Good Buddy

by Dori Ann Dupré

  Well, to her, that was ridiculous. He should simply tell her that she was going to spend some time with her grandparents, and that’s the end of it. No need to ask an eleven-year-old girl’s permission! That was what was wrong with modern parenting. Too much “talking it over” and allowing children to make major decisions for themselves when they don’t know anything.

  As Tammy Jo turned on one of her favorite true crime TV shows, her guilty pleasure called Unsolved in America, she sank down into the couch and pulled her brown and light blue afghan quilt over her legs. She was beat. Physically and emotionally exhausted. All she wanted to do was lie like a piece of raw steak on the couch all night long and not be bothered with her grief and regret and the anxiety peppering her otherwise tough interior.

  “Next on Unsolved in America, a cold case out of Killeen, Texas from May 1975,” the regular narrator spoke in his deep, well-trained baritone radio voice. Tammy Jo loved the cases from Texas because she could always remember hearing about them when she was younger. In an alternate universe, she was a police detective, a hard-nosed bossy female in a pressed dark blue pants suit and pumps wearing latex gloves and handling questionable firearms with chalk outlines on the floor around her. She was a ballistics specialist and a blood spatter expert and a DNA forensic witness.

  “In 1975, the country was still recovering from its Vietnam War years and no place was spared that challenge…especially Army posts like Fort Hood….home to the United States Army’s lauded First Cavalry Division. Corporal Kenneth Bellinger was a Purple Heart recipient, having been medically discharged due to his war time injuries during his service in Vietnam. Not long after his release from the Army, he settled down in Killeen with his new bride, a young war widow named Retta Kaspar and her young son Daniel. Daniel went by the family nickname Buddy.” Tammy Jo winced. Not another Buddy.

  “On May 16th, after a former co-worker and friend named Hollis Foster stopped by to visit the family, he found the front door unlocked and Kenneth Bellinger crumpled on the floor of his kitchen, unresponsive and covered in blood. Finding a faint pulse, Hollis called the ambulance.”

  The narrator’s voice added a certain dramatic flair to about every third word, Tammy Jo decided. It made otherwise boring sentences sound so much more intriguing. She often did things like that while watching this show, pick apart the storytelling and figure out which side the producers were trying to highlight in the best light to the audience. So far, on this Killeen case, she wasn’t too sure.

  “Mr. Bellinger had been shot in the chest and head, and his wife and stepson were nowhere to be found. There was no forced entry, and nothing was missing from the house except for Retta, Buddy and the family’s 1970 Duster.”

  “Hmmm, that’s an odd coincidence,” Tammy Jo said out loud to herself. Retta and Buddy. Buddy’s mother’s name was Loretta.

  As the faux TV detective persona started to take over, Tammy Jo found herself doing some mental math in her head. 1975. Buddy was thirty-five. Or abouts. Loretta? No idea. Her Joe was older than she was – that was obvious. Maybe she was fifty. Probably older if Buddy was thirty-five. Who knows? Tammy Jo was never very good at identifying a woman’s correct age. Good Lord, stop with this rabbit trail and enjoy the show, Tammy Jo.

  The episode cut to an interview of an elderly man, a former detective on the case. “We learned, after speaking with Mrs. Bellinger’s co-workers, that the Bellingers had a volatile marriage.”

  “Retta would come into work at the salon many times with bruises and cuts that were not due to accidents. We all knew that Kenny was beating her. But no one did nothin’ about it. I tried to talk to her one time, but she told me to mind my own business,” a woman, who appeared to be around sixty years old and three hundred pounds explained. The name “Marlene Jackson” popped up on the screen as she sat back in a large chair.

  “The family was not known to own a gun, so if Retta shot him, the gun had to have been brought into the house,” the detective explained. “No gun was found at the crime scene, but the ballistics showed that it was a handgun. A neighbor had reported his handgun missing a couple of days after Mr. Bellinger was found. But our office wasn’t able to match that gun with the bullets taken from Mr. Bellinger’s body during surgery.”

