The Girl from Felony Bay Read online

  “I’ve got an idea,” I told Bee, after I’d thought it through as well as I could. There was at least one place that was open, where we would be safe until it was time to go down to Custis’s office. Also there was something I needed to do there, and I had to do it before we went any farther.

  We headed out from behind the building, trusting our luck to hold just a little longer. There were only three blocks to go, and I knew a way to stay off the street for at least one of them.

  We made it to the end of the first block, then turned into one of the Medical University parking lots. Lucky for us, the booths where the money collectors sat were dark because it was still too early for anyone to be on duty. Just as I hoped, Clem was heavy enough to make a ticket pop out of the machine when I walked him forward. I told Bee to get Timmy beside me; then I took the ticket and we rode through when the gate went up.

  At the far end of the lot a sidewalk led to the center of the Medical University campus. We followed it and rode across the big, deserted Medical University green and out to the road on the other side.

  Now there was only one short block to go. As we trotted down the deserted street, the clopping of the horses’ hooves seemed terribly loud. Every second, I expected to hear the screech of tires or see Uncle Charlie’s black pickup come sliding around the corner after us, but we made it to the high wrought-iron fence that surrounded Miss Walker’s School for Girls without getting caught.

  “Are we going in there?” Bee asked, when I slid off Clem’s back and walked up to the gate.

  As I looked through the fence at my old school with its old buildings, broad green lawns, and large fishpond with water lilies and fountain, I nodded. “If they haven’t changed the combination on the electric lock.”

  They hadn’t changed the combination even once in the seven years I had gone there, so I figured there was a pretty good chance that they still hadn’t. I held my breath and punched in the old code. As soon as I did, I heard the magnetic lock snap, and I shoved the gate open.

  We led the horses inside, took off Timmy’s saddle and blanket and both bridles, and stuffed them in a sheltered spot. The horses took long drinks from the fishpond, then started grazing, seeming quite comfortable in their new surroundings.

  Since school was out for the summer, I didn’t think anybody would be coming onto campus for a while, and I hoped that when they did, they wouldn’t be too angry to discover the horses. I would try to explain things later.

  Bee and I went back out the gate, looked down the block to make sure no black pickups were coming, then trotted across the street and retraced our steps to the Medical University Hospital. Inside the hospital lobby, we headed straight for the elevators, but the guard at the information desk called out to us.

  “Young ladies, it’s six o’clock in the morning. You’re about three hours early for visiting patients.”

  “We’re going to see our father,” I told him.

  The guard eyed us as if he didn’t believe me. “What room is your father in?”

  “Six thirty-two,” I said. “Rutledge Covington Force.”

  The guard punched in my father’s name on his keyboard and checked the name and room number. “Okaaay,” he said, drawing the word out long. “Still pretty early if you ask me. There some reason you can’t wait for normal visiting hours?”

  “We have to go out of town. Our flight leaves in a couple hours, and we won’t be back for a week. We promised we’d visit before we left.”

  He looked back and forth between us as he thought it over. Finally he waved his hand and told us to go on. As we walked toward the elevator, I heard him mutter to himself about how some people today just let their kids run around like wild animals.

  If he only knew the truth, I thought.

  Twenty-two

  About two minutes later, we walked off the elevator onto the sixth floor and went to the locked door, where I rang the buzzer. After several seconds a startled-looking nurse came down the corridor and squinted through the glass at us a moment before opening the door.

  “What are you girls doing here?” she asked, glancing down at her wristwatch. “Do you know what time it is?”

  I’d never seen this nurse on the day shift, so I didn’t recognize her, and she certainly didn’t recognize me. “We’re Rutledge Covington Force’s daughters,” I said.

  “Both of you?”

  Bee gave her a very pretty smile. “Yes, ma’am. I’m adopted.”

  “Oh,” the nurse said. “Of course. You’re here to see your father?”

  “We have to fly out of town in just a short time,” Bee said, smoothly picking up the lie. “We promised ourselves that we would come in to visit him before we left.”

