Deceived (A Hannah Smith Novel) (4 page)

After several hundred yards of zigzagging, I told Levi, “Hold tight!” because we were approaching a hole deep enough to hold water. It hadn’t rained for two weeks, so I expected the truck to bang hard and it did. Levi, still in a trance, seemed not to hear but awoke when his head banged the roof.

“Ooh-ee!” he said, which is the equivalent of
Ouch!
to a Southern child who had not progressed beyond the age of ten. Then his eyes widened and his head began to swivel, taking in details as if trying to figure out where we were.

“Tighten that seat belt,” I advised. “We’ve still got a quarter mile to go and there’s another big hole ahead.”

“No,” he said. “Stop!”

I couldn’t stop. Water might have killed the engine, so I spun the wheels and worked the clutch until we had cleared the second hole, Levi repeating, “No! . . . No! . . . No!” the whole time.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, when we’d reached a smooth stretch.

The poor man was terrified. “Can’t,” he said. “I want to go back.”

It had taken us twenty minutes to travel a few miles; the sun was now above the trees, which didn’t give me time to waste. “We will,” I said patiently. “Soon as I’m done with my business. We’ll stop at the marina, too, and I’ll buy you a bottle of pop. How’s that sound?”

“No!” Levi yelled, fighting with his seat belt.

I reached to comfort him by patting his arm, but that only scared the poor creature more. There was nothing I could do but sit and watch as he kicked open the door and took off, running. Not toward the main road either. He bolted into a thicket of buttonwood trees that signaled the beginning of mangroves where, a hundred years ago, the Helms family had homestead a piece of high ground on what had once been a cattle trail that led to the bay.

“Pay Day Road,” locals still called the shell lane. The name dated back to the 1990s when off-loading marijuana bales required a remote place that was hard to find by land or water.
Pot hauling
, as it was known, had saved some fishermen from going broke, had made a few others wealthy, but had spelled trouble for the Helms family, particularly their young children, who had learned the trade too early to save themselves.

I thought about getting out and calling to Levi but decided against it. The decision wasn’t purely selfishness, but my eagerness to get to Sanibel Island played a role. By truck, it was several miles to Sulfur Wells, but there was also an old horse trail through the backcountry that cut the distance in half. Walkin’ Levi would know the trail, so he’d probably be home long before me.

But what was it about Pay Day Road that had scared the poor man? The Helms family had once kept pit bulls, I remembered. Not fighting dogs—not since old Mr. Helms had died, anyway—but for protection.

Levi’s afraid of dogs,
I thought. Shy people who traveled on foot had every reason to fear pit bulls. It made sense.

Even so, I felt a creeping uneasiness that caused me to take a precaution. My cell phone showed only one bar, but it was enough to include a locator map when I messaged Marion Ford and another friend, Nathan Pace, who is a bodybuilder but a sweet man nonetheless.

Here checking on Loretta’s friend. Will text again in 30.

I signed the note
H4
, a signature I reserve for friends, and also to remind myself I’m the fourth Hannah Smith in my family, so have more reasons than most to be cautious. My great-great-grandmother—known as Big Six because of her height and strength—and my wild aunt, Hannah Three, had both come to violent ends due to their own recklessness and their poor judgment in men. The history inherited with my name, although I’ve never admitted it, is a secret reason I’m careful about dating. The fear that history repeats itself is silly and superstitious, I suppose, but I’m also aware that my own judgment is often less than perfect.

I sent the text, waited for the message to clear, then put the truck in gear.

Ahead, mangrove trees leaned in to form a tunnel that sprinkled sunlight on the windshield. The shell road became sand and showed tire tracks coming or going. Both maybe. Definitely fresh.

A UPS truck, I hoped, delivering the wig Loretta had mentioned.

The house where Rosanna Helms’s husband, Dwight, had been born, and where
his
mother had been born, resembled a tobacco barn on pilings that, for a hundred years, had been jettisoning the junk that now surrounded the place. Oil drums, trailers, crab traps, pieces of Mica’s Harley-Davidson scattered around a hot-water heater, rusting near a satellite dish, and a bicycle frame perched trophylike atop a sheen of glass fishing net—Crystal’s bike, I remembered the pink streamers.

Crystal and I had played in this yard as children. She had been a shy, big-boned girl who enjoyed Barbie dolls, which I’d tolerated out of boredom more than politeness. But she was also game enough to paddle a canoe I’d found in the mangroves, then patched with roofing tar. We had never been close, but childhood is a powerful link, so it felt strange to be here alone, an adult woman sent to check on a playmate’s mother, a mother who had chosen to live amid the wreckage of her own shattered family. I had never liked the feel of this place. I didn’t like being here now.

Like a few other outposts on the coast, the Helms property had prospered when commerce was conducted by water, but the first roads had bypassed it, and better roads had left it as isolated as an island, the acreage not worth much because it was the only high ground in a tract of mangroves now protected by law. Yet the house remained as I remembered, a resolute structure two floors high, wood black as creosote, with four small holes cut for windows and a fifth added for a door.

