Chapter Six

Tanjee knew that time was not on her side. It was not going to get any cooler. The uncomfortable, humid morning would soon ramp up into that hellish afternoon heat that she remembered from yesterday. She was determined to get out of the car before that happened. She heard her phone. She thrashed her head from side to side trying to find it. Panic helped her ignore the pain. She didn’t see the phone anywhere.

“Where is it, where is it?” she screamed to no one. “Oh God, help me!”

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Monday mornings were busy and predictable at the court house. Ms. Mini used Monday to run reports and order supplies. The town folk spent Monday easing into the week so they didn’t usually show up to pester Ms. Mini until Tuesday or Wednesday.  Methodical, systematic; Monday was a comfort to her. The rest of the week there would be people lined up waiting to ask their ignorant questions - some so stupid that she would laugh with the clerks later. “He wanted an easement on Rouse Road…Rouse Road!! Can you imagine?” And they’d laugh the way government workers laugh at the general public.

This particular Monday, she was about to run the J30 dash seven report, so it was 9:30.  Terry was on break and Carlene was on her fourth cup of coffee. Being in the only county in Florida with a negative population growth, Ms. Mini had never needed more than two clerks. And even if both of them were out sick, like that Tuesday nine years ago, it wasn’t a crisis. That day, Ms. Mini just left the back desk and worked the counter. Carlene came in on Wednesday with a red nose and a box of tissues and Ms Mini went back to her desk. No problem. So, on that current, methodically predictable Monday, it was a shock to Carlene and Ms. Mini that twelve people showed up within six or seven minutes of each other.

Hearing the conversations among the twelve, Ms Mini determined that, even stranger than the fact that they all arrived at once was that they were all there for the same reason. Each one needed a permit to replace one or more of the windows at their house. “What went on out there this weekend Mr. Shackelford?  I had heard that there were some windows broken out past Ona, but twelve of you? Were we invaded by the Russians or something? What does the Sheriff say about this?”

“That so and so,” (he actually said the words, “so and so”…Mr. Shackelford never cursed) “wouldn’t know a crime if it jumped up and bit him on the backside. Ella was at the house by herself Saturday night. I was already out at the dairy. She heard them windows break and called me. I told her to call the law. That skinny deputy, uh, you know, Margaret Peeler’s boy, came out and rummaged around for a few minutes. Then he got a call on the radio and had to go real quick like, without even helping her tape up them windows. When I got home I called Sheriff Hanchey and he said that he didn’t know what happened, that maybe sometimes old windows just break. Now what kind of blame fool thing is that to tell somebody what knows better?”

Mrs. Tipton spoke up in a frantic voice. “Yeah, when we realized that twelve of us had been vandalized all about the same time, it scared the bejesus out of me. I haven’t slept since Friday night. And nobody has given us no answers. Do you know anything, Ms. Mini?”

“No. Like I said, I heard that there was some kind of commotion out there Saturday night but I didn’t know…”  Her voice trailed off. She was not used to being out of the loop. She would call Dale Hanchey as soon as Terry got back from break. Right now she needed to help Carlene process permits.

Each person told their story as they came up to the counter. The details were puzzling. Rather than it being a succession of attacks, Ms. Mini figured out that they’d all been hit within two or three minutes of each other. Simultaneous attacks ruled out in her mind that it was one person or even a couple of carloads of rowdy teenagers. Ms. Mini knew that her brain would not rest until she could figure this thing out. She had to find out what the sheriff knew. She decided to pay him a little visit. But first she went back to her desk and scribbled down the details she had just been told.

Not one person had seen a rock or bullet holes or anything to explain what had actually broken the glass. No one had heard a vehicle before or after the windows broke. Mrs. Miller had two windows broken and the Shackelfords had three. Everyone else had only one window broken. As she was writing, Ms. Mini wished that she had asked the folks which windows were broken, which side of the house they were on, to see if there were any similarities. “Surely the sheriff would have that information,” she thought. Just that quick she also thought, “And he’d better not play dumb.” She knew she’d saved his butt too many times for him to hold out on her.

Mark and Connie Yancy had been asleep in the back part of the house. There had been insistent banging at front door until Dave stumbled to it, shirtless, with his hair all messed up. He was surprised, and a little embarrassed, when he saw Shirley Stevens standing there in her Sheriff’s Department uniform. She was a bailiff at the courthouse. She explained that she had been called out because of the number of dispatches they had received that night. She was a duly sworn officer, but had not been on a patrol call since she had spent one night in a squad car during her training. She asked Dave if he had any windows broken that night, he said no, she said thank you, be careful, and was on her way. By this time, Connie was up and asking just what the Sam Hill was going on. Dave relayed what Shirley had told him.

“Did you look around, Dave?” Connie said in that condescending way that always put a knot in his stomach.

“No, I didn’t.” Dave said this like a straight answer was all Connie was after. She let a couple of seconds pass.

“You think maybe we ought to, Dave?” The knot was tightening. He could tell she was irritated.

