Wildcat Wine (19 page)

Wholly unknown to social services, or anyone else, even presumably my father, who appeared to go through life without rudimentary sensory perceptions, Delvon and I just moved in with Farmer Dave, who despite being fifteen years older, became my lover in no time at all. I had adored him since I was a puppy and he'd brought Delvon home from kiddie detention on the back of his Harley. Dave had picked Delvon up hitchhiking since the bus didn't wait for those held after school, and the two of them had bonded on some deep level from their very first “Hey, man.” In light of the depth and immediacy of the attachment between them, I had always figured Delvon and Dave had been buddies in their past lifetimes, which, given their juvenile souls, probably didn't predate the 1800s, and if their age difference mattered, I had never noticed it.

When we moved in with him, Dave had forty acres of cleared, high land in a snake-and-bug-infested corner of the county, and Delvon and I and Dave became ace farmers of skunk sativa, a hybrid marijuana with a kick-ass high. Money was never a problem; I went to school often enough, in decent clothes, and with no telltale signs of abuse, addiction, or abandonment, and nobody asked why I never answered the phone at the house of my parents.

I was gone from the grim, dark, dirty house of my childhood. I didn't look back. Delvon, Dave, and I were family. We took care of each other, and I learned to cook, to garden, to sew, and to be an ace gardener, and finally, in my senior year, seized by an ambition to be more than the common-law wife of a pot farmer, I learned to study. I discovered I was smart. When I went off to college, I began to grow up and adapt myself to the regular world, but Dave neither matured nor adapted. We stopped being lovers. But we never stopped loving each other.

And so there it was: My loyalty today to Dave was as strong as it had been twenty-one years ago. Translation: There was no way I could tell Tired that the gun and bullets used to kill Kenneth had been in Dave's possession just days before the murder.

Of course, there was no readily apparent reason for Dave to shoot Kenneth, so none of any of this made any kind of sense, but there you had it. Dave never wholly made sense. In another lifetime, that had been part of his charm.

But charm has a short shelf life when three bodies are somehow laid at the feet of the man smiling between his pigtails.

Chapter 29

Though I rose early,
fit in a killer workout at the Y, and landed at my Smith, O'Leary, and Stanley office wearing a steel gray dress that screamed serious-lawyering day, my plan was busted by Bonita.

That she sat in my office and drank from my private stash of coffee was my first clue that I wasn't going to like this day any better than the day before.

“Benny has been skipping school.”

“Yeah, I got that yesterday.”

“The reason he has been skipping school is that he is tracking that jaguarundi. Back in Myakka, in the state park. I found him yesterday, parked way out on Clay Gully Road, where he'd just hiked back to his truck.”

Before I sat down at my desk to absorb this, I poured myself a cup of coffee, opened my mini-fridge, and topped off the coffee with enough milk to cool it down and add a couple of hundred calories.

“Why's he so . . . obsessed with a jaguarundi?” I asked, but wondered if that was just the excuse. The excuse to go back to where he and Dave had been, to the scene where all of this had started, or that is, had started for Benny.

“He is increasingly obsessed by the wildcat and I do not know why. Benny's done this before. Even before going off with that Dave. Since, I don't know, since he wrote that paper on the jaguarundi for school. You know, the one you mailed to Dave.”

Well, yeah, of course I remembered that paper. If I hadn't sent it to Dave, maybe none of this would have happened; that is, maybe it would have all happened, but without Benny, Bonita, and me being slap dab in the middle of it. I was very sorry now that I had mailed a copy to Dave, but we know what the road to hell is paved with.

“He's done this before?” I asked. “Before Dave, he's skipped school and gone to Myakka?”

“Yes, I just told you that.”

“What do you think this means?”

“He is my son, but I do not always understand him. I don't know what this means.”

We pondered the various feasible meanings, psychological and otherwise, of Benny's fascination with the jaguarundi, but came to no conclusion.

“Where is Benny now?” I asked.

“I believe, that is, I hope, he is at school. He promised me this morning he would not go into Myakka again. Not alone. It is dangerous out there, off the main trails, for a boy like Benny, who lets his imagination get away from him.”

Jackson banged on my door and came inside at roughly the same time he knocked. He was holding a file folder by his side and I fervently hoped it wasn't another one of his unwinnable cases he was going to toss my way.

“Taking tea?” he asked, slapping the file against his thigh.

“Discussing how to handle a case,” I responded. “Coffee?”

“No, thank you. You two need to get back to our cases, not being social workers. All kids worth their salt play hooky. Boys who grow up to be men, real men, go off in the woods, or the swamps, by themselves.”

