Wedding Bell Blues (6 page)

 

Chapter Seven

When I got outside I heard Reba's clear, fresh voice singing “Amazing Grace.” The jail was in the basement of the courthouse across the street. I thought yes, how sweet the sound of Reba singing. I expected to hear her crying. It wasn't all that many hours ago she was crying and crying hysterically.

I entered through the basement door and demanded to see Reba. The skinny deputy at the desk, who didn't look a day older than eighteen, didn't even ask for my ID. It was Danny, the bag boy from M.&G.'s, in a police uniform. Must have been his first day on the job because I'd seen him bagging groceries just last week. Maybe he'd been hired on temporarily to keep an eye on the prisoner now that there was one. The last prisoner had been Miss Tempie's handyman. That was over a year ago and they'd transferred him fast to the Wake County jail where they had full-time guards and windows that didn't open.

“Sure thing, Miss Beth,” he said. “Keep her quiet for a while, don't think I can stand much more of that singing.”

I looked through the bars and there she sat on the edge of her jailhouse bunk making a cat's cradle.

“Look,” Reba said, holding up the dirty strings she must have pulled from her jail blanket and had woven around the fingers of both hands. “Isn't it pretty?”

I swallowed. “Beautiful,” I said. “Can I bring you anything?”

“Beans.” She grinned. “Some green beans from KFC. Extra crispy.”

“Oh, Reba,” I said, “Ossie's bringing you supper and I think you already had enough beans for today.”

“Not me.” She dropped her cat's cradle and came to the bars, held on to them just like you see in movies.

“The better man. But he wasn't,” she whispered. Then she lifted her head toward the ceiling and started singing, “Itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout…” while making the climbing motions with her fingers.

I'd bring her some towels, a washcloth and shampoo next time I came. I squeezed her fingers, noticed her nails were in better shape than my own and waved goodbye. Somebody at Juanita's had evidently done a gratis manicure for the June bride. The bride who wasn't to be. She didn't seem upset at all.

I bet Ossie wasn't buying any of this as anything but typical Littleboro craziness. Just some unfortunate somebody lying on a picnic table out by the Interstate. And an abandoned room at Motel 3 that he'd asked Bruce, who handed the job off to Allison, to tape off as a crime scene until he got around to investigating it. Let Reba cool it off in jail. A confession from her wasn't worth a hill of beans, as Mama Alice would say.

I was the only one upset. I was the only one in danger. Unless it was Butch Rigsbee. And where the hell was he? Rigsbee's wife must have seen me go into the room at Motel 3, asked Allison my name and so forth. Maybe she had waited for me at the Dixie Dew with some awful plan in mind. Kidnapping? Taking me out somewhere in the boondocks and doing me in? And why wasn't she trying to find her husband? I was only in this thing because Reba got me involved. And I was in it up to my neck.

 

Chapter Eight

The wallet was the ticket to all this confusion.

I stormed back to the Dixie Dew. On Lady Bug's front seat, I riffled through the bundle I had planned to take Reba but forgot, I was so intent on confronting Ossie. Maybe it was better that I had forgotten. She didn't need her bridal dress and flip-flops and even seeing them would only remind her of God and the better man and Ossie hauling her in and that would start her crying again.

The wallet wasn't there. I unrolled Reba's dress, laid the flip-flops on the seat, shook out the dress and no wallet. Well, dammit. I knew I had put the thing in there when I left the motel room to go sit in Pastor Pittman's car but it wasn't there. I felt around on the seat, under the seat. Nothing. No wallet.

Mama Alice used to say I would lose my head if it wasn't fastened onto me.

I folded everything back together, laid it on the seat and got out.

Maybe the wallet had fallen out in the Motel 3 parking lot, never even made it to my car.

Ten minutes later Lady Bug and I pulled in the empty parking lot at Motel 3, a depressing sight if there ever was one. What had once been ten units that stayed freshly painted and respectable as a mom-and-pop motel could be, now had only two rooms ready to rent. Since the Motel 3 franchise had bought it last year and torn down a good portion of it, the remaining buildings stood surrounded by scaffolding and construction waste. Even in daylight it looked like the set for some down-and-out drama production, a dark murder mystery. The piles of rubble pushed behind the buildings provided a perfect backdrop of chaos. A big yellow bulldozer sat atop the rubble.

