Best Served Cold

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  ‘Mama, she OK?’ Johnny Mac asked.

  ‘She’ll be fine, honey,’ Jean said, looking at Holly.

  ‘I best go in there and check—’ Holly started.

  ‘No,’ Jean said. ‘Let her alone for a little while. I know this has been hard on her, Holly, but it’s been hard on all of us, especially you. Having to worry about her and your baby. She needs to see that we’re all in this together. Maybe some time alone will help that.’

  Holly sighed again. ‘You don’t know Mama,’ she said. She stood up. ‘It’s all well and good, what you’re saying, Jean, but Mama’s mama and she’s not going to change at this late date. And, yes, she’s been through a lot. More than the rest of us, really.’ And with that, she headed into the adjoining room.

  Jean watched her go, one hand on her slightly swollen belly, and hoped all the stress they were all going through wouldn’t hurt that baby brewing inside. Deep down, Jean understood where Mrs Pettigrew was coming from. She wanted to go home, too. She wanted her home and her son back in school, and she even missed her sister-in-law Jewel and her husband Harmon. But one thing she was going to insist upon, once they got back, was that she, Jean, was going back in the kitchen. After these few days without Jewel’s cooking, actually eating good food, she’d be damned if she was going back to cauliflower surprise.

  Jasmine was holding Emmett’s arm as they walked the halls of the hospital. The doctor had said one more day then she could go home. And that’s all she could think about.

  ‘You go get Petal tomorrow morning, drive back and the two of you can pick me up—’ Jasmine started.

  ‘Like hell!’ Emmett said. ‘When it’s time for you to get out, I’m taking you straight to Oklahoma City. You’ll be staying in a double room with Petal on the same floor as Jean and them. It’s already arranged.’

  Jasmine pulled away from her husband. ‘Like hell your ownself! I’m not going to Oklahoma City for you or anybody else! And my daughter’s coming home!’

  ‘Need I remind you there’s somebody out there trying to kill us? And our families? What makes you think she – whoever the hell she is – won’t try to get you again?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Stow it! You’re going to the city if I have to hog-tie you and carry you up there on my back!’

  ‘Emmett! I’m a trained deputy with a gun! Try hog-tying me and see what the hell happens!’

  They stood in the hospital corridor staring at each other, then Emmett laughed. ‘Yeah, you could take me, I know that.’ Sobering, he said, ‘But you and Petal aren’t safe here in town. You gotta go, honey. You’re not in shape physically to handle any more of this crazy woman’s shenanigans.’

  ‘What about you?’ she countered. ‘You’re in as much danger as I am! You and Milt and Anthony and Anna! Should we all just up and go to the city? Leave the county on its own? And if we did, what’s to say she wouldn’t wait us out? We’d have to go home sometime. Unless we all sold our houses and moved elsewhere. But then we’d have to split up, change our names—’

  ‘OK, OK!’ Emmett said. ‘I get your drift. But, honey, you’re injured—’

  ‘I’m fine, the doctor said so—’

  ‘He said you’re OK to leave the hospital. But I distinctly heard him say you needed lots of bed rest! You gonna do that in your squad car? Which is still in the shop, by the way.’

  Sullenly, Jasmine took his arm and proceeded back toward her room. ‘Three days. I’ll give you and Milt three days to solve this crap, then I’m coming back and taking names, you hear me?’

  Emmett grinned. ‘Yeah, baby, I hear you.’

  I’d hollered at Anthony as I left the shop, telling him I’d radio in. I didn’t see any need for back-up since Joe Permeter was already dead. I’m sure the list of people wanting to off Joe Permeter was vast and mostly women – plus maybe a few ex-boyfriends or current husbands. But could it have anything to do with what had been going on? How could it? He wasn’t part of the sheriff’s department – he was a suspect! Why would she go after a suspect? My mind was going in so many circles I was getting dizzy. So I decided I’d shut it off for a while. I’m remarkably good at doing that.

  Buddy’s pool hall was a hundred yards from the city limits sign of Longbranch, which put it in county jurisdiction. It was a long, low space, a former strip mall that had gone belly up and which Buddy Sheridan had bought for a song. He’d taken the entire mall, opened it up, put a bar at one end, pool tables on the other and pinball machines and video game consoles in the middle. Buddy Sheridan was quickly becoming one of the richest men in the county. Which was OK. Buddy was a pretty nice guy.

