Wildcat Wine

by Claire Matturro

“It’s an octagonally shaped house, designed to . . . expand . . . ,” Tired said. “It has something to do with . . . spirits or something.”

  Obviously, Tired had received an explanation that didn’t quite stick.

  “Come in,” Tired said, in a tone redolent with the essence of an official order.

  Uh-oh, I didn’t like the sound of that, but to rudely refuse seemed the greater of two evils. Besides, I was curious as all hell.

  As I walked in, I looked around me. The yurt looked pretty high tech to me, though inside it still felt like a really big tent. Covered in a dense, coated fabric, the yurt had a high dome with a skylight. Inside was essentially one big room, with a futon folded into a couch in one end, a smaller futon couch in front of it, and an opened futon bed in the other end of the room, Indian cotton throws and pillows scattered about, and a long, wood table in the center. On the table sat a bowl of strawberries and a carton of vanilla ice cream.

  Though essentially an oddly shaped room, the inside of the yurt seemed to offer the normal equipment of a house: gas stove, a small refrigerator and a sink in a corner, and one area with a wooden screen around it, which, I suspected, might serve as a bathroom. I had noticed a pump house and a generator when I’d come up through the dense philodendron-shrouded pathway.

  Dave tried to put on his social personality and said, “Lilly, I’d like to introduce you to Catherine Susan Stallings. And, Cat Sue, I’d like to introduce you to one of my best and oldest friends, Lilly Belle Cleary.”

  The dark-haired hippie woman stood before me. We studied each other, Cat Sue and I. Both of us, no doubt for the same reason, that being the watchful eyes of Tired, refrained from mentioning that we had met before, though not formally, the night she had dropped off a paper sack of cash at my door.

  In the light of the day and the yurt, I could get a better look at her. Cat Sue was one of those middle-aged throwbacks to the sixties and she wore a long, loose, batik-printed cotton dress that looked like either a museum piece or a nightgown. So, okay, I thought, you went to Woodstock. You have to keep wearing the same dress?

  Wardrobe aside, I saw that Cat Sue had been crying and that her hair was a mess of long, gray-tinged strands, some of it hanging in her eyes, and she smelled just a bit like garlic. But under all that, I could see she’d been a beauty, maybe still was when she wasn’t so crumpled.

  Cat Sue, a name a bit too close to catsup for my own traditional tastes, hugged Dave and burst into tears. Toward the end of her crying, she pulled herself away from Dave, and offered us all chamomile tea, and before we answered, she said her doctor had just diagnosed a heart murmur.

  “Told me not to worry, not ten minutes after he said I was suffering from generalized anxiety disorder and grief over Earl, and he gave me some Xanax to calm me down. I mean, wasn’t the man listening to himself? Don’t worry! A heart murmur on top of Earl getting killed.” She started crying again.

  So spank me for not being more sympathetic, but I kept thinking she was overplaying the scene a bit. I studied Dave and Tired and saw that Dave was totally roped in, but if I read Tired’s face right, he wasn’t. No doubt, Tired suffered from the prevailing prejudice of homicide detectives that the first suspect in the murder of a husband is his wife. As if reading my thoughts about Cat Sue as a possible suspect, and apparently not the least disturbed about doing an interview in front of Dave and me, Tired nudged closer to Cat Sue.

  “How’d you and Earl get on?” Tired asked.

  Cat Sue pushed some hair out of her face and looked right at T. R. Johnson. “Why, that man was so crazy about me I had to hide my underwear from him.”

  Tired immediately turned beet red.

  “But how’d you feel about him?” Tired persisted.

  Cat Sue looked puzzled, and then as we all studied her face she seemed to be digesting the question. She frowned, then hung her head. Then she pulled away from Dave and collapsed on the futon, crashed into the pillow, and started crying again. When I looked over to Dave and saw the way he was looking at her, I thought, Oh, hell, he’s in love with her.

  Tired caught my eye and said, “Come on, Lilly, let’s you and me step outside a minute.”

  Outside, we ambled through the ferns and philodendron until Tired stopped, glared at me, and said, “I’ve about come to the end of my rope with you people. Now, what is going on?”

  Damned if I knew. “Tired, honest, I don’t know. Really. I’m trying to find out myself.”

