Champagne for Buzzards (16 page)

Marley and I set off with a list of must-haves from town while Tully and Zig wired up the chandelier. Clearing off while the two screw-ups had at it was a little cowardly, but self-preservation won out. I was giving odds that they'd have the house burnt down before we got back but Marley wouldn't take the bet, seemed she thought it was likely too.

“Let's see the list,” I said as I pulled the safety belt around me.

Marley dug it out of the pocket of her jeans and handed it over.

“Polish — one, two, three different kinds, silver, furniture, granite — who knew there were so many? There's a lot I have to learn, isn't there? This party is…” I didn't get any further with my worries because we were at the end of the lane and a car from the sheriff's department blocked our path. Marley, always impatient and focused, laid on the horn even though the deputy was already getting out of his car and coming back to talk to us.

It was Deputy Quinn. He broke into a smile when he saw Marley.

He leaned on the open window and said, “Hello again.”

Marley responded, “Hello to you too — now get out of my way.”

“Just want to check your car, miss. We're looking for a real bad fella and we want to make sure he isn't trying to sneak away in anyone's car. Would you mind opening your trunk?”

“Yes I would. We are still living in the United States of America, aren't we?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Then you have no right to search anyone's vehicle just willy-nilly.”

“Willy-nilly?” I asked. “Where the hell did he come from?”

“I need to look in your trunk, miss, it's my job.”

“Seems he isn't looking for Willy, Marley. Just pop the trunk and let's get on with it.”

She frowned, her sense of injustice battling with her desire to get back to her primary goal of house beautiful, but she pulled the trunk lever and Deputy Quinn went to search it while we turned in our seats to watch. We waited for something exciting to happen but Deputy Quinn slammed the trunk and came back to the window. “Have a nice day, ma'am.” His smile was big and warm, as if he'd like to help make her day.

“Nice butt and he likes you,” I told Marley as we watched him stroll back to his cruiser. “Don't be silly,” Marley snapped.

“Why are you so sure you'll never meet another man, that David was all there will ever be for you?”

“Why do you want Jimmy's truck back?” She always wins.

As we pulled onto the highway watching the cruiser in the side mirror, I told Marley, “He's following us.”

“Why?” Marley wondered. “What in hell is going on?”

“I think he's following you. He likes them mean and nasty. I think he still hasn't gotten over his last little up close and personal with you.”

She wasn't laughing. Her eyes searched the rearview. “What's going on, Sherri? This is starting to freak me out.”

“Me too. Why don't you go back to Jacaranda?”

“Are you coming?”

“Think we can get Tully and Ziggy to come with us?” I said.

“No.”

“That's what I thought too.”

Marley asked, “You're staying because they're staying, right?”

“Guess so.”

“Then I'm staying too.” She checked the rearview again. “He's still following us.”

“He's in love.”

“And you're crazy.”

Actually I was happy to have him following us. If I met up with Boomer, having a sheriff's deputy on the scene might make that crazy bastard think twice about acting out, that's if the whole sheriff's department hadn't been told to stay out of Boomer's face. How deep did the corruption go? How big a hold did Breslau have on Sheriff Hozen? Seemed the Breslaus might get to do whatever they wanted around Independence.

With all kinds of bad men I didn't want to meet at the back of Riverwood and being watched and searched at the front of the property, I was feeling caught in a net that was slowly closing. And I didn't even know why.

The deputy left us at the town limits, near a small Mexican cantina/grocery store with a tilting sign that said Tiena Mexicana. The cantina was cuddled up against a discount store selling everything from cowboy boots to dish towels.

This general store was Marley's first stop. They literally had it all; some of it rested in huge cardboard boxes in the middle of the floor until someone wanted what the box contained enough to dig for it. It looked like Western wear and leather gloves were only beaten out by cheap foodstuffs and housewares as the hot items. I picked up a half-dozen sets of small glass salt-and-pepper shakers to put out on the buffet but Marley had a cartload of stuff for which I paid.

The good news was that when we got back to Riverwood Tully and Ziggy had finished hanging the chandelier. They had it lit up and the house was still standing — no smell of smoke, no crackling noises. They were so excited I figured they were as surprised as we were by this.

Marley didn't leave any time for congratulations. She had us right back to work unpacking the last boxes. I sorted out the crystal drops for the chandelier, washing and polishing them.

