Birdsongs (17 page)

    When he turned off the vacuum, Red clapped with enthusiasm and said, “You little machine eat dirt!”

    “Yes, yes,” Peter answered thankful the boy had a pulse.

    “Bendy need dirt eater machine. How many monies?”

    “One hundred and nineteen dollars,” Peter said with another gaudy smile.

    “Oh,” Red said deflated. “Red having thirty dollars.”

    “You’re Red?”

    “Red here.”

    “Well Red,” Peter said pulling his camera out of his pocket. “Handy-Vac is having a special promotion to give some of our very special customers a free vacuum cleaner.”

    “Free!”

    “Yes Red, free. All I need for you to do is let me take a few pictures of you with the vacuum and you just might win it!”

    Red took the vacuum in hand and Peter snapped away with his digital camera. Peter then turned the dial on the camera allowing it to take video and said, “All right, one last thing here. What do you think about the vacuum cleaner?”

    “Eat dirt fast like broom not can do.”

    “And can you please tell me your name?”

    “Red. Red Jasper.”

    Feeling once again like a snake, Peter slithered out the door and back towards the office of Bobby Baker.

Chapter 53

   Birds sang to the evening. Benny and Rachael perched on the boat’s top with drinks missing umbrellas. They witnessed light’s last energetic flash of the day as crickets joined in the birdsongs. The water bowed to the shore and the silence of old friends waltzed through a breeze.

    A redneck screamed heehaw to the world and it all ended.

    “I visited Danny Hill’s mother today,” Benny stated.

    “Oh,” Rachael said interested.

    “She gave me some of his recordings and a couple of notebooks. Do you want to go down below, get a couple of beers and pour through this stuff?”

    “Oh wow! Yeah,” she said using Benny’s arm to vault upwards.

    Rachael still found the fact she was on a boat hard to believe. Benny navigated around the kitchen’s island and opened the oversized fridge. Rachael looked at the fridge, studying its size, and then at the door leading outside. Benny handed her a bottle with a homemade label that read, “Ein-Stein.”

    “Compliments of Ned,” Benny said.

    Rachael had yet to meet Ned and in jest she asked, “Is he a beer scientist?”

    “No,” Benny stated. “Just a mad one.”

    “Did he concoct a potion to get that fridge through the door?”

    “No. That’s why I have the skylight,” he said looking up.

    “You’re something else Benny James.”

    “Yeah, yeah,” Benny said sitting on the couch with the stereo remote. “Come, sit babe. Let’s see what these songs have to offer.”

    After hearing half a song, Benny and Rachael both held a similar bipolar opinion of Danny’s music. The instrumentation was brilliant; his voice and lyrics were atrocious. They listened to both cassettes with hopes of finding a clue. It was painful work. When the second tape clunked, signaling its end, a deep sigh filled the room. Neither tape revealed anything pertinent. Benny unloaded the cassette from the deck and as he slid it back into its case, his eyes gushed. “Wham! Bam!”

    “What is it batman?”

    “Remember the screen name the person used who Ryan was chatting with on the Internet?” Benny asked twitching.

    “Yeah. Little Red Hen,” Rachael retorted with anticipation.

    “Danny decorated this tape jacket, and at the bottom it says, ‘Made for - Little Red Hen Records’.”

    “What?” Rachael questioned.

    “Look,” Benny said handing her the casing. “They both knew him in some way.”

    “He preyed on them,” Rachael gasped.

    “Vulture.”

Chapter 54

   As R.C. drove home from Pascagoula, he thought about his future, near and far. He didn’t look as he turned onto roads at a whim. He figured he would find his way back when he was ready. R.C. ached feeling the prison. Those walls were cold and made his soul dry.

    He thought of Myra Robinson.

    He thought of Miles.

    He thought of Sly. He wanted to go fishing in Montana with Sly and work with him in the diner. Hard, honest work felt good to his soul. R.C. was homesick for the trailer with no electricity. He longed to gaze at the stars and to hear the bug chatter and other strange noises of the night. Even living in the shadow of the prison would not bring him down. It would be an arm around his shoulder, a friendly embrace. R.C. had the ability to forgive chance. He did not possess the ability to forgive Miles.

