Hoedown Showdown

by Misty Simon

  “And I’m just supposed to nap while you’re out detecting?” I said on a yawn.

  “You are, and I promise not to catch anyone until after you wake up.” He tucked a blanket around my legs and kissed my forehead. I was out almost before he closed the front door.

  ****

  I must have slept longer than I thought because when I woke up there were four missed calls on my cell phone, spaced fifteen minutes apart, the last one about an hour before. And they were all from Ben.

  I really hoped they weren’t from the jail cell again. But all four messages only asked me to call him back.

  So I did and heard the relief in his voice when he heard me say hello. Was he worried that I had been kidnapped or something? If he’d been that worried, you’d think he would have come home to check on me. Whatever it was, I was glad, and I was glad he was glad, and we were each glad, so that was a good thing.

  Anyway, he told me Thelma had been approached by two different contestants, as well as the Pickle Guy, to ask if the tournament was still on. Man, it hadn’t taken him long, had it?

  The judges were afraid, very afraid. With all the destroyed crops and Mac dead, they feared for themselves. Well, everyone except Thelma, since apparently she and her beehive of blue hair weren’t afraid of anything. They didn’t want to cancel the tournament, though, because it was the fiftieth anniversary.

  On a hunch, Ben had tried a fake bribe and was also told that he had not been the first person to try to bribe them. Oy!

  Wasn’t anyone honest in the world anymore? Not that I had a leg to stand on, since I’d taken those things from Mac’s and then lied about how I got them and how I knew about them. But it was for a good cause. Right?

  Anyway, Ben was heading back home because he hadn’t been able to find anything on Rukey, and he wanted to do more research. Research he couldn’t do at the office. He was also told by the whole judging team that no bribe could replace him using his PI license to figure this out and make things safe for them.

  “But that’s wonderful! You’d be a shoo-in for the winner of the Tasty Tomato Tournament.” He growled, and I ignored him. “Seriously, you would have the gold, the glory, and the bragging rights for the rest of the year.”

  “That’s not how I want to win this.”

  “Oh, I know that. I was just kidding.” Did he think I didn’t know who he was at his core? “But seriously, get home, and let’s assimilate all our info.” Good word, and one I savored as I made sandwiches and brushed my teeth to get rid of my second bout of morning breath.

  Ben arrived home, and we got down to business, but business was slow. Why wasn’t anything popping about all this? I felt like we were missing that one freaking piece that would make it all make sense.

  “So if we look at this as blackmail, then has Mac ever blackmailed anyone else before?”

  Ben glanced over at me from behind his laptop.

  “I mean, surely not everyone would love him as much as they do if he was out there blackmailing people for money. Wouldn’t someone have said something at some point? This isn’t a huge town. Hell, I can’t even change our toothpaste without hearing about it.”

  “What if there was fear involved, though? What if he threatened to expose them? You’re right, this is a small town, and if someone was doing something wrong and he knew about it, he could have them over a barrel.”

  I thought about that for a few minutes. “It has merit, but I just can’t believe that no one would say anything and everyone would go on loving him. Grudges are long and shared around here.”

  “True.” Ben sat back in his chair. “How about this, though? Mac always had some kind of charity he was collecting for or program he was setting up that put him in a position of looking benevolent but also made him look really good. What if all those favors he always called in and the glad-handing he did seemed innocent enough on the surface but then led him to other things?”

  My cell rang on the table. Mr. Winnet calling. I hoped he had something good. “What’s up, Mr. W?”

  “Oh, Ivy, I don’t think anyone has ever called me that.” He laughed, and it sounded so young and carefree.

  “First time for everything,” I said, a smile coloring my voice.

  “Yes, I suppose there is. Now, this is not a first time for our Mac, though.”

  I sat up straighter. Ben noticed and leaned in, though that probably wasn’t necessary since Mr. W was practically shouting into the phone. Oh, wait, I had my volume too high! Oops.

  “Can I put you on speaker phone, Mr. W?”

