“CYNTHIA!”
Robby closed the distance between his car and the Angel Oak grounds swiftly, sensing his leg muscles strain and tighten the harder he ran. There were no lights to guide his way in the darkness, so he slowed when he reached the dense set of trees close to the parking lot. He sucked air deeply into his nostrils then spit. And listened for the rustling in the brush and the struggle. There it was. Cynthia’s muted cry, feet kicking, and fists flaying. At the edge of the parking lot Robby could barely make out the scene but he could see her being dragged from behind into the woods by a figure whose arms were wrapped around Cynthia’s face and neck.
Robby charged and as he drew closer Cynthia was tossed to the side and she fell backwards to the ground. The figure backed away and then turned to crash through the woods.
Robby chased after, swallowed up by the forest of oaks, brambles, tall grass, and overgrown weeds. He reached out his hands in front, like a blind man without a walking stick, feeling his way through the damp earth, the sharp bushes and the hard leaves. He stopped and strained to discern the direction taken by Cynthia’s attacker, but was greeted by only silence.
Then a rush of sound from the side and Robby was leveled hard by a shoulder forcefully smashing into his ribs, like a linebacker nailing a wide-out venturing carelessly over the middle. Robby was lifted off the ground by the hard slam, his head smacked against a tree root, and his body landed hard on the wet ground. But his survival instincts kicked in and knew he needed to get clear. He rolled to his left and dug his fingers into the dirt, kicking his legs up and under his body to regain his feet. But as he made the move he felt the shove of the assailant’s hands and his momentum push Robby sharply into the brambles.
Hurling headfirst, Robby felt the thorns slash his cheeks and neck. He struggled getting up onto his knees, the thorns sticking his flesh, tearing away, he got up and swung wildly around with his elbows and fists.
The figure, the man, because he was obviously a man who laid him out, was gone. Robby could hear crashing through the trees in the direction of the river. There was no chance to give chase. And besides, there was Cynthia.
Robby searched the parking lot. He returned to the roadway and saw Cynthia’s Infiniti was still parked there. He turned to the grounds of the grand tree. She was there with her back turned, sitting beneath a low branch.
“Cynthia…are you…?”
“Please, don’t kill me.”
She reached for the branch and tried scrambling to her feet, but cried in pain and fell to her knees.
“Cynthia, it’s me. What are you doing here?”
“Are you part of this?”
Out of breath, Robby kneeled to her and reached to touch her hair, but she swung at his hand with hers.
“You are!”
“Part of this? Wha…? What are you talking about?”
She gripped her ankle, rubbed it, and winced. “Why did you come here?”
“I followed you here. I saw you leave the house and tried to wave you down. Didn’t you see me?”
She shook her head and sobbed quietly. Then she regained her composure and reached her hand for his. “My God, Rob. I can’t believe you followed me here. How did you know?”
“Know what? I didn’t know. I…who was that?”
Cynthia shook her head.
“Who was it?” Robby repeated.
“I don’t know.”
Robby took her whole face in his hands. He kneeled closer to her, his head throbbing from the crack on the root, his face wet with blood from the scratches. He was exasperated and at his tolerance limit. “What do you mean you don’t know? You must know! You came here. Why did you come here?”
“A phone call. It was someone…a man…I don’t know who.”
Robby gripped her face more tightly.
“Why would you…?”
“I don’t know who he was,” she said emphatically. “He said he had information I needed to know about Russ Venable –“
“Russ…why?”
“I don’t know why! Said something important that would help settle the claim.”
“The insurance?”
“Yes,” she responded softly.
Robby had so many questions to ask her. He couldn’t get his head around the mystery. He couldn’t find the right mix of facts to confirm or deny his trust in Cynthia. But she was attacked. He witnessed it. How could he be sure that she was innocent?
“Why come here? Why come alone?”
“I wasn’t afraid,” she said.
Robby looked around, thinking that he heard footsteps in the parking lot.
“I am. Let’s get out of here.”
He stood and bent low to help lift her, but her leg buckled, and she cried out again. Her ankle was likely turned, and she couldn’t support weight on it. Robby supported her, lifted her up into arms, and carried her to her car. “I’ll drive you…leave my car here.”
They kissed softly in her bedroom in the big house. They made love slowly, quietly, gently for hours, as if they both thought it might be their last time, their last stolen time together. And then they fell into sleep, Cynthia cradled in his arms.
When Robby first awakened to the loud thumping noise in the house he thought that perhaps they had been asleep for an entire night and a day, but a quick, dazed look at the bedside clock suggested they had only been sleeping for minutes, so deep was his rest. Cynthia was still sleeping through the noise, which was like the sound of a shovel repeatedly smacking on an outside wall.
By the time Robby reached the stairway leading to the ground floor he could tell that the thumping noise was emanating from the back of the house, near the deck. By the time he reached the kitchen and the glass sliding door leading to the outer deck, the thumping had stopped and the house was silent, aside from the wind blowing through the trees and shrubs outdoors. He switched on the outside deck lights.
Robby hesitated a moment, then threw open the sliding door and jumped out onto the deck. He turned quickly right and left, felt the noisy breeze blow through his face, his hair, and the sheer curtains, but saw nothing unusual. He waited and listened to the wind, checked for a tree branch that might be hitting the house, but saw nothing that could’ve caused the noise.
Maybe the thumping was all in his mind? Maybe it was the remnants of the evening scotch tearing a hole in his head. Whatever it was, Robby decided he needed a beer to help him get back to sleep.
