Hung Out to Die

by Sharon Short

  I thought about the list of questions in my pocket. “And if I can’t find anything out for you, then?”

  “Then I’ll still help you. Off the record.” Caleb took another sip of his drink. “Of course, I may want to see if I can interview you on the record again later, but—”

  “It’s a deal.”

  Caleb looked surprised at his success. “Really?”

  “Yes. I’m curious about the party, curious about if there’s anything to your sense that something’s not quite right about Effie’s divorce—although I doubt it . . .”

  “I don’t know. Here’s my theory. I think Rich and Effie were having an affair before her divorce. Rich took care of the divorce for Effie, but somehow messed it up, and Effie wasn’t really divorced. So, she’s really been married to two men all this time. Junior figured it out, and has been blackmailing them from some exotic island ever since, which is why they live in such a modest house when—admit it—you know Rich is much more the type to be living in an elegantly renovated Victorian-era house in town, rather than in a modestly updated house in the countryside, a house that’s really his wife’s.”

  I’d wondered about that, too, but Caleb’s theory seemed far-fetched, and I said so. “I think you’re just trying to create a story where there isn’t one. But I’ll go with you. Now, off the record, here’s what I want you to find out for me.”

  I hesitated. Should I trust this man? But Winnie was out of town and I couldn’t ask her to do this research for me. And in fact, I wasn’t sure she could do it for me, anyway.

  “I’m listening,” Caleb said.

  “My Uncle Fenwick appears to have made a lot of money, and yet he swore before he died that he hated the plumbing business. Usually people who hate their work are not wildly successful at it.”

  Caleb looked thoughtful and then nodded. “You think he might have had some shady deals going, something like that, and his murder was business-related—nothing to do with family issues?”

  “It’s an angle that I think bears looking into,” I said.

  Caleb grinned. “I like the way you think.” He stood up. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at six o’clock, if that’s okay.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  He gestured at his glass. “Mind if I leave this here? I’m heading home.”

  “Sure. You’re not going to stay and dance the night away?”

  Caleb grinned. “Josie, I only came because I wanted to talk with you. You weren’t at your apartment—and there weren’t many other places you could be.”

  He walked away. I stared into what was left of my cola. Had I really just agreed to two dates? But they were both business, I told myself. And neither man was my type. One was too dim . . . although gorgeous. Very gorgeous. The other was too bitter. But funny and smart . . .

  I shook my head, looked at my watch. It was just after nine o’clock. Owen should be back in his hotel room by now. I picked up my purse, fished around in it for my cell phone. It wasn’t too late to call him, to say I understood about the job—I did, didn’t I?—to . . .

  “Whew. Aren’t you the belle of the ball—and you’ve never even danced one two-step. I never thought I was going to get a chance to sit down.” I looked up as Mama sat down across from me. I dropped my cell phone back into my purse. “Why didn’t you come out and dance with one of those boys? Especially that first hunky one.”

  “I was guarding your fur,” I said.

  “Nonsense,” Mama said. “Everyone here is so nice.”

  “Yes. You especially seem to be having a good time.”

  Mama gave me a look. “Nothing wrong with that,” she said.

  “That’s right—that’s what the Bar-None is all about,” said Sally. Mama scooched over for her. Sally put drinks on the table, then sat down next to Mama. “This is on the house.”

  Mama took a long drink of her bourbon and water. I sipped my fresh cola. Sally had a beer.

  “So, what did you think of Randy.”

  “You sure he knows a wrench from a hammer?”

  Sally laughed. “He’s actually a good contractor.”

  “And cute, too. Why didn’t you dance with him?” Mama asked.

  “Mama, drop it. He wasn’t interested in me.”

  “Yes, he was,” Mama said.

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “No—”

  “Actually,” Sally broke in, “for the record, he was interested. And Caleb is interested in you, too, I mean from the way he was looking at you. Kinda like the way he did the other day at Sandy’s Restaurant. Even across the bar I could tell—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said stiffly. “I’m spoken for.”

  “Oh good Lord,” Mama said, chugging some more of her bourbon and water. “How prim. And where is the Owen I’ve heard so much about?”

