Champagne for Buzzards

by Phyllis Smallman

  “Wasn’t having a child out of wedlock a huge deal?”

  “Yup, but then Mrs. High and Mighty Sweet Pants could heave a sigh and say it was her cross to bear but no way was she going to have Luc for a son-in-law. Lovey wasn’t but fifteen or sixteen. Not easy to stand up for yourself then.”

  “But she kept the baby.”

  “Baptist you know, no abortion and you didn’t give away kin. She stayed at home for a few years then she got out of there. From what I hear, she hasn’t been back since and old Pearl won’t hear her name mentioned.”

  “Do you think it was Mr. Sweet who killed Lucan?” But April wasn’t listening. “Well look at that there, will ya.”

  I turned to see what had put the animation in her voice.

  CHAPTER 20

  The dog crept into the house on bent legs, nose almost to the floor, waiting inside the door to see what would happen before he melted down, head on his paws and his eyes watching us.

  “Luc said that was one mean animal but he don’t look so bad now, does he?”

  “He looks quite normal there,” I agreed. “He’ll be good company for you. You won’t be all alone now.”

  “Dog doesn’t make up for a man.”

  “Well,” I said, stirring the water in the sink with my hand, considering it, “there’ve been one or two men in my life that a dog would have been a whole lot better than.”

  She gave a hic and then a rusty laugh, as if she was using vocal cords that hadn’t performed in a long time. “That’s sure enough true. Some men in my life, well, living with a dog would be a whole lot better.” She came to the counter and took up the dish towel, hanging on a drawer knob, and began to dry the dishes in the rack, hip against the counter and one bare foot resting on the other.

  I asked, “What do you think, is Howard Sweet capable of murdering Luc?”

  She gave a shrug, watching the towel go round and round the plate. “He always seemed like his name. Don’t think he’d have made a fuss if Lovey and Luc had married, but not that wife of his.” Her hands stopped and her eyes met mine over the towel. “Pearl, Mrs. Sweet, she could do it.” She nodded her head in agreement with her words. “She could kill someone, especially Luc. Cruel woman, always hurtful, I remember once coming out of class at the end of the day, I must have been about eleven or so, Mrs. Sweet was at the door giving out invitations to Lovey’s birthday party. She gave one to the girl in front of me, was smiling and everything, and when I put out my hand to get my invite she just snatched it up to her chest, gave one to the girl behind me though. She just thought me and my family were no good and never would be. She’s real good at passing judgment like that.” She opened the cupboard door and put the plate inside. “Lovey saved me some cake. Brought it to school the next day and told me how sorry she was her mother hadn’t let me be at her party. Lovey’s a nice person.”

  I rinsed a glass and asked, “What about now, how did the Sweets get along with Luc?”

  “Mrs. Sweet still believes he’d ruined their family, and the mister pretty much follows her lead. Mrs. Sweet once told me at the grocery store that she thought Lucan and I were going straight to hell for living together without being married, but then everyone ’round here pretty much agrees with that. They don’t hold with living in sin.”

  “Yeah, I got the same reception. How does Lovey feel about Lucan now?”

  “Lovey just didn’t want Lucan around, didn’t have feelings for him anymore, although his never changed for her, nor mine for Luc.” She picked the glass out of the rack. “Funny, seems the person whose life was most ruined by Kelly’s birth was Luc’s. Never was no saint but he dropped out of school and started drinkin’ after Lovey got pregnant and told him it was someone else’s child. He done some bad things, sure, but he never stopped loving her. And when he knew Kelly was his child he loved her too. He used to go and watch her play baseball, kind of hide behind the stands where no one could see him, and watch her play. Sit outside her school and that sort of thing. And he gave Lovey money for her.” She looked around the room. “Think we just like livin’ this way? Every spare cent went for that girl or into a college fund for her.”

