his brow when he saw the pregnant young girls.
Pearl swiped at the sweat forming on her brow. “You could say that. Listen, we’re going to have to stay a little longer than I planned or like.” She quickly related the night’s events. George soaked it all in like a sponge. “Driver was dead, you say?”
“Very dead. I tried for a pulse. I took his cell phone and wallet so they aren’t going to know who he is, at least right away they won’t. I did pass that pickup like I told you. I’m sure the Highway Patrol is there as we speak.”
“These girls, what are they saying?”
“Nothing. The one who isn’t pregnant is the only one really talking and, beyond telling me who they are, she isn’t saying all that much. She did volunteer, quite cheerfully, that she miscarried in her fourth month. There must be some kind of law about this, George. You live here, what do the authorities do about something like this? Those girls are babies themselves, and they’re going to give birth to babies. Where are the damn parents?”
“Polygamy is a whole other world, Missy. The authorities pretty much look the other way. Those people out there in that big compound have some pretty powerful lawyers, and they go at it. Just easier to do nothing. I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying that’s the way it is.”
“Not for long,” Pearl said. “Things are going to change pretty quick, I’m thinking. In the meantime, we have to keep them here until…until I can get some help.”
“I hear you, Missy. Now, how about some of Irma’s pancakes? By now she’s probably run out of eggs, so she’s switching to pancakes. Our own fresh sausage is always a big hit. You game?”
“George, I am starved, and I admit it. You don’t think anyone will come around here asking questions, do you?”
“Doubt it. This acreage is set two miles back. Course, they know I’m here, but they’d call first to ask if I’ve seen anything. No one wants to take a chance on those spikes in my road, that kind of thing. Most people around here go on trust, and that goes for the Highway Patrol. ’Sides, me and Irma are honorary members. You look dead on your feet, Missy.”
“I am, George. Do you mind if I pass on breakfast and try to get a few hours’ sleep? Wake me if…well, just wake me if you need to, okay?”
“I will, Missy. Your room is all ready, just head on back to it. Irma laid out some clean clothes and towels for you.”
Pearl hugged the old man, looked into his eyes, then hugged him again.
George and Irma Ellis had a daughter who had tried to get away from her abusive husband too many times to count. By the time the couple contacted Pearl, who acted on the information immediately, it was too late for the Ellises’ daughter. She was found dead in her garage an hour before Pearl could rescue her and her twin babies.
From that day on George and Irma Ellis were Pearl’s staunchest supporters and did everything and anything they could to aid her underground railroad, making sure no one else met the same fate as their daughter and their grandbabies.
George looked around the barn and felt his eyes fill up. He and Irma had used all their savings plus their daughter’s insurance money to convert the barn into living quarters that no one in Sienna knew about. They’d installed two huge bathrooms with four showers each and two dormitory bedrooms that could sleep twenty-two comfortably. In the back of the barn, George himself had built a kitchen with a huge brick oven you could roast an ox in. All of this had been done on the sneak by Irma and George without building inspectors prying into what they considered their private business. They’d driven miles and miles out of their way to buy fixtures and wiring just so the local shop owners wouldn’t know what they were up to.
It had been Irma’s idea, once they got under way, to lay down the spiked hump at the entrance to their property. It worked like a charm, and no one came to visit after news got around about the first six or seven accidents. The message was loud and clear: the Ellis family didn’t want company. They were probably a bit tetched in the head because of the loss of their daughter and grandchildren.
George trundled his big body back to the kitchen area, where Irma was doing her best to chat up the pregnant young teenagers. She shrugged to show him she was not getting any useful information. He mouthed the word “polygamy” for his wife’s benefit. She nodded but gave no other indication she knew what was going on.
George walked around the old milk barn, which was big enough to hold all the people currently in it plus five or six more busloads. He went outside and walked the two miles down the lane to his mailbox. Sienna’s one and only police cruiser sailed past, slowed, stopped, and backed up to where George was standing, a pile of catalogs and the newspaper in his hands.
“Morning, Deputy Clyde. Where you going in such a hurry?” George asked.
“Down the road a piece. Bus went off the road, the driver’s dead. No identification on him a’tall. No passengers. The bus is a rental, we think. You see anyone around here, maybe walking, looking for help, George? You still got them spikes in the road that tear up a person’s tires?”
“I do for a fact, Deputy Clyde, and, no, I haven’t seen a soul. Heck, it’s a two-mile road to the house. If there were people in the bus, I’d think they’d head right into Sienna. Maybe the guy was deadheading somewhere. You know, dropped off his passengers and was returning to wherever he was headed. Sorry I can’t help you. I’ll watch the local news at noon to see how it’s all going. If you need me for anything like a search party, just give me a call.”
The deputy nodded and got back into the cruiser. George watched until the black and white cruiser was just a speck on the road before he turned and started on the two-mile walk back to the barn. Walking to the mailbox was George’s only exercise, and he was proud of the fact that he did it, day in and day out, rain, snow, or sunshine. Just like the United States mail carriers.
A knot settled itself between his shoulder blades. Clyde might act like a hick, but he was sharp as a tack. And Clyde did not take kindly to any kind of wrongdoing on his watch, which was twenty-four/seven. He’d be back sooner or later. Probably sooner than George would like. He had to make preparations for his guests before that happened.
The knot turned into an itch as he walked along in the bright sunshine. How long before the people at the compound—assuming that’s where his guests were headed—would call the authorities? Or would this be something they handled with their own people? He had to admit he didn’t know. Nor did he want to find out.
George picked up his pace and broke into a trot. Time, he felt, was his, Irma’s, and Missy’s enemy. Yet time was all they had.
Chapter 4
If she had been wearing jodhpurs and knee-high polished boots, Annie de Silva could have passed for General George Patton, ready to announce that it was time to go into battle as she waved Charles’s pointer at the huge seventy-six-inch television monitor on which Lady Justice stood, balancing the scales of justice.
It was always a moving moment for the Sisters as they contemplated their past, the present, and whatever the future was going to hold for them. Breaking the law, serving up justice Sisterhood style, had its upside and its downside. This was always the moment when each of them knew they could bow out or forge ahead. The question was never a verbal one, but it was hanging there like an invisible thread, and they all knew it. One by one they would nod to show they were on board for whatever was to come.
