Deceived - Laura S. Wharton Page 0,19
scratch!”
“What?” Sam started to laugh, but he hurt. “What did you say?”
“I’ve placed a curse on the driver,” Monroe straightened herself, “on your behalf.” Monroe bowed slightly toward Sam, and she smiled a toothy grin. “These things work, see. I learned them from my uncle who traveled all over the world, and he regularly cursed those who betrayed or hurt him, and blessed the ones who helped him. I’ve found over the years that they work for me, too. Now that driver who tried to run you off the road—and me over, for that matter—will certainly meet with a, well, let’s just say an uncomfortable fate.” Monroe was quite pleased with herself as she stood there rubbing a sore arm.
“Whatever,” Sam said. He pushed Monroe aside and gingerly got back into his car. His head was throbbing, and his chest hurt where it had hit the steering wheel. “Believe what you want.” The engine responded after a couple of tries, though the hood was smashed and the front-end dislocated.
“Hey! Aren’t you gonna even say thanks?” Monroe feigned her hurt. “The least you could do is offer me a ride.”
She ran around the car and pulled on the handle, but Sam had already locked it.
“Dude, you don’t mean to leave me out here!” she shouted through the closed window.
“You were out here already! You tried to snatch my wallet, and given the opportunity, you probably would have made off with my car, too!”
“Awww, really, I am sorry about all that. Look: I’ll make it up to you. What’s your name? I will bestow a blessing on you. Are you a cop?”
“Yes.” Sam unlocked the door and let Monroe in. “I am a cop. Where do you live, Monroe?”
“Wilmington. East Fourth Street. I appreciate the ride. I delivered this big-ass boat to an equally big-assed man on Bald Head. He didn’t know the first thing about powerboats, and he got this forty-two-foot boat, see. Then he wanted me to party with him at his dock on Bald Head Island. I think he was scared of his new boat or something. Anyway, before I left the dock in Wilmington, the broker told me that he’d send someone for me, but we never connected. So I told the new boat owner maybe he should run me home again, and he said he would. We started out of the marina, but then he got so drunk on the ride up the creek that I was scared to go any farther with the jerk.”
“So you probably put a curse on him, too, right?” Sam snickered as he backed out of the trees and ditch and slowly climbed the embankment to the road.
“I sure did. ‘May he drink a toast to his liver as he kisses it goodbye, and may a thousand mosquitoes feast on his fat, drunken head.’ Oh, and ‘May his golf cart batteries run out of juice before he gets back home,’” Monroe added, in delight.
“You’re making these up.”
“Sure am, and I have a good time doing it, too!” Monroe smiled. “Molly. My first name is Molly.” Monroe put out her hand a second time to Sam.
This time, Sam shook it briefly. “Sam McClellan.”
“So, Sam, why was that guy trying to run you off the road, anyway?”
“I have a hunch,” Sam said half-aloud.
“Care to share? I mean, I feel we are partners or something since he tried to run me over, too.”
“I don’t think he tried to run you over. I think you just got in the way.”
“Yeah? And what’s your excuse?”
“I think I am getting in the way, too,” Sam stated quietly.
“Um, you wanna talk about this?” Molly offered.
“No.”
“Okay. I was just trying to help you out, man. I mean, I know people in this town, and I could, like, put some feelers out for you or something in return for you giving me a ride home tonight. It’s a long walk on that road from Southport, especially at night. Those alligators can get mighty hungry.”
“Alligators?”
“Yeah, about where you crashed. They live in the pond on the way into Orton Plantation. Me and a bunch of friends used to stop there to see them when we were on our way back to Wilmington. Each time we stopped, there were more of them, and they were monsters!”
“You stopped by there often, did you?”
“Yeah. For a while, I worked on a boat.”
“Why not work out of Wilmington?” Sam’s head hurt as he squinted against the lights of the occasional oncoming car.
“The money is in Southport.