by Kim Smith
Before I knew it, she was dressed in comfy clothes, bedded down on my couch with a spare pillow, blanket, and the remote, planning to watch an old Ronald Reagan movie on the classics channel. I trotted off to my bed.
As I shut off the light, I hoped Dee didn’t encounter anything dangerous. He was playing pinball in the wee hours at a place that had porn movies.
I hated feeling like I should be with him.
Those feelings usually meant something.
I usually listened to those feelings.
###
At 6:36 in the morning, my phone emitted the warbling associated with Dwayne’s calls.
I snatched it up, heart in my throat. “Hello?”
“Shannon, roll your ass outta bed. Don’t ask questions, and don’t fool around. Come to 201 Poplar in Memphis and get me. I’m bein’ booked for assault. Better bring your damn money, too.”
“Oh, my God! Dwayne, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. The other guy looks pretty bad though. You wanna get goin’ now? I don’t think I will make it long in that cell with that buncha men.”
“Sure, sure. I’m on the way. 201 Poplar? Okay, got it. I’ll GPS it on my phone. Oh God, Dee, I’m on the way.”
I was afraid to hang up knowing it was the only call he would get. “Do you want to talk to me while I drive there or what?”
He laughed a short nasty laugh. “As if. They’ve got other plans, girl. Hurry the fuck up, okay?”
I didn’t remember pulling on clothes, didn’t remember anything until I skidded to a stop in the living room, waking Katie. She sat up, hair sticking out everywhere, blinking at me with sleepy eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Dee’s in jail! He’s been picked up for assault. I’ve got to go to Memphis and get him.” I frantically tried to find my purse and keys while juggling my cell phone.
“You want me to go? You don’t look up to driving.”
This stopped me cold. “Yes. That’s a good idea. I sure don’t need to get a ticket or be held up. You’re the ice queen, Katie. You can handle stress better than anyone I know.”
She pulled her dorm shirt off, and slid the tight knit black mini she’d been wearing the night before back on. In a moment, she’d zipped her little ankle boots up, smoothed her hair down, and waved at me to follow her out. She held out her hand for my keys, which I dropped into her palm as I passed her on the way out.
I hoped the cops didn’t think she was a hooker.
When we got buckled in our seats, she tried to crank Betsy, but unfortunately, someone had once again taken liberty to tamper with my car.
Katie got out and popped the hood and with a penlight I had in the glove box, peered at the depths of the car and announced my battery cables were off of the battery, and it was probably dead.
I stood there, shaking from head to foot. Whoever did this might still be around. Glancing around us, I hoped they showed themselves. I would tear them from limb to limb. They better hope they had the good sense to clear off.
“Where is your bike?” I asked, looking around at the shadowy area by the dumpster.
“Oh. At home. But we couldn’t ride to jail to get Dwayne on a bike.”
I wanted to start screaming. This was insane.
Think, Wallace, think.
“Okay. Only one thing to do then. I’ll have to call Sal.” The mere thought of facing him this morning before having coffee or brushing my teeth was scarier than facing a hairy spider trapped in the shower.
Katie held out a hand and stopped me as I grabbed my phone. “Don’t. Don’t do that. Call your aunt instead. It’s never a good idea to call a man early in the morning after you told him no the night before.”
She had a point.
I would not choose my aunts for such duty unless it was a desperate situation. I dialed Aunt Nancy’s phone. Nan was the most likely to be amenable to my problem. Tillie might just freak out.
She answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
I tried to keep my voice level and happy. “Hey, Aunt Nan. What’re you doing?”
“The crosswords. You know it keeps my mind active. It’s terrible to get old. What are you doing up at this hour?”
“Oh, got a little emergency over here. My car’s battery is dead again, and I sort of need a ride somewhere. I hate to ask but…can you come and get me?”
“Oh honey! You’re going to have to get a new car. That old rust bucket’s going to end up getting you stranded somewhere dangerous one day. Sure, I’ll come get you. Where are you?”
