The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1)

by Moreau, Iza

  “Not Ginette, Mark. Sue-Ann.”

  “Sue-Ann? But Ginette’s number is on the ID.”

  “She loaned me her phone,” I told him. “Listen. Where are you now?”

  “I’m home.”

  “Is, um, Krista with you?”

  “No. That shooting thing is an all-day event. She had two or three more rides and I didn’t feel like staying. Hey, what’s between you two anyway?”

  “What did she say?”

  “She wouldn’t say anything at all. In fact, her mood changed so much after you left that I didn’t feel like she wanted me there any more.”

  “She was probably just concentrating on her ride. Believe me, I was as surprised at her reaction as you were.”

  “Where do you know each other from?” he asked.

  “Mark, as far as I know, I’ve never seen her before in my life. But I really didn’t call to ask you about Krista. What I want to know is whether you saw three kids in the bleachers dressed like zombies at a funeral.”

  I heard a deep intake of breath and realized that Mark had just lit a cigarette—a habit I hadn’t known he had. “I saw them. I almost had to take a punch at one of them.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “The little fucker. He tried to hit on Krista. All three of them kept following her around.”

  “How did she react?” I asked.

  “Kind of like they were flies. Tried to wave them off, but they kept coming back. She finally went up to two or three cowboys she met and whispered something to them. Next thing I know they’re escorting the punks out of the grounds and not being too gentle about it.”

  “Do you know any of them?”

  “That’s the damndest thing. I saw them once before. They were dressed different, but it was the same three.”

  “Do you remember where?”

  “Never forget. It was the night I picked—the night I met Krista. It was in that place in Forester called something like Eat Me.”

  “Eat Now,” I suggested.

  “That’s it. Those kids were trying to hit on her that night too, just before I introduced myself. The three of them seemed to flake away after that and I don’t remember seeing them the rest of the night.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “That was the place you called from when you wanted me to check out that goat in the dumpster.”

  “Hey, that’s right. Great memory. I owe you one for that.”

  “You’ve just paid it.” I said. “See you at the office.”

  “But what did you call fo—” I hung up on his question and turned to Gina and Jack. “Maybe nightclubbing was too strong a word,” I told them. “But we can have dinner while we investigate.”

  “Investigate what?” Jack asked.

  Gina twitched her nose. “Damn, Sam,” she exclaimed. “Ah’ve got some things ah’ve been meanin to bring over but I left em at the office.”

  “What things?” I asked.

  “Ah went to the Property Appraiser’s Office on Friday and found out who owns all that property behind Meekins’ Market. Got some maps, too, and I wrote down the address of a website that lets you fahnd out whatever you need on line.”

  “That’s great, Gina,” I told her. “When can I see them?”

  “Ah’ll drop them over sometahm tomorrow.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Eat Now: Home of Food is located on the main highway just before you enter downtown Forester. It is a square, cinderblock building set apart from other businesses by a parking lot on each side. Over the years, customers in a hurry have left gouges in the corners of the façade with their trucks or rigs so that the whole building gives the appearance of being built of sugar cubes that have been gnawed on by rats. The main dining room consists of a long bar complete with spinning barstools covered with orange naugahyde. A dozen tables and booths take up the rest of the area. A second room, strictly for dining, is reached by going through a door just to the right side of the bar. All in all, its décor can be described as trashy but well-maintained. A back door leads out to a wooden deck that runs the length of the building and is very popular with the smoking crowd. On the whole, Eat Now is an under-35 hangout, although older customers sometimes rent the entire back dining room for parties or business meetings.

  We arrived with the place in full swing—customers were eating in booths, drinking at the bar, and milling around outside. The jukebox was playing something by Toby Keith, but not loud enough to inhibit conversation. Although not a pick-up joint per se, it often doubled as one. It was here, of course, that I had first become interested in Donny. For that matter, Donny had probably hooked up with Linda C in this same room. Mark Patterson, it seems, had met Krista Torrington here.

