CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
A few hours later, I stared in astonishment at the float I was supposed to ride on. It was covered with fake cotton plants that looked like they were planted in a field. Giant bugs were plastered all over the side of the float and on some of the fake plants.
“Is it too late to change my mind?”
Luke laughed, and I shot him a warning look.
Mayor Sterling walked by looking flustered and shouting orders to everyone. He seemed irritated that I wasn’t on the float yet.
“Did I ever mention I was in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?” I asked Luke as I continued to stare down the bugmobile. It could have doubled as a float representing pest control. “Twice.”
Luke grabbed my hand, and a grin quivered on his lips. “I believe you may have mentioned it in passing.”
How the mighty had fallen.
There was a set of steps next to the trailer, and I started to climb up while Luke still claimed my hand.
“There’s nothing precarious about climbing up these steps,” I said, leveling a look at him.
He flashed a mischievous grin. “Maybe I’m just lookin’ for an excuse to hold your hand.”
“Don’t you have a job to do?”
“It just so happens I’m doin’ it.”
I shot him an exasperated look. He’d been hovering over me all afternoon. “I’m one citizen in this town, Chief Montgomery. Surely you should be protecting the rest of them too.”
“Citizen?” he asked. “You mean temporary?”
I gave him a sassy smile. “I’m thinking about stickin’ around.” Then I hastily added, “And before you get a big head about it, it’s because I miss my cousins.” And because I was losing my house in California and had nowhere else to go, but I wasn’t going to tell him that part. But the more time I spent here, the more it felt like home, and something in me was desperate for home.
The smile that spread across his face filled me with happiness. “But maybe I can see you sometimes when you’re not hangin’ out with Teddy and Dixie?”
I smirked. “We might be able to work something out.”
Bill approached with his camera, looking unscathed by our afternoon.
“I thought Tony was in charge of filming me,” I called down to him.
He shrugged. “We switched. Lauren made a last-minute change.” Then he grinned. “I think Tony’s afraid your stalker’s going to try something, and he’ll get caught in the middle of it.”
Based on Luke’s behavior all afternoon, it was a legitimate concern.
Luke studied Bill for a moment before he cast a glance out at the growing crowd half a block down the street. “Now that your cameraman is here, I’ll get goin’. If you see anything that concerns you, just motion to me. I’ll be watching you and the crowd.”
“Okay,” I said, suddenly feeling like something was off. But I had no idea what, and no reason to base it on other than a niggling feeling at the base of my spine. I’d look like a baby if I called him back for some nothing reason like that.
Less than a minute after Luke walked away, Mayor Sterling walked over from another float. He looked less frantic than before, but still agitated. “Now, remember to wave to the crowd,” he said. “And to smile.”
I almost reminded him about all the pageants and parades I’d been in, but he’d already moved on.
Cale walked over with an anxious look on his face. “How’re you doin?” he asked, then cast a glance to Bill. “I’m surprised Luke’s not hovering.”
“He said he had to do some crowd control. There might be a small chance he deputized Bill.”
Both men laughed, and Bill said, “Which would fulfill a childhood fantasy . . . and maybe a few X-rated adult ones too.”
I shook my head with a grin as I scanned the crowd. “TMI, Bill.” But I was getting nervous. “Where’s Dixie? I haven’t seen her since Luke made me come to the police station for the afternoon. She told me she was headed out to the farm to see Teddy.”
“She’s here,” Cale said. “But she’s closer to the end of the route.”
“Really?” I asked. “For some reason, I thought she’d want to be part of all of this.” I motioned to the float.
“I think Luke wanted her at the end,” Cale said. Then he looked up into my eyes. “You spent all afternoon with Luke. Did you mention having that contact number?”
I blinked in surprise. I still wasn’t sure why Cale was wanting to keep it so secret. “No. But I plan to tell him soon after the parade.”
Cale nodded. “That’s fine. As long as Mayor Sterling gets his parade, you can tell Luke anything you want.”
