Hometown Secrets

by David Bishop

  Every year Linda received a few letters from her high school classmate and best friend, Vera Cunningham. Upon entering high school, Vera began making herself available to boys. Nearly every high school class has at least one female who shares herself as easily as did Vera. Of course, the boys needed to take her to the movies or wherever. Without ever having to buy her own ticket, Vera got to see every movie that came to town. When there was no picture Vera wanted to see, or hadn’t already seen, she was plied with dinner or a drive to the local swimming hole. Vera was a solid student and never a troublemaker. She just loved sex and was refreshingly candid about it. Linda suspected there wasn’t a girl in Cranston who, to one degree or another, at one time or another hadn’t envied Vera.

  Vera had remained in Cranston, stayed single, learned dressmaking from her mother, and eventually inherited her family home and took over the business, Vera’s Threads. The store had always been favored by the Cranston women. The favor of the Cranston women meant that, despite Vera not attending Saint Christopher Catholic Church, Vera escaped the subtle punishments meted out to others who didn’t fully fall in step with Cranston’s unwritten rules. Vera’s letters, also sent to Linda’s Portland postal box, were always postmarked from Wichita. Linda planned to ask Vera why.

  The identification Linda carried reported her name to be Carol Benson. That name was one of the sets of false IDs given to her by Cynthia LeClair, an elderly lady of somewhat mysterious skills, in Sea Crest, Oregon, with whom Linda had been great friends. The color of Linda’s hair as well as the clothing and accessories she brought oozed the style and image she had carved out for Carol Benson, a persona quite different from vintage Linda Darby.

  Today was Sunday, so the ringing of the church bell was not unexpected. Only the timing of that first bong felt odd. The bell had pealed just as her foot reached down from the train to touch the possessed ground of Cranston.

  Had Billy somehow learned I was coming home? Is my paranoia showing?

  Billy Cranston would be close to fifty now. He had always turned on the spigot of her juices. Would he still have that effect? King Billy had married. This she knew from the Internet. Billy, undoubtedly, had set up his marriage with a prenuptial that limited his wife to a modest sum, modest for the Cranston brood anyway. The family motto held that whatsoever belonged to Cranston blood would always belong to Cranston blood, which substantially meant Cranston male blood. During the early years, while Billy and Linda were still all tangled up with each other, he told her that should he ever marry, he would insist on a prenuptial agreement just as had existed between his father and mother, and between his older brother and his wife.

  The land and businesses controlled by Billy Cranston were legally held in one of three Cranston corporations. The voting shares in these corporations were owned only by Billy Cranston—the younger, but only surviving Cranston son. Billy’s older brother had died while serving in the U.S. Marine Corp. Wives were never allowed to work in any of the family businesses. There were two Cranston sisters who held minority interests of nonvoting shares.

  A small squad of CPAs and attorneys were employed to maintain a clear paper trail with the hope this would evidence that no wife’s money or joint marital funds were ever invested in Cranston businesses. And that no events could inadvertently create sweat equity claims if any of the wives decided to end their marriages.

  One question for which Linda intuitively knew the answer: Does Billy have a mistress? Sure Billy Cranston had mistresses, attractive women of negotiable virtue, buying them for less than the folding money he likely held at any time in the warm depths of his pockets. Billy Cranston still looked to temporarily hide his dick under skirts which did not hang in his wife’s closet.

  If Billy hits on me, perhaps I should say when he hits on me, will I succumb? If he doesn’t, will I feel offended? Is my vanity showing?

  Linda slung the strap of her purse cross-shoulder to keep it secure, picked up her two suitcases, and started her three-block walk to the Cranston-owned two-story Frontier Hotel on the corner of First and Main.

  She chose a route that required her to walk a couple extra blocks, taking her up Second Street along the side of the home of Vera Cunningham who lived on the second floor above Vera’s Threads. There was no reason for doing this other than wanting to make some personal connection, even if only to pass the Cunningham home, a house where she spent a great deal of time while growing up.

