Rusty Logic

by Robin Alexander

“That’s right, I know who and what you are, you hummus-eating chickpea-smashing terrorist!”

  “Stella, her last name is Martinez, she’s Hispanic or Latino or whatever. She’s not from the Middle East,” Kirsten cried. “Now lower your bird.”

  “Mexicans are just as bad!”

  “My family came here from Argentina generations ago,” Rusty snapped as her temper flared.

  “Same damn thing,” Stella seethed and gave the flamingo a little practice swing.

  “No.” Rusty shook her head vehemently. “No, it’s not. Buy a map, you old shit.”

  Kirsten moved between them and faced Stella. “I’m gonna tell you one more time. Lower the bird.”

  “Are you crazy? Do have one clue how to actually be a real police officer? You never turn your back on a suspect.” Stella set her wild gaze on Rusty. “You reach for that gun, and I swear I’ll peck you to death! Kirsten, you cuff her, and I’ll put down my weapon.”

  “I know I said there was a damn rat in here.” Kirsten snatched the bird out of Stella’s hand and marched out of the garage. “Everybody out! Now!”

  “I’m pressing charges, assault, trespassing, slander, and whatever else I can think of,” Rusty yelled as she clutched her shoulder. “Cuff me? Cuff you, you crazy old woman. Kirsten, get her.”

  “Go home,” Kirsten said to Stella and pointed across the street.

  “You can’t let her leave,” Rusty protested.

  “Where’s she gonna run, Rusty, really?” Kirsten inhaled deeply. “Stella, go home.”

  “I want my bird, and I’m calling the FBI,” Stella said with a hand on her hip.

  “I’ll bring this back to you later when you’ve regained your senses.” Kirsten waved the flamingo. “Now get across that street, or I swear I will put you in the back of my car.”

  Rusty’s shoulders sagged as she watched Stella go. It took her a moment to really catch her breath.

  “Well, everything is true about small towns. You people really take care of your own,” Rusty spat out in disgust.

  “We need to talk. I understand you’re upset, and I don’t blame you, but you need to listen to what I have to say.”

  *******

  The pink flamingo was propped in the corner of Rusty’s kitchen and almost looked as if it was eavesdropping on the conversation. Rusty was calmer, and she had a bag of frozen broccoli resting on her shoulder. She shook her head and said, “A terrorist. She thinks I’m a terrorist, and you let her roam the streets.”

  “Honestly, I think it’s a fantasy she indulges. I’ll explain Stella’s history in a moment, but I’d like you to consider that she really thought you were attacking me. There were several times you narrowly missed me with that pipe, and I’m sure anybody watching would’ve come to the same conclusion Stella did. This was a misunderstanding on her part. I’m pleading for your compassion and understanding.”

  “You know…if I were outside my body witnessing this, I might chuckle.” Rusty raised a hand slowly. “Might.”

  “Stella’s just looking for her place in a world that seems like it passed her by. She’s the leader of a secret women’s organization called the Daughters of Darkness, or the DOD as they refer to it, and—”

  “Do you think by telling me she’s a devil worshipper you’re making this any better?” Rusty said as her brow shot up.

  Kirsten shook her head. “It’s not—they’re not Satanists. They chose the name because they did their deeds in darkness,” she said and cleared her throat. “That didn’t sound any better. Let me start over. A long time ago when my mom was just a little girl, the men in this town built a supposed hunting lodge deep in the woods. At first, it was just a place the men went to drink beer and unwind, but soon, rumors began to swirl about prostitutes being brought in. More men joined, and soon, just about every man in town was spending his weekends at the lodge, including my grandfather and Stella’s husband, Paul.”

  Kirsten sat back and drummed her fingers on the table. “I’m not proud of this, but my dad’s dad was the police chief then, and he turned a blind eye to the things going on at the lodge. Women threatened to leave their husbands if they didn’t stop going, but the times were different then, and they were hollow promises. Stella was young and had been married to Paul a little over a year, and they already had a baby. She and a lot of women got together on the weekends to cry and complain, but Stella came up with a plan.”

