“Great,” I thought, and turned to go back home. I’ve never been one for wet t-shirt contests. But, I was only steps from my destination, the Blue Gringo, and several patrons spilled out the door.
“Heya, Raymond.” Snicker, snicker.
Did everyone know that name? With a shrug of defeat, I turned back to the bar. Wet t-shirt be damned. I am woman, hear me roar. I didn’t recognize the skinny man blocking the door.
“Lester Holmes,” he said by way of introduction. “And this here’s Cristobal Garcia.” He indicated his compatriot.
“Cris,” corrected Garcia.
“Howdy, boys. And I know you… how?” My arms crossed over my chest of their own volition. I forced them back to my sides. If you’re going to wear a wet t-shirt, wear it like a rock star.
“Uh, we’re deputies.” Lester elbowed Cris. “We’re just leaving, but your sister’s in there.”
“Thanks.”
They laughed as I pushed past them. There were times I hated myself. I was already going through culture shock, now I had to deal with my new ‘boy named Sue’ handle, and my shirt was soaked. I sighed. I know when to give in.
I made my way up to the bar, refusing to look at the men who stared at me and my wet shirt. I ordered a beer, and looked around for my sis. Emma sat at the far end of the room, at a table situated as far away from the stage as you could get. I headed over. A woman sat in the chair across from her.
“Hi, Raymond.” Emma scooted her chair over, making room for me. “You remember Patsy Daniels, don’t you?”
I couldn’t say that I did. It had been a long time since sixth grade, and I hadn’t spent enough time here to keep up on friendships.
“Patsy’s the Vice Principal at the high school,” Emma said as I set my beer on the table and I sat down. I looked at Patsy with renewed interest.
Patsy knocked back a drink and said “hey.” She was a plain woman. Unevenly cut, dishwater hair, and sparse eyebrows and lashes. No makeup. Flat, wide lips, and a V for a nose. She would probably dress up well, but she hadn’t made an effort for the Blue Gringo scene. A lone singer struck up a song, accompanied by a couple guitars, but I didn’t turn around to look. Instead, I focused on Patsy.
“So, you worked with Mrs. Wilson, huh?”
“That old thing,” she said with a grimace. “Why can’t everyone just leave it alone. The poor woman committed suicide.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Emma said. “Rumor has it that little Jennifer Garfield killed her.”
“But, why?” I pushed back my chair, exasperated. “She’s just a kid. What did she have against the nurse?”
Emma lifted her glass and took a sip of beer. Both women had a glass. Not me, I drink from a bottle. She cupped her hands around the glass, and slid it back and forth in the water it had sweated onto the glossy wood surface. “More gossip?”
“Sure,” I said, but Patsy Daniels didn’t look too happy.
My sister smiled, an echo of Mother’s, and halted the glass’s movement. “She was having an affair with the doctor.”
“Never!” I leaned back in my chair and looked up at the ceiling, then back at my companions. I looked at Patsy for confirmation.
“That’s what’s going around,” she said. “But you can’t believe it. I don’t anyway. I don’t think that girl killed Tammy Lynn.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Who’s Tammy Lynn?”
“Mrs. Wilson.”
I thought about the pretty little slip of a girl next door, and the suave, hunky doctor. She wasn’t legal, so that would make him what? A child molester? “Jennifer’s only sixteen,” I said.
“Nobody really knows how old she is,” Emma said. “Mac found her on his doorstep. His ex-girlfriend left her there. She was maybe three or four years old.”
“No birth certificate?”
“No,” Patsy said, and took another slug of beer. “I don’t want to talk about this. Certainly not when he’s right there, on stage.”
On stage? I spun around to get a view. An average looking guy with brown curls shot with gray, sat on a stool, a guitar strung across his chest, and resting on his knee. He plucked and sang while a second man, with a long bushy mustache and cowboy hat stood to the side and slightly behind, strumming his own guitar and occasionally singing harmony. They were good. A hoppin’ country song filled the bar, and several people danced on the floor in front of the stage.
“Huh.”
