"How did they meet?"
He flashed a brief smile. "They met at a dental convention in Brighton. My father is a dentist, and my mother is an orthodontist. It was love the first time they saw each other's bicuspids."
"So that's why you have your unusual name?"
He nodded. "They named me Aodhagan because it was my maternal grandfather's name. But in Ireland they pronounce it like Egan, instead of Aidagan. My father wanted me to have a Scottish name, but mom wanted me to have her father's name because he died in a fishing accident when she was just a girl. So they compromised and gave me grandpa's name, with a Scottish twist."
"Why didn't they clear out of Birdwell when the others did?" Meaning, why had they stayed in a dead-end town condemning their children to a life of boredom?
"They couldn't afford to, actually. My mother worked at a co-op for weekly wages in Cork, and my dad sold out his part of his practice to make the move to America and build this house. By the time they'd settled in, no one around here could afford a dentist, and my father was stuck and out of luck. They couldn't even afford a car to make a daily trip into Lubbock. He worked as a carpenter. That was good work around here, if you could get it.
"That was why the upper crust cleared out of here. When they closed all the stockyards and dairies that used to employ almost everyone in the county, the smell of desperation and unemployment put them all off their quiche. That was when they decided to head for greener pastures."
I looked out the window at the decaying town. "Why'd your parents' choose Birdwell in the first place?"
He shrugged. "I guess it looked like a portrait of America to them. Amber waves of grain and all that. I've seen pictures of Birdwell before the recession, and it really was quite the Norman Rockwell painting."
"And yet, somebody, a child, died here. That must have been such a shock."
"Deep in their hearts, I think it's still a shock, and that's why no one wants to talk about it."
As we got into the car, I pointed at the house. "So your father built this?"
"With a little help, he did. This was high-class back then."
I didn't have the heart to tell him that, as far as I could tell, it was still the Ritz of Birdwell. "Where are they living now?" I asked instead.
"Lubbock. My parents have a practice there with a cousin of mine from Crichton, the town where my father was from in southeastern Scotland. My mother sits on several committees here, even though they moved. She negotiates the hiring to bring new people to Tallatahola County."
"You hire people to move here?" I was mystified.
He laughed. "Not to live, to work. You know, as teachers, doctors, and principals, even dentists, these days. People like that won't come to a town like this for free. My mother's job is to negotiate the delicate balance of bribing them with enough to actually garner responses but not so much that it overwhelms the county's budget. I bought this house from them two years ago."
We pulled back out onto Farm Road 487 and headed in the opposite direction I'd come in from. What would it be like to have a big happy family? I came from a family who was neither big nor happy and seemed bent on rubbing itself completely out of the gene pool by never reproducing. Aodhagan and I were more than from different parts of the country. We were from different planets.
CHAPTER TEN
On the way, Aodhagan regaled me with stories of people who lived in Birdwell and their triumphs, tragedies, and the everyday comedy of errors that was life. In fifty years, people would be talking about him in the same way, knowing everything he'd done since the day he was born in Tallatahola County Hospital.
"How does everyone know so many details about each other in this town?"
His laugh was quick but real. "Are you kidding? This is small-town Texas. Finding out other people's personal business is the official sport around here."
"Doesn't that bother you?" I asked as we pulled back onto another dirt road.
He used voice commands to start a new song and then turned back to me. "Why should it? The folks around here already know everything that there is to know about me. I was born and grew up here. When I went to college in 1987 I'm sure that my mother read every one of my letters to anyone who'd listen."
"1987? Weren't you a little young for college?"
He seemed indifferent. "I was ten. But I graduated from high school the year before, so I didn't have anything else to do."
I nearly swallowed my gum. "You graduated from high school at nine years old?"
"I was kind of a weird kid. I got bored easily. I skipped a couple grades of elementary school and a couple in middle school and, actually, most of high school. But I don't think I missed anything."
I tried to remember what I was doing at that age. "Didn't you feel scared, going to college at ten?"
