Murder on a Girls' Night Out

by Anne George

  “Bonnie Blue and my sister thought he had you handcuffed. ‘In chains!’ They convinced me, too. We were ready to come down and spring you.”

  “That’s what I heard. Bonnie Blue called me last night.” Henry grinned. “She’s wonderful, isn’t she?”

  “A hundred percent on your side, I’d say.” I put my peeled apple in the pan. “The sheriff didn’t give you any problems, did he?”

  “No. I told him all I knew, which wasn’t much. There are quite a few regulars there. Mrs. Crane and her boyfriend, for instance. And Ed had a lot of girlfriends, most of whose names I don’t know. I never saw anybody sinister hanging around, though, and haven’t even noticed any new faces in the last week or so. Like I told the sheriff, Ed just seemed like a pretty nice guy. You had to stay out of his way sometimes when he’d been drinking, but that wasn’t too often. He didn’t hassle the help, and if anybody got too loud or belligerent, he handled it easily. I was surprised he sold the Skoot, to tell you the truth. I think he had a real good thing going there.”

  “I understand he was going to Atlanta, that his parents were in poor health and he needed to be near them.”

  Henry shook his head. “That can’t be right. I remember telling Ed once that my father had died of lung cancer and that it cured me of wanting to smoke, and he said both his mother and father had died of lung cancer within a week of each other while he was in the Navy and his wife had to stay in Charleston to settle everything.”

  “Charleston?”

  “Absolutely. I remember because he was talking about some beach property they had and how he was glad they sold it before Hurricane Hugo.”

  We looked at each other. “Did you tell this to the sheriff?” I asked.

  Henry shook his head. “He didn’t ask and I didn’t think about it. You think I should?”

  “Well, Ed was lying about his reason for wanting to leave town. I guess that could be important.”

  “Or maybe he was just trying to get away from one of his girlfriends. Didn’t want her to follow him.”

  “Or one of the girlfriends’ boyfriends.”

  “Maybe.” Henry studied the peeled apple in his hand. “But I don’t think his murder had anything to do with jealousy, do you?”

  “You mean because it was so vicious and premeditated?” I shrugged. “Who knows, Henry? You’ve read your Shakespeare.” I dropped an apple into the pan, where it landed with a metallic thud.

  “That’s true.”

  The phone’s ring startled both of us. “Unless I miss my bet,” I said, “that will be my sister, who probably suspects, God forbid, that my blood pressure is normal today.” I was right.

  “What are you doing?” she asked after I said hello.

  “Making applesauce.”

  “Why? You can get Motts now with extra cinnamon or Lucky Leaf. They’re both good as homemade.”

  I didn’t argue. I just let my mind drift for the millionth time to the idea that one of us really was adopted. Probably Mary Alice. After all, I had my mother’s short upper lip and blond hair.

  “Mouse?”

  “What?”

  “You nearly scared me to death about that phone call last night.”

  Mary Alice definitely was the adopted one.

  “There was a very reasonable explanation,” she said.

  “What was it?”

  “Probably one of the babies. Children nowadays know a lot more about electronic stuff than we do.” I didn’t point out that the babies were fifteen months old. Sister would just get started on what geniuses they are. “Anyway,” she continued, “I know you didn’t mean to upset me, so I forgive you.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “And I need you to go to the Skoot ’n’ Boot with me this afternoon.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m going to meet with a contractor. To have some minor remodeling done.”

  “You’re having the wishing well taken out.”

  “That and a few other things.”

  “You checked with Sheriff Reuse?”

  “Not yet, but I will before we actually change anything.”

  “So you’re definitely opening back up.”

  “Of course. What happened to Ed had nothing to do with me. I’m not going to be mixed up with the Mafia or doing drug trafficking or whatever he was involved in. All I’m going to do is have a nice, fun place for people to dance and have a good time.”

  “Shall I tell Henry his job is safe, then?”

  “Sure. When you see him.”

  I glanced over at the table, where Henry was peeling an apple and seemed lost in thought. “He’s here. Peeling apples.”

