“Mac,” I said, a serious look in my eyes. “You know I didn’t poison you. I didn’t put that stuff in the coffee. But the cops have made me prime suspect until they know what’s going on. It sounds simple enough, but it’s not.” I said that I knew about his Miami mistrial.
He wheeled his chair over to the sofa and leaned in to me, his hands clasped. “So if the hair thing doesn’t work out, you’re considering detective work?” He laughed aloud at his joke. “You know those reporters lie,” he said. “They’re trying to make a buck. Sensationalism is the name of the game. Guilty until proven innocent. And you won’t find anything from the mistrial.” He smiled again. “And I saw you going through the files at the real estate office,” he said. “As I was walking by. Those are confidential.” He looked like a father chastising his child for spilling milk on the floor.
“Did Preston Edwards ever threaten you?” I blurted out. “Because he kicked me out of his office this morning when I asked him about Trina and about some of your real estate dealings.”
He turned his head to one side and looked back at me without blinking. Like I was a slow kid. “It’s hard to lose a business interest, a friend. I was shocked myself. Saddened.” So he thought Preston Edwards considered Trina a business interest.
“I’m sure.” I cleared my throat. “How about Trina?”
“Who?” he said.
“Trina Lutz,” I said, shocked. “Trina, who just died several weeks ago. Whose funeral you attended last week? Who also questioned you about your accounting, your books.” I didn’t know for sure this was true. And then I took a breath. “Who had an appointment to talk to you here at the Cove the day she died.”
He shook his head and frowned. “LaRue, you’ve gotten things confused. A lot of things confused.” He stood, put his hands in his pocket, the second time today I’d had a man signal me in exactly that same way that the interview was over. “Do you think Trina Lutz knew to put what was poison to me in my coffee? I don’t think she could have crashed the wedding party and done that if she were dead, now could she? And my real estate files are confidential. Not your business. Now, why don’t you go experiment with hair dyes or . . . new styles and let the police do their work?”
I stood and followed him to the doorway. “Why is there nothing in the files about Preston?” I said. My hands shook. He shrugged. “Why can’t you tell me if or even why she was here the day she died? I mean, if you told her she was losing her job or something, wouldn’t the cops want to know?”
He stopped at the entranceway of the door exactly the way Preston had. He said, “LaRue, Trina killed herself. That’s what the cops have discovered. If they want to know something else, they can come and ask me. I need for you to go. I have a call coming in.”
“But what about that property your company ECOL is buying? What is ECOL exactly, anyway? And . . .”
He held his hand out and said, “See you later, LaRue.”
CHAPTER 21
SATURDAY NIGHT WAS A BUST, despite the fact that the city of St. Annes had put up red, white, and blue lights on the lampposts. We islanders preferred Christmas green and red, but the city officials seemed to think it cutting edge to go another way. Daisy was off spending the night with her friend Kevi. Taylor and I had argued over his new tattoo, which fortunately was henna and temporary. A picture of Uncle Sam hung by a rope at the neck was featured on my son’s left bicep. “Kill Kapitalism” was the slogan underneath the unfortunate Sam.
“What will Daisy think?” I said as I sat down across from him at the dining table.
“She needs to know that material wealth is the scourge of the earth, Mom,” he insisted. He had been scarfing down a bowl of cereal.
“Can’t you just let her have a little magic in her life before—”
“It’s not magic, Mom. It’s chicanery.” He’d slammed the door on his way out.
Just when I had decided to sulk and watch African Queen on my own, the cell rang. Jackson.
“How’s it going out there in the land time forgot?” he said with a chipper tone. How could he feel so happy?
“Well, the patriotic lights are strung up on Main Street to get us stirred up for Christmas shopping. The locals are hollering as they wander from bar to bar up the street because they’re reminded they can’t participate in the spending spree,” I said. “My kids are out, my Saturday night girlfriend get-together is a bust, and I’m feeling a whole host of self pities. How about you?”
“I’m tired up here,” he said. “There’s this new gang war going on. Black on black crime. Kinda depressing. I’m trying to find a hole in the middle of it before it explodes.”
