Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem (29 page)

By his wife.

It was something like sleepwalking, then, her movement down the steps of her tidy deck, across the white gravel path, over the dusty flagstones and through the metal screen door into the kitchen, through the untidy living room, down the hallway, and into that den of sweat and sin where Fossetta slept. Her perfect rosebud mouth was open, her lovely teeth bared in a smile. The sheet snaked up along the softness of her white hip.

The room smelled like honey. And Fossetta was the only person in it.

ANNIE LEIGH HAD
never prayed, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to start, but she got down on her knees, clasped her hands, and screwed her face into what she hoped was a prayerful expression. “Dear God.” Okay, that was a start. “Okay, God. Just listen for a minute. I know that there’s someone out there who’s killing skinny old men. And I just want to ask you to please keep Gramps safe. He gets real distracted by all those ghosts and songs he hears in his head, and he don’t always see what’s coming. And he ain’t all that skinny, anyway. Thank you. Amen.”

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

She opened the closet, drug out the gigantic black case. Hoisting it through her window took some effort. She had no choice but to let it drop. She winced at the jangling complaint of strings, but that old case could take anything. Annie shimmied out behind it.

It felt too heavy to carry tonight. It was definitely too heavy to take on the first leg of her journey, so she hid it under the aluminum steps of the Tyson’s trailer. Then she climbed to the highest point in the park, the top of the Tyson’s satellite dish. Only her lightness kept her from breaking the wires that stretched across the diameter. She steadied herself at the top, crouching, wishing for a little more of a moon. Then she could maybe see him, wherever he was out there in the barren countryside.

She gave up and sat down to listen. Maybe, just maybe, if she closed her eyes and cleared out her head, she’d hear him the way he heard things that no one else could. He was her kin, after all, maybe she had that in her, waiting to come out like her periods would someday.

The puppies in the kennel began to whine and worry.

“Are you supposed to be up there, little girl?” His voice had a funny whistle in it. She shrugged. It was that man with the dead eyes. Standing down below her, silent, staring up at her. Annie Leigh wasn’t afraid. But she pulled her boots up tight, under her, out of reach. “Where’s your guitar, little girl?”

Her chin thrust a little forward. “I don’t have no guitar.”

“Oh yes you do. You have a big black National in a big black case. And it’s not tuned.”

“It’s tuned.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. Maybe he wouldn’t have heard.

He had. “It’s not tuned right. You should care about tuning. Tuning is an art.”

Again, she shrugged. “Are you spying on me for any particular reason?”

He didn’t let on that he’d heard her. “I bet you aren’t pressing hard enough on that neck, either. It’s another art, hands on a neck. You have to put just the right amount of pressure on the neck, you see, and you have to have good hands to do it.” He held his hands out in front of him. “I have good hands, see.”

“You have girl hands.”

“Aren’t you the brat.” He smiled, but it was a flat line, that smile. “I could show you things with these hands, little girl.”

“I don’t want to see nothing you can show me, Mister.”

And he looked up at her, and in the moon, his eyes shone red. “You’re a bad girl.”

“That’s what my gramma says.” She smiled back, safe and out of reach. The dim red moon made her teeth shine with blood. They studied each other for a moment.

“Babygirl, evil is in you like a pinworm.” He was gone.

Wednesday

ASA WOKE TO
a quiet dawn. “Lord? Did thine own heavenly ears get sick of all the racket?” God didn’t answer, but Asa’s mind was full with a verse that he’d always disliked for the quiet truth in it. “Lord, make a joyful noise, not a quiet truth,” he grumbled. Standing, stretching, scratching. His life’s rhythms resumed, as the sky outside lightened.

He paged through his Bible’s pages. The paper had absorbed enough oils from his hands that it was translucent, as if the black type floated on incredibly thin leaves of waxed paper. Asa was searching for a context, a way to redeem this verse, to make it carry more threat.

Proverbs was short on threats, long on scolding, he decided. He went outside and went to work.

Asa stood back and admired his art.

No tearing of flesh, no flames devouring the multitudes. But at least it would turn a stomach or two.

Asa smiled, his teeth like ivory piano keys gone black around the edges. He was ready for his Postum and his day.

He knew he had God on his side.

MELVEENA STOOD UP
from her bed and threw off a bad dream like a swimmer shakes water from her skin. Her dreams got worse and worse, and she didn’t even have the sun to comfort her, as it was still dark. She went out into the living room to derive what comfort she could from the presence of her greatest mistake. He snored on the couch. Some comfort.

Melveena studied the man to whom she was married. Clyde Groth used to be handsome in the way of Viking men with reddish-blonde hair and ruddy complexions. But in the last few years, thanks to the beer and the desert sun, he’d come to look a little sand-blasted. He was tall, she reminded herself. He was very tall. At just under seven feet, Clyde was the tallest man she had ever met. Unfortunately, he was not tall all over.

“Clyde,” she purred. “Clyyyyyde. In the morning, you’re going to leave.”

He mumbled something. She hoped it was an assent.

“You’ve had enough of me, Clyde. I’m uppity and I haven’t had sex with you in almost a decade. You’ve had it and you’re leaving.”

