"The Grim Reaper's Dance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clemens Judy)

Chapter Seven

“Cute kids.” The guitar was gone, but Death still hummed the last tune from Martin’s iPod.

“Cute and confusing,” Casey said. “Who ever heard of kids who sneak out to eat baked goods?”

Death laughed. “I like it.”

“So do I. I like them.” She rolled up from her burlap bed and began her morning stretches. From the height of the sun it was at least mid-morning. The kids had left somewhere around five, after hours of talking—among themselves, since Casey wouldn’t answer any more of their questions—and dancing to Martin’s iPod, and it had taken Casey ages to get to sleep after that. She was surprised she’d been able to sleep at all; at least Death hadn’t felt it necessary to wake her every two hours, like the night before. “You knew they were going to come.”

Death grinned. “They were here night before last, eating those blueberry muffins they talked about. I would have taken one if I could have, but that would’ve been breaking the rules.”

“What rules? You have rules?”

Death shrugged. “They change on a regular basis. That night I didn’t want to scare the kiddies. Anyhow, this group could be helpful. They’re smart, well, except for the tall one, and they’re well-connected. I mean, that Goth girl’s family owns all this.” Death gestured to the shed.

“Yeah,” Casey said. “Real helpful.”

“Just you wait. You’ll see.”

Casey stretched her arms to the ceiling, hearing her joints crack.

“So.” Death jumped up beside her. “What’s on the agenda for today other than your boring kata?”

Casey took a deep breath. “Other things you’ll find equally dull. You might as well go back to wherever you go when you’re not bothering me. Don’t you have some people to go transport on your little boat?”

“I don’t have a boat. And if I did, it wouldn’t be little.”

“So all of those stories about you rowing dead people across the river Styx?”

“Complete bunk. I hate water.” Death gave a shudder. “Bad experience when I was young.”

Casey dropped her hands. “You were young?”

“What? Do I look that bad?”

Casey laughed and began her sit-ups.

“You know,” Death said. “You really aren’t very nice to me.”

Casey counted under her breath.

“You treat me like I wanted to take your husband and son.”

Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.

“The accident wasn’t my fault, remember. I just came when I was called.”

Twenty. Twenty-One. Twenty-Two.

“Fine. Ignore me. I’ll be back when you’re ready to be friendly.”

Casey squeezed her eyes shut. When she counted to two hundred, she opened them. Death was gone.

Casey went through a set of hapkido forms and took a long drink from the pump. She could hear tractors in the distance, but couldn’t see anything other than clouds of dust billowing into the sky. After washing her face she went back into the shed to consider how she might be able to get in contact with either Wendell or Davey. She’d have to be careful. As she’d said to Death, getting in touch with those guys so soon after they’d been involved with the police wasn’t ideal, but Casey needed to know what had happened. Had they turned her in? Had they gotten in trouble? Were the guys she’d knocked out—or Gun Man—in custody?

While Casey considered her options, she took out Evan’s photos and studied them, memorizing faces. If she ran across any of the people, she wanted to know it. She could put names to these faces, with Evan’s notes, but wouldn’t recognize the drivers on the manifests.

The sound of a vehicle coming up the lane broke into her thoughts, and she shoved the photos back into the bag, rolled up her makeshift bed, and stashed them both in one of the five-gallon buckets. She darted to the corner closest to the opening of the door and eased into it, waiting.

Gravel popped under the tires of the vehicle as it slowed and then stopped. A door opened and shut, and Casey balanced herself, her weight on her back foot.

“Hello?” Bailey stuck her head in the door, her dark hair and pale skin even more disconcerting in the daylight. Her lips were painted as black as her hair, and her eyes stood out between thick liner.

“Oh.” Casey relaxed and stepped out from the corner. “Bailey.”

“Hey.” Bailey looked around at the shed, toward the space where Casey had been sleeping. “Where’s your stuff?”

“I didn’t know who was coming.”

“So you cleaned it up.” Bailey assessed her. “You don’t take any chances, do you?”

“I try not to.”

“Dad let me drive the car to school today. He and Mom are both at work. I thought you might want a shower. And maybe some real food.”

“Bailey, you don’t have to—”

“Come on. If you’re going to be sticking around you might as well not stink.” She grinned. “My sister’s at college, and she left some clothes. Mom won’t notice if they’re gone.”

“Just like they don’t miss you at night?”

Bailey laughed. “Exactly.”

