Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem (49 page)

No law, those women had said to her through throats parched with anger and betrayal. We have our own law, they’d said. Bonnie MacIver’s mother, with her prematurely aged beauty and exhausting voice. Leave the menfolk out of it. Leave it to us. Blood is women’s work.

It’s true, thought Melveena Strange. Wrath is not the work of men. Wrath is the work of women and gods.

Wrath takes its time.

THEY WERE CERTAINLY
taking their time. Angus had cried, finally, he’d broken down like the boy he was and cried. She patted his arm. “Angus. You’re doing just fine, baby.” She held his hand. Angus trembled. They rolled up their windows and tried not to listen to what was happening.

It hadn’t taken nearly as long as it seemed, sitting in that truck with that shaking boy. The noise of the women stopped. She heard the whine of something mechanical and for one terrible moment she thought, Sweet Jesus, they’re dismembering him with an electric knife.

“Dustbuster,” mumbled Angus.

He was a young man, a boy, really, but looked old getting out of the truck, walking back to the bonfire. He came back with a darkened boot tucked under each arm, dragging what was left of the Reverend on a blanket. She marveled at the ease with which he wrapped the body, hefted it up and threw it in the bed of the truck. Melveena would remember the sound of it landing for the rest of her life.

Angus polished the boots with an old rag all the way back to town. The act seemed to calm him, to change him back from that weeping boy into a narrow-hipped heartbreaker. “You know, the hardest part was getting a good pair of boots for the kicking. The Mas got strong feet, but not that strong. They asked for mine, but I said no way. I had to look hard for a pair good enough for the job.” He admired the boots in the light from the dash.

She leaned her head out the window and delicately vomited.

“Sorry.” He carefully put the polishing rag in a snap-top Baggie, sealed it. “Where do you want this, Miz Melveena?”

“Just put it in my purse, Angus.” He did, and reached into his pocket and let another handful of something else fall in there. It sounded like silver dollars. “What was that?”

“His rings.”

“His rings?”

“Would you keep ’em for us? We all trust you. We all agreed, you were the one to take care of them. We know they’re worth a lot.” He looked so pleased with himself for thinking of it.

Melveena thought about those rings rattling around in the bottom of her purse. The loose change she had in there was worth more. But the Open Armers had believed that their Reverend, his rings, and his faith, had been real. She had wanted to cry. “Certainly. I’ll put them in a safety deposit box, Angus, and I’ll mail you the key at the store.”

She cringed at the sound of the body in the back of the truck thudding and bumping as she hit ruts and potholes.

“What if somebody sees us?”

“No one will think twice, since this is Tender’s truck. You found the Reverend’s keys?”

He held them up, jangled them. “In his pocket.” He’d put on the Reverend’s hat. The initial plan was that he’d wear it back to the park, then drive the Reverend’s truck with the Reverend’s body in it out to the quarry, the one wet place in the county. Both the truck and the body would go in. No one swam there, the water poisonously fouled from caustic chemicals leeched from a mining setup back in the early seventies. It hadn’t been dry in a hundred years. If it dried up a hundred years hence, well, the folks then could deal with the appearance of a skeleton in an indestructible polyester leisure suit. They just had to stop by the trailer first, pack a suitcase, make it look like the Reverend had left of his own accord. Angus had asked five boys from Bone Pile to keep Gator out of the way. They would pretend they wanted to back Gator in the talent show, they would do it for their cousin/uncle/half-brother/nephew, Angus.

Not a bad plan, she had to admit. Except the Reverend’s truck was broken down. And there was always a chance that those five boys from Bone Pile hadn’t been able to keep Gator at the bar all this time. What if he was home? Even if he wasn’t, he knew about Bonnie. What if he talked to the police, made a trail that led to Bone Pile? She’d known she’d have to do something about that man, too. Just what, she wasn’t sure. But first she had a dead body to deal with.

“We’re going to have to roll this truck into the quarry instead, Angus.”

“But this is a good truck!”

“It can’t be helped. We’ll go by his trailer and get the suitcase. It will look like he stole Tender’s truck to get out of town.”

They’d passed between the lions at the gate. Melveena turned off the headlights, leaving them to drive by the parking lights. Then, there in the road, she saw a pair of long legs and pair of new black boots extending into Sweetly Dreaming Lane.

“Sweet Jesus!”

She hit the brakes hard, and the body of the Right Reverend Henry Heaven thumped high and hard against the front of the truck bed, only to bounce out onto the lane with a thud.

“Somebody might have heard that,” whispered Angus.

“Someone would have, if she weren’t stone drunk in the street.” Melveena studied the legs stretched out before her. Raven hadn’t moved. “This is officially a botched plan, Angus, and it’s time for us to start panicking and doing stupid things.”

“It is?”

“It’s probably our only hope at this point. Take that blasted blanket and leave him where he fell. Let’s put this truck back and get the hell away from here.”

He jumped out and snatched the bloodied blanket from the corpse. She parked Tender’s truck. Angus carried the boots to the shoe rack outside the front door.

