Simon Diggery lived toward the end of the road. He was one of the more affluent inhabitants, having taken possession of a lopsided double-wide. Friends and relatives came and went in the double-wide. Simon and his pet boa constrictor were constant.
I pulled off the road a short distance from Diggery’s Place and parked on the hard-packed dirt shoulder. Lula and I got out of the SUV, and I put my stun gun in my back pocket and tucked my handcuffs into the waistband of my jeans. I didn’t expect to use either. Sometimes I had to run Diggery down, and sometimes he hid, but in the end he never resisted arrest.
“I’m waiting here,” Lula said. “He’s got a nest of snakes under that rust bucket mobile home, and he got the big boa inside with him. No way am I going near that moldy old thing.”
I didn’t especially want to go near it either. I walked a little closer and yelled for Diggery. “Simon! Are you in there?”
Nothing. I took a couple more steps and saw that the snakes had come out to sun themselves. They were draped over the steps and sprawled on the patchy grass and dirt that constituted Diggery’s front yard. I stamped my feet and threw some stones at them and they slithered back under the double-wide.
“It’s okay now,” I said to Lula.
“No way,” Lula said. “You just pissed them off. They’re lurkin’. They’re waiting to jump out at you and fang you.”
“Hey!” I yelled at the trailer. “Anybody home?”
“Guess he’s not home,” Lula said. “Might as well leave.”
“He’s always home during the day,” I said. “He only goes out at night to rob graves and steal food.”
“I’m not leaving until you open the door,” I shouted at Diggery. “I know you’re in there.”
The door to the double-wide opened, and Diggery looked out. “What do you want? You’re disturbing the peace.”
Diggery was a rangy guy with shaggy gray hair and weathered skin. He was wearing a stained wifebeater T-shirt and baggy work pants, and he had a cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.
“You need to come with me to reschedule your court date,” I said.
“This here isn’t a good time,” Diggery said. “I’m in the middle of something.”
“You can finish it when I bring you back. This won’t take long. Court’s in session.”
“That’s a big whopper fib,” Diggery said. “They’re gonna lock me up and take their sweet-ass time to let me out.”
“Yeah, but if you stay over lunchtime they give you a burger from McDonald’s,” Lula said. “Fries and everything.”
“Last time they forgot the fries,” Diggery said. “I think they might be getting cheap and left them off on purpose.”
Diggery was standing in his open door. I caught movement at his feet and realized his boa was making its way out of the double-wide and down the makeshift steps. The snake was about ten feet long and probably weighed in at about fifty pounds.
“Holy crap, holy cow, holy get me out of here,” Lula said. “That snake is coming to get us.”
I figured the snake’s top speed was one mile an hour. I didn’t think we were at risk of being run down by it. Still, I didn’t want to get too close.
Diggery looked down and saw the snake clear the steps. “Ethel!” Diggery said. “What the Harry Hill are you doing? You know you’re not allowed out of the house.”
Ethel wasn’t paying attention to Diggery. Ethel was heading for the patch of woods behind the double-wide.
“You gotta help me get Ethel,” Diggery said, hustling after the boa. “Once she gets into the woods it’s impossible to get her back. She’ll go up a tree and sit there until she gets hungry, and it’s not good to let Ethel get too hungry. She’s a sweet girl ordinarily, but she mostly don’t care what or who she eats if you let her get too hungry.”
“Is she hungry now?” I asked him.
“Naw. She ate a big old groundhog yesterday.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Well, it wasn’t as good as a Virginia baked ham, but Ethel seemed to like it. I found it on the side of the road all swelled up.”
Diggery had Ethel by the tail end and was trying to pull her toward the trailer, but he couldn’t get a good grip.
“Get in front of her and shoo her back to me,” Diggery said.
Yeah, right. I don’t think so. “How about if you get in front of her and maybe she’ll curl up on you,” I said.
Diggery trotted around and stood in front of Ethel. “Come on, Ethel. I got a candy bar for you in the kitchen.”
Ethel stopped all forward motion and thought about it.
“What kind of candy bar?” Lula asked.
“I got a Snickers,” Diggery said.
“That’s a good candy bar,” Lula said. “I wouldn’t mind having a Snickers. I got a piece of Cluck-in-a-Bucket fried chicken left over in the car. I’d trade you that piece of chicken for the Snickers.”
“Ethel would most likely rather have the chicken,” Diggery said. “It’s a deal.”
“It’s only a deal if you come back to town with me after you give Ethel her chicken,” I said.
“You got my word,” Diggery said.
Lula got the chicken from the car, handed it over to Diggery, and Diggery waved it in front of Ethel and led her back into the double-wide. After he got her into the trailer he slammed the door shut. Five minutes went by and there was no Diggery.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Simon!”
The door opened and Simon stuck his head out. “What?”
“Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“You know where,” I said. “We made a deal. You gave your word.”
“Everybody knows my word isn’t worth crap,” Diggery said. And he slammed the door closed again.
“That really burns me,” Lula said. “He took my chicken, and I didn’t get no candy bar.”
I blew out a sigh. This wasn’t going to be easy. I was going to have to go in there and drag him out, all the while trying to avoid Ethel.
“I want my candy bar!” Lula yelled at the trailer. “You better not be eating my candy bar.”
Nothing. No response from Diggery.
“That does it,” Lula said. “He’s not gonna get away with this. I was all set to have a tasty treat, and now I’m in a cranky mood. If there’s one thing I don’t tolerate it’s a man who doesn’t deliver on a dessert.”
Lula stomped up to the trailer, climbed the rickety steps, and hammered on the door. “Open up,” she said. “You better open this door and give me my Snickers bar or else.”
“Waa, waa, waa,” Diggery said on the other side of the door. “You’re just a sore loser on account of I outsmarted you.”
“Outsmart this,” Lula said, hauling her Glock out of her purse and drilling seven rounds into the door.
About forty snakes rushed out from under the trailer and made off for the woods. I shouted at Lula to stop shooting. And Diggery wrenched his door open and glared out at Lula.
“What are you, nuts?” Diggery said. “You can’t go around shooting up a man’s home. This here’s a respectable neighborhood. Look what you did to my door. Who’s gonna pay to fix this door?”
“Where’s my candy bar?” Lula asked.
“I don’t have no candy bar,” Diggery said. “I lied about the candy bar.”
Lula leaned forward. “I smell Snickers on your breath. And you got a little smudge of chocolate stuck in your whiskers. You ate my candy bar, didn’t you?”
“I was under stress,” Diggery said. “I needed it. I could feel my blood sugar plummeting.”
“Well, I’m not wasting any more time with you,” Lula said. “I got better things to do. And now I got a craving for a Snickers.”
Lula grabbed Diggery by his shirtfront, yanked him out of the double-wide, and kicked the door shut. She wrestled him down the stairs, lost her balance, and the two of them went to the ground. They rolled around a little. Lula got the top and sat on Diggery.
“I can’t breathe,” Diggery said. “How much do you weigh? Good thing for you I ate that candy bar. You don’t need no more candy bars.”
I got Diggery into plasti-cuffs, and Lula crawled off him. We lifted him to his feet and walked him to my car.
FOUR