Roberta held a lit cigarette in one hand and a plastic stadium cup in the other. Lipstick stains smeared the rim of the cup. I couldn't help but stare at her. If I'd seen her on the street, I probably wouldn't have recognized her.
"Mom." Zach bent his head close to hers, "Dad had to run a few errands. He'll be back in a little while, okay?" He was speaking to her the way Charli speaks to little Jaelyn. I felt almost embarrassed for him.
She stared at him, like she wasn't quite comprehending what he was telling her. She focused in on me. "Who's that?" she asked, slurring her words slightly.
"That's Marty Sheffield, you remember Marty, she's here to do that remote broadcast. Did Dad tell you where he wants her to set up?" he asked.
"No. I don't think so." She scratched her head with the hand holding the cigarette, making me very nervous. She stared at me lazily. "I don't guess it really makes any difference. Wherever, whatever. Why don't you ask your Dad? He knows everything."
"He isn't here right now."
"Where'd he go?"
"Errands, remember. I told you he had to go run some errands." Zach's voice went up a notch.
"What'd that woman want with him? To get in his pants? That’s what she probably wanted. That’s what they all want, ain’t it?"
Zach took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "No, Mom. She just wanted to ask him some questions about her car. Dad didn't mention the broadcast?"
An inch long ash fell off her cigarette and landed on the desk. "I don't know."
Zach pulled his lips between his index fingers and made a clicking sound with his tongue. "Okay," he said a few seconds later. "How about around front, between the building and the street?"
"Sounds good to me. All I need is electricity." I wanted to get out of that office. I'd have set up in the middle of Main Street if he'd suggested it.
"We're in luck. There's an outlet right next to the office door."
I set up the tuner and speakers, plugged the cell phone I use for talking on-air into the board, and ran an extension cord to the electrical outlet. Once everything was in place, I tuned in the station. They were playing my favorite song, George Teoria's "The Angel in You Brings out the Devil in Me".
During a remote broadcast, the remote DJ -- in this case, me -- goes on the air and tells the on-air disc jockey how great the sponsor is a few times an hour. The rest of the time, I play the station’s songs, talk to the people who drop by, hold contests, sign the occasional autograph, and hand out coupons and stuff.
The account manager who'd sold the time to Fred finally showed up a couple of minutes before four. She helped me hang a big 'WRRR 98.6 HOT HITS TO HEAT YOU UP" banner on the building above the table and we chatted until time to go on the air.
Things went pretty smoothly during the first two of the three hours Fred had bought. I'd just finished talking to the studio DJ at the top of the third hour when all hell broke loose.
8
I was teasing my co-worker and watching the cars swoosh by when the twisted sisters decided that things were just way too calm. It was probably my own fault. After all, I should have known better than to let my guard down. And I guess you gotta hand it to those folks at Channel Forty-two, they're nothing if not persistent. Perky Giselle was out of the van and had a microphone stuck in my face before I knew what hit me.
"Miss Sheffield, would you care to comment on your role in the murder of Warren Turner?"
I was in a bit of a quandary here. I couldn't say naughty words; there were too many people around. I certainly didn't want to give Giselle, of all people, anything useful. So I said the only thing I could.
"Moonraker. Moon over Miami. Bad Moon on the Rise. The cow jumped over the moon. Moon River."
Her face turned red, but she didn't give up. She repeated her question.
"Moonlight Serenade. The Honeymooners. Blue Moon of Kentucky..." I might have gone on forever, or at least until I ran out of 'Moon' words, but Detective Luray and Fred returned from the police station.
The detective wheeled her car into the parking lot. I waved to her and smiled. She waved back. Fred climbed out of her car and shuffled over toward our table, looking really glum. Giselle, being brainless, as I've already mentioned, didn't even realize that she had a real story on her hands. She kept her attention, and camera, aimed at me.
Detective Luray motored slowly across to Nancy Winslow's used car dealership. Fred, watching her, smiled broadly. The office door slammed and Roberta came weaving out, carrying her stadium cup and another cigarette.
