A/N: Getting close to our finish.

Big Swamp

Chapter Twenty-Three: Twine Backward

I glance down at myself, my snow-white boxers, and my now-sagging tube socks above my high-topped black Chucks. I face Sarah and shrug, still with my gun in hand. I glance down again to check that my boxers haven't gaped open. They haven't. I holster my gun.

Sarah's shock and anger melt as she reconsiders the scene; she reorients, a hint of a smile in her eyes but not on her lips. Her shotgun's already pointed at Peppers and Patty, but now her eyes are too. Pointed.

"Chuck," she says cooly, each word after my name stabs, "find something to tie them with. If there's nothing else, take his — " she jabs the shotgun at Peppers, who's gathering himself on the floor "— boot laces. Be sure to tie that bastard tight."

I nod and then I put my finger to my lips, a signal to Sarah to be careful what she says. Patty doesn't know her husband killed his mother. Peppers doesn't know what, if anything, Patty's told me. Sarah nods to me.

Patty sits up beside Peppers; he's on all fours, facing the floor. Peppers coughs a word: "Bitch!" — but his posture makes it hard to know if he's addressed that to Sarah or Patty or life itself.

Sarah's movements with the shotgun evince the baffling mix of precision and ease I've seen in all her movements. I cross to the kitchen, pull open a drawer. Kitchen gadgets. Damn. I pull open a second, a junk drawer, it seems. There's a stretch of heavy twine inside it, the kind often used in hay baling. — Yes, I've done that in the brutal Alabama sun. Worst high school summer job ever. It makes me itch to remember it.

I grab the twine and then the two straight-backed chairs under the table in the kitchen corner. Patty's now watching me. The rage on her face disappears and I bow mentally to her acting skill. She'd convinced me she was slow-witted but that was wrong. She's all guile and beguile. I'm going to have to retool my view about femmes fatales. She eyes Sarah.

"Your timing sucks. Chuck here was just about to show me his weapon 'cause I promised to clean it for him. Spitshine."

Sarah takes two quick steps, like a dancer, toward Patty. The shotgun's single barrel stares into Patty's two eyes, Cyclops to Siren. Patty swallows, then looks away.

Sarah motions for Patty to get in one of the chairs I put beside her and Peppers. She does. I glance at Sarah and she motions for me to tie Patty to the chair. I do it quickly.

Patty smirks at me. "Second time today I've been tied up in here." I ignore her and turn around.

Peppers stares at me. I've never gotten a good long look at him, although I've been hunting for him for a while. His work boots are dusty, his jeans look like they could stand on their own, stiffened by dirt. He's got on a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off. A cheap old Timex watch. His eyes are small, hard, and dark, shiny in his head like they're stained glass beads. There's something abysmal in his gaze and I understand what both Hannah and Peppers' neighbor meant. His elongated, unshaven face is bruised, his lip split, blood on his sharp chin. His Adam's apple juts out as if he'd choked on a greedy bite of Adam's apple.

He carefully keeps his glass eyes off Sarah.

I'm eager to know the story.

"Get in the other chair," Sarah says to him, not raising her voice but somehow raising her menace. Peppers feels it and clambers into the chair. I tie him to it, noticing the bruises that cover his arms, neck.

"Good, Chuck," Sarah nods, "now tip their chairs onto the floor. Make sure their tied hands aren't on the edges of the chairs." I'm not sure why she wants me to do that, but I tip them both backward, lowering each chair to the floor, leaving the two captives facing the ceiling. Not just the twine but now gravity holds them. Sarah nods and points to the back door. I open it and she quickly follows me outside.

I turn as she closes the back door. She stands the shotgun against the back wall of the cabin and then springs into my arms, wrapping her arms and her legs around me and kissing my face over and over, brief comments between each warm, hard kiss.

"Chuck, thank God! I was worried and sad — you didn't call — you said you'd call — then Peppers sneaked into the Hall with that shotgun — but he wasn't ready for me — I took it from him — and then I was terrified he'd already found you — I might've killed him with it — I drove like a crazy woman — then I heard that shot — "

She squeezes me tighter but stops the kisses, her voice breaking. Her eyes are wet as she hears that shot again in her mind. I kiss her this time, softly on the lips, allowing myself to linger for a moment. "I'm fine, Sarah. And Patty's lying to you."

"Of course she is, Chuck. You know you're mine." Sarah's tone is proprietary, final, although she watches my face. "Who is she? Peppers wasn't talkative on the drive up, not with that shotgun in his ribs and being forced to do the shifting. Especially one we got on the gravel roads and started bouncing."

"She's Wade Peterson's wife, Patty. The wife of the son of David Diamond and Jane Peterson. We saw their house the day when we followed Peppers."

Sarah remembers, nods. "So, did they kill Diamond? Patty and Peppers?"

I look around us. There's a clearing — not really a yard — behind the cabin. A fold-out lounge chair is in the sunshine, a sweating glass of iced tea, the ice all but gone, beside it on a fold-out stand. Beside the tea is a bottle of suntan lotion — and a copy of one of my books, Logan Smythe's Death, Where is Thy Sting?. Not my best work although it sold well. — Patty should've known better. Burney Lennox wouldn't have undressed for her either.

