~*~
Leon gripped the phone in Dallas's apartment as if he'd been assigned to crush it. He hated having to admit his brother could be right. He hated even more that the skydiver had skipped town and made him look stupid. He punched his brother's number. When Travis answered, he said, "He's gone."
"Fancy that, and I'll bet he didn't even leave a forwarding address."
Leon suppressed a groan as he glanced around the dinky apartment. "He didn't take much. His closet and dresser are full of clothes. I'll bet he's comin' back."
"And I'll bet he figures you'd think that," Travis said. "Thank God we're not both retarded."
Leon remained silent but squeezed the receiver even harder, wishing it was Travis's neck.
"Have you talked to his landlord or been to that bar he likes so much? What the hell have you been doing?"
Leon spoke through clenched teeth. "I'll call you as soon as I learn something."
"I can hardly wait," Travis said and hung up.
Leon dropped the phone in its cradle and took a step away when it begin to ring. He glared at it. "Damn it, Travis, get off my back!" He grabbed the receiver. "What?"
"Mr. Grant?"
"Huh? No."
"May I speak to Dallas Grant, please?"
Leon didn't recognize the deep, southern voice. "He ain't here."
"Oh. I was hoping he hadn't left yet. I've been called away from the office for a few days, and I'd hate for him to travel all this way--"
"Where you calling from?" Leon asked. "I'm hoping to catch up with him myself."
"Leesville. If you see him, tell him his uncle's attorney will be out of town until Thursday."
"I'll do that." Leon smiled, feeling the glow of vindication. "Thanks for calling."
~*~
"How 'bout some coffee?" Dallas asked. They walked back to the house and entered the kitchen. "I don't know where anything is," he said, "so this could take a while."
"I'm in no hurry. I've got a beeper if anyone needs me or the ambulance."
"You're on duty? What if--"
"Relax. I usually drive it home. Besides, we use it more for a hearse. That's about the only excitement we have in Leesville. We don't have enough crime to justify a full-time cop, never have. That's another reason no one bothered to investigate Gramp's death. Hell, we've still got the same Police Chief, the old coot."
Dallas found a jar of instant coffee and prepared to heat water in the microwave. He filled a measuring cup from the tap and put it in the bare-metal box.
Marti stared at it. "Wait! That's the defroster."
Dallas shrugged. "Well, yeah. Whatever."
"No," Marti said, animated once again. "There's a sketch of it in Gramp's notes." She grabbed one of the steaks and handed it to him. "Try it!"
He removed the water and placed a steak in the box.
"Let's give it a minute or so," she said. "If that's not enough, we can leave it in longer."
Two minutes later, Dallas extracted a slab of raw beef. Marti stared at the meat hanging limp in his hand, then looked into his eyes. "Dear God!"
He grinned. "Pretty cool, huh?"
"Don't you see? Gramp might still be alive!" Marti tugged his sleeve. "We've got to find him!"
"Whoa. He's been buried fifty years." Dallas flopped the steak on a plate. "Try holding your breath that long."
"Be serious. He's every bit as organic as that meat. Why couldn't we defrost him?"
Dallas aimed his thumb at the box. "For one thing, he wouldn't fit in there."
"True. But, we can make a bigger one!"
"Even if we could, how would we explain why we're digging him up? I imagine folks around here get a little edgy when you dig up the dead."
"He's not dead."
Dallas shook his head. "They probably get even touchier when you dig up the undead. I saw that in a movie."
"Will you stop with the movies?"
"Sorry. Okay, let's say we figure out how to build a bigger defroster--"
"Restoration chamber."
"Okay. And then we dig him up. What’s next? We unzap him and end up with a nice, fresh, dead body."
"We'd probably have to jump start him. You know, use a defibrillator on him. I've got one in the ambulance."
Dallas stared at her, wondering what he'd stumbled into. "You're serious, aren't you?"
~*~
Dallas rested his cheek against the cold metal box. They'd plundered the remains of the raw materials scattered around the lab to build it. After working most of the night, his eyelids felt like they'd been bungee'd to his face. Why am I doing this, he wondered, then glanced at Marti and knew. He could do a lot worse than spend his time working with an attractive woman on a project with awesome income potential.
