The Deadly Cotton Heart

by Ralph Dennis

  Art hissed a long breath at me. “I’ll check. It’s only been about three days or so. There’s not much chance that any charges would have been sent in yet. Big stations send charges in about every other day. Small jobbers might do it once a week.”

  “Long shot,” I said.

  “What’s next?”

  I hesitated. I didn’t know.

  “That’s what I thought.” In the middle of another long, hacking cough Art hung up on me.

  As soon as I put the receiver down the phone rang.

  The woman at the other end of the line said, “Now I suppose you’ll think I’m chasing you.”

  I didn’t recognize the voice. “Huh?”

  “This is Karen.”

  “Hey, Karen.” I pumped in a bit of false enthusiasm.

  “There’s another one,” she said.

  “Another what?”

  “Another letter. It was on Ellen’s desk. I just noticed it.”

  “I’ll be right over,” I said.

  “I’m not sure I can let you have it,” she said. “In fact, I might be in trouble for taking it and putting it in my purse.”

  “I’m acting as Nathan Webster’s agent,” I said.

  “Well …”

  “I can have Webster call you.”

  “No.” She waited. “Send your associate over.”

  “Hump?”

  “Is that his name?”

  I said he’d be right over. I went out to the back steps and told Hump the news. He put his head back and hooted.

  “See what I said about goats?”

  “It bother you?”

  He shook his head. “It’s been a long, black winter.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was the usual dime store line of envelopes. The blurred postmark told me that it had been mailed in Smythtown, Tennessee, on May 27th.

  Hump stood in the open front doorway. Over his shoulder I could see his Buick and the flash of blonde hair in the passenger seat. “You ask her in?”

  “I think she was afraid of that white meat sandwich talk.”

  “An old man like me?”

  “I said I’d take her for a drink or two.”

  I backed out of the doorway. The return address was printed in blue ballpoint. 2312 River Road.

  I tore off the other end and shook out the single sheet of paper. It was bright orange. I unfolded it. The headline in large, boldface type was 5TH ANNUAL SPRING BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL. THE SMYTHTOWN CITY SQUARE. MAY 30-31. Under that, in smaller type, there was a long listing of the performers and the bands. I read about half of it before I decided I didn’t know enough about bluegrass. I couldn’t tell if it was a frontline festival or a backwater one.

  Hump took the circular from me and looked at it. “This is all? Not even a word?”

  Out at the road Karen gave the car horn a short push.

  “The address is the right one,” I said.

  “You think there are any messages written on it in lemon juice or something like that?” Hump grinned. He wasn’t serious.

  “This is the message. We just don’t know how to read it.”

  Another car honk. Hump moved toward the doorway. “Where’ll you be?”

  “Packing a few things. I’ve got an urge for some bluegrass.”

  “When?” He waved toward the Buick.

  “It starts tomorrow night. Well leave about eight in the morning.”

  “Back soon.” He went out and pulled the door closed behind him.

  I reached Marcy at her apartment. The invitation to the bluegrass festival interested her, but she couldn’t go. There was a big staff meeting the next morning and she couldn’t miss it.

  “See you in a few days then.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “What?”

  “Get some steaks. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  Nothing surprised me. Nothing. By the time she arrived I’d made a trip to Cloudt’s and picked up three steaks and some salad things. “Explanation?” I brought her a drink from the kitchen. The evening news was on, and she’d camped in front of the TV set.

  “Later.” She smiled. “Much later.”

  I settled down next to her. Walter Cronkite told us how the world was.

  At eight I gave up on Hump. I got out the big cast iron skillet and placed it on the front burner. I dumped in half a stick of butter and pressed some freshly ground black pepper into two of the steaks. I’d just dropped the two steaks in and I’d turned to see how the salad was coming when Hump walked in. He slumped into the chair across the table from Marcy. He looked tired and out of breath.

  I grinned at him. “Goats and monkeys, huh?”

  “Don’t ask. Please don’t ask.” He put a huge hand over his face and shook his head slowly.

  “All right, I won’t ask.”

  He dropped the hand. “But you ought to see her roommate.”

  Marcy finished the salad. I prepared the third steak, the one for Hump, and motioned Marcy toward the skillet. On the way by I passed the large fork to her.

  Something bothered me. It nagged at me. I sat down on the bed and dialed Nathan Webster’s home number. He answered on the third ring.

  “Look,” I said, “I think she’s gone out of town. It’s a feeling I’ve got. Maybe it’s more than a feeling. I’m going to try a long shot and see if I can’t trace her. I need to know her maiden name.”

  “It was Carver,” he said.

  A hunch. “Think back over the last few years. The end of May, this time of the year. Did your wife go out of town alone for any reason?”

  “No.” He hesitated. “Yes, three years ago. She said it was her high school reunion. Her fifth one.”

  “You didn’t go with her?”

  “I offered to, but …”

  “She was gone how long?”

  “I think it was two or three days.”

  I thanked him and said I’d keep in touch.

  We’d finished dinner and Marcy was making the coffee when Art called. “I’ve been doing your scut work.”

