A crack of thunder startled them all. Driscoll actually let go of Thatcher’s tie and fell back a step away from the bars, as though they’d suddenly been electrified.
The first clap was followed by a second, then a third. And then a salvo. Simultaneously, Thatcher and Bill realized that it wasn’t thunder.
It was gunfire.
Fifty-Three
Chester Landry watched from the shadows as Laurel Plummer bade the O’Connor brothers goodbye. Even from this distance, he could tell she was anxious about sending them out tonight. She touched each of them on the arm, and clung for a moment, like a mother reluctant to wave her children off to school for the first time.
Final instructions were issued and goodbyes said, and the pair drove away in their truck. From the outside, it looked like a rattletrap held together with baling wire and crossed fingers.
But as it drove past Landry, he was close enough to feel the vibration of the new engine the twins recently had had installed. The swap-out had been done in a barn on a farm that had been foreclosed on years before. The mechanics, who’d helped themselves to the empty space, catered to moonshiners and bootleggers who were trying to outdo, or at least to equal, the horsepower had by lawmen, government agents, and each other.
He wondered if Mrs. Plummer was aware of the new oomph under the battered hood of the O’Connors’ truck. He would guess she wasn’t. The O’Connors were too cocksure of themselves by far. Brimming with piss and vinegar, they took needless chances, seemed to thrive on excitation, and routinely flirted with calamity.
But he couldn’t fault them. He reveled in risk-taking.
Lights were on inside, affording him a view through the window into the kitchen. He watched Mrs. Plummer drink a glass of tap water at the sink. Then she moved about the room nervously, picking up this or that, setting it down, opening a cabinet door only to close it without putting anything in or taking anything out.
He saw her actually wring her hands. At one point, she lifted her pocketbook off a peg adjacent to the back door, as though she were about to leave, then changed her mind. She seemed troubled and restless, feeling compelled to do something, but unsure of what she should do.
His timing was perfect.
He emerged from the shadows and crossed the yard. The honeysuckle vine brushed his shoulder as he neared the back door. He knocked, but stood to one side, keeping himself concealed in the darkness until she appeared behind the screen.
He stepped into the light and tipped his bowler hat to her. “Mrs. Plummer.”
Her lips tightened with dislike. “What are you doing here?”
Her hand moved to her side, where she no doubt secreted a firearm in the pocket of her skirt. Probably a Derringer. A whore’s pistol. Small but lethal if fired at close range.
“May I come in?”
“No, you may not.”
“You sound adamant.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“It would be improper.”
Amused by her hypocritical stance on propriety, he said, “Improper because your father-in-law isn’t at home? He’s away this evening?”
She realized that she’d trapped herself into admitting she was by herself, but rather than quail, she drew herself up taller. She looked above and beyond him at the lightning that streaked the sky.
“It’s about to storm,” she said over the boom of thunder that rattled the windows of her house. “You wouldn’t want to get wet, so leave now and don’t come back. You and Mr. Croft were fishing in the wrong pond today. In any case, I said everything I had to say. Now if you’ll—”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Our visit today.” He gave her a look of rehearsed chagrin. “You have every right to be miffed.”
“Don’t talk down to me.”
He held up his hand in a pacifying gesture. “Mr. Croft often gets carried away. His strident manner is a character flaw which I’ve pointed out to him on numerous occasions. Sadly, to no avail. His overbearing approach to you was tactless and clumsy. He came on like a buffalo when
a swan would have been more effective. It’s little wonder to me that you turned him down.”
“Did he send you to make amends?”