Burned in Broken Hearts Junction

by Meg Muldoon

  He thought about it for a few moments, and then shrugged.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll talk to my editor about pushing the feature back a day.”

  “Okay,” I said, reaching for the door handle.

  “Wait, uh, before you go, do you know if Dale had any enemies? Anybody that might have wanted him dead?”

  “Come by tomorrow,” I said, walking through the door, leaving Robert Reese chewing on the tip of his pen.

  I pulled out my phone, my fingers flying across the keyboard as I sent Beth Lynn a text message asking her to meet me at the bar tomorrow afternoon.

  That same old feeling of excitement rushed up inside of me. The way it sometimes did when I was about to bring two people together.

  It had been a long, long time since I had the feeling.

  And it was almost enough to make me reconsider my prospective retirement from matchmaking.

  Almost.

  Chapter 47

  “How the hell are you, Dry Hack?”

  I had expected the place to be empty, being that it was still supposed to be closed. But it appeared that Dry Hack had found a way in.

  Dry Hack Jones, the grizzled regular who spent much of his waking hours at The Cupid, sat as his regular barstool, drinking his regular sauce of gin and tonic.

  Johnny played from the speakers, singing about being busted.

  “Well, hey there, Bitters,” he said, lifting his eyebrows. “I didn’t expect to see you back here again.”

  He patted me lightly on the back like we were old bar buddies. Which, we kind of were by now.

  “Nice seeing you too, Dry Hack.”

  “Did Courtney hire you back?”

  “I’m here just until things get settled,” I said. “I didn’t want to leave Courtney out to dry.”

  “Dale was a real fool letting you go like that,” he said, shaking his head.

  He looked up at me.

  “Not that I’m speaking ill of him… he, uh, just made a mistake. That’s all. God rest his soul.”

  Dry Hack made the sign of the cross before throwing back the rest of his drink.

  I didn’t blame him. It felt weird talking about Dale like this, in the place where he had died.

  When I had walked in, I had half expected Dale to be here out of reflex. During the early afternoons when I’d come in to start my shift, I’d usually find him sitting at the counter, drinking brandy-spiked coffee, reading the sports section of the paper where he’d study up on the bets he planned to lay that night. He didn’t usually say hi. Instead, he’d start in about something I needed to do before I’d even gotten a chance to take my jacket off.

  I always hated that about him. Him, sitting there all afternoon drinking, ordering the rest of us around the way he did.

  But death had a funny way of making you feel bad about disliking a person.

  I shivered.

  I took Dry Hack’s glass away and fixed him another gin and tonic before heading to the back office.

  Courtney sat in the middle of the floor, stacks of papers all around her, almost in the same exact position I’d left her in the night before.

  She was shuffling through them with violent motions, looking like she hadn’t gotten one moment of sleep.

  She looked up when she heard me at the door.

  “All of our money,” she said, looking right through me. “That bastard gambled away every last cent and more.”

  She bit her bottom lip, which was stained with her usual shade of bubblegum pink lipstick.

  “He’s ruined us.”

  I stood there, not sure what to say to that kind of admission.

  It didn’t surprise me, Dale having done that. We all knew he was a compulsive gambler.

  But I didn’t think any of us knew he was in that deep.

  It had probably been a miracle that they’d held onto The Cupid for as long as they had.

  “Courtney, I—” I started saying, not sure where I was going with it.

  She kept looking at me with a vacant expression that kind of gave me the chills.

  “You know, that boyfriend of yours came in here this morning,” she said.

  “Raymond?” I said.

  She nodded. I was going to tell her he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore, but I held my tongue. That small distinction wouldn’t really matter that much to her.

  “Had a lot of questions for me,” she said. “Told me that someone had… someone had…”

  She started sobbing, the way she had when she first found Dale’s body.

  “Someone killed him,” she squeaked out in between wails.

  I went over, extending my arms to her, trying to be supportive. It didn’t really come naturally. Still, I tried.

  “Officer Rollins said that someone had brought the ox down on him,” she said. “Bashed his head in on purpose. No accident about it.”

  She wiped at her nose with the back of her sleeve.

  “Oh, Bitters, why? Why did this have to happen?”

  She started sobbing again. A dribble of spit dropped from her mouth.

  I felt downright awful for her, but didn’t know what else I could do.

  I suddenly heard footsteps coming down the hall. I turned back, surprised to see Dry Hack standing there.

  He rushed in like someone had screamed “fire.”

  “You poor girl,” he said in a tender voice.

  He kneeled down and put his arms around Courtney. She latched onto his arm, and sobbed into it.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said, stroking her hair. “It’ll all be just fine.”

  He sort of rocked her back and forth in his arms, and I suddenly had a strange sensation that I shouldn’t have been there watching them.

  The same kind of uncomfortable feeling you might get when you see a couple kissing a little too passionately in public.

  Then suddenly, she pushed him away violently, sending the old veteran careening off into the wall.

