Three Times Lucky (3 page)

“Somebody slit his throat?” I guessed, and an Azalea Woman dropped her spoon.

“Interesting thought, but no—somebody shot him dead,” Starr said. “Cut his phone line, came into his house, and pulled the trigger.” At the end of the counter, Mr. Jesse studied the photograph for a long moment. His hand shook as he passed it on.

“Who would kill a nice young man like that?” the
mayor sighed as Starr polished off his sandwich and pushed his plate away.

Starr shrugged. “Somebody who thought Dolph needed killing, I guess,” he said. “Could have been right too, for all I know. What do I owe you, Biblical Mo?”

“Two seventy-five, plus tax.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mayor Little said, reaching for his wallet. “Lunch is on me.”

Joe Starr handed me a five. “Keep the change,” he said, a whisper of a smile in his eyes. “And that spooky kid in the kitchen—”

“You mean Phillip?”

“I mean Dale,” Starr said, slipping the photo into his shirt pocket and buttoning the flap. “Tell him the next time I come in here, I expect to see shoes on his feet.”

He strolled to the door and stopped, looking out over the parking lot. “Nice Thunderbird,” he said. “Whose is it?”

I hesitated. The Colonel always says not to lie, but sometimes the truth doesn’t feel like a good fit. “Well,” I said, my voice trailing off.

Fortunately, at that moment, the kitchen doors behind me swung open, slamming against the wall. The dollar bill over the door tilted. The café jumped. “It’s my car, you nosy son of a gun,” the Colonel growled from the doorway. “What’s it to you?”

“Colonel!” I cried. The Colonel opened his long arms and scooped me in.

Miss Lana says hugging the Colonel’s like hugging a turning plow, but I like the scrawny steel of his muscles and the jutting angles of his bones. “I thought you’d still be in bed, resting,” I said.

He tightened the belt of the green plaid robe I gave him for Christmas the year I turned six. “Dale told me you had a stranger,” he said, eyeing Starr.

I pointed. “That’s Joe Starr,” I whispered. “He’s a lawman.” Everyone in the café pivoted to squint at Starr, who stood stock-still, the way you do when a mad dog comes near. “He looks like trouble,” I continued, keeping my voice low, “but he’s nothing I can’t handle.” I smiled at Starr. “No offense,” I said.

“None taken,” Starr said easily.

“Except for that, everything’s going great. Well,” I added. “There’s been a murder and we’re out of soup.”

At the end of the counter, Mr. Jesse leaned forward and cleared his throat. “Oh, and Mr. Jesse’s boat went missing,” I said.

The Colonel patted my shoulder. “Good job, Soldier,” he said. “You are temporarily relieved of duty.”

“Thank you, sir.”

An uneasy silence fell over the café.

“My goodness, where are my manners?” Mayor Little
sputtered from the counter. “Detective Starr, this is Colonel LoBeau, proprietor of the Tupelo Café. Colonel? Detective Joe Starr, from Winston-Salem. As I believe Mo mentioned, he’s looking into a murder.”

“Afternoon,” the Colonel said.

Joe Starr’s gaze drifted from the Colonel’s close-cropped military haircut, to his acorn-brown eyes, to his rough beard. He scanned past the frayed bathrobe to linger on the Colonel’s tan bedroom slippers. “Colonel,” he said, and from his tone I knew he would have tipped his hat if he’d been wearing one.

The Colonel faked a thin smile.

Everybody knows the Colonel handles authority figures even worse than I do. Some say it’s because of a tour of duty in Vietnam. Or Bosnia. Or the Middle East. Miss Lana says it’s because he’s an arrogant fop who can’t tolerate somebody else being in charge. Either way, the lunch crowd fluttered like nervous wrens.

“Colonel LoBeau,” Starr repeated, and glanced at me. “So, that makes you …”

“Mo LoBeau, with the accent at the end,” I said. “It used to be Mo Lobo, with the accent up front. But Miss Lana changed it when I went to first grade. She says it makes us practically French.”

“Plus,
Lobo
means ‘Wolf,’” Dale chimed in. “Who wants to lug around a name like Mo Wolf when you’re
headed for something like first grade? That’s like heading for Niagara Falls with a cinderblock strapped to your ankle.”

