Deadline. Metsy Hingle

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СКАЧАТЬ Don’t you remember, you moron? Melanie and Jody Burns had a kid, a little girl. She was sleeping in the next room. And when she woke up, she found Jody Burns standing over his wife’s body. It was her testimony that helped put her old man away.”

      “Melanie’s daughter,” Lester repeated more to himself than the other man. Relieved that the woman hadn’t been Melanie after all, he slumped against the cold wall. “Christ almighty, I thought for sure it was Melanie. That she was one of those reincarnations and she’d come back to make us pay just like old woman Burns said she would.”

      The other man swore again. “How many times do I have to tell you there’s no such thing as ghosts. Only drunks with shit-for-brains believe in all that voodoo crap.”

      Lester didn’t argue. But he knew what he knew. He’d heard the stories about Jody Burns’s mother, how she’d lived for a time in New Orleans in the French Quarter. Sin City, his own momma used to call the place because the people there were wicked. They even messed with black magic and stuff.

      “De Roach, did you hear me?” he snapped.

      “What?” Lester asked, pulling his attention back.

      “I asked if you said anything to her.”

      “No. I never said nothing to her,” he said. No reason to admit that he’d told her to stay away from him, he decided. After all, it wasn’t like they’d had a real conversation or anything. “I just got my stuff and got out of there as fast as I could. Then I called you.”

      “Okay. Good. That’s good. It’s best if she didn’t notice you. She didn’t, did she?”

      “No,” he answered quickly. “Like I said, she was paying for gas and getting directions from the kid behind the register.”

      “Directions to where?” he demanded.

      “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying no attention.”

      “Try to remember, De Roach,” he insisted.

      Lester thought for a moment, tried to recall what the kid had been saying to her. “She wanted to know how to get to one of those guesthouses.”

      “Which guesthouse?”

      “I don’t know. One with a name like a flower or a tree or something like that.”

      “The Magnolia Guesthouse?”

      “Yeah. That’s it. That’s the place. The Magnolia Guesthouse,” Lester told him.

      “All right. And you’re sure she didn’t say anything else or ask questions about anyone?”

      “I already told you what happened. She paid for her gas, got directions and left. And then I got out of there as fast as I could,” Lester repeated. He jammed his fist into his jacket pocket and his fingers brushed against a slip of paper—a gas receipt. He must have picked it up from the floor at the Quick Stop when he’d had to crawl around and pick up the beers he’d dropped. If he were to tell the guy now that the bitch had dropped it when her purse had fallen, it would only piss him off. He wouldn’t understand how scared he’d been and that he’d grabbed the thing in fear.

      “All right. Then I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”

      “How can you be sure?” Lester asked, not wanting to admit that he was still afraid. “I mean, if she is Burns’s kid, then she’s come back here for a reason. Maybe she knows what we did and she’s here for revenge and—”

      “Would you stop saying that shit?”

      “But if she knows—”

      “She doesn’t know. Nobody does.” He all but spit out the words. “You got it?”

      “Yeah. I got it,” Lester muttered grudgingly. Still, he had to ask, “So we aren’t going to do anything? Just sit around and wait?”

      “I’m going to do some checking around, confirm she is the Burns kid and then find out why she’s here. And while I’m doing that, you are going to go home, lay off the booze and keep your damn mouth shut. Understand?”

      Lester muttered his favorite four-letter word.

      “What was that?”

      “Nothing,” Lester grumbled.

      “So, do you understand me?” he repeated.

      “Yeah, yeah, I understand you.” But he sure as hell didn’t appreciate being given orders by the likes of him. Just who in hell did he think he was? If it wasn’t for him, the son of a bitch wouldn’t be where he was. The bastard owed him. They all did. None of them had had the balls to pull off the gig. They had needed him then, he remembered. They still did. And he’d show them, too.

      “Then go home and keep your mouth shut. And, De Roach?”

      “Yeah?”

      “Don’t call me anymore.”

      “But suppose she finds out that we were there that night?” Lester fired back, the panic building again.

      “She won’t.”

      “But what if she does? I’m not going to sit around and do nothing if she comes after me.”

      “She’s not going to come after you.”

      “How do you know?” Lester asked.

      “Because I’ll take care of her. In the meantime you need to keep your mouth shut. And don’t call me again.”

      Then the line went dead.

      Lester stood there listening to the dial tone. “Self-righteous prick. I’ll show you. I’ll show all of you,” he yelled into the receiver before he slammed it down onto the phone hook so hard that it fell off. Not bothering to pick up the receiver that dangled from the aluminum cording like a doll’s arm, Lester stormed away. He stuffed his curled fists into the pockets of his jacket and headed for his truck.

      He climbed inside the dirty old pickup, too angry to notice the torn seats, the empty beer cans on the floorboards, the overloaded ashtray or the stench of cigarettes and fast food. He grabbed one of the two remaining beers, popped the top and chugged it down to calm his nerves. When he finished, he threw the can on the floor and then reached for the last one. He opened it, drained half the can, then leaned his head back against the seat. Closing his eyes, he sighed as he felt the buzz start up again.

      When he opened his eyes again, he took another swig of beer. Then he pulled the crumpled gas receipt from his pocket and smoothed it out. For a moment, he remembered looking into those spooky gray eyes again and his hand trembled. “Not a ghost,” he reminded himself, shaking off the attack of nerves.

      He hit the interior light switch of the truck, but nothing happened. Then he remembered the thing had been out for months. Lester angled the piece of paper near the dashboard so that the overhead light from the parking lot fell on it. Squinting his eyes, he could barely make out the name stamped on the receipt because the inked copy was so faint. “T. Abbott,” he read СКАЧАТЬ