24 Hours

“What?”

“I like arranging flowers, too.”

Karen smiled and lifted Abby into her seat, then hugged her neck. “I think we can win the three-color ribbon if we give it half a try.”

“I know we can!” Abby agreed.

Karen climbed into the driver’s seat, started the Expedition, and drove along the line of airplanes toward the gate.

Fifteen miles north of the airport, a battered green pickup truck with a lawn tractor and two weed-eaters in back rattled along a curving lane known for over a hundred years as Crooked Mile Road. The truck slowed, then stopped beside a wrought-iron mailbox at the foot of a high wooded hill. An ornamental World War One biplane perched atop the mailbox, and below the biplane, gold letters read: Jennings, #100. The pickup turned left and chugged slowly up the steep driveway.

At the top, set far back on the hill, stood a breathtaking Victorian house. Wedgwood blue with white gingerbread trim and stained-glass windows on the second floor, it seemed to watch over the expansive lawns around it with proprietary interest.

When the pickup truck reached the crest of the drive, it did not stop but continued fifty yards across the St. Augustine grass until it reached an ornate playhouse. An exact replica of the main house, the playhouse stood in the shadow of the pine and oak trees that bordered the lawn. The pickup stopped beside it. When the engine died, there was silence but for birdcalls and the ticking of the motor.

The driver’s door banged open, and Huey Cotton climbed out. Clad in his customary brown coveralls and heavy black eyeglasses, he stared at the playhouse with wonder in his eyes. Its roof peaked just above the crown of his head.

“See anybody?” called a voice from the passenger window of the truck.

Huey didn’t take his eyes from the enchanting playhouse. “It’s like Disneyland, Joey.”

“Christ, look at the real house, would you?”

Huey walked around the playhouse and looked across a glittering blue swimming pool to the rear elevation of the main house. Peeking from two of the four garage bays were a silver Toyota Avalon and the white nose of a powerboat.

“There’s a pretty boat in the garage,” he said distractedly. He turned back to the playhouse, bent, and examined it more closely. “I wonder if there’s a boat in this garage?”

As Huey studied the little house, Joe Hickey climbed out of the truck. He wore a new Ralph Lauren Polo shirt and Tommy Hilfiger khakis, but he didn’t look natural or even comfortable in the costume. The lower half of a crude eagle tattoo showed on his biceps below the band of the Polo’s left sleeve.

“Look at the real house, Buckethead. See the third downstairs window from the end? That’s it.”

Huey straightened and glanced over at the main house. “I see it.” He laid one of his huge hands on the playhouse’s porch roof. “I sure wish I could fit in this house. I bet the whole world looks different from in there.”

“You’ll never know how different.” Hickey reached into the truck bed and took out a rusted toolbox. “Let’s take care of the alarm system.”

He led Huey toward the open garage.

Twenty minutes later they emerged from the back door of the house and stood on the fieldstone patio.

“Put the toolbox back in the truck,” Hickey said. “Then wait behind the playhouse. As soon as they go inside, you run up to the window. Got it?”

“Just like last time.”

“There wasn’t any freakin’ Disneyland playhouse last time. And that was a year ago. I don’t want you fooling around back there. The second you hear the garage door close, get your big ass up to that window. If some nosy neighbor drives up in the meantime and asks you a question, you’re with the lawn service. Act like a retard. It shouldn’t be much of a stretch for you.”

Huey stiffened. “Don’t say that, Joey.”

“If you’re waiting at the window when you’re supposed to be, I’ll apologize.”

Huey smiled crookedly, exposing yellowed teeth. “I hope this one’s nice. I hope she don’t get scared easy. That makes me nervous.”

“You’re a regular John Dillinger, aren’t you? Christ. Get behind the playhouse.”

Huey shrugged and shambled across the patio toward the tree line. When he reached the playhouse, he looked around blankly at Hickey, then folded his giant frame into a squat.

Hickey shook his head, turned, and walked into the house through the back door.

