The Great Catsby

by B K Baxter

  Pulling out my smartphone, I tapped Ethan’s contact. Expecting to get his voicemail as I had the last time, I was caught off guard when his deep voice answered with a husky “Good morning.”

  The reason why I’d called him eluded me at the sound of his amazing drawl.

  “Uh, hi there,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  His chuckle made me feel warm all over. “It’s going. Just calling me for a chat, or did you need something?”

  I really wasn’t prepared to go into what I needed because the images in my head right then were decidedly not appropriate, but I did recall the original reason I’d called. “Actually, I was wondering if you might be free sometime this week to stop by and check something out for me.”

  “Sure. What do you need me to check out?”

  Oh, the things I wanted to say in reply to that questions. “Er, well, I’m not exactly positive.”

  I could hear his confusion over the line even though he said nothing for a few moments. Then came a drawn out, “Okayyyyyy.”

  “Sorry, I know I’m not making much sense. Long story short, there’s a noise in my house that sounds like the banshee’s southern cousin. Although I’m a fan of haunting gothic tales, I doubt there’s a spectral entity roaming the halls of my house.”

  Ethan laughed. “Sounds like maybe your furnace is having a conniption.”

  “Maybe so. When can you stop by?”

  “Let me check my schedule and I’ll text you and let you know.”

  “Thank you.”

  His voice dropped an octave, making my toes curl. “Jade, if it is the banshee’s cousin, make sure you read the Bible backwards to stave off its evil cry. Best to use a southern accent, though, so the banshee’s cousin can understand you.”

  It was my turn to chuckle. “I thought it was Gone with the Wind I was supposed to read backwards. Good thing you warned me.”

  I hung up, a smile on my face, and not just because of the silly southern superstition joke.

  I felt Chonks swishing through my legs and looked down at him. “Okay, furball. Your new best friend will be over later this week.”

  Chonks purred loudly in approval.

  Chapter 14

  The trailer looked like it was held together entirely by rust. A few random items dotted the yard, a tractor tire, some cinderblocks, and a birdbath full of brown water. In the driveway sat the food truck, silent and empty.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  Char shook her head. “No. But how else are we going to figure out what Tabby was holding over Vince’s head? It’s not like Vince is going to tell us.”

  Another run-in with Tammy Carter wasn’t something I was looking forward to. There was something off about the woman, besides her penchant for the dramatic. Women like Tabby weren’t born into a vacuum. I had a feeling Tammy might not have been the perfect mother.

  Before we could get out of the car, the front door of the trailer opened and Tammy walked out, her arms laden with a box that was overflowing with hamburger buns. She tossed it to the ground next to the food truck and opened the truck’s side door with a big jerking motion.

  We got out of the car and walked across the lawn. I was mindful for any hidden dangers that could be lurking in the crab grass as we crossed.

  Tammy turned around, a suspicious look on her face. “Can I help you girls with something?”

  I waved as Char put on a bright smile. “Hi, Miss Carter. We came to pay our respects. Your daughter was a part of our book club.”

  Tammy’s expression went from suspicious to disbelieving. “Book club? Tabby ain’t the type to join any kind of club, especially one for books.”

  Char went charging past that fact, trying to pull Tammy past her doubt. “It’s a shame about the funeral being private and all. Her book club friends weren’t able to say our last goodbyes.”

  “Take that up with Vince Means,” Tammy barked.

  “How did Vince behave at the funeral?” I asked. “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”

  Tammy looked me up and down. “You were at the refinery the other day, weren’t you?”

  I nodded. “You said you thought Vince was responsible for what happened to your daughter.”

  Nodding, Tammy slammed the door shut on the food truck. “That man’s slicker than a river snake. He ain’t afraid to do what it takes to get his way, even if it ain’t exactly legal.”

  “Do you have proof?” Char asked, causing Tammy to let out a burst of angry laughter.

  “Proof? Come on, girl. You know he’s too smart for that. Vince covers his tracks.”