“Huh, what?” Lonnie came up behind, and hooked the chair next to Patsy with his boot. He pulled it out and sat without asking. My heart surged into my throat and I thought I might throw up. Holy Mother, I thought. Why did he make me so nervous? And then I remembered that he’d seen my butt twice. Once naked. He trained his eyes downward, and I fought the urge to cover my wet breasts. His eyebrows raised slightly as he drew his gaze to mine. Immediately, his maddening grin lit his face. Lecherous bum.
“I just found out that’s Mac up on the stage.” I fought to control a tremor in my voice. I broke my gaze from his and reached for my beer. As I lifted it toward my mouth a minute amount sploshed over the edge, joining the water that already soaked my T. And drew Lonnie’s attention downward again.
“He’s good isn’t he?” Emma blushed. It took me a second to realize that my sister was talking about Mac, not Lonnie. But not before I felt a surge of… what? Jealousy?
Patsy pushed back her chair. She took a long moment looking for her purse on the ground, but it was attached by a skinny strap across her chest. “I’ve got to go,” she said, giving up her search. She left abruptly.
“Well, that was rude,” Emma said.
“I hope she’s walking. Anyone who can’t find something they’re wearing is too drunk to drive.” I took another, rather prim sip off the top of my bottle.
“If she isn’t, she’ll get tossed in the clink,” Lonnie said. “But, since she only lives about as far away from here as you do, Raymond, I’m pretty sure she’s on foot.”
Emma nodded her agreement, then pointed out yet another, vaguely familiar face in the crowd. “Look. There’s Joe Gonzalez.”
We all turned to look.
She dropped her voice conspiratorially, “he murdered his girlfriend, you know.”
“Huh?” My normal response.
“I don’t really remember all of it.” Emma leaned toward us, one elbow on the table. “It was a long time ago. He killed her on spring break, or something.”
“Why’s he here, instead of in prison?” I faced Lonnie.
“Because he was a kid,” he said, and took a swig of his beer. He set the bottle back down. “He went to juvie for it. Did his time. Now let it be.”
“What kind of time is that?” Emma stood up, face flushed her words growing louder. “What? Next you’re going to say ‘boys will be boys?’”
“Emma,” I said, and pulled her back down. She sat. “She’s right, though,” I turned to Lonnie. “How come some kid can kill his girlfriend, then only go to juvenile hall? And now he’s out?”
“There’s a story behind everything,” Lonnie said, in an exasperating ‘I’m the law’ sort of way.
The sound of a motorcycle roaring caught Emma’s attention, and she turned to the open bar door. But, I kept my indignant stare focused on Lonnie. “Look,” Emma said. “Dr. Wilson.”
I craned my neck to see him enter the bar. He glanced around, then joined several others at a table. “He doesn’t seem very broken up just a week after his wife died, does he?”
“I don’t think so, either,” Emma said.
We both looked at Lonnie. He shook his head. “Open investigation.”
“He’s got a nice coat, doesn’t he? Wish I had one.” I gazed, admiringly, at the doctor’s black leather jacket, fringed and with blue piping marking its western cut.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? His wife had one, too,” Emma said.
“He must have come down from the hills,” Lonnie said. “I couldn’t wear a coat like that this time of y
ear. Not down here in the desert.” I glanced around. Nope. Everyone was in shirt-sleeves. No other coat in sight.
Even on a motorcycle, riding in the breeze, it was a warm evening. Eighty degrees, maybe. Some people, though, endure anything to look good. From what I’d observed at Old Timers’ Town, he was one of that type.
And then it struck me. If both the Wilson’s had the same coat, then, maybe someone mistook Mrs. Wilson for the doctor. And, from what I’d heard from Emma, Mac Garfield apparently had a better motive than his daughter had.
“Lonnie,” I said, still gazing at the doctor. “Was Mrs. Wilson wearing her coat when you pulled her out of the river?”
