Champagne for Buzzards

by Phyllis Smallman

  “There’s a murderer around, best to be safe. I figure we should keep the house locked for a bit.”

  Marley’s eyes grew wide. “I hadn’t thought of that. Do you think he’s still here?”

  “Naw.” Tully waved the thought aside and clomped over to get a coffee mug off the rack. “Never was here. It happened in Independence, and he’s long gone from there.” He poured his coffee and took a seat at the old enameled table. “’Sides, you gals got Ziggy and me. Don’t worry.”

  Ziggy and Tully didn’t actually look like the dream team when it came to home safety and Marley’s face was showing her concern. “I’m glad you’re here looking after us, Mr. Jenkins, but it can’t hurt to keep the doors and windows locked for security.”

  “Honey, I keep telling you, call me Tully.”

  “That’s awfully hard to do…” she smiled at him, “…after all these years. But I think Sherri is right, we should lock up until the sheriff gets it sorted out.”

  “’Cept you’ll die of heat, without a breeze going through. And how are we going to get in and out?”

  “Right, I forgot.” I sipped at my coffee. “You and Uncle Ziggy will expire without access to the kitchen. An interesting side advantage, my two favorite mooches will have to stock their own fridge. You do have a fridge out there, don’t you?”

  “Got a fine fridge. Trouble is it’s full of beer, no room for food. That’s why we come here. Tell you what, leave the door unlocked when we’re here and we’ll make sure we lock it if we go out. How will that be?”

  It would have to do. But still that face was shimmering in my worry zone.

  When Marley went off for a shower, I asked Tully, “What do you know about Howard Sweet?”

  He rubbed his right temple with gnarled arthritic fingers. “His family was rich people who used to winter in Independence. Bought this property for the future but never really lived here. His daddy come down to Florida back in the thirties. Had some kind of big dream, you know how it is with Northerners, always got some get-rich scheme, but it didn’t work out. Howie, he was borned here and never knew no other place but he wasn’t any better at making things turn out than his old man. He had those two big guys living to the east and west of him, both trying to get his land to fill out their own and get control of his water. He couldn’t fend them off. There was some problem with disease in his stock. Old Howie seems a bit paranoid on the subject, thinks it came from unnatural causes, thinks someone was trying to drive him out. If so, it worked. Howie went into debt to restock. Sweet Meadow Farm bought about three hundred acres to the west to get control of the water, but Howie Sweet was still way over his head in debt, that’s why he sold out to Clay.”

  “Was the debt just from restocking or did Howie have other needs?”

  “Not sure, but I bet there wasn’t much left after Clay bought this place and Old Howie paid off the banks. He let’s on he’s doing Clay a favor by working at Riverwood but I think he needs the money.” He rubbed the back of his neck and added, “And working here gives him a chance to hide from his wife.”

  “Why didn’t he just sell to one of those other ranchers?”

  “’Cause he hates them both. Breslau tried to ruin him and…well, it goes way back. I don’t rightly know the ins and outs of it, except Lucan worked for Breslau, did his dirty work, and you know of course that Lucan was the father of Lovey Sweet’s baby?”

  “What?”

  Tully nodded. “All that didn’t make for good relations between neighbors.”

  “So Clay coming along and buying Riverwood solved everyone’s problems?”

  “Maybe not.” He took a sip of his coffee and then said, “Clay already took Sweet Meadow, the orange grove on the other side of Riverwood, to court and stopped them from pumping the creek dry. Sweet Meadow Farm can only take so many gallons a day out of the creek, not nearly what they were taking before Clay arrived. Clay owns on both sides of the creeks up here near the road. Richard Arby, who owns Sweet Meadow, wanted the west side of the creek from Howie so he wouldn’t have to pump Sweet Meadow’s irrigating water so far. Offered him big money, but Howie wasn’t going to let either of them in so when Clay came along, he was the reasonable solution. Clay paid top dollar and Howie and Pearl get to live out their lives on their land, plus Howie has a job. They couldn’t have gone on living here if either of those other two neighbors had bought them out, would have had to leave the county. Dying where you were born is something good.”

  “What do you think is behind Lucan’s death?” Tully shrugged. “Why would you kill someone? Me, I’ve done a lot of crazy things, wonder I haven’t killed someone before now, but never have except in ’Nam. More luck than anything else that one of my fights didn’t end with someone dead. But that was always in the heat of the moment, and those days are well behind me.” He scratched along his whiskered jaw. “Guess I’d still kill to protect you.”

  Before this could go to my head he added, “Or Marley, or Ziggy. Only natural to protect the people in your life but I don’t get angry or crazy enough to kill for any other reason anymore. What was done to Lucan, well there was emotion behind it. Hate or even fear, there was a kind of madness. The guy that did it wasn’t just coldly ending a life; he was smashing a life, different sort of thing.”

  “Could a woman have done it?”

