Wild at Whiskey Creek

by Julie Anne Long

  Carlotta Kilgore was another older lady, but she had a great mane of dyed black hair and her penchant for red lipstick and snug dresses hinted she might have been a siren back in the day, and maybe still was. The front of her own little mobile home in Elysian Acres featured a variety of statuary: gamboling forest creatures mingling with a variety of gnomes—a smiling lady gnome dancing with her skirts in her hands, a grinning bearded fellow with his hands planted on his hips, a cheerful waving fellow wielding an axe who had more than once given Eli a start when he drove through the community on his rounds late at night. Her yard was a huge hit with any and all visiting grandkids.

  But the Heavenly Shores Mobile Estates Retirement Community had a rather cutthroat competition going with the Elysian Acres Mobile Estates over landscaping, and every year a grand prize was awarded by an allegedly impartial committee to both the finest landscaping and the community that showed the most creativity.

  The contest got a little hairy. A lot of these retirees who bought these mobile homes had left behind high-level corporate jobs in finance and marketing and old habits died hard. The rest were just wily. They weren’t afraid of a damn thing, not confrontation, not death, nothing.

  And Eli knew their idea of morning was often about four a.m. The streets around Heavenly Shores practically teemed with track-suited dog-walkers around then.

  “Have you ever actually seen Mrs. Kilgore do it?” he asked.

  “No, but I know. That trollop wears White Shoulders, and when I step outside it’s still hanging in the air like a pesticide.”

  Eli’s own grandmother had worn White Shoulders; his mother had bought it for her every Christmas and Eli had a soft spot for it. But that was neither here nor there at the moment.

  “I notice you don’t have any obvious security devices outside your house. Maybe if you set up a web cam?”

  “What’s a web cam? A camera that drops a web down over a criminal when they’re caught in the act?”

  When she put it that way, Eli didn’t know why a web cam shouldn’t do exactly that. One day, probably. He could imagine a future in which cops cruised around each morning in recycling trucks, picking up little cocoons comprised of people who’d been netted in the act of peeing against sides of buildings or defacing bus benches with graffiti.

  “If cameras could do that, Mrs. Wilberforce, I’d be out of a job. And we still live in a democracy. We’re all entitled to be tried by a jury of our peers. Have you spoken to Mrs. Kilgore about it?”

  “She denies it.”

  He could just imagine that conversation.

  “Ask your grandson, Bill. Isn’t Bill the one who likes computers?” He’d had many a long chat over the years with half the residents here. “The one who lives in San Francisco?”

  The place Glory had been headed a few months ago.

  How about that. He couldn’t seem to get through more than a few minutes without at least a glancing thought of her. The problem was that everything he did, said, thought, or felt, could be followed right back to her, the way Whiskey Creek fed into the Hellcat River fed into the ocean.

  “Oh yes, my Bill is brilliant!” Mrs. Wilberforce brightened immediately at the idea of her grandson. Eli had known she would. “What a good idea, Eli.”

  “He’ll know how to set you up with a security system or a camera that you see on your computer. But while a dog peeing on your rhododendron is impolite and certainly isn’t neighborly, I’m afraid it isn’t strictly illegal, and proving intent might be a bit tricky.”

  “I’ve half a mind to pee on her flowers.”

  He sighed. “I really hope you don’t, Mrs. Wilberforce.”

  They both shot straight up in the air and twirled about 180 degrees when a god-awful sound, a cross between a leaf blower and chainsaw, swelled and in an instant was deafening.

  Eli crouched when he landed and put his hand reflexively on his gun. If they were being strafed by enemy planes, there wasn’t much he’d be able to do about it, but at least he could say he’d gone down fighting.

  A rotund elderly gentleman in plaid pants and a jaunty matching cap was rounding the corner on a mobility scooter that had clearly been souped up in some fashion. His enormous rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of ping-pong balls.

  They went even bigger when they saw Eli and he quite clearly mouthed the words oh shit, did a sharp left turn, and went back the way he came.

  He cut the engine, and merciful silence reigned again.