  Jack, Gina, and I entered and sat down at a table next to the one where I had first seen Donny slumped over his beer. It was in a dimly lighted corner near the door leading out to the deck. A glance had been enough to see that the people I was looking for weren’t in the room.

  Gina, took her glasses from her purse and used them to peer at the menu.

  “Those glasses make you look, I don’t know, sophisticated,” I told her. “I think it would be cool to see you sitting back in an armchair reading Proust or somebody.”

  “Would ah lahk whoever it was you just said?”

  “I don’t think anybody really likes Proust. It’s just something you aspire to.” I glanced down at the menu for a second, but didn’t really see it. I was thinking of Gina reading in an armchair, but in my secret version, her glasses were all that she was wearing. I slapped the menu down and stood up. “Listen, order me a cheeseburger all the way with tater tots and a Corona. I’m going to check out the other room.”

  “All raht.”

  I checked out the smaller dining room, but only after I visited the rest room and splashed water on my face from the sink. The dining room was only half full. I recognized a couple of riders from the mounted shooting event, but no one else. I had better luck on the deck. Sitting alone on one of the rude benches in a corner of the deck, smoking, was a very thin young woman dressed in black. It was too dark to tell much else, but I was pretty sure it was Becky Colley, abandoned for a time by her two cohorts. Much of the rest of the deck was taken up by other young people, some in the western garb of the shooting event, others in work clothes or casuals, but all giving Goth Girl her space, as if she radiated a protective aura, or maybe an odor. I checked out both parking lots but saw neither Adam Zimmer nor Pauley Hughes. When I got back to the table, Jack and Gina seemed to have struck up a conversation. They quit as I walked up.

  “Talking about me?” I asked.

  “Mebbe yes, mebbe no,” Gina said with a twinkle. “Fahnd anybody?”

  “I did, yes. Becky Colley is out there by herself. Do you know her well enough to ask her to our table?”

  “She wouldn’t know me from a tree,” Gina said.

  “You recognized her picture,” I pointed out.

  “Cal pointed her out a coupla tahms when we were out.”

  “So Cal knows her?”

  “He’s golf buddies with her dad.”

  “I thought he played golf with the lawyer, you know, Rooney. And Paul Hughes.”

  “And Ray Colley. That’s the foursome. They’ve been playin golf together for years. Didn’t ya know?”

  “So that explains the connection between Ray Colley’s daughter and Paul Hughes’ son.”

  “Raht,” Gina said. “Their families hang out together sometahms.”

  “Okay, then, I think this is a job for Super Jack.”

  Our orders came before Jack could reply and I found myself ravenously hungry despite the Mexican we had eaten for lunch. I tore into my cheeseburger and popped some tater tots in my mouth without even letting them cool. Jack and Gina just stared. “What?” I asked.

  “Super Jack?” asked Jack.

  “Raht. Now listen. I need you to go outside and get into a conversation with that goth girl you took a picture of earlier.”

&n
bsp; “What, you want me to try to pick up a fifteen year old?”

  “Well, yeah. That would be really good. But if you don’t feel like going that far, I want you to borrow a cigarette from her.”

  “Borrow a—”

  “A cigarette, right. But don’t smoke it all. Leave enough of the butt so we can see the brand name.”

  “Why?” Jack asked.

  “It’s for a story we’re working on. An investigative piece. Don’t let on.”

  “Can I eat first?” he asked.

  “Eat fast.”

  Jack took a couple of bites of whatever it was he ordered, then stood up. “I’m not hungry anyway,” he said. “Wait for me.” He walked slowly toward the door leading to the deck.

  “Not a chance,” I told Gina, standing up and pushing back my chair. “We’ll go around the other way.”

  “But—”

  “No, really. You’ve got to see this. Jack is something else.”

  “All raht, all raht.”

  “And bring your cigarettes.” As we hurried toward the front door, we passed our server, gave her a five-dollar bill, and told her not to clear our table, we’d be back. And then we almost knocked down poor Benny Benedict, who was headed for the bar.

