The Girl from Felony Bay Read online

  The screech also got everybody’s attention, and the crowd of reporters turned their heads in our direction. Their expressions showed annoyance and surprise, but at least they were listening.

  “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “My uncle and Deputy Simmons are lying to you. My name is Abbey Force, and I need to report a very serious crime.”

  I glanced down. Uncle Charlie’s eyes were wide with shock and alarm, his lips tight with anger. As I watched, he dumped his gold ingots back into the crate and began to scramble out of the hole. He had to cover only a few feet, which meant I had to talk very fast.

  “Last night, my friend and I saw Uncle Charlie; his wife, Ruth; and Deputy Bubba Simmons dig this hole and bury this crate. It’s not really treasure from an old ship. It’s gold and jewels they stole from Miss Lydia Jenkins.” I pointed, my words racing out. “Over there in that cabin is where they melted down everything they stole from Miss Jenkins and made it into gold bars.”

  Uncle Charlie was already on the platform. He grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the microphone. I tried to twist out of his grasp, but he was too strong.

  “Uncle Charlie and Bubba Simmons caught us and tried to kill us by shoving us into an alligator pond,” I shouted, even as he clamped a hand over my mouth and handed me off the stage to Bubba Simmons.

  Bee hadn’t said a word, but as Uncle Charlie dragged me away, she rushed to the microphone. “My name is Bee Force, and my father bought Reward Plantation from Abbey’s father. Abbey’s telling the truth. These people tried to kill us.”

  She couldn’t say any more, because at that point Uncle Charlie pulled her away, too, and handed her down to Bubba Simmons.

  Bubba was strong as an ox, and he had huge hands. He held each of us by the arm, and even though we both tried to shout, he dragged us back among the satellite trucks, where the roar of the generators drowned out everything else. I had a desperate hope that at least a couple of the press people had understood what Bee and I had tried to say and maybe believed us. If they had, I was sure somebody would call the police or demand that we be released.

  I knew we’d been beaten when no one came after us, and then I heard Uncle Charlie’s voice boom out loud enough to be heard over the generators.

  “I’ve got to apologize for that interruption, but there’s an explanation that’ll help y’all understand what’s going on. That first young lady, Abbey Force, is my niece. Her daddy, Rutledge Force, is my brother, and right now he’s in a coma in University Hospital. He’s accused of robbing Miss Lydia Jenkins, that same lady Abbey just mentioned, who was his client. Reward Plantation had to be sold because of that theft, and I am sorry to say . . . well, this isn’t the first instance of my niece acting out or lying. I am afraid her sense of reality has been badly damaged.”

  Uncle Charlie turned and looked back in our direction like he actually cared. He could still see us, but we were way behind the satellite trucks now and far out of sight of the reporters. Even though we were both twisting and fighting, we couldn’t get out of Bubba’s iron grip. I caught sight of Ruth. She was standing a few feet behind the platform staring in our direction, and for a second I wondered if she would come over and try to help Bubba. However, she just remained where she was, with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, looking even more sick than she had before.

  “Bee Force is another girl who’s suffered a family tragedy,” Uncle Charlie went on. “Her mother and brother were killed in a car accident last winter. Bee was the only survivor. She has been in psychological care ever since.”

  “Don’t listen to him!” Bee and I shouted. “He’s lying!” It did no good. No one could hear us.

  “Now, they haven’t broken any laws, even though they probably hoped they could,” Uncle Charlie continued with a chuckle. “Maybe if Deputy Simmons takes them over next door where they live and tells them not to come back, we can put this behind us.”

  He kept talking, but I couldn’t hear him after Bubba slammed Bee and me together, which knocked the wind out of both of us. Then he picked each of us up with a different arm and slapped his hands over our mouths. “I shoulda waited there and made sure that gator did her job,” he said in a low growl. “I ain’t gonna make that mistake a second time.”

  We were far enough away now that I could no longer hear Uncle Charlie’s lies. But I knew it didn’t matter what he was saying. In spite of everything we had tried, he had beaten us.

