Moonlight and Mistletoe Read online

  They had to leave Nancyville just as quick as they could. The only thing was, Scarlett dreaded telling her little sister the reason why.

  Eleven

  “THIS HAS GOT TO BE A CASE OF THE world’s meanest people,” Officer Kevin Black Badger said, “to hijack a truckload of Christmas turkeys. The birds were going up to the state school for the deaf for Christmas dinner. The place is mostly kids, too.”

  Buck followed his deputy down the shoulder of U.S. Route 29 as passing traffic thundered by. “Watch the dog,” Black Badger reminded.

  Buck gave him an irritable look, “Don’t worry, I’m not lucky enough to have the damned thing run over.”

  They stopped at a place where the grass of the shoulder had been chewed into strips. “This was where,” Black Badger said, pointing to the tire tracks, “the Piedmont Poultry driver pulled his rig over to check his brakes. He hadn’t even put out his flares when this pickup truck comes roaring along, pulls up beside him, and two guys hop out and hit him over the head. When the driver came to last night he was lying here in the freezing rain, and his eighteen-wheeler was long gone.”

  Buck bent, hands braced on knees, to look at the truck’s tire tracks where they reentered the highway. Somehow he had hoped he’d seen the last of the hijackers, that they’d moved on to greener territory up in North Carolina or Tennessee. But it looked like that wasn’t going to happen.

  In any event, the theft of a truckload of Christmas turkeys meant they would shortly have a message from Byron Walker at the Georgia State criminal investigation department. And if the truck was headed north over the state line, as Buck suspected, that could even bring in the Feds.

  He realized his holiday was looking even bleaker, when he hadn’t thought that was possible.

  “It still had a full load when it left,” Kevin Black Badger was saying. The deputy was a Native American from the Cherokee reservation in the Smokies and prided himself on his tracking, both animal and vehicular. “You can see by the depth of the tire imprints that it was still loaded up.” He hesitated, frowning. “Turkeys are not something you can get rid of like cigarettes, or sides of beef, Buck. My guess is they must be going to sell them out of the back of the truck.”

  Buck straightened up. “Good work, Kevin.” There was nothing else he could say. He only wished that the big Indian could do some tracking wizardry and follow the hijacked truck down miles of concrete to its final destination.

  That, Buck told himself, only happened in movies.

  “Write it up,” he told Kevin. “Have you got anything on the pickup truck the hijackers were riding in?”

  Demon sat leaning against the deputy’s leg, making affectionate, whimpering noises. Black Badger bent to pat her head. “It’s pretty standard Sears Roebuck tread, but I’ve been checking it out for idiosyncrasies.”

  “Good.” Buck started back toward the Blazer. “Keep at it and let me know.”

  As Demon followed him the other man called out, “That’s a nice dog you’ve got, Sheriff, she’d make a good bear hunter. Let me know if you ever want to sell her.”

  Buck would have sold the Scraggs dog on the spot if he thought he could get away with it. Now the animal rushed past him in spite of his shouts, leaped through the open window on the passenger side with a great flailing of legs and claws and damage to the Blazer’s paint, and threw itself down in the seat.

  Muttering under his breath, Buck eased himself into the Blazer. He considered taking his arm out of the sling, but a few minutes driving without it coming down had proved what the doctor had said: the arm needed a rest. When it didn’t get it, it hurt like hell.

  Buck shifted gears carefully with his left hand and pulled the Blazer out onto the highway. It was not easy going even with two working hands; they were in the high Blue Ridge where the grades were steep, slippery, and filled with early traffic. The black ribbon of the road slashed through second-growth forest and on both sides rose green-black mountain pines, bare thickets of oaks and beeches. The woods had taken over the mountains after more than a century and a half of not-too-successful farming; down the road in the back country there were people who still lived in cabins and cooked on wood stoves and ate by the light of kerosene lanterns. And where deer, wild pigs, and bear were still hunted by the inhabitants, in or out of season. Protected by law or not.

  And, Buck was suddenly reminded, up there somewhere in a hollow that lawmen, including his late father, had yet to locate, was the kingfish of all southern Appalachian outlaws, Mr. Ancil Scraggs. And all his thieving, conniving, alcohol-tax-evading, breaking-and-entering, grand-theft-auto, assault-with-a-deadly-weapon kin.