Starr ignored him. “Colonel, you look familiar to me,” he said. “Have we met?”

“Not likely.”

“Ever visit Winston-Salem?”

“Not that I recall.”

Mayor Little swiveled on his stool. “The Colonel? In Winston-Salem?” He barked out a little laugh. “Unlikely indeed. The Colonel’s avoided cities since when … Bosnia?” He looked at Dale, who shrugged.

For some reason, Starr ignored him too. “Know a fellow named Dolph Andrews?” he asked the Colonel, flipping Dolph’s photo onto the counter.

“Nope,” the Colonel said. “Is he your murderer?”

“He’s my victim.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” the Colonel said, turning toward the kitchen. “So if there’s nothing else. …”

“One more question,” Starr said.

The café went tense. The Colonel had already been polite longer than anyone expected, and when he turned back, the smile had slipped from his face. He put his hands on his hips and jutted his chin forward. “Let me ask a couple questions, if you don’t mind,” he suggested. “Am I under arrest?”

“No sir.”

“Do you plan to take me in for questioning?”

“No sir.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No sir.”

“Then please help me understand what business remains between us.”

The café relaxed. That wasn’t bad at all, not for the Colonel.

“It’s about your Thunderbird,” Starr said. “Where did you get it?”

“Robeson County, I believe,” the Colonel said, his voice glassy smooth. “Cash transaction. Is there a problem?”

Starr shook his head. “No problem. When was that?”

“A couple years ago, maybe.”

Dale’s face reflected my shock. The Colonel just got that car! What on earth? The Colonel never lies. My shock went molten in a heartbeat. “You stop picking on the Colonel,” I shouted, stepping on the Pepsi crate for extra height.

“I’m just asking a few questions,” Starr said. “Dolph Andrews here collected vintage cars and a couple seem to be missing.”

Mayor Little’s mouth dropped open and he gaped at the lunch crowd, inviting everyone to share his horror. “Surely you’re not suggesting the Colonel’s—”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Starr said. “There’s nothing wrong with driving old cars. I like them myself.”

The mayor forgave him with a wobbly smile, and the café relaxed again. “If you like old cars, Detective, eastern North Carolina’s perfect for you,” he said, smoothing his tie. “We have oodles of vintage vehicles around here, don’t we, Colonel? In fact, I like to think of them as one of poverty’s little perks.”

Starr didn’t smile. “Thanks again, Mo,” he said. “I’ll be seeing you. Soon.”

“Another visit?” Mayor Little said, holding out his hand. “I know we’ll all look forward to that.”

I bet we won’t, I thought as they shook hands.

As the door slapped shut behind Starr, the Colonel shuffled toward the kitchen, yawning. “Give a man a badge, and he thinks he owns the world,” he muttered to no one in particular. “Only thing worse is a lawyer.” Like I said, the Colonel hates lawyers.

Outside, Starr slowly circled the Underbird.

“Can you handle checkout, Soldier?” the Colonel asked, and I nodded. “Very well, I’ll take the supper patrol.”

Dale stood on his tiptoes, trying to see over the Azalea Women’s hair and into the parking lot. “What’s Starr doing?” he asked.

“He’s squatting to write down the Colonel’s license
number,” Grandmother Miss Lacy Thornton said from her table by the window. “For a man of his age, he has excellent balance.”

The Azalea Women murmured in agreement.

As Starr settled into his Impala and began scribbling on a clipboard, the lunch crowd stampeded the cash register. Only Mr. Jesse hung behind. “Don’t see why folks care about a murder a half day from here when they don’t give a Fig Newton about my boat,” he said, pushing his three dollars across the counter and holding out his hand for change.

“Yes sir, that’s a pity,” Dale said, straightening the salt and pepper shakers. “Too bad there’s no way to get your boat back. Hey!” he said, his blue eyes flying wide. “Maybe we could … No,” he said, his face falling, “that would never work. I guess I really
am
dumb as dirt, like my daddy says.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Mr. Jesse snapped. “What’s your idea? Spit it out.”

“Well,” Dale mumbled. “I was just thinking if you offered a reward …”

A reward! My heart leaped like the cheerleader I will never be. Dale shows glimmers of genius at times, no matter what our teacher, Miss Retzyl, says.

