Chapter Nine #2
All I had in the way of a weapon was a wooden spoon, a butcher knife, and what was left of a pot of hot baked-potato soup.
I doubted that the spoon would do much damage.
I hated the sight of blood, and besides, I would be dead the minute I rushed at them with the knife.
The hot soup might slow one of them down, but the other one could shoot Rosalie or Scarlett without a single thought if I burned his or her partner.
That was when I remembered the pistol in my purse. It hadn’t been fired in years, but it was loaded, and I was a good shot back when I could find a range to practice at.
“If either of them lowers their hands, I’ll take out the waitress,” the guy said. “Now, open that cash register and then take us to the safe and open the damned thing.”
“There is no safe,” Rosalie lied.
“There better be, or the next customer will find y’all’s dead bodies in the back room,” he threatened.
Oh, my. She will be spending every day for a week in confession for lying, I thought as I eased away from the window, then tiptoed across the kitchen and back into the storage room, where my purse was located.
I carefully unzipped the concealed compartment, removed my five-shot .
38, and then took my phone from the side pocket.
I wasn’t sure if Dell City even had a police department, but I tiptoed into the bathroom and dialed 911.
A man answered and I whispered, “I own the Tumbleweed café, and there are two people with guns trying to rob the place.”
“Where are you right now?” he asked.
“In the bathroom, but they are threatening to shoot Rosalie and Scarlett,” I answered.
“I know the place and both of those ladies. I’m sending someone down there right now. Stay on the phone with me until they get there.”
“I can’t.” I ended the call, took a deep breath, and slowly made my way back to the window.
I took a quick peek and saw that everyone was still in the same place they had been when I left. Rosalie caught my eye again and shifted her gaze back to the counter for the second time.
“You really don’t want to do this,” Scarlett said as she opened the cash register. “Two policemen come in about this time every day for a slice of pie and some coffee. They’ll be here any minute.”
Rosalie didn’t make the sign of the cross or roll her eyes toward the ceiling as she addressed the robbers.
“Jesus sees everything you are doing,” she said. “Ev-ry-thing.”
I bit back a nervous giggle because what she said played right into my plan.
“They are bluffing. We should have been out of here five minutes ago. Go on over there and get the money,” the man said.
The woman kept her gun up and used the other hand to put the money from the cash register into her big purse. “Where is your tip jar?”
“We don’t have one,” Scarlett answered.
“Then give me what you have stashed in your purse or pockets,” the girl said.
Scarlett set the tip box on the counter and opened it.
Anger shot through me like a lightning strike. Those punk kids would walk out of here with our tip money over my dead body.
“I got it,” the girl said. “Now, let’s go to the back room where they keep more than just today’s cash, and they will open the safe or else they’ll bleed out on the floor.”
Such big talk for such a little person, I thought as I plastered myself against the wall beside the swinging doors and listened to the guy tell Rosalie and Scarlett to go ahead of them into the kitchen.
Rosalie walked past me. Scarlett cut her eyes around and saw me, but she didn’t say a word or miss a step.
When those two sorry-ass kids came through the doors, I touched the screen on my phone.
The next second, the sound of a dog the size of Cujo started barking and growling like it was coming right out of the storage room.
A man’s voice yelled, “Go get ’em, Jesus.
Tear ’em up. Don’t quit until they are on the ground. ”
Both would-be robbers froze. Before the dog stopped barking, the cold barrel of my pistol was pressed against the guy’s neck.
“You move, and I shoot. Have you ever heard of the apricot?” I didn’t give him time to answer.
That episode of Justified had better be based on truth.
That was the one where Raylan Givens explains that the apricot is a place at the base of the skull, and when someone pulls the trigger, the person is instantly dead.
“If I shoot you right here in the apricot, you will have breathed your last breath,” I said, in a voice so calm that it surprised me. “Both of you will drop your guns now and start backing up real slow like. I’ve got an itchy trigger finger.”
