Drag Strip (18 page)

“Fool me once,” she muttered, “shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. When number two left, I was ready. Me and Michael made out all right, squeaking by. Then Ham came along.”

With a start I realized Ham was husband number three. Old rail-thin Ham. Iris seemed to read my mind.

“Yeah, him. He's older, just like my first husband, but he ain't crazy.” She chuckled to herself. “Now, he's a might slow on the uptake, but he loves me and he ain't going nowhere. Ever'one I ever loved is gone.” She stopped and sighed. “Even Michael. He got himself into some trouble, and now he don't speak to me.” As if on cue, Ham began his tuneless humming in the back room.

“What happened to Ruby's father?” I asked. “Did he ever leave the institution?”

Iris looked disgusted. “Oh yeah, he left all right. Them legislators over in Tallahassee got the big idea it was wrong to keep nuts in the nuthouse. Developed a thing called deinstitutionalization. You know what that means, don't you?” She didn't wait for me to answer. “It means, ‘We ain't spending no more tax dollars on you people. Go back where you came from and bother them people.'”

My heart quickened. Ruby's insane father returned to Wewahitchka. How had he felt about her being adopted?

“So he came back here? To Wewa?”

Iris nodded slowly, opening a plastic container full of brightly colored hair bows.

“Yep. He came back. Acting like it was the Fourth of July and Christmas all rolled into one. Just as crazy as a Betsy Bug.”

“How long…” I couldn't even figure out what question to ask first.

“He'd been away fifteen years when he come back, his hair all wild and his eyes lit up with a fire. Wanting to see his young'uns.” Iris snorted. “Couldn't even remember we was divorced! Fat lot of good that did!”

“Where is he now?”

“All over town,” she said. “All up in
Time
magazine. All over the news. All over everywhere.”

“I don't get what you mean,” I said.

“Honey, you ever hear tell of the Honk-If-You-Love-Jesus artist?”

“Wannamaker Lewis? Ruby's father is Wannamaker Lewis?”

Iris nodded and picked a vibrant yellow bow, peeled a little patch off the back of it, and stuck it firmly in the center of Fluffy's cue-ball head.

“The walking one and only,” Iris said. “Multimillion-dollar daddy.” She laughed softly to herself. “All the money in the world and he couldn't save her. 'Course, he didn't make any of it until after he was released, but still, she's dead and he's not. Somehow it don't seem fair.”

Iris turned her attention back to Fluffy. “Don't you look special!” she said. “Let's shine that coat up a bit.” She reached for a small tube of grease that squirted out clear and smelled like a whorehouse. “This'll do you!” she said, but Fluffy moaned.

“Did Ruby know about you and her father?” I asked.

Iris glanced up, her eyes sharpening to little pinpoints. “No! No way was I gonna put her through hell twice! I don't know how her low-life of a father found out, but I do know the only decent thing that man ever did was leave his daughter alone. Him, me, Ruby's new mama, Michael, and Ham were the only ones ever knew where Ruby went. That's just how it had to be.”

Iris turned her attention back to Fluffy, who'd had enough of Iris and the Doggie Palace of Pampered Love to last her a lifetime. She was raising up her front paws and attempting to pull the hair bow off of her head.

“Darlin'!” Iris exclaimed. “That ain't ladylike! Come on, now!” With a practiced hand, Iris slipped Fluffy's rhinestone collar around her neck while at the same time undoing the snap that kept Fluff a prisoner. “There!” she said. “All purty for Mama!”

Iris gently placed Fluff in my arms and stood right in front of me, her teary, red eyes staring directly into mine.

“I can't charge you for this,” she said, “on account of how you're gonna find out who hurt my baby. You're gonna come back here and tell me,” she said, “and then I'm gonna kill him. I couldn't keep her. I couldn't save her. But by God, I can avenge her!”

Iris's eyes smoldered. Her heavy body trembled with rage, and for a moment her face was so red, I considered calling 911. Then Ham shuffled back into the room, humming, and the moment was broken.

For a second, the Doggie Palace of Pampered Love had seemed full of rage and violence, but just as quickly, it returned to pinkness and light, as if a cloud has passed briefly over the sun. Danger seemed as far away as Ruby's childhood. But like childhood, the illusion of safety vanishes all too quickly. Me and Fluff were heading for big trouble. On one level I knew that, but did that make it right to drag my family and friends in along with me?

Twenty

Fluffy wasn't speaking to me. We were driving down the little side streets of Wewa, the wind blowing through the T-tops just as it had been an hour ago, but for us, the mood was broken. The yellow hair bow had blown out the window and become a distant memory, but Fluff's encounter with Iris Strokes was obviously still fresh in her mind. At least we were focused on the same mental image, but Fluffy was dealing with the trauma to her psyche, while I was thinking of another, more deadly trauma.

Ruby Lee Diamond had lived and died in a public fish-bowl. The way I figured it, Iris Stokes was dead wrong if she thought no one but insiders knew who Jane Diamond's adopted daughter was. How hard could it have been to figure it all out in a tiny spit of a town? Maybe Ruby was the only one who didn't know what half the town knew. But now I knew, and there was one more link to follow. Ruby Lee's crazy father.

Finding Wannamaker Lewis wasn't going to be a problem. Wannamaker didn't want to be missed. The Honk-If-You-Love-Jesus icon had positioned himself with the canny shrewdness of a professional retailer, right in the heart of town, at the main crossroads, next to Wewa's only grocery, gas, bait, and tackle shop, the Dixie Dandy.