  Mrs. Wilberforce had started talking before it was completely quiet. “. . . that damn scooter of his with a lawn mower motor or something. I think he can do fifteen miles an hour on that thing.”

  It was illegal as all hell, but Eli frankly thought he’d be tempted to soup up his scooter, too, if the day came when he couldn’t get around easily on two legs.

  He’d be obliged to give that guy a ticket, if he could catch him.

  And he had a feeling the old guy wouldn’t go down easy.

  He sighed. The gang here at Heavenly Shores was as much of a handful as the gang down at the Plugged Nickel.

  “I don’t know how he can stand the sound of that thing,” he said.

  “He turns his hearing aid off,” said Mrs. Wilberforce.

  “Well, you have my advice, Mrs. Wilberforce, with regards to your rhododendrons. Let’s hope we resolve it peacefully. Always good to see you. I should be getting on my . . .”

  A tall, slim woman with long, streaky honey-gold hair was walking toward them, an overnight bag slung over her shoulder, worry and amusement and affection all over her face. She was definitely out of context here at Heavenly Shores. Quite possibly she was a mirage. Given how tired he was, it wouldn’t surprise him.

  “Grandma, why are you talking to the handsome police officer in your curlers? Did you pull off a heist again?”

  And Mrs. Wilberforce pulled the willowy beauty into a hug and a both-cheeks kiss.

  “Oh, Eli. This is my granddaughter, Bethany. She’s in town working on that television show they’re filming nearby. She’ll be staying with me.”

  The wind caught and tossed Bethany’s mane of streaky gold and brown and she swept it out of her face with a musical laugh.

  Eli had learned to be a little leery of girls whose names ended with an “any” sound. Melanie and Tiffany and Brittany and the like. He’d dated a few in high school and they were all as astonishingly high maintenance and as temperamental as the rust-bucket Fiero he’d bought dirt cheap in high school and that he and Jonah had tinkered with over many a summer weekend.

  “Eli Barlow isn’t married, either, Bethany,” Mrs. Wilberforce continued. “And he’s the sheriff, too.”

  Oh, for God’s sake. And now he deplored that willingness to say anything at all. Surely occasional circumspection was less dangerous than, say, skipping a blood pressure pill.

  “Deputy sheriff,” he clarified, modestly.

  “In charge of all the deputies around here! All of them. And he was on the news. On TV,” Mrs. Wilberforce clarified, as if being on TV were all the credentials someone needed. “He’s a hero!”

  Bethany gave a short laugh and sparkled ruefully up at Eli. “I’m so sorry. It’s how my grandmother classifies the world—married or not married.” But her words were all warm affection. “I’ve been hired as a freelance makeup artist on The Rush. Have to make those guys looks authentically dirty.”

  That was a flirtatious line if Eli had ever heard one.

  And it had been a while since he’d heard one.

  He took the hand she extended. Her nails had those neat little square white tips and it was very soft and probably lotioned and scented. She had that natural yet thoroughly groomed look which annoyed a guy when he had to live with it because it took forever to achieve but which he generally admired when he saw the end result.

  He was certain the fingertips of her left hand were just as soft as the ones on the right, not callused.

  In an instant he was under that t
ree again, and Glory’s eyes were soft and amazed, and her fingers combed up his neck as he went in for a deeper kiss.

  He hadn’t known Glory had any surrender in her at all until her body softened to fit his, as if she was a missing piece of him.

  Eli suddenly envied the ability to turn things on and off, the way the guy on the scooter had switched off his hearing aid. Things like his feelings and his libido and his memory. He’d only use them when it was safe.

  He let go of Bethany’s hand, freshly reminded of how very much he enjoyed touching women. And of last night’s resolve to move on.

  “I just want you to be as happy as I was, Bethany, sweetie.” Mrs. Wilberforce was regarding this meeting with proud satisfaction and a little glimmer of hope.

  “Gramps was one of a kind.” Bethany slung an arm around her grandmother and gave her a half hug.

  “Bet Eli could give him a run for his money.”

  Mrs. Wilberforce actually nudged Eli with her sharp little elbow.

  He was six feet five inches and in many ways hard as nails, and there was a gun hanging at his hip, but Mrs. Wilberforce might actually make him blush.

