Grab & Go (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 2) (14 page)

I pushed the screen door open and stuck my head out.

From the side, I could see just how droopy Tarq’s clothes were. The back pockets of his jeans hung down almost to his knees. Up under the stained t-shirt, he must have applied some means of attaching them at his waist so they didn’t fall down. He’d been a fat man before the cancer struck.

He stood in black rubber boots, leaning over a drainboard attached at counter height to the back of the house. He slipped a long, curved knife blade into a limp fish just behind the gills and, with a sickening cracking sound, cut through the length of rib bones and lifted a fillet off the carcass. He tossed it into a dented aluminum cake pan which already contained several other wet pink and silver fillets and grabbed another fish from a bucket at his feet.

Maybe it was the insufficient morning light, but Tarq’s skin color looked off — dull, yellowed and grainy like old newspaper. But while his head was completely bald, the rest of his body sprouted an exuberance of fuzzy white hair — ears, nose, the tops of his shoulders, forearms, and even chest where wiry hairs sprang above the neckline of his t-shirt. So whatever cancer treatment he was getting wasn’t making his hair fall out.

Watching him work was almost like studying a graphic illustration out of
Gray’s Anatomy
. Ropy muscles stretched taut along the bones in his arms, in no way disguised by the slack folds of leathery skin which overlaid them and jiggled back and forth with his movements.

“Eaten yet?” Tarq asked without taking his eyes off the action of his slick knife. “I never discuss business before breakfast. Besides, I have a hunch that unraveling your problems is going to require exceptional sustenance.”

“I’ll start the coffee,” I muttered and backed into the squalid kitchen.

I cleared off the seats of two more chairs and consolidated Tarq’s pharmaceutical spread on the tabletop to make room for place settings. Then I ran a sinkful of hot, sudsy water because there was no way I was eating off a plate in this kitchen that I hadn’t washed myself.

It turned out Tarq’s idea of breakfast was steelhead pan fried in two inches of crackling-infused rancid grease which he scooped out of an old margarine container that lived on the back of the stove. He flicked on the blue flame under the burner, and the room filled with the smell of hot oil, moldy bacon, singed shoe leather, old hairbrushes and other nasty, oppressive odors I couldn’t place. I’ve smelled better things in the sewage-infested slums of third-world countries. I inhaled through my mouth while my eyes watered.

I dashed out to the car for a healthy dose of fresh air and the doughnuts and juice I’d bought earlier, extremely grateful for my apparent foresight in the matter of proper nourishment.

CHAPTER 17

Tarq was a little disgruntled that I didn’t want to sample his fried fish, but that didn’t stop him from eating two-thirds of my box of doughnuts. Actually, I came to the conclusion that Tarq is perennially disgruntled, my refusal of his particular form of hospitality notwithstanding.

However, he also hadn’t had company — a real, bona fide visitor — in a long time, because his conversational floodgates burst and he held forth for a solid hour, rising occasionally to refill his plate from the cast iron skillet or pour another mug of coffee.

I didn’t mind because I learned all about May County in the past fifty years — who was related to whom (nearly everyone), when they arrived or how long their families had been settled here, how they got their land, how their kids turned out and why the majority of the two most recent generations had emigrated almost as soon as they came of age. He also included numerous examples of the shenanigans country people get up to when they’re bored. Tarq was quite a student of human nature.

I prodded here and there, sometimes able to direct the conversation. Tarq was expansive on every topic except himself. There he clammed up on me. Alcoholism, cancer — I could understand why he wouldn’t want to probe those personal subjects. But my problems also fell into that much more serious realm, and I wanted to know if he could handle them.

Finally, Tarq shoved his plate away, wiped the corners of his mouth with his fingers, and leaned back in his chair. “You’re turn, girlie.” He nodded toward my overstuffed tote bag. “Whatchya got?”

“Do you mind?” I waved my hand over the cluttered table.

“Nope.” Tarq jumped out of his seat, yanked open a cupboard door and returned with a giant roasting pan pockmarked with rust. With surprising eagerness, he swept the jumble of junk and pill bottles off the table and into the pan which he then balanced on top of an old pie safe. So much for keeping track of his medications.

I carried our dishes to the sink, but filled our coffee mugs again. This was going to take a while.

