A Living Grave (10 page)

“You couldn't handle a sponge bath.” He looked like a kid whose birthday had been cancelled. “Get into the shower.” As soon as he started to smile, I said, “Alone.”

He went. He was slow and weak, but he went.

This time I stayed out of the room. If I had gone in there I would not have run out again. However, I wasn't ready for what would have happened.

While he showered with the doors open—an invitation if I've ever seen one—I closed the doors and windows I had opened and let the air conditioner bring things back down. For the rest of the time I stared at the painting on the easel. Some of the time I spent trying to understand what Nelson had done. The remainder I spent trying to understand why. When he came back into the room I was still looking at the painting.

“What do you think?” he asked.

I answered with a kiss. It was deep and wonderful. With my arms around his neck I crushed my body against his and felt the heat there. When he breathed I could feel the rise of his chest against my breasts. I didn't let it break until I felt something else begin to rise against my leg. Even then I sucked his tongue into my mouth and nibbled it gently before moving away. It was a good kiss, full of meaning and promise.

* * *

The restaurant was called, predictably enough, Moonshines. It was all kinds of contradictions. Upscale in price and menu with a bar full of house-made micro-spirits, it was paneled with recovered barn wood and clichéd
Li'l Abner
décor. At the center of everything was a glass room that contained the distillery, a stainless-steel, space age–looking stack of plumbing that clashed with both the atmosphere and the clientele. The only place everything seemed to be working right was the patio space. It had a bandstand on one end with a lumber deck that stuck out over the lake waters. Under strings of white lights that were just beginning to show in the fading summer evening, the floor was stuffed with an eclectic mix of people. There were tourists and fishermen, performers from the Branson strip, college kids, and locals of every stripe.

After just a few minutes I had changed my mind about how the space age still clashed with the atmosphere. It was so out of place that the people seemed to be conforming around it. Stick stained-glass windows or expensive art and muted light in a room and people react to the space. You get church whispers and minded manners. Stick a still in the middle of a room and you get the Wild West. Moonshines looked like it was designed by Disney Imagineers, but it felt like a knife fight waiting to happen.

Nelson whispered a few words to the hostess and we were shown to a table that was shielded from most of the room, but next to a window that looked out over the water and patio. The smoked glass of the window muted the already gloaming sky.

“The head chef is Andre,” Nelson said once we were seated. “I think the name his mother gave him was Andy, but that wasn't good enough after cooking in New York.”

I laughed. “And what is the best that Andre has to offer?” I asked.

“I don't know. I guess it's all all right, just a little fancy for me. With him it's all sauces and reductions and I don't know. I'm more of a steak or fried chicken kind of guy.” He looked up and nodded at a man standing at a bar table along with a country western cowboy. The cowboy might have been a performer with one of the Branson music shows or just a snappy dresser. His jacket was suede with Indian beading and fringes. Below that were tooled leather boots with silver toe and heel caps. Between the jacket and boots were jeans whose fading could only come from an acid wash. They used to call them drugstore cowboys. Nowadays it seemed these guys were all rich posers. He was probably a New Yorker who thought all the Branson folk dressed like that.

“That's Johnny Middleton,” Nelson said. “Not the fancy cowboy, the other guy. This place is basically his baby.”

Johnny was as different from Nelson as I could imagine. He was soft and round but wearing snug black slacks with an untucked black silk shirt that did nothing to hide his shape. He had a desperate smile that looked to be the natural hang of his mouth rather than a projection of any emotion. He left the cowboy and headed our way stopping twice, once to talk to one of the bar girls and once to schmooze with two other out-of-place-looking guys whose faces I couldn't see. There were a couple of fingers pointed and Johnny left them looking nervous.

“Have you ordered anything yet?” he asked as soon as we were introduced.

“We were talking it over,” Nelson answered.

“Good. I asked Marsha to bring over our new appetizer. I want you to try it out. Did you think any more about what we discussed?”

Nelson opened his mouth to say something but never got the chance.

Johnny jumped back in, saying, “There's a man here that I really want you to meet. I asked him to come over when I saw you.”

“We just want to have a nice dinner, Johnny,” Nelson told him. “This isn't the time.”

“Just listen for a minute, please, Nelson. These aren't the kind of people you want to offend. Know what I mean?”

