Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem

by Karen G. Berry

  “What about the rest of your menfolk? None of them came to church this morning, either.”

  “There’s a fiddling festival up in Idaho. Most of the menfolk went to that. Only a few pups left around up there to keep track of the women.”

  Well, that was plausible. Bone Pile men traveled en masse to musical events as far away as Canada. And they often won. “When did they leave?”

  “Friday morning. They was driving straight through to make it there by Saturday morning.”

  “And the women?”

  “We was fixing to drive out and see who wanted to come in for services, but your deputy wasn’t up for that idea.”

  Well, so much for his big mystery. The women didn’t drive, so they couldn’t come to town. Mystery solved. “When will the men be back?”

  “Should be pulling in tomorrow morning.”

  “Well, can you remember to do something for me?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Can you give Garth a shove and tell him his duties for the night are discharged? Thank you very much, gentlemen.” And it was back to the cruiser.

  Memphis knew he had many things to do. There were reports to write, people to talk to. But first and foremost, he needed to have some breakfast. He decided that he’d better eat before he interviewed Jeeter Tyson, because he knew he probably wouldn’t feel like eating after.

  THE DAISY DINER was named for the owner and cook, Daisy Pusher. Daisy was not named for any sunny freshness of disposition. No, Daisy was Ralph Pusher at birth, a beefy man who had earned the nickname “Daisy” in high school, when he developed a habit of dying. He’d drowned at a picnic one summer, then fallen off a house, and finally he’d suffered a fatal concussion while playing linebacker during the homecoming game. He’d been revived by paramedics the first two times, but that third time, he’d received the kiss of life from a cheerleader named Ranita Wanderman. They subsequently graduated, married, and opened the Daisy Diner.

  Well, thought Memphis, Destiny is Destiny, and some people are born to be fry-cooks. Daisy had a way with over-mediums. Memphis leaned his long frame over his plate, sopping up the yolk with whole wheat toast. He was careful to keep his elbows off the counter. His hat sat on the empty stool beside him. Memphis believed that every man, even a County Sheriff, should remove his hat while indoors.

  The Diner was a perfect place, to Memphis’s way of thinking. Three booths equipped with small jukeboxes ranged along the red Formica walls. A dusty pyramid of small cereal boxes teetered over a coffee carafe the size of a small trashcan. A cake stand full of fresh donuts he wouldn’t touch sat on the end of the six-stool counter. And all over the black-and-white checkered linoleum danced the white Soft Spot shoes of Ranita Pusher.

  Ranita’s presence was the very finest part of the Daisy Diner.

  Ding! Daisy hit the bell with his meaty paw to signal that an order was up. Ranita retrieved a plate of waffles and an omelet from the pass-through and stepped lightly over to a table.

  Memphis sipped his coffee while he thought about the murder. He opened his little notebook and looked over his notes. The crime scene was sketched, there were measurements, diagrams, and names. However, Memphis had known with one glance at the body that all these notes were basically useless.

  This body had been dumped.

  Ding! Order up.

  Memphis studied his list of names. He needed to get out there and talk to Melveena, since her name kept popping up in conversations. Was there a point in trying to talk to Fossetta? He didn’t recall hearing her ever speak a word. Would murder loosen her tongue, stir it to work other than that which had made her infamous in the Park? His brother had threatened the Reverend earlier in the day, and his only alibi was his daughter, whose alibi seemed to be having been passed out in the street at the time the body turned up in the park.

  Ding! He looked up to see Ranita. She was such a pretty lady, her two little rows of straight, sharp teeth, her spiky dark hair. She almost reminded him of a possum. “How are you this morning, Memphis?”

  “I’m a little tired, Ranita.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that.” Ranita blushed gently, nothing strong, just a flush the color of her pale pink t-shirt. Such a nice combination of light-footed and top-heavy. A man couldn’t ask for a nicer pairing than that.

  “Ranita?” He spoke softly. It was an old trick, speaking softly so that she would have to lean even closer to hear. “I’d like a warm-up, please.”

  “Of course, Sheriff. You can have anything you want.”

  Ding!

  Yes, he reminded himself, Daisy was a lucky man to have a wife like that.

