by Tim Cockey
Carol was slamming gin. I was sticking to beer and she was calling me a sissy for it. I told her that the last time I touched hard liquor I killed five people. She laughed. She thought that was a riot.
“I kill people every day,” Carol told me. “But they don’t know it.”
She aimed a finger pistol at Lou Bowman and fired. She was right. He didn’t even notice.
At some point she asked me about my accent, which I was still in the process of perfecting.
“Where are you from?”
I took a bite off my beer. “Idaho.”
“Everybody from Idaho sound like you?”
“What do I sound like?”
“You sound like a sissy”
A number of other people had finally drifted into the bar. I noticed that a few of them—mainly the men—glanced over at us with an undeniable expression of relief. The Moose Run regular had new blood. Carol was body-languaging the hell out of me. She wanted me to see her legs and she wanted them to accidentally brush mine every few minutes. I had taken the stool on her right, so that I could look past her and keep an eye on Lou Bowman. Bowman and his friend appeared to be in a heated argument about something. I couldn’t make out what.
“Whatta you do for a living, Bob?”
I had given her an easy name to remember.
“Why don’t you guess?”
Behind Carol, Lou Bowman suddenly slammed his fist down on the table. “Get over it!” I heard him snarling.
“Traveling shoe salesman,” Carol was saying.
“Excuse me?”
“I said traveling shoe salesman. That’s what you do.”
I’m pretty sure the word “shoe” got in there by accident, but I wasn’t going to quibble.
“Well, you’re a smart lady. That’s exactly what I do.”
Carol grinned and hiccuped at the same time. Behind her, mean-looking Molly was snapping at Bowman, who very blithely held up his middle finger at her.
“Ask me what I do,” Carol slurred at me. The fingers of her right hand were toying again with the buttons of my shirt. I had already pulled Carol’s fingers away from my buttons about a dozen times already, but now it seemed as if she was using them to steady herself. Her swaying had picked up considerably in the last five minutes or so.
I obliged. “Carol, what do you do?”
She gave me a catbird-seat smile and pitched forward as if to whisper her answer. I grabbed her shoulders to keep her from falling off the stool. What she gave was a stage whisper at best; loud enough even for the dead moose across the room to hear.
“I fuck traveling shoe salesmen.”
Things happened fast just then. Whatever it was that Molly and Bowman had been arguing about reached its peak. Mean-looking Molly didn’t throw her glass at Lou Bowman. But she did flip its contents into his face. Immediately he reached across the small table and slapped her—not once, but twice—and then bolted up from his chair. I stood up too. Rather, I slid off my barstool, the result being that Carol continued to pitch forward. She fell unceremoniously off her stool and onto the floor, landing with an audible thud. I kneeled down and yanked the woman up into a sitting position on the floor, her back up against the bar. Her eyelids were half open and her lips were attempting to form a word—I’m guessing it was “sissy.” She was breathing. That’s all I had to determine.
I looked up and saw that Bowman was making his way out of the bar. He was halfway to the door. Molly was right behind him. I looked at my watch. It was only nine-thirty. Shit.
“Nice meeting you, Carol,” I muttered hastily, then started for the door.
“Hey!” The bartender jerked a thumb at my and Carol’s drink glasses. “Is Rockefeller comin’ by to pick this one up?”
I pulled out a fistful of bills from my pocket and tossed two twenties onto the bar. I bounded for the door.
“Hey, it isn’t that much,” the bartender said.
“Use the change to call her a cab.”
The bartender laughed. “She don’t need a cab. She lives upstairs.”
I had reached the door. I stopped, my hand on the doorknob, and turned around. “She what?”
The bartender waved his hand in the air. “She owns this place. That’s my boss.” He leaned far over the bar so that he could see the nearly comatose Carol sitting on the floor. “How ya doin’, boss?”
I hurried outside. Lou Bowman was standing next to his 4×4, snarling at mean-looking Molly, who was snarling right back. Really, they made a lovely couple.
“You’re a bastard!”
“Get over it.”
“No, you get over it!”