  Suddenly, there was Vera, the back of her anyway. She sat a few steps down from the landing at the top of the wooden staircase that descended from her upstairs residence to Second Street.

  When they were teens, Linda and Vera often sat on those very steps. Afternoons, the staircase rested in the shade, gentled by a breeze that regularly funneled down Second Street. Vera’s mother used to holler at them to not sit there saying it was immodest to do so in their dresses, but it was the coolest place in town. The air gusts would billow their skirts, tickling the soft whites of their thighs. Linda smiled at recalling they had another reason for sitting there, the attention of the boys with whom Vera was always in demand. During those years, Linda enjoyed basking in the banter that took place between Vera and the bolder boys.

  The clerk behind the Frontier Hotel counter was a stranger. She signed in, paid what was required, and schlepped her own bags up to her room. She paid five dollars more per night for a second-floor room with a window that looked across the street toward the Cranston Bank & Trust, the local drugstore, and The Do Drop Inn.

  Over the years, Linda and Vera never exchanged pictures. It just didn’t seem necessary. The image of Vera that Linda carried was of her friend decked out in the sexy red dress she wore to her twentieth birthday party. Linda stayed for that party and left town the next morning.

  Chapter Three

  Not being recognized is as much about not allowing your behavior to be familiar, as it is about not allowing your appearance to be familiar

  After unpacking, Linda decided to go to The Do Drop Inn to listen, observe, and to get something to eat. She put on heels and a black and white dress which cut a clean line just above her knees. The Drop, as it was known locally, had always served burgers and fries. She figured they still did.

  The Cranston-owned Do Drop Inn was roughly across the street from her hotel. As she stepped off the curb, she felt herself rushing as if returning to a memory. The warmth of the sun touched her head and shoulders. The sky was light blue with a few distant rain clouds, but she didn’t expect rain today. Neither did she expect what would soon follow.

  As soon as she cleared the doorway she knew the answer to her first question: The Drop still served burgers and fries. The place had been painted a new shade of brown slightly lighter than the rough-cut stained boards used as a chair rail. A new juke box adorned the far wall, but the same wallboxes accompanied each booth, allowing patrons to select songs from where they sat. A large picture she didn’t remember hung on the sidewall, something undecipherable with lots of bold colors that didn’t seem to be getting along with each other.

  She stepped up to the bar and ordered the All-American which included a soda with free refills. She was engulfed in the shadow cast by the bartender. He was no more than six-foot-two, but he seemed nearly as wide. He had massive shoulders and arms developed by lifting more than beer kegs. There was no paunch resting on his western style belt buckle, not even a small one. A swarthy looking man, she guessed of Mediterranean descent. He did not look familiar.

  She sat in one of their wooden, unpadded booths and opened a fascinating mystery novel she had started reading while on the train. After several pages, the bartender, who appeared to be the only working employee, brought her food. The plate cuddled in his broad hand like an eaglet in a nest.

  “Hi, miss, you new in town?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Going to be here long?”

  “At least long enough to have lunch.”

  He smiled, left her food, and returned to a
position behind the bar.

  She put the book aside, slathered the burger bun with the thousand-island dressing she had requested on the side, picked up the burger, and took a first bite. As she chewed, the tavern filled with light as the west-facing front door swung in. A young man, who had likely been in elementary school when Linda left town, stood in the center of that light, his hand atop the open swinging door.

  At that moment, routine behavior in Cranston abruptly ceased.

  Dead silence drowned the jukebox as the man went down. Easily at first, as does a film in slow motion, then hard and sudden. Two guys at the bar, the dark-complected bartender, a couple sitting two booths over, and Linda watched until a heavy thud shattered the silent limbo. His head pounded the concrete floor, then repeated, slightly muted, when his forehead bounced before settling against the hard gray flooring.

  As if by reaction, the bartender flattened his hands on the bar and catapulted over the counter and the barstools, to the customer side. When he got to the fallen man, he knelt, rolled him onto his back, and immediately checked his pulse at the side of his neck.

  “Carlos has been shot,” he said looking toward the men at the bar.

