When Bonnie arrived at Lloyd’s, he was waiting outside.
He ambled up to the car and leaned onto the open window. “So did she say what they did on Squirrel Creek?”
Avoiding the stick shift, Bonnie slid across into the passenger seat, inviting Lloyd to drive. “Wilma didn’t know, but damn, Lloyd, what about it? Witherspoon, Furby, and Trotter all out on Squirrel Creek at the right time, probably drinking, probably up to no good.”
As he sat, Lloyd shoved a pinch of Copenhagen under his lower lip. “And you think they ran into Leo?”
“Absolutely, and I wouldn’t put it past either Witherspoon or Furby to do a number on a homosexual.”
Lloyd flicked the last few grains of tobacco out the window. “And now Furby’s dead.”
“You betcha. Somehow Rattlesnake got wind of what those three did, and he’s going after them one at a time.”
Lloyd inhaled deeply and sighed. “I know I’m sounding like a broken record, but I got a few problems with this scenario. I mean beyond the fact that Rattlesnake has an alibi.”
Bonnie readied herself to shoot down her friend’s few problems. “Go for it.”
“Last night when we saw Rattlesnake, he was talking to Witherspoon, the two of them laughing like long-lost amigos.”
“Just for show.” She pushed his arm. “If you mean to kill someone, do you tip your hand?”
“Fair enough. What about Leo’s pile of folded clothes? Can you picture any of those three idiots taking the time to fold clothes, especially if they’re drunk?”
Bonnie tugged at her ear. “That one crossed my mind, but hell, it could happen. They might have thought the idea of leaving their victim’s clothes in a neat pile was a hoot and a holler.”
“After putting three holes in his chest? Some hoot.”
“They could have done it before they killed him.”
“I suppose.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Tell me you informed Deputy Hickman of this newest development.”
“Of course, I did. He promised he’d look into it. Include the Colorado Springs police in a search for Spoon’s Trans Am.”
Lloyd scrubbed a calloused hand across his chin. “So if I understand the situation, we have no further responsibilities. We’re not going on the hunt for Witherspoon and Trotter. We’re going to leave police business to the police, at least for tonight?” He put the Subaru into gear and pulled out of his drive.
“I do believe that accurately describes where we stand. Soooooo, what are we going to see?” Bonnie didn’t think Lloyd would really tell her, but she had to try.
Lloyd checked his wristwatch. “Won’t be long now.” The hint of a smile played at the corner of the man’s mouth.
“I’m not going to beg, Whittaker.”
“Never expected you to. How’s the eulogy coming?”
Bonnie groaned. “It’s not. The darned thing swims around in my brain refusing to gel. I mean to tell you, I’m not so sure I’ll have anything come the funeral tomorrow.”
“You’ll do fine. You always land on your feet.”
“From your lips to God’s ear.”
Lloyd slapped the steering wheel. “Speaking of God, I got a call from Xavier.”
Bonnie sighed an it-had-to-happen sigh. “And?”
“Well, what do you think? He started off asking why we kept on going and ignored him.”
“And why did we?”
Lloyd momentarily turned, just long enough to grin mischievously. “You’d have been proud of me. I told him we were late to see Seneca at the fair.”
“Nice, Whittaker. A nice composite of truth and fib. Watch yourself. You’re getting devious in your dotage.”
“It gets better. I filled him in on what happened to the girl, even launching into a spirited rendition of the scene at the fire station.”
Bonnie nodded her approval. “Better, indeed. First you head him off at the pass with a right turn at truth junction, then you slather in a large helping of reality. Was the big man impressed with our activities?”
Lloyd pursed his lips, his expression changing to one of chagrin. “Not enough to forget about asking what you were up to these days.”
Oh, God, tell me you didn’t spill the beans entirely. “And what is Bonnie Pinkwater up to these days?”
“She’s working with the sheriff’s office because Deputy Hickman requested her assistance. I told Xavier you were just the first of Leo’s teachers who were being called in.”
“Bless you. For your final trick, now tell me our esteemed leader isn’t privy to the fact that Leo Quinn had my phone number in his pocket—after a fashion—when he died.”
