Out Of Time

I was hungry enough to eat the ass end of a skunk. Fortunately, I wouldn’t have to. My case was about to crack wide open, courtesy of a dumpy brunette wearing ill-advised spandex who was teetering toward the bar on wobbly four-inch stilettos.

“One Bahama Mamma and a margarita,” she told the muscle-bound bartender, fingering her fake-gold necklace. Her voice was so squeaky, I narrowed my eyes in speculation. Could it really be the mayor of Munchkinland in drag? Or, more likely, could I really have just downed my third drink of the evening? What was I thinking?

I pushed my Tanqueray on the rocks to one side and took a deep breath. I needed to slow down. Bar surveillance could take all night, and you couldn’t fake the drinking without making the bartender suspicious. Especially this one. He smelled a spotter in the air and had already thrown me a few curious looks. If I kept up this pace, I’d pass out before I discovered the scam. Except—thanks to the munchkin—I was just about to nail his trim little butt.

“I meant to say a frozen margarita,” she squeaked across the counter, stopping the bartender in midpour long enough for me to realize he was standing in the wrong spot for tequila. And that the label on the bottle did not match the house brand. I watched more closely as he corrected the order, drawing a frozen margarita from a machine along one wall and tossing the rejected drink down the drain without comment. The Bahama Mamma looked legit, if you consider Bahama Mammas legit, but when he rang up both drinks, the munchkin did it to him again. “How much was that Bahama Mamma?” she asked, anxiously counting the dollar bills in her pudgy hands. He stopped ringing up, and I saw that the total on the register was zero, but the guest tape had been credited with nine dollars. That greedy iron-pumping bastard sure had ambition. He was doubling up on his scams. Looked like I would finally be able to explain to his boss why, after his place had been named the hottest bar in town, his profits had scarcely inched up.

“Nine dollars,” the bartender grumbled, shoving the drinks across the bar. His eyes slid sideways toward me and I knew he had me made. Realization had finally penetrated his steroid-soaked brain. I didn’t care. My job was done. By tomorrow, his career would be history.

“I’ll get that,” I told him sweetly, sliding a ten across the bar. After all, the munchkin had just helped me solve a three-day case. The least I could do was buy her a drink. “Keep the change,” I told him. He shrugged, unimpressed.

“Gee, thanks,” the munchkin piped up, but when she got a better look at me, she turned nervous. “What did you do that for?”

“Relax,” I told her, throwing her a wink. “I’m not after your body, cupcake. I just admire your fashion sense. It’s so distinctive.”

She brightened at this and scurried over to her table, casting a final suspicious glance my way. Hey, when you’re a woman as big and as bold as I am, you get a lot of those looks from other ladies who’re afraid I’m out to drag them for a walk on the wild side. It’s unfashionable of me, I admit, but I’d be a big disappointment in that department. Though others are perfectly welcome to go where no man has gone before, I’m strictly a younger-man woman myself. Just give me a negligee that rips off easily and a twenty-five-year-old boy that doesn’t rip off at all. I’ve got the soundtrack to “The Graduate” all cued up and ready to go.

I left the bar with a nice rosy glow, courtesy of too much gin and a smug sense of law and order. Casey Jones, watchdog of civilization, scourge of bar cheaters everywhere, defender of the oath, keeper of the cheap drink. Casey Jones, 160 pounds of pure brain and muscle. Casey Jones, too damn tipsy to drive.

It was true. My reach had exceeded my grasp. I was forced, by the prospect of Chapel Hill’s unmarked drunk-driving task force, to take a nap in the backseat of my 1965 Valiant before I could proceed. This was no small order. The backseat was my auxiliary office. In addition to current case files, it held assorted sweat suits, a large plastic cooler crammed with Diet Pepsis, three empty bags of Lay’s potato chips, a single can of Slim Fast (who was I kidding?) and four bundles of magazines I kept meaning to recycle, but where the hell did Durham, North Carolina, recycle its magazines anyway? I pondered the mystery as I fell into a deep snooze, waking an hour later, when the couple in the car next to mine mounted a show that made Tonya Harding and her ex’s honeymoon night look like the amateur hour that it was. An eyeful of their action sobered me up fast. The guy’s BVD-clad butt was pressed against the side window, which said a lot for his flexibility, but not much for his foreplay. Besides, I think guys look pretty silly in briefs, even when they don’t have toy cars or superheroes printed on them. I decided it was time to go, pronto. If I stayed in the parking lot of this singles bar for another instant, who knew what madness might overtake me. These days, I’m too old to wake up the morning after with regrets—or worse. When in doubt, I put the fire out. It keeps a woman healthy, wealthy and wise.

