Сандра Браун - Thick as Thieves

Joe didn’t doubt it, but he argued it anyway. “Rusty has browbeaten you into being paranoid and afraid of him.”

“You’re darn right I am. Aren’t you?”

Yes, he was. More than a little. Rusty would have his daddy and the whole corrupt sheriff’s department vouching for his son’s whereabouts tonight, paving his tracks with alibis that Mervin would make certain were ironclad.

Out of the four of them, only three would be made to pay for their thievery.

Thinking about the likely penalty, and the effect it would have on his already fractured family, Joe almost barfed up his whiskey.

“You’ve got to tell me what to do,” Foster wailed.

“Don’t do anything. Don’t show up at the meeting place. Leave the little bastard waiting.”

“He will come after me.”

The longer they talked, the faster Foster was unraveling. Joe had to keep a cool head, as hazy with liquor as it was. To panic was begging for a disastrous outcome. At the moment, disaster was only a possibility, a good possibility, but preventable if he could talk Foster off the ledge.

“All right, meet Rusty as scheduled. Hide the money. But then call his bluff.”

“Wh…what…what do you mean?”

“Tell the asshole you won’t be part of any scheme he has in mind for me. Tell him—”

“He would kill me!”

“He’s not going to kill you. Think about it. He was the ringleader of this. He originated the plan, made himself boss. Up to this point, he’s pulled off a successful heist. He’s sitting on five hundred grand.”

Through his heavy breathing, Foster murmured agreement.

“So he’s not going to do something now that would get him caught. Killing you would be a senseless thing to do.”

Foster thought it over, then to Joe’s aggravation he said, “No. I can’t stand up to that guy. I just can’t. It’s not in me.”

Joe didn’t think Foster had it in him, either, which meant that he couldn’t just sit here, getting drunker by the hour, waiting to see what trickery Rusty had in store for him. For all he knew, Rusty had already ratted out the rest of them, and arrests were imminent. That was a bleak but galvanizing prospect.

He had to act, and he saw only one option open to him. He asked Foster when he was due to meet Rusty.

“Half an hour. Well, now, twenty minutes.”

“Where?”

Foster was about to answer, then stopped himself. After a beat, he said, “I took a big risk by calling and telling you.”

“Yes, you did.”

“What’s to keep you from calling the cops and working out your own deal?”

“That’s probably what I should do.”

Foster groaned.

“But I won’t. I swear to you that’s the one thing I will not do.”

Judging by the choppy sounds Foster was emitting, he was either retching or sobbing.

“Your time is running out,” Joe said with forced patience. “Where are you meeting Rusty?”

Sniff, sniff. “There’s a picnic area on the lake where he and I have met a few times to drink beer. It’s gone to ruin. Only a few wooden tables are left and they’re falling down. It’s off the beaten path. There’s a turnoff to it about a hundred yards east of that boat ramp with the bent flagpole.”

Joe knew the spot. Years ago, he and Marjorie used to take the girls there, before the area had become overlooked and overgrown.

“What are you going to do?” Foster asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Will you be there?”

“If I can get there.”

Foster sobbed for real. “We were all so stupid, weren’t we, to be sucked in by him?”

“Yes. Very stupid. But let’s try to salvage the situation before it gets worse. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Now listen. Starting now, we must be very careful. They check cell phone data. If we’re ever asked about this call, our story is that you called to tell me how bad you felt over Welch’s firing me, and to wish my family a happy Easter. Understand?”

“Yes, all right.”

“Now, go meet Rusty. Take a flashlight. You’ll need it out there. Keep it on as much as possible. Play along with whatever Rusty says for as long as you can.”

“Then what?”

Then watch your back , Joe thought. But what he said was, “We play it by ear. Good luck.”

He hung up before Foster could respond. He stared at the bottle of whiskey with bone-deep craving. Then he carried it into the bathroom and emptied it into the sink.

He took a dark-colored windbreaker from his closet and pulled it on over his white, short-sleeved shirt. He opened his bedroom door a crack and listened but didn’t hear a sound. He kept his footsteps light as he made his way down the hallway.

Being the coward that he was, he passed his daughters’ bedrooms without looking in on them. If Arden woke up, he could ease her back to sleep with a white lie and a reassuring pat.

But not Lisa. She would see straight through any malarkey he tried to put over on her. The truth would come out. And then what would he do? What would she do?

In any case, he didn’t risk an encounter. He descended the stairs, avoiding the treads that creaked, and left through the back door. He started across the field behind the house. It was a moonless night, sultry and still with the heavy scent of rain, which Lisa had forecast. He hoped it would hold off for a while longer.

The ground was uneven, and he wasn’t that sure-footed because of the whiskey he’d drunk, so the walk to the cypress grove took him longer than expected, and when he reached it, he was leaking sour-smelling sweat from every pore.

He was glad to have the cover of the trees, although their density, and the darkness it created, made him claustrophobic. He didn’t dare risk a flashlight.

Stumbling around in the marshland, feeling his way in the dark, he didn’t find the rowboat right away, and, ever aware of the time constraints, his search for it became frantic.

His pants legs got soaked. More than once, he banged his shins on cypress knees. He walked into a clump of ghostly moss hanging from a low-lying branch, and smacked his forehead on another.

The discomforts did help to sober him up, however, and, eventually, he located the boat. It was a wonder he had, because vegetation had overtaken it, and it took some effort to pull it free.

Like everything else in his life, the craft had been neglected. As a family, they had taken it out on the lake frequently. “Nature excursions,” Marjorie had called them. They’d competed to see who could spot and name the most species of birds and wildlife. Whoever caught the first fish got the largest chocolate chip cookie from the picnic basket. Like that. How had his family deteriorated from that idyllic example of harmony to this?

Tonight, the boat looked as hopeless as regaining those happier days. He wasn’t even sure that it was still watertight. He wouldn’t trust it, except that going by car to the designated place would mean taking the long way around. Weaving through the intersecting bayous of the lake would take less time, but only for someone who had grown up doing it.

Joe had. Even in the dark, he would have no trouble navigating the swampy labyrinth. The future of his family depended on it.

He dragged the boat into the water and clambered aboard.

Chapter 26

Following her conversation with Lisa, Arden had determined that if she wanted to learn more about the ongoing feud between the smarmy district attorney and Ledge, a good place to start would be with the woman at the core of it.

Arden recalled Ledge telling her about his “friend” who owned the hair and nail salon where the errant squirrel had done damage in the attic. It hadn’t been difficult to link his Crystal with Crystal’s Salon on Main Street, a house that had been charmingly converted into a business. It was a white frame structure with pale blue shutters and purple petunias in window boxes.