arkansastraveler (14 page)

We sat there for a moment, enjoying the hustle and bustle of other people’s lives.

“Gabe?” I said.

“Hmmm?”

“Is what you said to John Luther true?”

“About what?”

“That how those cops treated you wasn’t the first time something like that’s happened to you.”

“Yes.”

“When? Where?”

“Do you mind if I don’t go into details right now? I’ll tell you someday, but I just want to enjoy our time here without dredging up old and painful history.”

I rested my hand on his thigh, wishing I could change what happened his first night here, wishing I could change the other incidents like it in his past. “I hate them for what they did to you.”

“Comes with the territory,
querida
. I learned early in my life that people with white skin can change their clothes and go anywhere in this country and fit in or, at the very least, not stand out.” He looked at his arm, still a deep mahogany from his months of surfing with his son, Sam. “But no matter how expensive my clothes are or what kind of car I drive or how much education I have, there are people who will look at this brown skin and make assumptions.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He kissed my temple. “Nothing for you to be sorry for,
niña
. It’s just the way life is.”

“Well, to quote your very articulate son, it sucks. It sucks big-time.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “We are going to have to buy that boy a word-a-day calendar to enrich his limited vocabulary.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ve got exactly two minutes to get to your appointment. After that, I want you to show me the Arkansas you love. I want to stop wasting my time talking about last night and spend it imagining you a happy little girl busy breaking your friend’s arm and dyeing the baptismal tank red.”

I bolted upright. “Who told you that? I swear, I’m gonna kill Emory. Worse, I’m gonna rat on him and Duck to Brother Cooke.”

He stood up, pulling me with him. “My sources are sacred.”

“You’ve been talking to Dove,” I accused. “And don’t be so smart. When I tell Brother Cooke you’re Catholic and have only been sprinkled, never fully immersed, he’s going to open up his full-on, no-holds-barred-you’re-going-to-hell-in-a-gilded-handbasket witnessing extravaganza on you. Don’t come hiding behind my skirttails when he’s dragging you toward the baptistery.”

“That’s shirttails,” he said. “Is the water warm? I might consider it.”

“Hey, kids, where y’all headin’?” Amen said, coming down the stairs of the courthouse. She was dressed in a conservative gray suit and carrying a black leather briefcase.

“Wow, you look like a lawyer,” I said.

“Bite your tongue, girl.” She nodded at Gabe. “Heard about last night. Cleaning up that joke of a police department is one of my first priorities if I’m elected mayor.”

“
When
you’re elected mayor,” I said.

“From your lips to the good Lord’s ears,” she said. “You okay?” she asked Gabe.

“Fine,” he said, his voice cool. “No harm done.”

“Right,” she said, her smile cynical. “Just another little razor slash to the soul.”

He shrugged and didn’t answer. I glanced from her to him, again trying to figure out what had caused this instant animosity between them. Was it because she was a politician, not one of Gabe’s favorite types of people? Even though he was disgusted by behavior like those young officers showed, he was protective of his profession and balked at any politician who made claims they could tell the police how to run their department better. Or was it what he claimed, that she was hiding something? Another aspect of politicians that Gabe hated, having seen it too much in his law enforcement career.

“How long are you going to be?” Gabe asked me.

“I shouldn’t be more than an hour,” I said. “How about meeting me at Hawley’s drugstore? There’s a soda fountain there and magazines to read.”

“Sounds fine. See you later.” He nodded at Amen. She nodded back.

“Where’re you goin’, girl?” she asked.

“Over to Beulah’s for a trim and hoping to catch a free ride on the gossip train. C’mon, walk me over there.”

“Is Gabe all right?” she asked as we crossed the thick grass and waited at the tall curb for three pickups full of camouflage-dressed hunters to drive past. Bumper stickers advertising “Ducks Unlimited” decorated every truck. “What happened to him last night is unforgivable and unacceptable as far as I’m concerned.”

“Physically he’s fine. I’m sure it upset him, but he won’t talk about it. That’s how he is. Don’t let anyone see what hurts you.” We stood in front of Beulah’s, and I waved at her through her big window and mouthed, “Just one minute.”

Amen shifted her briefcase to her other hand. “Sure broke my heart when I heard about it. Those little jackasses. I wanted to apologize for our town but I could tell he just wanted to let it drop.” She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Does he . . . Is it just my imagination . . . or did he and I get off on the wrong foot?” She wouldn’t meet my eye, and I knew how hard this was for her to articulate. Amen had always had a lot of pride and would never be the one to come to you first when you’d had a tiff. I guess she’d changed in more ways than I realized in the last few years.

