Make a clean break. He goes one way, I go the other.
There was no way Eli would risk coming inside the store, with its security cameras and "loss prevention specialists." By now his face was probably on every news program in the state. He would be instantly recognized.
I glanced at the doors. This is it. I'm walking away.
But I couldn't. However Eli felt about me, it didn't change the way I felt about him. I would help him escape, whatever it took. I owed him that much. I grabbed two of the ugliest shirts I could find, along with a pair of blue jeans that were a size too small. If nothing else I could put the squeeze on him.
Finally I threw in a pack of boxer shorts and a bag of socks for good measure. The clerk gave me a funny look when she rang up my purchase, but she didn't say a word, unless you count the price of purchase.
As I walked outside the store, weighed down by several plastic bags full of our loot, a green sedan pulled in front of me. The passenger window rolled down, and Eli leaned over from the driver side.
"Need a lift?"
I grinned and jumped in.
6.
As the sun rose, I began to recognize the streets we drove past. We were back in Shiloh. We went by my high school, a long brick building with an American flag waving in the front. So much had changed in my life since graduation, but the school looked exactly the same, rooted in my past.
Suddenly I realized where Eli was taking us.
"You're going home?" I asked. "Are you crazy? It's bound to be swarming with cops."
"I want to see it," he said. "We won't stop."
At the property line of the Rutherford estate, a thick green wall of thorny shrubs rose to block our view of the grounds where I had spent so much of my childhood. The shrubbery used to be so neat and trimmed at perfect ninety-degree angles, like a real wall, but the shrubs had been left to grow wild and shaggy with no one left to prune them.
The gardeners had all been let go weeks before we were forced to fire the butler, Maurice. That one hurt. Maurice had served Eli all his life.
When we reached the front gate, Eli left off the gas and coasted by, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of his lifelong home. Sure enough, several police cruisers and unmarked detective cars were parked around the center fountain, which had been turned off. The grass was dead. A sheet of plywood was nailed up where the SWAT team had kicked in the front door when they came to take my stepfather away for a crime he never committed.
Soon could see no more of the Rutherford estate through the walls of shrubbery. Eli sadly shook his head but kept driving.
"Where to now?" I asked.
"Time to see an old friend," he said.
We crossed the railroad tracks. Like a lot of Southern towns, Shiloh was extremely segregated, and now we drove down streets where most of the black residents lived. The homes were older and smaller, though most of them were well-tended. We pulled into a dirt driveway in front of a cute little wooden house painted white, with hunter green shutters. Flowers spilled out of the flowerbeds. The yard was full of kitschy lawn art from garden gnomes to pink flamingoes.
"Where the hell are we?" I asked. "And what are we doing here?"
Instead of answering, Eli pulled straight up the driveway and right into the open garage. I was entirely baffled. We got out, and he pulled down the garage door cord, then walked the stone steps to the front porch and knocked. I heard shuffling inside, and the door cracked open.
It was Maurice, our old butler. The expression on his face went from shock to joy to fear and back to joy within seconds. He pushed open the screen door.
"Well, I'll be! Get in here, y'all!" he said, motioning for us to enter.
It was strange to see Maurice wearing regular clothes instead of his black tuxedo. Once we were safely inside the small cottage and the door was shut, Maurice gave Eli a heartfelt hug. He bowed to me formally, then smiled and hugged me, too.
"I stayed up to watch the news last night. Y'all are all over the TV," Maurice said with worry in his voice. "You are in deep, deep trouble Mr. Rutherford."
"I was in deep trouble before," Eli said.
"But this is real serious," Maurice said. "Here, let me get you some coffee. No sugar. You thought I'd forget, huh? But Mr. Rutherford, with all due respect, what the hell were you thinking? When folks break out of prison they never stay out for long. They always get found in a day or two."
///
Maurice handed Eli his coffee, steam rising from the cup. He gave me a glass of milk, a child's drink. Why could no one remember that I was an adult now?
Eli sipped his coffee.
"My sentence is for life. If I get caught, what are they going to do? Execute me? I don't think so. But every day we stay here, our risk increases. I just need to buy myself a little time."
"A little time for what?"
"To find my wife."
Maurice seemed taken aback. We were sitting at the kitchen table, and Maurice leaned back in his chair, studying Eli's face.
"You think she's alive?" he asked.
"I know it," Eli answered. "I certainly didn't kill her. And you as well as anyone should know what Patricia is capable of. It all makes perfect sense, a twisted way. She stole my money and staged her own death. She gets her revenge, not to mention my riches."
Maurice pondered this as he watched the steam rise from the coffee in his hands.
"Not dead, you say," he muttered. "That's a lot to take in. But … "
"But what, Maurice?" I nearly shouted.
"The lake house," he said finally. "Yes, the lake house. The last time I paid the electricity bill out there-before you had to let me go, of course-the bill was quite a bit higher than I was expecting. It surprised me because nobody was supposed to be out there at that time of year. But sure enough, that place was occupied. Do you think it might have been Ms. Patricia?"
"Damn it," Eli muttered. "Maurice, why didn't you tell me before now?"
"You was already in jail when I saw the bill. I told your lawyer, though. Made copies for him and everything."
"That lazy, no-account son of a bitch," Eli said, his fist slamming against the table. "He never said a word about it to me."
"He must have had a lot on his mind," Maurice offered.
"Yeah. So did I. Let's go, Avery."
Eli moved to stand up from the table, but I remained in my seat.
"Surely you don't think she's still out there, do you?" I asked.
"Can you think of a better place for her to hide? While the dust settles?"
"Sure. How about Peru? Swaziland? Why not Switzerland? If Mama really has all your money, she can afford to go anywhere in the world."
"It's not that easy to disappear, especially if you don't know what you're doing," Eli said. "The lake house makes perfect sense. We own the entire lake, so you wouldn't have to worry about any visitors. The property is held in a trust for tax purposes, so it's not in my name. The authorities probably didn't even know to search there.
"Seriously, the lake house is the ideal hideaway. I can't believe it didn't occur to me until now. Even if no one pays the bills and the main power is shut off, the backup generators would run for at least a year or two. And if you don't mind eating a lot of canned goods, there's a fully equipped bomb shelter in the basement. You could survive a nuclear holocaust down there."
Maurice and I exchanged skeptical glances. Eli shrugged.
"Hey, it was the Cold War. It was a different time. And my grandpa, well, he was one paranoid rich man."
"That he was," Maurice said.
5.
Eli and I left the green sedan in Maurice's garage. We borrowed Maurice's black SUV-a gift from Eli to celebrate the butler's sixtieth birthday, as a matter of fact-and we drove back through town on our way to the lake house.
"If this lake house is so great," I asked, "why am I just now hearing about it? Did it never occur to you that your own daughter might like to spend a weekend at our private lake every once in a while?"
"That's a long story, sport," Eli said.
He was wearing a pair of Maurice's oversized sunglasses and one of the T-shirts that I had bought for him. The shirt was on the snug side, I couldn't help but notice. Eli rubbed the scruff on his chin. It was growing thicker than I had ever seen, nearly the length of a respectable beard.
"Have you ever seen me swim?" he asked.
"You own a swimming pool. Two swimming pools that I know of, to be precise."
"Yeah, but have you seen me dip so much as a toe into either of them?"