Sweetheart Deal

by Claire Matturro

  “You want to tell me what’s going on here?” the sheriff asked me.

  “Jubal just put two mules back inside the fence, and Lonnie Ledbetter is lying in the barn, dead. Beyond that, I don’t know.” Factual, succinct, the perfect answer. The sheriff gave me a look that said he didn’t appreciate it.

  “Where’s Demetrious?” he asked.

  I decided not to answer. After all, I had a right to remain silent, and Shalonda and my Honda had just roared back into the driveway. I turned my back on the sheriff and watched her as she got out of the car and walked toward us.

  “Where’s Demetrious?” the sheriff asked again, and I kept my eyes on Shalonda and willed her to keep silent too.

  “Probably up at his house, minding his own business,” Shalonda said, though not five minutes ago, she’d told me that Demetrious was not answering his phone at the house either. “He didn’t know Lilly and me were coming from town to the barn, or anything. He told me he had a lot of paperwork to do at the house, earlier, that is. I mean, he told me earlier. That he’d be working at the house. No reason for him to be anywhere near his barn.”

  I saw the way the sheriff stared at Shalonda, and decided that the first moment he wasn’t looking at Shalonda, I would have to give her a quick lesson on the art of lying. She was no good at it at all.

  No doubt sensing where the suspicion was landing, Shalonda tried to change the flight pattern. “I’m figuring that barn-burner, Colleen, she’s the sort to dump feed on somebody, even her own husband,” Shalonda said. “She never much acted like she liked him.”

  “Shalonda,” I said, “you’ve had a shock. Maybe you should sit down.”

  And shut up, the words I couldn’t speak in front of the sheriff, but I gave her a look that tried to convey to her that now was a good time to keep her thoughts to herself and keep careful watch. After all, her husband was fixing to be the lead suspect in the death of her lover. And it wouldn’t take much of a leap to rope her into the circle of official suspects.

  And anything you say can and will be used against you.

  chapter 36

  Patti Lea would not hear for one second any version of an idea that Shalonda should wait at her own house for her own husband all by herself.

  So there Shalonda was, in the guest bedroom, sprawled on the bed, stifling her tears for one man and her worry for the other, and sipping green tea, my remedy, laced with Jack Daniels, her remedy, and not a mix likely to make the Bartender’s Guide.

  Patti seemed more than willing to overlook the whiskey and the adultery in light of her friendship with Shalonda, and this from the same woman who had sharply eyed my short dress on a non-date date.

  But if Patti could overlook what were, to her, grievous sins, I could overlook the double standard. And we sat, one on either side of Shalonda, patting her hands, listening, and being what comfort we could. After all, a woman who thinks her husband smothered her lover in mule feed needs a little solace.

  “Lonnie said he was leaving his wife,” Shalonda said.

  Honey, I thought but didn’t say, they all say that. It’s the second biggest lie, right after “Trust me, I wouldn’t lie.”

  “He’s like a cool, big old glass of whiskey, and I’m some fool drunk can’t say no.”

  Well, I guess recent events had ended that addiction.

  “I don’t know where Demetrious is,” she said, gulped down some whiskeyed tea, and confessed she had gone back to seeing Lonnie behind Demetrious’s back. Maybe she was going to leave Demetrious for Lonnie. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she loved Demetrious. Maybe she loved Lonnie. The more whiskey she drank, the vaguer she got.

  But there were a couple of things not vague at all.

  One being the dead man in the barn.

  The next being the fact the phone was ringing. Patti and I ignored it. It stopped, then it rang again. And kept ringing.

  Patti stood up. “I’ll get it,” she snapped, as if it were not her house and that somehow I was supposed to have answered the phone.

  From the other room, I could hear muffled words but no screams or cries, so I figured at least the body count wasn’t going up.

  My sister-in-law stomped back into the room, clearly unhappy, and I said, “What?”

  “Your mother went crazy.”

  “I think we all knew that awhile back.”

  “No, she woke up. That was Dr. Hodo. She woke up from that Thorazine coma, and she just went…crazy. Acting out. Seeing things. Screaming. Fighting everybody. He…Dr. Hodo…called it a…a psychotic break. She even hit Dan when he tried to quiet her down.”