  OF COURSE, HE regretted eating a thing when he stood with Jeeter out in the dog pen. Jeeter seemed to breed his dogs specifically for bad hips and overactive salivary glands. He kept wiping his grief-stunned face and spitting brownish streams of saliva around their feet. The puppies sniffed and licked at it. Memphis found it difficult to interrogate a man when dogs were eating phlegm. He kept trying, though. “So, after the meeting you headed up to the bar, is that correct?”

  “I did.”

  “And you were up at the bar talking to the Reverend while the boys from Bone Pile were playing with Gator, is that right?”

  “He was playing with them.”

  “The whole night?”

  “Yes sir, ’cept for when he wasn’t.”

  “When was that?”

  “Well, that was when he weren’t up there, of course.”

  Memphis tried again. “And where was Gator, when he wasn’t on stage?”

  “He was answering the call of nature, I reckon.”

  “When was that?”

  “Well. A man’s gotta go when a man’s gotta go.”

  “I know, Jeeter, but when did Gator go?”

  “The call of nature don’t answer to no clock, Sheriff.”

  “I’m not asking for a moral judgment, I’m asking if you noticed when Gator wasn’t on that stage.”

  “It weren’t none of my business when he did his business.” Jeeter looked down. “Darn it! I tol’ Vonda not to give that puppy no more Dr. Pepper! If she weren’t up to the Coffee Klatch, I’d…” He looked up at Memphis, and with grinding, visible effort, began to think. “Now, Memphis?” He scratched his head. “Why’re you asking me all these here questions ’bout the Reverend? Is something wrong?”

  “I’m afraid so, Jeeter. The Reverend seems to have died last night.”

  Jeeter staggered backwards as if hit, and collapsed into a lawn chair. “Oh my Jesus in Heaven, what is this you’re telling me?” He put his face in his meaty hands and began to wail.

  Well, Lord bless him, there was only so much a man could stand in one day. Pups tugged and nipped at the hems of Memphis’s uniform trousers. Careful of where he stepped, he left for the office.

  RAVEN DOZED NAKED on the thin mattress in her sleeper cab. Images loomed, then faded, moving in and out of her mind as easily as the jaws of a crocodile in dark waters. The music she left on was softer and softer, until the batteries in her portable radio went dead. Music and motion stopped. It had all caught up with her. There was nothing left to fight.

  She usually woke early out of habit on a Sunday morning. All those years of finding a local church, anything from snake handlers to Presbyterians, and trooping in there with her mother while her lucky father slept. She much preferred the snake handlers. But she was trained to wake early on the Sabbath, and this Sunday morning was no exception. Her eyelids lifted over eyeballs that felt slightly sandy when she shut them again. She lay still for about ten seconds, cocooned in the safety of not remembering whatever it was that hung over her dreams like a storm cloud. If she could hold off remembering, she could slide back into sleep.

  Sleep pulled her back under, heavy and thick as tar.

  EVERYONE IN THE Park seemed to believe in Jesus, but actual religious fanatics were few. Asa Strug had his reader board ministry. Asa’s personal taste in Scripture ran toward the visc
eral. Some residents found his choices distasteful, not knowing that he really had no choice at all in the matter. On the day of the most recent Park-wide Fourth of July picnic, for instance, he had posted:

  They feed on the sins of my people

  and relish their wickedness.

  —Hosea 4:8

  Now, some called the use of the word ‘relish’ a coincidence, but others thought he’d done that on purpose. Several tenants complained for obvious reasons, but there was no Park-wide ordinance about unappetizing Scripture.

  Someone had resorted to unofficial community policing, and gone over in broad daylight while Asa slept and rearranged the letters. Asa awoke to a sign that read:

  pass the weenie relish and kiss off you sinning old idot.

  Misspelled, true, but the point was made. That wasn’t the only time that had happened.

  Driving down the street, you might see the occasional bumper sticker—“Get Right or Get Left!” or “This truck will be unoccupied in case of Rapture!” And someone in the Park, probably Jeeter Tyson, passed out those small religious comic books about the appearance of Satan, masked as a cat, a neighbor, a stranger, a magazine.

