Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (22 page)

“No, that’s not it.”
 
Jimmy tried to see what the man was rubbing against.
 
“Like I said, I’m writing—”

“A book, I know.
 
You
told me already.
 
What do you think I am,
stupid?”
 
The man backed away from the
counter slightly.
 

“Look,” Jimmy said, “the public has a right to information
concerning—”

“Oh, now you’re gonna lecture me on the fundamental rights
of a constitutional democracy, is that it?”
 
The man smiled in an odd way.

“I’m not lecturing about anything.
 
I just want to know what I have to do to get
a look at the public records.”

“Same as everybody,” the man said.
 
“Fill out some forms.
 
I need to see copies of a 37 dash 131 and the
Federal FOIA request form along with your tax returns for the past three years
and two forms of photo identification.”

Jimmy made an involuntary face.
 
“What?
 
That’s insane.
 
I’m not asking for
sensitive federal information here I just—”

The man behind the counter slowly opened a drawer and pulled
out a small, dirty pistol which he laid gently on the counter.
 
Jimmy’s eyes opened wide.
 
What sort of a nightmare had he stumbled into
here?
 
He half expected the man to open
another drawer, pull out a banjo, and start playing the theme to
Deliverance
.
 
The man’s face tensed like a dam holding back
an emotional reservoir.
 
Jimmy couldn’t
decide whether to go for the gun or the door.
 
When the man made a sudden move, Jimmy snatched the gun and skittered
backwards on the tile.
 
That’s when the
dam burst and the man started laughing.
 
“Ewww-weee!
 
You
shoulda seen your face!” he cackled.
 
Then he got all serious again.
 
“I’ll need to see your last three tax returns.”
 
He laughed some more.
 
“I’m just having fun with ya man, relax.
 
I don’t get to have a lot of fun here.”

Jimmy was unable to see the humor.
 
He felt the heft of the gun in his hand and
wondered if the skinny little guy was the sort of person who ought to be in
possession of a loaded weapon.

“Gone and shoot me if you’re mad,” the man said.
 
“Ain’t nothin’ but a starter’s
pistol.
”
 
He chuckled
some more as he imitated himself.
 
“37
dash 131 and two forms of photo I.D.”
 
The skinny man turned and headed for the filing cabinet.
 
“What was the last name again?”

Jimmy stared at the man for a moment before answering.
 
“Long,” he said.
 
“Tammy Long.”
 
Figuring the best thing to do was play along with this
lunatic,
Jimmy faked a laugh and pointed the gun at the
man.
 
“You had me going there,” he
said.
 
“I was ready to go get my tax
returns for you.”

The guy was rooting through a filing cabinet now, not paying
attention to Jimmy.
 
He mocked himself
again as he stood there, “Plus your tax returns for the past three years.”
 
He laughed.
 
“I wish more folks came in here so I could do that,” he said as he
walked back to the counter holding up the file.
 
“You’d be surprised at how dull this job can be.”
 
He stopped short of handing the file to
Jimmy.
 
He cocked his head to one
side.
 
“What kinda book you writin’?”

“Biography,” Jimmy said.
 
“You ever hear of Eddie Long?”
 

The skinny man said he’d seen Eddie perform once at the
casino up in Tunica and thought he did a real nice show.
 
“I didn’t realize he was from around here
though.”
 
He put the file on the counter,
then
looked around like a naughty school boy.
 
“You better not let the sheriff walk in here
and see you holding that gun on me.”

Jimmy slid the pistol across the counter in exchange for the
file.
 
It contained crime scene photos
along with copies of reports from every county agency that dealt with the
matter.
 
The newspaper reports Jimmy had
seen said only that Tammy had been found dead in her house.
 
There had been no details about cause of
death, only that
it was under investigation.

The coroner’s report filled in the blanks.
 
It said Tammy had died of poisoning and the
death was listed as a suicide.
 
But there
was also mention of a gunshot wound to the head.
 
Jimmy looked at the skinny man.
 
“Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

“Yeah,” the man said.
 
He looked over to his desk, then back at Jimmy.
 
“And you wanna see something past
strange?”
 
He went to his desk and picked
up what turned out to be a printout of an e-mail.
 
“This came in a few days ago from the State
Police in Terrebonne Parish, down in Louisiana.”

Jimmy took the document.
 
The information had come by way of the National
Crime Information
Center, a federal clearinghouse of
malfeasance.
 
It said a man by the name
of Fred Babineaux, first assumed to have died in a single vehicle automobile
accident, had actually died of sodium fluoroacetate poisoning.
 
According to the investigating officers, the
poison appeared to have been put intentionally into a dose of Dr. Porter’s
Headache Powder which Mr. Babineaux had ingested moments before crashing his
car.
 
According to a receipt found in the
wreckage, Mr. Babineaux had bought the powder at an E-Z Mart in Shreveport
the day prior to his death.
 
Louisiana
State Police were investigating his death as a homicide and were making routine
inquiries about any similar poisonings in the region on the chance that this
was part of a pattern.

“My guess is they’re thinkin’ it’s a serial killer like that
Tylenol pois’nin’ back in the eighties,” the skinny man said.
 
“That’d be a pretty good chapter for your
book if Eddie’s wife turned out to be a victim of a serial killer, wouldn’t
it?”

Jimmy nodded.
 
It
certainly would be interesting, he thought.
 
In fact a good serial killer story might be a book unto itself.
 
Jimmy’s publishing career couldn’t seem to
stay on one track. He already had a possible biography or a novel — depending
on how Eddie’s future played out, and now he suddenly had the start of a
true-crime book.
 
Except for the fact
that Megan had dumped him, he was having a good week.
 