  CHAPTER 17

  He thought about it. “If Lucan was already in the bed of the truck, say he was drunk and came out of the Gator Hole and climbed into the back of the truck for a little nap, sort of thing a man can do when he’s heavy in the liquor, then a woman could have found him there and beat him to death. A man’s skull ain’t as strong as you might think. One time, I saw a fella trip and hit his head on an iron gate. This little knob,” he made a circle with his fingers, “put there to look pretty, went into his head like a lead ball into water, killed him dead right there and then before anyone could do a thing.”

  “Maybe Lovey did it,” I suggested.

  “Hope not. It will break old Zig’s heart.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s where Zig’s been goin’ every day; got it bad for Lovey Sweet. He’s there every morning for breakfast and every day for lunch. Old Zig just sits there and drools and leaves enormous tips.” Tully threw back his head and laughed at this outrageous turn of events. “Myself, I don’t go there much ’cause I don’t want to step into Zig’s territory, being as handsome as I am.”

  “So where have you been going for some sweet talk, Daddy?”

  He gave me an exaggerated wink.

  I grinned at him and asked, “You think the sheriff is going to figure out what happened to Lucan?”

  Tully shrugged. “He didn’t impress me much, didn’t seem all that interested in Lucan. Might just pin it on the first person who looks likely. He was asking about someone hanging about and now you meet the Breslau bunch out back. Seems strange to me.”

  “Are you saying the Breslau clan had something to do with this?”

  “Don’t know. The sheriff is first cousin to Orlin Breslau. I’m just telling you to remember that blood runs thicker than water out here. Things aren’t exactly going to come down here like they would back in Jac. Independence is a small town and there are no disinterested parties.”

  I started to tell him about the man in the palmettos, but Marley came into the kitchen. She’d put a lime green baseball cap on, pulling her mass of hair up under it. The glasses were gone and she was actually wearing some lipstick and mascara, makeup being one of the many fun things she’d given up while dating David. The Baptist grip on her was starting to loosen.

  “You look real pretty, honey,” Tully told her. He turned to me. “You better stick real close to this gal today or someone’s gonna steal her away from us.”

  Marley beamed, just lit up like a Christmas tree. Even a compliment from my old man pleased her. Even the fact she k
new my old man was a really bad judge of woman didn’t stop her delight. Her confidence must have been lower than I realized.

  “Can I take your truck?” I asked Tully. “I want to swing by the restaurant and pick up the champagne the buzzards and dead body made me forget.”

  “Well, sure you can, honey. It might teach you to be more generous with your own vehicle.”

  “Oh, you can drive Big Red now,” I said. “There’s something about having a dead body in the bed that has made me go right off it.”

  “Bet it’s only temporary,” Marley said and bounced down the hall and out the front door.

  I raised a finger to Tully, telling him to wait, and went down the hall after Marley and watched her turn on the tap and start watering the flowers. I went back to Tully and closed the door to the front hall. “I got a little surprise out there in the woods — well, two actually.” I told him about the face hidden in the jungle.

  “Shit,” Tully said. “Why didn’t you call the sheriff as soon as you got back?” He thought for a minute and said, “Best you girls go back to town.”

  “Nope, I’m planning a party, remember?”

  “Tell people it’s been put off ’cause there’s been a tragic accident.”

  I only had to think about it a second. “Not going to happen. I’ve asked all of Clay’s friends. We’re doing this.”

  “Why didn’t you just hold it at the Sunset?” I didn’t want to tell him it was because I wanted Clay and me to look like a real couple, with a real life. “Don’t try to get out of cooking at my pig roast.”

  “Okay, if you won’t go back to Jacaranda then Zig and I are moving into the house.”

  “Thanks, that will make Marley feel much better.”

  “Tough girl,” he laughed. “Nothin’ scares you, does it?”

  “Only the cost of feeding you two. What do you hunt from the back of an ATV?”

  Tully’s eyebrows went up. “Me? Nothing.”

  “Would you hunt for a man on them?”

  Tully straightened.

  “I see what you mean. Both the sheriff and Boomer are looking for someone. I don’t think Boomer wants to arrest him.”

  From the back porch Marley hollered, “Come on,” through the screen door.

  I leaned forward and kissed Tully’s cheek. “You be careful,” I told him.

  “Always am,” he answered.

  I started to leave and then hesitated and turned back, suddenly afraid for him, a black premonition of danger filling me with panic and dread.

  “Go on,” he said, waving an arm. “Get out of here.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Marley was searching through the glove compartment when I climbed behind the wheel. Not finding what she was looking for she started on the junk on the seat and the garbage on the floor. Tully’s truck could substitute for a landfill site and contained stuff from the decade before my birth. “Did you lose something besides your mind?” She was now checking down the back of the seats. “Looking for cigarettes.”

  “Tully quit smoking.”

  “Oh, really? Just because you’ve been nagging him?” She pulled down the visor. “These will do,” she said, picking up the package of cigarettes that slid onto my lap. She opened the pack and held them out, “Want one?”

  “I promised Clay.”

  “Suit yourself.” The smell of the cigarette filled the cab and chipped away at my willpower.

  “I thought you quit,” I said, sounding as grumpy as I felt.

  “Did, but one can’t hurt.”

