Midnight Crossroad

31

It rained the next day, torrents and buckets. The fierce wind drove the drops against the front of Fiji’s place with more noise than she would have thought possible. She was so glad she hadn’t finished her outside Halloween decorations; that was scheduled for Saturday.

Only two customers came into her shop all morning, and she spent most of her time dusting and rearranging the merchandise. She managed to break two glass figures in the process, which effectively erased her profit from the two customers. She had to warn Mr. Snuggly to stay in his cushioned basket while she swept up the glass. To be doubly sure she’d gotten every tiny glass splinter, she vacuumed. Later that afternoon, she went back to the kitchen, leaving the hall door open so she could hear the shop bell, and started a pot of soup. It was a day that cried out for soup. She put on an Enya CD to work by.

While she chopped up vegetables and leftover chicken, Fiji thought about how to resolve the town crisis. The death of Aubrey was no longer Bobo’s tragedy—or at least, not only his. Aubrey’s murder surely tied into the legend of the missing guns. Fiji feared that bad men would keep showing up as long as Bobo lived, in search of the mythical treasure trove of death.

Fiji heard the shop doorbell tinkle, and she dumped everything on the chopping board into the pot of chicken broth. As she washed her hands, she thought of having corn bread with the soup tonight. As she was drying them, she told herself how much better the soup would be without the corn bread, and failed to convince herself that could be so. As she hurried down the short hall to the front of the shop, she called, “I’m coming.”

She was already smiling when she stepped into the front room. The smile vanished when she saw a tall man in a cowboy hat standing in the middle of the display cases. He was draped in a cheap yellow rain poncho, dripping water all over the boards and throw rugs. She was not a psychic or a telepath, but she knew bad intentions when she saw them, and Price Eggleston meant her no good. She spun on her heel to run down the hall and out the back door, but in three big strides he went around the chairs and table, seized her by the shoulder, and wrapped one arm around her middle. Then he clapped the other hand over her mouth.

Fiji struggled with all her might, using her elbows and kicking and squirming, but he was a strong man. She caught a glimpse of Mr. Snuggly. He’d jumped out of his basket and was hiding in the shadows under the shelves. She fought all the harder, hoping her assailant would not notice the cat and do him harm.

“Keep still, you bitch!” Eggleston growled, and she kicked backward to strike his shin. He was hampered by the plastic poncho and by his instinctive avoidance of the furniture and fixtures of the shop. But when he let her down a little, enough so her feet could touch the floor, Fiji planted them on the floor and pushed backward with all her might. She succeeded in causing Eggleston to slam into a clear case full of small glass ornaments and sun catchers, and the case went over. Fiji was trying to leave a record of what had happened, and when she heard the crash as the case hit the floor, she knew she had succeeded.

But the struggle had exhausted her, and she had to catch her breath. Eggleston took advantage of her weak moment by dragging her out of the shop into the rain, leaving the shop door open. There was no traffic, no one in sight, as he wrestled her out to his truck, pinning her against it while he pulled her hands behind her and clicked her wrists into a pair of handcuffs. Even then Fiji did not quit fighting entirely. She tossed her head from side to side when he tried to place some silver duct tape across her mouth, but eventually he timed it right and sealed her lips shut. He stuffed her into the front seat before running around to the driver’s side. He looked both ways behind him, backed out across the empty road to face west, and drove off toward Marthasville with the angriest woman in Texas sliding around on the bench seat, unable to stop herself, her hands cuffed behind her.

In the store, now silent except for the drumming of the rain on the roof, Mr. Snuggly considered his options. He could go back to sleep in his basket (he liked that idea very much), but that didn’t seem a noble reaction. He could chase after the truck in the rain . . . he discarded that option instantly. It required too much action on his part, and though he was a very fast cat, he could not keep up with a truck. He licked his paws as he gloomily settled on the most becoming option.

He would have to go next door.

If cats could sigh, he would have, when he stepped out onto the porch and looked at the rain. But since the bad man had left the door open, he really had no excuse to linger. Mr. Snuggly glared at a cat’s version of hell. But he gathered himself and dashed in a blur of marmalade to the cover of the nearest bush, where he took shelter. He got drenched instantly with the water that had been clinging to its leaves.

“Curse the man,” he muttered, and prepared for his next sprint to the doors of the chapel. The small eave provided no cover for Mr. Snuggly at all, and he began to caterwaul. He leaped up to scratch at the wooden doors. The Rev responded almost immediately. He had to look down to see who was making such a noise at God’s door, but when he realized Mr. Snuggly was his visitor, he stepped back and the cat shot through the aperture and into the relative peace of the chapel.

“Brother,” said the Rev. “What has happened to Fiji?”

“A man came,” Mr. Snuggly said. “She fought and cursed like a madwoman, and I was proud of her, but he was too big and too strong. He took her.”