  “He wouldn’t even spend a cent on a gallon of paint for the house, never mind anything for me. I work cleaning up at the Blue Haven retirement home, cleaning up pee and worse so we could stay alive and he could give it all away. He’d do anything for that child, and when Boomer Breslau started bothering her, I thought Luc was going to kill that boy. See, Luc never got over spying on Kelly, and he seen Boomer trying to kiss Kelly and Kelly trying to get away. Luc stopped his truck in the middle of the street, got out and slugged Boomer. Fortunately some men broke it up, but Luc was sure mad.”

  “Did he get fired?”

  “Nope.” Her forehead wrinkled in thought. “Luc said they couldn’t fire him because he knew too much.”

  “About what?”

  “Don’t know but something’s going on over there. Luc never said what, but it’s happening and it’s bad. Once, when he was drunk, which was just about every night, and we were watching TV he said that what we was watching on television was nothing. Said that worse things were happening right here in Independence.”

  I handed her the mug I’d just rinsed out. “But you have no idea what?”

  “Nope. Don’t want to know either and neither do you.”

  When I left April’s the dog started to follow me out the door. April’s face fell but she said, “You can take him if you want. I’m not much for animals.”

  Clay had talked about getting a dog and a mutt like this seemed to be part of every ranch yard I passed. Lord knows, I needed the early warning system. I looked from the dog, gazing expectantly up at me, to April. She crossed her arms over her flat chest and hunched her shoulders. “All the same to me,” she said.

  “Naw,” I replied. “He’s your dog; just remember to feed him, won’t you?” I wasn’t at all sure she would even remember to feed herself.

  Her face lit up and she nodded vigorously. “Sure, Luc always fed him, but I can do it.”

  “I’ll drop back in a day or two but you know where I am if you need me.”

  There was no answer but I got a slight smile with the nod.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Breslau place was called Oxbow, at least that’s what the old weathered sign out at the road said. I slowed down to look as I went past and then came to a stop.

  There was this thing biting me. Instead of my anger fading with the passing hours it seemed to be growing.

  The look of unrestrained desire in Boomer Breslau’s eyes had pretty well convinced me that if Joey hadn’t decided on eating meat instead of hay, I’d be shedding tears. I didn’t like being treated like a piece of meat, didn’t like being frightened, and I was damned sure it wasn’t going to happen again if I had anything to say about it. I wanted to tell Boomer’s parents to keep their son away from me or he was going to be real sorry. I backed up and pulled into the driveway.

  Heavy steel gates, attached to an eight-foot chain-link fence with barbed wire on top, stood open. It looked like the Breslau family was real worried about someone stealing their tomatoes. Well, they had something else to worry about now. I’d been terrified and it had made me cranky. And if I was going to spend time out here with Clay, live part of my life at Riverwood, the neighbors surely had to know I expected a little respect. And one way or another I was going to get it.

  Even with the gates swung wide back from the lane, the place wasn’t real welcoming. Instead of, “Welcome,” the entrance seemed to say, “Go away and forget about it, fool.” I had a brief flash of caution that was quickly overcome by simmering rage.

  The house was well back in the trees, not even a peek of it showing from the road. I started up the lane. Just driving through the dark overgrowth, greenery reaching for me on all sides, gave me the creeps. Except for the well
-used sand drive, the place had an abandoned feeling as if no one cared enough to cut back the vines and undergrowth encroaching all around.

  The remains of a white board fence, now peeling and rotting, ran parallel to the driveway. It seemed that things had once been far different here, maybe a little more welcoming and gracious.

  The underbrush thinned and I could see through to the field beyond. I couldn’t see anything that looked like a tomato plant in the weed-filled ground next to the lane. Truthfully, I wouldn’t know a tomato plant if it bit me. I’m only interested in those round red things when they have bacon and mayo on them, but it didn’t seem that this fallen-down sort of place with no sunlight was the spot to grow anything but brush.

  A covey of six Bobwhite quails darted out in front of me, hesitated and then fluttered into the scrub on the other side of the drive.