  The melting-chocolate eyes of Bethany sparkled up at him, reminding him that he was actually (1) a catch, (2) a red-blooded man who had more than a few moves, none of which he’d deployed since he’d had Glory Greenleaf pressed up against a ponderosa pine, and (3) his resolve of the previous night. Every journey began with the first step, as they say.

  “I can show you a little bit of the town if you like, Bethany,” he offered. “I know every bit of it like the back of my hand. Grew up here. I have a few free hours tomorrow, if you’d like to join me.”

  Within the hour everyone in town would know he’d just offered to take out Bethany.

  “That sounds wonderful, Deputy Barlow. I have a few days before I need to be on The Rush set full-time, so my schedule is wide-open.”

  That sounded a bit like innuendo, too.

  He smiled at her as Mrs. Wilberforce beamed triumphantly. “Excellent. Call me Eli.”

  Chapter 5

  Legend had it the Misty Cat Cavern got its current name because the previous owner, Earl Holloway, ordered a neon sign over the phone while he was falling-down drunk. He’d meant to call the place the Aristocrat Tavern, and he’d pitched a fit when the sign came but he couldn’t afford another, so he hung the one he got and the name stuck. The place had begun its life in the Gold Rush as a saloon with a whorehouse upstairs, and it hadn’t changed much since then, architecturally, anyway. It was said a certain former resident, a prostitute named Naughty Nellie, who was murdered by a jealous miner, had allegedly never left. Some claimed to have seen her spectral face in the upstairs window in the wee hours of the morning, but then, most people who were anywhere near the Misty Cat in the wee hours of the morning were probably pretty drunk.

  Poor Nellie couldn’t seem to leave Hellcat Canyon, either. At least I’m still alive, Glory pep-talked herself. And she had a plan.

  The Misty Cat was now a wildly popular restaurant, and Glenn and Sherrie Harwood had owned it going on two decades now. The food wasn’t fancy but it was pretty flawless and always satisfying, the place was almost always packed, and you left feeling hugged, if only metaphorically. And thanks to some mysterious magical conspiracy between the ceiling height and the aged redwood and the depth of the place, the acoustics were marvelous. Glory had been a regular at the Misty Cat’s open mic nights ever since she was old enough to get in the door with her real ID. (In a small town, there really was no way to get away with a fake ID.) Its famed acoustics were why college and indie bands like The Baby Owls often detoured there on their way to bigger venues up and down California and Nevada and Oregon.

  Glory timed her arrival at the Misty Cat for the lull, if one could call it that, between the breakfast and lunch rushes. She pushed open the door and the bells hanging from the handle leaped and jangled frantically.

  Everything looked and smelled the way it usually did: the big white board over the grill read “TRY THE GLENNBURGER! SEVEN SECRET INGREDIENTS!” And Giorgio was behind the grill. He was downright soothing to watch when you were hungover after a late night: the slapping, scraping, clanging, and sizzling were like a sort of noisy industrial ballet. He had a certain charisma, maybe even hotness, if you liked your guys irritable and taciturn and enigmatic. Glory didn’t. He didn’t really hold too many mysteries for her. He’d grown up in Coyote Creek and had more relatives in jail than she did, and she’d gone all through school with him. And he rented the tiny flat upstairs at Allegro Music extra cheap (as well it should be, given that it was right over kids learning how to play trumpets and guitars and whatnot), and she’d once seen him shuffling off to the bathroom with his toothbrush and shaving kit tucked under his armpit when his own toilet had backed up.

  Sherrie’s crimson hair was heading toward Glory like a beacon born aloft. It was the color she’d been born with, only more so, courtesy of a box she usually picked up at Costco or Walmart, whoever had her shade on sale that week, and her complexion was cured brown by decades of hot mountain summers. Usually the only thing brighter than her hair was her smile, which Glory basked in now, though today it was a contest between her smile and the orange and fuchsia striped shirt she was wearing. She and Glenn had four kids and Glory had gone to school with most of them, too.

  “Well, hello, hon! Haven’t seen you in a while. We’ve missed you at the open mics! Did you phone in a to-go order?” Sherrie seemed genuinely delighted to see Glory.