  “Hold on, my broccoli is getting warm,” Rusty said as she got up. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “Water would be great.”

  Rusty exchanged the bag of broccoli for cauliflower and propped it on her shoulder. “All right, continue. I’m listening.”

  “Stella rallied the women, and my grandmother was second in command. At first, those married to lodge members stopped cooking and doing laundry. There weren’t a lot of restaurants here, so those men didn’t get any hot meals, but that didn’t deter them. Stella and my grandmother followed a few of the men, found the secret location, and did indeed witness all sorts of debauchery going on inside the lodge. The good times ended when one Tuesday morning, someone noticed smoke rising up out of the woods. Stella, my grandmother, and a few other women torched the place when they were certain no one was inside. It burned to the ground.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Rusty said as she set a glass of water in front of Kirsten.

  “They did other things just as bad. The men decided to build a new lodge in a place only accessible by boat. They were hauling materials on an old wooden barge someone had made, and it sank mysteriously one day. Tires on any trucks transporting new lodge supplies were spiked. Stella and her group tracked down the place where the men were getting the hookers from just outside of Lafayette and talked a local reporter into exposing the operation. He managed to catch a few politicians patronizing the house of ill repute, and it caused a scandal, so the prostitutes disappeared. After all that, there was really no reason to rebuild the lodge.”

  “So what about this DOD?” Rusty asked as she reclaimed her seat.

  Kirsten smiled. “Sometime during the lodge war, the group officially formed, and Stella became president. It was a secret society, and no one outside of the DOD knew who the members actually were. They did some things like harass mistresses of the men still bent on cheating. They ganged up on men known to abuse their wives and made them miserable. There was one guy who lost like forty pounds because the waitress at the one diner we had filled his coffee constantly with laxatives. The DOD would leave notes on his truck telling him they knew he was hitting his wife, and if it didn’t stop, they would take real action. He didn’t, so a stranger showed up in town and beat him good enough to make an impression. Mom doesn’t even know who the stranger was, but she thinks he was a friend of someone in our family. This sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Rusty admitted with a sigh. “I would be tempted to be impressed if the president wasn’t a psychopath with her sights on me. Now I have to worry about a group of women burning this house down with me inside.”

  “No, you don’t,” Kirsten said with a laugh. “My mom is a member, and she’d never let that happen. The old guard is gone, and the new one consists of their daughters. Nowadays, they just get together to gossip and eat. Mom says Stella feels obsolete now, and that’s why she’s behaving this way. She once held what was an important position in this community, and today, she’s just an old woman no one cares to listen to.”

  The last part of what Kirsten said struck a chord with Rusty. She’d once forged a small empire out of the trunk of her car, and now, she wasn’t needed any longer. She wasn’t old, either, and that made it worse for her.

  “I won’t press charges, but if I see that,” Rusty pointed at the bird, “ever swung at me again, all bets are off.”

  “Thank you,” Kirsten said with a sigh. “I appreciate your understanding and kindness.”

  Chapter Nine

  Stella wasn’t as compassionate as Rusty. S
he scowled as Kirsten reiterated that what she interpreted as an assault was actually an overreaction to a rat. Stella’s expression darkened when Kirsten told her she should be thankful that Rusty had decided not to press charges.

  “You’ve already succumbed to her charms,” Stella said with resignation and disgust.

  “No, I’m thinking with a clear head, and that’s what you need to be doing. I think you’ve poisoned your brain by constantly watching the news and spy movies.” Kirsten softened her tone for what she had to say next. “Stella, you know we love you, and no one wants to see you go, but if you do something that requires me to lock you up, you might end up in a nursing home. The things you’ve been doing and saying are making you appear mentally unstable.”

  Stella grabbed one of her couch pillows and clutched it to her chest. “So you think I’m crazy now.”

  “No, I don’t. I think you’re bored and you’re looking for something to get into. You’re barking up the wrong tree with Rusty. She’s just a businesswoman here on a break. I read an article about her, and she started a successful business delivering groceries and picking up prescriptions for shut-ins. That turned into a corporation called Smart Shopper, and she did it all without a college education. She’s a woman who has obviously had to scratch and fight her way to success. I think that’s pretty impressive, and if you get to know her, you may find that y’all have something in common.”

