A Good Man Gone (Mercy Watts Mysteries)

by A W Hartoin

  Doreen dropped her cigarette and ground it to dust with her toe. “I’m getting so sick and tired of this shit. Why can’t Bart be a man and pay up?” She looked at me like she expected a reasonable explanation. I guessed that the best explanation was that a man that would assault his stepmother with a deadly weapon wasn’t much of a man to begin with and she ought to have known that. But since she had kids with him, I imagined she didn’t.

  I leaned on the rickety railing and crossed my arms. “I have got to ask. From the look of your file, Bart doesn’t have two nickels to rub together. How do expect him to pay thirty thousand dollars of back child support? It doesn’t look like he’s had a real job in years.”

  “His family owns Ace Bailey Trucking. All I got to do is find him, have him thrown in jail, and they’ll pay up.” She smiled. “I’ve got to get back.”

  “Thanks for your help. I’ll let you know what happens,” I said.

  She reached for the door handle, but stopped and looked at me. “You know, I can’t understand it. You’d think he’d want to help out. He loves his boys. I can say a lot against him, but he loves his boys and he knows I ain’t got a pot to piss in.”

  “I doubt he gave a thought.”

  Sadness filled her eyes, sadness for her boys, not herself. She looked like she was doing alright. The boys might be another matter.

  I followed Doreen inside and watched Aaron take an hour to polish off his crab feast. He was still moaning in ecstasy when we got in the car. I told him to calm down, but it did no good. Aaron was nothing, if not passionate about food. Crab stink radiated off him, and I had to crack the window to keep from gagging.

  “That car’s following us,” said Aaron.

  “Which one?”

  “Gray one.”

  Not a big help. Every other car on the road was gray, including Dad’s.

  “You want to give me more specifics?” I asked.

  “Two cars back. Left lane,” said Aaron.

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  Aaron shrugged and licked a bit of crab off his lip.

  I had to look in the rearview twenty times before I believed him. I don’t know how Aaron knew, but he was right. The gray Escort stayed with us at a discreet distance.

  I pulled the 300 up in the front of Kronos. “Well, it’s been...something. See you later.”

  Aaron looked at the restaurant and settled in. “Where to next?”

  “The airport. Surely I can be trusted to pick up my parents on my own. I am a big girl.”

  Aaron considered my request and put in another wad of gum. The smell of grape and crab combined, and I made an involuntary horking sound.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Aaron asked.

  “Can’t you smell that?”

  He tilted his head in the air and sniffed like a hound. “Smells okay to me.”

  “Forget it. Now go on.” I pushed his shoulder towards the door.

  “Okay, okay. Call me later.”

  “I will call you later.” I waved at Rodney in the doorway and hit the gas before Aaron could change his mind.

  Call him later. Why would I call him later? I’d never called him in my entire life. Still, he did notice the Escort when I didn’t. Maybe I owed him something for that, because it was still behind me, three cars back.

  I drove three miles before I realized that crab stink wasn’t going away. Aaron had left a lovely sweat stain on Dad’s leather seat back. I rolled down the windows despite the heat and wished I had some VapoRub to stuff up my nose. That crab had staying power. Aaron owed me. Uncle Morty owed me. Everybody owed me. God I hate Crab.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I ARRIVED AT the airport at a quarter after four in the crab car and discovered the airport was on some kind of alert. It took me a half hour to get through the nimrod security designed to stop terrorists without two brain cells to rub together. Like barricades and checkpoints were really going to help. All a terrorist needed was a fake ID and the ability to turn a corner and he would be allowed to park. It was inconvenient at best and rip-roaring annoying at worst. The Feds couldn’t decide what to do, so they settled for looking like they were doing something. Since I couldn’t go to the gate, I settled at a bar, ordered an iced tea and waited for my parents to walk by.

  A half hour later, a glut of passengers passed, but my parents weren’t among them. I waited and the passageway cleared. I went and checked the arrivals monitor and sure enough their flight was in.