  In one of those terrifying little comics, three fornicating, joy-riding teenagers discover that their late-model four-door sedan is really Satan. In another, a fornicating boy discovers that the girl with the long hair and the dramatic “Y” of black-ink cleavage, the girl with whom he has committed back-seat sin, is really Satan.

  On her rare trips home, Raven always found those little comics stuck into the latch of her sleeper door. As a child, she’d find them on the ground while roaming around the fairs. Before the show if it were an evening one, or after the show if it were an afternoon gig, Raven would put on some shorts and a t-shirt, and put on boots and a hat that were plainer than what she wore on stage. She’d help herself to a few dollars from her mother’s bag and wander around looking like any other kid in the world, except for the scar and the fact that as far as she could see, she was the only kid walking the grounds alone. She would look long and hard at the table of large and misshapen produce, admire the baked goods and preserves. Gardens and kitchens. She would watch the demonstrations of amazing household utensils and products. Instantly polish your silver! Raven didn’t have any silver. Dry a year’s worth of apricots in four hours! How could you know how many dried apricots you’d want to eat in a year, anyway? She would study the livestock, watch the horse show, try her hand at the midway, ride a few rides. Always, she was alone. And always, she found those little black and white religious comic books underfoot.

  She would read them, throw them back down, and go off to try to forget the voice of Satan speaking through a Jack-o-Lantern or whatever horror was printed up and passed out like something for children to enjoy. She thought of those comic books as sneaky. They put fears in your head. They would haunt your dreams with their frightening threats, if you let them.

  Dreams are made for haunting.

  A thudding knock landed on her door. It sounded like the fist of a giant. No one ever disturbed Raven. Even her own daughter knew that if she was asleep, she needed to stay that way. Raven cursed, walked on her knees to the door and flung it open.

  “I came for my guitar.”

  She launched herself out, buried her face in his neck and wrapped her bare legs around his waist. Isaac climbed into the cab, wearing her more than carrying her, and pulled the door shut behind him.

  SHE WAS SNIFFING his armpit like she was smelling a flower. She twined her fingers in his. He had such big, thick hands, with chubby fingers like a child’s. “How the hell did you get down here so quick?”

  “I never left the area. They took me in and when they called Oregon, they found out all the charges had been dropped. I left town the morning of the hearing, so I figured I was in trouble, but all that happened was they dropped the charges. It took a while to get into the computer, I guess. I wasn’t even really a fugitive anymore.”

  “Why were the charges dropped?”

  “A good lawyer.” He sounded a little embarrassed. “Hey,” he said, his face suddenly preoccupied. “I better call my mom and let her know I made it here. Do you have a cell?”

  “If I had a cell, my mother would call me every fifteen minutes on that thing till I pitched it out the window. But there’s a payphone in the bar.”

  “Great!” He found his clothes. “I’ll take my camera! Do you have a cigarette?”

  “I quit.”

  “Could we share that cigarette over there in your hat?”

  “Nope. That’s the last one, and I’m not ready to smoke it yet.” She pulled on a t-shirt, opened the door and pointed him in the direction. “Just go out the main gate and cross the highway.” She opened two little windows to air out the sleeper cab, then lay on her back and listened to the Francie June song drifting on the cooled air, wondering just how a jazz singer with a smooth alto had become a country superstar.

  Raven felt all right. The events of the preceding night had rattled her, and she would have to do something about Gator Rollins. But somehow, Isaac showing up made everything all right. She wondered how old he was. Hell, she wondered what his last name was. She thought about his small mouth, the beard he probably grew to hide his pudgy cheeks. He had the air of a boy, though he was definitely a man. She stretched, smiled, smelled the breeze. It occurred to her that all she needed in the whole wide world to make this moment perfect was a cigarette. A cigarette, like that one over there in her hatband, a nice long kitchen match tucked right beside it. She was saving her last cigarette for the perfect moment, and it just might have arrived.

  Of course, someone had to knock on the side of the truck. “Hullo?” The voice was low, smoky, Southern. “Is anyone home in this den of iniquity? I heard there’s supposed to be a big blonde bear of a man-child over here, and I don’t want to intrude.”

