He nervously moved the hat in his hand to his waist, covering up the championship calf-roping buckle on his belt. “Nah, Maddie, I’m too old for rodeo.’’ He smiled back at her. “I bought myself a little ranch west of here, out near Wauchula.’’
“Not far enough,’’ Maddie said.
I bit my tongue before I echoed Mama and told Maddie to mind her manners. She was trying to watch out for me, and with good reason. On the other hand, a lot of time had passed. And the man did look mighty fine in his boots and jeans. He smelled of sweat and hay and the faintest trace of manure, which is like an aphrodisiac for a former ranch gal like me.
“I think my big sister was just leaving, Jeb.’’
I tried to signal Maddie by jerking my head toward the dumpster and her car, but she ignored me. “Maddie, don’t you need to get back to the middle school and torture some little children?’’
“I’ve got all the time in the world, Mace.’’ My sister shifted her purse from her right shoulder to her left, the better to take a swing at Jeb if she needed to.
“We were just talking about the owner of this place, that poor guy who got murdered. Did you know him?’’ I asked Jeb.
His eyes flickered to the drive-thru. “Only to nod at.’’
“You’re probably a pretty good customer,’’ Maddie said. “If I remember, drinking too much was among your many flaws.’’
“Maddie!” I said.
Jeb glared at my sister, his green eyes cold. “I don’t drink like I used to, not that it’s any of your business. I just bought a couple of cases of beer for the boys who work with me at the ranch.’’ He put his hat back on, straightened the brim, and dipped it a little toward Maddie before he turned to me. “We’re having a barbecue tonight, Mace. I’d sure love for you to come.’’
“Mace is allergic to barbecue sauce. Gives her hives,’’ Maddie lied.
I stole a quick look at his left hand. No wedding ring. Still, I wasn’t going to be that easy.
“I’ve got plans tonight.’’ I wish. “How about you ask me for the next one?’’
“Is your number listed?’’
“Mace doesn’t have a phone.’’ Maddie made a last-ditch effort.
“Ignore my sister. I’m in the book.’’
After he left, Maddie lit into me. “I can’t believe you’d give that devil the time of day, Mace. When he breaks your heart again, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’’
“I’m a big girl now, Maddie. And you didn’t have to be so rude. My heart’s been shattered a time or two since Jeb.’’
“But never as bad as that first time, Mace. Never that bad.’’ My sister glanced at her watch. “Now, I really am late. The kids will be raising a ruckus if I’m not there to supervise the school bus lines.’’
She got into her Volvo and rolled down the window. “I’ll talk to you after school, okay? We need to decide what to do next about Mama.’’
As Maddie pulled away, I started looking through my purse for my cell. I wanted to call my other sister, Marty, and tell her about running into the great love of my life. No phone. I remembered pulling everything out of my purse inside the Booze ‘n’ Breeze, hunting for a pen.
I walked back inside and saw Linda-Ann waving my missing phone over her head.
“I figured you’d be back for it,’’ she grinned.
“Listen, I want to apologize for my sister. She’s been a principal for so long, she treats everyone like they’re in the seventh grade.’’
“That’s OK. She’s just as mean as ever, though. You know how her name is Madison Wilson?’’
I nodded.
“Back in middle school, all the kids called her Mad Hen Wilson.’’
I leaned in close. “That’ll be our secret, Linda-Ann.’’ I didn’t tell her that Maddie was not only aware of the nickname, she embraced it.
“There’s something else I want to tell you.’’ She touched one of her dreadlocks to her lips. “How well do you know that good-looking cowboy who just left here?’’
“Pretty well. We used to date, a long time ago.’’
“Then you might want to ask him what he knows about the guy who owned this place.’’
I got an uneasy feeling in my gut. “Why’s that, Linda-Ann?’’
“That cowboy’s been in here a lot in the few months I’ve worked here. He always went back into the office to talk to Mr. Albert, and they’d always shut the door.’’