  “Okay,” the nurse said. She still seemed confused, but she wasn’t fighting us. “Go on in.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Bee said, smiling and using her best Southern manners.

  The nurse got that brain-dead smile adults so often do when kids throw in lots of syrupy sirs and ma’ams.

  Having no time to waste on greetings, I went straight to Daddy’s bed, sat down on the side, and took his hand the way I always did. Then I sucked down a deep breath.

  “Daddy,” I said in a soft voice, “I have to tell you some important things. I’ve been telling you lies for a long time now. You’ve been asleep ever since last August, when you fell down in your library and cracked your head. I’ve been afraid if I told you the truth about what’s happened since then, you wouldn’t ever want to wake up. But now things are pretty bad, and I think it’s time to tell you.

  “When I found you and called the ambulance, the police came to the house. There was a bunch of jewelry and stuff that had spilled out of a hiding place in the ceiling, and so when the ambulance people took you to the hospital, the police collected the jewelry and looked all around the house.

  “Later on they said you’d taken all the gold and jewelry that Miss Jenkins used to keep in her safe, and . . .” I stopped. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I swear I felt that Daddy wasn’t in that same deep sleep he’d been in for the past nine months. For some reason I was convinced he was really trying to listen to me.

  “So anyway, Miss Jenkins had to be paid back, and Mr. Barrett said the only way to do it was to sell Reward. So that’s what happened. It got sold last February. The good news is that the new owners’ name is also Force. Their ancestors used to be slaves on the plantation. I know if you can hear me you’re sad that Reward was sold, but you’re glad about who’s living there now.

  “My new best friend is Bee Force. She’s the daughter of the owner. She’s twelve, and she’s right here in the room with me. And the reason we’re here is that we had to run away from Reward tonight because we discovered something really bad.”

  Over the next couple of minutes, everything I’d been holding back, all the rest of the story, came pouring out. I told Daddy how the Felony Bay property had been sold separately from the rest of the plantation and how Uncle Charlie, Ruth, and Bubba Simmons had buried their old chest after midnight and then chased us and kept us from getting back to the big house to tell Bee’s grandmother what we had seen. I told how we had ridden horses from Reward into Charleston and how we were hiding out until we could get ahold of Custis and tell him everything that had happened.

  I finally stopped talking. Daddy had gone so still that it frightened me. I couldn’t tell whether I’d done a good thing or a terrible thing by confessing.

  “I’m sorry if I told you too much,” I said, fighting back the tears that were trying to burn their way out of my eyes. Right then, I was afraid I had just made everything worse, maybe much worse. Only I didn’t think I’d had any choice.

  “I really, really need you to wake up,” I told Daddy. “I really need you to help me figure out what we should do.”

  We stayed in Daddy’s room until eight thirty. Neither of us had eaten since dinner the night before, and we had no money to go to the cafeteria. We sat there with our st
omachs growling like angry dogs, taking drinks of water from the tap in the bathroom. We both jumped every time the door opened and one of the nurses came in to check on Daddy, because each time we expected it to be Uncle Charlie.

  Bee kept looking at her watch. “Don’t you think I should call Grandma Em?” she asked. “She’s going to be worried sick when she realizes I’m gone.”

  “Okay, but you can’t tell her where we are. She’s going to want to come get us, but first we need to talk to Mr. Barrett or Custis.”

  She promised and went into the hall to borrow a cell phone from one of the nurses. She came back a minute later with a worried look.

  “That’s weird,” she said. “There’s a recording when I call the house that says the phone is out of order.”

  “Did you call her cell?”

  “It doesn’t work at the house.”

  “Maybe she’s sleeping late,” I offered, hoping it was true.

  Bee shook her head. “What if she heard something last night and realized that I’d snuck out? What if she went out to find me, and Uncle Charlie did something to her?”

  I shook my head, but it was mostly instinct. I didn’t want to admit that Uncle Charlie would do something really terrible like kidnapping an innocent old lady. But then I thought about what he had tried to do to us in the past few hours . . . and also how Deputy Simmons had wanted to use his gun to try to shoot us when he couldn’t find us. Uncle Charlie only stopped him because he’d been afraid the sound would carry.