“I guess so.” Again, without moving.

“Tonight, Dave?”

“Well, yeah.”

Connie sighed that loud, exasperated sigh she used when she wanted to tell Dave he was an idiot without saying it.  She pushed past him and started turning on lights. It wasn’t long before they found the broken window.

“Call the Sheriff’s Department, Dave.” Connie was still using that voice.

Shirley returned to the Yancy house, examined the shattered window and made a report. There was no evidence to explain how the window was broken. Dave and Connie watched her drive away.

Connie looked at Dave.

“Are you going to tape up the window, Dave?”

“I guess so.” Motionless.

Connie sighed and went to get the duct tape.

Alma Sconyers lived alone. She was 93 and still did all her own cooking and housework, mainly because no one else could do it to suit her. Her children had hired a succession of housekeepers, but Alma had nitpicked about everything from how they dressed to how many times they shook out the toilet brush until, one by one, they all quit. Sure, being there alone, she had the occasional grease fire and once in awhile the vacuum cleaner was left running for a day or two, but mostly everything worked out fine.

Her 67 year old son, Tom, had come in to get her permit.

“Mama said for me to find out if the war has started.” He didn’t stop for an answer. “She’s convinced that the end of the world is around the corner, you know. She listens to some preacher from Arkansas on the Christian channel and he says Armageddon’s so close that you better use a credit card to make a donation ‘cause there might not be time for the United States Postal Service to get it to him.” Ms. Mini couldn’t tell if he was trying to be funny or just relaying information. After a beat, he said, deadpan, “I think we’re going to have to cut off her cable.”

He then proceeded to tell them a practically identical story to the one that the others had told. Ms. Mini was baffled. How could there be so many incidents and so little evidence? What could explain 12 windows being broken nearly simultaneously? She wasn’t going to bother calling Dale on the phone. She would walk the two blocks to his office to see him face to face. Man, she thought, I need a cigarette.

It was the ritual she missed. She couldn’t be convinced that it was the nicotine. No, it was definitely the ritual. It was always the same: First, she had to find a spot that was completely quiet and still. She had figured out years ago that she needed it quiet so that she could actually hear the slow, smooth scritch of the long, thin cigarette being pulled from the others. That sound was full of promise. It made her insides vibrate just a little, the anticipation. She knew a complete mood change was about to happen. The dry paper against her mouth, the irritating scraping of metal against metal as the lighter flame sprang to life, and that happy crackle as the paper and tobacco ignited. All of that was just prelude. It preceded the sweet, delicious rush of warm, smoky love that was that first draw. Every subsequent drag was just perfunctory. If she were not so frugal, she wouldn’t have taken more than three drags. Those were the best. She only finished each cigarette to not be wasteful. For thirty years.

 

And then three years ago, she quit. Cold turkey. No patch, no hypnosis, no pathetic fake cigarette. She stopped smoking and put that man out of her life on the same day. Done. No looking back. Well, except every once in awhile. Something would trigger her mind into remembering. Then she missed a cigarette something desperate.

She spent the ten minutes it took to walk to the Sheriff’s office thinking about a cigarette and the 12 houses involved in the strange happenings two nights ago. Most of the houses were standard country clapboard. Some were fifty years old. Some were older. The McKenzie’s house was built before the turn of the century. The 20^th century. Mini smiled. She was keeping her own inner dialogue straight with that last thought. After all, there had been another “turn of the century” in the recent history of that house. “Better watch it, old girl,” she said out loud. “People who argue with themselves get sent to Chattahoochee.”  She didn’t even know where Chattahoochee was or if it indeed had a mental institution. It was a threat she heard locals lob at each other jokingly. A colloquialism. Ms. Mini smiled again.

The squat, cinder block building that housed the Sheriff’s office was a welcome shelter from the morning’s heat. The inside was cool and smelled slightly of mildew. Of course, to Ms. Mini, most of the South smelled slightly of mildew. On her little jaunt to the sheriff’s office, Mini had envisioned officers scurrying about, phones ringing, and the Sheriff up to his eyeballs in charts, maps, APB’s, and mysterious men in dark suits. Surely he would have called in the FBI or some outside agency to get to the bottom of this thing.  The Clark County Sheriff’s Department had more calls that past Saturday night than it had in the three months prior. This was cause for some frenzied activity.

But as she rounded the corner at the end of the narrow hallway and walked into the small reception area, she was shocked to see Wanda Lee alone in the room. It was obvious that Wanda Lee was unoccupied as she hurriedly stuffed the emery board she had been using into her desk drawer. The only sound in the room was the drone of an ancient window unit air conditioner going full blast.

“Well, hey there, Ms. Mini. How’re you?” Wanda Lee drawled out the words with a slow, syrupy sweetness, high pitched and surprised, as if she had not just seen Ms. Mini earlier that morning at the Shop ‘N Go. She was a pleasant enough girl, with a just a handful of failings, in Ms. Mini’s estimation. Some were not even her fault. For instance, she could not help that she was hired for her bra size and big blond hair. Dale Hanchey was a sheriff with no pride.