From the truck, I could see that the front door was open now, hanging lopsided on its hinges—unusual in a place where mosquitoes swarmed.

I considered getting out to check but was reluctant. Instead, I honked the horn to get attention, then honked again, expecting Mrs. Helms to appear in the doorway. She didn’t.

After another minute, I hollered out the window, “Miz Helms? It’s Hannah Smith!”

Overhead, an osprey whistled. A mosquito found my ear, whining the good news, while trees filtered a gust of wind, then clung to the silence that was my answer.

It made no sense. Rosanna Helms’s car was parked beneath the plywood shed—an old Cadillac as swaybacked as a horse but still hinting at the wealth her family had enjoyed during the pot-hauling years. She was a competent driver—better than Loretta, anyway—and had no trouble getting around. Unless the car wouldn’t start, which was possible considering its age and the years of abuse dealt to it by Pay Day Road.

I recalled the fresh tire tracks I’d seen on the way in. Maybe that explained the woman’s absence. Even so, the possibility didn’t excuse me from checking inside the house—but what about the pit bulls I remembered? They hadn’t come running at the sound of my truck, which suggested I had nothing to fear. On the other hand, the dogs could be a hundred yards away, where the shell road dead-ended, enjoying sunlight and water on the commercial-sized dock that had been rotting there since Dwight Helms had died—shot by drug dealers, most believed, even though the murder had never been solved.

No . . . it was safer, I decided, to try dialing again from my cell and hope the woman answered. At the very least, I would hear her phone ringing through the open door, which would have been a comfort because my mother had used the absence of an answering machine as evidence her friend was in trouble.

Twice I hit
Redial
before realizing the problem:
No service.
I moved the phone around, touched it to the windshield, even held it out the window, before finally giving up. No way around it, I had to go inside that house.

Please, God, don’t let Loretta be right about this.
That’s what I was thinking when I slid out of the truck and hurried across the yard to the porch. Every step, my eyes were moving, worried about those dogs. When I got to the door, I had something new to worry about. The door was leaning on its hinges because someone had used a crowbar to shear the doorknob off, then rip the dead bolt free of the framing.

No . . . not a crowbar, I saw when I looked closer. The door, which was plain but solid, had been split down the middle by a single blow, only weather stripping joining the two pieces.

An axe,
I thought.
A strong man with an axe did this.

I took a step back. Where was the man now? Where was the axe?

“Miz Helms!
Pinky!
Are you there?” I had never used the woman’s nickname before and embraced the absurd hope it would shock her into responding. It did not.

The house was as dark inside as it was outside, just as I remembered. Through the open doorway, in the shadows of the living room, I could see a mix of antique furniture and modern appliances, a wide-screen TV that was on but muted. A game show, one of my mother’s favorites, same with her bingo partners. A topic they squabbled about on the phone.

Eyes scanning the trees to my left, to my right, I backed to the porch railing and checked my cell. Still no service—but why was the Helmses’ satellite dish working?

Does it matter?

No, it did not. My brain was avoiding the real question, which was:
Should I bolt for the truck and
get help or go inside the house to see if Mrs. Helms was hurt?

What if it was Loretta in there?
my conscience argued.
Your own mother injured, maybe dying?
Then it asked a more painful question:
What if it was you thirty years from now? A helpless widow unable to cry out!

My pounding heart urged
Run! Get out of here now!
but I couldn’t do that. Why is the most difficult choice almost always the right choice in a tough situation? The good and decent person in me ignored a final reproach—
You have only yourself to blame!—
then took charge of the situation. I had to find a weapon. Something I could swing or throw to fend off a strong man carrying an axe.

Propped against the porch steps was a shovel I hadn’t noticed until now. It seemed a handy discovery until I hefted it and saw that the blade was soiled with dog feces. Which caused me to notice other unseen details in the yard: a bucket nearly empty of water; a galvanized chain clipped to a tree where the earth had been trotted into a circle; a second tree and another chain where there were mounds of dog spore fresh enough to draw bluebottle flies. Midway between the two dog runs was a cushion that had been shredded and a bone the size of a steer’s leg that had been gnawed in two.

My hands began to shake. I held the shovel tighter to steady them, then cleaned the blade by jamming it in the sand.
Pit bulls.
Mrs. Helms still owned pit bulls. She had lost her husband, Dwight, to drug dealers, and her children to drug dealing, but the progeny of the family’s dogs had survived it all.

Where were they?

Not in the house. I was certain of that—they would have charged me by now. Suddenly, the house seemed a safer choice than standing alone on the porch.

I slipped past the door and went inside.

•   •   •

MRS. HELMS
used snuff, Peach Blend,
which wasn’t uncommon for women her age. “Rubbing snuff,” Loretta calls the practice, and believes it relieves menstrual cramps and gives energy, which is why the odor was familiar when I entered the living room. But why so strong?

