Sweetheart Deal

by Claire Matturro

  “You’ve got to get that guardianship, now, if we have to go over to Judge Parker’s house and drag him out of bed, and we’ve got to get Dr. Hodo on the case,” I said. “We can’t wait till Monday. Do you have the judge’s home phone number?”

  “Nope, his home phone is unlisted. But Judge Parker will be at Mule Day tomorrow, we can talk to him then,” Dan said. “He never misses it.”

  Oh great, petitioning a slow-moving judge at a mule festival. A mule festival I hadn’t made up my mind to go to. But if I wanted to get a minute or two with the good judge in a social setting, Mule Day looked like my best bet. Especially since Judge Parker wasn’t going to be holding office hours on Saturday.

  “I’m going to spend the night, you can go on,” Dan said. “I reckon it’s my turn, and nobody’s gonna make me leave this time. Shalonda can’t stay all the time. She’s got to help Demetrious get his mules ready for tomorrow. And she’s got to sleep. And she deserves some time on her own. She helps us, so we’ve got to help her.”

  Everybody was so busy helping everybody, I thought, that maybe they had lost track of the fact some bad stuff was going on.

  chapter 30

  While it’s true, as Hank Williams sang, that none of us gets out of this world alive, I did hope to get away from the hospital alive.

  Perhaps that was overly optimistic.

  Too weary to be alert in the dim hospital parking lot, I fumbled in my purse, looking for my Honda key, and wondered why a place that charges $20 for a $2 pill couldn’t afford better lights.

  Before I could quite get my fingers around my keys, someone grabbed my purse off my shoulder, shoved me hard enough that I crashed to the ground, and took off running. Stunned, I sat for a second in a puddle of gravel before I struggled to my feet and shook myself off.

  My purse, damn it. My keys. My money. Nobody steals my purse without at least getting a fair fight, I thought, and charged after the shadowy figure, screaming my lungs out. Despite his head start, I would have caught him too, but another man grabbed me. As I tried to fight my way out of his grasp, I finally recognized the voice. It was Hank, and he was trying to calm me down.

  “Lilly, Lilly, stop. That man might have a gun. Or a knife. I’ll call 911, but nothing in your purse is worth getting hurt over.”

  Only a man would say that, I thought, and gave one more big struggle before Hank’s calming voice and strong grip made me give up.

  Of course, my cell phone was locked in my car and my mugger now had my car keys. And of course, Hank didn’t have a cell phone. So, by the time he pulled me back to the hospital entrance and dragged me inside, the thief had had enough time to get across the Florida state line, and I was not happy that big, strong Hank had not chased the man down with me instead of stopping my pursuit.

  While I sputtered and cursed and voiced my myriad complaints without one whit of reserve, Hank dialed 911. Then practicalities began to surface in my consciousness. I hoped the credit card companies had all-night 800 numbers to report lost cards. Quickly, I did an inventory. Worse than losing my cash and credit cards, the tape of the Deer Den manager offering me a modest menu choice of illegal turtle eggs or illegal fish eggs was in my purse, and now gone. And the camera.

  I had officially nothing to give to Demetrious, and nothing to show for a very long night.

  Oh, except for a really fine dining experience at Annier’s Courtyard, where they had let me inspect the kitchen, and where they did have vegetarian dishes that even I liked, topped off with an excellent wine list. Even Simon’s incessant adverb abuse hadn’t ruined my meal.

  While I was still grumbling to Hank about his utter lack of warrior spirit, Demetrious drove up. No siren. Just a tired, unhappy-looking man. Dragging. I knew the feeling.

  All I wanted to do now was get the police thing over with and go home, shower, and collapse into bed. But first we had to go through all that pointless stuff about the purse snatching, I had to confess I’d lost the Deer Den evidence, and then I had to ask Demetrious for a ride home, since I didn’t have my car keys.

  “Well, let’s ride over and check on the car, and then I’ll take you home, and we can get a locksmith out here tomorrow. No point calling one this late,” Demetrious said, and I had to admire the man for not fussing at me for failing to bring the recorder and camera straight to him, instead of first finishing up my share of a couple of bottles of wine and a fine meal with Simon, plus getting a foot rub.

