Cold Flat Junction

by Martha Grimes

  So the Sheriff and I had been sitting in the Rainbow that day after he visited the Queens. He was waiting me out, waiting for me to tell him what I’d seen and what I’d heard. What I knew. We sat in silence while his ice cream melted on top of his peach pie. I still remember the humming silence, as if everything had stopped except for the jukebox voice of Patsy Cline.

  I was grateful for Patsy. I was grateful to hear someone knew how it felt. Keeping a secret like that from the Sheriff was hard. The reason I did it is not because Ben Queen told me to keep quiet about seeing him. No, he said the very opposite; he said: If it goes too hard on you, turn me in.

  I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t turn in someone who put my welfare ahead of his. I would do it, too, the same thing, if it had been the Sheriff who’d said that to me.

  But no one had ever said it to me.

  It is not too late, I told myself as I stood in the rotunda of our courthouse, looking at the frosted glass of the door with SHER IFFpainted on it in white block letters. It’s one of several doors arranged in a half-moon arc around the rotunda. The other half is taken up by a wide marble staircase with columns on either side. It is an elaborate building for a town the size of La Porte. There are two dozen broad white steps leading up to its entrance, and stone lions flank its door. It also has a jail out back, where prisoners stand around with their hands gripping the bars of the windows, yelling comments whenever girls walk by, which I think is pretty disgusting and shouldn’t be allowed. I asked the Sheriff once why he didn’t crack down on the prisoners. I said it isn’t very pleasant having a serial killer whistle and catcall when you passed. He could be memorizing your face for when he got out.

  The Sheriff just shook his head. “I never heard anybody exaggerate the way you do.”

  Recalling this, I sighed. For that was back in the happy days when we were friends and walked all over the town, reading meters and giving out tickets.

  Today, it was a little after two o’clock on a Saturday and the Orion was showing a matinee, as it always did on Saturdays and Sundays. It was in the back of my mind that if things didn’t work out at the courthouse, I might just go along to the movies. I’m not sure what I meant by “work out.” Probably, it meant that the Sheriff would ask me to go along with him on a meter check. But I didn’t go into the Sheriff’s office; I stood and watched shadows move back and forth behind the frosted glass. I didn’t know whose shadows. The Sheriff might not even be in there.

  I was carrying a white bag of Shirl’s fresh doughnuts. There were two plain and two sugared and one iced. The Sheriff likes plain doughnuts and Maureen Kneff, the typist, likes sugar. Donny Mooma, the deputy, likes chocolate iced, so I got vanilla, just to let him know I was losing no sleep over his likes and dislikes. I do not like Donny; I can’t stand the way he struts around and puts on when the Sheriff isn’t there—sitting at the Sheriff’s desk, pretending he’s in charge of La Porte and everything else for a hundred miles around. I can’t think why the Sheriff keeps him on, for Donny is really dumb. He’s always tugging his wide black belt up to make sure you take notice he’s got a gun in that holster.

  I looked in the doughnut bag, then folded it closed twice over and went to the recessed fountain by one of the pillars. I tipped my head to drink, though I didn’t like this water. It was nothing like Crystal Spring; it was flinty from all the chemicals they put in it. I wiped my hand across my mouth as I looked at the frosted glass door again. I was thinking up ways to introduce the subject of Ben Queen, like: I got the biggest surprise when I was at the lake last week or Guess who I ran into? How stupid. There seemed no way to get out from under not telling him before. I stood there for a while longer. Above me, the clock said two-twenty. It was set in the molding just below the dome that seemed to soar off into the slate gray sky.

  I felt doomed. I turned and walked down the marble stairs. Outside, at the top of more stairs I opened the bag and took out the white-iced doughnut. They were my favorite.

  13

  Uninvited

  It was not until after my second helping of almost everything at dinner that I heard about the trip. And, of course, it had to be Ree-Jane I heard it from.

  I was resting my stuffed self on the porch. Had I honestly needed that second helping of Mile-High Lemon Meringue Pie? It was so beautiful, the stacked clouds of meringue topping the sun-drenched yellow of the filling, that, yes, I had to have a second slice.

