Where There's Smoke (22 page)

"The place looks great, Bobby.
 
Still doing a land office business."

"Hell, yes.
 
As long as folks eat, drink, and screw, they know the best place to come to find all three.
 
One-stop shopping.
 
That's my business philosophy!
 
Who's this?"
 
He jabbed a finger in Lara's direction.

Key introduced her.
 
The tavern owner didn't even attempt to hide his surprise.
 
"So you're the shady lady I've heard so much about.

Son of a bitch."
 
He looked her over with a candor she appreciated after being eyed covertly by so many others.

"You hung your shingle out in town.
 
Old Doc Patton's place, 5 that right?"

"That's right."
 
Lara smiled, noticing the burn scars above his eyebrows and along his hairline.

"Will wonders never cease."
 
He shifted his gaze between the two of them.
 
"Didn't reckon y'all would be on speaking terms."

"We're not," Key replied.
 
"But we were hungry at the same time, so here we are.
 
You going to serve us or jaw all night?"

Barbecue Bobby grinned.
 
"Hell, yeah, I'm going to serve you.

Can't wait to get my hands on your money.
 
What'll ya have?"

"Two rib platters.
 
No sauce on mine."

"I'll bring the sauce on the side and y'all can suit yourselves.
 
A couple more beers?"

"When you bring the dinners."

"Sure hope I get sick real soon," Bobby said, winking at Lara.

Then, shaking his head over the vagaries of life, he lumbered back to his bar.

Key took several long swallows of his beer.
 
Lara sipped hers.
 
"Did you go flying last night?"

He stopped drinking, but held the spout of the bottle against his lips and idly rubbed it across them.
 
"Why?"

Lara looked away from his mouth and the beer bottle.
 
"Just wondering."

"Yeah, I flew last night.
 
Took out a Piper Cub.
 
Know what that is?"

She shook her head, although she now had a vague idea of what one looked like.
 
"Nice little kite if you're going out for a spin.
 
Why'd you ask?"

She wouldn't admit that in order to clear her head after their altercation in the school parking lot she had taken a drive in the country, or that she had watched a foolhardy, but highly skilled, pilot flirt with death and destruction.

"I was thinking about your ankle," she said.
 
"Since you're still favoring it when you walk, I wasn't sure you could fly."

"It still gets sore.
 
But I couldn't remain grounded any longer or I'd have gone crazy.

"Then this hiatus is unusual for you?"

"Flying's my business.
 
I fly for hire.
 
For whoever has a job that sounds interesting."

That's your criteria?
 
Whether it's 5g "And well paying," he said with a grin.
 
"I don't fly for chicken feed."

"You can pick and choose your clients?"

"Pretty much.
 
Some outfits are top notch.
 
Their planes are slick and expensive.
 
They even enforce a few rules and regulations about how many hours a pilot can fly without sleep and how long it's been since his last beer.
 
They expect you to fill out all the paperwork required by the FAA.

"But there are just as many outfits whose planes aren't as well maintained.
 
Sometimes the landing strips at the destination aren't ideal.
 
And about their only restriction on a pilot is that he's able to open one eye.

"You've flown under those conditions?"

Under those conditions' I've earned some of my best money."

Having listened to him talk about it, she decided that money was the least of his motivators.
 
"You love it, don't you?"

"Second only to sex.
 
Sometimes it's even better than sex because there's no foreplay and airplanes can't talk."

She didn't take the bait.

He went on.
 
"Up there, everything's so clean.
 
There's no bullshit to cloud your thinking."
 
He squinted as though searching for the appropriate description.
 
"In the sky, things are uncomplicated."

"It looks extremely complicated."

"Flying's a motor skill," he said with a brusque shake of his head.

"You're either born a flyer or you aren't.
 
It comes from your gut, not your head.
 
You're either good or bad.
 
Decisions are either right or wrong.
 
You fuck up, you die.
 
It's that simple.
 
There're no gray areas, no time for analysis.
 
Only quick judgment calls that you hope to God are right."

"It wasn't that simple today," she reminded him.

"For me it was.
 
I wasn't involved in the emergency.
 
My job was to pilot the craft.
 
That's what I did."

Lara didn't believe he was as nonchalant as all that.
 
He had been more emotionally involved with saving Letty Leonard's life than he wanted to admit and would have been terribly upset if she had died en route to the hospital.

Barbecue Bobby served their beers and rib platters.
 
On each was a side of succulent baby back ribs, french fries cooked in their jackets, creamy coleslaw, a slice of red onion, two slices of white bread, and a jalapeno pepper the size of a small banana.
 
Key bit into his as though it were a piece of fruit.
 
