Midnight Crossroad

Mr. Snuggly opened his mouth, but Fiji looked down at him and the cat yawned instead of whatever he’d been about to do.

Manfred told Fiji, “It almost looked like he was going to say something.”

“That’s silly,” she said.

The cat winked at him.

31

It rained the next day, torrents and buckets. The fierce wind drove the drops against the front of Fiji’s place with more noise than she would have thought possible. She was so glad she hadn’t finished her outside Halloween decorations; that was scheduled for Saturday.

Only two customers came into her shop all morning, and she spent most of her time dusting and rearranging the merchandise. She managed to break two glass figures in the process, which effectively erased her profit from the two customers. She had to warn Mr. Snuggly to stay in his cushioned basket while she swept up the glass. To be doubly sure she’d gotten every tiny glass splinter, she vacuumed. Later that afternoon, she went back to the kitchen, leaving the hall door open so she could hear the shop bell, and started a pot of soup. It was a day that cried out for soup. She put on an Enya CD to work by.

While she chopped up vegetables and leftover chicken, Fiji thought about how to resolve the town crisis. The death of Aubrey was no longer Bobo’s tragedy—or at least, not only his. Aubrey’s murder surely tied into the legend of the missing guns. Fiji feared that bad men would keep showing up as long as Bobo lived, in search of the mythical treasure trove of death.

Fiji heard the shop doorbell tinkle, and she dumped everything on the chopping board into the pot of chicken broth. As she washed her hands, she thought of having corn bread with the soup tonight. As she was drying them, she told herself how much better the soup would be without the corn bread, and failed to convince herself that could be so. As she hurried down the short hall to the front of the shop, she called, “I’m coming.”

She was already smiling when she stepped into the front room. The smile vanished when she saw a tall man in a cowboy hat standing in the middle of the display cases. He was draped in a cheap yellow rain poncho, dripping water all over the boards and throw rugs. She was not a psychic or a telepath, but she knew bad intentions when she saw them, and Price Eggleston meant her no good. She spun on her heel to run down the hall and out the back door, but in three big strides he went around the chairs and table, seized her by the shoulder, and wrapped one arm around her middle. Then he clapped the other hand over her mouth.

Fiji struggled with all her might, using her elbows and kicking and squirming, but he was a strong man. She caught a glimpse of Mr. Snuggly. He’d jumped out of his basket and was hiding in the shadows under the shelves. She fought all the harder, hoping her assailant would not notice the cat and do him harm.

“Keep still, you bitch!” Eggleston growled, and she kicked backward to strike his shin. He was hampered by the plastic poncho and by his instinctive avoidance of the furniture and fixtures of the shop. But when he let her down a little, enough so her feet could touch the floor, Fiji planted them on the floor and pushed backward with all her might. She succeeded in causing Eggleston to slam into a clear case full of small glass ornaments and sun catchers, and the case went over. Fiji was trying to leave a record of what had happened, and when she heard the crash as the case hit the floor, she knew she had succeeded.

But the struggle had exhausted her, and she had to catch her breath. Eggleston took advantage of her weak moment by dragging her out of the shop into the rain, leaving the shop door open. There was no traffic, no one in sight, as he wrestled her out to his truck, pinning her against it while he pulled her hands behind her and clicked her wrists into a pair of handcuffs. Even then Fiji did not quit fighting entirely. She tossed her head from side to side when he tried to place some silver duct tape across her mouth, but eventually he timed it right and sealed her lips shut. He stuffed her into the front seat before running around to the driver’s side. He looked both ways behind him, backed out across the empty road to face west, and drove off toward Marthasville with the angriest woman in Texas sliding around on the bench seat, unable to stop herself, her hands cuffed behind her.

In the store, now silent except for the drumming of the rain on the roof, Mr. Snuggly considered his options. He could go back to sleep in his basket (he liked that idea very much), but that didn’t seem a noble reaction. He could chase after the truck in the rain . . . he discarded that option instantly. It required too much action on his part, and though he was a very fast cat, he could not keep up with a truck. He licked his paws as he gloomily settled on the most becoming option.

He would have to go next door.

If cats could sigh, he would have, when he stepped out onto the porch and looked at the rain. But since the bad man had left the door open, he really had no excuse to linger. Mr. Snuggly glared at a cat’s version of hell. But he gathered himself and dashed in a blur of marmalade to the cover of the nearest bush, where he took shelter. He got drenched instantly with the water that had been clinging to its leaves.

“Curse the man,” he muttered, and prepared for his next sprint to the doors of the chapel. The small eave provided no cover for Mr. Snuggly at all, and he began to caterwaul. He leaped up to scratch at the wooden doors. The Rev responded almost immediately. He had to look down to see who was making such a noise at God’s door, but when he realized Mr. Snuggly was his visitor, he stepped back and the cat shot through the aperture and into the relative peace of the chapel.

“Brother,” said the Rev. “What has happened to Fiji?”

“A man came,” Mr. Snuggly said. “She fought and cursed like a madwoman, and I was proud of her, but he was too big and too strong. He took her.”

“Miss Fiji has been abducted?”

“Yes, indeed.” Mr. Snuggly, his errand complete and his duty discharged, began to clean his fur. He paused long enough to say, “You must do something about it. She has left the cooking thing on, which she will not do if she is not remaining in the house.” Mr. Snuggly was proud to have remembered that detail.

“Thank you, Brother,” the Rev said, and it was his turn to consider options.

After asking one or two more questions, the Rev went next door to see the chaos in Fiji’s normally orderly home (though the old man disliked rain almost as much as the cat, whom he carried tucked under one thin arm). Somehow the broken things on the floor made him much more anxious.

The thud of feet on the rock sidewalk leading up to the porch announced new arrivals. Bobo hurried into the room, closely followed by Manfred. Manfred had taken a moment to pull on a hooded plastic poncho, but Bobo had come as he was. His shirt was soaked with rain, and his hair clung damply to his scalp.