    R.C. decided the time was near for the showdown. He grew weary of swinging the bat through air. His anger began to perk.

    The last time R.C. looked down at the speedometer it had passed a hundred. His teeth gritted like flint about to spark fire. He trembled with the vibrations of the bike and with his anger.

Chapter 55

   Benny borrowed Donny’s speedboat. He needed a wind in the hair jaunt around the lake. As he steered the boat across the water, gently breaking its surface, he thought of his houseboat and its current name the
Jane Says
. He decided it was time to change the name. Benny thought
Casually Late
would be a good name for a boat although personally he was always on time. As he pondered additional names he thought of racehorses. His favorite racehorse name of all time was
Captain Steve
. Playing off this thought he settled on the fact that his racehorse, if he ever owned one would be named
Lucky Steve
. Benny laughed as the wind tickled his ears.

    He felt trickles of sweat bead on his forehead and the wind pushed some of the beads into his hair and others down between his eyes. He was under the gun once again and the stress felt good. His heart was beating wildly. He had more to do than one ordinary man could accomplish or mentally cope with without cracking. Benny was not an ordinary man when it came to this business. He knew he needed to take the endeavors in front of him in stride and it would all fall into place. One step at a time he thought. A wise friend once told him to “chip away” when dealing with large problems or tasks and he decided as he saw a skier take a nasty fall to do just that.

    He pulled the boat’s throttle back and settled the boat into his favorite cove, tossing the anchor into the mirrored water shattering its stillness. He packed two beers in a cooler and popped one of them into his favorite coozy. It was blue with a picture of Mount Rushmore on the front. He swiftly drank the first beer and as he sipped the second in deep thought he snapped out of his thinking as he saw a man rowing a boat towards a small island, the closest one to the shore. Benny didn’t think it was odd until he saw the man quickly get out of the boat and run ashore with a bag. He disappeared behind the trees and emerged a few minutes later without the bag. From Benny’s vantage point he decided the bag didn’t look big enough to carry a body and the man had carried it with such ease, that it was not a body.

    With curiosity he waited until the man was back to the other shore. When he disappeared, Benny waited another five minutes anxiously until he drove the boat over to search the island. It took him nearly fifteen minutes to find what the man had hidden and upon finding it Benny filled with more curiosity and confusion. He found a hole, filled with canned goods and a six-pack of beer.

Chapter 56

   Peter downloaded the pictures and video from his camera to his laptop as he sat in the Baker Building parking garage. He dreaded Bobby’s forthcoming disappointment that had nothing to do with his brother’s plight. It was all about the golden calf, which was his campaign. Bobby had already banked on the fact this revelation would provide a priceless boost to his popularity. Peter walked as if he was a death row inmate to the chair in front of Bobby’s desk.

    Bobby was in a fantastic mood. He was high as a kite tasting power that was not yet his. Peter fired up his laptop again as Bobby poured himself a drink. Already celebrating, imagining the front-page news stories that would tell of his overwhelming victory, he had not read the outcome in Peter’s eyes. When Bobby sat down at his desk, he took a long drink and looked Peter in the eyes for the first time since he had entered the room.

    “You’re not going to like this boss,” Peter confessed.

    “What? Is he a homo, a burnout loser, a convict? What?”

    “I think he’s retarded or something. He’s not right.” Peter shook his head, still confused by Red.

    “Did you get video?” Bobby asked finishing his drink with exasperation.

    “Yeah, watch this.” Peter played the file.

    Bobby watched. His eyes had never been so wide. “Holy fucking shit. He’s a deaf retard. He is isn’t he?”

    “I don’t know boss. In person, he is even stranger than he seems on the video. Talking to him is like talking to a drunk three year old.”

    “This really bites my ass.” Bobby opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a healthy stack of bills. He laid them on the table in front of Peter. “This should more than cover the price for your silence.”

    “Yes sir, it certainly does,” Peter said with guilt and greed.

    “Send them the standard letter we send everyone saying the test produced negative results.”

