Dragonfly

by Farris, John

  "Where's Frosty? Where you all taken her?"

  "She's at Coleridge and Laster funeral home, Mr. Clemons."

  Walter Lee trembled, his bloodknot eyes standing out in his head.

  "Oh, God! They gonna have to cut her up in that place?"

  "Mr. Clemons, I think you might be more comfortable inside, and we need to ask you a few questions."

  Abby let go of his hand.

  "Go on, Walter Lee," she said quietly. "Help them find who did this."

  "My head. My head just splitting wide open."

  "I'll get you some aspirin," Sergeant Boston said. "And we won't keep you long."

  "Where did you find her?" Abby asked.

  Rich looked at her politely and said nothing.

  "I'm Pamela Abelard," she said sharply. "Frosty has worked for me for the past six years."

  "The novelist?" Rich said. "My wife sure does admire you. She has all of your books."

  "Could you answer my question, please?"

  "Yes, ma'am. The car was parked off Japonica Island Road, with several other cars that are usually left there; the people who live on Japonica Island take their boats back and forth across the inlet, there's no bridge or ferry—"

  "I know. How long was the car there?"

  "We're looking into that now."

  "Do you think that's where it happened, where she was murdered?"

  "No, we don't. The window on the driver's side was smashed, completely destroyed. There was glass inside the car, but not on the ground outside." Lieutenant Rich glanced from Abby to Joe, who was standing behind Rolling Thunder. Joe frowned slightly and said nothing that might enhance the cop's curiosity.

  A couple of relatives, murmuring consolations and encouragement, got Walter Lee on his feet and helped him walk the short distance to the office.

  The lieutenant said to Abby, "If it would be all right, I'd also like to talk to you this morning."

  She nodded tautly. "Yes. I'm feeling a little woozy right now. I need to go out for some air."

  "Certainly, Ms. Abelard." He nodded to Joe, and followed Walter Lee into the office.

  Outside Abby paused at the end of the walkway to the building and put her sunglasses on. Her hands were shaking.

  "I think I need strong coffee."

  "There's a diner down the street."

  "Yeah, Donehoo's. It's okay. Could you give me a push?"

  "Sure."

  Abby had nothing else to say until they were in the diner. She declined to order anything except coffee, then sat forlornly turning a paper napkin into little squares as ragged as her nerves.

  "You hear about it happening. It must happen every day. Women are kidnapped from supermarket parking lots and murdered beside ATMs. But Frosty—she's—you don't know her, but she would have put up a fight. Bitten and scratched and yelled like hell. So—I just don't think she was attacked. She must have known who it was, let him get close and then— And if it was Delmus—"

  "Her husband? They'll track him down in a hurry.""I really can't believe it was Delmus. Frosty started working for me right after she married him. I met Delmus a couple of times. I liked him okay, although it was obvious he was a lech. Even Charlene complained about him. And that's, what, calling the kettle—"

  The mention of Charlene caused her expression to change. She looked stonily at Joe.

  "I wonder what Charlene knows about you that I don't know."

  "I didn't come on to her, Abby."

  Her shoulders fell. She shook her head, woebegone; her loose-fitting sunglasses dropped into her lap.

  "I don't think I've misjudged you. And I don't mean to be accusatory. Luke gave me something last night, maybe it was Valium; can't shake it. I think I bit my tongue. One shock after another, and the day's not half-gone." She stared at him, the sun through the window nearest them like needles in her watering eyes. "Where's my little dragonfly? Where's the good luck I'm supposed to have? I'm not talking about money-luck. Maybe that's nothing but a curse after all." She revived herself with a thought that made her smile. "Hey, I know what to do."

  "About what, Abby?"

  "I need to get a dragonfly tattoo. Like your mother had, on her shoulder? Then it can't fly away, ever."

  "My mother was—"

  "We'll both get one!" she said. This fancy, the momentary relief from the steel press of reality, enlivened her. "What do you say, mon? You're not chicken to get a little tattoo, are you?"

  "Not me," he said, smiling.

  "There's a couple of these tattoo artists, the best one's on Ocean Drive in North Myrtle Beach. At least she's there during the summer. Damn, what a great idea!"