“Well, hey back, Wanda Lee. Don’t you look nice? That shade of yellow is one of your colors, it really is.” Ms. Mini had learned long ago that in the Clyettville, you must begin each conversation with a compliment. No abrupt questions. It wasn’t their way. With that requirement met, she got down to business. “Is the Sheriff in?”

“Well, he was in and then he went out for a little while. I thought I heard him down the hall just before you came in. Did you see him out there?”

Wanda Lee had an irritating habit of not thinking things through. Ms. Mini fought the urge to be completely sarcastic and say, “Why, yes I did see him, Wanda Lee. I just thought I’d ask you anyway.” Ms. Mini didn’t say that. She lowered her eyes and responded very deliberately, in a tone she reserved for small children and the very elderly,

“Why, no I didn’t Wanda Lee. I guess that’s why I was looking for him in here.”

Ms Mini smiled a huge patronizing smile and waited a moment for it to sink into dear Wanda Lee’s big blond head. Wanda Lee started to giggle.

“Oh, Ms Mini, you’re so funny. I get it.” Giggle. “Duh. Of course you didn’t see him out there or you wouldn’t have asked me if he was in here.” More schoolgirl giggling. “You are so funny. You certainly got me there.”

“Can we call him, maybe? You know, just to see if he’s somewhere close by. I really need to talk to him.”

Wanda Lee was suddenly very serious. “Oh, Ms. Mini, I’m not supposed to call him unless it’s a matter of life or death emergency. Is this a matter of life or death emergency?”

Lord, bless the little nitwit’s heart, Ms. Mini thought to herself. She really does live in a special little nitwit world.

Ms. Mini wanted to say out loud, "You know, Wanda Lee, we might soon have an  emergency that is a matter of your life or death, because in about five minutes I am going to put my strong, Western Pennsylvania hands around your little nitwit neck and choke the life out of you." But Ms. Mini didn’t say that, of course. Ms. Mini just smiled and said,

“No, Wanda Lee, it is not a matter of life or death emergency. Will you please tell him to call me when he gets in?”

“Of course, Ms. Mini…you have a wonderful day, now. Bye-bye.”

Ms. Mini just waved weakly and turned to leave. About that time, Terry called from the courthouse.

“The Sheriff has called five times. He’s out at the Heinmiller place and wants you to meet him there.”

“What in the world does he want with me, Terry? What’s going on out there?”

Terry’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “I don’t know, Ms Mini. Maybe he just misses your smiling face,” Terry laughed like she knew something. The rumors about Ms. Mini and Sheriff Hanchey had been circulating for years. Mini just rolled her eyes and said nothing back.

When she got back to the courthouse she grabbed her purse and left immediately for Joe and Sue Heinmillers’ little farm. They lived about five miles the other side of Ona. It would take her 15 minutes to get out there. It took other people 30. Driving was a personal challenge to Ms. Mini. Each trip was a test; with goals to be set and records to be broken. She exchanged the Deep Purple CD in the player for Skynnard and put the pedal to the metal. 

When she got to the Heinmiller place, the Sheriff’s car was parked at the back of the house. Mini pulled her car beside the brown police cruiser. As she got out of her car, she looked over the property to see if anyone was outside. A few cows dotted a small pasture near the house and beyond that was fifteen acres or so of their cash crop: prickly pear cactus. It was still jarring to see it there. It looked foreign, almost other-worldly. Florida farmland was supposed to be full of orange trees or strawberries or covered in cattle. The hard freezes of the early 90’s had ruined the family’s hundred-year-old citrus groves. Joe and Sue, and scores of other farmers, had been forced to become creative with the use of their land. An internet search had revealed a niche market for edible cactus. They made a small investment and worked the place mostly by themselves. They sold to restaurants, a couple of Mexican grocery stores and a small processing plant. They weren’t getting rich but it paid the bills.

Ms. Mini stepped to the screen door at the top of the back steps and called into the house, “Joe? Sue? It’s Mini. Is the Sheriff in there?”

Sue came to the door. Muscular and tan, she was dressed appropriately for Florida farm work: a sleeveless cotton shirt and khaki shorts. Her straight, blond hair was pulled back in a haphazard pony tail. Ms. Mini had known Sue all her life. Since she was an Albritton.  Sue had been a popular, hard-working girl in high school and then went off to the University of Florida to study Agricultural Science. She married Joe Heinmiller after graduation and they proceeded to work a farm and have four, stair-step children. Sue was a star softball player in a town where nearly every woman played. She ran a booth for her church at Pioneer Days and managed the winning team every year in the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. Sue Heinmiller had grown into a popular, hardworking woman. Ms. Mini liked her immensely.

“He’s around the other side of the house with Joe, Ms Mini,” Sue said, cheerily. “Boy, it’s a hot one, isn’t it? You want something to drink?”