“He is completely ignorant of that fact. However …”
Bonnie whipped around in her seat to give Lloyd the full brunt of her glower. “No howevers, no unfortunatelies, not even a measly uh-oh.”
“However, he did say he still wanted you to call him and that he intended to give Deputy Hickman a ring.”
Bonnie blew out a full lungful of air. “Things could be worse. Even though I can’t do a damn thing about what Byron will tell the boss man, I can still claim I never received your message. You never saw me.”
Lloyd blanched and shook his head. “Not quite. I let slip about you and me going to the fair tonight. In fact, I got the impression Superintendent Divine might make an appearance.” Lloyd put on his most ingenuous half smile. “You could consider telling the big man the truth.”
“We’ll see.” She nodded toward Seventh Street, the main drive into the fair. “I’m not going to think about any of that now. It’s showtime.”
Just past the fair gate, Bonnie had to quick-step around what appeared to be a trio of maybe twenty-year-old female kindergarten teachers and forty to fifty of their miniscule charges. In pairs, the children held hands, their tiny feet scuffling up a cloud of dust Bonnie absolutely had to put in her rearview mirror.
Good luck with your sanity, dearies.
As much as she had been feeling sorry for herself earlier, she felt even sorrier for these fresh-faced teachers. Sometime that evening at least one child would get sick, maybe wet himself. Certainly there would be tears, whining, and the occasional fight. Truth be told, Bonnie considered children under the age of five card-carrying members of an alien species. Cute with their grapefruit butts, oversized heads and eyes, but certainly nothing more than curiosities. If one could circumvent them, by all means one should.
So much was Bonnie in avoidance mode that she momentarily lost track of Lloyd. She was reluctantly turning back, when she felt a hand grab her at the elbow.
“In here, Bon.” Lloyd held open the door of a gigantic aluminum Quonset hut. He took her arm and led her past a cloud of smoke and the pod of cowboys generating it.
As soon as Bonnie stepped into the building she was assailed by loud canned country music. Dolly Parton’s disembodied voice was singing a sad farewell and promising someone she would always love them. Lloyd put his hand on Bonnie’s back and guided her to a small beer stall.
The music was so insistent Bonnie had to lean close to Lloyd’s ear. “What are we doing in here?”
“You’ll see,” he mouthed, then signaled for the bartender to get them three beers and a basket of popcorn. It seemed they could have any brand of beer they wanted as long as it was Coors. Lloyd handed her the popcorn and a plastic cup brimming with foam.
Dolly finished her good-bye lament, and a male singer launched into a song that entreated everyone to live like they were dying.
Lloyd took a long pull on his beer and crooked a finger for her to follow him. The two of them wove through the crowd—folks toasting one another, an old couple slow dancing next to their table, teenagers tossing popcorn across the heads of their elders. Several long tables added to the obstacle course, and since some of them were at least partially empty, Bonnie wondered where Lloyd was taking her. Finally, he selected one just off the dance floor.
Curiouser and curiouser. Does he mean to ask me to danc
e? She set down her beer on the table and herself next to Lloyd.
Before long, a tall cowboy with an impressive beer gut and what appeared to be a brand-new straw cowboy hat waddled onto a small stage beyond the dance floor.
Bonnie elbowed Lloyd. “That’s Mister Crump. The one I told you about.”
When Lloyd failed to produce the appropriate expression of recognition, she said, “The one who helped me move Furby’s body.”
“Oh, yeah.” Lloyd obviously had more on his mind than Paul Bunyan—sized cowboys.
“Ladies and gents,” Crump drawled into one of two mikes. “I’m going to ask you to put your hands together and welcome onto the Appaloosa Stage, a genuine El Paso County original. Let’s hear it for Swing Town.
Four men led by a woman in a pink cowboy hat and matching bandanna and boots strode onto the stage. Two of the men picked up guitars, a bass and an acoustic, while the other two sat behind a piano and a drum set. The woman, a fiddle at her side, sashayed up to the mike recently vacated by Crump.