“Oh, wow,” I said, fairly depressed myself. “How about finding some holes down here in the island murders, which time and a certain state investigator seems to have forgotten?”
“Hey, you’re not even playing rough right now. There are those who say that investigators are just glorified secretaries with clipboards.”
“Never heard that one. But I notice you don’t even carry a clipboard.”
“So you’re still in a gleeful mood, I gather. Why don’t you come up to Tallahassee, and you, your girlfriends get some culture? The New Seventy-Sixers are playing at the Mockingbird next week. I know you love that band.”
I did. The best string blend of folk twanged up with old-time-religious mournfulness, country and rock in the region. He had me, but I couldn’t leave right now. “I can’t. Too much going on. God, I love that band. Maybe another time?” I said weakly.
“All work and no play. Okay, I see I’m beginning to wear you down. Wonder what it’ll take. Tickets to see the Avett Brothers, I’m thinking. Anyway, I did find out about the turquoise Ford license plate,” he said. “It’s registered in Trina Lutz’s name.”
“I’ve never seen that car before,” I said. He’d actually checked on the tag. “Everybody knows everybody else’s cars around here, even if they’re in the garage.”
“That’s the curious thing,” he said. “Wellborn address. Take it down. Ninety-eighty-two Seventeeth Avenue North.”
“I’ll check it out, Boss,” I said. “By the way, Trina has a son who was raised by a black woman.” I told him what I’d discovered. He encouraged my aboveboard sleuthing skills. “Well, you won’t like this,” I said, and told him about my pilfering through the real estate office and confronting Mac but not getting anything out of him.
“Be careful, LaRue,” he said. “You don’t have anything on anybody yet. I know that’s hard, because you have to ask questions.” I hated nothing more than being told what to do.
“Okay, sure. Thanks,” I said, explaining that I had to take a nap, and I hung up.
I clicked the video on, only to have someone knocking on the door. There stood quiet, solid, reliable Laura. She held in her hand a present for Taylor. A DVD of some survivalist game.
“Great,” I said, plopping down on the sofa.
“You seem tense,” she said sitting down with care, as always. She wore a long green and pink paisley skirt with a hot pink turtleneck. Her big eyes were disguised by thick glasses. She had a creamy complexion. I hadn’t been spending enough time with her lately.
“Have you seen the tattoo on Taylor’s arm?” I said. I described it.
“Ooo, kinda . . . deathly,” she said in a mock-shudder. “Sounds . . . like a teenager.” She always comforted me with her droll humor.
“And that frickin’—excuse my French—Jackson keeps giving me advice about raising Tay, and about not getting in trouble with the law myself,” I said, “and meanwhile he’s the one—”
“Who’s put you nearly into jail. I know, LaRue, you’ve said that. A lot.” She sat down next to me, tucking her leg under her and putting the DVD on the coffee table. “I hate that too, but I admire him for his honesty, you know?” She glanced outside. “He cares about you. More than you can say for most. At least the ones we seem to know the most about.”
I groaned.
�
�I think you’re really attracted to him despite yourself,” Laura said, her kind eyes twinkling.
I sat up facing her. “But on Thanksgiving, Randy put his hand on my neck. I can’t tell you what that did to me.” We sat quiet for a minute. “And money,” I said. “My constant companion, worry about money.”
Laura shrugged, clicked off the silent TV. “Join the rest of us. Meanwhile, I’ve got an idea,” she said. “As I recall, you’re an ace pool player. Didn’t you tell me your father taught you the game at the old Rains Restaurant?” Daddy had indeed taught me pool at Rains in the mornings. Rains had the best breakfast in town, the local fisherman gossip that Daddy loved to hear, and a pool table open all hours. So we’d go first thing in the morning for breakfast, we’d play pool, and then Daddy would drop me off at school down the road most days.
Trouble was, I had been good at pool. The guys had started to cut me out of the game. “I used to be good,” I muttered.