I rolled down the windows and headed to Raleigh, where my grossly obese boss, Bobby D., was anxiously awaiting my progress report on the bartender scam. This new client— like my boss—was a big one. He owned a lot of bars in the Triangle, and keeping his staff honest could turn into a steady gig. Best of all, it was yet another task that Bobby D. could foist off on me. I didn’t mind. It’s a dirty job sitting at bars drinking all night, but someone’s got to do it. And that someone is me. Because the only work Bobby D. actually does for himself involves either the telephone or a soon-to-be- grieving divorcee vulnerable to Bobby’s practiced words of love. That man is a genius. He makes Barry White look like a piker. He also makes Barry White look underfed. At 360 pounds of pure fat, Bobby is a favorite of the ancient staff that mans the Big Man Department at Hudson Belk’s.

The fresh air sobered me up. I arrived in downtown Raleigh on top of the world. After all, it was only nine o’clock on a balmy Saturday night in March. Spring was in the air. My hormones were racing. The night was young, even if I wasn’t. And I had a non-date with Bill Butler at eleven o’clock, when he got off his shift at the Raleigh Police Department.

Bobby D. put a big dent in my mood. For starters, I thought he was dying.

“Bobby,” I called out. “How’s it hanging?”

He didn’t answer. He was too busy asphyxiating. His face was bright red and he was pointing a half-eaten chicken drumstick toward my office.

“What?” I asked, eyeing him suspiciously. As usual, he was parked in a long-suffering chair that tilted back from a desk heaped high with junk-food wrappers so ancient I was surprised he hadn’t tried to foist them off as antiques at the fair-ground weekend flea market. The trash can at his feet held a six-pack of Bud Lite. Fat lot of good it did him when he was known to down a case a day. A cardboard bucket of chicken leaked grease onto the desk. It ran in slow rivulets over the edge, and dripped on his polyester slacks. His face was shiny with chicken fat.

“Can you breathe?” I asked, readying myself for the Heimlich maneuver. I’d have to jump up and down on his chest just to penetrate his fat.

“Of course I can breathe,” he said indignantly. “I look like a corpse to you?”

“Then why are you waving a chicken part at me and turning blue?” I asked.

“You’ve got company,” he said grimly. “And it don’t smell good.” He turned his back on me. After all, he had better things to do—like polishing off a twelve-piece family dinner for four before it got cold.

Okay, I told myself. It was a little unusual for a new client to comlorlient te knocking on a weekend night, but, after all, I was a professional. I hadn’t gotten into this business to punch a clock, I’d gotten into it to punch the bad guys.

I turned the hall corner toward my office—and froze. At least ten pairs of eyes trapped me in the dreaded country-lady glare. That glare is a North Carolina classic, designed to scrutinize every detail of your being. With a single look, the assembled women were toting up my hair, my attitude, my age, my weight and my worth in the world now and far into the future. It’s as powerful as any laser Obi-Wan Kenobi could wag around.

“I’m Casey Jones,” I said, squeezing myself as far away from them as I could get. I counted quickly. Eleven women, of various ages, sat on the edges of my desk and on the windowsill, leaned against the walls and spilled out the door into the hall. How the hell had they all fit in there? The older ones shared the same no-nonsense short-cropped haircut and sun-worn faces that displayed just enough makeup to make it clear they were women. The younger ones had lots of big hair, makeup that was heavy on the pink and they wore embroidered country-western blouses above skin-tight blue jeans. By god, I’d never be able to breathe in those things. Among them, they probably had enough yeast infections to shut down the local Taste-Tee Bread bakery.

“Can I help you?” I asked when no one said anything.

“I’m Carol Ann Honeycutt,” the oldest woman finally said. She looked like human beef jerky and twice as tough. “Most people call me Nanny.”

