Dead Man's Bones (27 page)

“Wanna get you to try this,” he said. “Tell me what you think.”

He pulled a beer from the tap and offered it to me. Lunchtime was still an hour away, so I opted for iced tea. Bob took the beer, and we sat down at a table. I cut off a bite of meat—it was fork-tender—and chewed. It was sweet and spicy-hot at the same time, unusually tasty.

“Hey,” I said, “this is good stuff. What is it?”

“It’s a leg offa Rosabelle’s kid,” he said. “I roasted him up with some rosemary, a couple of bay leaves, garlic, and mustard.” He gave me a snaggletoothed grin. “And a secret ingredient.”

“A secret ingredient, huh?” I sniffed at the goat meat, which I usually don’t care for. “Jalepeño?”

He made a face. “Mighta known you’d spot it.” He leaned forward and whispered loudly. “Jalapeño-apricot jelly. Sweet and plenty hot. Maria made it. She put extra hot sauce in it, too.”

“No foolin’,” I said, opening my mouth and fanning with my hand. “You’ve got my vote, for whatever it’s worth.”

“Muchas gracias,”
he said with satisfaction. “Then maybe you’ll put a piece about it in the paper, on your cookin’ page. Only you can’t have the recipe. I want folks to come here to eat it, not go cookin’ it up at home.” He thought about that for a second. “Guess they won’t, though. They ain’t got any of Maria’s jelly, and good baby goat is hard to come by.”

“We’ll just keep it a secret,” I said. “And I won’t mention that I was eating Rosabelle’s kid. That might be too up close and personal for some tastes. What are you calling it?”

“Bob’s Best Grilled Goat.” He beetled his red brows. “Now, what was it you wanted to know about Andy Obermann?”

“He was in the Marines, I understand. First Recon Battalion. Is that where you knew him?”

“Nah.” Bob glugged another swallow of beer. “We was both in Recon and both at Chu Lai, but I got there after he’d already got shot up and was back in the States. I ran into him later, here in town. But you know how guys are when they been through the same war. He was a Marine, I was a Marine, we was buddies.”

“When was it you ran into him?”

He cocked his head one way, then the other. “Well, lessee. Would’ve been, oh, maybe ’76, ’77, somewhere in there. He was hangin’ round town here, tryin’ to get some bread outta his aunts.”

I was surprised. “I thought he inherited the Obermann family fortune. From his father. Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah, well, he did, sorta. But he’d already spent all the loose change. The rest was tied up some way or another and the lawyers wouldn’t let him at it for another three, four years. He figgered on gettin’ his aunts to give him enough to keep him goin’ for a while.” He paused, regarding me. “Guy had a big-ticket habit.”

I guess I wasn’t surprised. It happened to a lot of soldiers who came home from the war and spent time in the hospitals. So Andrew Obermann, looking for money, had come to Pecan Springs, bringing his expensive drug addiction with him. What had happened after that?

“Did he have any friends here? Other than his aunts, I mean.”

Bob barked a short laugh. “What makes you think his aunts was his friends? Oh, Florence, maybe. She allus made over him, like he was special, but she didn’t count. That other one, Jane, she was always on his case about something or other. Booze, dope, women.”

“Women?” I asked. “Anybody in particular?”

He squinted at me. “Hell’s bells, China. That was twenty years ago. More ’n that. And I only knew him to drink with.”

With a meaningful look, I tapped the fork on the empty plate. Tit for tat.

Bob got the message. “Well, there was Lila,” he said after a minute. “We all used to hang out at the old Rodeo Roadhouse, out west of town. Place was torn down long ’fore you got here.” He shook his head reminiscently. “Man, oh man, it was some joint. Lotta good times, lotta good dope. And more shootin’s and stabbin’s in that parkin’ lot than anywhere else in Adams County.”

“Lila Jennings, over at the Diner?” My voice showed my surprise.

“Wudn’t Jennings back then. King, her name was.” His eyes glinted. “Damn sight younger and prettier than she is now, and a helluva lot more fun.” His grin became sly and his eyebrows were suggestive. “Kinda . . . well, easy, I guess is the way you’d say it, though she ain’t gonna own up to it now she’s been born again. Yeah. Nice ’n’ easy.”

Meaning that Lila had slept around. Meaning that she and Bob had probably slept together, and that maybe she’d slept with Andrew.

Ooh-la-la, Lila, the secrets you have kept!