“Come on,” she said. “You and I both need to go out and just raise a little hell, forget all this and have some fun.” She stood up and grabbed my hand and pulled. “C’mon! ’Tis the season. I stood with a longneck in one hand, a pool cue in the other. I hadn’t been here since I was eighteen and had finally been banned from playing pool in St. Annes. I’d pissed half the men in town off. The other half cheered me on. I played with focus. Daddy had taught me that. Grandma Happy said it was the Indian genes. I don’t know what, but it had turned out to be a curse and a blessing. Some men loved that I could beat anybody in pool, others purely hated me for it.
I held the cold beer in one hand, the cue in the other. All I knew was, it was the same trick as doing hair. It was all physics. A player looked at what needed to go where and made sure it went there by way of gravity, entropy, and the path of least resistance. It was all a mental measurement of weight, gravity, and chemical makeup of the objects at hand, static electricity, all that.
I took a swallow of beer. A small crowd had gathered. It started when I signed up for the game. I supposed enough years had gone by to keep people’s memories from protesting my playing. The bartender, new enough in town not to know me, said nothing.
I was taking a ladylike sip off my longneck standing next to Laura, who kept poking me affectionately with her elbow, telling me to go on. Across the smoky room stood a greasy brown-haired biker dude with a tattoo of blood dripping from a knife.
A passel of bikers, who also lived out the county road, took their places behind Mojo, as they called him. The colony of bikers varied in population from three permanent to three hundred temporary residents on their hundred acres, depending on the time of year. Biker chicks perched on stools lining the bar. Randy was hovering, but I couldn’t think about that. Fletch stood by the bar.
And so the game began. Mojo broke with a quick snap, scattering the nine balls. The three dropped into a corner pocket. He sank the eight with a combo off the one, then a straight shot into the side with a long shot at the four that luckily went a little wide.
I took another ladylike sip off the longneck, handed the beer to Laura, and stared at the oh-so-familiar felt of green.
The four sat an inch off the wall. I studied, leaned into the table, squinted and thought. And then I saw what Daddy always told me to see—that faint lighter green line down the table that told me what the path of least resistance was and exactly where to shoot that ball, and how hard, and at what angle. I leaned into the cue ball and hit it down the line. The four went in.
Around the table, I found the light green line from the cue to the six-ball. I’d have to cut it sharp to send it sideways without the cue ball running into the far corner pocket. I studied it, then hit ever so gently. The cue nicked the six, and the six went right, into the side pocket.
“This chick might be good,” some biker woman said. Others were muttering. I began to feel a bit woozy.
“Here, have a little sustenance.” Laura handed me the longneck. I looked around and saw Mary staring at me. She looked completely lost. She’d lost her lamb. I drank long and hard. What was the lamb Mary’d lost, I wondered.
I looked back down at the pool table and saw the light green line from the cue to the distant five. I sent the cue to the five, the five to the corner pocket. Somebody let out a yell, and the bikers groaned.
I took a deep breath. “They might throw me out,” I murmured to Laura.
She said. “That was twenty years ago.”
I leaned over and dropped the two into a side, the seven in with a bank shot. Then the eight down the length of the table. The nine, an easy shot, rolled into the corner pocket. End of game. Then the crowd was yapping like gulls on the beach.
Mojo came up and held out his hand. He shook, saying, “Good game, dude.”
What made me happy was the $300 I made on that game, and even more so, the $500 I won on the next. After that, I played one more, lost, and they were satisfied that I’d lost $100 on the game. After that, I quit. I didn’t want to push my luck.
AS I WAS COLLECTING my remaining booty, someone put an arm around my neck. I turned around. Randy. “Good game, Ace,” he grinned. Laura winked and waved goodbye. She was headed home to work on the Magnolia Gardens piece before early deadline Monday morning.
Randy lifted his beer. “Can I get you another?”
“Sure,” I shrugged. I’d already had two, my limit. I didn’t know when to quit sometimes, especially out at a St. Annes bar. That was an Indian gene, too, Grandma Happy said. We could handle tobacco, but not alcohol. Whatever the reason, it’s why I didn’t go out much.
