Redneck's Revenge

by Joan Livingston

  When I told Ma about Lin, she asked, “What did he sound like over the phone?”

  “Unsure.”

  “About himself or you?”

  “Oh, definitely me.”

  “Did you check him out? What’s it say on that Google thing?”

  I smiled. My mother has never touched a computer, but she’s picked up on Google.

  “Better than that. I asked the Old Farts.”

  “Oh, them,” she said with a bit of scorn in her voice. “What did those fellows have to say?”

  “Well, the Fattest Old Fart said Franklin Pierce used to be an ambulance chaser, but he hasn’t been doing much of that these days.”

  “That doesn’t sound too promising.”

  “The Serious Old Fart said he did insurance cases, like catching somebody who’s faking he’s hurt. He also spied on cheating husbands and wives. But I got the feeling the Old Farts were leaving something out. I even mentioned it, but the guys were tight-lipped. Now that’s a bit unusual. Maybe he’s kin to one of them.”

  My mother frowned.

  “You’re going to do things like that? Spy on people?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m not planning on it. All I want is for Franklin Pierce to say I work for him. If I get paid for a case, I’ll give him a cut.”

  “You think he’ll go for it?”

  I tip my head forward. I believe I’m about to find out.

  Lin clears his throat.

  “All right, Isabel, I’ll take you on as an associate. If you’re not working a case for me, I’ll pay you a buck a weekday as a retainer fee. If you are, I will up that to twenty an hour. And if you get a case, I’ll take fifteen percent, not ten. Let me get you the paperwork for the state and IRS.”

  I smile to myself as he rifles through a desk drawer. I was figuring fifteen percent but decided to lowball him, a suggestion from my mother, who played her share of slots and Bingo at the Indian casinos in Connecticut before she moved in with me.

  “Sounds like we have a deal.”

  He winks.

  “Do you have any prospective cases?”

  “After I solved the Adela Collins case, I did get a few calls from people, but nothing that grabbed me like that one. I’m not about to search for missing dogs or treasures that somebody’s grandfather was supposed to have buried in his backyard. But now that I’m an associate, I’ll spread the word. I’m not planning to be a P.I. fulltime. It’s more like a paying hobby.”

  “Okay.”

  The office door opens. Lin leans way over to his left.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  “I bet that’s my mother.” I turn. “Yes, it’s her. She was shopping next door at Cumby’s. Let me introduce you. Lin Pierce, meet Maria Ferreira.”

  Sweeten the Deal

  Ma and I don’t stay in Jefferson once my business is done. She informed me this morning another snowstorm is on its way. My mother is the official weather watcher in our household. It’s part of her late-night routine. She plays solitaire on a tablet one of my sisters gave her while the TV is on. She has her shows. I’m in bed long before her, but then again, I’m up at the crack of dawn, a habit I acquired when I worked at the newspaper and just can’t seem to shake even though it’s been nine months since I got the heave-ho. You might’ve heard the story. After a corporation bought the Daily Star, we were supposed to reapply for our jobs. Like hell, I told the publisher, who ended up getting canned later even though he did what the new owners asked.

  Besides, I like the quiet that time of day. The dog, Maggie, and cat, Roxanne, hang out with me like we could be best friends, as if that were true. They love Ma better, but, honestly, that’s okay.

  “What did you think of Lin Pierce?” I ask her.

  “He did what you asked him for.”

  “That’s not really an answer, Ma.”

  She pauses.

  “I was expecting somebody a little more hard-boiled.”

  “You mean pickled?”

  “No, no, more like Philip Marlowe or Mike Hammer.”

  I laugh.

  “I think you’re dating yourself there, Ma.”

  “I am ninety-two.”

  “Almost ninety-three.”

  “Don’t remind me.” She’s laughing. “I think he’ll be all right. You just need to be a part of his business and not take any of his cases unless he really needs you. From what you say that doesn’t seem to be a possibility anyways.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Now that it’s official, how are you going to get the word out besides telling those Old Farts in the back room.”

