The Redneck Detective Agency (The Redneck Detective Agency Mystery Series Book 1) (15 page)

Chapter 31

It was cozy in the treehouse. Rain drummed down on the low tin roof. Mosquito netting was fixed around the perimeter of the platform from floor to roof. The netting kept out not only the mosquitoes, but so far the water moccasins and other creatures.

              The small radio and CD player was tuned to a jazz station and it was just a little louder than the sound of the rain. Rusty and Gloria lay side by side on the inflatable mattress.

              “I love rainy season in the tropics,” Rusty said.

              ‘This isn’t the tropics. This is Elk River.”

              “Still it reminds me. It feels the same tonight. Jenny and I had a two-story split bamboo house on the Esmeraldas River. The walls, the floor upstairs was made out of split bamboo. We had a tin roof. We slept upstairs on a thin mattress…” Here he was talking about his life with his ex-wife. But with Gloria it didn’t matter. Gloria was Gloria.

              But still he had said all he wanted to say about it.

              “I like the sound of a small radio at night,” Gloria said.

              In a radio announcer’s voice, Rusty said, “You’re listening to the Voice of America.”

              “You listened to that in the jungle?”

              “Yeah. To listen to what was going on in the States. Or sometimes just to hear the English. I remember listening to it one night and they announced that John Wayne died. And then the next announcement was that a trucker had been killed in Travertine County, Alabama, on the highway. Shot because of some trucker strike.”

              “I remember that.”

              “There I was in the wild, dangerous tropical jungle. Dragged my wife down there, thinking I could get rich prospecting for gold and emeralds. Disease, strange animals, headhunters, Jivaro Indians. But back in safe, calm Travertine County, some hard-working truck driver gets shot dead because he moved his truck when he shouldn’t have.”

              “Which one was the civilized land?”

              “Exactly.”

              A strong breeze came through the thick tree cover and the mosquito net. “It’s going to start again any minute,” Gloria said.

              In a few minutes it was like the tin roof was a drum and the rain was keeping time for them, beating harder and harder and faster and faster.

              This had to be a sign, Rusty thought. A sign that the end was near. Something was amiss in the universe when you were with a woman and you were fantasizing about a specific passionate moment you had with your ex-wife.

              Afterwards, as in seconds after the moment was over, with pitch dark around him and now only a light steady rain coming down through the treetops and hitting the tin roof, Rusty passed out into a deep sleep.

              Later, Gloria tugged at his shoulder. He heard her say, “Rusty, Rusty, get up. It’s eight o’clock!”

              He opened his eyes and propped up. It was broad daylight. The rain had lifted.

              Gloria scampered around, getting dressed. Rusty looked down. He was naked to the world.

              “Oh, God,” Gloria screamed. “The rain’s gone. It’s going to be crazy at the café. And God knows what’s happened at the RV Park during this deluge. Oh, God, and I have to, just have to, get a ride into town and pick up my Land Cruiser.”

              “I’ll take you, Gloria.”

              She stopped mid pulling her jeans on up over her blue bikini panties. “I thought you had to stay underground for a while?”

              “What’s going to happen is going to happen. So, it doesn’t matter now.”

              Rusty pulled on his underwear and jeans. He put on his white long-sleeve shirt and left the tails out.

              Gloria started gathering things up.

              Rusty said, “Just leave everything. I’ll get it later.”

              “Oh, good.” She grabbed her purse up and they hustled to the boat.

              Spring was over. The rain, along with all the rain clouds, was gone. But it had not washed the earth clean like a good Spring rain does. It had been a summer rain. Now the air was hot and muggy.

              Rusty put his boat full throttle headed up river to his place. Grabbling boats were all about.

              Rusty pulled up to his dock. Gloria tied up the bow, then climbed out with her purse.

              Rusty got out and said, “I left my keys with Ray. He was moving the cars around. I got to go in the house and get them. Come on.”

              “I’ll just be waiting in your truck,” she said, and hustled around the house.

              The front door was closed. He opened the screen door back. The front door was locked. He reached over the lintel, got the key and opened it.

              He walked right in. The breakfast smell hit him. Oh, God. It was too late. He should have knocked. Alice stepped out of the kitchen to see what was going on. She had on some black lacy negligee.

              “Alice. I’m sorry. I should have knocked first. I forgot you were going to be here.”