"C'mon," Marti said, "help me hook this up."
Dallas groaned. "It's not like he's going anywhere, wherever he is. We can take our time."
"Please?"
He opened an eye and focused on the object in her hand. "That's the kinkiest thing I've ever seen."
"Relax, Romeo. It's a wiring harness. I labeled all the leads before I disconnected them, and marked where they need to go on the new chamber. All we've gotta do is install the fittings and hook 'em up."
"How do you know this'll work?"
"I don't."
Dallas yawned. "We don't even know if it's big enough."
"Gram said he wasn't very tall."
"Did she say if he was standing at attention when Uncle Eli zapped him?"
Marti looked at him in silence for a few seconds before her shoulders slumped. Regretting his words, Dallas stepped from behind the workbench and put his arm around her. "I'm sorry. I've got a big mouth."
"No, you're right." She sniffled. "You must think I'm insane. It's just... Damn it, this could be my chance to turn things around. Now that Gram's gone I don't have anybody. With Gramp, and this funky raygun, maybe I have a chance for a real life. Or maybe-- Maybe I'm just being stupid."
Dallas reacted naturally and discovered he liked the feel of warm, firm female in his arms. "I don't think so," he said.
~*~
Marti arrived the following night with chicken from Leesville's only drive-in. She and Dallas dined in the old farm house. "It never ceases to amaze me how these little southern towns can have so many churches," Dallas said. "And every one of 'em has a cemetery. Too bad your grandfather isn't in any of them."
"Gram never said where he was buried." She rested her chin on her hand and sighed. "It was a dumb idea anyway."
Dallas stood. "It's way too early to give up. C'mon, let's go for a walk." He accompanied her to the door. To his delight, she reached for his hand and held it.
They wandered out the back and headed for a small rise where they could watch the sunset. At the top they found a family cemetery. Surrounded by a rusted, wrought iron fence, the neglected gravestones crowded the space.
Dallas glanced at a few of the closest markers, which all bore the name Barnes. "That's odd," he said. "I wonder why Uncle Eli didn't arrange to have himself planted up here, with the rest of the clan."
Marti shrugged. "Maybe he didn't feel worthy."
"Or maybe he didn't want anyone coming up here."
Marti drifted away for a closer look at the headstones. "I didn't realize your family had been here so long. Some of these go back a long--" Her comment ended in a shout.
Dallas hurried over. As he closed the distance, he quickly realized her exclamation was of joy rather than fear.
She pointed to a marker with the name Bertrand Tugner on it. "It's Gramp--I can't believe it!"
"Maybe we had Uncle Eli all wrong," Dallas said. "He may have had the same idea as us. If he had your grandfather buried here, digging him up and bringing him back would've been much easier."
Marti nodded. "That would explain some of his remarks in the journal. He may have wanted to bring Gramp back, but I don't think he was smart enough to work out the details."
"We'll k
now for sure if he isn't buried too deep," Dallas said. "I'll be right back."
He retrieved Marti's flashlight and a pair of shovels from the barn. They hit something solid less than two feet down.
"This is creepy," Marti said.
"I had the word 'ghoulish' in mind." Dallas scraped the last of the dirt from the metal lid of an over-sized box. "I thought crypts were cement."
"Me, too." Marti pushed a loose strand of hair from her forehead. "And this looks bigger than a crypt."
Dallas prepared to open it. "Ready?"
She nodded, and he pried the lid upward. Marti stood behind it with her eyes closed while Dallas aimed the flashlight into the box. "Well?" she asked.
"I don't believe it," he said.
"What?" Marti opened her eyes and let the lid fall away from the rough, over-sized casket.
It was empty.
~*~
"Everybody in this damned town is deaf and dumb," Leon said. "Nobody's ever heard of Grant."
"Amazing," Travis said, his sarcasm thick as sorghum.
"It's not a set-up, I swear. All I need to do is find out who died in the last couple weeks."
"Yo, Einstein, can you read?"
"Yeah."
"Then check the obituaries."
