by Tracey Quinn
“That left you with only one loose end to tie up; Lloyd's phone with the incriminating evidence on it. You had assumed he would have it with him when you killed him, but he didn't. You knew that if the phone were discovered you'd be sunk, so even though you had successfully framed Gene for the murder, you had to take the risk of searching Lloyd's hotel room. When that didn't work, you got desperate, burning down Lloyd's house and then the rec center in hopes of destroying the phone wherever it might be hidden.
“However, Lloyd hadn't been that clever when it came to hiding the phone. He was just keeping it in his pocket, figuring it would be safest if he had it with him at all times. But as things went on he suspected that you were scheming to get it from him; maybe you had even tried to steal it. A short time before the bank robbery was to go down, Lloyd started going around town telling everyone about his lectures so that he could get good crowds and look successful, and one of his stops was the Breezy Spoon.
“When Lloyd was here he saw you coming, and thought you were following him. Afraid you had some new scheme to steal or trick him out of the phone, he slipped into the restroom on his way out and dropped the phone into the back of the paper towel dispenser. He knew no one would look in there and he figured he could come by and retrieve it later. Thanks to you, he never got a chance to do that, because you killed him and cost me a small fortune in napkins.”
“I want to call a lawyer,” Roger mumbled.
“You can call from the sheriff's office,” Bob said, taking him by the arm.
“Don't call from the sheriff's phone,” I said. “You'll get better reception from your cell! Get it? Cell phone, jail cell?” Nobody laughed but I didn't care.
“I've got a call to make to a lawyer, too!” Zeke Constable snarled, jumping up from his seat and stalking toward the front door.
“Oh, sugar lump, wait!” Kristi cried, wobbling after him on her high heels. “I can explain! It's not like that!”
After everyone had left Mark came up to me and said, “The diner business is too exciting for me. I think I'll go to the firehouse and see if there's a nice, relaxing four-alarm fire I can deal with.”
“You can get your eyebrows singed off again later,” I said, looking at my watch. “We've got to get over to the high school. The basketball game has probably already started.”
“You have got to be kidding!” said Mark. “After all that you still want to go watch Jimmy play basketball?”
“We promised him we'd be there,” I said. “Besides, how bad could it be?”
“I don't know how bad, but it'll be bad,” said Mark. And he was right.
When we got to the high school the second half of the basketball game was just beginning. The score was East Spoon Creek High School 12, Pumpkin City High 104.
“There must be something wrong with the scoreboard,” said Mark. “That couldn't possibly be right.”
It was, though, and the second half didn't get any better. Jimmy didn't look like he knew whether he was playing basketball or baseball out there, but as the final minutes of the game wound down, one of the opposing players fouled him and the referee called for a free throw.
I nudged Mark with my elbow. “Wake up,” I said. “Jimmy might actually score something.”
Jimmy started for the free throw line, but then hurried over to the sideline where the cheerleaders were dancing to give Charlene a quick kiss. Unfortunately, Charlene was jumping up and down facing the crowd and hadn't noticed him approaching, and as her feet kicked out when she jumped her heel caught Jimmy right between the legs with considerable force. He fell to the floor and didn't get up.
“I can't watch any more,” Mark. “This whole game has been brutal.”
The crowd was chanting Jim-my, Jim-my and his teammates were yelling for him to hurry. He somehow managed to do a commando crawl back to the free throw line and with a great deal of effort he pushed himself up till he was on his knees. The referee threw him the ball and Jimmy and heaved it up into the air with a wheeze that sounded like a balloon losing air.
“It went in!” I exclaimed. “Jimmy actually made a point!”
“Great, that almost cut the other team's lead down to 100,” Mark said.
“Don't be such a sourpuss. It's a big moment for Jimmy.” The whistle sounded which marked the end of the game, and Charlene ran onto the court and threw her arms around Jimmy's neck, driving her knee into his stomach by accident.
“I thought you were mad at Jimmy.”
