Small Town Trouble (2 page)

“Cheers,” I said, and we sipped our Manhattans in the living room while the air conditioner hummed. We covered the weather, the Cincinnati Reds, Clint’s newly hatched case of hemorrhoids and Bunky’s dry skin problem. From there, the conversation took another downward spiral.

Evelyn complained about how hard it was to meet a nice man at her age and how much she missed my father and A.C.

“Don’t end up alone like me in your old age.”

Evelyn had never been a robust supporter of my alternative lifestyle, as it was commonly and stupidly known. With my wicked ways, she was sure I’d end up solitaire, breast stroking around in circles at the bottom of the Well of Loneliness. My mother still couldn’t say the word “lesbian,” but she
had
come to grasp the general concept that, after all these years, this was no phase I was going through. Even my brother Clint had stopped sending me those “Jesus Loves You Anyway” pamphlets.

At dinner time I checked Evelyn’s refrigerator and, amazingly, found enough edible ingredients to make an omelet and a salad. Evelyn wasn’t famous for her culinary wizardry. In fact, I think she existed mainly on SnackWells and Manhattans. It was close to a miracle to run across lettuce and eggs.

I set the table and uncorked a bottle of chilled white wine I’d retrieved earlier from my stash. A long time ago I’d learned never to venture far from home without taking along drinkable wine. This was especially true if my destination happened to be Fogerty.

Evelyn said she enjoyed her dinner, although I know she probably would have been just as happy with a bowl of cereal. Anyway, it was nice to see her get some protein. After dinner, I loaded the dishwasher while Evelyn went upstairs to take a bubble bath in her heart-shaped tub. Then Bunky and I ate a bowl of frozen yogurt and watched the local news which was always a mind-bending experience.

Naturally, the news highlight was the topless tavern murder story. Not only had redneck sleazoid Jimmy Jacobs gotten his throat slit in his own parking lot, he’d somehow he’d managed to lose his genitalia in the scuffle. Fogerty’s finest hadn’t figured out who’d done it yet, which was no great surprise.

After all of the mind bending I could take, I excused myself and retired to the Ashley Wilkes bedroom. I hung up a few things from my suitcase, brushed my teeth and got comfy on the immense four-poster bed. Then, against all good reason, I called Nancy Merit.

No answer. I hung up and punched in the number for the TV station. I was hoping that Nancy would be working late. It wasn’t a real long shot. When the Southern belle on the night switchboard picked up, I said in a no-nonsense, businesslike fashion, “Nancy Merit, please.”

“May I say who’s calling?”

“Sure, Martina Navratilova.”

“One moment, please,” she purred, then proceeded to put me on hold for at least ten minutes. Finally, she came back on the line.

“I’m sorry, but Ms. Merit isn’t available.” The operator didn’t know how right she was. “Is there a message, or would you like Ms. Merit’s voice mail?”

Decisions, decisions. I opted for Nancy’s voice mail where I left a mildly provocative message of a sensual nature. I hoped Nancy would retrieve the message instead of her personal assistant, Shirley, who already knew more about Nancy and me than I did.

I had dated off and on over the past couple of years, but nobody had revved my engine like Nancy Merit. I could barely keep my hands off of her when we were together. She made me tingle in places I’d forgotten existed.

I left Nancy my mother’s number and tried to sound casual about it. Despite our recent decision to take a little breakie-poo from one another, I was really hoping that Nancy would feel like talking, too.

This thing with Nancy Merit had gotten a little crazy. Not that it didn’t start out that way, but a bit of a breather was probably best for both of us.

My friends had warned me from the beginning that I was off my beam to get involved with Nancy. Not only was she obsessed with her popular TV show,
Nancy Merit’s House
, she was also known within the circles of the inner sanctum as a hopeless closet case with a savage penchant for breaking hearts. Then there was the small matter that Nancy was quite married, although lately I’d come to regard this as a technicality. Just about everyone I knew wondered how I’d hooked up with a woman who was as preoccupied and unlikable as Nancy Merit. I’d actually wondered this myself from time to time. But I didn’t wonder for long because maybe it said more about me than I wanted to know. Besides, I liked unlikable people. In fact, my best friend Mad Ted Weber could be one of the most annoying, petty, self-absorbed people you’d ever want to meet. But he could make a mean rabbit stew and he always had a good bottle of wine around.

