Baby Daddy Mystery

by Daisy Pettles

  “She texted me she’s over at the VFW snooping for clues on our cases.” Veenie’s favorite part of detecting was digging for gossip down at the VFW. She usually managed to dig up some mighty helpful stuff. Most people who hung at the VFW were retired or disabled or both. All of them were bored silly. Veenie had recruited a gang of them to be her snitches. They were a motley lot, but Lord they knew the scuttlebutt on who was sleeping with whom and who had money problems. Veenie always came back from the VFW hall dripping in gooey gossip. We only used what we uncovered for professional reasons, of course.

  Harry asked why Avonelle was keeping her case open now that Bromley’s death had been ruled natural.

  I slid the blackmail note out of my top desk drawer and showed it to him. I had it in plastic so it wouldn’t get messed up if we needed it for evidence. I’d dusted it for prints, but it was pretty much clean as a whistle. The cut-out letters used, near as I could tell, came from the Pawpaw County Banner and some Hoosier Feedbag circulars.

  Harry read the note and handed it back to me. “Why is she being blackmailed?”

  “Dunno. Claims she don’t know either.”

  “You believe her?”

  “Not right sure. How about you?”

  “Seems to me if she was innocent and had nothing to hide, she’d have ignored this here note.”

  “Veenie said the same. I’m inclined to agree.”

  Dottie came over and nosed in over Harry’s shoulder, trying to get a peek at the note. “Who’s being blackmailed?”

  Harry flipped the note over so Dottie couldn’t see it. “Nothing to worry your sweet head about, honey buns. It’s detective stuff. A case we’re trying to crack.”

  Dottie “ooed” and “awed” and petted Harry’s tie. She started hoovering his neck again.

  Oh boy. I was getting ready to gather my things and vamoose—I was never going to get any work done there at Harry’s House of Ho’s—when my cell phone danced. I picked it up. I was expecting more hearts and hieroglyphics from Joyce, but instead it was a text from Avonelle. “Meet me. My house. Now.”

  I thumbed back, “Okay. Fifteen minutes.”

  I clicked off the computer and grabbed the keys to the Impala.

  “Where you going?” Harry asked.

  Dottie was busy climbing him like a tree. He had to stick his head out and look around her to yell at me.

  “To work,” I said as I scurried out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Avonelle was waiting with the front door wide open when I pulled up in her driveway. She stepped onto the porch. She shot glances up and down the street before ushering me inside. After we were safely inside, she lifted the curtains and peered up and down the street. Then she yanked a cord and pulled the drapes shut tighter than a clam. She looked pale. She was dressed in one of her smart little peach-colored knit suits, but her Buster Brown bow was all loose and floppy. I’d never seen her so discombobulated. One of her apricot eyebrows was drawn on crooked. She was definitely stressed.

  She asked me if anyone followed me, or if I saw anything suspicious outside around her house when I drove up. I said, “Nope.”

  We sat next to each other on a burgundy-and-gold striped divan in the living room. She handed me another piece of lined yellow paper. It had a message spelled out in cut-out news letters in the same style as the first blackmail note. It read, “$20,000. Skaggs’s barn loft. Hound Holler. 9 PM tomorrow.”

  Avonelle sat up stiffly, hands on knees. “This was taped to my door when I came home from the bank.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Do??? What do I want you to do??? I want you to find out who’s sending these ridiculous notes.” Steam was close to escaping out of her ears.

  “Would help me if you told me what in the name of Sam HiIl this is all about.”

  She stood and paced the carpet. “Bromley had a few debts.”

  “I’ve discovered as much.”

  She sat down next to me. “His debtors want paid. That’s all.”

  “Why don’t they file a claim in court against the estate?”

  Avonelle put her hand to her throat and laughed nervously. “Estate? He wasn’t very good with money. He might have fallen in with some men who weren’t all that reputable. It wasn’t his fault. He never had much of a head for business. Like his father that way.” She sighed.

  “You know who these people are?”

  “I have my suspicions.”

  “But you’re not telling?”