I looked around the parking lot, which was littered with cigarette butts, checked very carefully the area where Pastor Pittman's car had been parked, and then around the door of the room where Reba and her “intended” had their tête-à-tête, their last supper. Yellow crime scene tape still blocked it off.

I rang the doorbell outside the end unit marked
OFFICE
. Background sounds of Dr. Phil's TV pop-psychology advice show drifted out. “And just when was the last time you had contact with your last lover?” I heard him ask amid the wailing sobs of a woman. The door unlocked and Allison stuck out a hand holding a lit cigar. One of those smaller, more dainty ones aimed at women smokers.

“Beth?” She opened the door wider. “What are you doing back here?” She motioned for me to come in. Before I could answer, she clicked off Dr. Phil from the oversized flat-screen TV, then went behind the desk and picked up her coffee cup. “I only got one room available now. Looks like Ossie is trying to put me out of business.”

Allison and her best friend Andrea had been the Littleboro High School bad, bad girls. Rumor was that the two of them had written their phone numbers on all the men's restroom walls all over town. I wondered if the numbers had faded or the two kept the paint fresh and kept Motel 3 in business. If so, it sure didn't look from the outside that business was booming.

“Don't talk to me about ‘Mr. Ossie,' as Reba calls him,” I said.

Inside was a different story. A new-looking leather sofa took up half the room. There were matching glass coffee and end tables, and a huge hanging copper light fixture. The biggest flat-screen television I'd ever seen covered one wall. In the corner stood a whole modified kitchen unit with refrigerator and a microwave oven, one of those fancy espresso and latte maker units. I knew because I'd priced one of the coffee thingies for the Dixie Dew: $450 just for the coffeemaker. Everything looked top quality. Very nice indeed. Who would have expected such fine, expensive furnishings inside this run-down remains of a motel?

“I lost something when I was here and wondered if you found it,” I said.

“Oh, okay. I was kidding about the room earlier. Didn't think you'd come to rent it, seeing as how you got a big house full of rooms over at your Dixie Dew.”

Was that meant as a dig? Did she know how desperate my bed-and-breakfast business was these days?

She reached behind her to shut the door to a bedroom, but not before I saw the rumpled sheets of a king-sized bed and what looked like somebody still in it. Was this where she and Andy lived? Did all this make sense? Fix up the living quarters first, spend your franchise loan fast and furious on “the best,” then deal with trying to get the business going and make some money. I'd done the opposite. I'd fixed up the dining room, guest bedrooms, and the outside of the house. The rest would have to be done later. The plaster ceiling in my bedroom had gaps big as the map of Texas, and the living room … I couldn't even think where to start on it.

“Haven't touched that room,” Allison said, her right hand on her heart and her left arm raised as if she was swearing she was telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. “Haven't found anything you'd be interested in either.”

“A man's wallet?” I asked.

“Describe it.” She looked at the ceiling.

“Black leather, old, curled at the corners. Had photos in it. Driver's license. That sort of thing.”

Allison reached in a drawer of the desk and pulled out a black wallet, held it over her head.

“That's it,” I said, and reached for it.

She held it out at arm's length behind her. “Doesn't look like anything that would belong to you. Why do you want it?”

“I want to take it to Reba. I think it belonged to her friend, Butch Rigsbee.”

I lied, crossed my fingers behind my back. So what if I did not intend to take it to Reba? But now I would have proof that the guy flat out on the picnic table was not the Butch Rigsbee in the wallet's photo.

“He who? Butch? He's one of our regulars. Has been for a couple years. Stays here on his route to Florida and back. Funny guy. Good-time guy. We've talked of putting in a bar and naming it after him. Always flashing a roll, and Lord, what a roll.” She flapped the wallet back and forth over her head. “There was not one bill in it when I found it. Empty as this town.” Then she started flipping through the photo flaps in the wallet. “But if you say you're taking it to Reba, then you better be taking it to her. I don't want to get mixed up in anything not on the up-and-up. I have a reputation to protect.”