He let out a string of babble and rolled over, his bony shoulders poking up beneath his uniform shirt. Even in sleep, Clyde’s grip on the remote never relaxed.

IT WAS TOO
early for work, but she got ready and made her way to the park in Grandma’s Caddy. Some scrappy little songbirds sang a dawn song, like second stringers running notes, the chorus pretending they could take on the main role if only given a chance. What mangy little songs the birds sang here, compared to the south.

She pulled into the park to have a look around at points of interest. She cruised past Fossetta’s to see if any lucky man was parked there. No. She checked the clubhouse. No light on there, so Rhondalee must be sleeping in past her usual 5 AM wakeup. Finally she came to Raven, sitting in a lawn chair outside her rig, polishing her boots. She had on jeans and a man’s sleeveless undershirt, and what showed out of the oversized armholes would have greatly pleased a man to see. Melveena got out of her car and sat on its hood. “Good morning, early bird.”

“I already had my worm.”

“Stop bragging. And go put on a decent shirt.”

“What’re you, my mother?”

“Perish the thought.”

Raven hooted, spat on a boot, rubbed it with a rag. “Why’re you up? I got beaten awake with a big stick, but I don’t think Clyde carries one of those anymore.”

Melveena sighed. “I couldn’t sleep. Bad dreams.”

“Me too.”

“I wish we had some coffee.”

“If wishes were fishes…” Raven frowned. “How does it go? If wishes were fishes, we’d all walk up to the bar and get some damn coffee.”

Melveena laughed, low and throaty. “Have you heard from your father?”

“Nope. And my mother,” said Raven between strong swipes of the rag, “is madder than a rabid dog out in a boat.” She was upset, Melveena could tell. Worried.

Melveena examined her nails. “At least he’s not over there with Fossetta Sweet.”

“Fossetta Sweet won’t hook up with married men.”

“Well, your father’s so sweet I wish she’d have made an exception. And then Tender could have had his memory of it to take out on his birthday every year, like in that horrible book.”

“What horrible book?”

“You know, that book that nearly every woman in this Park has learned by heart? Where that Italian woman has the affair with the photographer?”

“You know I don’t read.”

“Well, in the case of this book, it’s just as well. This poor woman has one wicked sexy week in her whole dreary Midwestern life. One WEEK, I tell you.”

Raven shrugged. “At least she had that one week.”

Melveena looked at the hard woman next to her, polishing her boots as if it were a religious rite. “You exasperate me, Raven LaCour. You exasperate me by being right, and by having a name like Raven LaCour when I have one like Melveena Strange Groth.”

“That
is
one of the ugliest names I ever heard. But don’t forget,” and she spat again, “my stage name was Rowena Gail.”

“Sweet Jesus, girl.”

With a crunch of gavel and a spray of yellow dust, the Sheriff’s car arrived. The women traded blank looks. Memphis rolled down his window with a haunted expression. “Morning, Miz Melveena.”

“Well hello, Memphis. What brings you out so early?”

“I came to see my niece.”

“I’m busy.”

His face was carefully pleasant. “Raven? Let’s take a ride.”

She looked down at her boot. “I said I’m busy.”

And he made himself say it. “This is official.”

The air changed with that word. Melveena looked away into the distance. Raven hardened. And Memphis comported himself with the dignity and manners befitting a man of the law.

So she pulled on her boots over filthy socks, and settled her restless bones in the cruiser. He cranked up the cool air. They headed out on the highway towards Ochre Water.

He’d always though it would have been nice to have a little girl. Someone to take on Sunday drives, buy her an ice cream, show her that prairie dog village east of here, let her steer a little. A daughter would have been a fine, fine thing.

He looked at the woman in the seat next to him. She reminded him of a rattlesnake held at the jaw, whipping around, pale and deadly, possessed with a frustrated need to strike and strike hard. He thought, that’s a daughter, right there.

“Is your father back home?”

“Nope.”

“Is your mother all right?”

“Yup.”

“Annie Leigh doing fine?”

“Yup.”

“Any more trouble from him?”

“Nope.”

He knew she wouldn’t offer him a thing more than that. “Raven, I have some more questions about the Reverend.”

“Am I under arrest? Because if I’m not, I’m done.”

“I can probably put you under arrest if you’d like.” He let that sit there for a minute. She honestly looked as if she might jump out. He kept the speed high and steady so she wouldn’t. “You say you were up to the bar for about a half hour. And you left about ten-thirty. You called in right after midnight. What did you do between ten-thirty and when you found the body?”

He watched for her knee to bounce, her hand to tap. Nothing. She was as immobile as Tender had been when asked to repent some imaginary sin at the Indian school. Like rocks, they were.

“Now, I know you told me you were wandering around feeling sick and drunk, and hearing this sound, and feeling poorly. You also told me you got sick on the side of Quentin’s truck, and then you sat down and had a little rest in the street. You were out for over an hour?” He thought about his niece staggering around in the street, getting sick, passing out. He’d never known her to do anything like that. “An hour’s a long time, Raven.” He looked over to her feet on the floor of his cruiser. “Those are new boots? Where’s your old ones?”