He held up the fax.
 
“Did you respond to this?”

The skinny guy looked wounded.
 
“‘Course I responded.
 
I called and told ‘em we had a pois’nin’ and
that we’d found a box of the Dr. Porter’s stuff in the medicine cabinet.”
 
He rifled through the crime scene photos and
found one taken in the bathroom.
 
It
showed the open cabinet with the box clearly visible on the shelf.
 
“We sent ‘em the box and, sure enough, there
was poison in every one of the little doses, you know, those little
envelopes.”
 
He indicated the size of the
envelopes with his thumb and index finger.
 
“And you wanna know something else weird?”
 
The man found the part of the coroner’s
report detailing the contents of Tammy’s stomach.
 
“Says she’d eaten Chinese food ‘fore she died
— didn’t even get digested that poison killed her so fast.”

Jimmy saw that she’d eaten orange beef, one of his
favorites.
 
“What’s weird about that?”

The man spread the sheriff’s report on the counter then
slapped his hand down on top of it.
 
“Where’d it come from?
 
You know
what I’m saying?”
 
He pointed at the
photos.
 
“Ain’t
nothing
in the pictures.
 
No Chung King cartons
in the trash, no take-ee out-ee boxes on the counter, nothin’.
 
Not a dirty dish in sight, and ain’t a decent
Chinese restaurant within fifteen miles of Hinchcliff.
 
I think they oughtta be looking into that, is
what I think.”

“That’s weird all right.”
 
Jimmy collected the sheriff’s and coroner’s reports.
 
“Can I get copies of these?”

The skinny man pointed at the copy machine.
 
“Go on.”
 
As Jimmy made copies, the skinny guy took a phone call.
 
Jimmy stapled the coroner’s report to the
death certificate,
then
made a note to find out what
sodium flouroacetate was.
 
After a few
minutes of saying “uh huh” and “issat right?” into the phone, the skinny man
hung up and looked at Jimmy.
 
“Well, talk
about scratchin’ where it itches…”
 
The man pointed at the phone.
 
“That there was a detective from Tuscaloosa,
Alabama.”
 
He walked to the fax machine just as it started to ring.

“What did he want?”

The skinny man didn’t answer.
 
He just stood by the fax machine,
grinning.
 
When the fax finished printing
he handed it to Jimmy.
 
“Seems somebody down there had a headache too.”

32.

Eddie picked up the phone to make a call but there was no
dial tone.
 
He pushed the button a couple
of times, trying to hang up, but to no avail.
 
Finally he said, “Hello?”

“What?”
 
The woman on
the other end sounded startled.
 
“I never
heard it ring,” she said, then paused.
 
“Eddie?”

The voice was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.
 
“Yeah,” he said.
 
“Speaking.”

“Surprise!
 
It’s me.
 
Megan.”

“Hey, girl!
 
What’s going on with you?”

Megan moved her lips close to the mouthpiece of her phone
and slipped into her earthiest radio voice.
 
“Guess
who’s
working nights at 106 point 9 FM
in Nashville?”

“Get outta town!” Eddie said.
 
“But don’t stop talking that way.”
 
He knew flirting when he heard it.

Megan lilted the station’s tedious slogan, “Givin’ you
everything you
want.
. . and more.”

“Wow,” Eddie said.
 
“You oughta forget radio and go into phone sex.”

“Probably pays
better
,”Megan said,
“but you don’t get all the free cd’s and t-shirts.”
 

“So what’s the deal?” Eddie asked.
 
“How long’ve you been in town?”
 
He hoped Jimmy hadn’t come with her but he
wasn’t sure if he should ask or wait to see if she dropped it into
conversation.
 
“Where’re you livin’?”

“Some apartment complex way the hell out
past
Brentwood
.
 
It’s pretty tacky,
but at least my commute’s a bitch.”

Eddie laughed.
 
He
could picture Megan behind the control board at the radio station wearing a too
short t-shirt revealing her flat stomach.
 
“Man, I’m glad you called when you did.
 
You came damn close to missing me,” he said.
 
“Just now, I was pickin’ up to call the phone
company about getting an unlisted number.
 
I mean, one second later and, hell, I don’t even have call waiting.”

“Well, like they say, timing’s everything.”
 
Timing was one of the things on Megan’s mind
at the moment.
 
She was wondering how
long Eddie planned to wait before he started dating and she wondered how long
she should wait before making a move.
 
“You gettin’ an unlisted number ‘cause you got girls stalking you?”

“Not hardly
.”
 
Eddie told her all about signing with Herron
and Peavy.

“Ohmigod Eddie!
 
That’s fabulous!
 
Congratulations!
 
I knew you were
going to make it.
 
And just think
,
I knew you when…”
 
Wow
, she thought,
timing is everything.

“The unlisted number’s part of this whole marketing plan we
got.”
 
He paused.
 
“Listen, I’d love to tell you about it…”

“And I’d love to hear about it.”

“Hey, listen,” Eddie said.
 
“Uh, did Jimmy, I mean is he—”

“Oh, we broke things off,” Megan said, real casual.
 
“I mean we’re still pals, but he didn’t want
to try the long distance relationship thing.
 
So I guess he sort of dumped me in that sense.
 
But, you know, no harm done.
 
No blood, no foul.
 
I’m a big girl.”

“Well, I’m, uh, sorry, you know.
 
So, uh, how’re you doing?”

“Hey, I’m over it,” Megan said.
 
“
New city
, new
apartment, new start.”

Eddie knew the door had just been opened.
 
“That’s cool,” he said.
 
“Listen we’re going in to record this
weekend.
 
You wanna be my date?”

“I’d love to.”