  The evening light that seeped through the trees and lay across the porch railing was a paler note of the lemon pie, as if Nature, not feeling up to scratch, waited while my mother put the last meringue loop on the surface of her pie so it could settle down and copy the color. Only a person utterly immune to beauty and one with a leather tongue could have resisted another slice of that pie....

  And here was one, and here she came.

  Groggy as I was with enough food in me to feed Cox’s army (an army known only to my mother, who referred to it as a measure of size), I could still tell that Ree-Jane was going to tell me something that I wouldn’t like but that she did. I watched her arrange herself on the porch railing in a dress that was noticeably new. I might as well ask.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Heather Gay Struther’s, of course. I got this and two others and an evening gown and a swimsuit. Of course, I’ll need more, so I’ll buy them at the Beach House.”

  The Beach House was a shop in Hebrides that specialized in swimwear. “No kidding?” No kidding was not at all what I felt. What I felt was an urgent need to kill her. I refused to ask her why she was buying all of this.

  So she told me. “I need a lot of new clothes for the trip.”

  She was watching me closely to gauge my curiosity level. I kept my face as expressionless as I could. “What trip?”

  “Oh, didn’t you know? We’re going to Florida. To Miami.”

  I stilled my rocking. “What? When? Who’s going?”

  She was clearly pleased by my astonishment. “Three days from now. All of us—mother, me, and Miss Jen.”

  My mother? But my mother never got to go anywhere. She was always stuck with the Hotel Paradise.

  “It’s too bad you can’t go along.” The tone indicated she thought it anything but too bad.

  So I was to get stuck with the Hotel Paradise. And Will and Mill, I supposed.

  I said nothing because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep the disappointment out of my voice. I rocked back and forth in the green wicker chair.

  “We’ll be gone over a week. We want to spend four or five days there and it’ll take us a couple of days to get there and back. We’ll go down the west coast to the Tamiami Trail and cut over to Miami Beach along it.”

  Tamiami. For a brief moment I shut my eyes and said that word in my mind. Tamiami. Tamiami Trail. It was such a beautiful sound I could almost taste it.

  “... and we’re staying at the Rony Plaza in Miami Beach.” Rony Plaza. Another one! I dropped my chin in my palm. Was Florida full of beautiful names? I should say that there is something in my nature that makes me adore certain names of things and places, almost as if the names were enough.

  “It’s quite luxurious,” Ree-Jane went on. “It’s right on the beach, so every morning I can roll out of bed and down to the ocean. I’ll show you the swimsuit later. Perhaps I’ll model it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We’ll go to the Keys, too.”

  “Like Key Largo? Did you see that? It had Humphrey Bog-art in it.” How I remembered the storm, the waves lashing the shore, the furious wind blowing the fronds of the palm trees like women’s scarves. Howling winds in which I pictured Ree-Jane lifted off the beach in her Heather Gay swimsuit and hurled at the building. Then picked up and hurled back on the beach. This went on.

  Ree-Jane gave a labored sigh. “This isn’t a film.” That’s what she called movies, thinking it much more sophisticated. “This is the real thing. Do you think life is like some film?”

  “Yes.”r />
  “I suppose you would. You’ve never been anywhere. Too bad. We’ll probably go to Key West, since that’s the most famous one of the Keys. You can drive all the way down to it. It’s the last one, I think. Those sunsets! I can hardly wait to see them, they’re so famous! And that water! It’s the color of turquoise. What colors! Like a film!”

  “Told you.” I snickered.

  So that evening, after dinner was finished and my mother had changed into one of her good cotton dresses, we all sat on the porch around a green table, rocking. My mother had a glass of sherry and Lola had a tumbler of Dewar’s Scotch. I was satisfied to listen as they talked about Florida because every once in a while the Tamiami Trail would come up and the Rony Plaza. And there were other names, like Biscayne Boulevard, and bougainvillea. Everything about Florida had this lush quality.

  “Jane” (which is what her mother calls her) had left and gone up to her room to try on her new clothes which she said she’d model for us. From her room, which overlooks the porch, we heard strains of music, a little scratchy, coming from her old record player.

