Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (15 page)

Lila was waitressing today, which
meant that either Docia or Lucy was cooking. According to the menu, which is
posted on a blackboard behind the counter, I had my choice of meatloaf plate,
fried catfish, or chicken and dumplings. Today's sides were mustard greens,
deep-fried corn on the cob, and black-eyed peas, and either lemon or coconut
pie for dessert. I contemplated this list happily. Out of regard for my cholesterol
count, I have lunch here only once every couple of weeks, but when I do, I go
whole hog.

I sat down at a table by the front
window and Lila came over, pulling her order book out of the pocket of her pale
green nylon uniform. A perky little white hat was perched on her bleached blond
hair, which she rolls under like one of the Andrews Sisters. In that getup, she
looks right at home among the fifties fixtures.

"Where's yer
better half today?" she asked, taking a pencil out of her hair.

"He's doing a
little work for the sheriff," I said incautiously. "Have you got
plenty of meatloaf?"

"Enough fer
you," Lila said, and
scrawled a
big
ML on the order pad. She tilted her head, her eyes bright. "I'll bet
they're out investigatin' poor Carl's accident."

I sighed, wishing I'd
had the sense to keep my mouth shut. But Lila had no doubt already heard the
news. In Pecan Springs, gossip is like a deadly virus, so communicable that
nothing will stop it.

Lila pulled down the
corners of her lipsticked mouth. "Carl was Lucy's boyfriend, y'know."

"He was?" I said, in some surprise. Carl
Swenson was a loner, and Sheila's comment about essence of goat had been on the
mark. The idea that the man might have been romantically involved with someone
had never crossed my mind. But now that I thought about it, they seemed to be a
pretty good match: a pair of misfits who might have found consolation in each
other. Lila's granddaughter is not particularly attractive—tall, skinny, and
graceless, with dark, stringy hair and a half-furtive, hangdog look about her.
She might be prettier (and happier) if she'd pay some attention to herself, but
she didn't seem to think it was worth the trouble.

Lila nodded.
"They been seein' each fer, oh, near a month now. Lucy was 'spectin' a
proposal." She jerked her head in the direction of the mistletoe. "He
brung that, you know. Gave her a big kiss under it, too."

"Give Lucy my
condolences," I said. I tried to conjure up a mental picture of Carl
Swenson and Lucy sharing a kiss under the mistletoe, but it wouldn't come.

Lila's eyes darkened.
"Yeah, the little gal's really grievin'. She's back there in the kitchen
right now, cryin' so's she can hardly cook. First batch of meatloaf, she left
out the tomato sauce." She made a small grimace. "Came out lookin'
real funny an' gray. Don't taste half-bad, though, if you put catsup on it. Or
salsa." She picked up the salsa jar and inspected it to make sure it was
full. "Or you can wait fer the next batch. Ten minutes, mebbe."

I don't care much for gray meatloaf, and I'm leery
of Lila's salsa. It'll burn holes in your tongue. I didn't want to wait,
either. "Guess I don't feel much like meatloaf today," I said.
"Think I'll go with the chicken and dumplings."

Lila leaned over, nearly overpowering me with the
scent of her Evening in Paris. "And it weren't no ak-se-dent,
neither," she whispered. "Carl was kilt on purpose."

No accident? I felt
the hair on my neck prickle. "Who says?"

"Lucy says,
that's who," Lila said. She straightened, her eyes slitted suspiciously.
"There was somethin' about that man made me nervous. Somethin' strange
goin' on there. No job, no vis'ble means o'support, 'cept fer mistletoe and
goats, and whut's that amount to?" She made a scornful noise, and answered
her own question. "A hill o' beans, that's whut. I told her she didn't
have no bidness with him, that he'd use her up and toss her out, but she wudn't
listen." Lila made a scornful noise. "Romance. That's all the girls
think about these days. Show 'em a good, solid man, such as Orville Pennyman,
who works at the Fina station and brings a good paycheck home to his mama ever'
week, an' whut do they do? They go runnin' after the nearest rat."

We were getting off
the subject. "Lucy thinks that Carl Swenson had enemies?"

"A passel,"
Lila said with relish. "People who'd love to see him done in. Leastways,
that's what Lucy told her mom. Her 'n' Docia both live with me now, you know.
Saves money that way. Lot cheaper than for all three of us to be payin'
rent."

A man at a window table, a regular, lifted his
coffee cup and Lila gave him a curt nod. He put the cup down with a complaining
sigh, but he knew the rules. When Lila gets involved in a conversation with one
of her customers, the others have to wait. I know—it's happened to me.

"I don't suppose Lucy mentioned who they
were," I remarked. "Swenson's enemies, I mean."

Lila tapped her pencil against her teeth.
"Well, fer starters, there's that neighbor of his, that Turtle woman.
Lucy says she threatened to give him a good dose o' buckshot next time she saw
him, on accounta them goats. Maybe she figgered it'ud be safer to hit him a
good clip with that old maroon Mercury she drives. Safer fer her, I mean. That
way, he couldn't shoot back."

A maroon Mercury,
huh? I made a mental note to ask Blackie whether he had taken a look at Mrs.
Tuttle's car. "That's interesting," I said encouragingly. "Who
else?"

Lila frowned.
"Well, there's Bob Godwin, just a fer instance, though you don't need to
go tellin' him I said so. Him and Carl got into a fight over some money Bob
claimed was owed him. Wouldn't put it past Bob to try and collect. And you know
what a temper that man has." She shook her head with a disapproving
tch-tch.

"Now,
Lila," I said. I didn't put much stock in this charge, since Bean's Bar
and Grill, which Bob owns, is one of Lila's chief competitors. She's always
finding some way to run him down.

