Murder and Mayhem (30 page)

“I’m doing just fine, Chartreuse, how about you?”

“We’s doin’ jes fine, thanks Hon.”

My cheeks were beginning to ache so I said, “I see
you’ve got yourself a new outfit, Louanna.”

When Louanna jumped to her feet
the rolls of fat around her midriff put me in mind of the Michelin Man.

“Whachoo think?” She twirled
around on the stilettos, like a carnival doll.

“I think it’s just peachy, Louanna, and the color is
so you.” I readjusted my smile.

“That’s what I thought when my Shaylon bought it for
me.”

“Well, you look lovely,” Rosie said.

Chartreuse, not to be outdone said, “I told my Isaac
he had to buy me one of dose.”

“I can just see the pair of you walking down the
street. It would be quite a sight.”

Chartreuse’s face lit up. “You think so, Bee?”

“I particularly like the orange Day-Glo underwear. It
finishes the outfit off nicely. And, I think you should get that little Korean
girl to paint your nails in matching colors. Now that would really be something
to see,” I said with pious sincerity usually associated with Puritans and
priests.

Both women waited in case I had any more helpful
suggestions−but on this I had reached my limits.

“Then I’ll definitely ask my Isaac to get me some of
dose. And, you book us in with that little Ko-re-han girl, Louanna. Tell her we
want something special,”Chartreuse said to her sister.

“I think that would look real
good, don’t you, Bubbie?” Rosie said.

I decided to check my T-shirt
for any sign of left-over lunch–and as fate would have it found a sticky red
blob on my left breast. I dabbed at it with my finger and licked. Just as I thought,
raspberry ripple.

“Is you all right, Hon?” Chartreuse asked.

Louanna noted the concern in her sister’s voice and
looked closely at Rosie. “You is looking a little peeked, Hon. Are you okay,
girl?”

I nudged Louanna, and grinned. “Drew came home for a
flying visit last night.”

Louanna’s face broke into a smile. “Uh-huh, dats
mosprobly hit,” she said.

Rosie blushed.

“Flew in late last night and
flew out again this morning. I’d call that a booty call would you?” I said with
a Cheshire cat grin.

“It was not a booty call,” Rosie
said with an indignant air.

“Came all the way from Chicago then left early this
morning for South Carolina. Everyone knows Chicago is much closer to South
Carolina than San Francisco. If that’s not a booty call, I don’t know what is,”
I add, smugly.

“Dat sho’ sounds like a booty call to me,” Chartreuse
said.

“Uh-huh. Dat fo’ sho’ is a booty call,” Louanna added.

“You girls need to get your mind out of the gutter!”
Rosie turned on her heels and flounced off in a huff.

I grinned.

“It most definitely was a booty
call.”

*****

The nights were crisp, the days, warm. Everywhere they
looked the landscape was filled with trees heavy with red-gold-and
bronze-colored leaves.

The sky overhead was a washed out mottled gray, the
air heavy with damp as they drove down the narrow two-lane road where a
scattering of yellow leaves still clung to the skeletal limbs of willows and
poplar trees. On a narrow country road they passed an ancient cottage with
rough-hewn walls built from lichen-covered rocks that fitted together like
pieces of a puzzle, where a woman wearing a large brimmed hat was clearing dead
blooms from what was once a colorful display during the summer months. At the
back of the house a grove of tall pines were back-lit against a pale sky. In
the lot next door, a small orchard filled with apple trees planted in straight
rows was surrounded by a weathered split post-and-rail fence that had fallen
into disrepair.

Danny asked as he pulled off the road and buzzed down
the window. “That looks like something out of a Grimm’s fairytale. How old do
you think that cottage would be?”

Nicola leaned forward and looked out through the
windshield. “Oh. A couple of hundred years at least, I should think. It may
even have been here since the time of George Washington.”

“The history of this country never ceases to amaze me.
It looks like a picture on a Hallmark greeting card. I would love to see it in
the winter covered in snow with gray plumes of smoke curling out of the
chimney. I wonder what it would be like to live in a place like that.”

“It might look like fairyland at the moment but
believe me when the snow comes and you can’t get out your door; then the rain
turns it all to slush and the roads are covered in black ice, you’d wish you
were some place warm like Florida. No, I take that back, definitely not
Florida. The Bahamas… perhaps; Texas… maybe; … or California.”

“Still nice to dream,” Danny said as he eased the SUV
back on the road. As they rounded a bend Danny noticed a turnout with a view of
a river and pulled off the road.

He told hold of Nicola’s hand as they walked to the
safety rail and looked at the silvery water. On the opposite bank they could
see the rich treasury of autumn leaves reflected in the surface of the lake.

Danny slipped his arm around Nicola and pulled her
close. She shivered and leaned into his shoulder.

“Cold?” he asked hugging her tighter.

“Just a little. It’s so beautiful here isn’t it?”
Nicola said. A cool breeze off the water ruffled her hair and made her eyes
smart.

“Do you want me to get your sweate?”

“No, I’ll be all right.”

They stood locked in each other’s arms and took in the
scene laid out before them–in glorious Technicolor.

“It’s so quiet there doesn’t seem to be another soul
within miles,” Danny said after a while.

“There probably isn’t.”

Nicola wandered down to where an old aluminum runabout
lay half submerged in a nest of debris of weathered driftwood, rotting
vegetation and discarded plastic. The upturned hull that rested against a rock
displayed a large jagged gash some two feet long shaped like a jagged lightning
bolt. Just below the surface of the water, moss-covered rocks shimmered in the
sunlight. Nicola pondered the fate of the crew on the boat’s last voyage.