  “He’s away . . . on business.” Well, technically that was true, what with the job interview and all. “And I haven’t told you a thing about him—”

  “I’ve been hearing about him from Cherry, at the salon, and between dances, from Sally. Doesn’t sound like he’s good enough for you, dear.”

  I glared at Sally. Sorry, she mouthed. I kicked her under the table, anyway. For once, she didn’t kick back.

  “Look, Mama, my personal life is really none of your business, especially since, since . . . since . . .”

  I broke off lamely, letting the unspoken hang in the air.

  “Especially since I haven’t been much of a mother to you? Abandoned you when you were little? Well, that’s true. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t speak to me at all.”

  I looked down into my fresh glass of cola, my eyes misting. Damn it. I kept vacillating between not caring—being the young woman who knew her parents were really, emotionally and spiritually speaking, Aunt Clara and Uncle Horace—and being the young girl from before Mama had left.

  “But I’m speaking from experience, Josie,” Mama said. “It’s fine to follow your heart—but be sure you know where it’s leading you. And that you really want to go there.”

  I looked up at Mama. She was talking about Daddy, I knew.

  “Hello, May.”

  We all looked up, startled. Lenny Burkette was standing by our booth. None of us had heard him walk up.

  Sally and I exchanged a look. I thought of what Caleb had said about finding me here—he’d come here because I wasn’t home, and where else could I go on a Friday night in Paradise. Apparently, Lenny had figured out the same thing about Mama. I didn’t think he’d come to the Bar-None just to hang out. He didn’t seem the type. In fact, he was wearing a suit and tie, looking uncomfortable and uncertain.

  The bar had quieted, I realized. The music had switched over from the rollicking two-stepping music and hilarious country ditties such as “Prop Me Up Beside the Juke Box When I Die,” to something slower, more mournful. I recognized the classic ballad, “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

  “I picked a song just for us, May,” Lenny said.

  I gasped. Sally frowned. But Mama just smiled sweetly. “What about our song?” Mama asked.

  “Our song’s not on the juke box anymore,” Lenny said, his voice thick. “But when I was putting in the coins for the juke box, this one seemed—”

  Mama sighed. “Just ask me to dance, Lenny.”

  Lenny swallowed hard. “May, would you dance with me?”

  She smiled and suddenly looked younger. “I’d be glad to.”

  Sally stood up and let Mama out of the booth. Then Lenny led Mama onto the dance floor, and they danced together, a simple one-two-three. They didn’t dance close, keeping their bodies just from touching, but their eyes were locked.

  Sally sat back down. We looked at each other. “Oh, my,” she said. Then we looked back at Lenny and Mama on the dance floor.

  “I’m ready for a break. How about you, hon?” Cherry plopped down next to me. “Skooh,” she said.

  Dean remained standing, stari
ng out at the dance floor.

  “What?” Cherry asked, looking at Sally and me. But we ignored her. By now, it was just Mama and Lenny on the dance floor. Everyone—even the hunky, dim Randy—was watching them, somehow captivated. They seemed to have landed there, on the dance floor, out of a different time, Lenny in his suit, Mama in her full-skirted soft dress, both of them staring into each other’s eyes.

  Even Cherry finally looked and understood and said “oh,” and then was silent and watched.

  17

  “You’re mad at me again, aren’t you?”

  Mama and Lenny had shared only the one dance, and then he’d left—wisely, it turned out, before the latest round of snowstorm hit. I’d been ready to go then, too, but Mama insisted on staying another hour or so. I’d even ended up dancing—just one dance, mind you, and not slow or close—with Randy, which was way more fun than I’d wanted to admit to myself.

  And now Mama and I were back at my apartment, curled up on the couch in pajamas. My ensemble was a T-shirt that said WAKE ME LATE FOR BREAKFAST and PJ pants dotted with miniature Tweety-Birds. Mama was wearing elegant burgundy pajamas.