  I greeted him with a “Hey, Benny,” and he turned, startled. “Hey hey,” he replied. “The gruesome twosome, heh heh.” Now Gina was the one who looked startled, but then said, “You’re the guy from the bookstore, raht?”

  “Um, well, yeh, uh huh. That’s me. I see you going in and out of the newspaper office all the time.”

  “Ginette is the heart and soul of The Courier,” I told him, jealously guarding her diminutive. “Meeting someone, Benny?” I asked.

  “Naw, nope. Just going to quaff a few before I head on home. You little ladies want to join me?”

  “Next time, Benny. We’ve got to go out for a while. Later.”

  Outside, we hurried along the right corner of the building, squeezing in and out of cars parked too close to the wall. Our progress brought us to the deck where Goth Girl was still sitting, her back to us. We stopped in the shadow of the wall and lit cigarettes—just two diners who had stepped out for a quick smoke. I know you won’t believe me, but I didn’t inhale.

  Jack was busy being the Jack I knew and had once loved. He was a man who never went right for his object; rather he moved in gradually decreasing circles until he just happened to arrive at the destination he had set for himself at the beginning. It was a ploy that put his quarry at ease and he almost never lost his photo op. As soon as he had gotten outside, he spotted someone from the mounted shooting event, and put on a big smile. I could see the men shaking hands, Jack asking all kinds of questions about the man’s life, his horses, and what kind of animals he liked to hunt. The man introduced Jack to others in his group and the same round of questions were gone through again. The men all exchanged business cards and Jack, seemingly reluctantly, looked at his watch and made excuses. Very slowly, he made his way toward where Goth Girl was seated, although I never saw him actually look in her direction. On the way, there was another handshake as he passed another group of people. Another, shorter, round of words spoken.

  By the time he had actually gotten within Goth Girl’s aura, I was nearly chewing my cigarette butt with anxiety that she might leave or be joined by friends, but Jack’s intuitions are almost always precise. Hesitating, he looked at her and cleared his voice. Becky looked up and her back straightened. Jack smiled brightly and said softly, “Do you mind if I sit down for a minute? I’m waiting for someone and I’ve been on my feet all day taking pictures.”

  “I might spit on you,” she told him tonelessly.

  “I guess I can take that chance,” Jack smiled, sitting down across from her, showing his teeth and crossing his legs.

  Goth Girl shrugged and reached in her shirt pocket for a cigarette. Jack took a cell phone out of his coat, opened the face, and peered at it. He frowned and placed it on the bench beside him.

  “My name is Jack Stafford,” he told her. “And I’m visiting from Richmond, Virginia.”

  Becky looked him up and down, probably trying to figure out what this well-dressed, well-spoken studmuffin was doing in a dingy little burg like Forester. “Visiting who?” she asked. Contact. That was what I had been waiting for and I nudged Gina, grinning.

  Jack’s eyes opened wide. “Can’t tell you that, I’m afraid,” he said. “It’s kind of a secret assignment.” He took a card from his wallet and handed it to her. “For my newspaper,” he added. “The only thing I can tell you is that it concerns someone who used to be on the Olympic Team that lives near here. She’s been sick and doesn’t want anyone to know it.”

  “You get paid to take pictures?” she asked.

  “You better believe it.”

  “Is that cell phone a camera?” she asked.

  “How did you know?” Jack asked.

  “My mom’s got one. She hides it from my dad, though. I think she has a boyfriend and uses it to talk to him while she’s naked. Ugh.”

  “Well, I don’t know your mother,” said Jack. “But she can’t be that bad if she looks like you. Anyway, I don’t—Wait a minute, I think I saw you earlier today, at that cowboy thing.”

  “You were there?” she asked.

  “Holy wow,” Jack said, quickly putting his hand over his mouth. “You won’t tell anybody that I was there, will you? Listen, can I have one of those cigarettes? I thought I had quit but I guess I haven’t.”

  Becky handed him one from the pack and lit it for him with a plastic lighter. He drew deeply, then blew smoke. “Umm, that’s great,” he said. “Thanks. Yeah, I think I saw you at that place, whatever they call it. You were with some other people, right?”

