by S. J. Harris
I remembered Lori Barbera’s name from when I’d called Kessler’s from Louisville. I pulled into the space beside the Lexus. Maybe in person Lori would be more cooperative about giving me some information.
I jiggled the front door, but it was locked. I tapped on the glass with the tip of my ignition key, and all hell broke loose.
11
A siren wailed, and the flood lights on the plant’s exterior flashed on and off. Lori Barbera’s office went black.
She came to the door, peered out at me, and then punched a code into a nearby keypad. The alarm shut off. She stayed inside and spoke to me through an intercom.
“Can I help you?” she said.
I was embarrassed at setting off the alarm. “I’m sorry. I had no idea that would happen. My name’s Kim Journey. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“About?” Lori Barbera had short red hair, a long neck and a big nose. She wore jeans and a Hard Rock Café t-shirt from Orlando.
“I’m a flight nurse, working on a novel. I’m doing research on animal rendering plants, and I thought you might be able to help me.”
She punched another code into the keypad, unbolted the door, stepped out to where I was standing and locked the door with a key. She faced me and looked directly into my eyes.
“You called here a few days ago, didn’t you? From a pay phone in Louisville, Kentucky. I recognize your voice. I don’t know what you’re up to, lady, but I can tell you that you’re barking up the wrong tree. We haven’t had any accidents here. What you claimed over the phone is impossible. Do you hear me? If I see you around here again, I’m calling the cops. Got that? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was just leaving.”
She started her Lexus and backed out slowly, probably noticing my license plate before driving off. KIJ-1. Easy to remember. I never should have told her my real name.
***
In fairness, he had said noonish, but when Bill Driscoll showed up at eleven-thirty Monday morning he caught me off guard. I asked if he would mind waiting outside while I put on my makeup; he said I looked more beautiful without any. Score one for Billy boy.
We walked across the street to Remington Park and sat on a bench surrounded by huge, ancient oaks. From our seat I could see the St. John’s river, its current choppy and sparkling like a million diamonds on a glossy blue platter. Children threw balls and built castles on the fabricated beach, ignoring a sign that warned of possible alligators. Someone’s boom box blasted the drum solo from Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”
Bill opened a picnic basket and revealed our lunch--fried chicken, corn on the cob, biscuits. I took a biscuit and an ear of corn.
“You have to try the chicken,” Bill said. “My aunt makes the best fried chicken in the world. I practically begged her to fix it for us.”
“But I’m a vegetarian,” I said. “I haven’t eaten any flesh food in over three years.” My mouth watered every time Bill took a crunchy bite.
“Just try it,” he said. “One bite’s not going to kill you.”
He handed me a drumstick. I took a bite and nearly choked when what sounded like a gunshot rang out behind us. My head involuntarily jerked toward the direction of the bang, and I saw happy birthday balloons floating over a congregation of children and their parents. The culprit, the balloon popper, took a slap on the wrist and sat down frowning. My second bite of chicken went down a lot smoother.
“See, you didn’t die,” Bill said.
“I can’t believe I ate that. It was the best thing I’ve ever tasted. What are you going to talk me into next? Smoking? Sniffing glue?”
“Now that you mention it.” He pulled a pack of Marlboros and a steel flip-top lighter from his pocket and lit up.
“That’s got to go,” I said, realizing how rude it sounded after I’d said it.
“I’m trying to cut down.” He looked sort of sheepish, and I was sorry I’d been so blunt. I really do abhor cigarette smoke, though.
He extinguished the cigarette. He popped some mints, offered me some. We sucked our mints and watched the children on the beach. A yellow butterfly churned overhead and then flittered away.
“Do you know a lady named Lori Barbera who works at Kessler’s?” I asked.
“I know who she is,” Bill said. “I don’t really know her. Funny you should mention Lori. She was the woman Ron Kuhlman was caught having an affair with a few years ago.”
“The man that’s missing?”
“Yeah.”