  After we got home, changed into pajamas, I’d wanted to go to bed, but Mama insisted on making hot chocolate and talking. We hadn’t said much in the process—she’d asked if it was okay if she left her cell phone charging on my counter, and I said sure, but mostly we’d been quiet up until the moment we curled up on the couch with our mugs of hot chocolate. Which should have made a cozy scene. Except I was grumpy and quiet and instead of letting it go, Mama was insisting on talking about it.

  “I’m not mad,” I said.

  “Yes, you are. You’ve been fuming ever since we left the Bar-None.”

  “The drive home made me tense. Creeping along at twenty miles an hour in a snowstorm is not my idea of fun,” I said.

  Mama tsk-tsked. “You drove just fine. I’d have insisted we leave earlier, but you were finally having a good time, and I get the feeling that doesn’t happen as often as it should.”

  Okay, now I was mad. “I like my life, thank you,” I said.

  We sipped our hot chocolate in silence. Then Mama said, “I know you were bothered, seeing Lenny and me dance. We dated back in high school. It was just a childhood sweetheart, first-crush kind of thing. Lenny’s just a sweet memory to me, that’s all.”

  “Didn’t look back at the Bar-None like Lenny’s reached that same kind of resolution. Did you go see him yesterday?”

  “What?” Mama snapped.

  “I know you disappeared for a while, while Daddy and Uncle Fenwick went for a walk. That’s what Aunt Nora said, anyway.”

  Mama glared at me. “I went for a drive—that’s all. I just needed to get away.”

  “But you stripped the gears later that night?”

  “I was pretty shaken up about Henry being in jail, Josie. Why does everyone read too much into my actions?”

  Maybe because your actions can be pretty outlandish, I thought, but didn’t say.

  Mama shook her head. “I really, simply went for a drive. Tonight’s the first time I’ve seen Lenny since I left this sorry little town. Look, I feel sorry for Lenny because he had a hard time after his father disappeared, even though his parents were already divorced, and his mama had been taking up with Rich Burkette for a while. A long while.”

  “Before the divorce was final?”

  “Long before, from what Lenny said. And of course his grandpa—who was really like a daddy to him—died. It all happened at once, and so Lenny was a little sensitive already when I broke up with him to go with Henry.”

  “You couldn’t have waited a little while?”

  “What?”

  I tightened my grasp on my mug. I feared if my hand was too loose, I might be tempted to whop my own mama upside the head. Not a good impulse. “Why didn’t you put off breaking up with Lenny to go with Henry—I mean, Daddy—if Lenny was already having a hard time dealing with his grandpa’s death and his daddy running off? Wouldn’t that have been the kinder way to break off?”

  More silence. “I . . . I just didn’t think of that.” Mama’s voice sounded perplexed, and I knew that she really hadn’t thought of that. I could kind of understand that as a teenager she might have been that self-absorbed. But even as a fifty-something woman, she sounded perplexed by the idea. Maybe, I thought, some folks just never develop the capacity to think beyond their own immediate needs. And maybe my mama was one of them. Which meant, I thought, that her leaving really didn’t have anything to do with me, and everything to do with . . .

  “Henry just wasn’t the kind to wait around, anyway,” Mama said. “And sometimes waiting to break off doesn’t work. There would never have been a good time, not from Lenny’s point of view.”

  The comment stung. Would there ever be a good time for Owen to break off with me, from my point of view? Even with him in Kansas City, interviewing for a new job, I was still telling myself we had a chance together, but truth be told . . .

  I took another sip of hot chocolate, pushing away thoughts of Owen, focusing on the hot chocolate. Yum. Mama had used cocoa, milk, sugar, and a dollop of vanilla, not the instant packets I kept handy. Maybe I’d stop using the instant. The from-scratch hot chocolate was worth it.

  I looked at Mama, about to tell her how great her hot chocolate was—after all, her dancing with Lenny had been innocent, and it was really none of my business—but she was staring off in the distance. “Mama?”

  She looked back at me abruptly. “Sorry. I was just thinking.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Something, I thought.

  “Mama. You look like you’ve suddenly figured something out. About Uncle Fenwick’s murder?”