  Abby was diverted again, by the arrival of a noisy truck in front of the diner.

  "There's Reggie!"

  Joe saw the familiar muleskinner's hat and a little of Reggie, possibly seated in his own wheelchair in the bed of the five-ton truck, surrounded by numerous hand-carved waterfowl with graceful arching necks that seemed bound for a flea market somewhere. The truck bed had a canvas shade like a Bimini awning over it.

  With the aid of a power tailgate Reggie was lowered to the pavement and motored inside the diner. Abby greeted him ecstatically; Reggie parked beside her at the table and they hugged and cried.

  "I heard; I came to see if there was anything—"

  "I don't know, I don't know how it could have happened, Reggie."

  They were joined by a couple of hippie relics name Bill and Nellie, who owned the truck and did the carvings. Straggly beard and straggly blond hair, macrobiotic thinness, bandanas, tinted granny glasses and frayed jeans.

  "I had to get something to eat," Reggie explained after introductions were made. "My blood sugar gets low about this time of the day." He ordered waffles, scrambled eggs, sausage and a pot of coffee. Bill and Nellie brewed tea from what looked like dried grass and nibbled from Baggies of seeds they carried with them. Reggie and Abby resumed talking about Frosty. Joe's attention was on Reggie's scruffy JanSport backpack, which was hanging from a handle of the computerized wheelchair, as it had been the night Frosty placed in a zippered side compartment the stolen ampule containing an unknown drug from Dr. Luke's infirmary. Was the ampule still there? If it was, would Reggie think of mentioning itto the cops? Joe wondered where that conversation would lead.

  He wanted the ampule himself, and he wanted it right now. But that was going to be difficult. He couldn't just ask Reggie to hand it over.

  An alternative was to steal it, but stealing involved even greater difficulties. Joe was a clever thief with words, but his hands were unskilled.

  In addition to the muleskinner's hat he had placed in his lap, Reggie wore a beaded Thunderbird vest over an unpressed blue workshirt, and black trousers. There were three small gold rings in his right earlobe. His narrow shoulders slumped and he looked close to helpless in the wheelchair; his hand movements as he consumed a stack of waffles were more laborious than when he played his twelve-string guitar. Probably there were good days and bad days as the disease wore on, turning connective tissue to wood pulp. But his eyes were bright and attentive. He had the wan, bony, hawk-nosed face of a minor outlaw in a nineteenth-century daguerreotype, photographed with the boys in front of the Last Chance Saloon. In spite of his looks and his ability to assimilate so ably the blues tradition, it became obvious through his conversation that Reggie had the intellect and credulity of a ten-year-old boy.

  When Reggie had to go to the bathroom, Joe excused himself a couple of minutes later and followed him.

  Reggie had squeezed himself into a stall not designed for wheelchair access. The door was half-closed on his chair, which stuck out into the small bathroom.

  "I hate it when they don't have a toilet for handicapped," he said.

  "Aren't there federal laws now?" Joe asked.

  "Nobody but us ever makes a fuss about it. And there's not enough of us, Abby says."

  "How long have you known Abby?" Joe asked, unzipping at the urinal next to the stall Reggi
e occupied.

  "I don't remember exactly. I know we've been good friends a long time. But it's been a while since I seen Abby. Frosty had a surprise birthday party for me two years ago. Abby gave me this wheelchair. You know they cost almost ten thousand dollars? Quadriplegics use them. I'm not there yet. I mean I've got rotation in my left wrist so I can reach all the chords I need to." He managed to sound upbeat about the progress of the appalling, slow-moving, always fatal disease. "Abby said you're a doctor? Is it true that in a couple years at the most that there's gonna be a new treatment for scur roses? I mean that they take each cell and sort of do a housecleaning, so that it stops the—I can't remember the word they use."

  "Induration."

  "Did you hear anything about that?"

  "It isn't my field, actually."

  "Are you Abby's doctor now? Frosty kind of gave me the idea she wasn't doing so good."

  "I know what Frosty told you."

  Reggie was quiet while he labored to move his bowels. "When did you see Frosty?"

