by Ed Lynskey
Reynolds folded his arms high up on his chest. “I did not kill your father, Sammi Jo. Let’s get that much straight right this second.”
Reynolds’ denial was vehement enough to ring with veracity. She didn’t want him angry enough to clam up and storm off in a huff, so she did some smoothing of his ruffled male feathers. “I’m not making the accusation you are his killer. Let’s get that much straight right this second. What I am asking you is to rummage around in your memory bank and see if you can dredge up whether Daddy got on the bad side of anybody, or if anybody bore him any ill will.”
“Nothing immediately springs to mind. Something weird is going on here. Why are you three gals up for this and doing Sheriff Fox’s job for him? You have tons of grief to cope with, and you shouldn’t be saddled with the responsibility to round up Ray Burl’s murderer.”
“Because, to put it bluntly, Roscoe Fox couldn’t find his ass with both hands tucked inside his back pockets. He’s of little use to me, and you can bet your checkered flag I’m going to put Daddy’s killer behind prison bars if it’s the last thing I do.”
Seeing the fury crackling in her eyes shot a pang of fear through Reynolds. She meant business, and he pitied whoever pulled the gun’s trigger on her father. If she let her impulses get the better of her, she’d do something rash, and there’d be a second corpse ending up inside a drawer at the morgue’s cooler.
How did he go about calming down Sammi Jo? Well, first off he’d better go fire up and smoke that all-important cigarette, or else he’d go barking mad by putting it off for a heartbeat longer. Second, he felt helpless over finding the eloquent words in offering his support to her. Third, smoking that cigarette was nearly a matter of life and death. So, he just acted like himself, tattoos, warts, and all.
“Do me a big favor and let Isabel and Alma be the ones who lead on this deal. They’re not emotionally charged up by Ray Burl’s murder like you obviously are. You should first trust their coolheaded judgment over your own.”
“I already have decided to do that, so it’s not an issue. I love those sweet, old ladies as if they’re my own grannies. So, don’t you go talking trash about them, too.”
“I won’t, because their being with you makes me feel better. Do you believe they can they get to the bottom of this nasty business?”
“Is a bullfrog’s ass watertight?”
“I reckon it is enough.” He licked his lips, started then stopped cracking his knuckles, and wiped off his perspiring forehead with his wrist. “Is it hot enough to singe off your eyebrows in here, or is it just me?”
“I keep it a comfy seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit,” she said. “Please head on outside and poison your lungs before you blow a main gasket on me. Just use the rear alley. Eustis doesn’t like for the cigarette smokers to hang out in front of the drugstore. He fusses it’s bad for business.”
A thrilled Reynolds poised to jump up from the chair, and this time she put up her flat hand, detaining him.
“But here’s what it is, darling,” she said, recalling how Isabel’s young son Cecil had died of cancer from his cigarette smoking habit. “Before we ever cha-cha back yonder again”—her nod went toward the boudoir doorway showing her ecru chenille bedspread—“you’ll have to quit the cigarettes. I kid you not.”
He felt his jaws go slack, and his unhinged mouth suck in for air. “Mercy.” She was 100% for real. He knew she hadn’t cared for his tobacco habit since she was a reformed smoker. They were always the most entrenched of the anti-smoking crusaders.
“Does that mean you’re cutting me off like that?” he asked, chopping his vertical hand through the air. “Beginning this moment on Saturday morning?”
“Did the tin man need a brain?”
Reynolds paused, sorting through the Oz cast of characters. “I thought he needed a heart, and the scarecrow is the straw-stuffed dude who was hard up for getting the brain.”
“Whatever. You get my larger point being made.”
Reynolds groaned like the mountain wind sluicing through the pine tops. “You’re a hard woman, Sammi Jo Garner. Hard as nails, you are to me.”
Blank-faced, she didn’t smirk or sneer in triumph as he expected to see her do. He decided to dig in a bit and try to gain a little wiggle room with her.
“I tell you what let’s do. We’ll compromise and make it more reasonable. I’ll cut back and taper off on the number of cigarettes I smoke over the next two, no let’s make that three, weeks. How does that proposal sound to you?”
