For You (The 'Burg Series) (75 page)

Thinking about it, I said, “We’ll put some music on when we get home.”

He grinned and said, “Anything you want, baby, but when we dance at home, we’ll be horizontal.”

I grinned back and replied, “That works for me.”

* * * * *

Colt went to the Station to find out what was happening with the robbery investigation and I took over letting Dee shadow me at the bar. Making drinks and making change wasn’t rocket science but we were relatively busy and when it got busy you had to have a good memory and be able to multitask.

I saw George Markham, the head honcho of Markham and Sons Funeral Home, walk in still wearing a suit from funeral duties. He slid in beside Joe-Bob, caught Dad’s eye and Dad moved down to his end of the bar.

There were two funeral homes in town but most folk chose Markham and Sons. This was mostly because it was on the main drag. Therefore, if you had a funeral to host, you’d get maximum attention from people driving by, counting the mourners standing outside chatting or having a smoke. The location of Markham and Sons allowed the all-important assessment of the post-mortem popularity of the deceased.

Amy was quiet but young and well-liked and just the young part would draw people out because that kind of tragedy had a way of doing that. She was a bank teller so a lot of people knew her even though they didn’t really know her. When Colt and I walked through the milling crowd outside Amy’s viewing, she had to hit three and a half out of five on the popularity scale. This was saying something considering Colt told me Amy had no real friends left when she died.

I knew George. He was the kind of man you knew in town because no one could escape spending some time at his business. I knew him but he rarely came into J&J’s. He liked to golf and would drink at the clubhouse. Though, when Dad was running J&J’s, George would come in from time to time to shoot the shit.

Therefore George being there, and looking like he was coming direct from a funeral, meant something was up.

I sidled down to George and Dee followed me. Dad felt us coming, started to turn and George and Joe-Bob’s eyes came to us as we got close.

“Feb, darlin’,” Dad said, “before the crowd hits for the night, maybe you should show Dee how to restock.”

“I already know that,” Dee replied, obviously wanting to know why George was there too. “Feb taught me last Sunday.”

Dad looked at Dee wanting to say something but biting his tongue.

I looked at George.

“Ain’t no secret, Jack,” George said to my Dad.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Joe-Bob shifted on his chair. I saw it out of the corner of my eye but I kept my gaze on George.

“Got Angie at the home, had her for awhile. Talked to her parents twice, they say they got no money for a funeral. I don’t find someone who’ll help, Angie’ll be buried –”

“I’ll pay,” I said instantly, cutting him off and kissing that kickass vacation good-bye.

I knew why he was there. Firstly, Angie spent a lot of time in J&J’s but secondly, and more importantly, Dad had a way. Years ago, the town had a little league team that was so good they made it to some championships that meant the entire team had to fly to Japan. Problem was half the kids on the team didn’t have parents who could afford to send their kids to Japan to play baseball. Therefore Dad fleeced every customer out of a donation to help the kids go and gave a hefty donation himself besides. Same with Whitey West when he lost his insurance and couldn’t afford his chemo treatments. Same with Michaela Bowman, who used to work at J&J’s, when her juvenile delinquent son fell asleep in bed smoking pot and burned out half the inside of her house luckily escaping before he got too injured himself, but insurance wouldn’t pay so Dad collected.

“Feb,” Dad said.

“Morrie and I’ll kick in too,” Dee said.

Dad turned his attention to her. “Delilah, darlin’, you and Morrie got two mouths to feed.”

“So?” Dee asked Dad.

“Don’t got much but I could give you a little,” Joe-Bob put in.

“What’s this about?” Lanie Gilbert, a stool down from Joe-Bob, asked.

“Lookin’ for money to help pay for Angie Maroni’s burial,” Dee informed her.

“I’m in,” Lanie said and I stared at her. Lanie came into J&J’s a lot, not to get trashed mostly because she was social and liked the selections on the jukebox. Though I’d never seen her spend time with Angie, in fact, like most women, she gave Angie a wide berth.

Before any of them could have second thoughts, I asked George, “How you wanna play this?”

George glanced around and said, “Anyone wants to contribute, they just bring it down to the home and the boys and I’ll sort it.”

“What about her headstone?” Lanie asked.

“We’ll figure somethin’ out,” George told her.

Lanie got up from her stool. “I’ll come down, got my checkbook with me, and I’ll look at some catalogues of headstones.”

I had no idea if there was such a thing as headstone catalogues and I looked at Dee who was pressing her lips together. She caught my eye and shrugged her answer to my non-verbalized question.

“We’ll get the word out, George,” Dad said as George moved toward Lanie who was moving toward the door.

“‘Preciate it, Jack,” he said. “Angie, she was…” he trailed off then said, “no matter what, town should take care of their own.”

“Yeah,” Dad replied, George nodded, gave a little wave and followed Lanie out the door.

George was so right; a town should take care of their own. And they would, Dad would see to that.

I looked at Dee and asked, “Bud draft is gettin’ low. You wanna learn how to change out a keg?”

“Highlight of my day, hon,” she replied, though this was a lie. We both knew her highlight of the day was watching Morrie play basketball, even if he lost. For me, watching Colt play was the bottom of three top highlights for my day and, we danced horizontal tonight, it’d be kicked down to four.

On that thought, I grinned at Dad then at Joe-Bob and then Dee and I changed out a keg.

* * * * *

As he walked from the bar down to the Station, Colt’s phone rang. He pulled it out of the back pocket of his jeans, looked at the display, flipped it open and put it to his ear.

