I loved my Grandma Peachy’s kitchen more than anyplace else in the world. My mama scrubbed away her disappointment with Ajax and ammonia, leaving her kitchen as sterile as an operating room. In Mama’s kitchen, I was clutter: messy, sticky, and as unwelcome as soda in her bourbon. But in the colorful chaos of Grandma Peachy’s kitchen, I could spill the flour and lick my fingers and break off nibbles of pastry from the crust of just-baked pies.
I gave myself a little shake, reached for the wooden awl, and squeezed the lemon juice into the guacamole. I glanced at Bree to be sure she wasn’t looking, then surreptitiously swiped my finger through the guacamole. I wondered whether Dalliance, Texas, was ready for avocado ice cream. Maybe with just a hint of lemon and chili. A sort of frozen guacamole.
I was sucking my finger clean when the doorbell rang. Before I could move, Bree sprinted to the door to welcome Finn inside.
Bree showed Finn around the house while I finished up the snacks and laid them out on the table; then Finn and I started munching while Bree worked her magic with the tequila and blender.
“So, is your mom with the home health aid tonight?”
Finn shook his head as he scooped up some guacamole on a tortilla chip. “The night nurse called in sick and the service couldn’t get a sub. But Mrs. Jillson happened to call and asked to come visit Mom, so she’s with her tonight.”
He bit the chip and groaned. “God, these are fresh, aren’t they?”
I smiled. “Bought them at the tortilleria this afternoon.” I snagged a chip for myself. “I’m glad Honey touched base with your mom. We were just talking about the fact that they’d drifted apart, and she sounded so sad.”
“Mmm-hmm. Honey mentioned that you two had talked. She seems pretty high on you.”
I nearly choked on my chip. Surely Honey wasn’t playing matchmaker?
Bree joined us, juggling three glasses of pale green frozen margarita, each finished with a float of blue curaçao. “Oh, Tally and Honey are the bestest friends now,” she mocked.
“Hey, she helped us with the historic commission. Not only did they approve our colors—pampas grass, adobe, and sunset blush, which sounds like pink but isn’t—but she also got them to suspend the fines for a month to give us time to get the house painted. So, yeah, I guess we are friends.”
Finn chuckled and raised his glass. “Here’s to Honey Jillson.”
We all clinked glasses, then observed a moment of silence in appreciation of Bree’s excellent bar-tending skills.
“So how’s the murder investigation coming?” Finn asked. “Mike Carberry is beside himself with excitement about some new development, but he won’t tell me what’s going on.”
I grimaced. “I tend to think that the official investigation and my own are going in very different directions.”
I filled Finn in on all the latest. He seemed mildly intrigued that JoAnne Simms might bat for the other team, completely enthralled—and impressed—by Alice’s armchair forensics, and absolutely aghast that I would actually go to Eddie Collins’s house and basically accuse him of murder.
“Honestly,” I assured him, “Eddie didn’t seem particularly scary.”
“Well, of course not,” he said. “Unless Eddie Collins has changed dramatically in the last twenty years, he’s about as scary as a newborn kitten.”
I sat up a little straighter. “You knew Eddie back in high school?”
“Sure, I remember Eddie.” Finn’s face flamed.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “And how exactly did you know him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, your face is hotter than a habanero. Spill it.”
He plucked a chip from the basket in the center of the table and began breaking tiny bits off of it, making a little pile of tortilla confetti. “I bought some weed off him a few times. He went to Berkeley, and he came home for vacations with a stash.”
“Finn Harper,” I chided.
“Listen, it was before we started dating.” He smiled, that sideways smile that turned my knees to jelly. “I was a sinner, Tally. You knew that. It was part of my charm.”
I snorted a little laugh. “Yeah, you’re still a sinner. But it’s not nearly as charming anymore.”
He clutched his chest and lurched dramatically. “Oh,” he gasped, “oh, cruel woman!”
I threw a chip at him. “Get serious, Finn.”
He straightened, chuckling, and took another sip of his margarita.
“These are great, Bree.”
“Uh-huh,” she agreed. “But you’re not changing the subject that easily.”
