Stiffs and Swine (14 page)

James was surprised. Gillian hardly ever consumed alcohol. “Well, you were pretty distraught.”

“I am in agony, James,” Gillian replied without any of her usual dramatic flare. “That strawberry wine helped dull the burn, but I only slept for a few hours. At first, I hoped that I’d dreamed the whole thing.” She finally gazed at Harding. “But I knew I hadn’t. After I woke up, I went to
his
camper. I wanted to know if he was sorry for what he did so many years ago.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “He never told me he was sorry. Not once. I wanted to hear the words, so maybe I could think about moving on to a state of forgiveness.”

“And did you talk to him?” James asked quickly, before Harding could break the spell by speaking.

Gillian shook her head. “No. I was sitting on the camper steps, working up the courage to knock on the door, when that
awful
woman pushed me away, went inside, and then burst back out of the camper and started yelling at me.” She pulled a fresh tissue out of the packet and blew her nose. “I couldn’t understand most of what she said because she was shouting in double-time, but I caught on that Jimmy was dead. When I heard that, I couldn’t move. It was like getting punched in the stomach.”

James eased himself into the chair across from her. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sorry he’s gone to the other side, but
I
didn’t send him there.” Gillian put her head in her hands. “I wouldn’t have wanted him to leave this life until he apologized to me. I needed to know that he felt regret over what he did!”

James was almost afraid to speak the words that had formed on his lips, but before he could contain them, they came tumbling out. “You wanted Jimmy to apologize to you for killing your husband?”

Gillian issued the briefest nod but did not look up.

“How did it happen, Gillian? How did Jimmy cause your husband’s death?”

Shoulders shaking, Gillian wailed into her hands. “He ran over him! That son of a bitch deliberately ran over my husband.”

“With his car?” Harding asked from his corner.

“No.” Gillian lifted her head, her green eyes rimmed with red. Sorrow had etched lines in her skin and cast shadows across her face. “Not with a car. With a chicken truck.”

An hour after
Gillian had been brought to the interview room, she finished her story. The telling of it drained her so completely that afterward, she requested that she be returned to her cell, as she longed for quiet and solitude. Nodding in sympathetic agreement, Deputy Harding handed Gillian off to the officer waiting in the hall and then waved two fingers at James, indicating that he should rise and follow him from the room.

“You guys are going to release her now, right?” James asked Harding eagerly.

Harding shook his head. “She’s still a suspect, Mr. Henry. She sure as hell has a motive, so we can’t let her go until we’ve gathered more information.”

“But she didn’t hurt anyone!” James declared wearily. “She just wanted to confront the man who killed her husband!”

Harding turned the corner at the end of the hall at the same moment Sheriff Jones stepped out of her office. Standing directly in his path, she stared at him inquisitively.

“Ms. O’Malley has given a statement,” Harding informed his superior.

Jones was clearly pleased. “Excellent. Let’s talk in my office.” She turned a pair of tawny eyes on James. “We have your contact numbers, Mr. Henry. Why don’t you and your friends go back to the inn and try to relax?”

“No offense, Sheriff,” James snarled. “But we can hardly
relax
while Gillian is being held in suspicion for a crime she didn’t commit!”

“Understood, Mr. Henry,” the sheriff countered calmly. “And we are going to examine every angle, I assure you. My deputies are canvassing the campground area and conducting interviews as we speak. We don’t operate under assumptions in this department. We search for evidence and allow the facts to speak the loudest.” She placed a kind but firm hand on his arm and steered him toward the lobby. “I will review Ms. O’Malley’s statement immediately. In the meantime, I’d like you and your friends to refrain from involving yourselves any further in our investigation. Ms. Hanover has my contact numbers and I’ve also asked her, as one professional to another, to step aside so that we can gather information during this critical time. As she knows, the first twenty-four hours following a crime of this nature are crucial.”

The sheriff only released her hold on James’s arm upon reaching the vestibule. At their approach, the supper club members turned distressed faces at him. They looked haggard and uncomfortable as they waited on two of the four wooden benches lining the lobby. Bennett perked up slightly upon seeing the attractive sheriff, but after delivering James to his friends, Sheriff Jones ducked back into the inner hallway without so much as glancing his way.

Without warning, Lucy raced over to James and threw her arms around him, resting her cheek against his shoulder. “You look awful, James. What happened back there?” she murmured into his ear.

James paused for a moment in the circle of her arms, inhaling the fruity scents of her shampoo and enjoying the warmth of her embrace. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus,” he said, forcing himself back to reality. He gently pushed her a safe distance away and walked closer to Lindy and Bennett.

“Did you see Gillian?” Lindy sagged against the side of the bench, hugging her purse to her chest in search of solace. She looked at James hopefully.

“She didn’t kill Jimmy. That’s for sure,” he answered and listened to his friends exhale loudly in relief. “But she sure had reason to.” Hearing his words echo in the uncarpeted hallway, James gestured at the front door. “Let’s find a place where we can talk. I don’t want to share her story here.”

“The deputy takin’ my statement mentioned a place called the Old Hollywood Diner,” Bennett said. “He said the décor’s kinda cheesy but the food can’t be beat.”

“I can’t believe I could be hungry at a time like this,” Lindy moaned. “But I could sure use some comfort food, like a big bowl of macaroni and cheese.”

“Or pie,” Lucy added. “Warm apple pie. With ice cream on top.” She glanced at James. “And big mugs of coffee with loads of half-and-half. Come on guys, we’ve gotta eat so our bodies can make some energy. Gillian is going to need us to be at our best if we’re going to prove her innocence.”

