Grilled, Chilled and Killed

by Lesley A. Diehl

  The two other men stopped talking, puzzled looks on their faces. Perhaps he should just throw them both into the swamp and make for the coast, sail out of here on his boat and head for the warm waters of the Caribbean. Smith was suddenly very tired of this caper. He despised the other men, hated how Toby smelled and had no respect for Barry. He was simply a thug. No class. Smith was used to dealing with criminals whose rap sheet included more than hitting their wives. Most of his friends were known to Interpol. These guys barely caught the attention of the county authorities.

  Not only did he think Toby was an idiot, but he also knew he was hiding something. He was cooking up some half-assed plan of his own. What it was, Smith didn’t know, but he suspected Toby had in mind to make some money other than what he was taking off the husband. Should he tell Barry or let it go? Smith didn’t really care what Toby had in the works. He was confident he could handle either or both of them. He swatted a fly off his arm and again gazed out at the cattle. Damn funny looking creatures with their floppy ears and neck humps. Yet he found them a lot more appealing and interesting than the two-bit criminals he was league with. Morons. The men, not the cows, he thought.

  Emily saw off the St. Simontons the morning after Daisy’s and her unsuccessful attempt to find the Pratt’s still. As she hugged them goodbye at the motel on her way to work that morning, she couldn’t help but notice there was a feeling of chilliness in the air, and it was not due to the weather. Daisy was still pissed at Rodney for being Lewis’ spy. She wondered how much of their exploits Rodney revealed to the detective.

  Emily had hung up on Detective Lewis when he called last night. She was still aggravated. She knew Daisy’s anger at Rodney would pass, but Emily intended hers at Lewis to be life long.

  “Call me when you get home.” Emily waved as the Cadillac pulled out of the parking lot. When she turned to get into Stan, Lewis pulled up.

  “Oh crap,” she said.

  “It is a wonderful morning, isn’t it? But it’s going to get hot, hotter than yesterday.” Lewis appeared to be in some kind of pleasant mood today. That made Emily suspicious.

  “What do you want?”

  “If you have the time, I’d like to buy you coffee.”

  “I’m on my way to work.”

  “And I’d like to apologize.”

  She continued toward her car and opened the driver’s door. “You know it isn’t just your setting Rodney up as a spy. It’s your whole attitude on this case. You think you’ve got it solved, and you don’t think anyone else has a pea of an idea.”

  Lewis’ smile faltered a bit, but he plastered it more firmly on his face and tried to speak.

  “Shut up. I’m not finished. I also know you think I’m an idiot, that I haven’t a clue about who did what to whom, but I think I do. Ask yourself, detective, how tight your case against Bill is if your only evidence is his motive, the same one all the barbequers had, and the barbeque rod, the one Toby, your oh so reliable informant, delivered to you.”

  Lewis cast his eyes downward as if to make humble, thought Emily. But I’m not fooled.

  “Okay, let’s say I’m wrong. To be honest, Emily, I’ve got nothing else except a boss who’s breathing down my neck to make certain the community knows we’ve made an arrest and the festival and the town is once more safe from murderers.”

  He looked so depressed she almost felt sorry for him.

  “You could interview those women Everett Pratt was making whoopee with.”

  “I already did that. Nothing.”

  “See there you go again. You think because you had a chat with them, you’ve taken care of things, but I’ll bet they’d be more comfortable talking with another woman. Did you think of that?”

  “No, of course not. I got my detective badge out of a cereal box.” Lewis glanced at her with a sly look on his face, and Emily realized she’d been had. Manipulated. Run around by a tall, sexy detective who was smarter than she gave him credit for.

  “Call me after you talk to them.” Lewis winked at her and tipped his hat as he got into his cruiser.

  Emily could only gaze at his taillights with an open mouth.