The muted television darkened the room, so I flicked the wall switch and my question was answered. A can of Peach Blend
lay open on the floor, the sweet tobacco spread on a shattered coffee table. Within easy reach was the woman’s vinyl recliner. The recliner had tumbled over backward hard enough to crack the wood floor, landing amid a litter of what looked like pamphlets. Glass from a china closet crunched beneath my feet—its walnut facing showed the divot from a single blow of an axe. Mrs. Helms had used a frozen orange juice can as a spittoon. It was there, too. Or was that sticky black mess beneath the can blood? I couldn’t be sure, and the possibility caused me to freeze for a moment.

A crime scene,
I thought.
Don’t touch anything.

I had finished three semesters toward my A.S. degree in law enforcement before Loretta’s stroke and had at least learned the basics. But then I ignored my own counsel by hurrying across the room to retrieve the telephone, which was also on the floor.

Nine-one-one. I hammered the buttons with an index finger. The signal tones suggested the phone was working, but it was dead when I put it to my ear. My god, Loretta had been right about the significance of no answering machine! I was already frightened, but this realization pushed me close to panic.

Pinky’s hurt, maybe dying!
my mother had said, or something similar. I couldn’t escape to the truck; not now, I couldn’t, because what my mother had feared might be true. I had to continue searching the house.

“Miz Helms! You here?” How unnerving it was to hear my own voice tainted by the coward that is in me. It caused me to take stock. I am an oversized woman, fitter and stronger than most. Poor, tiny Mrs. Helms was in her seventies, had survived family tragedies and cancer yet continued to live her life with a woman’s energy, still fussing over clothes and her looks. If an intruder was in this house, Mrs. Helms was the one who had a right to be frightened, not me!

I picked up the shovel, noticing the pamphlets when I knelt. Dozens of the things on glossy paper, all the same:

PRESERVE OUR HERITAGE
JOIN FISHERFOLK of SOUTH FLORIDA, Inc.

The words were printed in white over an old-timey photo of a pioneer woman stirring a cauldron. Below it was an architect’s drawing of a modern building—it appeared to be a museum.

A charity project,
I thought. Had I seen the same pamphlet among my mother’s magazines? If not, there was something similar, which was no surprise. Elderly women were easy targets for solicitors seeking donations. Loretta, because she was lonely, took every automated phone call just to hear a human voice. Same when a solicitor came to the door. Pinky Helms would have been no different. I dropped the pamphlet and continued on through the house, flicking on lights as I went.

In the hallway was a heavy metal floor lamp with twin globes, milky white, that came on when I hit the wall switch. The staircase to the second floor was there: wood beneath carpet worn bare by the passage of children and time. Crystal’s room was up there. Mica’s, too. Mica was three years younger but already taller than me when he entered middle school, and already smoking cigarettes and weed. By then, Crystal and I were strangers, separated by interests and school districts, since the village of Sulfur Wells was on the line that separated Sematee County from Lee County. I hadn’t been up those stairs in twenty years. I didn’t want to go up them now. Wasn’t it smarter to search Mrs. Helms’s bedroom first? A woman in her seventies, even if fleeing for her life, wasn’t likely to charge up the stairs.

There was a door, though, that separated the stairs from the rest of the house—typical of old houses that had been pieced together before air-conditioning. I knew the woman’s bedroom was somewhere off the kitchen, which meant I would have to open the door before continuing: a cheap door, painted green, with a white ceramic knob. I stood staring at it for several seconds, aware that the dread I felt was irrational. A man with an axe would have bashed the thing to pieces; at the very least, would not have closed a door behind him. But an elderly woman on the run
might
have.

A competent investigator searches buildings systematically, always clearing one room before proceeding to the next.

Textbook training from the degree I had failed to complete. Competence, I realized, could also be a handy excuse for cowardice.

I turned away from the door and went up the stairs, wood creaking beneath my weight with every slow step, my eyes focused on lace curtains white with sunlight at the top of the landing. They streamed with dust beams that pulled me forward as if on a tightrope while I used the shovel for balance. Even so, it was a clumsy weapon to carry. Halfway up, when I turned to glance behind me, the blade clunked against the banister so loudly, it startled me and I almost fell. Then I dropped the shovel, which made even more noise when it sledded down the stairs, banging each step like a cymbal.

To steady myself, I leaned against the wall, my heart pounding again. Should I retrieve the shovel? Or continue without it?

To postpone the decision, I used my voice again. “Anyone up there?” Then added a lie in case I had cornered an intruder. “The police are here! We’re worried about you, Miz Helms.”

The silence I expected was jolted by a new sound coming from outside the house; a distant noise that touched my ears as the random snaring of a drum. Then the sound deepened and took form, and I thought,
Barking dogs!
Dogs coming toward the house at a run; a slathering chorus I recognized from hunting with my Uncle Jake in the Everglades as a girl. It was the bellow of catch dogs that had picked up the scent and were on the heels of game.

Pit bulls. The Helms dogs had returned.

Dear god,
I thought, remembering:
You left the front door open!