“Congratulations, my dear!” he said, raising his chocolate malt in salutation. “I understand you are the woman of the hour.”
“Hopefully fame will prove to be as fleeting as they claim!” I answered ruefully. “So far, it’s brought me nothing but a peck of trouble.”
“Your mother told me about the upcoming article in the Gazette. I suppose that is the trouble to which you are referring?”
“Yep! Not only do I have to suffer the invasion of my well-deserved privacy by having my photograph plastered all over tomorrow’s early edition, but I also have to read fourteen-hundred and fifty-two pages of a single-spaced, barely legible autobiography written by a thirty-three year old spinster with no life.”
“Oh, my! That is a fate worse than death,” he chuckled.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I explained. “Beth Davis seems to be a very nice person. She’s articulate—maybe a little too articulate—and smart; but that doesn’t always add up to talent. Look at me! I’m not that smart, and according to Mother, I’m practically tongue-tied.”
“And yet you are the successful novelist Miss Davis aspires to be. Did anyone extend a helping hand on your road to success, Paisley?”
“Why, of course! Pam, my agent, helped me do everything; but you know that, Horatio.” I looked up and saw the chiding look on his handsome, aristocratic face. “Oh, I see—I’m being a spoiled rotten brat again, aren’t I?”
“Certainly not now that you’re aware of your fall from grace,” he answered with a smile.
“Oh, well,” I sighed. “I guess you’re right. I’ll read it when Mother finishes.”
A short, plump woman in a Dairy Queen uniform walked up to our table. “Miz DeLeon. I have your order.”
“Goodness! I would have come to the counter if you had called me,” I protested.
“Well, I wanted to thank you in person for what you done last night.”
I looked carefully, but didn’t see any of Nell Jane’s thin, sharp, features in the woman’s broad face and stout body. “Are you related to the little girl?” I asked.
“No, no,” she laughed. “I’m Darlene Hanson—Tiffany’s mother. But I was there last night. Those little girls was mighty upset until Nell Jane got found. It would’a killed them if that man had made off with her.”
“Did you see the man?” I asked curiously.
The two little half-moons she had drawn above her eyes with a cheap black makeup pencil came together as she tried to remember. “Maybe.…It was dark, ya’ know. I thought I saw a man’s shadow just on the far side of the goal—so did Tiffany, and a couple of the other little girls.” She smiled sadly. “They’re so scared now—I guess they’ll wanna do all their practicing in the morning. Tiffany may even have to drop off the team unless I can swap hours with somebody on the night shift.”
Darlene gave me a quick pat on the shoulder. “Anyway, thanks again,” she said, and hurried back to the front. I unwrapped my cheeseburger and took a bite while I reflected on her words. Horatio seemed to be doing the same thing.
“Very interesting,” he observed. “Mass hysteria would not be an uncommon phenomenon under the circumstances—a group of prepubescent females worked into a frenzy by the physical stresses of a highly emotional game—suddenly one of their own vanishes. It would be devastating.”
“She wandered off after a bunny, Horatio,” I mumbled over a mouthful of fries.
He made careful packets of his burger wrappers and folded them on the tray, then pulled a spotless linen handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands.
“You saw the child first, Paisley. At least, that’s my understanding. Is that what she told you?”
“Well…no.” I wadded my own waste papers in a messy ball and tossed them on the tray next to his. “I did most of the talking,” I admitted. “But I was just trying to calm her down. She was pretty scared.”
“Of a bunny?” he asked, raising his own immaculately groomed eyebrows.
“It was dark! And I don’t mind telling you I was frightened, too. Geez, Horatio, there were snakes and worms and spiders in that thicket. It was a ten year-old girl’s worst nightmare!”
“There are worse things than spiders, worms, and snakes, Paisley.”
“Worse than spiders?” I asked with a grin. “Not in my book!”
I tagged along behind my elegant friend as we made our way out of the busy restaurant. He paused to speak to several acquaintances while I shifted impatiently from one foot to another, aching to get out of the pressing crowd.
When two toddlers in the middle of a ketchup war plodded heedlessly over my toes in their teeny-weeny combat boots, I turned and ran for the nearest exit, vowing never again to indulge a salty grease attack at rush hour.
Horatio caught up with me as I was buckling up my seat belt.
“Sorry about that, my dear. In my business you never know when you’re meeting a prospective customer. His Honor the Mayor, looked a trifle jaundiced, don’t you think?”
“Horatio!”
“I thought that would make you smile!” He patted the edge of my window. “Nice buggy, your Watson. You know, I’ve never taken him out for a spin. Do you mind, Paisley?”
“You? Now?”
“Why not!” he declared. “No time like the present. Scoot over my dear, and let an old man have some fun.”
I don’t know what I expected—perhaps a tentative, meandering drive through the hills around the lake, but Horatio surprised me yet again. He climbed behind the wheel and took us on a silent, completely focused, and very fast roller-coaster ride which came to a screeching halt on the bluff overlooking the state penitentiary and the river down below.
“They call it the Castle on the Cumberland. Did you know that?” he asked, as he turned off the engine.
“Wha…what?” I gasped, trying to get my breath.
“Why, Paisley! Are you all right? You look positively ill. Too many French fries, perhaps?”
“Where did you learn to drive like that, Horatio? I’m still trying to catch up with my liver.” I opened the car door and stumbled out. “I need some fresh air.”
I staggered over to the small sandstone wall surrounding the edge of the cliff and sat down, swinging my legs over to the other side. The wall, intended to protect the foolish from getting too close to the edge, was used by young daredevils as a diving platform. The tumbling surface of the wide surging river was forty windswept feet below.
The view across the Cumberland and into the valleys and fields beyond was spectacular. A hundred different shades of green—from pale celadon to dark greenish-blue—tinted a forest of trees in the distant hills. The fields were planted in a fertile patchwork of soybeans, sorghum, and corn—with a scattering of white farmhouses and red barns in between. Directly beneath us, dry yellow bulrushes and fuzzy brown cat’s tails danced in the wind against the background of the mighty river.
“Mind if I smoke?” asked Horatio, as he spread a handkerchief on the wall and sat next to me.
“You know I love the smell of your pipe, Horatio. Can you really see two states from here?”
“I truly doubt it,” he answered with a smile. “But the view is breathtaking, nevertheless.”
“Even the old prison is picturesque—if you squint