  I frowned. “Does Vince know you think he killed your daughter?”

  “Vince don’t give a damn what I think. Neither did Tabby, for that matter. It’s probably the only thing those two agreed on.”

  “It seems strange that they would get married if they didn’t get along.” This was from Char, who tried to inject genuine confusion into her voice, but I wasn’t sure if Tammy would buy it.

  Tammy pulled out a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and lit one up. Taking a long draw, she blew out a cloud of contemplative smoke. “Anyone could see what Tabby wanted out of the marriage. Money. Clout. Respect.” Another long inhale, another smoky exhale. “Vince? Well, his hormones was leading him around by the… you know.”

  “Still doesn’t mean he had to marry Tabby,” Char replied. “As much as Jesus might not approve, plenty of men take up with younger women.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Tammy said with more force than expected. She eyed us both. “Y’all were her friends, huh?”

  Char and I nodded in unison, and Tammy pursed her lips. “Tabby ain’t got many friends, mostly because she stabbed them all in the back, or the front, a few too many times. But maybe it was different with y’all.”

  She leaned in, looking around conspiratorially. I felt suddenly like I was in a stage play, and we were in front of some great invisible audience. The feeling was so strong that I even looked around to make sure we were still standing in an overgrown yard filled with debris.

  “Most of the town knew Vince and Tabby were running around together. Hell, Tabby made sure of it. She wanted to be the next Mrs. Means, and she wasn’t afraid to do what it takes to get that title. That’s another thing she had in common with Vince.”

  “What did she have to do?” I asked, almost breathless in anticipation. Tammy knew how to turn a mundane conversation into melodrama, and I was falling under her spell.

  “Only the same thing women have been doing for ages.” Tammy took her hand and moved it in the shape of a semi-circle over her midsection.

  “Tabby got pregnant?” Char asked, surprise evident in her tone. “But they never had a baby.”

  Tammy winked. “She told Vince she was pregnant. What happened to that baby? I don’t know. My money is on it never existing. In any event, it worked. Vince managed a quickie divorce and then Tabby got her white wedding.”

  I realized my mouth was standing open and shut it. The thought that people would lie about something so massive was astounding. No wonder Mercy hated Tabby with a passion. “But even if Tabby was… in the family way… that didn’t mean Vince necessarily had to marry her.”

  Tammy laughed hard enough to set off a coughing fit. “Girl, you know you’re livin’ in the Bible Belt. That means whatever sin goes on below the belt has to be paid for. Folks in town would have blacklisted Vince for not doing right by my daughter. And Tabby would have raised such a stink, it would have been impossible for Vince to sweep it under the rug.”

  “You think Vince could have found out about the fake pregnancy and that’s why he wanted to be rid of Tabby?” Char asked.

  Tammy dropped her cigarette and stepped on the butt to put it out. “I’m sure he had his suspicions, but I don’t think Vince would have bothered. Tabby got what she wanted, so she wasn’t a threat. And one wife is as good as the next with that sort.”

  The implication was that his eye w
ould continue to wander, regardless of who wore the Means wedding ring around her finger. In that regard, Tammy was a very good judge of character, if the lipstick on Vince’s collar was any indication.

  “You said that your daughter had something on Vince, something that would turn the town’s sentiment against him. Do you have any idea what it is?”

  Tammy inhaled and let out a huff of air through her nostrils. “She wouldn’t tell me. That girl and me have had our own issues. But whatever it was, it was big. Big enough for Vince to try and screw me over as well.”

  “What do you mean?” I was so engrossed in her tale that the only thing I was lacking was a box of buttery popcorn.

  “This,” she said, jerking open the food truck door again and leaning inside to dig in a storage container on the floor. She pulled out a piece of crumpled paper and thrust it in my direction.

  Taking hold of it, I tried to straighten it out to get a good look at it. The logo at the top was a stylized M, the script below it announcing the “Means Co.” It was an eviction notice with Tammy’s name on it.

