Champagne for Buzzards (14 page)

Monday morning Marley was going to meet the movers at the storage sheds. I offered to do it but she insisted on going herself. Claimed it was her car and she would drive it, wasn't going to trust me because I picked up dead bodies and wouldn't let Tully because he ran into trees, his explanation for the fender. I hopped in with Tully to go into town for breakfast at Lovey's café. Tully was going to leave his truck in town to get it fixed so Zig drove behind us. Our convoy didn't get far coming out the drive.

A sheriff's vehicle was parked at the end of the lane. A deputy, someone new to us, held up his hand to stop Tully and came back to speak to us.

“Morning, sir.”

“Morning, son. What's the problem?” Tully asked.

“We're looking for a fella that's been seen hanging about out here. You seen any strangers?”

“Son, I'm new to these parts. You're all strangers to me — some are just more strange than others.”

The deputy smiled and leaned sideways to check out the bed of the pickup. “Well you just call the sheriff's office if you see anyone you figure shouldn't be here.”

“Okay,” Tully said. The deputy started back to Marley's car but Tully called out, “Say, what does this man look like?”

“I understand he's Guatemalan, dark and not very big.”

“What's he wanted for?” The deputy frowned. “Sheriff didn't say.”

“Think he murdered Lucan Percell?”

“Sheriff didn't say, but maybe.” He made his way to Marley's car, checking inside and then to Zig's four by four.

“Does he think we're smuggling someone out of here?” I asked Tully. “Maybe.”

“If the sheriff wants this guy for Lucan's murder, wouldn't he be saying so? And why would we be taking a murderer anywhere?”

Tully watched the cop in the side mirror. “Well, the sheriff wants this guy for something, that's clear. He's willing to sacrifice a man from other duties just to check out who leaves Riverwood.”

I turned in the seat to see if the deputy was within earshot. “I bet Boomer was looking for this Guatemalan too when we met him out back. Why would the sheriff and Boomer both be looking for someone and why on Riverwood?”

Tully kept his eyes locked on the side mirror and said, “Boomer must have found something in the woods that told him the guy was out there. Or maybe he saw him, like you did, and that's why they think he's on Riverwood.”

Tully raised his hand off the side mirror to wave at the deputy as he went by the truck and said softly to me, “You so sure Boomer was looking for a man out there in the woods?”

“Well, either that or he was hunting, but why hunt on Clay's land when he's got a couple of thousand acres of his own? It doesn't make sense.”

“Guys like that just go where they want. They don't care about private property and they just shoot at anything that moves.”

“Well, I think they were after human quarry.”

“You may be right.” Tully turned to me. “Think you and Marley should head home?”

“No. As long as they stay well away from the house, I'm cool.” We watched the deputy drive out the lane. I asked, “How is Boomer getting onto Clay's property? I thought there was no way onto it but the lane from the house.”

“We're in the height of the dry season; water is low this time of year and especially this year.” We followed the deputy onto the highway. “They're probably coming in by going along the stream bed or running up the side where it's dried up. They could go right up to the lake and onto the trail.”

The police car pulled to the side of the road and then reversed into the lane when we'd gone by. Tully said, “I got a bad feeling about this.”

Every seat in the café was filled, most of them by men. The reason wasn't haute cuisine but Lovey Sweet, a sensuous lush piece of walking art, a Rubens with a coffee carafe in her hand. Alabaster skin and clear dark violet blue eyes, innocent of pride, and perfect features were all worth looking at. And though her figure might be a little fuller than was popular in
Vogue
, no one here was complaining. Heads and eyes swiveled as she walked by and a sigh, a trembling reverberation of lust, followed in her wake.

I'm not really used to being invisible but with Lovey in the room there wasn't another woman who was going to get a second look. With eyes that smiled and laughed, she called each customer by name and made him feel special, almost blessed, as she leaned over and refilled his coffee cup and patted his back or arm, almost always touching them. All of this was as natural as breathing for Lovey. She wasn't coming on to anyone.

When she reached our table, I asked, “Have you heard from your father?”

She set the coffee carafe down on our table as her smile faded. She folded her arms over her chest and said, “Not yet. He's gone off for a few days here and there, just taken some downtime without telling Ma where he was going, but in the past he's always got in touch with me. Not this time. This is different. I'm scared. I've been calling the sheriff morning, noon and night. Can't figure out why the sheriff isn't taking it seriously. He keeps telling me that Dad has to be gone forty-eight hours before the sheriff's department is supposed to get involved.” She worried her lip with her teeth while both Tully and Uncle Ziggy gasped for breath, making fish-out-of-water strangling sounds.

Lovey wrinkled her forehead and said, “The sheriff just makes soothing sounds but I don't think he's doing anything.”

“Do you think your dad's disappearance has anything to do with Lucan's murder?”

She looked away, considering her answer, and then said, “I don't want to, but Dad wouldn't go away right now. He knows…well, he knows it's a bad time. I don't know what I'll do if anything happens to him.”

Someone called Lovey's name. She picked up the coffee carafe and touched my shoulder. “Thank you for caring about Dad.”

“Let us know when you hear from him,” I said.

“Sure. I'm real sorry you've been let down. Do you need any help out at Riverwood? Maybe I can find someone for you.”

“Don't worry about it. We can cope 'til Howie gets back.” Lovey gave us a small smile and went off to refill more mugs and cause another couple of coronaries. “Do you think Howie is dead?” I asked.

Neither Tully nor Uncle Ziggy looked at me but at least Tully answered. “Lovey's got a point; it's a strange time for Howie to go off.” Tully's eyes never left Lovey's undulating backside. “He loves his daughter and knows she needs him. Why'd he go off on a toot now?”

I had the answer to that. “Because Pearl was about to find out he'd snuck off to the Gator Hole. I can see him going away to avoid that party, but won't it just be worse when he gets back?”