When he opened the fridge to find a cold one he heard the voices in the living room.
The light from the TV cast a blue glow on Mateen’s face as he sat and watched the news, shaking his head.
“Where’ve you been?” Robby asked angrily.
Mateen didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “Working at the club. Saw you there earlier…you seeing this?”
“You missed some excitement, Mateen…”
Mateen cranked up the volume and silenced Robby. “Yo, check it out…”
“...where federal, state, and local governments are now making plans for a massive evacuation of the Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina coastal communities…”
“We’d better pack up,” Mateen said.
Robby tried to take in the images of the storms’ paths…two storms…and plot the timetable.
“When could this hit?”
“Both of them,” Mateen clarified. “They both turned right…I don’t know—“
“Mateen,” Robby interrupted. “Cynthia was attacked tonight at Angel Oak. And that suitcase turned up again at the guesthouse. With the money, but no gun. What do you know about all this?”
Mateen looked at Robby like he was crazy.
“Are you serious?”
Robby approached Mateen’s couch furiously. “Stop playing me! What do you know?”
Mateen stood, stood tall in Robby’s face.
“She was attacked? Is she all right?”
Robby was caught off guard.
“Yes…no…she’s okay. She…”
“Where is she?”
“She’s upstairs. She’s asleep.”
“You call the police—?“
“No. No. She was responding to a call…from a man…who said he had information about Russ Venable.”
Mateen looked away from Robby’s face and mouthed the word “Venable,” with apparent perplexity. Then he remembered the other thing Robby said. “Wait…the suitcase? The one with the money? What do you mean it’s back? Where is it?”
“The insurance investigator. Gail Heinrich. She spotted it, too. She’s handing it over to the state police.”
Mateen stepped back. “State police?” Said it like “pole-lease.” “Oh, that’s beautiful. Now they’ll come looking at me.”
“Mateen…” Robby started, stepping toward Mateen, but Mateen waved him off. “I didn’t tell her about you—“
Mateen paced the room. “Yeah…but they’ll come here and they’ll figure out who I am…and my record…and they’ll—“
“If it’s not yours—“
“…and just like you they’ll start blaming me.”
Here we go again, Robby thought. Sympathy for a suspect. Robby stopped Mateen from pacing with a stiff arm to his chest. “Mateen, listen to me. Look at me.”
Mateen yielded.
“If it’s not yours…and you’re telling me the truth…I’ll help you. I will, Mateen.”
Mateen looked down at Robby’s hand on his chest and looked up. He laughed.
“Like they’ll believe you?”
A sharp, strong wind rattled the limbs and the windows of the house.
“I’d better gather up my things from the guesthouse right now,” Robby said. “You’d better get your important things together, too. We’ll let Cynthia sleep. We might need to head inland tomorrow. Sort all this out later.”
Clouds moved swiftly though the night sky; the moonlight was now visible through the trees. Wind whistled and howled as Robby walked the dark path along the marshes and the golf course to his guesthouse. A flashlight would’ve been nice. Would’ve been a nice feature, had he thought of it, at multiple times during this long night. Careful steps on the path would have to suffice.
In the dark near the slave cemetery on the golf course Robby saw a shadow move out of the corner of his vision, moving among the gravestones.
He stopped. A tree branch in the wind? No. The sound of branches on the ground breaking. The shadow moved across the ground and against the cracked dull white marble stones. Robby stepped cautiously, but deliberately toward the cemetery and searched the ground for a rock, a stick, something hard to hold in his hands. He scrambled quickly to find a weapon as the rustling sound grew louder. He’d been smashed to the ground too many times already that night, and suddenly became desperate to find something to strike back if attacked. To no avail.
“HEY!” he shouted hoarsely and stepped closer to the trees and headstones with his fists raised. “Who the fuck are you?”
Suddenly, Robby was tackled to the ground, to his knees, from behind.
“No!” Not again.
Robby thrust a sharp, hard elbow into his attacker’s side. The attacker groaned and relaxed, which allowed Robby a chance to roll onto his back and wedge a foot upward toward his assailant’s midsection. That doubled the man into a fetal position with a deeper groan. Robby reversed position on the man and pressed a knee into his stomach. He began to pummel the man’s face with rapid fists. The man struggled to protect his face with his hands and blocked some of the punches. Robby took the opening to drive his forearm into the man’s neck, to try to crack his windpipe. That effectively subdued him into a spitting, snarling mess. Robby grabbed at his hair and pounded his head forcefully into the ground. The man grabbed weakly at Robby’s arms and tried to work his fingers into Robby’s eyes. Robby sat up and removed his forearm from the man’s neck, about to strike. When he recognized the face.
“What the…?”
He let go of Carrington Avila’s hair.
“Robby. Robby don’t—“
“Carrington…”
Carrington shielded his face from the blow he thought was sure to come, and turned away his eyes. Instead, Robby shook Carrington, grabbed his collared shirt, twisted the cloth in his hands, and pushed down on his chest.
“What have you done? What have you done?”
Carrington turned his head and spit blood. “I haven’t. I haven’t done anything! Let me explain it to you. Robby!”
“I could kill you! I could kill—“
“I’m already dead!”
Robby held tighter, rose to his feet, and lifted Carrington off the ground, with Carrington’s words wailing into the wind:
“I’m already dead…I’m already dead.”
(Read Chapter Thirty and catch up on previous episodes of Blacksmith's Girl, including Chapter Twenty-Eight and the rest.)