Murder on a Girls' Night Out (3 page)

“It looks the same,” Mary Alice said, also looking at the wishing well.

“Take your time.” The sheriff pulled out a chair. “Here, sit down.” Mary Alice sat down and folded her hands on the table like a proper schoolgirl. Sheriff Reuse pulled a chair out for me. “Mrs. Hollowell.”

We sat for a few minutes, not saying anything, just looking. I looked at the dance floor and the dark drapery
across the side window; I looked at the bar and the shiny glasses.

“You see anything?” Sister asked.

“No. You?”

“No.”

“I didn’t even know his last name.”

“Meadows. His name was Edward Meadows.”

“Nice name.”

“Yes.” Sister drummed her fingers on the table. The sheriff drummed his fingers on the table. So did I. We sounded like the game where you have to guess what song a person is playing. I drummed the
William Tell
overture.

“Lone Ranger,” the sheriff said. We all smiled at each other.

“I see something different,” Sister suddenly said, looking over my shoulder. “The rope and bucket are gone from the well!”

“The rope went with Mr. Meadows and the bucket is already at the lab. We found it at the bottom of the well.”

“Oh.” Mary Alice sounded deflated.

“Why don’t you just tell me all you can about Mr. Meadows and buying the Skoot?”

“Well, my friend Bill Adams and I learned to line dance in Branson, Missouri—”

“Excuse me,” I said, “but is the rest room open?”

“Sure,” the sheriff said. “We’ve already been over it.”

They certainly had. Not only had they chipped a small piece out of the corner of the mirror with the etched boot on it, but they had also loosened the toilet-paper holder, so that it was just hanging on. I got my Swiss army knife (a gift to myself years ago) from my purse and tightened the screws. The holder needed a little more work, but it would be okay for a while. I came out feel
ing proud of my handiwork and saw that a man had joined Sister and the sheriff at the table.

“No way!” he was saying as I approached. “No way!” He looked up at me and the expression on his face changed to surprise. “Mrs. Hollowell?”

“Henry? Henry Lamont? It is you, isn’t it?”

“Lord! Mrs. Hollowell.” Henry jumped up and engulfed me in a bear hug. “Mrs. Hollowell. How about that!”

Henry Lamont had matured into a handsome young man. Like my son Alan, he had grown a couple more inches after graduation from high school and was at least six feet tall. His blond hair had darkened some, but in his late twenties, he still had the face that some men are blessed with that keeps bartenders asking for I.D. until they are forty.

“You two know each other,” Mary Alice said.

“She taught me AP English for two years.” Henry hugged me again. “Lord, Mrs. Hollowell, you remembered me.”

“Of course I do, Henry. You were the best. Absolutely.”

“No,
you
were the best. I still remember when you took us to see
Macbeth
. The way they brought his head out on the sword at the end and how they kept shaking a piece of metal for thunder.

“And Banquo’s ghost. That was really something.”

“Mutual admiration society meets at the Skoot ’n’ Boot,” Mary Alice said.

“Yeah. Speaking of murders, how about you people joining us for a few minutes?” The sheriff pointed at the chairs. Henry and I sat down, still beaming at each other.

“But what are you doing here, Henry? Last I heard, you were at the writers’ workshop in Iowa.”

“He’s the cook,” Mary Alice said.

“She was bragging about you yesterday,” I said, patting Henry’s hand. It was true he had been one of my most promising students, a gifted writer. I wondered what had brought him to become a short-order cook at the Skoot ’n’ Boot.

“It’s a long story,” he said, reading my thoughts.

“You were saying ‘No way’?” the sheriff said.

Henry turned to him. “That’s right. Ed was straight as an arrow. I’ve been here six months and, take my word for it, he liked the ladies. All of them. But I never saw him coming on to one so much that it bothered their boyfriends.”

“Regular customers?”