  “He wanted me out by the end of the month. Makes sense that he would wanna get rid of me if he was planning to take my baby out. Didn’t matter that we had a deal. He was still gonna throw me over.”

  “A deal?” Char asked.

  Tammy nodded, opening her mouth to speak, then froze. This was the first time she’d hesitated since we started our conversation. “Yeah, a deal for this property. It was tied to the food truck here. I agreed to park it at his place exclusively during the lunch hour, and in exchange, he discounted my rent.”

  I didn’t know Tammy well, but I knew she was holding something back. She grabbed the notice back, tossed it in the truck, and slammed the door once again. “Anything else you girls need? I gotta get dinner in before my man gets home from work.”

  “This is an awkward question,” Char said, “so forgive me if you think it’s rude, but do you think Tabby could have been seeing anyone else?”

  Tammy chuckled, pursing her lips. “Honey, I’m sure she was. That girl was always runnin’ around with boys. She started chasing Vince when her and Jimmy were still together. And I even seen her flirt with my man. That stunt got her put out of my house.”

  “Any idea who she might have been seeing?” I asked, amazed at the sort of dynamic Tabby and her mother must have had.

  “Take your pick from any of the eligible guys in town. Even the ineligible ones.” She looked at her phone and frowned. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta get going.”

  “Thank you for your time,” I said, then felt like an idiot for saying it. Char and I returned to the car while Tammy hustled into the house and shut the door behind her.

  “Well, that was a whole lotta nothing,” Char said as she fastened her seatbelt.

  “You think so?” I asked.

  She nodded. “It’s all speculation or hearsay, no hard proof.”

  “What about the eviction notice? It does line up with what Ethan overheard.”

  “But there’s no way to say how it’s relevant. And I didn’t buy whatever ‘deal’ she said she had with Vince. Why would he discount her rent to have her park her food truck at the refinery? Where else does she think she could make any money with that rolling culinary monstrosity? If anything, I could see Vince charging her extra to park there.”

  I frowned, forced to agree with Char. Talking to Tammy had just raised more questions than answers. The only thing we knew for certain was that Tabby wasn’t afraid to lie to get her way, and she had a fondness for gentlemanly company.

  I put the car into gear and headed back toward downtown. “What do you think Tabby could have had on Vince? What would be bad enough for him to kill her over?”

  Char shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. If a fake pregnancy and a string of affairs wasn’t enough to make Vince balk, I don’t know what would be enough to make him risk his business and his life to murder his wife.”

  “He could have paid someone to keep himself out of danger. Hired someone to do his dirty work.”

  “Then he’d have another person who had a secret on him. It doesn’t seem worth it.” Char scratched her head. “You know, the idea of dirty work brings me back to something you said Taz mentioned. The man in coveralls at Tabby’s house, the one she was kissing. Jimmy wears coveralls at the garage.”

  “It’s as good a lead as any. She was found dead at his place of employment.” I’d called the garage the day after they arrested Taz to make an appointment, but it seemed like I wasn’t the only one whose car suddenly needed maintenance. They’d been so swamped that I’d had to wait over a week to get an appointment. Tomorrow was my timeslot.

  “It looks like you’re going to get your shot to interrogate Jimmy ‘The Hunk’ Beal.” Char chuckled.

  “The Hunk? Is he good looking?”

  Char nodded. “If you like a guy with tattoos and dirt under his fingernails, he’s not too bad. But that’s not the only reason they call him that. He was known as ‘The Hunk’ because he could fix any ‘hunk of junk’ around, according to his bragging. Although my brother used to say they called him that because his brain worked about as well as a hunk of metal.”

  “I thought moving to a small town was going to make my life simpler,” I said.

  Char laughed. “Well, look on the bright side. The word ‘simple’ definitely describes Jimmy.”

  Chapter 15

  The exterior of American Auto Garage was painted red, white, and blue, no doubt in homage to our nation’s colors. Why it was patriotic to get your automobile serviced, I had no idea, but the little slice of Americana that was the auto garage was neatly kept and very clean. It seemed the owner ran a tight ship.