  I grin hearing Ma call them that name.

  “Actually, I believe that will be sufficient to get the ball rolling. I’m not looking to do this full time. As I told Lin, this is more like a paying hobby than a business. I gotta do something to keep me out of trouble.”

  My mother snorts.

  “Out of trouble, I like that,” she says.

  What have I been doing since I solved the Adela Collins case? That happened a few weeks before Christmas, so I got busy with everything that goes with the holiday, buying gifts and getting together with the family. I used to go a little bit nuts decorating the house when Sam was alive. We’d get a tree from one of the local farms. The kids would come over. Christmas the previous year was a somber affair. Sam had been dead less than two months. I didn’t bother with Christmas at my house. Ma wasn’t living with me then. This year, we split the holiday between my house and my daughter, Ruth’s. She took Christmas Eve. I took the day. I put up a tree and baked lots of cookies, a personal request by my sons, Matt and Alex. Ma made a couple of Portuguese dishes: bread pudding, favas beans, and bacalhau, which is salted codfish.

  I now have a granddaughter, Sophie, so that’s worth celebrating. My son-in-law’s parents drove up from Connecticut. His mother got a little smashed and asked a whole lot of questions about the Adela Collins case. I just couldn’t get away from it. Ruth was a bit annoyed, but it isn’t my fault her mother-in-law can’t hold her liquor or her mouth.

  I skipped New Year’s. Sam and I went a few times in the past to the Rooster, but I heard from a reliable source, the Old Farts, of course, Jack didn’t have anything going. Besides, it would have definitely been weird if I’d showed up.

  Then winter hit us harder, except for the thaw in January, which always gets our hopes up spring will be early. But the thaw only breaks people’s hearts, except for the rednecks who love driving their snowmobiles and the cross-country skiers, those newcomers in tights. I dodged storms to take Ma into town to go shopping. We did the Conwell triangle on Saturdays and sometimes Wednesdays, going to the dump, store, and library in that order. I politely greeted winter-weary residents and was relieved not to run into Jack just yet.

  What else? I shoveled snow and carried more firewood into the basement. I went snowshoeing with Matt and Alex. I remembered when I did that with Jack in November, his first time actually, and how we kissed, again for the first time. I couldn’t bring myself to park at the Rooster lot, so the boys and I started on a trail at the town park.

  I wrote a couple of freelance articles about life in the sticks for a magazine, but my heart wasn’t in it. I read books from the town library and watched crime shows with Ma. We figured out who did what before the characters. Ma joked we had to keep our detective skills sharp for the real thing.

  I did take a cursory peek at the boxes of notebooks from my old reporting days I have stored in a closet upstairs and decided to let them be. I was told reporters should get rid of their notebooks pretty damn quick, so some lawyer couldn’t subpoena them. I’m glad I held onto mine. They were helpful with the Adela Collins case. Maybe they’ll help with another. I’m not ready for that big backyard bonfire just yet.

  Yeah, I visited the Old Farts in the backroom a few times just for jollies and to keep up with the news not fit to print.

  Mostly, I moped.

  Ma noticed it,
too.

  “When are you going to find something to do?” she asked me one day.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like when you solved that mystery.”

  “You heard what the state cop said about getting a license,” I reminded her. “I need to find a licensed P.I. to take me on.”

  “What’s stopping you?”

  Ma had a point. I have a hard head and an iron will. I suppose I’m generalizing when I say it’s because I’m a full-blooded Portagee. But I’m descended from people who went all over the world in tiny wooden ships. My grandparents came over from the Madeira and Azores islands in them.

