The Redneck Detective Agency (The Redneck Detective Agency Mystery Series Book 1) (22 page)

Chapter 46

Rusty kept the gun on him. “Where’s your boat?” Rusty asked.

              “Near yours.”

              “You’re going to have to walk on your own.” Rusty wasn’t getting near him.

              Al got to his feet and slowly limped toward the south part of the island. Ten good feet behind him and with gun still in hand, Rusty used his left hand to get out the cellphone and punched Gloria’s number.

              “Gloria. Al tried to abduct me, pulled a gun on me. He’s been bitten twice by two cottonmouths. I’m on Clay Island about to bring him in his own boat. ”

              “Oh, my God! You be careful. I’ll handle things from this end.”

              Rusty clicked off. Al trudged along in a slow, automaton kind of way. Rusty kept the gun pointed right at his back. They got to Al’s boat. The bow had been run up onto ground. Al walked to the bow of the boat and collapsed in it.

              Rust put the phone in his pocket. He pushed the bow until the boat floated freely. Rusty pulled the boat around and hopped in just behind the helm. He started to crank the engine, but looked at Al.

              Al stared at him. He didn’t seem to be in any pain now, but his entire leg and especially lower leg was swelled up to cartoonish proportions. Rusty wondered if in fact it could explode.

              “Aren’t you supposed to cut little x’s on the bite wounds and then get down and suck on it?” Al said in a dead pan sort of way, but it sounded like the punch line to a joke.

              Rusty laughed. “Naw, they don’t do that shit anymore. More people died from having little x’s cut in them than they did the snake bites. We’ll pack you in ice just as soon as we get to the marina. In the meantime, just lower your heart rate down. I know you can do mental shit like that.”

              “That dynamite blast knocked off the electronic balance of my body.”

              “It didn’t do anything for the hearing in my left ear either,” Rusty said.

              Rusty got the Boston Whaler full throttle. He came around the point and made a ninety degree. The marina was still crowded with boats, cars, and people.

              But a lane of open water had been created among the boats. And at the end of that lane, at the water’s edge of the boat ramp, a big ass Dodge Ram pickup was parked.

              This huge bearded man in bib overalls waved Rusty on in. The back of a deputy’s car was right in front of the truck. The blue and red lights were flashing.

              You could always count on Gloria to take care of things.

              Rusty pulled in. Two gargantuan bearded men grabbed Al up and put him in the back of the pickup. Gloria and some man Rusty didn’t know climbed into the back. Two men ran up with four five gallon buckets of ice. The buckets were handed up. Gloria dumped the first bucket—Al was out of Rusty’s line of sight now—onto Al.

              The truck eased forward. The deputy’s car took off, with the truck following.

              Sheriff Barker walked over to Rusty. Rusty stood in the bow of Al’s boat. Rusty extended the gun to the sheriff. “Here’s the gun Al killed Elmore King with. He claimed self-defense.”

              Nolan was about to take it, but pulled his hand back. “Hot damn. Lay it down in the boat. I better call Sammy.”

              Then it hit Rusty. “Where’s Vivian?!”

              “Who?” Nolan asked.

              “Al’s girlfriend. She didn’t come in here in Doc’s old fishing boat with a huge, huge catfish?”

              “No. I been here for an hour. Some grabblers from Mississippi were causing a commotion.”

              The sheriff got on his cell phone.

              Rusty hopped out of Al’s boat and ran around the place, looking. But if Vivian had come in with Ole Blue, everyone would have known it.

              Rusty ran down the dock—dodging in and out of grabblers—to Gloria’s slip and got into the old wooden Chris-Craft. He got the keys under the passenger cushion. He unmoored her and cranked her up.

              Rusty blasted the horn a few times to urge a couple of boats out of the way. He taxied out of the marina and then opened her up, headed straight for where he had grabbled Old Blue.

              He went almost all the way to the catfish hole, but there was no one or any boat to be seen. He looped the boat full speed and headed back across the river. That’s when he saw the figure. He saw somebody sitting on Al’s dock. Doc Davenport’s old dock. He headed straight for it.

              As he neared he could see the figure all hunkered over. A little closer, he saw it to definitely be Vivian, with her head in her hands and her legs dangling off the end of the dock. And closer still, he saw Doc Davenport’s boat swamped. The bow barely stuck out of the water. The video camera sat on the dock right beside her. The outboard was just under the water, the foot probably resting on the bottom.

              Rusty pulled up and moored the Chris-Craft. He climbed up on the dock.

              Vivian sat there. Every once in a while, she caught her breath between light sobs. She seemed spent, like she had been there crying her eyes out.

              She raised her head up and looked at Rusty. He sat down beside her. “What’s wrong, Vivian?”

              “I’m sorry, Rusty. I’m sorry. I was taking the fish in like I was supposed to and I heard him grunting. Over the outboard I could hear these terrible grunts. I stopped the boat and he was just grunting, almost whining. It sounded like he was a man. It was so pitiful. I couldn’t take it. I thought it was some man that looked like a catfish. I had to let him go. I just had to.”

              Rusty put his hand on her shoulder. “I understand. I understand.”

              “I drove over here and unstrapped him and got over him and I capsized the boat getting him out. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Vivian said.