  “What would that be?” Stella asked sullenly, avoiding Kirsten’s gaze.

  “You’re both women who have the ability to organize and make things happen. Y’all are very strong, and I respect and admire you.”

  “So you’ve done your background work, and you’ve cleared her.” Stella nodded and sighed. “I guess I can accept that.”

  “I have to go now, I have work to do. If you plan on talking to Rusty, you might want to give the lump on her shoulder a day or two to go down. You swing a mean bird, Stella,” Kirsten said as she stood with a smile. “I stuck it back on the two metal legs I found in your flowerbed.”

  *******

  Kirsten pulled into the station and was about to get out of her car when dispatch radioed her and asked her to call. She walked inside and said, “I’m here, what do you need, Ellen?”

  The day dispatcher spun around in her chair with a half-eaten meatball po’boy in her hand. “I’m about to send Antoine on this, but I thought you might want to know about it before I do. Carla Danner heard about the peeper at the Jessups’ place, and she thinks he’s been at her house too.”

  Kirsten nodded. “Word’s out, that means we’re gonna get a lot of these calls. I’m glad you notified me, and I want that to continue on every one. Make a note in the computer for Tash to dispatch me on anything of this nature.”

  “Do you want me to have Antoine roll on this too?” Ellen asked.

  Kirsten thought for a second. “Yeah, go ahead. If it’s legitimate, two pairs of eyes are better than one,” she said as she walked back out to the parking lot and got into her car.

  As she drove out to Carla Danner’s house, Kirsten thought more about Noah and Candace. They were young, supposedly in love, and Candace’s father, Phil, was super strict. He probably didn’t approve of his daughter dating Noah, either. Everyone in town knew that. The couple more than likely had to sneak around for a moment alone. Noah smoked and probably didn’t want to leave cigarette butts lying around to draw attention to their secret meetings. It all made perfect sense to Kirsten.

  Antoine Thompson turned onto the road ahead of her, and Kirsten followed him to Carla’s house. Carla walked outside as Kirsten and Antoine got out of their cars. Carla immediately rushed over to Antoine and began telling him about what she’d found while Kirsten took note of Carla’s property.

  Carla lived at the outskirts of town where the lawns were much larger. The homes on either side of Carla’s place had wooden fences surrounding their backyards. They afforded Carla privacy, as well, but she’d never fenced the back of her own property bordered by woods. It would be very simple for someone to walk up and look through her windows.

  “Are you telling me you think your flowerbeds were vandalized?” Antoine asked.

  “No—well, I did at first. Come see,” Carla said as she headed around to the side of her house.

  “Carla, I wasn’t listening when you told Antoine what happened. Would you repeat it, please?” Kirsten said as she followed.

  “Yes, a few months ago, I found out I was one of the finalists for yard of the month. Madge Halphin told me that she and the committee would be coming to do a final look at my place and the others before they voted. So I spent the whole afternoon before making sure I didn’t have any weeds, and I planned to water real good the next morning. When I got out here, I found a plant smashed into the dirt beneath one of my windows. I thought a dog had been digging because the soil had been kind of spread around just like this.” Carla pointed at a messy place beneath her window.

  Kirsten expected to see paw prints, but there weren’t any. To her, it looked as though someone had swept the dirt around to obscure evidence they’d been there, and there was no ash. Kirsten tapped the brick wall with her pen. “This is a kitchen window, right?”

  “Yes, and it’s the one over my sink. It’s kinda hard for me to reach the stick that closes those blinds, so I leave them open, but they’re the only ones I do. That’s the first incident, mind you,” Carla said. “The second time was maybe a few weeks ago, and I found a place in my flowerbed the same way beneath this very window. Whoever did it ruined my portulaca.”

  “What is that?” Antoine asked.

  “It grows kind of like a vine but on the ground, and it makes pretty flowers. They prefer drier soil and full sun, and this side of my house gets very hot during the day, so this is the perfect place for them. Anyway, I began to suspect that someone was trying to make me look bad because I did win yard of the month. But Julie Dyer told me that there was a peeper at the Jessups’ place, and when I found this today, it hit me, the peeper did this, and I know who it is.”