  “This is your fault, you know,” she said, a sudden and unexpected rage in her eyes. “This is all your fault, George. If you hadn’t… then God wouldn’t have…”

  He stared at her, a strange expression on his face.

  It wasn’t lost on me that she had just called him by his real name, something I had never heard anyone else do.

  She got up, and brushed past me, nearly sending me off balance too. Then she bolted down the hallway, disappearing into the front of the house.

  Sobbing all the way out the front door.

  I looked back at Dry Hack.

  But he had trouble returning my stare.

  Chapter 48

  “You what?” I said.

  “I need you to come down to the station.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes. Right now.”

  Raymond’s voice was cold and steely. Like he was doing his best to keep a professional tone.

  “Why?” I said. “What about?”

  “What do you think about, Loretta?” he said, his voice strained with that typical anger of his.

  “Forgive me for wanting to know why I have to drop everything just because you say so.”

  “It’s about your former employer,” he said. “We have a few questions. It would behoove you to get here as soon as you can.”

  I hated when he used words like behoove to make himself sound smart. Because he wasn’t tricking anyone. Especially not me.

  But I quickly realized that I didn’t really have a choice. If I didn’t go there now, he’d be here within 20 minutes, making a big scene out in front of the saloon for the whole town to see.

  “Fine,” I said.

  He started saying something else, but I hung up the phone before I got the full gist.

  I decided to lock up The Cupid, being as Courtney had abandoned it. Dry Hack had left too, looking as guilty as a dog caught eating a chicken.

  I grabbed my coat, and walked out through the heavy wooden doors, into the frosty, foggy early afternoon.

 
; It was weird, but seeing Dry Hack and Courtney fight like that had given me a strange feeling.

  And what she had said, about Dale’s death being Dry Hack’s fault.

  What did she mean by that? She’d thrown the word God in there somewhere. What was she talking about?

  The way he had swooped in and embraced her… that wasn’t something strangers did.

  There was more in that hug than friendly consolation.

  Then she used his real name when she yelled at him.

  I couldn’t help wondering how long this had been going on for.

  And about whether I was the only person to know.

  Or if someone else knew.

  Or had known.

  Chapter 49

  “You what?”

  “We found your prints on the jukebox. Fresh prints.”

  I sat back in the beige plastic chair, looking up at Raymond and his sidekick, Officer Bart Botkin, in the room they had told me was just an office, but that I was now beginning to suspect was an interrogation room.

  I glanced at the digital recorder sitting on the desk in front of me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Of course my prints were. I work at the saloon.”

  “Yours, and only yours, were found on the jukebox,” Raymond said, hovering over me, trying to intimidate me with his shadow.

  But if he wanted to scare me, he wasn’t going to get very far. I could see through Raymond Rollins’ B.S., same as you could see through a worn-out t-shirt strung up on a laundry line.

  “Shouldn’t somebody else be doing this, Raymond?”

  “Do what?” he said, leaning close enough to me so I could smell the roast beef sandwich he’d had for lunch.

  “Asking me these questions,” I said. “Doesn’t our, uh, prior relationship compromise your ability to do your job in this situation?”

  “Well, it’s a small town,” he said, picking a hangnail off one of his large and yellow fingernails. “I can’t throw a stone without hitting a girl I was involved with at one time or another. Christ, I couldn’t do my job if we followed that rule.”

  Officer Botkin started laughing like the none-too-bright sidekick that he was.

  Both of them had seen far too many cop movies, I gathered.

  “Now, can you explain to me again where you were before you discovered Mr. Dixon’s body?”

  I told him, for what must have been the twentieth time.

  “Hmm,” he said skeptically, rubbing the top of his head.

  I stared out the window, wishing these two fools would run out of questions soon so that I could just go home.

  “Well, I’m not going to lie to you, Loretta. You’re looking at something pretty serious here.”

  Raymond got up and started pacing the room, his hands behind his back like he was some sort of dictator wondering what he was going to do with me.

  “A sensible man might even think you were in on some sort of conspiracy,” he said. “That Fletcher fella being there just after you discovered the body. He’s got angles on this, just like you do. Could be that he helped you take care of Dale. Could be that it was mutually beneficial to see the fat man whacked.”

  Far, far too many cop movies.

  “What do you mean, Fletcher’s got angles?” I said.

  Raymond shrugged.

  “Sounds like you don’t know that fella of yours all that well,” Botkin interjected.

  “Your friend wanted something from Dale,” Raymond said. “Only I don’t think Dale was ready to let him have it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know if it’s really your concern,” Raymond said. “All I’m gonna say is that I told you to stay away from him. Yet look what you’ve gone and done.”

  I shook my head angrily, feeling a sense of rage deep at the base of my chest start to rise.

  This was such a load of crap.

  Dozens, if not hundreds, of people had touched that jukebox in the last week. My fingerprints couldn’t have been the only ones on it.