              “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Thank God he didn’t have to have his picture in the paper with a two hundred fourteen pound catfish. And worse--Rusty could see it in
The Wall Street Journal
right now.
Alabama man previously arrested for the bombing murder of his ex-wife’s multi-millionaire fiancé grabs world record catfish with bare hands
. To hell with giving those Yankees an opportunity to make fun of somebody from Alabama.

              “I can get together the five thousand dollars and give to you. I promise,” Vivian said.

              “What five thousand dollars?”

              “The prize money for the biggest fish.”

              “Oh, you just forget that. I never wanted that money. I’m relieved.”

              “Really?”

              “Yeah. One less thing I have to contend with right now. Let some worthwhile grabbler who could use the money for his family get the five thousand dollars. And me, you, and Al were going to split it three ways, anyhow.”

              “At least we have it on video,” Vivian said. “I don’t know if that will qualify you for a world’s record…”

              “No, no, no, Vivian. It’s all right. It was an illegal grabble. The fish had been placed there.”

              “It had?”

              “Yes.”

              “The way it grunted was terrible, Rusty. You wouldn’t believe me. It was like an old man saying, ‘Let me go, let me go, let me go.’”

              “I know how they can grunt.”

              “If I hadn’t have done it, I would have felt like I was killing someone. It would have given me nightmares.”

              “Believe me, Vivian. I understand. You did the right thing. The perfectly right thing.”

              With that Vivian, put her arms around Rusty and clung to him.

              “Listen, Vivian, there’s something I need to tell you about Al right now.”

Chapter 47

Rusty and Ray lifted up Goober’s body and hoisted up into the double wide casket right next to old man McAllister’s corpse.

              Rusty was telling Ray, “I don’t know why Gloria has this little game going. She’s got this thing about having to claim I’m a redneck.”

              “Don’t let it bother you,” Ray said with a grunt. He was tugging old man McAllister so that he was more on his side of the casket. “There, that’s good. Pull ole Goober’s head around a little there, Rusty, and it’ll look like they in bed sleeping together.”

              “You do it. I don’t like touching dead dogs,” Rusty said.

              “Damn pussy,” Ray accused. Then Ray went to straightening Goober’s head around.

              “I mean,” Ray said. “Where Gloria is coming from is, I mean I’m a bigger redneck than you are…”

              “I never hear her calling
you
a redneck.”

              “That’s the point. You won’t claim you one. That’s her game. Just like Alice. She’s got her little game. She claims I’m a white liar and that I make stuff up and I deny it all the time. But that’s the game. I mean what am I supposed to say that yeah your ass is a little bigger than it used to be? That, yeah, I was staring at that woman’s tits. That, yeah, I had more than two beers. That, yeah, I can remember I had that five hundred dollars hidden in my sock drawer. That, yeah, I could have come home half an hour ago…”

              “Hell. You think you know everything there is to know about women, Ray?”

              “I do.”

              “You’re the only man on Earth who does.”

              “Just because I only got one damn arm don’t mean I go around setting my own limitations.”

              “You got me there.”

              “But you are one lucky son of a bitch.”

              “How’s that?”

              “What about the game between the Clear Springs Blue Catfish and Claramina? That damn field goal of yours back in 1970?”

              Rusty laughed. “Aw, that’s those assholes own fault. If they want to go ahead and play a game with a storm rolling in with thirty miles an hour winds…”

              “And you do have certain abilities that only a redneck would have.”

              “Like what?”

              “You have some power over some animals. You know like catching Cottonmouths.”

              “Well, you can do that with that one arm you got.”

              “Yeah, but it’s more than that. I seen that video. That damn two hundred and fourteen pound blue cat. It spit your arm out and jumped in the boat.”

              “It did not, Ray. I had to wrestle that thing over the gunwale.”

              “You did not! The camera don’t lie. I saw it with my own eyes. That damn catfish just jumped in the boat for you!” Ray was practically hollering so loud now that Rusty was scared they could hear him in the church.

              Then Henrietta McAllister, the new widow, walked into the back room of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church. She came to the casket and leaned over her husband’s corpse. She started crying. “Oh, boys, you have done a wonderful job. Look, just look at that.”

              She stood back and held her hands to her breast. “It looks like him and Goober are just taking them a nap before they go off coon huntin’ for the night.”

              “They going off to that big coon hunt in the sky is what they doing, Mrs. McAllister,” Ray said.

              “Oh, Ray,” Mrs. McAllister said, “you as gifted with words as your daddy was. Lord rest his soul.”

              Mrs. McAllister went over and put her hands on her dead husband’s hands, stared at him a moment and then backed away. “Okay, Rusty.”

              Rusty stepped up and closed the casket lid. She went back into the church and as soon as she got out there, Rusty could hear her break down.

              The funeral director, Charles Bertell, along with the other pallbearers, walked into the back room from the church auditorium. Chuck reached under the lid of the casket and clamped it shut. He directed them to roll the casket out the side door.

              They stepped out into the blazing hot June sun. The pallbearers got the casket into the hearse.

              Then Rusty turned and admired his new car. All he had been through, all the interrogations, all the press bullshit, and now in the middle of a funeral, he still could take the time to baste in the glory of the car that Ray had just finished for him.

              A cool, sleek, blue-gray 450 SL Mercedes. It was jacked up a bit all around. Had big mud grip tires on the back and small mud grip tires on the front. That would keep the bottom from scraping the middle of the rutted country river roads. Add the 327 into the mix and it would skitter along as fast as any pickup.