  I went around a bend into a place where the brush had been pushed back by a bush hog. The weedy clearing in the trees was cluttered with broken machinery, old cars, a flatbed truck and even a mesh-sided orange hauler, all sitting in various states of disrepair while they decayed in dying grasses. The equipment looked as if the machinery had been left to rot where it stopped when someone was done using it, all abandoned in a casual uncaring way.

  Beyond this dumping area the house stood sheltering under huge oaks. Even around the house there was more abandoned machinery. Out of this tumble of broken stuff came three brown pit bulls, jaws stretched and barking to wake the dead. Not one tail among the lot was wagging.

  These guys meant their snarls; their bare teeth were just waiting to strip the meat from my bones. The scars on their muzzles and along their flanks proved they’d survived more than one battle, their attitude saying they were ready for another. Every country place comes with a dog, often more than one, but not like these — these dogs were meant for something else, something I recognized.

  In the trailer park I grew up in there was an old man, a seriously dangerous man who not even my mother tried to reform. He raised fighting dogs. His dogs were locked in cages on the edge of the swamp behind his trailer. His dogs had overlapping scars just like these. We used to sneak out to see those dogs when Old Man Butler took his prize animals off to fight. To prove your mettle, our gang demanded you sneak close enough to a cage to hand feed a dog. They’d gulp down whatever we stuck in between the wires and then lunge at the fragile metal trying to get at you. They were not pets. Neither were these dogs. At least there’d been some sort of cage between me and Old Man Butler’s dogs.

  I eased around the circular drive searching the old tumbled-down ruin for signs of human life, looking for someone to come outside and call off the dogs. The house had once been white like the fence, but it was now mostly gray where the paint had crept back to expose the weathered boards beneath. And at one time the house had worn black shutters. Now half of them were missing and the remaining ones looked like they’d packed their bags to go.

  Except for the dogs and the three rusting air conditioners falling out of the front windows on the ground floor, it looked like the dwelling had been abandoned years ago. As I considered the building, a large brown mastiff came out from the dark of the porch. A thick chain was connected to a leather strap around its neck. The dog’s face was an open mouth, a trap of teeth and white drool. His deep-throated growl overpowered the din of the other dogs.

  I reached over and pressed down the lock on the passenger door and then on my own side. I wasn’t sure I really wanted anyone to come out of the house. If the family was anything like their dogs, this was no place to take a stand on my need for respect. Maybe I should write them a strongly worded letter. Neighbors like this I didn’t want to know.

  I looked around. The only bright spot on the landscape was a little cottage tucked off to one side. It was painted in soft lavender with purple trim and had bright yellow sunflowers growing in big pots on either side of the door. It was fresh and welcoming but it was also surrounded by chain-link fence with a fenced chute sticking out to the drive. A battered white sedan sat by the fence, the only sign of an automobile I could see. Always one to take the easiest option, I headed for the cottage.

  The dogs followed.

  I parked in front of the house and tooted the horn to see if I could get anyone’s attention. The dogs, except for the mastiff chained to the porch, were now all throwing themselves at the driver’s door of Tully’s pickup and waiting for lunch to step out. The purple door opened a crack, just enough for a pale face to peek around the edge. I slid over and rolled down the window a few inches and waved a hand out the opening in what I hoped was a friendly gesture. At least they could see the hand didn’t hold a weapon. I was thinking that might be important. If I lived in a place like this, guarded by a pack of slavering dogs, I’d expect all my guests to come armed. A dog jumped up onto the door of the truck, its nails clattering on the window and scratching down the paint. I quickly brought my hand back inside and closed the window.

  A tall thin man slipped around the edge of the door and swiftly closed it behind him. He walked to the gate of the chute. The pack ran to him. He opened the gate and edged out without letting the animals into the enclosed yard. He closed the gate firmly behind him and hesitated, which I thought was a big mistake. The dogs surrounded him, baring their teeth. Cursing, the man landed a couple of kicks, driving them back. Still snarling and slinking around, they waited for an opening or any sign of weakness. Focused on me, the guy ignored the dogs.

