What did he mean, it's all right? What kind of brazen talk was that? Snatching the cage, she shoved it at him, forcing the door open. She watched in relief and horror as the tomcat flew out biting and raking him. That cat clung to Grady's face venting all its wild rage, clawing and tearing at him, biting so deep that Grady screamed and struck at it, stumbling back. Tripping, he fell, his arms over his face. He rolled over, pressing hands and face to the ground, shouting something she couldn't understand. The cat leaped off him and fled.
Blood spurted from Grady's neck. Sick and horrified, she rolled out of the camper nearly on top of him and flew for her own truck. Hinging the door open, she snatched up her phone—was into her truck dialing the sheriff when she heard a siren up on the road, the whoop-whoop of the rescue vehicle ...
Where was it headed? Was someone sick, up the mountain? Could she stop them, bring them here? They had to come here, come now. Martha and Idola needed them. If she ran to the road they'd be past, they'd be gone. In panic she lay on the horn, honking and honking, her racket mixed with the siren. How could they hear?
But the siren died.
She kept honking. She opened the door and shouted. "Down here!" She screamed. "At McPherson's!" Then, gathering her wits, she snatched her phone and punched in 911.
The sheriff answered. She couldn't talk right. "At the lake," she screamed. "McPherson's. Ambulance is here, but... it's the killer. Grady Coulter. He's bleeding. Martha and Idola are hurt bad, real bad ... in a car above the lake, a car he meant to push over." All of this as the ambulance scorched down the gravel drive skidding to a stop beside her truck. She watched the medics race out to kneel over Grady Coulter. Dropping the phone, Florie Mae ran to them.
In a moment she was in the ambulance beside one of the two medics, while the other had stayed with Grady. Moving fast up the little road, the vehicle's wheels skidded in the gravel and pine needles. The driver was younger than Florie Mae but he looked determined, finessing the big van. At the third curve, he slowed, approaching the promontory where the rusted-out Dodge would be poised above the lake.
The car was gone. The rocks that had held its wheels had been tossed aside. Piling out, she ran to the edge of the cliff, stood at its edge then started down clinging to the bushes, hugging a bush, panic sickening her.
Far below, the water was still churning. She could see the glint of metal or glass down within the dark lake—but the car hung only half submerged, its right rear wheel wedged between the boulders.
Above her, the medic started down. As he passed her, telling her to go back, she tried to follow him, but she was terrified of the height. For an instant, she hung on the side of the cliff, frozen and immobile.
When she looked up, Albern Haber stood above her, his heavy work boots planted solidly, his black hair blowing against the sky.
His arm and shoulder were bleeding, were all torn up, his bloody shirt was in tatters. She had seen animals with shotgun wounds, torn up that way. His face was ashen pale, his dark eyes wild. He held the shotgun by its barrel, the butt down as if he would chop down at her, would slam it on her hands, make her lose her frail grip on the bushes. Even as she stared up at him frozen with fear she heard the sheriff's siren coming fast up the hills.
A breeze drifted through the open windows of the Harkin kitchen, its cool breath mighty welcome after the heat of the day. Though the night was not so cool that the katydids had stopped their song; their buzzing filled the kitchen, as comforting as the crackle of the wood stove would be, come winter. They sat around the oak table, Florie Mae and James close together with their three babies sprawled on their laps. Granny, dishing up the children's plates from the bowls that filled the table. Martha with her bruised face and sprained and bandaged arm. And Grady Coulter, Grady's own face crisscrossed with claw scratches that were still red and angry, and his throat sewn up with seven stitches and sealed with a plaster-tape bandage.
Their early supper was picnic leavings, cake and slaw, potato salad and deviled eggs and pickles and tea, and Granny had fried up a couple more chickens. Idola was in the hospital with two broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and two broken fingers where she had fought with Albern Haber. Albern was in the hospital, too, but he was under guard. They'd all just come from the little Greeley hospital, where two sheriff's deputies sat with their chairs tilted back against the door of Albern Haber's hospital room, one inside, one in the hall. Albern would be headed for a jail cell as soon as his shotgun wounds were tended.
As for the tomcat, the moment he sprang off Grady, he'd scorched away through the woods heading for parts unknown. The worst of that was, from Florie Mae and Martha's view, he hadn't had a chance for his life-changing operation. Dr. Mackay had already left, that morning, when Martha got back to the clinic, the door had been locked tight, and no one answered at the house. Martha had caught up with Dr. Mackay at Cody Creek and had arranged to take the cat back late that afternoon. Now, such was not to be.
Who knew where that tomcat would end up? Or what other mischief he'd stir in Farley County or how many more kittens he'd sire? Martha and Florie Mae just hoped he wouldn't show up around Harkin's store again. Even when Florie Mae had thought that cat was saving her life, lighting into Grady, that also had turned out a disaster. Maybe that tomcat carried bad luck around with him like a drinker totes his moonshine.
Sheriff Waller had identified the fingerprints on the shotgun. The over-and-under twelve-gauge held enough prints to implicate half of Greeley. Rick McPherson's prints, of course. It was his gun. The prints on top of Rick's, on the trigger and stock, were Idola's. Florie Mae's prints were on the stock, where she'd picked up the gun. And then Albern's prints, mostly on the barrel where he'd meant to use the gun as a battering ram against Florie Mae.
But it was Idola's prints on the trigger. Idola's handling of that weapon had been quick and deliberate. She'd blasted Albern Haber twice in the shoulder before he snatched the empty gun away from her. If she'd had any more shots she might have finished him and saved Farley County the cost of a trial.
The sheriff had a full confession from Albern, who had turned cowardly at the last, meek and frightened. "He just spilled it all out," the sheriff had said. "As to Rebecca, maybe Albern is telling the truth, that he had no notion to kill her. That he never meant to hit her, sure not hit her that hard. Said it happened real sudden-like." Sheriff Waller, standing with them in the hospital emergency room, had tried hard to contain his anger. "Well, Albern sure didn't stop with killing Rebecca. Once he killed Rebecca, seems like he taken off on a reg'lar binge of meanness."
Now, at the table, Martha said, "When I got up to Idola's, it must've been around nine this morning, before ever I knocked on the door I saw Rebecca's cat up that new gravel road. That's what I come for, so I went on up the road before I rang the bell. See if I could catch her.
"And there she was. It was Nugget—mostly all white, with that big gold circle on her side. Sitting smack in the middle of the new gravel where it was spread on the road." Martha shivered. "Sitting on Rebecca's grave.
"That's where I found the doll, just beside the gravel, nearly covered with leaves—just the way you found it later, Florie Mae. I'd knelt to pick it up when Albern came on me sudden, from around the hill—I guess he was up in the woods, saw me kneel down." She looked at Florie Mae. "Well, I'd picked it up. I was kneeling there looking at it, feeling strange. And here came Albern, straight for me— and I knew. The doll lying there, where he'd been digging. Rebecca's cat sitting there on the new-spread gravel. But mostly, the way Albern was looking at me. His look turned me cold clear to my toes.