JESSICA SPEART
A RACHEL PORTER MYSTERY
BLACK DELTA NIGHT
Contents
One
“My daddy says this picture is worth a hundred thousand…
Two
The top brass in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service…
Three
“You did what?! Are you out of your ever-lovin’, cotton-pickin’…
Four
Having achieved a temporary victory, I plunked my laurels down…
Five
Terri hadn’t been to bed by the time I awoke.
Six
Mavis Newcomb had just been catapulted to the top of…
Seven
Mavis Newcomb’s home address was in the upscale Central Gardens…
Eight
It was time to head into work for another round…
Nine
A chorus of mournful howls was my welcoming committee as…
Ten
The next morning, I picked up the phone and gave…
Eleven
I drove back along the road I had traveled yesterday…
Twelve
“You realize you’re crazy, don’t you?” Terri asked, after I’d…
Thirteen
By nine-thirty that night, I was in my Ford chugging…
Fourteen
I woke to a throbbing headache and the sensation of…
Fifteen
Mavis had yet to return my calls, and I was…
Sixteen
I was deep in thought as I drove down the…
Seventeen
I walked into my loft, where Dog greeted me with…
Eighteen
I drove back to Memphis under a sullen sky, accompanied…
Nineteen
When I awoke, Santou was gone. I wondered if it…
Twenty
Boobie was right. The moon was hanging low tonight, its…
Twenty-one
It was nearly midnight—too late to catch Sergei at his…
Twenty-two
I fell back into a restless sleep, only to be…
Twenty-three
I spent the day thinking about power and its games.
Twenty-four
I scampered up Galinov’s front steps at nine, my heart…
Twenty-five
“How dare you!” Galinov snarled. “Do you have any idea…
Twenty-six
My loft had never felt so welcoming as when I…
Epilogue
A blistering guitar lick cleaved the air, igniting the audience…
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Jessica Speart
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
“My daddy says this picture is worth a hundred thousand dollars!”
The snapshot was waved like a red flag in front of my face by the underage tartlet sitting next to me, who clutched a fried bologna sandwich in her other hand. The stench of greasy, seared meat filled the interior of my Ford SUV and I held my breath, trying to fight off the memory of having eaten one too many barbecued ribs last night. Oh no! Too late! She bit into the meat, causing a wave of nausea to roll from my stomach into my throat. I quickly lowered my window, despite the cold.
“But I’m gonna let you have it for just fifty thousand bucks.” Wynona Hardy bargained like a seasoned pro.
I took the photo as I drove and glanced at fifty pairs of beady, camera-flashed red eyes that swam in a blackness as impenetrable as the Tennessee woods on a moonless night.
“Do you want to explain exactly what I’m looking at that’s so valuable?”
“For chrissakes! They’re coons, of course!” Wynona’s full lips formed a well-practiced pout, her dark lashes fluttering like a professional “virgin” whose innocence had been questioned.
“Okay, so what makes this Quik Pik photo worth fifty thousand dollars?”
We passed a Piggly Wiggly supermarket held captive by a series of rough-and-tumble pawnshops on either side, all proudly advertising an arsenal of guns for sale. I turned onto a narrow street where dilapidated houses were the norm, their front yards littered with junked cars and flat tires. Either I’d stumbled onto the set of the old Jeff Foxworthy Show, or I was once again in redneck country.
“Daddy bought those coons for next to nothing from a holding station in Ohio.” Wynona smiled slyly. “Is that a big enough clue for you?”
It was slowly coming together. A former trapper, Woody Hardy had turned to training and selling coon dogs to hunters after the bottom fell out of the fur trade. He must have decided to tip the scales in his favor during the most recent field trial, by dumping coons in the area where his dogs would be hunting. And to save a few bucks, he’d apparently purchased an illegal haul of rabid critters from a greedy employee at a quarantine station. Woody probably figured they were going to be destroyed anyway, so what did it matter how they met their Maker?
It was easy to imagine Woody releasing feverish coons the night before the trial. They wouldn’t get very far as they stumbled along, bumping into obstacles in their path. By the time morning rolled around, any five-dollar, biscuit-eating mutt from off a front porch could have treed the coons in no time flat. The scam was as rank as the sandwich Wynona had just polished off.
She snatched the photo back, adding a grease stain to its surface. Then extracting a cube of bubble gum from her jeans, Wynona peeled off the worn wrapper and popped it into her mouth.
“I was gonna blackmail him, but the old bastard would probably just whack me. So you’re it. Whadda ya say? Have we got a deal?”
As I hit a bump, the handcuffs dangling from the shift on my steering column caught the sun’s beams, causing light to glimmer and dance on the dashboard. It proved too much for Wynona. Her fingers twitched, irresistibly drawn toward them.
“Hey! Leave those alone!” I warned, but I might as well have been Wile E. Coyote trying to fend off a speeding train. She swiped the cuffs as I swerved to stay on the road.
“Put those back!”
