The Redneck Detective Agency (The Redneck Detective Agency Mystery Series Book 1)

by Phillip Quinn Morris

  Rusty took it all in before he gave her hand a tug and she hopped on up to the dock. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and then adjusted her hat and turned to look back over the river.

  There was slight breeze. It was mid May, still nice weather on the Elk along here. Maybe it was the breeze came around the bend and off the cool bluffs, but it always seemed to be a good ten degrees cooler around Clear Springs than in town.

  Gloria picked up her night bag and the cooler and walked on up to the house. Rusty grabbed two cardboard boxes and followed her. She sashayed her little tight fifty-nine year old ass for his benefit.

  When they plopped the stuff down on the kitchen table, Gloria said, “I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. Why don’t you throw the steaks on and I’ll put away all this stuff?”

  “Okay.”

  Rusted got the platter of raw steak. He walked over to the back door and turned. Gloria had gone to the kitchen sink and was leaning over, looking out the window. “The sun is setting, Rusty. After you put the steak on, let’s go down on the dock and look.”

  “Okay,” Rusty said.

  Then she bent over even further. “Oh, there’s a heron on your dock. It hopped over onto the bow of my boat.”

  Then she started scratching her butt. She stood up straight, but with her back still to Rusty. She scratched at her crotch. “These underwear may be cute and sexy but they sure do itch.”

  She reached up under her dress and pulled off her panties. She dropped them on the floor there and bent forward over the sink again, staring out the window. “I think that is the biggest heron I’ve ever seen on Elk River.”

  Rusty looked at the panties on the floor, then back up at her ass. Sometimes life was a bitch. Then sometimes...

  Chapter 6

  At a quarter till ten the next morning, Rusty sat in his office. He wasn’t thinking much about the mystery man and the stolen record-breaking two hundred fourteen pound catfish. He was thinking about sex.

  It had been a long time since he’d had a night like last night. It had been thirty years since he’d had sex with anyone but Jenny. Between their marriages, he’d never gone out prowling. He knew Jenny would come back. But not this time. This time she was marrying a rich surgeon.

  Ten o’clock came and went. Ten thirty came and went. No fat grabbler. That was a little strange. Rusty didn’t even know the man’s name who had given him five thousand dollars in cash, but he took him for a punctual man. And if his memory served him correctly, the grabbler had said, “Ten o’clock sharp.” When you said ten o’clock sharp, ten-thirty was definitely late.

  Maybe the man was crazy. Delusional enough to think he was some king of the catfish. A two hundred fourteen pound catfish. Rusty had never heard of a catfish weighing over a hundred fifty pounds. Sure, there were rumors and legends. The biggest one Rusty ever saw with his own eyes weighed one hundred forty pounds. It took two McAllister’s to get the thing in the boat. It was a bizarre looking monster.

  With the concept the man wasn’t going to show up, the adrenalin ran out of his body. He went over and lay on his little couch. He had gotten little sleep. He and Gloria had been up almost all night long. He was as good as he ever was, but it would probably take him a couple days to recover.

  Just as he was about to doze off, he came awake. He knew the door downstairs was being opened. The creaking sound snapped him to.

  Now footsteps. It was not the fat grabbler. There was no mistaking that clomp. They were an octave—not that Rusty knew shit about music—off from Jenny’s. It was Gloria.

  Clomp, clomp, clomp up the stairs so quickly. Rusty stood up, then saw blue illuminate the translucent glass. There was a knock.

  “Rusty, it’s me. Gloria.”

  Rusty hustled over and opened the door.

  Gloria entered, all perky as hell. She had on a neon blue dress, came a little below her knees. It was low-cut with sleeves. She had a matching hand bag, had on a matching hat and matching open toe shoes.

  She walked to the middle of the room, twirled around and announced, “I will soon have a divorce from Al.”

  “Congratulations,” Rusty said. What in the hell was he supposed to say? He was sure there was nothing about the proper retort to that in Emily Post, not that he had an Emily Post. It had belonged to Jenny and Jenny took it with her.