“Oh, Amen, he’s just being a cop, you know? They’re suspicious of everyone. It’s in their DNA, I think.”

Her dark eyes scrutinized me. “He’s suspicious of me?”

“He’s got a crazy notion you’re hiding something, and Gabe’s a stickler for everything being completely aboveboard. Which is kind of ironic, if you ask me, for someone who hides so much of his own feelings. I told him he was way off base. What could you possibly have to hide?” I laughed.

She didn’t.

As a matter of fact, her face was as serious as a pallbearer’s.

“Amen? He’s not right, is he?”

She hesitated, then slowly nodded. “Sorry, Benni.”

“What are you hiding?”

Beulah rapped on the window, pointing at her watch and gesturing me inside. I held up an index finger and turned back to Amen. “What is it?”

“Come out to my grandma’s cabin around two o’clock. I’ll tell you then. It’s too complicated to get into now.”

“But . . .”

Beulah opened the front door and yelled out, “Quit your jabberin’ and get your butt in here, Benni Harper, or we’re rafflin’ off your appointment.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I called back. “I’ll be right there.” I
turned back to Amen. “Okay, two o’clock at Miss DeLora’s.”

“Her cabin’s out by Mayhaw Lake. Do you remember how to get there?”

I nodded.

“It’s changed some since Boone rebuilt the cabin. There’s a wishing well in front, but the old hickory tree’s still there. My Mustang will be parked in the driveway.” She turned and walked away, her dark head held high.

“Oh, Amen,” I said to myself. “What have you got yourself into?”

B
EULAH POINTED OVER
to the back room where the pink wash sinks resided. “Get in there and let Crystal Lee wash you so’s Maybellene can get you cut. We’ve got a full house today and don’t have time for you to be visitin’ the day away.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, slipping my arms through one of Beulah’s smocks. Crystal Lee, Maybellene’s daughter, appeared to be about seventeen or eighteen years old. She was a short, round-hipped, pretty girl with deep dimples and curly rusty-red hair. Sparkly butterfly clips floated around her big hair.

The washroom was entirely devoted to Elvis’s younger years. There were dozens of black-and-white pictures from his Hollywood films. In the background, the soundtrack from
Clambake
played softly.

She smiled at me and said, “I love your hair. Hope you’re not letting Mama cut off a real lot.” The tiny silver-colored ball piercing her tongue clicked against her front teeth. I was tempted to warn her not to open her mouth in an electrical storm, but, as Dove would no doubt advise me, I kept my own counsel.

“I’m just here for a trim. And some interesting talk.”

She tucked a pink towel around my neck. “Oh, we got plenty of that around here,” she said, giving a shy giggle. She poured some thin, minty-smelling concoction on my hair and started massaging my scalp. “Hope you don’t mind me rubbing your head. It’s something Memaw wanted us to start doing to compete with that new salon out by the Wal-Mart. She said we have to compete with service ’cause that’s our strong suit, so we’re rubbing people’s heads now. The older ladies seem to like it.”

“It does feel good,” I said, leaning my head back over the wash sink and settling into the chair.

“So, how’s your visit been so far?” she asked cheerfully, punctuating her words with clicks from her tongue jewelry.

“Pretty good. There’s been some rough spots.”

“Toby Hunter,” she said without hesitation.

“Boy, you must be psychic.”

She sighed and massaged my temples. “Not so hard to figure out. It seems like most the time there’s trouble in Sugartree, he’s involved one ways or another. I’ve known Toby since we were in the primaries in Sunday school. He was meaner than a badger even then. He used to throw the wooden Noah’s ark animals at me when I was four and he was seven. Still got a scar.” She pointed to a thin white line above her pink-painted lips.

I lifted my head slightly to look at it. “So, I take it he had a lot of enemies in this town.”

“For sure. He got, like, really creepy in high school. Five years ago at Halloween when I was a freshman and he was a senior, he came dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. Claimed he was Casper the Ghost, but the pointed head gave him away. He did it to get people’s goats. Worked, too.”

She rubbed her strong fingers along the edge of my hairline, pressing deep into my scalp. A rich combination of rosemary and mint engulfed the tiny room, and I was tempted to just lay back and relax. But curiosity had seized
me, and I’d found a fountain of information that would rival Uncle WW’s backyard extravaganza. And I’d only have her for a few minutes.