  “Is it just your young man there?”

  Ben smiled. “Yep, it’s just me.”

  “Okay then.”

  I clicked the side button down so I wasn’t being blasted by the sweet old man. Putting the phone on the table between us, I hit the button for speaker. “Go ahead.”

  “It seems that Mac was not the stellar character he has always portrayed. There was some ruckus in college when he was attempting to start a venture, and a lot of money came into his account that he couldn’t explain. Turns out he was acting as a kind of escort service.”

  I slapped my hand over my mouth. Mac? Escort service?

  But Mr. W was still talking. “Then there was a time in his twenties when he wanted to get into importing. That was more legitimately put together, but when it was time to ship his product, the money had mysteriously disappeared. And he came back here to set up his life in that big house.”

  “Interesting timing.” I jotted a couple of notes down on my notepad.

  “Yes, and I spoke with Mr. Hanks, who I highly admire even if he does keep trying to get me to come into your shop and buy a thong.”

  I choked on my own spit, then sputtered unintelligibly. (Good word!)

  “No worries, dear Ivy, this body was not meant for anything so constricting, but he is persuasive.”

  “Uh, I’ll have to thank him for trying to hand-sell my merchandise.”

  “That would be fitting. Maybe a tiny bit more of a discount too, since he might have cracked this whole thing wide open. It turns out that all the backers for Mac’s development over on the beach have disappeared, and the place is in some serious trouble. The money’s gone, and the loan is coming up due. He borrowed most heavily from an outside source, and we couldn’t get to the core of who it was. Too many shell companies, but we’ll keep working on it.”

  “Thank you so much!”

  “It’s my pleasure, Ivy. You keep me young. Ben, cherish this one. I’d come out of my grave to make your divorce excruciating if you ever overstepped the line.”

  And with that he hung up.

  I stuck out my tongue at Ben, and he laughed, then unceremoniously grabbed me off my chair and held me while I squirmed on his lap. “Never, my love.”

  I settled in and kissed his chin. “Never. I love you.”

  “I love you more.”

  We didn’t accomplish much for the rest of the day, and I felt like this was dragging horribly. Yes, we had information, but without knowing who the backer was, there wasn’t much we could do. We talked over confronting Ford, but we weren’t sure how to go about it and decided we’d rather wait for the rest of the info before we went barging into his life with just an indecent picture as proof of wrongdoing. And with no real method of murder and few truly viable suspects, we were in the middle of a quagmire. (Freaking fantastic word!)

  We’d just settled down for a movie we’d seen before so we could cuddle on the couch and pretend to be naughty teenagers and make out, when a scream nearly split the air in two. I glanced at the TV first to make sure it wasn’t a scene I didn’t remember. Since we were watching a comedy and that had sounded more like horror, Ben and I both scrambled off the couch at the same time, trying to rearrange our clothes and put some of them back on right side out before we burst out the front door.

  The sight that greeted us was another form of horror. Myrt stood in her front yard, pulling at her hair and wailing like a banshee. />
  My God, if I could hear her like that from my living room, could she hear me in my bedroom? No time to worry about that, because Ben was running across the street to see what was happening, and I was not going to be left behind.

  When we arrived, Myrt fell into Ben’s arms and sobbed out my name. Okay so she didn’t only mistake me for Ben, but it went the other way, too. How did she manage to tend her plants if she couldn’t see objects almost six feet tall?

  Ben tried to lead her to her house, but she dragged him around the back and then started wailing again. And I saw what had sent her into banshee mode. All of her tomatoes had been crushed and made into a big tub of puree. Not cool, tomato smasher.

  “Oh, Ben, what am I going to do? I only wanted to ever win this thing once, and this was going to be my year! How could I go wrong with Irma’s plants growing in my shed?”

  She clapped her hand over her mouth as Ben and I shared a glance.

  Oops.

