by Jane Elzey
If you’re lucky and you know it share this coin was engraved on one side, a casino logo on the other.
The bartender picked it up and chuckled. “I like being lucky,” he said and winked. “This one’s on me.” He pulled her mug from the coaster. “What’s your pleasure?”
Smiling, she said, “Stella.”
He whistled softly. “That’s a long way uptown from Old Style.”
“That’s what we drank in college because it was dollar cheap and everywhere. Old Style, I mean,” she said, her fingers now twirling the tall Weizen glass he set before her.
“And you drank too much one night, right?”
“Not exactly.”
The bartender faded away to the other end of the bar, filling orders from other patrons. She watched the fluidity of his motions, a well-rehearsed dance as he popped, poured, blended, and stirred. The bar was crowded. Not surprising, since it seemed to be the closest pub in a county that had been dry since the prohibition like more than half of Arkansas.
A commercial on the radio for a new bar in Hot Springs ended, and old school Jimi Hendrix filled the room. A man at the end of the bar was grooving with the music, his stringy black ponytail bobbing with the beat, his eyes closed. The bartender drifted back in her direction.
“Buy me another, and I’ll tell you the story.” She smiled her best, most flirtatious smile.
“I’ve always been a sucker for a redhead,” he said with a wink, dancing away to fill drink orders. He returned with another Stella.
“In this bar I went to a lot, we used to have an Old Style beer contest every year.” The alcohol was loosening her tongue. “You know, like a wet T-shirt contest but without the water. It was a costume and talent contest. And the winner got pizza and a twenty-dollar tab.”
The bartender nodded in encouragement.
She twirled the glass, drank, and set it back down.
“It was called The Shanty. It was a little bar wedged between the shore and A1A in Daytona Beach. What I remember most about that bar was that it stunk like old beer, B-O, and Hawaiian Tropic.” She laughed at the memory. “The floors were never swept clean of the sand that got tracked in by thirsty surfers and the chicks in string bikinis who wanted to wax their boards. You know what I mean.”
His eyes lit up when he laughed.
“Idiot that I am, I thought I could win the Old Style crown by tapping out ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ by Iron Butterfly.”
“Holy shit! That’s seventeen minutes long.”
She nodded. He knew his music.
“I was dressed like Columbia in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, tap shoes and all. Cute little short shorts.”
The bartender grinned with anticipation.
“I was tipsy already, and I slipped about three minutes into it. Went into a split on that dirty floor.” She glanced down at the floor beneath her barstool and winced.
“Nasty floor,” she said, shaking her head, then lifted the glass in a toast. “I didn’t win the Miss Old Style crown, either. I did get some sympathy, but it wasn’t near enough to take the sting out of the humiliation.”
He chuckled and opened another beer. “Bought and paid for,” he said as he set the bottle in front of her. She smiled at his generosity.
“I was in a beard contest once,” he said with a grin, his fingers stroking the gray threads under his chin. “Didn’t win that, either.” His smile was full of charm. “I think that means we have something in common.”
He drifted away again, and Amy looked around the bar. A couple sat at a table near the far end, making love with their eyes, their knees intertwined in a not-so-subtle wrap under the table.
Even from this distance, she saw the woman’s hair was bottle-blonde, and her smile was all bright white and perfection. Her cleavage, which was much too deep to be real, spilled out of her tank top. A matching black skirt rode seductively up her thighs, and Amy narrowed her eyes to focus on a tattoo there. It was either an angel with wings or a bumblebee.
It had to be a bumblebee. A dotted tattoo trail marked the flight of the bee leading the way to her nether regions some might call the honey pot.
What was she thinking? She sighed and shook her head. Three beers on an empty stomach and she was buzzed.
Her thoughts shifted to Zelda. She met her man in a bar, too. Zack adored Zelda, or at least he appeared to, at first, but expensive gifts and good looks didn’t make or break a marriage. Betrayal broke a marriage. Death broke a marriage.
Till death do us part.
Zelda had gotten her wish. Vamoose.
The blonde with the tattoo noticed Amy’s attention and narrowed her eyes. Turning slightly to look out the front window where the Hummer was parked, she looked back at Amy and smiled with bared teeth.
Amy turned away quickly. The smile wasn’t intended to be kind.
The woman must have recognized the Hummer. She must know Zack if she knew his car. Out of the corner of her eye she watched her, questions bubbling forward.
Did Zack have a lover on the side?
Maybe Zelda suspected Zack was cheating on her. Amy glanced back at the bartender, now cramming bottles into a cooler of ice. She motioned with her head in the woman’s direction, a question in her eyes.
“Wild as a bedbug,” he said in a whisper, leaning across the bar. “Which is where she spends a lot of her time. She’s the Honey Bee Queen—lah-dee-dah—and this place is her hive. Her granddaddy owns it. Don’t go looking at her man,” he warned, “or she’ll sting you dead.”
Amy smiled. Honey Bee Queen. Not all that different from Miss Old Style. She glanced briefly at the woman before returning her attention to the bartender.
“What’s the story about that cranky old guy over off 214? The one living in that sad little trailer under the cell tower?”
