Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem

by Karen G. Berry

  Eventually, equilibrium was restored.

  “Brother, I don’t think that you and I are exactly tuned in to the same radio station at this point, so to speak. I know that your wife might kill you for overhearing your neighbor during her acts of love, but I myself don’t believe it’s on the books as a crime. In your situation, I would consider it an unlikely benefit of painfully acute hearing. But I need to know if you heard anything else, Tender, because the Right Reverend Henry Heaven wasn’t just injured. He was found dead in the street not far from here.”

  “Hank Heaven’s dead?”

  “Yes, he died before midnight. And he died ugly. So think carefully. Did you hear anything else?”

  Tender shook his head. “Trucks, the usual.”

  “No sound of a fight, yelling, anything like that?”

  “No, brother. I didn’t hear a thing besides what I told you.”

  “Do you think it could have been his murder you heard?”

  Tender drew in a deep breath, and took his time letting it out. “It’s possible. But what I heard, it was all around me, but it wasn’t close. It won’t help you.”

  His brother’s ears. It was a blessing that something fine had come along to drive out whatever that sound was. “She sounds pretty?”

  “I’ll never tell, you beast.”

  Both brothers smiled their tight, secret smiles. Memphis closed his notebook. “Well, Tender, I have to ask you to keep this information to yourself. At nine o’clock, I’m heading to the Clubhouse to talk to the Open Armers. Please don’t tell anyone he’s dead before then.”

  Tender looked at his porch. Rhondalee stood in the porch light with her arms crossed, a robed Sybil, waiting for the truth. He swallowed. “Anyone?”

  “Anyone at all.”

  Tender looked at him with eyes full of resignation and left the car.

  Memphis sat looking at the series of grids on his tiny tablet. Xs and Os. Playing Tic-Tac-Toe against yourself was pointless, he thought. Something like questioning your own brother in a murder investigation. He took off his cap for a moment, rubbed his forehead, sighed. He wanted coffee, and there was only one place to get it in the middle of the night.

  MINAH BOURNE LIVED in Space 49, the last space on Sweetly Dreaming Lane, nearest to the highway and the main gate. From this vantage point she was, to Memphis’s way of thinking, the sentinel of the community. Her door was open twenty-four hours. If an odd-job man put gas in his truck and bought a new tire but came up a few dollars short for a warm meal, he came to Minah. If a woman had a drunk boyfriend, a black eye, and no safe place to hide till it was time to make up, she came to Minah.

  Memphis approached the row of clean tunafish cans Minah set out on her porch every night. He had to step around a few remarkably plump and well-whiskered strays as he took off his hat, held it to his chest, and knocked.

  She came to the door in a fuzzy blue bathrobe and matching slippers, her wig askew, her glasses on the end of her nose. He gave her the short facts, which required her to take a few audible breaths. “Dead? Oh my gosh. Oh my goodness gracious. Oh do come in.”

  She found a tissue, which wasn’t hard in her home. Every few feet there was some kind of crafts project to hold tissues. She blew her nose and wiped a tear or two away from the corner of her eye as she made a pot of fresh coffee and cut him a slice of maple sugar coffeecake, which he left untouched. She sat at the table and took up a crocheting project to calm herself. “Can you tell me how he died?”

  “A large amount of trauma to his head. I found him in the road, but it’s hard for a car to hit a man in the head. He was a mess but the road wasn’t. I have my suspicions, which the coroner will probably confirm.”

  She looked up at him through her glasses. “And you want to know what happened at the community meeting.”

  “In fact, I do.”

  “Well, it got ugly, but not that ugly. Harley Ridgeway had quite a suggestion for the Reverend, if you want to know the truth. And Quentin Romaine and the Reverend got into it over that gosh darn little jockey. I’d like to sell that for scrap, myself.” She kept adding Folgers to his cup, and he kept adding names to his list.

  “Did you hear anything? See any strange vehicles coming in?”

  “I was exhausted by all the fireworks. I came back here and fell asleep.”