I was drying baubles when someone called, “Hello,” from the front door.

Marley and I looked at each other. She shrugged and dove back into a box. Nothing was as interesting as what was hiding among the paper and she was ripping off newspaper and setting the contents of the box on the floor around her before the next hello came.

I peeked around the entrance to the dining room. April Donaldson stood in the front doorway. “I brought the dog,” she said, looking around and taking in the chaos. “Come in.” I set the crystals down on the table.

April had actually combed her hair but her eyes were still hollow and red-rimmed.

“Why? Why did you bring the dog?”

“My sister called, didn't expect it but she'd heard about Lucan and thought I might want to come up and spend some time with them. Can't really show up with a dog, can I? And I'm not really a dog person; don't know what to do with him.”

I was going back to Jacaranda. I wanted the dog like I wanted chiggers but you can't say no to someone in April's situation, at least not if you're Ruth Ann Jenkins' daughter. “All right,” I agreed, my voice full of reluctance.

I followed her down the steps to her beat-up old Honda. The back seat was filled with suitcases and boxes. It didn't look like she was planning on coming back anytime soon. “Did you tell the sheriff you're leaving?” I asked.

“No.” She opened the door of the car. “Why should I?”

“He might want to know.” But then, if the old guys at the service station already knew she was going, and knew where she was going, the sheriff probably did as well.

I looked into the front seat where the dog was pretending I couldn't see him, hunkered down like he was expecting blows. “Well, are you coming out or not?” I asked.

He was beside me in one bound, shaking and trembling and leaning up against me like he just couldn't get close enough. I stroked his head, telling him he was in for a helluva life if he chose to stay with me. He didn't seem to dislike the idea, just stuck onto me like he was glued right to my leg.

“Will you be back for the funeral?” I asked April, figuring I might get a second chance to ditch the animal.

She frowned. “I called the sheriff's office to see when they were going to release Lucan's body. They didn't know.”

“Want me to call you if I hear anything?” She nodded, “I'll give you my sister's number up in Gainesville.” She opened her purse and wrote down a number, handing it over to me. “How much does it cost to bury someone? I don't have much money put away.”

“Maybe the Breslaus will help out. After all, Lucan worked for them.”

“He only worked when the gates were closed.”

“What?” It sounded like her mind was doing backflips but she was looking away from me and worrying her lip.

Her eyes came back to mine. “Always told me if I saw those gates closed to go right on home and stay put. Never knew why but I think you better do the same. Stay away from them people, especially when the gates are closed.”

“Have you heard something in town? Heard about Boomer and me having a little trouble?”

“Oh, God no, you didn't? Get away from here. Lucan said Boomer was real crazy, not just normal disturbed but real dangerous crazy. Lucan hated him and was afraid for Kelly, said what he was going to do if Boomer Breslau came near his daughter again. That's why, well, why I was surprised that it was Lucan who died. Should have been Boomer. I really thought Luc would kill him to keep Kelly safe. The way Boomer has been acting that's what it will take to keep him off that girl. Luc was real scared for her. He even talked to Lovey about sending Kelly away to a private girl's school to finish high school. It was going to cost a lot of money but Lucan figured it was the only way he could protect her. Well, that or Lucan was going to have to kill Boomer.”

“You think Boomer killed Lucan?”

“Maybe, but if it was Boomer who killed Luc, no one is ever going to charge him. Luc said the sheriff was as dirty as the Breslaus were. Whatever bad things are happening, the sheriff is involved. You stay well out of their way and stay away from Boomer.” She was getting agitated, trying to convince me. “Just stay away from them all, you hear?”

“Don't worry about me. I know how to look out for myself, although this place is turning out to be worse than most of the bars I've hung out in — but with a lot less to drink.” She almost smiled. “Still, you watch out.”

I nodded and said, “I'll keep your dog for now but if you decide you want him back you just swing on by.”

“Okay,” she said brightly, nodding her head in agreement as she got into the car.

“What's his name?” I asked as her car coughed to life.

“Whose?”

“The dog's.”

“I don't know, just Dog. Luc just called him the dog, never heard nothing else.”

I raised my hand to wave as she backed the car around and headed off.

“Okay, Dog, looks like it's you and me.” I stroked his head. He seemed to like it. At least well enough not to bite my hand off.