  “That’s my job, okay, you stay out of official sheriff’s department business.”

  I nodded, registering the fact that Tired was actually pretty mad after all.

  “Now, tell me why you’re here.”

  “To see Dave.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re old friends.”

  “Cut the crap. You’re smack-dab in the middle of all this, and if I have to arrest you as a material witness, by damn, you’re gonna tell me what you know.”

  Mad begets mad, and I eyed Tired with my best Hard Look and said, “Look, bud, you arrest me for anything and Philip Cohen will have me out of jail and you suspended before that ice cream melts.”

  “Like hell. You been hiding stuff from me from the get-go, and now you’re fixing to tell me everything.” Tired grabbed my arm, and held on.

  “You let go of me,” I said, and let my tone of voice be my threat.

  Tired dropped my arm. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said.

  Taking that as a good moment for an exit, I pushed past him and back into the house. As soon as I was back inside the yurt, I blurted out, “Listen, Dave, you get shed of Tired and come see me. I’m going home.” Close at my heels, Tired had followed me. I could hear him huffing behind me.

  Neither Dave nor Cat Sue seemed to notice Tired or me. Dave had cradled one arm around Cat Sue and was taking a bottle of pills away from her with his other hand. “Kitty, you got to stop taking these tranquilizer pills. You gotta face up to it all on your own. Drugs ain’t gonna help.”

  Tender as the scene was, and as good as Dave’s advice might be, coming from a man who had spent most of his last thirty-five years stoned except during periods of incarceration, Dave’s words struck me as a tad hypocritical. But I wasn’t interrupting them to point this out.

  Cat Sue cried and reached for the bottle as Dave tried to keep it from her. Suddenly weary beyond belief, I eased myself back out of the yurt. Tired pushed past me without saying a word. I followed him around to the back, where his car was hidden from the front by pines, ferns and philodendron, and the yurt itself.

  Standing in the cleared spot near his car, Tired inhaled and exhaled with some force.

  Cautiously, I walked over to him, stood and inhaled too, and smelled the rich, dark loam under our feet. I looked around me as the late-afternoon sun was shifting through the foliage, giving the philodendrons a variegated look. Earl had had himself a pretty piece of property. For no reason that was readily apparent, I felt homesick for the red hills of my own Georgia.

  “Damn,” Tired said. “I sure am tired of being smack in the middle of other people’s messy lives.”

  “Me too.”

  Well, we’d both picked just about the perfect careers then, hadn’t we? It was clear to me that Tired was over his mad, but still in over his head.

  Chapter 24

  On the way home, I drove by Bonita’s, and despite the fact that neither her car nor Henry’s van was in the driveway, I pounded on the door until I was satisfied that not even alien spirits were home.

  Being weak from hunger, I then went straight to the Granary instead of home first to clean up. While drooling in the deli, contemplating whether I could get away with another tofu cheesecake, I also considered whether I should fix a deli meal for Philip or actually cook something.

  At the moment, I wanted a date slightly less than I wanted gray, frizzy hair. But canceling seemed so not the thing to do. Deciding it was too soon to cook for him, I figured deli food would be just the ticket.
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br />   So I bought the cheesecake, sprouted-wheat bread, and a tofu potpie, which the man behind the counter assured me I couldn’t tell from chicken. Sniffing and prodding, I also settled on a ripe cantaloupe, a couple of avocados, and two bags of mixed greens, which, though labeled triple washed, would definitely get another wash in my own kitchen.

  For good measure, I restored both my apple and granola-bar supplies. Then, remembering the ice cream at Cat Sue’s yurt, I added a few cartons of some Rice Dream, some sorbet, and some organic, low-fat, non-GMO frozen yogurt. My total bill was only slightly less than my rent for a shabby room my first semester in college.

  Rushing home and calculating how long it would take me to shower and get gorgeous, I spun into my driveway at just about the same moment my new grandmom came outside and waved at me.

  I waved back, but declined her invitation for tea. Once inside, I scarfed half a carton of peach sorbet, and, totally recharged by the sugar, which these days was my primary drug of choice, I put my goodies away and let Bearess out into the fenced backyard, let her back in, let her out again at her insistence, fussed at her for acting like a cat, and let her back in again, then hit the shower.