              “Hey, it’s your house. Don’t be sorry.” And she didn’t make any moves to cover up her body either. Rusty could see everything. The house was closed up. The air conditioner was on freeze and her .38 nipples were practically poking through the silky top. “Ray had to run to the store. You want some breakfast?”

              Oh, great. Here Rusty was standing not ten feet away from his best friend and cousin’s wife, with her all duded up for sex. Something was in the air.

              “No. I just came in to get the keys to my truck.”

              “I think I saw some keys on your dresser in there.”

              Rusty went into his bedroom. The sheets were all a mess. Old VCR tapes were strewn out on top of the dresser by the TV.

              He went over and looked around. There were his keys right beside a video tape--2001, A Sex Odyssey.

              Yeah, old Ray and his wife had had them a little honeymoon in Rusty’s bed last night.

              Rusty grabbed his keys and hustled back out, hollering goodbye at Alice.

              As Rusty headed for his truck, Gloria came out of the garage. “You got a 450 SL Mercedes?” There was a hint of being impressed in her voice.

              “Yeah. I got to have something to take you on that date in.”

              Soon they trundled along the river road.

              “Gloria, what’s the main reason you divorced Al?”

              “He is an egotistical bastard,” she said, without missing a beat.

              “He seems pretty polished to me.”

              “That’s his trouble. I was fooled by the polish of his good looks and silver tongue. Listen, it’s not like he’s just self-confident. Sometime it’s like he thinks he’s smarter than god. Usually he’s careful not to show anything, but I started to see his real opinion of himself. I can’t believe it took two and a half years of him to make me start throwing up.”

              Rusty shook it off. Halfway into town, on Highway 72, Rusty said, “I think we need to pull over and do it one more time.”

              Gloria slid over in the bench seat and sat right down beside him. She reached over…

              “Gloria?!”

              But before he could tell exactly what Gloria had in mind, a siren blared.

              Gloria turned around, to look back. Rusty glanced up in his rear view mirror.

              “Oh, great,” Rusty said. “This is it.” Bail revoked. Maybe the Crippled Crawfish had really pissed Starr off.

              This time it was a Travertine County Sheriff’s patrol car.

              Rusty looked straight ahead. He didn’t bother taking out his billfold.

              Gloria turned around in the seat, looked back. “It’s Vince,” Gloria announced.

              Vince Gordon was the sheriff’s number one deputy. Rusty had gone to school with him.

              One car, one man had found Rusty. No bunch of cars. No press. No drawn guns.

              Rusty’s window was already down. He said nothing. Just looked straight ahead.

              Vince walked up to his window. “I was headed down to your place. Spotted you coming this way. Turned around, caught up with you.”

              Rusty sighed. He turned and looked at Vince. “What’s up, Vince? You want my driver’s license? You want me to come quietly?”

              “Naw, Rusty. I stopped to tell you the McAllisters have been looking for you.”

              “I hadn’t done anything to the McAllisters.” Not lately.

              “They looking for you. Pelfry McAllister’s dead.”

              “The one I hit at the party?” Gloria asked, like she was scared her left hook had a death delay to it.

              “Naw,” Vince said. “Pelfry Senior. Old man McAllister.”

              “Oh, man. I hate to hear that,” Rusty said. “But I didn’t kill him.”

              “Naw, man. He died from a stroke. They been looking for you and trying to call you. They need to see you in a bad way. You got to be a pallbearer.”

                                                                      Chapter 32

Rusty dropped Gloria off at Bob’s Windshield and Glass, then hightailed it straight to old man McAllister’s country house near Clear Springs. The place was covered up with McAllister’s.

              Rusty walked through all of them hanging out on the front porch and straight into the big front room. People sat quietly in every available chair that had been brought into the room. Some looked up and nodded to Rusty.

              Mrs. McAllister came in from the kitchen and saw Rusty. She walked straight over to him and hugged him.

              “I’m sorry to hear, Mrs. McAllister.”

              “Thank you, Rusty. You know Pelfry was just crazy about your daddy. He always said there wadn’t a better man than J.R. Clay.”

              “And I’ve heard those same words come out of daddy’s mouth about Mr. McAllister.” It was the only McAllister he had much of anything good to say about. ‘Pelfry is one of them good McAllister’s,’ were his daddy’s exact words.

              Then one of the Newby women came in the front door. Mrs. McAllister broke away from Rusty and went over and hugged her. They both went to bawling.