  “Wouldn’t make much difference.” She stood up and strolled to the gilded mirror that hung above the limestone fireplace. “Lord, I look a fright.” She fixed her tie and messed with her hair. When she came back, she was composed, very cool. Her eyes were chips of blue ice again. “I’ll not pay the money until I know who I’m dealing with. I need you to show up for this meeting Friday, see who’s trying to milk me. Keep me, Bert, and the bank out of this in the meantime. Can you manage that?”

  I was about to say yes when the house phone rang.

  Avonelle froze. She got up, took me by the elbow and rushed me to the door. I was booted out the door before I could say much more.

  Avonelle got in the last word. “I’ll text you. Tomorrow.” The door slammed in my face. I heard two clicks as she double bolted the door shut behind me.

  Avonelle wasn’t fooling me. She was spooked, and it wasn’t me that had her shaking in her hundred-dollar shoes. Bromley had been in some kind of deep doo-doo before he died, and she wasn’t about to let the family name, or her considerable assets, be dragged through the mud.

  Still stunned by Avonelle’s sudden dismissal, I drove over to the VFW to update Veenie. It was bingo night, still early, but the gravel parking lot was already brimming with cars and trucks. I parked across the street in the IGA lot and loped over to the VFW building.

  The VFW was housed in a red brick building that used to be the Farm Bureau, nothing fancy. Outside, a flagpole was hoisted with the Stars and Stripes, a POW flag, and the Indiana State flag. The front door was a screen job set in a battered aluminum frame. I stepped straight in onto a chipped yellow-and-white checkered linoleum floor. Card tables were scattered around. A long, yellow pine counter lined the back, with a kitchen. There was a bar with two beers on tap behind the counter. The building was used for bean suppers, bake sales, and memorial services. Tonight was countywide bingo, so vodka well drinks and chicken wings were half-price. Cold beer came in two flavors: PBR or Bud. Blue oil cloths draped the tables.

  Bingo at the VFW went on for hours. It was serious business. The jackpot was up to two thousand dollars. People put on their Sunday clothes and drove over from Jackson County, Lawrence County, Washington County, and Jennings County hoping to get in on the wild action.

  Over to one side, Veenie’s son, Fergie Junior, and my son, Eddie, were busy setting up their band, The Lonely Lip Lizards. Junior was the lead vocal and guitarist. My son Eddie was the drum man. They had a standing gig to play a few country-rock songs before bingo and during the break. They played at Pokey’s Tavern several nights a week and raked in some extra bucks with sets over at the Stumble On Inn in Ewing.

  Eddie sauntered over and asked me if he could bend my ear for a minute. I said, “Sure,” and waved at Veenie, who sat over at the bar holding court with her snitches. I made some hand motions to let Veenie know that Eddie and I were going over to have a private family chat in the back.

  Veenie gave me two thumbs up and went back to chatting with the boys at the bar.

  Eddie was tall, like me, and so skinny his bones practically rattled when he walked. All the Reynolds men were like that, not an ounce of fat on any of them no matter what they ate. All his life he’d had to wear a belt with two extra punches in it to keep his jeans from falling off his washboard ass. As a kid, he’d been all elbows and knees, with his bony white ankles pushing out of his pants, and as an adult, there wasn’t a spit more to him. His hair had been the same style since the s
eventies, long and thin, bleached and streaked blond, but now that he was pushing fifty, his hairline had gone gray and receded into a widow’s peak like my daddy in his senior years. It was band night, so Eddie wore his usual stage outfit of white denim bell bottom jeans, a red bell-sleeved shirt with an open throat, and a fringed brown leather vest that I’d made for him in high school. He wore overly large, gold wire-framed glasses, which made his brown eyes look bug-eyed, too large for his long skinny face. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he rubbed a couple of fingers under his nose, where he had a whisper of a mustache. He looked sad.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Need a couple of bucks.”

  “Trouble?” I asked.

  He looked down at his feet, which were encased in red Converse high-top sneakers. He shuffled his feet a bit and wiggled his hands, which were shoved flat in the front pockets of his jeans. “Nah. I’m groovy. Got a big mowing job this weekend out at the Proctor Cemetery. Just a little short on buying the gas I need to get the work done.”