Danny stretched his arms above his head and massaged
his scalp with his hands while his eyes scanned the woods on the other side of
the lake. The air was fresh and the light breeze sent ripples across the
surface of water. Not a sound could be heard except for the chatter of birds
and rustle of wind through the trees as it sent leaves dancing through the air.

As the SUV pulled back onto the road a car drove into
the turn-out and parked where the SUV had stood moments earlier. Danny glanced
in the mirror and noticed a tall man wearing a baseball cap set out of the
vehicle and walk over to the fence. As the man leaned with his back against the
rail, Danny thought he had the same emblem on his cap as the one that sat on
the back seat of the SUV atop his own luggage–but, from that distance he could
have been mistaken.

As the SUV rounded a bend, the image of the stranger
disappeared from sight.

* * *

Nicola hummed in time with an old INXS song playing on
the radio as she watched the landscape slide past the window. With summer
vacation over, ski resorts and campgrounds would be waiting in anticipation for
the first snow falls that would herald the return of ski crowds breathing life
back into the small towns and villages that were almost deserted, except for a
few hardy locals.

“Do you like INXS?” Danny asked.

“I like some of their music. They’re a talented band.
It’s a shame what happened to Michael Hutchence.”

Danny shrugged. “Rock singers have a habit of wiping
themselves off the board early. It comes with the territory.” He buzzed down
the window and breathed in the resinous smell of pine trees and damp humus from
overnight rain, and wood smoke from fires. “I love that smell. The nights must
be starting to get cooler; you can feel the drop in the temperature already.”

“This far north winter comes early. Many of the trees
have already dropped their leaves,” Nicola said.

They passed a faded sign by the road that boasted,
Best food in town. Underneath, an arrow with the words, 2mls, indicated the
location. The sign was old and Danny wasn’t sure if the food would still be
good–or if the restaurant would even be there. 

He glanced over at Nicola softly humming to herself
and asked if she wanted something to eat. She gave him a nod in time with the
music.

“There was a sign back there but it looked pretty old so
I’m not sure what we’ll find, if anything. We might have to go on to the next
town,” he said.

Some two miles down the road, Danny turned into a
pot-holed car park overgrown with weeds, and pulled up to the front of an old
wooden building where the shingles on the roof had turned gray over time, and a
curling wisp of blue-gray smoke rose from the chimney. Riverview Restaurant the
sign above the door boasted amid layers of peeling paint–with no sign of river.

Danny parked well back from the only other car in the
lot–a tired looking gold Chrysler whose faded, scarred duco was covered in mud
streaks. The rear bumper was hanging by a couple of loose screws duct taped to
the body; the back passenger-side door was staved in–the car was parked at an
odd angle.

When Nicola climbed out of the SUV, the scent of
wood-smoke and rotting humus tickled her nostrils. The air was laced with the
smell of distant rain.

Danny held open the door and followed her inside.

The restaurant appeared to be empty except for a
couple sitting in a booth not far from the door. Danny assumed these were the
owners of the oddly parked Chevy.

The man had a full head of thick, wavy, gray hair, a
neatly trimmed beard and thick rubbery lips. His spoon, dripping soup, stopped
midway to his mouth as he regarded the young couple with curious, washed-out
pale eyes. His companion, her back to the door, stopped talking and turned to
scrutinize them with inquisitive, unblinking eyes, her face thin and
leathery–her hair was dyed a strange shade of red–like the color of plums.
Danny estimated the woman’s age to be mid-fifties but she could easily have
passed for seventy.

The two men took the measure of each other and nodded
a greeting. Once the pleasantries were dispensed with, the gray-headed man
bought the spoon to his lips and resumed his lunch. The woman turned back and
took up the thread of their disrupted conversation.

On a shelf behind the counter, amid an assortment of
china and containers that held all manner of things, sat an old fashioned radio
where the tinny voice of an announcer was reeling off crop prices and weather
reports for the benefit of local farmers.

“Sit anywhere you like. I’ll be with you shortly,” the
waitress said as she popped her head through the doorway that led to the
kitchen, disappeared, and reappeared a moment later.

“Coffee?” she called as an afterthought.

Danny smiled and nodded. “Thanks.”

The waitress appeared a short time later with a
balancing act of plates and condiments and shuffled them in front of the other
couple, all the time laughing and talking in a manner that bespoke an old
familiarity. When she finished she walked to the counter, filled two mugs with
rich aromatic coffee and grabbed a couple of well-worn menus covered in cracked
plastic, yellowed with age and dotted with what appeared to be fly droppings
and dried food.

Fiona, if the name embroidered on the worn, faded pink
uniform was correct, looked to be in her late forties with lank
dirty-blond-colored hair, a sunny disposition and smiled easily as she deposited
the mugs on the table. She gave the menus a cursory wipe with her apron and
placed them on the table. 

Danny and Nicola took a moment to scrutinize the
selection, while Fiona, if that was her name, stood waiting, pencil poised,
ready to take their order.

“I’ll have the hamburger and fries,” Nicola said.

“Soup or salad?”

“Salad. Can I have the dressing on the side?” Nicola
smiled up at the woman who barely touched pencil to paper.

“You betcha:  Ranch, Caesar, French, Thousand Island,
blue cheese, house…”

“Blue cheese,” Nicola interrupted before she could go
through a whole lot more choices.

Danny held up two fingers and smiled. “Make that two.”

“Can we have the salad with our burgers?” Nicola
asked.

“You got it.” The waitress slipped the pencil into her
hair, collected the menus and hurried over to the other table to check on the
food and collect empty dishes before returning to the kitchen.