“It sounds like a clunker. It’s a no-go on the cigarettes, Reynolds, or it’s a no-go on the cha-cha. Straightforward as that. Which is it to be? I’m waiting to hear your final decision.”
He spotted a sliver of daylight, figuring he could sneak in a cigarette when they weren’t together, and she’d never be any the wiser for it. He’d promise her the moon if it let him take a cigarette puff on his next drawn breath. Nobody at the drag race track would rat out Reynolds for smoking, or else they’d be finding themselves a different venue to indulge their need for speed. His pulling a fast one on her was as easy as taking a Sunday drive through the Piedmont. He’d guffaw like Joe Cool with his pals over his outfoxing her between taking all the cigarette puffs he felt like. He was so proud of his cunning scheme until she spoke again and torpedoed it.
“Don’t go calculating you can be sneaking cigarettes behind my back,” she said. “My hypersensitive nose can pick up the fresh tobacco scent on you from a mile away.”
He groaned louder. “Sammi Jo, you’re putting me in a terrible bind. Even a condemned man facing the firing squad is allowed to smoke a final cigarette. Surely you’d let me do that much.”
“Out of the question.”
“You mentioned a pipe. I’ll just make the switch from cigarettes to using a pipe to smoke. I’ll look so professorial and distinguished.”
“I was using a metaphor, Professor. Do I have to explain what it is to you?”
“No, I’m aware of what metaphors are.” He commenced to rocking back and forth in the straight-back chair. “You should give me a little advice. How did you manage to quit? There must be a secret way you can give me to break the smoking habit.”
“I’ve got two words for you, Reynolds: cold turkey.”
He groaned again, only it came out as longer and louder before he got up and skulked out of her apartment.
Chapter 8
Isabel had stopped short by the door exiting the florist shop to the bright sidewalk on Main Street.
“Oh, for sweet gracious sake, I don’t believe this. It’s much too early to deal with the likes of them, Alma. I can’t do it, and I won’t do it.” Isabel pointed out the glass pane. “Look at who’s deigned to drag themselves out of bed and occupy their bench.”
Alma didn’t bother to confirm who Isabel was referring to since they both knew Ossie Conger, Willie Moccasin, and Blue Trent were town institutions. The trio of senior gentlemen, who verged closer to eight decades than the youthful seven the sisters insisted they were, sat tic-tac-toe three in a row on the same bench every single day of their lives. It was angled just so on the sidewalk to capture the sun’s rays for the day’s longest period. The shop owner Corina was the grand niece of one codger, but Isabel couldn’t recall which one it was. Willie, perhaps.
Taped to inside the glass pane above the bench was a sign written in bold black letters reading, NO LOITERING ALLOWED! THAT MEANS YOU, TOO! The trio of gentlemen had grown that territorial over their bench. To solidify their claims, Willie, the whittler of the Three Musketeers, had carved their first and last initials—OC, WM, and BT—into the wooden bench’s seat. They didn’t miss a single detail going on from their vantage point between their soaking up the August sunrays, fitting in their catnaps, and telling the outrageous lies on each other. Sometimes they played dominoes for sticks of chewing gum.
Isabel had turned around, craning her head and searching for either a side or rear exit. She was determined to avoid meeting
the gentlemen who loved nothing better than to buzz the sisters’ ears off. They could go on blathering about a lot of claptrap for longer than Isabel and Alma could play a Scrabble marathon. But the sisters had a murder case on their hands to tie up, and little time for entertaining the champion baloney artists.
“Our at least not saying hello would be rude,” said Alma. “How could you be such a grinch and do that to them?”
“I’m not a grinch, so take a rain check, and we’ll do it on a different morning,” said Isabel. “We’ve got a big job to complete, a concept that’s alien to their indolent natures.”
“Will you stop it? You don’t mind seeing them for striking up a game of Scrabble, but now you’re too busy to say hello. Besides, I suspect Ossie is growing sweet on you.”
“Horseradish, too. He’s cast out his nets to snag a wife cum maid to wash his clothes, fix him large Sunday breakfasts, and vacuum his apartment. But this old maid has retired after a lifetime spent doing all that for one man, her beloved Max.”
