The Redneck Detective Agency (The Redneck Detective Agency Mystery Series Book 1) (3 page)

Chapter 5

Rusty put in a new razor and gave himself a clean close shave and then took a tub bath with an extra soak.

              He had three kinds of jeans: his Levi’s, his Wrangler Carpenter Jeans, and some he had bought over in Huntsville for fifty dollars. He put on the fifty dollar ones and a clean white pressed shirt.

              He went back out to his fire pit and stoked the charcoals. They were good and burnt down and putting out enough heat to be broiling hot. He went back in and took out the steaks and sopped them down with butter.

              He looked out the front kitchen window and there was Gloria cutting out of the channel and headed toward his pier. He walked down to greet her.

              Forget all the fancy new ski boats and bass boats and pontoon boats that all the rich yuppies from Dolopia had on the Elk. Gloria had the ultimate--a 1957 wooden Chris-Craft eighteen foot runabout that had belonged to her father. She had a new Johnson outboard on it.

              Rusty stared down at Gloria’s cleavage. She had perfect small breasts and just two years ago she had a job done on them, but instead of some trashy shit where women knocked them up two cup sizes she just had them tightened up and shaped. But that was Gloria--all class.

              Now, she had them all pouched out there in a push-up bra with her little lacy black dress that came just above her knees. She had on a matching hat and open-toed black shoes with her nails all done bright red. It matched the band on her broad-rim hat.

              Around the marina and at home, Gloria wore pants, but to go into town, and obviously to come to Rusty’s, she wore dresses and a hat. She started putting stuff up on the dock.

              Two baskets, a cardboard box with two bottles of wine and some French bread. A small ice chest of who knew what. An overnight bag.

              “Good God, Gloria.”

              “I have to be uptown at Perry’s at ten o’clock in the morning for an important meeting.” Perry was the lawyer who rented the downstairs of Rusty’s building.

              “What a coincidence. I have to be at my office at ten o’clock for an important meeting.” If you call an appointment with some mystery grabbler important. One whose case was a stolen two hundred and fourteen pound catfish. But slap five thousand dollars cash on top of it and it has some validity.

              Gloria set another box up on the dock.

              “What in the hell is that?” Rusty asked.

              “A chocolate fondue. I have some fresh sweet strawberries in the cooler. You dip the strawberries in the chocolate.”

              “Sounds very romantic.”

              “It is.”

              “Well, the coals are ready. I got T-bones and sirloins I’m about to put on.”

              “I have the salads made already. They’re in a big Tupperware bowl in the cooler.”

              Gloria finished mooring her boat.

              “You want me to take my skiff out of the boathouse and you put her in for the night?”

              Gloria gave it a thought and said, “Nah. Thanks. She’ll be all right right here.”

              Then Gloria stepped up on the gunwale and put her right foot up on the deck. There was about three good feet of elevation difference between her right and left foot now. She extended her hand and Rusty took it.

              Her dress rode plumb up her right thigh. Up way high. Rusty got a good clear crotch shot. And saw that she had on black lacy panties, not those thong kind or French cut jobs or even bikini ones, but those boy-short ones or whatever they were. Not that there was anything boy about her right now. It certainly finished off her ensemble quite well.

              Gloria had always been like that. Letting her dresses ride up. Rusty loved riding with her when she drove in a dress. She was never behind the wheel five minutes until her dress was up to her ass, with her legs all spread.

              Rusty took it all in before he gave her hand a tug and she hopped on up to the dock. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and then adjusted her hat and turned to look back over the river.

              There was slight breeze. It was mid May, still nice weather on the Elk along here. Maybe it was the breeze came around the bend and off the cool bluffs, but it always seemed to be a good ten degrees cooler around Clear Springs than in town.

              Gloria picked up her night bag and the cooler and walked on up to the house. Rusty grabbed two cardboard boxes and followed her. She sashayed her little tight fifty-nine year old ass for his benefit.

              When they plopped the stuff down on the kitchen table, Gloria said, “I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. Why don’t you throw the steaks on and I’ll put away all this stuff?”

              “Okay.”

              Rusted got the platter of raw steak. He walked over to the back door and turned. Gloria had gone to the kitchen sink and was leaning over, looking out the window. “The sun is setting, Rusty. After you put the steak on, let’s go down on the dock and look.”

              “Okay,” Rusty said.

              Then she bent over even further. “Oh, there’s a heron on your dock. It hopped over onto the bow of my boat.”

              Then she started scratching her butt. She stood up straight, but with her back still to Rusty. She scratched at her crotch. “These underwear may be cute and sexy but they sure do itch.”

              She reached up under her dress and pulled off her panties. She dropped them on the floor there and bent forward over the sink again, staring out the window. “I think that is the biggest heron I’ve ever seen on Elk River.”

              Rusty looked at the panties on the floor, then back up at her ass. Sometimes life was a bitch. Then sometimes...

Chapter 6

At a quarter till ten the next morning, Rusty sat in his office. He wasn’t thinking much about the mystery man and the stolen record-breaking two hundred fourteen pound catfish. He was thinking about sex.

              It had been a long time since he’d had a night like last night. It had been thirty years since he’d had sex with anyone but Jenny. Between their marriages, he’d never gone out prowling. He knew Jenny would come back. But not this time. This time she was marrying a rich surgeon.