  Frigging great.

  Being an obsessive-compulsive agoraphobic wasn’t good enough for Willette? She had to become psychotic too? And a violent one at that? The self-defense theory might collect some doubters if she kept being violently psychotic.

  “So, what did…did they…what? Tie her up?” I asked.

  “Dr. Hodo ordered a sedative to calm her down. He’s hoping to bring her out of sedation slower in the morning, maybe have less of a reaction.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t suppose Willette had a chance to tell anyone why she shot Ray Glenn?”

  “No, I don’t suppose she did.” Patti gave me one of those looks that let me know she was rethinking being part of the Cleary clan.

  “I better get over there.”

  “I’ll better go with you,” Shalonda said, slurring the words just a hint.

  “I’ll drive,” I said.

  “I’ll wait here,” Patti said. “Somebody needs to be here and field the phone calls.”

  As I spun my little Honda the few blocks to the hospital, I wondered: Now what do we do with Willette, if our choices are catatonic drug stupor or psychotic rage?

  But like a cloak over that worry was a bigger wonderment, one that had been pestering me since I first saw Lonnie’s blue face on the barn floor. Okay, so it’s not like I’m a specially trained forensic scientist or anything, but even Lonnie wouldn’t be stupid enough to stand still while somebody dumped sweet feed on top of him.

  chapter 37

  Here it was, a bright, chilly morning, the day of the Lord, and all through the town of Bugfest, good folks gathered themselves into their Sunday dresses and suits in preparation for church.

  I lay in my bed, like the town drunk, my head pounding and my stomach lurching.

  Yeah, I pretty much woke up this way every Sunday in my undergrad days, but that was because I had an unusually stupid learning curve regarding tequila.

  This Sunday-morning migraine I could lay straight on the doorstep of the cosmic forces that kept raining down Bad Stuff.

  But not on me, per se, but close enough to me that I felt splattered.

  I rose on shaky legs and gulped three Advil and four ginger capsules from the stash in my suitcase, and headed to the kitchen. Coffee. Lots of it. Caffeine, along with Advil and ginger, will sometimes knock out a migraine. And if it didn’t, I’d weigh the risks/benefits of taking a Zomig.

  But the immediate task before me was to consume as much caffeine as I could.

  There was a pot of coffee in the percolator by the sink. A carton of ordinary grocery-store milk. Nothing organic. Nothing fair-trade.

  I took exactly the time it takes to inhale and exhale to decide: Yeah, whatever.

  And poured a cup. Added the milk. Added white sugar. And gulped it, burning my tongue.

  Hot coffee in the cup versus two in the freezer. No question that Coke had been the beginning of a slippery slope backsliding into regular store-bought food laden with whatever. Next thing I knew, I’d be eating pound cake.

  Yeah, whatever. I poured another cup and sat down at the table, picked up the Sunday paper, and read this sad story in the local newspaper:

  Lonnie Ledbetter, county commissioner and local businessman, crossed over Saturday, probably near evening, when a load of feed fell off a trailer on top of him.

  Sher
iff Ronnie T. Wyatt said a load of sweet feed meant for Chief of Police Demetrious Dupree’s mules fell on the victim.

  The incident happened at Dupree’s farm on Dead Possum Road. Dupree’s prized mule, Big Beauty, had taken the Best in Show award, as well as other first-place ribbons, in the Annual Mule Day earlier on Saturday in Canaan.

  In an interview with Sheriff Wyatt, he said no one really knows what happened, all they can do is guess.

  “All we know is, somehow Mr. Lonnie got trapped behind the trailer in feed. We don’t know what time it happened, exactly, but we took a call in the evening.”

  “He was dead right there, wasn’t anything anybody could do,” said a neighbor who didn’t want his name put in the paper. “I came running when I heard all the sirens, but there was nothing any of us could do.”

  At this point, the sheriff says the incident is ruled an accident. Big Beauty, the prize-winning mule, is reported missing. So is Demetrious Dupree, but law enforcement officials refused to comment on this.

