Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues (14 page)

Dazed, I shook my head to bring myself to. Big mistake. That only works in the movies. After a second or an hour, I wasn’t sure which, I felt behind my head and came back with blood on my hand.

Then I was really torqued; that fat bastard busted my head back open. No more Mister Nice Guy.

“What’d you do that for?” I growled, my voice lowering naturally.

“I wanted to impress upon you, in a way that you couldn’t mistake, the distress that man’s name causes me.” Bubba spoke like a gentlemen farmer himself, when he wanted to. I was surprised, but no less mad.

“For all you know, I could be a cop,” I said.

“Hah,” he laughed. “I know every police officer in this town. And son, you ain’t one of them. Not by a long shot.”

I put a hand on each arm of the chair and pushed myself into a standing position. I’d had, simply put, enough.

“Sit down,” Bubba ordered.

I kept my ground. “Listen, Bubba, I don’t need this crap. You and that reject from a Lite Beer commercial over there can go to hell for all I care. You don’t want to talk to me, fine. Talk to the cops.”

I took a step toward the door.

“Sit down,” Bubba repeated. A moment later, “I said sit.”

I walked around him, settled myself on the couch. I’ll sit, all right, but where I want to.

Bubba crossed back to his desk, lowered himself into the seat. “Now what is it you think I can tell the police?”

I shook my head. “No, sir. I don’t think so.”

“What you mean, boy?”

“After the welcome I’ve been given here, I don’t feel like answering any of your questions. If there’s any answering to be done here, I’ll let you do it.”

Bubba smiled, as if he couldn’t believe I’d still be getting smart with him after all this. He don’t know me very well, do he?

“I’ll say this much for you, boy. You ain’t much to look at, but you got great big brass ones.”

“From what I can tell,” I continued, ignoring what I guess was supposed to be a compliment, “Fletcher had two kinds of people in his life. Those who hated him enough to kill him, and those who merely fantasized about it.”

Bubba looked over in Mr. Kennedy’s direction and smiled. “He was not the most lovable man in God’s creation.”

“I keep running into people who thought the world would be better off without him. To tell you the truth, Bubba, I just wanted to find out if you were one of them.”

Bubba reached down below the desk, tugged at his crotch. “The man had a problem. Loved to play. Hated to lose.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ve seen doctors with habits before. More of them have it than you think. I got quite a few in my territory. When he started, Fletcher was no better, no worse, than most. He played football during the season, pro basketball, some college games.”

“When he started?”

“Some people just can’t handle it. I told him he needed help once. Over the phone, of course. He never came here.”

I thought for a second. “How much was he into you for?”

Bubba hesitated. That made me think it was quite a bit, maybe even a few thousand. He leaned against the desk, stared at me for a moment, then spoke.

“That man owed me not quite one hundred thousand dollars.”

When I got my breath back, I whistled.

“Jesus,” I sighed.

“Jesus hadn’t got nothing to do with it, boy. At least not
on this end of the action. Right now, I’d guess Jesus and Fletcher are just about wrapping up a very long talk.”

I gritted my teeth, preparing for what the next question was probably going to bring me.

“In your business,” I asked, “is that the kind of scratch that would get somebody killed?”

The color shot up Bubba’s fat neck. “Praise Jesus!” he yelled. “I’ve sinned in my time, blasphemed God in my life. But never, never, mortally sinned by taking the life of another! Besides,” he added, “a doctor would be good for it over the long run. High life-style, high profile. Wouldn’t want his revered name dragged through the mud.”

“So you’d just blackmail a doctor. A truck driver who owed that much?”

“I’d never let a truck driver owe me that much,” Bubba growled. “Now, of course, it’s just a write-off. Cost of doing business.”

“But you didn’t kill him?”

The color came back again. “The answer to that question is
no
, boy. Don’t ask it again.”

I was, as we say down South, dog-assed tired. Between lack of sleep, running around in circles, and being knocked silly a couple of times, the last couple of days had used up all my reserves. All I wanted to do was get home, get a cold compress on my head, clean the dried blood off, then take a nose dive between the sheets.

But then there was Rachel. I was already headed down Demonbreum Street toward the highway when I remembered. I looked down at my watch: 10:30. Just enough time to make it back out to Golf Club Lane, to the shaded, tree-lined dark street that probably had more security devices per square foot than the Pentagon.

I pulled a U-turn across the freeway bridge, in front of the nude dance club that advertises 50
BEAUTIFUL GIRLS
& 3
UGLY ONES
, and headed back in toward the ritzy part of town.

Twenty minutes later, I was driving up the black asphalt of Rachel’s driveway. Discreetly low lights guided my way toward the darkness of the back yard. I pulled around and parked. Once the car engine was shut down, a deep quiet settled over the neighborhood. No freight trains going by a block away, no rednecks’ squealing tires, no radios blaring, no gunshots penetrating the night air. Jeez, I’d hate it over here.

I padded up the steps to the kitchen door and knocked softly. A few seconds later, Rachael came to the door. The lights in the kitchen were low. Rachel wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Her hair was brushed loose down to her shoulders,
and she wore no makeup. She’d finally, it appeared, relaxed.

“Hi,” she greeted me. She smiled, a tired smile certainly, but still a smile. She was holding up reasonably well, I thought. I don’t know how I’d have done under the circumstances.

“You okay?” I asked before I stepped in. “I mean, is it okay for me to be here?”

“Of course,” she said, holding the door open for me. “Everyone’s gone. Finally.”

I stepped in. She closed the door behind me, then bent her head down slightly and came toward me with her arms open.

“God, what a day,” she sighed. “Could you just hold me for a minute?”