Wynona hooked the steel bracelets firmly around her wrists, and her manacled hands began to prance like two high-kicking Rockettes. “You know how many guys would pay good money to get hold of me like this? It’s that ‘women in prison’ fantasy they get off on.” She giggled.
I had the feeling she knew only too well what she was talking about. “What else have you got besides the snapshot?” I asked, with a sigh of resignation.
“What do you mean, what else? Isn’t that enough?” She scowled.
Yeah—enough to get me laughed right out of the Memphis district attorney’s office. Still, I was itching to grab Woody on something. He was a good ol’ boy who believed God’s creatures had been placed on this earth for only two possible reasons—to fill his belly or to bring in money to line his pockets. I’d been after him since my arrival in west Tennessee five months ago, and had yet to catch him red-handed.
“The photo alone won’t do. Would you be willing to testify against him in court?”
She indignantly popped a bubble in my direction. Even her gum held the faint whiff of bologna.
“Whadda ya, crazy? Didn’t you hear what I said? He’d off me without giving it a second thought!” Wynona tried to wriggle out of the handcuffs, only to discover that her wrists were stuck. “Hey! What’s going on? I used to be able to get out of these things real easy!”
Wynona had spent the majority of her youth in and out of drug rehab, which was where she’d learned to become a female Houdini. It also explained the tee-shirt she now wore—a lovely little number declaring, Rehab Is for Quitters!
I pulled over, f
ished the key from my pocket, and unlocked the handcuffs. Wynona rubbed her wrists, as if embarrassed that her flight skills had become so rusty.
“So, am I getting the money or what?” she groused.
It looked like a visit to Woody Hardy was in order, and this seemed as good a time as any to drop in on him up at Reelfoot Lake. The day begged me to stay outside and play—especially since a massive pile of paperwork was waiting back at the office.
“Why do you want to turn your father in, anyway?”
Wynona grimaced in distaste. “It’s that new wife of his. She musta been a contortionist in the circus, the way she’s got him all twisted around her little finger. Seems her and her brats are in his will and I’m out.”
She grabbed an edge of her bubble gum and stretched it as thin as a string of dental floss. “Daddy ain’t cutting me outta my rightful share of money. We’ll just see who wins this game!” Wynona flashed a vindictive smile.
Ah! Family discord! It often turned out to be a federal agent’s best friend. I dropped Wynona at her latest boyfriend’s digs and hit the road to pay Woody a visit.
Two
The top brass in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seemed to have given up all hope of obedience training with me. The cold, hard fact was that I’d been hired as a token woman to fill their federal quota; they hadn’t counted on my doing my job so vigorously.
There was little chance I’d ever work my way up the Service’s career ladder, but I was more than happy to stay far away from headquarters, with its wing-clipping rules and regulations. Whenever there was a choice to be made between obeying the rules or protecting wildlife, I always followed my personal mantra: Damn the bureaucracy and full speed ahead.
The Service had responded by dumping me back in the South to play with the rattlers—both reptile and redneck, equally venomous. The post I was now stationed at had been vacant for the past thirteen years, and rumor said the area was too damn dangerous for a Fish and Wildlife agent—especially a female Yankee.
My new territory consisted of west Tennessee and parts of Mississippi and Kentucky. It’s an area ruled by tight-knit locals whose attitude toward federal officials was, Turn your back and you might get something in it.
I headed for Highway 51 and shot onto the four-lane road that follows the Mississippi. The river lay to my west, and the land to my east looked as if it had been beaten by nature’s rolling pin. Flat fields lay fallow, patiently waiting to be planted with soybean and cotton. Likewise idle were the fireworks stands that flew by.
The landscape gradually mutated into crosswork patches of piney woods, interrupted by occasional outposts of civilization. Bumpers Drive-In offered “5 Burgers For $5,” while You All’s country store attempted to lure in stray tourists with statues of obsequiously smiling black jockeys. The scenery soon degenerated into nothing but car junkyards, proof that I was in auto theft country.
I spotted a sign peppered by gunshot and swung left onto a narrow country road. Out here Confederate flags hung off Chevy pick-ups, with vehicles and drivers alike decked out in eye-catching camouflage.
Reelfoot Lake, in the northwest corner of Tennessee, has thousands of submerged cypress stumps poking up through its liquid roof. Legend has it the area was formed when an Indian chief, Reelfoot, kidnapped and married an Indian maiden against her father’s wishes. In retaliation the Great Spirit angrily stamped his foot, causing the Mighty Mississippi to flow backward, the earth to shake, and the thundering sky to roar. The river swallowed up Reelfoot, his bride, and all of his people. The cypress stumps stand as memorials marking their watery graves.
Local law enforcement agents refer to the area as the Lake of a Thousand Arsonists, since the locals tend to torch the property of those they don’t want around. Many evenings, flames can be seen fiercely licking a striated sky.
Reelfoot is merely eerie during the day. At night, it’s absolutely ominous.
Hardy’s cabin leaned alongside the road like a tuckered-out hound after a lifetime of hunting. I parked near a wire pen filled with flea-bitten mongrels who announced my arrival with welcoming howls. Just past their cage sat a broken-down trailer bearing the logo COON DOG EXPRESS. I was about to wander over when two young boys appeared to see what all the commotion was about.