Mr. Jesse scowled. “You think I should pay a thief to return my own property?”

“Don’t you listen to him, Mr. Jesse,” I said, dropping his change into his hand. “The thought of rewarding somebody for bringing your boat back. … That’s wrong. Shoot. It would be better if they kept it, and that’s the dog-honest truth. You don’t need a boat. Besides, you can use that dab of reward money for … for …”

“For canned goods,” Dale suggested.

“Right. For tuna,” I said. “That way you’ll still get plenty of fish in your diet.” I buffed a napkin holder to a high sheen with my shirttail. “Too bad, though, losing a nice boat over a little finder’s fee.”

Mr. Jesse drummed his fingertips against the counter.

“A finder’s fee,” Dale said mournfully. “See? That’s smart.”

“Sure,” I told him. “A reward is like welfare, which Mr. Jesse here has said a million times will bring about the end of civilization. Isn’t that right, Mr. Jesse? But a finder’s fee! That’s more like a minimum wage job.”

Mr. Jesse squinted at me, his eyes glittery hard. He snagged my pen and scrawled a notice on my order pad:

“Put this on the bulletin board,” he said, and slammed the door behind him.

We watched Mr. Jesse cross the parking lot, giving Starr a wide berth as the Impala roared to life. “Think
Starr will really be back?” Dale asked as Starr’s taillights disappeared around the curve.

“Yeah,” I said, thinking of the Colonel’s Underbird.

“Me too.”

I could feel it in my bones: Trouble had come to Tupelo Landing for good.

That evening, as the Colonel puttered about our living room, I settled on my bed and printed a title across the bright blue cover of a new spiral notebook.
THE PIGGLY WIGGLY CHRONICLES, VOLUME 6. TOP SECRET. If you ain’t me, stop reading.

As far as I know, I’m the only kid in Tupelo Landing researching her own autobiography. I’m also the only kid who needs to. So far, my life is one big, fat mystery. At its heart lies this question: Who is my Upstream Mother, and why hasn’t she come for me?

Fortunately, I’m a natural born detective, hot on my own trail since birth. I mostly decorate my room with clues.

The
Piggly Wiggly Chronicles,
volumes 1 through 5, line the bookshelf over my flea market desk. The sprawling map of North Carolina, which Miss Lana helped me tape on the wall above my bed, pinpoints my search for my Upstream Mother. Using the process of elimination
and a set of color-coded pushpins, I’ve marked all the places I know she’s not. By now, the map bristles like a neon porcupine.

My bedside phone—a heavy, black 1950s model with a genuine dial—jangled. I scooped it up on the second ring. “Mo LoBeau’s flat, Mo speaking,” I said. “A message in a bottle? Yes sir. It’s mine. … You found it where?”

I hopped onto my bed and studied the map. “Cypress Point? I see it on the map, sir. … No, I’m not upset that you’re not my mother. Thanks for calling.”

I jammed a green pushpin into Cypress Point and settled on my bed.

How did I wind up short a mother? Good question.

I was born eleven years ago, during one of the meanest hurricanes in history. That night as people slept, they say, the rivers rose like a mutiny and pushed ashore, shouldering houses off foundations, lifting the dead from graves, gulping down lives like fresh-shucked oysters.

Some say I was born unlucky that night. Not me. I say I was three times lucky.

Lucky once when my Upstream Mother tied me to a makeshift raft and sent me swirling downstream to safety. Lucky twice when the Colonel crashed his car and
stumbled to the creek just in time to snatch me from the flood. Lucky three times when Miss Lana took me in like I was her own, and kept me.

Why
all that happened is Mystery on a larger scale. Miss Lana calls it Fate. Dale calls it a miracle. The Colonel just shrugs and says “Here we are.”

Behind my back, Anna Celeste Simpson—my Sworn Enemy for Life—says I’m a throw-away kid, with no true place to call home. So far, nobody’s had the guts to say it to my face, but I hear whispers the way a knife-thrower’s assistant hears knives.

I hate Anna Celeste Simpson.

The Colonel knocked on my open door and peeked in from the living room, his gray stubble glistening in the lamplight. “Busy, Soldier?”

“Sorry, sir,” I said, closing my notebook. “I’m contemplating an intro to Volume Six. It’s Top Secret.”