“Should you be going through the guy’s mail?” Morrison asked.
“Sheriff gave me the key,” I reminded him. “Go check the garage and see if there’s a car in it.”
People collect all kinds of things they never really notice while they’re going about their daily business. These bits and pieces often end up in a junk drawer in the kitchen and are an archeological treasure trove to someone like me. The receipts, take-out menus, pens, frequent dining cards and other crap you pick up tell a story, if you know how to read them. A junk drawer can usually tell me where a person likes to eat, how far away from home they wander, and what their habits are.
Roman didn’t have one. That was unusual.
“No car in the garage,” Morrison reported.
“Okay, let’s check out the rest of the house.” The hallway coming off the living room led to three doors. A master bedroom, guest room and a bathroom.
“Let’s start with the master bedroom,” I said. Some people—especially bachelors—keep their junk drawer in a bowl in the bedroom.
“How about if I start with the bathroom?” Morrison asked with an urgent look on his face.
“Go ahead,” I told him.
Morrison shut the bathroom door behind him and I surveyed Roman’s bedroom. King bed with a plain beige comforter. Two nightstands. A closet and a chest of drawers. I looked under the bed first.
You’d be surprised how many “secrets” are stashed under the bed. One of my first cases was looking for a runaway husband. High school sweethearts, Gladys and Morton Kelly had been married for thirty years. Until Morton just took off one day, no explanation. I found a scrapbook filled with pictures of Morton and a woman under the bed. Flipping through, it looked like the photos went back twenty years. The woman was not Gladys.
I asked my client about it. Turns out, Morton’s other woman was her high-school rival. The first picture in the album was from their ten-year reunion. The moral of this story is, maybe you shouldn’t go to reunions. The other moral is, you shouldn’t put stuff you don’t want found under the bed.
There was nothing under Roman’s bed. So it was nightstands next.
I’m always reluctant to go through bedside drawers. People keep, well, personal stuff there. Roman was no exception. Rubbers, lubricant and some appliances for making the ladies happy. Personal, definitely, but it didn’t offer anything that was going to help find him.
I heard the toilet flush and moved on from the nightstand to the dresser.
Morrison stepped into the room, buckling his belt.
“Find anything?” he asked.
“You didn’t wash your hands,” I replied as I moved Roman’s socks around.
“Huh?”
“Elvis once said cleanliness is next to godliness,” I told him, moving on to a drawer full of undershirts.
“No, he didn’t,” Morrison said skeptically.
“Maybe not, but you should still wash your hands,” I replied. Underwear drawer. There are very few things I dislike as much as going through another man’s underwear. But I did it anyway.
Morrison went back to the bathroom and made a production out of washing his hands. I opened the closet. Pants and shirts and jackets on hangers. Nothing else. Morrison came back in as I was shutting the door.
“All clean!” he said, showing me his palms.
“Too clean,” I said. “This house is too clean.”
I looked over at Morrison, who had a confused expression on his face.
“This house is like a hotel room,” I explained. “I’ve hardly found a thing that tells me what kind of guy Roman is. Just his mail. It’s weird.”
“Maybe he hasn’t lived here that long,” Morrison said.
“Maybe.”
I pushed past Morrison and quickly looked through the bathroom and guest room. Nothing.
“We could spend all day here and not find anything,” I said finally. “Let’s go.
Morrison followed me out of the house and I locked up behind us.
“Where to next, partner?” he asked as we made our way to the car.
“I never said we were partners,” I told him. “I said you could tag along.”
“Okay, where am I tagging along to next?” he amended as I unlocked the Camaro.
“Sheriff Kresge said Roman likes someplace called Whispers. That’s our next stop.”
Morrison opened his door and leaned on it, a smirk spreading across his face.
“She told you to go to Whispers?”
“Yeah.”
“Whispers is an afterhours place. Doesn’t open until ten. Take me back to the Bombay Club, I’ll buy you a drink and you can tell me all about Elvis hunting.”
* * *
Morrison and I had a few drinks and the more time I spent with him, the more I liked him. But when ten o’clock rolled around, he yawned and said, “Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night. Floyd, I’m pooped.”
He wrote out directions to Whispers and sent me off, smiling. I didn’t trust the smile.
Whispers, it turns out, is a basement bar in the local Masonic Lodge, about five miles outside of town and across the county line. Beyond Sheriff Kresge’s jurisdiction, in other words. I assumed that was why she wanted me to follow this particular lead. Morrison told me Kresge was in a semi-dry county, so bars had to close down at 1:00 a.m. and all day on Sundays. The Masonic Lodge was in a very wet county and was open twenty-four hours a day.
If you’ve ever been to a biker bar on the outskirts of town or stopped to take a leak at the only watering hole in a fifty-mile radius, you should have an idea what Whispers is like. Dives like Whispers are usually occupied by only the most dedicated or desperate patrons, but this place was packed. Wall to wall. With men. Aside from the worn-out-looking waitress serving food in the back, there wasn’t a woman in the place.