“I am over it!”
“What’s that mean?”
“What’s it fucking sound like?”
“You’re a bastard!” she said again.
I could see it was a pretty limited discourse. Bowman yanked open the door to his power vehicle.
“Go back inside,” he instructed his friend.
“Go fuck yourself!”
That’s when he hit her. He took a step away from his Jeep and belted her. It was sort of an amateur karate chop to the side of the head. But hard.
“Hey!” I ran over to the two of them. Neither seemed especially pleased to see me. I turned to Molly. “Are you okay?”
“Who the fuck asked you,” Bowman snarled. His lips curled as he checked me out. I took a step closer. Around the knees, I was telling myself. Tackle him around the knees.
“Keep your hands off her,” I said.
“Mind your own fucking business.” Bowman pointed a finger at his lady friend. “I’ll call you.”
“Don’t bother,” Molly called after him as he climbed into his Jeep. “Don’t fucking bother.” Bowman slammed the door and turned over the engine.
“Wait!” I took a step—literally—in front of the vehicle. I held my hands up. “Hold on.”
“Get the hell out of my way!” Bowman bellowed, gunning the engine.
Molly concurred. “You’d better move, man. He’ll run you over. He’s a prick!”
The prick hit the gas. I leaped out of the way. Bowman fishtailed on the gravel as he roared out of the parking lot. I took a large stone on my shin.
“Bastard,” mean-looking Molly sputtered, not for the first time. She scowled at the settling gravel dust, then looked over at me. “Thanks.”
I didn’t have time for conversation. I limped over to my rental car and got in. As I turned the key, the passenger door suddenly opened and in dropped none other than the proprietress of The Moose Run Inn, fresh off the floor of her bar.
“What are you doing here?” I cried. “Get out!”
Carol was murmuring. “Needair. Lessgo.”
I didn’t have time to talk with her. And I didn’t think it would be polite to open the door and shove her out onto the gravel.
“Christ.” I put the car into drive and did my own little fishtail past mean-looking Molly, who was looking less mean at this point and more confounded.
“Where’s the fire?” Carol mumbled as I hit the main road and slammed down on the accelerator. And then she passed out.
Bowman’s 4x4 appeared on the horizon. He was definitely headed in the direction of his house. I got the rental car going sixty on the narrow thirty-miles-an-hour road. I was closing the gap, even as I was desperately putting together a plan to keep Bowman from reaching his home and discovering his former colleague rifling through all of his stuff. Given the mood that he was presently in, it was especially doubtful that his response would be calm and reasoned. And the thought that this ex-cop probably still kept a pistol handy didn’t sweeten the image any.
As I caught up I formalized my plan. I didn’t much care for the plan but I went about launching it. Pushing the pedal to the floor I swerved to the left and began to pass the Jeep. Bowman was traveling pretty fast himself, but I had the jump on him. I was passing him easily, when he noticed me and began to speed up. At the same time, a red pickup truck appeared on th
e road in front of me, coming my way … coming directly my way. If I was going to pass Bowman I had to angle in right now and shoot the shrinking gap. My plan—and I now realized it was a stupid plan—was to get in front of Bowman’s Jeep and hit my brakes, forcing him to run into the rear of my car. Assuming no serious loss of life, I figured I could tie him up for a while on the side of the road with bickering. Stupid plan, yes? And with this pickup truck coming, I now had about one point zero seconds to implement it.
That was when God appeared. No burning bush, no barefoot carpenter … He appeared in the guise of Carol the bar-owning floozy. Carol’s head lolled sideways on the headrest and her eyes came open (one more than the other). The pickup truck was almost on me. I could hear its horn blaring.
Carol hissed, “Is your name Sprinkle?”
I pumped the brakes and slid in behind Bowman’s Jeep… just as the pickup truck flashed by. I got a snapshot view of the shrieking driver.
“What did you say?” I yelled as the rental car continued to slow down.
“Got a call at the bar,” she muttered. “Sprinkle somebody. Somebody looking for Sprinkle. Is that you?”
My foot was off the pedal.