“Miss Fiji has been abducted?”

“Yes, indeed.” Mr. Snuggly, his errand complete and his duty discharged, began to clean his fur. He paused long enough to say, “You must do something about it. She has left the cooking thing on, which she will not do if she is not remaining in the house.” Mr. Snuggly was proud to have remembered that detail.

“Thank you, Brother,” the Rev said, and it was his turn to consider options.

After asking one or two more questions, the Rev went next door to see the chaos in Fiji’s normally orderly home (though the old man disliked rain almost as much as the cat, whom he carried tucked under one thin arm). Somehow the broken things on the floor made him much more anxious.

The thud of feet on the rock sidewalk leading up to the porch announced new arrivals. Bobo hurried into the room, closely followed by Manfred. Manfred had taken a moment to pull on a hooded plastic poncho, but Bobo had come as he was. His shirt was soaked with rain, and his hair clung damply to his scalp.

“I saw a truck hauling ass away from here. What happened?” he asked, every line of his body tense. “Where is Fiji?”

“She’s been taken,” said the Rev.

“Little Timmy fell down the well,” said a tiny voice, and the two men looked around wildly to find the source.

“Who said that?” Bobo asked.

“Don’t even ask,” the Rev said, with a kind of tired exasperation. “Let us pray for our sister, for she has been taken, and we must recover her.”

“What are the cops doing?” Manfred demanded.

“I haven’t called them. This is something we have to do. The man who took Fiji has had enough time to switch vehicles or possibly to reach his destination.”

“Have we heard from Fiji at all?” Bobo asked.

“She’s handcuffed and gagged,” the Rev said.

Bobo made a shocked and angry noise, as if someone had poked him with a hot needle.

“We need to go across the street to the pawnshop, Bobo,” the Rev said. Manfred wondered why. “We’ll take the cat with us.” The cat in question raised his head and looked at the Rev with his eyes slitted in indignation. “Manfred, if you would put the cat under your rain poncho, it would protect him on our way across the street.”

Manfred felt almost as unhappy as Mr. Snuggly, but he lifted the poncho, scooped up the cat, and pulled the yellow plastic down over him.

The second they were inside the pawnshop, Manfred set Mr. Snuggly on the floor. The cat stretched and began inspecting all the chairs he could choose to sit in. Naturally, he selected the one Bobo favored, and in a second he was curled into a ball in the middle of the chair, purring loudly.

Bobo hardly seemed to notice but drew three chairs together around that one so that they could talk. They all sat, and the Rev told them that he had been alerted to Fiji’s plight—and he used the word “plight”—by the cat.

If the Rev had had much of a sense of humor, it would have been highly gratified by the expressions on Bobo’s and Manfred’s faces.

“And what’s so funny about that?” said the same small, bitter voice they’d heard in Fiji’s store.

They both turned to look at the cat.

Mr. Snuggly said, “I can talk. Woo-hoo.”

Manfred filled his lungs with an audible gasp. It appeared he’d forgotten to breathe. “I thought so!” Bobo said triumphantly. “From that day I dropped the gardening fork on my toe. I knew I heard someone laughing. So, cat, you were the one who actually saw someone take Fiji?”

The cat nodded and then closed his eyes, intending to resume his nap.

“Wait a minute,” Manfred said. “You have to tell us all about it.”

“The man came in the front door, and when she came from the kitchen, he took her.” He put his head back down and closed his eyes.

“She fought?”

“Oh, yes,” said the cat, opening his eyes a little, very reluctantly. “The case got broken, and some of the glass landed very close to me. I could have been cut! But he hustled her out into the rain and handcuffed her. I saw him when I got up on the counter to watch. He put something over her mouth and shoved her into his truck. Then I ran over to the chapel, because I knew she would give me permission to leave the grounds under the circumstances. I roused the Rev by an almost supernatural effort.”

“Almost supernatural,” Manfred repeated.

“Yes. He heard me and listened to me, and now here I am, warm and almost dry and in a good chair. When I wake up, you can give me some salmon.” Mr. Snuggly’s eyes drifted shut and he relaxed into sleep.

“Somehow I thought a talking cat would be friendlier,” Bobo said. “Ah . . . more caring?”

“He might talk, but he’s still a cat,” the Rev said, as if that were explanation enough.

“Setting aside the talking cat and the fact that he doesn’t seem too concerned about his owner, which I know is a lot to set aside, this is about Fiji,” Manfred said.

“Yes, and I will say two things here,” the Rev told them. “Bobo, though God tells us not to judge, you have taken the easy way out two times in a row, or your friend down below has.”

For a wild moment, Manfred thought the Rev’s downcast eyes meant Bobo had a connection with the Devil, but he understood after a long second that the Rev meant Lemuel.

“What do you mean?” Bobo looked bewildered.

“Did Lemuel not settle your problem with the first two thugs this Eggleston sent?”