“No, I don't,” Nelson said, then glanced at me. There was apology in the look. By the time he had shifted his gaze back to his friend, one of the men from the bar was standing beside Johnny. It was the same man I had seen with Nelson at the hospital.

He was a big man. His bulk still looked powerful but without the tone of youth, like a linebacker past his prime. The fat that layered his body gave a solidity. The same fat in his face seemed to have the opposite effect. His countenance was soft and drooping, pulling the bags under his eyes down until the lower lids turned outward. Like an old hound he had jowls that were always in motion. Most striking to me were his hands. They were much too small for all the largeness to which they were attached. Short, little sausages, the fingers were adorned with heavy gold and diamond rings that only made them look stubbier.

Johnny introduced the man as Byron Figorelli.

“I've met Mr. Figorelli,” Nelson said, looking at Figorelli, not Johnny.

“You have?” Johnny asked. He was surprised.

“Johnny said we could talk a little business with you,” Figorelli said, ignoring Johnny.

“We?” Nelson asked.

That was when I caught a look between Nelson and Figorelli. That was all, a quick look. It wasn't something of great meaning, more of a guy thing. The testosterone of two men sizing each other up. Just for a moment, though, I had the feeling that they knew more about each other than either wanted to let on.

“Beg pardon?” Figorelli asked and the moment passed.

“You said
we
, but I only see you,” Nelson said.

The big man's rheumy eyes narrowed. “Johnny said you were a sharp one. Sharp enough to get the point, I figure. I want to purchase your share of this place and I am making the offer on behalf of an investment group. For said group, I have full authority to negotiate. Does that make things clear?”

“Clear as mud on milk glass,” Nelson said, then gestured to me. “Now, if you don't mind, we're trying to have a dinner here. Maybe we can do this another time?”

At that moment, a woman came from the bar and slipped a platter of fried appetizers and smaller plates on the table. “Enjoy the Missouri mountain oysters,” she said.

Figorelli kept his gaze locked with Nelson's while he jabbed his fat little fingers into the dish. “Oysters, huh?” He tossed a pair of the breaded balls into his mouth and started chewing loudly. Then he stopped, and with his mouth still full, he said, “The fuck?” It was obvious he wanted to spit the food out. At least he grabbed a napkin first and put the mess there. “You eat that shit? It tastes like chewy liver and dirt.”

Nelson leaned forward as he pushed his chair back to rise. I beat him to it, placing my hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Figorelli, those are mountain oysters, fried bull testicles. They are a bit of an acquired taste. If you would like to take them with you and go acquire it, I think it would be best.”

“What am I, like some kind of phone number on your shithouse wall, Johnny? Everyone keeps trying to get rid of me?”

“Maybe it just isn't the time,” Johnny said to him.

Nelson stood slowly beside me and for the first time I noticed that he was shaking and supporting himself on the table. How long had it been since he'd had a meal he'd kept down? The white shirt and khaki pants he wore were both loose on him and his belt was pulled into holes that had never been used before. Still, he wasn't backing down.

“Johnny's right and I've told you the same, Mr. Figorelli. This isn't the time.”

Johnny put his hand on the bigger man's arm and tried to urge him from the table. Figorelli jerked away and said, “Get your hands off me. Does everyone here have cornpone in their ears? I have business to do.”

“Not with me you don't,” Nelson told him. “You need to be going.”

“Maybe you got a few oysters of your own, but you look like a piece of toilet paper. The wind would carry you away. Or are you gonna let the bitch off her chain? I could have some fun with a tall drink like her.”

He never even glanced at me as he spoke. It was one in a string of mistakes. Nelson was ready to come over the table. That would have been a mistake of a different order altogether. I was going to settle this, but I wasn't going to do it in any way that would put Nelson in the middle. I'm lucky that assholes are so easy to manipulate.

I put my right hand back on Nelson's shoulder, urging restraint and calm. My other hand I reached out to Figorelli. “Mr. Figorelli is going to go over to the bar and have a drink on us, aren't you, sir?” My voice was soothing. Anyone in earshot would have told you how reasonable I sounded. My left hand, however, was digging into the man's meaty trapezius muscle. At the same time I squeezed hard and pushed him away. My gaze was anything but placating. Everyone else saw a woman trying to smooth over a confrontation. Figorelli saw someone taller, manhandling and challenging him.