Then I told him everything — and I mean everything. He needed to know what he was getting into. I laid out the paperwork as I came to the relevant parts in the story — the property records for the freight terminal, Lee Gomes’s contact list with Josh’s web of connections drawn all over it, the copied pages from Skip’s notebook of money laundering accounts, the Polaroid of Skip in his flip flops. I told him how I’d obtained all this information, that I suspected Hank had been shot because of what he’d found, how I’d used a teenaged boy to break into the freight terminal’s office, how I’d traded my wedding ring for a little girl who might be my husband’s daughter.

Even if the problems didn’t seem related, I told him. The only information I held back was about Dwayne, because that wasn’t my secret to reveal and because, as soon as Walt had a chance, the moonshining operation would be defunct anyway.

I experienced an overwhelming sense of release while unloading my problems at Tarq’s table. Even Clarice didn’t know all the gritty details — I’d been trying to protect her. I hated to admit it, but there was also something secure about the idea of unburdening myself to a man whose terminal disease meant he wouldn’t have to bear the load for long. If it was a breach to do this, it was of short duration. Not that I would ever wish cancer on anyone — but it was Tarq’s reality and it didn’t seem to be making him squeamish in the least.

Tarq latched onto my words, his eyes turning bright and hard. His yellow face took on an animation, a rapidity in fleeting expressions that he hadn’t exhibited earlier.

He didn’t speak except to murmur, “Keep going,” whenever I’d stop to check if he was following all the convoluted branches of my thoughts.

I ended by reiterating the list the people I knew of who had been killed, injured or arrested for being in some way involved with what was now my mess.

Tarq nodded slowly, his upper lip bulging as he ran his tongue over his teeth.

“The one positive aspect,” I whispered, “is that I can pay. Hourly, or however you’d like to arrange it, plus expenses.” I gently laid an envelope stuffed with hundreds on top of the stack of papers closest to him.

I’d dipped into the stash of money hidden in wood pellet fuel bags in the mansion’s basement. I didn’t know exactly how much was down there or how long it would last, but hiring Tarq would be well worth the investment, if he’d take me on as a client.

Tarq gripped the edge of the table with both hands. The fish blood crusted in his cuticles had turned dark brown. With his overall jaundice, his fingers looked like a long-time smoker’s, as though they were stained with nicotine.

“The doc says I have three months left, at most,” he murmured and raised his eyes to mine. “Much of that time, I might be bedridden.”

“You’re not taking your medicine,” I said quietly.

Tarq gave a short shake of his head.

“Pain killers?” I asked.

“Only when it’s really bad. I don’t want to live my last few months numbed out of my mind.”

I laid my hand over his, but didn’t try to claim understanding, which would have been both fruitless and offensive. Then I moved to pack up my things.

“Wait,” Tarq barked. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t take your case. But you need to know it will be short-term, out of necessity.” He stabbed the envelope with a forefinger and pushed it back toward me. “I don’t care about money at this point in my life. From what I can see, you’ll need this more than I do. I’ll take a few bucks to make this official, but that’s all.”

Tarq handwrote a short contract on a lined legal pad which he retrieved from the living room. I signed it and gave him carte blanche with my affairs. There was so little risk in this — my personal life, marriage, finances and reputation already shattered beyond the worst case scenario I had ever imagined — that I had no qualms doing so.

Then I took frantic notes while Tarq rattled off a list of things I needed to do.

“You realize these roaches are gonna crawl out from under their rocks when we start messing with their easy money supply,” he said.

“Exactly.” I nodded, a huge wave of relief washing over me at the ‘we’ in his statement. “I want to see them. I need to know.”

“Stay close to your phone.”

I tried to hide my smile — it was an odd command coming from a man who let his own landline phone ring incessantly. I’d become accustomed to lugging around my own cache of phones since this whole business began. I mentally added one more item to my list — a prepaid cell phone for Tarq. He needed to join the twenty-first century even if he’d only be able to appreciate a few more months of it.

I left him in a brown study, his lips pursing in and out, fingers drumming on his knees, his gaze focused somewhere past the back wall of his house.

The clearing was empty of wildlife when I crossed it. The frosty coating on the grass had warmed into sparkling dew where sunlight had filtered through the high wispy clouds and left its imprints in a seemingly random pattern.

But I felt lighter than I had in a long time. Another brain besides mine was working on my problems now, sharing the load. I’d probably exhausted Tarq, though. I hoped he wouldn’t have physical repercussions from his unusual morning.