  Mrs. Davidow, sitting back in one of the green rockers, leaned her arm on the railing, her hand extending over it to tap ash from her cigarette onto the shrubs. The world is her ashtray. But I shouldn’t be so critical because she was in such a good humor. She called up to “Jane” with a musical request, a song named “Tangerine.” This was a favorite song of hers, for she associated it with “my Florida years.” I didn’t know she’d had any Florida years before I’d heard that song, but she had, for she’d lived in Coral Gables for a while.

  Coral Gables. That had a pleasant ring to it, although not as much as the other names did. It wasn’t right up there with Tamiami Trail; still, it was worth including. Including in what, I wasn’t sure. Apparently, she’d thought up this trip in a sentimental wander through memories of her “Florida years.”

  “Tangerine” sifted down from Ree-Jane’s room. I could not make out the words very well, though I did catch “lips ... as bright ... as flame.” The melody was wonderful, something you could really do a slow dance to. Mrs. Davidow hummed the tune and sang a stray phrase here and there, such as “every bar ... across ... the Argentine.” I wasn’t surprised she liked the song.

  So my mother (who had spent time there too, I was surprised to discover) and Mrs. Davidow talked about Florida—Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Hialeah, the pink flamingos in its center. Seabiscuit. Whirlaway. I was dizzy with names. And dizzier still to find out that Whirlaway was a horse, or used to be. Lola Davidow was regretting his loss. With a name like that, so did I.

  The first night of driving, they could stay in Culpepper, Virginia, my mother said. With a word like “Culpepper” I knew we were not yet in Florida territory.

  Perhaps recalling that I was alive, Mrs. Davidow said to me, “You won’t mind keeping an eye on things here, will you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  For some reason they thought this answer was amusing and laughed.

  “You’ll be fine. There aren’t any reservations for the next two weeks. There’s only Miss Bertha and Serena Fulbright. And the Poor Soul might be coming back next week, but that’s not sure.”

  Mr. Muggs. The ax murderer. I said this. That was howlingly funny. Didn’t anyone ever worry about me? I rocked and drank my watery Coke and remembered the Sheriff had been really mad when they’d left me alone to watch the hotel once. I was thrilled when I found out he had told off Lola Davidow. Her face was beet red and her eyes were bloodshot when she reported this to my mother, as if some fire inside her were burning through to outside.

  I shut my mind to this when Mrs. Davidow mentioned a street in Miami Beach lined with poincianas and royal palms. Poinciana. Royal palm. I’d heard of “coconut” palms and “date” palms and wondered how many different palm trees there were. “Royal” must be the handsomest of them all. I would have to research this at the Abigail Butte County Library. Mrs. Davidow called up to Ree-Jane to put on “Poinciana,” another record. That it was a song was twice as good.

  What did people remember of the past? When I was old, what would I remember of tonight? Would I see us sitting here rocking and talking, but with the actual talk itself vague (at best) or forgotten (at worst), or would I remember royal palm and Tamiami Trail? Would I care less that they hadn’t taken me than I’d care about having heard these names?

  And if the names were all I needed, I wondered what that meant.

  14

  Bunny and me

  There were only two tables to be served breakfast and only Miss Bertha and Mrs. Fulbright for lunch, so my mother agreed, as long as I waited on tables this lunchtime, to let me off serving dinner, as Vera would be there to take care of a small dinner party, and she could easily wait on Miss Bertha too. I don’t know about “easily,” but that was fine with me. My plan for the day: to get a ride to White’s Bridge and inspect the murder scene. I certainly was not going to take a cab and ride with nosy Delbert, and both the Woods’ trucks were being repaired, so I thought of Bunny Caruso, who drove her pickup into La Porte most days to shop. I was supposed to stay away from Bunny Caruso, which made her that much more interesting. Like Toya Tidewater and June Sikes.

  When I opened the dining room’s double door, there was Miss Bertha in another of the gray dresses that matched her hair and eyes and made her look armored. She also looked as if she’d stepped out of one of those old pictures called “daguerreotypes,” that make even little kids appear solemn and rained on. I’d seen several of my mother and her family when she was small: they were stiff and stern and unsmiling, as if in those long-ago days all pleasure and excitement were forbidden.