  Right after I finished reading this story, Dan and Patti, all spiffy in their Sunday-school clothes in spite of a Saturday night straight from the trials of Job, stuck their heads in the kitchen to say good morning before they left for church.

  “Shalonda’s still asleep, I just checked. You keep an eye on her,” Patti said, as if I were too inconsiderate to have thought of this on my own.

  “Don’t look like you’re planning to go to the church with us, so would you run over and check on Willette? Soon as you can? I mean, after you see to Shalonda,” Dan asked, as if I were the trained social worker instead of Shalonda, the woman still sleeping off her whiskey and personal tragedy.

  I grunted. The vibrations of that sound set off a bouquet of arrows, all razor-sharp and aimed at the soft gray matter right behind my right eyeball.

  Apparently, Dan took this evasive grunt as a yes, and ushered Patti out the door. Their car wasn’t out of the driveway before Becky and Bobby ducked into the kitchen, making me suspicious that they had been waiting and watching for some private one-on-one time with me.

  “We got something we need to tell you,” Bobby said.

  “We’ve talked about it. We figure we can trust you. I mean, you didn’t rat us out about…you know?” Becky added.

  A sprinkle of bright lights, some with a hint of blue, popped in my head, then shot past my eyes in a flash, and I stifled a moan. Migraine auras would be cool, actually, if they didn’t come with pain and nausea. That Zomig was looking better and better.

  Here it was that I had to wonder: Why in the hell was I still in Bugfest?

  I could take a Zomig, gather my belongings, and be home in five hours.

  I ordered my muscles to lift me up from the chair and go forth to pack. But Bobby and Becky stared at me. Yeah, hadn’t they just said they had something they needed to tell me? And yeah, I had to confer with Dr. Hodo this morning about Willette. And I had to keep making sure nobody actually killed her. And we weren’t through cleaning out Willette’s house. And, as a family, we had to decide what to do with her in the long haul. So, I guess I wasn’t running home today in my ancient little Honda. Not just yet. Instead, I steeled myself for teenage confessions. But started on the offensive.

  “Why aren’t you going to church?” I asked, as another round of ziggy bright lights launched their offensive behind my eyes, each bolt of color zooming through my head, pounding the pain deeper into my brain. About that church thing, I didn’t care myself, as I thought God could probably hear any of us anywhere we wanted to pray, given that He could part the Red Sea. But I knew Patti was big on church.

  “Oh, we’re going, later, the eleven o’clock service, you know, but we got to tell you this thing first, what with everything that’s going on, we, er, figured you should know this,” Bobby said. “And then we’ll…er…walk over for Sunday school.”

  Uh-huh, they were playing hooky—from church. Poor Dan and Patti Lea, having a son that had genes and an attitude more in common with his aunt and uncle.

  “We hadn’t told anybody else about this,” Becky said.

  Figuring on a full tree-house confession, I geared up for a Safe-Sex and Anti-Drug antidote to their anticipated admission of sin, but before any of us could say anything more, the doorbell rang.

  The three of us lumbered into the living room and opened the door.

  There stood Armando, the squat teenage son of my loyal secretary, Bonita, whom I had left house-sitting my place on Tulip Street. Armando had Johnny Winter, his albino ferret, wrapped around his neck.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him. Okay, so, “How are you?” or “Are you all right?” would have been better openings, but after all, this was a surprise, and my head really did hurt.

  “I rode the bus all night to get here,” Armando said, then glanced at Becky and straightened up his adolescent slouch.

  I wondered how he’d convinced the bus driver to let Johnny come too, then I thought to ask him, “Is everything all right? Is anybody hurt?”

  Ignoring my question and thereby raising both my already off-the-charts anxiety and the sharp, insistent throbbing inside my skull, Armando said, “I Yahoo-mapped the way to your brother’s house, directions right to the door, and I walked from the bus station.”

  Becky edged closer to the ferret.

  “It’s kinda cute,” she said.

  The way Armando looked at Becky told me he thought she was kinda cute. The way Bobby looked at Armando told me Bobby had noticed the way Armando was looking at Becky.