I admit the idea of Patty reading my books makes my flesh seem to move on my bones.

I make myself focus on what Sarah asked.

"No, Wade killed his father. I thought so and Patty confirmed it. She and Peppers have been blackmailing Wade."

"I take it that's not all they've been doing?"

I shudder. "No, but I'll spare you Patty's word for what they've also been doing."

Sarah looks nauseated for a moment. "God, with him? That man's some kind of psychopath."

"They're a matched set. She was going to make me strip, then kill me if I didn't agree to take Peppers' place."

"In all things?" She looks down at my boxers. I'd forgotten I was standing here nearly naked. "Well, at least she hasn't seen anything I haven't seen yet." Sarah raises an eyebrow as a late question mark, after her sentence finishes.

I nod hard. "Scout's honor!" I give her the three-fingered Boy Scout salute.

She knows the salute and grins. "Of course, you were a Boy Scout. Stay here, I'll get your clothes." She picks up the shotgun and goes back inside.

I walk over to the fold-out table and pick up the copy of my book. It was face-down, open, on the table, and I realize it was open in the first chapter. Patty hadn't gotten far. I'm looking through the book when Sarah comes outside, my clothes bunched under one arm. She pulls the door shut with her foot.

"So, Patty was reading a pulp detective novel while sunbathing?"

I feel oddly self-conscious. It must show; Sarah tilts her head.

"Guess so."

Sarah looks at the cover, a man standing, enshadowed, holding a gun, above a woman, nearly naked, posed just so on the ground at his feet. I can never make my publisher stop using these lurid covers, despite the fact that there is no such scene in the novel. "Logan Smythe?" Sarah asks as she hands me my clothes. I put the book down and start quickly to dress. I have to sit in the fold-out chair to pull my jeans over my sneakers.

Sarah's still looking at the book. "You know, Diana — at St. Dunstan's — she was reading a detective novel. I asked about it and she told me, but she mentioned that Logan Smythe is her favorite. Odd, thinking of her reading a book that Patty would read."

As I stand and pull up my jeans, I confess: "That's my book."

Sarah looks at me. "How did Patty get your book?" There's a sharp edge in the question.

"No, it's not my copy of the book. It's my book. I wrote it."

"Wait, you are a writer?"

"Yes, but only Ellie and Morgan know."

"I knew it!" Sarah says, her eyes shining. "Well, I mean it just felt like it to me. So, you have an alias too?"

I hadn't thought of it that way. "I guess so. Say, Sarah, what is your name, your birth name?"

She pauses for a second and then answers. "Samantha, but I haven't used that name in a long time. Let's stick with 'Sarah'. I like the way you say it to me."

From inside, we hear a yell. Patty. "Hey, I have to pee!"

Before I can speak, Sarah does. "Then pee! Aim for a polka dot!"

Patty curses in a lowered voice. Pepper laughs. She curses him. "Stop snickering, you sick puke."

Sarah shakes her head. "Quite a couple. — But what're we going to do with them, Chuck?"

I'm not sure. I apply myself to the question. For the first time since I was on the front porch, I hear the air conditioning and insect drone. "I need your help to decide. But, before I do, I need to know about Wylie and Peppers."

Sarah's face changes. "Oh, that. Uncle Wylie…" she pauses, shakes her head, "...Dad wanted you to see him having a mysterious conversation with someone. Peppers had come around the place a few times asking about handyman work or odd jobs. Dad needed a prop, thought of him and hired him just to meet in the Coliseum."

"So...that was staged?" She nods reluctantly.

"And you were part of it?" She nods again, more reluctantly.

"Because I'm your mark?"

"Mine? Yes and no." She stops and I'm about to ask her to explain that contradiction but she continues.

"But Peppers messed up. He was supposed to leave through the opposite exit, not the one we were watching from. Your following him wasn't planned, and we — Dad and I — had no notion that Peppers'd go from there to Peterson's place, that they were closely connected."

"Okay," I'll ask more later. "Here's where things stand — I think. There have been two murders at Noble Hall. David Diamond. Wade Peterson killed him, acting on impulse, I believe, hatred, shame. And Jane Peterson. Peppers killed her but Wade hired him to do it. I'm guessing he hired Peppers because he feared his mother was going to reveal that Diamond was dead, reveal his body. Deliberately or accidentally. She was slipping further and further into madness. She knew he'd killed Diamond all along, I suspect that was what initially unhinged her. She kept her boy's secret for a long time. I don't know when he figured out that she knew, but he did, and I don't think he's rested well since he figured it out. He paid Peppers to kill her to protect that grave we found, only to then end up being blackmailed by Peppers and Patty for that grave anyway."

She listens closely; I talk fast. "But I don't understand Patty's role in all this."

I put my t-shirt on. "I didn't either, and that's how I ended up an involuntary stripper. She'd found out about Diamond from Peppers. I'm not exactly sure how Peppers knew, but I suspect he followed Jane on one of her 'black veil' vigils and worked it out. It was him in the woods with us the other night."

