Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

“Talk to him?”

“Come on.”

“Okay, Doddy.”

Charlie offered his hand, no bigger than a silver dollar, and Ransom, as he took it, saw in one clear flash how his day would have gone without this interruption. His stiffness left him, the engine began to gather speed.

Outside, he showed the man the rotten sill, explained his idea for a swale.

“Sounds good to me.”

“So how long do you think all this will take?”

“No more’n a couple hundred hours.”

Ran gave him a narrow smile. “So you’ll be done by lunch.”

“Most likely, if I skip my doughnut break.”

“Doesn’t look like it would do you major harm.”

“You sound like my wife.”

“Tell me about it, brother.” Ran grinned and held his palm out, and the man conceded a reluctant but good-natured five. “I have to drop my kids at school in Powatan and run a couple errands. I should be back before you leave.”

“I guess I’ll be here till you pay me.”

“Good, then I’ll catch up with you.”

Claire, sipping coffee, ran out the back door, her hair wet from the shower.

“I’ve got to run,” she said. “Give Mama a kiss.” She knelt and took it. “Later, dute.”

“Bye, Mama.”

“And you…”

Ran searched her face, but found no evidence of condemnation in the look she gave him, which was full of coded messages suspended in a medium of suppressed hilarity. “You were in rare form last night, Hill.”

“So were you, madame.”

She made a pleasant little smirk, and Ran felt his whole day turn the corner. He went in and made the children breakfast; he got them in the car and drove them into town. The process went more smoothly than before, except for the logistics of the T-Bird. Remembering Claire’s complaint, he pulled into a used-car lot.

An aged salesman with an unapologetic see-through silver pompadour strolled out and whistled. “Nice car—a ’55?”

“Fifty-six.”

“Always wanted one of them,” he said as he did the walkaround. Dressed in the manner of an old-fashioned country dandy, in madras slacks, he had the air of one who’d been a ladies’ man and was under no interior compulsion to get over it. “I don’t suppose you want to sell her.”

“I was thinking of a trade,” said Ran. “Something for the wife and kids.”

“There’s your vehicle right there.” Old Silver pointed to a Honda Odyssey two shades darker than his mane.

“A minivan?” Ran asked skeptically. “I don’t know, padre. I’m not sure my self-esteem and a minivan could coexist in the same universe.”

“That ain’t your father’s minivan, my friend,” said the dealer, taking a quick read of the customer and demonstrating no mean grasp of human nature. “It’s got leather, two automatic sliding doors”—he prompted one, and Ran looked in—“fold-down seats for cargo. And check this out.” He flipped down a rooftop screen.

“A TV, too?” said Ransom, warming.

“That ain’t just a TV, brother. That’s a DVD.”

“No kidding?” Knowing it was wiser to play coy, Ran, unable to, smiled and stroked his chin.

“She’s sweet, my brother. Plus, I’ll throw in five free DVDs.”

Ransom laughed. “Like that’s really gonna seal the deal.”

“It has before,” the old man said.

“Does that include The Lion King?”

The salesman looked nonplussed, but only temporarily. “If it ain’t, we’ll put it on the list.”

Ran held out his hand and grinned.

Afterward, he picked up his prescription, bought a Coke and downed his pills right there, then let the nurse at Claire’s OB draw blood. By the time he started back to Wando Passo, surrounded by the new-car smell, Ran felt righteous, he felt good. His former mood had vanished like the shadow of a cloud that touches you and passes on. As he drove the Odyssey, Ran began to feel himself settling in, becoming grounded. Through the windshield, he saw the day he would have had in New York in his cab; saw, beside it, the day he now had ahead of him to live…thanks to Charlie’s little interruption, thanks to Claire’s remark and pleasant smirk. Selling his father’s T-Bird somehow capped the deal, like surrendering some old baggage he didn’t have to carry anymore. In New York his depression would have gone on, gathering momentum as it went; here that hadn’t happened. And that had been what Nemo lost, what made him a vengeful monster, scarcely human anymore—Captain Nemo lost his family and his wife. Now Ran saw it all. By the time he got back to Wando Passo, the sun was peeking through the overcast. It seemed worth fighting after all.

When he pulled into the allée, however, there beside the excavator’s dump truck and trailer were six police cars parked haphazardly with flashing lights. As he pulled into the gravel turnaround in back, he could see the yellow backhoe idling, a tangle of roots and mounded earth in the toothed bucket. Under it stood Sergeant Thomason, conferring with the excavator.

They both turned and watched as Ransom parked and got out of the car.

“Mr. Hill,” said Thomason.

“We meet again,” said Ran. “What’s going on?”

Thomason nodded down into the grave-shaped trench, which had appeared where the former periwinkle patch had been.

Looking up at Ran as though his long-awaited hour had finally come, Officer Johnson lifted a blue plastic tarp. Beneath it, an intact skeleton lay beside a second set of remains the backhoe had disturbed. Ran recognized a pelvis, a string of vertebrae, what looked like a human femur bone.

“Doc?” Thomason called to a gray-haired man in an unkempt suit, squatting on his hams at the far end of the trench, studying something Ransom couldn’t see. “Doc Sneeden?”

“Umm,” the ME said perfunctorily. Only as he turned did Ransom see the second, larger skull he held. In it was a dime-sized hole with fracture lines radiating out like rays from a black sun. He shook it by his ear and something rattled.

“What the hell is that?” said Ran.

“Let’s take a look,” said the ME. Unhinging the jaw, he reached into the mouth and took out a small black pellet. “Birdshot. Looks like number 8.”

“This here’s Mr. Hill, Doc,” Thomason said. “The homeowner?”

Remembering his manners, Sneeden hurriedly removed