Mourning Crisis

by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson

  I spent the rest of the evening debating whether or not to drive out to The Backwoods Bar and find out what I could about Tucker and Buford. Common sense said that would be insane, but a part of me argued for my need to know.

  Common sense won, but not when it came to heading over to Buford’s truck in practically the middle of the night, which I did, against my better judgment.

  The rig was completely dark when I pulled up next to it. The entrance to the trailer park lit up the area well enough for me to shut off my lights and still be able to examine the thing from my car. I had no intention of getting out and going inside. I might have been dumb, but I wasn’t stupid.

  I didn’t even know why I’d driven out there, I just needed to see it, to make sure the dead man’s things were okay. Not that I could do anything if they weren’t. When the inside of the truck lit up, I ducked into the seat of my Tribute and panicked. Who was in there? Could they see me? Did they see me? What were they doing? Why were they in there? Should I get out?

  Oh, heck no. Why had that thought even crossed my mind? I glanced in my backseat for any type of weapon but found nothing. All that was back there was the blanket and an empty Styrofoam cup. I might could throw the blanket over the person’s head, but the cup was completely useless unless he—or she—had a thing about the sound of fingers scraping down the side of Styrofoam. Some people hated that sound, my Momma being one of them. That might throw the person for a loop, but it might not give me enough time to cut and run.

  I really needed to keep a pocket knife or something in my glove compartment, if for no other reason than to stop myself from being so overly dramatic.

  While I sat there in full-blown drama-queen mode, the door to the truck slammed shut. I pressed myself even further into the seat of my car and wished myself invisible, but I knew it wasn’t possible.

  Oh gosh, oh gosh, oh gosh. What was I doing? Why had I acted so impulsively? I knew I shouldn’t have gone there. Everyone knew the girl that ran up the stairs and locked herself in the bedroom in the horror film always died. She was the stupid one. I was the stupid one. I was that girl in the horror film.

  What was I thinking? I wasn’t. That was the problem. Granted, I didn’t get out of my car, and technically, I hadn’t actually gone into the mobile home, or since I was speaking technically trailer park. I was sitting in my vehicle outside of it. But still, it wasn’t in the safest part of town, and it was late at night.

  Yes, I was the girl in the horror flicks. The idiot. And I deserved exactly what I had coming.

  I heard steps coming my way and then heard a deafening smash and glass shattered in through the back driver’s side window, followed by another loud thunk when the rock thrown at my window hit my backseat. I sat up and watched as the shadowy figure ran away into the black night.

  “Why would you go there on your own?” Christopher Lacy rubbed the back of his neck as he paced up and down a small and narrow straight line of the Asheville Police Department’s parking lot. “That’s just insane, Mayme.”

  “I didn’t drive there intentionally, I just sort of ended up there, and I didn’t get out of my car or anything. I just wanted to make sure the truck was okay.” I would have explained why, but I couldn’t figure it out myself.

  He smashed the ball of his hand into the right side of his chin and dragged it upward. “You just wanted to make sure the truck was okay? What? Did it have a cold or something?”

  I leaned against my broken window and pieces of shattered glass fell into my car. “Listen, I know it was stupid, okay? I’ve already told myself that. I know I’m an idiot. I got that. I own it. If this were a horror movie, I’d be dead, I know. You don’t have to make me feel like a bigger idiot than I already do.”

  “This isn’t a movie, Mayme. This is real life. You could have been killed.”

  “Thanks, I feel so much better.”

  “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I’m trying to get you to understand how serious this is.”

  “You don’t have to get me to understand. I do. I apologize. I don’t know why I went there. I just kind of ended up there. I don’t know, I guess I don’t understand. I don’t get what’s going on, and I’m trying to figure it all out. I told you earlier, something doesn’t feel right to me.”

  “What’re you trying to figure out? A man is dead. He suffered an allergic reaction to a wasp sting. So he wasn’t stung in the neck, and yeah, I get that you’re bothered by that, but the world doesn’t always wrap things up in a box with a pretty little bow, Mayme. Sometimes death is ugly and brutal and bad. That’s just how it happens. We don’t all die peacefully in our sleep at some old age after living a happy, fulfilling life. Some people die young and miserable. It’s just the way it is.”