  And then I swear to everything that is in the least bit holy, Rukey came speeding up in his patrol car and ran full throttle for Ben and Myrt in full dress uniform. What the hell had happened to strip and lock? Did this mean Jameson was back in town and had let this bastard out and back on active duty even after Debbie had told him absolutely not? I would have liked to be a fly on the wall of that debacle. (Good word, even if this was the second time I’d used it!)

  While Rukey was distracted, and Ben was holding him off with one hand on the guy’s forehead and he scrambled over and over again for purchase, I went to the tub of puree because something blue was sticking out from under the vat. Another flyer.

  Okay we were going back to Pickle Guy because, as much as I wondered where Chloe was, and how Ford fit into all this, Pickle Guy would not stop cropping up. I was going to find out why and put it to rest for the last time.

  The question was: How the hell were we going to get out of this Rukey sighting to go find Pickle Guy and bring him to justice?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Maybe I should just find something in Myrt’s shed to take Rukey out at the knees. Right about now I was wishing there was a wasps’ nest so that we could at least get him to run away. Hell, I’d go for a big fat spider or a tiny, yappy dog.

  None of those things came to hand, but there was a screech of tires and then there stood Jameson and Bartley.

  Jameson took lead as he strode toward Rukey and grabbed him by the collar. Did that make Rukey the tiny yappy dog? He certainly looked the part as he hung his head and tried to squirm away from Jameson, who was not small at all.

  “We talked about this, Junior,” I heard him growl.

  Junior? As in Junior Detective? Junior Officer? Surely not…

  “I’m sorry, Dad. But these people are menaces to society. I’ve been trying to get them taken care of for you, but Bartley keeps blocking me. I finally have them. Let me go, and I’ll bring justice.”

  Dad. Dad? Holy shit!

  Bartley slapped her hand over her eyes.

  “Dad?” Ben asked, standing next to Myrt. “This little creep is your son?” Anger practically radiated off Ben, and I was close behind him. “I know you don’t like us interfering, but what the hell have you been telling this son of yours that he would think we’re the worst people in the history of Martha’s Point?”

  Jameson looked away from the whole scene, then turned back to Ben with a resigned face. “Nothing that should have perpetrated this. Yeah, sometimes I’d bitch to his mom about you guys, years ago, but nothing that should have made this whelp act like this.” He shook Rukey by the collar for good measure, then stuck him in restraints for further punishment, and hopefully to keep him under control, although he did put the handcuffs on with his hands in front of him and not behind.

  “So you bitched to his mom years ago, and then when he graduates from some kind of police academy he comes to avenge you? And where did you go while the avenging was happening?”

  That was me, this time. I won’t lie, I was angry and pissed. While I knew Jameson hadn’t liked us interfering, I didn’t think it was that heinous (good word, and I would enjoy it later) that we’d helped them solve every single freaking murder that had happened here. I wasn’t expecting gratitude, but I also hadn’t expected to have his little vicious offspring nipping at my ass.

  He addressed the boy/man still in his grip. “For once in your life, listen to me when I tell you to get in the car, Darren.” Officer Rukey’s head still hung, but he straightened as he got closer to the car. He shook off Debbie’s offer to help him get in the car and awkwardly slammed the back door himself after he got in.

  I was still waiting for an explanation, and I think everyone else was, too. Even Debbie stepped closer and stood near Ben, Myrt, and me instead of sidling up to Jameson.

  “It’s complicated,” he started. Or at least I hoped that was only the beginning instead of the only thing he was going to say.

  “That’s not enough, and you know it, Jameson.” Myrt stepped forward. “No one has helped me except Ben and Ivy. No one has been out looking for the reasons a man was killed in my shed. I don’t believe for a second that it wasn’t murder. I have no wasps, and I did nothing more than whack the guy on the head with a trowel, which might have stunned him but couldn’t have killed him. Now explain yourself, young man.”