  Gloria tossed her handbag onto the seat of the swivel chair and then plopped herself down on the couch. Her dress rode up high above her knees. Rusty sat beside her. He thought he was good for now, but damned if he didn’t think he might just run his hand up between her legs.

  “I had to distance myself from him,” she explained.

  “Why’s that?”

  “He’s becoming a loose cannon.”

  “He is a little different. I’ve always found him intriguing.”

  “Intriguing is a good word for Al. We had a fun three years together. But I have to fix it so none of his actions have financial repercussions on me. That girl he’s shacked up with. He swore to me he looked at her driver’s license and that she’s nineteen, but I bet she’s barely sixteen if that.”

  “I was illegal when you first fucked me decades ago,” Rusty said, as a reminder.

  “I like casting the first stone.”

  Al Bolton had come into town a very handsome man of thirty-five. He seemed to have a thing for good-looking older women and soon married one twenty years his senior, one Gloria Davenport. Of course, Davenport was Gloria’s maiden name. She changed it twice. Right before Al came into town she legally changed it back to Davenport. Her two grown children were off in other states, with no grandchildren in sight, and she wanted her original name back. When she and Al married, she kept the name Davenport.

  But when Al turned thirty-eight he suffered some kind of midlife crisis and didn’t show up to work at the bait shop and just stayed holed up alone in a cabin for over a month. When he came out of his funk he was still kind of aloof and now had a thing for good-looking girls about twenty years younger than he was.

  Twenty years older, now twenty years younger. It must be one of those yin-yang things, Gloria had said.

  Now Gloria said to Rusty, “I gave him the cabin and he was happy. He didn’t contest a thing, just signed the papers. We’ve never been mad at each other. He just has this split personality thing happened when he turned thirty-eight.”

  “Wait, Gloria. You just up and gave him your father’s old cabin?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s one prime waterfront lot.” It was just south of the marina. The first piece of river property her daddy owned. Prime real estate. Everything south of the marina all the way to the Tennessee was known as the Elk Riviera.

  “Glad to cut the financial ties for that. It was a bargain. Speaking of intriguing. Have you been to that cabin lately?”

  “No.”

  “Looks like a command post. All the electronic shit he’s got in there. I think he’s getting back into that clandestine stuff I suspect he was into before he came to Travertine County.”

  “He was in the CIA?”

  “I think he might have worked for them. A contract spy. And big international corporate intrigue. I think his looks and personality and knowledge of electronics made him a natural. I think his little romance with river life at little Clear Springs, Alabama, is over.”

  “Well, good on doing whatever you had to do.”

  “Yes. Enough of talking about Al.”

  Rusty put his hand between her knees and then slid his hand slowly and gently toward her crotch. He didn’t have any strong intentions in his action. He just didn’t want to offend her by not taking advantage of the moment.

  Gloria paid no attention to his hand. Acted like it wasn’t there. She said, “Speaking of Clear Springs. That’s where I need to be right now. That Catfish Rodeo has me in high water.”

  She squeezed her legs together. “You owe me a date, Rusty.”

  “Owe you a date?”

  “Yes, y
ou said if last night worked out we’d go out on a date.”

  “Yes, last night worked out well for me. Where do you want to go on this date?”

  “To a Broadway play.”

  “I’m supposed to take you to New York City?”

  “No. There’s some on tour to Birmingham, Nashville, Mobile.”

  “We’ll go, Gloria.”

  “I got that wedding tomorrow. Sunday I got Mama and Glenda. After the catfish rodeo’s over.”

  “All right. After the mud settles on all that, we’ll go.”

  Chapter 7

  After Gloria left, Rusty wrote a note to the catfish man, jotted down his cellphone number, told him to call. He put the note in an envelope, printed “To Catfish Man” on it. He would tape it to his door when he left.

  Used to Rusty was different. Nowadays he didn’t give a shit. He didn’t like being on the worrying side of something, waiting for somebody. He had the man’s money. To hell with him. Let him show up when he wanted the money back.