“Sure. Lots of them. I worked in back, so I wasn’t out here much, but I would sometimes see faces I recognized.” He smiled at Mary Alice. “Like Mrs. Crane here.” Sister beamed back. “Bonnie could tell you more about that. Bonnie Blue Butler.

“Or Doris Chapman, except Doris quit a few weeks ago. I think she was moving somewhere. And then there’s a new girl, Sadie somebody. She’s only been here a few days, though.”

“Anyone else in the kitchen?” Jed Reuse had his notebook out and was writing.

“We have two part-time people that help. Usually students from the junior college. Right now we’ve got Mark and Ted, and that’s all I know about them. Mark helps me with the cooking and Ted cleans up. I don’t even know where they live. Bonnie Blue probably does, though. She finds out about everybody.”

The sheriff looked up from his notes. “We’ve already called her. She’ll be in soon.”

“Interesting name,” I said.

“She swears she was conceived during the burning-
of-Atlanta scene. Must have had a tremendous effect on her parents.” Henry laughed. “May be true.”

“
Casablanca
caused one of my kids,” Mary Alice said. “You know, when she’s getting on the plane and looking back at Humphrey Bogart. That just does me in. Late movie one night.”

Jed Reuse cleared his throat loudly. We all looked at him. “Please. I’d like to continue.”

“Go ahead,” Sister said, having a hard time getting off the subject. “The other two were just vacations or carelessness or something.”

A good disciplinarian, the sheriff used the old schoolteacher trick of being totally quiet and still for just a moment too long. None of us moved.

“Mr. Lamont,” he said, “do you know of anything unusual that has happened here in the last few weeks? An argument Mr. Meadows might have had with someone? Anything that comes to mind?”

A dead body in the well, I thought. That’s pretty unusual.

But I kept my mouth shut.

“No.” Henry took his time trying to remember. “He told me yesterday he had sold the place to Mrs. Crane and that he was going back to Atlanta in a week or two. He was always very nice to me, paid me on time, sometimes a little extra if we’d had an especially busy week.”

“What were you doing here yesterday? The place was closed.”

“He called me.”

The notebook came out again. “Whatever he had to say, he could have told you today, couldn’t he?”

“I suppose so. I guess he was just excited that he had sold the Skoot and wanted to tell somebody.”

“What time was it?”

“About two, I guess.”

“We saw him after that,” I said. “We left here just before dark, and he appeared alive and well then.”

The sheriff looked at me. “Mrs. Hollowell, I’m just trying to get some information. I’m not accusing your best student of murder.”

Mary Alice kicked me under the table. I gave her a go-to-hell look.

“It’s just that this was not a robbery or some random killing. This was murder, obviously, which means that someone, maybe one of you, is sitting on some information that you don’t think has anything to do with the case but which might be just the key we need. Mr. Meadows didn’t live in a vacuum, wasn’t murdered in a vacuum. Someone wanted him dead. And from the way they did him in, I’d say someone really didn’t like him.” Sheriff Reuse spread his hands as if he were doing card tricks. “Now, Mr. Lamont, suppose you tell us why you left Iowa.”

Henry cracked his knuckles, a habit of his I had forgotten. “Selling drugs,” he mumbled.

There was a commotion at the door. “Woo-hoo, Henry!” It was as if a photographic negative of Mary Alice stood there. Six feet tall, two-fifty (at least), platinum hair and skin the color of dark chocolate.

Henry jumped up so quickly, his chair turned over. “Bonnie Blue!” He disappeared in the vastness of her embrace.

“The admiration society grows,” Mary Alice murmured.

B
onnie Blue Butler maneuvered through the crowded tables with an ease that belied her size. You could tell it was something she was used to doing. We caught glimpses of Henry following her as she made her way toward us.