“In my parking lot at the apartment.”
“Where are you going at this ungodly hour?” she asked.
I swallowed hard. Squeezing my eyes shut, I answered her question and waited for the result.
She exploded. “That’s the Memphis jail, kiddo!”
“Yes, ma’am. I know. It’s Dwayne. He’s been taken there, and I have to go get him.”
“Oh good Lord. Poor Dwayne. For him, I will do this. I’m on the way. Sit tight.”
She disconnected. I took a deep breath and relayed the news to Katie.
“Good. She’ll take care of you. She’s a tough lady. If you ever need security, take her. She’s not one even I would tackle.”
“Will you still go with me? There’s safety in numbers.”
She nodded. “Wouldn’t miss this for all the money in the mint. Dwayne Brown being held in jail? Oh yeah.”
I wanted to understand the humor she found in the situation, but I was too afraid for his safety inside the concrete block walls of a place where dangerous criminals resided.
Chapter Eighteen
They say going to jail is like an out of this world experience. I say it is more like a dream you cannot get out of. The smells of old paper, dust, urine, blood, and things I would never be able to identify made me choke when we arrived. I didn’t quit feeling sick all the way through the process. When we walked out with Dee in tow, I finally felt better and allowed the sun to beat down on my head and face for a moment before following to the car.
Seated safely inside, I gave my friend a pointed look and waited for the explanation to come. He shrugged and said, “Some people don’t have a lick of sense, Shannon.”
“What does that mean?”
“Tell you about it later. I don’t think I can exactly elaborate just yet. My heart may never settle back to its normal beating again.”
I scowled at this. “Do you know how close I came to calling Sal? Do you remember what he told us in his office?”
Dee motioned toward my aunt’s back. “Let’s talk about it later, okay?”
I stewed the rest of the way home. He owed my aunt as much of an explanation as anyone since she funded his release from jail via a bail bondsman, and she was driving his criminal butt around. But I knew he would pay her back every cent, and I knew she would never refuse to do anything for him as he ranked high on her list of favorite people.
We took him to his trailer and Katie and I stayed with him letting Aunt Nancy go on about her day. When we entered the trailer, he went straight to the fridge and pulled out beers for all of us.
I went straight for the jugular. “Spill the beans, Dee, and don’t you dare leave anything out. Your recklessness made me drag my aunt all the way to downtown Memphis. You owe me.”
He plopped down on his ugly sofa and took a pull off his bottle before answering. “It’s pretty simple really. I finished up my pinball game, walked over to the guy behind the counter, asked where I could find books written by Thelma Denaldo, and acted like I was just a shopper. Problem was, she don’t write under her real name.”
“Oh, no? I suppose she wouldn’t, would she?” I took a thoughtful sip of beer. “Wonder who she does write as?”
“Sally Sanders.” He saluted me with his bottle. “I found out.”
“Was this before or after you ended up assaulting someone?”
“Before. And quit looking at me like that. Your aunt wasn’t nearly
as judge-y as you look right now.”
I stuck my tongue out at him hoping it softened my obvious chagrin.
“What happened? Come on and tell us,” Katie said, fidgeting. “I’m getting old and gray over here.”
“Uh huh,” said Dwayne. “Well, at some time around three this morning I finally found some of her stuff, over by the videos. I had been takin’ my time, easin’ around, lookin’. I think the damn clerk thought I was screwin’ up the courage to rob him.”
“You played pinball for that long? It’s a wonder you can even see today.”
He frowned at me, forcing me to shut up. “Anyway, I was just about to flip through a book when this huge blond dude comes rushin’ at me, and shoves me straight into the wall. You know I ain’t takin’ that shit lyin’ down.”
I gasped. “Did he mean to? I mean was it an accident?”
“Who knows? He stank like a still, so I’m pretty sure he was too crocked to care.”
“So you assaulted an inebriated man who couldn’t stand up? Pretty bad form,” Katie said, wagging a finger in his face.
