by David Bishop
“Have you been here since then?”
“Not important.”
In the soft light of the room’s low wattage bulb, she watched Ryan’s face while he chewed and swallowed a bite of a bear claw. Suddenly, she asked, “Did you kill Carlos Molina?”
“Not important.”
“Don’t give me that crap. Carlos shouldn’t have been killed. He was just a guy.”
“Carlos Molina was a thug. He was muscle for Billy Cranston. Taking away a mainstay of his muscle chipped away at Billy’s confidence, his sense of invincibility. Let’s call Carlos’s death another fortuitous event. To quote that famous Sinatra song, ‘Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant.’ ”
“You’re sick. You know it? A man is not a rubber tree plant.”
Ryan continued as if Linda had said nothing. “Carlos smuggled some weed for the Mexicans, with Billy’s approval. When he wasn’t strong-arming someone for Billy Cranston, Carlos’s main job was a bouncer in Billy’s brothel. When he wasn’t working for Billy he used his easy smile, soft voice, and expressive eyes like currency to buy his way under the skirts of the town’s young women. Carlos chose the live fast and die young plan. It just came full circle sooner than he anticipated.
“Carlos’s death, along with the fire at the Cranston ranch, gave Billy a lot to think about other than Carol Benson—the diversion I spoke of. Frankly, you have the man worried about just who the hell you are and why you’re here.”
“And just what do you have planned next?”
“Things are still . . . fluid. Maybe nothing, but I expect I’ll be doing my thing. If you need me in the daytime, ball up a piece of clothing behind the closed drape to bunch it up. If at night, plug this nightlight into the wall near your window and prop the curtain back the same way. A word of caution: Once a week Vera plays hide the weasel with Billy. And he beats his wife. Your ex-boyfriend is a real asshole.”
“Are you sure about him and Vera?”
“Absolutely, or I wouldn’t have said it.”
Linda paused for a moment, thinking back. Vera had beer in her fridge and a salt shaker near the front of her stove top, clearly not its normal position. Billy had salted his beer in the bar the day Carlos Molina was killed. Vera said she sometimes had a beer late at night, but there had been a beer mug rinsed out in her sink. What Ryan’s saying could be true.
“Doesn’t all this . . . stuff you do, doesn’t it bother you?”
“Now and then. It passes.”
“As easy as all that?”
“Look. I live and work in a different world than you. As long as I do what I do in my world, it goes with the territory. Those who choose my world, accept the rules.”
“Is that why you spared me back in Sea Crest? I wasn’t part of your world.”
“Not important.”
With that Ryan Testler, a half good man, half bad man, whom Linda trusted completely, silently went out through the door, a door that had always made noise every time she went through it.
Chapter Seven
Few nineteen year old girls can resist the charms of a wealthy, attractive man of twenty-nine
MONDAY
“One egg over easy, an English muffin, a half grapefruit, and coffee, please, black.” After Linda placed the order, but before it came, Billy Cranston walked into the diner on the ground floor of the Frontier Hotel, a cigar in the corner of his mouth. He paused long enough to spear it into a glass of water in a tray of dirty dishes, came directly to her table, pulled out a chair, and sat down with his back toward the center of the room.
“I don’t recall inviting you to join me,” she protested, “and a gentleman would not do so without being asked.”
“You know who I am?”
“Yes, a rude man I first saw yesterday in The Do Drop Inn, just after that young man was shot. You came in with the sheriff. Are you one of his deputies?”
“I’m not a deputy. I am Billy Cranston. My family founded this town. I’m the current pit bull of the family.”
“Well, bowwow, Mr. Billy Cranston.”
“I like you, Miss. You got brass ba—well, just brass. You speak right up.”
“Apparently, not quickly enough to protect my privacy so I could have breakfast while reading my book.”
He raised his arm above his head and circled his hand in the air. He wasn’t shooing flies. She assumed it was some sort of order for the wait staff.
His expression turned as hard as a mud facial. “Who are you, little lady?”
“I gave my name to your sheriff. I was a witness of sorts, so he had a right to know. I’m guessing Sheriff Blackstone, wasn’t that his name, told you.”
“That’s his name. So, Carol Benson, what makes you think the sheriff would pass that information on to me?”
“The way the sheriff deferred to you. The way you were able to control him with either a nod of your head or a gesture.”
“The sheriff and I have known each other all our lives. If you’re not from a small town you wouldn’t understand how that kind of thing happens.”
“I get it. You’ve bossed Blackstone since when, sixth-grade recess?”
Billy Cranston looked at Linda with a mixture of curiosity, irritation, and hesitance. “Okay,” he said. “Skip that part, little lady. I wanna know why you’re here in my town?”
“Asked and answered, Mr. Cranston. Seeing your sheriff gave you my name, he likely gave you my answer to that question when he asked it. If he didn’t, I must surmise the sheriff didn’t want you to know. Assuming that, I’ll respect the sheriff’s decision. He’s investigating a murder, which would make him the authority over everyone in such matters.”
“He told me.”
“Then why are you playing this game? Asking me the same questions when you already have my answers?”
