Murder and Mayhem

by Hamilton, B L

“Danny Richards, and, Nicola Madison,” he said nodding in Nicola’s direction. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you and your lovely family, Gina.”

  “You have a nice day, Danny. And I hope you enjoy your vacation.”

  Gina turned to Nicola and clasped her hand warmly. “Nicola. I’ve enjoyed meeting you.”

  “I enjoyed meeting you too, Gina. Take care. And good luck with the hibernation,” Nicola added.

  As the woman walked away, she turned and waved. “Thanks, Nicola, I will need all the help I can get,” she said as she slipped her dark glasses on. She knelt on the sand and hugged her son.

  Danny took hold of Nicola’s hand and headed down the beach leaving Gina, Thomas and faithful dog, Cindy, to enjoy the sunshine that would all too quickly become just another memory as the cold weather set in.

  Nearly a mile from the lighthouse, but still within easy sight of the small family group, Danny dropped down onto the sand and tugged Nicola down with him. They lay with their hands clasped behind their heads and listened to the sound of the sea as the sun warmed their faces, their minds drifting, letting thoughts pass like clouds.

  Gold and coppery hues washed through Nicola’s hair as the gentle breeze off the ocean blew it in swirls across her face. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of sea birds calling; a car thundering past on the otherwise deserted road and the sound of the wind as it rustled through the dry grass that served as a break between beach and street. In the distance she could hear the high pitched excited voice of Thomas, and Cindy barking. Every now and then Gina’s voice floated up to them as their minds drifted, allowing thoughts to pass like clouds.

  Danny propped himself up on his elbow and gently ran his fingers over her face; the skin was smooth and lightly tanned. When Nicola opened her eyes, small lights played in them.

  “Tell me about Sara?” she said as the hushed words were carried away on the breeze.

  When Danny pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head and cupped her face between his hands, Nicola looked into dark eyes filled with secrets he could never share, and knew the answer before he spoke the words.

  “No, Nic. Now’s not the time. You’ll just have to be patient with me.” Danny slid his sunglasses on and gazed up at the sky. Through the dark lenses, it was without color and the clouds, diffused – like the face that haunted him.

  Hidden from view behind tall sea grasses that acted as a windbreak, a beige-colored rental car sat by the side of the road where a man wearing a wide brimmed hat, pulled low over blond hair that curled along the base of his neck, and created shadows on his mirrored sunglasses, sipped coffee from a take-out cup, and watched gulls riding the foam capped waves. The wind off the water rustled through the sea grass and the high pitched voice of a small child and barking dog drifted up to him. The skin at the corner of his mouth twitched as anger bloomed in his chest like an old friend. He knew it was not good to be locked up with his thoughts, but he had nowhere else to take them, so he allowed them to gather and feed at his heart.

  *****

  After dinner Ross and I were in the bedroom keeping Rosie company. I’d finished another chapter and Rosie wanted me to read what I had written, when she was taking a nap.

  *****

  The rising moon was almost full. It appeared so close to the earth the craters and the face was clear.

  Waves crested against the hard-packed sand as Danny pulled the SUV onto the shoulder of the road and switched on the parking lights. They walked back along the narrow strip of road covered in a fine layer of sand blown up from the beach, with the grit crunching beneath their shoes, like broken eggshells.

  The restaurant was packed as people made the most of the last of the warm weather. The efficient staff cleared a recently vacated table on the terrace that had a view of the ocean.

  Once they were seated, a waitress took their order and returned with a bottle of chilled water and two glasses, followed by large mugs of coffee. A middle-aged couple pushed past wearing T-shirts with the words Indian Wells splashed across the back in bright colors. Danny, noting the name, recalled something Nicola had told him during one of their many late-night phone calls.

  “Didn’t you tell me you have family in Indian Wells?”

  Nicola nodded. “Yes, my grandparents, on my mother’s side. Granny Madison lives in Palos Verdes Estates on Redondo Beach, in Los Angeles.”

  “Do you get to see them much?”