“Hell naw, I didn’t. He snatched the book I was holdin’, and told me to keep my nose outta other people’s business. I told him to get the eff out, and that was when we commenced to tusslin’,” he assured her.
“Dude. Did you find out who he was and why he cared so much?” I stood straighter. This was getting interesting.
“Yeah, I see your antennae goin’ up over there, Wall-ass. You’re on the right track. Apparently, he’s an admirer of Sally Sanders, aka Thelma D. Figured out she was the one and the same, and when he heard about the situation from the news reports, he came over to beg, borrow or steal all her books and stuff from the bookstore before anyone could buy them. Just so happened, I was there first. Thought he was saving her honor or some such crud, and that was why we went at it. The night man called the law and well, the rest is history. Only good thing was they hauled Blondie’s ass in, too.”
Katie gaped from one of us to the other. “What? Can I ask…?”
“No,” we said in unison.
She sighed and slid from her seat. “Okay then, I guess you really don’t need me anymore huh?”
I took a deep breath. “I really do want to hang out. I’m in need of some retail therapy.”
She glared at Dwayne. “Seems to me that your partner here scotched that idea.”
He gave her a funny look and stalked away toward his bedroom.
“Katie,” I said with a pleading note.
“It’s his fault. He’s the one who got tossed in the pokey, and you won’t fill me in on what it’s all about. I might as well leave.”
“It’s the murder case. The Denaldo woman is involved, and well, as you heard, she is a sort of porno writer, and that involvement is crucial to the case. Even Sal doesn’t know about the extracurricular activities of dear old Thelma aka Sally Sanders though, and we were trying to get more details on it before taking our findings to Sal.”
She pursed her lips. “Uh huh.”
Dwayne came back. “Guess we have to tell our tale now?”
“I just did.”
He nodded. “So, as I was saying, Denaldo has a few admirers. I think that may be who’s been phoning you up.”
“I figured as much. Didn’t I tell you that back at the office right after it happened?”
He shrugged. “Well, Wall-ass, you have a lot of enemies. It’s hard to keep count.”
Katie and I both swiveled our necks to gape at him.
“Kiddin’. I’m just kiddin’. Gah.”
“So what now?” I asked, patting my hair down.
“We gotta go back to the bookstore. I think if we all go we might get a lot further. I mean, Katie can keep the clerk busy with her sweet talk, you can keep a watch out, and I can check out the wares.”
“How come I can’t be the ware-checker? How come you can’t be the watchman?” It sounded so much like kids arguing even I had to smile.
Katie said, “He just wants to be the first one to drool on the pages.”
Dwayne grinned.
“Grin like a Cheshire cat, if you will, Dwayne Brown,” I snipped. “You have to fix my car again, so there.”
His grin changed to a grimace and he let out a huge sigh. “If they tore up that fix I gave it the other night…I may kill somethin’.”
###
We synchronized our watches and planned on meeting at the shop around two that afternoon to travel together to the adult bookstore. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be that many people hustling in there in the middle of the afternoon on a Friday.
Of course, there might have been because some people got in there and got their weekend started early. Binge-watching videos and reading books were the bomb dot com, unless you were a videographer. Then it wasn’t too much fun anymore.
I pulled out my cell and called Jimmy to let him know about the visit to the Denaldo residence. He told me to sit on the footage and he would get back to me. I was a little disgruntled he was so flippant about the trouble I’d gone to on his behalf.
“Whatever dude,” I muttered aloud, shoving the cell inside of my tote. Later, I unlocked my car so Dwayne could work on it, and he lifted Betsy’s hood and got busy right away. I headed for some light housekeeping at my place.
While dusting, vacuuming, and picking up, thoughts of how pitiful my life had really become assaulted me. My aunts were staid and single and seemed to be quite happy, but damned if I wanted to follow their lead.
Smitten with regret at putting Sal off, I contemplated how hard it would have been to just ask him to come up to the apartment for a drink? Or even more?