  Raven pushed open the door and smiled. “Actually, he’s up at the bar, calling his mother.”

  “His mother? He’s calling his mother? Well. Bless his heart. Isn’t that just so precious you could die?” Melveena climbed up and enter the disarranged lair that Raven called home. She kept her arms crossed, her hands tucked away from any accidental contact with the metal walls of this place. She made the most delicate of faces as she looked around at the rucked up sheets, scattered CDs, and what she sincerely hoped was NOT a discarded condom. “It smells appalling in here.”

  “We could sit outside. I could get a couple of chairs from Levi’s.”

  Melveena smiled. “That’s a plan.”

  It was a Peeping Tom’s delight as both women scrambled out, the tops of Melveena’s stockings flashing in the Sunday morning sunlight, something a little more blatant flashing from under Raven’s white cotton t-shirt. She wrangled some old webbing folding chairs into place, and they settled.

  There was absolutely no accounting for the friendship between these two women. They did share a Southern heritage. Raven had roots in Tennessee, and Melveena was a former first runner-up for the title of Miss Arkansas. They were as different as two women could be while still being of the same species, but somehow a friendship had sprung up on Raven’s rare visits home.

  “We missed you up at Coffee Klatch.”

  “I just bet you did.” Raven came very close to laughing out loud. “What’s your greatest mistake up to these days?”

  “Well, snoring, mostly.” Melveena brushed her skirt down over her knees. “I have a new strategy. I’ve been trying to implant subliminal suggestions while he sleeps. I stand over him at night telling him how much he wants to move out.”

  “How’s that working for you.”

  “He’s still on that davenport.”

  “You sure married yourself a good one, Mel.”

  Mel flashed those eyes. “You’re just eaten up with envy, aren’t you, Raven.”

  “Oh you bet. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night over how much I want Clyde.”

  Melveena’s smile was a work
of art. “Well, enough talk of my wedded bliss. I was going to ask you about Annie Leigh. I’ve been talking to your mother about her coming out to Bone Pile Elementary.”

  “Bone Pile? Jesus, Melveena.”

  “I run a tight classroom, and those girls are marvels. Annie would love it out there.”

  “I bet she would. She’d run off, marry her a black-haired boy and commence to spitting out glow-in-the-dark brats when she was about fourteen. No thanks.”

  “You’re missing the point entirely. Annie has gifts, and not to insult your father, but…” Her persuasive attempts were interrupted by Jeeter Tyson, who ran down the street bawling like a stuck calf.

  “MURDER!” He waved his arms, his cheeks aflame with panic, his legs pumping. “MURDER!” he screamed, “MURDER!” Then he ran on.

  “He must be yelling about Hank Heaven.”

  “Yes. Jeeter broke the news at Coffee Klatch.” Melveena’s face was icy calm. “You found the Reverend’s body?”

  Raven nodded. “I am officially a person of interest in the case.”

  “Sweet Jesus. Why would anyone think you killed that man?”

  Raven shrugged. “He probably needed killing.”

  Melveena studied her friend’s scar, the way it swept down her face like a feather. She didn’t know how Raven had come by that scar. No one did.

  Mysteries were rare, Melveena had decided. And she loved a good mystery.

  ISAAC HAD HIS camera as he walked through the land of satellite dishes, pea gravel paths and scalloped wire fencing, tin, aluminum, vinyl and asbestos, bent and dinged and painted and flaking.

  He was taking pictures, and he was being inspected.

  The women watched him. Eyes behind screen doors. Hard cheekbones. Hard eyes. Painted toenails in dime store sandals, ruined hands braiding hair. Cotton sundresses and cutoffs.

  The men watched him, too. Crooked teeth. Run-down heels on boots worn past their prime. Grease-stained hands working on beat-up trucks, Wranglers.

  Cats everywhere. They lounged in the sun, sprawled on the hoods of muscle cars, bathed their battered whiskers. The cats reminded him of a summer he spent in Italy as part of an exchange program. The cats had been there, too, begging at restaurants, stretched out on the sunny Roman ruins with an air of absolute entitlement.