“Howdy, music lovers. Like the handsome man said, we’re Swing Town, and I hope we can get you on your feet tonight and onto the dance floor.”
Bonnie felt her back stiffen. She knew that voice. When she turned to Lloyd, he was already staring back at her.
“Say hello to the new Marjorie.”
CHAPTER 12
MARJORIE WHITTAKER JAMMED THE FIDDLE INTO THE crook of her neck and sawed out the bluesy opening licks of “Little Red Rooster.” Her fingers were a blur.
Damn, the woman’s good.
A cheer went up from the audience. Radiating a two-hundred-watt smile, Marjorie took a bow and blew through another quick arpeggio that ran up and down the neck of her violin.
Bonnie leaned across the table. “I knew Marjorie played—I mean I must have seen her a dozen times at parties and such—but damn, Lloyd, the woman’s got game. And she knows her way around the blues. What gives, big guy?”
Lloyd tore his gaze from his erstwhile spouse, giving at least a part of his attention to Bonnie. He pointed with his chin to the piano player, a rotund aging hippie with a long gray ponytail. “When I met Marjorie at Kearney State, she was half of a duet with Chad there. The two of them worked a circuit throughout Kansas and Nebraska. Had been at it for two, almost three years, planning to get married.”
Marjorie sidled up to the mike and belted, “I got me a Little Red Rooster. He won’t crow for the break of day.” She sounded like a smooth blend of Phoebe Snow and Bonnie Raitt.
The piano barrelhoused through an infectious boogie-woogie turn.
Again Marjorie leaned into the mike. “I got me a Little Red Rooster, people. He plum refuses to crow for the break of day.”
This time when Chad’s piano chimed in, Marjorie’s fiddle matched it note for note.
Bonnie turned back to Lloyd. “I would imagine there’s a story in how she ended up as Missus Lloyd Whittaker.”
Her friend nodded. “Chad was a womanizer. Marjorie caught him with a coed and not only ended their engagement, but broke up the act as well. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to pick up the pieces.”
“Must have been hard on her.”
Lloyd shrugged, but a melancholy smile played at the edges of his lips. “I suppose you could say that. But Marjorie’s a tough lady. Chad came around once to try to talk her into finishing the tour, but she let him know she couldn’t be with someone she didn’t trust, not even in business. He found a new partner, and Marjorie stayed with me. I was about to graduate. We got married less than a year later.”
“So how …”
“So how did she end up after all this time in Swing Town?” Lloyd shouted to be heard over the band, which had ratcheted up the noise level.
Marjorie was almost maniacal as she attacked a fiddle lead. The guitar player stood at her side, fanning Marjorie and her instrument with his black cowboy hat as though both the woman and the fiddle might catch fire. As for Missus Lloyd Whittaker herself, she wore a mixed expression of concentration and ecstasy.
Lloyd waved his now empty beer glass toward Chad. “Last May, Swing Town came through the Springs. We went to see them playing on a stage a lot like this one.” Lloyd held up a finger indicating he wanted to listen to the band before he finished his tale.
A roar went up from the crowd as Chad and Marjorie swapped licks, mirroring first one melody line, then another. With each trade-off, the tempo increased. Thrown in, almost casually, were recognizable refrains from other songs, first a revved-up “Somewhere over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz, then an equally accelerated “Wonderful World” à la Louis Armstrong. They finished their exchange and the song with a finale that modulated a series of blues riffs, building “Little Red Rooster” to a crashing crescendo. When the tune ended, Marjorie let loose a wahoo and everyone, including Bonnie, joined in.
Her principal sighed. “She’s more than good, isn’t she? It’s like she was born to it.”
“But she’s your wife; you should be sharing all this.”
Lloyd shook his head. “She’s with Chad now. As I was saying, Swing Town came through last May, and Marjorie begged me to go see them.”
He tipped the glass to his lips, trying to glean the last dregs. “That version of Swing Town was passable, no great shakes, but they didn’t stink up the place. The lead singer, the guitar player now, could carry a tune, but he didn’t really go anywhere with the songs. About halfway through the first set, Chad invited Marjorie onto the stage—seems he brought a fiddle with him.”