  “Yeah, we were just hanging around.”

  “Um hmm, me too,” Jack said.

  Gina and I were nursing our own cigarettes, listening intently to every word and watching Becky as she plied her body language. She would shift in her seat, pick at one of the several earrings in her left earlobe, twist a lock of her choppy black hair. We heard her ask, “You, um, take pictures of nudes?”

  “Me?” Jack asked, surprised. “Nah—did you tell me your name?”

  “Rebecca.”

  “Great name, Rebecca. I’m Jack.”

  “You told me.”

  “Sorry. Listen, Rebecca, my thing is trying to take pictures of people that make them look naked without having them take their clothes off. Do you understand that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “To take pictures of people’s souls. The way people really are without all the fake things they’re always doing.”

  “I can relate to that,” she said. “Are you famous?”

  “A little, maybe. You can Google me when you get home. Whoops, I think I just saw the people I was waiting for coming in the front door. “Great talking to you, Rebecca. Sorry I don’t have my camera with me.” He picked up his cell phone from the bench and put it in his pocket. “I mean, my real camera. I’d love to have a picture of you. Maybe a series. There’s just something . . . I don’t know. Maybe I’ll see you again.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks for the cigarette,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  As Jack walked back to the door leading into the room, Gina whispered to me, “You’re raht about Jack.”

  I whispered back, “I’ve been having lewd thoughts about you all night.”

  “Sue-Ann!”

  “Let’s go finish our dinner,” I said, smiling.

  Back at the table, Jack handed me the cigarette butt. I looked at it carefully and put it away in my purse. I nodded at Gina. “One of the same brands,” I said.

  “Did I do okay?” Jack asked.

  “Shit, Jack, that poor girl is creaming her panties.”

  “Yeah?” he smiled.

  “Yeah.”

  “What was the cigarette for?”

  “It’s nothing you need to know about, but
I found some cigarette butts at the scene of this thing I’ve been working on and I wanted to see if Goth Girl’s is the same brand. It is.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Might be, unless I do something.”

  “Too bad. She seems like a really nice kid.”

  Our food was cold by now and our drinks room temperature, but we finished what we wanted and paid. The cashier was a young woman I had never seen before—Linda C must have Saturday nights off. Gina had stopped at the trash barrel below the SMASH THE DIXIE CHICKS sign. She rummaged around among the jewel cases and came out with two different titles and stuck them in her purse. Back outside, cars were still coming and going with difficulty. A horn blared and someone shouted, “Get the fuck out of the way, you moron!” I looked over to see a cowboy in a pickup shouting at a man in a red Jeep.

  “Sue-Ann,” Gina nudged me. “That’s your friend in that Jeep.”

  She was right. Poor Benny was having trouble getting out of the parking lot and the bozo in the pickup—who had evidently just pulled in—wasn’t making things easier. Benny was finally able to swerve around the man and I saw him hit his own horn on the way past. But instead of the honk I was expecting, a loud voice, metallic and digital, came from what appeared to be a loudspeaker bolted to the front bumper. “BITE ME!” it growled.

  Before the cowboy could react, Benny was in the street and racing off. Heads turned and people on the deck were laughing.

  “Heh heh,” I chuckled.

  Chapter 12

  After we got home from Eat Now and Gina had said her goodbyes, I shunted Jack into my mother’s room, showed him the adjoining bathroom and towel closet, and helped clear Cindy’s few remaining papers from the bed. As soon as he was settled, I went into my own room and closed the door. I knew I had to call Donny, had to sit down with him tomorrow and talk about Adam, but the idea of having him come to the house again, or even going to his, was a bad idea. And one of the main problems with Pine Oak is that there are no restaurants open on Sunday. Either you cook your own meals or drive to one of the adjoining towns. So when I managed to reach him on his cell phone—he was out on a call, not unusual for a Saturday night—I asked him to meet me for lunch at the Burger King between Pine Oak and Hanson’s Quarry.