  When I checked online for private investigators in the area, I eliminated the ones who were too far away. My mother is in great shape, but I don’t want to leave her alone too much although she does have the dog and cat, who are absolutely devoted to her and pretty much ignore me, except when they want to eat. I went down my list of possibilities. They all had heard about my success finding Adela Collins’ killer. After all, the story went national: a reporter, whose first big story was a woman’s disappearance, solves the mystery twenty-eight years later. One P.I. wanted me to work fulltime, but I turned him down nicely. Then I heard about Lin Pierce, from one of the Old Farts, actually.

  “Isabel, are you listening to me?” my mother says beside me in the car. “You’re not daydreaming again, are you?”

  “Sorry. What did you say?”

  She points.

  “What are those tubes hanging from those trees?”

  We’re past the Jefferson town line and into Penfield, where two guys decked out in coveralls are hanging line off the maple trees. I did enough stories about maple sugaring to give my mother a complete rundown on the process, from hanging line and tapping trees to boiling the sap in flat evaporators. I can tell you the difference between Grade A and B, and why. I’ve written about good seasons when there was a long enough stretch of freezing nights and warm days to make all the work worthwhile, and I’ve written about bad ones, that is, when spring came too darn fast and the trees started budding. One sugarer told me the season is done for when the peeper frogs start chirping. I always think of that when I hear them in the woods.

  I tell my mother, “When the time’s ready, sap from those maple trees will flow through those tubes into a big tub. At the end of the day, the sap gets pumped into a tank on the back of a truck. Then the sap gets boiled down into syrup back at the sugarhouse. It takes forty gallons of sap to make one of maple syrup. Real maple syrup. Tasty stuff. I’ll take you some time to a sugarhouse.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “When the season is in full swing, they’ll stay up all night boiling.”

  “Sounds like a lot of work.”

  “Uh-huh, but that’s true about a lot of ways people make their living up here, like Charlie who brings our firewood. How much do you think he makes? I bet not a lot after you factor in the equipment and fuel. It’s called sweat equity.”

  As we head up and west, the snow comes down harder. It’s already sticking to the road. I slow my Subaru. Traffic is light. Anyone who works in the city is already there and hasn’t left for home yet.

  Ma watches the scenery. Everything is still locked in snow. The guys on snowmobiles must be living it up. Maybe that’ll help Jack get over this strange turn of events.

  So, what did happen to Jack and me? He came to see me, and like I said, we talked it over and out. He stayed a couple of hours. The man cried about his sister and Adela. I cried because I care a lot for him.

  The next day he called.

  “Maybe we should take a break for a while,” he told me.

  I am well aware of what taking a break for a while means. I should have been ticked off he couldn’t say it to me in person, but then again these were unusual circumstances. I agreed only because I didn’t want to beg or try to reason with him. There are moments when I wonder if that was the right thing to do. Uh-huh, I’ve been doing a lot of second-guessing these days.

  Besides, I hadn’t been with a man other than Sam in decades, a time span that includes having three kids and a move from Boston to the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. I wasn’t expecting romance when Jack hired me to work two nights at the Rooster, but one thing made its way to another, and we had fun flirting, dancing, and, yes, having sex. He was easy to be around. He made me laugh. But that was before I found out his sister killed his former girlfriend, a scenario that sounds like one of my mother’s crime shows or novels, but the God’s honest truth, it happened. Jack said he doesn’t hate me for finding out. But I don’t know if he could love me in spite of it.

  I will admit losing Jack has a lot to do with my moping around these past few months.

  Beside me in the Subaru, my mother speaks, “Isabel, you all right over there?”

  “I’m fine, Ma. Just paying attention to the road,” I lie.

  She hums. She knows my tendency to go off somewhere in my head. I was a big daydreamer as a kid. I still am as an adult.

  “I heard the Rooster is serving food again,” she says.

  I glance her way. Ma doesn’t venture out in town without me now that it’s winter.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Mira, the librarian, told me when we were in there yesterday.”

  “I missed that part of the conversation.”

  “Anyway, it might be nice to go out for dinner soon. Mira says the new cook is better than the old cook.”

  “I presume she hasn’t killed anybody either.”

  “Isabel.”