  “I hope he didn’t,” I said after a few seconds.

  We stood there and looked at each other. “You want to call the police?” I asked after a long silence.

  “Like they’re going to believe me when some sheriff says I’m a liar.” Bee gave a helpless shrug.

  I glanced at my watch. I was feeling terrible guilt about what might have happened to Grandma Em, but I knew we needed to stay focused. “It’s eight forty-five. Let’s go find Mr. Barrett or Custis.”

  I looked at Daddy one last time. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like he was having a dream in which somebody was telling him something he didn’t want to hear.

  “Good-bye, Daddy,” I said. “Sorry to have to tell you so much bad news.”

  Out in the hallway, I stopped to tell the nurses how Daddy looked different, and they promised they would have the doctor check on him as soon as he came up for his rounds.

  “I think he may be waking up,” I insisted.

  They nodded, but I could tell they didn’t believe me.

  “Would you at least call Mr. Barrett or Custis Pettigrew? Promise me you’ll do that if he looks like he’s waking up? They’re his friends, and they’ll come in and talk to him and help him. Will you do that?”

  They promised they would check on him every few minutes, and if it looked like there was any change in his condition, they would call them. I thanked the nurses, and Bee and I said good-bye, then headed out the locked door that led to the elevators.

  The hallway was deserted as I pushed the Down button. The elevator came a few seconds later, and the doors opened. It was empty, and Bee and I started to move inside, but then we came to a dead halt.

  “Squib!” said a familiar voice from very close behind us. “I thought you might be here.”

  Twenty-three

  I spun around in terror and looked back at where the men’s room door was swinging closed. Uncle Charlie was just a foot away. There was no place to run and no one to call for help. I sucked down a deep breath, ready to scream my head off, but he grabbed me and slapped a hand over my mouth. I flailed with my elbows and tried to kick him, but he was way too strong. Bee made a move toward him, but he held up a hand and pointed at her.

  “We’ve got Grandma Em,” he said in a harsh whisper. “If either of you makes a peep, something terrible’s gonna happen to her.”

  I was hoping Bee would run away screaming, but she was utterly frozen. Uncle Charlie’s threat had done its trick. Bee wasn’t going to risk anything happening to Grandma Em.

  The elevator doors started to close, but Uncle Charlie muscled us into the empty car before they did. He hit the button for the first floor, then shoved me into the back wall of the elevator.

  “I’m not jokin’, Squib. One word, one single word outta either one of you, and the old lady is gonna get hurt.” He glanced at Bee, whose terror was written across her face. “Understand?”

  Bee nodded right away, and Uncle Charlie looked at me. His eyes were red from staying up all night, but there was enough meanness in them so I was afraid that for once he wasn’t just being a big bag of wind. I was as scared and angry as I had ever been.

  Time seemed to stand still for the next few seconds, and everything seemed totally unreal. I didn’t scream or try to slug Uncle Charlie or hit the emergency Stop button, even though I wanted to do all three of them at once. Instead I looked at Bee. The fear in her face was terrible to see, and I realized that having lost her mother and brother, there was no way she could survive losing Grandma Em. So I just stood there and let Uncle Charlie think he had won. Which wasn’t hard, seeing as I had no idea how we were going to get out of this one.

  The elevator finally came to a stop, and the doors opened. Uncle Charlie took a tight grip on each of our arms and started to steer us out, but someone in a wheelchair was blocking our way. It took me a second or two to realize that I’d stepped right in front of Miss Lydia Jenkins. I couldn’t believe I was seeing her again, in the same place, twice in one week. Behind Miss Jenkins, five or six other people were also waiting to get into the elevator, including Esther Simmons.

  “Remember what I told you,” Uncle Charlie whispered.

  In that moment before everyone started to move to let us off the elevator, Miss Jenkins and I locked eyes. Right away she started doing the same thing she had done the last time I’d seen her, moving her head back and forth, struggling, and keeping me pinned in place with her eyes.