“Yes!” I cried. My voice filled with an excitement that Carol could not possibly comprehend. “I’m Sprinkle!” We rolled to a halt.
Carol looked at me cross-eyed. “You know … you look like someone.”
CHAPTER 30
“Who’s your friend?”
“That’s Carol. Get in.”
Kate got into the backseat. I had cruised past Bowman’s place and caught up to her as she was walking back down the road into the village. She pulled the door closed.
“Is she dead?”
I put the car in gear and continued down toward the village. “She’s passed out. It’s a long story.”
“Christ, Hitch,” Kate said, “I only left you two hours ago. How long can it be?”
“She owns the bar. She needed some air. Don’t worry about her. Tell me. How’d you do? Did you find it?”
Kate sat back in her seat. “It’s a long story.” Uh-oh, I thought. She’s pissed. But when I caught a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror she was wearing a Cheshire grin.
“I didn’t find it,” she said to my reflection. “But I think I found something else. In fact I’m sure of it.”
“Do tell.”
“I think maybe we should drop off your buddy first. What’s her name again?”
“Carol.”
Kate poked her head between the two seats to peruse the situation. Carol was sprawled in the front seat like a sodden rag doll.
“Wow.”
Carol stirred just then. Her heavy eyelids lifted. She didn’t seem particularly surprised to see a new face. I’m guessing a woman like Carol becomes pretty accustomed to surprises after a while.
“I’m Carol,” she said.
“Hello, Carol. I’m Kate.”
Carol shifted her beams over to me. An approximate grin grew on her face. “Bob fucking Sprinkle.” She asked Kate, “Do you know him?”
Kate’s voice was filled with mirth. “Oh, Bob’s a dear friend of mine.”
Carol declared solemnly, “He’s killed five people.”
Kate hit me playfully on the shoulder. “Bob, you never told me it was five.”
“I was going to surprise you.”
“Where are we going?” Carol seemed to be aware for the first time that she was in a car and that it was moving. She floated out a hand and set it tentatively on the dashboard. Yes, it’s real.
“Well that’s a question. Where would you like to go, Carol? Would you like to go back to the Moose?”
“Aw ffffuck the Moose.”
Kate sat back in her seat. “That sounds like a no to me.”
Carol cranked her window down and tilted to the right, letting the air hit her in the face. She closed her eyes and for a moment I thought she had passed out again. But then she said, “I think you’re going to be sick.” She didn’t have it quite right, but I knew what she meant to say. I pulled over immediately and Carol reached her head farther out the window and took care of business. We were on the approach into town, on the hillside loop overlooking the harbor. The little village gave Kate and me something nice to look at while the woman in the passenger seat retched like a sailor.
“I found bank records,” Kate suddenly announced. “Every month, on the sixteenth, Bowman deposits five thousand dollars into his account. Every month.”
“This tells you something?” I asked.
“You’re damn right it does. There’s no dead aunt, just like Kruk said, but somehow this guy has got a big house and a boat and that Jeep, and he’s pulling in five thousand a month from somewhere. Somebody has got Bowman on a monthly allowance. Why?”
I echoed her. “Why?”
From the passenger seat, Carol gave a grunt as she continued her purge.
“It’s a payoff, I’m positive,” Kate said. “Bowman had no reason to kill Charley. No personal reason, I mean. This whole thing, the house with the view, all of it… Bowman’s so-called dead aunt was just somebody paying him off to kill Charley. That’s what’s been going on. It was a hit, and I just happened to get in the way. Bowman’s pulling down a free five thousand a month, on top of whatever else he got in order to get set up in this place. For killing Charley. If I could have found that report we could have figured out who owned that land and who wanted so badly to shut Charley’s mouth about it.”
“But you didn’t find the report.”
“No. But I found the bank records. Whoever owned that property is sending Bowman money every month. Now if your date here would stop throwing up so we could get back to the hotel we can check the PI’s report and find out what date Bowman got his FedEx package. Bowman’s deposits are like clockwork. The sixteenth of every month. My bet is that he gets the FedEx package the same day. And do you know why I know we’re going to nail this bastard? Because today is the fifteenth,” Kate said triumphantly. “We’re here just in time to watch Bowman pick up his hush money. God is on our side.”
