Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (9 page)

“Court might not see it that way.”
 
Franklin
reached over and pulled a wallet from the gin drinker’s pocket.
 
Both of them feigned surprise.
 
“What’s this?”
 
He handed the wallet to Estella.

“You got no business reachin’ in my pocket!
 
You got a damn search warren or
somethin’?
 
I’ll have you rested for
civil rights vilations.”

Franklin Peavy smiled at the man.
 
It wasn’t a friendly smile.
 
Franklin’s
bright white teeth stood out like little square Klansman in the context of his
nut brown face.
 
“Got any witnesses?”

“Everbody here’s a witness,” the man insisted.

Franklin looked
around at the crowd.
 
“Anybody see what
happened?”

“I didn’t see
nothing
,” the young
black man testified.

“I saw this man run off without paying his bill,” the cowboy
hat added.

“He attacked Miss Estella, but she defended herself real
good,” a woman in the back of the crowd said.

“
This a
frame up!”
 
The gin drinker pointed a greasy finger at
Franklin Peavy.

“That’s gonna be hard to prove in Nashville-Davidson
County,” Franklin
said, leaning close to the man.
 
“I should know, I’m a lawyer.”

“He’s a good one too,” Estella said.

This was true, as far as it went.
 
But Franklin Peavy was actually a partner in a
well known artist management firm, so his practice was confined almost
exclusively to music industry contracts.
 
He hadn’t been in a criminal court since handling that matter for
Estella’s husband a few decades ago.
 
But
there was no need to explain any of that to the gin drinker, so Franklin
just turned to Estella and asked if she got the money she was owed.

“Sho’ did, and a good tip too.”
 
Estella handed the wallet back to Franklin
who stuck it back in the gin drinker’s pocket.
 
Franklin took the skillet
from Estella then put his arm around her shoulder and led her back toward the
club.
 
“Estella, I think I need a plate
of your shrimp and a little bit of personality.”

“What kind you want, Mr. Peavy?

“Scotch’ll be fine.”

13.

Two days after seeing Eddie in Biloxi,
Jimmy dropped by the radio station where Megan worked.
  
While she finished her shift, he sat in the
news room reading stories as they came over the AP wire.
 
The twenty-four year-old daughter of Delta
businessman Henry Teasdale was found dead in her home in Quitman
County, one story opened.
 
At first, it caught Jimmy’s eye because of
the tender age of the deceased.
 
The name
‘Teasdale’ didn’t mean anything to him but he was curious about the death since
most twenty-four year-olds found dead in their homes have died of something
more interesting than old age.
 
Jimmy was
disappointed to find the cause of death was still under investigation but he
continued reading until he got to the part that said
,
she was the wife of popular local entertainer, Eddie Long.

“Oh my God.”
 
Jimmy felt an empty, sinking sensation.
 
He read the story again.
 
It was awful.
 
He tried to imagine how he’d feel if Megan died.
 
It was sickening.
 
But then something odd happened.
 
The sick, sinking feeling was replaced by
something more pleasant, which bothered Jimmy somewhat.
 
Yes, he felt bad about what had happened, but
what could he do?
 
It wasn’t his fault.
 
It was a tragedy, sure, but the fact remained
that Tammy’s death was a blessing in disguise if you happened to be writing
Tammy’s husband’s biography.

Jimmy waited until Megan finished her shift before telling
her what happened.
 
She took the news
with slack-jawed shock.
 
They debated
whether they should attend the funeral.
 
Megan wanted to go, she said, to see Eddie and to offer
condolences.
 
Jimmy argued they’d be
strangers intruding on a private family event since he knew Eddie primarily on
a professional basis.
 
In the end it was
a moot point as Megan had a shift change at the radio station and couldn’t have
attended even if she wanted.
 
The day of
the funeral came and went.
 
Megan sent
flowers and a card.
 
Jimmy called and conveyed
his condolences.

14.

The next week Jimmy started work on a magazine article he’d
been hired to write.
 
He also started to
worry about his relationship with Megan.
 
There was something about the way she had looked at Eddie that night in Biloxi
that left Jimmy feeling insecure.
 
He
wanted to talk to someone about his feelings so he turned to the King and asked
his advice.

Elvis sneered at Jimmy as if to say he never had any
problems with women.
 
Elvis was wearing
his white high-collared Eisenhower jacket, all spangled with sequins and
glitter.
 
His guitar strap was a
bandoleer draped across his chest.
 
His
right hand pulled the microphone close.
 
His dark eyes smoldered and stared straight into Jimmy’s.
 
Elvis would be this way forever, or at least
as long as Jimmy kept the little plastic statue glued atop his computer
monitor.
 
It was a little piece of kitsch
he’d bought at Graceland while doing research for a
magazine article.
 
He brought a little
atmosphere to Jimmy’s office but he didn’t have any solutions for Jimmy’s
problems.

Perhaps it was just that Megan had been captivated by
Eddie’s performance that night.
 
God
knows he was good looking.
 
And standing
on stage in the spotlight with that beautiful guitar and that damn smile of
his, well, Jimmy couldn’t compete with that.
 
It made him wonder suddenly if he really had a chance with Megan.
 
Writers weren’t sexy the way musicians were,
especially unknown writers.
 
No one wants
to watch a writer perform his craft, since it pretty much looks like
typing.
 