  Forty-five to fifty, blond hair faded to mostly gray, he had a face that sadness had moved into a long time ago and had no intention of leaving. Suspicion, and more than a little trepidation, worried his forehead. He didn’t smile, although I was wearing my brightest one.

  I slid across the bench seat and rolled down the window six inches. “Hi,” I said, sticking out my hand for a shake. “I’m Sherri Travis. I live with Clay Adams over at Riverwood. I just came by to invite you to a party.”

  He thought about taking my hand but remained undecided. Behind him the door of the little house swung in. I couldn’t see who was at the door because they were well back from the opening.

  “It’s Clay’s birthday and I thought it would be great for us to get to know the neighbors.” My hand was growing tired of hanging there but I wasn’t going to pull it back inside unless he spat on it.

  “Harland Breslau,” he confessed, as if it were a crime. He leaned forward just far enough so he could make contact and in the most fleeting of touches pressed his fingers to mine and then quickly withdrew them. “Thank you, ma’am, but we don’t really go to parties. My wife isn’t well.”

  I leaned sideways to see around him. “Hello,” I called and risked my arm to wave towards the house where I could see movement at the door.

  “I’d like to meet your wife,” I told Harland.

  He frowned and looked back to the house. Only a black maw yawned into the dark interior. “My wife isn’t up to visitors.”

  His words were immediately turned into a lie as a wheelchair rolled through the open door and the woman sitting in it called out, “Harland, bring our guest inside, don’t keep her out there talking in the hot sun.”

  His voice was uncertain and tentative when he said, “Guess it would be all right for you to step in.”

  “Are the dogs going to bite me?”

  He frowned again. “They’re just crazy beasts, never know what they’ll do. Pull your truck right up to the gate. That would be best.” He went and stood at the chute protruding from the fenced yard, kicking the dogs that rushed at him. They moved away as I backed the pickup to the gate; evidently they were accustomed to being herded with vehicles.

  My heart was beating double time. I took a deep breath and pushed open the door on the passenger side. Once my feet hit the ground I was moving. He held the gate ajar for me and clanged it shut before the first dog could slide under the truck and reach me.


  I followed him up the crumbling sidewalk to the wooden ramp accessing the cottage.

  The woman in the wheelchair was beautiful. She could be used in an ad that needed the perfect grandmother. She had pure white skin, with just a hint of pink on the cheeks and eyes the color of periwinkle. Her perfect blond hair was pulled back and tied with a black velvet ribbon at the nape of her neck.

  She backed her wheelchair away from the door and rolled into the living room where she spun the chair around to face us expectantly. She folded her hands in her lap and waited, totally composed and the queen of her surroundings.

  The front door led directly into the living room. It was like walking into a little doll’s house, the kind of place a real grandmother would live, with roses and ivy climbing over a big overstuffed couch and the chairs all wearing white slipcovers and rose-covered pillows. The sun poured through crystalclean windows, flooding the living room with light and glinting off a tiny glass chandelier hanging over a round cherry table. Matching glass lamps, with crystal drops, sat on white wrought-iron tables. Light bounced and twinkled around the room. The bleached cypress floors, very like the ones at Riverwood, were free of carpets. Lace curtains at all the windows were pulled back and tied up to let in the maximum amount of sunlight.

  “This is Sherri Travis, a friend of Clay Adams,” Harland said. He smiled at his wife, a look tender with love. “This is my wife, Amanda.”

  She nodded like the monarch she was. “Welcome to our home, Ms. Travis.” Her voice, dignified and educated, had a hint of Georgia peach in it. “Please call me Sherri.”

  “Of course, Sherri.”

  Regal and handsome, she smiled at me and stretched a palm out towards the chair beside her. I felt honored to be invited to sit next to her. “We’ll have some iced tea, please, Harland.”

  “Your house is lovely,” I told her.

  “Not so grand as the main house where our son Justin and his grandfather live but here I can maneuver my chair, and everything is on one floor.”