  Emily read the first three names on the list Lorelei gave her. Faith Walters, Hope Coldwell, Charity Levre. Faith, Hope and Charity. Cute. She checked a phone book and located all three of them in one of the struggling fish camp trailer parks along the rim canal, the canal that ran most of the perimeter of the Big Lake. At one time years ago when the fishing was better, before hurricanes had churned up the lake, these so called “fish camps” were places winter visitors came to rent an inexpensive place, hire a guide and boat and fish the waters of the lake. With the damage to the quality of the lake’s water, the fishing had changed. Coupled with the economic downturn which hit rural Florida harder than coastal areas preferred by tourists, camps closed or were reduced to less than half their size. The one listed as the address of the three women was south on Highway 441 and 98, only several miles outside of town and located close to Emily’s place.

  “Jammer’s Fish Camp” read the weathered sign as she drove Stan down the gravel driveway toward the tumbled down fish-cleaning station that stood at the canal’s edge. More old trailers with sagging metal skins lined the road into the camp, their condition worse than that of the Pratt’s. No matter how battered and old, they all sported a window air conditioner that sometimes worked, Emily knew, but often did not. Some of the mobile homes were abandoned, left to continue their decay alone under the brutal Florida sun. Emily suspected their former occupants hadn’t moved out for better housing on the coast.

  She checked the paper in her hand for the number of the first trailer, 464. The others were 10 and 11. When she located the first one, it sat on crumbling cinder blocks at the water’s edge. A gravel patio area peeked from around the back of the dwelling. Emily could see it once had been a humble lakeside abode, a small casita on the canal, surrounded by several ponytail palms and bougainvillea. Now the yellowed palms drooped unhappily for lack of water and the bougainvillea exploded over the trailer’s roof and sun porch, making a tangled, impenetrable jungle of green. Here and there a few flowers bloomed in showy reds and purples, but the recent drought made the thorns on the plant more prolific than the blooms. Emily shuddered to think of what critters made homes in the mass of vegetation and then awaited a door left open to take up more sumptuous digs inside the trailer.

  Interesting numbering system, thought Emily. All three trailers sat next to one another. The other two were even older than the first. No plantings around them, only sand mixed with the black dirt of the Okeechobee basin.

  She got out of her car and went up to the screen door of 464 and knocked sharply on it.

  “We’re around back,” called a female voice. “If you’re a friend, grab a beer from of the fridge and come on out. If you want money, leave now cuz I got a gun and a trigger finger that yearns to put holes in bill collectors.”

  Emily heard laughter coming from the gravel patio area. She shrugged her shoulders and opened the screen door. The inside was what she expected, cracked linoleum, cabinet doors with hinges missing and, when she opened the fridge, she found nothing in there but several six packs of beer and a lonely piece of pizza, edges curling up, cheese dried and cracked. She grabbed one of the beers, opened the screen door to the back and stepped outside.

  “Hey, I know you,” said one of the women seated on a straight back kitchen chair.

  “Emily Rhodes. I’m the bartender at the Big Lake Country Club.”

  All of the women looked alike, bleached blonde hair, teased in a manner not seen since 1965, spaghetti strap tops covering large breasts and substantial muffin tops. Yet the smiles on their faces said they were friendly and happy to have company.

  “Here, I’ll get you a chair.” One of the women ran into the house and extracted the mate to the one already outside.

  “You can take mine. It’s more comfortable.” The woman gestured toward the lawn chair she’d been
in. Emily was reluctant to sit in it. Its seat was made of plastic straps, half of which were missing.

  “Maybe not a good idea, Charity. Her butt’s so little, it’ll sink right through.”

  “Try ‘er anyway.”

  Emily did, and sure enough, her jeans’ clad rear end slid between the straps and headed south. “I can just stand.”

  “No way. Get comfortable.” Charity, the runner for the chair, grabbed a chaise lounge from a corner of the patio, dislodging a grey cat. At least Emily thought it was a cat. It could have been a raccoon or an opossum.

  “Shoo, you lazy old thing.”

  Okay, Emily said to herself, it’s a thing.

  The women dragged the lounge toward the group. The pad on it was mildew-covered.

