The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [86]
My mom: no one I knew.
Or was she? Thigpen’d lied about killing Simons. Or he’d made us think he’d killed him. So why wouldn’t he lie about me, about Mom and Unc, just to get me to run like I did, get me to blink?
I’d blinked. And maybe Thigpen was lying.
But he wasn’t. I knew. I’d known forever.
I shivered from the cold and wet, even with Tabitha’s jacket around me.
“Timing is everything, now isn’t it, Leland?” Simons said. We were headed upriver, the bluff already past. We sat facing him in the stern, Mom and Miss Dinah still on the bench at the bow, Unc and me on the middle bench, Tabitha next to Simons, facing us. He had one hand to the engine, the other with the pistol pointed at Unc. The boat was moving slow, headed into the current, and I wondered where we were going, and I knew in the same moment it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
“I hope our little interruption of the festivities between you three and Deputy Thigpen hasn’t disappointed you much,” he said. “Of course, Miss Gaillard and her daughter’s cameo appearances this evening have certainly put a crimp in their day, a day otherwise filled with information gathering. But once one finds intruders rummaging though one’s e-mail, of course it behooves one to go to the source, as it were, and prune the offending branches.” He paused. “As I said, timing is everything, and the coincidence of our crossing paths in this manner has the ring of Providence about it.”
Unc was silent.
Simons shrugged. “Or maybe not. Maybe quite the opposite. I guess we’ll find out once we rendezvous with Deputy Thigpen. We’ll see whether Providence plays a hand or not.”
“Dorcas found what station he sending mail from,” Miss Dinah said from behind me, her voice low, steady. “She found out he sending from Miss Constance address at the museum.” She paused. “But he found us out.”
“I am sorry, Miss Dinah,” Unc said. “I placed you in this, and I am truly sorry.”
“Sweet sentiment,” Simons said. “And it may sadden you even more when I inform you the mail was nothing. Only cosmetic, in case someone came knocking where he ought not, figuring out what is best left a mystery.” He paused. “To paraphrase Mr. Clemens, e-mail as regards my demise has been greatly exaggerated.” He laughed. “This way it appears as though messages sent from Constance to Cleve Ravenel incriminate the two of them, implicating them in my death as well as yours, LD.”
Unc let out a breath. “And Pigboy and Fatback don’t even exist.”
“Precisely,” Simons said.
The river widened out here, a clearing coming up on the Hungry Neck side, and we would be right where I’d parked the Luv that first day I had it, the marsh stretching away for miles. “Almost to the cut,” he said, and looked at the motor a second. “If this troller will get us there. Truth be known, I hadn’t expected all this company, even though we’ll be packing out a great deal of material this evening. Even so, the engine I’ve got will do the work, I’m certain.” He looked past Unc now. “Truth be known,” he said. “Truth be known. Now there’s an oxymoron if ever I encountered one.”
He turned the engine, and we were heading out into the marsh and off the Ashepoo, beside us the gray walls of marsh grass, the channel suddenly narrow, twelve feet across, and now Hungry Neck was what I could see behind him and Tabitha: trees growing smaller as we pulled deeper into the marsh.
Unc said, “If you’d wanted the land, you could have come to me.”
“Hah!” Simons let out quick, his head tipping back a moment, and Tabitha flinched at his move. Without thinking, I reached a hand out to her, touched her knee a moment.
She did nothing.
Simons hadn’t seen it. He shook his head, looked at Unc, then past us again, maneuvered us deeper into the marsh, the walls swallowing up the trace of the Ashepoo I’d been able to see behind us. “Your lack of vision, Leland—and I apologize for the bad pun—though precisely what I’ve come to expect from you, still astounds me,” he said, his words perfect the way South-of-Broaders made them perfect: to remind you of who they were, and of