“We’ve got more than a few sad little trailers around here,” he answered. “And more than our share of cell towers.”
He sounded bitter.
“You must be talking about old man Crawley over in Yell County.”
She knew she recognized that name. That was the name on the mailbox. That was the name in one of the articles in Zack’s office.
“He does have a sad story,” he said, nodding. “He comes in here every once in a while. Came in here a lot right after his wife died. I haven’t seen him much lately. His old dog would sit in the back of his truck all day.
“I always felt sorry for that mutt. That dog waited in the hot, in the cold. It didn’t matter. I guess he jumped out when he had to mark the bushes, but I never saw him do it. Crawley always parked the cab facing out. The dog would sit and stare at him in through that window.” He slapped a threadbare bar rag in the direction of the front of the bar. “I took him out a burger a couple of times.”
“How did his wife die?”
“Cancer.”
She shook her head in sympathy.
“Dog, too. About three months after the wife died. Penny, I think. The wife’s name was Penny.”
“Sad.”
“Brain tumor.”
Amy was still shaking her head. It was sad. A man loses his wife and dog at the same time. That’s would be a hard grief to shake.
“If you take Crawley’s word for it, it was that cell tower his trailer sits under that gave them both cancer. That’s all he talked about until he got stewed on bourbon. Evan Williams. Neat. That’s what he drank.”
He mopped at the bar with the rag. “Somebody brought a flyer in here one day about how cell towers were giving people brain cancer and killing all the bees.” He nodded with the rim of his hat in the direction of the woman in the black skirt. “Most likely responsible for that flyer, I bet,” he said. “Crawley’s been trying to sell his land, I hear. No one’s buying.”
“Why put up the tower in the first place?”
“Money, I guess. I hear those leases pay a tidy sum every month. Money for nothing, you know?”
She matched his smile. Her favorite song.
So that’s why he was bitter toward Zack. He blamed Zack for his wife’s and dog’s death. Had his shoes been on her feet, she might have blamed Zack, too. She remembered the newspaper clipping in Zack’s office files.
“How long ago did all that happen?”
“It was last summer. Funny thing, though,” he said, swiping the rag on the bar in front of her. “A guy with a Hummer like yours used to come in every once in a while for a beer and a burger.”
Amy’s attention snapped back.
“He came in here not long ago. Met some great big fellow in a suit, as I recall. Sat over at that table.” He nodded in the direction of the lovers. “Single malt scotch. He sweated like a pig in a blanket. Hummer guy had a beer.
“Your Hummer . . . It wouldn’t be the same one, would it? Can’t say we get too many Hummers around here. Certainly not many pretty ladies in Hummers.”
He smiled, and she knew where his mind was headed. If she had more time, she might have been more receptive to a date. It had been a long time. Casual sex wasn’t in the rules of her playbook, but she was flattered all the same, and she knew it was time to leave before any kind of unwanted trouble found her and followed her home. The bartender looked up and then motioned to the window with the rim of his hat.
A group of men the size of tree trunks circled the Hummer, fists and jaws clenched. She couldn’t see clearly through the greasy glass, but she saw enough to know they meant mean-spirited business. Terror gripped her as she watched one of them pull at the door handle of the Hummer. Another cupped his hands and peeked into the darkness of the window on the passenger side. Two of them pushed on the back bumper, rocking the car on its frame.
She held her breath as the posse punched its way into the bar, eyes steeled against the dark and searching. For Zack, she guessed. Still more people down here who knew Zack and his Hummer.
“Afternoon, Bubba,” the bartender spoke up. “What’s up?”
“None of your business,” came the answer from the first man to walk through the door. His dirt-stained T-shirt stretched across a generous gut that rolled over jeans slung low on his hips. The others looked distinctly the same.
“Now that’s a fine way to start a tab,” the bartender replied.
Smart man. He was earning his tips.
“Where’s the asshole driving that Hummer?” the man demanded.
The bartender and Amy exchanged glances. “Left with some babe about an hour ago,” he lied. “Your old lady?”
Brave man. Maybe he was into earning a fat lip.
The leader snorted anger out of his flat, broad nose, and took a step forward. His companions snickered behind him. “What are you laughing at?” He yelled, turning to face them. The posse took a step back.
“We’ll sit an’ wait,” he said finally, scraping a chair from a table and beaching his bulk. “He ain’t gonna be gone too long, I bet.”
“Uh-oh,” she muttered. The bartender gave her a look that was full of warning. She could tell these guys were mean as snakes in summer when they were sober. Add some alcohol, and they could start a venomous war.
They piled in around the table in a clamor of chairs and grunts. “Beer,” said the leader. He dug a sweat-soaked wallet out of his pocket, pulled out a fifty, and slapped it down on the table. The bartender filled a pitcher from the tap and brought five mugs to the table, picked up the bill, then laid it on the shelf outside the cash register.
The scene in front of her passed by as though she were seated in the front row of a horror film, trapped and intrigued, spellbound, and terrified all at the same time. Was there no one in the county who didn’t have some feud with Zack?
What an idiot she was, driving off like a fool on vacation. She was in the backwoods, not some fancy villa by the sea.