He swept his arm up to knock my hand away. He was about to say something too. Probably something about a bitch, but he never got the chance. Once his hand struck me I stepped around the table and bumped against him. That's when I said, “Sheriff's Detective Williams.” Out of habit I reached for a pocket I didn't have for the badge that was stuffed in the handbag hanging off my chair. The one time I try to dress well.

As I had expected, though, Figorelli didn't listen and he wasn't interested in seeing a badge anyway. He shoved me back first with his chest, then with his hand right in my sternum. That was all I needed. I grabbed the hand on my chest and twisted it hard over and around his back, turning him at the same time. In the same movement I stepped behind him and pushed his bulk over the table.

I thought there was going to be trouble when I heard a man's voice yell, “Hey, Figgs.” I caught a glimpse of a man coming our way and was regretting having left my weapon out of reach.

Backup came in the form of Billy. I heard him saying, “Hold on. You don't want to be interfering with the sheriff's department, do you?”

It should have ended there. I wanted to provoke a response that allowed me to end the encounter and send Figorelli on his way. There would have been no charges and we could have had a quiet dinner.

Nothing in my life is ever easy
.

There was a short-nosed .38 revolver tucked into the small of Figorelli's back.

“Billy—”

I wanted to tell him that they were armed but I never got the chance.

Billy yelled, “Don't move.”

I heard a sharp crackling of electricity, then a grunt, and the man hit the floor. Billy had hit the other guy with a stun gun. At least it wasn't the knife fight I had been afraid of.

I
wanted—needed—to get Nelson out of there quickly but nothing about justice or law moves swiftly. Because Moonshines was within city limits, and because Billy and I were involved, both the Branson city police and the sheriff's department were called. After some debate it was decided to give the arrests for assault and for interference to our department. It took forty-five minutes to get the pair taken away. Johnny Middleton had disappeared.

After leaving Nelson with Billy I disappeared as well. I needed a little privacy to make a phone call. When I got back Billy was on the patio holding a guitar and standing at a microphone. It seemed he had a second job. When did he have the time? Checking the tune of his guitar, he strummed a few chords and smiled sheepishly at the small crowd. He saw me looking and he looked back. We had never seen each other in quite this light. Strange what a difference a dress and a guitar can make.

Billy kept picking a bit, without the smile now, but he kept looking at me. There had been no chance to thank him for the backup. If anything, though, I needed to thank him for the night he'd spent watching over me. All of a sudden I felt stupid for running out on him that morning. Running was becoming an ugly habit with me.

Billy looked different than he had the last time I had seen him, but I couldn't set my mind on any one thing. It was the guitar, I decided. That and the fact that I'd been shamefully slinking away and he'd been standing in the fog. With no words, he stopped tuning and started playing. It was an old John Denver tune, “Annie's Song.” When he began to sing the change was amazing, like finding out the old horse you had ridden for years was a talking unicorn that recited Keats.

“He wanted me to tell you that he stayed at the river as long as he could.” Nelson nodded toward Billy as he stepped up beside me. “And he said that the only people that came around today were some kids that he ran off and a couple of bikers that kept riding around.”

The kids would be Carrie Owens, Danny Barnes, and cronies—I was sure of it. The bikers had to be Nightriders. Looking to make sure they'd run Clare off or for something else?

“Thanks,” I told Nelson. “How about if we get out of here and get some real food?” For some reason Billy's singing was making me nervous. It was the first I had heard it but I had the feeling that I should have known.

“That sounds good,” Nelson said, then he started clapping at the end of Billy's song. “Also, Billy said to tell you he would call you later. He's pretty good.”

Despite my efforts to get us out of there, Nelson insisted on hearing a little more of the music.

It was just Billy and a guitar playing the kind of country rock that made the seventies so mellow. He had played songs by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Marshall Tucker, and the Eagles before I got us started for the door. Distance soothed my feelings about the music and Billy. As we walked into the parking lot I could hear him singing about making love in a Chevy van. Nelson and I were both laughing and singing the chorus when I pulled out of the lot and passed a white sedan with government plates.

When the laughing and the mood settled into the curves of the road, I asked Nelson, “What was going on back there?”

“What do you mean?” He lobbed the question back a little too casually. “You were the one in the middle of it,” he said.

“They want you to sell your share?”

“I told you about that.”

“Yeah. And you told me it was that Middleton guy trying to buy you out. You didn't say anything about the goon squad.”

