Harvestman Lodge (53 page)

“You made money?”

“Good money. Then I hooked up with a woman, married her, even, and she got her claws on every penny I had, and disappeared. That was about the same time the law began to catch on to the Flower Garden and things got so hot everything went underground and dead for a time. But it never really died. The roots run way too deep for that. It’s growing again, and it’s going to be bigger than ever. Too big for anybody to shut down.” He looked Rawls in the face and got back on his subject. “Damn that thieving woman … if I ever find her, I’ll swear I’ll turn her into something you’d not recognize as a human being, boy. Roadkill. Hamburger. I’ll do it. Because some of the things she done left me in dutch with the Gardeners. That’s what they call the ones who really run the ring, the Gardeners. I think they’ve got somebody following me, and not to invite me to Sunday School, no sir.”

“Yeah. You said something about that.”

Lukey drank a little more in brooding silence, then said, “Yeah, that woman took my money, and she might have took my life, too. She’ll pay high for that, Rawls. I’ll make sure of it. A man can’t let a woman wrong him and not pay her back for it.”

“Yeah.”

“That reminds me: that pretty little princess you was hooked up with back in the day, the one who cut you loose and whose daddy ruined your football career with that bullet in the leg … did you ever settle the score with her and him?”

“Not yet.”

Lukey looked disgusted. “You got to man up, boy! She spit in your face and made a fool of you, then left you sidelined for good, thanks to her dear old daddy and his gun, and you’ve let her go for years without you spitting back?”

“I know … I know. But I’ll overlook a lot when it comes to Melinda. She’s a special kind of girl.”

“That’s the very kind of soft talk I can’t hear from you, Rawls. Not with what we got ahead. You want on the Flower Garden money train, you kill all your sentiment and softness. Otherwise you become a problem. And the Gardeners don’t solve problems. They just make them disappear. For good.”

“Why do they call it the ‘Flower Garden’?”

“You’ll understand that soon enough, that, and a lot of other stuff.”

“It’s just that I don’t know that I get what you’re talking about. I think I do, but I ain’t sure. Your talk is all code and riddles.”

“Exactly.”

“So why should I say yes to something without even knowing what it is?”

“Because it’s me who’s telling you, and you ought to trust your old uncle. But Rawls, boy, you’re making me wonder if I’m wrong about you being tough enough.”

“Hey, Lukey, I’m tough enough. I am! Honest to God!”

“God’s got nothing to do with any of this. Except for creating them pretty little blossoms the Flower Garden deals in. He makes ’em, we gather ’em, and we put ’em out on the market, all around this world. It’s big money, boy, big money and big dealings. But not just anybody can do it. You got to be – ”

“Hard. Tough.” Rawls cut in. “You already told me, over and over. I got what it takes, Lukey!”

“Prove it.”

“How?”

“By you doing what you ain’t done yet. By settling up with that gunslinger who took away your football career. Think of what he stole from you, Rawls! You’d be living the life of an NFL quarterback right now, rich, famous, women all over you! You owe him some big-time payback. I’m telling you, boy, if you want to show you can work with me and the Flower Garden, the time to give him his payback is now.”

Rawls took another just-in-case look around and spoke very softly. “You’re saying I should kill him?”

“Not that. He ain’t worth it. And there’s harder payback you can give a man than killing him. That’s something I’ve learned from the Gardeners: how the big boys, the really big boys, settle their scores. The way you do it is, you go after the family. Got a man who’s cheated you, robbed you? Put a knife through his wife’s spine while she’s putting her groceries in the minivan and leave her flopped on the grocery store parking lot like a dishrag. Or get yourself a bunch of boys together and go spend a little ‘quality time’ with his daughter. That’s how you make a man suffer … by making his family suffer with him knowing it’s because of what he did.”

“I understand, Lukey.”

Lukey raised his beer. “We’re kin, Rawls. And kinfolk help each other. We might be onto something here. To kinfolk.”