  “Wow, well, thanks for that life lesson, Mr. Happy Pants.”

  “Do you understand now?”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t understand. Why would someone do this to me? What’s going on with these people?”

  “I told you not to mess with these people, Mayme. Why won’t you listen to me?”

  I straightened and pointed at him. “You know something, don’t you?”

  His eyes darted to mine and then quickly shifted away. “No, I don’t. I just know that you need to stay away from these people. Half of them have been under investigation of some sort for one thing or another at some time or another, and they’re not good people. That’s what I know, so I’m telling you, stay away from them.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Mayme, nothing is going on, I promise, but I really need you to stay away from these people. Please. You need to trust me. They’re dangerous, especially Tucker.”

  “I could have told you that.” I scratched my head. “I can’t stay away from them. I have a job, and if I quit, I’ll completely ruin my chances of going back to New York and acting again. Don’t you get that?”

  He lifted his eyes to mine. “You won’t have an acting career in New York if you’re not alive, Mayme. Don’t you get that?”

  I flinched. “What’re you saying?”

  “I’m saying Tucker Hyut’s a bad guy.” He walked over to me and held my hand in his. “Please.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “I have a responsibility to the agency. I need to follow through.”

  His frustration showed in his rigid stance and stoic expression. “Seriously?”

  “I know you’re worried, and I promise, I’ll stay away from Tucker, I will. I just have to do what I committed to. I can’t just walk away. If I do, I’ll never forgive myself. It’s who I am.”

  He did a head-shake, eye-roll combination followed with a sigh-grunt thing. “Yeah, fine. Your moral compass allows you to lie to a group of people who just lost someone they love, but when it comes to staying safe around a criminal, you won’t back down. Got it.”

  I forced myself to look him in the eye when really, I wanted to climb back into my beat up car and take off. “That’s a little harsh.”

  “The truth isn’t always pretty, Mayme, but it’s always the truth.”

  I nodded. “Now I know why we never talked in high school. We didn’t have the same moral compass, or at least not one that pointed in the same direction.” I climbed into my car and left, and I had no intentions of ever speaking to Christopher Lacy again.

  Sure, he was right, at least in part. I shouldn’t have gone to the trailer park by myself late at night. It wasn’t the safest place in general, but I didn’t get out of my car, and I didn’t expect anything to happen to me. I didn’t—up until that point anyway—know for a fact that the situation surrounding Buford Lester’s death wasn’t on the up and up. I only had a sneaking suspicion something wasn’t right, so why would I be concerned about going someplace women went on a regular basis, and at all hours of the day and night?

  Having a rock thrown through my window just proved to me that Buford’s death either wasn’t an accident or had meaning I didn’t understand. I didn’t know which was right, b
ut after what happened, I was more determined than ever to find out.

  I’d told Daddy about the window incident when I got home, minus the scary details of course, because he didn’t need to worry. He called a friend and made arrangements for it to be repaired bright and early the next morning.

  It warmed my heart knowing Daddy wanted to take care of me like that. When I got up, I had a brand new, sparkling clean window on my old girl. I thanked Daddy with a hug and a kiss.

  I drove out to the trailer park the next morning dressed in clothes appropriate for cleaning up the cab of an eighteen wheeler. I didn’t expect Alice to provide anything to assist me with the job, so before I left, I raided Momma’s cleaning supplies, grabbed some packing tape and a pair of scissors and stuffed it all in my old Vera Bradley bag from high school. If Momma saw me put a bottle of bleach cleaner in a tote that once cost over a hundred bucks, she’d pitch a fit with a tail on it, and the entire town would run and hide, including Daddy. It surprised me to find that old bag sitting on the shelf in the back of my bedroom closet. I thought she’d have sold it at the thrift store the minute I left for the city.