Finn turned up his hands and shrugged.
“So,” I said, “Eddie Collins was always a stoner, huh?”
“No, not really. From what the other guys said, Eddie was a real straight arrow in high school. Dated goody-two-shoes Miranda Jillson. Went to Berkeley on a scholarship, planned to be a doctor.”
“But he came back a drug dealer?”
“I don’t know that I would call him a dealer,” Finn said. “He just always had a big stash, and he was willing to share.”
“For money.”
“Yeah, for money. But I guess my point is that I don’t think he was trying to turn a profit.”
“What about now?” I asked. “Could someone be blackmailing him because he’s a drug dealer?”
Finn held up both hands. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I’ve been gone a long time, and I don’t do that crap anymore.”
Bree heaved a mighty sigh and held out her hand. “Give me your cell phone.” Finn obliged, and Bree dialed.
“Alice, honey, it’s your mom. Is Kyle there?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I love you and would be delighted to talk to you, but I have a question. . . . You sure as heck better not be able to answer this question. Just give the phone to Kyle.”
Bree held her hand over the mouth of the receiver. “Sometimes I wish I’d dropped her on her head so she wouldn’t be quite so smart.
“Kyle! Listen, kid. Don’t freak out on me, but I need to know who’s dealin’ pot these days.”
Bree started to giggle. “Kyle . . . Kyle . . . Kyle! Chill out. I’m not trying to get you in trouble. But you and I both know that if you wanted to score, you’d know where to go.”
She held the phone away from her ear and stuck her tongue out at it. “No, you little dork. I’m not going to buy weed. I just need to know whether Eddie Collins deals. . . . You sure? . . . Okay, get back to work. And if you breathe a word of this conversation to my daughter, I’ll string you up by your short and curlies.”
Bree flipped the phone closed and handed it back to Finn.
“Eddie Collins gets high with the kids he hires as hourly workers, but he doesn’t deal.”
Finn and I stared at Bree in stunned silence.
“What?” she asked, popping a chip laden with guac in her mouth. “You both have your sources; I have mine.”
“Fair enough,” Finn said, a smile of grudging admiration spreading across his face. “But that eliminates one possible motive for blackmail.”
“Are you kidding? Doing drugs with high school kids sounds pretty bad to me,” I argued.
“It doesn’t sound great,” Finn conceded, “but it’s not nearly as big a deal, crimewise, as dealing. It’s still distribution, but a joint here and there instead of real quantities of drugs. I can’t imagine Eddie murdering someone over it.”
“Well, then, we’re back to square one.”
“Look,” Bree said, “everyone agrees Eddie’s a total pantywaist. So maybe the blackmail note has nothing to do with the murder at all.”
I shook my head adamantly. “Two major felonies at one picnic? They have to be related.”
Finn tutted softly. I knew what he was thinking, that I was making huge leaps of logic again. The blackmail and the murder didn’t have to be related, and even then, on some level, I understood that. But I needed them to be related, because otherwise I was back to square one.
/>
Again.
And I didn’t know how much more time I had before Cal showed up with handcuffs and a warrant for my arrest. I had started this investigation trying to save Wayne, but now I was trying to save myself. And I wasn’t doing such a hot job of it.
“So how can we find out about the skeletons that might be rattling around in Eddie Collins’s closet?” I asked.
“He has a sister,” Bree offered. “Her name is Shelley.” She drained her drink and uttered a ladylike burp.
“And?” I prompted.
“And Shelley and her husband, Ted, are regulars at karaoke night at the Bar None. As am I.”
“Do you think they’d talk about Eddie?” Finn asked.
“I don’t know,” Bree said. “But it’s worth a shot. They’re usually pretty drunk, and drunk people lack—what do you call it?”
“Discretion?” I offered.
“That’s it,” Bree said with a smile. “They lack discretion. So are you two game?”
I exchanged a look with Finn.
“Come on,” Bree urged. “You’d get to hear me sing.”
Finn raised one questioning eyebrow. “The night nurse promised she’d have someone there tomorrow night,” he said.
