promise to obey me if we get into a dicey situation.”
“Dicey how?”
“I’m not quite sure yet. Please just go pack up clothes for an overnight. As if you were going camping,” I added.
I ran up to Tom’s and my room. The clock said three-fifteen. Dicey how? Good question. I packed some warm clothes. In the kitchen, I loaded paper bags with Jake’s spare leash, kibble, homemade dog biscuits, and large plastic bags as well as small ones that zipped closed. I scribbled a note to Tom, telling him not to worry, no matter what happened. Then I glanced around the room ? what could I have forgotten? Oh, yes.
“Arch!” I called up the stairs. “I need you to bring all your fake blood!”
While he was objecting, the front doorbell rang. Arch, Jake, and I arrived at the door simultaneously, and a quick glance through the peephole revealed General Bo Farquhar in a black sweat suit and heavy jacket. At least it wasn’t camouflage gear. Arch turned off the alarm system and opened the door.
“Well,” Bo boomed as he stepped inside, “long time no see! As in less than five days.”
It might as well have been five months. Miraculously, General Bo’s distracted air had vanished, as had his slumping posture and three-day growth of beard. He was freshly shaven, and I wondered how he could have become so tanned, given all the rain we’d been having. If his face seemed older for his prison ordeal and his bout with depression, he now had a firmness in his facial muscles that spoke of new resolve. Apparently the compound did have a barber. He’d had his pale blond hair cut so short he was almost bald. His pale blue eyes, cloudy and unfocused when I had visited him at the compound, now possessed the razor clarity and mesmerizing intensity I knew of old. He quietly closed the door behind him.
“Hello there, General. How’s your ankle?”
He shrugged dismissively and held out his hands. “My dear Goldy. Arch, my buddy.”
I shook his right hand, but Arch opened his arms and threw himself against the general’s chest. Bo embraced him warmly.
“Wow! I can’t believe it’s really you!” Arch exclaimed as Jake gave a low, suspicious woof. My son pulled away. “This is my bloodhound, Jake. Jake, meet General Bo Farquhar.”
I shook my head in disbelief as Bo stooped and put both his hands under Jake’s chin. He said, “Jake, I’m very happy to meet you.” The dog whined joyfully and wagged his entire body.
The general turned his ice blue gaze on me. “You want to tell me what your plan is?”
“What plan?” asked Arch. “What kind of Jell-O plan using Jake needs fake blood?”
Quickly, I outlined the essentials of how I thought we might be able to clear Marla.
“Gosh, Mom,” Arch commented when I finished, “Tom is going to be so ticked off with you.”
“That’s something I’ll just have to risk,” I said. “First we need to make a stop at Marla’s house.”
It took longer than I expected to pack up the jet black Jeep Grand Cherokee General Bo Farquhar had borrowed from someone at the compound. I led the way in my van; Bo and Arch followed in the Jeep. By the time we reached Marla’s house it was just after five o’clock. Fog still curled through her garden, and the house looked ominously deserted.
I hopped out of the van and approached General Bo, who had put on sunglasses despite the fog. His commando outfit, no doubt. I said, “Can you stay here with Arch? Explain to anyone who comes along that I’m just getting a few things to take to Marla?”
“Absolutely,” he replied.
“What if somebody comes along and starts giving you a hard time?” I asked dubiously.
“No one’s going to come along, Goldy.” He lowered the sunglasses and gave me his spellbinding gaze. “But if they do, I have a nine millimeter semiautomatic Glock under my jacket. Want to see it?”
Arch said, “Yes.”
I said, “No.”
