Do Unto Others

by Jeff Abbott

  I glanced down at the completed board, MAKING PEACE WITH DEATH. What a lovely invitation. The air now felt moist and hot, as the noontime sun began its drumbeat on the town. I sat in my Blazer for a few minutes, running the air conditioner at arctic blast and watching the leafy oak branches sway in the wind. I didn’t regard Beta Harcher and Tamma Hufnagel as such bosom buddies; they might have been allies, members of the same church, followers of the same version of God, but maybe they just weren’t friends. People who pride themselves on their powers of judging others don’t bond well. There’s always that withholding of true affection, waiting for a sign of human weakness from one that the other can deliberate on. Clearly Beta Harcher rejoiced in finding people deficient in some way, so she could proclaim what awful sinners they were and how bad they needed God—and her guidance. How do you stay friends with a miserable so-and-so like that?

  I pulled away from the First Baptist Church of Mirabeau. Making peace with death. Tamma Hufnagel seemed to have already done that, and right quick.

  I COULDN’T STAND BOB DON GOERTZ. FORTUNATELY I only knew him from a distance. Bob Don owned the two biggest car dealerships in Bonaparte County. If you looked up charlatan in the dictionary you might find a bejeweled and polyestered Bob Don leering back at you, ready to shake your hand and arrange financing for your new or quality pre-owned car. I’m only a bigot toward car dealers; I’ve yet to meet one I like.

  He replaced Beta on the town’s library board when she got booted. The Hufnagels liked him, which was no recommendation in my book. As soon as Beta got sacked for her reactionary hysterics, Bob Don stated that what America was all about was freedom of the press and he’d sure be delighted to donate his time to the library board The board elected him without a second (or possibly first) thought. Since then he’d been as sweet and as fake as cotton candy to me. I guess he knew I was a force to be reckoned with. Or he wanted to sell me a car. Apparently for Bob Don, running a car dealership was a lot like running for public office. He could smell the winds of change and spit the other way quicker than you could blink his saliva out of your eye.

  I pulled my Blazer into the quiet dealership, hoping that Bob Don hadn’t dashed off to a cholesterol-filled lunch with the good ol’ boys. I parked, stepped out of the car, and made it about three feet before a fat, balding salesman arrowed toward me.

  Telling him as we hustled along that I wasn’t buying, but was just there to see Bob Don, I swerved and made it roughly twenty feet before a younger fellow with huge sideburns and bad teeth attempted a verbal tackle, offering to let me test-drive a Bronco. Nimbly avoiding him and his sales pitch, I made it to the air-conditioned showroom. With a plea to use the bathroom, I pushed past another sweaty salesman and got into Bob Don’s inner sanctum.

  A gum-chewing, beehived receptionist examined me critically before picking up her phone and announcing me to the King of the Road. Bob Don came to his office door quickly, which surprised me. He surprised me further by looking happy to see me. His broad, tanned face broke into an ear-to-ear white grin.

  “Well, hey there, Jordy, it’s good to see you!” He pumped my hand like I was a water well.

  “Hello, Bob Don. I wonder if you have a minute to talk privately.”

  “Why, sure I do.” Apparently talking to me would be the highlight of his day. I found that a little difficult to believe, what with all the unsold cars on his lot.

  We went into his office, decorated in small-town prosperity. Pictures of local Little League teams that were sponsored by the Goertz dealership covered the walls, going back at least two decades. Trophies for the teams that fared well stood on a shelf. He’d backed several winners and probably sold their parents a car while the glow of victory was fresh. There were pictures of him and his wife over several years, the fashions changing somewhat but not straying far from rural Texas couture. His wife was a numbed-looking woman with heavy-lidded, blank eyes and pneumatically big hair. I’d heard gossip that she drank heavily. There were awards for excellence from the various automakers he represented; but they were cheap-looking certificates that Bob Don had mounted in expensive frames. I thought they looked rather sad.

  Bob Don sat behind his desk in a thronelike leather chair and gestured for me to take a seat. Clutter covered the desk, including a huge, ceramic monstrosity of an ashtray with a few butts mashed in it. I saw it and laughed; it reminded me of the horror ashtray I used in the library. Bob Don laughed with me in the automatic, reflexive way of salesmen. I told him why I laughed and his grin grew.