His admission, just before Bonnie Blue’s appearance, had startled me. Henry Lamont selling drugs! Any teacher will admit that occasionally a child touches her heart. He or she may not be the prettiest or the smartest or the neediest. But there is something that clicks, and both lives are enriched for it. Sometimes it is perilously close to the love you feel for your own children. During thirty years of teaching, there were perhaps four or five children I had totally lost my heart to. Henry was one of them. The thought of him not fulfilling his potential was painful enough. But selling drugs! He was right.
There was a long story here, and one I wanted to hear.

“Mrs. Butler.” Sheriff Reuse got up and pulled out a chair for Bonnie Blue. “Please join us.”

“I got a choice?” Bonnie Blue did not sit in the chair. Instead, she seemed to squat over it and fall. The chair creaked but held. The sheriff did not even attempt to push it back toward the table. He introduced himself and then us. Henry had eased warily back into his chair. He seemed uneasy. I glanced at him, but he avoided my eyes.

“I know Mrs. Crane,” Bonnie Blue said, looking at Mary Alice. “You are one wicked line dancer, girl.”

“Thank you.” Mary Alice smiled, more a smirk.

“That Mr. Crane can move, too.”

“Mr. Crane ceased all motion about twenty years ago,” I said.

“Fifteen,” Mary Alice corrected.

“I stand by what I said, Sister.”

“You sisters? Lord, Lord! You don’t look one thing alike. Henry, you know they’re sisters? You think they look one thing alike?”

“Maybe around the eyes. And no, I didn’t know they were sisters.”

“And that man’s your boyfriend.”

The sheriff tapped his hand against the table. We all jumped. “Please,” he said, sounding exasperated. “We’ve got a dead body down at the morgue. I’m sure this is all fascinating, but could we please get down to business?”

“Ready when you are,” Bonnie Blue said. “Henry, honey, will you go get me a Coke? I swear I’m dry as a bone.” Henry started to get up. “Diet, honey. And maybe everyone else would like something, too.”

Mary Alice, Jed Reuse and I shook our heads. While
Henry was at the bar, Jed held the tips of his fingers pressed against his forehead.

“I think he has a headache,” Mary Alice whispered. “You got any aspirin?”

I reached into my purse and found a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol. I handed it to Sister, who nodded and placed it quietly in front of the sheriff. Henry came back with Bonnie Blue’s Coke.

“Get the sheriff one, too, Henry,” she said. “He needs to take something for his headache. Acting just like a man, not wanting anybody to think he has feelings.”

Henry put the second Coke in front of the sheriff, who promptly opened the Tylenol bottle and took several.

“Now,” Bonnie Blue said, “you want to know what I know about Ed Meadows and who killed him, don’t you?”

“Yes, it would be appreciated,” Jed Reuse said as he got out his notebook again.

“Diddly.”

“Who?”

“That’s what I know about it. Diddly.”

I swear I think the sheriff wrote “diddly” in the notebook. At least he wrote something. Then he got up, drank the rest of his Coke in one gulp and excused himself, saying he had to go check on his men but no one was to leave, he would be back in a minute.

“Nervy,” Bonnie Blue said, watching him walk out the door. “You see his hands shaking?” She shook her head in sympathy. “That man’s got one hard job.” Bonnie Blue sighed. “Least he’s got a job. What you gonna do here, Mrs. Crane?”

“Oh, I’m planning to open up soon as I can. I’ve got to get organized and see where we stand and where everything is. I’m not planning on anybody missing a
payday, though.” Sister folded and refolded a Kleenex she held in her hand. “One thing that I’ve thought of is whether the murder will scare people away.”

“Lord, no. Bring them in by droves. Halloween we won’t be able to move.”

“Bonnie Blue!”

“It’s the God’s truth, Henry, and you know it.” She reached over and patted Sister’s hand. “Let that be the least of your worries.”

What Bonnie Blue had said was so terribly true that I started giggling. The others looked at me. “Tickets to sit in the well,” I said, and laughed harder.

“We’ll get the bucket back.” Sister was laughing now.

“Oh, God, this is awful!” I put my head on the table and howled. “Poor Ed.”