 
I glanced at my watch as I got in the car. I still had better than a half hour before I was due at Ruby’s. Plenty of time to stop at the Nueces Street Diner for a cup of coffee.

Some years back, Lila and her husband Ralph (now deceased, a victim of his long-standing two-pack-a-day habit) salvaged an old Missouri and Pacific dining car and had it installed on the square, catty-corner from the bank. They cleaned it up, prettied it up, and furnished it with vintage items from the 1940s and ’50s that they picked up at going-out-of-business sales around Texas: red formica-topped tables, chrome chairs with red plastic seats, old soda pop signs, and a Wurlitzer jukebox loaded with scratchy 45s, songs like “Bye Bye Love,” “The Purple People Eater,” and “The Battle of New Orleans.” Lila herself favors ’50s’ fashions, with a green puckered-nylon uniform, a ruffled white apron, a flirty white cap perched on her pageboy do, and cherry-red lips and nails.

It was just after eleven, so the breakfast crowd had left and the lunch crowd hadn’t come in yet. Lila was behind the counter filling plastic catsup and mustard bottles. Her daughter Docia was in the kitchen, banging pans. Lila and Docia are almost always at war. Today, the dispute seemed to be over something Docia had been supposed to do and didn’t.

“—Told you three damn times to order thirty pounds of hamburger last week,” Lila was saying as I came in.

From the kitchen, I heard Docia roar, “Did not!”

“Did!” Lila yelled. She looked up, saw me, and modulated her voice. “Hello, China.”

“Did
not
!” Docia thundered. “You said you was gonna order that meat yerself, and for me not to bother.”

Lila put her head through the kitchen pass-through and said, very sweetly, “We got us a customer out here, Docia, dear. Button your lip.”

Docia was not cowed. “So fire me, whydoncha?” she bellowed. There was a bellicose clanging, as if she had slung a saucepan into the metal sink, followed by the slam of the kitchen door. The soda-fountain glasses clinked on their glass shelves.

Lila picked up the coffeepot, rolling her eyes. “These modern girls. Don’t know what they’re comin’ to.” She poured coffee into a white ceramic mug and slid it across the counter to me. Lila’s coffee is legendary. It’s like drinking pure adrenaline. “My mother would never of taken that kinda lip from me. She’da backhanded me across the mouth. I swear, I spoil that girl.”

Docia is all of thirty-five and hardly qualifies as a girl, but I wasn’t going to argue. I sat down on a stool, wondering how to broach my somewhat delicate subject. I put sugar and cream into my coffee and stirred.

“Hey, Lila,” I said, “do you remember a guy named Andy Obermann? I happened to be talking to his Aunt Florence the other day, and she mentioned his name, and something about a tragedy. I thought I’d ask you, since you know more about the people around here than anybody else.” With Lila, a little flattery goes a long way. “If you don’t know about it, probably nobody will.”

Lila put a hand on her bosom and sighed dramatically. “Yeah, I knew Andy. Sweet guy, nothin’ but a big kid at heart. It was a for-real tragedy.”

“What was?”

“Him bein’ on drugs an’ all. Wasn’t his fault, neither. It was what they give him in the hospitals, while they was fixin’ him up. Some of them boys got hooked in the vet hospitals. Pain killers, y’know.” She paused. “Say, Docia was messin’ around in the kitchen yestiddy and she come up with a new pie. Wanna try a piece, tell me what you think?”

I thought of Bob’s Grilled Goat, the effects of which lingered in my digestive system a little longer than I might have liked. “Thanks, Lila, but I don’t—”

“Aw, come on,” Lila wheedled. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

I considered. Lila might be more likely to talk if I was eating. “Sure,” I said. Docia’s pies, like Lila’s coffee, are legendary. “What kind is this one?”

“Apple, with a little somethin’ special. You know how Docia is, always wantin’ to be different.” She took a one-crust pie out of the cabinet behind her and deftly sliced it into eighths.

I sipped my coffee, feeling the rush almost before the hot liquid was down my throat. “I don’t suppose Jane was too happy about that situation with Andrew. His being on drugs, I mean.”

Lila slid one of the pieces onto a plate. “Boy, you just said a mouthful there. Jane, she was fit to be tied. Raised holy Ned with him, said she wasn’t gonna have no addict in the family.” She shook a can of whipped topping, squirted a three-inch mound on the pie, and added a maraschino cherry. With a flourish, she put the plate in front of me. “Florence was a real softie, o’ course. She knew Andy was hurtin’, and she’d slip him money on the sly. Until Jane caught on, that is. Then there was a such a hollerin’ fit, you could hear it clear to Dallas.”