“And doesn’t anybody miss you during the day? Like your teachers?”

Bailey shrugged. “I called in. Said I was my mom, and that my daughter wasn’t feeling well today.”

“Bailey, you shouldn’t—”

“Hey. My choice. Don’t give me a lecture.”

Casey shut up and retrieved her bag from the bucket, following Bailey to a blue Honda Accord. “Won’t you draw attention to the shed by driving back here?”

“Nah. I checked the fields before I turned in the lane. No one’s within a couple miles.”

Casey walked around to the passenger door and hesitated. Just being in the vicinity of another car made her heart race. She closed her eyes, concentrating on her breathing.

“You all right?” Bailey looked at her over the top of the car.

“It’s just, the accident, you know, it makes me—”

“Freak out? Sure, I get it. I thought about bringing bikes, but there’s no way to ride one and pull another one, so—”

“It’s fine. I’ll get in in a minute.” Casey gritted her teeth, and opened the door.

Bailey kept up the chatter the whole way into town, and had the radio turned to a top forty station so loudly she had to raise her voice. “You like pancakes? I make good pancakes. Sausage, too. Or we have that bacon that’s already cooked and you just have to warm it up. Or I could make eggs. Or cereal. We’ve got lots of that. How about toast? You could have cinnamon toast. Unless you want lunch? It is about lunchtime, actually, so we could have that. You want to stop at McDonalds? Or Taco Bell? Or maybe you’d rather have something from the house? I can make mac and cheese, or we have leftovers from last night. Lasagna. Or a sandwich. We have all the stuff to make sandwiches. Even that Amish Baby Swiss cheese.”

Casey’s stomach rumbled, whether from excitement or apprehension, she wasn’t sure. The long list of food was rather overwhelming, as was the volume at which it was delivered.

Bailey suddenly stopped talking and pulled a cell phone out of her pocket. She slid it open and began punching keys at a rate faster than Casey could keep track of. Casey prayed silently that nothing would pull out in front of them, and that Bailey could keep at least one eye on the road.

Bailey closed her phone and set it on the seat beside her. “Martin. Wondered if I’d picked you up yet.”

“He knows?”

“Sure. They all do. Martin and Johnny wanted to come, but I thought that would look weird, if we were all gone.”

“Sheryl probably thought you shouldn’t come.”

“Yeah, well, she’s got her reasons.”

Bailey’s phone buzzed again, and she snatched it up, laughing. “Martin says he looks forward to seeing how well you clean up.”

Casey hoped she lived long enough to do it. Weren’t there laws about this sort of thing? That you needed to actually pay attention to the road while driving?

Besides fearing for her life, Casey kept her eye out for traffic, thinking that in her present state she would be a source of interest, even if people didn’t recognize her. They might also wonder why a school-age girl wasn’t actually in school, but there was nothing she could do about that. She pulled down the sun visor to get at the mirror behind it, and blanched at the sight of her hair and face. The fact that Death was now in the back seat didn’t faze her. The fact that the rest of the seat was filled with bagpipes was a little more disturbing.

“You keep asking to die,” Death said. “What better chance do you have than with a teenage girl who texts while she drives?”

Casey blew her bangs off her forehead and ran her fingers through the rest of her hair, wincing at Death’s blast on the bagpipes, which sounded like a dying whale.

Bailey glanced over, then reached into the back seat, putting her hand right through Death’s leg and scrabbling around where the bagpipes lay. Casey clutched the dashboard as the car swerved dangerously toward the side of the road.

“Here.” Bailey tossed a baseball cap into Casey’s lap. “You can wear this till you get inside.” She looked at her fingers, clenching them into a fist and blowing on them.

Rather than a ball team, the cap advertised a seed company. “You wear this often?”

Bailey wrinkled her nose. “It’s Dad’s. He has tons of them. Guys from the different places give him free stuff all the time, so we’ve got more crap than we know what to do with. Hats, pens, tablets, money clips—like who uses those—even T-shirts. Not that I wear them.”

Casey pushed back her hair and put on the hat. Not great, but at least a little improvement.

“Niiiiice,” Death said, giving Casey a thumbs up in the mirror.

Casey flipped up the visor.

“That’s our place,” Bailey said, turning a corner. “White farmhouse down there.” She pointed to a homestead about a quarter of a mile ahead.

“And all of this is your land?”

“A lot of it. We own over a thousand acres, and work about nine thousand more.”