              Then Rusty spotted Justin in the kitchen. Justin gave a backward motion with his head. Rusty meandered around through the McAllister’s to the crowded kitchen. Justin had disappeared. Rusty walked on through and out the back door.

              Justin stood on the back porch. He was a little older than Rusty and was now officially the patriarch of the McAllister clan.

              Rusty was about to say how sorry he was, but Justin spun around and said: “Do you know it is against the law in the State of Alabama to bury a dog with a human being?”

              Rusty didn’t know if he meant side by side or in the same casket. Nonetheless, Rusty replied, “I’ll be dipped in shit. The world’s going to hell in a hand basket.”

              “Them sons of bitches in the legislature, what they do is slip in there in the middle of the night and pass laws somebody’s paid them off to pass when there ain’t but about ten or twelve of them there. That’s what they do. Do you know that’s how they passed the law that says you have to pay income tax? Shit, nobody would have voted for that.”

              “Don’t get me started on the justice system, Justin.”

              Now, there would have been irony for you--if the police came and took him into custody while he was at the McAllister’s.

              Justin nodded his head at Rusty, like he knew the situation Rusty was in.

              About then Goober, old Man McAllister’s old Black and Tan coon dog came wandering around the edge of the house. He leaned up against the back porch and walked in a limp, around the edge. The poor old dog was blind and damn near crippled with arthritis.

              Goober came on around and, old and crippled as he was, his nose still worked. He found Justin and got right up against him, like he was trying to get inside him and possess his body. Goober started crying and howling.

              “He knows something has happened to Daddy. It’s pitiful.”

              And it was pitiful. Goober gave the saddest moan. A plaintive cry. Rusty had heard Gloria use that term before and he had gone and looked it up in the dictionary. And if his memory served him correctly, that’s exactly what Goober was doing, giving a plaintive howl that could rip your heart out.

              Finally, Goober lay down at Justin’s feet and went to sleep.

              “Isn’t that the most pitifulest thang?”

              It was a rhetorical question, but Rusty answered it anyway. “It sure is.”

              “Daddy must a known something was going to happen. About two weeks ago he said if something happened to him, he wanted to be buried with Goober. So, what we gone do is the humane thing. We gone have Goober put down and bury him with Daddy.”

              “But it’s against the law?”

              “Damned undertakers got it passed is what I bet you. Trying to sell an extra casket. So, Mr. Bertrell up at the funeral home says he can’t do that. Well, I told him I could. Now, I want you to be a pall bearer?”

              “Of course.”

              “We gone ask Ray, too. I’m gone be with Mama, but after the funeral, we gone wheel the casket in the back room. I’ll have Goober there waiting. You, Ray, and my cousin’ll slip Goober in alongside Daddy and then close the casket. Bertrell is going to have himself a see nothing, know nothing, say nothing attitude. Then they’ll come get the casket roll it out for the cemetery.”

              “I see.”

              “You in?”

              “Of course. But your Daddy is a big man and Goober is a big dog. You think they’ll both fit in?”

              “Aw, we gone have Daddy laid out in a double wide. They’ll be plenty of room.”
Russell Clay, how to you plead to the double homicide of Elmore King and Dr. Robert Compton? Not guilty, Your Honor. The only thing I’ve done illegal lately is bury a coon dog with a McAllister.

              Rusty went back out to his truck. He had no more than cranked it up when he heard the faint ring of his cell phone. He opened the glove compartment. It was his old cell phone, not the untraceable one Al had given him. He barely remembered leaving it in there.

              “Hello.”

              “Rusty. Starr is going to let the bail be.” It was Sammy.

              Hot damn. Never underestimate the lure of a Crippled Crawfish.

              “Far out!” Rusty said.

              “Yeah. Can you meet me at Freddy’s Place? There’s something I want to go over with you.”

              “I’m on my way.”

              Rusty wasn’t a quarter mile down the road until it rang again.

              “Hello.”

              “Hey, Melvin. What’s up?”

              “The Madison County Sheriff’s office just called.”

“Oh, shit.”

“No, they just told me you could pick up your El Camino. They’re through searching it for evidence.”

“I’ll call my cousin Ray. He and his wife can go pick it up. I don’t want to go anywhere near any Madison County sheriff’s facilities.”

              “I can understand that.”