~*~
Dallas and Marti studied the notebook but couldn't find any clues to Gramp's whereabouts. "He didn't get up and walk away," Dallas said.
"And he couldn't have unthawed himself."
Dallas looked at her and smiled. "Remember the steaks that were just kind of stacked next to the defroster gizmo?"
"Yeah, so?"
"I wouldn't be surprised if he was out in the barn somewhere. Probably pretty close to the zapper."
They raced to the barn and started searching. Within an hour, they found a statue-like man propped against a wall behind stacked bales of hay. He stood with his eyes and mouth open, and one arm raised, as if shouting a warning. The discovery left Marti visibly shaken.
"It's him, right?" Dallas asked. He blew a cloud of dust from the man's face.
After staring at him for a moment, she shook herself out of her trance. "Yes! It's him. Gram kept a snapshot of him on her dresser. I guess I expected him to look older." She took a deep breath, then exhaled. "Let's get him in the chamber."
Dallas shook his head. "With his arm up like that, he'll never fit. I'm sure that's why the coffin was so big. It had to have been Uncle Eli. He's the only one with a reason to keep some idiot from cutting the arm off, or breaking it, in order to cram him into a regular-sized coffin."
Marti smiled. "And by having him buried in the family plot, he could dig him up, bring him here, and try to restore him."
"But why wouldn't he say anything about it to your grandmother?" Dallas wiped more dust off Gramp with a rag.
"I don't know. She didn't like to talk about it, 'cause she knew she'd just get angry. Or weepy. Anyway, I'm beginning to think your Uncle Eli wasn't such a total jerk after all."
"Me, too." He threw the dust rag on a workbench. "I guess we'll have to rebuild the box. In the meantime, maybe we ought to try it on something small, like a cat. If we can zap it and bring it back, we'll know whether or not we're wasting our time."
Marti made a face.
"What?"
"It's just-- It doesn't seem terribly ethical."
Dallas shrugged and walked over to the raygun he'd uncovered the day before. "It's still plugged in. I'll bet Uncle Eli used it all the time. I doubt he zapped all those steaks fifty years ago." He squinted through the crude sighting device at Marti bending over a workbench. He smiled, then blinked himself out of a rapidly forming fantasy involving her. "I wonder how big a field it has?"
Marti looked up in alarm. "Hey--cool it! One accident per family is enough. Besides, you said we ought to test it on something little."
Dallas swung it away from her as the door to the barn crashed open. Leon Pinnel barged in waving an automatic that looked like a toy in his huge hand. "Well, look who's here." He pointed the gun at Dallas.
Dallas willed himself to relax. He decided to treat the big redneck the way he'd treat any other predator--show no fear. Indignation however, was a different matter. "Jeez, Leon, you scared the hell out of me!"
"I'm all choked up," Leon snarled.
Marti looked at Dallas. "Who is this bozo?"
Leon swung the gun toward her. "Shut up, bitch!"
With the device already pointed at the intruder, Dallas flipped it on and bathed him in a beam of coruscating light. Leon didn't even have enough time to register surprise before he stiffened like a rock. He fell slowly forward, and hit the floor with an ominous thump. In response, a fine rain of dust drifted down from the exposed rafters.
"My God!" Marti gasped. "What've you done? Who is he?"
"His name's Leon Pinnel," Dallas said, sticking his hands in his pockets so the trembling wouldn't be so obvious. "He's what you’d call a bad guy.”
“How bad?”
“The worst. He’s a killer."
Marti looked from the body to Dallas, and backed away from them both. "And you aren't?"
"Hell no! What he did to my friend can't be undone, but we can always run the big slob through the defroster."
"How? Look at him! He's twice as big as Gramp."
Dallas rubbed his chin. "Maybe so, but believe me, we're better off with him like that." He explained about his debts and described how Ruts died.
The explanation seemed to restore her confidence. She approached the body. Pinnel's sneer was locked into his face. Marti knelt beside him and tried to pry his fingers from the gun, but they wouldn't move. She ejected the clip. "At least we don't have to worry about him shooting anybody when he wakes up."