"Whut d'ya mean,
'Now, Lila'?" she asked haughtily. "You ain't seen Bob when he's got
his back up about something? He's hell on wheels, believe you me. Didn't you
read in the paper last week about him gettin' into that fist fight with Harley
Moses? He ain't got red hair for nothin'." The outside door opened and she
looked up. "Well, if it ain't Mr. Hotshot Hibler, the editoor of our very
fine newspaper, who printed that story his very own self."

Hark peeled off his
windbreaker, pulled out the chair next to me and sat down, brushing raindrops
out of his dark hair. "Hello, Lila," he said in a mild tone.
"Kinda damp out there, isn't it? Hi, China."

I frowned, recalling
what Sheila had said about Hark and Lynn Hughes. It was entirely possible that
Wade's return had nothing to do with Ruby's recent behavior, and that her
weirdness was due to her problems with Hark. But the guy is my boss—I edit the
weekly Home and Garden section for the
Enterprise
—and we've been friends for a couple of years, so
I wasn't going to jump down his throat. I intended to find out what was going
on, however.

"Hello,
Hark," I said. "How's life?"

Hark began rolling up
the sleeves of his shirt. "Not too shabby," he replied. "You
doin' okay?"

Pointedly ignoring
Hark, Lila scratched out ML on her order book and wrote down CD instead.
"What'd'ya want with yer chicken and dumplin's?"

"Mustard
greens," I said. "And deep-fried corn on the cob." I smiled in
anticipation. "And coconut pie."

She stuck the pencil into her hair.
"Be right out," she said, and turned to walk away.

"Hey, Lila," Hark said, raising his
voice. "I'll have the meatloaf plate."

"Lucy left out
the tomato sauce," I said in a warning tone. "She's grieving for Carl
Swenson."

Hark's dark eyebrows
went up. "Lucy was a friend of Swenson's?"

Lila wheeled around.
"And whut's wrong with that?" She put her fists on her hips.
"Mebbe you think it's a crime fer two people to fall in love and get
married and practice fam'ly values, Mr. Newspaper Editoor. Mebbe you'd rather
print dirt about dope and preverts an' such, so's you can sell more
papers."

"Carl Swenson
and Lucy were
marriedT'
Hark asked, even more surprised. "How the
hell did I miss that?"

"Lila says Lucy
was expecting a proposal," I said quickly, forestalling one of Lila's
snappish replies. I don't understand why Hark eats at the Diner, given the way
Lila criticizes him. She thinks that the
Enterprise
pays too much attention to crime,
which Arnold Seidensticker, the newspaper's former owner, swept under the rug.
Arnold saw the
Enterprise
as a family newspaper, so he printed stories that
Dad could read aloud to his wife and children at the dinner table every
Wednesday, when the paper came out.

But Hark bought the newspaper from the
Seidensticker family in the fall, and things have changed. To Hark's way of
thinking, his readers have a right to the truth, however disagreeable.
Moreover, the
Enterprise
is now a daily. As a result, Pecan Springs is
waking from its self-satisfied trance to the startled realization that it is
not the squeaky clean village it thought it was. It is just like every other
small town, populated by people who make mistakes, accidentally go wrong, or
are intentionally corrupt. These imperfect people probably don't outnumber the
rest of the populace, of course—it's just that errors, accidents, and
corruption naturally seem to demand a certain amount of press attention, and
Hark is happy to oblige.

Not everybody is
pleased by this new journalistic realism, of course. Those who object write
letters to the editor, threatening to cancel their subscription so they won't
have to read that the mayor was forced to resign because of a sex scandal or
that the town's favorite dentist had abducted his granddaughter. (Both events
made headlines in September.) But Hark says that it pays to tell the truth,
even when it doesn't taste good in your mouth. And he must be right. For every
cancellation, there are two new subscribers.

Lila pushed her lips in and out, considering.
There was a calculating gleam in her eye. "I reckon you'll put the story
on the front page," she said judiciously. "Poor Carl bein' hit an'
run an' all."

Hark nodded. "I suppose you'd rather we
didn't cover it at all, but—"

"You can have Lucy's high school
grad-u-ashun photo," Lila said. "It's got a gold frame on it, though,
an' glass, so you got to be careful. I don't want it broke."

Hark
blinked. "Lucy's
...
photo?"

"Well," Lila said, "I
just thought that since she's the grievin' fee-an-say, you'd want to put her
picture in the paper, alongside his. Human int'rest, y'know." She smiled,
showing her gold tooth. "Be sure and put in that she works at the Diner,
'longside her mother and grandmother. It won't hurt fer us to get a little
publicity."

"Oh,
right," Hark said. "A little publicity." Then, capitalizing on
Lila's change of attitude, he added quickly,

"While you're
here, I'll have what China's having, except I'll take black-eyed peas. And
lemon pie."

"You got it, Mr. Editoor,"
Lila said cheerfully, and sashayed off, ignoring the man at the window table,
feebly hoisting his coffee cup.

"Breaking
news," I said, grinning.

"Sheesh,"
Hark muttered. "I don't believe Swenson was involved with Lucy. She's
not—well, not his type."

"You can't believe everything you hear,"
I said, and segued neatly into the subject at the top of my mind. "I just
heard about Lynn Hughes, for instance." I gave him a meaningful look.

Hark looked confused. "What's Lynn Hughes got
to do with Swenson and Lucy?"

"Nothing. I
heard that you took her out to dinner. At Crandall's. And that you two were
exceedingly cozy."

Hark shook his head disgustedly. "Was it
Sheila who told you that? I saw her and Blackie come in. She gave me the evil
eye."

"I was just
wondering," I continued, "whether Ruby knows about Lynn."

Hark frowned.
"Ruby? Sure she knows. The restaurant was her idea."

"Excuse
me?"