Small Town Trouble (10 page)

“Don’t think I’ve seen you ladies in here before,” John Deere said.

“Don’t suppose you have,” I said, trying to strike a cool, but social tone. You really couldn’t blame a guy for trying.

“Oh, Christ,” Amy whispered on my right.

“Well, hey,” he said, warming up. “My buddy and I’d like to buy you ladies a drink. How ‘bout it?”

“Yeah,” Fat Boy chimed in, “how ‘bout it?”

“Oh, Christ,” Amy said, this time with real sibilance. I was beginning to notice that she had a fondness for repeating herself.

“That’s awfully sweet of you boys,” I said, “but we’ve got to run along.”

“So soon?” John Deere said, almost a whine.

I checked my watch. “Yep, don’t wanna be late for the lesbian barn dance.”

Fat Boy nudged John Deere and said, “Told ya.”

I was waiting for Amy to say ‘oh, Christ’ again, but she was already beating feet out to the parking lot.

“Well, you gals have yourselves a real nice evening,” John Deere said, more than a bit sullenly.

“Thanks,” I said, “you, too.”

We wagon-trained it over to Sparkie’s Lounge. Amy and I needed a quiet place where people were fully dressed to mull things over, analyze the data. Plus, we were hungry. A bowl of pretzels just couldn’t be called dinner.

We grabbed a booth and ordered Sparkie’s Supreme Combo and a bottle of Chianti.

“The lesbian barn dance?” Amy said.

I just grinned.

Amazingly, Mario Lanza was still singing
Because You’re Mine.
Maybe it was an eight-track tape. The never-ending loop. The eight-track was a great invention. You could hear the Captain and Tennille non-stop until the tape broke or the player exploded. All too often, this was only a matter of minutes. Mad Ted had a nice little collection of eight-tracks which he showed off to anyone who’d pay attention. His pride and joy was
Disco Duck,
which he liked to play in a little red Panasonic portable. Unfortunately, it only played one track, but it played it over and over.

The waitress brought our wine and a couple of glasses. I’ll bet she still didn’t know what a hoagie was. Or a Tequila Sunrise either.

The Chianti wasn’t half bad. Not that I’m a wine snob. I certainly wasn’t the type who needed to sniff out every nuance of anise, leather, roses or the La Brea Tar Pits to enjoy a glass of wine. Call me snooty, but I’d just as soon my wine didn’t taste like fermented grape Kool-Aid.

“Okay,” I started, “let’s sort things out. So far we’ve got one dead, dickless, topless tavern owner, one dead cousin in like condition, his topless dancer girlfriend who’s not talking and a guy named Larry White who doesn’t exist.”

“Wanna bet that the police aren’t much further along on this than we are?” Amy said, sipping her wine. “What makes you think Larry White’s connected anyway?”

“It’s just a lame theory.”

“He called again, wanted to know if we’d made up our minds on selling the farm. I told him we were still thinking it over. He wasn’t thrilled.”

“Probably didn’t cheer him up much when Bud Upton told him the WFOG deal is on hold either.”

“Jeez, he gives me the creeps.”

I love a woman who says ‘jeez.’ “Has anyone actually met Larry White?” I said.

“Not that I know of.”

“Maybe he’s just a computer-generated figment of someone’s imagination, like the guy who leaves a message on your voice mail telling you that your library books are overdue.”

“But the money’s real,” Amy said.

“Don’t remind me.”

The pizza showed up and it looked all it was cracked up to be. We’d ordered it with extra everything.

Amy pulled the first slice loose. “Can I ask a stupid question on an entirely different subject?”

“Is this about breasts?”

“Sort of. You don’t have to answer.”

“If I don’t, will I still get to play Final Jeopardy?”

“Of course.”

“Then shoot.”

“Well,” she said, drawing it out, building the suspense, “if I were lesbian, would you be attracted to me?” Staring me dead on, she took a generous bite of pizza and chewed.

She was right on schedule with the If I Were One Question.

I sipped some Chianti and without breaking eye contact, went pensive for a moment.

Amy Delozier was a true beauty. Bright, sexy, adventurous and a great sense of humor. Other than the dentist, she was practically perfect. But I needed another married woman like I needed Liberace’s hairless Chihuahua.

But the question had probably been a difficult one for her to ask, and before I answered I wanted to get the words just right.

I settled on “Hell, yes!”

“Really?”

“Are you nuts? Of course, really.”

Amy took another bite. “Thank you,” she said through her mouthful of pizza.

Chapter 22

That night, in my dream, the original
Addams Family
was chasing me down the Yellow Brick Road. The sky was black and thick with those hideous flying monkeys and a rather large one had just taken roost on my head. Lurch was about a half-step off my heels and he was reaching out to strangle me when the phone next to the bed rang. It probably saved my life.

I thought about ignoring the phone, but it could’ve been Nancy. Or Amy. Hopefully not Morticia Addams.

But I was wrong all around. It was Bud Upton. He’d definitely had his morning drive to Detroit coffee. I envied him.

Bud was nearly bursting with details to share. By the end of our conversation or, more accurately, Bud’s monologue, I learned a great deal more than I’d expected.

Bud’s source had told him that the police had a list about a mile long of people who might have taken great pleasure in seeing the late Jimmy Jacobs dead and dismembered.

Jimmy Jacobs was your basic low-life creep trying to keep his topless lounge and fungoid lifestyle afloat anyway he could. Somehow, apparently he’d managed to keep from getting busted for anything major and had never spent more than 30 days in jail. He owed money to just about everybody he knew and many he didn’t, including the IRS, bookies, suppliers of goods of all sorts, not to mention his three ex-wives.

“Whoa,” I said, quoting Amy and Ted. “You’ve got one excellent
source,
Bud.”

