“I normally don’t bother you, Daisy.”
“I know you don’t. I’ll go close up the house right now, honey.”
“Good.”
“Night, darlin’.”
“G’night.”
Daisy had waited for his click and then reached over to put the receiver back in its cradle on her nightstand. The house was suddenly very empty.
“Shoot,” she said, staring up at the ceiling.
This wasn’t the first time somebody had threatened to harm her to get to Franklin. The last time this had happened, somebody trying to scare them like this, she’d had to tell Franklin every time the phone rang and nobody was there, every time a car she didn’t recognize slowed down going past the dirt road that led to their house, every time a letter or package came with handwriting she didn’t recognize, every time somebody looked at her cross-eyed buying aspirin in the drug store.
The phone rang again.
“Hello?” Daisy said, thinking it had to be Franklin again.
Silence. Then they hung up.
Another wrong number.
Third one tonight. She hadn’t told him about the first two. Didn’t want to get him more upset about nothing than he already was.
She swung her legs off the big empty bed and stuck her feet into her house slippers. She’d lock up and then she was ready for bed. Had her nightgown on and everything. She’d already locked up all the doors anyway. Now she went from room to room, checking, locking the windows in the kitchen, the small back bedroom, and Franklin’s study.
In the parlor, the two windows on either side of the front door were wide open with the thin curtains blowing in. She spread her hands on the windowsill and peered out into the dark night. Not too many stars out and it had turned cold. She heard the faint hum of tires out on the highway, somebody going past at a pretty good clip, on into the night. Then another car going in the opposite direction. Real slow.
She waited, listening for it to keep going past the little dirt road leading to their house.
It did.
The distant hum of a car going by on a lonely highway at night was a weird thing. She often lay in bed, waiting for sleep, and listened to them passing by out there. On a rainy night, especially, there was that sad hissing sound the tires made on the way to somewhere else. Who was it behind the wheel? Where were they going? What was going on in their minds as they watched that long yellow line disappearing in the rear view mirror? Was someone sitting next to them? Who?
Franklin had spooked her, all right.
No question about it. She pulled the damn front windows down, both of them, locked them, and went back into the bedroom. She got down on her knees beside the bed. Looked like she was fixing to pray, but she wasn’t. She was just doing the next best thing, getting her gun. She bent down to fetch the double-barreled Parker. It was a rare Sweet Sixteen shotgun that Franklin had rejiggered to fit her for her twenty-first birthday. Sawed a couple of inches off the stock and gave it to her on the big day itself.
A sawed-off gun for a grown-up girl, the card said. She still had it stuck in the mirror all these years later.
She lifted the worn chenille bedspread and felt around with her right hand until her fingertips brushed the smooth cold barrels. She pulled it out and lifted it to her nose. God help her, she loved how that damn gun smelled more than was natural in a woman.
Daisy kept half a dozen or so shells locked in the right hand drawer of the dresser. Double-ought buckshot. She unlocked the drawer and fished out a couple. Then she levered the gun open and loaded it. She snapped it shut, made sure the safety was on, and went back into the kitchen. After laying the gun across the table, she lit a wooden kitchen match and turned on the gas, lighting the burner under the teakettle.
Sitting there at the kitchen table, facing the bedroom, she knew she could easily swivel her head and see both the front door and the back door. Looking straight ahead, she’d see anybody who just happened to be peeking in her bedroom window.
She’d deliberately left the porch lights on, front and back. And now she decided she’d best turn all the lights in the house off and sit in the dark. That way she could see them before they saw her.
Not that there was any “them,” she told herself, moving from room to room and extinguishing lights, but she’d heard something catch in Franklin’s voice tonight when he told her how much he loved her.
You sit watching them in the dark, a kettle take an extra long time to whistle. And, a ticking kitchen clock sounds a whole lot slower and louder. She had the Parker in her lap now. Pretty soon the cruiser would show up, park out in front of the house. She’d walk around the house with Homer or Wyatt or whoever was on duty, see that there was nothing to see, and then she could maybe go on to bed and get a little sleep. Even though it was so hard with Franklin gone.
Any damn bed felt ten sizes too big without your man in it. All her friends who’d lost their husbands said so.
The thought, when it first came, hit her so hard she almost fell out of her chair.
A woman alone.
That’s what the Mexican guy in the restaurant had said to Franklin. You had to worry about a woman alone, he’d said. She was alone, sure. But so were a few other women here in Prairie.
June Weaver, for instance, was very much alone tonight. June had a son named Travis. Big strong football player. But he lived with his father.
June lived alone.
And it was June, she thought, getting nervous and excited all at once, not her, who had the videotape the man down in Key West wanted badly enough to threaten a man like Franklin over. If they knew about her tapes, they probably knew how to find June’s address as easy as they’d find—
She jumped up from the table and ran to the phone mounted on the wall beside the stove. June’s home number was among the ones scribbled in pencil just above the phone.
Line was busy.
She called the sheriff’s office and got a recording. June’s familiar drawl telling you what to do in case of an emergency. Which meant whoever was on duty was on the phone.
She took a deep breath and redialed both numbers.
Still busy.
52
D aisy grabbed the shotgun and ran into her bedroom flipping the light switch by the door. To hell with it. She shed her slippers and stuck her feet into her boots. No time to dress, she grabbed her terry robe off the hook on the bathroom door. She grabbed a handful of shells from the dresser and stuffed them in the pocket of her terry. Then she hurried back to the kitchen. The phone was ringing off the hook and she paused just long enough to grab it.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
“Who is this, damn it?”
Hearing only silence, she slammed down the receiver, picked it up again and redialed June’s house.
Busy. So was the sheriff’s line. Damnation.
Was that June trying to get through to the courthouse? Is that why Daisy couldn’t get through to either number? Had to be it.
She ran out the front door and jumped into the pickup, laying the gun on the seat beside her. She twisted the key in the ignition and for a few horrible seconds thought the damn thing wasn’t going to turn over. Then it did. She jammed it into gear and fishtailed onto the long dirt drive that led out to the highway. She didn’t hardly slow down
