The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) (18 page)

“Mebbe yes, mebbe—.”  She stopped in mid sentence and pointed at the pictures I had in my hand.  “Those kids,” she began.  She took the sheet from my hand and studied it.

“Do you know them?” I asked.

“Ah do, yeah,” she said.  “This skinny kid is Linda C’s son, Adam.”

“Really?” I asked.  Things were starting to make sense now.  “Do you know the others?”

“The girl’s name is Becky Colley.”

“Not the commissioner’s daughter?”

“Raht.  And, Sue-Ann, you’re not gonna believe this, but the older kid, the one with the black fingernail polish, is Pauley Hughes.”

“Should I know him?” I asked, not making any connection.

“Short for Paul Hughes, Jr.,” she said. 

“Paul Hughes from
The Courier
?”

“Raht as a rabbit an jist as fast.  Well, almost as fast.”

When Jack came out of the bedroom, dressed neatly, cleanly shaven, and with his black hair slicked back, Gina was in the kitchen making coffee.  I had filled her in on our morning in Forester and showed her the rest of Jack’s photos.  Now I was sitting on the couch planning my next move.  Jack was a new wrinkle in my friendship with Gina, but one I couldn’t think about just then.  The goat story was approaching its denouement.  All it needed was a little editing, a motive, a couple of i’s dotted.   Three gothic faces were seared onto my brain like a brand.  I toyed with the idea of driving back to the Ag Center to see if they had stuck around, but decided against it.  I wanted to see them in their own element.  Outside, the light was dimming, it would be night soon.  Saturday night.

“We’re going nightclubbing,” I suddenly decided.

“There are night clubs in Pine Oak?” Jack asked, as Gina came into the room with three cups on a tray.  She gave Jack one and placed the tray with the other two on the table in front of me.  Then she sat down at the other end of the couch.

“Not in Pine Oak,” I told him.  “Maybe in Forester.  Gina, where do the kids hang out these days?”

“How would ah know?” she said, dragging on a cigarette.  “Ah’m jist an old dee-vor-cee.”

“Shit . . . Wait!  I’ve got it.  Gina, do you have the phone numbers of everyone at
The Courier
?”

“Raht here in mah purse,” she said.  “On mah cell phone.”

“Call Mark Patterson.”  In filling Gina in on the cowboy-mounted shooting event, I had also mentioned seeing Mark and his young girlfriend.  But when I showed Gina Krista’s picture, Gina had shaken her head.  “No one ah know,” she said.  But Krista gave me an idea and Mark owed me favors.

“What should ah say?” she asked.

“Just give me the phone and I’ll talk,” I told her.

Gina fished a pair of glasses from her purse along with the cell phone, played with the buttons for a minute, then held the phone to her ear. 

“I never knew you wore glasses,” I said.

“Ah’m jist gittin decrepit, ah guess.”

Seconds went by and Gina looked at me and rolled her eyes. “He’s takin forever—wait . .  .”  She pulled the phone away from her ear and handed it to me.  I put it to my own ear and heard a casual, “Hey, Ginette, what’s up?”

“Not Ginette, Mark.  Sue-Ann.”

“Sue-Ann?  But Ginette’s number is on the ID.”

“She loaned me her phone,” I told him.  “Listen.  Where are you now?”

“I’m home.”

“Is, um, Krista with you?”

“No.  That shooting thing is an all-day event.  She had two or three more rides and I didn’t feel like staying.  Hey, what’s between you two anyway?”

“What did she say?”

“She wouldn’t say anything at all.  In fact, her mood changed so much after you left that I didn’t feel like she wanted me there any more.”

“She was probably just concentrating on her ride.  Believe me, I was as surprised at her reaction as you were.”

“Where do you know each other from?” he asked.

“Mark, as far as I know, I’ve never seen her before in my life.  But I really didn’t call to ask you about Krista.  What I want to know is whether you saw three kids in the bleachers dressed like zombies at a funeral.”

I heard a deep intake of breath and realized that Mark had just lit a cigarette—a habit I hadn’t known he had.  “I saw them.  I almost had to take a punch at one of them.”

