2 Heroes & Hooligans in Goose Pimple Junction (34 page)

“Evening, Chief.” Stanley didn’t bother getting up with his wife when the men stepped onto the porch.

“Evening, folks,” Johnny said, taking in Stanley’s denim cutoffs and white T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. “This here’s Jackson Wright. Don’t know if y’all have met.”

“No, can’t say’s we have. Nice to meet you, Jackson.”

“Likewise.” Jack nodded at Mary Ann and shook Stanley’s hand.

“This isn’t official police bidness, is it, Chief?” Molly Ann motioned to two old lawn chairs with heavy steel frames covered by sturdy nylon webbing in which the men could sit. Johnny watched her as she sat down, her nervous eyes darting every which way.

“No, of course not. Fact is, I’m on a leave of absence from the department.”

“Y’are? How come?” Stanley asked, gently moving the glider up and back with his foot.

“I guess you heard about the murder over on Marigold Lane.” Jack and Johnny had previously agreed that Jack would watch Stan’s reaction and Johnny would watch Molly Ann’s. But Johnny tried to register both of their expressions when he said, “You know—Lenny Applewhite?”

“Yeah, we heard about it,” Stanley said indifferently. “But I thought you said y’all weren’t here on official bidness. Asking folks about murder sounds official to me, don’t it to you, Moll?” Stan nudged Molly Ann’s leg, clad in skintight jeans. She nodded, her eyes flitting from Jack to Johnny. She chewed on a hangnail.

“I can see where y’all might think that.” Johnny looked at Jack.

“Thing is,” Jack said, “we’re just out talking to folks, trying to find any little clue, so we can catch a killer.”

“So you’re going to every house in Goose Pimple Junction?” Stanley asked suspiciously, absentmindedly scratching his protruding stomach.

“‘Course not,” Johnny said. “We saw y’all out on the porch here, thought we’d just stop and see if y’all had any thoughts on the subject.”

“Nope, sure don’t.” Stanley looked at his still silent wife.

“Did y’all attend the Oktoberfest?” Jack asked.

“Uh, yeah, we were up there for a while. Ate some supper, then came home.”

“But y’all did know Lenny Applewhite, didn’t you?” Johnny pressed.

Both husband and wife shook their heads, but Stanley spoke for both of them. “No, can’t say that we did. I may have seen him around town once or twice, but don’t believe I ever met the man. Honey, did you know him?”

Molly Ann had been nodding to what her husband was saying, but then switched to studying her nails. “No, I don’t think so.” Then, giving her gravelly voice its full strength, she said, “Where are my manners? Can I get y’all a beverage? Co’Cola or Mtn Dew maybe?”

“No, ma’am, we won’t trouble you for that.” Johnny held up a hand.

“Ale-8? RC? How about a Dr Pepper?”

“No, ma’am. Thank you.” Johnny pursed his lips and looked questioningly at Molly Ann. “You never met Mr. Applewhite?”

“Well, I
might
have met him up at the Mag Bar. His name does sound kinda sorta familiar.” She tried to look uncertain but failed. She stood up and forced a smile. “How about an ice-cold Yoo-hoo?”

“No thanks. Can you tell me where y’all were between eight and ten that night? The night of the murder?”

Husband and wife looked at each other. “Yeah,” Stanley said, “We can tell you.”

They waited. Finally, Johnny said, “Well?”

“Oh. We were eating and socializing and participating in the wife-carrying contest. Don’tcha remember, Jack? Our turn was before yours, maybe you didn’t see us, but I know plenty other people did.”

“Yeah, I do remember, now that you mention it. Y’all look a might different than you did that night.”

“He was Popeye, and I was Olive Oyl,” she explained to Johnny.

Johnny stood up and Jack followed. “I see. Okay then. We’ll get out of your hair. If y’all think of anything pertinent to the case, you be sure to call me or the house, you hear?”

“Sure thing, Chief,” Stanley said.

“Toodle-oo.” Molly Ann wiggled her behind as she leaned on the porch railing and waved to the men, giving them a good look at her cleavage. “Y’all don’t be strangers.”

Jack and Johnny waited to speak until the car doors were closed. The second they were both in the car, Jack said, “She was lying through her yellow teeth.”

“She sure was, but I’ve got to say I don’t think Stan was lying. So if he doesn’t know about his wife and Lenny, it would be a pretty human thing for her to lie to keep him from finding out. And they do have an alibi.”

“So they say. Right now all’s we can be sure of is they were there for the wife-carrying contest. I’m going to see if I can get Hank to confirm their alibi.”

“Sounds good.”

Johnny started the car, both men waved to the Adairs, and Johnny drove off. After a few moments, he said, “Know what my mama used to say?”

“Hard telling,” Jack said.

“Tomorrow’s ash cake is better than last Sunday’s pudding.”

“And her point would be?” Jack asked.

“Folks always want what they don’t have.”

“Words to live by.” Jack nodded. “Who’s next on the list?”

“Nettie and Sonny Luckett, back in town, over on Walker Street.”

“Hmm. If Goose Pimple Junction had a rough neighborhood, that would be it.”

“Then this should be fun.”

When you are standing on the edge of a cliff, a step forward is not progress.

~Southern Proverb

J
ohnny and Jack wound their way through the crowd of kids playing freeze tag in the Lucketts’ front yard. Jack knocked on the screen door, and Nettie Luckett, a blonde who might have been attractive if she didn’t have such a huge nose, opened the door a few seconds later. She took one look at the chief and her face lost all its color.

“Oh Lord. Who died?” she said, with her hand over her mouth.

“Nobody died, Mizz Luckett, we just want to ask you some questions.”