  We’d had this conversation before, a few hundred times. Eddie never had cared much for money. He liked poetry and songwriting a whole heap better. For pocket money, he did his music, and for bigger stuff, like groceries, he mowed yards all around the county, small commercial accounts for the town and the county mostly. He did okay for the most part. He’d even sold a song or two to some music producers down in Nashville, but every now and then he ran low. He had the heart of a poet and a bank account pretty much the same. He’d been married once, but that didn’t take. These days he lived in an old Bunny Bread truck that he’d converted to a mobile bachelor’s pad. I was all right with that once he stopped parking it in my driveway.

  “I got twenty,” I said, as I opened the flap of my messenger bag and pulled out my little zip purse. I didn’t add any kind of lecture because Eddie was Eddie, and well, I reckoned there was a reason God made him this way—all soft and dreamy like an ice cream cone that was forever melting under the heat lamp of life. He seemed happy enough with his lot in life, and I knew darn well that he was good for the twenty. It might take a week or two, but that twenty would meander its way back into my purse. He mowed my yard right regular, for free, weekly, and that was a sight more than most moms got in the way of a thank you these days. Plus, he’d never once been inmate of the month at the Pawpaw County Jail.

  His face brightened a little. “Thanks, Mama. I’ll get this back to you come Monday.”

  I nodded as he loped away toward the stage, a little more bounce in his step.

  When I got back out front, Veenie was still busy holding court at the bar. She was perched on a bar stool with a frosty cold PBR in front of her, her chubby little legs dangling free. To her right sat Twinkles Tatlock, the beauty technician at Reddy’s Funeral Home and a decorated Vietnam vet. He was a notorious bingo addict when his husband, Daddy Dewey, a short-haul Tennessee truck driver, was out of town on a run.

  Twinkles offered me a seat at the bar next to Veenie. “Been saving this here seat just for you,” he said.

  “Thanks a heap,” I said. It was hard to get a good seat at the VFW on bingo night. I fiddled with the red leather barstool, which was near as old and tattered around the edges as me, until I had it screwed up high enough for my giraffe legs. Sitting on a low stool made my knees ache. Luckily the stool Twinkles had saved for me still had some spin in it.

  I ordered a Bud from the barkeep and complimented Twinkles on his outfit. He wore a cute little red blouse with a peek-a-boo chest piece and a matching pair of palazzo pants with white piping trim. His red leather ankle boots sparkled like they were covered in a mess of yellow fireflies. He’d let his dark hair down but had it curled in finger waves like Veronica Lake.

  I had to admire the man. He was clearly born to accessorize. Veenie and he got along swell on account of their shared fashion sense. They sometimes went shopping together down at the Goodwill and the Pawpaw County Second Chance Charity Store that the Methodists ran to make money for their weekly free chili supper for the poor and the downtrodden. Twinkles was a kick-ass seamstress. He owned a professional sewing machine the size of a John Deere riding lawn mower. He’d bought it at auction years ago when the Excello Shirt Factory went out of business up in Seymour. Veenie and he were forever dragging home vintage fabric finds and gabbing fashion while they whipped their Goodwill wardrobes into shape.

  “You put battery lights in them shoes?” I asked Twinkles.

  “Sure did,” he said, as he stuck a size thirteen ankle boot out and made it blink a bit. “I’m test driving these for the big chicken dance competition next month at the Chickenlandia Festival. “Veenie helped me rig them up. I can make them flash in time with the music if I want.” He flashed his toes again, just to show off.

  I was impressed, and said so.

  That made Twinkles beam. “Thanks. Veenie and I work right nice together. We’re plotting a new business. Aiming to start a new fashion trend for men. Lord knows most men could use a little spit and shine.” He rolled his eyes as he took a sip of his vodka well drink.

  Veenie reached down and pulled something out of an orange Hoosier Feedbag grocery bag that laid at her feet. It wasn’t groceries through. She stretched a sparkly blue piece of cloth over one of each of her pointing fingers and made the thing snap. “Whaddaya think?” she asked.

  Twinkles giggled.

  “What in tarnation?” I asked. I adjusted my bifocals so I could see better and fingered the thing. “Are those panties?” I asked. They looked a little like a thong or a G-string that had been fattened up.

  “Sorta,” said Veenie. She danced her fingers around the fabric a bit. “Me and Twinkles call it a ding-a-ling sling. It’s fancy summer wear for men.”

