Stay At Home Dad 03-Father Knows Death

by Jeffrey Allen

  Corey turned his attention back to me. “So, here, it would be a minor inconvenience. But there? Our process will be pretty extensive due to the excessive amount of shale beneath the surface. It won’t be usable until we’re done with it.”

  “So the fair couldn’t be held there next April?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No way. Nothing will be able to be held there. It’ll be in full swing at that point. But she said she had a lead on another location.” He shrugged. “Sounds like she’s got it all figured out.”

  It sure did.

  32

  Victor waved a BBQ-slathered rib in the air. “This town is insane.”

  Julianne and Carly had already finished their food and were inside, getting Carly ready for their girls’ night at the fair. Victor and I were polishing off the remainder of the ribs, hashing over our meeting with Corey Stewart.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I said, finishing my last rib and the rest of my beer. “I’ve lived here my entire life.”

  “I mean, you guys are really nuts,” he said, shaking his round head. “It’s like Fantasyland crossed with Oz here.”

  I nodded. He wasn’t entirely wrong. Rose Petal wouldn’t have been Rose Petal without some sort of insane drama playing out.

  “So here’s my question,” Victor said, wiping his hands on a napkin. “What exactly did George Spellman know?”

  I thought for a moment. “The only thing we know for sure is that he ran into Stewart on the fairgrounds that morning. That’s the only certainty we have and, even with that, we have two different accounts.”

  “I believe the sales guy,” Victor said, grabbing his beer. “Yeah, he’s kind of a dipstick, but I think his story makes sense.”

  “Why?”

  “If Spellman got punched, like the other broad said, wouldn’t other people have noticed? Wouldn’t there have been a black eye or something like that?”

  That made sense. “I suppose.”

  “So I think this dude went to the fairgrounds to do his measuring or whatever it is he does, and Spellman surprised him. Spellman got all indignant about his being there, got a little handsy, and got knocked down,” Victor said, drinking the beer, then setting the bottle down. “And I don’t think Stewart told him squat about the land deal.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he doesn’t seem the type,” Victor answered. “That guy cares about one thing. Commission. No way he would’ve fouled up a big old deal like that by giving away details that he was supposed to keep to himself.”

  “But he just gave them away to us.”

  “Because we threatened him,” Victor said with a smile. “And because we are scary and intimidating.”

  “Right.”

  “But Spellman could’ve easily made the jump,” Victor continued. “A guy from that company, surveying the grounds. He could’ve put two and two together to figure out that something was cooking.”

  I pushed my plate away. “So maybe that’s what he was talking about when he told that group that he knew something.”

  “Those tree-huggers? C.A.K.E.?”

  “Yeah. He told them something was happening, that he needed to find out more. So maybe he has the fight with Stewart and realizes what’s going on.”

  “And then he tells his girlfriend he went to the old bag, she tells him not to worry about it, he says he’s going to go to the board meeting and make it public and—boom,” Victor said, raising an eyebrow. “He’s dead.”

  I nodded. It all fit together and definitely seemed connected. Somebody didn’t want George letting people know about what was going down in Rose Petal. And it all sort of pointed squarely at one person.

  33

  “Find any more dead bodies?” Tom asked as he dealt the first hand.

  After the ribs, Victor and I made plans to meet the following day at the fair. The girls headed off to their evening of fun and, as it was the last Friday of the month, that meant I was off to my monthly dorky dads poker night. Yes, it was fair week and everyone was busy, but some things were too important to mess with. The fact that each of us had quickly responded to Tom’s e-mail, saying we were available, told me that everyone needed a night away from the fair and their families as much as I did.

  “Not yet,” I said, fanning through the cards he dealt me and frowning. “But I might kill you if these are the kind of cards I’m gonna see all night.”

  He chuckled.

  “Do we have a plan in place in case your wife decides to have the baby tonight?” Paul asked from across the table, his eyes on his cards.

  “A plan?” I asked. “Yeah. I’ll tear out of here and get her to the hospital.”

  Jeff rubbed his chin. “Hmm. We’ll just hold onto your money, then, until you get back.”

  “Or, we could play for you,” Brandon suggested, raising an eyebrow.

  “I like that,” Mark said. “That works. A chance for you to earn while you’re gone.”

  “We’ll use your winnings to buy the baby a gift,” Raphael suggested as he tossed several chips into the middle of the table.

  “Somehow, I think I might lose,” I said. “So. No. My money goes with me.”

  “Chicken,” Tom said.

  “Cluck, cluck,” I said. “Bet.”

  There was comfort in knowing that once a month, no matter what was going on in my life, I could jump out of the day and sit down with friends for cards, beer, crappy food, and friendly harassment. It was like I’d never left college and we’d never grown up.

  “I heard your dad talking about an offer he got from the drilling business,” Paul said, tossing several of his chips into the pile.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “He gonna take it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Tom raised an eyebrow. “No?”

  I shook my head.

  “I heard the money’s good,” he said.

  “It is,” I said. “But I don’t think he wants them digging.”

  “Couldn’t pay me enough,” Brandon said, shaking his head and tossing his cards on the table. “It isn’t safe.”