“Yeah, Sully.”

“You close to the Station?”

“Walkin’ there from J&J’s now.”

“Double time, man, Evelyn and Norman Lowe just showed with a big, ole box. We put ‘em into interrogation one and we’re gettin’ ‘em some coffee.”

“I’ll be there in two minutes.”

“Good, but not waitin’, man, want them fresh. I’m goin’ in.”

Colt flipped his phone shut and shoved it in his pocket. He was one hundred percent certain he did not want to know what was in the box that Denny Lowe’s parents had brought to the Station. He still hoofed it double time.
 

He hit the Station and it was strangely quiet. This was because it was Saturday, a weekend, so the day would be relaxed. It’d get busy in the night.

This was also because a serial killer’s parents were on the premises carrying with them a box and it was likely the observation room next to interrogation one was shoulder to shoulder.

Colt’s eyes hit Connie through the windows in dispatch and she was watching him. She was talking into the microphone that curved around to her mouth but she also pointed to the ceiling, pumping her hand twice then she gave him a thumbs up.

Sully was already in with the Lowes.

Colt took the stairs two at a time, dumped the cup with the dregs of his Meems’s in the trash and hit the observation room.

He was right, it was packed. Without a word, everyone shifted aside so he could have a bird’s eye view.

“You understand this is difficult,” Colt heard Norm Lowe say when he hit the one-way window.

Norm was standing behind and beside his wife’s chair, his hand on her shoulder. Evelyn Lowe was seated, handkerchief sandwiched between both her hands and her face, her neck was bent, her shoulders shaking.

Looking at the man he hadn’t seen in years, a memory struck Colt.

It was when Colt had been young, seven, maybe eight, and ill. Colt didn’t get sick often but he was then, so sick he didn’t go to school, which he’d always liked, even as a kid, it was an escape from home. He didn’t even go over to Morrie’s which meant he had to be really sick because he always preferred to be at the Owens’s, not to mention he knew even then Jackie was a helluva lot better at taking care of a sick kid than Colt’s Mom was. In fact, he was so sick his mother braved the world she didn’t often go out into unless it was to hit a liquor store and she took him to see Doc. Then later, with no one to watch him, even though she was half-snockered, she put him in her car and took him to Norm Lowe’s pharmacy to pick up Colt’s prescription.

Colt remembered Norm looking down at his mother from the raised station, the white shelves of medicine behind him, wearing a crisp white labcoat with his name embroidered in cursive with blue thread over the coat pocket, the filled prescription bag in his hand, the bag held back from Colt’s mother, and saying, “Now, Mary, we both know this wouldn’t be a good idea.”

Colt remembered it clearly, like it happened the moment before, but until that second he’d buried it. He’d buried it because, that day long ago there were people in line behind his mother. Everyone knew Norm’s meaning, refusing his mother Colt’s medications. He was intimating that she’d take them herself. Even Colt knew it, at his age, and he’d been humiliated, mainly because Norm Lowe was probably right.

His mother didn’t fight it. She grabbed Colt’s hand, ducked her head and walked as straight a line as she could muster right out of the store. She took him back to Doc and Doc saw them right away. Handing her the prescription from his cabinet, Doc said to Colt’s Mom, “Next time we’ll remember this, Mary. You got somethin’ you need for Alec, you’ll get it direct from me.”

Colt couldn’t remember if his mother ever gave him the drugs and it was the only time he remembered ever needing any.

He did remember, years ago a new chain store pharmacy was put in at the edge of town and he’d talked Melanie into moving her prescriptions to the chain, though he never could understand why he wanted her to do this. Most of the folks on insurance or Medicare didn’t have a choice but to go to the chain. If they did, they’d go to Norm just because he was a local. Not Colt.

Since Colt was seven to the time that chain opened, he never stepped foot in Norm Lowe’s pharmacy, partly because he had no need, partly because that buried memory kept him back.

Now, staring at him, Norm’s back ramrod straight, his face looking carved from a rock, his wife a mess in front of him, his son on the road carrying out a violent rampage, Colt found he could call up no empathy for the man.

He would soon understand why.

“We’ll give you some time,” Sully, seated by Evelyn, said quietly.

Everyone waited for Evelyn to pull herself together and Colt watched as Norm squeezed her shoulder. Colt didn’t know why but this gesture looked to him less like a show of support and more like a demand for his wife to get control. It was then Colt knew Norm Lowe was not the kind of man who would allow his wife to walk down the street with frosting on her lip. Not because of how this would reflect on her, but because of how it would reflect on him.

Evelyn nodded her head and lifted it, wiping the tears from her face and swiping under her nose.

“I’m sorry,
Lieutenant
Sullivan,” she whispered.

“You okay to talk now, Mrs. Lowe?” Sully asked and she nodded again but it wasn’t her who talked.

“We found
that,
” Norm announced, dipping his head toward the medium-sized box on the table beside two untouched Styrofoam cups of coffee, “in the house.”

“And what is that, Mr. Lowe?” Sully asked and Evelyn made a noise that sounded painful, a choked sob, a sob Norm ignored.

“Dennis asked his mother to hold some things at the house. She did. Never told me. I knew about
that
, well…” he let that hang and Colt watched Evelyn’s face blank so much it was void. One second, she was tearful, the next, her face was a clear slate. She was so good, it only took a second. A defense mechanism, a practiced one. It was then Colt knew Evelyn Lowe lived under a tyrant.