              Ten o’clock came and went. Ten thirty came and went. No fat grabbler. That was a little strange. Rusty didn’t even know the man’s name who had given him five thousand dollars in cash, but he took him for a punctual man. And if his memory served him correctly, the grabbler had said, “Ten o’clock sharp.” When you said ten o’clock sharp, ten-thirty was definitely late.

              Maybe the man was crazy. Delusional enough to think he was some king of the catfish. A two hundred fourteen pound catfish. Rusty had never heard of a catfish weighing over a hundred fifty pounds. Sure, there were rumors and legends. The biggest one Rusty ever saw with his own eyes weighed one hundred forty pounds. It took two McAllister’s to get the thing in the boat. It was a bizarre looking monster.

              With the concept the man wasn’t going to show up, the adrenalin ran out of his body. He went over and lay on his little couch. He had gotten little sleep. He and Gloria had been up almost all night long. He was as good as he ever was, but it would probably take him a couple days to recover.

              Just as he was about to doze off, he came awake. He knew the door downstairs was being opened. The creaking sound snapped him to.

              Now footsteps. It was not the fat grabbler. There was no mistaking that clomp. They were an octave—not that Rusty knew shit about music—off from Jenny’s. It was Gloria.

              Clomp, clomp, clomp up the stairs so quickly. Rusty stood up, then saw blue illuminate the translucent glass. There was a knock.

              “Rusty, it’s me. Gloria.”

              Rusty hustled over and opened the door.

              Gloria entered, all perky as hell. She had on a neon blue dress, came a little below her knees. It was low-cut with sleeves. She had a matching hand bag, had on a matching hat and matching open toe shoes.

              She walked to the middle of the room, twirled around and announced, “I will soon have a divorce from Al.”

              “Congratulations,” Rusty said. What in the hell was he supposed to say? He was sure there was nothing about the proper retort to that in Emily Post, not that he had an Emily Post. It had belonged to Jenny and Jenny took it with her.

              Gloria tossed her handbag onto the seat of the swivel chair and then plopped herself down on the couch. Her dress rode up high above her knees. Rusty sat beside her. He thought he was good for now, but damned if he didn’t think he might just run his hand up between her legs.

              “I had to distance myself from him,” she explained.

              “Why’s that?”

              “He’s becoming a loose cannon.”

              “He is a little different. I’ve always found him intriguing.”

              “Intriguing is a good word for Al. We had a fun three years together. But I have to fix it so none of his actions have financial repercussions on me. That girl he’s shacked up with. He swore to me he looked at her driver’s license and that she’s nineteen, but I bet she’s barely sixteen if that.”

              “I was illegal when you first fucked me decades ago,” Rusty said, as a reminder.

              “I like casting the first stone.”

              Al Bolton had come into town a very handsome man of thirty-five. He seemed to have a thing for good-looking older women and soon married one twenty years his senior, one Gloria Davenport. Of course, Davenport was Gloria’s maiden name. She changed it twice. Right before Al came into town she legally changed it back to Davenport. Her two grown children were off in other states, with no grandchildren in sight, and she wanted her original name back. When she and Al married, she kept the name Davenport.

              But when Al turned thirty-eight he suffered some kind of midlife crisis and didn’t show up to work at the bait shop and just stayed holed up alone in a cabin for over a month. When he came out of his funk he was still kind of aloof and now had a thing for good-looking girls about twenty years younger than he was.

              Twenty years older, now twenty years younger. It must be one of those yin-yang things, Gloria had said.

              Now Gloria said to Rusty, “I gave him the cabin and he was happy. He didn’t contest a thing, just signed the papers. We’ve never been mad at each other. He just has this split personality thing happened when he turned thirty-eight.”

              “Wait, Gloria. You just up and gave him your father’s old cabin?”

              “Yes.”

              “That’s one prime waterfront lot.” It was just south of the marina. The first piece of river property her daddy owned. Prime real estate. Everything south of the marina all the way to the Tennessee was known as the Elk Riviera.

              “Glad to cut the financial ties for that. It was a bargain. Speaking of intriguing. Have you been to that cabin lately?”

              “No.”

              “Looks like a command post. All the electronic shit he’s got in there. I think he’s getting back into that clandestine stuff I suspect he was into before he came to Travertine County.”

              “He was in the CIA?”

              “I think he might have worked for them. A contract spy. And big international corporate intrigue. I think his looks and personality and knowledge of electronics made him a natural. I think his little romance with river life at little Clear Springs, Alabama, is over.”

              “Well, good on doing whatever you had to do.”

              “Yes. Enough of talking about Al.”

              Rusty put his hand between her knees and then slid his hand slowly and gently toward her crotch. He didn’t have any strong intentions in his action. He just didn’t want to offend her by not taking advantage of the moment.

              Gloria paid no attention to his hand. Acted like it wasn’t there. She said, “Speaking of Clear Springs. That’s where I need to be right now. That Catfish Rodeo has me in high water.”

              She squeezed her legs together. “You owe me a date, Rusty.”

              “Owe you a date?”

              “Yes, you said if last night worked out we’d go out on a date.”

              “Yes, last night worked out well for me. Where do you want to go on this date?”

              “To a Broadway play.”

              “I’m supposed to take you to New York City?”

              “No. There’s some on tour to Birmingham, Nashville, Mobile.”

              “We’ll go, Gloria.”

              “I got that wedding tomorrow. Sunday I got Mama and Glenda. After the catfish rodeo’s over.”

              “All right. After the mud settles on all that, we’ll go.”