But girls do like a handsome man
with a guitar.
 
For that matter, they
seem to like any sort of man with one.
 
Even Keith Richards has groupies for Christ’s sake.

Jimmy sneered back at Elvis.
 
Maybe he wasn’t giving Megan the sort of attention she deserved.
 
That was probably it.
 
It was a simple problem with a simple
solution.
 
He made a note to take Megan
flowers the next time he saw her.
 
With
that, he returned his attention to the article he was writing.
 
It was a piece on the Mississippi Delta Fried
Catfish Blues Festival.
 
He’d finished a
first draft, about fifteen hundred words.
 
Now all he had to do was cut a third of it.
 
He stared at the screen for ten minutes but
he couldn’t concentrate.
 
Dammit.
 
He had the distinct feeling, an instinct
really, that the problem with Megan wasn’t going to be solved with
flowers.
 
He started to wonder if Megan
was thinking about him or Eddie.
 
He
started to replay the Biloxi scene
in his head.
 
Was she being polite to
Eddie because he had just finished a show or was it more than that?

The next thing he knew he was dialing her work number.
 
He got voice mail and thought about hanging
up, but then he made the mistake of saying, “Hi, it’s me.”
 
Then he froze, couldn’t think of what to
say.
 
Try
to sound relaxed
, he thought,
like
none of
this matters
, like you could take her or leave
her
.
 
“Uh, you know I’ve been wondering
if you…”
 
Jimmy stopped.
 
He couldn’t believe it.
 
He’d almost asked if she’d been thinking
about Eddie.
 
“Uh, this is going to sound
weird, and maybe I shouldn’t leave this, but I was wondering, the other night
at the casino, was it just me or, I guess what I’m asking is if you’re more
interested in, well, oh, hell I never should have started this.
 
Forget you heard this.
 
Is there a button to erase this shit?
 
Uh, call me.”
 
He hung up.
 
He felt like an
idiot.

15.

When the toxicology reports came back, the sheriff called
Henry Teasdale and Eddie.
 
He asked them
to come down to the jail.
 
They sat in
the sheriff’s office.
 
Eddie looked like
he was still in shock.
 
He had the dazed
countenance of a lottery winner who didn’t think he deserved to win.
 
He responded to questions with nods and
shrugs and an occasional “yeah” or “I don’t think so.”
 
Henry short-stopped most of the questions,
thinking there was no reason for his cuckold son-in-law to go through more than
he already had.
 
But there were some
questions Eddie had to answer, like whether he knew Tammy was having an affair.

Eddie looked up, wounded and confused.
 
“No, sir.
 
I didn’t.”
 
His voice was small and distant.
 
He still couldn’t believe things had ended the way they had.

“Well, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but we know for
a fact she was.
 
In fact, she’d been with
someone the day she died.”
 
He looked
down at his hands folded on his desk.
 
“Now if we knew who she was seein’, we could compel a blood test and
that might help us clear some things up, but if you don’t know who it was…
”

Eddie shook his head slowly.
 
“I didn’t know.”
 
He continued
staring straight ahead, remaining expressionless even as the sheriff explained
that Tammy had died of poisoning and that she’d been shot after she was already
dead.
 
Eddie didn’t react other than to
blink a few times.
 
The sheriff turned to
Henry and asked if he had anything to add to his previous story.
 
Henry shook his head, ashamed of what all
he’d done.

“All right, Henry, I understand,” the sheriff said.
 
“Here’s what I think happened based on the
facts I got.
 
You stop me if I get
something wrong.”
 
Henry just looked at
the floor and nodded.
 
“You went looking
for Tammy, just like you said.
 
When you
got to the house you found she’d killed herself with the poison and you found
the note.
 
You couldn’t stand the thought
of your family’s reputation suffering further, so you took the gun, made it
look like a murder, and then you got rid of the evidence, including the
note.
 
Is that pretty much it?”

Henry nodded even though it wasn’t the truth.
 
It was close enough and he just wanted this
to be over with.
 
He said he was sorry.

All of this was news to Eddie.
 
Up until now, he thought the intruder story
was the truth.
  
He thought someone had
shot her.
 
He didn’t know anything about
the affair or a suicide note or that his father-in-law had tampered with
evidence in the hopes of protecting the family name, or that Tammy had really
died from the poison.
 
It was such an
incredible set of facts Eddie didn’t know what to think, so he just remained
silent.

“My guess,” the sheriff said, “and it’s just a guess, you
understand, but my guess is that Tammy was feeling guilty about the affair
she’d been having.
 
Since Eddie was out
of town, this fella had come over and
they’d.
. .
well, you know… and afterwards, after this fella left, the guilt just got
to her and she took the poison.”
 
He
paused a moment.
 
“I’ve seen it before.”

Henry looked up, squinting as if he had a new theory.
 
“Maybe this fella she’d been seein’, maybe
he’s the one who poisoned her and then made the note.”

The sheriff shook his head.
 
“Well, Henry, I suppose the suicide note — if that’s what it was — it
mighta been intended to mislead investigators but since we don’t have it we
can’t say for sure, can
we
?”
 
He looked Henry in the eyes.
 
“Do you have it?
 
It might help us answer some questions.”

Henry shifted in his seat and looked out the window.
 
“It’s gone.”