All of us were laughing so hard we were gasping for breath when Sheriff Reuse came back in. I think he thought something was wrong. He came hurrying over.

“Sheriff,” Bonnie Blue said, “I think I just peed my pants.”

That made us laugh even harder. Mary Alice always cries when she laughs, so she was holding the shredded Kleenex to her eyes. “Me, too,” she gasped.

“Mr. Lamont, when you get control of yourself, I would like to see you in the kitchen.” The sheriff turned and walked stiffly away.

“He’s got the piles,” Bonnie Blue whispered. “Look at that walk.”

Sister bumped her head against the table, she was laughing so hard.

Henry scraped back his chair. We looked up and saw that he was not laughing anymore. “I’d better go,” he said quietly, seriously.

“It’ll be okay, Henry,” Bonnie Blue called after him. He gave a backward wave of his hand.

“That was certainly an unseemly show of emotion, Patricia Anne,” Sister said, wiping her eyes.

Normally, the way she said that would have started me laughing again, but it didn’t. I was watching Henry’s thin shoulders, the way he pushed against the kitchen door and disappeared.

Bonnie Blue wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Well,” she said, “there’s just no telling.”

Sister and I nodded in agreement, assuming what she had said was connected to something. The laughter had drained out of us as quickly as it had exploded.

“That Ed was not a bad guy. I’ve seen worse.” Bonnie Blue traced a finger around a wet circle her Coke had left on the table. “Full of it, but not the worst.”

“Full of what?” Mary Alice asked.

Bonnie Blue looked at me.

“She’s usually quicker,” I said. “She’s just a lot older than me and a whole lot older than you.”

“She looks good.”

“Plastic. Everywhere.”

“Y’all cut that out,” Sister said. “Tell us about Ed, Mrs. Butler.”

“Bonnie Blue.”

“Mary Alice,” I said, pointing toward Sister, “and Patricia Anne.”

“Okay.” Bonnie Blue drank the last of her Coke, took the napkin that was wrapped around it and wiped the table. “Let me see. He bought the place from a man named Mullins, Sam Mullins. Used to have a filling station and bait shop here. Sold a lot of bait to people going to the lake. Called The County Line.”

“I remember that!” Mary Alice exclaimed. “He had
an old tarpaper shack out in the back where he kept the crickets in cornmeal.”

“Sure did.” Bonnie Blue looked pleased. “Anyway, Mr. Mullins made himself a bunch of money and decided The County Line wasn’t uptown enough. So he tore it down and built this little shopping-center thing. He had the restaurant and his sister did catering and stuff. Lasted about two days. If there was anything on the menu had cornmeal in it or on it, people turned green.”

“You worked for him?” Sister asked.

Bonnie Blue nodded her head. “But like I say, it didn’t last long, and then he sold it to Ed. Went to Florida, I think. Grouchy old man. Should have stayed in the cricket business.”

Sheriff Reuse came out of the kitchen and called for one of the deputies. Bonnie Blue turned and looked at the kitchen door, then continued.

“That was about two years ago, did I say that? Anyway, I came in one day and here was Ed and Mr. Mullins just beaming, and Ed said he was going to turn it into a country-western bar called the Skoot ’n’ Boot; said he wanted me to keep on working. It took them about a month to get everything done, like the boots on everything and the dance floor. I went to see my sister in Detroit while they were working on the place and didn’t have any idea Ed would pay me during that time. But he did. Amazed me.”

Bonnie Blue glanced around. “All this stuff didn’t come cheap, either. Took them days to build that well. Didn’t seem to bother him, though. Even when business was slow at first, it didn’t bother him. I asked him one day point-blank was he rich, and he just laughed. Must have been, though. Maybe this was like a hobby.”

“You said Ed wasn’t the worst, though, like something was wrong,” Sister said.

