The Turtle Mound Murder (15 page)

“I want to make sure we’re coordinated,”
Ruthie said. “What do we do if we see Stinky?”

Penny Sue gave her an exasperated look. “Get
his name. Find out where he works, who his friends are, as much as
we can. We need something to give to Deputy Moore and Woody.”

Woody’s name seemed to stick in her throat.
Penny Sue still hadn’t heard anything from him about the gun. I
figured no news was good news. If she were really a suspect, they’d
have taken her into custody by now. Of course, we’d all have felt
better if someone—anyone but Penny Sue—had been arrested for
killing Rick.

No such luck. Ruthie combed the paper every
day, partly because she was a news freak, but mostly to search for
articles about Rick’s death. For a small town, there had been
surprisingly few. There had been a short piece on Monday when
Rick’s body was found and a longer article on Tuesday which quoted
the police as saying they were following several leads. Since then,
nothing. Not a peep from the press in a place where DUI’s and
domestic disputes made the front page. Strange, to say the
least.

“How, exactly, are we going to get his
name?” Ruthie asked. “I thought we were working incognito.”

“We are,” Penny Sue said, perplexed. She
swept her hand down her body in a motion worthy of Vanna White on
Wheel of Fortune
. “Why else would I be dressed like
this?”

Penny Sue had on beige shorts, a white
sleeveless shirt, and casual sandals. Her hair was pulled back in a
pony tail, and she had on approximately half the makeup she usually
wore. And, for the first time in her life, she wore no scarves,
belts, jackets, shawls, caps, or jewelry except, of course, the
two-carat diamond ring, which didn’t count, since it had been her
Momma’s. For Penny Sue, that truly was incognito. Heck, she looked
like me. Or Ruthie, whose drab, baggy, designer clothes would go
unnoticed by all but the most discriminating eyes. Which meant
Ruthie had nothing to worry about from Stinky. Discrimination of
any kind did not appear to be one of his faults.

The fact that Penny Sue had stooped to
looking plain was lost on Ruthie. “Yeah, but how do we find out who
he is?” she asked again.

At that moment a waitress tapped Penny Sue
on the shoulder and pointed toward the corner table that was being
vacated. “Don’t worry, we’ll think of something.”

Penny Sue and I took the side of the booth
facing the room, which left Ruthie looking out the back window. She
didn’t mind. Although she was concerned about our situation, Ruthie
was definitely not gung ho about our undercover exercise.

Ruthie kept remembering Pauline’s prediction
that we’d meet the angry light-haired man at a bar. When Pub 44 had
turned out to be a dead end, Ruthie’d grown increasingly anxious
about coming to JB’s. In fact, she recommended that we hire a
private detective and volunteered to pay for it herself. She called
two P.I. agencies whose yellow page blurbs boasted FBI connections,
but got no answer. After five on a Thursday, what did she
expect?

I wasn’t thrilled about playing detective,
but only half-believed Pauline’s prediction, so I wasn’t on
tenterhooks, either. I definitely didn’t intend to do anything
crazy like confront Stinky, or even follow him. I was willing to
make a few inquiries; that was all. Period. No matter what.

A tall man appeared at the table a few
minutes after we sat down. While virtually all men, except Zack,
Jr., were on my shit list at that moment, I had to admit that this
guy was a real hunk. With a deep tan, chiseled jaw, and solid build
packed on a six-foot-four frame, this man would stand out in any
crowd. “Your waitress is up a tree.” The guy ripped a large piece
of Kraft paper from a roll on the wall and slid it over our table
top. “Can I get you ladies something to drink?” he asked.

Penny Sue lit up like a firefly spying a
flame. She had the inside seat, next to the wall, and nearly pushed
me off the bench as she leaned toward him. Batting her lashes
several times, she answered “Chardonnay” in a syrupy, Southern
drawl. Ruthie and I ordered the same.

“Three Chardonnays. It’ll just be a minute.”
He smiled (nice teeth) and left.

Even I watched his back as he strode away,
and Ruthie actually turned around in her seat.

“What a Titan,” Penny Sue mumbled.

“Titan was the son of Uranus and Gaia,”
Ruthie said softly, eyes riveted on his retreating form.

“Whoever he’s kin to, he’s got nice jeans,”
I said, grinning. Neither of them got the drift. So much for genome
wit, I thought wryly.