An old Ford rumbled into the drive-thru. I waited while Linda-Ann served a woman with three screaming kids, two of them still in diapers. I’d be buying booze too, if I had that brood.
As the Ford backfired and pulled away, the stench of burning oil filled the little store. Linda-Ann continued her story. “The last time the cowboy came in, they were back there yelling so loud I could hear their voices coming through the concrete wall.’’
“Could you tell what they were saying?’’
“I couldn’t make it out.’’ She folded a dreadlock in two and let it spring back. “But when the cowboy left, he slammed the office door so hard it about came off its hinges. Then he kicked over a whole display case of beer. Mr. Albert came out to the counter a couple of minutes later and told me to clean it up. I thought he’d be angry.’’
“He wasn’t?’’
“His face was ghost-white and he was shaking. He didn’t look mad. He looked scared to death.’’
I barely had time to process what Linda-Ann revealed about my one-time boyfriend.
I had to rush to work, where I was past late for an after-school event. Two third-grade classes were scheduled to visit the makeshift wildlife center I maintain at Himmarshee Park. A teacher from the last group of kids who came by sent me a letter, saying her students were still talking about the injured fox and scary snakes.
This latest group of kids was already there. I didn’t want to disappoint them by not showing up.
I could hear the din of thirty-one third graders as I crossed the little bridge over Himmarshee Creek and turned into the park. When I walked in the office and dropped my purse on the desk, Rhonda, my boss, shot me a relieved look.
“Thank God, you’re here, Mace. Those little monsters are tearing the place apart.’’
Within ten minutes, I had the students gathered in an outdoor amphitheater, ooohing and aaahing over the contents of a half-dozen cages. The star of the show, a bull alligator missing an eye and most of one foot, was waiting in the wings in his outdoor pool, ready to wow the kids for the show’s grand finale.
“Does anybody know what this is?’’ I held the first cage aloft. Two dozen hands shot into the air.
“A skunk!’’ cried a little boy in a red shirt who couldn’t wait to be called on.
“That’s right. But we don’t talk out of turn, do we? Anyone with the right answer today will get a special award. But you have to wait ’til you’re called on to get the prize,’’ I said.
“Now, this skunk I trapped because it was eating up the tomatoes in some lady’s garden. She definitely didn’t want it around because when she invited her friends over for cards, seeing a skunk freaked them out. It was probably somebody’s pet, because it had been descented. Who knows what that means?’’
Fewer hands went up this time. I called on the red-shirted boy so he wouldn’t feel bad.
“It means he don’t stink no more,’’ he said.
“Doesn’t stink anymore. Very good. Now, it was wrong to buy this skunk as a pet, and then let it go in the wild,’’ I said. “You know why? Because skunks use that stinky smell as a defense against bigger animals. Without it, this little guy was as helpless as a kitten.’’
And so it went for the next thirty-five minutes. A demonstration with something furred or slithery; a lesson about environmental responsibility.
Finally, I herded the kids to the pool holding the seven-foot-long Ollie. There, I lectured them about staying away from alligators in the wild.
“Never, ever feed an alligator, or tease it in any way,’’ I said. “If they get too comfortable around people, it’s dangerous—not just for you, but for them. That’s when gators become what our state laws call a nuisance animal. And that means that someone with a trapper’s license—like my cousin, Dwight—can kill them and sell them for their meat and hide.’’
I thought of my stuffed-head key holder at home. It wasn’t that gator’s fault someone built a house with a pool in his territory. But once they did, it wasn’t safe for him to make himself at home there anymore. So now his head graced my coffee table, like a trophy buck on the basement wall of a deer hunter up north.
I pointed over a low concrete wall at Ollie, lolling in his pond. “Now, that gator’s here because he became a nuisance to people who like to play golf. But we didn’t kill him. We got special permission to keep him for educational purposes. Does anybody know what that means?’’
Hands shot up. I picked a little girl in a yellow sundress.
“Teaching?’’