“Honey, that man had PMS. I swear. You know Doris, the other girl worked here? I told her he had PMS, to watch and see if he didn’t. And she said no way, he couldn’t have any such thing. So I started marking it on a calendar and showed her. I made a believer out of Doris. We knew to start covering our butts beginning every twenty-six days. He’d get cranky and that would last for a couple of days and then he’d start drinking.

“Sometimes he’d get so drunk we would just lay him out in the storeroom and cover him up. And sometimes he would disappear and we’d know he was off somewhere, drunk. Mean drunk, too. What’s today?”

“The date? October tenth.”

“Well, that wasn’t why somebody killed him, then. He wasn’t due until next week.”

“Anyway, what would you do when he was, well, indisposed?” Sister asked.

“Actually, he didn’t do much of anything, anyway. Made his tattoo dance. Wasn’t much good as a bartender. Most of the help comes from the college. They have this restaurant course and even a bartending one. Long as they’re twenty-one, they can serve drinks. Most everybody just drinks beer, anyway. Henry would call asking for a bartender for a couple of nights. But they would know the call was coming. They have a calendar, too.”

“That’s the strangest thing,” I said.

“PMS, honey. Remember?”

“I certainly do remember. It hasn’t been
that
long.”

“What about girlfriends? Wife? Family?” Mary Alice wanted to know.

“Boobs resting on the bar. Lots of them.”

“What?” Sister said.

Bonnie Blue spoke slowly. “Women came to see him.
They were hanging over that bar all the time, like Ed was a Moon Pie and they were craving sugar.”

“He looked perfectly resistible to me,” I said.

“Me, too.” Bonnie Blue motioned toward the kitchen with her Coke. “I told Doris, I said, ‘Listen, Doris, what
is
this? Is there something I’m missing? ’Cause I don’t think I’ve missed much.’ And she just laughed and said I wasn’t missing a thing if I meant what she thought I meant, but had I ever just watched Ed? And I said, ‘Watch him do what?’ And she just grinned and said, ‘Watch and you’ll see.’ So that afternoon, first woman came, I watched just like Doris said, and sure enough, I saw it right off.” She paused.

“Saw what?” Sister asked.

“He touched her hand,” Bonnie Blue said. “That’s all he did. A woman would come up and order a drink or be sitting at the bar and he would reach over and touch the back of her hand with his fingers. Just sort of rub them across her hand. That’s all. Those poor women would just melt.”

“From him just touching their hands?” Sister looked incredulous.

“It was like he was telling each one of them that he cared for them, that he understood,” I explained. “Of course, the booze didn’t hurt.”

Bonnie Blue frowned at me and then looked at Mary Alice.

“What your sister said. Doris caught on before I did; I was slow. Even Henry knew it. I asked him one day if he knew about this trick Ed had and he said, ‘Rubbing his fingers across their hands?’ Made me feel dense. ’Course, he never tried it on me. But I wasn’t leaning across the bar.”

“Maybe he didn’t stop there and somebody’s boyfriend or husband found out about it,” Mary Alice said.

“Could be.”

The three of us sat quietly for a few minutes. I didn’t know about the others, but I was thinking about the lonely women who had been comforted by the brush of Ed’s fingertips across their hands. It was a manipulative gesture. No doubt it had given him a sense of power. But I remembered his limp handshake and wondered how in the world the touch of that hand could be so appealing.

“There’s no accounting,” Bonnie Blue said.

“But so much loneliness,” I said.

“And violence,” Sister added. She pressed the tiny shreds of tissue against her eyes again.

Bonnie Blue eyed the kitchen. “I wonder what that sheriff’s doing to Henry.”

“Doing?” My breath caught. “You think he’s doing something to him?” I started to get up.

Bonnie Blue reached over and caught my arm. “I mean I wonder if he’s upsetting that child.”

I sat back down. “He better not be.”

Bonnie Blue looked at me, puzzled.

“Henry was Patricia Anne’s favorite student,” Mary Alice explained.