  She propped her feet up on the dash and opened the envelope with the list of furniture as I backed the truck around and started out the lane. Being a neat, in control, sort of orderly person, Clay not only knew where the keys to the units were, he also knew what was in every container. Very impressive and unusual behavior in my world.

  After a failed fishing trip, I once heard my father tell my Uncle Dallas that he couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse. That pretty much is a family truth. I come from a long line of people with my uncle’s lack of talent in the management department. In my family, not only would the keys never be seen again, no one would have a clue what was in the units, and for sure they would never pay the bill for the storage. And then there would be one more story added to the family legends of how, through no fault of their own, mind you, the Jenkins family had lost out on a great fortune. This epic would probably have some tricky educated person, some person with authority, doing them wrong and making off with their extremely valuable treasures. These stories are a great comfort to people who are their own worst enemies. We polish and embellish them until not a hint of a loser remains, turning them into sagas of evil overcoming decent folk. This ability to rewrite the stories of our own failures is our one true skill.

  Marley read the list of furniture to me as I wrestled with Tully’s old pickup, which kept heading for the ditch, probably in memory of days past — vehicle repair and home repair being two more things we Jenkins didn’t go in for.

  “Says here there is a silver tea service in the first unit and, in case you were wondering, it comes complete with sugar bowl, tongs, milk jug and tray, and it is early Georgian. What do you think that means?”

  “Money, honey, money…old money and lots of it but I didn’t think Clay’s folks were all that rich. Maybe it is something he bought later. Can you imagine him going around to auctions and secretly buying things like a Georgian tea service and stashing it away?”

  “Not really, but I always figured he had hidden depths. After all, he chose you. It would take a strangely perverted man to pick you from the crop, so buying stuff on the sly is not all that weird.”

  “A man that chose both me and Georgian silver has very good taste.”

  “Or a strange sense of humor.” She stuck the cigarette in her mouth and mumbled something unintelligible around it. The wind from the open window blew the scarf around her neck into her face as she was taking a huge life-destroying gulp of smoke into her lungs. I waited for the material to go up in flames but she batted it away and squinted at the papers in her lap. She took the cigarette from her mouth and said, “Mahogany dining table, sex chairs, nope, must be six chairs.”

  “You think?”

  “Slide…no, sideboard. That sounds good. I’m getting excited here.”

  “Lucky you. Must be the thought of sex chairs.”

  “You have no soul or mahogany would do it for you.” She pulled the pages up close to her eyes.

  “Hey,” I warned. “Be careful you don’t set them on fire.” She pushed them away again. “Shit, this print is really small.”

  “Put your glasses on.”

  She stuck the cigarette in the corner of her mouth to keep the smoke out of her eyes. Puffing the whole time, she dug through her bag for the glasses. “Better,” she said, pushing them up her nose and holding the cigarette to the window for the wind to take the ash. “What do you suppose King Charles spaniels are?”

  “My guess is dogs, so you stand in front of me when we open the doors.”

  It took over an hour to get to Sarasota and the three storage units, but oh, the excitement when we opened them.

  It was Christmas and birthdays and Easter and every High Holiday I didn’t celebrate rolled into one. We opened the first compartment, pulled aside the blankets and wrappings, screamed and jumped up and down and ran to the next storage unit. We opened it, uncovered stuff and screamed, jumped up and down and clapped our hands, all the time saying, “Look at this, look at this,” not really seeing anything but yelling anyway and then we ran to the last container, repeating the action, going crazy with greed and excitement and the beauty of what we saw.

  It wasn’t just old stuff, but fine antiques packed to the roof. Surely very little of it had come from Clay’s family. They’d only become moderately well-to-do when they sold o
ut to developers and moved to a new ranch farther inland. And while Clay’s family was Old Florida, they weren’t the kind of people who ran things or came out from England with a boatload of furniture. They were just hard-working ranchers who lived at the mercy of nature. This assortment looked like someone had spent a lot of time and energy building a collection.

  Marley, the shopping whiz, called out a description of each piece as she found it — an orgasmic adventure for the queen of the garage sales. I started to wonder if she realized she wasn’t going to get to take any of it home. Best not to tell her when she was in this state or she could turn vicious.

  “Hey,” said Marley. “I saw a telephone book in your dad’s truck.” She looked up from her papers. “Why would anyone carry a telephone book around? Get on the cell and find a mover to take this stuff out to the ranch.” She was now in charge so I did as I was told.

  “The best I could do is Monday afternoon,” I told Marley when I came back. “Hey, where are you?” “In here. I think I found an organ.”

  “Must have something to do with sex chairs, don’t touch it, you never know where it’s been.”

  Her head poked up beside a floor lamp with an alabaster shade. “You are a very crude person.”

  “I know. It happens every time Clay goes away. What do you suppose causes it?”

  “You have a mind like a septic tank.”

  “That’s a shitty thing to say.”

  “Humpf,” she grunted and disappeared.

  “Hey, come out of there. You’re going to bring the whole thing down on your head.” There was no response. I didn’t want to be there when the accident happened so I went back and checked out the other two storage spaces. Even in a sixteenroom house, this furniture was going to make a statement and impress the hell out of everyone.