He moved to the next float, and I had to admit that I was surprised Cale was so invested in the success of the parade. It didn’t seem like something that would overly concern him.
“I’m worried about Dixie,” I said to Bill. “It seems like she should be here.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “I’m gonna text her and see where she is.” Why hadn’t I thought of that sooner?
Where are you? Haven’t seen you all afternoon, and I’m worried.
The marching band started playing in the front, making it nearly impossible to hear, and I could see movement at the beginning of our small procession.
“Summer!” shouted Mayor’s Sterling’s assistant, practically skipping toward the float. I’d met Annie Lee about a half hour earlier, and I had a hard time trusting someone that perky and energetic. “We nearly forgot your partner.”
“My partner?” Were they having Dixie ride on the float with me?
If only. Someone in a giant bug costume strutted out of the pharmacy next door.
I cringed. “Why is that giant tick heading over here?”
“It’s not a giant tick,” the mayor’s assistant said, way too jolly for the situation. “It’s a boll weevil. You have no idea how hard it is to find one.”
“I can see why.”
The first float in the parade—a wagon pulled by a bicycle—started down the street.
“We couldn’t find the guy who was supposed to play the boll weevil, but we found a replacement, and we’re all set!”
“A replacement?” I asked.
Annie Lee helped the seven-foot bug up onto the float. “Mayor Sterling told you the route, correct?”
“No, he didn’t tell me anything.”
“What is goin’ on with him?” she asked. “He’s been out of sorts today. All this murder and mayhem is throwing him off.”
No wonder. No doubt it was bad for tourism.
“Okay,” she said, shouting to be heard. “The parade’s going two blocks down Main Street, then turning right at the corner on Buttercup, then going two short blocks, then turning left on Henry. Right in front of the police station. Your job is to stand there and wave to everyone. Easy enough?” she asked.
I nodded. My stomach tightened into a ball. That sensation washed over me again—something was off in a big way, but I couldn’t put my finger on what or why. I checked my phone again to see if I’d heard from Dixie. Nothing.
“Okay,” Annie Lee said. “Showtime! I’ve got to hurry to my spot at the microphone.”
The marching band had begun to move, so I took my place on the spot marked with a giant X.
Up ahead, I heard the mayor’s assistant’s perky voice on a microphone that was broadcasting through several speakers set up around downtown. “And welcome to the third annual Sweet Briar Boll Weevil Parade! We’re here to celebrate the anticipation of healthy and fruitful cotton plants! First up, we have Edgar Snitt pulling a small float sponsored by his accounting firm. If you look closely, you can see Barbie and Ken figures inside tending to a roaring fire. It’s meant to represent farmers burning their crops back in 1914.”
I peered around the float in front of us, and sure enough, there was a tiny fire in the back that had begun to consume the white butcher’s paper decorating the sides of the wagon.
“Oh, dear,” the assistant said, then tsked. “Edgar’s town’s on fire. Wrong parade, Edgar! That’s in July, when we celebrate half the town burning down!”
The crowd clapped and cheered.
“Next up,” Annie Lee said, “we have the cheerleaders from Sweet Briar High School representing the Sweet Briar Suffragettes. Since there were only two suffragettes in Sweet Briar and we have six cheerleaders, the other four have taken up the roles of the other women who drove them out of town.”
What?
She announced several more equally bad floats and marchers, and then our float began to move. As it did, the giant boll weevil started walking toward me.
“And next we have the very loud Sweet Briar High School marching band,” Annie Lee announced, “playing a song written by our very own Sweet Briar High School band director, Woody Briar the seventh. Titled ‘Our Farm Is Now Bankrupt from Boll Weevils So I Might as Well Enlist to Fight the Germans in the Great World War before I Die from the Spanish Influenza’ . . . Oh, my,” she said as an aside, “that’s a long title. In any case, it was inspired by the fate of his uncle who was a descendant of one of our town’s founding fathers, Woody Briar the second.”