“What are you doing?” she hissed as she closed the truck’s door. “In the name of all that’s decent, Angus,” Melveena hissed, “those boots should be burned.” But she knew he would never burn a pair of boots.

He whispered back. “I have to put ’em back.” He put them on Rhondalee’s shoe rack.

“Those are
Tender’s?
”

He nodded. “The Sheriff will never check these out.”

“That’s actually good thinking.” Certainly she couldn’t blame the young man, having followed a similar train of thought in her own choice of vehicles. There was no way that Memphis would ever suspect his brother of murder, no way that this truck would ever go to Forensics. But still, she thought of that fine, tall man wearing those boots and shivered.

Angus had walked out of the Park carrying the old blanket. She assumed the women of Bone Pile had disposed of it. But who knew? With as little as they had, that blanket would probably be cleaned up and used again. In fact, Melveena felt sure that the blanket would end up stretched over the sleeping body of one of the girls that the Reverend had defiled.

She had walked down the street as if she didn’t see the two bodies in the street—one dead, one passed out. She’d found her car tucked over by the Clubhouse and driven home to Ochre Water. To her little lavender bungalow, which she’d entered quietly so as not to disturb her greatest mistake. She’d disabled her smoke alarm and turned on the teakettle. Then she’d started a fire in her stainless steel kitchen sink. She’d gagged again at the smell of burnt blood and cloth and plastic, at the images carried by touching what she had to touch.

“What the hell you doing?” Clyde’s sleepy voice had called over the television. “That stanks!”

She’d washed the ash down the sink. “I was making myself a cup of tea. There was a bread bag on the burner.” She’d washed her hands, her manicured, lovely hands that had touched that rag. She’d washed them over and over again. There was no way to wash her mind.

She’d known she’d have to take those rings out of her purse, but she hadn’t been able to bear to touch them. What metal gave out was too strong. She could feel it through gloves. Images of the man’s death were one thing. The images of his life would have done her in.

So, she’d re-enabled her smoke detector and brewed her tea. She’d sat all night in her easy chair, sipping tea and calming herself, until it was time to go to Coffee Klatch. Clyde, on the couch, had caressed his remote and slept. He’d given her nothing but his presence that night. That night, it had been enough.

Well, thought Melveena as she drove down the highway, that was that. For a botched plan, that wasn’t too badly done. Thankfully Gator Rollins had the good grace to die without her direct intervention. But thanks to her less than smooth execution of an amateurish plan, suspicion had fallen on the one friend she had in this state. To clear Raven, she’d tried to incriminate Gator Rollins. Fossetta had been hurt.

Poor Fossetta.

Oh, Melveena knew she’d left some loose ends. She knew she’d left trails of evidence, done a hasty, haphazard job of it. There were probably snake holes all through the entire undertaking. But after all, she thought, this was my first murder.

I’m sure if I tried again, I could do better.

Melveena caught sight of herself in the rearview. Her lipstick needed refreshing. She rummaged in her handbag. Her fingers closed around a random tube and she felt the shock travel up her arm. She gripped that tube of Pearl Mimosa, the lipstick that she’d bought for Bonnie. She would touch it now and then. For as long as the vibrations remained, she could check up on Bonnie. A little psychic social call.

She felt her road sight falter, her mind sight calling up Bonnie behind the wheel of a truck, driving herself and a gaggle of Bone Pile women into town. Swarming that bank with their dusty bare feet and treacherous voices, gathering the envelope. Driving away with the monetary means of escape in their skinny white hands. Taking down their town, attaching it all to their dilapidated vehicles. Their unknowing men bearing it all away.

Melveena had always had the sight. She had always known what was to come. But she hadn’t needed the sight this week. She had known all week, watching the lovely defiled girls of Bone Pile, looking at the reddened, stuporous face of the man she couldn’t even remember loving. She had known while sitting at her table with Raven and holding her hand in a good-bye that neither of them could bear to speak out loud. She had known her time at Ochre Water was over. Whatever held her in the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park, just outside Ochre Water, California, it was gone.

And now, she was free. Free to find the ocean, free to find a man, free to fill up a cookie jar. Free to do whatever she wanted. She had finally found her way to the highway in Granny’s Caddy, the wind tossing her hair, Rhondalee’s stash of skimmed cash in her pocketbook, Francie June singing on the radio.

The desert surrounded her in all its parched glory. Now and then she drew back her arm and pitched a remote onto the highway. She’d pilfered quite a few over the years, and she watched them smash and splinter on the blacktop. Yes, that was another mystery solved: what had happened to Clyde’s remotes. She grabbed another. Holding that remote told her the story of Clyde’s life. Changing brake pads and changing the channel.

She let it fly.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Berry lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Her daily life is arranged around numerous daughters, small dogs, and friends. She would like to thank all those friends by name, but that would take up too many pages, so she has to call out just a few for their particular help as readers: Mimi Newhouse, James MacDougall, Sue Sabol and Sarah Bryant.