I knew my dad suffered exhaustion after family visits. Alzheimer’s is vastly different from cancer, but I guessed that the stress from over-stimulation might have similar effects on a disease-wasted person, regardless of whether the disease focused on the mind or the body.

Tarq would probably crash later today. I just hoped his crash didn’t last too long and wasn’t too painful. At least I’d given him a challenge — something to think about other than his short life expectancy.

At the second intersection of backroads, I turned right, toward Woodland and the most important items on my list of assignments from Tarq.

oOo

I established separate accounts at a bank and a credit union with the cash Tarq had turned down, passed the vision test and lied about my weight at the DMV, and found the county courthouse. It was a postcard-perfect old molded concrete brick building with a grand entrance staircase and clock tower. The hands on the clock said ten after five — only a few hours off, and sure to encourage any workers just putting in their time until the taverns opened.

I made friends with the meek but cordial and grandmotherly records clerk, Maeve Berends, who, according to Des, did not have the constitution to deal with obnoxious lawyers. I considered that a positive character trait and liked her immensely. I told her enough of the truth about my guardianship of Emmie that tears came to her eyes, and she started me on the path for establishing a new legal identity for the child.

Then I grit my teeth through a meeting with a smarmy real estate agent. But I gladly accepted the stack of literature about the area that he pressed upon me, including a fairly detailed map emblazoned with his smiling portrait and phone number in the corner.

I retreated to the Subaru parked at the curb and collapsed in the driver’s seat. Through the large plate glass window that fronted the realtor’s office, I could see him seated at his Formica-topped particle board desk, talking excitedly on the phone and casting what he thought were surreptitious sidelong glances at the car. He was probably speculating with his wife on how much someone who drove a no-longer-brand-new station wagon with California plates could afford in monthly mortgage payments.

I slouched low behind the steering wheel, appalled at how many times I’d had to sign my name in the space of a few hours, especially considering how hard I’d been trying to stay unknown and unnoticed since Skip’s kidnapping. But Tarq had said it was the only way.

I was ineffectually trying to sort through all the forms and waivers and terms of use and privacy policies I’d collected in exchange for my signatures when one of my phones rang.

“What’d you do to Tarq?” Des said. “He nearly ran me off the road.”

“Is that unusual?” I asked.

Des blew an irritated sigh into the phone. “He’s going to kill himself by wrapping that truck of his around a tree before the cancer has a chance to finish the job.”

“So write him a ticket.”

“Tickets are supposed to be educational experiences. Tarq’s way past learning from my warnings.” Des’s words were clipped.

“Thanks for the recommendation.”

Des’s pause felt like an indulgence, long and thoughtful. “How’d it go?” he finally asked.

“Beneficial for both parties, I think. Did you know he’s not taking his medications?”

“I suspected.”

“Hey.” I forced a note of cheerfulness into my voice. “Why isn’t your office in the courthouse, along with all the other elected county officials?”

Des actually snorted. “It’s a farm-league county, but most of those officials carry political ambitions around like they’re in the majors. Stakes are small, but egos are big. I prefer hiding out at the fire station. That way I can get at least part of my real job done.” Then his voice softened. “You should have stopped by this morning — at my house, I mean. You were in the neighborhood.”

“I even had doughnuts with me.” I tried to laugh off my unease. “But really, Des, where I come from — well, I don’t just drop by.” It was a shallow excuse, since that was exactly what I’d done to Tarq, even though this morning’s visit had been at his suggestion.

“Then you should start doing it, so you acclimate to our backwoods culture faster. It’d be good for you.” Des sighed again. “Mainly, I called to tell you that Paul — Hank’s doctor, you know — is going to release him tomorrow. And the guards have reported that there’s been no interest in Hank or his health from anyone other than his wife and the hospital staff.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

I drove toward home grateful that Des currently had no other reasons to call me — like a slip-up which left incriminating evidence during the freight terminal office break-in or an under-the-influence woman having second thoughts about parting with her beloved niece or the FBI trying to roust me for information about my husband’s location.

I made one detour to drop off Tarq’s new phone. He wasn’t home, but his back door was unlocked, so I left a short note on his kitchen table, plugged the phone into the closest outlet and laid the instruction booklet next to it. Then I spent a few minutes scratching the old dog behind his ears while he dozed on the blankets. I hoped Tarq didn’t mind the liberties I was taking.