She took a deep breath and laid her hand over her heart. “For crying out loud, you about scared the living daylights outta me.”

“Sorry, ma’am, didn’t mean to. This here’s Jackson Wright. May we come in and set a spell?”

“Oh! Of course, Chief. Where are my manners? Come right on in.”

As the men came into the house, she looked past them to the kids in the yard and hollered, “Jenny, you leave your brother be.” She let the screen door slap closed, mumbling about dang kids, and led the men to the family room at the back of the house, where Sonny Luckett watched
Wheel of Fortune
. The room looked lived in, and Sonny fit right in with the décor. Johnny detected a faint smell of marijuana.

“Cut off the TV, Sonny, we got kumpny.”

Sonny did as he was told and pulled his La-Z-Boy up to a sitting position. “Somebody die?” He stubbed out a cigarette in the ashtray next to him.

Jack and Johnny both assured the Lucketts that nobody had died; they just wanted to talk.

“I hear tell you ain’t the po-leece chief right now,” Sonny said.

“That’s correct.” Jack and Johnny sat on the sofa next to Sonny’s chair. “Jack and I are conducting an unofficial investigation into the murder of Lenny Applewhite.”

“Lenny Applewhat?” Nettie spoke a little too loudly.

“Applewhite,” Johnny said. “We were told y’all might’ve known him.”

“Well, I don’t know who told you that. We don’t get out much, and I can assure you we never had no Lenny Applewhatsits over to the house.” Nettie laughed a nervous woodpecker kind of laugh, as Sonny pulled the lever on his La-Z-Boy, returning the chair to the reclined position. He took a drink from his can of Coors Light, swiped his hand over his mouth, and wiped it on his dirty shorts.

“Unless the feller was at one of them Bunco nights you go to all the time,” he said to his wife.

Even though Sonny had said it jokingly, she visibly pretended to ponder that question, her index finger propped on her cheek. “No. No, can’t say that I knew the man. I wish I could help.”

Their daughter appeared in the doorway. “Mama, I’m going over to the diner with Julie, ‘kay?”

“How you getting there?” Nettie blew a puff of smoke from the cigarette she held in one hand, the other hand propped on a hip.

“Julie’s gonna pump me on her bicycle.”

“All right, just be home before the street lights cut on.”

“Aw, Mama, do I have to?”

“Naw. You can stay home if you’d rather.”

“All right, all right.” The girl stomped away.

Johnny looked pointedly at Nettie. “We were told maybe one of y’all met him up at the Mag Bar and thought maybe you could tell us something about him.”

“Well, honey, it looks like you came to a goat’s house for wool.” She smiled sweetly.

“Come again?” Jack said.

She made her eyes big in a transparent attempt to look innocent. “Y’all have come to the wrong house if you think we can tell you anything about that man. We must not have run in the same circles.”

“Aw, Net, don’t go acting all highfalutin. Fact is, boys, we’s just a couple of homebodies. Nett here only goes out on her Bunco nights. That’s as far as our
circle
goes.” Nettie shot him a stink eye.

“I don’t get a chance to meet many folks,” Sonny explained. “I’m a trucker, and I’m either on the road, or I’m home resting up to get back on the road. Nettie doesn’t have time to meet nobody. Between taking care of the kids and her sick mama, and her occasional Bunco night, she don’t get out much, neither.”

“Do you remember where you were on the night of the Oktoberfest?” Jack asked.

“I’s on the road, heading for the armpit of America—Peoria. Where were you, Nett?”

Nettie swiped a hand under her nose. “I would have had to have been home with the kids, of course.”

“Ma’am, are you sure you never met Mr. Applewhite?” Johnny leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I was under the impression you knew him. He had brown eyes and brown hair, and wore muttonchops, although I hear tell women found him attractive. He was a little thick around the middle, but that didn’t hurt his popularity with the ladies any, or so they say. You sure you don’t know him? Feller I talked to said he thought for sure you knew him.”

She looked everywhere around the room but at the men. She rearranged some knickknacks, scratched her nose, and puffed her cheeks out like she was thinking hard. They stayed silent, and she cracked in under a minute. “Oh! Oh,
that
Lenny Applewhite.”

Jack and Johnny glanced at each other, a silent laugh passing between them. “So you
did
know him?” Johnny said.

“Uh, not
real
well, but now that I think about it, I think I seen him once or twice.”

“Where?” Sonny demanded. “Where did you
see
him?”

“Now, honey, it’s nothing to get all riled up about. I believe I met that man at the Piggly Wiggly.” She brought her hand up to her mouth and tapped her lips with her finger while she looked off into space, apparently trying to remember where she’d met Lenny. “Or maybe it was over to the school. Yeah, that might’ve been it.”

“I see. You’re out philandering while I’m working my butt off trying to provide for you and the kids—”

“Aw, hon, it ain’t like that at all—”

“Okay, folks.” Johnny put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. They shut up. “Is there anything you remember about Mr. Applewhite that might help us find his killer? Maybe he mentioned someone, or something he was doing. Can you think of anything that would point us in a specific direction?”

“I’m sorry, Chief, I just didn’t know the man that well. We didn’t talk much.”

Back in the car, Jack and Johnny shared a laugh over Nettie Luckett’s comment.

“I’ll bet they didn’t talk much,” Jack said, strapping his seat belt on.

“Oh, she probably just
disremembered
.” Johnny put the car into drive. “Bunco nights. Something tells me Mr. Applewhatsis
was
a part of those
Bunco
nights.”

“Yeah, but what do you bet if we asked Nettie the rules of Bunco, she wouldn’t be able to tell us?”

“Bunco night,” Johnny echoed, laughing and shaking his head. Then he rolled through a stop sign to make a right turn toward the last couple’s house.