“Sure you don't want to run after her?” I asked Dog, who was still leaning on my leg. He looked up at me and yawned with an open mouth that showed off all his teeth. “Bored with my jokes already?” I asked him. He seemed disinterested but I went on petting him anyway.

Tully was making his way back from the bunkhouse where he'd gone for a quiet nap, daily naps being only one of the things that were worrying me about Tully.

“Look what I got, a genuine dog.”

“And an ugly one at that,” he replied.

“Now don't you go disparaging my animal. I don't let nobody bad mouth you, although heaven knows there are plenty of reasons to do that, so nobody's going to dis my dog.”

“Has it got a name?”

“Yup, didn't I just say it?”

“What?”

“Dog.”

“But what's his name?”

“His name is Dog.”

“You have got to be kidding. First he's an ugly brown dog with a tail too long, to say nothing of his legs that look like they belong to one of those things we're feeding in the barn. Every bone in his body shows through his skin and now you give him a name like that.” He shook his head and headed for the house.

“Be careful,” I warned Tully, “Marley is looking for someone to polish more silver. I'd like to see that, like to see you polishing stuff.”

“Tell her to get Dog to do it,” he said and kept on going.

“Are we ever going to get this done?” I asked. Boxes were everywhere and although the furniture was sitting where Marley thought it belonged it was looking bedraggled and haphazard. Marley had declared it all needed vacuuming and polishing. The kitchen counters were still covered with silver to polish.

“Of course we will,” Marley said. “You just get on your dancing shoes and move.”

“I'll get some real good music for you, that's what we need, some good music for dancing. It'll help us work too,” Ziggy said and hurried away.

Marley watched him hustle out the door and asked, “Does he take everything literally?”

“Pretty much. Just don't say ‘Break a move,' or he'll be looking for something to destroy.”

“I love that man,” Marley said, diving into a box. On her knees, she stopped digging through paper and looked back at me. “And I love this place, love Independence.”

“Girl, you are crazier than I ever knew. This is one weird place, people getting murdered, psychopaths on the doorstep and now mutant dogs.”

“Do you think Boomer Breslau is a psychopath?”

“Oh yeah, the poster boy.”

Ziggy's music turned out to be the greatest hits of the sixties, his old-fashioned boombox blasting out
Creedence Clearwater Revival
.

“Now that's what I call music,” Tully said, grinning with delight.

“‘Proud Mary' was an old girlfriend of yours, was she?” I asked.

“Tad hard to remember them all but I'm sure there was one named Mary.”

“I'm sure there was too,” I agreed.

Tully took the empty box I handed him. “The great thing about a misspent youth is it gives you something to think about when that's all that's left for you to do. Man, I'd sure hate it if those years were boring.”

The work may not have gone faster with the music but it was a lot more fun. Things just got better when Zig started to do a solo performance to “Lookin' Out My Back Door.” It was a bit like a hippo ballet but I sure got to say it really did lighten the mood. As he jerked his head and tiptoed around the room, in what looked a lot like the beginning of a convulsion, Marley went into spasms of laughter.

An hour later, when Marvin Gaye was growling out “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” I was standing on the table hanging the last of the crystal drops on the chandelier.

“Hello,” a thin voice called from the front door. That was followed by, “Excuse me.”

“April,” I said. “Thank God, she's come back for the dog.” I sat down on the table and slid to the floor.

“Just don't use it as an excuse to be gone all day,” Marley said, stuffing newspaper back into the last cardboard box.

“You know, with a little more effort you could become a real pain in the butt,” I told her as I went by.

“Saturday is four days away, remember? It's your party. I'm only doing this for you.” She went to take the box out to the back porch where Ziggy was breaking the empty boxes down.

I went to see who was visiting us, with Dog clicking along beside me.

Laura Kemp stood beyond the screen door on the front porch. At the end of her right arm hung catalogues of material and in her left hand was a black portfolio case.

Struck speechless, a great rarity for me, I stared at her in stunned silence.

“I thought, for Clay's sake, I'd come out and go over a new design with you. He seems to feel you should have some input.” Words seemed to stick in her throat and she swallowed before she got out, “For Clay's sake, I think we should put our own personal feelings behind us.”

“How lovely,” I said, with a smile every bit as sincere as her words. I opened the screen door. Dog, still hugging my side, stretched out his neck and sniffed her crotch. Not a dog lover, she yelped and jerked backwards, swinging her heavy portfolio around in front of her for protection.