  Raymond knew that. But he had another agenda. One that had nothing to do with catching Dale’s murderer.

  I remembered the sound of the car engine that I had heard the night before outside my house.

  It wasn’t too hard to connect the dots.

  “Let’s cut the BS, Raymond,” I said. “You, me, and Officer Botkin all know that I didn’t do a thing to Dale. The only reason you’re doing this is because you’re upset with me over last night.”

  He took a seat on the desk and leaned over me, trying to impress upon me his size.

  “I’m trying to be your friend, here, Loretta,” Raymond said, that muscle in his neck bulging. “That’s all. Got nothing to do with last night.”

  “Doesn’t it?” I said. “Doesn’t the fact that I told you I’m not going to take you back have anything to do with why you’re accusing me of murder right now?”

  Raymond balled his hands into fists at his side and his face turned red.

  Officer Botkin started grinning at Raymond, like the foolish sidekick that he was.

  I stood up, having had it. I’d spent too long in this stupid room, breathing the same air as them.

  “You charge me now, and I’ll get a lawyer,” I said. “But if you’re not willing to do that, then you and Robin here can go on twiddling your thumbs, doing just about everything but find Dale’s killer.”

  I grabbed my bag and brushed past them, heading for the door.

  “You walk out of this building, you’re gonna regret saying that to me,” Raymond said.

  I turned around.

  “No, Raymond,” I said. “I don’t think I will.”

  I walked out, stomping my cowgirl boots hard against the dingy and dirty linoleum floor of the Broken Hearts Police Department station.

  Wondering what on earth I ever saw in Raymond Rollins in the first place.

  Chapter 50

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were stalking me.”

  Fletcher Hart was sitting on the steps outside the police department, staring out into the parking lot, looking a little worse for wear.

  The fog had burned off, giving way to a crisp, blue, high desert day. It was actually warm in the sun, almost warm enough to take off my jacket.

  When Fletcher saw me, he looked up and smiled.

  “Or maybe you’re the one stalking me.”

  When our eyes met, I suddenly felt awkward, remembering that wild and passionate kiss in my doorway the night before.

  I could still feel a little buzz from it when I thought of his lips against mine. The way his hands moved through my hair. The way he…

  I rubbed my damp hands on my jeans.

  “What are you doing out here?” I said.

  “Waiting for a taxi to take me back home,” he said.

  I sighed, the reason for him being here becoming clear.

  “Did Raymond bring you in?” I asked.

  “If by Raymond you mean that cop with a neck as big as a tree trunk, then yes.”

  Seemed like Officer Rollins and Botkin were building up an entire conspiracy theory.

  “That guy doesn’t seem to like me much,” Fletcher said.

  “That’d be my fault,” I said.

  “I thought he was your friend.”

  “Not anymore,” I said. “It perplexes me now why he ever was, to be honest.”

  “Hindsight’s so much easier, ain’t it?” he said, looking down at the concrete.

  I got the sense he was talking about more than just me going out with Raymond, though I didn’t know what exactly.

  Was he talking about the kiss the night before?

  I wasn’t sure.

  But if he was, well, then, I wasn’t sure how that made me feel.

  “Listen,” I said. “You don’t have to wait for a taxi. I’ll give you a ride.”

  “I’m not sure if I want to go back to my hotel just yet,” he said.

  “Then where?”

  He shrugge
d, then nodded to the building behind us.

  “Your buddy in there made it sound like I only had a few hours of freedom left before they’d come and arrest me for Dale Dixon’s murder.”

  I shook my head, and squinted out at the parking lot.

  If given the chance, I might just kick Raymond Rollins in the face.

  “Yeah, I got a version of that speech too,” I said.

  “Maybe we should take him seriously,” he said. “Live these next few hours like they’re our last few hours of freedom.”

  The skin on my arms broke out in goose bumps.

  I knew it wasn’t a good sign.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said.

  I knew that the longer I spent with the stranger, the harder it was going to be to ignore the feelings that I was starting to have.

  I had to be sensible about this. There was no point in going down a path that would only lead to a dead end.

  He got to his feet and stood up, like he read my mind.

  A yellow cab was making its way through the parking lot, its studded tires popping loudly on the pavement.

  “You’re probably right.”

  He patted my arm, and then started walking down the steps to the cab.

  I watched him, my stomach lurching forward a little.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I was hurrying down the steps, stopping him before he could open the cab door.

  I had no business doing what I was doing, going down the road I was going down.

  No business whatsoever.

  But here I was, making another poor decision in what seemed to be a long, long line of them.

  “Okay,” I said. “But only if you start giving me real answers. Raymond said that you’ve got angles on Dale’s murder.”

  He turned, a serious expression on his face.

  “I want to know why he said that. No more dancing around the truth.”

  He looked past me, and then nodded.

  “And one other thing.”

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “Don’t kiss me again,” I said.

  The beginnings of a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.

  “You have my word, Bluebird” he said.

  “Bluebird?” I said.