“In that case, I’m gettin’ the biggest piece of meat they’ve got,” Bennett stated as he helped Lindy up from the bench. “I need somethin’ to wash away the taste of that God-awful coffee. No wonder those deputies arrested the wrong person—their brains are bein’ turned to mush from drinkin’ that sludge.” He eyed Lindy’s large purse. “You got any gum in that shoulder suitcase?”

The Elvis section of the Old Hollywood Diner was full, so a waitress in a lemon-yellow dress and squeaky white sneakers led them to the Elizabeth Taylor section. Beneath a poster of Liz flashing a predatory smile in her role as Cleopatra, the supper club members perused a menu that was as thick as an anatomy textbook.

“They make everything here,” Lindy remarked. “I wonder if that’s a good thing.”

The waitress returned with glasses of water in amber cups and flipped her pad to the open position. “Y’all wanna hear the specials?” she inquired, chewing slowly on a piece of gum.

James tried to shake the image of the woman morphing into a cow and lazily chewing a long piece of grass against a wooden fence rail. She recited the specials mechanically and then told them to take their time thinking things over as she drifted off to care for other customers.

Bennett was the first to shut his menu. Gazing at the poster above their table, he began to regale his friends with Hollywood trivia. “Did you know that Elizabeth Taylor was born in England? Her parents were art dealers from St. Louis and went over there to open a gallery.” He pointed at the poster. “That film is the one where she met hubby number five: Richard Burton. She actually got paid a million clams to star in that movie. That’s a lot of dough in today’s times, let alone 1963. Won two Oscars as well, but not for playin’ Cleopatra.”

“I take it your current trivia book is about Hollywood,” Lucy said sourly, peering at Bennett over her menu.

Bennett shook his head. “Nope. I’m done brushin’ up on that category. And don’t go gettin’ punchy at me just ’cause you’re hungry and worn out.”

Lucy murmured an apology as the waitress appeared to take their order.

“How’s the Brando Bolognese?” James asked her as his stomach rumbled expectantly.

Their waitress, who wore no nametag on her spotless uniform, shrugged. “Pretty good, I reckon. I don’t eat them foreign foods, but
other
folks seem to like it fine.” She jotted James’s order on her pad. “’Sides, I don’t care for that Brando fella. He couldn’t talk right. Sounded like a chokin’ billy goat every time he opened his mouth.”

Having no idea what a strangling goat might sound like, James nodded his head in agreement. The waitress slapped their ticket on the stainless steel counter separating the eating area from the kitchen and then brought a pitcher of root beer to the table even though no one had ordered soda. “I know y’all wanted tea, but we make it fresh and it’s still brewin’,” she said by way of explanation. “This here’s the best birch beer you’ll ever taste, anyhow. It’s a house special.”

“What
isn’t
a house special at this place?” Bennett said and then poured a glass. He took a sip and the caramel-colored foam flecked his mustache. “All right, James. I can’t stand it anymore. We got a few minutes ’til Miss Sunshine comes back with our food, so tell us what happened back at the station. How’d you get Gillian to talk and what did the woman say?”

James removed Bennett’s tiny recorder from his pocket. “I hope you’re not mad, but I’ve had this with me since it fell out of your pocket in the Bronco and something just told me to press the record button. I think I taped over most of your statistics. I’m really sorry, Bennett.”

“It’s okay, man. Glad you made such a good call. Now put that thing on the table and let’s all listen to what you heard. This not knowin’ is drivin’ me crazy.”

It took a minute or so to rewind the tape, but then James pressed the play button and Gillian’s voice fizzled out of the machine’s tiny speaker.

“
To tell you how Jimmy killed my husband, I’ve got to go back a few years, to a time I have tried really hard to put out of my mind and out of my heart.

“I married Walden O’Malley when I was twenty. We met while doing volunteer work at the local animal shelter, and we fell in love like a lightning strike. My hometown was so small that the post office and grocery store were in the same building. There was one place to eat, a bank, and two churches. Most folks worked at the local poultry plant, and Walden’s family had just moved into town because his father had gotten a job at the plant. That’s why I had never met him until that day at the animal shelter.

“Walden enrolled in the local community college and was taking agriculture classes. He wanted, more than anything, to own a small farm and raise livestock. We dated for six months and were then married on the courthouse steps. No party, no gifts—just us declaring our love for one another with our landlord as witness. It was perfect.”

A pause as Gillian accepted a glass of water from Deputy Harding.

“
Walden really loved animals and he couldn’t help but ask his father what the conditions were like in the factory. For the birds, that is. His father told him that the conditions for the workers were fair and that was all that mattered. He got really angry and yelled at Walden, telling him to be thankful that they had enough money to pay for his studies, which Walden’s father viewed as a waste of precious dollars.

“You see, Walden’s family had moved from Pennsylvania because mills and factories across the state were closing their doors and turning
desperate
families out in the cold, with no means of paying for mortgages or car loans or food. Walden knew his father had been lucky to find work, but he
still
had to know how the chickens were handled once they were delivered to the factory, so he asked one of the line workers to give him a tour. That’s how it all started.”

“How what started, ma’am?”
Deputy Harding asked gently.

“His … interaction with Jimmy Lang. Jimmy was hired as a driver. He picked up the birds from farms all around western Virginia and brought them to the plant. He was truly a
cruel
soul. He
enjoyed
bringing the birds to their deaths
.
And the more they suffered, the more he was entertained.
”

“
But the chicken factory was a processing plant, right?”
Harding sounded genuinely perplexed.
“That’s what they do—process poultry for the rest of us to eat. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it or no one would be eating nice pieces of fried chicken for supper. Does that really make a person bad?”