  “Oh, Lord, yes, Gretchen’s just got too much time on her hands.” He examined the ashtray as though it were an interesting part from a foreign car. “She said it represents somethin’, but damned if I know what it is. Rage, I think. Insisted she had to take some damned course over at the community college in Bavary. Not pottery, but cer-a-mics. Next week it’ll be photography or genealogy or some such thing.” He shook his head and started to offer me a cigarette. Suddenly he withdrew the pack. “Sorry. Just remembered you’re trying to quit.”

  “How did you know?”

  “You mentioned it last board meeting.” He shrugged and put the pack away.

  “Actually, I’d love to have a cigarette with you, Bob Don. I decided to hold off on quitting for the moment.”

  He looked pleased, muttered something about not living forever, and lit for us both. I inhaled deeply and looked at him through the smoky veil. Tall guy, over six feet, probably up over two hundred pounds now. His face held strength when he wasn’t trying to be a good ol’ boy, and I thought he must’ve been handsome when he was young. He looked better when he didn’t smile than when he did. His official Beta verse, according to my notebook, was Judges 5:30: Have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two? Two women. Had Beta discovered another woman in Bob Don’s life aside from the artistically challenged Gretchen? Or had some other prey been split? Or neither? Beta had a vivid imagination. At least I had that in common with her, I thought.

  I stayed silent for a moment, watching him smoke, and wondering if he was going to set his blond-gray hair on fire with his cigarette. His hair spray was probably creating an ozone hole directly over Mirabeau. He wore it swept into a Conway Twitty-style helmet, with long matching sideburns. Bob Don could have easily been a televangelist or a Sixties country-western singer as much as a rural car dealer.

  “What’s up, Jordy?” he finally said, breaking my reverie.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Beta Harcher.”

  His eyes frosted. “Oh, her. Don’t pay attention to her. She’s just a bit overzealous, and—”

  I didn’t let him continue. “Haven’t you heard? She’s dead.”

  I might as well have leaned over the table and mussed up his hair. The shock showed naked on his face. He recovered quickly, drawing on his cigarette. His eyes avoided mine. “Dead?”

  I told the story in few words, omitting the list. “I thought the police might have called you by now. They’re starting an investigation, of course.”

  “Call me? Why?” Now he looked at me. His complexion, fair to begin with, paled.

  “You have a key to the library, Bob Don. There was a key on her that Tamma Hufnagel says Beta swiped from Adam, but who knows for sure?”

  “Good Lord!” He receded into his chair. He blinked his puffy blue eyes through the smoke. “Holy Christ!” he muttered. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Sacrilege and booze? How un-Baptist of you, Bob Don.”

  He shrugged instead of arguing. “I’m a man like any other, Jordy. I believe in God, but all His rules get tiresome. I’m gonna have me a whiskey. You want one?”

  “Sure.” I never drink early, but I’m flexible under stress.

  He produced two plastic glasses from a desk drawer, along with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He poured solemnly and handed me a glass. He didn’t make a toast and I was relieved.

  “Beta dead,” he muttered. “Jesus! It seems impossible.” The shock faded from his f
ace and his expression was composed and unreadable.

  “Everyone dies,” I observed, wondering how he’d react to such a cold comment.

  “Yeah, but I always thought she’d go on her own terms.” He shook his head and sipped.

  “I understand you saw her yesterday, around midafternoon?”

  “You ask that like you don’t care, but I think you do.” He fingered his red necktie, covered with little yellow horseshoes.

  “You were upset when you saw her,” I said.

  “Who told you this?” he asked. “Tamma Hufnagel, I guess. She was leaving as I got there. Practically running. Looked as scared as a four-year-old at a haunted house.”

  I filed that away. “Never mind Tamma. I’m curious as to why you were there.”

  He frowned and I saw his fingers whiten against his drink. “Why should I tell you?” His friendliness had not entirely evaporated, but it was drying.

