by Dixie Cash
Edwina shook her head. “What are we gonna do, Debbie Sue? You convinced Judd he didn’t need to worry. Billy Don’s depending on us, too. The shindig’s almost over and Judd’s gonna have to send those shoes back.”
Debbie Sue pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. “Yeah, and Buddy’s going to be coming home Sunday. I wanted those shoes to be found before he gets here.”
Sam squatted beside a sage bush and laid his shotgun across his knees. All morning he had checked his phone to make sure he hadn’t missed Avery’s call, had checked and rechecked the status of his battery charge. He flipped open his cell phone and checked his messages again.
I’ll call you, Avery must have said three or four times last night. Then, in a jocular moment, he had handed her his cell phone and she had handed him her Treo and they had each entered numbers into the other’s contact list. Not wanting her to see him as pushy, he had agreed to wait for her call, though it wasn’t like him to leave a phone call up to a woman he found attractive and interesting.
Now he wished he had said he would call her. He couldn’t even concentrate on bird hunting, something he loved to do. Memories of last night and Avery Deaton filled his head. She was funny and entertaining and she had a way of looking directly into his eyes that left him breathless, as if her concentration was solely on him. He found that more intoxicating that any perfume he had ever smelled.
He hadn’t expected her to end up in his bed last night, but he hadn’t been entirely surprised, either. The chemistry between them had been obvious from the moment they met and he had been around long enough to know that was a rare connection. What did confuse him was the insecurity he felt today, as if he had to hear her voice, had to have the reassurance that the feeling on her part was still there. And he could hardly wait to see her again.
A covey of quail burst from a nearby stand of brush. Sam sprang to his feet, jerked his shotgun to his shoulder and fired. Bam! Bam! Two birds fell from the sky.
He stepped from behind his cover to pick up his kill and heard a crunch under his foot. He looked down, lifted his foot and saw his cell phone. Dammit, he had dropped it when he rose to shoot.
He bent and picked up the pieces, still mumbling cuss-words.
chapter twenty-two
At 9:45, the sleigh bells whacked the Styling Station’s front door and Avery popped in, startling Debbie Sue. The girl was wearing jeans with a sweater and blazer and a blinding smile.
Edwina smiled back at her. “Well, good morning, sunshine. You’re just grinnin’ like a flea in a doghouse.”
Avery laughed. “Oh, my gosh. Do fleas grin?”
“ ’Course they do,” Edwina answered.
“You got me,” Debbie Sue chimed in. She pointed to the grocery sacks on the payout counter. “We’ve got your breakfast order.”
Avery crossed to the payout counter and began to prowl in the bags like a hungry trick-or-treater. Soon she had a burrito in one hand and a doughnut in the other. “What do I owe you for all of this food, Debbie Sue?”
Debbie Sue flipped her hand in her new friend’s direction. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll overcharge you for what we’re doing today and we’ll come out even.”
Avery laughed again. “That’ll work. Where do we start? Should I change what I’m wearing?”
Debbie Sue picked a nylon salon coat off a coat tree in the corner and handed it to Avery. “Just get rid of your blazer and your blouse. You can change in the bathroom.”
“Okay.” Avery abandoned them and returned minutes later wearing the black salon coat, took a seat in Debbie Sue’s hydraulic chair and returned to her food.
While they ate and joked and laughed at Edwina’s entertaining stories—and steered clear of obvious questions about the previous evening—Debbie Sue studied Avery’s almost flawless face. “Are you wearing makeup?”
Avery’s palms flew to her cheeks. “No, do I look that bad?”
“You look great. Your skin’s great. But when we get through with you, you’ll look better. Like I told you on the phone, Ed and I are experts. Ready?”
“Ready.” Avery wadded her breakfast trash and laid it on the counter.
Debbie Sue tilted the chair back and began to slather the girl’s face with a fragrant frothy cream.
“Wait. What are you doing?” Avery said. “What are you putting on my face?”
“An avocado masque,” Debbie Sue said. “Ed and I are throwing in a free facial.”
Edwina started to roll a small table over to Avery’s side to begin her manicure. Just then the door opened again and Burma Johnson hustled in.