I decided to come clean. “I wasn’t exactly truthful with you last night. I am a flight nurse, but I’m not writing a novel. I work for a traveling nurse agency and I have a job starting on the tenth of July at Shands Jacksonville.”
“So what brings you down here to Hallows Cove?”
I told him.
“So let me get this straight,” he said. “You saw part of a girl’s finger in a can of dog food. You traced the origin of the meat in the can, and now you’re down here playing detective?”
“That’s it in a nutshell.” I told him about my motivation, about Jenny’s unsolved kidnapping and about being arrested in Kentucky. “I talked to Lori Barbera on the phone, and again last night, but she wouldn’t give up any information. She got really pissed when I approached her last night.”
Bill shook his head and gazed out toward the river. A squirrel scurried by and heisted a corn cob. Bill reached for his cigarette pack, but didn’t pull it out.
“I wasn’t exactly truthful with you last night either,” he said. “And I didn’t tell the police the whole story about the night Ron disappeared. We played pool that night, and he left Kelly’s at ten, like I said. He forgot his Zippo on the bar and, when I walked outside to catch him, to give it back, I saw him standing beside a car with a skinny blonde girl. She looked under age, not even twenty-one. She had platinum hair, pale sunken cheeks and dark circles under her eyes. By the looks of her, I figured she was into the nose candy. She had dark fingernails. I thought they were black, but they could have been purple. Ron got into the car with her and they drove off.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police about that?” I asked.
“I figured Ron was having another affair. I didn’t want to be the one to blow the whistle. It was really none of my business, you know? After a few days, when Ron never came back, I thought maybe he abandoned Diane and took off for good with that girl. Ron’s rich. He probably has offshore bank accounts, maybe even accounts Diane doesn’t know about. He and that girl could have left the country.”
I reached into my purse and pulled out one of the prints of Darla Bose.
“That’s her,” Bill said. “That’s definitely the girl I saw Ron leaving Kelly’s with.”
“Her name’s Darla Bose,” I said.
Bill seemed fascinated by a distant motorboat, skier in tow, grinding circles in the wake. He clicked his chipped tooth with a thumbnail. “I didn’t think anything about it at the time,” he said, “but I saw a car follow Darla and Ron out of Kelly’s parking lot.”
“What kind of car?”
“It was a beige sedan. A Lexus, I think.”
“Guess who drives a beige Lexus?”
“Who?”
“Lori Barbera.” I started putting some things together from the information Bill had given me, thinking out loud, bouncing some ideas around. “Okay, Ron Kuhlman was last seen on Saturday, April second. Kessler’s is closed on Sundays, right?”
“Right. It’s shut down from Sunday morning till Monday morning. I work every other Saturday night, so when I leave Sunday morning we lock up and set the alarms.”
“So, you worked Saturday, April second, and locked up the plant Sunday morning. I found out from a guy at a cannery in Seattle that the meat in the can of GIANT-PUP I found left Kessler’s on April fourth. So, it’s possible that someone killed Darla Bose on Sunday, April third. Someone with access to Kessler’s. Someone like Lori Barbera, for instance. Let’s formulate a possible scenario: Lori Barbera catche
s her former lover, Ron Kuhlman, with another woman. Mad with jealousy and determined to get revenge, she somehow gets Ron and Darla to Kessler’s and makes dog food out of them. Or, maybe Ron Kuhlman killed Darla Bose. Maybe he killed her and then left the country. Maybe they were having an affair and she was trying to blackmail him or something.”
I saw a little girl skipping and singing on the beach. She reminded me of Jenny.
“That’s possible,” Bill said. “Ron could have had a connection at Kessler’s, could have paid someone a lot of money to dispose of a body for him.”
“What I need to do first, before going any further, is to make sure that that was Darla’s finger I saw. I was at her house yesterday, and took some hairs from her hairbrush. I’m going to take them to a DNA lab and see if they can match the hairs with some flecks of fingernail polish I took from the dog’s stomach.”