  “Will he be okay, Mud?” asked one of the men.

  “I’m afraid he’s dead,” the bartender said, his nickname apparently Mud.

  For a bartender, Mud had been not only nimble, but quick to recognize death.

  “You should call the sheriff,” said one of the men sitting on a barstool. “Or maybe Billy, Yeah, Billy, whatdaya think?”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Mud said.

  “Oh, my God,” said the woman sitting in the booth with the man. “His mother works for the Cranstons. She’s a maid in their home. She’ll wanna know what’s happened. Honey, go get her.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Maria. You know. Maria. Maria! Go on.”

  “You know her much better than me. You go, Terry. I’ll stay.”

  The woman got up and hurried toward the door. She stopped suddenly as she neared Carlos’s body, turned and went around behind the bar and through a door. The aroma from a deep fryer rushing out through that door revealed it to be the kitchen, likely with an exit to the back alley.

  By this time, Mud had moved around the end of the bar, raised the hinged section and returned to his position on the working side of the counter. He immediately picked up a phone on the back counter and dialed.

  As he did, an older man with an obvious hunchback and a scruffy beard, the collar on his rumpled shirt partially turned up, walked up to the bartender, said something and pointed at both his eyes using both his index fingers. The bartender opened a drawer in the counter and handed the old man a pair of glasses. The old man slid the glasses up under the bill of his soiled ball cap which carried the name of the grain cooperative near the interstate highway. The old geezer smiled and nodded before squeezing past the bartender. He picked up a tray of dirty glasses and dishes and went back into the kitchen, limping slightly.

  After a moment, the bartender turned, faced the wall, and spoke. When he hung up, he dialed again, keeping his back toward the patrons. Linda figured he called the sheriff first and then his boss, Billy Cranston, or one of his underlings.

  As far as the others knew, Linda was a stranger in town. As such, she stayed put and watched while finishing her burger and nibbling on the heaping pile of fries which had been scattered on her plate the way tossed kindling bunches in a fire pit. Eventually, the bartender brought her a fresh cola, a refill. Mud had seemed completely in his element when he checked Carlos and calmly declared he was dead—almost too calm.

  Not counting numerous lynchings Linda had read about, carried out in the old days by the town’s vigilantes, she couldn’t recall ever reading of a homicide in the Cranston Gazette. She had religiously read the Gazette online, once a week in the library near her home in Sea Crest Oregon. The library had subscribed at her request, showing it, not Linda, as the subscriber. She donated an amount sufficient to cover the costs associated with their doing so.

  While eating, Linda watched a pale, thin man at the bar draw hard on a cigar the width of his nose, both showing red on the ends. His cheeks collapsed inward in response to his harsh inhale. Then she heard someone at the bar say the victim’s name, adding a last name: Carlos Molina. That same man said Carlos worked, had worked Linda thought would now be correct, as a laborer of some sort at the Cranston feedlot. However, Carlos, his shoulders in his own blood, now wore slacks and a blood-soiled button-down collar long-sleeved shirt. Not the dress of a farm laborer. From what she could tell, given the distance and the less than ideal light, his fingernails looked clean and the skin on his hands was not embedded with soil or heavily calloused. One of the men at the bar said Carlos had no family other than his mother.

  The light from the open door again dashed past Linda to crash against the back wall. This time, a sheriff’s deputy walked in and told everyone to stay put that Sheriff Blackstone was on his way.

  A few minutes later, a man Linda immediately recognized as Billy Cranston walked in followed by another man. As they came in, she heard enough trailing words to know they had been talking about a fire and not the town’s first murder in God knows how long. Judging by his uniform, the second man, the one who held open the door for Billy, was Sheriff Blackstone.

  The clock in the town square screamed once, followed by a second bong to announce it was two in the afternoon, a little early for a feedlot worker to be dressed business casual and entering a bar. Perhaps today had been Carlos’s day off.

