by Bill Hopkins
ago.”
Rosswell doubted that Ollie had heard any such thing, yet it was a good place to start. Tripping up a witness with a non-sequitur often made them spill the truth.
“Memphis, Tennessee? I never been outside the state of Missouri, except for the time I went to Piggott, Arkansas, back in ’95.”
Ollie said, “Why’d you go to Piggott?”
“I wanted to find out why they named their town Piggott.”
“Why did they?” Rosswell said.
“Never did find out. I got into a poker game with the sheriff, the moonshiner, the chief of police, the judge, the Baptist preacher, and the undertaker, who was also the biggest pimp in town. Did a lot of business in the back of his hearse. Anyway, lost my car and all my money. They drove me to the state line and kicked me from the Natural State into the Show-Me State. I was drunk. Hitched a ride to Poplar Bluff and rode the Greyhound back home. I figured I done good. Went down there in a two thousand dollar car and come back in a two hundred thousand dollar bus.”
It was fortunate that Mabel hadn’t brought the coffee yet, or Rosswell might’ve been spitting it across the table.
I pray that Ribs is the murderer. If he’s the killer, then all the cops have to do is wait for him to commit an exquisitely stupid act proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. We’d have our case made. We? I mean Frizz.
The fourth person to join the table was Candy Lavaliere, whom Rosswell had known for a decade. Now there was a big woman. Voluptuous, I’d call her. Nice view. Blonde, with a gentle, stunning face, soft and clear almost to the point of translucence. The woman, tanned and buff, smelled like Ivory soap. Big charm bracelets on her arms rattled and clanked. Rings on every finger. Rumor had it that this expert shooter also lifted weights and had read every book in the public library . . . twice. Ollie’s intellectual equal was Candy, the cosmetologist who loved to dance. She didn’t have a silver car with 16-inch wheels. Candy owned a golf cart she drove everywhere, including golf cart races in various towns around the area. The tires on the electric cart were only 8 or 10 inches.
“Candy,” Ollie said, “pull up a chair and sit your pretty butt down here.”
For a moment, Rosswell assumed that Candy, she being of the feminist stripe, would clobber Ollie with her backpack. Instead, she sat between Ribs and Ollie, and tee-hee’d like a teenager, although she had to be around the same age as Ribs, Nadine, and Johnny Dan.
“Here you go, boys.” She handed each of the three men a dark fudge brownie wrapped in wax paper. Rosswell’s disappeared in a millisecond. Candy’s sweet baked goods were famous.
“Thanks,” Rosswell said. “That tasted angelic.”
Ribs asked her, “You holding up under this heat driving that green buggy all over town?”
“It’s not green,” she said. “It’s chartreuse. And there’s no problem since it’s not snowing or cold. That’s a good thing. You have to search for silver liners in black clouds.”
“Linings.” Ollie enjoyed correcting people. “You have to search for silver linings.”
She tilted her head to one side, her face full of puzzlement. “Why did I say that? I need to check my journal. Must’ve heard it somewhere.” Candy laid a hand on Ollie’s arm. “It’s hotter than blue bonfires out there.”
Candy made goo-goo eyes at Ollie. Rosswell hoped she couldn’t see him pulling a forefinger across his throat, signaling Ollie to cut off any more nasty remarks. She apparently had difficulty remembering clichés. No one, especially Ollie, should make fun of her for that. Rosswell found it refreshing that she couldn’t remember threadbare phrases.
With a tiny wave of his forefinger, Ollie signaled that he’d seen Rosswell’s command. “I haven’t seen you in a while,” Ollie said to Candy. “Where have you been?”
Ribs said, “You ever been to Piggott, Arkansas?”
Candy said, “Can’t say that I have.”
Ollie forced the conversation back his way. “Candy, weren’t you out of town for a couple of days this last week?”
Ribs said, “Ernest Hemingway lived in Piggott, Arkansas, for a spell. I seen the house.”
Ollie quoted Hemingway. “‘A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl’.”
Rosswell said, “What the hell does that mean?”
Ribs said, “I don’t know nothing about birds.”
Ollie said, “You’re an Indian. You’re supposed to know all that nature stuff.”
“I,” Ribs said, “been busy with other stuff.”