“He was sure a jerk at Amen Tolliver’s fund-raising party,” I said.

“I heard about that! Not that I’m surprised. He’s plain lucky someone there didn’t take a shotgun to him.”

“So,” I couldn’t resist asking, “who do you think killed him?”

“Oh, shoot, it could’ve been any of a dozen people. Why, I’d place money on Ricky Don Stevens right off. I’ve even
heard
him say, more’n once, too, that he’d like to kill Toby Hunter.”

“Ricky Don Stevens?” The name didn’t ring any bells.

“Tara Billings’s boyfriend. He’s had a crush on her since he was thirteen. You’ve probably met him.”

“Where?”

“He works over at the Dairy Queen. He was workin’ last night when . . . Well, you know what happened.”

I was slightly irritated but not surprised that Gabe had already become a subject of gossip. “You mean when the cops illegally harassed my husband.”

Her face blushed pink under her frizzy poodle curls. “I think what they did to your husband was awful, but some of the patrol officers are old buddies of Toby’s. They all kinda hung out together, to drink beer and hunt.” She tilted her head and smiled at me, pink lipstick staining her right front tooth. “I hope your husband’s okay. He sure is good-looking.”

I smiled back, telling myself to chill out. This young girl didn’t have anything to do with those cops or their attitude. “He’s fine. And, yeah, he is pretty good-looking for an old fart.”

She giggled again. “Right before you came in, Mama said if’n he was hers, she’d lock him in the bedroom and wear the key around her neck. But don’t tell her I told you.”

“Your secret’s safe with me. About this Ricky Don . . .” I was curious about his connection with this and, though I’d never admit it out loud—especially in Gabe’s presence—I was trying to come up with suspects other than Quinton. Just in case.

“I saw him this morning at Leon’s Donut Shack. He feels real bad ’cause it was him who called the police. There’s some cops in Sugartree who are real nice, real fair. You were just unlucky enough to get the assholes.” She blushed again. “Pardon my French.”

“So, Ricky Don and Tara are an item?” I asked, trying to remember what the boy who served us at the Dairy Queen looked like, but coming up blank.

“Shoot, he’s been tryin’ to get her to wear a promise ring since they was fourteen. But Tara’s always been real independent. Said she wanted to play the field before settlin’ down and havin’ a passel of babies.” She heaved a deep sigh. “Now, me, I’d just love to get married and have me a big ole bunch of babies. But now that I’m out of high school, Mama and Memaw want me to go off to beauty school in Little Rock, get myself some training so I’m not dependin’ on some man. Mama and Memaw are real big on not dependin’ on men.”

“Why would Ricky Don want to kill Toby?” I asked, hoping to verify my suspicions.

She turned on the water, tested the temperature on her arm, then proceeded to wet down my hair. “Well, ’cause of what Toby did to Tara, of course. It really messed her up. I mean, she used to be the happiest girl, and now, I hear tell, she barely leaves the house. Hasn’t been to school in three weeks.” Crystal Lee
tsked
under her breath, sounding like my aunt Garnet except for the metallic clicking. “I heard her daddy was thinkin’ of home schooling her. And it’s her senior year, too. What a cryin’ shame.”

“I saw her at the 3B,” I said.

“You know,” she said, squirting shampoo on my head,
“I heard her daddy was gonna try and get her to work there a couple days a week. Try to get her back out with people.” She started scrubbing my hair with youthful enthusiasm. “Hope it helps.”

“Toby came by when I was there,” I said, hoping to get her to tell me what he’d done without me out-and-out asking.

“Shoot, that must’ve made Mr. Billings madder than a wet mud hen.”

“He was pretty pissed.”

“Mr. Billings just thinks the moon rises and falls on Tara.”

I couldn’t stand it any longer. “What exactly did Toby do?”

“Well,” she said, her voice dropping lower, “he took advantage of her. I mean, she was out drinkin’ and carousin’ with him, no doubt about that. And she is eighteen, so there was nothin’ her daddy could really do to stop her. You know Mr. Lovelis, the janitor at the church? He was going fishing early one morning and found her sitting on the road out near Mayhaw Lake, clean out of her mind. Didn’t even know where she was. He took her home to her daddy. Guess she’d been, well, you know, sexually attacked. Except she didn’t remember anything. Not a thing.” She started rinsing my hair, doing it quickly and expertly. I wouldn’t have her to myself much longer.

