Home Is Where Your Boots Are (15 page)

We were taking what we knew and slapping it up on an oversized whiteboard Fae Lynn had stolen from the dispatch office. Tally, organized to a fault despite trying to pretend otherw
ise, was color-coding the facts
based on participant. A loose timeline was forming.

Char waved a bag of tortilla chips at me. “Do a recap. I’ve had one shot too many.”

Giggles and guffaws mixed with the heaviness of the night air as it floated through the open windows. The smell of honeysuckle and chirping crickets accented the rich chocolate and tinkling of ice. We gathered around my great grandmother’s walnut dining table like a team of mission impossible covert ops engaged in a planning session.

In any other, more sane, part of the country, a city perhaps, this meeting would have never happened. Regular people would have left the detecting to the detectives. Normal women would have spent their girl’s nights drinking cosmos and talking about celebrities. But this was Brooks. My hometown wasn’t exactly logical, no one here was really regular, and there was nothing normal about my group of friends. S
o we ignored all societal norms
and
,
infused with the maybe not so false sense that we were the smartest in the room, decided to just figure it out ourselves. Because my whole life, there wasn’t a problem that couldn’t be solved with cheese and six angry women. I’d missed that in Dallas, where the rules were the rules and most everyone I knew there abided by them.

“Ok, so here’s the deal. Cash is obviously mixed up in something. I still don’t think he killed Tina, though.” I took a breath.

“Spencer Locke then arrives on the scene, which may or may not have anything to do with Cash, but it is weird.”

“No such thing as a coincidence,” Char said importantly.

“He is so hot,” Jacque said
,
and everyone murmured their agreement, Fae Lynn cutting her eyes at me with a smile.

“So what does all this mean?” Brandy asked.

“It means that someone’s killing and cutting open bodies to sell their organs like meat,” Char announced tactlessly before I could beat her to it, swigging her margarita and wiping the salt off her mouth with the back of her hand.

“So what were the papers you think are suspicious, exactly?” Jacque asked. I took a breath.

“Files of donor and donee charts. It all looked normal, for the most part. But there were lists of body parts. And…” I trailed off. Fae Lynn helped me out.

“A price list,” she announced.

“For body parts?!” Jacque asked. I nodded.

“In Cash’s office?” Char questioned. Tally nodded.

“Cash’s selling dead bodies!?” Brandy squeaked. Tally shrugged her shoulders.

“That’s what it looks like.”

“I can’t think of a better explanation,” I chewed a brownie
,
thoughtfully. I didn’t want to voice the direction my thoughts were taking
  me because t
hat path led to the edge of a cliff and the conclusion had Cash riding a toboggan on the slippery slope to hell.

“That doesn’t explain Tina’s being dead,” Tally reasoned. Char rolled her eyes and looked at me sympathetically.

“Are you sure Cash didn’t do it?” I shook my head emphatically.

“Someone else is involved.”

“Spencer.” Tally offered.

“Not Spencer,” Char shot back. “No one would trust h
im. He’s not from around here, e
ven if Charlie and Annabelle are his people.”

“Okay, let’s focus on the selling bodies aspect and forget about Tina being dead,” Fae Lynn steered us back on track.

“If Cash didn’t kill her, someone else did. Because no doubt she was involved in this thing. Who else could be a possibility?” Jacque asked.

“Well everyone knows that
Drew Fans
is running drugs through the tire shop,” Brandy said
,
and we all nodded affirmatively, no irony in the fact that this had nothing to do with our discussion ever surfacing.

“Drugs are small time,” said Char, who’d lived in Atlanta for a while. “This is a
high-class, white-collar crime,” s
he told us.

An inkling of an idea of what was going on began to form.

“Wait. Tally, don’t you remember telling me that Danny was at
Drew Fan’s
the day I came back into town?” She nodded, realization dawning in her eye. “Why was he there? To get a flat fixed?” She shook her head slowly, thinking hard.

“Not that I remember. They seemed to just be shooting the shit. I remember thinking it was odd at the time because I didn’t know them to be friends.”

“You think Danny’s on drugs?” Fae Lynn asked.

“Along with some other folks,” I answered.

“What does that have to do with the body-smuggling ring?”

“Think about it Fae Lynn. There’s nothing in this town that would really drive anyone to need the kind of money they’re getting off the selling of toenails unless they’re desperate. What makes someone more desperate than drugs?” She began to nod.

“So you think Danny’s involved?” I sighed.

“I don’t know who is involved at this point. I think it’s a little strange that Danny always seemed to be on the fringes when something has happened to Cash. It’s not like he’s a detective or even one of the go-to police officers. I mainly thought they kept him around for traffic offenses.”

“That’s true. Wasn’t he there whenever they arrested Cash?”

“And when Cash got shot,” I added. “Cash also offered the alternative theory that maybe Tina’s death was an accident, and he was the real target.”

“Of course he did,” Char snorted. I shot her a look.

“So how does this all add up?” Tally interjected. “There’s no way in hell Danny Muggs is running a body-smuggling ring in
order to support his drug habit;
he’s not that clever or smooth. Someone else is involved.” Fae Lynn answered before I could.

“I think we can agree Lilly’s resigned herself to the fact that Cash is in some way implicated. He could be directing Danny.” Tally shook her head, vehemently.

“I’m not saying this because I’m defending Cash, but Cash is not at the top of the food chain on this. There’s a reason Cash has never been without a girlfriend since he was fourteen. His motto has always been that it’s easier to say yes than to say no. I cross my heart that he doesn’t have enough gumption to set all this up, nor does he have the desperate factor. All he’s ever wanted was to be respected in Brooks. He’s got that with his position. Granted, his wife didn’t help out his status, but he was working on getting rid of her.” We all looked closely at Tally. She was right. She had always had Cash pegged better than any of us, even as a pre-teen to our teenage years.