  “Well, tell him I’m glad he’s not in jail. I’ll pick you up around two. And, Mouse? Bring me some of the applesauce.”

  “What about Motts?” I yelled into the dial tone. Whatever had happened to saying good-bye before you hung up? I slammed the receiver down. “That was Mary Alice,” I said to Henry, needlessly, as I sat down. He was grinning. “She’s going to open the Skoot ’n’ Boot back up.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You really think so?” For a moment I saw Ed’s tattoo dancing, saw his body being lifted into the ambulance. “You think it’s safe?”

  “Most probably.”

  It was not the answer I wanted to hear, and Henry knew it. We both reached for an apple at the same time.

  Seven

  In October, political advertisements bloom on all the signboards and at the interstate exits. If there is a space, there is a sign. They will stay there long after the elections, in fact until storms batter them down. Candidates are supposed to take them down the day after the election, but I have yet to see that happen. Half the candidates are too happy to bother; the others are too depressed.

  On our way to the Skoot ’n’ Boot, Mary Alice asked who I was voting for and then said, “Never mind. I know.”

  She was referring to the fact that I usually vote a straight Democratic ticket. She votes straight Republican. Always has, so she says. I happen to know she voted for Kennedy, though, and she knows I didn’t vote for McGovern. He sounded exactly like Liberace when you listened to him on the radio. Not that I had anything against Liberace, but I couldn’t take him seriously as President. I’m sure Mr. McGovern was a very nice man and I felt terrible about it, but there it was. Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t be elected today and we all know it. Or at least he would have to have that mole taken off. I’ve always worried about it being a melanoma, anyway.

  “What factor sunscreen do you use?” I asked Sister.

  “Thirty.” She looked over at me. “Worrying about Abraham Lincoln again?”

  “That mole was very dark.” Sometimes it’s scary the way Sister can read my thoughts.

  “Worry about something you can do something about.”

  Lord, she sounded like Mama.

  “I know, I sounded like Mama, didn’t I?”

  I nodded. Sister flicked her right turn signal and we exited up the ramp, which was lined with political posters.

  “Speaking of politics,” she said, “you know who lives over there? Richard Hannah, Jr.” She was gesturing toward the house across the fields that I had noticed the first time we had left the Skoot, the Tara house that had been silhouetted against the setting sun. “I’m invited to a party there next week for the Republican Women’s Committee. You want to come with me?”

  Dick Hannah was the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. He just might win, too. My candidate was, admittedly, old and ugly. His slow speech made him seem retarded at times. He was, though, as our father used to say, dumb like a fox. And he was a known quantity. Dick Hannah was young and handsome, and some advertising agency in Memphis had done a wonderful job of promoting him as the ideal family man with his beautiful wife and two little girls. Yes, he probably would win.

  “You want to come, Patricia Anne?”

  “No.”

  “Sure you do.” Mary Alice stopped at the top of the ra
mp for an old pickup that was huffing and puffing down the county road. So much smoke was pouring from it, it reminded me of the little engine that could.

  “I think I can. I think I can,” it gasped.

  I wasn’t at all sure it could, but the driver seemed confident, waving to us. We followed him as closely as the exhaust fumes would allow. Two old hounds watched us mournfully from the truck bed. It was a relief when he turned into a dirt road.

  “See?” I said. “That’s why I vote Democratic. That old fellow has Social Security and Medicare at least, thanks to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.”

  “Are you crazy?” Mary Alice looked at me and laughed. “That old fellow needs Social Security like he needs a hole in his head. That was Jackson Hannah, Richard’s uncle. He and his brother—ex-governor Richard, Senior—own half of north Alabama. Coal, lumber, cattle, trucking. You name it, they own it. Jackson even ran for governor one time. Remember?”

  How could I forget? The Hannah family has been involved in Alabama politics for years. Richard, Senior, had served one term as governor and probably would have been re-elected if he hadn’t been injured in a small plane crash during his second campaign. And now his son, Richard, Junior, was campaigning for the Senate. But it was brother Jackson Hannah’s one foray into the political arena that had left the most indelible image.