One guy in particular stood out. He was leaning against the jukebox by the pool table, holding a cue but not playing. On his head was the largest jet-black cowboy hat I have ever seen. On his feet were black silver-tipped boots. With the hat and footwear you’d expect a cowboy shirt, but he wasn’t wearing a shirt at all. His very large, muscled, torso was partially covered by a floor-length black leather trench coat. His hairless chest was shiny in the bar’s dim light and I suspected it might have been lightly oiled. His pants, no surprise, were black leather and tucked into his boots. Clothes don’t make the man, though, and I walked in dressed like Elvis, so I’m no one to criticize.
Blacky, the man in black leather, was only the most uniquely dressed hombre in the place. All the other men were tarted up in their own way, if you can apply that term to roughnecks and oil riggers, and they were all ready for a night in the big city. If I’d walked into this bar in Boise or Reno, I’d swear it was a gay bar, but trust me when I say there are no gay bars in the Wyoming desert. Gay or straight though, at least one guy in a bar like this usually gives me the eye, either because he like the cut of my jib or he thinks taking a swing at me will prop up his self-esteem. It’s the cape. But not a single eye turned my way.
It took some pushing, but I was able to make my way to the lone open seat at the counter and raised a finger to get the waitress’s attention. She looked like an Ethel. Ethel gave me a nod and finished filling out a light blue order slip, which she slotted into the order turnstile with a snap. From a distance and through the haze of cigarette smoke, Ethel looked haggard. Up close she made haggard look good. Blue eye shadow clumped in the many creases of her eyelids. Red lipstick was worn off at the corner of her mouth where a cigarette of her own was dangling. You’ve heard the phrase “powder my nose”? Ethel had been powdering for decades and I don’t think she ever washed it off. At some point she had scratched at some annoyance on her cheek and left a divot. Blue veins spider
webbed up from her hands into the waddle that hung loose on her upper arms, then disappeared into a dirty pink uniform.
“A finely dressed man like you is just passing through, am I right?” she asked.
“That’s right. I’m looking for someone.”
Ethel’s lips slid back revealing nicotine stained teeth and receding gums. It was as much disconcerting as it was friendly.
“Glad to hear that. Business first, sweetie. You gotta order if you want to sit at the bar.”
I hadn’t eaten since before Goliath beat me up and now that she mentioned it, I was pretty hungry.
“What’s good?”
“All we got is burgers and fries, sweetie.”
“Cheeseburger and fries, then.”
“That’ll be twelve dollars, plus tip,” she said with a wink. “Cash up front, honey.”
“Right!” I opened my wallet and pulled out a twenty.
“Sorry, hon, no change,” she said, winking again and giving me another look at her teeth. She grabbed the twenty and pointed to a sign above the window to the kitchen that did, in fact, say No Change.
Elvis always said to make lemon meringue pie out of lemons, so I smiled back. “I was going to tell you to keep the change anyway.”
Ethel reached out a leathery hand and placed it on mine, making a little rubbing motion with her thumb. She leaned in close, giving me a view of her desiccated cleavage. “Nice duds and a money pants! My shift is over at two if you want me to come to your place.”
She was about to say something more when the cook yelled out, “Order up!”
Ethel gave me one more suggestive wink and a final rub with her thumb and turned away. I was beginning to think the winking might be some kind of tic. She picked up a lump of bread and charred cow flesh that Whispers called a burger and handed it to one of the other patrons.
I thanked my lucky stars that women were still attracted to me. And then I cursed them for sending me Ethel.
My cursing was interrupted by a sun-baked man in a red plaid shirt who yelled out, “Ten thirty! Time to dance, boys!”
I had a momentary mental picture of work-hardened riggers and field hands breaking into a scene from Pirates of Penzance, with Blacky singing “I am the very model of a modern major general, I’ve information vegetable, animal and mineral!”
Or maybe a Village People routine.
The “boys” responded to Plaid Shirt by yelling out a collective “Woo-hoo!”
Blacky, who was standing near the jukebox, let out a few whoops of his own and fed some quarters into the slot. The rest of the men in the bar began to get up from their seats and push toward the counter. By the time ZZ Top’s “Legs” started blaring, it was elbow to elbow men, each and every one of them hooting and hollering like cowboys at a rodeo, taking their hats off and waving them in the air.
A man right behind me yelled out, “Get them legs o’ yours out here, Midge!”
Ethel, Midge. I was pretty close.
During the rush I hadn’t noticed that Midge had been looking out at the boys, hands on hips, doing a little bob in time to the music. She saw me looking her way and blew me a kiss that sent the hooting volume up another decibel or ten. Then the short-order cook put my prepaid cheeseburger on the shelf between the well and the kitchen. His yell of “order up!” was lost to everyone but me.
Midge walked to the opposite end of the counter and two burly roughnecks lifted her up by her waddley arms.
The song’s refrain, “she’s got legs!” played just as Midge hiked her skirt up over her knees, revealing calf-high stockings and a patchwork of varicose veins that ran from her ankles to, well, someplace I’d rather not speculate on. She shook her hips a couple times, then kicked her shoes off.
The roughnecks went wild.
For a woman old enough to be my mother, Midge had remarkable balance. Standing on one foot, she smoothly slipped off a stocking and shot it into the crowd like an erotic rubber band. The second came off just as easily. Midge dangled it over the head of a man who snatched it out of her hands and pressed it to his face.
