Stinking Rich

by Rob Brunet

“Of course. Best there is. See that big old bar of Sunlight in the crook of the branch there?” Judy pointed her flashlight at the tree trunk. “It’s what I use on Wort when he chases a skunk or brings me home a fish.”

  “Great,” he said.

  No shower could ever be less pleasant than the one in prison, but this one came close. The stall, if one could call it that, had no sides. It was positioned behind the cabin so its occupant would be invisible from the road. Brushing by the ferns and long grasses on their way over, he and Judy had awoken a cloud of mosquitoes who were surprisingly hungry for autumn. Danny did his best to keep most of his body splashed by the trickle of cold water while he lathered himself up with the rough bar of yellow soap. Judy had given him a wicker basket for his dirty clothes, saying she’d wash them in the morning.

  “There’s a towel hanging off the tree there,” she called out through the screen door. “I used it on Wort yesterday, so it should be dry by now. I’ll heat up the soup. It’s beet. Homemade. I had quite a good crop this year.”

  Danny washed himself three times head to toe. The soap made his hair stiff but he really didn’t want to call out and ask Judy for shampoo. The shrinkage brought on by the cold water was not something he wanted to share.

  A few minutes later, wrapped in the dog towel, Danny sat on a log upwind from the fire pit. Judy had lit it while he showered and it was burning strong by the time she came outside carrying two bowls of soup. Instead of joining him on the log, she pulled up a stump and sat where she could keep an eye on him. As she watched him eat, half-naked, Danny caught her checking out his abs. He flexed just a bit.

  “Good soup,” he lied. The sweet sticky broth warmed his belly nicely, but it was all he could do to force the thick red goo past his tongue. After years of bland prison food where the strongest flavor of any kind was ketchup, this frothy concoction made him want to retch.

  “Thanks. It’s a Moosewood recipe. Well, sort of. I didn’t have most of the ingredients but there were tons of beets and I threw in a little potato to starch it up. If you like, I can get you some hot sauce.”

  “No, that’s fine. Could I maybe borrow a T-shirt, though? And maybe some sweat pants? Something I could fit into? The mosquitoes are starting to find me again.”

  “Sure. I’ve got a couple of pair of Ernie’s pants. I was patching them for him. He did all his gardening on his hands and knees. Pretty much by feel. Wore out the knees in no time.” She disappeared inside and was back in an instant with sweatpants and a T-shirt two sizes too big.

  “You were a big help to him, I take it,” Danny said.

  “I just did what anyone would do. He was such a sweet man. Other than the social services that helped out now and then, Ernie was pretty much alone. Especially since your mother went away. I think she must have been sending money, though. Ernie said she was like that. Every so often, out of the blue, he’d have a few hundred dollars—one time, more than a thousand—and he’d insist I spend it fast. On something he needed or something I could use or just on a great bottle of scotch that we’d polish off over a couple of evenings.”

  Holy shit, Danny thought. Unless Ernie had kept a bunch of the cash he’d intended for his mom, he must have found the stash after all. It still didn’t add up, though. The man wasn’t exactly the save and savor type. He’d have been the first to fly off to an extended Caribbean beach holiday if he’d found that much dough in his shitter.

  “What’d he tell you about my mom?” he asked Judy.

  “You mean about how she’d help him?”

  “No. About where she went. When she left.”

  “Oh, that. That was some kind of mystery. I don’t even think he knew. He just said one day she took off. Indefinite vacation, the way he put it. I figured maybe she needed a break, what with you being in jail.”

  “You knew I was busted?”

  “Ernie told me all about it. Well, enough to know that you got caught growing a whole bunch of dope and you landed a teetotaling judge who decided to make an example of you and sent you off for a bunch of years. Real bum rap, it sounds like.”

  “You’re not kidding.” Danny saw no percentage in telling Judy what he had actually pled guilty to.

  “Most people just get a slap on the wrist for growing pot. I figured you must have had some big crop or something. Even then, it’s a drag. Marijuana should be legalized. Get the gangs out of it, I say. Tax it like alcohol and use it to pay for homeopathy.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said.