  I got a glimpse of said owner when I walked through the front doors and stepped up to the service desk.

  “You got an appointment?” the bald man behind the counter asked. He was a wall of muscle with piercing blue eyes. A jagged scar ran from his right cheek to a spot behind his chin. In his mid-fifties, he had an unmistakable air of sternness.

  “Yes, uh, Jeff,” I said, reading the name patch on his pristine coveralls.

  “Folks around here call me Scar, which means you ain’t from around here.” He eyed me. “If you just came down here to get your crime scene jollies, you can take yourself elsewhere.”

  I swallowed hard. “I need an oil change. And I am from around here now, technically. I live in the big house off Beechum Road.”

  Scar grunted. “Pull your car into bay two. If I find out your oil don’t need changing, I’ll refuse you service the next time you come in.”

  I hurried outside and hopped into my car, piloting it into the garage bay as commanded. It was clear that Scar did not play around, and frankly, I was already terrified of the big man.

  A tall, attractive young man in tight blue coveralls guided me in with hand signals so that the car would be correctly positioned on the lift. Climbing out of my car, I confirmed his name was Jimmy, per his name patch, as he looked down at a clipboard, his longish blond hair falling in waves around his striking face. “Oil change, right?”

  “Yep. Although I always get my oil changes promptly as the manufacturer suggests, so the oil might not seem very dirty…” I trailed off, hoping what I said was enough to prevent the owner from sanctioning me.

  He gave me a crooked smile that lit up his face, and I decided “The Hunk” wasn’t a misnomer, at least in terms of his physical attractiveness. I also noticed the knuckles on his right hand were tattooed in an intricate vine pattern. I could also see the hint of another tattoo creeping up his neck, the bulk of which was hidden by the coveralls.

  “Most folks wait in the waiting room,” he said, pointing out the glass-walled reception area where a line of plastic folding chairs stood in front of a console television so old, it might have been the first one ever built.

  “I think I’ll stay out here if you don’t mind. The guy in there is just a little intimidating.” And Ma
rdi Gras is just a little parade.

  Chuckling, Jimmy waved his hand as if waving away my worries. “He comes off as hard, but he’s got a good heart. Was a sergeant in the Iraq War, and they used to ask him how come he never sweat out there in the desert. He said he was born in Louisiana so he wouldn’t sweat even if they stationed him on the Devil’s ball sac.”

  I blinked at the colorful turn of phrase, and Jimmy shook his head and apologized for his rude talk. He started to gather supplies, getting ready to change my car’s oil. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m from Baltimore so I’ve heard it all.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen you around town but haven’t had the chance to make your acquaintance yet. I’m Jimmy.” He held up his right hand, covered in dirt from working on cars all afternoon. “Forgive me for not shaking.”

  “My name’s Jade, and I’m the new assistant librarian.”

  “Ah, that’s where you’ve been hiding out. I don’t make it in there very often.” His expression said he had never seen the inside of the library in his lifetime.

  I laughed, then looked around. There were cars in the other two bays, and I could see through the glass partition that Scar was on the phone, likely taking down another appointment. “You guys have been busy lately, eh?”

  “Yep,” Jimmy said, nodding.

  “Do you think it has anything to do with the murder?” I figured directness would work best on The Hunk.

  Jimmy looked up, a little surprised. His expression turned thoughtful. “Yeah. I reckon it does.”

  “I heard you were close with Tabby. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  He shook his head. “That was a long time ago. I ain’t been with Tabby for ages.” I watched as he clambered under the car to start draining the oil. He unscrewed the oil filter, his hands getting coated in oil in the process.

  “Any idea why someone would plant her body here?” I asked while he traded out the old filter for a new one.

  “None in the slightest.” His tone was a little tight, but I wasn’t willing to let the issue go. This could be my only chance of talking to Jimmy, so I had to make the most of it.