  “It’s a little dirty, but it’s comfy. Sit back and relax.” The woman identified herself as Hope and introduced the others.

  Emily gingerly placed her butt on the edge of the lounge. The three women looked at her expectantly.

  Oh, what the hell, she thought. She settled back into the lounge and put her feet up. I can wash my jeans when I get home. She leaned her head back and popped open her beer. A lizard slipped out from behind the head rest and dashed for safety.

  “Cute little buggers, aren’t they?” she said.

  “They poop all over the place,” said Faith. Or was it Hope?

  “Not as much as those damn palmetto bugs. I’ve forever cleaning bug crap off my table and stove.”

  Spoken like a true Floridian, thought Emily. Winter visitors hired exterminators. The natives just swatted the damn things.

  “You didn’t come for the beer and the sunset now, did you?” asked Charity or Hope or Faith.

  Emily gazed over the canal waters. The sunset might have been beautiful here, she thought, and said so.

  “It’s nice.” All three women nodded their heads.

  Emily searched for a way to begin the conversation. “Uh, you said you know me?”

  “Well, not know you, exactly, but I saw you once at the Burnt Biscuit. You were tending bar there and got sacked I hear.” The smallest of the three women said this. That was Hope, thought Emily.

  “That was my first job, Hope, and it wasn’t a good fit for me.”

  “I’m Charity.”

  “Right. I went to the Big Lake Country Club.”

  “Yep, I heard you got fired and then went off and killed that rich rancher.”

  “No, no. That wasn’t me.”

  The three women exchanged glances. One spoke, but Emily couldn’t get the names straight yet.

  “Like a friend of mine said, maybe he deserved to die.”

  The women sipped their beers and continued to look at her.

  “Uh, he was a mean one.” Emily took a sip of her beer to wet her throat. This wasn’t exactly what she had planned. She was supposed to interrogate them.

  “I found the body.” Another sip.

  “The other day I found another body.” Why was she telling them all this?

  “You sure you ain’t bumping off these folks?”

  “I think the victim was someone you knew.”

  “Everett Pratt. We knew him alright. Used to party with him,” one of the three said.

  “All of you partied with him?”

  “All of us. Together. We had us some great times. He brought us moonshine. He made the best in the county.”

  “When was the last time you and Everett got together?”

  “Hey, that’s what that detective asked us the other day.”

  Their faces changed from open friendliness to suspicion. “You’re not a cop, are you?”

  “Oh, no, I just…”

  “Find bodies, right?”

  Emily nodded. “You know Everett’s wife, right?”

  Three heads again nodded, but slowly now and with some reluctance. They had stopped sipping their beers, and Emily knew it wasn’t because the bottles were empty. She was about to be thrown out on her ass. She had to recover the creds she had when she came in.

  “See, I kind of follow what the cops do, but I do it different. They come here and try to see if you had reason to kill Everett. I come here because I think you might know something to help poor Melanie Pratt. The cops seem to think she might have killed him.”

  “Melanie? Melanie wouldn’t hurt a soul.” Faith stopped for a minute, then continued. “Not unless that person was hurting on her family. Then she might do something.”

  “So you’re sure Melanie wouldn’t have done in Everett because he was playing around…”

  “With us? Hell, no. She was grateful he wasn’t crawling into her bed. Aside from his great moonshine, Everett wasn’t much to talk about. Besides we stopped partying with him a long time ago.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I think he found someone else.”

  Chapter 15

  “Everett Pratt found someone else? Do you know who?”

  Faith grabbed up the beer bottles, now empty and headed into the trailer. “Let me think a bit.”

  When she returned with a beer for each of them, Emily included, she sat and stared over the canal for several minutes.

  “You two remember her name?” she asked her companions. They shook their heads and laughed “We must have burned out some brain cells on Everett’s booze.”

  Emily drew the paper with the names of Everett’s women friends out of her back pocket. “Let me read you a few names. Maybe you’ll recognize one of them.” She set her beer bottle on the ground and looked at the names.