Bobo flushed deep red. “Yes,” he said. “Lemuel and . . .”

“Lemuel and Olivia,” the Rev said. “And do you not suspect that it was Lemuel and Olivia who went over to Marthasville and burned down Eggleston’s house?”

Bobo became even redder. “I don’t know that,” he said.

“But you believe it’s so.”

Manfred looked from the wizened old minister to the big blond man, trying to absorb all these new ideas. “So,” he said cautiously, “you’re telling Bobo that Eggleston wouldn’t have resorted to kidnapping Fiji if Lemuel and Olivia hadn’t been so drastic in their reaction?”

“I am saying we’d have a much better chance of getting her back unharmed.”

“Okay, point taken,” Bobo said. “But what now?”

The Rev looked almost approving. “Good. The right spirit will lead you into the paths of righteousness,” he said. “We must find where he has taken her, and we must rescue her, because the police will not be able to do this.”

“But won’t we have to take measures as drastic as the ones you’re condemning?”

The Rev said very patiently, “Now is the time to take measures. Her welfare is at stake. It’s not the answer to every problem. It is the answer to this problem.”

“If you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” Manfred said suddenly. He’d just caught on.

“Exactly. And Lemuel and Olivia are hammers.” The Rev nodded, glad now that he felt they were all on the same page.

“Lem will be up soon,” Bobo said, glancing at a clock.

“It’s too bad you’re not a tracking creature,” the Rev said. “But Lemuel will do his best.”

“Olivia’s not here?” Manfred was looking all around him in furtive glances, worried that Lemuel would pop up out of nowhere and scare the shit out of him.

“No, she’s gone.” The Rev looked sad, whether because he missed Olivia, thought she would be useful if she were here, or regretted whatever cause had taken her away, Manfred could not decide.

“Should we get Chuy and Joe?” Manfred said.

“No, they need to stay here,” the Rev said, without any hesitation.

“Teacher?”

“No, he would not come,” the Rev said. “Better not to ask him.”

Manfred wondered how the Rev knew all this, and how the oldest resident of Midnight had been tacitly acknowledged leader of the Fiji rescue expedition—but since Manfred himself was not qualified to take control, he was not about to ask out loud.

“What are we going to do?” Bobo asked impatiently.

“We’re going to find Fiji and get her back.”

“Great. How?” Bobo snapped.

The Rev looked up at Bobo, but Bobo didn’t relent.

“As soon as Lem is up, we’ll go. We’ll take the cat.”

Both the younger men looked at the Rev as if he’d lost his mind, and so did the cat, whose eyes sprang open. Manfred thought they were lucky Mr. Snuggly’s outrage made him speechless.

“Mr. Snuggly, Manfred will hold you. He is a psychic, and that will help you focus.”

“Oh, all right,” the cat said sullenly. “I must get my feeder back.”

Bobo looked a little punchy. “All this time, he’s been able to talk,” he whispered. “And he calls Feej his feeder?”

“You have a vampire living in your basement, and you’re stunned by a talking cat?” the Rev said, with some asperity.

“Good point,” Manfred said. “Catch up, Bobo. Okay, so we take the cat out with us, and because he’s . . . what, her familiar? . . . he’ll be able to tell where Fiji is?”

“Yes,” said the Rev. “He is a lazy cat, but he must do that for her.”

“What’s all the palaver about?” Lemuel said behind them, and Manfred couldn’t help it. He jumped. Everyone except Mr. Snuggly politely ignored that.

Lemuel had come up through the trapdoor. “I could tell there was trouble up here,” he said, moving to stand beside Bobo. Lemuel was wearing starched khakis and a button-down shirt. He made it look like a costume. His pale hair was slicked back, still damp from a shower, Manfred assumed.

“Fiji has been stolen,” the Rev said. “We think the man who took her was Eggleston. If you had not burned down his hunting lodge, we would know where she was, but since you have done that, we must look for her elsewhere. We have the cat.”

Lemuel absorbed all this quickly. He didn’t respond to the Rev’s rebuke, and he didn’t waste time raging against the kidnapper. “We must start now, then. How long have they been gone?”

The Rev looked at his watch. “Less than an hour.”

“We can all get in your station wagon,” Bobo said, and that was another surprise for Manfred. He’d never seen the Rev drive.

“Do you need to change?” Lemuel said to the Rev, and Manfred wondered why the Rev would need different clothes.

“Not now,” the Rev replied, and he left the shop, running faster than Manfred would ever have believed a man his apparent age could move.

In three minutes, he was parked in front of Midnight Pawn in an ancient station wagon. It was dark and rusty and huge, and probably steered like a boat, but in this weather, that was about what they needed. Manfred had not removed his rain poncho, and he scooped up the cat again. They scrambled out of the store and into the station wagon, and without a word the Rev drove west.