  I’d gone to school with Buddy’s mother, a homecoming queen, head cheerleader, beautiful – you name it, Donna Sheridan was the ‘it’ girl of our class. She went with Todd Singleton, the quarterback of the football team, point guard of the basketball team, pitcher for the baseball team, homecoming king and most handsome of our class. Todd got his draft notice before we graduated and was off to Vietnam only months after boot camp and a quick R&R at home. Donna didn’t find out she was pregnant until he was overseas. Poor Todd didn’t make it more than a month in Nam before he got killed in a raid in Saigon. He never even made it in-country. So Donna was a fallen woman, which is what people thought back in those days, but she ponied up, kept her baby and glared at anybody who looked at her funny when she walked her baby on the streets. Needless to say, Buddy Sheridan is her son. Donna owns a real-estate company and is doing quite well, but has never married. Or maybe that should read ‘and’ has never married. Nothing to say, these days, that a woman’s gotta get married.

  Unfortunately Buddy took after his dad in the brains department. Donna was the alpha in that relationship. Buddy dropped out of high school as soon as he was able to, went to work mopping floors at his mom’s office, accidentally sold a house when nobody was in the office, got a real good commission, put that into buying the strip mall and the rest, as they say, is history.

  Buddy was sitting on the front step outside the entrance to the pool hall, his elbow on his knee and his head resting on one hand. He stood when I pulled into the parking lot, waving at me like I might miss him. He was a big guy, like his daddy, but somehow the beauty of his mama and the handsomeness of his daddy didn’t mix well. Buddy wasn’t exactly butt-ugly but I guess you could say he was a little less than attractive. His nose was too big, his ears stuck out and, as my daddy used to say, he could eat a corn on the cob through a barbed-wire fence, he was that buck-toothed.

  I got out and went to shake his hand. ‘Hey, Buddy, sorry about all this.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, me, too. Joe worked for me?’

  ‘That’s what I heard. Bartender, right?’

  ‘Yeah. And he cleaned up some nights when I had to get home early. Last night was one of those nights, ya know?’

  ‘Right. So he stayed after you left?’

  ‘Right,’ Buddy said, expelling a breath, like he’d been saving it up.

  ‘Anybody else stay late?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, now, I don’t know. I got a couple of waitresses. I think Mindy Hayes was on last night. Want me to call her?’

  I patted him on the arm. ‘That’s OK, Buddy. I’ll get her address and go ask her about that.’ I sighed. ‘Might as well go inside now.’

  Buddy Sheridan made a face. ‘Sheriff, it’s real bad.’

  I patted him on the arm again and followed him inside.

  This was Anna’s thing. This was what she was born to do. This was what she was best at. Trolling the Web, sneaking in here, there, everywhere. She’d been doing it since she was thirteen years old. And it had almost caught up with her. Almost. It had taken a tragedy to get her out of it. But she didn’t want to think about that. She wanted to find what she could on Lynette Sanders’ housemates and track down her alibi, if there was one. Anna really didn’t care where Lynette was or wasn’t, but this was what she was supposed to be doing now, and she’d play along as long as she could.

/>   While the computer was doing its thing on Lynette, Anna decided to start a search on Nadine Hamm. It didn’t take long. Nadine Hamm was now living in Bishop, right here in Prophesy County. She printed out the paperwork and ran to find Anthony.

  Well, there was a man’s body lying on the floor of the pool hall, close to the bar, pants down around his knees and a decorated pecker laying flaccid against the thigh. I turned my back to the pecker, reached into the back pocket of the jeans and found a wallet. No doubt about it, the faceless body belonged to the late Joe Permeter.

  My cell phone rang. The read-out said it was the shop so I walked away from the body and answered it.

  ‘Kovak,’ I said.

  ‘Sheriff, it’s Anthony. Anna found Nadine Hamm!’

  ‘Well, that’s nice. She in McAlester?’ I asked.

  ‘No, sir. Right here in the county. Up in Bishop.’