I started feeling a little sick with cramps, excused myself to go to the restroom. I guess that chicken leg was a shock to my system. The restroom was nasty, about what you’d expect at a public park. When I walked back to the bench, Bill was mashing the cigarette he’d just finished into the sand and saying goodbye to someone on his cell phone.
“Mind if I stretch out for a few minutes?” I said.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m all right. Just a little dizzy. Just let me lie here and rest my eyes for a minute.”
I dozed off there on the park bench, with the shade of the oak trees blocking the hot summer sun.
12
When I opened my eyes, I saw the sun setting over the river. I grabbed Bill’s wrist, looked at his watch. Hours had passed.
“Why did you let me sleep so long?”
“You looked so peaceful, I didn’t have the heart to wake you up,” Bill said.
“Damn. I wanted to look for a DNA lab. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Feel like going for a drive?” Bill asked.
“I guess. Where to?”
“Just around. There’s a place I’d like you to see.”
We walked back to The Parkside motel. Bill led me to where his car was parked and opened the door of the long black Cadillac El Dorado for me. It was a 1979, he told me. The leather interior still smelled new. Even the tires were shiny.
“Fancy car,” I said.
We left the parking lot.
“I inherited it,” Bill said. “My Uncle Richard died a few years ago and left me the car. I hated this car for years. I remember the day Uncle Richard bought it. I was at the babysitter’s house after school. I was in the second grade and me and some other kids were in the yard, playing a game called freeze tag. When you’re caught you have to stand frozen like a statue until another player touches you and ‘melts’ you. I was chubby and slow when I was a kid, never very good at running games. This little girl named Maggie was ‘it,’ and she caught me but then nobody would melt me. I had to pee really bad, but they all said if I didn’t stay frozen then I was the biggest sissy in the world and they’d never play with me again. So, like an idiot, I stood there till I pissed my pants. Uncle Richard drove up in this Cadillac, brand new that he’d bought that day, and I guess the thought of me getting in with my pissy pants made him blow a gasket. He got irate and belligerent and stripped all my clothes off and sprayed me with the babysitter’s garden hose. I stood there crying, with my hands over my privates, naked as a jaybird. I rode home with nothing on but a beach towel. I hated Uncle Richard after that. And I hated this car.”
“Where were your parents when all this was happening?”
“My parents died in a fire when I was two. There was a fire at that bar we were at last night. Kelly’s. Everyone else made it out alive. I don’t even remember my parents. My Uncle Richard and Aunt Julie took me in, raised me as their own. They never had any kids. I’m staying back at Aunt Julie’s place now, just temporarily. She still introduces me to people as her son.”
“Sounds like you had a rough childhood,” I said.
Bill put a cigarette in his mouth, but didn’t light it. When he started to say something, the cigarette dropped from his mouth and rolled to my side of the floorboard. I picked it up. A long blonde hair stuck to the butt where his lips had been.
“Ah ha,” I said.
“Must be one of my ex’s.” He chucked the cigarette out the window. “My childhood really wasn’t all that rough. Uncle Richard was an asshole, but it’s not like we were poor or anything.”
“What kind of work did your uncle do?”
“He owned the motel you’re staying at.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Seriously. Aunt Julie still owns it, but she’s retired. She has a manager that runs the place.”
“Patrick?”
“Not him. He’s just a clerk.”
“Why don’t you manage the place for her?” I asked.
“I do some maintenance for her sometimes. But Aunt Julie’s pretty stingy with the dough. I can make more doing something else. Anyway, I have my own ambitions.”
“Tell me your ambitions.”
“This might sound crazy, but I want to raise ostriches.”
“Ostriches?” It did sound crazy.
“It’s the meat of the future, I think. I’ve been studying a little about it. I don’t have any birds yet, but I’ve started building some pens and feeders.”
“You have a farm?”
“Aunt Julie has a few acres south of Green Cove Springs. She said I can use it, maybe buy the land from her once I get the farm working. I’ll take you out there one day if you want.”
“Sure. Sounds like fun.”