  Well, he’d been hoping against hope, but of course she’d been asleep. Minah was a tough old bird, Lord Bless her, but she was in her seventies.

  Memphis admired Minah. He might not have admired the decoupage and needlework and bric-a-brac that covered every inch of her home, but nothing made her more proud than to talk about her son, whom Memphis remembered as a silent, tall teenager with a dumpy build, the chess champion of Ochre Water County. He’d grown up and gone north to college. Minah spoke with quiet pride of his education, his success, and how well he took care of the numerous children he’d made. One wall of her living room was nothing but framed school pictures. Various crayon and magic marker drawings adorned her fridge.

  He turned his eyes to hers. “Minah? What did you think of the Reverend as a man?”

  “Well, I’m not so sure. He’s only been here a few months, Memphis.”

  “A few minutes is all you need for an opinion.”

  Minah stabbed a crochet hook furiously in and out of her mass of yarn. “I’m not much for church, as you know.”

  “I’m not asking about church. I’m asking what you think of the man.”

  “I’m not all that impressed with him. You see, Memphis, it seems to me that around here, it’s hard to hide who you are. Everybody’s living so close to the bone. We wear what we are right out there, like our clothes.” She frowned. “I think the Reverend had more than a few suits hanging back in his closet, if you get my message. It’s just a feeling I have.”

  “Did you know he was raised Mormon?”

  “That man is no Mormon. Have you ever driven through a Mormon neighborhood? It’s just nice lawns and big families, kids with nice teeth, Dad earning a living and Mom sifting weevils out of all the flour they have stockpiled in their bomb shelters. Mormons are good people. I have a hard time thinking that Hank Heaven was ever a decent Mormon. They do not leave their faith.”

  “Well, he said he got the call.”

  “I don’t buy it. He wasn’t worried about salvation. Do you know he hasn’t called on Fossetta Sweet? Not once in the four months he’s been here.”

  It was no mystery to Memphis why a man of God might stay away from Fossetta’s trailer.

  “Well, now Memphis, I know what you’re thinking, but the man was a preacher. He had Jeeter Tyson pass out all kinds of flyers about the church to everyone in the Park, but never to Fossetta. Jeeter has nothing against her, so the Reverend must have told him not to put anything from the Church of the Open Arms on Fossie’s door. He never reached out to her, but he had plenty to say about her, always shooting off his mouth about her ways like they were any of his business.”

  “Maybe it was Christian concern.”

  “Hmph.” Minah frowned. “A good builder never despises his stones, that’s what I think about it. And I live next door to her. I’m not sure why everyone around here is always in such an uproar about the woman, I live right here and I can tell you, there are twenty women in this park who have busier bedrooms than Fossetta Sweet.”

  He felt his cheeks flushing. “Some women capture the imagination.”

  “In her case, the stuff that flies around this park is mostly imagination. And here’s another thing. Why would a flashy fella like him want this kind of a backwater ministry?”

  “They all have to start somewhere.”

  “The man kept bragging about his show business connections. If he had those, why was he bothering with this place? Oh you know I love the Park, but seriously, Memphis. And why did he die like that?” Minah did all but shake a finger at him. “That’s not how men die around here.” She was right. Mostly, local men died in car accidents or from liver fa
ilure. Tysons died all sorts of creative ways. “Men aren’t usually beat to death around here. It makes me wonder if there wasn’t a good reason that a man would die like that. He died like a woman. Murdered. Why, I just saw on the television that the leading cause of death among pregnant women is murder.”

  Unfortunately, Minah was right about the women. When a woman died in Ochre River County, she usually died at the hands of a man she knew. “Those are good questions, Minah. I’m out here looking for answers, and it helps to have the right questions.”

  Minah patted his hand. “I guess the best we can hope for is that we’ll get the deaths we deserve.” Sheriff LaCour rose to his feet, turning her ideas around in his head.