Uh-oh, that suggested Jackson had done a tad bit of eavesdropping.

Jackson looked at Bonita. “At his age, Benny needs to be around some men. You want, I'll take him with me next time I go hunting.”

“Fishing,” Bonita said. “Fishing would be better.”

“Deep sea,” Jackson said. “I'll set something up. Out of Boca Grande. We'll take Judge Goddard and Fred.”

I thought how simple the world of a man who thinks a deep-sea fishing trip will cure a fifteen-year-old boy of his problems. Well, what did I know? Jackson had raised four sons, and as far as I knew, they were all reasonably normal, or at least stayed under the radar if they weren't.

“Lilly,” he thundered, knocking me out of that thought. “That little rat-faced law clerk with the earring brought this folder to me this morning, full of stuff the clerks had worked on for Kenneth. I found this”—Jackson slapped the file in the air as if swatting gnats—“in the pile. I thought you'd want to look at this since that EStall file on his hard drive caught your eye.”

“His name is Arnold and he is a very fine young man,” Bonita said.

“Who?” Jackson said as I ignored Bonita and reached for the file.

“The law clerk.”

Ignoring my outstretched hand because he was staring at Bonita, Jackson made a low, growly noise, then turned toward my desk and tossed the file on its clear surface.

“You have any idea what is going on?” Jackson asked me.

“None, sir,” I said.

“When you do, tell me first.”

Grunt, slam, stomp. Jackson was gone, and I grabbed the file and opened it, while Bonita crowded me, looking at the paper at the same time I did. Printouts and forms and copies of
American Jurisprudence
on the how-tos of filing patents, along with some literature and case law about modifications on existing patents, but nothing specifically about Earl Stallings. The bulk of the information seemed to focus on how significant changes had to be in an existing patent before a person could obtain a new, or independent, patent.

All this did have
something
to do with a patent.

A patent and Earl. Earl and wine.

Think, think, think, I ordered myself.

What I thought of was Earl pontificating on the difficulty of making sulfite-free wine and his confident reassurance to me and the Poodle Heads the day I met him that he had a way to produce wine without mold or sulfites. Maybe he'd devised a new process. The world beats its way to a man who makes a better mousetrap—and inexpensive sulfite-free wine, maybe?

“You should take that to Officer Johnson,” Bonita said.

My habit of not cooperating with T.R. was pretty well ingrained. But then I thought—Yeah, a patent. A patent doesn't lead back to Bonita, or Benny, or Dave. Or me.

Dodging traffic, and worrying, I about wore out my brain on the drive to the county jail, where Bonita had located Tired after a minimum of only three phone calls. For reasons that got lost in the Bonita-Tired phone call translation, he had to stay there for a while, but could see me if I came on out right then. While I would rather have met him somewhere other than the jail, there I was, en route with a file on patents and hopefully a small trail of potential evidence leading away from those I loved.

Parking in a visitor spot at the jail, I made my way inside and discovered that the cute girl who liked Tired and babies but had the hair from hell was again at the front desk.

“Hi, again,” I said, and squinted at her hair. It was a kind of big, layered pink do, Cindi-Lauper-does-back-up-for-Tammy-Wynette-on-drugs.

“Brock didn't do that, did he?”

It took the woman a minute or two to figure this all out. “Oh, hi. You're the lawyer who gave me that guy's card. Yeah, I remember. You were here to see Tired.”

“What a coincidence, I'm here to see him again.”

“Tired's coming in?”

I saw a look of anticipation on her face as she smoothed her hair and looked down at her tight pants and tugged at them, but failed to improve upon anything.

“Can you take a break, a few minutes?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure, why?”

Why indeed? Because Tired needed a girl and Redfish needed a momma.

“You wouldn't take a nine-month-old to McDonald's, would you?” I asked.

“Gawd, no. You mean for food? Naw, I wouldn't take a nine-
year
-old to a McDonald's. Except for the salads. They have good salads. Have you ever tried—”

“Okay, come on,” I said. “Ladies' room.” I followed her tight pants all the way to the women's room, where I had to hold my breath till I acclimated. “Sit.” I pointed at a chair of questionable sanitation.

“What's your name?” Pink Head asked me.

“Lilly.”

“Oh, that's pretty. I'm Susie.”

Marveling at how quickly women can bond in a bathroom, I pulled her hair back into a wide, silver barrette I kept in my purse for my own bad-hair days, and said, “Wash your face.”

Susie had a heavy hand with the foundation and blush. And she had not picked colors that appeared either in nature or that complimented her own delicate coloring. I mean, come on. Didn't she have a mirror at her house?