  The truck was as I’d left it the night before, at least on the outside. I hesitated as I pulled up and parked, not near the remnants of my poor window. I did worry someone would come running up and smash my window again, but the only people nearby were a few day workers lounging in plastic chairs aggressively pursuing employment opportunities. So aggressively, in fact, they completely ignored me. Either I didn’t fit the bill for their kind of work for hire jobs, or they weren’t actually all that interested in actual work. Either way, I didn’t mind being ignored.

  I unlocked the rig’s driver’s side door and climbed inside. Whoever had been in there the night before hadn’t cleaned up the mess from earlier, but at least it didn’t appear any worse for the wear. I stilled, listening for sounds of movement or something to warn me I wasn’t alone. As if the small compartment wasn’t big enough for me to see in its entirety. Hearing nothing, I said, “Hello, it’s Ivy Sawyer. I’m here to clean up the rig per Alice Mableton’s request.”

  Like that would stop a criminal or Tucker Hyut from killing me if that was on either’s morning agenda.

  Since no one rushed me with a knife and no bullets pelted me in the chest, I figured I was good to go. I began in the back of the rig thinking it would be easiest to move forward, and I was right.

  I removed the sheets from his bed, folded them neatly and placed them into a bag, which I then put in the back of my car and locked, just in case someone decided to do an upgraded version of the previous night’s shenanigans.

  I emptied each make-shift shelf, though most of them had already been emptied and scattered around the small compartment by the person who’d ransacked the place prior. I searched through a few files and found three envelopes, each containing dated letters from Grace Lester, Buford’s mother. Curiosity got the best of me, and I read them in order. Grace warned Buford he might be in danger and provided her phone number in the last letter.

  What kind of danger would Buford be in and how would Grace know about it?

  Instead of putting the letters in a bag for Alice, I placed them in my purse. I would likely give them to the agency to send them to Grace, but based on what I’d read, something told me it was best to keep them for the time being.

  I scooted up on the bed, and something sharp jabbed my behind. I squealed and then laughed out loud because it hadn’t actually hurt, just scared me. The windshield incident set my nerves on edge, and everything seemed so enlarged and overblown, from a bird accidentally flying into the rig’s front windshield, to a car with a loud booming bass as it zipped by.

  I moved over and pushed the thin futon-like mattress aside but found nothing. Odd, I thought. I knew something poked me. I pressed into the mattress and felt it again. I grabbed the scissors I’d brought and sliced a hole into the cushion. Sorry, Tucker, you’ll just have to get a new one with all the money you’ll save by cheating Buford’s family out of the value of the rig, I thought. My bad.

  I carefully dug my hand around the hard foam stuffing, ripping it to do so, until I found the culprit, a steel blunt knitting needle. I only knew that’s what it was because my mother knitted. A lot.

  Why would Buford Lester have a knitting needle stuck inside his mattress?

  Wait a minute. Didn’t Christopher say Buford’s leg and backside were swollen and that the ME couldn’t pinpoint an actual sting?

  Could Buford have been pricked by the knitting needle? If so, how? Why? None of that made sense. He couldn’t have been allergic to the needle, could he? Could it have some kind of wasp stuff on it? What was in the venom that caused the allergic reaction in the first place?

  Confused, even more, I searched the small compartment for a baggie or something to keep the needle clean and safe, but couldn’t find anything. All I had was a rubber glove I’d brought with me, So I wrapped it in that and then some paper towels and said a prayer whatever was on it didn’t come off. If the needle was what killed Buford Lester, then it wasn’t an accident. It was murder. I placed it in my purse for safe keeping. I planned to get it to Christopher, but I needed to do a little more snooping around first.

  I continued plugging along, meticulously going through a stranger’s items, evaluating his life by the few belongings he’d kept in the small space of his truck. Though I didn’t know him, I’d grown attached to him in some way, and my heart hurt for him. He’d lost his mother and father when he was young and was raised by an aunt that didn’t seem all that caring and loving, and his cousins, though Atticus was a nice guy, didn’t strike me as the brotherly kind either. So Buford Lester, in my opinion at least, had a rough life.