“It was as much a surprise to me as it was to you,” he said, looking out the window.

“Was it?” I asked.

He looked at me and smiled. “Don't let them spoil our night. Where are we going?”

My call had been to Uncle Orson. He had steaks on the grill when we got to the dock. Alongside the meat were ears of bicolor corn that he had pulled from his own garden and soaked in butter before dropping on the grill. We caught him tossing a salad and cutting up yellow squash that he would coat with more butter and parsley before briefly grilling. The old guy was no chef but he was a heck of a cook. He'd be the first to tell you, though, he was number two to his brother.

I noticed the calendar was not on the wall. That was the kind of man Uncle Orson was. Having the calendar up would have been a form of pressure, an expectation to be the famous guy. Uncle Orson treated Nelson like an honored guest who he had known all his life. That's to say, like family. We had beers in our hands before getting to the dock, but I took Nelson's away. Orson noticed.

“You gonna let her treat you that way?” my uncle asked him.

“I have to,” Nelson answered. “I just watched her take down an armed guy that probably had a hundred-fifty pounds on her.”

“Nelson just needs to get some food in him before he has any beer.” I said. “He hasn't had anything all day and it's kind of my fault that our dinner was messed up.”

“Nothing about that was your fault,” Nelson said. “It was that idiot Middleton and the goons he keeps getting into bed with.”

“You knew about those guys?” I asked.

Nelson shook his head slowly before looking at me. “The place Johnny had before. He got out because he had owed money to some of those types. Might even have been those same guys. But he told me that was all over.”

“And it should be all over for tonight, at least,” Orson said as he pushed through the screen door bearing a platter of steaks and roasted corn. “The meat has to rest. I saw that on a cooking show. I just put the squash on the grill. Give it about two minutes a side and we'll be feasting.”

There was a lot more I wanted to ask. It wasn't the time for those questions, though. It was time to eat. We sat around the old picnic table passing salad and jokes. Nelson finished less than half of the filet side on his T-bone. Vegetables must have been easier to manage. They were almost gone from his plate. He was too polite to tell me to stop the mother-henning. When I got up for a moment he'd gotten hold of a beer. I think it was more for his ego than the desire to drink. The level in the bottle never went lower than the neck.

“Desert Storm left you with a long-term reminder, didn't it?” Orson asked Nelson when all of us had stopped eating and my uncle was on this fourth beer.

To be fair, if Nelson were not there I would have been keeping pace with Orson's drinking. As it was, I hadn't yet finished my second beer. And to be honest, I wasn't feeling the need to drink more. It was a surprising feeling and something I had almost forgotten possible. I excused myself and went out the screen door and walked toward the far end of the dock. I didn't really want to hear what was coming. But I didn't want to go too far away, either.

“Is it that obvious?” Nelson asked in return.

I couldn't see him but I pictured Uncle Orson leaning across the table. I did hear his half whisper that was supposed to make it man-talk and just between the two of them. “Like tits in a whorehouse,” he said. “I've had a lot of friends go through the same things. Agent Orange. At the VFW I meet younger guys who have issues from the spent uranium used in tank shells or were exposed to sarin gas when we bombed that munitions plant.”

The talk faded behind me as I went out to the edge of the dock and watched the water. Some late fishermen were coming in and there were a few going out to run jugs or trotlines. From where I stood it was easy to believe that the world was wrapped up in a comforting blanket of warm darkness. Across the water, in a piled snag of fallen trees, a bass hit at something on the surface, splashing loudly. I let the world surround me and my thoughts slip away. After a few minutes, it occurred to me that, even in the darkness, I was looking at the colors. The moon was yellow and haloed in a lighter shade that misted out into a blue tint. Where the light hit the water it reflected back and added its own green cast. Under the tin-roof canopy the old dock was painted variously in white, red, and pale blue. From every surface hung nets and minnow buckets, floats and oars. In the slips were the boats themselves in every shade, many shining with the glitter under the clear coat on fiberglass.

I realized slowly that I was looking for the dust of another place and waiting for the burning sense of loss that went with it. I was waiting to bleed and expecting the clatter of AK-47s.

“You should come back in,” Uncle Orson said from behind me. I hadn't heard him come up. “He's not looking too good.”

Nelson
.