  Mark tossed his chips in. “Money is always safe.”

  “Not the money. The fracking.”

  Jeff made a face. “Oh, please. You’re a hippy tree-hugger. It’s perfectly safe.”

  “Tell me that after you have a three-headed baby,” Brandon said, folding his arms across his chest.

  “He’s already been neutered,” Tom said. “No chance of any-headed babies.”

  “I heard the remnants go right into the water tables,” Raphael said, laying his cards down and folding. “Chemicals. Dirty water. Rock fragments.”

  Paul scowled. “Please. The process has been around forever and it’s only gotten safer. It’s safer than drilling for oil.”

  “How do you know?” Tom asked.

  Paul’s cheeks colored slightly.

  I started laughing. “How much are they paying you?”

  A number of catcalls and howls went up at the table.

  “So, maybe I’m a little defensive,” Paul said, chuckling. “But they are making it worth my while. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

  Mark started laughing. “Me, too.”

  “You, too?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I hate yard work anyway and with them digging in the backyard, I won’t have to do squat for a while.”

  That discussion was a perfect representation of our group. We all had different political views. All had different views on education. On money. But none of us took any of it seriously enough to take offense. We could all disagree on different things.

  As long as we were allowed to mock those we didn’t agree with.

  “So what exactly do they do?” Raphael asked. “Is it like in that movie with Bruce Willis where they take a massive drill to the moon?”

  “Hardly,” Paul said. “The way I understand it is they bring in some sort of drill and go down into the shale with some pressurized fluid. Af
ter it’s located, they fire some water down into the shale to break it up, forcing the gas out, and they capture the gas and—boom! Gas prices go down.”

  “Yeah. Just like that,” Brandon said, shaking his head.

  “You know what I’m saying,” Paul said. “They capture the gas and then do whatever it is they do with it. I’m not smart enough to understand that part.”

  “That part is fine,” Brandon said. “It’s what they do during and after. The gas can leak. The water tables can become contaminated. There’s all sorts of bad crap that can happen.”

  Mark held up a finger. “Might happen. Not will happen.”

  “But they can’t promise it won’t,” Brandon argued. “And the problem is, you don’t know until well after the fact if it’s happened. When the three-headed babies start popping up.”

  “But I’ll be dead by then,” Paul said, shrugging. “And I’ll just tell my kids to go live somewhere else.”

  We all laughed at that, but I thought the discussion demonstrated the varied opinions on the subject and probably represented what was going on all over town. People were having to weigh the risks versus cashing a fat check. Given Julianne’s staunch stance against it, there wasn’t going to be a decision for me to make. But others were probably going to have to give some pretty good thought as to which way they wanted to go.

  An hour later, I was down twenty bucks and two beers in.

  “I wanna hear more about the dead body,” Jeff said, munching on a jalapeño stuffed with cheddar. “What the hell exactly happened to that Spellman guy?”

  “Wish I knew,” I said. “But I really don’t.”

  “I heard he and that Biggs woman were sleeping together,” Mark said.

  “Mama?” Paul asked, appalled at the idea.

  “No, no,” Mark said. “That daughter.” He looked at me. “That right?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss,” I said.

  “Please,” he said, making a face. “You aren’t a lawyer. You’re a detective.”

  “Sort of,” Tom said, grinning. “I still think of you as unemployed. I like it better that way.”

  I rolled my eyes. Some myths refused to die and the story that I simply couldn’t find a job was a Rose Petal myth that would probably follow me forever. I knew he was kidding, but they all knew it drove me nuts.

  “You can tell us,” Raphael said. “We won’t tell anyone.”

  “Except your wives, who will then spread it all over town like the flu,” I said.

  They all looked at one another.

  “Excellent point,” Brandon said. “You probably shouldn’t tell us anything.”

  Mark leaned across the table. “They were totally doing it, weren’t they?”

  “Thanks for the image,” Paul said, shutting his eyes, no doubt trying to erase said image from his mind.

  “I’m not saying anything,” I said, smiling at Mark. “Nada.”

  “You are no fun,” he said, frowning. “The rest of us go to our crappy jobs every day, sit at the desk, staring at our computers. But you? You get to go eavesdrop and stalk people and do detective stuff.”

  Tom nodded. “It’s true. We do live a little vicariously through you.”

  I looked at the useless cards in my hand and tossed them on the table, folding. “Then how about if you repay me with some decent cards?”

  He pretended to think for a moment. “Never mind. I don’t need to live vicariously through you. I’d rather have your money. Or, sorry, your wife’s money.”

  That brought more than a few hoots and hollers and I stood to grab some more food that would contribute to my early death.

  “You guys settle on a name for the baby?” Raphael asked.

  “No,” I said quickly. “Not yet.”

  Brandon glanced at me. “Why not? It’s gonna be like any minute.”

  I shrugged, filling my plate with nachos and cookies.

  “Yeah, why not?” Tom asked, smiling.

  “Just haven’t settled on one yet.”

  “Oh, that’s weird,” Paul said, staring at his cards. “I heard it was because you don’t get a say in the matter.”