    “Yes sir.”

    Bobby poured another drink as Peter hurried away with the money already tucked firmly in his pocket. He had a shark to visit.

Chapter 57

   Rachael decided to have lunch at the diner where Michelle previously worked part-time. Jerry Lee was just sitting down as she entered.

    Making eye contact with Rachael he said, “Well golly!” Rachael thought of Gomer Pyle. “If you’re not going to be busy working while you wait on your food and eat, you are more than welcome to join me Ms. Martin.”

    “Well, thank you,” Rachael said smiling. She sat her notebooks down on the seat across from Jerry Lee and pushed them in as she slid beside them.

    “I imagine we’re here for the same reason,” Jerry whispered secretively.

    Rachael knew what he meant, but joked with him saying, “You’re hungry too!”

    “Ms. Martin!” Jerry spit a dribble of coffee on his shirt. Wiping clumsily at the new forming stain he laughed. “I’ll be a monkey’s kitty cat,” he said continuing to laugh at himself. More Gomer Pyle flew through Rachael’s mind.

    “I knew what you meant,” she said winking. “Yeah, I had to get a feel for this place. I would die, excuse the expression, to go into her home or the Hair Palace but those are now sealed with yellow tape.”

    “Yep. I snuck my way into the first crime scene but that won’t happen again.”

    “Once again I must ask you to excuse the expression, but you’ve got the balls of a big city reporter Jerry Lee.”

    “Not really,” he said finishing his cleanup job of the coffee incident. “You can only pretend to not know protocol once. I used up my once.”

    “Hey—at least you used it and didn’t let it go to waste. What did you know about Michelle?” Rachael asked abruptly.

    “Well…” Jerry Lee hesitated as if he were about to give away a family secret. “She slept around.”

    “With who?”

    “Chief Neighbors.”

    “I could have guessed that one, who else?”

    “I’ll tell you in a minute—let me first tell you a little bit about her so you’ll understand.”

    “All right,” Rachael said trying to follow his logic.

    “Michelle was a sweetheart. Look up sweetheart in the dictionary—there’s a picture of Michelle. She’s had bad luck trying to get serious with someone. It seems that she attracts the running around type. She’s always getting cheated on. In some warped psychological way she gets back at those that done her wrong with her loose ways. I guess in her own way it shows them that she don’t care and she can do it too.”

    “Wow. OK. Now who else did she sleep with?”

    “You’re not going to like it.”

    “What?” Rachael said catching on.

    “Yep. Benny too.”

Chapter 58

   Benny decided to check the two motels in town for strangers. His first stop was the Lakeside Motor Inn. He and Carlton Davis were friends and Benny knew he would know who was staying in what room and what kind of person they probably were. Benny discovered media types inhabited a majority of the Inn. Carlton reported his knowledge of newspapers, radio stations, television crews, and a blogger. Carlton gave Benny the blogger’s room number, as she was the only one he felt might be shifty.

    Benny knocked on room twelve’s door, the room next to Rachael’s, and he saw a young woman spring from the bed like a deer. The drapes were open as she kept an eye out for any commotion in the parking lot. Hurried movements meant something new happened in the case.

    She swung the door open and said, “Damn!” She paused. “Benny James.”

    “I guess you watch a lot of TV,” Benny said.

    “Well, I guess I do.”

    “Since I don’t have to introduce myself, why don’t you?”

    “Lola.”

    “Is that like Madonna or something, no last name?”

    “I guess if that’s how you want to think about it.”

    “What brings you to town?”

    “You,” Lola said coolly.

    “Me?”

    “Yeah, you. I write a blog about you.”

    “Isn’t that some sort of Internet diary slash chat room?”

    “I guess if that’s how you want to think about it.”

    “Why me?”

    “Come in,” Lola said and walked into the room. Benny took a seat in a chair by the window and Lola sprung back onto the bed. “When I was in middle school, you were working the case where the college dean was killed in his office.”

    “Oh God,” Benny mumbled.

    “You were the media’s darling. I felt the same. Then you met Lizzy Clark and fell from grace. I’ve followed your career ever since.”