Ignoring her rant, Alma had opened the shop door, creating a whooshing noise that attracted the Three Musketeers’ attention. They wore matching sky blue aloha shirts. Ossie was the first gentleman to smile and wave at Isabel.
She sighed in mild annoyance and trailed Alma into the insufferable heat.
The gentlemen had removed their sunshades. Willie, the most vociferous one, was responding to Alma’s salutation.
“Why if life got any more peachy keen for us, Alma, I declare we’d have to hire somebody to help us enjoy it.”
Alma nodded with an encouraging smile at Isabel not to act so standoffish.
She counted the umpteenth time she’d heard Willie use the pet saying before she tossed out one of her own.
“Hot enough for you, gentlemen?”
Ossie jumped on that one like a ravenous goose on a June bug. “Indeed it is, Isabel.” One hand in his pocket jingling his keys and coins, he patted the empty space on the bench seat between him and Blue. “Why don’t you take a load off and relax with us? Lookie here, I saved you a spot. Willie and his carving knife can add your initials, IT, if you like.”
Isabel lost her forced smile. Loafing and joking around under the sun with three old fossils was the last thing she wished to do. She sent Alma a sharp glance to throw her a lifeline.
Now.
“We’d love nothing better, Ossie,” said Alma. “But right at the moment finds us up to our necks in solving Ray Burl’s murder case.”
Murmurs of disbelief and shock rippled along the bench.
“Godawful is what befell Ray Burl.”
“One murder—Jake’s—was horrid enough, but now the two murders are unbearable.”
“Justice will never be served for Ray Burl.”
“Not with Sheriff Roscoe Fox pitted against the killer, it won’t be, no sirree.”
“Poor Sammi Jo.”
“She must be coming unraveled at the seams over this.”
“She’s got to be.”
Alma horned in before the next gentleman could pipe up in their Greek chorus. “That’s our opinion, as well. She has requested us to help Sheriff Fox.”
Hand out of his pocket and shuffling his shoes, Ossie snorted. “Good luck to you there.”
“If Roscoe Fox had half a brain, he’d be dangerous,” said Blue.
“Yeah, but when compared to his deputy sheriffs, he’s an Einstein,” said Willie.
Alma caught herself nodding at the Three Musketeers’ skewering Sheriff Fox after Isabel frowned at her.
“He once tried to arrest a blue tick hound for jaywalking, or was it for spitting on the sidewalk?” said Ossie.
“Unbelievable,” said Blue.
“Ditto,” said Willie.
“Of course, he did once lend me a sawbuck which I’ve never repaid him for,” said Ossie.
“He also gave me a hand to find my lost raccoon Bosco inside my basement,” said Blue.
“There was the time he gave me a lift to the doctors while I was hitchhiking to Warrenton,” said Willie. “All we talked about was sports.”
“I guess he’s not such a bad bloke, after all,” said Ossie.
Impatient Isabel was left tapping her toe. “What do you know about Ray Burl?” she asked.
“He was salt of the earth folk.”
“The A-1 best there ever was.”
“The Almighty never created a more honest fellow.”
Alma stepped in again. “Isabel’s interest centers on Ray Burl’s homicide. Have you heard anything of note floating around our whistle stop of a town?”
“In other words any gossip,” said Isabel.
“Information,” said Willie, indignant. “We don’t have anything to do with receiving or promulgating common gossip. It’s a sin before the eyes of our Good Lord.”
Isabel bit down to keep her lips buttoned and not blurt out her thoughts about the hypocrite Willie.
Blue removed the broken matchstick from between his lips. He studied the matchstick’s chewed end for a moment. “I’ll tell you what I heard, but I can’t reveal where it came from to you.”
“Sock it to us, Blue,” said Alma. “We’d like to hear it.”
He swiveled his head from left to right like a creaky weather vane, ensuring no pesky eavesdroppers lurked near them. “My confidential snitch informs me Ray Burl was a dump job at the turf farm, and he got killed someplace else.”
“It’s got to be a two-thugs job then,” said Willie. “One thug couldn’t lift a corpse that’s got to be as heavy as one of those rusty barge anchors set out in front of the fire station.”
