Wildcat Wine (15 page)

Chapter 24

On the way home,
I drove by Bonita's, and despite the fact that neither her car nor Henry's van was in the driveway, I pounded on the door until I was satisfied that not even alien spirits were home.

Being weak from hunger, I then went straight to the Granary instead of home first to clean up. While drooling in the deli, contemplating whether I could get away with another tofu cheesecake, I also considered whether I should fix a deli meal for Philip or actually cook something.

At the moment, I wanted a date slightly less than I wanted gray, frizzy hair. But canceling seemed so not the thing to do. Deciding it was too soon to cook for him, I figured deli food would be just the ticket.

So I bought the cheesecake, sprouted-wheat bread, and a tofu potpie, which the man behind the counter assured me I couldn't tell from chicken. Sniffing and prodding, I also settled on a ripe cantaloupe, a couple of avocados, and two bags of mixed greens, which, though labeled triple washed, would definitely get another wash in my own kitchen.

For good measure, I restored both my apple and granola-bar supplies. Then, remembering the ice cream at Cat Sue's yurt, I added a few cartons of some Rice Dream, some sorbet, and some organic, low-fat, non-GMO frozen yogurt. My total bill was only slightly less than my rent for a shabby room my first semester in college.

Rushing home and calculating how long it would take me to shower and get gorgeous, I spun into my driveway at just about the same moment my new grandmom came outside and waved at me.

I waved back, but declined her invitation for tea. Once inside, I scarfed half a carton of peach sorbet, and, totally recharged by the sugar, which these days was my primary drug of choice, I put my goodies away and let Bearess out into the fenced backyard, let her back in, let her out again at her insistence, fussed at her for acting like a cat, and let her back in again, then hit the shower.

My hair was still wet and I was wearing a towel when Bearess started barking at the door. It was too soon in our putative relationship for me to greet Philip in a towel so I peeked first and saw Dave. That reminded me I still needed to get in touch with Bonita and Benny and I let him in. Dave wolf-whistled, but I ignored him and grabbed the phone and called Bonita. She answered.

“Bonita,” I said, “it's me, Lilly,” as if she wouldn't know my voice. “Listen, I don't have time to explain right now, but do not, don't, do not, not, not talk to Tired Johnson at all about anything until you and I have talked in person. Okay?”

“What's going on?”

Oh, wouldn't I like to know. But Farmer Dave was snooping through my CD collection, I was dressed in a towel, my hair was frizz drying, and I had a date due in just a few minutes, so I just reiterated my instructions and said I'd call her later tonight or first thing tomorrow. And, oh, by the way, how was Benny?

“He's in his room, listening to music.”

“Fine. Don't let him talk to Tired either. Promise?”

“You need to tell me what is going on.”

“Yeah, that works both ways,” I said, “but Dave's here now and Philip is due any minute and I've got to fix supper and get rid of Dave and smooth my hair all in about the next two minutes. So, later, all right. 'Bye.” I hyperventilated and hung up.

“Hey, Belle, where's all those Willie CDs I sent you? And who's this Chris Isaac fellow? Whoa, you still got that Emmylou I mailed you for passing the bar exam.”

Dave put Emmylou Harris on to play and then, as if the world wasn't doing its best to throw up on us at the moment, asked again, “Where'd you put all those Willie Nelson CDs? Lilly Belle, I 'bout sent you the whole collection.”

Yes, and I had about given them to Benny when he was doing some sort of school project that ultimately involved making mobiles out of round, plastic things.

“Don't know, Dave, it's hard to keep hold of Willie. Everybody wants to borrow him.”

“That's true,” he said, and then Ping-Ponged to the next topic. “I'm standing in need of that sack of cash you're holding for me.”

“It's not here. It's in a safe place.”

“Well, put some clothes on, we need to talk.”

An understatement on both counts. On the way to my bedroom, I stopped in the kitchen to put the tofu potpie in the oven to reheat.

While I was styling my hair and wondering which would make a better impression on Philip, a little makeup or a well-set table, Bearess started barking and I looked at the clock and thought, Damn, why does that man have to be punctual?

Too late for the well-set table, I left it to Dave to let Philip in and I went for the makeup, slithered into white hip-rider jeans and an iridescent green cropped T-shirt. Forgetting to put on shoes, I ran out to greet my date, resigned to Dave as a second guest for dinner.

Philip and Dave were sitting on the couch, each drinking Earl's wine while Bearess knelt at Dave's foot, slurping something from my real grandmother's good china bowl.

“Philip didn't think giving the dog wine was a good idea, but, hey, I told him, what's good for the goose, and all that. I mean, Willie gives beer to his horses.”

Willie also allegedly didn't pay his taxes, but how could I criticize Dave's choice of hero when my own thought he was the reincarnation of a dead general who sucked lemons for his digestion and had piously told his underlings to “kill them all” when the Rebels trapped the Yankees at Fredericksburg.

Before I could either greet Philip or rescue my heirloom china, the doorbell rang. Bearess kept drinking.

Tired and Redfish were at the door when I opened it, and Redfish giggled, then ducked his head into Tired's neck. “I brought you this,” Tired said and handed me a sack.

I peeked in. Okra?

“I was sorry I got mad at you today. There's a market in Oneco where you can usually get good okra and fishing bait. My, don't you look nice.”

“Thank you. On both counts.” I stood blocking the door, unsure of the next step.

“Also, you being Kenneth's law partner and all, I wanted to tell you we recovered a gun today that might be the murder weapon.”

Tired stared at me so hard in the doorway of my house that I thought I might be under a microscope or something. Under his scrutiny, I figured bland, polite pleasure would be the best response. “Well, good, good for you. How long before you know for sure? I mean, if it's the murder weapon?”