  My hair was still wet and I was wearing a towel when Bearess started barking at the door. It was too soon in our putative relationship for me to greet Philip in a towel so I peeked first and saw Dave. That reminded me I still needed to get in touch with Bonita and Benny and I let him in. Dave wolf-whistled, but I ignored him and grabbed the phone and called Bonita. She answered.

  “Bonita,” I said, “it’s me, Lilly,” as if she wouldn’t know my voice. “Listen, I don’t have time to explain right now, but do not, don’t, do not, not, not talk to Tired Johnson at all about anything until you and I have talked in person. Okay?”

  “What’s going on?”

  Oh, wouldn’t I like to know. But Farmer Dave was snooping through my CD collection, I was dressed in a towel, my hair was frizz drying, and I had a date due in just a few minutes, so I just reiterated my instructions and said I’d call her later tonight or first thing tomorrow. And, oh, by the way, how was Benny?

  “He’s in his room, listening to music.”

  “Fine. Don’t let him talk to Tired either. Promise?”

  “You need to tell me what is going on.”

  “Yeah, that works both ways,” I said, “but Dave’s here now and Philip is due any minute and I’ve got to fix supper and get rid of Dave and smooth my hair all in about the next two minutes. So, later, all right. ’Bye.” I hyperventilated and hung up.

  “Hey, Belle, where’s all those Willie CDs I sent you? And who’s this Chris Isaac fellow? Whoa, you still got that Emmylou I mailed you for passing the bar exam.”

  Dave put Emmylou Harris on to play and then, as if the world wasn’t doing its best to throw up on us at the moment, asked again, “Where’d you put all those Willie Nelson CDs? Lilly Belle, I ’bout sent you the whole collection.”

  Yes, and I had about given them to Benny when he was doing some sort of school project that ultimately involved making mobiles out of round, plastic things.

  “Don’t know, Dave, it’s hard to keep hold of Willie. Everybody wants to borrow him.”

  “That’s true,” he said, and then Ping-Ponged to the next topic. “I’m standing in need of that sack of cash you’re holding for me.”

  “It’s not here. It’s in a safe place.”

  “Well, put some clothes on, we need to talk.”

  An understatement on both counts. On the way to my bedroom, I stopped in the kitchen to put the tofu potpie in the oven to reheat.

  While I was styling my hair and wondering which would make a better impression on Philip, a little makeup or a well-set table, Bearess started barking and I looked at the clock and thought, Damn, why does that man have to be punctual?

  Too late for the well-set table, I left it to Dave to let Philip in and I went for the makeup, slithered into white hip-rider jeans and an iridescent green cropped T-shirt. Forgetting to put on shoes, I ran out to greet my date, resigned to Dave as a second guest for dinner.

  Philip and Dave were sitting on the couch, each drinking Earl’s wine while Bearess knelt at Dave’s foot, slurping something from my real grandmother’s good china bowl.

  “Philip didn’t think giving the dog wine was a good idea, but, hey, I told him, what’s good for the goose, and all that. I mean, Willie gives beer to his horses.”

  Willie also allegedly didn’t pay his taxes, but how could I criticize Dave’s choice of hero when my own thought he was the reincarnation of a dead general who sucked lemons for his digestion and had piously told his underlings to “kill them all” when the Rebels trapped the Yankees at Fredericksburg.

  Before I could either greet Philip or rescue my heirloom china, the doorbell rang. Bearess kept drinking.

  Tired and Redfish were at the door when I opened it, and Redfish giggled, then ducked his head into Tired’s neck. “I brought you this,” Tired said and handed me a sack.

  I peeked in. Okra?

  “I was sorry I got mad at you today. There’s a market in Oneco where you can usually get good okra and fishing bait. My, don’t you look nice.”

  “Thank you. On both counts.” I stood blocking the door, unsure of the next step.

  “Also, you being Kenneth’s law partner and all, I wanted to tell you we recovered a gun today that might be the murder weapon.”

  Tired stared at me so hard in the doorway of my house that I thought I might be under a microscope or something. Under his scrutiny, I figured bland, polite pleasure would be the best response. “Well, good, good for you. How long before you know for sure? I mean, if it’s the murder weapon?”