  Except for two.

  Reluctantly, Buck’s thoughts went to Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs. That black-eyed, long-legged vision that flitted distractingly through his mind when he least wanted her to.

  What in the devil, he wondered, had prevailed upon her to practically attack him night before last? Some sort of backwoods experiment? If so, it had been unnerving, plus he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it and that worried him.

  When he’d been engaged to Susan, Buck told himself irritably, she’d never preyed on his mind like that. On the contrary, theirs was a rational, well-adjusted relationship.

  On the other hand, Scarlett Scraggs was a mental toothache, one that wouldn’t leave him alone, lovely and troubling and presumably innocent enough so that you had to wonder how she’d managed even to exist in the Scraggses’ degenerate, criminal environment. Of course she’d been dedicated to bringing up the strange little sister. That had isolated both of them to some extent, he supposed.

  What, he suddenly asked himself, was he going to do about Scarlett Scraggs? He’d gotten to the point where he couldn’t imagine turning her and her sister over to Susan Huddleston after the holidays and just walking away, never to find out what had become of them.

  As a law-enforcement officer, Buck’s professional detachment was second nature. These two, he told himself, were just strays. Runaways. A case for the county and the state social services.

  But, the other part of Buck’s mind argued, Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs was different. All you had to do was see her in those jeans, properly cleaned up, with a ribbon in her hair, to know how different.

  Dammit, if they ever did get to Atlanta he knew what would become of them; any cop could read you that scenario. The sleazeballs told girls who looked like Scarlett that they could get them into modeling school where they could make lots of money. Only there was no modeling school.

  Buck carefully steered the Blazer onto a side road, the short cut into Nancyville. Some idiot, he saw in the rearview mirror, was riding his bumper, indifferent to the sheriff’s-department insignia on the Blazer and the telltale police radio antenna.

  He still had to make one stop at the office for a meeting with a Hare Krishna delegation from Atlanta who wanted to talk to the sheriff about alternate forms of winter-solstice celebrations. Buck intended to listen to them but politely turn them down. Then he was going to take the afternoon off and go home.

  He found he was looking forward to it. He had to fight down the anticipation of delectable odors of cooking in the house, wondering what Scarlett had fixed. It was the pits, as he had found out last night, to get a McDonald’s hamburger and fries and eat it alone in the den in front of the television when there were better things to be had in the kitchen.

  Tonight, Buck promised himself, he would sit down to dinner with Scarlett and Farrie. What had happened the other night was best forgotten—a mistake, that was all. God only knows he wished he could forget the look on Scarlett’s face when she asked him if he could kiss her again. Just thinking about it made his body ache. He was going to have to keep that under control, too.

  The 1993 Dodge pickup behind him pulled out as if to pass and then suddenly dropped back, neatly sideswiping the Blazer’s bumper.

  Buck stared into the rearview mirror, amazed. Was there somebody in Jackson County who had a perverted desi
re to spend the rest of the year in jail? The way this idiot was driving it looked like it!

  Gingerly, favoring his right arm, Buck pulled the Blazer to the edge of the road and slowed down to give the jackass the benefit of the doubt and let him get by. After all, he thought a little self-righteously, it was the holiday season.

  The police radio suddenly came on.

  “Sheriff,” the dispatcher’s voice said, “I got a message from a Mr. Rama Rasmurtha McNally of the Hare Krishnas that they’re running a little late for your meeting.”

  “Cancel it,” Buck told him curtly. The pickup truck had made another dive at the Blazer’s front fender. He couldn’t believe it, but it was trying to run him off the road. “Right now I haven’t got time for any more holiday freaks.”

  The pickup dropped back in another sideswipe. There was a metallic tearing sound. The Blazer lurched wildly. Buck seized the steering wheel with both hands. That hurt like hell; he suppressed an anguished yelp.

  “Sheriff?” the dispatcher said.

  Buck looked in the side mirror.

  The blue pickup was accelerating in the left lane. Coming back again. Through the Dodge’s windshield he could see a wild-eyed, contorted face under a cowboy hat.