Could she get to the car, unlock it, and back it out before they knew what was happening?
Possible.
If she stayed, she might hear something important. She needed to know how these men knew Zack and why they wanted to find him. But if they were looking for Zack, they didn’t know he was dead. Which meant none of them was behind the wheel at the parking garage that day.
Amy smiled in spite of her circumstances. She couldn’t picture any of them at the posh Bennfield, thundering like a herd of angry buffalo as they stomped the old wood floors, sending the crystal chandeliers jangling.
They may not know that Zack was dead, but they did know his Hummer. Their paths had crossed somehow.
“Keep ’em coming,” the leader barked as they emptied the first round of beer.
“Asshole thinks he’s gonna come down here and steal our gig, he’s got another thing comin’,” one of them said.
“Nobody’s buying or selling here but us,” another said as the beers were poured.
“Shut the fuck up.”
Drugs. They had to be talking about drugs.
Zack must be planning on selling drugs on his cell tower runs. Maybe he was working with Rian.
But that didn’t make sense. Maybe these men weren’t even talking about weed. Maybe they were talking about meth. Rian would never touch that junk.
The conversation at the table turned to cars, women, and old rock and roll, with bodily sounds that came from one offensive end or the other. She’d had enough. It was time to get home. She hadn’t found Zack’s killer, but she was ready for a hot shower and a warm bed.
She drained her beer and shook her head at the bartender. She felt his disappointment. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “I need to get out of here before they get ugly.”
“Another time,” he said quietly. “Another time.”
How would she get out of there unnoticed? She could go to the bathroom and slip in through the kitchen and out the backdoor. If there was a backdoor. She still had to come around the front of the building to get in the car. She could wait until they left. But who knew how long that would be. Until Zack came for the Hummer, which would be never.
She nearly fell off her barstool when her cell phone rang.
“Where are you,” Zelda yelled. “You’ve been gone all day.”
“Yes, yes,” Amy answered.
It was her chance. “Hold on a minute.” She winked at the bartender. He winked back.
“Ready for another?” he yelled to the table.
“Hell yeah!” the men bellowed and burped.
The bartender refilled the pitcher.
“I’ll call you back!”
“What?” Zelda yelled. “Why are you yelling?”
Walking alongside the bartender as he walked to the table, she let his frame camouflage her own, and then, slipping out the front door with her key in one hand, phone in the other, she was in the Hummer and backed out of the parking space before the round of beer was poured.
Back in the saddle again.
Would they follow her? She glanced in the rearview mirror as the miles flew by. She shook her head to clear what felt like cobwebs. She was more buzzed than she wanted to be. No driver’s license, either. She’d be in trouble if she got stopped by the law.
Sitting forward in the seat, her hands gripping the wheel, she drove cautiously, her eyes alert. Her panic felt lighter as the road put more distance between her and Zack’s dirty deeds. He seemed to have a lot of those going on in this part of the state. His dirty deeds. In fact, he seemed to have a whole other life going outside of Bluff Springs. She hadn’t known that about him. Had Zelda known? Suddenly her stomach felt queasy from the beer and the excitement. Food would help, but there would be no drive-through options in this part of the state.
But she had gotten away.
She’d managed to flee from crazy Crawley and now that herd of b
ubba. And what was the deal with that bumblebee? What a dirty look.
Zack had so many enemies. How could one person make so many people want to kill him?
Her heart sank, realizing with a pang in her ribs that the list of suspects wasn’t growing in the right direction. There seemed to be a lot of people angry at Zack, maybe even a few angry enough to kill him, but none of them seemed to know Zack was dead. That realization didn’t do anything to clear Zelda, Genna, or Rian from the list of suspects. Someone else had to be on that list. Someone else who was resting easy knowing Zack was dead.
She gripped the wheel with her decision. She knew she had to keep looking. She knew she had to keep digging. No matter how scary or dangerous or how far from home she was, she had to keep going until she found proof that would clear her friends. If one went to jail, they all went. That’s just how it would be.
“Shoot!” she yelped, remembering she had forgotten to call Zelda. In the rush from the bar, she tossed the phone onto the seat for a two-handed escape. She reached now for the phone, patting the car seat to find it. There was no moon to light the sky, and no streetlights on this isolated stretch of road, so she couldn’t see where the phone had landed. Fumbling with the canopy light above the rearview mirror, she turned it on. Both her and Zack’s phone were on the floor of the passenger side, having fallen from the seat. When she reached to grab them, the car yanked dangerously toward the side of the road, where the hillside plunged hundreds of feet down the jagged rock.
Straightening in the seat, she flipped off the light and gripped the wheel. The phone would have to stay on the floor until she found a safe place to pull off.
As she scouted her position, hoping the now-familiar GPS voice would tell her she was closer to home than it felt, she saw that the GPS screen looked just like a video game, a race car on a blacktop with neon yellow lines. Through the windshield, there was nothing but black, but she was well aware there were trees and steep hills on either side. She drove as fast as she felt she could, given the curves that held tight to the hillside and switchbacks climbing through the mountains.