"A little, but they'd already given me an extra year at home, and it was either that or go to work for a farmer or rancher. I was done with my primary education. Around here, you don't just graduate and do nothing. It isn't the Texas way, no matter how old you are."
"What did you major in?" Maybe now I would discover what he was doing for the nineteen years he was away from Birdwell.
He laughed derisively. "Reality. I had a lot of studying to do, after growing up here. You?"
"Photography. Like an idiot, I wanted to play at the New York art scene, so that's what I did."
"You didn't like it?" He asked.
"It was okay, but it just wasn't for me. I didn't have the patience to spend years building up a name, so I never had any money. I like to have the capability of doing wild and crazy stuff like, you know, eating and paying my rent. I have a trust, but I'm only allowed to use it for certain things." I looked out the window. "Where are we going first?"
"To see Thelma Sue's mama. She's one of the people I warned we were coming so that maybe she would try to focus her thoughts on just what we want to know."
He pulled in front of a short, squat, blue-planked house that was barely a block down from Penny's house. Oh, no, excuse me. My house.
I scrambled out after Aodhagan, who moved much faster than I did. He knocked on the door and casually let himself in without waiting. I had barely reached the bottom of the stairs when I heard his hello. "Miss Abbie Walker, you look like a picture of Heaven as always." I stepped in behind him. "Thelma Sue, did you do your mama's lovely hair?"
Thelma Sue, I was sorry to note, was sitting in a circa 1970s La-Z-Boy upholstered in nubby turquoise fabric that was almost more than my poor heart could take. Someone should have taken that poor thing out and shot it a long time ago. Maybe with Thelma Sue still in it. Both Abbie Walker and Thelma Sue were literally preening over Aodhagan's smooth praise.
On anyone else, I would have said that such words fell under the distinction of schmoozing, but he seemed strangely sincere. Abbie Walker looked as delicate and heavenly as an old boot, and her tremendous crown of tightly curled hair in a shade of red that nature had never intended seemed ready to topple from her head.
Thelma Sue spotted me. "You still here?" She smoothed the short, full skirt of her red-checked gingham dress. She looked like a picnic blanket.
At the same time, Abbie Walker noticed me and surveyed me with distrust. "Who's this, Aodhagan?"
"It's Penny's niece, Helen. We just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Norma Jean Fredrick. Remember?"
Thelma Sue didn't even seem to know who Norma Jean Fredrick was, as she evinced no reaction to Aodhagan's words.
"I don't remember too much, you know. She was younger than me." Abbie's face pinched tight, pulling wrinkles into wrinkles. "I do remember that she was a horrible goody-two-shoes. Acted like she never did breathe the same air that we did. A lot of that crowd did."
"My aunt, too?" I asked, curious.
She seemed to consider it. "Nah, she was different. And Kitty too. Her head was always in the clouds."
"Kathleen Audbergen?" Aodhagan clarified.
"Sure, they always stuck to
gether. Along with Lloyd, Frank, and that other boy. Frank died in Vietnam in 1970. It was a real sad time for his folks. His mama, Betty Jean, she never could have but just him. Their hearts was broke."
That explained why Penny had left Frank Lundgren out of her will. "Lloyd came from that preachin' family, and some of them was real bad stock. You know, cheap. We used to call him a backwoods rat, even though most of us was no prize. His Uncle Charlie had this preachin' hour on the radio. Lordy, he was big business in those days, always yelling and screaming out of pretty much anywhere you left the dial.
"I didn't listen to him, but a lot of folks did. He was groomin' Lloyd from the time we was in primary school to take over for him. And you know, he did it too. That other boy, the teacher, there was nothing nice about that kid. He never had his head on quite right, you know what I mean? Kind of not connected."
I thought that sounded like a description of pretty much everyone who had ever emerged from Birdwell, Texas. By process of elimination, I assumed she was talking about Dennis Strinton and was hoping that Aodhagan was getting something from this conversation, because all that I was getting was a headache from Abbie's cheap perfume. All the knowledge I'd gained was that Lloyd Granger was the televangelist, and I had already guessed as much.