  A second later we reached Bubba’s sheriff’s department car. He took his hand off my mouth, opened the rear door, and tossed me across the seat. He tossed Bee in behind me and pulled two sets of handcuffs from the pouch on his belt, clicking one set onto Bee’s wrists and then another onto mine.

  As I tried to sit up and put my feet on the floor, I hit something, and when I looked down, whatever hope I had died completely. Skoogie Middleton was already in the car, lying on the cruiser’s floor with his hands cuffed behind his back and tape over his mouth to keep him from crying out.

  Bubba climbed behind the wheel, looked back over his shoulder, and nodded. “Caught that one tryin’ to sneak back to his grandma,” he said.

  “Why have you got him handcuffed?” I asked. “You need to let him go. He didn’t do anything.”

  “Nice try, little lady, but he knows about the canoe.”

  We had worked so hard and come so close, but we were prisoners again. It was even worse than it had been the first time, because now Skoogie was a prisoner as well, and I knew we weren’t going to escape Green Alice a second time.

  A tear broke loose and trickled down my cheek, but I didn’t care. I closed my eyes and silently told Daddy that I was sorry I had let him down. I was sorry I had let everyone down.

  Twenty-seven

  As Bubba started the car and pulled away from Felony Bay, I tried to summon some hope, but it was a huge stretch. I really believed we had lost, but I knew we had to keep fighting to the very end.

  “You know you’re not going to get away with this,” I said from the backseat. “You’re gonna get caught.”

  I saw Bubba’s hands grip the wheel tighter and his shoulders hitch up toward his ears.

  “Uncle Charlie and Ruth are back there. Everybody saw us leave with you. You’re the only kidnapper, not either one of them. They won’t go to jail, but you will.”

  “Quiet down!” He cranked his head around and glared back. If there hadn’t been a wire screen separating us, I’m sure he would have started hitting.

  “You want to slap me, don’t you?” I said. “Just like you slapped Jimmy that day I saw you together in your truck.”

  Bubba slammed on the brakes, and for a half second I thought he was going to get out, come around to my door, and haul me out. But when he turned around in his seat, I could see the fear in his eyes. He must have been scared, starting to wonder if he really might be hung out to dry by his partners in crime.

  “You,” he said in a hoarse rasp. He had dried spittle at the corners of his mouth. “Keep your trap shut ’fore I come back there and show you what slapping really is.”

  I glanced at Bee, who looked at me and nodded. You go, girl, she mouthed.

  Bubba sped up again. We were playing with fire where he was concerned. If he totally lost his temper and self-control, we would have no way to protect ourselves, but at the same time his fear was all we had to work with. Our only hope was that he would get rattled and make a big mistake.

  “Grandma Em knows almost everything we know,” I lied. “She’s gonna figure out the rest when we disappear. You gonna kill her, too?” I paused for half a second. “Jimmy knows, too,” I said.

  Bubba’s head snapped around. “Liar.”

  “I just told him five minutes ago behind the cabin. He’d snuck back there to smoke a cigarette. When he saw me, he was going to beat me up, so I told him everything.”

  Bubba stopped the car again, but this time he didn’t even turn in his seat. He just sat staring straight ahead with his hands on t
he wheel. After another moment or two, I heard a strange sound and realized Bubba was muttering to himself. I figured he was thinking about what I had said and trying to come up with a way to deny things to his son. I also knew there was no way he could.

  Nearly half a minute went by before he started driving again, but even then he went slowly. We hadn’t gone far from the cabin yet, and we were still on the dirt track that led up from Felony Bay. I could see the township road about fifty yards ahead, and I knew we were going to turn right toward One Arm Pond.

  I hadn’t said anything else to Bubba, because fear was scrambling my brain and I had run out of words. I closed my eyes and felt my throat clamp shut as I tried to shake off the picture of Green Alice. I only opened them again when Bubba slammed on the brakes once more, and Bee and I pitched forward, almost smashing our heads against the seat back.