  “What’s wrong with that? I’ve done yours.”

  “Don’t remind me of that. Look, that Amoco charge card. The regional office is in Raleigh. I ruffled a lot of feathers up there. The kind of thing they’d do for the F.B.I. they didn’t want to do for me, but I pushed.”

  “And …?”

  “They searched the new charges for me. They found a charge she made three days ago at a station just outside of Chattanooga. Gas and oil.”

  That tied it. It was more than a feeling now.

  “Thanks, Art.”

  “That all I get? A cheap thank you?”

  “I’ll have more in a day or two.” I looked up. Marcy brought me a cup of coffee. She placed it on the night table and sat on the bed next to me. “I’m going over into Tennessee in the morning. You didn’t know I was a big bluegrass fan, did you?”

  “You talking doubletalk?”

  “You know any cops in Smythtown, Tennessee?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I don’t even know where Smythtown is.”

  “I’ll get back to you.” I broke the connection.

  Hump leaned in the doorway. The steak had picked him up and put the fire energy back in him. “When you two park in the bedroom, I know it’s time for me to leave.”

  I put an arm around Marcy. “Stay around. You might learn something new.”

  Marcy shoved me away. When I looked around, she’d buried her head in the pillow. Hump winked and backed away. A few seconds later, I heard the front door close behind him.

  Midnight. A light spring rain tap-tapped on the bedroom window. Marcy lifted her head from the hollow of my shoulder and smiled at me. “Now you know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Why I came here.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You think I’m going to let you go off to Tennessee all randy?”

  It mad
e a woman’s kind of sense. I just nodded at her.

  It rained all night.

  By late morning Hump and I were on the mountain road that circles high above Chattanooga. Below us smog and haze covered the city. It must have been hell on the eyes and the lungs down there.

  By three in the afternoon, their time, we reached the outskirts of Smythtown.

  It was a part of the fruit stand culture. Outdoor sheds and fruit stands lined the approach to the town.

  “Question,” Hump said. “What do you do on Saturday night in Smythtown when you’re bored?”

  “You beat your wife or you drive out the highway and buy yourself a watermelon.”

  “Or both,” Hump said.

  The town square was blocked off. All roads led in that direction. After a couple of attempts to get around the barriers, I parked and we walked the three blocks to the square. A large platform-bandstand had been constructed on the steps in front of the courthouse. A group of teenagers dressed the bandstand with red, white and blue crepe paper. Below them, in the street, another group unstacked and arranged a thousand or so chairs in a disorderly half circle. Wide streets ran down both sides of the courthouse. Down both these lanes, as far as I could see, there were craft booths and food tents. It looked like every civic group in town had gone into the business of selling cokes and hot dogs. From the funeral home names on the tent fringes, I decided they’d postponed all burials until after the weekend.

  After some searching, and a five-mile drive away from town, we found a room at the Lakeside Motel. The battered old air conditioner huffed and fluttered and barely stirred the hot air. We had a view of a river or a lake below from the glass sliding door at the back of the room.

  In the sun it was ninety degrees or better. Now I knew where they got their red necks.

  At six, after a rest and a shower, we drove out River Road. The river curved with the road below us, to the left. The river looked muddy near the edges. Out toward the center, it seemed green and cool.

  “You believe that crap?” Hump asked.

  “I believe it.”

  “No booze or beer in the city limits. Dumb shit.” Hump had found that out at the motel office while I was under the shower. “Should have brought a cooler with us.”

  “Bitch, bitch.”

  We passed a weathered shack with a sign about five feet high pushing out at the road. BEER. “On the way back,” I said.

  “Where … ?”

  “2312 River Road or a beer joint … whichever comes first.”

  Another mile or so and the low, unpainted cinderblock building appeared on the right. It had EATS and BEER scrawled on the single front window. And in the bottom right pane, in a blocky child’s printing, THELMA’S.

  From the parking lot it looked like a full-up day. Cars and pickups lined three sides of the tavern. I pulled off the road and parked in the shade of a large oak. At the front door, I stopped and looked around. There was a number above the doorframe in chipping paint. I couldn’t make it out.

  Hump stepped around me. “Looks like 2310,” he said.

  “Then where the hell is …?” I broke off and walked around the side of the tavern. Driving in I’d had the impression of a low building or a huddle of buildings behind the beer joint. Now I could see a shotgun arrangement of eight or ten rooms. Near the center there was a neon light, not burning yet, with CASTEL MOTEL on it.

  I turned to Hump. “Want to bet?”

  “Let’s have a cold one first.”

  We returned to the front of Thelma’s and I pushed the door open and stepped in. The smoke hit me and the air-conditioned staleness. Off to the left, a juke box was cranked up full and Mel Tillis whined “The Best Way I Know How,” the song about the guy leaving all those empty bottles around his house and not even combing his hair. All because of lost love.

  There were two tables available, one near the juke box and the other beside the side door. I headed for the one near the door. Redneck heads turned with me, tracking me. They didn’t stay with me long. I heard the hum and buzz and the heads whipped away. They’d seen Hump and at the next table a beefy man in a clay-stained t-shirt said, “Look at the size on that nig.”