He’d been leaning back on the back legs of his chair, and they came down with force.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
❃ ❃ ❃
I couldn’t place the disappointment I felt when Lonnie got up to leave, saying he had something to attend to. As he passed by my chair he leaned over.. His fingers brushed my cheek as he slid my hair back to whisper in my ear, igniting a tingle that spread quickly from where his fingertips trailed along my face, and ended in my private reserve. I shivered as he leaned close, his cheek to mine, and his lips almost touching my ear. And then the whisper, sending delicious tendrils of excitement into the pulse points at the base of my throat and in my wrists. “I don’t think this is where you’ll find your Beachmaster.” He played lightly with my still damp hair and laughed.
“You… you…” Guttural me, as always, I couldn’t find the words for my indignation. He continued laughing as he strolled toward the door. He paused to pluck his cowboy hat from a rack full of hats, and set it on his head. He turned back toward me and winked, then disappeared. Clearly, he’d read my hippo article and focused—like a man—on the section about mating. I was mad enough that he’d compared my wet state with a river full of hippos, but that also meant I was a ‘cow!’ And who did he think he was? The ‘Beachmaster?’ The main hippo bull? The head honcho, the… oh. I deflated. He was, ‘cause he’s the sheriff.
Emma took off shortly after, leaving me to stew over Lonnie’s behavior. And time to think about what I was feeling toward him. Before, I’d been pretty sure it was embarrassment because of the bare butt thing. But now? I wasn’t so sure.
I nursed a second beer, and hung out until the end of Mac’s last set. He sang a lot of sad songs, I realized. The ‘she done me wrong’ kind. Interspersed were some hopping tunes, but again, they spoke more to ‘going through hell’ and things going ‘from bad to worse.’
The two men on stage left everything in place, simply covering it all with cloths to protect the equipment from dust. I figured they were regulars.
“Mac!” I fell in beside him as he left the bar and headed across the plaza. Dumb, maybe. If he was the murderer, I was about to challenge him. Alone. In the dark.
“Hey, there,” he said. He spoke with his voice somewhere in the back of his throat, kind of nasally. He was also much cuter up close. He’d retained the round face and slightly downturned eyes I remembered. “You’re the Murphy kid.” He didn’t say it like a question, but as if he already knew the answer.
“Yep.”
“Raymond?”
“Why not. Everyone else calls me that.”
He laughed, a full throated, head tilted back, kind of laugh. There was no threat to it, and I joined in. I felt much better afterward.
“Laughter’s good medicine, isn’t it?” He paused under a street lamp to look me over. “You don’t look like a Raymond to me.” I wasn’t sure if he was flirting. I didn’t think Emma would like that. But, then again, she didn’t own him.
“I’ve come home to take care of my mother.” I started walking again, shoving my fingers into my jeans pockets, and squaring my shoulders. “She’s not quite all there.”
“I know. Miss Marple, is it?” He raised an eyebrow, and we both laughed again. He was very easy to talk to.
“Mm-hmm. It seems to get a little worse each day. I think she knew who she is… who I am… when I first got here. But now. I don’t know. Maybe, if people didn’t support her delusions…”
“Tried,” he interrupted. “My mom, the other ladies in the Solitaire group. They found that if they just let her be, then she doesn’t get confused—keeps things straight in her head, I mean. But if they try to force her to remember who she really is, well, then she gets depressed, or angry, and either way, takes to her bed.”
“Good to know.”
We walked in companionable silence, then turned the corner and neared our drive. “Before we go in, I need to know…”
“No,” he said, a sudden angry tone in his voice. Gravel crunched under his feet as he spun to face me. “You don’t need to know. But, I’ll tell you anyway. Jen wasn’t anywhere near that woman when she was killed. She’s a good girl. She was home all night.” That’s the second time I heard what a good girl Jennifer was. But sneaking out at night wasn’t my definition of a good girl. And the thing with Dr. Wilson? Some people might blame her, but others would call her a victim.
“Actually,” I said. “I was talking about you.”
“Me?” He seemed surprised, and I guess it was the first time someone had asked about his alibi. But, it seemed to me that his motive was as good as Jennifer’s… if not better. “I was here that night, too. All night.”
“No gig?”
“Nope. I was here. With Mom, and Jennifer.”