  Hank, who had hovered discreetly enough to pretend to give Demetrious and me some privacy, popped back into our space. He said, since his car was parked near mine, he’d ride over with us for the company. As if we were chipper. As if the parking lot was that vast.

  But at my car, a bigger problem presented itself.

  Every door to the vehicle was wide open, and the trunk lid was up.

  “Damnation and hellfire,” I shouted. The thief had quickly put my stolen car keys to good use, and right under Demetrious’s nose.

  “You sound just like your granddaddy used to,” Hank said. “That’s what he always said.”

  Ignoring that nostalgic footnote on my family history, Demetrious said not a word, but got out his flashlight and humped around the car from all directions, as if the thief might be hiding somewhere in the shadow cast by my Honda.

  This was bigger than losing my purse. Much bigger, I thought, as I looked into the now mostly empty Honda trunk. The hiding place of the original set of Willette’s most important papers.

  Just in case I’d missed them in my first look, I grabbed Demetrious’s flashlight and I stuck my head way down into the trunk.

  But Willette’s papers were gone.

  While Demetrious took his flashlight back, and asked what was missing from the trunk, I had the satisfaction of thinking: Good thing two sets of copies of Willette’s important papers were hidden at Dan and Patti’s house.

  Then I realized my doubled-bagged collection of Willette’s prescription-pill bottles, which I had stashed in the trunk, was also missing. Damn, damn, damn, I thought, now Jubal wouldn’t be able to help me find the person supplying my mother with drugs.

  For good measure, I rooted around in the glove compartment, discovered my cell phone and lock picks were still there, as were my wet wipes and detailed Honda-maintenance records.

  So what was the thief after? Pill bottles, tape recording, camera, important papers—or just my pocket change and my credit cards and whatever might have been in the car and trunk the thief could hock for money?

  Uh-oh, like an unmerry little parade, still another unhappy thought pranced toward me.

  What if Jubal really had been Willette’s drug dealer and just volunteered to help me poke into the Tru Blue computer as a means to hide his own trail? I mean, I know there are regulations, federal, state, and no doubt local, that make pharmacists practically have to take a video of every narcotic pill they handle or sell or dispose of, but there was a cunning criminal element that was very adept at getting the kind of pills they wanted for personal consumption or black-market sales.

  Maybe Jubal had a business on the side.

  Maybe he didn’t want me finding out he was Willette’s dealer, and he had been after those pill bottles.

  “Where’s your father?” I asked, staring hard at Hank.

  “Over there, badgering Simon about something. Probably that resort. He’s got a bug up his…sorry, ma’am. Daddy’s just in a snit and he’s seeing if Simon, being a nearby landowner, has any ideas.”

  I looked over where Hank had pointed. In the shadows of the front door of the hospital, I could see two men talking, one waving his hands all about.

  If I could see them from my Honda, then couldn’t they see my Honda? I mean, why hadn’t they noticed someone breaking into my car and done something to stop it? Was the much-touted Southern chivalry dead, or what? “So they were pretty helpful while somebody was emptying out my trunk,” I said, possibly a bit more snippy than Hank deserved.

  “Simon
just stepped outside a couple of minutes ago. Daddy caught up with him after you and Demetrious finished up. By that time, I reckon your purse was already stolen, and the car gone through.”

  Well, okay, it was an excuse of sorts.

  “Let’s walk over and chat with them,” I said, and started walking.

  So, that’s what I did, despite the protests of both Hank and Demetrious.

  Naturally, neither Jubal nor Simon had seen a thing, heard a thing, or suspected a thing, and both were just really glad I wasn’t hurt, et cetera, et cetera. And nobody knew how to hot-wire my Honda so I could drive it back to Dan’s house, not even Demetrious. You’d think they’d teach how to hot-wire at the police academy, but no.

  Thus, after that further waste of time, I let Demetrious drive me home.

  After all, tomorrow was shaping up as a busy day. As soon as the locksmith got me new keys to my car, I would have to go to Mule Day to track down and convince the good judge to let my brother make all of Willette’s legal decisions for her. Plus all that other stuff I had to do.