I grabbed another chip, dunked it in the guacamole, and devoured it in one bite. “What the heck? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
chapter 22
I don’t sing. I’m beyond tone deaf and can’t quite bring myself to inflict my off-key warbling on the world. As a result, karaoke night at the Bar None never held much appeal.
Bree, whose PG-13 Madonna covers made her a fan favorite, led the way to the bar, greeting her adoring public with smiles and waves and even the occasional blown kiss. Finn and I followed in her wake, exchanging more sedate greetings with a few familiar faces.
Bree braced her hands on the brass rail and greeted the bartender. “Hey, Andi.”
Andi seemed an unlikely bar back. A cloud of tight gray curls covered her head, and she wore a glittery orange jack-o’-lantern sweatshirt. “Hey, Bree. Scarlet O’Hara?”
“What else? And these two,” Bree said, waving in our direction, “will have beer.”
Andi popped the tops off a couple of beers and thumped them down on little cocktail napkins, then bustled off to pour Bree’s SoCo and cranberry. The bartender, a blocky, big-bosomed woman, moved with muscle-bound stiffness, graceless yet energetic, like a badger tunneling its way through the forest undergrowth.
While we waited for Bree’s drink, we turned to survey the crowd. Finn took a sip of his beer and jerked his chin toward a table near the small raised stage. “There,” he said, just loud enough for us to hear him. “Isn’t that them?”
Bree, ever the soul of discretion, craned her neck to follow his line of sight. “Yep, Shelley and Ted Alrecht.”
The couple sat across from each other, each with a two-handed grasp on a drink, as though the booze were a shield between them. Judging by the empty glasses littering their table, they were both well on their way to wasted.
Shelley had her brother’s coloring, hair as black and oily as fresh asphalt, bisected by a brutally straight part, above a sharp, pixielike face and an elfin body to match. Ted Alrecht had a lean, rawhidetough face, the spare build of a Depression-era field hand, and a head as round and bald as a cue ball.
Bree snagged her drink from Andi and asked her to start a tab, then wove her way toward the Alrechts.
“Shelley, Ted, you two gonna sing tonight?” They both looked up as Bree approached, looks of hunger flashing across their faces—Ted’s a hunger for something he wanted, Shelley’s a hunger for something she wanted to be—before their expressions resolved into polite smiles.
Shelley nodded in Ted’s direction. “He’s gonna do ‘Achy Breaky Heart.’ Me, I’ve got awful allergies.” As if on cue, she sneezed violently into her cocktail napkin. “I’d sound like a sick cat. You?”
“Yeah. I thought I’d mix things up a little, do some Cyndi Lauper tonight. Mind if we join you?” Without waiting for an answer, Bree slid into an empty chair. “Shelley, Ted, this is my cousin Tally and her friend Finn Harper. I dragged them out to hear me sing.”
Finn and Ted exchanged a grim-faced manly handshake before Finn fetched another chair, and we sat down.
“Harper?” Ted said, brow wrinkled in concentration. I held my breath, hoping Ted didn’t place Finn as a reporter. I suspected we wouldn’t get much information from Shelley and Ted if they realized they were talking to a reporter. “Didn’t you play football for the Wildcatters? Woulda been ’eighty-four or ’eighty-five?”
I sighed in relief, even as Finn’s smile tightened. “Nope, that was my brother, Sonny.”
Ted nodded. “Sure. He was amazing, man. What’s he up to these days? Didn’t he go pro?”
“No. He played a couple of years for A&M, but that’s it.” Finn didn’t mention that Sonny didn’t go pro because he never had a chance. He died after his second college season.
“Too bad,” Ted said. “What did you play?”
I smiled at the casual assumption that Finn played something. That was what Texas boys did: played sports, drank beer, and chased skirts.
“Clarinet,” Finn deadpanned.
I could almost see the wheels turning as Ted pieced it together, but then he laughed and clapped Finn on the back with his knobby hand.
A tipsy couple in crisp new cowboy hats and polished boots took the stage and began giggling their way through “Islands in the Stream.” We all nursed our drinks and listened politely until they collapsed in a chortling heap and gave up about halfway through.