Candy scooted her chair closer to Ribs. “I’ve just been hanging at my own house. Reading in the air conditioning. No one wants me to fix their hair. Think I’ll retire.” She rubbed her forehead. “Leastways, I think that’s what I’ve been doing. Things are so jumbled up sometimes. I misplace things. Too much on my mind.”
Is Candy starting to have memory problems?
Candy asked Ribs, “Are there more flies this summer than there were last year?”
Ribs steadied the coffee cup he held halfway between the table and his mouth. “Can’t say as I’ve counted them.”
Candy said, “‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed’.”
Rosswell recognized the line from William Butler Yeats’ poem about the end of the world. What he didn’t recognize was its relevance.
Ollie took Candy’s hand. “Are you feeling all right?”
Ribs said, “Maybe she’s been counting flies in the heat.”
Rosswell noticed that Candy, her hand under the table, was rubbing Ribs’s leg. Did Ollie notice? Was Candy doing Ribs and Ollie? If she was, then Rosswell prayed that it wasn’t both at the same time. He didn’t want to fantasize about that scenario.
Two things happened then. First, Johnny Dan walked in the restaurant. Next, when Ribs saw the mechanic, he threw two dollars on the table, and left through the back entrance without a word of farewell. Rosswell pondered whether these two events were connected when his phone buzzed. Before he could say hello, Frizz said, “You better come to the hospital.”
Chapter Thirteen
Tuesday afternoon, continued
“Tina?” Again, Rosswell leaned over her bed. The sheriff’s call said that Tina had awakened from the anesthesia. No nurse and certainly no city cop was going to throw Rosswell out. “Can you hear me? I’m here.” Her hair had been freshly washed. He pressed his cheek against the side of her head, letting her hair tickle him.
“Rosswell,” she said. “Water.” She opened her eyes. The afternoon sun shone through the windows on the most glorious vision he’d seen in years. “You okay?”
He helped her sip through a straw. “Yes, I’m fine.” He set the glass down and kissed her cheek. “I’m fine and you’re fine. You’re too cute for words.”
She blushed. “Don’t feel fine. Won’t feel fine ’til we go to our special place.”
“You’ve got one hell of a hangover from the anesthesia.”
“We’re okay,” she said, barely above a whisper.
Rosswell stroked her face. “I love you.”
“Someone shoot me?” A scowl crossed her face. “Your house?”
“Yes. A bullet grazed you.” Rosswell took her hand. “Are you in pain?”
“Frizz . . . arrest?” Her law enforcement training forced her to think about justice before self. “Who?”
“We don’t know who did it.” Some liquid in a bag hooked to a tube dripped into her veins. Although it was probably the same painkiller they’d dripped into Rosswell’s veins, he worried that she wasn’t getting enough. Again, he asked, “Are you in pain, Tina?”
There was no answer. She’d fallen asleep, a natural, healing sleep. The nurse tapped him on the shoulder. Time to go. This time, he left without being an asshole.
Frizz met him in the hallway. “I talked to the doctor earlier.”
“And?”
Frizz searched his pockets for his
car keys. “Why do they make all these keys look the same?” He flipped through a wad of keys on a circular metal holder. “Everything’s going to shit.”
Frizz and Ollie fell into the same classification when it came to having a direct and simple conversation. That classification was IRRITATING AS HELL. Rosswell didn’t prompt the sheriff, hoping he’d get to the point quickly. Frizz’s observation that everything was going to hell wasn’t encouraging.
After riffling through about a hundred keys, the sheriff said, “The doctor wants to keep her overnight.”
“That means she’s going to die.”
“Damn it, Rosswell, that’s not what that means.” He jiggled his keys, the metallic clicks resounding in the sterile hallway of the hospital. “It means he thinks she had a reaction to the anesthesia, and he wants to be careful. He’s just not sure. Probably doesn’t want a malpractice suit.”
“Then he better be finding out. I’m going to move her to St. Louis or Memphis or some other place where they know more.”
“It’s a minor gunshot wound and a drug reaction, not. . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence but Rosswell knew he was going to say It’s not cancer. “They can handle gunshot wounds here. This is hunting territory, remember? She just needs to rest. I took a deputy off the search who’s coming in to spell Junior in a little bit.”
They walked to Frizz’s car. In front of the hospital, a herd of Harleys roared up and down the street.
Frizz said, “You need to quit.”
“Quit what?”
“You don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t want anyone else hurt.”
“Whatever you say,