“Testing itself could be done in a day or two, but it's kinda hard to say to a DFS guy that this is a priority case 'cause almost all of his cases have dead bodies with them.”

Figuring that was cop talk for “I don't know,” I murmured what I hoped was a reassuring noise and waited. Now what? Okra and information and scrutiny all done, wasn't it time for him to leave?

“Look, Redfish and me are going to McDonald's, if you want to come along?”

Setting aside for the moment the horror that Tired thought I was the sort who would actually eat a cheap slab of dead cow on white bread, I asked, “You feed that child McDonald's?”

“He loves the French fries.”

Oh, frigging great, give him cardiovascular disease before first grade.

The good-food prima donna in me kicked in and I was warming up to a serious lecture on the value of proper food when Dave came up behind me and said, “Why, Tired, hey, man. And ain't that a fine-looking baby. He sure favors you.”

Tired beamed. “That your truck, out in the road?”

“Girlfriend's. On loan.”

I peered out around them and saw Cat Sue's white Toyota pickup parked in the street, more or less in front of my neighbor's house, and Philip's Lexus parked in front of it on the street. What? My driveway wasn't good enough for them?

When I leaned my head back in, Dave stuck out his hand toward Tired. “No hard feelings, you hear?”

Tired took it and they shook.

“That sure is a handsome little fella,” Dave said. “Can I hold 'im?”

Tired beamed again and handed Redfish across to Dave. As I watched Dave and Tired bond, I figured their fundamental country-boy personalities transcended which side of the law they made their livings on, especially where mutual admiration of a child was involved.

Redfish cooed in Dave's arms.

Oh, what the hell. I stood back and invited Tired and Redfish in, offering supper and wine.

If Philip was dismayed to discover that he would be sharing supper and me with Dave, Tired, and Redfish, he was gracious enough to hide it. He offered his hand to Tired with the proper respect and passed a fleeting compliment toward Redfish, who was busy trying to unbraid Dave's pigtails and giggling like a thirteen-year-old girl practicing her first flirt.

Great.

After I had everyone except Redfish drinking generously from poor dead Earl's wine, I escaped into the kitchen to finish preparing supper for four and a baby. What did a nine- or ten-month-old baby eat? I wondered.

The tofu potpie was warming up nicely and I was glad it was a good-sized pie as I judged Tired to be a big eater and I knew that Dave was. Thank goodness I had lots of salad, I thought, and repetitively rewashed the trice-washed (That's just what the label said, okay? How did I know it had even been washed once?) salad mix and tossed it into a bowl with some equally well-washed grape tomatoes and generous slices of avocado.

Grabbing the cantaloupe, I washed it, put it down on the counter, rewashed my hands, realized I hadn't washed off either the plunger on the liquid soap or the handle on the kitchen sink, and I washed each, then rewashed my hands, and then couldn't remember if I had washed down the counter after putting the grocery sack on it earlier, and I started the whole process over.

On my third wash of the cantaloupe, Philip, who proved to be light on his feet, asked from the kitchen doorway, “May I ask, Lilly, exactly what it is you are doing?”

“Fixing dinner.”

“Why wash the cantaloupe?” Pause. “Why wash it three times?”

There is no explaining these sudden bursts of obsessive-compulsive behavior that pop out at odd times, particularly when I'm under stress, and I just smiled wearily at Philip and said, “If the skin of the cantaloupe is contaminated, when the knife cuts through it, it might carry germs into the fruit.”

Philip walked up to me, took me in his arms, and said, “I apologize for laughing last night. I thought you were making a joke.”

“A joke? About what?”

“Being obsessive-compulsive.”

“Oh, yeah, joking about mental illness is a good way to impress a man on a first date,” I said.

Philip tightened his arms around me and kissed me. A good, nice, long kiss. Not with the toe-curling sensations of the kiss from the night before, but then the night before I had not spent the day destroying evidence and chasing my secretary and her son to coordinate wordsmithed stories of why Bonita had my car the night Kenneth was shot.

Pulling out of his kiss, I washed my hands and cut the cantaloupe, cleaned out the seeds, peeled it, and put in on a platter, while Philip hovered, making the inane suggestion that he help.

“Please, go watch things in the living room,” I said.

“The other gentlemen seem to be doing fine. They are discussing something tedious about sooty mold and aphids in the garden.”

“Just go check on them,” I snapped.

“You really are high-strung.”

“Listen, short man with thick glasses, I don't need your criticism right now. I've got a sheriff's office investigator and a fifty-year-old man with pigtails and criminal proclivities drinking wine in the living room and an infant pulling on the ears of a tipsy one-hundred-pound dog. Now why wouldn't I be high-strung?” With that, Philip apologized as I shoved him out of the kitchen with repeated instructions to keep the peace in the living room. In the solitude of my own kitchen, I finished washing things to my satisfaction and began to set the table.

Though the potpie gave out too soon, and I saw Tired poking at the tofu chunks with a puzzled look, we managed to each get enough food to quiet our nerves. We finished off everything except the fake ice cream and we drank way too much wine and Redfish showed great gusto with the tofu cheesecake, but none whatsoever toward the salad. It reoccurred to me that I didn't have a clue as to what age you could feed what to a baby, but neither did anybody else, and we all just ate and drank and acted for all the world like this was a normal party and not a gathering of lunatics.

With some trepidation, I left them all in the living room while I cleaned up the kitchen. Each man offered to help me, and to each I refused because no one cleans up a kitchen to my standards except me. Dave did tiptoe into the kitchen to kiss my neck and tell me it was a “real good supper,” and by the way, “that boyfriend of yours don't know spit about baseball. And you and me, we sure got to talk, and I got to get that money back.”

I put Philip's lack of expertise about sports into his plus category, ignored the comment about the money, and shooed Dave out.