We sat in a booth, and he grinned. “I remember you when you were in ninth grade,” he said. “I was only in seventh, but I had this excruciating crush on you.”
“Me?” I said. “I was TooTall.” My high school nickname, TooTall Panther.
He shrugged. “Not too tall for me.”
We talked about the years between—marriage, divorce, coming home. How things were changing on the island now. Suddenly, he leaned in towards me across the table.
“I don’t think it was suicide, LaRue.” He said it quietly, looking around afterwards.
“Huh?” I said. I was getting too woozy. So was he.
“Trina’s death,” he said. Then he looked around and leaned back in and said, “I think she was murdered.”
He wouldn’t say why he thought this, try as I might to get it out of him. I got up to pee and pushed through a hoard of people to get to the door. Inside, there was only room for one person waiting and one in the john. I heard a familiar voice behind the door.
“I really was pregnant. I was. They can say I wasn’t all they want to, but I was.” Mary, I deduced from lowering my head to peer under the stall door and see the high-heel black velvet shoes she’d worn at the funeral. She must be talking to herself. She was drunk. I cleared my throat to let her know someone was waiting. “Sure, Cooter’s sterile. But Fletch ain’t.” I looked in the mirror to see my own shocked face.
She barged out of the bathroom and stumbled to the sink. “Oh, hey LaRue,” she said, zipping up her pants, not knowing, I felt sure, what she’d just revealed. “Good game.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve got to pee.” I ducked into the stall. The next person pushed open the bathroom door, and Mary said to her, “He made me have an abortion, the jerk.”
“Sorry, hon,” the stranger said as Mary left.
I stumbled out of the bathroom and wanted to leave. This was too much alcoholified stimulus. I had gotten too off-duty. I looked toward the booth to signal to Randy that I wanted to leave. But just then I saw Fletch leaning on the bar. I walked up to him and said hello. He nodded. The grieving widower, out the next weekend.
“What do you know about ECOL?” I said. Catching him off guard might work.
“What?” he said. He leaned away from me.
“Did you get Mary pregnant? And what do you intend to do with the property you’re buying out adjacent to Magnolia Gardens?” The room wasn’t st
anding quite still anymore.
He straightened up and smiled at me. “Saucy, ain’t you? That pool game’s got you all wound up. Come on, let’s dance,” he said. I was under the influence enough to let him slow dance with me to “I’m Having Daydreams about Night Things.” Then he steered me right back over to Randy. “Sit here with your date, Miss LaRue.”
I plopped down, and Randy looked at me quizzically. “Let’s get out of here,” I muttered.
A STRANGE AND FICKLE ATMOSPHERIC CURRENT was blowing into St. Annes. Something akin to a northeaster was blasting through as Randy and I walked past Main Street and onto Dock Street by Mrs. Fielding’s house. Randy put an arm around me, and my heart began beating faster.
“Randy, tell me why you think it wasn’t suicide?” I said, turning to look up at him.
“I don’t know,” he said, watching my mouth. He licked his lips. We stood in the shadows of Mrs. Fielding’s backyard cedar tree, our feet planted in the parking lot of the boat cove.
“Yes, you do,” I said.
“You’re right,” he said, “I do.” And he lowered his head to kiss me.
But he never got the chance, because suddenly Mrs. Fielding’s voice yelled out from inside. “Knock it off, you beer-drinking sex fiends,” she said. This startled me back into reality.
“I’m totally confused and slightly drunk,” I said.
So he walked me home. “Why’re you so interested in how Trina died?” I said as we cut through the side street between the bait shop and the bank to get back to Main.
He shrugged. “Business. She was my accountant. She knew who was into dirty business here. She had the honesty to get to the bottom of it, maybe. I think she was killed.” He set his jaw hard.
I pushed. “That’s kind of—” I swallowed, “melodrama, don’t you think?” I said softly.
“Melodrama?” he snickered. “Come down to my house next week sometime. I’ll take you out to show you something,” he said. “Something that will make you—just come out.”
Cutting Loose in Paradise Page 20