“You didn’t tell him why you were in my town.”
Linda steadied herself to remain outwardly calm, while inside her resolve quivered. “Yes,” she said, “I did. A one-day layover from the train, extended due to the fascination of this murder.”
A blond waitress carried her serving tray to the table. From it she placed Linda’s order in front of her and a matching order in front of Billy Cranston. While she put Billy’s food in front of him, he let his arm hang loose to his side. Linda couldn’t see that low, but the woman’s facial expression suggested Billy’s hand had likely caressed the calf of her leg. She startled, but didn’t step back. Not immediately anyway. She smiled and then stepped around to refill the coffee.
Billy hasn’t changed. He’s still a bully. He still trolls for female connections. When I was nineteen, I got a kick out of being with a man who held such sway, now I see him for what he is, a self-absorbed bore.
“Apparently, you prefer the same things for breakfast as I do, at least this morning. Or, did your arm signal when you sat down mean bring me whatever she’s having?”
“That’s right,” he said without bothering to explain which of those two options he had confirmed. He used his foot to pull the chair to his right toward him. He slid his boot onto its wooden rung and leaned back. The part in his hair so straight it looked uncomfortable. “I want to know why you’re here.”
“And I want to win the lottery. None of us get what we want every time, Mr. Cranston.”
“I do.”
“Don’t let me detain you. Feel free to eat and run, or just run if you’re really not all that hungry.”
She looked at him over the rim of her cup while drinking half of what was barely warm coffee. She motioned to the waitress who, along with two other employees, had eyes only for their table: workers watching this encounter between the town’s self-described pit bull and the lady who entered town just before Carlos Molina exited the world.
The blond waitress came back to their table, to her side. “This coffee is only lukewarm. Please bring me a fresh cup, hot, and a glass of water. Thank you.”
Billy Cranston scratched around at his food while Linda ate
and he watched. By the time she finished he’d eaten but half of his muffin and drunk part of his cup of coffee.
Another man walked into the restaurant. Linda didn’t know quite how to describe his entrance. It was neither contrived nor arrogant. He was substantial, muscular, but not bulgy like a bodybuilder or like Mud at The Drop. He just walked. Still, she fixated on him. He approached from behind Billy who held his coffee cup high enough to block out his nose and the lower half of both his eyes.
The man coming in wore a baseball cap, a pair of Levi’s fronted by a pewter belt buckle, and a dark blue tee-shirt, tucked in. He moved more with the athletic grace of Gene Kelly than the cloddish step of a rodeo performer. There was also the purposeful stride of John Wayne. These elements of his walk somehow fit together. His legs moved easily like two lovers under the same sheet.
He headed straight toward her table.
Unlike Billy Cranston, this man did not claim a right to sit down. Linda looked up and smiled at his freshly shaven face. He seemed familiar in some way. She was pretty sure she had known him during her school years.
He stood quietly in the space between Linda’s and Billy’s chair. “Excuse me,” Linda said, looking up over her shoulder. “May I be of some help?”
He took off his cap. “I came in for breakfast and hate to eat alone. May I join you and Mr. Cranston?”
“Certainly, the more the merrier, however Mr. Cranston was about to leave. He has something he wants and he claims he always gets what he wants.”
She turned toward Billy. “Or did you want to ask or tell me something further?”
Billy looked sternly at the other man, got up, and walked out without paying—one of the perquisites of owning the place.
Cranston, Kansas, has at least one man who doesn’t lick Billy Cranston’s boots.
“My name is Carol Benson,” Linda said to the trim man in the tight, but not skinny jeans. “And you are?”
“Dixon Wardley, Ms. Benson. My pleasure to know you.”
Dixon Wardley. Okay, I remember, the class jock when we were students.
“May I ask you something, Mr. Wardley?”
He nodded, and said, “Dix, please, my friends call me Dix. I’d like you to.”
“I’ve only been here since noon yesterday. I’ve seen Billy Cranston twice and gotten the impression he owns the town and everyone in it. Yet you came up as if he were no one special. Why’s that different for you than everyone else?”
“Money makes a man special, to those who allow it. May I call you Carol?”
Linda smiled and nodded. He sat in the chair on the other side opposite where Billy had been seated, took off his hat and hung it on the post of the chair across from her.
“Billy Cranston owns a great deal of the land all around this town as well as a good part of what’s in it. But I’m Methodist, so like the others in our church I’ve had to learn to live on the scraps.”
“Why don’t you, all the Methodists, to use your description, just up and leave? There are plenty of places to live.”
“That’s true, far as it goes,” he said. “I imagine there are lots of different reasons for the lots of different folks who stay. In this part of the country many people end up being buried just up the road from where they came into the world. The hell you know can seem less foreboding than the hell you don’t know.”
“Well said. I don’t see that reason as fitting you—uncertainty about what you’d find in the outside world.”
“I’ve traveled more than most folks hereabouts. I went away to college and did a couple hitches in the Marines, even took an out of town job for a while. Curiosity about if and how the town might have changed keeps bringing me back. If I had any sense I’d permanently move on, but, well, I have my reasons for not leaving, at least not for a while yet.”