  Yeah, okay, I was being naive, given that it was midnight in the small town of good and eerie. Sure, it was entirely probable I should have done something more, but as it was, my world had reduced itself to a single, fundamental fact: Get some sleep or die.

  So, I went to bed.

  chapter 31

  As the small towns of the South watched more of each generation of their children move away to the great cities, watched their industries of pickles, paper, and textiles relocate to third-world countries, watched their family farms being crushed by the mega–farm corporations, development, and rising fuel costs and taxes, and watched their place as the butt of the only acceptable ethnic jokes still tossed about the media—redneck being an ethnic group, if you ask me—the small-town Dixie chambers of commerce rallied back.

  Damn near every one of them now has some festival, from Swine Time to Mule Day to Rattlesnake Round-Up, into which the civic leaders pour their efforts and their enthusiasm and their hopes.

  And so it was that I woke, anxious and fatigued and sore of joint and heart, but with a certain excitement. It was Mule Day.

  Despite the chaos and calamity that had clamored down about me of late, I finally decided to go. Hey, it was Mule Day, okay? And I hadn’t been in twenty years. And, more important, I had to find that judge.

  Except, wouldn’t you know it, the only locksmith in Bugfest had a mule in the parade, and couldn’t come rescue my Honda from its keyless state of inertia. I had to call locksmiths in an ever-widening circle until I found one in Tallahassee, who, for an exorbitant sum of money, would indeed come thirty miles up the canopy road, cross the state line, and do whatever he had to do to re-create a car key for me.

  Naturally, this took frigging forever.

  Thus, I missed the bulk of the excitement of Mule Day.

  I missed the parade, the rodeo, and, more interestingly, the unintended and unscheduled highlight of the day: A big fight between Demetrious and Lonnie and the vile-mouthed Colleen, including cussing, stomping, and out-and-out punching. That is, punching between the menfolk. And though I had missed witnessing this spectacle with my own eyes, pretty much everybody I saw afterward gave me a blow-by-blow description.

  But I didn’t know about the fight when I drove my Honda with its new and expensive key up to the mule festival grounds just barely in time to capture the apt attentions of one good Judge Parker.

  Given the dwindling crowd by the time I got there, I was able to park within a mile of the event, and huffed my way forward in a totally cool pair of tooled red leather cowboy boots that I didn’t figure Patti would mind too much if I borrowed from way in the back of her closet.

  I found my sister-in-law fixing to chomp down on a fried Oreo cookie. “Wow, you missed it,” Patti Lea said. “Colleen cussed out Shalonda and then Lonnie cussed out Demetrious and next thing anybody knew they were hitting each other like schoolboys whose mothers hadn’t brought them up right. Demetrious is all right, but a bunch of his deputies had to pull him off Lonnie.”

  “Is Shalonda all right?” I asked, eyeing the fried trans-fat-and-flour combination in Patti’s hand.

  “Oh, all right, considering. I had to give her a hug, and a tissue, but at least nobody hit her.”

  Patti moved the fried dough closer to her mouth.

  “You really should not eat that,” I said. “That oil in the deep fryer is probably used over and over. It’s an established scientific fact that old oil repeatedly heated to high temperatures becomes carcinogenic, did you know that?”

  When I annotated my initial warning to Patti on the ill-advised nature of eating such a thing, she gave me a hard look that ended up at my feet.

  “Those are Tony Lamas,” Patti said, looking at her boots on my feet.

  “Oh, I noticed. And they fit me just wonderfully. Thank you for letting me borrow them.”

  Patti Lea looked me right in the face and took a big bite of that fried cookie.

  Well, fine then, you can eat poison-fried poison if you want to, I thought. Just then Bobby and Becky ran up.

  “Wow, did you see it?” Becky said. “Demetrious about beat the tar out of that Lonnie, and then when his own deputy men had to pull him off of Lonnie, Demetrious told Lonnie somebody needed to teach him and his wife some manners.”

  “Reckon Demetrious would teach me to fight like that?” Bobby asked no one in particular.

  While Patti started a little speech about the evils of fistfights, I pulled Becky off to the side. “Do you know Judge Parker?” I asked her.

  “Everybody knows Judge Parker,” she said.