  “What the hey?” Bubba said to himself.

  When I looked up, I saw two state police cars blocking our way on the single-lane dirt track.

  “You’re dead,” I said from the back, finding my voice once again. “You better surrender.”

  Bubba turned and looked at me out of the corner of one fear-yellowed eye. “I told you to shut up,” he snarled.

  He jammed the shift into Park, got out of the car, and walked ahead. The driver in the front police car rolled down his window and stuck his head out, and he and Bubba talked for a moment. I caught only snatches of what the policeman said, but I did hear something about an arrest order.

  When Bubba replied, his voice barely reached us through the car windows and over the sound of the air conditioner, but I heard him say something like “I don’t know nothing ’bout no arrests. A couple kids started acting up. I’m just taking them back to where they live. How ’bout y’all back up into the road and let me get past.”

  I was hoping desperately that the state police would refuse to let him leave, but the policeman just smiled and rolled up his window, and then he and the police car behind him began to back up to let Bubba pass.

  Bubba was as pale as new cotton as he walked back to the car. I knew that if he’d been scared a minute earlier, he was positively panicking now.

  “What’s the matter, Deputy Simmons?” I asked. “Did I just hear something about the police arresting somebody? It isn’t Uncle Charlie, by any chance, is it? He’s a big talker, you know. Wonder who he’s gonna pin everything on? Better turn yourself in before he hangs you.”

  “I’m tellin’ you for the last time, girl, you shut your trap.”

  Once the other vehicles were out of the way, Bubba started forward. We inched past the two state police cruisers, which had pulled off on the side just where the dirt track emptied onto the township dirt road. Bubba was doing his best to look relaxed and normal, but he was doing a lousy job.

  We turned right, and I swung around and got on my knees and looked out the back window as the two police cars grew smaller. We had come so close, but we had failed. The state police had been our last chance. My head dropped down into my shoulders, and I felt my heart fall into my stomach. As scared as I was, though, I was also mad, and I wanted him to hurt bad for what he was about to do.

  “You really think anybody’s going to believe that Bee and Skoogie and I ran away from you and jumped in a canoe and paddled out to get eaten by an alligator?”

  Bubba didn’t answer. The car slowed, and we turned into Reward.

  “Tell me you’re not really stupid enough to think you can get people to believe that story.”

  “I’m a deputy,” he said, half grunting the words. “People’ll believe what I tell ’em.”

  “No! They’re gonna believe what Uncle Charlie tells them. He’s gonna say you did this all by yourself, and then he and Ruth are gonna keep your share of the money.”

  Bubba shook his head like he was trying to clear his brain. He’d been backed into a corner, and he knew it. The question was whether he was smart enough to realize he had choices. We were heading up the drive, toward the last turn that would put us on the dirt track that led to One Arm Pond. I felt it when Bubba took his foot off the accelerator. The car slowed, but it didn’t stop.

  “Even if other people believe what you say, you think Jimmy’s gonna believe you?”

  Bubba’s neck was red as a beet, and in spite of the air-conditioning, I could see sweat breaking out of his hair line and dripping down his neck and onto his collar.

  “Jimmy’s gonna know you’re a murderer, and nothing you say will ever make him think different.”

  Bubba sagged in his seat all of a sudden. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn he reacted like somebody who just took a hard punch to the stomach.

  I was starting to feel a surprising sense of hope when a half second later Bubba’s eyes went to the rearview mirror, and he stomped down on the accelerator and cranked a hard turn toward One Arm Pond. Right away I realized that what I had just said had pushed him over the edge. He was going to kill us as fast as he possibly could just to shut me up.

  I felt tears burning at the corners of my eyes. I was about to tell Bee and Skoogie how sorry I was when instead of driving all the way down to the pond, Bubba cut the wheel hard and pulled into a tractor shed where Daddy used to keep his corn harvester.

  The harvester was still there, and Bubba tucked his car in between it and the wall of the tractor shed. I was too stunned to say anything as I watched him lean forward against the steering wheel and watch as two state police cars went speeding down the dirt track we had been on just seconds before.