She staggered toward the table, hollering for Fred, and caromed into Giselle. About half the contents of Roberta's cup sloshed down the front of Giselle's dress. Giselle backed away from Roberta, screaming about her dress being ruined. I didn't even try to hide my smile.
"What is it, Roberta?" said Fred. "I'm right here." He was still staring after the detective, who had gone inside Nancy Winslow's office.
Zach rushed around the corner and smacked into Giselle. Her microphone smashed into her nose. She whimpered as she rubbed her nose and went over to the news van to look at herself in the mirror.
Roberta teetered to a stop right in front of me and set her drink on the table. She smelled sour and boozy. The liquid in the cup must have been straight gin. She leaned her hands against the table and bent forward trying to look at me. Her eyes were out of focus. "You're Maggie and Don's kid, ain't you?" she said.
"Yes Ma’am."
"Thought so. You don't look like her. You look like your dad, all those dark curls and those big green eyes. Handsome thing, ain't he?" She grabbed a handful of my hair. "Wish I had curly hair." Hers was short and spiky, sort of a mousy brown. Not particularly flattering.
"Play me that song about the library," she said. She straightened up and picked up her cup.
"You mean Trent Hart's “Library of Love”?" I didn't bother to explain that the music was coming from the radio and I couldn't play anything. Besides, it was in heavy rotation, which meant it was bound to come on soon.
"That's the one." She started around the table. Fred was still looking over toward Nancy Winslow's, watching the detective get in her car and drive away. He looked unhappy again. Zach watched Fred. Giselle wailed about her nose being swollen.
All of the sudden, there was a loud crash behind me and the music went off. I jerked around. Roberta lay sprawled on the ground, the electrical cord tangled around her legs.
“I’m all right,” she muttered.
Fred and Zach hurried over and tried to help Roberta up.
"Mom, Mom, are you okay?"
"Roberta, for Christ sakes, get up!"
“Marty, she's broken the plug off!" my co-worker said. She mumbled something about drunken fools and slipped around the corner to call the station and tell them what had happened.
Giselle asked Robbie, her cameraman, if he thought her nose would look bad on the air.
A bright red Explorer squealed into the parking lot. It screeched to a halt and a bunch of high school aged girls jumped out. They were laughing and jabbering a mile-a-minute.
One of the girls shouted, "Ready, set, go!"
They all started to sing, “Ice cube in my pants, makes me want to dance, kills all that romance, I don't have a chance with that ice cube in my pants!"
The on-air DJ, a person with a really sick sense of humor, had offered a CD to the first person to show up at the remote and sing “Ice Cube Boogie”, that stupid song that went viral on YouTube back in the spring. Two girls wearing varsity soccer t-shirts began doing the line dance someone else made up and put in their video version, which had gone even more viral. I laughed and drummed on the table. They were much better than the idiots from the video.
Robbie turned his camera around and filmed them. That just made them ham it up more.
"What the —? ” Fred dropped Roberta back to the ground and came around the table. "You kids go on. Get on out of here!" he shouted, waving his arms at them.
Robbie
swung the camera around toward Fred. Fred jerked it out of his hands and threw it. The cameraman cursed Fred and ran over to his camera. His baby.
Giselle bellowed about her nose, the kids sang louder and louder, Roberta hollered for somebody to help her up. It was absolute pandemonium.
In the midst of all this, Nancy Winslow's gritty voice thundered through. "I'll get you for this if it's the last thing I ever do!"
I looked up in time to see her take a huge swing with a baseball bat directly at Fred's head. Some of the teenagers were still laughing and singing; the rest screamed. Giselle screamed, too. I ducked under the table. My momma didn't raise no fool.
Zach tackled Nancy, knocking her off balance so that the blow with the baseball bat hit Fred in the shoulder instead of the head. They banged into the table and the bat smacked down hard, right above my head. I scrunched down tighter, hoping and praying that they didn't destroy my equipment.
"Stop that! Give it to me!” Zach yelled. He wrenched the bat out of Nancy's hands and tossed it under the table right beside me.