  "This was a couple of days ago. It's true that Abby has serious problems. She's almost died on me a couple of times."

  "Lord!"

  "And I don't think I can do anything to save her, unless you're straight with me, Reggie."

  "M-me? What can I do?"

  Joe flushed the urinal and took his time washing his hands.

  He said, in a harsher voice, "I don't know you, Reggie, but I've already done you a hell of a big favor. I've kept your ass out of jail. Talk about no facilities for the handicapped."

  ''Jail!"

  "That's right, Reg. Frosty committed a felony when she stole that ampule of medication from Dr. Thomason, and you're an accessory. Do you know what that means?"

  "I haven't done anything!"

  "Keep your voice down. And remember what I said You'd better be straight with me, son, because time is of the essence here. Do you want Abby to die?"

  "No!"

  "Where's the ampule Frosty gave you for safekeeping?"

  "How do you know—"

  "Reggie. I'll ask the questions, and all I want to hear from you is straight answers. And if I don't get them, I can have a bench warrant for your arrest in ten minutes. I don't care about your ass, son, my only concern here is Abby. You owe her, Reggie. Now do what's right for her. I need that ampule to save her life."

  "I d-don't—"

  Fear had the effect of a quick-acting laxative on Reggie. Joe backed away from the stall.

  "Last chance. I'm walking out the door."

  "No, wait! It's—I left it in my locker."

  "What locker?"

  "At the Lost Sea Turtle."

  "Good. Good, Reggie. What time do they open?"

  "Five-thirty."

  "I'll meet you there at six o'clock. What time, Reggie?"

  "S-six o'clock."

  "Don't let me down. For Abby's sake. And keep this conversation to yourself. Talk to nobody."

  "Okay."

  "By the way, I think you're a hell of a talented musician."

  "Th-thank you," Reggie said humbly.

  Outside the bathroom door Joe paused to take a breath. His fingers were tingling. It had been a decent job of intimidation, but he wondered how long it would take Reggie to stop thinking about Frosty and their meeting in the Sea Turtle's parking lot on Friday night, and start thinking about dead Frosty, and what connection her murder might have with the stolen ampule. Maybe it wouldn't occur to him at all. Or maybe some smart state cop, asking a few routine questions, would find Reggie nervous and evasive and take his sweet time pursuing the matter until Reggie blurted something that would put Joe Bryce in a very bad light. But that was the chance he'd been willing to take; now all he could do was wait for six o'clock and hope that Reggie would be alone when they met again.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Inside the cozy tattoo parlor on Ocean Drive in North Myrtle Beach, there was a poster of Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man with the legend A Creatively Tattooed Body Is Better Than Being Well-Dressed, Except in a Cold Climate. The proprietress, however, claimed to have no tattoos at all, not even a token of affection for some defunct lover in an intimate place.

  "I'm an artist," she said, and the photographs on display of her clients' extravagant whims—sailing vessels, snarling tigers, the Mona Lisa—reproduced in colored inks on canvases of skin testified that she wasn't bragging. "Did Picasso paint his own face?" She was in her forties, perhaps her early fifties, but looked, in black leotards, as taut and well crafted as a five-iron. She was weathered, coarse, with thick black hair as vain as plumage and frank, amorous Latin eyes—explicitly erotic in expression, the way a bee is sticky with pollen after wallowing in a flower.

  She looked up photographs of dragonflies in her collection of nature books, found one that satisfied them all, then did sketches with colored pencils on a notepad. She served them rosé wine and herb crackers while setting up her apparatus. On her television there was storm news on CNN. Hurricane Honey was waffling in her course, but seemed to be attracted to the East Coast again.

  "Oh-oh," Abby said. On the weather map the northeast edge of Honey, the most dangerous part of a hurricane, was still well out to sea but on the same latitude as Savannah, Georgia, not so far down the coast.

  "I hope we don't have to go through another one of those."

  "It will hit us," the tattoo artist said, her voice low but with the power of superstition. "In less than two days."

  "How do you know?"

  She shrugged. "I do the charts. Mundane charts. Then I meditate. Nature is subtle beyond one's ability to comprehend. Until she's ready to wipe you out."