  Buck cursed.

  What had old Ancil Scraggs said about trading off for a ‘93 Dodge pickup? Some redneck moron named—something. Potter?

  Buck gave the side mirror a savage glance. The Dodge pickup gladiator looked as though he were dumb enough to have a name like Potter. Like one of the shiftless Potter clan that ran a service station over White Creek Gap.

  The idea that Devil Anse would try to give his own granddaughter to some cretin like the one trying to smash in the Blazer filled Buck with fury. Forgetting his sore shoulder, he jerked the van into the path of the truck as it came on again.

  The two vehicles, both doing about fifty miles an hour on the narrow road, collided with an earsplitting clang. Snarling with pain and temper, Buck spun the Blazer’s wheel left again. The Blazer creamed the pickup a second time.

  Zigzagging, the truck went out of control and ran off the road on the far side. Buck slammed on the brakes. Before he could get the Blazer turned around, working furiously even with his arm in the sling, the blue pickup backed up, turned with tires skidding, and roared off in the opposite direction.

  On the radio, his dispatcher was practically yelling for instructions. Buck fumbled the receiver to his shoulder with his throbbing right hand.

  Demon, who had been crouched beside him through the whole thing, now leaned out the window barking wildly at the retreating pickup.

  “Shut up!” Buck shouted. He pressed the button to talk. “Yeah, George, I’m okay. I just need an APB on a ninety-three Dodge pickup. License number—”

  Hell, with everything going on he hadn’t gotten the license number!

  “Pickup’s license number unknown,” he said. “But I would like to talk, in the worst kind of way, to the scrawny snotnose wearing a cowboy hat who was driving it. See what you can do.”

  The idiot tried to kill me, he thought, signing off. It damned sure wasn’t anything else.

  Anger pounded in his head. Now that he’d gotten a look at Scarlett Scraggs’s would-be bridegroom he had to wonder just how innocent she was after all. Having the side of the Blazer smashed in didn’t exactly put him in the most tolerant mood.

  Buck stepped on the gas, feeling justifiably raw. By damn, he had a few questions he wanted to ask!

  It took only a few minutes to whip through downtown and head for home. Buck had canceled the meeting with the Hare Krishnas through his dispatcher; there was no reason to stop at the office.

  As he turned off the road into the driveway he drove through a spot of chill winter fog, then pulled the Blazer up to the front door. He watched while the dog vaulted out of the front seat and ran up on the porch.

  Buck moved more slowly, taking time to circle the Blazer and assess the damage. He swore under his breath. He only hoped the pickup was just as banged up, because the department couldn’t afford the bodywork this was going to cost.

  He mounted the front steps, favoring his aching right arm. Once inside the downstairs hallway, a smell of something heavenly greeted him.

  Buck missed his mother’s presence in the house, her bustle of pre-Christmas activities with church and her friends, the amount of holiday baking she still managed to do. But miraculously, he saw, something just as good had come to take its place.

  There was the odor of simmering, roasting, delectable food in the air. He sniffed, then drew in a long breath. He was practically frozen from standing out on U.S. 29 examining tire tracks. The warmth of the old house enveloped him, and the radio in the kitchen was playing. Buck made out the local station’s nonstop program of Christmas carols, not the secular stuff the Living Christmas Tree was struggling with, but regular old-fashioned carols. Someone was singing “O Holy Night.”

  He started down the front hall. The door to the parlor was open. Inside, the tree, lights winking, stretched to the high ceiling.

  He paused in the doorway to admire it. A beautiful tree, he thought somewhat grudgingly, even loaded down with all the Grissom family junk.

  The dog scrambled down the hall ahead of him and Buck followed it. The old-fashioned swinging door to the kitchen opened to his push and he found the place blazing with lights. Something was boiling and steaming away on the stove. The first thing Buck saw was that the old wooden kitchen table was covered with more food than he’d seen in his life.

  It seemed to be all vegetables. Dinner, fixed early.