“You’re kidding!”

“The little fucker.  He tried to hit on Krista.  All three of them kept following her around.”

“How did she react?” I asked.

“Kind of like they were flies.  Tried to wave them off, but they kept coming back.  She finally went up to two or three cowboys she met and whispered something to them.  Next thing I know they’re escorting the punks out of the grounds and not being too gentle about it.”

“Do you know any of them?”

“That’s the damndest thing.  I saw them once before.  They were dressed different, but it was the same three.”

“Do you remember where?”

“Never forget.  It was the night I picked—the night I met Krista.  It was in that place in Forester called something like Eat Me.”

“Eat Now,” I suggested.

“That’s it.  Those kids were trying to hit on her that night too, just before I introduced myself.  The three of them seemed to flake away after that and I don’t remember seeing them the rest of the night.”

“Let me guess,” I said.  “That was the place you called from when you wanted me to check out that goat in the dumpster.”

“Hey, that’s right.  Great memory.  I owe you one for that.”

“You’ve just paid it.” I said.  “See you at the office.”

“But what did you call fo—” I hung up on his question and turned to Gina and Jack.  “Maybe nightclubbing was too strong a word,” I told them.  “But we can have dinner while we investigate.”

“Investigate what?” Jack asked.

Gina twitched her nose.  “Damn, Sam,” she exclaimed.  “Ah’ve got some things ah’ve been meanin to bring over but I left em at the office.”

“What things?” I asked.

“Ah went to the Property Appraiser’s Office on Friday and found out who owns all that property behind Meekins’ Market.  Got some maps, too, and I wrote down the address of a website that lets you fahnd out whatever you need on line.”

“That’s great, Gina,” I told her.  “When can I see them?”

“Ah’ll drop them over sometahm tomorrow.”

~  ~  ~

Eat Now: Home of Food is located on the main highway just before you enter downtown Forester.  It is a square, cinderblock building set apart from other businesses by a parking lot on each side.  Over the years, customers in a hurry have left gouges in the corners of the façade with their trucks or rigs so that the whole building gives the appearance of being built of sugar cubes that have been gnawed on by rats.   The main dining room consists of a long bar complete with spinning barstools covered with orange naugahyde.  A dozen tables and booths take up the rest of the area.  A second room, strictly for dining, is reached by going through a door just to the right side of the bar.  All in all, its décor can be described as trashy but well-maintained.  A back door leads out to a wooden deck that runs the length of the building and is very popular with the smoking crowd.  On the whole, Eat Now is an under-35 hangout, although older customers sometimes rent the entire back dining room for parties or business meetings.

We arrived with the place in full swing—customers were eating in booths, drinking at the bar, and milling around outside.  The jukebox was playing something by Toby Keith, but not loud enough to inhibit conversation.  Although not a pick-up joint per se, it often doubled as one.  It was here, of course, that I had first become interested in Donny.  For that matter, Donny had probably hooked up with Linda C in this same room. Mark Patterson, it seems, had met Krista Torrington here. 

Jack, Gina, and I entered and sat down at a table next to the one where I had first seen Donny slumped over his beer.  It was in a dimly lighted corner near the door leading out to the deck.  A glance had been enough to see that the people I was looking for weren’t in the room.

Gina, took her glasses from her purse and used them to peer at the menu.

“Those glasses make you look, I don’t know, sophisticated,” I told her.  “I think it would be cool to see you sitting back in an armchair reading Proust or somebody.”

“Would ah lahk whoever it was you just said?”

“I don’t think anybody really likes Proust.  It’s just something you aspire to.”  I glanced down at the menu for a second, but didn’t really see it.  I was thinking of Gina reading in an armchair, but in my secret version, her glasses were all that she was wearing.  I slapped the menu down and stood up.  “Listen, order me a cheeseburger all the way with tater tots and a Corona.  I’m going to check out the other room.”

“All raht.”