  I thought about that. So Nadine was back, if she’d ever really left. There were some highfaluting hair salons up in Bishop, being that it was the town where all the rich folk of the county lived. Maybe she just got her a better job than the one at Wendy’s Cut & Curl. Which didn’t rule out the fact that she was still pissed about old Hank and had been doing all this. But she wasn’t tall enough, I told myself. The girl couldn’t be more than five foot three or four. But if she stood up on her tiptoes, tried to make us think it was a man … It could be her. Who knew? Maybe she had a daddy who taught her how to shoot and cut brake lines and mess with alarm systems. Anything was possible.

  ‘You wanna take a ride to Bishop?’ I asked Anthony.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ he said, a little eager to get going.

  ‘OK, you do that. And get back to me.’

  He hung up without saying goodbye. Then I thought, Nadine Hamm. Pretty little thing. But maybe she was nuts. I mean, after all, she was in love with Hank Witovec and who, except a crazy person, would fall for him?

  So I walked back to the body of Joe Permeter and sighed. I really needed another dead body like I needed a ring in my pecker.

  Anthony put on the siren as he left the shop, headed through Longbranch on the highway to Bishop. He shut it off once he got to the town so he could hear Siri tell him where to go to find Nadine Hamm’s address. When he found it, his mouth dropped open.

  It was a big house, even by Bishop standards. Maybe the biggest in a town full of big houses. And it was on a lot of land. Maybe ten acres, unlike most of the houses in Bishop, which were either on an acre or less or snug up against each other like there wasn’t enough room to spread out.

  It was in a Tudor style, with wings and fancy windows and a portico that led to a four-car garage in the back, in the same Tudor style of the house. Anthony got out of his squad car and walked up to the front door, which was a mammoth thing made out of what looked like super-thick oak with wrought-iron handles and a wrought-iron pull cord. So he pulled it. A gong sounded inside the house. When the door opened a man in a suit stood there.

  ‘May I help you, sir?’ he said.

  Oh, jeez, Anthony thought. It’s a frigging butler! ‘Ah, yes, I’m looking for a woman by the name of Nadine Hamm?’

  ‘May I say who’s calling, sir?’ the frigging butler asked.

  Anthony straightened his shoulders. ‘Deputy Dobbins from the Prophesy County Sheriff’s Department.’

  The man nodded and opened the door wider. Taking off his Stetson, Anthony stepped into a foyer that was about half the size of his whole house.

  ‘I’ll let madam know you’re here,’ the man said. He didn’t have an English accent. Anthony was disappointed by that.

  He stood there for a long moment, checking out the place. The chandelier above his head was about the size of his wife’s car. The flooring was white marble with a gray streak running hither and yon. He touched a wall to see if he was right, and sure enough it was covered in fabric, not wallpaper. And the fabric felt like silk, although a lot of things felt like silk to Anthony. There were bits and pieces of French-looking antiques placed here and there and, all in all, Anthony figured his yearly salary wouldn’t cover a month’s mortgage on this place.

  The butler came back. ‘Madam will see you,’ he said and turned toward a closed door about three closed doors down from where Anthony stood. Anthony followed.

  The butler opened the door, stepped aside and nodded Anthony in. A woman was standing by a roaring fireplace. She was not what Anthony had been led to expect. She was blonde, the honey blonde that nature intended, with large blue eyes, full lips, a slightly upturned nose and a perfect body. She was dressed conservatively in a straight medium-blue dress that reached her knees and had a scoop neck that only showed what Anthony thought were perfect collarbones with sleeves that went a little below her elbows. There was a tennis bracelet on one wrist, the diamonds bigger than any he’d seen on such a bracelet himself, and the ring on her left hand looked to Anthony like the Hope diamond. He admitted to himself that he could be mistaken.

  ‘Hi!’ the woman said and smiled brightly, her perfect teeth perfectly white. ‘I’m Nadine Osterman. Formerly Hamm. How can I help you?’

  ‘Ah,’ Anthony started, realizing that wasn’t a good beginning.

  Nadine’s smile softened. ‘Why don’t we both sit down, Deputy?’ she said.