  As she showed him to the door, she offered some antacids and reassurance. “I won’t be talking about this at Coffee Klatch. This is the kind of news that can wait, don’t you think?” His relief must have shown on his face. She smiled. “Good news, I’d tell it in a minute. But bad news keeps.” He stepped over a sleeping tabby, and she shut her aluminum screen door. He smoothed down his mustache and checked his wristwatch. Almost six o’clock. He ate a Tums and thought about the idea of people having the deaths they deserved. If Minah Bourne had the death she deserved, she would ascend to heaven on crocheted wings, a radiant trail of maple sugar coffeecake crumbs falling behind her.

  Lord Bless her.

  MEMPHIS SPOKE TO Garth on the radio to verify that the five boys from Bone Pile hadn’t been out of his sight. “No sir, Memphis, they haven’t. Not one of these characters has left the room.”

  “And none of them have made any phone calls.”

  “There’s no phone here, Sheriff. They sat here and polished their boots, and then they got drunk on that wine they make, and then they played a few songs, and they all took turns pissing in the kitchen sink because I wouldn’t let them go to the bathroom. Now they’re cooking something. And you really don’t want to know what it is they’re cooking.”

  “Then it’s a fine thing that I never asked.”

  “Sheriff? How long do I have to stay here?”

  “Just keep them there until nine. I’ll head over to the service for the Open Armers, and I’ll break the news. You can let those boys come on over there about 9:15 if you want to, they’ll probably want to talk with the rest of the congregation about losing their pastor. After that, you come on in to the office. And don’t fall asleep, now.”

  “All right, but there’s nothing to do. No TV, not even a radio.”

  Memphis thought for a second. “Polish your boots, Garth. I know they have shoe polish there.”

  “Sheriff? I don’t know what it’s made out of.”

  MEMPHIS LEFT HIS car in front of his brother’s home and began to walk because there was no way to do this except on foot. He checked the bumpers and fenders of every car and truck, space by space, omitting from his perusal only those vehicles on blocks. He counted forty-two fender dents, but none were fresh. Most were rusty. None were bloody.

  Well, of course not. No one hit the Reverend in the face with their car.

  His cell phone rang. “Morning, Sheriff. I have a preliminary report for you.” Phineas Border, the coroner, got to the point in his usual brusque tone. “Cause of subject’s death, blunt force blows to the head causing cerebral hemorrhage. Subdural hematomas at throat and internally on larynx and trachea indicate asphyxiating holds applied, though subject did not die of asphyxiation.”

  “Weapon?”

  “Pointed but relatively giving instruments. Not wood, not metal. I’m still counting points of impact.”

  “Boots?”

  “Of course it was boots, Memphis.”

  Memphis closed his eyes and saw that gory face. The eyes ruptured, sockets empty of all but connective bundles of nerves and blood. The nose completely flattened. One ear kicked off. It might be satisfying to kick a man in the ribs or the back, but it was rarely lethal. If you were mad at a man, you’d kick him where it hurt. If you planned to kill him, you’d just work on his head or his throat. Which shows me one thing, thought Memphis. I’m dealing with murder in the first degree. “Was he kicked anywhere else besides the head?”

  “Throat.”

  What a way to die, thought Memphis. But is there a good way? “Phineas? What about the trailer?”

  “I’m headed there next.”

  OF COURSE, AS Memphis left Minah’s, a pair of silvery eyes had been watching him. And these eyes didn’t belong to a tabby cat.

  Annie Leigh had watched out her window directly after her slapping, pinching re-entry into bed at the hands of her grandmother. She wasn’t long for the sheets. Annie Leigh thought nights spent sleeping were wasted.

  She was ready to go out.

  First, the closet, to get the big black case. That shouldn’t have been easy, as it was almost bigger than her and the process of wrestling it out of the window took every bit of strength she had. But it was like that case wanted out as bad as she did, because it sailed through and landed hard. “Sorry ’bout that.” The strings buzzed their forgiveness.

  She dragged a full pillowcase from under the bed and let it fall out the window next. The knot kept the contents in when it hit the case. Then, bare feet first, the sow’s ear of her sex visible when her nightgown rode up her skinny flanks, she shimmied out the window. The heavy case cushioned her landing. She grabbed the pillowcase in one hand, the handle in the other, and set off. “You okay?” The case thumped against her leg, strings jangling in reply. “Good.”