Just the scent of it brought tears to Lara's eyes, so she avoided it.
 
The ribs, however, tasted as good as Key had promised.
 
The pork, smoked for hours over mesquite wood, virtually melted off the bone.

"Did you always want to be a pilot?"
 
Lara asked between bites.

"Did you always want to be a doctor?"

"I can't remember wanting to be anything else."

He shot her a wicked grin.
 
"When you were a kid and played doctor, you played it for real, huh?"

"Actually yes," she returned with a smile.
 
"Although not as you mean.

My friends would eventually tire of the game and wanted to move on to playing teacher' or movie star' or model."
 
I never wanted to stop bandaging them until they looked like mummies.
 
I took their temperatures with Popsicle sticks and gave them shots with meat basters."

"Ouch."

"It was a preoccupation my parents desperately hoped I would outgrow.

I never did."

"They didn't cotton to you going into medicine?"

"Not at all.
 
They wanted me to be a lady of leisure who does lunch with friends, holds office in service clubs, and organizes charity functions.
 
Not that there's anything wrong with doing those things.

For a lot of women that represents challenge and fulfillment.
 
But it wasn't the life for me.

"Mama and Daddy couldn't understand that?"

"No, Mother and Father couldn't."
 
He acknowledged the distinction with raised eyebrows.
 
Lara explained.
 
"I came late in their marriage.
 
In fact I was an unexpected and unpleasant surprise.

"But, since they were stuck with me, my parents decided to make the best of the situation and plotted the course of my life.
 
Because I didn't want to follow the path they had carefully chosen, they've never let me forget what a burden I've been to them.
 
And sometimes I was," she added with a reflective laugh.

"I once kept a friend in intensive care' for hours until her concerned parents came looking for her.
 
They found her in my bedroom breathing through drinking straws that I'd poked up her nostrils.
 
It's a wonder she didn't suffocate.
 
I prepped another friend for brain surgery by giving her a very short haircut."

Chuckling, Key blotted his mouth with a napkin.

"Then there was Molly."

"What'd you do to her?"

"I cut her open."

He choked on his swig of beer.
 
"You what?"

"Molly was our next door neighbor's golden retriever.
 
She was a beautiful dog that I'd played with since I could toddle in the yard between our houses.
 
Molly got sick and-" "You operated?"

"No, she died.
 
Our neighbor was disconsolate and couldn't bear to bury her the same day she expired.
 
So they wrapped her in plastic and left her in the carriage house overnight."

"Good God.
 
You performed an autopsy?"

"A crude one, yes.
 
I coerced a friend of mine, who claimed to want to be a nurse, to sneak into the carriage house with me.
 
We took along our housekeeper's kitchen utensils."

He laughed, running his hand down his face.
 
"Most girls l knew played with Barbie dolls."

Defensively, Lara said, "As long as Molly was feeling no pain, I didn't see the harm in cutting her open and taking a look inside.

I wanted to learn something about anatomy, although at the time I didn't even know the word."

"What happened?"

"As I began to remove Molly's organs, my so-called friend started screaming.
 
Hearing the screams, Molly's owner called the police.

They arrived roughly at the same time my parents missed my friend and me.
 
They stormed the carriage house, saw the carnage, and all hell broke loose.

"Naturally, my parents were horrified and began accusing each other of having undisclosed bad seeds' in their family trees.
 
The neighbor declared she would never speak to any of us again.
 
My friend's parents told mine that there was obviously something dreadfully wrong with me and that I should have psychiatric care before I became a real danger to myself and others.

"My parents agreed.
 
After weeks of expensive and extensive psychiatric sessions, the doctor's analysis was that I was a perfectly normal eleven-year-old.
 
My only unusual trait was an obsessive interest in human anatomy from a strictly medical viewpoint."

"Bet your folks were relieved to know they hadn't raised a ghoul."

"Not really.
 
They continued to believe that my desire to become a doctor was strange.
 
To some extent, they still do."
 
With her finger she absently traced a bead of condensation that trickled down her beer bottle.

"My parents are very social.
 
Appearances are important to them, and they resent cogs in their well-oiled lives.
 
I've provided many, beginning with my birth and ending-" She raised her eyes to meet his.

"Ending with the scene at Clark's cottage.
 
Like you, Mr. Tackett, they didn't chasten me for having an affair.
 
Only for making it public knowledge."

At that moment, a body landed in the middle of their table. chapter nine.

Brty dinner dishes clattered to the floor while rib bones scattered across the grimy planks like clumsy Pick-Up-Sticks.
 
Four bottles of beer toppled.
 
One broke, the others rolled away.