I turned to Shelley. “Aren’t you Eddie Collins’s sister?” She nodded, and I continued, hoping to draw her out. “I met him the other day. Seems like a good guy. Really knows his stuff, too.”
Ted laughed contemptuously, a harsh bark of sound, and Shelley shot him a narrow-eyed glare.
“He’s a great guy,” she said, her words directed more at Ted than at me. “And he is smart. He was gonna be a doctor.”
“ ‘Gonna be,’ ” Ted mocked. “Hell, I was gonna be the starting QB for the Cowboys.”
Shelley reached for a pack of cigarettes on the table and shook one into her hand. “The difference is, you didn’t have no talent. Eddie, he’s smart enough; he coulda been a doctor,” she said around the cigarette, flicking her lighter. “Got a full ride to college.” She inhaled deeply and held the flame to the paper.
“But then he flunked out and started dealing dope,” Ted said.
She let the lighter go and exhaled, glaring at her husband through the steady stream of smoke.
“What do you know about it?” she snapped. “You have no idea what he went through.”
I had completely lost control of the conversation. Ted and Shelley would get into a knock-down, drag-out fight, and I wouldn’t get a lick of information, if I didn’t separate them. I kicked Finn in the shin and, when he looked up in surprise, jerked my head toward the pool tables.
He sighed and leaned in close to whisper in my ear. “You’re gonna owe me for this one.” He shoved his chair back. “Hey, Ted. Looks like there’s a table open. Wanna play a game?” Ted didn’t budge. He stared hard at his wife, and you could see he was itching for a fight. “Come on, man,” Finn cajoled. “Loser buys the next round.”
The prospect of free booze jolted Ted out of his funk. “You’re on.”
Shelley watched her husband walk away, shooting daggers in his back as he went. When the guys were out of earshot, I tried to recapture her attention.
“A full-ride scholarship, huh? That’s impressive.”
“Yeah,” she said, slowly bringing her focus back to me. “Like I said, Eddie’s the smartest guy I know.”
“More than smart, I bet. I mean, you have to be pretty driven to go to medical school.”
Shelley scrunched up her face, as if she smelled some milk that had just gone off. “No,” she admitted. “That was always Eddie’s problem. B
erkeley and med school—that was Daddy’s idea. Daddy wanted Eddie to get the hell out of Dalliance and make something of himself, and he decided the best thing to be was a doctor. Eddie could have been a doctor, but that’s not what he wanted.”
“Huh. So what did Eddie want to do?”
She took a sip of her drink, something amber and bubbly, like a whiskey and ginger ale. A soft smile lit her face, and I thanked the booze for loosening her tongue. “He didn’t want to do nothin’ but hang out with his girlfriend and party. But he did what Daddy said. Eddie was a good boy.”
I couldn’t wrap my brain around what it would be like to have parents who pushed you to leave Dalliance, who wanted you to go to school instead of get a job. But I did know what it was like to live your life making up for someone else’s regrets. After all, I broke up with hell-raiser Finn and, eventually, married into the financial security Wayne could provide, all so I wouldn’t repeat the mistakes my mama made. And look how great that turned out.
I sighed, saddened by what I imagined to be the inevitable outcome of the story. “So once Eddie got to college and didn’t have Daddy looking over his shoulder anymore, he started making bad choices, huh?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head, her eyes unfocused as though she were staring into the past. “No, he started unraveling even before he left for Berkeley. That summer, he became sullen and moody, would snap at us for no apparent reason. Started drinking.”
She laughed a little at some private joke. “I mean, he drank some in high school. Everybody did,” she said with a wry smile. “But that summer he started drinking heavy. Liquor instead of beer, like he was trying to get as drunk as he could as fast as he could. Then, when he went off to California, he had access to all sorts of drugs.”
She sighed.
I shook my head in commiseration. “I wonder what happened.”
She pressed her lips together. We’d come to a line that, even drunk, Shelley was unwilling to cross.
I caught Bree’s gaze and willed her to keep quiet. The silence stretched out, awkward and begging to be filled. Shelley took another drink and shrugged.
“It about killed him when Miranda Jillson died.”
I Scream, You Scream Page 17