  Tammy Jo faintly remembered this story when it first happened. She was a young mother at the time, working part time doing title searches for an old, nasty lawyer who smelled like cheap cigars and would always hit on her, inviting her out to dinner and to lawyer social functions. Jed was big time by then and Tammy Jo had a few extra hours on her hands to do normal things like read the paper. It was just a short article in the news about a man found shot near Fort Hood and a wife and son missing. She never thought about it again because no one wrote about it again. People got shot and disappeared all the time, especially in military towns or in places close to the border.

  After several interviews with the elderly police detective and the man who found Mr. Bellinger in his house, photos of Retta Bellinger and Buddy Kaspar were displayed prominently on the screen with a phone number serving as a tip line set up by the show.

  The narrator summed up the show’s theory: “It’s believed that Retta and her son Buddy found a way into obscurity and may be living under assumed names. For many years, there were rumors of women’s organizations and societies throughout the United States hiding battered women and their children fleeing abusive husbands. However, there’s been no concrete proof of such groups. In 1975, Retta Bellinger was a hair dresser in a small salon. She might still be a hair dresser in a salon today.”

  Then they showed photos of age progression. “This is a likeness of what Retta Bellinger would look like in 2001, at fifty-four years old.” Tammy Jo almost choked on her tongue at the sight of the woman. Then came a photo of Daniel Kaspar, Junior. It was, without a doubt in her mind, Julie’s husband Jonathan at thirty-five years old, sans the hair style. The age progressed photo had brown hair grown out with a neat part on the side. Jonathan had a high and tight haircut with lighter hair. But the face. The jawline. The shape of the eyes. The eyelashes. Retta. Buddy. Loretta. Buddy.

  And then it hit Tammy Jo like a bolt of lightning. Buddy was thirty-five years old. Loretta was a fifty-something year old hair dresser. They had lived in Texas a long time ago. And those photos looked a helluva lot like the Loretta and Buddy living quietly up in North Carolina.

  She started hyperventilating. There is no way that this is happening right now.

  Tammy Jo’s heart raced and her thoughts became jumbled in her head. She knew that she had missed her calling by not becoming a police detective. And now she was going to reckon all of it with a twenty-six-year old cold case out of Killeen, Texas.

  “No, this cannot be possible!” Tammy Jo yelled at the huge green plant in the corner, which appeared to want to respond to her.

  Jed walked into the room. “What can’t be possible?”

  “Julie’s husband!” she stood up and shouted into a high pitch.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s not him! He’s not Jonathan!”

  Jed put his hands on his hips and cocked his head. “What in the hell are you talkin’ about TJ?”

  “Buddy…er…Jonathan! He’s not really Jonathan! He’s that boy right there!” she hollered, almost in a full-blown panic attack, pointing to the photo of a young Daniel Kaspar, Junior on the television. He was a boy with a buzz cut and a sweet round face and long eyelashes, wearing a yellow collared shirt and holding a small American flag at a parade.

  “Call Phil! Call him right now!” Tammy Jo yelled at her husband who stood at the foot of the TV, watching the show, his face remaining in a contorted mass of confusion.

  “Call Phil, why?”

  “I want him to put an investigator on those people. And I want to know my rights.”

  Jed stood silently in front of the TV with his eyes fixed on the
sad old story in front of him. A Vietnam veteran who wasted away in a state facility for almost ten years, until finally succumbing to his mortal wounds. A woman who got away with shooting him and leaving him for dead. A mother and son who disappeared and remained on the run for twenty-six years. Surely, this was Tammy Jo being her usual over-the-top crazy self, right? Anything to make a mountaintop out of a simple coincidence? Anything to make a stink and be the center of attention?

  “You want to know what rights?” he shouted over at her as he heard her fumbling around in the study in the next room.