“Right,’’ I told her. “Now, I’ll educate you a little about Ollie.’’
Thirty-one small bodies crowded toward the pond. “Careful, now! You may peek over, but you may not climb onto that wall.’’
When they’d chosen their spots, I continued, “A gator’s jaws are about the most powerful thing in the animal kingdom,’’ I told them. “If Ollie were to clamp down on your arm or leg, the pressure in his bite is more than sixteen times harder than your average big dog. His jaws are even stronger than a lion’s.’’
At this point, I tossed a whole raw chicken into Ollie’s gaping mouth. Some of the girls screamed when the gator’s jaws snapped shut over his meal. I took my bow.
Handing off the kids to one of their teachers, I collapsed on a park bench. I was staring up at the sky through the green-needled branches of a cypress tree when I heard a tentative voice.
“Excuse me, Ms. Bauer?’’
A pretty redhead peered at me from the end of the bench.
“I’m here with the kids,’’ she said. “They’re going to want to know: How’d Ollie get hurt?’’
“A fight with another male, probably over a mate. And if you think Ollie looks bad, you should have seen the other guy.’’
The line usually gets a laugh, but the teacher didn’t crack a smile.
“Uhm … I wonder if I could speak to you about another matter?’’
With the kind of day I’d had, with her hesitation and demeanor, this couldn’t be good.
“Sure.’’ I patted the bench next to me, inviting her to sit down. “What’s on your mind?’’
“I knew your mother real well. I mean, I know her.’’ She corrected the past tense. Mama wasn’t dead; she was just accused of killing someone else. “I was in her Sunday school class.’’
You and half of Himmarshee, I thought. But I was silent, preparing for the punch line.
“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about her being in jail.’’ She sat, looking down to straighten the already perfect lines of her knee-length skirt. “I don’t think she belongs there.”
“We don’t either.’’
“No, I mean it’s impossible she did what the police say.’’
I sat up straight, fatigue forgotten.
She continued, “My mother plays bingo at the Seminole reservation, just like your mom. They were together at the casino yesterday, all afternoon. They had dinner there, and then played into the evening. At one point, before dinner, my mother got to feeling awfully cold. They keep the place air-conditioned like an ice house.’’
I drummed my fingers on the bench.
“Anyway, Ms. Deveraux told my mom she had a jacket in the trunk of her car. The two of them left the casino and walked way out into the parking lot to your mother’s turquoise convertible. Ms. Deveraux opened up the trunk. My mother said she moved aside some fishing tackle and a cooler before she found that jacket. And there sure was no body inside her trunk.’’
I felt like I was Samson, the Bible strongman, and the Lord had just lifted the heavy pillars of the temple off of my hands. I wanted to hug her, but settled for grinning like an idiot.
“That’s fantastic!’’ I jumped off the bench. “Your mother needs to tell that to the police.’’
The teacher stood up, too. “She already did. My mother called and told me a detective questioned her this afternoon. Spanish accent. Kind of rude, my mother said. He didn’t seem all that interested in her story about bingo, until she got to the part about Ms. Deveraux and her jacket.’’
I grabbed her by the arm. “What’d he say?’’
“Well, he wanted to know all about it. When, where, and how. My mother told him she saw clear into the back of Ms. Deveraux’s trunk. He argued with her, saying your mother might have collected the body from somewhere else before she wound up at the Dairy Queen.’’
I sat down again, thinking about why Martinez was trying so hard to indict Mama. Did he have something against bingo-playing grandmas?
“Did your mother tell the detective anything else that could be helpful?’’ I asked.
The teacher rolled her eyes toward her forehead, like she was replaying her conversation with her mother in her head. She touched the hem of her skirt. “She did tell him there was no way Ms. Deveraux could have snuck away. Your mother was on a hot streak all night. All the other ladies gathered round to congratulate her when bingo was over. She wound up going home with the two-hundred-dollar pot.’’
