When they got to her bedroom, Rusty sat on the foot of the bed and watched Gloria shuck her dress off and go into her closet. She mumbled something about the catfish rodeo, something Rusty couldn’t understand and didn’t care to get clarified.
She stepped back out of the closet wearing a tight pair of jeans and was naked from the waist up. She had her Coke in one hand and a blouse and bra in the other. Rusty found the sight overly inviting.
She walked right over to Rusty, pushed his legs apart. She tossed the blouse and bra on the bed. She sipped the Coke with one hand and put her other hand on his head.
And then like the Elk River, things took their own course.
Chapter 19
Everything about Albert Bolton intrigued Rusty. He was Rusty’s symbolic line out to the rest of the world. Al was the only person Rusty had much contact with on the river, who was from somewhere else. The only fellow river rat who hadn’t known Rusty as a kid and the whole Clay family. The existence of Al Bolton gave life on the Elk River a nice touch of flavor.
Al was born and partly raised on Bermuda. His folks divorced and then he moved to London with his mother and went to boarding school somewhere in Switzerland, Le Rosey, or something like that, then they moved to New York City. By the time he was eighteen both his parent had passed away. From ages eighteen to twenty-two Al made over six figures a year as a male model. After that, the work got more irregular at lower rates. Age, he said, was that profession’s occupational hazard.
He found himself in Boca Raton, living on his savings, working for minimum wage at a treasure ship hunting company cleaning whatever the divers found off the Florida coast, and going to college. About the time he got a degree in computer engineering--Al already had two years of college piled up between his modeling gigs--against all odds, the salvage company located one of the biggest galleon ship wrecks ever found off the east coast of Florida, of which Al was entitled a cut and gave him the biggest windfall of his life.
After that Al’s life story got a little vague. Rusty read between the lines. It seemed Al went off and did contract work for clandestine arms of the government using his computer skills. He came to Huntsville, Alabama, on a small job and fell in love with the area. He was two-years divorced from a marriage that lasted three and he liked the slow river life. He found it romantic the way someone from Alabama might have envisioned life romantic on Bermuda or in the South of France or in a rural province of Italy.
He met Gloria and they fell in wild romance and the rest was history.
Rusty thought Al was too good-looking. It was one thing to be ruggedly handsome like Ray Clay, but it was another to be as handsome as Al.
Rusty moored his boat and walked up the wooden steps fixed into the hillside to the cabin where Gloria’s father Doc Davenport once lived. Rusty stepped into the screened-in front porch and knocked on the front door.
The door opened and there stood a young female beauty. She was about five-ten, had light green eyes, tan, smooth perfect skin, white straight perfect teeth, dark blonde hair, and two huge breasts that were strapped up in a bra and covered over in a skin tight athletic shirt.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi. I’m Rusty Clay. Is Al here?”
She smiled and extended her hand. “Hi, I’m Vivian. I’ve heard so much about you. Please come in.” She had no discernible accent. It sounded mature, none of this whiny dialect a lot of the kids had today. Or that high-pitched annoying voice a lot of young women seemed to sport these days.
She wore khaki shorts and a sleeveless white blouse. She could have been eighteen, as Gloria claimed, or twenty-five, for all Rusty knew. All Rusty knew was that she looked youthful, like a goddess of Youth and Fertility.
Al walked into the room. He held an unfiltered cigarette in his right hand. Rusty smelled it when Vivian had opened the door. At the time, Rusty figured it was residual from Doc. Rusty never saw Doc without a Camel or hand rolled Prince Albert hanging out the corner of his mouth.
“Rusty, my man!” Al said. He extended his hand and they shook.
That’s another thing Rusty liked about Al. Al was always tickled to see you.
“I see you two have met. I’ve told Vivian all about you.”
“Al has been training me to grabble,” Vivian said. “I’ve entered the rodeo. It’s my goal to grabble a catfish of equal or greater body weight than my own. I plan to be the female Rusty Clay.” Then she giggled. It was a hearty, raspy, giggle.