  Ridiculous thoughts popped unbidden into my head. Things I usually was able to keep under wraps, like some ex-con murdered Gavin and poisoned Dad for revenge and my parents were lying in a ditch somewhere. That’s what Mom used to say when I was late for curfew. “You could’ve been dead in a ditch somewhere, young lady.” I thought that was stupid when she said it to me and before I knew it, I was thinking it about her. It must be something about being an adult that makes you go to the worst-case scenario instead of the best, like they missed their connection.

  An announcement came over the intercom, “Carolina Watts, please come to Concourse A security. Carolina Watts, please come to Concourse A Security.”

  My stomach twisted into a bow tie. I dropped a five on the table and jogged down the passage. Like my mother, I should never run in public. There’s not a bra manufactured that can stop my breasts from bouncing like a couple of kids on a trampoline and the little lace number I had on was barely enough to keep them from knocking me out. A businessman dropped his briefcase and I saw a wife smack her husband on the back of the head as I passed.

  I rounded the turn and saw Mom and Dad standing on my side of Security. Mom seemed okay, but Dad looked like he’d been pulled from my imaginary ditch half alive. Some guards stood near my parents, looking at me with their mouths hanging open. The guards were all men except for one large black lady with Lynette on her name tag. She was also looking at me, but without the whoa expression on her face. She smiled as I ran up out of breath and said, “Girl, you should be against the law. Look at these fools. As if your mother wasn’t bad enough.”

  “Sorry,” I said, panting.

  “Don’t be sorry, girl. If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Just don’t run. The world can’t take it.”

  I turned to Mom. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  Mom fluffed her hair and looked at Dad out of the corner of her eye. “We’re fine. We could use some help with the carry-on luggage though.”

  “Fine? Are you nuts? Dad looks like he should be in the ICU,” I said.

  “I can hear you. I’m standing right here. How about a kiss for your dear old dad?” Dad leaned on Mom and held out his hand. His skin had the translucent look of greased paper and his veins showed the effects of several needle sticks. Large purple bruises spread across the back of his hands and up his wrists, ending in large Band-Aids. I was glad I wasn’t the one who had to find a reasonable vein for an IV.

  Dad wasn’t a guy who had a lot of color to begin with, but his freckles stood out like stars in the night sky. There were deep purple grooves under his eyes and his eyeballs looked too small for their sockets. The lower lids hung away from the eyes, showing the blood-red rims. His red hair wasn’t brushed back sleek as a seal, but stuck up in every direction in odd clumps. There was a spot of crusty yellow on the front of his polo shirt and his jeans were about to fall off him.

  “I think I’ll pass. Can we get a wheelchair over here?” I asked Lynette.

  “You could, but he won’t sit in it. I already tried.” Her mouth turned down into a disapproving frown, and her arms crossed over her own substantial chest.

  “I don’t need a wheelchair,” said Dad. “How old do you think I am?”

  “Dad, it’s not your age. It’s your condition. You look like you’re ready for a toe tag. Can we have that wheelchair, please?” I looked at Lynette. She shrugged and went into a storage room.

  “No wheelchair,” said Dad as Lynette wheeled a chair up behind Dad and opened it up.


  “Dad, if you don’t sit in that chair, I’m taking you straight to the ER instead of home. What do you think of that?”

  “It sucks,” he said.

  “Damn straight. Sit down.”

  Dad looked at me with his basset hound eyes. “To think I could’ve had a vasectomy.”

  “Tommy, for heaven sake.” Mom looked at the ceiling. “I’m sorry, honeybabe. It’s been rough.”

  Dad looked at the two of us. “I’m not sorry. She’s a pain in my ass. Always has been. Who do you think you are? I don’t take orders. I give them.”

  “Dad, please.”

  “Don’t you talk to me.” He looked at the guards. “Do you know what her name is? We call her Mercy, not Carolina, Mercy. Why do we call her that? Because she screamed for twelve hours straight the day we brought her home. All I could say was, ‘Have mercy.” And that’s what we call her. My wife wanted to have another one. Another one? Are you crazy, woman?” Dad looked at Mom and passed out cold. Luckily, he dropped straight back into the wheelchair. I checked his pulse and respiration. They were fast, but not dangerous.