“Hey, Burma,” Edwina said. “What can we do you for today?”
“I got to have a new hairdo. I wanna look my best for tonight.”
Edwina abandoned the manicure table and walked over to her own styling chair. Debbie Sue’s attention was focused on Avery’s masque, but she heard Edwina pat the back of the styling chair. “Just have a seat right here, Burma.” The chair released a small gush of air as Burma sat down heavily.
“I think Judd Hogg’s pulled a fast one on the people of Salt Lick,” Burma said. “I always knew a Hogg couldn’t be trusted, what with Barr always braggin’ about his grandpa being kin to the governor and all.”
A few seconds of pause. Debbie Sue didn’t dare turn around where she could see Edwina’s face.
“Why, what makes you think that, Burma?” Edwina said. “Here, let me help you put this salon coat on.”
“Them shoes,” Burma said. “Irving and I went in Hogg’s last night and looked at ’em. Paid five dollars, too. Them’s the biggest shoes I ever seen. I seen a thousand pictures of Elvis. If he’d o’ tried to wear them shoes, he would o’ looked like one o’ them big-footed clowns. And they look more like corduroy than suede.”
For a full five seconds, Debbie Sue’s eyes refused to blink.
“Oh, now,” Edwina said soothingly. A pause. “Hm. And speaking of corduroy, Lord, Burma, your hair’s so dry it looks like corduroy. Looks like you need a protein pack today. I’ll do one for free. Maybe that’ll make up for the five bucks you were out at Hogg’s. Come on back to the sink and let’s get you shampooed.”
“Well, okay. My hair has been dry as a West Texas creek bed lately. ’Preciate it, Edwina.”
As Debbie Sue listened for Burma’s footsteps to fade into the shampoo room, her scalp began to sweat. Thank God Edwina was an accomplished liar. “Let’s get your manicure going,” she said to Avery. She picked up one of Avery’s hands and placed her fingers into a bowl of warm water, her anxiety causing her to splash a little of the soapy mixture on the manicure table’s surface.
“Hm,” Avery said from a pursed mouth, her skin stiffened by the green masque. “I thought the same thing about those shoes. You don’t think they look awfully large?”
Debbie Sue gave a nervous laugh. “Well, never having seen Elvis myself, I just figured, you know, he might have been a big guy. Don’t talk now. You’ll crack that masque.”
“But those are really big shoes. My dad wears a fourteen. Those looked every bit that big. I think I got some great pictures of them. I’m sure the paper will want to use one of them in my article.”
Fuck! Now Debbie Sue’s heart was pounding. She had to redirect her attention and her energy to finding those shoes. She hadn’t even talked to Judd Hogg yesterday. “Oh, that’s great,” she said with exaggerated enthusiasm. “Tell you what, just keep your fingers soaking for a few more minutes. I’ll be right back.”
Debbie Sue started for the storeroom. On her way, she fished her cell phone from her smock pocket.
Just like yesterday, Sam and the Crawfords had bagged their limits of quail and dove and he had given his birds to W. L. He had never seen better quail hunting. Back in Dallas, he had heard talk about hunters “leasing” land in West Texas for hunting and now he knew why they did.
As much as he liked hunting, he was glad to finish. His mind was on his broken cell phone and the fact that he had
been unable to make contact with Avery. Pulling away from the Crawford home, he glanced at his watch. After ten o’clock. Avery was probably sound asleep back at the hotel in Odessa. They had, after all, been awake most of the night. If he headed for Odessa right now, he could wake her up and say good morning.
Avery sat up and dragged her hobo bag from the floor, dug through it for her cell phone and looked at the tiny screen for the umpteenth time. No missed call, no message waiting, nothing. She clearly remembered Sam saying he would call her. At first, she had insisted that she would be the one to call, but remembered something she had heard her whole life. Let the man take the lead. The first time she had heard that, she had argued the point. If she liked a man and knew he liked her, why did she have to wait?
In last night’s debate with Sam, in the end, she had caved in and agreed to wait for him to call. She knew he might still be bird hunting. Perhaps he hadn’t had an opportunity to call her. She would hear from him. She just knew it.