I almost said “Ha,” but checked myself.

Allison rolled her eyes, laughed a little. “Butch had this thing going with Reba. She thought he was going to marry her. We like to have laughed our heads off. Then she took up with our handyman who wasn't all that handy, but was the only one of us who knew how to crank and run a bulldozer.”

“So where is this Butch now?” Maybe he was who I saw in Allison's bed before she closed the door.

“On his regular Florida run I guess. He was here Friday night.” She lit a new cigar, waved out the match and tossed it in an ashtray already overrun with spent matches and butts. “His truck's gone. Gone when I got up this morning.”

“The white truck was out by the Interstate and Bruce drove it into town.” I gave her that information but I think surely she already knew all this. Had Bruce not explained anything when he asked her to seal off the room? I guess he didn't have to. Police business with our “trained professionals” had to remain confidential.

“Oh”—Allison blew a smoke ring toward the TV—“then I guess he must be still around here somewhere.” She came from behind the desk, looked out the back and used a remote to close some very expensive window treatments. “That's what I told the woman who came looking for him. She saw you come out of the room, then get in the car with Pastor Pittman. She was so mad she could have spit tenpenny nails.”

I reached for the wallet.

“Nothing doing.” Allison held it tight.

I waited.

“I thought Butch might be in trouble with all the Reba marriage and stuff, but this woman only wanted the money he was carrying. She threatened me about stealing all the money. Me! Little ole me! Money was all that woman had on her mind.”

“What money?” I asked.

Allison gave me a hard look. “Honey, if you don't know dirty business when it's right in your face, then you don't know anything in this world.”

With that she threw the wallet at me. Whiz-bang. I grabbed it as it hit the door behind me, fell to the floor. I picked it up and made a fast exit, didn't even say thank you.

Well, I thought as I stood outside. So much for manners. I turned the wallet over in my hand. Oops. The wallet Allison had thrown at me wasn't Butch Rigsbee's wallet. This wallet was smaller, newer and must have been buried somewhere. It stunk like a landfill or the bottom of a dumpster. Phew. And it was totally empty. Not even a photo, just the blank plastic holders with not a face among them.

“Wait,” I said but she had slammed shut the door.

I tried the knob. It didn't turn. Had she locked it? Locked me out? Damn. I knocked very nicely. “Allison?” I called.

She didn't come to the door and I heard the TV turned up full blast. She didn't
intend
to come to the door. I stood there holding the wrong wallet. One that wouldn't do me the least bit of good or prove a thing to Ossie.

As I turned Lady Bug around in the parking lot I noticed a red truck, spattered with paint and rust, parked behind the office unit. Randy's red truck? Randy, who sometimes worked with Scott on construction projects and music gigs. Is that who was in Allison's bed?

I had not seen Randy with Scott lately. Had they parted ways? He'd seemed a nice guy, sort of Scott's right-hand man, but come to think of it, Scott had not mentioned him lately. Randy was also one of Scott's musician friends. Had they done any gigs together recently? Scott was going to play keyboards for Mayor Moss's trashion show fund-raiser on Sunday afternoon.

Things and people in Littleboro surprised you sometimes. Just when you thought you had somebody and something all figured out, they took a left turn. I thought I remembered Scott saying Randy was married, but that didn't necessarily mean he was happily married. Was anybody ever happily married? I shifted gears and headed home to the Dixie Dew.

 

Chapter Nine

Ida Plum took one look at me, and instead of her usual clucking and fussing made me cream of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, told me she had sheets to hang on the line and then she was going to iron awhile. She was the only person in the world I knew who actually
liked
to iron. I liked to hear the
thump, whump
of the ironer that did mainly our bed linens. Regular clothes ironing had to be done the regular way. Board and steam, hand guiding the iron. Mama Alice taught me how to iron, starting with handkerchiefs, her aprons, pillowcases and dish towels. Dish towels! Who even used handkerchiefs anymore? She said it was one sure way to kill germs and most people didn't know that.