For the past few months, Nancy and I had been speeding full throttle over the high and lusty seas of romance. That is when we could work in the time. Neither of us was sure what should happen next, or if there even was a next. What I knew shouldn’t happen next was a head-on collision with Dickhead, Nancy’s unbelievably irritating and repulsive husband. Dickhead was one of the main money players behind the hideous overdevelopment of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, the gateway to the Gateway of the Smoky Mountains. As of late, he’d been hinting around that he was on to Nancy’s philandering, not that you’d think he would have time to notice given his own rather hectic philandering schedule.

I was of the opinion that jealousy was the driver here. What was really getting under Dickhead’s skin was the fact that he could no longer ignore Nancy’s runaway popularity and billowing success. She’d just hired a full-time secretary who spent a great portion of her time handling fan mail from Nancy’s adoring public.
Nancy Merit’s House
, once a local show, had gone on to cable TV. Nancy’s book,
Nancy Merit Style
, was selling vigorously and she’d just landed a juicy contract for two more books.

This was only the beginning and Dickhead knew it. So it figured that he was in the mood to rain on her parade any way he could. And being the King of Dickheads, he certainly could.
 

 
No doubt there’d be more heavy showers on Nancy’s parade if her bedrock audience got wind of what she was up to when the TV cameras were off duty. The Southerners love their eccentrics and are suckers for real perversity, but they’re an unpredictable lot and can turn on you like mad opossums. One minute they’re throwing you a Champagne Magnolia party, and the next they’re chasing you across the state line with a sawed-off shot gun. There was no way to know how ugly they’d get if confronted with the notion that their fair-haired Nancy Merit, the same charming Nancy who showed them how to make a Sky-High Berry Pie, sharpen their rose pruners and stencil their bathroom walls, regularly took girls’ night out to its wild extreme.

There was a sharp rap on the bedroom door. “Kimberly! Kimberly, you awake?” My mother shouted. The door flew open. “Oh, good. You’re awake. I feel like having a little night adventure. Get dressed.”

I had the sudden urge to pull the covers up over my head, but I knew that my mother had had more than her fair share of Manhattans and I certainly didn’t want her to climb behind the wheel, so I complied.

Chapter 3

 
“Take a left. Let’s drive by that awful place where the tavern owner got himself killed and his
thing
chopped off.”

“We could use a little adventure,” I said. Always something fun to do in Fogerty. When I’d been watching the TV news, I hadn’t paid much attention to the details about the tavern murder. My mind had been busy mud-wrestling with the Big Questions, like, was Bunky hogging the bowl of frozen yogurt? And was Nancy Merit, at that very moment, wearing her peony pink Victoria’s Secret underwear?

“There it is!” Evelyn spouted, pointing to a ramshackle of a roadhouse. “That’s it! Jimmy’s Place.”

The sign propped up with scrap lumber on top of Jimmy’s read TOPLESS TOPLESS TOPLESS. Someone had taken an artistic stab at painting two jiggling breasts about to pop out of a bikini. Nice touch. It was all bathed in a sickly blue light. A few cars were parked in the gravel lot, and a barely flickering neon Open sign hung above the door.

“I will never understand why they even
allow
these places to exist,” Evelyn said, leering all the while.

“Didn’t A.C. used to stop off here once in a while?” I couldn’t resist. A.C., like many of the guys in town had been known to drop by Jimmy’s Place for an occasional brew and breast exam. By reports, even Scotty Mink, the town’s mayor, was a semi-regular.

“He most certainly did not. A.C. was a gentleman,” Evelyn said, emphatically. “Now pull around to the back. I want to check out the crime scene.”

“The crime scene?” I wheeled into the back parking lot. “You’ve been watching too much
Law and Order
.”