  I measured him. I hadn’t liked Bob Don before, but in the past five minutes he’d shown glimmers of humanity that elevated him beyond the supercilious glad-hander I’d known.

  “Look. She threatened me yesterday in the library, then she ends up dead there from a bat I brought and left in my office. It doesn’t look promising for me. The police and Billy Ray Bummel think I was involved.”

  He mashed out his cigarette and downed his glass of Jack Daniel’s. His stare held mine. “I’ll ask you a question, Jordy. I want the truth. I will help you all I can if you need it.” His eyes had a frankness I hadn’t expected. “Did you kill her?”

  “No, I did not,” I answered. “And if I did, why would you help me anyway?”

  He poured more whiskey into his glass. “Because I liked your daddy, and I like your mama,” he said simply. “I’d do it for them.”

  “Then help me. Tell me why you were there and what you know about her.”

  “What do I know about her?” He looked toward the window. He didn’t say anything for several moments. “She grew up here. She was pretty when she was younger. She was wild, too. I remember hearing that about her, although she was several years younger than me. She didn’t get religion bad until she was twenty, and then something happened to her to make her think she and Jesus together were an unbeatable team. She never married ’cause nobody could live with her. Her daddy was well-to-do and she lived off the money he left her.” He shrugged. “She was obsessed with God With judging people.”

  I nodded. “Do you think she ever used that judging to go a step beyond?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked hoarsely.

  “You can’t judge someone until you know their story. She could just judge people by conduct, but that might not be enough.” I watched him; our eyes never strayed from each others’. “Was she the type to dig up dirt on folks? Use it against them?” I thought of the verses she’d associated with Tamma and Bob Don; they suggested secrets best kept hidden.

  “She wasn’t blackmailing me,” Bob Don said tonelessly. He raised the plastic glass to his lips and gulped.

  Not the response I expected. I sipped my own drink, trying to act nonchalant. “So why did you go see her yesterday?”

  He swallowed. “I wanted to clear the air with her about me replacing her on the board. Just make amends instead of amens.” He tried to laugh but it sounded more like a sick cough. “I knew how upset she was and I thought it best to make her feel she still had a voice—through me—on the board.”

  That was all I needed, another Beta. “And are you her voice now? Are you going to give me as much trouble as she did?”

  Bob Don looked hurt. He fumbled for his words, as though they were scraps he’d scattered on the floor. “No, not at all. Look, Jordy, please stay out of all this. Let the police do their job.”

  “Their job seems to be trying to find enough evidence to arrest me, according to Billy Ray Bummel.”

  “They won’t arrest you. I promise. I—” Bob Don never got to finish. I heard the nasal sounds of the bee-hived receptionist and I recognized two other voices before the door flew open.

  Junebug Moncrief and Billy Ray Bummel.

  They hadn’t bothered with the niceties of knocking. Billy Ray looked at me like he’d caught me with my hands around a tender young throat.

  “I told ’em you were busy talking to Mr. Poteet,” the receptionist yelled from behind Mirabeau’s Law and Order.

  “It’s okay, Bernadette,” Bob Don eyed Junebug and Billy Ray critically. “Y’all come in.”

  Since they were already in, they stayed put. A glaring Bernadette shut the door behind her.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Goertz,” Junebug smiled. Billy Ray nodded and continued to scrutinize me as if I were a urine specimen.

  “Gentlemen,” Bob Don wheedled in his closing-the-deal voice, “usually visitors wait to be announced. Y’all trying to make ever’ body here think y’all gonna arrest me?” He chuckled good-naturedly at the end.

  “We just wanted to ask you some questions, Bob Don,” Junebug said. “How you doing, Jordy?”

  I stood, setting my drink on Bob Don’s desk. “I’m fine, thank you.” I didn’t feel it.

  “You mind telling us what you’re doing here?” Billy Ray asked. “Not making a toast to Miz Harcher’s memory, I hope.”

  Before I could answer, Bob Don leapt into the fray. “Jordy here and I were just talking about him gettin’ a new truck.”

  “You must be a mighty cool customer, findin’ a dead body then going car shoppin’,” Billy Ray observed. He didn’t bother to hide the vitriol in his voice.

