Page 24 of Falkner
This time it was she who hung up on Emmie, but she didn’t just put the phone down, but slammed it several times in the cradle or whatever she had as a phone.She never bothered her with her cell phone bills, so she had no idea what she used.It was just as well; she wasn’t going to pay it either if it came to that.
Emmie ate her now cold dinner and cleaned up after herself.She never left a mess to clean up after herself if she could help it.Her sister wouldn’t do dishes for days at a time, so by the time she got around to doing it, they’d be so filthy that she’d just toss them out rather than try to save them.
Her sister would do a lot of things that would piss her off, and it wasn’t much to do with the state of her dishes.She would, at times, leave the kids at home alone while she went out partying.She used to not know about that, but now she had people helping her out with that information.Was she spying on her sister?Yes, she was.It was that or the kids might be hurt.
She’d never met her niece and nephew.She knew for sure that they existed, but didn’t know much more about them than that.There were never any pictures that she paid for sent to her, no warm greetings at Christmas or her birthday.Just dues and fees made her know that at least that part of their lives was being taken care of.However, the next time MaryBeth left them to go partying, she was going to hop on a plane and bring them home with her.
Every time her phone rang, she was sure that it was going to be someone calling her to tell her that the kids had been hurt.Or that her sister had been murdered by Bash.Or that it was the other way around.She didn’t trust her sister, but she was her family, all she had besides the kids, and she’d be devastated if anything were to happen to any of the three of them.Bash could rot in hell, and she’d lose no sleep over him being out of the kids’ lives.
Making her way to work the next morning, she had three missed calls from her sister on the answering machine.She’d not left any messages but had hung up the phone when it kicked on, telling her to leave a message.Whatever was going on, Emmie wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it and didn’t care enough to call her back.If she wanted something other than money, she needed to leave a message for her.
She got through most of her morning without any trouble from her family.At noon, she received a call from MaryBeth, but again she didn’t leave a message.After she was finished with her lunch, she left work early and went home.She had plenty of things to do there that would keep her busy for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening.
Getting her laundry finished was a huge relief to her, as she normally did it over the weekend.Now that she was caught up on that, she had time to do some other things she’d been meaning to do for a few weeks now.Going to the zoo was tops on her list, as well as visiting the botanical gardens in Columbus.Just things that made her happy were going to be done over the next three days, as Friday was her birthday and she’d asked for it off weeks ago.She was almost giddy with excitement.When her phone rang again, she answered it because she was in too good a mood to let her sister’s problems bother her.
“Ms.Jamestown?”She said it was her, straightening up in her chair for some reason.“Ms.Jamestown, there’s been an accident with your sister and her husband.We need you to come and take care of the children as they are both in intensive care right now.”
“What’s happened to them?I can be there within the next two hours, but what has happened to my sister?”He explained.“I don’t understand how that could happen.Neither one drives.I don’t even think that they own a car.”Then she remembered what her sister said about the kids being tied up tothe car.“Did Bash have a car?He doesn’t have a driver’s license as far as I know.”
She was tossing her clean clothing into a bag so that she could stay in town for a few days.When the officer or whatever he was didn’t answer her, she had an idea that this wasn’t right.Pausing in her effort to get out of the house and on the road, she asked him who he was.
“Officer Smith.”She sat down hard on the chair and waited for him to continue.“Ms.Humphrey was at the store when his car was hit from behind.She just left all her groceries in the cart after she checked out to see to her husband.That’ll need to be taken care of before the kids can be given over to your care.”Why would she need to pay for groceries if she’d already checked out?
“I see.And how much are you being told to tell me how much the groceries cost.”He told her.“Yes, I understand now.Since she was in the store when he was hit from behind, I’m assuming that he was freed from the jail that he’d been in.Is that correct?How exactly was my sister hurt so badly that she had to be put into the ICU?Or for that matter, Bash?”
“He was hit from behind in his car.”She said that she understood that, but how did that affect her sister being hurt if she was in the store buying groceries.“Listen, lady, that’s all I know.They were in an accident, and you’re going to have to pay for the groceries that she got before I can let the kids go to you.”
“You do realize that that’s called blackmail, don’t you?And since you’re Officer Smith of the local police station, you won’t mind if I give them a call to find out if this is all true.MaryBeth has tried this before.Is that why you’ve not left a message for me to call you back?You couldn’t chance me calling the stationhouse to find you?”He started cursing that would have rivaled even her sister’s mouth.“Not very professional of you now, is that?Why don’t you put my sister on the phone now that the scam is up, and you go back to wherever you came from.I can’t believe she’d be so dishonest—or you, for that matter, to use the kids as a pawn in a scam to get me to send her money.Put her on before I call the real police and have you arrested for impersonating a cop.”
“She told me what to say.I didn’t want to do it.”She didn’t say anything but waited for MaryBeth to get on the line.When he started talking again, she began putting her clothing back in the basket to be put away.“Listen, lady, she really isn’t here.She’s at the police station with Bash, trying to get him out.I only agreed to do this because she said she’d give me fifty bucks if I managed to get you to come here and pay me what she said it would take to get Bash out of jail.”
“Where are the kids?And you’d better be telling me that they’re safe and not harmed in this stupid prank.”He said they were still in the hospital as far as he knew.The doctors weren’t releasing them until they were better.“What’s wrong with them?”
“I don’t know, lady.I’m only telling you what MaryBeth told me.She said that the doctor wouldn’t release them because they’ve not been eating good or some bullshit like that.I don’t even like her much less her kids.I just thought it was an easy way to make a few bucks.”She said that he’d better not be pulling this trick on her again.“Don’t worry.Once was enough for me.You’re too smart.”
“Damned straight I am.”She didn’t think it would be all that difficult to be smarter than an idiot who thought that she’d pay for groceries when her sister was hurt.He had never explained how that had happened, that her sister was in the ICU too.“You tell my sister that it didn’t work, and I’m not bailing out her husband.I don’t like Bash and wouldn’t bail him out if her life depended on it.”
She might then, but that would be the only time that she did anything like that.Hanging up the phone, she sat there and wondered how stupid did her sister have to be to think that she’d come running without checking things out first.It was as if she thought she was smarter than her when anyone with a sound mind could tell that MaryBeth didn’t have one brain cell that wasn’t attached to Bash Humphrey.Idiots, the two of them.