  “No, I haven’t,” she said, giving me a look of pure innocence. I saw right through it.

  “Mama,” I said, warningly. “If you’ve thought of something, you’d better tell me and the police.”

  Mama narrowed her eyes. Her look of innocence transformed to stubbornness, and I knew I wasn’t going to get anything out of her. “I know that.”

  I sighed. “Fine,” I said.

  “Fine,” she snapped right back, and stood up abruptly—immediately sloshing hot chocolate down the front of her silk pajamas.

  “Damn it!” she exclaimed. “These PJs were expensive! Now they’re ruined!”

  “No, they’re not,” I said. “Come on, let me help you.”

  Who knew. I’d bonded enough with Aunt Nora over the cranberry stain that she’d told me about Uncle Fenwick coming back for the clothesline from his mama’s front yard.

  Maybe I’d bond enough with Mama over the hot chocolate stain that she’d tell me whatever she’d just realized.

  I loaned Mama a pajama top—this one in blue that proclaimed, TELL ME WHEN THE COFFEE’S READY. It didn’t really go with her pajama bottoms and mules, but she didn’t care after I assured her the hot chocolate would come out of her pajama top.

  “Hot chocolate is a combination stain,” I told Mama. “A protein stain—from the milk—and an oily stain—from the chocolate. You want to treat the protein element first, soaking in cold water. Not hot—that will set the protein in the fibers. Then, for the oily part, we’ll soak in a bucket of a quart of warm water, with about a teaspoon each of cloudy ammonia and dishwashing soap for about fifteen minutes. Then we’ll wash as usual. If there’s still some stain left, we’ll soak in an enzyme product and wash again.”

  “Wow,” Mama said. “You really have developed an expertise.”

  I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pleasure at the admiration in her voice, and it stayed with me through the soakings and then hand-washing and rinsing the top—I feared it was too delicate for a machine wash, and I didn’t really want to brave the cold night again to go down to my laundromat.

  I left the now clean pajama top on a padded hanger on the shower rod so it could dry overnight and went back into my bedroom. Mama was sitting
on my bed, looking at a framed photo I keep of Guy on my nightstand. I sat down next to her, looked at the photo of Guy she held in her hand. I’d taken it a few autumns earlier, at the Stillwater harvest festival. In the photo, Guy was holding a big pumpkin and smiling broadly.

  Mama set the photo back on the nightstand. Her hand trembled a bit.

  “He looks so much like Horace did, the last time I saw him,” she said.

  “It must have been hard,” I said gently, “being so disconnected from your family.”

  Mama looked at me sharply. “Who told you that?”

  I smiled. “It’s a small town.”

  “And everyone knows everyone, and everyone’s business. Or they think they do,” she said bitterly.

  “There are good parts to living in a small town,” I said.

  “Good and bad to everything, I guess. I didn’t see it that way when I was young. I just wanted to get out of here. Away from all the gossip. Most of what was said about me wasn’t true, you know.”

  Which meant part of it was. Which part, I wondered? I’d probably never really know.

  “That was the plan all along, you know,” Mama went on. “Henry and I were going to graduate and leave town. But . . .”

  She stopped.

  “The first baby,” I said gently.

  “Yes,” Mama said. She wiped a tear from her eyes. “I was so torn up after that. Henry, too. We couldn’t seem to get our act together to leave. We acted . . . badly. And then we had you. We decided we’d try to make a life with you here. But Henry never liked it here. He always felt like a failure compared to Fenwick, and he always compared himself to Fenwick, no matter how often I told him not to.

  “And then one day, when I thought things were starting to go well, Henry just didn’t come home. He left me nothing but a note that said, ‘I’ve found our treasure,’ and a small pile of weird coins.”

  “The coins you used to have me take to the wishing well,” I said. “I remembered I still have them in a hat box.” I hopped up.

  “Don’t—” Mama started.

  But I’d already hopped up. Eagerly, I trotted to my closet and stood on tiptoe and shoved aside some summer T-shirts and shorts and pulled down a box from the corner. I went back over to the bed and sat down again. I opened the box and pulled off the lid.