“A female Rusty Clay. That sounds like a dangerous thing to me. I think you make a much better female Vivian,” Rusty said.
“What’s up, my man?” Al said. “What makes you climb my hillside on this fine river day?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Well, Al, I think I’ll go out back and get myself some sun,” Vivian said. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
Vivian walked to the kitchen. Rusty heard the back door open and close.
Al said, “Come on into my office.”
They walked into what had once been Doc’s den. There must have been about seven computers in the room and electronics Rusty had no idea what was. There was a row of clocks on one wall--London, New York, Tokyo…and a map of the world. Two walls of bookshelves were crammed with technical manuals.
The second thing that caught Rusty’s eye--after the just sheer overdrive of electronic and international war room--was an 8x10 color photo that sat beside what appeared to be Al’s main computer. At first Rusty thought it was a picture of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. But that didn’t fit in. Rusty stepped over and took a closer look. Two beautiful people Rusty just couldn’t take his eyes off of.
“Who’s that?” Rusty asked.
“My parents,” Al said. “They’re both passed away now.”
“They’re both beautiful.”
“Inside and out. Any shortcomings I have I can’t whine and blame on either one of them, that’s for sure. Great folks, they were.” Al pronounced either like a Yankee. Eye-ther.
Al sat at his computer. Motioned for Rusty to sit. Rusty took his attention off the picture, sat, and said, “I was arrested for murder,” like it was an announcement.
“I heard all about it. I’m sorry. I know you didn’t do any such thing.”
“Thanks. Listen, Al, I need to talk to you very confidentially.”
Al held up his hand in a swear.
“I need to know everything I can about Dr. Robert Compton, the surgeon I’m charged with bombing. And this Madison County DA, Jeffrey Starr, he seems to be a real career climber and at my expense.”
“So you need a dossier on these fuckers?”
“That’s right, Al. But they had search warrants on me. They nailed me because I Googled the engine compartment specs on a 450 Mercedes. They took my computer.”
“So, you need some untraceable internet surfing?”
“You got it.”
Al extended his hand out toward his computers. “My casa is su casa. Knock yourself out.” Knock himself out? Isn’t that what Gloria just told him. The last thing he needed right now was knocked out. Before Rusty could thank him, Al said, “No, wait, man. I’ll do it for you. I might be able to get into some files you can’t get into. Can wait until the morning?”
Rusty said of course he could. Al got Rusty to follow him to the kitchen, so he could get his glass of wine and he offered Rusty one. Rusty declined, told him he drank very little and only for medicinal purposes. Unlike everyone else, Al did not take Rusty’s statement for a joke.
The kitchen was what Rusty knew to be quaint and cosmopolitan. The appliances were old. The old green wooden table was fashionably chipped here and there. A bottle and a glass of wine sat on it.
Rusty was in this very kitchen many times as a kid--the same appliances, the same table. Back then it looked to belong on Elk River. Now it looked quaint, like something you might see in the South of France or Ecuador. Then Rusty saw her through the kitchen window. Vivian lay naked in a chaise longue, sun
bathing.
Rusty diverted his eyes but her naked image was singed in his brain. Al stepped over, grabbed his glass of wine. Rusty followed him through the main room and to the screened-in front porch.
Al saw Rusty down to the boathouse and dock. He put his wine glass on top of a piling and unmoored Rusty’s boat for him. “Just a little advice, Rusty. Not to make you paranoid, but assume your phones are being monitored and that the walls have ears.”
“I am.”
“Good. I’m behind you on this, buddy. If I come up with any good ideas, I’ll let you know.”
As Rusty was taxiing away from the dock and then opening up the throttle near the channel, he sensed the river was taking him. Maybe Jenny was right. He was turning into his old man.
He was arrested for murder. He was out on bail. All that seemed another world and another time away. Right now all Rusty could think of was the sight of Vivian lying naked.