“So, Mr. Wardley, what is it you do for fun?”
“Have breakfast with attractive women I don’t know.”
“Not something that’d appeal to me. Now, with a man, that’s different, depending on the man.” Linda feigned being demure. “So, tell me,” she said, “why is it that when I walked into this town I felt I had accidentally walked through a time warp and come out in a Tennessee Williams play?”
Dixon Wardley laughed. A deep rolling laugh, free and easy and low enough to somehow feel intimate, filled the modest space between them.
“You being familiar with Tennessee Williams, tells me I’m not in a time warp.”
“I’m the high school drama teacher. Well, I used to be, along with being the head football coach. I also taught math and sometimes driver’s ed. Teachers have to be versatile in small schools.”
His name had sounded familiar. Now, with this additional information, Linda finished finding Dixon Wardley in her memories. He had been in her class. She had liked him, but kept it friendly. No dates. She was involved with the older, wealthier Billy Cranston. Billy’s footprint in Cranston alone was enough to turn the head of a teenaged girl from a just-above-dirt-poor family. In those years, she only had eyes for the self-described pit bull of Cranston, Kansas.
Which nineteen year old girl wouldn’t respond to a wealthy, attractive, single man of twenty-nine?
“You said ‘used to be the drama and football coach?’ What happened, or am I being too curious for a first . . . ah, encounter?”
“Great choice of words. We need to elevate our relationship from an encounter to a date. What are you doing for dinner tomorrow? Oh, I’m not married or . . . involved. Are you?”
“No. Widow actually.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“How about we hold it to meeting for a drink tonight? Should you decide to ask again, we could share dinner next time.”
“That sounds fine,” he said. “Say, eight o’clock? Can we meet at the Stop By rather than The Drop? Anyone in town can direct you. That okay?”
“I suppose. You squeamish because of the killing of Carlos Molina?”
“An unnecessary death is always sobering, but that’s not why. I’m a Methodist, remember. The Cranstons are Catholic. The town is divided along religious lines, like Ireland some years back with the Catholics and Protestants, except we’re Methodist and this isn’t Ireland so there’s no open warfare.”
“I feel like I’m back in that time warp. Will you tell me more about all this over drinks tonight?”
“Living in Cranston, this division doesn’t seem all that fascinating, but if I were from out of town . . . sure, if you’d like. Tonight at eight, dress casually. Around here there’s nothing much to dress up for. Clean trumps fancy every time in these parts.” He picked up his hat and stood.
Linda pegged him at around six-foot with the trim front and broad shoulders of the stereotypical high school football coach.
“May I ask you something, before you leave?” He smiled, put the palms of his hands on the table and leaned in. “Since you’re Methodist and this establishment is owned by the Catholic Cranstons, why’d you come in here?”
“That’s easy. I saw you walk in.” He smiled, turned, and walked out of the restaurant.
Chapter Eight
Who doesn’t know what skinny dipping means?
After breakfast Linda rented a car using her Carol Benson identification, principally a Connecticut driver’s license. The clerk at the only rental car location in town, next to the Ford dealership, admitted never having seen a license from that state. She showed it to someone else, and then returned and finished the rental process. Linda rented the car on a daily rate, open until returned. That way Billy and his puppet, Sheriff Blackstone, couldn’t learn how long she planned to be in town. Not that she yet knew.
She drove a wandering pattern, like a sightseer—a sightseer feeling watched. She assumed the sheriff and Billy would keep some kind of tabs on her movements. She went up and down the in-town roads, looking mostly at the older homes. At one point she stopped to get some biscuits and coffee and took them with her. She drove a country road ou
t of town past several farms and ranches. Eventually, she stopped along the shore of a lake she passed, a lake she knew very well. After eating her biscuits she got back in the car, focused on the wind-pushed ripples in the lake and dozed off.
“Let’s go skinny dipping,” the remembered voice said.
“What?”
“You know what skinny dipping is, don’t you?”
It was young Billy Cranston’s voice. She could hear him as clearly as when they were back at the lake during her last year of high school. “Of course I know,” Linda said.
I had never done it, but I knew what it was. I mean, who doesn’t know what skinny dipping means?
“Strip it down, Girl. I want to see you naked in the water.”
By the time he finished saying it he had his shirt off and was using the sock-covered toe of one foot to push off his other shoe. At eighteen she wanted to act like she was older. She wanted to do what young adults did, or what she imagined young adults did. She was eager for her nakedness to be seen by someone other than her gym mates—and her bedroom mirror. She wanted to please Billy Cranston, for him to like her. Before she knew it, Billy was standing before her, naked. She couldn’t take her eyes off his erection. She had felt a few, but this was the first time an erection has been so . . . presented for her viewing pleasure. The next thing she knew, they were both naked and in the lake. The water crested just above his waist, just below her breasts, his cock peeping above the waterline.
And, at that moment, Linda’s fascination pushed aside her fear. That day had been her first for more than just skinny dipping.
Sometime later she awoke with the thought:I wonder if Dixon Wardley likes to skinny dip.
