Scrambled Hard-Boiled

by E.R. White, Jr.

The diner Bertha took me to the next morning was named “Sally’s Friendly Grill” and was located just off the main drag in Oldbury. As we walked into the crowded restaurant, we were greeted with the smell of waffles, eggs and bacon. We sat at a booth and ordered up a couple of breakfasts with all the trimmings. While Bertha and I waited for our food to arrive, I listened in to all the local gossip flowing about me.

  Of course, most of the conversation revolved around the events at the county fair the night before. They were already saying it was the worst night of violence in the county’s history. In addition to Dickle Doug and the officer, three more individuals met an untimely end that night directly due to the catastrophe in the rear tent. One elderly man suffered a heart attack by the Ferris wheel when word reached him of the ape having a loaded pistol. A middle age couple bought the farm when their car flipped and rolled as they were fleeing the fair in panic. If you included the Mighty Xerxes on the list—who was lynched later that evening on the outskirts of town by a group of concerned citizens, no doubt as a warning to any other uppity primates in the area that didn’t know their place on the evolutionary ladder—the grand total came to six.

  While Dickle Doug was a legend in town, it was soon obvious that he was not a well-loved legend, and the consensus was good-riddance to him. There was a lot of sympathy for the late lamented Officer Grissom, who was a hometown boy, and all felt real sorry for the widow he left behind. Luckily, they hadn’t started a family yet, which was fortunate but not because the children would have had to grow up without their father. Most felt it was fortunate because no child should have to grow up and have to explain to the world that the reason his or her Dad was dead was because he lost a gunfight with a one-eyed monkey.

  According to some, a local politician was already saying that at the next county commissioners meeting, he was going to introduce a resolution banning inter-species dueling in Xavier County. This seemed like a good idea for a few moments to the stalwart citizens eating at Sally’s, until a bright soul pointed out that some fancy lawyer might be able to finagle such a law into meaning a ban on hunting and fishing in general. This statement pretty much shot down any support in the diner for the proposed resolution. From what I heard later, the idea was overwhelmingly rejected exactly because of that concern.

  I sat there and took all of this in while Bertha got up and got the attention of her friend Linda. Both walked back to the booth I was sitting at. As Bertha took her seat and launched into her breakfast, I introduced myself to Linda, who was a thin rail of a woman with mousy brown hair.

  I handed the photograph of Susan Bowman and asked her if she recognized the woman. She took the picture and stared at it as she lit up a cigarette. After a long drag and letting the smoke drift out of her nostrils, she began to shake her head up and down.

  “Yep, I know her. Her name is Myrtle Baylor,” she said. “She looks a lot older in this picture, but that’s her, I'd bet.”

  For confirmation, she passed the photo around to a few more of the restaurant patrons. Before I knew it, practically everyone in the diner was gathered around Linda, looking at the snapshot. Those who recognized the woman in the picture agreed; it was Myrtle Baylor.

  “What did she do? What you after her for?” asked Linda.

  “She got herself murdered. I’m searching for who might have wanted her dead.”

  A few low whistles were heard and some sympathetic muttering.

  “Did she have any family around here, someone I can talk to about what her past was or what she had been recently up to?” I asked in my noblest white knight voice. “I’m just trying to get to the truth. That's all.”

  I heard a few chuckles and one guy off at the counter shook his head and said, “Oh, hell.”

  Linda looked at me askance for a second then shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as if saying, you asked for it!

  “She’s got kin who live about ten miles from here, up on Sharp Ridge. A whole bunch of ‘em live there, in and around them hills. They keep pretty much to themselves. We call them the ‘Bat-Face Baylors’, cause a lot of them got these funny heads.”

  Now I heard guffaws come from some of the people sitting around me. A little man sitting a few seats down from me at the counter piped in.

  “Funny….hell, they look like they been breeding with rats. You can always spot one of ‘em by their pointy ears and front teeth. I always thought they looked like rats more than bats, but hey, you get the drift.”

  I asked if her parents were still around and the answer was no, they both had died years ago, but her older sister still lived up there.

  This was a bit of luck, so I asked what her sister's name was.

  “Lucy Baylor,” came the answer from Linda.

  “Never married, huh?”

  The laughs broke out again.

  “Oh, she’s married alright. Got four or five young’uns,” said a chuckling Linda.

  “Well, what’s her married name?” I queried, starting to get a tad frustrated.

  “Baylor,” said the waitress and the café exploded in laughter.

  “Like we said,” commented the little man near me, “them Baylors like to keep to themselves.”

  Mrs. Lucy Baylor, née Baylor. I started to get the picture. Oh well, they could laugh about it, but Eleanor Roosevelt had had the same problem.

  I asked for directions to Sharp Ridge and the home of the Baylor clan and after eating my breakfast, I left the diner with Bertha. I dropped her off at her home, pretended to get her phone number and took off for Sharp Ridge. I remember thinking how I had gotten lucky in getting a lead to Susan Bowman’s true identity so soon.

  Yeah, I was lucky alright.