  “So the first thing you do when you get out is come nosing around Ernie’s place in the middle of the night looking for some creepo volunteer fire-stud.”

  “Did he really rescue your dog?”

  “I rather doubt it. From what I hear around town, it’s not dogs he chases.”

  “Huh?”

  “Seems he slips in and out of any cuddy offering a warm bed and free booze.”

  “Sounds like Terry.”

  The soup and the fire had worked and Danny was feeling warm all over. Even the mosquitoes had retired for the night. In the glow of the flames, Danny could see that Judy was even more attractive in person than she had appeared in the newspaper photo. He stood up to add a log to the fire, hoping her earlier peeks at his jailhouse physique, honed by countless hours killing time in the gym, would convince his hostess to invite him inside.

  As though she could read his mind, Judy said, “There’s a Mexican hammock just over there.” She flicked on the flashlight and pointed to a clearing in front of the cabin. “I’ll get you a sleeping bag that zips up over your head. You’ll be comfy enough.”

  Ten minutes later, wearing Ernie’s clothes for the second time in his life, Danny was shut out of the cabin and left hanging between two maple trees. Wort’s on-and-off growling ensured dogs would feature prominently in his dreams.

  Grabbing a tuft of long grass so he could swing the hammock, he slowly rocked himself to sleep. His heart ached and he wanted to cry like a baby, but no tears came. He felt robbed. Wronged. He had been patient, and kept his mouth shut. He had done his time—well, most of it, anyway. He had endured threats and beatings and countless hours locked in small rooms with beefy police officers who breathed stale coffee in his face and drilled him with the same questions over and over, trying to trip him up. He had spent half his young adult life in a tiny cell convincing himself that it would all be worth it; that his personal pot of gold was assured even if his life’s road was anything but a rainbow. And here he was, ready to claim it, about to ride off into the proverbial sunset. And now this?

  If what Judy had said was true and Ernie was blowing cash he oughtn’t have had, the old man must have found it. He decided that made the most sense. But then what of the fire? Danny remembered Ernie fetching him the lantern in the dark. How the guy could whip his shotgun off the wall and use it to challenge unwanted visitors. Not the kind of guy who’d start a fire in his cabin. Much less hang around and burn to death. Someone else must have done it. Someone with a reason to want Ernie dead. It had to be connected to the loot.

  Where in hell was his stinking bag of money?

  Twenty-Four

  Danny woke when something nibbled his fingertips. It had to be five in the morning. Half-dreaming, he wondered where the dogs had come from this time. His arm hung from the hammock and his first waking thought was he was still in his cell, Carson getting frisky from the bottom bunk. “Get your goddamn tongue back in your mouth before I shove it there with my foot, asshole,” he snarled before remembering where he was. Panic quickly replaced relief when he realized whatever was gnawing his hand was neither human nor canine but some unidentified nocturnal beast.

  Danny pulled his hand away and, failing to realize the dynamics of a hammock, rolled over to face his nighttime lover. The hammock rolled with him and dumped him out. As he tumbled to the ground, he made out a thick white stripe against inky blackness before the body of the oversized skunk collapsed under his chest. For a moment, he felt the animal squirm�
��a death rattle—and then he was enveloped in the rankest fumes he had ever experienced. The stench scalded his nostrils as he gasped, trying to clear his lungs, succeeding only in filling them deeper with the mist from the skunk’s flattened sack.

  He made a mad dash down the lane, across the road, and down Ernie’s lot to the lake. He plunged his head into the frigid water and pulled out gasping. He gulped and dunked repeatedly until his brain pounded from the cold.

  Stumbling back up the hill, he stopped short of the hole he’d just dug. He stared at the tilted-back shitter, then the pile of soot, and back again. Something was wrong. Something had changed. The outhouse had been moved. Instead of standing between the road and the cabin, Ernie’s shit shack was to the lakeside of the cabin. It must have got full up and been relocated. Danny had dug the wrong hole.