  “I want to know my rights about Molly. We are her grandparents and that fraud of a man ain’t her father. I want to know if we can make him give us our granddaughter, the only thing we have left of our own daughter.”

  And with that, Tammy Jo stormed out of the study and picked up the phone in the kitchen, dialing furiously.

  “You’ve reached the Law Offices of Phillip Crenshaw,” the young female voice stated in an answering machine greeting on the other end of the line.

  When the beep beeped, Tammy Jo blurted into the phone, “This is Tammy Jo McVicar! I need to speak with Phil as soon as possible, please. This is urgent! Please have him call me immediately after getting this message.”

  Soda Cans

  Loretta washed her hands slowly in the sink, observing the older gentleman who just waltzed into the reception area. Most of the folks who walked into this salon were young coeds at Carolina…and the occasional boyfriend in desperate need of trim, per the coed’s opinion.

  Loretta worked at Tar Heel Hair and Nails for almost ten years and found it to be like a second home…or a third or a fourth…she lost count of her homes by this point. She was the Salon Mom or the Den Mother to all the stylists and estheticians, some young mothers and some simply young and single.

  There was much more money to be made on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill than in the rural small town of Welby. The privileged college students who attended this upscale state school seemed to have a lot of disposable income, which was odd to Loretta, and the girls who came into the salon spared no dollar on good hair and a fine French manicure or pedicure and foot massage.

  “May I help you?” Liz, the receptionist, asked the man. He was large, broad shouldered, and had a head full of gray hair. He wore a long dark coat, unbuttoned due to the unseasonably warm day outside.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’d like to get a trim, please. Do you take walk-ins?” he asked. Loretta noticed his accent was deep South, almost Cajun.

  “Loretta?” she called over. “Do you have time for a men’s trim?”

  Loretta eyed the man peering back over at her. He was completely out of place in this salon and on this street and this time of day. Something inside of her squeezed slightly – a twinge of what exactly, she didn’t know. She hadn’t had a feeling like that in a long, long time. Dread? Awkwardness? Suspicion? She had no idea.

  Something was off, though.

  “Sure do,” she replied and patted her chair on the back.

  The man walked over and sat down. She put a huge teal colored plastic cape over him to catch any stray hairs from collecting on his coat. His hair wasn’t very long and didn’t appear to need much of a trim to her, so she asked him what he was looking for.

  “I’d like a military style cut,” he answered. “What do they call it?”

  “A high and tight.”

  “Yes, a high and tight will do me just fine.”

  “My son wears a high and tight, and I find it to be very attractive on most men.”

  Loretta thought that a high and tight on a man his size, who appeared to be well into his sixties, probably looked stupid…mostly because his face was too fat and his skin was too haggard. But she wasn’t one to judge male hair styles too harshly – unless they had those fake blond spiked tips on the top. That was just a dumb hairstyle on a man. She liked haircuts that looked traditional and not too trendy.

  “So where are you from, sir?” she asked him, trying to make him feel comfortable with hair dresser lady chit-chat. “You sound Cajun to me.”

  “I grew up in Louisiana.”

  “How long have you lived up here?”

  “Oh, I don’t live up here,” he replied. “I’m visiting my daughter at UNC,” he stated proudly. “She’s a senior.”

  “Would you like a Coke? Or wine? We like to offer our guests something to drink,” Loretta explained, briefly taking a sip of her own Diet Coke sitting on the counter in front of them.

  “A Coke would be good.”

  Loretta handed him a cold can from the mini fridge next to her station.

  “You must be so proud,” Loretta continued, indeed knowing what it felt like to have a child graduate from that fine institution…twice.

  Loretta felt much more at ease now; this man was out of place in this salon, but he was just a daddy in town. “What’s she studying?”

  “Well, she is completing her degree in social work. I think she’s going to apply to AmeriCorps when she’s done.”

  “What’s AmeriCorps?”