And if she didn’t? Then, what?
Maybe that’s why I’m still single, she thought. I don’t have the right attitude about men and I don’t make the right moves.
In the storeroom, Debbie Sue waited for an answer to her call. She hated being stuck in the salon all day when a crime needed to be solved. She had meant to call Billy Don sooner, but with all that had been going on, she hadn’t had time. Fine detective she was.
A male voice finally answered. “This is Sheriff Roberts.”
“Billy Don, you haven’t called me. What have you been doing? Have you heard from Judd?”
“Lord, Judd Hogg’s been busier than a cat covering crap. He don’t even have time to say hello.”
“I can imagine,” Debbie Sue said. “Any progress?”
“Progress?”
“The shoes, Billy Don. And I swear to God, if you say ‘what shoes’ I’ll come over there and—”
“Oh, the shoes. Sure, Debbie Sue. We made a lot of progress.”
Debbie Sue was surprised. Maybe there was hope for Billy Don after all. She was almost afraid to ask, but she knew she had to. “Like what?”
“Deputy Bridges and I have wrote down the license plates of ever’body in town for the celebration. Took us hours, too. We wrote down them plates with funny names on them, too.”
“You mean vanity plates?”
“I’ll tell you, Debbie Sue, it was a hard job, with all these extra people in town breakin’ laws and stuff. Cal Jensen asked me once what we was doing, but you said not to get the cops involved, so I told him it was just for security.”
A tiny guilt pricked Debbie Sue. With nothing to do but enforce the law, Cal Jensen might very well have solved the mystery by now and found the shoes.
“We worked extra hours,” Billy Don went on. “Started out yonder at the Cactus Patch RV Park, then come back into town and wrote down the numbers of cars we didn’t recognize. We thought we’d enter ever’thing in the computer and see if any cars are stolen or registered to felons.”
Debbie Sue brightened. She felt like a mother witnessing the first few steps of her infant child. “Why, Billy Don, that’s a good idea. It sounds like you’ve got things under control.”
“We shore do, Debbie Sue. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”
“You know what? If you separate those numbers by states it’ll be easier and faster to get the information. I’ve watched Buddy do license-plate searches by state before, and if you divide them up, you don’t have to jump back and forth so much. Just an idea.”
Silence. Oh, hell, had she lost her connection? “Billy Don, are you there?”
“States?”
An uneasy feeling crept up Debbie Sue’s spine, reached her shoulders and headed straight for her brain. “You did write the name of the state that issued the plate, didn’t you?”
Billy Don chortled. “Lord, no, Debbie Sue. We didn’t waste no time writin’ down the states.”
Debbie Sue’s eyes crossed. She sat down on a stack of boxes, squeezing the cell phone in her fist. She drew a few measured breaths. There had to be a way to salvage this. “Okay, listen, Billy Don. It’s not a total loss. Just run the plates through Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. You could even add Colorado to the mix. I imagine that’s where the majority of outsiders drove in from. You’ll probably get a match on most makes and models within those few states.”
Another long silence. The last thread of patience Debbie Sue was relying on to keep her civil was growing shorter. She touched one finger to the pinch in her brow and felt a deep crease. Oh, hell. Dealing with Billy Don was adding wrinkles to her face.
“Makes and models?” Billy Don asked, caution in his tone.
Aargh! She knew it! God almighty, she knew it! A litany of her dirtiest cuss words raced through Debbie Sue’s mind.
But as much as she would like to be a hardened, ranting SOB, there was something about Billy Don that softened her. Buddy had always managed to use tolerance and patience when Billy Don was his deputy. She could certainly do the same. “Without the make and model, Billy Don,” she said gently, “all you’ve got is a bunch of numbers. If you don’t know the state that issued the plate, who it’s registered to or the make and model of the car it’s supposed to be attached to, you really don’t know much, do you?”
“Uh…Can I get back to you on that question, Debbie Sue? This was Harry’s idea. I’ll have to ask him.”
“Sure thing, Billy Don. Sure thing.”