  I had totally forgotten Mrs. Crandall had taught Jameson in school. But it was evident in the way he straightened himself and put his hands behind his back.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. Rukey’s mom was recently put into a care facility because she has advanced cancer of some sort. She won’t even tell me what kind. I haven’t seen him in years because she wouldn’t allow me near him. We never married, and she made sure to have full custody of him. She wouldn’t even give him my last name. With her in care, though, I thought if I brought him here and let him try out a new place, that we could maybe start again. I was called away because his mother ran away from the home, and I’ve been looking for her. I didn’t realize what was going on here, or I would have been home sooner. I promise that Rukey will not bother any of you again.” He looked at all of us and then at the ground. “I’m shipping him to his aunt in Tennessee, where hopefully he can get away from all this anger and start living like he should instead of always looking for injustices. I don’t know what his mother taught him, but it’s going to take time to undo it. My apologies.”

  I could not let this strong man shoulder all of it. We hadn’t exactly been on our best behavior, and he was trying.

  “Jameson,” I said.

  He blew out a breath, pinched the bridge of his nose, then straightened his shoulders. “I know I owe you an apology, too.”

  I hit him with a hug that would have knocked a smaller man off his feet. It took a moment, but he wrapped his arms around me. I stepped back before it became awkward.

  “It’ll be good. He’s not a bad guy, he just needs a different focus, maybe. I don’t know that law enforcement is quite the right thing for him.”

  Jameson laughed derisively. “He’s bound and determined to go into law enforcement to follow in my footsteps.”

  “I bet if he had you to look up to and see how it works, he might be able to settle down just a bit.” Myrt stepped up again and patted his arm. “You weren’t always the upstanding citizen you are today, if I remember your primary days.” She gave him a smile, one he returned.

  “We’ll see. For now, I’m going to go deal with him. Bartley’s in charge of the station until I get back.”

  He turned and then came back. “It really was only bitching to make Therese laugh when things were tough. I didn’t realize she was fueling Darren to want to follow in my footsteps and telling him that he had to take out my enemies or I’d never love him.”

  Wow. Just wow.

  Bartley, Myrt, Ben, and I just looked at each other for a moment or two. I was the first one to speak. “We have a lead, Bartley. We’ll report back as soon as we see if it pans out.”

  Then
I grabbed Ben’s hand and ran across the street to my trusty brown car. When we arrived at Pickle Guy’s trailer, every light was on and the grass glistened like he’d sprayed it with a hose. Maybe he had. I hadn’t the first clue about how to grow grass.

  “Are you finally here to join my Pickle Brigade?” he asked as he stepped out of the front door onto his small stoop.

  Ben shook his head. “Dude, first, you need the alliteration, and you need to get more people interested in actually making pickles before you can start a festival. Instead of wanting everyone to join your crusade, why don’t you work on getting other people interested in pickles first and then get a contest going?”

  Pickle Guy took a step forward. “Mac said that same thing, the bastard, and he promised he’d help me get that started, but it came at a price I couldn’t afford.”

  “What price was that?” Ben asked matter-of-factly. I hoped it would catch him off guard enough to actually answer.

  “Ha. He was involved in building all those new homes over on the south side, and he wanted free grass for all the properties. All I had to do was grow it and give it to him, and he promised me my own tournament and my own contract with Jerry.”

  “But Jerry doesn’t really use pickles. That would be something more like what Martha would use at the diner.”

  My comment seemed to snap him out of his reverie, and he snarled. “Well, at least I know where to get free fertilizer that will make for some excellent grass.” He jumped off the porch and pulled a gun from the back of his pants.

  Holy shit!

  ****

  Ben shoved me behind him, and then I heard the familiar roar of a car. No way had Rukey talked his way out of those restraints that fast and gotten his car back.

  But I’d been wrong before, and I was never happier to be wrong this time when he came careening up the drive, slammed on his brakes, and smacked right into Pickle Guy. Not enough to kill him, but enough to knock him off balance. The gun went off into the sky, and I tried to step out of the way from where the bullet might fall. I dragged Ben with me as Rukey hustled out of the car, tied up Pickle Guy, and then proceeded to put his foot on his back like he’d just bagged a particularly hard prey.