  Frigging great, my own adolescent As the World Turns.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Is everybody all right? Are you all right? Is your mother all right?”

  “Mom is going to marry that Henry man, and it’s all your fault and you’ve got to stop it,” he said. He looked like he might hit me.

  “Can I hold him?” Becky asked, apparently missing the budding drama and the potential violence, as she reached for Johnny.

  “Sure,” Armando said, his pugilistic tone wholly mellowed for the cute blond girl, and he unwrapped the wary animal from around his neck as Bobby edged protectively toward Becky.

  Wow, I thought, so Bonita had made up her mind. Finally. After a courtship of what? Three years? I was glad, I started to beam, then I saw Armando glare at me again.

  “You’ve got to stop her,” he said, the pugilistic tone recaptured.

  “I couldn’t stop her if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. Henry is a good man, a fine man. He’s honest, and reliable, and he’s—”

  “He’s not my dad,” Armando said.

  Johnny curled in Becky’s arms, and oonked at her. “What happened to your dad?” she asked.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Now draped with Johnny, Becky inched forward and gave Armando an honest-to-gosh hug. Armando had clearly never been hugged by a cute girl, and he froze, rock-still, and for the first time in the many years I’d known this tough little guy, he looked plain old-fashioned scared to death.

  “Hug her back,” I whispered, but then I saw Bobby jump toward Becky and take her arm and tug on it.

  I had the feeling I wasn’t going to hear Bobby and Becky’s confession this morning.

  Becky let Bobby lead her off a few steps before she stopped, and with eyes full of young-blond-girl wisdom, she smiled back at Armando and said, “I’ve had three stepdads, and it’s not so bad. They buy you stuff, and this last one was trying real hard to be my friend. Always asking me about school and what I thought about stuff. Used to come into my bedroom at night and talk about what was going on with me and my friends. Gave me a ruby ring, that’s my birthstone. It’s a real little stone, but it’s still a real ruby. But I reckon he wasn’t so good to my momma, ’cause she flat run him off. But I got to keep my ruby. So I think if Aunt Lilly thinks this Henry is a good guy, you ought not to fuss so over it.”

  Oh wait. When did I become Becky’s Aunt Lilly? Was she already co
nsidering herself part of Bobby’s family? But before I could chime in on that note, Bobby, not to be left out, said, “I don’t have a stepdad. But I got a good friend whose real dad ran off and his momma married this new man who drives a yellow Mustang convertible and he’s teaching my friend to drive it. Does Henry have a cool car?”

  “He drives a minivan,” Armando said, the contempt clear in this tone.

  “Oh, too bad,” Bobby said.

  “I bet if you ask him to, he’d trade for something cool and let you drive it. They try real hard at first to get along with you, to the point they’d do stuff like that,” Becky said. “You could talk him into getting a cooler car. I can tell you exactly how to. The trick is—”

  “Does Bonita know where you are?” I asked, wanting to remind them that I was still there and to cut off Becky’s lessons on manipulating adults and especially stepfathers. Henry was already easy enough to manipulate. I knew; I’d been doing it for years. And Becky was kind of scary for one still so young, so I wanted to protect Henry the best I could by cutting her off before she taught Armando the step-by-steps.

  “She knows where I am,” Armando said.

  Yeah, right, I thought. Like Bonita would let you take a bus ride to Bugfest by yourself in the middle of the night so you could enlist me in your campaign to disrupt her wedding. She was not that tolerant a mother.

  Rather than challenge him directly, I decided I would just call Bonita. Right then. Besides, all three of the teenagers in Dan’s kitchen, and Johnny too, were giving me a kind of bug-off look, and my stomach was lurching in step with the migraine auras, so I left them to it. Teen counseling clearly wasn’t my calling in this life. Becky was probably going to teach Armando the fine art of manipulating Henry into getting a cool car no matter what I did, so I butted out, went to my room, did my risk-benefit analysis on the Zomig thing in the time it took to unwrap the bubble pack around the $20 pill, swallowed it dry, and pulled out my cell phone to call Bonita.