“Well, I suppose if he'd actually done his job right he would have found the cell phone instead of me, and who knows what he would have done with it? He hasn't got the sense God gave a jackrabbit.”
Mark laughed. “And his odds of making the NBA aren't looking good, either. What say we get out of here and cross our fingers that tomorrow night will be a little less excruciating?”
The next night was indeed shaping up to be more fun, as we were headed to the Country Club to go dancing. When we got there we saw Kitty and Bob wave to us from a table near the dance floor. We made our way toward them through the crowd which consisted of young men in jeans and cowboy boots, and young women who were all wearing jeans, too.
Mark said, “You know, Dani, it looks like you didn't have to buy a new dr-”
“Mark, you seem to have such a happy life right now. Why would you want to cut it short?” I said.
“What's that about?” Bob asked.
“Oh, just your sister threatening my life again,” Mark replied. “Nothing unusual.”
“Happy birthday, Kitty,” I said, giving her a hug.
“Now that Gene's home again it's a very happy birthday,” Kitty said. “Thanks to you we can put all of the craziness and trouble with Lloyd behind us now.”
“I'm glad I could help. You and your family deserve the chance to move on with your lives in peace without Lloyd looming like a cloud of doom over you.”
“They're not the only ones,” Bob said. “Kitty, tell them about the car.”
“What car?” Mark asked.
“Lloyd's car,” Kitty replied. “By rights it was supposed to go to Lloyd's mother, but she wants nothing to do with this business and said I could have it. After what I heard about the people Lloyd harmed, I decided that I would sell the car and let Maurice Sharp and Ray Belcher split the money from the sale.”
“That's awfully generous of you, Kitty,” I said, “but I wouldn't expect anything less. I'm sure they'll be very grateful.”
“By the way, sis,” Bob said, “Mom called earlier this evening and told me to let you know that Centralia, Pennsylvania didn't turn out to be what she and Dad thought it would be, so they're leaving.”
“Oh, that's too bad,” I replied.
“Centralia, Pennsylvania?” Mark asked. “Isn't that the place where there's been a fire raging in a coal mine for decades and they can't put it out?”
“What?”
“Yeah, I saw a video on YouTube a couple years ago about a town in Pennsylvania where they had a fire at a trash dump and somehow it got into an old coal mine. It's been burning underground since the 1960's because it was going to cost a half billion dollars to put it out. I think the name of the town was Centralia.”
Bob was looking at his phone. “Yep, that's Centralia, Pennsylvania all right,” he sighed. “They estimate that it might burn itself out in about 250 years.”
“Not again!” I groaned. I thought back to the time my parents had accidentally ended up in the middle of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally when looking for a quiet little town to visit. “Mom and Dad have such bad luck with the places they visit. We should have researched the place before they went there and warned them.”
“I used to think that way, too,” Bob replied, “but they like traveling around in the RV and they go where they want to go; they wouldn't listen to anything we told them anyhow. Besides, Mom said they're heading to California to investigate land by a lake out there, so maybe this one will work out better.”
“I'm
sure you're right,” I said, although I wasn't sure at all.
“Come on, they're playing a great song,” Kitty said, getting up from her chair. “I feel like dancing!”
“Let's show 'em how it's done!” Bob agreed.
“It's a well-known fact that firefighters are much better dancers than sheriff's deputies,” Mark told me. “It's up to us to prove that point to the world once again.”
“Well, when you put it like that...” I said.
An hour later the disc jockey was playing one of my favorite songs, I Can Love You Like That by John Michael Montgomery for the last dance of the evening. My feet were sore from line dancing in high heels and I was glad to switch to slow dancing for this last song.
“You look so hot in that dress I'm almost afraid I'll get burned if I touch you,” Mark said.
My arms were around his neck and his were around my waist. “You seem to have overcome your fear,” I replied.
“Good Lord, you may be right! I seem to be getting over that overwhelming shyness that I have whenever I'm near you.”
“You know, you are an extremely handsome man and an extremely poor liar.”