“Please come in,” I said and stood aside, waving her into the front hall.

With her samples behind her and the portfolio in front of her — to guard against all canine possibilities — Laura Kemp came reluctantly forward.

The hall seemed to startle her. She stopped, turned to me with her mouth still open, started to say something and then closed it; she looked back to the stripes Marley had us paint in the hall, at the round mahogany table in the center of the foyer with a big vase of lilies on it, and then into the dining room on the left.

“I brought in a few family pieces,” I told her, which was not a lie. They were pieces that had once belonged to a family — just not my family. In the single wide trailer on the edge of a swamp where I'd grown up it had been Super Discount sales items all the way, and if it wasn't plastic and faux-grained we didn't own it.

I stepped around the stunned Laura and led the way into the dining room. We'd put the two extra leaves into the mahogany table, opening it up to its full length to fill the huge space. Uncle Ziggy had rubbed every inch of the rich wood down with beeswax. It glowed. The chandelier sparkled and gleamed. It had taken me an hour to wash and polish those little devils before I hung them. A silver champagne bucket on the table was filled with Peruvian lilies.

On the matching mahogany sideboard sat the silver tea set and two silver chargers, polished and waiting for food to be laid out. The red velvet drapes we bought at the secondhand store hung at the edge of the windows and pooled on the floor. The air smelled of beeswax and lilies.

In the carved rosewood mirror over the buffet I met Laura Kemp's eyes. They were filled with shock and defeat. I turned away and led the way to the sitting room across the hall, the most formal room in the house.

The sun coming in the bow window made Marley's shiny cream stripes the center of attention, but the rosewood settee covered in blue and silver satin looked pretty good too. A group of bronze greyhounds sat on a rosewood table in front of the settee while over the settee was a huge painting of horses in front of a grand house. The bay window was hung with more red velvet drapes. Two Victorian chairs on small casters sat on either side of a mahogany table with a glass oil lamp, a pot of orchids and a small silver box. The only other pieces of furniture in the room were a massive rosewood secretary with ivory inlay and two upholstered wingback chairs. The room was anchored by a Persian rug that covered most of the floor. The effect was that of quiet elegance and understated wealth.

“Would you like to see the rest of the house?”

“No,” she shook her head. “No, not really,” she said.

“How about the powder room? It's fabo.”

“No,” she said, stalking to the front door, no longer worrying about protecting herself from Dog, more intent on getting out of the house than she was on being sniffed. Laura was through the door and down the front steps before I could even offer her tea.

“But you haven't met my family,” I protested as she pitched her samples into the back seat of her Audi. “You must stay and meet them.”

“No,” she said, without stopping or even looking back. But then she'd already met Tully and Ziggy. Understandable if she couldn't take the excitement of that twice.

“Well, you all come back real soon now, you hear?” I said, all biscuits and grits.

When she didn't reply I was thinking that a return visit wasn't going to happen in my lifetime. She slammed the door on her materials, hopped into her Audi and was gone. Dog leaned up against me and sighed.

Marley came up behind me, chewing on an apple and asked, “Who's that?”

“Laura Kemp.”

“What? No shit! And I missed it. Damn.”

“Seems she didn't want to meet you. I tried, but there was just no way she was going to hang around if you were here.” I leaned over and kissed Marley on the cheek.

She took a big bite of her apple and said around her mouthful, “What's that for?” Bits of apple sprayed me but I didn't object. She held out the apple.

“That, Marley my friend, was for messing with Laura Kemp's mind and for saving my bacon. It's the first time I ever felt on equal footing with one of Jacaranda's gentry. Who knew it only took a shitload of heavily polished old wood.” I took a bite out of the apple and gave it back. “You're ace.”

“You're welcome,” she said. “But I still wish I'd been here.”

“She's worth seeing, the queen of bitches with the crown and sash to prove it.”

We laughed. The great thing about our friendship is we can be as nasty as we like, behave as badly as we please, without the other one thinking less of us.

She looked out at the yard. “Crazy weather.”

The air was heavy and hot, threatening rain. Barely a breeze stirred the leaves. Ominous and breathless, the darkening day seemed to be braced for what was to come.

I considered the sky and said, “We never get rain this time of year. Hope it stops before the weekend.”

I always worry about the wrong things. It was silly to be worrying about the weather with what was about to hit us.