  “Um . . . no. No, I didn’t, actually.” In a flash everything at stake made her palms go damp.

  “Oh . . . do you want a table, then? You can have a seat right over there, if you want. See where that pink flyer is?” Sherrie waved a hand.

  It was a Baby Owls flyer.

  That clinched it for Glory. She squared her shoulders. “Actually, Sherrie . . . I came in to see if you might be hiring. I heard you might be short a waitress, since Britt is moving on.”

  What ensued in the wake of that sentence was a sort of cosmic record scratch.

  Sherrie’s smile congealed.

  Giorgio froze, spatula mid-air. He looked absurdly like a swarthy marching band conductor.

  The only thing moving was the ceiling fan. Glory could see its reflection in the laminated gleam of the menus Sherrie was clutching.

  “Oh!” Sherrie said brightly, finally. “Well!”

  And that was all she said. Her smile didn’t shift at all.

  But Glory could practically hear her brain gears whirring like the blades of the fan overhead.

  And she didn’t say a word.

  Glory cleared her throat again. “I didn’t know whether you’d hired anyone yet, so I thought I’d, you know, just, inquire . . .”

  Sherrie had apparently come to some silent accord with herself, because she re-animated. “Well, hon, let me . . . let me just go and get you an application. We’ll need to get your particulars from you.”

  Glory had a hunch she was stalling. Glenn was probably back there in the Misty Cat’s little office, and they were probably going to have a confab.

  Sherrie pivoted and slipped behind the counter and disappeared into the depths of the kitchen.

  Glory sat down at the empty table Sherrie had gestured to and looked around. At one table a guy was twirling his final French fry into a pool of ketchup, his face the picture of dreamy, gustatory satisfaction. At another table a pair of guys in heavy work boots, hardhats slung over the backs of their chairs, those huge, tough work gloves hanging out of their back pockets, were laughing over something on one guy’s phone. One of them glanced up and saw her, and she lifted a hand. Bill Cranford, one of Jonah’s old friends from high school.

  And that was how it normally was in the Misty Cat. Half the time you’d know at least half the people in the place, and they all knew a little too much about you, too. Same was true of Hellcat Canyon itself. The blessing and curse of small towns everywhere.


  Giorgio was glowering at her as if she was the health department. He knew Glory pretty well, and he clearly anticipated she would be a disruptive force in his orderly world if she got a job here.

  “You can glare at me all you want, Giorgio. I saw your pee-pee when you ran through the sprinklers at my cousin’s house when you were five years old.”

  Giorgio lowered the spatula, impressed by this opening gambit.

  “Piglet panties,” he said pointedly, after a moment.

  Well, damn.

  She had indeed split her pants when she was in kindergarten and the whole class had seen her underpants, which were covered with little Winnie the Poohs and Piglets and Eeyores. Honestly, she could hardly blame them for calling her Piglet Panties. She was only glad no one had thought to call her Pooh panties.

  “Well played,” Glory allowed.

  He actually flashed her a little smile and saluted her with the spatula.

  Mutual blackmail sorted out, she resumed looking about the place as if she hadn’t done it a hundred times before. Old pickaxes and sieves hung on the walls, now decorations where they’d once been tools in someone’s hands. Daguerreotypes of scruffy guys, some of whom struck it rich, some of whom never made it out alive. A few women were pictured, too, hardy souls, camp followers, a few prostitutes who made excellent marriages, and a few, like Nellie, a victim of the primal lawlessness of that time.

  Glenn Harwood emerged from the kitchen wiping his hands on a towel. He was tall and big boned and soft bellied, and he had a bushy head of hair, all gray, as was his formidable mustache.

  “Let’s sit over here, kiddo, and have a chat,” he said briskly.

  He’d coached her softball team when she was in grade school, and then he’d coached soccer in high school. His daughter Eden, who ran the flower shop and had hair a few shades lighter than her mom’s, was the same age as Glory. In Glenn’s eyes Glory was probably forever nine years old. He would probably call her kiddo until the day he or she died, whoever went first.