I checked out the smaller dining room, but only after I visited the rest room and splashed water on my face from the sink.  The dining room was only half full.  I recognized a couple of riders from the mounted shooting event, but no one else.  I had better luck on the deck.  Sitting alone on one of the rude benches in a corner of the deck, smoking, was a very thin young woman dressed in black.  It was too dark to tell much else, but I was pretty sure it was Becky Colley, abandoned for a time by her two cohorts.  Much of the rest of the deck was taken up by other young people, some in the western garb of the shooting event, others in work clothes or casuals, but all giving Goth Girl her space, as if she radiated a protective aura, or maybe an odor.  I checked out both parking lots but saw neither Adam Zimmer nor Pauley Hughes.  When I got back to the table, Jack and Gina seemed to have struck up a conversation.  They quit as I walked up.

“Talking about me?” I asked.

“Mebbe yes, mebbe no,” Gina said with a twinkle.  “Fahnd anybody?”

“I did, yes.  Becky Colley is out there by herself.  Do you know her well enough to ask her to our table?”

“She wouldn’t know me from a tree,” Gina said.

“You recognized her picture,” I pointed out.

“Cal pointed her out a coupla tahms when we were out.”

“So Cal knows her?”

“He’s golf buddies with her dad.”

“I thought he played golf with the lawyer, you know, Rooney.  And Paul Hughes.”

“And Ray Colley.  That’s the foursome.  They’ve been playin golf together for years.  Didn’t ya know?”

“So that explains the connection between Ray Colley’s daughter and Paul Hughes’ son.”

“Raht,” Gina said.  “Their families hang out together sometahms.”

“Okay, then, I think this is a job for Super Jack.”

Our orders came before Jack could reply and I found myself ravenously hungry despite the Mexican we had eaten for lunch.  I tore into my cheeseburger and popped some tater tots in my mouth without even letting them cool.  Jack and Gina just stared.  “What?” I asked.

“Super Jack?” asked Jack.

“Raht.  Now listen.  I need you to go outside and get into a conversation with that goth girl you took a picture of earlier.”

“What, you want me to try to pick up a fifteen year old?”

“Well, yeah.  That would be
really
good.  But if you don’t feel like going that far, I want you to borrow a cigarette from her.”

“Borrow a—”

“A cigarette, right.  But don’t smoke it all.  Leave enough of the butt so we can see the brand name.”

“Why?” Jack asked.

“It’s for a story we’re working on.  An investigative piece.  Don’t let on.”

“Can I eat first?” he asked.

“Eat fast.”

Jack took a couple of bites of whatever it was he ordered, then stood up.  “I’m not hungry anyway,” he said.  “Wait for me.”  He walked slowly toward the door leading to the deck.

“Not a chance,” I told Gina, standing up and pushing back my chair.  “We’ll go around the other way.”

“But—”

“No, really.  You’ve got to see this.  Jack is something else.”

“All raht, all  raht.”

“And bring your cigarettes.”  As we hurried toward the front door, we passed our server, gave her a five-dollar bill, and told her not to clear our table, we’d be back.  And then we almost knocked down poor Benny Benedict, who was headed for the bar. 

I greeted him with a “Hey, Benny,” and he turned, startled.  “Hey hey,” he replied.  “The gruesome twosome, heh heh.”  Now Gina was the one who looked startled, but then said, “You’re the guy from the bookstore, raht?”

“Um, well, yeh, uh huh.  That’s me.  I see you going in and out of the newspaper office all the time.”

“Ginette is the heart and soul of
The Courier
,” I told him, jealously guarding her diminutive.  “Meeting someone, Benny?” I asked.

“Naw, nope.  Just going to quaff a few before I head on home.  You little ladies want to join me?”

“Next time, Benny.  We’ve got to go out for a while.  Later.”

Outside, we hurried along the right corner of the building, squeezing in and out of cars parked too close to the wall.  Our progress brought us to the deck where Goth Girl was still sitting, her back to us.  We stopped in the shadow of the wall and lit cigarettes—just two diners who had stepped out for a quick smoke.  I know you won’t believe me, but I didn’t inhale.