I hadn’t heard from Teddy since morning, and now that I hadn’t heard from Dixie too, I was well and truly worried. I still hadn’t figured out his part in all of this. Part of me was scared that he might be the new supplier, but I just couldn’t believe it. Teddy hated drugs and what they had done to Dixie.
I scanned the crowd, looking for the members of the Sweet Briar police force. I could see Luke farther down the street, standing on the corner where we would turn, and Willy was standing at the edge of the crowd about halfway down the street, but I didn’t see Cale, and I definitely didn’t see Dixie.
The thirty-five-member band was attempting to form the shape of a cotton plant while they marched down the street playing an off-key song that sounded like ragtime jazz.
Bill was walking beside the float, filming everything—me, Annie Lee’s monologue, the other floats. I wondered if he felt something was off too, but he seemed fine. Grinning, even. I could only imagine this would be gold for the reality show . . . Speaking of which, I saw Lauren and Karen half a block up standing with the rest of the crew.
Where was Dixie?
The float jerked as it picked up a little speed, and the racket of the band got louder again, probably to represent something terrible happening in the life of the band director’s uncle. The suffragettes began to do the jitterbug while the other cheerleaders chased after them down the street.
I started to wave to the crowd as we drove down Main Street, and the boll weevil inched closer still, stumbling on the cotton plants.
“I think you’re supposed to be waving,” I said.
But the boll weevil seemed more interested in reaching me.
I sidestepped a cotton plant and shifted toward the back of the float, still waving to the crowed.
The boll weevil kept advancing.
I sidestepped to the other side, not breaking form.
“And here’s the float for our guest of honor, Summer Butler, former teen star of Gotcha!, now a washed-up and bitter actress starring in a reality TV show filmed in our own Sweet Briar!”
I was proud of not reacting to being called washed up and bitter.
“Summer is portraying her ancestor Minny Baumgartner in her valiant yet hugely unsuccessful attempt to save her farm from boll weevils by running around trying to scare them away with her pockmarked face, the result of a smallpox epidemic that swept through the town five years earlier.”
Say what?
“But instead of running away, the boll weevils turned on her and consumed all the flesh on her body.”
The boll weevil seemed intent on catching me, and I realized this was part of “the show.” Annie Lee had forgotten to tell me.
I glanced down at Bill in bewilderment, preparing to tell him that boll weevils didn’t consume human flesh, when several giant boll weevils emerged from the doors of local businesses and ran through the crowds and into the street. The crowd shouted and laughed, and several small children began to scream and cry hysterically. The giant bugs threw out candy from the buckets slung over their arms.
The parade progressed down the two blocks, and I continued waving and evading the boll weevil, who had started to act frustrated. Then it occurred to me that maybe he was. She’d said Minny had been surrounded and then consumed by boll weevils. So I stood still as our float got to the end of the street before it started to turn the corner. (Thematically, it seemed the right time. The children didn’t need to see the whole flesh-consuming thing.)
The boll weevil grabbed my arm and held tight. “Once this float stops, you’re coming with me,” it said, and I realized it had Sebastian Jenkins’s voice.
I frantically searched the crowd for Luke, but he was busy breaking up an argument between two women on the sidewalk.
I supposed it was up to me to find a way out.
The float leaned as it turned the corner, and I took advantage of the opportunity. Jerking free from Sebastian’s hold, I elbowed him in the stomach and gave him a hard push off the float, the momentum nearly making me fall off with him.
“Oh!” Annie Lee’s voice echoed downtown. “Minny’s puttin’ up a fight!”
Sebastian fell to the ground, rolling around like a roly-poly, then got to his feet and took off running.
“Luke!” I shouted. “Luke!”
I finally caught his attention.
“The boll weevil is Sebastian Jenkins!”
But the other boll weevils had all followed.