Grinding her teeth, Debbie Sue snapped the phone shut and started out of the room, narrowly missing a collision with Edwina.
“Whoa, girl. That was nearly a gotcha,” Edwina said. “Listen, I got Burma out the door and told Avery to wash her face. I can do her manicure while you style her hair.”
“Okay,” Debbie Sue said glumly. She dropped her forehead into her palm and shook her head.
“Hey, you sick?” Edwina asked. “You look like you’re ready to throw up. Was it the burrito? I had one the other day and I—”
“Ed, who was it that said, ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures?’”
“Hell, I don’t know. Bill Clinton? You know I’m no good at trivia questions. Let me call Vic. He knows all that kind of shit.”
“No, don’t call Vic. It doesn’t matter who said it. It’s just something that popped into my head.”
“Why?” Edwina asked.
“Because, my dear friend, we are smack-dab in the middle of a desperate time and we’re gonna have to find a desperate measure. The investigation of the shoe theft has gone nowhere. We don’t have a fuckin’ thing. Not even a hint of a suspect. We have no idea who or where Adolph Sielvami is.” She heaved a great sigh. “Hell, Ed, we don’t even have a clue.”
“There’s a lot of people in that category,” Edwina said solemnly.
“Think, Ed. What we need is a plan.”
“We? You’re the one that told Judd we could do this better than real cops.”
That fact was the last thing Debbie Sue wanted to be reminded of. “I should have never relied on Billy Don.” She related what Billy Don and his deputy, Harry Bridges, had been up to for the past two days.
“My God.” Edwina’s head slowly shook. “I meant it when I asked him if his mama dropped him on his head. So what desperate measure do you have in mind?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m thinking. But I do know a couple of things for sure. After tonight, this celebration will be over. Someone somewhere will be expecting to get those shoes back.”
Edwina’s brow knit into a frown. “Yeah,” she said ominously. “And tomorrow night, Buddy Overstreet will be home.”
Debbie Sue sighed. “Man. I knew this day was going to be one of those weird ones when I got up this morning. I don’t know what fuckin’ excuse I’m gonna give Buddy for why I didn’t get some real cops involved in this. Cal Jensen’s been hanging around Salt Lick like a hungry hawk. I should’ve told him about the shoes being missing.”
“Look on the bri
ght side,” Edwina said. “After being gone practically a whole week, Buddy will be horny as a billy goat. You know what desperate measure to take there. Just get naked and dazzle him with sex. At least it’ll be fun.”
Debbie Sue’s spirits lifted. There was always a bright side. “You’re right, Ed.”
chapter twenty-three
Avery studied herself in the mirror. Even Carrie Lynn had never applied an avocado masque to her face. Her skin did look better—dewy and glowing. She checked her phone again. Sam’s calling had now become a test of his character. If he called, she would believe he was all she had hoped he would be. If he didn’t, she would have to label what she had done last night a colossal mistake.
Just then Debbie Sue returned from the storeroom and dragged her back to the shampoo bowl. Her full-of-fun demeanor had changed. She seemed tense. “Is something wrong?” Avery asked her.
“Uh, no. Ed and I just have a lot to do to get ready for tonight.”
Avery said nothing else as Debbie Sue leaned her back into the shampoo bowl and began to wash her hair. Soon a heavenly scent and lather covered Avery’s head. “That feels wonderful,” she said. “I couldn’t get a bubble out of my shampoo in the hotel shower.”
“We’ve got really hard water in this part of the world. You have to use the right stuff and we’ve got a water softener.”
“Ah,” Avery replied. “I just knew you and Edwina would know how to fix it.”
“You should have come in earlier.”
“I should have let you work on my hair yesterday instead of drinking all of those Bloody Marys.”
“Hm,” Debbie Sue said, her lack of a reply making Avery wonder if she blamed her for the catastrophe at the hotel.
“I noticed the gas pumps dressed up outside,” Avery said, wanting to change the subject. “And I saw a picture of them on the Internet. It was from several years ago in Texas Monthly. I’d like to write something about them in my story. Could you give me some history?”