“That’s a lot of land. It must take forever to farm it all.”

“It’s what Dad does. And with the new farm equipment nowadays it doesn’t take all that long. Now, you might want to get down. We’ve got some guys who work for us, and unless you want to get me in trouble you’d better stay out of sight.”

“Won’t you be in trouble if they see you, anyway?”

“They’ll probably just think it’s my dad, coming home for lunch. They don’t always know where he is. Stop worrying.”

Casey hunched over in the seat, scooting down low into the leg area of the passenger seat and ducking her head as far as she could.

“This is fun.” Death sat in the passenger seat, feet up on the dashboard, above Casey. “Think we could do this more often?”

Bailey pulled into the long driveway, driving faster than Casey liked, bumping Casey’s head up into Death’s legs. She was thankful she was wearing a hat. Bailey lurched to a stop, opened the electric garage door, and pulled in. “Stay down.”

The garage door made its slow descent, ending with a quiet clunk.

“Okay,” Bailey said. “You can get up now.”

Death had already moved, so Casey unfolded from her position and climbed out of the car. She bent over, hands toward the floor, stretching her back.

“You okay?” Bailey stopped halfway to the door to the house.

Casey straightened and forced a smile. “I’m fine.” She grabbed her bag of information and followed Bailey into the house, stopping just inside the door. This place was not just a “farmhouse,” as Bailey had said. It was a state-of-the-art home, beginning with the kitchen into which they’d come. Stainless steel appliances shone in the brightly lit room—skylights and windows were everywhere—and the floor looked like original tile work, as did the counter top. Rows of expensive pots hung from hooks above a cooking island, and the tops of the custom cabinets were lined with cut glass bowls.

“Wow,” Death said. “So much for the idea that farmers are back-woods.”

Bailey dropped her purse onto the glass kitchen table. “Shower first, or food?”

No contest.

Death watched as Casey stashed her bag under a pile of towels in the bathroom’s sink cabinet. “I’ll guard your stuff.”

“Oh, great. And how will you respond if Bailey comes in and looks around? Chill her to death?”

“No.” Death’s voice held exaggerated patience. “I’ll tell you.”

“Oh.” Casey slid off the ball cap and waited.

“What?”

“Can you at least turn around?”

With rolling eyes Death spun toward the wall. “You are so sensitive these days. Are you having body-image issues?”

Casey pulled off her bloody sweatshirt. “I’m not— Never mind. How about you just pretend to respect my privacy?”

“Whatever. Maybe I’ll just go see what your little friend is doing, instead.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Casey watched Death walk through the closed bathroom door before she stepped into the shower. She stood under the steaming water for a long time, shampooing her hair twice and scrubbing her body roughly with the washcloth. The cut on her shoulder looked a little better than the day before, even with it re-opening after Davey’s. The cleaning at the hospital had done wonders.

By the time she was done, her skin felt raw, and after patting it dry she slathered it with the scented body lotion on the counter. She rooted through the cupboard and found a large Band-Aid for her shoulder, and even some of that sticky wrap-around gauze. Finally, she pulled on Bailey’s sister’s clothes, which fit remarkably well, except for the length in the jeans; she was obviously taller than Casey, so Casey simply rolled up the hems.

“Feel better?” Bailey asked when Casey rejoined her in the kitchen.

“Much. Thank you.” Casey put her bag of papers under her chair.

Death was nowhere to be seen.

Bailey stuck a grape in her mouth. “No problem. Heather’s clothes fit you all right, huh? Hope you don’t mind pink. That’s pretty much all she owns.”

Pink wasn’t, in fact, one of Casey favorites, but she wasn’t about to complain. “What can I do with these?” She held out her old clothes.

Bailey wrinkled her nose. “Burning barrel. Here.” She rummaged under the sink and held out a grocery bag, into which Casey stuffed the clothes. “I’ll take them out while you’re eating.”

“It sure smells good in here.”

Bailey brightened. “Spaghetti. Sounded good to me, so I hope you like it.”

It took a few minutes for Bailey to finish cooking, so Casey picked up the newspaper, which sat on the counter. Nothing on the front page about the accident or Wainwrights’ Scrap Metal, but page three held a little of both. Investigators Unsure of Accident’s Cause, one article said, and explained that it was a mystery as to why the construction vehicles were on the road. It described Casey’s appearance and reiterated that she was wanted for questioning, as were a group of men who had been at the accident site.