  Rusty heard the door downstairs creak open this time. Then footsteps. A man’s. Not Sammy or the Catfish King. Too light and quick.

  Soon, there was an image on the other side of the translucent glass, then a knock.

  Rusty went over and opened the door. There stood a slim, sleek six foot black man he knew to be Melvin Waters. Waters must have been in his thirties and had an athlete’s build.

  “Hello, I’m Melvin Waters.”

  “Rusty Clay.” They shook hands. “Come in, Mr. Waters.”

  “That’s Melvin to you.”

  Melvin came in. Rusty closed the door. “What brings you up those stairs?”

  “I have an office a block down the street. I just opened my one man firm a month ago.”

  “I heard.”

  “I thought I would introduce myself on a professional basis. And actually, I may need a private eye from time to time. I was wondering how much you charged? I would bill the client and you’d get paid when I got paid.”

  “I’m not a private eye.”

  “I must have misunderstood. The word around the Square is that you are the proprietor of The Redneck Detective Agency.”

  “It’s a joke.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I managed to buy this building a few years ago. That door there went with the office.”

  “Oh, there used to be a redneck detective agency here before you came?”

  “No, that was a scam.”

  “A scam?”

  Rusty had Melvin sit on the couch. No, Melvin didn’t care for a soda. Rusty sat in the swivel chair and told him the story of the scam.

  “That’s quite amusing,” Melvin said. “So, what is it you do do, Rusty?”

  “I was a commercial fisherman and a mussel diver by trade. I made a couple of good real estate deals with my ex-wife, back when she wasn’t my ex-wife. Now, I’m always just looking for that perfect scheme that’s going to net me a few million dollars.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Melvin said.

  “And what can I do you out of today, Melvin?”

  “Nothing, really. I am actually walking around pounding the pavement, trying to stir up some business.”

  “Well, I don’t have any business for you.” Rusty started to say something like, here it is the twenty-first century and you’re the first black attorney in all of Travertine County, but Rusty let it slide, figured it might come out as some racial statement.

  So he said, “Hey, Melvin, you may think I’m just a wacky redneck.”

  “No, no. Not at all.”

  “I can’t do it today, but one day we’ll go to Freddy’s Place on the Square here and have lunch if you want. Not to brag, but the truth of the matter is I’m sorta in the boy’s club around here. You just being seen with me would give you a little credence. Then later I’ll introduce you to my brother-in-law Sammy Reese.”

  “Sammy Reese, the district attorney, is your brother-in-law?”

  “Yeah. You didn’t know that?”

  “No.”

  “Hell, Melvin. I head you went to Harvard.”

  “I did.”

  “You a little bit naïve here if I must say so myself. You need to know who’s who around here and who knows who and who’s screwing who and who hates who. You don’t need to be pounding the pavement. You need to be back at your law office. And not looking at your law books. You need to be reading The Art of War.”

  “I just finished it. Why do you think I’m walking around town asking questions?”

  “I think I like you, Melvin Waters.”

  “I think I like you, Rusty Clay. And I know you’re not a redneck.”

  “To tell the truth, I don’t know what a redneck is. I do know I’m a riverman.”

  “I knew we were kindred spirits, Rusty.” Then he blurted out: “I have actually canoed alone down the entire length of the Missouri River.”

  “No?!”

  “Yes.”

  “The longest river in the country.”

  “Few people know that. They think it’s the Mississippi.”

  “You’re a river celebrity, Melvin.”

  “Like I said, I think I like you, Rusty.”

  Chapter 8

  Rusty wasn’t one to lie around on his ass doing nothing during the daylight hours. That’s all he had done come early afternoon Saturday. Two things you could say about the Clays, even old crazy Aunt Essie, they weren’t lazy and they paid their bills.

  He just laid on his couch in the living room. All the windows were open. The front door was open with only the screen door closed. The sun shined bright and a late morning rain shower had made everything fresh. This was one of those precious May days.