Dallas frowned. "I wouldn't count on it. He probably chambered a round before he came in."
"Oh, great!"
"Relax," Dallas said. "Only his trigger finger is in the way." He tried to move the digit but couldn't even wiggle it. The scars on it brought back unpleasant memories of Leon's visit to his apartment. Suddenly he had an inspiration--an opportunity too rich to pass up. He walked to one of the cluttered workbenches, and after a brief search, came up with a heavy pair of wire cutters.
"You're not going to...."
"Sure am," Dallas said. "I've gotta disarm him."
"That's disgusting!"
"It's just a finger--"
"I was talking about the pun." She smiled. "You should know by now I don't have much sympathy for killers."
Dallas smiled back. "Right." He leaned down and slipped the cutters into position around Leon's finger, then relaxed. "I can't do it."
Marti nodded. "It's nice to know you've got a heart. But you can't be sentimental at a time like this. Just try to make a clean cut. The finger can be reattached. Lord knows, he won't feel anything."
"Not now anyway," Dallas said. He took a quick breath before bearing down on the handles. The finger came off with a sharp click.
Marti picked up the loose digit and stuffed it in Leon's shirt pocket. Once again she struggled to free the gun, but it wouldn't budge. "It's no use. I can't get it."
Dallas tried too, but without success. "I suppose I could snip off a couple more...."
She shivered. "He's going to have a tough time pulling the trigger as it is."
"Yeah, I guess so."
Marti found a chair and slumped into it. "There’s one good thing that’s come out of this. We no longer need a cat."
~*~
Peanut breath, Dallas realized, is enough to make you puke. He looked around the office and tried to ignore the odor that emanated from the ancient attorney and drifted across his broad, bare desk. Though clean and well-maintained, the office reminded Dallas of Eli’s house. Both belonged in the past. He glanced at a black and white photo of FDR on the wall behind Marti, and wondered how much of the afternoon they'd have to spend there.
"Your uncle was a most peculiar man," the lawyer said, his deep voice filling the room.
"Kept to himself, mostly." He held out a handful of peanuts. "Goober?"
Dallas shook his head. "We’re in kind of a hurry."
After dabbing his mouth with a napkin, the old man cleared his throat and passed Dallas a sheaf of papers to sign. "Your uncle's land represents the bulk of his estate. Other than a burial policy, he didn't have any insurance."
"There's no cash in the estate?" Dallas nervously folded and unfolded the shopping list he and Marti had made. Neither had the money to buy parts for a bigger restoration chamber.
"What little cash there is will remain frozen until the whole business goes through probate."
Dallas rubbed his eyes. They had to do something with Leon. The big man's brother would be looking for him soon. "I've got to have some money." He heard the rustle of a paper bag as the old man groped in a desk drawer for more peanuts.
"I might be able to find a buyer for that land," he said, "but it'll take a while. Money’s tight. The peach crop was off, and the peanuts won't be in for another couple months."
Dallas groaned. "How about a loan against the property?"
"A mortgage? Possibly. Have you got a good job?"
"It's fairly steady. I take videos of people skydiving."
"From an airplane?"
"Inside and out," Dallas said. "I jump with them."
"Son, if it was me, I don't believe I'd be telling any bankers that I jumped out of airplanes for a living." He chased the advice with more peanuts.
Marti reached for Dallas's hand and patted it. "Folks around here are known for their open-mindedness."
"Yeah," Dallas said. "I can tell."
"I'm sure you'll work something out, and when you do, you'll be able to take care of this." He handed Dallas a statement for legal services.
Dallas took the bill with him when they left. They stopped at a cafe next to the barber shop and went over the list again.
"We'll just have to charge it," Marti said.
Dallas frowned. "Borrowing money is how I got into this mess."
"You just borrowed it from the wrong people." She got up from the table and turned toward the door. "C'mon, let's go."
"Where?"
"Shopping!"
"But--"
"At least my credit is still in pretty good shape!"
~*~
"Herpes?" Travis stared at the phone. "Well, can't you get a shot for it or something?"
"I didn't have to tell you, ya know," said the woman on the line.