I shook my hair all the way forward and twisted up an ugly ponytail.
Ending up a lonely old woman was not what I wanted, but being Sal’s girlfriend was damn scary, too.
I wandered over to the window and looked down in the lot. Dwayne had left. The hood was down on my car, which could mean either it was fixed or still broken. I snatched up my cell and called him up.
“Well?” I asked when he answered.
“Well, you got a car, girl, but don’t count on anything. You really need to buy a new one.”
“I can’t afford it, Dee. We’ve been over all this.”
“Humph. Okay, then. Later.”
We disconnected and I took a deep breath. Maybe I should try yoga or meditation or chanting to send the demons that plagued me back where they came from? Nothing else was working on my side.
Finally, retail therapy dialed my number.
I tapped out Katie’s number on the phone and waited for her to answer. She picked up on the third ring.
“You want to go shopping with me?” I asked.
“Sure. I’m always in the market for something new. What’re we shopping for?”
“Something that makes me look as good as you do even on a bad hair day.”
“Cool. Where’re we going?”
“I sort of have no ride, so…”
“No problem. I’m on the way.”
In just a short while, we were walking past dress shops in the mall while I tried to figure out what I wanted to try on. Katie ended up pulling me by the hand until we stood in front of a pretty exclusive one.
“Here,” she said. “Here you will definitely find Sal bait.”
I giggled. “What bait?”
She gave me a grin. I shrugged and we entered the double entrance of Gaston and Co. I wandered the aisles, ogling everything. I wanted to buy jeans, a shirt, a belt, a jacket, a necklace, and short boots before it was all over.
Katie made me pull out my emergency credit card and spend. Oh boy, did I ever spend. Then as quickly as I’d had retail madness, it was over and I was second-guessing my insanity.
“God, Katie, what have I done? I cannot afford all this stuff.”
“Shannon Wallace. You never spend money on yourself. What is the point of having a lie if you never live it?”
I didn’t have a good answer. She
dropped me off and I trudged upstairs. I plopped all the packages on the bed and flopped across it. What good was having stylish fashion if I didn’t have a stylish life to go with it. I had to figure out my life.
To satisfy my oncoming depression, I gobbled down an Elvis special-a peanut butter and banana sandwich-and slid my feet into a new pair of white flip flops. Sitting by the front door was the camera bag with my camera and tape from the Denaldo residence shoot. I scooped it up and snuggled the strap over my shoulder. This would need to be tended to soon. I hauled out of there to meet up with the others at the shop.
Betsy, my worn out Mercury Cougar, sat gleaming in the sunlight and cranked right up when I turned the key. I was extremely happy about that but kept a sharp eye out for vindictive vandals as I rolled out of my lot. Somebody had it in for me, and I really suspected it was Sally Sander’s fan club. Once at the shop, voices could be heard all the way down the stairs.
I hurried to dump the bag on my desk before going to find out what Dwayne and Katie were arguing about.
“I ain’t givin’ y’all no chance to chicken out,” he was saying.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“He’s decided we all need to go in the same car,” Katie said, rolling her eyes.
“Fine by me. After that, I need to get back here. The tapes are piling up. I need view footage in the worst way, and especially the one from the shoot at the Denaldo’s. I really want to focus on that one.”
Dwayne rubbed his hands together. “Yeah. Me, too.”
“Oh, good grief, all right.” She flounced to the front room. Snickering, Dee followed suit, and I shook my head at their antics before bringing up the rear. We piled up in Dwayne’s Toyota, and took off down the old highway leading into Memphis.
Katie fiddled with the radio stations and soon she and Dwayne were in a heated discussion about music. I tuned them out in favor of plotting what we were going to do.
If the books Thelma had penned, or the movies she was considered to be a part of, had other people’s real names on them, we might have a lead or two to follow. Not that that was very likely. Who wanted people to know you starred in porno?
I shuddered when I thought about how this whole situation might lead us toward the heart of something dark and dangerous.