Chapter 20
Rusty took him a long, hot bath. Then he put on some fresh jeans and T-shirt. Just as he walked into the living room, the black phone rang.
He stopped and stared at it for a couple rings, like someone might do in an episode of The Twilight Zone, an episode that probably didn’t exist, but an episode that Rusty was living. Like he was going to answer it and it was going to be Compton’s ghost and that ghost was going to give him some cryptic clue as to who did it.
Rusty picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Dad, it’s me.”
“Crystal! Where are you?”
“Argentina. On my Fellowship. It’s autumn here.”
“Far out. You sound like you’re across the river,” Rusty said, before he realized she would have no concept of how out of state calls, much less calls to another country, would be all static jumbled with time lags.
“Hey, I talked to Mom earlier today and she told me about you being arrested.”
“Yeah, don’t worry, honey, it’ll get straightened out.”
“I know you didn’t do it, Dad.”
“Thanks. It’s hard on your mother. A big shock.”
“I guess,” Crystal said. There was a hesitation in her voice, like she was going to say something else. Rusty had seen little of his daughter the last two years, but all her life, before that, they seemed to seldom be more than ten feet apart. And like her mother, Rusty knew her through and through.
“What, Crystal?”
“Well, I met him a few months ago up there.”
“I know.”
“And, well, he came on to me.”
Rusty wanted to say fuck, shit, piss. But he just kept his mouth shut. Crystal could feel the hesitation, he knew, and before she could voice her own ‘what’ he said, “Did you tell your mother?”
“No. I thought she would get mad at me.”
“Oh, honey, she wouldn’t have.” His words did not seem natural coming out of his own mouth.
“I felt like she would have thought it was my fault. He came up to me and was talking to me and then got real syrupy with me. I had on pants, but he ran his hands between my legs and was moving them up and leaned in to kiss me, but I broke away from him. Then he said, ‘Please, your mother doesn’t have to know about this. I was in surgery all night last night and I’m not quite myself today.’”
“It’s all right,” Rusty said. It wasn’t all right, but the son of a bitch was dead. He thought Crystal was going to start crying.
“And, of course, I haven’t told Mom. She’s so upset. But, Dad, I’m glad she’s not going to marry him. Does that make me a bad person?”
Then Crystal did start crying. In between her sobs, Rusty tried to be reassuring, “You are not a bad person…You are a very good person…Come on, it’s going to be all right.”
Then Crystal snapped out of it, and said, “Dad, I got to go. We’ve got to leave for a museum.”
“Okay. Now you don’t worry about this stuff anymore. It’s done with.”
“Thank you, Dad.”
Then he said what he told her every time he’d ever dropped her off anywhere or at school or she’d left out the door: “Don’t take any shit off anybody.”
They said goodbye. Rusty hung up and went back out to the front porch. How do you get even with a dead man? Go piss on his grave?
Just as he was pondering it, wondering if someone came up, if they could see the steam coming out his ears, his cell rang.
It was Melvin.
“Okay, Rusty. I did an interview with Action News 19. It will be on the six o’clock news. I really lambasted the prosecution for circumstantial evidence…”
“Melvin, assume this phone is being monitored.”
After a pause, Melvin said, “All right.”
“Don’t call me paranoid, Melvin.”
“Not at all. Listen, the reason I called, we need to get together very soon.”
“How about tomorrow morning, early?”
“Good. Are you okay at your place?”
“What, you want to meet me out here?”
“No, I mean, is your house covered up with reporters and TV news crews?”
“No.”
“That’s strange. My office is covered up. I just had to hire a receptionist.”
“There you go, Melvin. I knew you were the man. You’re doing your job. You’re drawing in the sharks, keeping them off me.”
As soon as he clicked his phone off, a pickup came trundling up to the barricaded gate and parked. At first Rusty thought it was Ray, returning with another load of lumber, but it was an old GMC.