  “Mud,” Billy said in a stern voice, while making a couple of jerky moves with his hand, his thumb out like an impatient hitchhiker. The bartender picked up the racing forms Linda had seen on the bar when she walked in, and slid them under the bar. Right after ordering, she had heard the men discussing wagers on horses. Someone was making book in Cranston, and doing it rather openly. At this point a good guess would be the bartender, Mud.

  Had this all been going on before I left Cranston? Maybe it had always been here, but I was too young, self-absorbed, and naïve to see some things plainly there to be seen.

  Billy Cranston and Sheriff Blackstone looked around. As he panned the room, Billy’s eyes stopped on Linda. Her first face-to-face immediately wet her palms, but nowhere else. She froze, but didn’t panic.

  Billy removed the remainder of a fat cigar from his face. He looked at the stub, the way a man does when taking a pipe or cigar from his mouth. He sputtered his tongue against his lips a couple times before using his fingers to remove a morsel of tobacco that had somehow gained freedom from the stalk in his mouth. He looked at it before flicking it from his fingers. Then Billy looked at Linda again, holding his gaze for more than a moment.

  Billy’s hair had thinned some, his body widened some. More softened, than widened, likely from an excess of everything but exercise. She forced herself to hold still, not smile or look away.

  I’m a stranger who has just seen a man shot dead. Look disturbed, she told herself, curious, even somewhat frightened, nothing more. Recognize nothing and no one.

  The entire establishment had been stone still since the authorities walked in. That quiet was broken by the gimpy-legged dishwasher who again came out from the backroom carrying a stack of beer mugs which he proceeded to put in the cooler beside the row of draft beer pulls. Other than that action, no one moved. No one spoke. The few customers watched Billy. Not the sheriff. Billy.

  The bartender stood center on his own side of the bar, his arms slid outward, stiff, his hands cupping the edge of the bar, his elbows slightly hyper-extended. Without fanfare or anyone speaking, he reached for a clean shot glass, then a second and filled both with whiskey. By the red wax around the neck of the bottle, Linda recognized the brand to be Maker’s Mark. Mud set both shot glasses, now dark in color, on the end of the bar.

  Billy’s stare moved to the man sitting in the booth alone, the one whose female companion had left t
o get Carlos’s mother. Billy also looked at the men at the bar. They each looked at him, smiling or nodding in submission, or fear, or simply deference.

  So far, Billy hasn’t recognized me. Then again, the light in The Drop is dim and Carlos, not I, holds center stage.

  The sheriff, or whom Linda assumed to be the sheriff, moved across the carpet to stand in the middle of the small parquet dance floor. He hunched his shoulders before stuffing his thumbs behind his wide black belt, his shiny boots reflecting the low lighting sent out from the jukebox.

  “Most of you know me. I’m Sheriff Reginald Blackstone.”

  His identity surprised Linda. The Reginald Blackstone she had known in high school would be the last young man she would ever imagine growing up to become sheriff. Reggie had always been big on the outside, but Jell-O like on the inside, using his bulk to bully those he could, which were most of her classmates.

  The man’s clearly still a bully. Funny how things change, but stay the same.

  “All of you stay right where you are,” he said, “for the time being. Don’t talk amongst yourselves about what you observed here. Speak only to me.” He punctuated his order by banging his left thumb against his chest.

  How silly, Linda said to herself. What the hell does he think we all have been talking about ever since the shooting?

  The sheriff walked to the jukebox, grabbed the cord and jerked, pulling the plug. The music died and the jukebox’s light reflection immediately retreated from what appeared to be his hand-tooled snakeskin boots.

  While the sheriff commanded the floor, Billy took a seat at the bar. The bartender brought him a draft beer and a salt shaker. They didn’t speak, but slowly and down low along the bar top, Billy extended his closed fist toward the barkeep for a macho fist bump. Billy salted his beer and took a drink. He tongue removed the foam left on his upper lip. He wanted to come across as unconcerned, but he had come as quickly as Sheriff Blackstone. King Billy was concerned all right. From what Linda knew, this was the first murder in his private fiefdom, at least since the beginning of his personal reign.