  “Testing itself could be done in a day or two, but it’s kinda hard to say to a DFS guy that this is a priority case ’cause almost all of his cases have dead bodies with them.”

  Figuring that was cop talk for “I don’t know,” I murmured what I hoped was a reassuring noise and waited. Now what? Okra and information and scrutiny all done, wasn’t it time for him to leave?

  “Look, Redfish and me are going to McDonald’s, if you want to come along?”

  Setting aside for the moment the horror that Tired thought I was the sort who would actually eat a cheap slab of dead cow on white bread, I asked, “You feed that child McDonald’s?”

  “He loves the French fries.”

  Oh, frigging great, give him cardiovascular disease before first grade.

  The good-food prima donna in me kicked in and I was warming up to a serious lecture on the value of proper food when Dave came up behind me and said, “Why, Tired, hey, man. And ain’t that a fine-looking baby. He sure favors you.”

  Tired beamed. “That your truck, out in the road?”

  “Girlfriend’s. On loan.”

  I peered out around them and saw Cat Sue’s white Toyota pickup parked in the street, more or less in front of my neighbor’s house, and Philip’s Lexus parked in front of it on the street. What? My driveway wasn’t good enough for them?

  When I leaned my head back in, Dave stuck out his hand toward Tired. “No hard feelings, you hear?”

  Tired took it and they shook.

  “That sure is a handsome little fella,” Dave said. “Can I hold ’im?”

  Tired beamed again and handed Redfish across to Dave. As I watched Dave and Tired bond, I figured their fundamental country-boy personalities transcended which side of the law they made their livings on, especially where mutual admiration of a child was involved.

  Redfish cooed in Dave’s arms.

  Oh, what the hell. I stood back and invited Tired and Redfish in, offering supper and wine.

  If Philip was dismayed to discover that he would be sharing supper and me with Dave, Tired, and Redfish, he was gracious enough to hide it. He offered his hand to Tired with the proper respect and passed a fleeting compliment toward Redfish, who was busy trying to unbraid Dave’s pigtails and giggling like a thirteen-year-old girl pr
acticing her first flirt.

  Great.

  After I had everyone except Redfish drinking generously from poor dead Earl’s wine, I escaped into the kitchen to finish preparing supper for four and a baby. What did a nine- or ten-month-old baby eat? I wondered.

  The tofu potpie was warming up nicely and I was glad it was a good-sized pie as I judged Tired to be a big eater and I knew that Dave was. Thank goodness I had lots of salad, I thought, and repetitively rewashed the trice-washed (That’s just what the label said, okay? How did I know it had even been washed once?) salad mix and tossed it into a bowl with some equally well-washed grape tomatoes and generous slices of avocado.

  Grabbing the cantaloupe, I washed it, put it down on the counter, rewashed my hands, realized I hadn’t washed off either the plunger on the liquid soap or the handle on the kitchen sink, and I washed each, then rewashed my hands, and then couldn’t remember if I had washed down the counter after putting the grocery sack on it earlier, and I started the whole process over.

  On my third wash of the cantaloupe, Philip, who proved to be light on his feet, asked from the kitchen doorway, “May I ask, Lilly, exactly what it is you are doing?”

  “Fixing dinner.”

  “Why wash the cantaloupe?” Pause. “Why wash it three times?”

  There is no explaining these sudden bursts of obsessive-compulsive behavior that pop out at odd times, particularly when I’m under stress, and I just smiled wearily at Philip and said, “If the skin of the cantaloupe is contaminated, when the knife cuts through it, it might carry germs into the fruit.”

  Philip walked up to me, took me in his arms, and said, “I apologize for laughing last night. I thought you were making a joke.”

  “A joke? About what?”

  “Being obsessive-compulsive.”

  “Oh, yeah, joking about mental illness is a good way to impress a man on a first date,” I said.

  Philip tightened his arms around me and kissed me. A good, nice, long kiss. Not with the toe-curling sensations of the kiss from the night before, but then the night before I had not spent the day destroying evidence and chasing my secretary and her son to coordinate wordsmithed stories of why Bonita had my car the night Kenneth was shot.