Glass clinked glass, beer was gulped, and Rawls’s head wobbled and ended up resting on the tabletop, passed out cold.

MELINDA BUCKINGHAM’S PLAN FOR evading evening services at her family’s church had been pulled off with ease. She’d made a point of coughing and acting sickly through the afternoon, then as her parents readied themselves for evening church, had told them, hoarsely, that her throat was raw and painful. She was going to stay in and rest.

It worked. Her parents drove off. The cough went away and the sore throat magically disappeared. Melinda put on jeans and a button-down cotton shirt and left the house, walking the short distance down to Buckingham Video Services shop, the Super 8 cartridge she’d sneaked out of Eli’s grandparents’ cellar nestled in her hand.

She entered the shop and went to the processing room. She closed the blinds and went to work. When she was done the content of the eight-millimeter film had been copied to videotape, on cassette.

WHEN HER PARENTS RETURNED from evening services, they found Melinda tucked away in her bed, but not asleep. Dot Buckingham went into the dark room and sat on the edge of the mattress, putting her hand on her daughter’s shoulder.

“Honey! You’re trembling!” she said. “Are you feeling worse?”

“I’m … I’ll be okay, Mom. I’m just under the weather.”

“I think you might have flu, sweetheart. You need to visit Dr. Walters tomorrow. I can take you, if you’d like.”

“I … I will, Mom. I’ll take myself. Right now I just need … to get to sleep.”

“Did you take anything? Can I bring you some aspirin?”

“I took some.” She hadn’t, but it made no difference. It wasn’t illness or fever that had her trembling.

“Rest well, Melinda. A good night’s sleep can do wonders.”

“Yes. Good night, Mom.”

“Good night, sweety.”

Melinda stared into the dark a long time, wondering why she was so bothered by what she’d seen on that film, until sleep finally came.

Chapter Thirty-Two

ELI’S CHEAP PLASTIC TELEPHONE trilled early Monday morning, awakening him most impolitely.

“David Brecht, Eli. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget to come by the office this morning for staff meeting. Dad wants to speak to the group.”

“I haven’t forgotten. Monday morning means staff meeting unless specifically told otherwise. I’ll be there.”

He secretly was glad for the call because actually he had forgotten. And if Mr. Carl was going to address the staff, he didn’t want to miss whatever he had to say.

Depending, of course, upon what it proved to be.

MELINDA, TOO, WAS THINKING about the newspaper’s standard Monday morning staff meeting as she readied herself for her day. That meeting would keep Eli away from Hodgepodge at least until sometime in the mid-morning.

And that was good. What Melinda had found on the cellar film distressed her, and the odd thing was, she wasn’t sure why.

The main content of the Super 8 film was nothing particularly shocking or even noteworthy … though it did seem an odd thing to have been possessed by Eli’s late grandfather, given what Eli had told her about him. Will Keller had been a Baptist deacon, an attender of every service his church held, including Sunday and Wednesday nights. He’d taught the Sunday School class for men for a quarter-century and his farm had been a frequent site for church picnics, hay rides for the young folk, and so on. The man Eli had described to Melinda had been a typical rural, conservative, Bible-belt, church-going East Tennessean.

So why, she wondered as she dried and styled her hair, would such a man have hidden in his cellar an undeveloped Super 8 movie showing a half-dozen frilled and painted-up dancing girls entertaining a gaggle of obviously drunken men?

She’d not been totally surprised to discover off-color content on the cartridge of film. It had to have been hidden for some reason, after all. It was obviously something Will Keller hadn’t wanted his family to know he possessed, comparatively mild though it was.

The big question for Melinda was whether she should tell Eli about it. He didn’t even know the film existed, or that she had sneaked it out of his grandfather’s cellar. Would he rather not know? What would be gained by possibly disillusioning him, however slightly, about his beloved old family patriarch?