  “Hey, police,” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “We’re here!”

  The police cars were already past us, and I knew there was no way they had heard me. That wasn’t why I shouted. I was trying to bother Bubba.

  “Better give up, Bubba,” I said. “They’re after you already.”

  Bubba lashed his elbow back, but it just slammed into the metal screen. “Shut up,” he growled.

  He shoved the car into gear and shot out of the barn, spraying clouds of dust and heading back toward the township road. When I looked back, I saw that both of the police cars had turned around and were coming after us, their light bars flashing.

  Bubba must have sensed them, because he turned on his own lights and accelerated even more. Anybody watching us would have thought all three police cars were heading to the same emergency. They wouldn’t have guessed that two state police cars were chasing a Charleston County deputy.

  We were starting to pick up serious speed. Trees whipped past. We slammed through the bumps in the dirt road. Several times the back tires bounced off the ground, and when they hit again, the car would slide to one side or the other.

  As we shot through the Reward gates and onto the township road, I looked back but could barely see the police cars through the huge cloud of dust we kicked up. I knew the paved county road was just a half mile ahead, but so did Bubba. He mashed the accelerator, and I could feel the engine roar as we went even faster.

  Bee and I jammed our feet against the seat back, because it seemed obvious that Bubba had no intention of slowing down when he turned onto the paved road. I glanced ahead, praying a truck wouldn’t be coming along just then, and that’s when I noticed the other flashing lights. There were two more police cars, and they had spread out across the road, blocking the way.

  Bubba must have realized there was no way to get around them, because he slammed on his brakes. The car went into a skid and came to a jarring halt with the front end nosed into a drainage ditch. Bubba wrenched open his door and jumped out.

  The two police cars behind us had already slid to a stop, and policemen from each car were already running toward Bubba. More policemen were approaching on foot from the two cars that had been stopped to block the road.

  Bubba stood in the drainage ditch and stared angrily at both groups. He made one last attempt to bluff his way out. “What the heck you boys think y’all’re doing? I told you I got me some prisoners, and I’m on my way t
o lock ’em up. You boys best be outta my way right now.”

  “Deputy Simmons,” one of the policemen said, “stand away from your car. Place both hands on top of your head. You are under arrest.”

  Bubba looked at eight guns aimed at him, and he did as he was told. “What’re you boys talkin’ about? Arrest me? For what?”

  “Kidnapping, for starters,” one of the state policemen said as he stepped down into the ditch, grabbed Bubba’s shoulder, and jerked him out of the water. As they came up the bank, another policeman stepped in and took Bubba’s pistol from his holster.

  “Th-that’s a b-big lie,” Bubba stuttered. “Who told you that?”

  “Right after we passed you the first time, dispatch got a call claiming a deputy sheriff was kidnapping two girls with intent to do grievous harm. At first we just wanted to ask you a few questions, but you answered them for us when you ran.”

  I realized Jimmy Simmons had made that call, but it had no time to sink in. The policemen were on all sides of Bubba now, and the one who had jerked him out of the water took Bubba’s hands, put them behind his back, and tried to cuff him. As he did, Bubba threw an elbow into the man’s stomach. The policeman grunted and took a step back, but in the same instant the others were on Bubba like flies on honey.

  Bubba went down with two of the policemen on top of him. I heard some painful grunts, and a second later they dragged him back to his feet. He was cuffed and now bleeding from the nose and a cut on his lip.

  After they slammed Bubba into the backseat of one of their cars, one of the policemen came over to our car, opened the back door, and looked at us. “You kids okay?” he asked.

  Bee and I nodded. Skoogie grunted. I held out my hands to the policeman. “Please take these off,” I said.

  He smiled, unlocked our handcuffs, and took the tape off Skoogie’s mouth.

  I looked around at the policemen and felt a tremor of alarm, because they were acting relaxed, like they thought catching Bubba had been everything they needed to do.