  “Terry Blanchard?”

  The women shook their heads.

  “Mimi Presco?”

  “I know Mimi,” said Hope. “She came to my bible study class a couple of times. I can’t believe she’d be involved with Everett.”

  “Her sister then,” said Charity.

  “Oh right. It wasn’t Mimi who had a thing with Everett. It was her sister, Connie. Connie was one wild gal. But that was before us.”

  The three women continued to suck on their beers. After several minutes of silence, Emily got up. “I don’t want to take up more of your time. If you think of the name of the woman or anything else that might help me, would you give me a call? Here’s my cell.” She scribbled her name and number on a slip of paper and handed it to Faith. Or was it Hope?

  “Thanks for the beer. I’ll let myself out.”

  She drove Stan out of the camp and headed home. Naomi would be showing up soon, and Emily had some laundry to do. A dead end on the women. And one of the names Lorelei had given her wasn’t even one of Everett’s girlfriends, but Lorelei claimed Melanie gave her the names. Maybe Everett’s wife got them wrong. Or there could have been more. She’d have to go back to Lorelei or better yet, Melanie.

  “You and Daisy did what, Mom?” Naomi sounded worried. “You could have waited for me to show up. You have all the fun.”

  Not concern after all, thought Emily. Curiosity. Like mother, like daughter. The gal had a nose for adventure.

  “Sorry, honey. I thought we had to move fast. Anyway, what’s fun about going through the contents of an old trailer or checking out a still which isn’t operating now? Emily drove her car down the road toward the Pratt’s trailer. She wasn’t sure Lewis would approve of this move, but he did want her to question the women. And Melanie was a woman.

  Emily hoped none of the men were at home. She wanted to get Melanie alone, thinking she might be more open without testosterone circulating around her head. There were no cars in front of the trailer when she pulled up, but she could see movement through the windows.

  Melanie answered the door, the same hang-dog look on her face as the other times Emily had seen her. When she saw it was Emily, her expression drooped even more, and her sorrowful eyes filled with fear.

  “Oh,” was all Melanie said. She held the door open for them, then stuck her head out and looked into the yard.

  “It’s just us. This is my daughter Naomi.”

  Naomi smiled
at her. “I’m sorry to hear about all your trouble, Mrs. Pratt.”

  “Uh.” She closed the door and looked at her guests.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not here because I think you killed Everett. I’m here because I think you can help us find who did.” Emily rushed ahead before Mrs. Pratt could say anything. Or throw them out.

  “You gave your sister-in-law Lorelei the names of women Everett was, uh, friendly with…”

  “He was having his way with them.” Melanie said this with no expression in her voice, not anger, not sorrow, not even judgment of his betrayal of her.

  “Right. But that was a while ago. I hate to ask this, but was there someone more recent?”

  “You think he stopped seeing his women?” asked Melanie. It wasn’t really a question, but a statement filled with sarcasm, almost the first emotion Emily had observed in the woman.

  Time for Emily to be completely honest. “No, I don’t, and neither do you. Are you protecting someone?”

  “No.” Her answer came quickly, so quickly Emily knew she was lying.

  “Mrs. Pratt, if you don’t level with me, the chances are Detective Lewis will have no choice but to take you in for questioning and then perhaps arrest you.” Emily let silence hang between them.

  Melanie repeated the names Lorelei had given Emily.

  “I have those names already. Come on, Melanie. Give me something.”

  “I don’t know if Everett had anything going with her, but he talked a lot about a woman who joined our church about a year ago, Amy Bushnell, a divorcee. She seemed real lonely.”

  The sound of tires on the gravel driveway made Emily take a quick peek through the window. Melanie’s Jasper and his friend, the skinny, short guy got out of the pick-up.

  “You better git on out of here now. Jasper and Elmer don’t seem to like you snowbirds hanging around here.”

  That was the friend’s name, Emily remembered. Elmer.

  “We’re just leaving,” Emily said to Jasper who stomped through the door and into the trailer.