  He paced up and down, kicking at the earth, trying to remember just exactly where Ernie’s outhouse had stood. The underbrush had grown too high to find the spot in the dark, but the stash would be easy to find by daylight. He retrieved the dead skunk and dropped it in the empty shithole. Then he climbed back in the hammock and rocked himself to sleep.

  Morning came quickly. The hammock was hung where it would catch late afternoon sun but was well shaded before noon. Danny slept soundly until he was shaken awake by Judy, leaning over him and whispering in his ear.

  “Danny. Wake up. There’s men at Ernie’s. I’m surprised their motorcycles didn’t wake you.”

  Instantly alert, he looked across the road to see three Harley-Davidsons on their kickstands.

  “You smell even worse than last night,” Judy said. “Did you run into our skunk?”

  “You might say that.”

  Through the trees, he watched the men poke around the far side of Ernie’s burnt out cabin. One of them was checking out the bike he’d stolen from the RV. It looked like the guy from the bus station except he was wearing some kind of centipede pants. Wort stood next to Judy, growling steadily.

  “Why would they push Ernie’s outhouse back like that?” Judy asked.

  “It’s me they’re after.”

  She stared at him blankly. “They’ve no right to be mucking around his place.”

  “You’re so right. Why don’t you go set them straight.”

  Judy bit her lower lip and Danny could tell she was considering how involved she was willing to get.

  “They’re your friends,” she said. “You go talk to them.”

  “Those guys aren’t friends.”

  She looked back and forth between him and the bikers, as if trying to decide who stank worse.

  “Distract them,” he said. “Chat them up. Let me disappear into the woods. And you’ll never see me again.”

  She frowned. “Get yourself gone. Quick. And I’m doing this for Ernie—not you.” With that, she marched across the road, Wort at her heels, whispering back over her shoulder, “Jeepers, you stink.”

  Perko stared down the hole, one hand splayed across his mouth and nose. “Jesus H. Christ. Never thought I’d be this close to a skunk and not able to smell the damn thing. What kind of a twisted mind drops a skunk in a pile of shit?”

  “Same kind of weird fuck who kills his friend and feeds him to his dog, I figure,” said Mongoose.

  “But what’s it mean? Is he trying to tell us something?” Perko asked. “Throw us off the scent?”

  “Looks like we got company,” said Hawk. He jerked his head toward the road where a woman wearing sandals and a tie-dyed wrap-around skirt stomped toward the clutch of bikers. She was followed by a tiny white mutt.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” the chick called out when she got close.

  “Mornin’, ma’am,” said Perko, giving her an approving once-over.

  “Can I help you with something?” she asked.

  “This here your place?”

  “No, it belongs to Ernie McCann. Or, at least, it did. I’m his neighbor.” Her dog sniffed Perko’s leg.

  “Well, neighbor lady, we won’t be but a moment or two,” Perko said. “My friend Mongoose here is a bit of a firebug, see. Likes to burn things and stuff. We heard about the fire and thought we’d swing on by for a little peek.”

  “Musta been quite the blaze,” said Mongoose. “You see it?”

  “A man died here,” she said. “I’m not sure I like the idea of you treating it like a tourist attraction.”

  “We’re not tourists,” Perko said. “More like business people.” He jerked his knee, but the dog was intrigued by his Centiagues.

  “Business people?”

  “Yeah, kinda like insurance adjusters,” said Mongoose.

  “Only freelance,” Hawk added.

  “So if you saw the fire,” Perko said, “then you would know if anyone was hanging around. Looking suspicious and stuff.”

  “What are you? Detectives?” she asked. She snapped her fingers at her dog; he ignored her.

  “We don’t really represent anyone,” Perko said.

  “Independent,” said Hawk.

  “So?” Mongoose stared at her hard.

  “So what?” she asked.

  “So, did you see anyone not from around here or what?”

  “Either at the fire or maybe pokin’ around after,” said Hawk.

  “Like you, you mean?” To her dog she said, “Wort, stop that.”

  This cookie is tough, Perko thought. He said, “Maybe someone else, sweetheart?”

  The woman hesitated, looking from one biker to the other.

  “Just one,” she said, “besides the police and such.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A lady lawyer. All uptight and curious. Her name’s Linette Paquin. That’s who.”