“You won’t shoot me—and if you do, my partner will kill the old woman,” he said, but he backed up into the dining room.
The girl took a couple of steps back, but she turned her gun away from Rosalie and toward me.
That was when Scarlett slipped past them and brought the sawed-off shotgun out from under the counter.
The clacking sound when she cocked that thing sent shivers down my spine.
The steely look in her eyes told me that she was angry, not scared.
“Both of you will very gently lay your guns on the floor and take a seat in a chair. If you don’t, I will shoot the girl first, and my friend’s bullet will find that apricot. This ends right here and now,” Scarlett said.
Apparently they did not want to die, because they obeyed.
When they were seated, Rosalie hurried to the kitchen and brought out a roll of duct tape.
When she had wrapped it around their hands and ankles, she ripped their masks off.
They both looked like they were about sixteen.
The girl had blue hair, and the guy had a scraggly beard that reminded me of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo.
They both had lip rings, nose rings, and hoops in their eyebrows.
That they hadn’t been pulled out when Rosalie yanked the masks away was a miracle.
“I ought to take a switch to you both,” Rosalie snapped.
“I should have shot you,” Shaggy growled. “You wouldn’t have been the first one, neither.”
“I can’t believe that we’ve been caught because I’m afraid of dogs,” the girlfriend groaned. “But we’ll only do a couple of years in juvie.”
“Not for murder, if you are telling the truth,” Rosalie said just as a police car pulled up and two officers got out, one with a bullhorn.
“This is Deputy James Carson. I need you to come out with your hands in the air,” he said.
Rosalie opened the door and motioned them inside. “Hello, Jimmy and Luis. Come on in and get them. We’ve got them tied up and ready for you.”
Jimmy tossed the bullhorn back into the car and followed her back into the café. When he saw the two kids tied up, he smiled and said, “You’ve done our job for us.”
“She wasn’t lying about them coming for pie and coffee,” the young girl said. “Next time we need to be more careful.”
Jimmy pulled his phone from his hip pocket, looked at a couple of pictures, and then showed them to Luis.
“Little lady, I don’t reckon there will be a next time.
Even out here in the boonies, we get photos and write-ups for who the FBI has on their Most Wanted list.” He whipped the phone around to show her the screen.
“I believe this is you and your boyfriend. The FBI is involved now since you’ve crossed several state lines on this spree.
Did you think you were reenacting Bonnie and Clyde? ”
“We’re better than they were.” She scowled at him.
“I doubt that, Lisa McAdams,” he said.
Evil poured from her eyes. “So, you know my name and that I’m a juvenile.”
“Me too, and we are still alive to start again when we get out of juvie,” the boy said.
“Not so, Stanley Mason,” Luis said. “You don’t get to go to juvie when you have murdered two people.”
“Allegedly—and prove it,” Stanley growled.
“I don’t have to. Those guns on the floor will do that for the FBI,” Luis told him.
Rosalie had sunk down into a chair and had turned so pale that I was afraid she would faint.
I rushed over to the counter, poured a glass of water, and took it to her.
She took a couple of sips and then took several deep breaths.
At that point, I wished that Rosalie had cut a switch, or even a piece of cow’s tongue cactus, and beat on them for a while before the authorities arrived.
The pompous little snots needed some discipline.
Luis bent down and cut the tape from the girl’s ankles. When she was free, she kicked him hard in the shins with her free feet. He fell backward, and she popped up on her feet and tried to kick him again. Jimmy grabbed her from behind and held her while Scarlett wrapped more tape around her legs.
“I’m going to get a lawyer and sue the bunch of you for brutality,” Shaggy screamed.
I crossed the room and leaned down until my nose was only an inch from his. “You do that. When you do, I’ll gladly be in court to testify that you held my friends at gunpoint and threatened to kill them.”
He leaned as far back as possible in the chair.