  Esther Simmons turned Miss Jenkins’s wheelchair slightly, and I felt Uncle Charlie start to steer me out of the elevator. Before I could step clear, Miss Jenkins’s hand shot out, just like the last time, and she grabbed my wrist.

  Uncle Charlie tried to force me to take a step, but Miss Jenkins’s grip was strong for such an old lady. The harder Uncle Charlie tried to pull me, the harder Miss Jenkins squeezed. Just like the last time, Miss Jenkins’s eyes were intense and jumpy, but there was something different in them, too. I realized that her eyes were trying to tell me something that she couldn’t express any other way.

  As Charlie jerked me harder, her lips started to tremble. “Ddddddd,” she said, then shook her head the way somebody would in a charades game when another player makes a bad guess. “Dddddon’t ddddddon’t gggggo wwwwww—”

  Esther was trying to push the wheelchair past us, either not noticing that Miss Jenkins had a death grip on my wrist or not caring. Uncle Charlie had Bee all the way out of the elevator now, and he was pulling me to follow. The arm Miss Jenkins was holding was straight out from my side, but she kept her ferocious grip.

  Finally Uncle Charlie jerked even harder, and Miss Jenkins let go. Even as I was pulled away, she was still struggling to say something. A second later the elevator doors closed, pinching off her words, but just before she disappeared from sight I heard what sounded like “Wwwwwwithhim.”

  “Nosy old bag,” Uncle Charlie muttered.

  Uncle Charlie steered us out of the exit and through the parking lot to where he had parked his truck. He opened the passenger-side door, looked around to make sure nobody was nearby, then pulled our hands behind our backs and used a roll of duct tape to wrap them and then our feet.

  “You keep your mouths shut, or I’ll tape them, too,” he said, forcing us both to lie on the floor.

  As we pulled out of the parking lot, he picked up his cell phone and punched in a number. “I got ’em . . . yeah, at the hospital. I told you, didn’t I? Be there in twenty minutes.”

  I was sti
ll just as angry and scared to death as I had been when he snuck up on us in front of the elevator, but I actually fell asleep for part of the drive. After all, Bee and I had been up all night, and I was totally exhausted. I was sure Bee was as tired as I was. If we were going to have a chance of escaping, we needed to get all the rest we could, even if it was only for a few minutes.

  I woke when Uncle Charlie hung a turn onto the township road and the wheels slammed into a pothole in the dirt. My head banged hard on the floor, and I struggled to push myself up onto the seat.

  “Did I tell you to get up there, Squib?”

  I didn’t answer him, but I stayed where I was.

  He reached over without slowing down and tried to shove me back down, but I moved over next to the door, too far away for him to grab me without stopping or swerving all over the place.

  Out the side window was Mrs. Middleton’s trailer, and she was in her yard. She was leaning on her walker and looking out at the road. My eyes locked with Mrs. Middleton’s in the half second that it took for us to hurtle past, and then we were gone, the pickup’s tires slamming hard into the ruts and kicking up a huge rooster tail of dust.

  We were going fast, but at least the road was dirt underneath us. If I was ever going to jump out, it had to be right now. I could shout to Mrs. Middleton that we were being kidnapped, tell her to call the police. It might be our only chance.

  I tried not to think how much it was going to hurt to break an arm or leg or scrape half the skin off my face. I jerked the handle as hard as I could and shoved against the door.

  Nothing happened.

  I pulled the handle again, and again nothing. There was no click of a lock unlatching.

  “Child-proof locks, Squib,” Uncle Charlie said. “We want to make sure we protect the little ones.” He laughed at his own joke.

  Reward’s gates came up fast, and we roared into the drive and then hung another turn into the dirt track that led to Uncle Charlie’s. I hadn’t said a word since we’d gotten into the truck, partly out of fear and partly because my brain was racing with so many thoughts. Now, as we pulled to a skidding stop behind the house, I got my voice back.