“Lord knows,” said Tully. “If I was married to Pearl I'd run long and fast.”

“Uncle Ziggy?” I asked just to see if he was on the same planet as us but was not really expecting an answer. None came. Uncle Ziggy could only deal with one thought at a time and the one thought that had him in its grip was Lovey. A million dead bodies stretched out end to end wouldn't have caught his attention. He was definitely in love.

Uncle Ziggy wasn't ready to leave when breakfast was over, claimed he needed more coffee, even though he'd already had Lovey fill his cup four or five times. When the debris of our breakfast had been cleared away, and with it all reason to stay, Ziggy moved over to the counter for one more refill, one more chat, one more small contact with Lovey to see him through his day.

“Can't you get him to take it easy on the coffee?” I asked Tully when we left the diner to go check on Tully's truck. “All that coffee, it's just not good for him.”

“Never mind the coffee. When a man falls in love at Zig's age it can be dangerous for his health, period. Last night he was cutting the hairs in his nose to look pretty for breakfast and he damn near took his schnoz right off.” “Think he's going to remember us?”

“The fog will clear when he gets out in the fresh air. He'll be along to pick us up as soon as he gets over mooning over Lovey Sweet, or sweet Lovey as he likes to call her. It may take some time though.”

The news on Tully's truck wasn't good. Seems it wasn't worth fixing. In fact, the mechanic refused to let Tully drive it off the lot, which got Tully pretty excited. I could have told Tully it was a piece of junk and dangerous to everyone on the road but he wouldn't have listened.

We sat outside the garage on plastic chairs with three elderly men who seemed to be permanent residents of the garage and waited for Uncle Ziggy. Apparently these three spent their mornings sitting there in the sun and considering the world. Their daily routine was recognized as one of the things that made Independence interesting, and everyone driving by acknowledged them with a wave or a honk of the horn.

We introduced ourselves, although they knew exactly who we were. They seemed quite interested in getting a close-up look at the woman who drove around with a dead body in the back of her pickup. When I'd told them all about the buzzards they were more than eager to talk about Lucan Percell and the town of Independence.

The leader of the pack was a skinny, gnarled man who had said goodbye to his teeth some years back. “That Lucan Percell never did get over Lovey; course neither do most of the men who clap eyes on her. Hardly a man in this town that doesn't get weak in the knees at the sight of Lovey. Any that doesn't, well let's just say maybe they oughta get themselves checked.” The man turned his head to the side and spat a line of brown juice into the weeds at the edge of the sand parking lot. The side of the garage was speckled with brown spots from years of poor aim and juice caught by the wind.

“You think Lucan's death has anything to do with Lovey?” I asked.

A corpulent man, the only one not tilting backwards on his plastic chair, cut in with, “Naw, why'd she kill him after all this time?”

I hadn't actually been thinking of Lovey as the killer but I didn't point this out to the big fella. Knees splayed, one going east and one going west, and hands the size of dinner plates planted on his knees, he leaned towards me waiting for me to disagree with his assessment. He looked pugnacious enough to put me down on the ground and sit on me if I disagreed with him so I smiled and nodded in agreement.

“Besides,” he continued, “Lucan gave lots of folks reason to kill him. Your man took him to court and that guy over at the tattoo parlor, that artist, told everyone in town he was glad Lucan was dead. Said better Lucan died than the turtles. Course,” he paused to pull on his ear, “doesn't mean he wanted to kill Lucan, just that there were lots of things about Lucan that made people hate him. That April, she's the only one that ever cared about him. Don't know what will become of her.”

“She's leaving,” the tobacco chewer stated. “Going to her sister's north of here somewhere.” They worried that around a little, surprised that she'd leave before the funeral and speculating if she ever meant to come back. “Don't think she'll be back,” Mr. Tobacco said. “She told Sue Clausen at the nursing home she'd wasted more than enough of her life in Independence.”

The bald man smoothed back the hair that wasn't there and tried to puzzle this out. “Don't seem right not to stay until Lucan is buried.”

It was Tully who brought up the Breslaus and created the silence you could hear all the way to Tallahassee. Seemed no one wanted to discuss the Breslau family.

“The Breslaus have been hunting on Clay's land,” I told them.

The big fat fella frowned, “Just stay indoors and let them get on with it. Don't go near them.”

“Just best stay away from that family, specially that Boomer,” Mr. Tobacco advised.

Boomer cast a pall over them even when he wasn't physically there and fear settled around the old men like cloaks.

Tully tipped back his chair and said, “Sheriff seems to be looking for someone out our way.”

“That a fact?” the fat one said. He didn't seem surprised and I was sure it didn't come as news to him. None of them asked for details.

“Who's he looking for?” Tully asked. His question was answered with silent shrugs. Tully tried again. “Have you any idea why the sheriff thinks this stranger might be out our way?”

“Ain't got no idea,” their leader said, turning his head to spit one more time. “Best not to get ideas.” I tried another question. “Know what the guy's done?” They just shook their heads. Strange they were interested in every other bit of gossip but not this. Maybe they had no idea what was going on or maybe they just didn't want to know. When I tried to ask about Harland Breslau and what they grew on their farm, my questions were met with more uneasy silence, another subject not up for discussion. Nor were any of the other questions I tried. They weren't going to speculate on any of the Breslau clan's activities, even the sheriff's, no matter how innocuous the questions.

Their eyes slid away and their bodies eased off from us. They were growing restless and ready to bolt at the next mention of the Breslau name. The bald one confirmed this when he got to his feet preparing to leave and said, “Always best not to know too much about what the sheriff and his kin are up to, if you take my meaning. Safest just to stay clear of them.” The others nodded their heads in agreement and followed the bald guy out of the parking lot.