“I need to get back.” Dr. Perkins retreated and shut the door.
The three of them filed out of the waiting area, Laurel leading the way. Bill and Thatcher had conferred briefly at the scene of the ambush before Thatcher had gone in search of Landry. At the time, the sheriff had dispatched men to comb the woods on both sides of the road in search of clues. They recovered dozens of shell casings from numerous weapons, but nothing else.
Bill had remarked then that he hoped the rain would hold off until daylight tomorrow when a more thorough search could be made of the woods and the road on which the getaway car had sped away.
Thatcher could tell how disheartened Bill was when they reached the exit of the office building to see that the lightning and thunder had moved east, but a hard rain was being driven sideways by a strong wind.
“So much for tire tracks and footprints,” Bill said as he motioned Laurel and Thatcher toward his car. They dashed through the rain and piled in.
When they reached Laurel’s house, it was in total darkness. “Thank you for the ride.” She opened the backseat door herself, got out, and ran toward the house.
Thatcher watched her go inside, then turned his head and looked at Bill.
Bill gave him a knowing smile. “Busy day in store for tomorrow. Gabe Driscoll. Now this ambush with one man dead. You’re only a reserve, Thatcher. I’ve got no claim on you. But I’d sure appreciate your help.”
“I’ll stop by the stable and see if Fred can spare Roger to tend to the horses tomorrow.”
“Early then.”
Thatcher nodded, got out, and ran through the torrent to Laurel’s door.
Fifty-Five
The electricity was out in Laurel’s house. When Thatcher entered the kitchen through the back door, she was lighting a kerosene lamp. She blew out the match and situated the glass chimney.
She said, “You know what’s funny?”
He propped Barker’s rifle against the wall and hung his dripping hat on the wall peg. “I can’t think of a thing.”
“Davy would’ve been the first to laugh over being killed for a truckload of pies and fruit fillings. It was his and Mike’s idea. They’d cooked it up even before I told them about Mayor Croft and Chester Landry visiting today. I was—”
“Hold on. The mayor and Landry came here?”
“To try to coerce me into joining their…I don’t know the word. Syndicate? Did you know the mayor is a bootlegger? Anyway, they showed up at my front door this afternoon.”
In a thready voice, she pieced together broken sentences to relate what the pair had proposed. Thatcher wasn’t surprised by any of it except for Bernie Croft’s brashness. “Who did the talking?” he asked.
“The mayor.”
Up till now Croft had used his political office as cover. If he was stepping out from behind it, he must be feeling damned confident that he couldn’t be touched. That was a troubling prospect.
“When they left,” Laurel was saying, “I had the shakes. I knew I hadn’t seen the last of them. But I didn’t think their reprisal would come this soon or be so…deadly.”
Tears filled her eyes. “When I told the twins about that visit and the reason behind it, they admitted that a truck had been hijacked just a few days ago.” She described the incident to Thatcher.
“I suppose the only reason they let that Johnson man live was so he could put his family and the rest of us on notice. Nevertheless, the twins were keen on going tonight.”
“But without whiskey.”
She nodded. “They weren’t selling just my whiskey. They had been dealing with another moonshiner, who’s up closer to Ranger. They’d bought several crates from him and had hidden them someplace accessible, so the product would be on hand when they needed it.
“In view of this recent hijacking, they had counted on selling what was in that stockpile, but would continue to make the trip from here to there with pies only. In the event they were intercepted, the joke would be on whoever had stopped them.
“Their thinking was that after they were caught with only pies as cargo, they would be left alone. You see? Isn’t that just like a prank the two of them would pull?”
She gave a dry, forced laugh, and she began to quiver like a shell-shocked trooper on the verge of cracking.
He spoke her name quietly, and when she’d blinked him into focus, he asked about Landry. “Tell me what happened with him.”