I forked up a bite of pie. “You heard them arguing?”

“Well, sorta.” She gave a little shrug. “See, me and Andy was messin’ around in the stable, and when Jane come lookin’ for him, he told me to climb up to the loft.” She eyed me. “Whaddya think?”

I blinked. “Hey!”

“Ya like it?” She leaned forward.

“It sure is . . . different. It’s got jalapeños in it?”

“Guess I shoulda warned ya, huh? Docia got some jalapeño-apricot jelly from Maria Zapata. She couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Thought it might go good in a pie.”

Maria’s jelly again. What goes around, comes around. I took a gulp of coffee and sloshed it around in my mouth. “Maybe a little less of it next time,” I said.

“I’ll tell her,” Lila said. “Some folks do like it hot, though.”

I grinned. “Guess I’d better not ask what you and Andy were doing, messing around in the stable, huh?”

She batted her mascaraed eyelashes at me. “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” she said ambiguously.

I finished the pie and chased it with the rest of my coffee, shaking my head to Lila’s offer of a refill. “So Jane was mad at Florence for giving Andy money?”

“Mad as a mean bull at rodeo time.” Lila put down the coffeepot. “And pissed off at him for taking it. See, he’d inherited a bunch from his dad and his grandpa. But with his habit, he was goin’ through money like it was water and he was a broke faucet. There was more in stocks and bonds and stuff like that, but his dad had fixed it so he couldn’t get it for a while. The old girls had plenty, so he figgered he could get them to loan him some. Or he could sell the house.”

“Sell the house?” I asked sharply.

“Well, that’s what he said, anyway. I never got the straight of it, but somehow or other, seems like it was his. He was thinkin’ it would bring in enough to keep him goin’ for a while, until . . .” Her voice died away, and she shook her head sadly. “Until he was dead, I reckon. He was skin and bones then. Big tall guy and skinny as a fence post. And crazy. You know how people get when drugs is all they think about. Little bit crazy.” She sighed. “A lot crazy, maybe. He was always lookin’ to score—not so easy in Pecan Springs, leastwise, back in those days.”

“So what happened to him, Lila?”

“Dunno.” She shrugged. “One day he was there, and the next, he was just . . . gone, that’s all. Florence told me they got a letter from California, but I never heard from him.” There was a silence, as Lila scrubbed an imaginary stain on the counter. “People do that, you know. They just up and disappear, and you never hear from them.”

The words were matter-of-fact, but there was sadness in them. I wondered how many other people had disappeared from Lila’s life. I thought of Andy, too, craving the release that drugs gave him, desperate to ease old pains.

“And when was that?” I asked gently. “When did he disappear?”

She pushed her cherry-red lips out, pulled them back in. “Oh, about this time of year, I guess. October. But I couldn’t tell you when.” She sighed. “It all blurs together, doncha know? That’s been a lotta years ago.”

“1976, maybe?”

“Coulda been.” She considered. “Yeah, I’d say that’s about right, maybe. How’d you know?”

I gave a vague wave of my hand. “As I said, I was talking to Florence. She must’ve mentioned it.” I pushed the plate back. “That’s good pie, Lila. You ought to give it a name, though—something that tips people off to what’s coming.”

She wiped the counter. “How about Hot Apple Pie?”

“I don’t think that would quite do it,” I said. I reached for my purse. “How much do I owe you?”

“You gonna write up Docia’s pie in your column?” Lila understands tit for tat, too.

I grinned. “Well, I might.” Maybe what I ought to do was write up Maria Zapata’s all-purpose jelly, if I could get her to give me the recipe.

“You put it in your column, pie and coffee’re on the house. Lunch, too.” She paused. “Say, speakin’ of Florence, what’dya know about Jane shootin’ Hank? I heard you showed up with the chief right after it happened.”

I told her what I had seen, adding the caution that it was for her ears only. That was pure foolishness on my part, of course, since that story, with embellishments, would walk out with the next customer. But most of it had already been in the newspaper. And it made her feel good to think there was something secret about it.

“Well, my goodness gracious,” she said when I had finished. “Andy allus usta say that Jane had a mean streak in her. She hadda figger that Hank was liquored up, or he wouldn’t a come bustin’ in that way. All she had to do was pick up the phone and call nine-one-one.” She pursed her lips. “Somebody said it was legal, too. Shootin’ him like that, I mean.”