  Abby volunteered to be first. She sat smiling through the needles, with an occasional wince that squeezed out a few tears. The dragonfly was on the cap of her right shoulder, where she could see it at a glance. She seemed ecstastic when it was done, helping herself to the chilled wine again.

  "Your turn, hero!"

  Joe took off his shirt and sat on the padded stool. The tattoo artist worked with magnifying glasses like those used by surgeons. She chatted more with Joe than she did with Abby.

  The wine got to Abby, and she had to excuse herself. She was in the bathroom for a while. The tattoo artist finished her work and sat back, studying Joe, but not as if she were coming on to him.

  "It's dangerous," she said. "What you do."

  "Excuse me?"

  "But you're not a flier. Or a policeman. I'm not quite sure why I feel that way. You see, I learn things about about people as I beautify them. My fingers reach inside the skin. I touch what is hidden. It's hard to explain."

  "A psychic thing," Joe said, with a cool smile.

  "You're not impressed," she said, almost indulgently, touching a small mole beside her well-shaped mouth.

  "Is this going to cost extra?"

  "No." She had a dark and forbidding scowl. "I'm not in love with money. I don't always say what's on my mind. Something compels me now. The dragonflies are little tokens. Ephemera. The fact is, you and your nice lady are soulmates. You have been separated many times in the past, often under tragic circumstances. There is a long, spiraling, intertwining journey through space before soulmates may be together at last, in peace and the perfect love they crave. I only want to prepare you."

  "For what?"

  "This dangerous thing," she said, becoming vague as she withdrew a little in contemplation. "You are like a house in flames. A house in flames. Others may burn with you." She shuddered, and closed the turquoise lids of her eyes. "Again."

  The net fishermen were seining in the breakers off the black community of Atlantic Beach, attracting a crowd and flocks of seagulls pilfering the remains of gutted fish that littered the sand, which was packed hard enough here to allow Abby easy access in her wheelchair. You could, in fact, drive a good-sized truck up and down this part of the Carolina shore.

  "My mother came up here during the fifties to dance to the black music on the jukeboxes," Abby sai
d. "I guess they still boogie and do the shag at the places along Ocean Drive. When I was in high school we went to Fat Harold's a couple of times, but shagging was kind of quaint to us."

  Her hair was blowing in a stiffened wind that filled the air with salt spray and brought out the red in her cheeks. Joe bought two huge deep-fried fillets from a fisherman cooking some of his catch in a big iron pot on the beach; they ate them hot and lightly salted between slabs of Cuban bread.

  "You look spooked," Abby said, staring up at him and flicking crumbs of bread from the corners of her mouth.

  "No, I'm okay."

  "What did you and the nice tattoo lady talk about while I was in the john?"

  "Destiny."

  "Heavy, mon. She's sort of a witch, don't you think? I don't mean that in a nasty way. You know, horoscopes and reading palms. Did she read your palm? Did she tell you how many children you're going to have?"

  "Ten."

  "You lie."

  "What she said was, you and I are soulmates."

  Abby pondered the implication of "soulmates." "Does that mean sex is out?"

  "Completely."

  "That had better be another lie," she said with a grin. "Does your tattoo itch?"

  "A little."

  "I can't believe you went through with it." She regarded him with a feline complexity, her pupils small in the light off the sea, brows and lashes beaded with a fine mist; he looked back at her calmly, a little quizzical hitch at one corner of his mouth. "It's deeper than marriage, you know. It feels—occult. Whatever brought us together in the first place, we've sealed our bargain today."

  "Or canceled an old debt."

  She nodded.

  "Somehow that seems right. When I looked at my dragonfly, I didn't feel like an ass for being there with a man I've known for less than a week. I felt this huge sense of relief. I felt protected—no matter what becomes of us—protected in this life or the next. How old was your mother when she died?"

  The question startled him.

  "I don't know that she's dead."

  "But you think that she is."

  He looked away, over the heads of the shouting fishermen, their flung nets returned with silvery leaping catch. Gulls hovered like seething thunderclouds above the sand. The sea rolled over, and over again.