I led Orson back into the shop. Nelson was doing his best to look wide awake and strong, but he was failing miserably. He had gone pale. Sweat had beaded on his brow and over the crown of his head, making the pale skin look like a fish's underbelly.

“I'm sorry,” Nelson said. “I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass.”

Before I could say anything Uncle Orson moved around me and put a huge hand on Nelson's shoulder and told him, “None of that crap. What do you need?”

“I'm sorry,” Nelson said again. “I think I just need to get home and rest.”

He appeared to be as weak as a kitten with polio and he wouldn't look at me.

Shame
.

Nelson didn't want me to see this. He didn't want to be like this in front of me. I understood the feeling; at least part of me did. Another part wanted to shout at him for being foolish. None of that changed the fact that I didn't know how to deal with the situation. I was afraid he would have to be carried to the truck. If nothing else, he would need help getting in and what then? How would I get him from the truck into his house? I had already realized that I would carry him if I had to. It didn't bother me—in fact, I wanted to help him—but I wanted to do it without making him feel like less of a man.

Again, Orson came to the rescue.

He asked, “Would you stay here with me? I was wanting to see if you'd go fishing with me in the morning. We'd need to get up pretty early.”

Just like that, I knew that Nelson had been adopted. Nelson himself was looking pretty skeptical. I could tell he was ready to put up a fight when the case was helped by my phone ringing. It was Billy. There was another problem at Moonshines.

It was quickly decided that Nelson would stay with Uncle Orson. I would retrieve anything he needed from home once things were settled at the restaurant. That way the guys could be guys and Nelson wouldn't have to let me see him at his worst.

* * *

Johnny Middleton had returned to Moonshines and had gotten into a fight with a biker wearing an Ozarks Nightriders cut. It had started in the bar and moved as Middleton had retreated out onto the patio. Billy had come off the bandstand when things got too noisy but Middleton refused to make an issue of it, even to the point of allowing the biker to remain at the restaurant. That was when things got weird. Witnesses said, a little later, Middleton and another biker were in the parking lot when someone fired a shot. They said that it was the biker that pushed Middleton out of the way.

This time I was on duty. I changed out of the skirt and into pants and jacket in the houseboat. Once at the restaurant, I put on and adjusted my kit: cuffs, telescoping baton, tac light, pepper spray, and my service weapon. When I got inside, Billy was on break, drinking a soda at the bar with a couple of young women telling him how talented he was. He had about the biggest grin I'd ever seen.

“Pardon us, ladies,” I said, taking the troubadour by the arm. “Sheriff's department business.” I walked him out to the patio railing over the water. Standing right in front of him, I saw what was different. He had gotten a haircut. It wasn't the usual, cheap hack job, either.

“Really, Hurricane?” he said. “You show up now?” There was something in his tone too. Probably it was showing up then because it was the first time we were alone. Why it was showing up at all was eluding me.

“Hey, you called me,” I told him.

“Yeah. Things have settled down a bit, though. City cops were the first to respond for all the good it did. No one can find Middleton or the biker. Since it involved one of the Nightriders, the sheriff said to let you know when I called it in.” He wasn't looking at me. I followed his gaze and caught sight of one of the girls who had been with him. She was smiling and waving at him like bait happy to be on the hook. The attitude made more sense. He was mad because I had pulled him away from the skank buffet.

“Catch you at a bad time?” I asked.

He looked at me then. It was an odd look. It made me feel like I had forgotten a promise and Billy was waiting for me to say something about it. Then he let it drop and said, “A couple of songs and I get more attention than I ever got for being a cop.”

“Is that the kind of attention you want?”

“Do you want to know about the bikers or not?” He shot his question right back at me as if I had stuck my finger in a wound.

I could have asked him what the problem was. Instead I asked, “Bikers? More than one?”

He nodded. A little bit of the light went out of his eyes. “The one that argued with Johnny Middleton, the mean one; he acts like a boss and he smells like a run-out horse. After they fought, another guy came in. He was wearing the same colors and the boss guy gave him a hard time. He was the one who was outside with Middleton.”

“Did you get a good look at them?” I asked.

He nodded and I pulled out the printed sheets I'd collected on the Nightriders membership. He identified Cotton Lambert as the second biker. He couldn't ID the greasy “boss” guy. I didn't have a picture of him, but there was no doubt in my mind it was Leech.