  “I don’t know, Ma. It might be a bit awkward with Jack and all.”

  “It’s about time you got over that. This is too small a town not to run into him. And I would be there with you.”

  “If that’s what you want.” I sigh. “Hey, I’ve really got to pay attention to the road. This snow is getting messy. Oh, there’s a highway truck, thank God.”

  I beep the car’s horn in gratitude.

  Back at the Rooster

  The jukebox is playing something by Willie Nelson when my mother and I enter the Rooster Bar and Grille. It’s a little after five, of course, because I still haven’t gotten my mother to eat later than that. I’m not a fan of early dinners, but it makes Ma happy, and really, it isn’t too much to ask of me. Coming to the Rooster may be pushing it, however. Three months ago, I would’ve been stationed behind the bar, popping the caps off Buds and chatting with the customers. Jack and I would be carrying on a friendly banter, flirting, and dancing a little. It was strictly fun for adults. I did try to stay clear of his sister, which tells me my instincts were right on.

  In the Rooster’s parking lot, I gave Ma a chance to turn back. I even offered to drive her to the city if she wanted to eat out so badly.

  “That’s not what I had in mind,” she said, and then she tried to distract me with, “Oh, look at all those snowmobiles.”

  Snap out of it, Isabel. You ain’t in junior high, and Jack’s not your first crush.

  Ma chooses a window table. I’m helping her with her coat when Jack hustles from the kitchen with a plate of food in each hand. He notices me, I’m sure. I know from firsthand experience you see everything and everybody from behind that bar. Jack keeps moving toward a table at the other end of the room. He’s working solo. Even with this early crowd, he’s super busy. That’s why he hired me. Four hands are better than two in a busy bar.

  Would I come back to work at the Rooster? What do you think? In a heartbeat, but only if Jack and I could continue where we left off, without his nasty sister, of course.

  I glance around the place. It isn’t as full as I recall for a Friday, but then again there’s no band tonight. I recognize all the True Blue Regulars who come here straight from work if they have jobs in the middle of winter. For the most part, they’re friendly guys who’d rather be drinking here than at home. I’ve already gotten a few waves and a lot more curious stares.

  I spot a hand-written sign
tacked to a post that says the Cowlicks are playing next Friday. Beneath the words MUSIC IS BACK someone scribbled, “It’s about fucking time.” Before that whole mess happened, the Cowlicks were the unofficial house band at the Rooster, playing that crowd-pleasing mix of country, rock ’n’ roll, and a bit of blues once a month. They had every danceable Lynyrd Skynyrd tune in their repertoire. On the other weeks, Jack managed to draw other bands, most with the same repertoire. They got one shot to impress him and the Rooster’s music fans. The last band to play here was called the Hunters and Gatherers because it was the middle of shotgun season, an irony I enjoyed.

  Then all hell broke loose two days later.

  My mother leans forward.

  “You look nervous, Isabel,” she says.

  “I am nervous, Ma.”

  “Do you want to leave?”

  I glance behind her as Jack walks our way. I bite my lip.

  “Too late for that, Ma,” I mutter. “Incoming.”

  “Jack?”

  “Bingo.”

  My mother takes the paper menus stuck between the napkin holder and the salt-and-pepper shakers. Her head bobs down. She studies the menu as if she’s cramming for a test.

  I study Jack instead. I can’t help it. He squints like he’s staring at the sun, but that’s impossible since it’s already dark outside and Jack keeps the lights inside the Rooster on the dim side. He’s got a grin I’m trying to read. Is it a happy-to-see-me grin? Or is it a why-in-the-hell-did-you-come-back-to-my-place grin? Remember that line from Casablanca about all the gin joints? Well, the Rooster is the only gin joint in Conwell and the hilltowns around it although I would say it is more like a beer joint.

  Jack hasn’t dropped the grin.

  He stops in front of me. He doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. But the air between us is thick and heavy like something is about to break although I don’t know what at this point.