“And all the boll weevils were chased out of town,” Annie Lee said as though she were finishing a bedtime story.
Luke took off running, and Willy joined him as they began to chase the boll weevils, who were heading in the opposite direction down Buttercup. It occurred to me that although I’d shoved Sebastian off the float, all the boll weevils had fallen in ranks around him, making it difficult to immediately see which one was Sebastian.
Which meant Sebastian had help. From who?
Mayor Sterling? He was in charge of the program, which made him the most likely culprit.
The parade continued despite the ruckus. I could see that Luke had tackled a boll weevil a half block down, and Willy had grabbed another before we turned onto Henry and headed past the police station.
“Would you look at Sweet Briar’s finest subduing the boll weevils?” Annie Lee asked with admiration in her voice. “I’m sure if Luke Montgomery had been the police chief back then, the Sweet Briar crops would have been saved!”
Several women catcalled.
The float came to a halt, and Bill reached up a hand, laughing. “Lauren’s bound to be pissed as hell we can’t reshoot the boll weevil falling off.”
I scanned the crowd again, taking advantage of the height, before I climbed down. “Cale said Dixie was down here, but I don’t see her anywhere.”
My phone vibrated in my hand, and I saw she’d just sent a text.
Found something for the case. Bring Bill to the Sweet Briar Cotton Mill. This is big. Don’t bring Luke. He’s in on the whole thing.
What? I couldn’t believe that.
I hopped off the float and showed the text to Bill.
His gaze jerked to mine. “Where’s the cotton mill?”
I pointed to the abandoned cotton mill halfway down the street and set back from the road.
Everyone in the parade in front of us had gone running back to Main Street to watch the giant Boll Weevil Crushing, which Annie Lee was now describing over the microphone. Apparently the crowd had joined the hunt, and there was quite a melee in progress.
“What do you want to do?” Bill asked. “Do you really think Luke’s part of it?”
“No.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“Why would Dixie say he was otherwise?” But part of me couldn’t help wondering if the text was really from my cousin.
“What do you want to do?” Bill asked.
I was torn. If Dixie hadn’t sent the text, then someone had her phone, and likely had her. But if Bill and I just showed up, we’d probably be walking into a trap. “Maybe we should wait for Luke.”
But even as I said the words, a new text arrived.
If you want to see Dixie alive, you and Bill come now. Come alone. The cotton mill.
The text was from the supplier’s number.
“Shit,” Bill said when he saw the text. “I bet you want to go.”
“You can stay behind and warn Luke.”
He gave me a shaky smile. “Think of the ratings.”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling like I was going to barf. “The ratings.”
Dixie’s text had said not to tell Luke, but I forwarded the text to Luke anyway as I started walking down the street to the mill, with Bill following behind me.
We walked across the overgrown lot toward the storage building about two hundred yards from the road, traipsing across the overgrown gravel parking. No one would think to look for us here. He’d chosen well.
I glanced down at my phone, surprised Luke hadn’t answered yet. Why hadn’t he answered yet?
The door to the building was ajar, and Bill and I hesitated in the opening before walking into the darkness. Dixie was counting on me. I had no doubt she’d come looking for me if our positions were reversed.
My eyes adjusted, and I saw a faint light at the end of the interior, coming from a partially open door.
“My camera won’t pick up anything in here,” Bill whispered.
“I’m going to turn on the video on my phone.”
“But if you get a text or call, you won’t be able to see it or respond.”
“I doubt our mystery person will let me make calls anyway.” I quickly had the video rolling.
We walked across the massive space, my heels clicking softly on the broken concrete. So much for surprising our host. When we reached the partially open door, I took a breath, then walked in, big as I pleased, torn between hoping I’d see Dixie and hoping I wouldn’t.
My heart sank.
Dixie sat in a rickety-looking wooden chair, with a handgun pointed at her head.
I gasped in horror, not only because my cousin was being held at gunpoint, but because Cale Malone was the man holding the weapon.