  An older man across the table from him shook his head, silencing him.

  Hump slid back the chair across from me with the toe of his shoe and sat down. The only waitress was busy in another part of the joint. I got out a couple of bills and leaned on the counter. I ordered a couple of Buds. When I asked for glasses, the counterman flipped me two paper cups.

  “It ain’t the Midnight Sun,” I said.

  “What would the Midnight Sun be doing here?” Hump tipped back his head and poured down about half the beer in one swallow.

  I sipped mine slowly and looked around. After the first startled reaction, the rednecks had gone back to the Friday business of getting drunk. I finished the Bud and pushed the empty toward Hump. “Get us two more.”

  “Your leg broke, Jim?”

  “Going outside for a minute. Don’t let these good old boys bother you.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  I ducked out the side door. A sign near the back of the building pointed toward the restrooms. I didn’t need the sign. A blindman could have found them by the smell alone. I went in that direction but passed them up and angled my way toward the motel office. The strip of driveway between the rear of the tavern and the motel was paved with broken beer bottles and flattened out beer cans.

  I reached the door below the neon sign. A card in the window part of the door had OFFICE written on it. I pushed the door open and went in. There was a counter off to the right. Straight ahead there was an open door and beyond that an unmade bed. I leaned on the counter and waited. Near my elbow I saw a thick stack of the flyers for the festival, identical to the one that had been mailed to Ellen Webster.

  I waited. A couple of minutes passed and then I heard a toilet flush. The sound came from the direction of the bedroom. Another minute or so and a woman appeared in the doorway. She wore jean pants and boots and a white cotton top. Huge breasts sagged. No bra. She looked about forty and her hair was bleached. Either her eyebrows had been touched up or they’d grown back in coal black.

  “We don’t have any rooms,” she said from the doorway. “Full up.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What is it then?” Keeping her distance, she rounded the counter and placed it between us.

  “I’m here for the bluegrass festival.”

  She waited. Her face showed nothing.

  “I thought a friend of mine might be registered here.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Ellen Carver.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Well,” I said, “maybe I misunderstood her.”

  Flat eyes, unblinking. “That all you want?”

  “You know Ellen Carver? She’s from around here.”

  “There must be ten thousand people live here in town. You know ten thousand people?”

  “You’ve got me there.” I nodded my thanks and backed toward the door.

  She leaned across the counter top. “You want to leave your name in case she comes in?”

  I said, “No reason to do that. You’re full up, right?”

  The heat and humidity hit me with the force of a two-by-four. I took a deep breath and stepped out into the driveway. I looked down the row of cars parked in front of the motel rooms. I didn’t see a blue VW. Before I headed back to Thelma’s, I looked toward the motel office. The woman had her face pressed to the pane above the office sign. I waved at her.

  The stale air conditioning felt better now. I eased into the chair across the table from Hump. There were two empties in front of him. “Where’s mine?”

  “I drank it.” Hump leaned toward me. “The vibrations in here are bad, bad, bad.”

  “And it’s driving you to drink?” I looked around the room. About forty pairs of eyes burned at me. “Anything happen?”

  He shook
his head. “I think some of these cowboys never saw a black before.”

  “Let them choke on the experience.” I got the empties and carried them to the bar counter. When the counterman approached, I nodded at the bottles. Reluctantly, I thought, he opened two more.

  “No trouble in here,” the counterman said under his breath when he gave me my change.

  “Why should there be trouble?”

  “It’s the nig … your friend.”

  “I’ll tell him you’re concerned about him.” I turned away.

  “No, wait …”

  I pushed a beer toward Hump. “You been making trouble in here? Playing grab ass with their ladies?”

  “What ladies?”

  He was right. The only woman besides the waitress in the room was fat and almost toothless. “Screw them.”

  I got out a handful of change and marched to the juke box. I didn’t see any songs I liked so I played “Jingle Bell Rock” three times.

  The two uniformed Smythtown cops came in the bar exactly at seven-thirty. I’d just checked the time by the Schlitz clock over the menu board. One slow look around the room and they headed straight for our table. I should have expected it. It was that kind of town. It looked like we were going to be arrested to prevent a race riot.

  Both of them were pretty young, not much more than twenty. The one who stepped out first and led the way to our table was still fighting acne. There was a bad patch of it across his chin. He stopped at the end of our table. The other one drifted away so that he was behind Hump, facing me.

  “You two visiting town?”

  “We’re here for the bluegrass,” I said.

  “Where from?”

  “Atlanta.”

  “A long way to come just for music,” the cop behind Hump said.

  “Not if you’re a real fan,” I said.

  “You two traveling together?” This from the one with the acne patch on his chin. He’d taken over again.

  I nodded. “You got some good reason for asking these questions?”

  “We’ve got reason,” he said.

  “Give us one,” I said.

  “Word is somebody is selling dope over at the festival.” He dipped his head at me. “You fit the description.”

  “Where’d you get the description?”

  “A phone call,” he said.