  “Late again!” snapped Miss Bertha, consulting the silver watch she always wore pinned to her chest. I think she kept it running fast just so she could say this.

  Mrs. Fulbright told her, no, it was they who were early, but Miss Bertha was already stumping across the dining room, back to their table for two. (I asked once why they couldn’t have been put nearer the door, and Vera said they’d been coming for years and that was their table. They’d raise a fuss if they were moved.)

  The other guests were a pleasant family of four, easy to serve, since they wanted to be gone to their exciting day just as much as I wanted them to go. Also, they all ordered the same thing: scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast, which had my mother pursing her lips and kissing heaven, for she always said breakfast was the hardest meal of all to prepare because of all the different things and combinations of things that could be ordered.

  Miss Bertha would not give me an order until she’d inspected every single item on the menu, even though only one item had changed—corn cakes in place of yesterday’s French toast. I stood and stood with my order book ready, wishing she’d sink in a vat of syrup, when she finally snapped out, “My three-minute egg and sausages.”

  I said, “But you didn’t like the ones yesterday.”

  “I don’t want the ones yesterday! I want today’s.”

  “Yes, but that’s the way my mother, I mean the cook, makes sausage.”

  “Tell her to make it another way.”

  Why was I bothering to argue? Probably because I wanted to. “The sausage patties are already made; they’re already seasoned.”

  “Well, for Lord’s sake, girl, she doesn’t have to slaughter a hog, does she?” She turned when Mrs. Fulbright put a hand on her arm. “Leave me be, Serena! All I’m doing is making my point.” She flung off Mrs. Fulbright’s gentle hand. Turning back to me, she said, “Just make me a sausage without all that hot spice in it!”

  “And what else?”

  “What?” She still had some sausage-arguing left in her head and “what else” confused her. “Oh. Didn’t I say? Didn’t I say my three-minute egg? And see it’s fresh!”

  In the way of deaf old people, she barked all of this out so she herself could hear it, which meant the family of four heard it, too, and were enjoying it a lot. It was as good as one of Wi
ll’s shows.

  I told my mother all of this. The “slaughtering a hog” part had Walter laughing so hard he could have washed the dishes back there in his tears.

  “And she wants her egg fresh so you better lay another one,” I added. That broke my mother up and got Walter, hearing my mother laugh, laughing even harder until he was so overcome with it he had to sit on the floor.

  I skimmed back into the dining room on the waves and swells of their laughter, my sails flying, and wondered if I was always on stage, too.

  Bunny Caruso’s truck wasn’t hard to pick out, it was so banged up and rusted out. It was parked in front of the grassy slope leading up to the courthouse.

  The Rainbow Café was directly across from the courthouse. I wondered if Bunny was in there because she told me once that she didn’t want to run into men in town she sometimes saw “under previous circumstances.” That sounded mysterious enough, but I didn’t question it. Mayor Sims and Dodge Haines were regulars in the Rainbow, plus other men from the bank, the jewelry store, and the telephone company. They had lunch in the Rainbow on a regular basis. Ulub and Ubub usually did too, but now both of their trucks were in Abel Slaw’s garage in Spirit Lake being fixed, so they were hanging out on the bench in front of Britten’s store. They usually did that anyway, only now they did it more.

  It was true that it was almost all men in the Rainbow, as if it were some kind of a clubhouse, like the Rotary. The only regular woman customers were Miss Ruth Porte (a descendant of the founders, supposedly) and Miss Isabel Barnett. People said Miss Isabel was filthy rich, but she never acted like it. She was as nice as could be and she was also a kleptomaniac, which made her more interesting than some. Most of what she stole came from the five-and-dime and hardly amounted to anything. Lipsticks, cheap costume jewelry, hair nets, and stuff. Nobody ever said anything to her about this, as there was an arrangement with the Sheriff that after she’d stolen a few things over a period, she’d go to the courthouse and give him the money and he would pay whatever she owed for the stolen items.