Midge danced a few feet down the counter and teased the crowd by slipping the top of her uniform down one shoulder, yelling out, “Want to see what I got underneath?”
I wanted to scream “No!” but no one would have heard me.
The men around me were loudly yelling “Yes!”
Taking her cue, Midge undid a few buttons on her blouse and shimmied toward me. A little shake and the entire uniform, apron and all, slid down her body and legs to the counter.
I’ve never seen a train wreck, but I understand now why people can’t turn away. In all fairness, it wasn’t as horrible as I’d feared. Large, white control top panties kept the loose skin from her navel to the top of her thighs in place. The varicose veins that started at her ankles disappeared into the panties, then reappeared above them. A heavy-duty white underwire bra kept her breasts up where breasts are supposed to be. If I crossed my eyes it was sort of like watching old-time burlesque.
But only if you have a good imagination.
Another huge cheer. Another two steps closer. The song was only half over. Maybe it was peer pressure. Or morbid curiosity. But I kept watching.
Another step closer and Midge slipped her thumbs under her bra straps and pulled them to the sides. Bending forward she gave a Monroe-like wiggle of her décolletage. More yelling, and dollar bills started flying up on the counter. The bra came off. Her puckered and wrinkled boobs dropped down to her waist. The Whispers men upped their vocal efforts to a deafening level.
Midge was almost naked, about two steps away from me, and the cheese on my bacon cheeseburger was congealing into a waxy film behind her. And I still couldn’t look away.
“Want me to go all the way tonight, fellas?” she yelled as she closed the distance between us. By now it came as no surprise to me that the men did want her to go all the way.
Standing above me, Midge turned to give us a view of her derriere and slid the control top down past her bottom, which drooped to about mid-thigh, before rolling her panties down to the counter. Over her left shoulder Midge looked back at the crowd and then down at me.
“New guy gets the prize tonight boys!” she yelled.
With a flick of her bare foot, the oversized drawers slid off the Formica and into my lap. Midge turned to face us, fists on hips, legs set at shoulder width, and tossed her head back as the guys went wild.
She looked back down at me and said, “There’s more where that came from, handsome!”
Before I could think of a reply Midge went into a very traditional stripper-grind routine. The song was nearly over, too late to save me, and Midge finished off her routine by dancing down to the end of the counter. The final power chord played, Midge’s fans went back to their beers, darts and pool. The guy behind me who’d yelled out for her legs gave me a sharp nudge in the ribs with his elbow as he stepped up to the counter.
“I’ll give you ten bucks for them undies.”
“Done.”
The man put a bill on the counter and snatched the control tops right off my lap. I watched him stuff them in his pocket and head for the door. Midge was behind the counter opposite me now with a fresh cigarette dangling from her lips and the plate with my burger on it in her hands. Her still naked body was shiny with sweat.
“Here’s your food, hon,” she said, wheezing just a bit as she set the plate down and grabbed the ten dollars. “So you’re looking for someone?”
“Yeah, a guy named Roman Finney, he’s a city council member over in Kresge.” I pulled out the picture Wanda had given me and showed it to Midge.
“I know Roman.” She said it with a happy sigh. “Wish I knew him better, that man can shake his rump like a maraca. And honey, I’m telling you from experience, not many men
his age can even shake their hips. Ain’t seen him in a few days.” She exhaled a stream of smoke. “That the only person you’re looking for tonight?” There was a touch of impatience in her voice now.
“Does Roman come to see you often?”
“He doesn’t come to see me at all,” she said bitterly. “Meets up with an old lady for drinks. I don’t know what he sees in her when he could get some of this,” she said, cupping her drooping flesh.
As long as I was there, I figured I’d ask about the case I had come to town for. “What about a guy named Jon Burrows? He’d be late sixties or so. Might dress a little like me.”
Irritation was added to her impatience. “I know plenty of Johns but nobody named Burrows.” Midge puffed on her cigarette again and blew the smoke at me. She flicked her ash and turned. I tried not to watch the cellulite ripple across her butt as she walked away and looked back at my food. The plate was in the exact same spot on the counter that Midge had dropped her panties.
I decided I could stand to lose a few pounds, so I gave the burger to the guy next to me.
Chapter Seven
I returned to the Butterworth late—tired, hurting, hungry and with no new information. The day had been a bust. I swiped my key card on the reader at my hotel room door and went inside, looking forward to one of those painkillers and a good night’s sleep.
Detectives are supposed to have a “feeling” when someone might be lurking behind a door with a sap or billy club. My detective spidey sense was asleep on the job or AWOL, because I had no warning that a locomotive-powered fist was going to be driven into my belly. I also didn’t “sense” the bodies attached to the four hands that tossed me onto my bed, where I curled up like a pill bug.
“I thought we were just supposed to talk to him,” said a nasal voice that for some reason made me think of Ichabod Crane.
“I felt like hitting somebody,” said a second, deeper voice.
“Well, let me know next time,” complained Sinus Man.
Elvis Sightings (An Elvis Sightings Mystery) Page 6