“Thanks,” Bud said. “Actually, it’s my brother, Irvin. He wanted to be an FBI agent, but got into a little trouble awhile back. Oh, and on Larry White? Can’t find anyone who’s actually
seen
him in the flesh. It’s entirely possible, even probable, that whoever he is, he’s never even been to Fogerty.”

“I guess that makes it hard to pin two murders on him.”

“Very hard. Listen, Kim,” Bud said, taking on a paternal tone, “your cousin, Abbott, and Jimmy Jacobs probably tangled with the same scumball whose psycho streak flares up now and then, and from what I understand, that’s about half the clientele at Jimmy’s Place. So I wouldn’t let my imagination run wild on this Larry White angle. Let the cops figure it out.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Bud.” Actually, I wasn’t all that convinced of it, but I said it anyway.

“Under the circumstances it’s reasonable enough to put the WFOG deal on hold for now. Let’s just not let it get
too
cold if we’re serious about the money.”

“Excellent point. I have one more question.”

“Ask away.”

“Did Jimmy Jacobs have an ex-wife named Charlene?”

“Let’s see.” I heard him rattling his papers. “How’d you know that?”

Charlene was certainly popular. I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant that she had been both Abbott’s squeeze and fungoid Jimmy’s ex-wife, but I had a feeling that more than
love
grows where Charlene goes.

“You said that Jimmy had other exes. You have names?”

“Yeah,” Bud said, hesitantly, “but I’m not sure it’s a great idea to give them to you. I hear you’ve already made one field trip to Jimmy’s Place.”

“Gee, your brother
is
thorough.”

“Obsessively so.”

“How about if I say pretty please?”

“Gosh, I’m a sucker for
pretty please
.”

I liked it that Bud was showing a little life. I just hoped it didn’t get in my way.

“All right,” he said, “here it is. Ex-wives include Charlene Jones, Cherry Kirchbaum and Pebbles Dugger. And guess what? They’re all dancers at Jimmy’s Place.”

“Cherry and Pebbles?”

“Be careful.”

I hung up with Bud and could easily have rolled over, covered my head with a pillow and gone back down dreamland’s Yellow Brick Road, but I was still a little haggard from my last trip. Amy and I had been out way past midnight. Not that we hadn’t had a swell time, it was just that midnight was way past my usual bedtime.

And it showed. I checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror and I was sorry I did, but I did it mostly to make sure I still had one. Weary was the word that came to mind. Another word was
aging
. At just past forty, I wasn’t wearing my wine, women and late bedtimes as well as I used to.

After about ten additional seconds of self-reflection, I’d had all I could handle for the morning, possibly the week.

I took a quick shower and headed downstairs for coffee.

Evelyn already had a pot on. She was sitting at the table reading the
Fogerty Journal
and eating her bowl of Cheerios. Bunky was lounging in the chair next to her. He looked up long enough to snort at me when I came into the kitchen.

Ignoring Bunky’s rude behavior, I said good morning to Evelyn and bee-lined it for the coffee.

“The coroner’s finished with Abbott,” Evelyn said, setting her newspaper aside.

This was not Breakfast Talk Lite. “Any news?” I was hoping JFK’s missing adrenal glands hadn’t turned up. Things were already weird enough.

“Guess not.”

This was good news I supposed. I took a sip of the lousiest cup of coffee I’d had since yesterday.

“Abbott’s gonna be cremated,” Evelyn said, holding out her cup for a refill. “The boys’ll keep his ashes until they figure out what they want to do with them.”

I topped off Evelyn’s coffee and put the pot back on the burner. “Sounds good.” I was sure that, whatever Agee and Alonzo decided to do with Abbott’s remains, I didn’t want to hear about it.

Evelyn shook her head. “Wish we could afford a decent Christian burial.” At this juncture, Evelyn could barely afford a decent pair of underwear.

I did my best to conjure up a tender tone. “Cremation
is
a decent Christian way to go,” I said. “And I know Clint would agree.” I had no idea whether my brother Clint would go along with this, but his opinion carried a lot of the weight with Evelyn in the Jesus department.

“Well, maybe so,” Evelyn said. “Besides, it
is
better for the environment.”

I was really impressed. Al Gore
was
making a difference.

“The memorial service is tomorrow,” she said, setting her bowl of leftover Cheerios on the floor for an eagerly awaiting Bunky. “Guess I better find something to wear.”

There was really no need to ask where the service would be held. Fogerty was a one funeral home town. Here, it was Hooker-Handy’s all the way, and it’d been that way since before Jesus rolled away the big stone.

Although the Hookers had sold out to the Handys probably just before the end of the last century, the name had such a nice ring to it that the Handys had decided to keep it around. I didn’t want to think about what else the Handys had kept around after all of these years. I’d gone to school with the Handy kids, all seven of them, and they were weirdniks for sure. Any one of them could pass for a prime suspect in the recent spate of macabre murders, but what could you expect, having been raised on a steady diet of embalming fluid and
Nearer My God to Thee
?

The phone rang, and Evelyn hopped up to get it. Bunky stopped chomping his Cheerios long enough to snort again. Apparently, he wanted Evelyn to hold his calls.

I was feeling a little like snorting myself once I could see that Evelyn and Bunky had finished off the box of Cheerios.
 

In a rather excited voice Evelyn said to the caller, “Well, praise the Lord!” Then she said it again about ten more times. Either Evelyn was participating in a telephone tent revival or the caller had some very good news to pass along. Finally, Evelyn hung up the phone and said, “Praise the Lord!”

“I got that part.”

“That,” Evelyn said, “was the police chief. They caught the killer!”

“Well, praise the Lord,” I said, although there was certainly no need to say it again. I was half-expecting Evelyn to tell me they’d nailed Charlene the Spangled Dancing Machine for the heinous crimes, but I was way off.