Fred lay on the ground, moaning. The kids were hiding behind cars, screaming. Giselle and Robbie yelled at each other over whose fault it was that they weren't getting this on video. Roberta hollered for somebody to help her up. The account manager was nowhere to be seen. Her momma evidently didn't raise no fool either.
Nancy, who's almost as big as Zach, grabbed him around the neck and choked him. "Give me back my bat! I'm gonna kill him! I'm gonna kill you!" she screamed.
I grabbed the baseball bat and swung it out, knocking her feet out from under her. She went down with a loud thud, pulling Zach on top of her.
In the background? Roberta. "Where did the music go? Why'd you turn off the music?" she said.
Believe it or not, when the police came, no one was arrested. For God only knows what reason, Fred refused to press charges against Nancy. Fred told Robbie to send him a bill for the damage to the camera and the cameraman agreed, so no charges were filed for that. either. Eventually, Robbie and Giselle left, still screaming at each other. The teenagers, evidently scared out of their wits, had taken off as soon as they heard the sirens.
Fred's shoulder was badly bruised, but not broken. He locked up the shop, bundled Roberta into his car, and they drove off, presumably headed for their house. Nancy Winslow slithered off toward her car dealership. My co-worker finally reappeared from wherever she'd been holed up, loaded up our undamaged equipment, and went back to the station. The last thing I heard her say was something about changing careers.
That left Zach and me. We leaned against the table I'd been using, staring at our feet. Shell-shocked.
"What just happened here?" I asked him.
He shrugged. "I'm not real sure. Dad and Nancy have been having a feud off and on for a few months. Maybe it had something to do with that. Or maybe it had to do with that cop going over to talk to her after she brought Dad back."
"How come he didn't press charges? I mean, she tried to hit him with a baseball bat! She could have killed him!"
Zach bounced on the balls of his feet. "It's a real complicated relationship between those two. I'd rather not go into it right now." He bent down and picked up some loose gravel and began tossing it up in the air.
"By the way," he said, "thanks for what you did. Nancy was choking me so hard that I couldn't breathe." He dropped the pebbles to the ground and wiped his hands on his shirt.
"No problem. I couldn't let her kill you guys." I grinned at him. "If y'all were dead, I might not get paid for doing the remote."
Zach chuckled. "Yeah, well, thanks anyway."
I turned my head so I could look at his face better. How come I'd never noticed before just how nice he is to look at? He looks exactly like what Fred must have looked like about twenty-five years ago: thick dark brown hair, those crystal blue eyes, and a great body.
I've always known Zach, maybe that was the problem. Familiarity. In fact, I couldn't remember ever not knowing him. His birthday is the day before mine, and our moms were even in the hospital at the same time. We also have a lot of other stuff in common, most important among them being that we both hate Ricky Ray Riley.
The girl that Ricky Ray dumped me for -- and ran off to Nashville with -- was Zach's fiancé at the time. In spite of all that, we've never really been friends. Maybe it was time to change things.
I checked my watch. Uh oh. It was eight-fifteen. "Wanna go to Pilazzo's with me?"
"Yeah. I could use a beer or two." He rubbed his hands over his head. “Man, what a zoo this town is turning into."
I laughed. "I guess that makes me the head zookeeper."
He gave me an odd look. "What?"
"You know, first I find Wart's body in a trash can. A few hours later, I participate in a riot. Never mind. It was a stupid analogy."
He smiled and twinkled. "You're the prettiest zookeeper I've ever seen."
I felt my face flush. "Yeah, right."
He reached over and softly ran his finger down the side of my face. "Yeah. Right."
My heart skipped a beat. At least it felt like it did."Let's go," I said, my voice just a little bit hoarse.
9
Ah, Pilazzo's! An abandoned gas station until two guys I grew up with got the bright idea to open a combination bar-pizza parlor-pool hall, it's practically my home-away-from-home. You can still smell a faint odor of gasoline, and when it rains the outside patio turns into a rainbow colored oil slick. It's always chilly in the winter, hot in the summer, and the walls look like they're coated with axle grease.