He pulled me closer and kissed me. “I know,” he said. “It's a terrible curse.”
Later that night when we were driving home Mark said, “Did I mention how hot you look in that dress?”
“Only three or four times,” I replied, “but who's counting?”
“Oh, that reminds me of Jimmy,” he said.
“Well, there's a mood killer. I sort of thought you were thinking about me.”
Mark laughed. “I'm definitely thinking about you. I just thought you should know that Charlene has finally figured out that we sort of like each other and we might be thinking about dating sometime in the future, and she sent Jimmy to talk to me about it. This afternoon I was at the Breezy Spoon, just finishing a piece of caramel apple pie a la mode, which was very good by the way, when Jimmy came over, sat down, and asked if I had ever had the talk about m-a-t-t-i-n-g. I asked if he meant the card stock that people put around pictures when they frame them; he looked sort of shocked and said it wasn't about dirty pictures, it was about responsible mating.
“That's when I realized what Jimmy was getting at. I actually had to try not to shudder at the thought of what he was about to say. I convinced him that my father had explained the subject very thoroughly when I was about 14 years old. He asked if I still remembered everything since that was such a long time ago, but I told him I remembered every single word and it was etched on my memory as if it were yesterday and I thanked him for his concern. And as more proof that there is a God who answers prayers, Don called Jimmy to clear off some tables and the torture ended.”
I tried not to laugh too much. It must have been bad.
“So do you really remember every word your dad told you about the facts of life?” I asked.
“Sure do. He told me since I knew how to read I could find out about it by myself if I didn't already know. Then we played poker for a half hour, he let me win a buck and a quarter, and that was it.”
“You know, now that you mention it, Charlene came into my office the other day and gave me a women's magazine,” I said. “She had marked a page that had a list of ten things a woman could do to spice up her relationship with her significant other.”
“Now that's very interesting,” Mark said. “I don't suppose you mind sharing them with your significant other?”
“Why not? The first one said you should gather wildflowers, tie them up with a strand of raffia and leave them on your loved-one's door step.”
He sighed. “Oh my, one of those magazines. What is raffia anyhow?”
“No idea. I asked Tammy and she told me it's a stringy fiber from some kind of leaves and it's sort of an artsy thing that people use to tie gifts. I feel so incompetent sometimes because other women always seem to know that kind of stuff and I don't.”
“I can see why you'd feel like that,” Mark said. “After all, flying a helicopter in a war zone for more than a decade to rescue wounded soldiers doesn't make you nearly as competent as someone who knows how to tie up a bunch of wildflowers with a weed. Were there any other spicy suggestions?”
“Let's see, there was one that told how to get your significant other into a more sensual mood.”
“Okay, now we're getting somewhere. What did it say?”
“It said that you're supposed to take their cell phone, turn it off, hide it and replace it with a large chocolate bar, the kind that you can break off into little squares, and then you can feed the chocolate bar to each other, square by square.”
“Why would you have to hide my cell phone?”
“So you can relax and not have to answer it,” I replied. “We're supposed to just concentrate on each other.”
“But if I don't answer my phone when there's a fire, I'll lose my job. Couldn't we just do the candy thing?”
“I guess so, but there's a problem with that, too.”
“Which is?”
“You like dark chocolate and I like milk chocolate.”
“So what's the problem? We could just buy two different candy bars.”
“I considered that, but what if we get distracted and feed each other a piece of chocolate from the wrong candy bar?”
“What difference would that make? It's all edible.”
“I know, but I've given it some thought and I'd be miffed that I had to choke down the dark chocolate and I'd be trying to fight the feeling that you didn't care enough to give me the right chocolate bar, and at the same time you would be disappointed that I gave you the milk chocolate instead of the dark chocolate that you preferred and you'd have to try to hide your resentment. You can see the problem.”
Mark didn't say anything for a moment. Then as he turned into the driveway, he asked, “Do you have any of that chocolate cream pie left?”
“Sure,” I replied.
“Problem solved,” he said.