  For once, Rusty felt alone and lonesome. Cousin Ray had his other life. A life with his wife Alice. Tonight Ray would probably “jam” somewhere, playing Dobro with his Elk River Blues Review Band.

  Gloria was off to that big hours-long wedding to-do. One of the McAllister’s got married. And Rusty wasn’t invited? There was a time that never would have happened. He was somewhat emotionless about it. He knew if he were still married to Jenny, they would have been invited. With that last divorce, something disconnected between Rusty and life, or maybe civilization. All that was left was Rusty and the river.

  And now he was alone and disconnected from Jenny. The other two divorces had not lasted. But this one had a finality to it. She would go out of his life and never come back. Even Crystal would not connect them anymore.

  For three decades Rusty and Jenny lived on different rivers. First, in that house boat on the Miami River. They divorced and remarried. She followed him to Ecuador and the Napo River, where they gold mined. Made a little, all the while thinking they would strike it rich. They moved to the Esmeraldas River on the other side of the Andes. They came back to Miami. Got divorced, remarried.

  They moved to Crystal River, for their longest run together. Crystal was born. They made some good money by just owning some of their own river lots and a house.

  They sold out and moved to the Elk River. He and Jenny got into renovating houses in the old part of Dolopia. Did good. Jenny got her realtor license and started in on selling high end shit. Then divorce number three followed.

  Rusty was back where he started. Started at Elk River. Ended at Elk River.

  Maybe that’s what he needed to get his ass in gear. It was Saturday and all those yuppies from uptown would be crowding the Elk Riviera, in their fancy boats and their pontoon party boats. And all those grapplers would be stirring up the water out from Davenport Marina.

  He would just get in his hydroplane and head upriver toward the Tennessee line. There was nothing like the sight and feel of a river bank on both sides of Rusty to make him feel alive.

  He got off his lazy ass and walked down barefoot in his T-shirt and an old tattered pair of jeans to his boathouse. He let himself in, flipped two switches. One to let his hydroplane down into the water and the other to open the slatted exit
gate.

  Rusty stepped down the wooden ladder and into the boat--a homemade hydroplane with an old classic fifty-five horse Mercury outboard. His daddy, an ardent Johnson man, got the Mercury off a McAllister in a sweet deal and gave it to Rusty.

  Ray built the boat, with Rusty helping. It could blow those overpriced pieces of shit bass boats with their two hundred horse outboards out of the water.

  Rusty unhooked the cables from either end of the boat and pulled them out of the way by placing them in hooks on the side of the slip. He tested the electric motor that adjusted the Merc engine up and down on the transom, so that you could start off with the prop down in the water and as you built up speed you could lift it on up nearer the water’s edge to get maximum speed.

  The boat had no windshield, but the single seat was a little fore, to offset the weight of the huge outboard, and was right in the bottom of the boat behind the steering wheel.

  Rusty squeezed the bulb on the fuel line a few times and was about to turn over the engine, and fill the boat house up with two-stroke exhaust when the door to the boat house opened. He thought he had latched it from the inside.

  He turned around to see who it was. It was last person in the world he expected to see step inside his boathouse. It sent his heart up to his throat.

  “Jenny,” he said.

  She just stood in the doorway a minute. The afternoon sun was behind her and an aura of light glowed around the back of her like an angel or something.

  But she didn’t look exactly like an angel. She looked like one of those rich women from Palm Beach, her hair was all stiff and in place, a lot of gaudy gold jewelry, and her outfit looked like it cost the price of a boatload of filleted channel cats.

  She wore some shiny black pants and this tailored cotton blouse, that accentuated her trim, kept body.

  Rusty climbed out of his boat. She stepped back out of the boathouse and just stood there on the deck of the pier, looking out at the river.

  Life was never fair. There was a restraining order that kept him from showing up at her real estate office or calling that office. But she could walk right into his most private of place. Rusty decided not to bring that up. He didn’t want to start bickering.