The girls filmed dancing on a platform set up in the middle of a large room clearly had been trying to titillate their clapping male audience. Just not trying very hard. There was a lot of high-kicking, flouncing skirts, hip-wiggling and so on, but no significant display of flesh. It was closer to a saloon can-can dance as presented in an old western movie than to anything actually salacious. A hoochie-coochie show in the corner of a typical rural county fair midway probably had much wilder presentations than the three minutes of rather inept bouncing around done by the women on Will Keller’s old Super 8 film.

Clearly Keller had never watched the piece of film, given that it had been previously undeveloped. Maybe he had been awaiting a chance to smuggle it off to some far city and have it processed on the sneak, and had simply never gotten around to it.

Two more questions plagued Melinda. The first was: had Will Keller shot the film himself? It seemed likely. After all, how else would he have possessed it?

The other question was: why did she feel so disturbed by a mere clip of amateurish, well-covered dancing girls putting on a mildly naughty performance for a bunch of men in a tavern, a club, a lodge …

Lodge.
Her mind froze upon that word, and she knew she’d have to take a closer look at her bit of found footage. She wondered if, at a subconscious level, she’d recognized the place the dancers had been.

One of the rooms in Harvestman Lodge, perhaps?

MR. CARL WAS WAITING in the
Clarion’s
meeting room as the news staff filed in. From the look on his face it seemed likely he had something serious to talk about with them. Keith Brecht was there, too, not a good sign, because Keith was usually mostly uninvolved in news department activities.

Eli sat down beside Jake Lundy with anticipation they were about to hear the newspaper had been sold to some media syndicate who would probably clean out the news staff to bring in fresh blood.

David opened the meeting with his usual attempt at a pep talk, doing his best to stir his staff to excitement over the prospect of another week of covering brain-numbing governmental meetings, routine police activities, court hearings, overheated mayoral pronouncements, and school class projects, all the typical mundane ham-and-eggs of small-town newspaper work. David went a little too long at it until he finally noticed the stern gaze of his father and wrapped it up.

“Wonder if we’re all about to get our asses fired,” Jake Lundy whispered into Eli’s left ear.

“Dad,” said David, “you have the floor.”

Jake Lundy whispered in Eli’s ear again. “Floor, walls, ceiling … it’s all his, actually.”

“Shut up Jake. We need to hear this.”

Mr. Carl cleared his throat and looked directly at Jake and Eli. “Girls, if you two have finished your whispering, I’ll get started.”

“Sorry, Mr. Carl,” Jake said in his loud nephew-of-Bufe-Fellers voice. “I just can’t get Eli to shut up.”

“Yeah, yeah, right Jake. Right.” Mr. Carl paused and looked around at his news staff. “I’ve got news to deliver today, my friends, that I wish could be happier.” Every heart in the room beat a little faster. “It involves a beloved figure in our
Clarion
family, a man who particularly means a lot to the Brecht clan. All of you know our dear friend Jimbo Bailey, who has done so much for us all day-to-day, keeping our workplace clean and orderly, giving us barbarians at least the appearance of being slightly civilized.” He paused as it to let his listeners know that he’d just made a joke, and it was time to laugh. They did, in a forced and feeble manner, everyone wondering all the more just what they were about to hear. Eli had the sickening suspicion that Jimbo had died.

“I’ve brought you together to let you know that Jimbo, who has been suffering increasingly from heart trouble that runs in his family, suffered a heart attack Sunday afternoon and was rushed to Parham Memorial Hospital in grave condition. Unfortunately he was alone when he suffered the infarction, and was not found until after he’d laid on his kitchen floor, untended, for nearly an hour. His younger sister, Mrs. Flora Hamilton, came by to check on him, having had a feeling something was wrong. It was her coming along when she did that allowed him to be treated in time to save his life. If he’d gone much longer, I would have to be delivering you worse news than I am. Jimbo is in serious condition, and at this point no promises are being made as to his prospects for recovery, but he is alive. That much we can be thankful for. Jimbo is down, but he’s not yet out.”