Though the weather was brisk, they were perspiring hard from the game they were playing—attacking each other with tin cans held together with twine.
The younger boy dropped his weapon and idly kicked it about. “You here to buy one of Pawpaw’s dawgs?” he questioned.
The other boy took advantage of the moment to bash his little brother across the head. A sharp metal edge found its mark, nicking its victim above the brow. The younger boy screamed and began pummeling his sibling into the ground, and they quickly became a blurred cloud of motion. Just as quickly, the battling stopped.
“This one here’s a good dawg.” The injured boy pointed to a mutt, while rubbing a dirt-covered hand across his cut.
The elder brother amused himself by swinging his tin cans at the pen, prompting the coon dogs to howl again.
“I’m not here for a dog. I just stopped by to say hello. Maybe you should get that cut cleaned up,” I suggested, wondering if all little boys were walking petri dishes of bacteria.
“He’ll live,” scoffed his churlish sibling.
Having determined I was of little interest, both boys took off around the back of the house. I waited until they were out of sight, then opened the door of the Coon Dog Express. A musky aroma wafted out. I climbed inside and found droppings and clumps of fur littering the metal floor. While it confirmed Woody had indeed used the trailer for hauling raccoons, there was no evidence of any wrongdoing. Nothing useful like a sworn statement admitting, “The critters inside here were rabid.”
Exiting the trailer, I made my way to the cabin and up a rickety set of steps. An old easy chair sat on the porch, its flowered upholstery faded and torn. I knocked hard on the door to be heard above the ruckus going on inside. The third knock proved to be the charm. It was answered by Woody Hardy’s latest here-today, gone-tomorrow spouse.
Wife number five’s dyed blond hair hung limp as a dishrag, its dark roots creeping south. A thick layer of foundation lay caked on her face, as if she never bothered to wash it off. Her hands flew to check that her dingy shirt was closed, revealing skin roughened by manual labor and chipped nails, as a screaming baby clung to her ankle, intermittently trying to scale her leg.
The girl had clearly been through her share of bad relationships. Whatever fire had once been in her eyes was now gone; the corners of her mouth turned down in a permanent state of dissatisfaction. The next thing I noticed was the prominent bulge of her tummy: Woody Hardy’s young wife was pregnant again.
“Sorry to disturb you, but is your husband at home?” I asked, trying to be heard above the baby’s bawling.
The girl rolled her eyes and pointed toward a room. Then she walked away, the baby dragging behind her like a dust mop. I interpreted this as an invitation to enter and walked inside, where I found Woody sprawled on a couch.
He was dressed in bib overalls, sans shirt, with a chest full of wiry hair curling over the top. Protruding out the open sides were thick rolls of flesh that undulated like two well-fed seals. His shoes had been kicked off, and his socks emitted an odious stench. They probably could have stood up and walked on their own, except for the missing toes and heels.
The decor consisted mainly of three dilapidated black-and-white TVs, each with tinfoil balls atop their rabbit-ear antennas. Hmm. Perhaps Woody was attempting to contact a higher form of intelligence. Only one set showed any sign of life, producing the squawk of a sick parrot. It apparently didn’t bother Woody, who dozed, lulled by what appeared to be a nature documentary. One of his own loud snores woke him, and he caught sight of me and jumped. Then he rubbed his back on the sofa like a bear scratching against the wall of his lair.
“Hey, Porter! Whatchoo doin’ in these parts?” he
asked. “Lookee there at those birdies on that animal show. You ever seen anything so pretty in all your damn life?” Hardy pointed his foot at the blizzard on his TV, and then began to pick his toes. “Hell, instead of standing here trying to scare the living daylights out of me, you should be policing all of them critters.”
Woody clearly needed a bath. Even a billy goat wouldn’t have shared a bed with him. A visible layer of dirt and grime had formed a protective coating over his skin. Throw a handful of grass seed on the man, and he’d have turned into an overweight Chia Pet.
The room wasn’t in much better condition. Woody reached down for one of the Mountain Dew cans littering the floor, found one not yet empty, and took a sip.
“I’d be careful if I were you. I hear that stuff lowers your sperm count,” I dryly informed him.
“Sheeet! Don’t you believe those God awful rumors. Why, you just take a look at my Tammy. She’s got one on the floor and another bun in her oven.”
Maybe his wife wasn’t buying the right kind of Dew.
Woody grinned, displaying a prominent gap where his two front teeth should have been. He could have passed as the poster boy for a local saying: “The farther south you go, the less teeth you grow.”
“Southern men can drink Dew and make babies, too!” Woody guffawed, with a slap of his knee.
I suspected too much of the stuff had gone to his brain.
“Wasn’t Tammy the name of your last wife also?” I inquired.
Woody nodded and threw me a wink. “I call all my wives Tammy. That way I don’t screw up their names when I’m all hot and in the throes of passion.”
Black Delta Night Page 1