Up on Appaloosa Stage, Marjorie launched into a sweet fiddle tune she introduced as “The Lover’s Waltz.” The lilting heartfelt strains of the tune stopped Lloyd speechless. He simply stared at his wife—her eyes closed in rapture. She wasn’t twenty bars into it when the dance floor started to fill. Cowboys holding their ladies close—slow two-step syncopation to the melody and beat.
Lloyd blanched and set down his cup. “This was the first song she did that night. It brought down the house. When it ended, the crowd demanded another.”
“Did she know another?”
“You bet. She’d been tinkering with songs ever since the kids graduated and moved out. I chalked it up to empty-nest syndrome. She’d go down into the basement and spend hours going over tunes she and Chad had done twenty-five years before. She also added new songs, sometimes asking me to listen. Most times I was too busy.” He thumped himself on the side of the head. “I should have listened more.”
You think? Bonnie’s heart went out to her friend. “I take it, she was a hit.”
Lloyd snorted. “You should have seen her. She looked twenty again. So beautiful, her face all lit up and full of life. I think she ended up doing five more songs in that set. When she came back to the table, she absolutely gushed and informed me the band wanted her to return the next night.”
Uh-oh. “What did you say?”
“I can’t exactly remember. Something like, Suit yourself. I begged out of going with her. I had to attend some administrator thingamabob with Xavier. I think it was in Steamboat Springs. Big mistake. I should have seen how much this dealio meant to her. How much she wanted my support.”
I’ll say.
Bonnie felt herself reintroduced to the clueless stupidity of the masculine portion of the human race. Somehow they had no problem demanding unconditional backing from their women but failed to see how that gate should swing in two directions. When it came to being there when they were needed most, a significant fraction of them never stepped up to the plate. Shoot, they failed to recognize a plate even existed.
“Tell me you at least asked her how it went.”
Lloyd shook his head. “When I got back it was late. I was tired. She wasn’t home yet, and I went to bed. I think we talked about it a little in the morning, but I didn’t really listen. Instead, I went on about my conference, my boring conference and the long dull drive with Xavier.”
“And she paid attention, like th
e good wife should.”
Lloyd shot Bonnie a pained look. “You think I haven’t played that morning over and over again in my mind?”
She patted his arm. “I’m sure you have.”
When the waltz ended, so did the conversation. For the next forty minutes, Bonnie and her longtime friend gave their attention to a band that knew their way around a tune—tight when the song called for precision but never forgetting people were there to have fun. Marjorie even told jokes between songs.
Lloyd was right, she seemed born to it.
When Chad broke into the opening bars of the band’s signature song, “Swing Town” by Steve Miller, Lloyd stood.
Bonnie peered up at her principal. “Going somewhere, cowboy?”
Lloyd grunted. “If I’m not mistaken, this’ll be the last song of this set. Going to get me some air. I can’t talk to her right now.” He tilted his chin ever so slightly toward the stage. Bonnie followed his gaze to see Marjorie staring first at her husband, then quizzically at her.
Bonnie could only imagine what Marjorie had to be thinking. “I’ll join you.”
Lloyd rested a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Nah, you stay put. I figure you’re going to want to chat up Marjorie, and it’ll go a lot smoother if I’m not hanging around. I won’t be long, and I won’t be far.” Without another word, he took off through the crowded room and out the double doors.
For a long moment, Bonnie still considered following him, but inertia and a real desire to talk to Marjorie kept her rooted. She needed to hear from the woman’s lips just how bad things had progressed.
Besides, this woman can play, and I need some entertainment that doesn’t include sawdust and horse poop.
The Steve Miller tune ended, and true to Lloyd’s word, the band announced they were going to take a break. Still holding her fiddle, Marjorie made a beeline for Bonnie.
“You look like you’ve been abandoned.”
Bonnie signaled for Marjorie to sit. “It appears that way. How have you been, Marjorie?”
Irrational Numbers Page 11