  He waited for her to pick a white-and-gold brocade chair, then sat gingerly down on the sky-blue, high-backed sofa across from her.

  ‘My husband’s all right, isn’t he?’ she asked, a frown marring her perfect face.

  ‘As far as I know, ma’am,’ Anthony said. ‘I didn’t know you were married, actually, ma’am.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’m here about Hank Witovec.’

  Nadine’s eyes grew big. ‘What’s he done now?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing that I know of, ma’am,’ he said, then chided himself for his behavior. He was almost shucking and jiving in front of this woman, something he’d never done in his life. What was his problem? he wondered. ‘The thing is, ma’am,’ he started again, ‘we’ve been having some trouble at the sheriff’s office that seems to be connected to someone we put away. And we’re just checking up on the family members and loved ones of some of those perps. I mean perpetrators, ma’am.’

  ‘Am I or my family in danger, Deputy?’ she asked, clasping her hands in front of her.

  ‘Oh no, ma’am. Seems to be the other way around. We think a family member or loved one of somebody we put away might be wanting to take a little revenge.’

  ‘Oh!’ she said, her face lighting up. ‘And you think if I was stupid enough to go with Hank Witovec and even try to give him a phony alibi, I might be stupid enough to want revenge for you taking away my big old baby?’ She laughed.

  Anthony cringed. He was pretty sure this woman had nothing to do with what was going on. ‘Well, ma’am, we’re checking up on a lot of people.’

  ‘I’m sure you are!’ she said, seeming delighted. She shook her head and her face got serious. ‘Yes, at one time I was very stupid. So stupid I almost landed myself in jail for lying for that no good son of a bitch. I was so upset I left Longbranch in the middle of the night and went home to Tulsa.’ She smiled. ‘Got a job at a fancy men’s salon, which is where I met Henry, my husband. He moved his company to Bishop and so, of course, we moved too. Henry and I have two little girls. They’re both upstairs with the nanny right now. Would you like to meet them?’

  ‘Sure, yes, ma’am, that would be nice. I’ve got a baby girl myself. Three months old.’

  ‘How wonderful!’ she said and clapped her hands together.

  ‘But, ma’am, I gotta ask you about your whereabouts for a couple of time periods,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, of course! But if it helps, Henry and I and the girls just got back from a cruise two days ago. We were gone three weeks. Does that cover your time period?’

  Anthony sighed. ‘Yes, ma’am, it surely does.’

  Nadine Osterman stood up. ‘So let’s hop upstairs so you can meet the girls! They’ll just love your
uniform!’

  I got the ball rolling with the ME’s office, then called in the incident to Emmett.

  ‘What the hell?’ he said when I told him.

  ‘My sentiments exactly,’ I said.

  ‘You think this ties in with all this other crap?’

  I sighed. ‘How could it? I mean, what could one have to do with the other?’

  ‘Damned if I know,’ Emmett said.

  ‘Look, I’m going to go notify the family and then check out the last person I know that might have seen ol’ Joe. Anyway, can you head back to the shop?’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he said and we disconnected.

  The one thing – OK, one of many things – I didn’t want to do at that very moment was go tell Nick Permeter and his mama that baby brother Joe was lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor of the pool hall. Five’d get you ten Nick was gonna blame it on the sheriff’s department, maybe even yours truly.

  I waited until the ME got there, took down all the particulars I could get out of Buddy Sheridan, then headed to my squad car and off to the Permeter farm. Life sometimes sucks great big river rocks, know what I mean?

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Dalton, you think you can get away for a day?’ Holly asked her husband over the phone.

  ‘I don’t know, babe. We still got all this going on, with that crazy woman and all, but we ain’t doing much. How come you want me to get away?’

  ‘It’s Mama—’

  Dalton sat up straight in his chair, panic giving him perfect posture. ‘Is she OK? What happened?’

  ‘She’s OK, honey, really,’ Holly said. ‘It’s just that she’s so depressed. She wants so bad to go home, but we both know she can’t, not yet. But I think if she saw you, maybe …’

  ‘Maybe it would make her happy?’ Dalton suggested.

  Holly smiled. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Let me talk to Milt. Maybe I can leave now and be there ’fore it gets dark.’