  “He’s the one who pulled off his shirt on TV to show how much hair he had on his chest?”

  “Well, somebody had called him a wimp, questioned his manhood, he said.”

  “Good Lord, is that who that was?” I turned to look at the truck, which was disappearing in a cloud of red dust. “I remember his wife trying to get his shirt back on him and he fell backwards over a chair. One of Alabama politic’s finest moments.”

  “Jackson has had a little problem with alcohol, I understand.”

  “I’m sure the host of that TV show would agree with that.”

  “Water over the dam,” Mary Alice said, turning into the empty parking lot at the Skoot ’n’ Boot. “We’re dealing with a whole new generation of Hannahs now. Dick and Sara are very nice, and their house is supposed to be as gorgeous inside as it is outside. Don’t you want to see it? It’s going to be a fancy party, and I’ve got plenty of invites. I contributed to his campaign fund.”

  “I don’t have any Republican clothes to wear,” I said. “They dress elegantly at these parties.”

  “Don’t be silly. Nobody’ll notice you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Sister missed the sarcasm as usual.

  “The guy’s not here yet.” She pulled into the handicapped parking space almost in front of the door. “Let’s go on in.”

  “You’re in a handicapped space!”

  Mary Alice looked around the empty lot. “Oh, the shame! And all those handicapped people without a place to park.”

  “It’s the principle!”

  “There’s nobody else in the whole place!”

  “Move your car!”

  Mary Alice sighed, backed the car up and moved two spaces down. Just as we were getting out, a pickup with a large butterfly painted on the door, with the words “Monarch Remodeling” forming the antennae, pulled into the lot. This truck, I noticed, wasn’t in much better shape than Mr. Jackson Hannah’s. Blue exhaust fumes floated behind it like contrails. These truck owners, I thought, had every reason to pray we never had another oil embargo.

  The truck stopped in the parking space on the other side of the handicapped place, and an old hippie got out. Well into his fifties, he wore his waist-length graying hair in a ponytail. His hairline was receding badly, as if the weight in the back were pulling it out of the front. The result was a look of permanent surprise.

  “Mrs. Crane?” His rubber flip-flops made squishy sounds as he came toward us. “I’m Fly McCorkle.” He was not as tall as Mary Alice, but he had broad shoulders and gave the impression of strength. His handshake was warm and firm when Sister introduced us.

  I was glad to see him. I had been dreading going into the Skoot and seeing the wishing well. I knew it was silly, but I got a funny feeling in my stomach just thinking about what had happened there. Fly McCorkle’s presence was obviously going to be a comforting one.

  “I know the old Skoot well,” he said while Sister found her keys. “And Ed.” He shook his head. “Nobody deserves that. You know?” We agreed. “He was a pretty good old fellow. Went fishing with me a couple of times.”

  Sister handed him the key as if she were as reluctant to enter as I was. He fit it into the lock.

  “Did my lady tell you I don’t work on Fridays? I go fishing Fridays. Can’t miss that. Friend of mine’s got a son named Smith, ’cause we were fishing at Smith Lake when the baby was born and his wife didn’t want him to forget it. He told her, he said, ‘Woman, I promise you only one thing. When you’re nine months pregnant, Fly and I won’t fish at Weiss Lake.’” He grinned and opened the door. “Got grandchildren now.”

  He held the door open for us. I was smiling at him and didn’t realize Mary Alice had stopped dead still. I walked right into her with a whump, barely catching my glasses as they sailed off. “Lord, Sister!”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

  “For heaven’s sake, I didn’t hurt you. Move.”

  “Ohhh.” It was almost like a long-indrawn breath.

  “What’s the matter? Turn on the lights.”

  “Here.” Fly McCorkle reached around me and flipped a switch.

  “Oh,” Mary Alice said. “Ohhhhh.”

  “Good God!” Fly exclaimed.