  She liked the dark. She heard the cries of cats as they bit and hunched. She heard the sound of flesh on flesh, those mysterious cries and scared whimpers. The dark was a song, and she was part of it.

  Standing on the case, she could see into Fossetta’s window through the gauze of the curtains. Sometimes Fossetta was up to stuff that was interesting to look at, if a little curious. Tonight she was just sleeping. Naked. A lamp lit flesh so soft it looked melted, gold hair that flowed like a spill of raw honey. As pretty as that was to see, there were other windows to look in, where more exciting events might unfold.

  The park was full of television-lit domestic tableaux, and Annie checked them all. She saw a woman made of stone watching Judge Judy on TV, quietly ripping her wedding photos into confetti. She saw a grown man sitting at a table holding his head in his hands, crying. She watched a man holding his girlfriend’s hair like he was tethering a dog, bending her over the back of the couch in front of him while he watched a dirty movie on the television. The woman stared absently into space, her eyes blank, her mouth closed. “He needs to go take him some lessons from Fossie,” she whispered to the case she stood on.

  Strings hummed in agreement.

  She gave up on that window and went back to the road, where she stooped to inspect an ugly red smear on the asphalt. It looked like something had been hit. She bent closer, sniffed. Yes, blood, for sure. She had an interest in road kill. She wanted to write a book about it. She had it all worked out in her head. It would be like a field guide her friend Melveena had for birds, but Annie’s book would be for the mashed stuff you see on highways. A picture of the mess and a picture of what it used to be, before a truck flattened it on the asphalt.

  She couldn’t figure out what had died there, though. No fur at all to help her. Of course, the Bone Pilers took the best fur Frisbees for themselves, and maybe those men over in Space 13 had scooped it up. She wasn’t quite sure what they did with the road kill. Some of the Ochre Water kids said they ate them, but her mom said they made leather from the hides and used it to re-sole their boots.

  She stopped by Space 13 for a few minutes. There was music in there, as always when the windows were lit. She leaned against the aluminum door, wishing they’d left it open, and soaked in as much of their rollicking Bone Pile melodies as she could. But other business called.

  She went to the east edge of the park, where the gravel wasn’t well-raked and a dark trailer leaned toward the fence. A few nights back, she’d seen th
e old woman who lived there hunting through the Dumpsters. Her grandma said Mrs. Hayes wasn’t right in the head and couldn’t manage anymore. Annie Leigh peered in. The only light came from an old console television with a tree of coat hangers twisting off it, the screen full of black and white shapes of pure static. The old woman sat in front of the television, leaning in an attitude of starvation. Annie Leigh deposited the pillowcase full on her step and knocked at the door, knowing Mrs. Hayes might be too far gone to ever answer. But that was her prerogative. It was the right of the wild to starve to death.

  Unburdened, Raven moved better. Two hands swung the case, which chimed rhythmically, bumped by her knees, strings jangling, calling. She needed quiet, and she needed privacy, and it was hard to find either in the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park.

  Annie Leigh stopped at the highway and looked both ways. She walked though the parking lot of the Blue Moon Tap Room. She walked out into the desert night on the thin wire of her own foolishness.

  That foolishness was her only protection.

  TWO HOURS LATER, shivering, barefoot, teeth clacking like castanets, Annie Leigh returned to her trailer. She heaved the case in first. It landed on the bed and purred like a cat. She jumped, caught the sill, arms like tensile steel, pulling herself up and in and back to the bed she hated.

  And that’s where she was, standing on the mattress, leaving filthy footprints on the white sheets, holding her bare pillow and watching out the window when her uncle Memphis left Minah’s house. He was still up, and that meant he was being a lawman.

  She thought about the red blotch in the road. “I wonder what died,” she whispered. She lay down, her arms around the case. She dreamed of blood on pavement and music, while the strings breathed along with her childish snores.