“Why do they think Toby did it?”

She turned off the water and squeezed the excess water out of my hair. “Sit up, now.” She pulled the towel around my neck up and wrapped it around my head, turban-style. “They had a date that night, and according to her, the last thing she remembers is drinking and dancing with him at the Blue Dog Tavern outside of town. Next thing she remembers is sitting alongside that road where Mr. Lovelis found her.”

“Was she drugged or something?” I asked.

“They don’t really know,” she said, taking a sweet-smelling hand towel and patting my wet face. “I heard she was so hysterical she wouldn’t let her daddy take her to the hospital.”

“Did Toby get arrested?”

“Oh, the cops talked to him. Leastways, they said they did. His daddy’s got an awful lot of pull in this town, especially with the police department. Mayor Hunter and Chief Bollwood go way back, belonged to the same fraternity in college. Story goes that Toby claims he and Tara got in a fight, and she left with some other guy. He got three of his buddies to back him up. Thing is, not a one of them could give a good description of this so-called other guy. So there you go. Toby gets away with something again.”

She shook her head. “It’s a shame, for sure. I hope Tara can go on with her life. She’s a real sweet girl.”

Out in the main room, Maybellene was sweeping up around her chair while a spirited argument about Beulah’s Elvis altar was going into high gear.

“I don’t care what Miss Teresa hickory-stick-up-her-butt Sullivan says,” Beulah said. “I told her that puttin’ a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich in front of Elvis’s picture on his birthday ain’t any weirder than puttin’ flowers on her own mama’s grave.” She glanced around the room, making sure everyone was listening so the story would get retold right. “You know what she said? That dead people can’t eat. You know what I told her? That they don’t smell too good, neither.”

“Why, Beulah, you done made a double nintendray,” the silver-haired lady in her chair said.

“Why, I sure did,” she exclaimed, her cackle the loudest of the bunch.

“Crystal Lee scrub you down good?” Maybellene asked me. “She give you the free scalp massage?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “It was wonderful. That minty stuff is still tingling my head.”

“Well, sister, what is it you need?”

I’d already gotten what I’d come in here for—more information about Toby—so I just said, “Take off about an inch. Kinda trim up the split ends.”

“You got it.”

As she cut my hair, I listened to the latest gossip about people’s trials and tribulations with jealous boyfriends, toddlers unwilling to potty train, fathers who drink too much bourbon, and one lady whose teenage son just revealed to her he wanted to go to clown school.

“Oh, Lord, Dixie,” Beulah said. “That means for the rest of your life you’ll have to introduce him as my son, the clown.”

“It was all those times I let him play with his daddy’s shoes when he was a boy,” Dixie said, holding a specially designed tulip-shaped plastic shield over her face while Beulah sprayed her hairdo with about half a can of Final Net. “I swear, that boy has a thing for shoes that don’t fit his feet.”

“I think they call that a fetish,” said another lady waiting in one of the hair-drying chairs.

“Nah, that’s only if he likes to wear them when he’s doing the dirty deed,” Maybellene said, using a whisk broom to sweep off the loose hairs on my shoulders. “How’s that, Benni? Do you need it blow-dried?”

“Looks great. I’ll just let it dry naturally.” I slipped a five-dollar tip on her table when she turned her back.

“Before you leave town, you bring that fine-looking man of yours inside here so’s we can take a closer look,” Beulah said as I paid for my trim. “We need some fresh material in this place.”

“Y’all sound like you’re doing okay to me,” I said, their laughter following me out the door.

The short walk to Hawley’s drugstore gave me time to
mull over what I’d learned from Crystal Lee. From that information, there were two more likely suspects than Quinton for Toby’s murder. Of course, I didn’t want to think that John Luther would kill anyone. Then again, it had obviously been a crime of opportunity, not an elaborate plan. And like Gabe said, even a passive man might go temporarily insane where his daughter was concerned.

Inside Hawley’s drugstore, Gabe was sitting at the counter drinking a Coke and reading an
Arkansas Sportsman
magazine. I waved at old Mr. Hawley behind the prescription counter in back. The smell of the cramped drugstore was that nostalgic combination of malty fountain drinks, sweet medicine, and sharp, waxy floor polish. It was a scent you never encountered in today’s modern mega-drugstore.