he followed you out to the parking lot and beat the hell out of your car with a sledgehammer?”
“Of course not.” Serenity told her about the rest of the morning’s adventure. Doom yelped and raised her hand in a high-five. “Hero.”
Serenity left the high-five hanging. “I don’t know, Doom. I lost my temper. I could have killed that man.”
“We’re in a war, Ms. Hammer. By any means necessary.”
Serenity shook her head. “I get so tired of that line. It sounds like just another excuse for more macho bullshit like guns and trucks and strutting and hurting. We ought to have something better.”
“We have ass-kicking in high heels.”
Serenity said, “Oh, yeah. That intimidated camo guy back there.” She thought a minute. “Doom, find me a pay phone on the way back to the library.”
“Pay phone? What is this, the eighteen-hundreds?”
“They didn’t have… never mind. Try a convenience store or two.”
It took a couple of tries, but they found one. Serenity dialed a number.
“Doris? Serenity, up in Maddington. Good, but listen: I’ve got something important and I’ve got to talk fast. Remember last year, when the governor was paying his mistress with state library funds? We ran down the information and fed it to the papers? I need the same librarian superpowers now, but I think it’s even bigger. You’ll need to get the Birmingham and Mobile libraries in, too. And keep it quiet. And when you get something, don’t call me at the library, call me at home. Late at night. Now, here’s what I know… ”
Serenity and Doom drove back to the library and went to Doom’s desk.
“Doom, I need you to open an off-the-books library account. With these.”