  I couldn’t say anything. The Skoot ’n’ Boot was a total wreck. Tables were turned over, chairs were slashed with padding spilling onto the floor, broken glass shimmered everywhere.

  “I didn’t know it was this bad,” Fly said, looking around, stunned.

  I found my voice. “It wasn’t. Somebody did all this last night.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick.” Mary Alice nearly knocked Fly and me down getting out the door.

  I felt sick, too. I had never seen such devastation. They had spared nothing.

  “We better call the sheriff. I got a phone in the truck.”

  We backed out carefully, our shoes crunching glass. Why hadn’t I noticed that crunching sound when I took my first step inside?

  “Fly’s calling the sheriff,” I told Sister, who had her head propped on the steering wheel and the air conditioner on full blast. “You want a Tums?”

  She nodded, and I found one in the side compartment of my purse for her. There was another one down in the corner with the old receipts and recipes. It was a little dusty, but I chewed it up. I had the feeling I was going to need all the help I could get.

  In a few minutes there was a tap on the window. “She okay?” Fly asked me.

  Sister answered for herself. “I need a Valium.”

  Fly looked around me. “You got a mantra?” he asked Mary Alice.

  “Of course.”

  “We both do,” I added.

  “Then close your eyes and say it until the sheriff gets here. He said it would be a few minutes.”

  Mary Alice moaned.

  “You say that mantra now,” Fly cautioned. “You, too, Mrs. Hollowell.” He went back to his truck, turning to wave. I waved back.

  “Dear Lord, Patricia Anne,” Sister said. “You’ve always had a thing for hippies, haven’t you?”

  “Feeling better, are we?”

  She put her head back against the steering wheel. “Say your mantra.”

  Sister was right. The whole hippie movement was one that fascinated me. I had been too old to be one, my children too young. But there was something so innately romantic about handing out flowers in a park in San Francisco. The darker side of the movement I didn’t like to think about. It was the innocence that touched me.

  I closed my eyes, but what I saw was the terrible vandalism inside the Skoot ’n’ Boot. My mantra went sliding by, refusing to stick in my brain. “I’m going t
o walk around,” I said.

  “Don’t mess up any clues.”

  “Like what?”

  “Footprints or something.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  Fly McCorkle was talking on his phone when I passed his truck. I admired the butterfly on the side, and for the first time, it dawned on me that “Fly” must be a nickname for “Butterfly.” Good for him, I thought. Moon, Sunshine, God. You don’t hear those old hippie names much anymore. Like their owners, most of them have faded into corporate America. God Jones just doesn’t get it for a stockbroker.

  I walked to the end of the building and down the side. In the field behind was an old apple orchard, overgrown, neglected, but with a few of the trees still bearing. I wondered about the people who had owned this land, who had planted this orchard. Surely there had been many October days like this when they had come out to pick apples under a sky that looked freshly Windexed. Sister says I romanticize the past, and she’s probably right, but there was the peaceful old orchard before me and the asphalt parking lot and Skoot ’n’ Boot behind me. The comparison was enough. I went over and sat under a tree. A few apples had fallen and bees were going mad over them. I kept my distance, though the bees were too busy to notice me.

  I leaned back against the tree, closed my eyes and let my thoughts wander. Why had someone torn up the Skoot ’n’ Boot like that? For that matter, why had someone killed Ed? He had to have been deeply involved in something others felt passionate enough about to want him dead. Maybe partners with some people in a robbery and he had held part of the loot back from them? Money, jewelry?

  The tattoo on Ed’s arm danced against my closed eyelids. I saw him laughing as Sister and I danced; I saw his body being lifted into the ambulance. I shuddered and rubbed my fingers in a circular motion on my temples. Drugs. It was all going to boil down to drugs and we all knew it. What else could it be in a little country-western night spot on a county road in Alabama? And my sister had bought right into the middle of the mess. Well, given the condition of the Skoot now, she was just going to have to accept her mistake and eat her losses. She needed to get as far away from this place as possible.