  “I used to visit them often when I lived in L.A, but since the accident I’ve only been back a couple of times. I know I should, but it just seems all too hard.”

  Sea birds wheeled above the waves, calling. The air was filled with the tang of salt and seaweed – and cooking from the restaurant. In the twilight small clouds on the horizon skimmed across the purple and orange sky.

  Nicola played with her water glass. “Indian Wells is off Interstate-Ten, near Joshua Tree National Park.”

  Danny nodded, and said, “I’ve been through it a couple of times. Some years ago I traveled I-10 through Phoenix, Houston, and Baton Rouge, to Mobile, Alabama–then north to Montgomery, and Birmingham, the place of segregation, freedom riders, and Martin Luther King. It’s all right there, in Alabama…”

  *****

  “You’ve got a mate in Alabama haven’t you, Ross?”

  “Uh-huh. Decatur.”

  “Where’s Decatur?” Rosie asked.

  “It’s up near Huntsville on the Tennessee River. It’s a real pretty place. I’ve stayed with Pete a couple of times while Bee stayed with you.” He took a sip of coffee and said to my sister, “Would you like me to tell you a story, Hon? I think you’ll find it amusing.”

  Rosie laughed. “All your stories are amusing, Ross.”

  Drew, home for the weekend grabbed a chair and joined us in the bedroom.

  “Ross is going to tell us a story about a friend of his who lives in Decatur,” Rosie told him.

  “Is that the one in Alabama?”

  “Yeah, on the Tennessee River.”

  “I went there way back in my college days to some kind of music festival. Sorry, Ross I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Drew said.

  “That’s okay, Drew. Well, this one time I was staying with Pete we got to talking about music. Now Pete’s in his late sixties, early seventies, I think, so his taste in music goes back much further than mine. Pete’s never married and has only two passions in his life, Harley Davidson motorcycles, of which he has quite a collection–and bluegrass music.”

  “Nothing wrong with a good collection of bluegrass music,” Drew interjected. “I’ve got the odd record or two, myself.”

  We all laughed. Drew’s collection of bluegrass music is legendary. At last count it stood close to 1,000 CD’s, DVD’s and old records going back to the Appalachian roots of the twenties.

  “There are a couple of really good bluegrass singers I’d pay premium dollars to hear,” Ross continued. “Anyhow this one time I was staying with Pete he tells me this story...

  “He said that in the mid-seventies he was going to a bluegrass festival in south-western Virginia to see a couple of good ole boys who were really big in the bluegrass music scene at the time, Ralph Stanley and Bill Monroe.”

  Drew nodded. “I’ve got a couple of their records. I think Ricky Skaggs used to be in Ralph Stanley’s band way back in the seventies along with another great country singer, Keith Whitley, who became a star in the late eighties, before he drank himself to death. What a waste of good talent that turned out to be.”

  “You’re not kidding. That man could really sing. Anyway, this festival was at the old homestead, up in McClure, where Ralph and Carter Stanley had grown up. So Pete and his mate set off in this old 1956 Lincoln Premiere...”

  “My God, a 1956 Lincoln Premiere. I used to have one of those. It had a back seat big enough to fit a football team in.” Drew laughed. “Boy we used to have some fun in that old thing. Sorry Ross, go on.”

  “That’s okay. Apparently the directio
ns they’d been given were pretty sketchy. They were told to go to Norton and just follow the signs. But when they got to Norton there weren’t any signs. So they stopped at a gas station and asked some guy if he knew where the blue-grass festival was.

  “He said he didn’t, but pointed to a guy with a pickup at the gas pump who had a couple of bloodhounds in the back, and a couple of shotguns racked under the back window of the cabin. Pete said he looked like a real mountain man. He was dressed in dirty overalls and had half his teeth missing, the rest black, and had a week’s growth on his face, and wild looking eyes. Pete said he looked like he was right out of Deliverance, you know…, the movie.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “So, they walked over to Deliverance Man and told him they were looking for the Ralph Stanley show. The guy told them to follow him and he’d wave them off when they came to the turn-off.