To our extreme disappointment a waitress,
Joanne, delivered the wine. She was about our age and nice enough,
but a letdown, nonetheless. Titan was a tough act to follow.

In order to prolong our surveillance, we’d
already decided to stretch out dinner as long as possible by
ordering a succession of appetizers. If we did that again and
again, eventually we’d be full and a couple of hours would have
passed. We started with one order of Buffalo Shrimp, to split.
Penny Sue assured the waitress we were big tippers, hoping to
assuage the woman’s natural desire to turn the table. The server
nodded politely, as if she’d heard the line more times than she
could count.

We settled back, eating, chatting, and
trolling the restaurant with our eyes. I couldn’t help but notice
that Penny Sue homed in on the Titan bartender after each pass of
the room. About a half hour into the gig she got a bite.

“Look who’s talking to Titan at the bar,”
Penny Sue whispered suddenly. “That’s definitely Al.”

I squinted in their direction. It was almost
eight, and the room was getting dark. “I think you’re right,” I
finally said.

“Should we say something to him? Ask if he
got the invitation to the party?” Ruthie asked.

“No. We don’t want to call attention to
ourselves. We’ll track him down tomorrow to make sure he got
it.”

Our second appetizer, clams, arrived. We
ordered another round of wine and some water, but our waitress was
not listening. Her eyes were fixed on the television at the far end
of the room. I repeated our request.

“Sorry,” Joanne said. “I was checking out
the storm. I live on the beach. New Smyrna has never taken a direct
hit. Even so, hurricanes always make me nervous.”

“Hurricane?” Ruthie echoed, turning toward
the television which was tuned to the Weather Channel. Jim Cantore
was pointing to a swirling blob west of Puerto Rico. A moment
later, arrows appeared indicating the storm’s projected track. New
Smyrna Beach was in the red, high probability zone.

“A hurricane,” Penny Sue wailed. “It will
ruin our party.”

“Yeah,” I said sarcastically. “A hurricane
might put a damper on things, especially if they evacuate the
island.”

“Evacuate?” Ruthie moaned. “We can’t
leave.”

“Surely, Woody wouldn’t make us stay in a
hurricane,” I said.

Penny Sue shook her head. “I don’t know.
We’d have to have his permission first, that’s for certain.
Otherwise, we could be charged with fleeing from a murder
investigation. I know that’s serious.”

“So is being blown away,” Ruthie
countered.

“We’ll get permission,” I said emphatically.
“I’m not staying here in a hurricane.”

My eyes wandered back to the Weather Channel
at the exact moment Stinky walked by. The pony-tailed guy from the
previous night was with him, as well as a balding man in a tee
shirt with Marines in glitter across the back. The trio sat a few
feet from the television at a table that had just been vacated.

We hunkered down and took big gulps of
wine.

“Pauline was right,” Penny Sue said, a trace
of awe in her voice. “She said we’d find the angry man in a bar.
There he is.”

“Now what?” Ruthie asked.

“For starters, we should eat.” I speared a
clam. “We need to stay calm and act naturally.” I looked askance at
Penny Sue. Natural for her encompassed a lot. Perhaps I’d better
clarify. “Normal,” I added hastily. “We want to look like normal
people on vacation.”

Penny Sue raked several clams onto her paper
plate. “Okay, how do normal people act?” She doused her clams with
hot sauce.

They both stared at me, expecting answers.
“They eat,” I said.

“We covered that already,” Penny Sue
said.

I scanned the other tables. The couple next
to us was watching the Weather Channel. Some kids behind Ruthie
were drawing pictures on the Kraft paper covering their table.
Young men in the kitty-cornered booth were drinking long neck beers
and arguing sports. One of them had a head cold and kept wiping his
nose with the back of his hand. Yuck. There was a whole roll of
paper towels on their table, so why didn’t he use one?

What was normal? I recalled my conversation
with Penny Sue where she equated normal to being average. That
being the case, normal was definitely not something she aspired to
be. Neither did I, come to think of it. While I actually might be
normal, it wasn’t something I was particularly proud to claim. The
terms “normal” and “boring” had an unusual affinity.

“Normal people don’t do anything in
particular,” I said. “Virtually everything goes as long as it
doesn’t create a stir.”

“No chanting, Ruthie,” Penny Sue said
mischievously.

Ruthie folded her arms defensively. “Or
getting smashed.” She nodded at Penny Sue’s empty plastic cup.