Ossie interjected. “Then a hit man and his assistant did the bloody deed.”
“Ossie, you’re about as sharp as a potato,” said Willie. “A hit man doesn’t get paid enough money to hire a Sancho Panza sidekick.”
“I bet my flat screen TV and dog tags a hit man out there uses an assistant,” said Ossie, defensive.
Sucking between his teeth, Willie scoffed.
Isabel, discombobulated prior to this discussion, found her thoughts tied up in messier knots. “Let’s table the hit man angle for the time being,” she said. “We can always return to it if we run out of other ideas.”
“Just saying it pays to think outside the box,” said Ossie. “If a professional hit was ordered on Ray Burl, the assassin is long gone from our Dogpatch, so we have nothing to fear.”
“Corina told us she saw Ray Burl carrying a shotgun he’d bought from the hardware store,” said Alma. “Evidently he wasn’t a big hunter. The obvious question is why did he buy the shotgun?”
“That event went right by us,” said Willie. “I’ve also never heard of Ray Burl tagging along with the hunting crowd.”
“He always worked up a storm at the turf farm,” said Ossie. “The only game he may’ve bagged was the night crawlers he found wiggling under the sod.”
Blue snickered behind his gnarled, liver-spotted hand while Isabel failed to see much hilarity in Ossie’s latest ridiculous speculation. Kicking around Ray Burl’s murder amounted to the monumental waste of time as she’d predicted it would be. She cleared her throat extra loud while checking her wristwatch, and Alma knew their meeting was finished.
She said their good mornings and thanks to the Three Musketeers. She refused to acknowledge Isabel’s smug I-told-you-so expression as they strolled away over the sidewalk, leaving the bench and its three occupants whispering all at the same time. The sun was shining, they had a new topic to chew on, and life was never any more peachy keen, as Willie liked to put it.
Chapter 9
Isabel missed the simple pleasures of using her own porch, front or back, since their brick rambler on Church Street lacked for one. Whenever she and Alma rode down the block, she had porch envy while observing the older homes offering their lucky dwellers the amenity. Their sturdy clapboard of a farmhouse on the outskirts of Quiet Anchorage had been blessed with a wraparound porch. Their mother, Gwendolyn, had referred
to it as the “verandah,” giving it an eloquent sound.
You could loll on the verandah with plenty of room to spare and sip your mint juleps, or in their case, Mason jar glasses of iced tea. All the girls learned Southern ladies sipped their iced tea while the boys guzzled their beer. The heartthrobs and heartbreaks of boys had lurked further on the horizon for the Trumbo sisters.
Isabel’s most memorable boyfriend was The Indigo Kid, so called because he played a blue guitar. His dreams of stardom far outstripped his musical talents, what she had told him during their stormy breakup. Much later, he made his fortune by playing the stock market. So it went.
The ideal hours to savor their porch sitting fell during twilight when darkness took its sweet, old time to drape its deep purple shawl over the farm. Mark Twain, relaxing dressed in his signature white linen suit while puffing on a stogie, was an avid porch sitter. If it was good enough for the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, then it had to be good enough for everybody else in America.
Listening to their herd of dairy cows munching on the succulent pasture grass, she’d sway to and fro in the bentwood willow rocker. The sisters sat and gabbed, their deft fingers shelling the lima beans and black-eyed peas they’d picked from the vegetable garden in the early morning cool. They collected the shelled lima beans and black-eyed peas in galvanized tin colanders for later washing, cooking, and canning. The filled Mason jars of lima beans and black-eyed peas stayed on shelves in the root cellar throughout the winter months.
Television was still the futuristic stuff of the Dick Tracy comic strips, and air conditioning was a ways off for the Trumbos. Electricity had arrived via the REA’s copper wires strung from the poles, and the Trumbos had interior lights. They banned the electric lights’ harsh glare from emblazing the porch and ruining its homespun tableau. Sometime right along there, Isabel had aided Watson and Holmes in tracking down the Baskervilles’ devil hound terrifying the Scottish moors. From then on, she was hooked for life as a reader. Later, Dame Agatha taught Isabel the ladies could also be detectives, something she passed on to Alma.