  “I don’t think I would have gone with him. Would you, Ross?” Rosie said.

  “Hell. No! Not in those backwoods where you could disappear and never be heard of again. But Pete’s a big guy so they probably figured it was two against one; and the mountain man was real puny, the odds on him getting the drop on them were almost negligible,” Ross said.

  “Well, anyway, they followed him and eventually the pick-up stopped and the guy pointed up a dirt road. Pete and his mate weren’t sure where he was pointing, but the guy took off in a cloud of dust leaving them scratching their heads, wondering what they were getting themselves into. They drove the old Lincoln up the side of the hill along the dirt road that was little more than a track past abandoned cars that had been airmailed into the trees.”

  “What do you mean–airmailed?” I asked.

  “You know–they drive the car to the edge of the cliff and jump out just before it goes over the side. It lands in a tree at the bottom of the ravine. I saw it happen in Australia once, but it was done by accident–not design.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Sounds a bit like flirting with death, to me,” Drew said.

  “They’re probably out of their trees on moonshine and wacky-tobaccy when they do it so they’re would have been feeling no pain, and thought they could fly.”

  “Probably.”

  “Anyhow, back to the story: Pete said he and his buddy drove up the hill past rundown and abandoned shacks with rusted out shells of cars in the yard, and discarded furniture and appliances, until they came to an old barn that had a poster with Ralph’s picture on it and thought they must have been getting close. But the dirt track just kept winding its way around the top of the ridge seeming to go nowhere. Then, suddenly they heard music and yelling in the distance, but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, because the sound echoed around the canyon.

  “After another mile or so they came across a couple of teenagers walking along the side of the road. They asked them where Ralph’s place was and they said it was back where the poster with Ralph Stanley’s picture on it was tacked to the side of a barn.

  “So they went back to the old barn and noticed what looked like a dirt track barely visible through the thick underbrush, and headed up. When they finally emerged at the top of the ridge the place was packed with RVs and tents and people everywhere. And there was Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley in the middle of the crowd having a grand old time. Pete said there must have been oh, hundred- hundred-and-fifty banjos and fiddles up there. I told him some folks would say a hundred and fifty banjos at the bottom of the Tennessee River would be a good start, but Pete just laughed, and said it was a vicious lie. He reckoned it was the best bluegrass music he’d heard and the best time he’d ever had.”

  “That must have been really something. Wish I had been there,” Drew said.

  “Me too. Mountain men aside, It did sound like fun,” Ross said, and added, “Apparently, a couple of years later there was an article in the paper that said Bill Monroe, in his seventies at the time, a so-called devout Christian, had been arrested for hitting his girlfriend with a Bible. The caption under the picture, Pete said, read, ‘Bible Belter’.”

  “Mmm,” I said, with a vacuous mouth.

  Ross stood up and moved towards the door. “I’m heading to Fairfax to pick up some bike parts,” he said. “Can I get you girls anything before I leave?”

  “Nothing for me, thank Ross. What about you, Hon?”

  “No nothing. That was a nice dinner, thanks Ross,” she said, patting her stomach even though she’d barely eaten enough to keep a sparrow alive.

  “And I’ve got some calls to make,” Drew said.

  “Well, that just leaves us,” I said to Rosie. Do you want to have a rest or would you like me to read my latest chapter?”

  “I want to hear what’s happening in the fairytale world so I don’t have to think about what’s happening in the real one.”

  *****

  The ground was littered with leaves from bare-branched trees that glistened from the early morning drizzle.

  Nicola tore her eyes away from the children playing in the park and smiled over at him. “You didn’t finish telling me about your trip through the south,” she said.

  Danny drained the last of his coffee and signaled a refill.

  “Oh, sorry, where was I?”

  “You were heading north.”

  “That’s right. After I left Alabama I went to Tennessee, home of sippin’ whiskey, country music, mountain men and Dollywood.” He smiled his thanks to the waitress as she topped-up their coffee.