  “A lawyer, eh?” Perko looked over at Mongoose. “Much obliged, ma’am. Why don’t you run along now and we’ll be out of your way in no time.”

  “Run...what?” Little Miss Tie-Dye flushed bright red. Perko thought she was about to slap him. She lunged for him, hand open, and he stepped back, but not quick enough. He felt the dog’s pee splash over the top of his boot and trickle down inside.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, mister,” the woman said. She scooped up the dog in her arms and clutched him to her. She did her best to cover the grin that crept up her cheeks. “I’ll be going now,” she said.

  “One more thing.” Hawk pointed at a road race bicycle leaning against a tree not far from the outhouse. “That your bike?”

  She looked at it, shook her head then nodded. “It must have belonged to the man who lived here,” she said and walked away.

  “You believe that?” Hawk said once she was out earshot.

  “Woulda snapped that runt dog in half if she hadn’t snatched him away,” Perko said, bent over wiping his boot with dried leaves.

  “About the bike, I mean,” said Hawk.

  “It’s too new?” said Mongoose. “That it?”

  “The fucking guy was blind. You ever seen a blind man on a bicycle?” said Hawk.

  “Oh, yeah, man is she stupid,” said Mongoose.

  Perko said, “Far as I’m concerned, if Grant found what he came for in that shitter, there ain’t no way he’s sticking around to find a dead skunk and toss it down the hole.”

  “And if he rode up on that bike, why’d he leave on foot?” said Hawk.

  “Unless he’s still here,” said Perko.

  Mongoose looked from the burnt out cabin to the upturned outhouse. “Where?” he asked. He watched the lady and her dog cross the street to her cabin. “Think he’s with her? Let’s go check.”

  Hawk said, “Hang on a minute. If Perko’s right, we head over there and the guy sees us coming? He knows we’re onto him. He disappears into the forest, and we’re shit out of luck.”

  “What’s we gonna do then? Wait here?”

  “Something like that,” Hawk said.

  Danny crouched in a tangle of dry undergrowth a few hundred feet away, far enough into the trees so the bikers wouldn’t see him. He was sure the guy
with the weird ass pants was the same one he had kicked in the gonads two days before. He didn’t think for a second that the posse was after him for that particular infraction, but he had no doubt it would influence the dude’s mood.

  Being prey felt familiar, and he didn’t like it one bit. Worse, if the bikers had put two and two together, the police wouldn’t be far behind. His only way out was to locate the old outhouse hole and dig it up fast. Without his ticket to paradise, he was just another loser on the run, ripping off convenience stores whenever he got hungry.

  The Harleys roared to life. He ducked into the bushes and watched them speed by—one, two...where was the third? He waited until the sound of their engines had disappeared over the horizon and swore under his breath: three bikers, two bikes—the meathead from the diner had stayed behind.

  He darted across the road and crept back toward Ernie’s. There was no sign of the chunkster. No big surprise. The biker was hiding. He made his way back to Judy’s cottage by a circuitous bush route. Wort was on him the instant he slipped in the back door, snapping at his ankles and barking ferociously.

  Judy stormed into the kitchen. “Sit, Wort. Sit and be quiet.” Then she looked at Danny. “I thought you said I’d never see you again.”

  “I lied.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” She walked over to the counter and poured herself a cup of coffee. She was wearing a cut-off T-shirt and he noticed hair sticking out from her armpits. She said, “I think maybe it’s about time you tell me what’s going on.”

  “Alright,” he said, “but that coffee sure smells good. Mind if I have a cup?” What kind of woman didn’t shave her pits? Danny stifled a Carson flashback.

  “Frankly,” Judy said, “I don’t even know how you can smell coffee, reeking the way you do. That stench is unbearable. I’ll bring the pot outside—right after you shower. With this.” She handed him a large bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a box of baking soda. “It works on Wort. Scrub hard.”

  In daylight, Judy’s shower set up wasn’t half bad. Danny alternated the frothy skunk bath with the coarse yellow soap and splashes of cold water until he shone like a baby.