  “Billy Ray,” Junebug cautioned. He looked at me, then the drinks. “Didn’t know you were interested in buying a truck, Jordy.”

  “I’m offering him a good trade-in on that car of his, but he reckons I’m trying to rip him off,” Bob Don laughed, as jovial as a host politely trying to remove unwanted guests. His verbal awkwardness was gone; the hallmark glibness that’d earned him that big car lot was back.

  “Since Junebug and Billy Ray obviously want to talk to you, Bob Don, I’ll be leaving.” I shook his hand. “I’ll consider your offer. Thanks.”

  “Give me a call and we’ll discuss it further.” His blue eyes bored into mine and there was steel in his handshake. I thought for a moment that he was reluctant to release my hand, but he did.

  Junebug and Billy Ray said nothing further to me as I walked out and shut the door. I went past the still fuming Bernadette, who was muttering about the poor manners of civil servants. I emerged into the heat of the afternoon.

  Bob Don Goertz, unaccountably, was acting like my ally. But even though he had been forthcoming, he hadn’t seemed comfortable. Did I make him nervous? I’d half-expected him to point a finger at me and tell the officers that I was prying into Beta Harcher’s death. But he hadn’t. And I thought I knew why.

  I’d asked if Beta was the type to dig up dirt on people; his immediate response was She’s not blackmailing me. It seemed an odd answer for a smooth talker like Bob Don. Not a “Yeah, she was the type to do it” or “No, she was a good Christian woman who’d never commit extortion.” He just said he wasn’t being victimized. I wondered if that was a slip of the tongue, if Bob Don had been so jumpy that he’d logically leapfrogged ahead a couple of questions. Was he being blackmailed by Beta, or did he know of someone else who was? I was getting ahead of myself, I thought. But I’d definitely take him up on his offer of further discussion. He hadn’t said where he was last night. I felt that honest Bob Don wasn’t being entirely so.

  It didn’t make me want to buy a car from him.

  The smell of marijuana hung faint in the air as I sat on Matt Blalock’s screened back porch. I wasn’t surprised that someone in Mirabeau would be toking up, but I found it disconcerting that a Vietnam vet sneaked a puff while staring out at the lush, dense growth of mossy woods that came up to his property like alien jungle. It seemed too much like a scene from an Oliver Stone picture.

  Matt Blalock wheeled back onto the porch, balancing a lap
tray with iced tea glasses with little mint sprigs (I hoped they were mint) topping the tea. I’d have offered to help, but I knew from experience Matt liked to do everything himself.

  Stopping at the low table in front of me, he handed me a glass of tea and set one down for himself. He deftly whipped the tray around and tossed it onto another table. The tray clattered, but didn’t fall.

  “Good aim,” I offered.

  Matt shrugged. He wasn’t a big guy; only five feet six or so, but his arm muscles bulged massively from years of acting for his legs. He kept his black hair cut military short. Matt’s uniform these days was jeans and some cause-related T-shirt, using his big chest to advertise saving the whales, disarming the populace, or promoting world peace. Today’s shirt invited us to plant a tree. His other nod to calculated Bohemianism was a perfect little trimmed triangle of beard that sprouted on his chin, pointing downward. It was like a small medal of hair pinned to his face. His eyes were dark, quick, and intelligent—without the haunted look one hears vets have. All I really knew about him was that he did occasional computer consulting for software companies in Austin and that he was involved in the Vietnam veterans movement.

  “Your farm’s looking good,” I offered by way of conversation.

  He shrugged again, an odd motion that evoked French schoolgirls more than burly veterans. “Credit my dad and my brother. They do all the work. I just live here.”

  I couldn’t imagine my family letting me do drugs on the porch, but maybe the Blalocks figured Matt had earned special privileges.

  “I hope they’ll be reopening the library soon,” Matt observed in his lazy, drawling voice. “I don’t want to have to move our vets meeting on account of that bitch.”

  I loathed Beta Harcher, but even I wouldn’t have said something that insensitive. “She’s dead, Matt. Have some respect.”