  “I dunno,” I said, eying the thing that did look sort of like a skinny hammock. “I don’t think many Hoosier fellows would wear that sort of thing.”

  Twinkles shot his head around Veenie’s shoulder. “Too sissy?” he asked.

  “Too sparkly. They comfortable?”

  Twinkles took another straw sip of his drink. “Scratchy. We’re still working on the details. It’s comfy other than that. Once you get into it, you hardly feel like you’re wearing anything at all.”

  I wasn’t all that up to date on men’s underwear. I reckoned Twinkles and Veenie knew that end of life a whole heap better than me. I went for comfort and durability in my underpants but realized a whole lot of folks liked more sparkle and sass in that department. “Who’s your market?”

  Twinkles fielded that one. “Anybody who wants a little more excitement in their downstairs.”

  “Well,” I said, as Veenie flung the ding-a-ling sling back into the bag, “those ought to do the trick.”

  Veenie nodded. “We figure we can sell them to the Millennials down at the community college. Like a sexy nature boy thing. Those Millennials don’t think there are two sexes. They like to mess things up a whole heap more than we did back in the sixties.”

  Twinkles nodded. “That’s true. I was born way ahead of my time. Ain’t nothing these days for a fellow to wear a bit of makeup and a man bun. I’m practically a plain Jane.” He looked a little sad at that declaration.

  “Well,” I said, draining my beer and motioning for the barkeep to bring me another mug, “ding-a-ling sling, that name sure is catchy. Maybe you can get Devon Hattabaugh to test drive a pair.” Devon was the junior law officer for the Pawpaw County Sherriff. He had side whiskers, wore a beret, and fancied himself worldly. I could sort of see him wearing a ding-a-ling sling, though Lord I didn’t want to hold that image in my mind’s eye for too long, afraid I might burn out my retinas.

  After sipping at my second cold Bud, I asked Veenie if she’d uncovered any new gossip related to our cases.

  “Loads,” she said. “We ought to hang out here more often, Ruby Jane. These folks got more good gossip than the Squealer.”

  Twinkles chuckled. “You hang, you hear.”

  I ask
ed Twinkles if he was the source of Veenie’s intelligence.

  He shook his head. “Nope. I do enjoy a fresh meaty piece of gossip, but my clients don’t tend to bend my ear all that often.” He giggled.

  Pooter Johnson, a pre-teen snitch who cruised Knobby Waters scouting for things he could sell on the side, including newsy tidbits for the Squealer, broke out of the crowd at my elbow. Pooter was too young to drink, only about eleven, but he had his lips pressed to a straw stuck in a bottle of Big Red pop. “I’m your source,” he proclaimed proudly. His eyes were shielded with his customary dark aviator sunglasses, which boasted fat chrome rims. His hair, the color of a field mouse, was home buzzed. The blue, wide-lapel jacket he wore was new and too long in the sleeves. He had the sleeves cuffed up. His scabby knees poked out from a pair of blue knee-knocker seersucker shorts. He looked Miami Vice, in a Hoosier sort of way.

  I was about to ask Pooter for an official briefing when the lights went low in the VFW hall and the announcer informed us that the Lip Lizards were about to do a set of songs to get us in the mood for the big bingo jackpot, which he reminded everyone was now worth over two thousand dollars.

  Everybody hooted and clapped and whistled. The crowd got so worked up the floorboards rattled and jumped.

  I signaled Pooter that we’d gab later. Asked him to meet us out in the Chevy when all the bingo and hooting and hollering was done.

  He gave me two thumbs up and disappeared into the crowd.

  Veenie’s son, Fergie Junior, stepped into the spotlight at the mic in the front of the room. He was wearing a ripped-sleeve, wife-beater T-shirt with fatigue-style capri pants and his little round John Lennon glasses. He stomped his booted foot a couple times and howled out Kenny Roger’s hit song, “The Gambler.” “You gotta know when to hold them …” while my son, Eddie, banged drums to perfection in the background. The noise was too loud in the VFW hall now to talk about much of anything, so we leaned back and let the music get us in the mood for a mad night of gambling away our Dairy Queen money.