  There were casseroles of what looked like broccoli with melted cheese, and glass baking dishes with what appeared to be onions baked with a crusty cheese top. There were rows of baked potatoes in their skins decorated with bacon pieces and creamed spinach. Then grilled tomatoes, and more cheese. Whipped potatoes with lightly broiled, fluffy tops, french fries beside them. There were braised carrots and candied carrots, a dish of candied yams. A bowl of green peas mixed with slivers of mushrooms. Garbanzo beans with onions and tomatoes.

  Buck’s eyes began to glaze over. Obviously Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs had been raiding the freezer again. He turned to look for her and found her there, sitting at the end of the table, her bent head propped in her hands. When she looked up he saw she’d been crying.

  “Farrie’s gone,” she said tonelessly.

  Twelve

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, SHE’S GONE?” BUCK said.

  The girl before him held her head in her hands. “Farrie’s never done this before.” Her voice was rough with tears. “Ever since she was born, practically, my little sister’s never gotten mad with me. And she’s never, never run off.”

  Buck looked around. The kitchen was littered with dirty dishes and pots and pans. Scarlett Scraggs was not a neat and orderly cook. After a moment’s hesitation he drew up a chair and cleared a space between the platter of french fries and the garbanzo beans with tomatoes.

  “Scarlett, let’s take this from the beginning.” He couldn’t help noticing that in spite of her air of misery, she was wearing her dark hair pulled back with a blue ribbon again and looked adorable. “We’re talking about your sister Farrie?”

  She nodded, eyes downcast.

  Buck had come into the kitchen wanting an explanation. After all, some Scraggs-appointed boyfriend had tried to kill him. Now, at the sight of Scarlett’s tear-stained face, he found all he wanted to do was take her in his arms and comfort her, kiss that luscious, downturned mouth, the tousled gypsy hair. It was a feeling that slightly amazed him.

  He cleared his throat. “Your little sister’s gone somewhere,” he said, “without telling you?”

  She shook her head. “Not ‘gone somewhere,’“ she corrected him, “she’s run away.” Her voice dropped even lower. “Farrie hates me.”

  He found that hard to believe. Not the way Scarlett hovered over her. Besides, the goblin child couldn’t have gone far; it was raining
.

  “Hates you? How could anybody hate you, Scarlett? Didn’t you say you’ve practically dedicated your life to her? What did you fight about?”

  Her eyes slid away. “It was just something to do about us. Talking about where we belong.”

  He was seeing Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs being devious. Buck wondered what they had really talked about. He opened his mouth to find out more but the wall telephone in the kitchen rang. With a groan, he got up to answer it.

  Scarlett lifted her head to watch Buck lean up against the kitchen wall with his head bent, frowning, as the voice on the other end said something at length.

  Buck Grissom was young, but you could just tell by looking at him how powerful he was as sheriff; people jumped when he spoke. And he nearly always scared Farrie half to death. He was a big man, crisp and neat in his tan uniform. His shoulders stretched his shirt tight, and below, his trousers stretched just as tightly across his muscular backside.

  It had taken a lot out of Scarlett to explain to Farrie about Devil Anse, how he wanted Scarlett to be friendly with Buck Grissom the way he’d wanted her to be with Loy Potter’s son. Only this time it wasn’t just a ‘93 customized six-cylinder Dodge pickup Devil Anse was aiming for, but the sheriff himself.

  In return for doing what he said, Devil Anse expected to get a lot, like the sheriff’s looking the other way as far as Scraggs family businesses were concerned.

  Watching Buck now, Scarlett couldn’t help wondering if Buck had made up his mind about Devil Anse’s offer. He was hunched against the wall, his hand on the back of his neck, rubbing it as he talked. For a moment she almost felt dizzy. Why not, a little devil in her head whispered, pick up from where they had left off? That is, letting him kiss her?

  She was so taken with this idea that she jumped when Buck suddenly roared: “Television crew? George, are these people out of their minds?”

  Scarlett’s heated, forbidden thoughts faded and she gave herself a shake. What she had told her little sister was right, that in the end what Devil Anse wanted her to do would bring only trouble not only to Buck Grissom, but to all of them. The only thing to do was leave Nancyville. Since the sheriff’s department still had their money they would have to hitchhike, and even Scarlett didn’t like to think about how they would manage.