Yeah, well, good luck finding them, Casey thought. Or me.

But there was more.

“It was so strange,” Bethany Briggs said to reporters at the crash site. “I stopped to help, and the woman had a man in a headlock. She let go when I arrived, and pushed him out of the way. I don’t know what she was doing, but I guess she was in shock. I mean, why else would she be wrestling with someone right after being in an accident?”

Casey rubbed a hand across her eyes. She’d forgotten about her Good Samaritan in the bright red suit, and hoped she wasn’t going to become a problem. There wasn’t anything more from Ms. Briggs in the piece; just the usual stuff about law enforcement keeping the public up-to-date.

She looked at the next article.

When David Wainwright, owner of Wainwright Scrap Metal and Recycling, heard his dog barking, he didn’t think much of it until he saw the men on his property. “They just showed up,” he said. “I don’t know what they were doing there.”

Wainwright and Wendell Harmon, a mechanic visiting the office, looked outside in time to see the two men confronted by a third, who immediately attacked the other two.

“He just went crazy,” Harmon said. “We couldn’t hear anything they were saying, and we weren’t about to go outside. Instead, we called 911.”

Wainwright, Harmon, and Rachel Inskeep, the scrap yard’s secretary, watched from safety as the third man incapacitated the other two.

“As soon as we heard sirens,” Harmon said, “the man took off.”

The two men, whose names are yet to be released, were taken to the local hospital, where they remain under a physician’s care. Police are waiting to question them further.

Casey set down the paper. The men and Rachel had completely covered for her.

“Ta da!” Bailey set a steaming bowl of pasta on the table, dumped a bag of salad into a bowl, sliced some bread, and set out the grapes. While Casey filled her plate, Bailey took the bag of clothes outside. Casey dove into the food, pushing aside her anxiety. Bailey soon came back and ate her share, as well.

When they were done, Bailey put away the leftovers while Casey placed the dirty dishes in the high-efficiency dishwasher. Bailey wiped the table and threw the dishrag into the sink.

“Ask for a tour.” Death’s breath was cold in Casey’s ear. “You’ll find something interesting.

Casey raised her eyebrows and mouthed, what is it?

“Ask,” Death said.

“So,” Casey said. “Any chance I could get a tour?”

Bailey shrugged. “Sure.”

She took Casey through the sunroom, the den, the living room, the rec room, the master bedroom and bath—which were large enough to comfortably serve an entire family—and the entertainment room, which housed an enormous flat-screen TV and surround sound. In each room Casey looked to Death, who hung back with crossed arms, head shaking “no.” Finally, they stood in front of a closed wooden door, and Death’s face became more animated.

“Dad’s office,” Bailey said, and swung open the door.

Casey gasped. All of those corner offices shown in movies or talked about in business circles, had nothing on this place. Bookshelves lined what walls weren’t taken up by floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on miles of golden grain. Thick carpet lay under Casey’s stockinged feet, and colorful artwork dotted the room—paintings, sculptures, even a quilt over the back of an antique sofa. A fireplace with dark red brick sat cold and clean along the far side of the room, with two comfortable—and beautiful—chairs in front of it.

“Does your father spend a lot of time in here?”

“Not most of the year. During the winter he’ll use it, but the rest of the time he’s too busy. He doesn’t believe in hiring other people to do work he can do himself.”

Casey wandered to a table that displayed an array of photographs and thought of Evan’s family picture, which she’d transferred from her old clothes to the pocket of the jeans she was now wearing. On the table were pictures of Bailey’s family throughout the years—as evidenced by Bailey’s changing form and style, as well as her sister’s—photos of dogs, and one of Bailey’s father with another man, standing beside a tractor.

“My grandpa,” Bailey said. “Dad took over the farm from him. He died a few years ago.”

Casey didn’t hear the sadness she would acquaint with losing a grandparent, and Bailey’s face showed nothing. “You weren’t close to him?”

Bailey shrugged. “He worked all the time. I didn’t see him much. Kinda like Mom and Dad.”

“Who’s this?” Casey pointed to a photo of Bailey’s dad with a group of men, sitting around a table at a restaurant.

“Dad’s friends. Other farmers. Dad’s known them forever. That picture was taken ages ago, like, five years.”

Casey took a closer look, then sent a shocked glance toward Death, who sat smugly with a hip hitched up on the big desk. Sitting just two chairs away from Bailey’s dad in the photo was one of the men from Evan’s pack of pictures.