  When I sat and thought about it, thought about his aunt selling the one thing Buford could call his own, for well under its listed value, thought about his so-called friend, Tucker Hyut, and the fact that his back-in-his-life-momma had to pay someone to be his fake fiancée, and everything else, I cried.

  I cried for Buford and the life he’d never have. I hoped and prayed that man sat up in heaven enjoying whatever it was he’d missed out on down on earth, whether it was a talk with his hero, or a famous football player, or a beer with a best friend he’d wished he’d had, or a game of soccer with his dad, or maybe even a goodnight kiss with the girl of his dreams. Whatever it was, I prayed and cried and hoped Buford Lester had it because he deserved it, we all did.

  Except maybe Billy John Jefferson and Tucker Hyut because they were seriously scary and rude, and Daddy said people who spoke ill of the dead didn’t deserve a place on the other side of the golden gates, and Daddy was right.

  As I cried for Buford, a tapping sound on the rig’s side jolted me out of my thoughts and back into reality. “Who’s there?”

  “That you, Ivy? It’s Atticus. Just checking on you.”

  I unlocked the door and opened it. “Hey. Come on in.” I wiped my nose and eyes with an extra paper towel on the roll Buford had in the rig.

  He sighed deeply and spoke with a calm, soothing tone. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m okay.” I climbed into the bed of the cab again. Luckily, I’d put everything back in place, so it didn’t appear as though I’d cut into the futon mattress at all. “Long morning.” I glanced at my watch. “Oh, wow. I didn’t realize the time.” It was already past noon. “I might could take a break now, I guess.”

  “That’s why I’m here. I’m fixin’ to grab me some lunch. Thought I’d come by and check on you. See if you need anything. I usually get Momma something, but she’s at the doctor today for a checkup. I forgot about it or I wouldn’t of come by. Glad I did though, so I could offer to grab you a bite.” He’d climbed up into the passenger’s seat. “Chick-Fil-A sound good? What girl doesn’t love her some nuggets?”

  It was hard to pass up Chick-Fil-A, and I was starving. “You know what, I’d love some of those, but you don’t have to pay.”

  He laughed “No
w, don’t you go and make me lose my gentleman-like behavior. It don’t happen all that often.” A teeny smile formed on his lips. “That isn’t polite to do to a man.”

  I smiled, too. “Well, when you put it that way, how can I refuse?” I did believe Atticus Mableton was flirting with me, and I thought it was a perfect opportunity to drill him for information. “How about I come along with you? I could use a break from this rig.”

  “I’m good with that,” he said and pushed open the heavy door to Buford’s truck. “Do you need to uh…” He pointed at my face. “Take care of anything?”

  I covered my face with my hands. “Heavens, I’m a hot mess, aren’t I?”

  He blushed. “I think you’re perfect, but I know how you ladies get, and I don’t want you going out and worrying you might not be looking your best.”

  “Now, Atticus, if that’s not the sweetest thing.” I gathered my things. “Hold on, let me just get in my car and give myself a quick touch up.”

  Oh boy, Atticus was right. I was a red, swollen bulb of smeared makeup, tears and, unfortunately, snot. No modeling agencies would be making me any offers in that condition, that much I knew. I did the best I could to make myself presentable, including a quick swipe off of my raccoon eyes with a baby wipe, something an actor always had on hand–if they were any good anyway—touched up my lipstick and patted on some translucent powder to take off the glare. I’d never succumbed to the whole airbrush makeup craze. I considered it false advertising. A country girl at heart, I wanted a more natural look. If I did ever find the man of my dreams, I didn’t want to take off a seven-layer cake’s worth of makeup and send him running because what lay beneath it wasn’t remotely similar to what he’d fallen in love with. That was what I’d called false advertising. For me, real honest to goodness makeup was just meant to enhance my God-given features, not alter them entirely. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s just how I was raised.

  I hopped out of my Tribute, locked it and Buford’s truck, and jumped into Atticus’s pickup, a gray Ford something or other. It was clean, unlike his momma’s trailer, and I liked him even more. Not following in her footsteps like the hoarder shows say.