  The rest of them burst into laughs.

  I chucked a cookie at the back of Paul’s head. “Very funny.”

  “Julianne told Lynn,” he said, still giggling. “Can’t believe you don’t get to name your own kid.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “But I guess that’s the trade-off for getting to stay home,” he said. “She pays the bills. She gets full naming rights.”

  All of them were giggling like third graders.

  “Maybe you could get a cat,” Tom suggested. “Maybe she’d let you name that.”

  The giggles turned to outright laughter.

  “What about a fish?” Jeff asked.

  “A hamster?” Mark offered.

  “A bunny,” Raphael said.

  “A snake,” Brandon said.

  “I hate all of you,” I said, throwing all of my chips at them.

  But I didn’t hate them at all. I appreciated the fact that, for one night every month, they would be there to pull me away from any crap I might be dealing with. And for the rest of the night, I didn’t give a single thought to Mama or Matilda or George Spellman.

  I just continued to lose money.

  34

  “You two better have something good for me,” Mama Biggs said from her golf cart in front of the fair offices the next afternoon. “Because I’ve got a singing competition to run this evening and it doesn’t just run itself.”

  I’d gotten home in the middle of the night, slept in late and enjoyed a lazy day around the house with Julianne and Carly. No baby yet, but everyone seemed to appreciate the quiet day at home before heading back to the fairgrounds.

  Victor and I had driven over to the fairgrounds together, the girls to follow later on. He and I went through our conversation with Corey Stewart one more time. Everything pointed right at the person who had the most to gain from the deal, and the most to lose if the information about selling the fairgrounds got out.

  “George Spellman knew about your deal with Taitano Resources,” I said.

  Mama Biggs was good. She caught herself before she could snap her face toward me, surprised.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, looking in my direction, but not exactly at me.

  “We know you’re leasing the fairgrounds,” I said. “We know George came to you after seeing their rep on the fairgrounds. And I’m pretty sure you’re looking at buying another parcel of land to move the fair to for the next couple of years. Which might all be legal and on the up and up, but it will anger a boatload of people here in Rose Petal. So you’re waiting until after the fair to do it all quietly, when everyone is burnt out on fair news.”

  Mama stared at me and then at Victor, then moved her eyes back to me. “You’re talking crazy.”

  “Look, lady,” Victor said. “We know what we know. And right now, nothing looks good. You hired us to look into George Spellman’s death, right? Well, as of right this second, everything points at you.”

  “At me?” she squawked, anger filling the lines in her forehead. “Me?”

  We both nodded.

  “So you two nitwits think I hired you both to look into a murder that I committed?” She rolled her eyes. “I think we got a pair of donkeys over in the barn that could’ve done better and come a lot cheaper.”

  She had a point about hiring us if she were the culprit, but she still owed us some answers. “First things first. Do you own these fairgrounds?”

  She shifted in the golf cart, ripped the walkie-talkie off her belt, and twisted a dial on it. She set it on the seat next to her. “Fairgrounds are owned by my family, yes.”

  “The county doesn’t own them?”

  “Not for about twenty-five years,” she answered, raising an eyebrow at me. “My daddy struck a deal back before Rose Petal was Rose Petal. He owned this land. Actually, he owned most of R
ose Petal. But he sold most of it off and then managed to gamble all the proceeds away.” She shook her head. “My mama and he used to really go at it.”

  The walkie-talkie crackled and she picked it up and turned another knob on it, laying it back down.

  “Anyway, he held onto this land, for some reason,” she continued. “But when the county incorporated in the fifties, they wanted a public use land. They wanted this spot. But Daddy owned it. So they worked out a deal.” She smiled. “Daddy may have been a degenerate, but he was no dummy.”

  Victor sighed, his patience waning.

  “He gave them the land for a small fee,” she said. “The town didn’t have much money back then and he did want to help it grow. So he basically gave it to them for nothing. He took a small cut of the fair revenue and of anything else that was held here. But the term was limited.”

  “Limited?” I asked.

  She nodded, her tight gray curls bobbing up and down. “Yes, sir. Limited. Their ownership was more like a long-term rental. It was the county’s to use for forty years. When that agreement expired, the land reverted back to my family. My daddy and my mama were gone by then. So it came back to me.”

  That sounded like it was probably true. A lot of Texas towns were started with handshake land agreements that eventually expired. A lot of them became public when they expired. But not all of them, apparently.

  “So when it came back to me, I didn’t make a big deal about it,” she said, shrugging. “I didn’t see the need to put the family name on the fairgrounds. It’s still used by the county for everything it always was.” A crooked smile formed on her face. “Revenue just goes to a different bank account.”

  “And now you’re selling the land?” I asked.

  “I’m not selling nothing,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.

  “Leasing,” Victor said, adjusting his hat.

  Her hands clutched the steering wheel of the cart. “I suppose everyone’s gonna find out soon enough. Yeah. I’m leasing it.”

  “To Taitano Resources,” I said.

  “They’ve offered me a small mint,” she said, still smiling. “And I will still own the land when they are done with it.”