Old man McAllister got out of the cab. He had on bib overalls and brogan shoes.
Just what Rusty needed in his life right now--a McAllister.
Rusty walked over, manipulated the gate and some fifty-gallon barrels so that old man McAllister could get onto the lot, and then shook his hand. “I got a little business to go over with you, Rusty.”
“Come on up on the porch. Take a load off.”
They walked to the house. Pelfry McAllister climbed up the two steps onto the front porch and sat down in the ladder back chair there. Rusty figured him to be about eighty-three, the age his own daddy would have been if he were still alive.
Rusty sat in the porch swing. He just sat there, waiting for old man McAllister to say something. That was the proper thing to do.
Old man McAllister took a chipped and scarred briar pipe out of his bib and started dipping it in a tobacco pouch, tamped on the tobacco. He let his words come slow and deliberate.
“The McAllisters and Clays been in this county together and in this part of the county before it was a county. Before Alabama was a state.”
“That’s right, Mr. McAllister. We go way back.”
“Your daddy was a good man.”
“Yes, he was.”
“My great granddaughter got married last week.”
“I heard. Heard he was a mighty rich man she married. You McAllisters are coming up in this world.”
“Well, Rusty. It was too rich for my blood. I can tell you that. That’s the main reason that brought me here. I found out you didn’t git invited.”
“That’s fine with me.”
“Well, it ain’t with me and I let Halsey know that. She claimed she thought it was bad luck having McAllisters and Clays at the same party where there was liquor.”
“She might have a point there.”
“She let superstition git in the way of proper manners if you ast me, but nobody was asting me. Ain’t that a hell of a fix?”
“The world’s going to hell in a hand basket,” Rusty said.
Old man McAllister got his pipe going and then spit out a stream of something that looked like he had been chewing tobacco before he dug out his pipe. Some of the spit landed on the corner of the porch. Rusty made a mental note to take the hose pipe and wash it down after Pelfry left.
“You said that right. The other thang, I just come over from seeing that judge on your case.”
“Judge McCartney
?” Rusty could remember his name because it was the same as Paul the Beatle’s.
“Yeuh. Some McCartneys moved over here from Mississippi when I was a boy. All of them was sorry. I ast the judge about it, he didn’t know anything about him having any Mississippi McCartney blood in him. Said his folks was originally from South Georgia. But that’d be just like a Mississippi McCartney to claim they’s from South Georgia.”
“Yes, sir. How’d you get in to see the judge?”
“I told them Pelfry McAllister, a Travertine County McAllister, was here to see Judge McCartney and if they knew what was good for em, they better let me see him right away. They was uppity about it, but the Judge was patient enough. Now, I told him that you didn’t do that murdering.”
“Well, thank you, Mr. McAllister. That was kind of you. Much obliged.”
“You welcome. I told that judge that you and you daddy and you daddy’s daddy could cook up a mean stick of dynamite. And that ya’ll’d rather blow something up than eat. But if you had some objection to that fancy heart doctor marrying your ex-wife that you’d just gone to him face to face and killed him with your bare hands, not gone blowing him up behind his back. That he’d just better find him somebody else to hang that murder on.”
“Thank you, Mr. McAllister. I appreciate that.”
“If there’s anything else I can do for you on this, Rusty, you just let me know.”
“I think you’ve done enough already, Mr. McAllister.”
Chapter 21
Rusty stood at his screen door. What in the hell was this? Prosecuting Attorney Jeffrey Starr getting out of a boat and coming up to his house?
As the man got closer, thank God, Rusty saw it was Al Bolton. I’m going crazy. The stuff is getting to me so that I can’t see straight.
Rusty opened the door, and without any salutation Al walked in like he owned the place. Al tossed two thick folders down onto Rusty’s kitchen table. Rusty just stood there and stared down at them as Al spoke.
The Redneck Detective Agency (The Redneck Detective Agency Mystery Series Book 1) Page 9