I scrunched my feet around in the gravel, clearing a crescent moon. I looked into his eyes. “You know, I’m trying to help your daughter.” I hitched my thumb over my shoulder, and toward my door. “With Mother being… well… you know who, sleuthing is kind of the thing. But I really don’t think Jennifer’s guilty.”
“Thanks, Raymond. I appreciate that.” He deflated from his earlier displeasure. “I just wish there was some way to get the sheriff off our backs.”
“Maybe we could.” I tread carefully, recalling Maria’s earlier reference to Mac’s strictness with his daughter. “If we knew where she goes, and who she sees.” I could tell by the flicker in his eye that he knew what I was talking about. He knew his daughter slipped out at night. “Maybe, she’d have an alibi,” I added. He didn’t counter. Just shrugged.
“It’s late,” he said, and looked up at the stars.
“Yeah.” We each crossed to our own doors. I slipped the key in the lock, then paused and looked back. “Mac?”
“Yes?”
“You play real good.”
“Thanks.”
But did his alibi jibe? And where did his daughter go when she snuck out at night? I wondered about these things as I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. Standing in front of the sink I washed my face, then wiped my face dry and yanked my shirt off over my head. I shook out my hair, sexy model style.., and froze. I stared at my reflection. Not at my floofy hair, but at my boobs. Vicki’s Secret bra. Lacy, sparkly. And translucent. No,..more like invisible. I pulled the T back on, turned on the tap and frantically splashed water all over my front. Arms rigid, my palms gripped the edges of the porcelain sink. Oh. My. God. I stood up straight and watched as the wet fabric molded itself to my body. Through the now nearly sheer t-shirt I saw lace, sparkly faux diamonds, and rosy areolas and nipples. Yep. Find me a Beachmaster.
Chapter Nine
I slept in late. Mother had already had breakfast and washed up. Her dishes rested in the drainer, air drying. I walked through the kitchen, into the living room. She wasn’t around, so I knocked on her door and popped it open. The far door was ajar, the screen letting in a fresh breeze. The door at the front of the house, that is. Once upon a time, her large room had been the living room, but now it was her bedroom. I walked over and pushed open the screen. She sat in a purple chair, one of a bistro set. I hadn’t noticed it when I had my disagreement with the cactus. Aside from a trail of red dots on my arm, you wouldn’t know I’d ever been into a fight with it. But, the sight of that particular prickly pear mad
e my arm tingle. Rather like Lonnie. I sat down in the empty chair and scootched it around to change the view, cactus behind me.
Mother had two cups and a teapot on the tiny table. She poured, and shoved one my way.
“Dee says that Mac was home all night,” she said.
“Huh?”
“The night Mrs. Wilson got murdered. Dee says it couldn’t have been Mac, because he was home.”
“That’s what she said about Jennifer.” I didn’t put much trust in Dee Garfield’s word. At least, not where her progeny were concerned. “Wait. How do you know?”
“I asked her. With you and Mac caterwauling at all hours, it’s a miracle you didn’t wake up the whole neighborhood. Dee says it was probably that boy who killed his girlfriend years ago. But, I told her there wasn’t any sense in that. She said there wasn’t any sense in it being Jennifer, either.”
“Now tell me, Mother. Why did you ask Mac where he was?”
“Who says I asked him?”
She smiled, a tiny ‘knowing’ sort of movement of the lips. Raising her cup to her mouth, she hid behind the rim as she took a sip.
“You wouldn’t believe it, Mother, but Jennifer was having an affair with… or, more like being molested by… Dr. Wilson. Whichever way you want to look at it. And, that’s why Lonnie suspected her. Out of jealousy of the wife, or something. But, I found out last night that Dr. Wilson and his wife each had an identical, and very distinctive, black and turquoise motorcycle jacket. Custom made, I think. So, if the murderer came upon her, in the dark say, and saw that jacket, then he, or she, might have mistaken the wife for the husband. In that case, Mac has a very good motive. Especially if he knew about the affair. And, I’ll bet my bottom dollar he did.”
“It reminds me of the maid…”
“Whatever happened about my car?” I shortstopped her Marpleism. “Did you hear from Earl?”
It's Marple, Dear Page 6