Bill had the radio tuned to a country station, and we were treated to one whining sentimental tear-jerker after another. My dad told me once that, if you play a country record backwards, you quit lying and cheating, lose all desire to drive pick-up trucks and chew tobacco, and that the love of your life and your dog return to you. My dad’s a riot.
We passed Ferrell’s Diner on the left, and Bill asked me if I’d like to stop for a bite to eat. My stomach felt much better, and I had cravings for flesh. The chicken leg I’d eaten earlier had stirred some sort of primordial hunger in me, a taste for blood. Bill made a U-turn and pulled into Ferrell’s lot.
Chrome stools, with turquoise vinyl seats, were bolted to the floor in front of the lunch counter, and booths styled likewise lined the walls. We sat at a booth, facing each other. A waitress wearing a red and white striped apron came and took our order. I ordered a cheeseburger, the biggest one they had.
After eating we ordered coffee and took it to a picnic table on the deck outside. The sky was clear, a full moon rising. Bill smoked, and I didn’t protest this time.
“What do you think Lori Barbera was doing there at Kessler’s last night?” I asked. “On a Sunday, when the plant’s closed.”
We could see the highway from our picnic table, and Bill seemed preoccupied with the passing traffic. “Maybe she’s just ambitious,” he said. “Putting in extra hours, catching up on her workload.”
“I sure would like to be a fly on the wall of Lori’s office, see what she’s up to. I’m suspicious of her now, after you telling me about a beige Lexus following Ron and Darla.”
“I’m working tomorrow night,” Bill said. “It’s just me and one other guy on third shift. Maybe on my lunch break I could do some snooping.”
“What time do you take lunch?”
“Around two, usually.”
“Would you mind if I joined you for lunch tomorrow night? I’d like to see Lori’s office for myself.”
“We’ll have to be sneaky,” Bill said.
“I can be sneaky. I’ll bring my cat burglar costume and put black grease on my face.”
Bill laughed. He looked at his watch. “I want to show you something. A special place. You ready to leave?”
I got another one of those big cheeseburgers to go.
We drove up 6th Street toward Main. Bill turned off on a winding dirt road and took it to the t
op of a hill, a level clearing with a view of Hallows Cove, Green Cove Springs and parts of Jacksonville.
“This is called Big Kid’s Mountain,” Bill said. “Of course, it’s not really a mountain, but it’s the biggest hill around here. The high school kids come up here on Friday and Saturday nights to make out.”
We were the only car on the hill. I felt a little anxious, being alone up there with a man I’d only met yesterday. Bill stayed on his side of the seat, though. He never made a move.
I could see State Road 13 below and, on the other side of the highway, a fenced property with a single-wide mobile home. An old Camaro, a ’68 or ’69, pulled into the trailer’s driveway and parked behind a Toyota. I saw what I thought were two women getting out of the Camaro, then realized one of them was the guitar player I’d met last night, Sonya Shafer’s fiancé. I couldn’t remember his name. I guessed he’d taken Sonya to dinner with his Frisbee golf winnings.
Bill and I sat quietly for awhile. Everyone, I suppose, has little quirks, habits that probably annoy or irritate other people. When I’m in deep thought, I tend to twist my hair. Bill clicks a thumbnail on his chipped front tooth. It sounded like a clock or metronome or something and was driving me nuts. I started thinking about how alone and vulnerable we were up on that dark hill. I asked Bill to drive me back to The Parkside. He started the car without saying anything.
“Why do they call it ‘Big Kid’s Mountain’?” I asked.
“It’s not really the official name. I don’t think there is an official name. Me and some of the kids I played with started calling it that when we were too small to go up there and ride our bikes. Only the older kids were allowed. The name just kind of stuck.”
Bill dropped me off at the motel and we said goodnight.
Someone had stuffed a note under my door. It was composed with letters of various sizes and colors, type that had clipped from magazine headlines and pasted to a sheet of copy paper. The note read: GET OUT OF HALLOWS COVE WHILE YOU STILL CAN.
13