Kate’s declaration was met with a rousing punctuation from our front-seat guest. It was a finale. Carol brought her attention back into the car. I detected a certain new steadiness as she leveled me with her lamps.
“Bob,” she said hoarsely. “I need coffee.”
Carol’s last name was Shipley, of the Heayhauge Ship-leys no less. Carol’s mother had been mayor of Heay-hauge way back when, before the tourists started arriving. Her father had owned The Moose Run Inn. And now—in the interest of symmetry perhaps—Carol’s brother, Roger, was mayor and it was Carol who owned the Moose.
“Politics wasn’t in my blood,” Carol told Kate and me as she took in a coffee facial. She gave off a hard laugh. “You know those T-shirts? ‘All I got was this lousy T-shirt?’ That’s me. My mother ran this town and all I got was that lousy bar.”
We were sipping java at the hotel’s restaurant, out on the deck. The night was cloudless. From where we were sitting we could see Lou Bowman’s house up on the cliffs. The lights were on. The monster was home. Kate kept glancing up there.
“My brother hates my guts,” Carol went on. “I hate his too. He’s turning this town into a sissy town.” I expected her to aim that barb in my direction, but Carol had apparently forgotten her taunting me with that adjective just a few hours ago. “This was a nice little town when my mother ran it. No outsiders.”
“And now you’ve got to put up with people like us?” Kate said.
Carol didn’t seem to hear her. “You think I’m a hard case, don’t you? You both do. Well I am. I’m pissed off every day and I don’t even know why that is.”
Kate asked, “Have you ever thought of leaving? Maybe you’d be happier somewhere else.”
Carol shook her bleached-blonde head. “Everyone knows me here. They don’t all like me, but they know me.”
“Is that such a good thing?”
Carol ch
ewed on this for a moment. “Maybe it’s not such a good thing anymore,” she agreed. “I’m probably getting stale here, aren’t I?”
Kate flashed me a look. Don’t answer, was what it said.
“Were you ever married, Carol?” Kate asked. “I know it’s none of my business, but—”
“Don’t worry about that. Yeah, I’ve been married. Hell, I’m the local Elizabeth Taylor. I been married three times. Four, actually, but one of them doesn’t count.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Carol said darkly. And convincingly.
Now that I was no longer in her sights, Carol was showing no further interest in hearing anything about me. Or Kate either. Carol herself was clearly her most fascinating topic of conversation and as she continued to sober up and replace gin cells with caffeine cells, Carol rambled on about her life in Heayhauge, Maine. The general theme I had already heard back at the Moose. Men are shits. To this theme she added that women younger and prettier than herself were a bit of an irritation as well. Even so, she was completely civil to Kate, who was both. And Kate was being very encouraging to Miss Shipley, providing all the verbal cues necessary to keep the woman talking … not that they were really necessary. It was female bonding, right before my eyes. Or so I thought.
Carol admitted at one point that she was rotten with figures and that despite owning a popular local watering hole she was heavily in debt. In addition, twice in the past year alone she had been forced to close the Moose, for ten-day stretches each time, as a penalty for selling alcohol to minors.
“Teenagers with motorcycles,” she said, shrugging. “I see a tattoo, I serve it a drink. Call me old-fashioned.”
Carol blamed her brother the mayor for her problems. Carol was convinced that he was the one who had directed the local sheriff to send in the motorcycle teenagers just so that he could bust his sister.
“He wants my ass in a sling, what can I tell you?”
Conclusion: Carol was a lousy businesswoman and she couldn’t conduct a lucid personal life.
“I don’t even own a car,” she said. “The bank took it this past winter. Do you have any idea how cold it gets up here in the winter? You sure as hell don’t want to walk everywhere. I’m goddamn forty-six years old and I’m fucking hitchhiking everywhere. Excuse my language, Bob.”