“Just hush and drive,” Evelyn said, sticking her head out the window.

“For crying out loud, Mother. Get your head inside of this car.”

“Hey, Kimberly. Lookie there.”

I was hoping she hadn’t spotted the missing winkie.

“I’ll bet those are blood stains. Don’t you think so?” she said, pointing at a brown circle in the gravel.

“Try rust stains.”

Suddenly, from somewhere stage left, there was a very loud
bang.

Evelyn screamed. We both ducked below the dash. I’d had a feeling all along that this wasn’t going to be my lucky day. But I hadn’t been prepared for things to go
this
badly.

Reluctantly, I looked down to see just how much blood was leaking out of me.

Chapter 4

It was my lucky day after all. There wasn’t a drop of my blood or Evelyn’s or anybody else’s to be found. In fact, there hadn’t even been a gunshot.

The deafening noise I’d mistaken for a shotgun blast had actually been the sound of the back door of Jimmy’s Place slamming open.

Rick Rod Delozier careened out of the door. God knows how I recognized him, but I did. I hadn’t seen Rick Rod since high school, but there was no doubt about it. It was him alright, my best friend Amy Delozier’s more than a bit off-kilter brother.

Rick Rod was in the process of getting 86’ed from Jimmy’s Place and having the riot act read to him by a mean-looking, well-endowed babe in tight-ass jeans, her big yellow hair piled high like a lemon cake. She had him by the front of his T-shirt, her nose about an inch from his face, and she snarled something indiscernible, but clearly ugly, then tossed him into the parking lot. The door banged closed and she was gone.

“My Lord!” Evelyn exclaimed as Rick Rod Delozier stumbled and bounced off a few parked cars, then he landed across the hood of mine.

Luckily or unluckily, I hadn’t decided which, yet my car wasn’t rolling at the time.

“Oh, My Lord!” gasped Evelyn grabbing my arm with a look of sheer dread. “Make a run for it, Kimberly. Now!”

Rick Rod managed to peel himself off the hood, and then rolled around to my car window.

“How’s it goin’, Rick Rod?”
 

Looking deeply confused and not unlike Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion, he eyed me long and hard. Then he peered in at Evelyn who muffled a scream, then gasped like a large-mouthed bass. Rick Rod’s glazed gaze fell back on me. My own alcohol blood level must have risen just from inhaling his vapors.

“Now hold the phone,” he slurred, the dim-watted bulb trying very hard to click on. “I know you, right?”

“Kimberly!” Evelyn was now climbing me like a koala. “Can’t you see he’s dangerous?”

I knew Rick Rod Delozier was a lot of things, but dangerous probably wasn’t at the top of the list.

Finally his headlights flicked onto low beam. “Hey, I know. Fogerty High, right? You’re Amy’s friend!”

“Bingo.”

Ah, Amy Delozier. Momentarily, my thoughts drifted back to the times when Amy and I used to spend hours in her grandfather’s hayloft concentrating on perfecting the French kiss. It had been her idea to get in some kissing practice before we started junior high when, according to Amy, there would be lots of boy action. Boy action hadn’t actually sounded all that great to me. Even then, it was clear that making out with Amy would be hard to top.

Somewhere along the line I’d heard that Amy had married a dentist and they lived in an enormous Tudor over in Terrace Park. For the record, dentists are notoriously bad kissers. Not that I’d ever kissed one or was likely to, but the information does come from more than one reliable source.

Curse my luck. Why couldn’t Amy Delozier have fallen across my car hood instead of her drunken, deranged brother?

Rick Rod looked confused again. “Now what
was
your name?”

Evelyn groaned heavily and slumped in her seat.

I told him.

“Kim Claypoole!” he said, pointing at me like I’d finally come into full focus. Then he leaned in a little too close for my comfort and said, “Lemme tell you somethin’, Kim.” He nodded over at the tavern. “This just ain’t a very nice place anymore.”

Like it ever was.

“Matterafact,” he went on, “this whole town’s goin’ to hell.” So it wasn’t just me who’d noticed.