She smiles for a second. "I worked that out already. One reason he failed to surprise me was that I recognized the engine in his truck when he pulled up. V6, 5 speed. I was ready for him when he came in."

I kiss her quickly. "I love you!"

Her eyes widen, her jaw drops. I curse myself silently. Damn! Too soon, jackass, too soon. But she rewards me with a smile like a holiday, and kisses me back.

The smile was enough, more than enough. I make myself get back on topic. "Patty says that Wade kept something that proves he killed Jane and that she knows what it is, where it is. I need to know. I guess I can ask Patty."

I take a step toward the door but Sarah puts her hand on my chest. "I'll ask Peppers."

She goes inside, shotgun in hand. A moment later, Peppers screams "Bitch!", the single scream alive with misery and rage.

When she comes out, a few minutes later, I look at her. She's flushed and she shrugs, but not with real indifference.

"The Farm?" I ask.

She nods once. "Interrogation class. It was mostly a psychology and physiology class."

I don't ask for a follow-up.

"I know what it is, Chuck, and where. It's the hammer Wade used to kill his father. He's kept it as a memento all these years. It's in the boathouse behind his place."

"So, let's go get it. These two will survive a few hours out here. They've got air conditioning."

"Yeah," Sarah agrees, "but they're going to wish they had air fresheners if we don't hurry…"

Chuckling, I kiss her cheek. "The Farm hard-boils its eggs."

She shakes her head, troubled by my words, staring at the shotgun. "They try. My whole life has tried. But I'm a few minutes short of hard too, Chuck. Maybe closer to hard than you — but still, short."

I grab her hand and we hurry around the cabin. I stop and take the keys from Peppers' truck. Sarah nods her appreciation of my thought. We jog to the Camry and, once in it, we head out of the woods.

We drive along the Lake, north toward Wade Peterson's house. The subtropical Alabama scenery is resolutely green, resolutely thick. It crowds the asphalt edges of the county roads we travel.

The sky is slowly darkening. Another summer thunderstorm threatens.

Each of us is silent for a few minutes, then Sarah starts.

"So, Chuck, here's the story..." She looks away from me, out the passenger side window. I sneak a look at her, away from the road, and only then notice she's wearing a dark t-shirt, jeans, and red, high-topped Chucks. I feel warm all over even as I brace for the story.

"...I told you Dad called me from out east. He was in Boston. He tried to run some kind of con of your grandfather but pulled the plug on it. I don't know why, not exactly. He never explained. But I suspect it was because he'd decided to con you, instead, a long con. He came to town and rented Noble Hall…"

"Rented?"

She turns to me.

"Dad's had some big scores lately, and he's cash-flush, but he's not got the kind of money it would take to buy that. He rented it through Peterson's lawyer, and he talked the lawyer and Peterson into letting him claim he bought the place. He paid extra for that. And then he started establishing himself here and learning about you. He knew you were going to get an early, sizable inheritance from your grandfather…" she looks out the passenger window again, her hands fidgeting in her lap, "...I'm not sure how he found that out, but he did. Once he got established, he started asking around about you, very casually, discreetly, irregularly, staying away from the folks closest to you, but talking to other people. He even followed you around a lot — but you never noticed. He ran into you once or twice but didn't try to...cultivate...you. When he saw you had no one special in your life, he thought of me, of course. He called. I refused at first but he kept at it."

"I should've just said no but this time, when he said this was the last con, for some reason I believed him. I still do. He's different. So, I came. He sent me to you but what he told me about you, although factually accurate, was personally way off. He never said it, but he suggested you were...shady...mean. Hard-boiled. The con was for me to get you to start following him around, curious what he was up to, and then for me to slowly work you from observer to participant. He was going to sell you on some investment scheme after I drew you in."

"So, he came at me...backward?"

She shrugs but doesn't look at me. "It's an old dodge in conning. You let the mark think he or she's discovered something, something that will make them a lot of money, something you don't seem to want them to know about at all, and then you've set the hook. They don't suspect you, they're too busy congratulating themselves on how clever they are."

"So you hired me to discover the scheme designed to fleece me?"

"Yes, Chuck. I'm sorry."

We drive, nearing Peterson's house. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because," she offers softly, "I knew Dad was wrong about you. I knew it the moment I saw that silly Blade Runner poster. And because I...liked...you. I liked you from the moment you admitted you were soft-boiled.

"So, I started trying to figure out what to do, while I was simultaneously going through the motions of Dad's con and falling for you. I kept forgetting the con, then remembering. I felt ashamed, of myself and my dad, trapped, between him and you. And then Bryce showed up — to complicate everything more..."

Peterson's house comes into view, the old yellow caddy in the driveway. The sun now hides behind gray clouds. I drive past the house a short distance and park on the side of the road.

I take Sarah's hand in mine. She searches my eyes, holding her breath.

"Doesn't change anything, girlfriend." She exhales softly and treats me to that holiday smile again.

We kiss, letting ourselves go for a moment, then both pulling back. There's still work to do.

I check my gun. She reaches into the back seat and grabs the shotgun. We get out of the car.

We do. And then it hits me. We're a team.