“Yeah, c’mon,” I agreed. She came to me, and I wrapped my arms around her shoulders. I felt her breath through my shirt, each movement of her chest deep, exhausted. She felt good. I had to remind myself of the circumstances; after all, her husband had just been murdered.

“This feels good,” she whispered after a moment. “It’s been a long time since anyone held me.”

“You’ve been through the mill, haven’t you?”

“God, you don’t know. When the police started asking me where I was last night, and how Conrad and I got along, it was just too much. Then there were the phone calls, the arrangements. I had to race to the bank, close all our accounts, reopen them in my name only before the bank shut them down for probate. The insurance people, the calls from the university, the hospital. All Conrad’s friends in New York and Boston.”

“News travels fast, doesn’t it?”

She rocked gently in my arms, leaning against me as if she needed someone to hold her up. “Yes. Fortunately, Dr. Lingo went down to the morgue to identify the body. I didn’t have to do that. But they’ll have him out in the funeral home tomorrow.”

She raised her head. “You must be beat, too.”

“It’s been a rough couple of days. Yeah.”

“Can I make you a drink?” she said, pulling away from me, on her own two feet again now.

“It might put me to sleep.”

“Then you can crash on the couch,” she said. “I could use one, myself. What can I fix you?”

She reached over, turned the dial that controlled the kitchen lights. The level rose enough to where we could get a good look at each other. She looked even better in the light. Apparently, I looked worse.

“What happened to you? What’s that? Harry, you’ve got blood on your shirt.” She gasped.

I looked down. A few splatters of red stained the front of my white shirt. Damn, that stuff’s hard to get out, and I don’t have that many decent dress shirts left.

“I had a little run-in with someone. Seems I did a bounce or two off a wall. Fortunately, it was just my thick skull.”

“Oh, God, let me see.” She spun me around, turned the lights up all the way. “Harry, this looks nasty. What am I going to do with you?”

She disappeared into the small bathroom just off the kitchen. I heard her fumbling around in the medicine cabinet.

“Rachel, it’s no big deal,” I said. “I probably just need to wash it off.”

“No big deal, my eye. Those closure strips are hanging there like laundry on a line. You’ll be lucky not to wind up needing stitches.”

“Really, it’s okay.” Now that she’d mentioned the drink, I wanted that more than anything else.

She came back in with hydrogen peroxide, bandages, antibiotic ointment. “Here, sit down.” She motioned toward the kitchen table. It was easier to take a chair than argue about it.

“You’re a mess,” she chided. “Can’t you stay out of trouble for a minute?”

“I usually don’t have a problem with a minute or two,” I said. “An hour, though, and I’m pushing it.”

Her hands were gentle, professional. She was the only
person who’d touched me in the last two days without causing me pain. “You’re a pro,” I said.

“Thanks. Actually, I am. I used to do this for a living.”

“What, patch banged-up detectives?”

“No, silly. I went back to school after Conrad and I got married, when he was in his residency. Got my degree in nursing.”

I turned. “You were a nurse?”

“Yeah, I worked full-time at it until we moved back down here.” She brought her hands up to the side of my head and moved me back into position. “This might hurt a little. I’m going to pull these old closures off and replace them.”

I got set for some serious pain, but got only a minor sting instead. “You are good. So how come you quit working?”

“I don’t know. Connie was making such good money. I worked part-time, but there wasn’t the driving need for it like when we were younger and he was in school. I hate to sound clichéd, but those really were the good old days. Our salad days. We were young, up to our ears in debt, living on Hamburger Helper. Sometimes without the hamburger.”

I laughed. She wiped the last of the dried blood off my scalp and got everything taped down. She started pulling the wrappers from the bandage together, knotting them into a neat ball to throw away. Her voice became almost wistful.

“Connie and I loved each other then. Things were really going well for us. Something happened somewhere. I never quite figured out what.”

I thought for a moment. “Why don’t you fix me that drink now? Then I’d like to hear about it.”

She fumbled around under the kitchen cabinet for a minute or so, and came up with a perfectly iced down, exquisite Scotch and soda.

“You remembered,” I said.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She was suddenly embarrassed. “Do you not drink Scotch anymore? I can get you something—”

“This is fine,” I said.

“Would you like to go into the den?”

“Sure, as long as you think the old biddies aren’t spying on your house.”

She laughed quietly as she stood up and pushed her chair back under the kitchen table. “It’s past their bedtimes.”

We walked out of the kitchen and down a long carpeted hall. Off to the right, the living room was dark and unoccupied. I could see enough to tell, however, that it was filled with expensive antiques, the kind you can only afford to keep when you’re doing exceptionally well and don’t have children.

“How come you and Connie never had kids?”

She stepped down into the sunken den and turned a knob on the wall. The lights came up. The room was much more relaxed without homicide detectives hanging around. A comfortable couch sat in the middle, with a projection screen TV against the opposite wall. The room was lined with books, an expensive stereo, and shelves of records and CDs.

She sat on the couch and set her drink down on an end table. “Connie didn’t want them,” she said. “Frankly, I never felt the urge either. So I never made an issue of it.”

“What happened between you two?” I asked, settling into the couch a space or so over from her. Instinctively, I knew I wanted to sit next to her, but not
too
next to her.

“We were married twelve years,” she said after a moment. “A lot can happen in that time. The stresses of professions, especially medicine. Connie worked eighty, a hundred hours a week. We got to where we went days at a time without seeing each other. That puts a strain on a marriage. It’s a brutal system, but you can’t do anything about it. Marriages are a casualty.”

“I can imagine.”

I sipped the drink. She’d made it strong, the Scotch as old as their marriage. It burned down my throat for about three seconds and then exploded into pure pleasure. Good thing I don’t drink much; I’m too prone to enjoy myself at it.