And that platinum-haired imp had never said one word about winning $200.
“Listen, would your mother be willing to go to the police department with me and tell her story over again? If we can’t get Detective Martinez to listen, we’ll just go over his head to Chief Johnson.’’
She didn’t hesitate a moment. “Absolutely. We’ll do anything we can do to help Ms. Deveraux.’’
Soon, the kids and the red-haired teacher were gone.
I fed the animals and closed up the park. It was late. I’d catch up my sisters by cell phone on my ride home. I couldn’t wait for a hot shower. All I wanted was that, and the fried chicken stuck in my fridge since last night, when Mama’s call had interrupted my supper.
My hand was on the doorknob to leave when the office phone started to ring. I wanted so bad to head on out and let the answering machine pick it up, but I was scared it could be someone trying to reach me at work with news about Mama.
I picked up the phone, and would come to wish I hadn’t.
“Mace? It’s your mother’s friend, Sal.’’
I looked with longing at the exit sign over the door in the park’s office. I’d been so close.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Provenza?’’ He’d asked us a hundred times to call him Sal, but my sisters and I addressed him more formally because we knew it irked him. At least Maddie and I did. Marty had barely said six words to the man in the year Mama had been dating him.
“It’s about Rosalee.’’
My heart skipped a beat. “Is she okay?’’
“She’s fine, so far as I know.’’
I let out my breath.
“But me and her aren’t,’’ Sal said. “I tried to see her today at the jail, and she refused my visit. That’s why you and me need to talk.’’ Tawk. “I don’t think she loves me anymore.’’
I felt like Robert De Niro’s shrink in the movie Analyze This.
“Then maybe you should have been truthful with her upfront,’’ I said. “Why didn’t you tell us last night at the police department you had ties to Jim Albert? Or, should I say, Jimmy the Weasel?’’
Pause. “How do you know about th
at?’’
“Detective Martinez told me. And I’m betting he told Mama, too. That’s probably the reason she won’t see you. She can’t abide a liar. Martinez is very interested in how you’re involved with a New York gangster, who then turns up dead in the roomy trunk of your girlfriend’s car. And, frankly Mr. Provenza, I’m interested in that question, too.’’
There was silence on his end of the phone. I could hear him taking raspy breaths. Sal really should give up smoking.
“I’m sorry, Mace,’’ he finally said. “I can’t go into all of that. Especially not on the phone. I’m out at the golf course, just finishing up eighteen holes. I played like crap. All I could think about is your mother.’’ Mudder. “Would you consider swinging by here on your way home?’’
The golf course, the centerpiece of a posh new development along a canal off Lake Okeechobee, wasn’t on my way home. I live north; the new course is south. But Sal seemed to be a key to Martinez’s case against Mama. I wanted to find out why.
“Please, Mace? There are some things I wanna tell ya, face ta face.’’ The harder Sal pleaded, the more his boyhood in the Bronx seeped into his speech.
I finally agreed to meet him at the golf course, which is out in the middle of nowhere, ten miles past the last trailer park in the Himmarshee city limits. He told me he’d wait at the snack bar, next to the pro shop.
When I got there, it was dark. Two floodlights illuminated the ornate pillars marking the entrance to the community. Himmarshee Haven, they said in cursive script. Luxurious Country Living. Talk about your oxymorons. Most of the country lives I know have very little luxury.
The Jeep bounced over a series of speed bumps as I made my way past Victorian-style homes with gingerbread trim and two-car garages. Most driveways featured golf carts parked behind white picket fences. Not a single double-wide trailer or swamp buggy in sight.
I parked in the golf course’s nearly deserted lot. There was no sign of Big Sal’s big car, but I decided to go inside anyway. I killed some time looking over the merchandise in the pro shop. Not that I play golf. But Marty does. I bought her a three-pack of those little ankle socks with the pom-pom that sticks out above the back of her golf shoes. The pom-poms were pink, mint green, and baby blue. Marty loves pastels.
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