Oh boy, I didn’t want to get into that
subject, and I could see they were both getting tense. “We should
be ourselves ... in a low key way. Right?” I glanced from one
friend to the other.

“Right,” Penny Sue finally allowed. “Let’s
not forget that we’re here to get the names of those bikers who
killed Rick and tried to run us off the road.”

That was an unexpected leap. “Killed Rick?”
I asked.

“The guy in the red pickup killed Rick, but
Stinky and his buddy are in cahoots with him.”

I blinked. “You’re sure of that?”

“Pretty sure. Why else would they try to
kill us? Mr. Red Pickup knows we can link him to Rick.”

I’d actually had the same thought myself.
Gerty said the turtle haters were mean, and the guy in the red
pickup was clearly a turtle hater, judging from his bumper
sticker.

Ruthie broke in. “Which brings us back to
square one. We must get some names for Deputy Moore.”

“Let’s ask Titan,” Penny Sue said with a big
grin.

I noticed a plaque hanging next to the bar.
Do you want to talk to the man in charge or to the woman who
knows what’s going on?
“Let’s start with our waitress. Here she
comes now.”

Joanne sat a plate of potato skins in the
center of the table and passed plastic cups of wine and water all
around. Penny Sue glanced defiantly at Ruthie and took a big
swallow of wine. I rolled my eyes. Honestly, Penny Sue acted like a
kid sometimes—a defiant, devilish one at that.

“Joanne, see those three guys sitting by the
wall?” I nodded toward Stinky and crew. “The table with the bald
guy.”

“The one with Marines on his back? What
about them?”

Good question. What about them? Why was I
interested in those skuzzy slobs? I needed to be careful in case
she knew them. Three of us; three of them. I sure didn’t want her
to think we wanted to pick them up and, God forbid, have her help
us out by telling them. No, I had to have a reason to keep our
interest secret.

“I think the guy with the pony tail might be
the ex-husband of a woman I know. A bad situation; he used to slap
her around. If that’s him, I want to warn my friend that he’s back
in town.”

Joanne frowned as she studied the men. “They
don’t look familiar; I’ll ask the other girls.”

“I don’t want him to know I’m interested,” I
said quickly. “If that’s Tom Jones, I sure don’t want to mess with
him.”

“I understand.” Joanne left and went to the
bar.

I sat back, feeling satisfied with my
ingenuity. It only lasted a moment.

“Tom Jones?” Penny Sue cackled. “Is that the
best you can do? Talk about fake names! You might as well have said
John Doe!”

“What’s wrong with Tom Jones? It’s a nice,
normal name.”

“It-t-t’s not un-US-u-AL ...” Penny Sue sang
off key. Ruthie giggled.

“It was the best I could do on short notice.
Joanne didn’t think it was funny. Look, it seems to have worked.” I
inclined my head toward the bar where Joanne was whispering with
the other waitresses and motioning toward Stinky’s table. “We’ll
have their names in a matter of minutes.”

“I know how to get their names,” Penny Sue
blurted. The young guys drinking the long-necks looked over at us.
Penny Sue leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I’ll throw my
panties at ‘Tom Jones’ and ask for an autograph!” She was laughing
so hard, tears streamed down her face.

“Your panties aren’t big enough to write
on,” I countered, thinking of the lacy thongs Ruthie and I had
unpacked for her.

“Whoo-o.” Penny Sue took a deep breath to
calm herself and wiped her eyes. “Okay, a bad plan. Those guys
probably can’t write anyhow. But, Tom Jones? You must have had a
brain cramp to come up with that oldie, goldie.”

“Brain cramp? Don’t start in on the hormone
stuff. I’m not in the mood.”

Penny Sue was getting wound up. The best
policy was to ignore her. So, I turned my attention to the bar and
watched as Joanne sidled up to Titan. The handsome hunk had just
served a drink to a well-dressed, gray-haired fellow. Titan stooped
to hear what Joanne was saying, glanced toward Stinky, then toward
us. The gray-haired fellow turned around, too.

“Uh oh. Talk about goldie oldies,” I said.
“There’s Lyndon Fulbright.”

“Lyndon?” The look on Penny Sue’s face was
one of pure horror as she slid down into her seat.

* * *

“
What’s he doing
here? I don’t have on
any makeup.” Penny Sue moaned as she rummaged in her purse for a
compact. She was hastily applying lipstick when Lyndon arrived at
our table.