Abbie started out on a very long story about the goat farm that Kathleen "Kitty" Audbergen's family had sold out of in the fifties. Kitty's younger brother, Joe Don, had apparently kidnapped his favorite goat, Lucy. It was later discovered shoved in his closet feasting on his, apparently no longer secret, stash of nudie mags. He surrendered the goat easily after that, apparently preferring the centerfolds to the livestock, which I found perfectly reassuring. Around here, how could one ever know?
Thelma Sue threw up her hands. "Lordy, Mama, what the Sam Hill are you talking about? They don't care about Joe Don's goat, you old fool." To Aodhagan she said, "Who's Norma Jean Fredrick?"
"A girl who went to school with your mama. I was hoping that she might be able to tell me a little about her."
Unfortunately, Abbie Walker now seemed unwilling to talk at all, even about Norma Jean. I wanted to punch Thelma Sue's smug smile right off her face. Instead, I just excused myself to go outside and smoke a cigarette. Aodhagan probably knew what I was up to, but he couldn't leave at that moment without being rude, which he would never do. That left me to my own devices.
To add insult to poor Aodhagan's tobacco injury, I used the lighter I scrounged from his messenger bag still sitting in the car. I stood under the hot, wet blanket of Texas midmorning sun and smoked my limp cigarette in a modicum of peace. It was the first time that someone hadn't bothered me about it, so, naturally, I instantly felt guilty. I pushed the feeling aside, shuffling my foot, determined to have a relaxing smoke if it killed me. A second later, with a sigh, I threw the cigarette on the ground and snuffed it out with the toe of my sandal. I threw the lighter back into his bag and noticed that the hard pack I'd stolen from Penny was still in there. So much for his high horse about it being important evidence.
Then I saw the numbers.
In the top panel of the pack were four numbers written in my aunt's square, mannish handwriting. 4128. I stared at it for a long moment, hoping it would turn into something comprehensible, but in the end it was still 4128, which didn't mean a thing to me. I pulled the hard pack, still in the baggy, out of Aodhagan's bag and shoved it in my purse before going back into the house. Thankfully, Aodhagan was saying good-bye, and in a few moments, we were ensconced in the blessed coolness of the Rover's air conditioning. As we pulled away, I noticed an older woman in a small compact car watching us from across the street. She wore sunglasses and didn't move, but somehow, I knew it was us she was concentrating on. Aodhagan didn't notice her, and I said nothing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Does 4128 mean anything to you?" I asked once I could no longer see the compact or the woman inside.
He shot me a glance. "Why? Should it?"
"I don't know. Penny wrote it on the inside of this pack of cigarettes I took from her house." I offered it in his direction. "I borrowed your lighter, and then I saw it digging through your bag."
He pulled the Range Rover onto a dirt shoulder and took the bag from me. He examined it with the concentration of a laboratory specimen. "Are you sure that this is Penny's writing?"
"Yes, she just wrote me a letter, remember? Besides, who else would write something on the inside of one of her packs of cigarettes?"
He stuck the bag back inside of his satchel. "I don't know. And I don't know what it means either. But I do know you shouldn't have this. And I'm not sure we should keep doing this."
I gaped at him. "We've only talked to one old lady. Suck it up, MacFarley. Besides what else have you got to do?"
"Well," his smile was thoroughly charming, "I was about to start petitioning to put in a duck pond in Town Square."
"I didn't even know that there was a town square."
"Yes, it's the lawn in front of Town Hall. It's very…square."
I laughed. "So, what? Are we still in this together?"
He gave a long-suffering sigh that may or may not have been a joke. "I guess so."
After a minute of speeding toward Tallatahola I asked, "What are you doing in Birdwell anyway?" Tired of trying to deduce why a perfectly able young man would spend his time proposing fish ponds in a dead-end town, I just came right out and asked him.
I saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel, but he sounded perfectly normal when he said, "What do you mean what am I doing?" He pushed up his glasses in what I surmised was a nervous gesture. "I'm being mayor and volunteer sheriff and whatever else comes up. Why?"
"You said that you were bored. Why don't you just move?"
He was silent for a long time, and I wasn't sure whether he was debating the answer or had simply decided not to answer me. Finally, he said, "My mother asked me to come."
Again silence. I assumed that he had said all he was going to say, so I looked out the window to watch the cows fly by in an attempt to make the silence less awkward.
"I asked her to find anyone else. After nearly twenty years, this place was a distant, not particularly pleasant, memory, and I was glad of it."
"I would say that's a perfectly normal reaction," I said sympathetically. "This place is sort of…depressing. That doesn't make you a bad person."
He glanced at me with a wry twist to his lips. "I'm sorry, but I don't appeal to unqualified authorities about what makes me a bad person."
Stung, I looked out my window again.
To my surprise, I heard something that I thought I would never hear from the lips of Aodhagan MacFarley, an apology for speaking in haste. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. It's my dirty secret, you know. I don't like Birdwell. Really, I don't even like living in Texas. Actually, to tell the truth, I wasn't thrilled to come back here."
"What's so bad about that?" I asked. It sounded perfectly reasonable to me.
He shook his head. "I don't think you could understand it, because you didn't grow up with my mother or here in this town. Birdwell took care of me. They helped to raise me. They had collection bins in all the stores and raised a thousand dollars to send with me when I went to college. I mean these people aren't pretty, and maybe they aren't smart, but they sacrificed for me when I needed them, and I can't turn my back on that."
"But, couldn't anyone be mayor? Why did it have to be you?"
We passed into the beginning of another small town, though bigger than Birdwell. "It doesn't. I came to do something else. This is Boothe."
There was a long silence while I watched Boothe pass in the windows. A new song started. This man did love his music. We turned off the highway and onto a side road flanked by small businesses, many with boarded windows even though they seemed to be still in operation.
"What piece of music do you think has influenced you the most?" I was curious for another peek into his psyche and picked something I knew he'd want to talk
about.
"Well, I know most jazz aficionados would tell you that it was something from Miles Davis on Birth of the Cool, but I would have to say that it was "Girls, Girls, Girls" by Mötley Crüe."
My laugh tore out of me before I had a chance to control it. I couldn't stop laughing, despite the hated pig noise I had been guarding against since childhood. So I hid my red face until I regained control.
When I looked back up he gave me a crazed smile. "Do you always laugh like that?"
I felt my face grow hot again. "Of course not." Only when something was so funny, I forgot to stop it.
"Too bad. That was about the cutest thing I've ever heard." He was still grinning like a lunatic.
I shook my head. "Everything you've ever said to me makes me think that you're completely insane."
"Funny," he rebuffed, turning up the air conditioner, "I think the same thing about you."
He gestured to a strip mall across the road. "This is where we go for groceries, a pharmacy, a video store, whatever. Tallatahola is the biggest city and the county seat. They have the Walmart, hospital, that sort of thing."
"You have to drive all that way to go to the doctor?"
He gave me a calculating look I didn't understand. "We have a family practitioner in Birdwell. Doc Holiday. He's a bitter old curmudgeon who has one foot in the grave, and if you show up at his office, you better be able to prove that you have one too."
"Your town doctor is named Doc Holiday?"
"Yes, he is, and if you ever have the misfortune of having to go and see him, I wouldn't mention it. I don't see him, and he doesn't like me." He didn't say so, but it was clear that Aodhagan disliked him as well.
He pulled into a pharmacy parking lot. It was a tan stucco fifties-style building replete with a soda shoppe and product names and slogans painted on the windows in thick red paint. Painted straight on the stucco above the door were the words Spencer Apothecary Established 1953.
Aodhagan threw the car in park and gestured to the doors. "This is it. Billie Jo's one of those people I thought that we better take by surprise, seeing as she's, um, grumpy."
Digging Up Bones (Birdwell, Texas Mysteries Book 1) Page 9