Karen and Abby sang at the top of their voices as they rolled north on Interstate 55, the tune one from The Sound of Music, Abby’s favorite musical. The Jenningses lived just west of Annandale in Madison County, Mississippi. Annandale was the state’s premier golf course, but it wasn’t golf that had drawn them to the area. Fear of crime and the race problems of the capital city had driven many young professionals to the gated enclaves of Madison County, but Karen and Will had moved for a different reason. If you wanted land, you had to move north. The Jennings house sat on twenty acres of pine and hardwood, twelve miles north of Jackson proper, and in evening traffic it took twenty-five minutes to get there.

“That will bring us back to doe, oh, oh, oh …”

Abby clapped her hands and burst into laughter. Breathing hard from the singing, Karen reached down and punched a number into her cell phone. She felt guilty about the way she’d spoken to Will at the airport.

“Anesthesiology Associates,” said a woman, her voice tinny in the cell phone speaker.

“Is this the answering service?” asked Karen.

“Yes ma’am. A-l Answer-all. The clinic’s closed.”

“I’d like to leave a message for Dr. Jennings. This is his wife.”

“Go ahead.”

“We already miss you. Break a leg tonight. Love, Karen and Abby.”

“With sugar and kisses on top!” Abby shouted from the backseat.

“Did you get that last part?” asked Karen.

“With sugar and kisses on top,” repeated the bored voice.

“Thank you.”

Karen hit END and looked at her rearview mirror, which was adjusted so that she could see Abby’s face.

“Daddy loves getting messages from us,” Abby said, smiling.

“He sure does, honey.”

Fifty miles south of Jackson, Will settled the Baron in at eight thousand feet. Below him lay a puffy white carpet of cumulus clouds, before him a sky as blue as an Arctic lake. Visibility was unlimited. As he bent his wrist to check his primary GPS unit, a burning current of pain shot up the radial nerve in his right arm. It was worse than he’d admitted to Karen, and she’d known it. She didn’t miss anything. The truth was, she didn’t want him flying anymore. A month ago, she’d threatened to tell the FAA that he was “cheating” to pass his flight physicals. He didn’t think she would, but he couldn’t be sure. If she thought Will’s arthritis put him—and thus the family—at risk while flying, she wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever she had to do to stop him.

If she did, Will wasn’t sure he could handle it. Even the thought of being grounded put him in a black mood. Flying was more than recreation for him. It was a physical expression of how far he had come in life, a symbol of all he had attained, and of the lifestyle he had created for his family. His father could never have dreamed of owning a three-hundred-thousand-dollar airplane. Tom Jennings had never even ridden in an airplane. His son had paid cash for one.

But for Will the money was not the important thing. It was what the money could buy. Security. He had learned that lesson a thousand times growing up: money was an insulator, like armor. It protected people who had it from the everyday problems that besieged and even destroyed others. And yet, it did not make you invulnerable. His arthritis had taught him that. Other lessons followed.

In 1986, he graduated from LSU medical school and began an obstetrics residency at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. It was there that he met a surgical nurse with stunning green eyes, strawberry-blonde hair, and a reputation for refusing dates with physicians or medical students. After three months of patience and charm, Will persuaded Karen to meet him for lunch, far from the hospital. There he discovered that the cause of her dating policy was simple: she’d seen too many nurses put medical students through school only to be cast aside later, and others caught in messy triangles with married doctors and their wives. In spite of her policy, she dated Will for the next two years—first secretly, then openly—and after a year-long engagement, they married. Will entered private practice with a Jackson OB/GYN group the day after his honeymoon, and their adult life together began like a storybook.

But during the second year of his practice, he began experiencing pain in his hands, feet, and lower back. He tried to ignore it, but soon the pain was interfering with his work, and he went to see a friend in the rheumatology department. A week later he was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, a severe, often crippling disease. Continuing as an obstetrician was impossible, so he began to investigate less physically rigorous fields like dermatology and radiology. His old college roommate suggested anesthesiology—his own specialty—a three-year program if the university would credit Will’s OB experience and let him skip the internship year. It did, and in 1993, he began his anesthesiology residency at UMC in Jackson.