I figured he was either going to headbutt me or spit in my face, so I moved to the side.
He was nothing more than a blur when he shot forward, but since I had moved, he couldn’t stop the momentum and fell out onto the floor in a heap—screaming and wiggling like a two-year-old having a tantrum.
“Looks to me like we’re going to have to carry them out rather than let them walk,” Jimmy said.
Lisa started screeching, too, so Scarlett taped her mouth shut and then bent down and did the same with Shaggy Stanley.
“They might try to chew through each other’s tape or bite one of you.
Then you’d have to go all the way to El Paso for a rabies test. It might not be a bad idea, when you get them over there, for the Feds to go ahead and have both checked. ”
“She’s right.” Rosalie stood up from her chair. “Something has made them murciélago mierda loco.”
“What does that mean, Luis?” Jimmy asked.
Luis picked up the guy’s feet. “It means they are bat-shit crazy, and I’m surprised that Rosie said something like that.”
Rosalie shrugged. “The words ain’t nice, but that’s the only ones that work on these two feral children. Get them out of here and in your car.”
“We’ll be locking them up in our jail, but they won’t be there long. There are two agents coming to take custody of them in a few hours. I can’t believe that y’all caught them,” Luis said.
“You can give Carla the credit. She was the one who really caught them,” Rosalie said.
I draped an arm around Scarlett’s shoulders. “It was a team effort.”
Jimmy got the skinny Shaggy kid by the shoulders, and he and Luis carried him out. The way he tried to wiggle free reminded me of a worm in hot ashes. The same thing happened with the girl. The two policemen waved from the car when they finally had them secured in the back seat and drove away.
The adrenaline rush inside my body bottomed out so fast that I either had to sit down or fall on the floor in a heap. I laid my gun on the table. Scarlett shoved the shotgun under the bar and slid into the chair closest to me. Rosalie sat down beside me and draped an arm over my shoulders.
“I was scared out of my mind,” Scarlett whispered. “Matilda always told us to never go to the back room with anyone, because nine times out of ten that meant they would kill you.”
“I thought you were both very brave,” I said.
“So were you, Carla,” Rosalie said. “I didn’t know if you would get my message or not, but you did.”
“Did you know I had a gun in my purse?” I asked.
“I moved it to one side this morning when I grabbed a bag of flour,” she answered between deep breaths.
“It seemed heavy, and then I saw the zipper on the side. I figured you carried a weapon for protection. I’m glad it was there.
I worried that you wouldn’t get my message and they would kill us once I opened the safe. ”
I patted her on the arm. “Me and Jesus took care of things.”
She gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I want that recording put on my phone.”
“Me too,” Scarlett said. “And if I ever get a dog, I’m naming him Jesus.”
“Don’t you dare!” Rosalie had clearly found her second wind. “That is sacrilegious.”
Scarlett slapped her hand over her mouth.
“What?” I asked.
“If they need someone from here to testify in a trial, you will have to go, Carla. Neither Rosalie nor I can do that.”
“I will be more than glad to tell the jury what happened,” I said. “But why can’t you go?”
Why can’t they go to court? Does it have something to do with why they are so content to stay in this remote area of the state? I wondered, but I didn’t ask.
Scarlett glanced over at Rosalie.
Rosalie shook her head.
“Today is not the time to tell those stories. We’re all still too nervous to open those cans of worms,” Scarlett finally said.
“Right,” Rosalie said. “Let’s leave this cleanup until morning. We can come out half an hour early and get it done then. I just want to go home for now. That dog of yours scared me so badly, I peed my pants.”
“It helped when you told them that Jesus could see them.”
She stood up and headed for the kitchen.
By the time Scarlett and I caught up to her, she was already in the trailer.
She started down the hallway but then turned around.
“I was so flustered that I forgot to pick up the sack with the leftovers in it. Y’all can go get it when you get hungry.
And, Carla . . . you can call me Rosie.”