I love it anyway. I don't know why. I mean, I'm not a barfly or anything like that -- I don't drink much, maybe an occasional beer or glass of wine. Okay, I guess I do know why. Food. We're talking the best pizza this side of Chicago. Overstuffed sub sandwiches. Half-pound ground sirloin burgers on Kaiser rolls. Awesome potato soup. It makes me hungry just thinking about it.
The bonus is that I can pretty much count on knowing ninety percent of the people there at any given time. Plus, the owners let me bartend whenever I need money. What more could I ask for?
Well, I guess it might be nice if everybody in the place didn't always know my business. I probably wouldn't complain if they all loved Ricky Ray a little less, either. I mean, it is a little irritating that they have giant posters of him stuck all over the walls and that the sign out front says 'Pilazzo's: Home of Ricky Ray Riley'. And really, you have to admit, twelve Ricky Ray songs on the jukebox is just plain overkill.
As usual, one was playing – “Hot-Blooded Mama, Gives Me the Chills” -- when Zach and I arrived. The front room was crowded for a Monday night. All ten stools that sit in front of the bar and all the chairs at the three round tables crammed into the tiny room were taken. People stood in little clusters, chattering and laughing. The air was thick with noise. Instant headache.
I tapped Zach on the arm. He bent his head down so that he could hear me over the blare.
"I'm going to go see if I can find something for this headache," I said. He nodded and winked at me, causing me to forget what I was going to say next.
The song ended and it was like being caught talking in the middle of church. I looked around. Half the people in the place were staring at us. The rest of them had their heads together, furiously whispering and slyly eyeing us. I glanced at Zach and he shrugged. Someone stuck a quarter in the jukebox and George Teoria’s “I Thought I'd Found Heaven the Day that I Found You” blasted out.
Zach put his mouth close to my ear. Really close. "Ignore them. They've probably heard about you finding Wart's body. You wanna beer?" His lips brushed against my cheek.
I stammered out a yes and nodded. If he kept this stuff up, I was going to be in some serious trouble before the night was over.
"Meet you on the patio." I nodded again and we split up, Zach going for beer, me searching for aspirin. And a little self control.
He was right about everybody knowing about Wart. Bad news travels fast in a place
like Glenvar; in a city of twenty thousand you don't really know everybody, but sometimes it sure seems like it. Especially when your name is Marty Sheffield and your Mom just happens to be Miss Popularity.
The word had also gotten out about Fred being taken in for questioning. Every two steps someone stopped me and asked if he was guilty. The rumors were also flying around pretty fast and furious. The one I heard most frequently – jokingly thrown out there by some guys who made a bet about whether or not they could get it to be taken seriously - was that Wart had been killed by the CIA because he found secret documents proving that the proposed golf course was really going to be an alien landing site.
I finally managed to reach the swinging doors leading into the big kitchen that had been added to the back of the building. I went in there and snagged some otc pain medicine from the manager's desk. Next stop, the patio. Instead of fighting my way past the crowd, I used the door that exits from the kitchen. One of the perks of being a sometimes-employee.
It was a lot quieter out there and not nearly as crowded. Tim sat at a black wrought iron table with a bunch of cops, including Detective Luray. The table was piled up with dirty dishes and empty soda glasses.
"Hey, Marty," Tim said. "You remember Detective Luray? I think you know everybody else."
"Hi, y'all. How's it going?" I asked.
A chorus of 'just fine', 'how are you', and 'hey there' greeted me back. I pulled up a wrought iron chair and squeezed in between Tim and the detective.
"They're just grabbing a quick bite to eat before heading back to work," Tim said. He smiled at the detective. "No rest for the weary."
She smiled back and then looked at me. "Tim's the only lucky one in this bunch. He gets to go to bed tonight. The rest of us have a murder to solve. How are you holding up, Miss Sheffield?"
"Fine, thanks. And please, it's Marty."
She stuck out her hand. "Theresa."
I shook her hand and we made small talk for a few minutes. She was new to the area, had only been on the force for six months. I told her how impressed I'd been with her handling of Fred.
The Doom Diva Mysteries Books 1 Page 5