  “It’s like the Peace Corps, only in the United States instead of foreign countries. The young people get assigned to low income regions of the United States for a year. Or two. It’s a great experience for them. Makes them appreciate what they have and where they come from, I think,” he continued.

  “Wow, that is wonderful. I’ve never heard of that before. I guess it must be like how Legal Aid is for lawyers?” she asked.

  “Something like that, I’m sure.”

  “My son is a lawyer, and he works with low income people needing representation in court. I have always been so proud of him and how he gets to do what he loves but is also helping people at the same time. Do you know that movie with Gregory Peck? The one where he represents a black man accused of rape back in the 1940s or 1950s or something? I think it takes place in Alabama or Georgia?”

  “Of course! That’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Classic film. And book for that matter,” he responded.

  “Well, that’s what my son is like to me. He’s like Gregory Peck in that movie. He goes in and tries to help the people who have nothing to offer him, righting wrongs and finding justice or just trying to get the best deal for someone down on his luck. I bet he would take chickens for payment from some of his clients…if his neighbors wouldn’t have a fit about it.”

  The man laughed. “Now that’s a right good attorney right there,” he said. “Don’t hear about those kinds of lawyers much these days. All I ever hear about are the money grubbing ones on Wall Street or the politicians who make them all look bad with their behavior.” He took a sip of his Coke. “Your son sounds like a good fit for my daughter. Is he married?”

  Loretta got quiet. Here she was, yammering on like a woman without a care in the world, bragging on her son like he was a teenaged football player who was just crowned Homecoming King, instead of the responsible, hardworking, broken-hearted and devastated adult man that he is.

  Her gut sank. Her poor boy. So many years of being alone, finding Mrs. Right, and then losing her so quickly, so tragically, and all for nothing. She knew that Buddy would never be all alone, thank God. He was a father and had two little girls to raise. But being all alone and then being lonely – the kind of lonely that is only reconciled by the presence of the love of your life – are two entirely different things.

  “Well, he was,” Loretta said, quietly through a sadness that cut through the man’s thick patch of gray hair. “He is recently widowed.” Or was it widowered? Who knows?

  All Loretta knew was that just like her, long ago, her son lost the centerpiece of his very heart. One day he woke up married and in love. The next day, he woke up widowed…but still in love. And he could do nothing about any of it.

  “Oh, I’m real sorry,” the man groaned. “I am so sorry.”

  “Yes,
it was a horrible accident. She was run down by an elderly man who lost control of his car.” Loretta’s voice changed. “I always hated how she ran along the side of the road and with headphones in her ears…for that very reason. It’s just not safe!”

  “Do they have children?” he asked, quieting his voice.

  “Yes, and that’s the biggest part of the tragedy. They have two girls, one eleven and the other is just a toddler. It’s so awful. That baby will probably not even remember her own mother.”

  The man’s face drew down, the folds sagged lower. He had probably heard plenty of sad stories in his lifetime, and this one was another to add to the pile. He folded his hands in his lap on top of the cape and watched Loretta in the mirror as she worked behind him.

  Sometimes stories are so sad, there’s not a whole lot to say in response. The silence itself was enough to say it all.

  Loretta clipped and cut and shaped his big head into a look that was slightly less ridiculous than she originally imagined. She took off his cape and shook the hairs out onto the salon’s floor, which had been recently swept. Taylor, the Tar Heel varsity basketball cheerleader walked into the reception area, her platinum blond locks needing a touch up. She was Loretta’s next appointment. Liz checked the man out on the computer, ran his credit card through the reader, and handed him the receipt. He signed it and then walked back over to Loretta.

  “Ma’am, may I have your business card?” he asked.

  Loretta looked perplexed, and she felt her gut flare up again, but only for a second. Why in the world was her sixth sense making such a rare appearance today after being in hibernation for so long?

  “I want to give it to my daughter, in case she needs a good hairdresser for her graduation,” he explained further.