  Well I didn’t, and Dan hadn’t, but I let that slide. “Come on, then, you can help me find him and introduce me.” And we started off down the block, leaving Patti pontificating on the value of personal pacifism, while Bobby fidgeted and shifted foot to foot, waiting for his chance to bolt after Becky.

  It wasn’t, after all, an improper ex parte communication with a judge if I were to tackle Judge Parker into a conversation about Dan’s legal guardianship for Willette, since I wasn’t the attorney of record, just an anxious next of kin. And how could the judge possibly refuse to chat with me when such a charming young woman as Becky would be introducing us?

  “Afterward,” I said to Becky, “let’s find Shalonda and make sure she is really all right.”

  “Oh, I think Shalonda and Demetrious might’ve left. Wow, you should have seen it. Demetrious was just about as mad as I’ve ever seen anybody get. That Colleen called Shalonda a really bad word. And Demetrious just jumped right in there to her rescue and hit Lonnie right smack in the face.”

  “You saw this?”

  “Everybody saw it.”

  Well, except me, thanks to the slowness of that Tallahassee locksmith.

  “Think Bobby would do that for me?” Becky asked. “Defend me?”

  “In a minute,” I said, without thinking it through. As it turned out, I wasn’t far off the mark.

  chapter 32

  A circle of nice, professional men surrounded the bed of my frail mother, nodding and saying pointless things.

  “It’s really quite simple,” I said, trying but failing to keep the tart out of my tone. “Judge Parker appoints Dan as Willette’s legal guardian. No one is objecting. All the paperwork is done.” I wisely controlled myself from pointing out Judge Parker could have and should have already done this a couple of days before.

  “Is anyone objecting?” Judge Parker asked, as if I hadn’t already told him nobody was, and I would have been stupid enough to tell a lie that easily discovered. Nonetheless, we all turned to Dr. Weinstein. If he had the bad taste to say anything, I was prepared to strike him down with my prepared speech, pointing out that he had no standing to object.

  “Certainly, it is not my place to object to Dan being her legal guardian, but I insist Mrs. Cleary remain in this hospital until she is stable enough for a transfer,” Dr. Weinstein said.

>   Okay, he’d played his cover-your-ass card, and I turned back to the judge. “As you can see, Your Honor, Willette is not competent, and Dan is her most trusted son, and no one objects, and—”

  “All right, Miss Lilly, all right,” Judge Parker said.

  It was entirely possible all right just meant shut up, but I took it for a positive ruling and whipped out the paperwork and a pen from where I’d stashed them on Willette’s bedside table. “Here.”

  “This is most irregular,” the judge said.

  But he signed it when I stood between him and the door out and waggled the pen under his nose, my body language as clear as pig Latin to a ten-year-old.

  Dan was now officially Willette’s legal guardian.

  “Dr. Weinstein, thank you for your services,” I said. “But Dr. Hodo is now Willette’s treating physician. You got that, Simon?”

  “What I heard was Judge Parker appoint Dan, not you,” Dr. Weinstein said.

  Dan looked at me, then turned back to Dr. Weinstein. “You can go now. Dr. Hodo is going to take care of Willette.”

  The stocky doctor with the spiky hair turned and left the room.

  Finally. Why had I left this to Dan and his lady lawyer in the first place? I verbally kicked myself for half a second for not taking charge sooner, on the well-established principle that the only way to get something done right is to do it yourself. Though, of course, I had chased the elusive judge about town before Becky cornered him for me that afternoon at Mule Day. Becky’s mom the lawyer and Dan had just been too damn polite about it, but Becky was a child after my own sense of initiative. All it had taken was my two-minute explanation to Becky about what I was up to, and her sweet introduction of me as her boyfriend’s aunt to Judge Parker at Mule Day. First Becky oohed and aahed over the judge’s mule winning a second place—second, it turned out, to Demetrious’s Big Beauty’s blue ribbon in the overall-great-mule category. Then Becky did a sensitive-teen, all-worried-about-Bobby’s-distress-over-his-grandmother thing, and I did my demure, dutiful-daughter persona, a role I had actually never bothered to try on before. In no time at all, we two convinced one Judge Parker to come by the hospital that very afternoon and observe Willette.