There were no police ribbons barring entry to Chez Marla. At least I wasn’t breaking any laws. Yet. I grabbed the spare key and two large plastic bags I’d brought and walked purposefully up the front steps. Once inside, I retrieved the Epipen, an autoinjector containing epinephrine, from the upstairs bathroom. The label read: For emergency intramuscular use. Cardiac patients may experience dangerous side effects. Use only under care of a physician. I wrapped the injector in a hand towel, put it into the plastic bag, then stuffed a warm change of clothes for Marla on top. I looked around her still-messy bedroom and tried to remember what she’d said to the cops this morning. He has his own closet here. I strode quickly into the green-yellow-and-white guest room and pulled open the two-doored closet. The first side yielded four plastic-covered hangers from the dry cleaner, each with slacks and suits. I yanked on the second door, where a single hanger held a pair of blue pants I knew to be Tony’s. It looked as if he’d worn them once, wrinkled them slightly, then hung them neatly until Marla’s maid could send them out to the cleaners.
“Hallelujah,” I breathed. I put my hand into the remaining plastic bag and, touching the slacks only through the bag, carefully slipped them off their hanger. Then I clutched the bag upside down until the plastic fell like a shroud over the pants. I twisted the plastic hard and prayed that this would work.
Once we were out on Interstate 70, General Bo kept a two-car distance behind my van. Down through the gray mist we followed the road, until we passed the exit for the sheriffs department. Just after the highway re-entry from that exit, I signaled and pulled onto a slice of shoulder. Following my instructions, Arch and Jake bounded out of the Jeep and stationed themselves twenty yards above us, where they had a good view of the interstate. Arch signaled us with a flashlight Bo had given him. It was nearly six o’clock. I prayed that this harebrained scheme would work.
Dinner was being served at the jail. I tried to picture Marla: She would have been fingerprinted and put in an orange prisoner suit. Right now she could be eating the Jell-O. Lime Jell-O: the gelled substance that contained artificial food coloring, specifically Yellow No-5. Because Marla was allergic to that dye, it would close her throat, cause her to break out in hives, and make breathing difficult. The cops might disbelieve Marla if she feigned a heart attack, but there was no way a person could fake the physiological signs of an allergic reaction. And any nurse worth his or her salt would know that an extreme allergic reaction in a former cardiac patient was not something to fool around with.
The jail authorities would have to send her to the, hospital. I was pinning all my hopes on Sam Perdue’s report: The parents flagged down the ambulance, and the, EMT gave the kid mouth-to-mouth and CPR. They have to do that when it’s a matter of life and death. It was yet to be seen how convincing Bo and I could be in doing a life-and-death scene.
Six-fifteen came and went. With my face pressed against the van window, I watched for Arch’s signal through the fog. Both Bo and I had left our car lights blinking; I fervently hoped that would be enough to keep people from pulling over to see if we needed help. . Behind the wheel of the Jeep, General Bo looked serene. To him, this was probably routine covert operations.
At six-forty, I was about to give up. She hadn’t eaten the Jell-O, she hadn’t had a reaction, they weren’t sending her to the hospital. And then an arc of light from my son, as well as the distant sound of sirens, said otherwise. I waved to the general and he revved his engine. I hopped out of the van, ran up past the Jeep, and watched as Bo signaled to get back on the road.
No one was coming, thank God. Only the ambulance. With, I hoped, the department standard for a female prisoner: one paramedic driver, one female guard.
Bo accelerated rapidly. There was a crunch of metal and crash of breaking glass as he rammed my empty van into the road barrier. He leapt out of the Jeep and flung himself down on the pavement next to the rear of my crumpled vehicle. I trotted down to him, opened Arch’s bottle of fake blood, and poured it out-first on Bo’s face, chest, and legs, then on my face and hands.
And not a moment too soon. The ambulance slowed as it approached the scene of our ‘accident.’ I jumped up and waved my arms.
“Help!” I cried. “Help! My husband’s been hit!” I motioned wildly and shrieked, “Stop, or he’s going to die.”
The ambulance swerved and came to a stuttering halt on the shoulder. Bo murmured to me, “Just get out of the way when the paramedic arrives. Let me handle this.”
A uniformed paramedic vaulted out of the ambulance and trotted toward us. “Okay, ma’am, can you make it down to the ambulance? Just move back and let me take a look at your husband.”