  “Anything else I can get for you, folks?” the waitress asked.

  “Not for me, thanks. Nic would you like something else? A slice of apple pie a-la-mode smothered in cream?”

  “No, thank you, I’m fine,” Nicola said and the waitress moved on to the next table.

  “In Tennessee I went to Memphis–home of the Delta blues–and visited Graceland,” Danny said.

  “I would never have picked you for an Elvis fan.”

  “I’m not, but it was a really hot day and so I went on a tour of Graceland partly to get out of the heat, and partly because I didn’t have anything else to do. I was just filling in time while I waited to meet up with a guy who had some parts for me. Have you been to Memphis?”

  “No. I haven’t been to that part of the country.”

  “Memphis is a nice place. The Peabody Hotel on Union Avenue is like something out of another era and there are some lovely old home on Adams Avenue, but unless you’re an Elvis fan visiting Graceland is not something I recommend you put on your ‘to do’ list.

  *****

  “You were never a big Elvis fan, were you, Bubbie?”

  “Me? No. Roy Orbison was the man that did it for me. I cried every time I heard him sing.”

  “I was a Beatles fan. Loved Paul McCartney. I used to dream he’d see me in a crowd one day, our eyes would meet and it would be love at first sight,” she said, and let out a long sigh.

  “I remember when you and Robyn wagged school and went to the airport the first time they came to Australia.”

  “Then we got sprung when our parents saw us on the Channel Nine News and confiscated our Beatles records.”

  I laughed. “I remember you cried nonstop for a week. In the end Mum gave them back because she couldn’t stand it anymore, and then you drove everyone nuts playing them over and over until Dad threatened to chuck them in the rubbish bin.”

  Rosie laughed and watched a small gray bird nesting in the oak tree outside the window. “Do you ever see any of the old gang?” she asked after a while.

  “No. But a while back I came across one of the boys from the old neighborhood–used to be a big Elvis fan. Stovepipe pants, sideburns, hair combed over into a curl in front with a ducktail at the back.”

  “Do you mean now, or then?”

  “Then. He was so excited to see me after all these years he kept going on about us having a ‘thing together’,” I said curling my fingers in the universal quotation gesture. “I didn’t have a clue what he was tal
king about and thought he must have had me confused with you.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Johnny Mancuso.”

  “Italian guy! Mum would have tanned your hide if she caught you going out with one of those–remember how she pronounced it– Eye-talian Casanovas.”

  “Tell me about it. I made the mistake of having this cute Italian guy I’d met at the beach pick me up at home one night. Mum answered the door, gave him the once over and sent him on his way. I met all my dates on the street corner after that. Did you know him?”

  “Who? The guy who came to the house?”

  “No dopey. Johnny Mancuso.”

  Rosie shook her head. “No. That name doesn’t ring any bells with me. Did you know him?”

  “Oh I knew him all right. He used to live with his grandmother on Stanley Street. Tall, dark hair, cheeky grin, warm brown eyes that could melt icebergs. But I don’t remember ever having a ‘thing’ with him. Wish I had. He was real cute. But he was a mate of Brian’s and never gave me so much as a look.” Brian had lived in the house opposite the one my sister and I grew up in. He was a couple of years older and thought my sister and I were annoying pests.

  Rosie thought for a moment, and shook her head. “No. Still doesn’t ring any bells. So what did you say to him?”

  “Nothing. I decided to go along with it. Who knows, it might give me some street cred in the old neighborhood. I’d like to be remembered as that wild Bethany Palmer who had a ‘thing’ with Johnny Mancuso, instead of that skinny kid who lived next to the church.”

  Rosie laughed. “It would be more exciting to have a reputation for being wild rather than not to be thought about at all. Next time you run into someone from the old neighborhood do you think you could start a rumor about me? I’d love to have had a tarnished reputation. It would make me sound exciting and mysterious.”

  “Okay. Next time I see any of the old gang I’ll do my best to make you sound as trashy as possible,” I said with the best intention in mind.