  “Who?” Antoine and Kirsten asked simultaneously.

  “Jimmy Bertrand. He stares at me every time I’m in the grocery store. He never double-bags my canned goods, and I think it’s because he wants the bag to break, so I’ll have to bend over and pick them up.” Carla feigned a shudder. “That boy gives me the creeps.”

  Every man in town stared at Carla, with good reason. She was an incorrigible flirt, and she sought constant attention from any man she came in contact with, regardless of his marital status. She didn’t own anything that didn’t show off her cleavage, and her shorts and pants fit her like a second skin. Most women in Ancelet Bay despised her because Carla had a reputation for doing a lot more than flirting.

  “So you didn’t actually get a look at anyone outside your window,” Kirsten said.

  “No, but Jimmy should be your prime suspect.”

  Kirsten liked Jimmy, and she knew he was gay, though everyone else didn’t. Jimmy wasn’t looking at Carla with lust. What she saw in his eyes was disgust. Age didn’t matter a whole lot to Carla, and she had bedded the boy Jimmy was secretly in love with the night of his high school graduation. Kirsten knew this because Jimmy had cried on her shoulder.

  “Carla, unless you have substantial proof that Jimmy has been in your yard, don’t make accusations like that. This is a small town, people are already getting rattled about this…peeper, and someone might decide to exact their own brand of justice on an innocent boy because of your suspicion,” Kirsten said firmly. “We’re gonna start spending a lot of time around your place. We’ll let you know before we’re gonna be in your yard at night. You need to close this blind, and I know you have an alarm, so keep it set.”

  “I did mention it’s hard for me to reach the stick to close my blind.” Carla placed a hand on Antoine’s arm. “Would you do it for me?” she asked demurely.

  Antoine looked like he’d smelled something really bad but nodded. Kirsten a
ccompanied him and Carla inside her house, and Antoine closed the blind. Without a word, he turned around and walked right back out.

  “We’re going to take some pictures, then we’ll leave. If you hear or see anything, call 911 immediately. Okay?” Kirsten said.

  “I will, but you should talk to Jimmy,” Carla said curtly.

  Kirsten nodded. “I’ll handle it.” She walked outside and closed the door behind her. Antoine was back at the scene of the portulaca murder. Kirsten took out her phone and snapped off a few pictures, but there was nothing really of value to capture. “Let’s walk around and make sure there aren’t any pry marks on the windows or doors.”

  “Don’t you ever tell my wife I was in that woman’s house, or Diane will kill me where I stand,” Antoine said softly.

  “I can’t believe you’re so scared of such a tiny woman,” Kirsten teased.

  “You try being married to her. My arm is still tingling where that woman touched me and not because it felt good. I can wash it fifty times, but Diane will still smell her scent on me. Then, she’ll open that mouth, and five extra rows of sharp teeth will come out and start snapping.”

  Kirsten snorted. “I’m gonna tell her you said that.”

  “Go ahead, and that tiny woman will rip my head off. I think that would make Mitch happy.”

  “Nothing makes Mitch happy,” Kirsten said as she ran her fingers over the frame of a window screen. “These all look like they’ve been in here for years. I don’t think Carla cleans her windows much.”

  “Most of her work is done indoors and on her back.”

  Kirsten turned and gazed up at Antoine. “What’s with the tension between you and Mitch?”

  “He’s got a know-it-all attitude, thinks he’s superior because he was a big city cop before he retired and came here. He blows Tasha a lot of shit too. She says he’s always on her about the way she talks on the radio.”

  Kirsten thought for a moment. “Do you feel this is a racial thing?”

  “No, he ain’t like that. I see him all the time out at Bay Street Park, repairing the swings and painting stuff. He mentors a lot of the kids out there, and the upgrades he does on his own dime. Mitch spends more time with the black folk than he does with the white. I think underneath all that attitude is a nice guy. Tasha and I just don’t take his shit like everybody else does.”