Damp and fresh faced a moment later, Susie looked at me entirely too trustingly for a young woman who worked in a jail and didn't know me from Adam's house cat. But I wasn't taking her to raise, just for a quick, mini-redo.

Using my portable makeup kit, fished from the bowels of my purse, I gave her the Lilly light touch, and then, knowing I'd never use any of these things again because I'd used them on her and she worked in the jail, I made them a gift.

Apparently she'd missed that class in middle school on personal hygiene and never using anyone else's lipstick or mascara. She beamed and said, “Wow, Clinique. I can't afford that, but I hear it's, like, one of the best.”

“Now, go to Brock and get a decent hair color. And a decent cut.”

“I tried to. You know what Brock charges? I mean, like that's half my take-home pay. My sister-in-law did this.”

“Well, fire her.”

I pulled out another one of Brock's cards and wrote a note on the back, “Maybe strawberry blond, blunt, chin-length bob. Bill me.” And I signed my name.

“Why are you doing this?” Susie asked, peering at and then pocketing the card.

Good question. What was I, Wonderwoman of makeovers? Or what?

As I pondered this, Susie spun around and studied herself in the mirror. “Yeah, that's better,” she said. “How'd you know to do that? With the makeup and all?”

Back when I had first arrived at Smith, O'Leary, and Stanley fresh from law school with a suitcase full of jeans and the concept that Chap Stick counted as makeup, Brock had been an excellent teacher on the art of makeup and elegance in dress, and fortunately Susie's own pale complexion and blue eyes were a match for my own. So, what looked good on me wore well on her. I simplified this explanation to: “You're young, you're pretty, you don't need much paint, and nobody looks good in orange blush. And I'd peel off those fake nails. And, maybe, ditch the shoulder pads, go for cotton or linen over polyester every time, never wear plastic jewelry, and take up a sport that involves a lower body workout.”

“Yeah. So, like, why are you doing this? You got, like, a mother complex?”

Hey, she wasn't that young that I could be her mother.

“Not hardly on the mother complex. But Tired's a nice man, and he and Redfish need a nice woman. But I think his tastes run toward”—what, women who don't look like cartoon versions of country-western singers from the seventies?—“toward more low-maintenance women.”

“Like good mother material?”

“Exactly.”

“Yeah, okay, got it. You and Tired good friends, or just work stuff?”

“Both, I guess.”

“I need to get back out there.” She reached up and took off the barrette, and that pink-shag bouffant hair fluffed down around her. Ugh.

Okay, in a pinch, I can do a version of a French twist that will work unless you're going jogging. “Sit,” I said. “Won't take a sec.”

It took me a few minutes, mostly to fish out enough bobby pins from the bottom of my purse, but I got that French twist done, despite the manic layering in her hair. I made a gift of the barrette, which held the largest chunk of hair in place.

If you didn't notice the cheap poly shirt or the pink tone in her hair, she looked almost elegant. Very nice cheekbones and chin, I noted. Then said, “Don't forget Brock. I'll call him tonight, let him know to expect you.”

“Yeah, I mean, thanks. Thank you. This is pretty weird, though, you know. I mean, really, pretty weird.”

Pretty weird was good, that was a step up from the karmic convergence of malevolence that had tagged me of late.

When we got back to the front desk, Tired was waiting. He didn't look at Susie until I said, “Well, Tired, Susie here has been most helpful to me.”

He looked at her, looked sideways at her again, and then said, “Hey, Susie. Helping how?”

Suddenly afraid he would think Susie had been slipping me secrets, like telling me about the gun Stan took out of my car and all that, I stammered, “Oh, girl stuff, bathroom, soda machine, you know.”

Tired nodded at Susie and took my arm to herd me toward that same dirty office where he and I and Philip had met the night Dave got himself arrested because he couldn't outrun a deputy named Sprint.

“Bonita said you had something for me, ma'am,” he said.

Paranoia suddenly filled me. Philip would surely counsel against my turning over potential evidence to Tired without first running it by him. Also, it seemed every time I opened my mouth around Tired, I made something worse.

But for reasons I couldn't explain, I wanted to tell him. Something about Officer Tired Rufus Johnson inspired a level of trust in me I don't usually accord members of law enforcement. Or the general public. Maybe the great fatigue in those puppy-dog eyes. Maybe the way he'd blown the gnats off Redfish's face with a steady, gentle breath, or the way he'd about ma'amed me to death. After all, this was the man who had cut the head off a rattlesnake for me.