  “Should we wait until he wakes up, so he can order me to push him to the car?” I asked Mom.

  “Be amusing on your own time. Push the chair.”

  We got Dad out of the airport and into the back of the car before he woke up. I covered him with the emergency blanket he kept in the trunk.

  Mom glanced at Dad’s closed eyes and whispered, “Tell me you took care of that problem.”

  “Well…”

  “Don’t well me. You fix this. Now,” said Mom.

  He opened his bleary eyes and started struggling with the blanket. The only word he uttered that I could understand was barf. Mom and I pulled his head and chest back out of the car. He vomited a thin, yellowish liquid onto the pavement. It’s the kind of stuff that comes out of a stomach that’s been ill and empty for too long. He continued to dry heave for ten minutes, then I dried his mouth with a tissue and checked his pulse again. Dad was getting into the scary range and I had to make a judgment call. We put him back into the car and I asked Mom, “Didn’t they put him on anything?”

  “Of course they did, but he keeps throwing it up.”

  “What about a suppository for the nausea?”

  “No, they said he was better.”

  “This is better?”

  “Your father was putting on a bit of a brave face. We had to get on that plane.”

  “It’s not going to make any difference where he is in this condition. You should’ve stayed there.” I felt Dad’s forehead and tucked the blanket in around him.

  “There’s no reasoning with him. We’ve been married for twenty-six years and I’ve never seen him this belligerent. Well, maybe when Cora died, but mostly he was just crazy,” said Mom.

  I ran my thumb over the lines in Dad’s forehead. I hadn’t thought about Cora in years. She was one of Dad’s partners and the only female. Cora got shot in the head when she walked into a robbery in progress in her own house. Dad loved Cora. He thought she was the best he ever worked with. I was ten at the time and her death changed him in ways I didn’t understand.

  If he was as bad as when Cora died, it was serious. “I think we need to take him in,” I said as I fired up the car.

  Mom got in and wrinkled her nose. “Do you smell something? What is that?”

  “Aaron.”

  “Poor guy.”

  “Aaron is not the victim here. He’s quite happy as a matter of fact.”

  Mom found an old air freshener in the glove compartment and swung it around. “I can feel sorry for him if I want to. He can’t help it if he stinks.”

  “Yes, he can. That’s what soap and not eating crab is for.”

  “Fine. Now are you sure we have to take your father in? He won’t be happy.”

  “Nothing would make him happy right now, and I don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

  “The ship’s doctor said it was some kind of flu-like virus. He has to ride it out.”

  “How many people got it?”

  “Quite a few, I gathered.”

  “How many is that? Ten, twenty?”

  “More like a couple hundred. It was on the news,” said Mom.

  “Haven’t been watching a whole lot of CNN lately.”

  “I’m sorry. Has it been very bad here? How’s Sharon?”

  “I really don’t know,” I said, feeling my throat constrict at the thought of Gavin and Dixie.

  “She’s out of her head, honey. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “Once. Two days ago. She says she yelled at you. What happened?” Mom twisted in her seat and looked at me. I was merging onto the I-70 with the Escort right behind and took the opportunity to concentrate on that while forming a reply. Mom wouldn’t be happy with how Dixie found out about Gavin’s murder, but I’d feel worse if I lied to her about it. Mom would find out in the end, so I gave it up.

  “She overheard me talking to Pete about what happened to Gavin.”

  “That’s how she found out he was murdered?”

  “I didn’t mean for her to hear. It just happened.”

  “You should’ve been more careful.” Mom turned back towards the front and crossed her arms. She looked up at the ceiling. “What else can happen?”

  “Don’t say that. We could have an accident on the way to the hospital.”

  “Heaven forbid. Are you still seeing that Pete what’s-his-name?”

  “Yes. I’m still seeing what’s-his-name.”

  “He’s a doctor, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah. Why?” I asked.

  “Could he come by?”