I found it hard to believe that anyone could call that old goat a nanny, but I kept it to myself. I pegged her age at seventy or so.

“We thought it best to wait for you here,” she said, nodding toward Bobby D. as if he were a grizzly about to run amok. “I didn’t want that man out there to hear.”

Okay, I thought, they were some sort of country lesbian group. Or maybe that women’s choir I kept hearing about. What the hell did they want with me?

“And these are?” I asked, gesturing toward the crowd.

“My family,” she said impatiently. “Do I have to introduce every one of them?”

“Of course not. I just like to know who I’m doing business with is all,” I assured her. “You are here on business, right?” Could they be a particularly belligerent branch of the Seventh-Day Adventists?

“Of course we’re here on business.” She peered at me suspiciously. “You are Casey Jones, aren’t you?” she said. ”The lady detective who got that girl off over there in Zebulon, the one they said burned down that store when it was really the owner?”

“That’s me,” I admitted. “In the flesh.” I heard a sniff or two, letting me know that they thought I had a little too much flesh for my own good. Ah, let them think it was fat. Lots of people made the same mistake. It wasn’t fat; it was muscle. But when it comes to fighting, surprise is my best weapon.

“Then I suppose you’re nobody’s fool,” Nanny Honeycutt conceded. A few heads nodded in agreement. Gee, I was winning over the crowd. “We want to hire you.”

“To do what?” I asked.

“To save my granddaughter’s life.”

There was a silence. I waited for more. None came.

“Is that all?” I joked.

“It’s not a joking matter, young lady,” she snapped. “My granddaughter is Gail Honeycutt Taylor. Only she’s dropped the Taylor part for obvious reasons. Does that name mean anything to you or are you too smart to read the newspapers like most of the damn fools running the world these days?”

She had a point, but I wisely ignored it as a sense of dread permeated the working parts of my brain. “Yes, I know who your granddaughter is.”

“Well, she didn’t do it,” the old woman told me. “Gail didn’t shoot her husband any more than I could do a striptease.”

I considered the possibility. She wasn’t that damn old.

“Take my word for it,” the old gal snapped, interrupting my thoughts. “If her husband hadn’t of been a police officer, she never would have been convicted. Those people were out for blood, and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Wasn’t she found just a few feet from the body?” I asked, recalling the case. “With the gun in her hand?”

“See what I mean?” the old woman retorted. “Wrong place. Wrong time.”

“I thought she had an appeals lawyer,” I said, thinking back to the case. I measure my life in ex-boyfriend eras. The Roy Taylor killing occurred back when I was dating a Guilford County deputy sheriff who had a thing for handcuffs and ladies’ underwear. On him, not me. That would have made it about eight years ago.

If I remembered correctly, Gail Honeycutt Taylor had shot her husband, a Durham police officer, one night during a drunkebering a dn brawl and it hadn’t taken the jury very long to give her the death penalty. The case had snaked its way through the appeals process and gotten Gail nowhere. She was currently one of four women on death row in North Carolina. And she’d been there for a while. I suspected she was next up to bat.

“She’s got her a lawyer,” the woman admitted angrily. “And that’s why we’re in this mess. If we hadn’t of listened to that snooty Northern girl, we wouldn’t be standing here with only a month to go before they kill Gail.”

“A month!” I shouted, taking a step backward. “Oh, no. No way. How can you come in here and ask me to help you when she’s only got a month left? How can I possibly say no without feeling guilty?”

“We’re counting on that,” the old woman said, folding her arms. “People have a conscience for a reason, you know.”

I groaned. She sounded like the nuns in the Catholic school that kicked me out after a week when I was seven years old. I felt a headache beginning at the back of my eyes. Too much gin, too early in the evening, ignited into a headache by incipient guilt.

“I know it’s last minute,” a softer voice interjected. “Nanny Honeycutt doesn’t mean to be rude, but we’re desperate.” A woman in her early forties stepped forward. She wore a sweater decorated with two giant red hearts. Even the QVC network would have turned down that beauty. “We would have come to you sooner, but the lawyer told us that everything was under control, that the case would be reversed on a technicality.”