“So someone is directing Cash?” I thought out loud. Jacque and Char reached for brownies and chomped thoughtfully. Brandy, who’d remained oddly quiet during the discourse, cleared her throat.

“Spencer,” Jacque said again.

“Not Spencer,” Char shut her down.

“He really is hot,” Brandy offered.

“So not Spencer,” Fae said. “Who?”

“Someone with money,” I reasoned. “Too much money, too fast. That’s probably being thrown around.”

“Or someone desperate for money,” Jacque reasoned. “Remember the drug theory.”

“Big Jim,” Char announced, snapping her fingers. We all stopped and stared. Tally’s chip paused in mid air
,
and a glob of congealed cheese dropped on the table. Jacque stopped chewing in midchomp and Brandy swallowed hard. Fae Lynn and I sat up a little straighter. Char fiddled with her glass and downed a thick gulp, shuddering as she put
it
down. She opened her mouth and her theory poured out.  A titter ran through the group as we chewed on what Char had just thrown out.

Big Jim Handler was Char’s father-in-law, and also the mayor. He was barrel-chested, smooth with a gun, and smoked horribly stinky cigars. He was also the person who had almost broken Fae Lynn’s backside at the hospital the morning we investigated the morgue.

To accuse him of something like this was out of the ordinary for Char, who was privy to and upheld the code of keeping family secrets. Family was family, whether you’d been born or married into
it
. Which was a whole other code.

“Lilly, this is out of left field, but Aaron’s daddy came up with some extra funds last year outta nowhere for his campaign. I know I shouldn’t be talkin’ trash about my father-in-law, but Big Jim’s never been my favorite, and it’s just always stuck in my mind that Aaron could never understand where that money came from.” She shrugged, “Just a thought.” I just looked at her.

“It’s just hard to wrap your mind around it all. I mean, my so-called ex-boyfriend, turned head of the hospital, smuggling body parts so
your
father-in-law, who happens to be the
mayor,
can sell them? It’s like something out of a really clichéd mystery novel,” I teased.  A nervous
laugh
ran through the group. 

“Hey
,
I know it’s a leap, but truth’s stranger than fiction, especially around here.”

“Yeah
,
and the Yankees have a better outfield than the Braves.” I scoffed.

Fae Lynn took over and started devising a flow chart. “So for giggles, we’ll say Big Jim is the head guy doing the wheeling and dealing. From what Scott told me, buying a body part is kind of like adopting a kid. It can be done legally through the donee program, or illegally like this.”  She wrote as she talked. We were all agreeing with her and my stomach was bubbling with both apprehension and excitement at the thought of finally having a full clue.

“So in theory, Cash procures body parts,” I said delicately, “and then passes them on to Big Jim?”

“It would be fairly obvious for Cash to take them out of the hospital or for Big Jim to keep coming to the hospital.” Tally interjected.

“Tina,” Brandy
finally spoke, loudly. “About a month ago. Right before you came back, Lilly, I was taking my Aunt Lolly to the hospital,
because
sh
e had to have a colonoscopy.
I saw Tina coming out with a little cooler. Well, I know y’all can’t stand her, but she’s never had a beef with me so we got to chatting, and I asked her what it was. She told
me she had brought Cash lunch, w
hich was kind of silly ‘cause I didn’t think she ever cooked or did anything for Cash for that matter
,
but I didn’t really question it at the time. But now…” We all contemplated the implications. Char broke the silence.

“So basically, Cash’s cuttin’ up dead bodies,
stickin’ 'em on ice and Tina was
smuggling them out to somebody, maybe the mayor, who h
appens to be my father-in-law, w
ho’s selling them on the black market.” The silence resumed. But some nagging thought kept creeping at the edges of my thought process, holding me back from completely jumping on the bandwagon.

If Cash was as weak as the consensus claimed, he wouldn’t have had the gumption to begin. I couldn’t see Tina
being able to talk him into it. S
he wasn’t capab
le of controlling him that much,
and I couldn’t see Cash just acquiescing to the idea of endangering his career without some coercion. I know it was a long shot, but I was still clutching with slippery, sweaty fingers the idea of him turning out to have morals. So if he was under duress, then
why
?

And Spencer, where did he fit in? He was obviously involved. And maybe he was in charge. But the fact that he was from out of
town put a crimp in that theory
because no one around here trusted an out-of-towner, even if they were only from the next county. He did always happen to be at the right place at the time when it came to something detrimental happening to Cash. And if he was such a bad guy, why did I keep having such fantastic fantasies about him? I mean, wouldn’t my gut tell me if he was a cold-blooded killer? Okay, maybe my instinct’s track record wasn’t all that great, but still.

And how were they getting
the body parts to their buyers?
You couldn’t exactly ship a lung Fedex.

Fae Lynn knocked me on the shoulder.

“You okay?” she asked. I smiled and nodded.

“Yeah, but this is all a lot of circumstantial evidence,” I sighed. “And if Big Jim is involved, we probably don’t want to go straight to the police. There could be someone else involved.” The girls agreed and we finished our drinks and snacks, the conversation slowly turning to kids and less disturbing gossip, until everyone had to go before a husband started to worry.

Fae Lynn was the last one out the door.

“We’ll figure this out, Lilly, if it’s the last thing we do.”

I hoped it wouldn’t be.

xxx

After church the next day, my father, noticing my distracted demeanor and borderline pitiful expression, decided to put me to work.