  “You want to meet my boyfriend now?” I couldn’t believe it. My parents, mostly Dad, had a long-standing rule about meeting boyfriends. He couldn’t hate them if they didn’t exist.

  “No, I mean yes, I want to meet him, but I was hoping he would take a look at your father.”

  “You don’t trust my medical opinion? I’m your own daughter.”

  “Pete’s a doctor. I’d like him to take a look.”

  “Instead of taking Dad to the ER, you mean,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Is he that crazy?”

  “You have no idea. If we take him to the hospital, we may as well book him into the psych ward straight away.”

  “My phone’s in my purse.”

  Mom got out my cell phone and texted Pete a 911. He called back immediately and agreed to come to the house. Pete wasn’t thrilled about meeting my dad, period, but he still agreed to come. I must’ve sounded desperate.

  After I hung up with Pete, Dad started making gagging noises.

  “Pull over. Pull over,” Mom yelled.

  I couldn’t. We were on the highway into the city and there was nowhere to go. Mom panicked. She opened her purse and dumped it out on the floor. It was her favorite Prada bag, but Dad could not barf all over the car. If that happened, there would be repercussions, to say the least. Mom started to crawl into the back seat.

  “Wait. I have a salad in the glove compartment. Toss it and use the container.”

  Dad’s long arms waved around as the gagging got worse.

  “Why do you have a salad in the glove compartment?”

  “Who cares? Hurry!”

  “What do I do with the salad?” Mom looked around with the Styrofoam box in her hands.

  “Throw it out the window.”

  “It’ll get on the paint.”

  “Christ, Mom. It has six thousand coats of wax on it. Just toss it.”

  Mom flipped my salad out the window and it flew straight back. A Buick swerved and dodged it and my salad splatted onto the Escort’s windshield. Much honking and, I imagine, cursing ensued as the Escort ended up on an off ramp and we sped away.

  “Mercy, look what you made me do. You could’ve caused an accident,” Mom yelled.

  I could’ve caused an accident. She flew Plague M
an halfway around the world, and I could’ve caused an accident. I was sure all the people from the plane who would be barfing their brains out in a day or two would think I was the bad one. Recycled air was the curse of all travelers.

  Dad made a chest-deep honk like a water buffalo. I’d never heard a water buffalo, but I was sure that’s what they sounded like, low and phlegmy.

  “Mom!” I yelled as Mom crawled into the back and murmured soothing sounds into Dad’s ear while he spewed into my salad box. When he was done, she came back to the front seat with the box.

  “I suppose you want me to throw this out the window too,” she said.

  “I do not,” I said.

  Actually, I did, but I could live with the smell for another ten minutes in order to take the high road.

  I pulled into the alley in record time and saw Pete leaning on his ancient Saab parked next to our trash bins. He looked wonderfully cool and confident. The sight of him made me want to cry with relief.

  “Is that him?” Mom asked.

  “That’s him,” I said with more than a little apprehension.

  “Nice, and he drives a Saab. Your father will be pleased.”

  “I’m sure that’s what Pete was going for.”

  “Don’t be snide. I’m saying it’s a good thing.”

  “I know.”

  I parked in the garage, got out, and kissed Pete. Then I turned to Mom and introduced the two of them. Mom shook his hand, apologizing for both calling him and her appearance. She was stunning, as she well knew, and Pete said so. That brought a smile to her face and we were off on the right foot.

  Pete listened to Dad’s heart and lungs, took his blood pressure and pulse in the car in case we had to take him in. He pronounced him safe to keep at home for the time being and asked me to get a bag out of his back seat. Pete and Mom slid Dad out of the car and Pete carried him into the house. There was a lot of strength in that skinny body. I never would’ve guessed it.

  There was no sign of Dixie or anyone else as we walked up the stairs to the second floor. Mom decided to settle in the largest guest room since Dixie was entrenched in their room. Dad lay on the bed semiconscious while Pete unpacked his bag. It was filled to the brim with hospital supplies, IVs, several bags of saline, some lancets, tubes for collecting blood samples, several prescription bottles, syringes, and liquid vials from the pharmacy.