His studio was a rundown shack that had once sold Tupelo honey. At least that's what the sign that hung precariously from a pin oak still promised to deliver. The dirt brown hut sported a rusted tin roof, and it might have gone unnoticed if Wannamaker hadn't taken steps to ensure that didn't happen.

The entire lot was crammed with whirligigs: wooden cutout Uncle Sams painted every color of the rainbow, huge bears covered with Scripture, and his trademark
HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS
placards. One whirligig in particular stood out, jutting into the road. It was Jesus, with mobile arms that swung in circles with the wind. At least it must've been Jesus. It was a good physical likeness, but there the resemblance to the traditional figure ended. Jesus wore a tie-dyed robe, had fire in his eyes, and an American flag was painted squarely across his chest. Floating above him was a halo and two angels, one with a flashing neon sign that said,
OPEN. HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS
!

Sister Mary Catherine would've had plenty to say about this. I crossed myself as a precaution and pulled into the parking lot. Fluffy, sensing perhaps another encounter of a personal nature, jumped down off the seat and crawled to the back of the car so I couldn't grab her.

“To each his own, girl,” I said. “If you don't want an extra dose of precaution, if you are not concerned about eternal damnation, then stay in the car.” My answer was a low growl. Fluffy was a heathen and proud of it.

BEWARE
! a sign proclaimed, as I stepped out of the car.
SATAN IS EVERYWHERE
!

“Damn straight,” I muttered.

JOHN
3:16, another placard read.

“Lavotini 24:7,” I said back. I wandered up onto the porch of Wannamaker's studio, looking for signs of life other than the eternal kind. A ceiling fan whirred slowly inside the studio, moved by the breeze that gusted through the paneless windows.

“Anybody home?” I called, stepping gingerly across the wooden porch planks.

“Yoo-hoo, Mr. Lewis?” I waited another moment, until I was sure that no one was around, and started back to the car. “Too bad for you,” I said out loud. “I just love Jesus!” Still no response. That didn't make sense. If Lewis's folk art was worth so much, what was it doing just sitting out in his parking lot unattended? Where were the security guards that hovered around the fancy galleries they always showed on TV?

I reached the Camaro and had my hand on the door when Fluffy started the dog equivalent of screaming.

“He ain't here,” a deep voice boomed, scaring me into jumping a good two feet straight up in the air.

I whirled around to face one of the biggest, darkest, and tallest men ever to fill a pair of tattered overalls.

“Good grief! Holy Mother of God! Were you trying to scare the living shit out of me, or is it just something you do naturally?”

The man stared at me for a moment, as if it were taking a while for the circuits to connect and formulate an answer.

“It's his nap time,” the man said slowly. “Don't take nothin' and you won't go to hell.” He stood there, not moving, too close for comfort. There was something not quite right with this cookie. Then he smiled, a beautiful toothy smile that warmed his face. “Jesus loves the little children,” he said. “Come back after nap time.”

“I will,” I said, sliding behind my door and slipping into my seat. Fluffy was still screaming at the top of her lungs, and I wanted to.

“Bye!”

I cranked that Camaro up and spun out of the driveway. Fluffy, emboldened by our departure, leaped up onto the backseat and balanced her front paws on the open window ledge. Her bark changed to a deeper promise of murder and mayhem.

“Yo, Fluff,” I yelled, “you keep that shit up and I'll bring you back with me the next time.”

There was an abrupt silence from the backseat.

I pulled into the Dixie Dandy parking lot, to the side farthest away from Wannamaker Lewis's studio, and stopped by a phone booth so I could look up Roy Dell. If Raydean and Ma were serious about staking out Roy Dell's house, then it was probably time for me to check on them. Knowing Raydean, they were inside drinking tea. Knowing Ma, she was cooking Lulu a real meal and lecturing her on the values of fidelity and the penalties for committing mortal sins.

I couldn't have been further from the truth.

*   *   *

Roy Dell lived off of State Route 20, away from the racetrack, in a little cluster of brick and wooden-sided house that had been someone's attempt at a subdivision in the late 1960s. Roy Dell's place in the one-street neighborhood was not hard to find. It sat at the end of the cul-de-sac, scrubby pines and knobs of grass springing up like errant groundhogs, a big split-level with its siding painted Roy Dell's vibrant racing yellow, just like his race car.

The piece-of-shit yellow Vega sat in a position of honor in the front yard, its back two wheels up on cinder blocks. Various hulks of cars and car parts lay littered across the front yard, sandwiched in among the used racing tires that had been painted a house- and car-matching yellow and filled with stringy portulacas. It was a vision of poor taste and a monument to sloppy living.

You could view the entire street from the top of a little rise that led down into the Lucky Days Subdivision, a fact that I found faintly disturbing on account of how Ma and Raydean would have no good surveillance point that wouldn't leave them exposed to their subjects. Ahead of me, just outside the entrance to Roy Dell's little neighborhood, sat Raydean's ancient Plymouth Fury. The car was deserted.

“Something's wrong, Fluffy,” I said. “It don't feel right around here. They wouldn't just leave the car and walk onto Roy Dell's property. No, if they felt good about things, they'd have driven right up to the front door. Especially Ma with her corns.”

Fluffy, still unsure of me, stood on the backseat, sniffing the air. From the look on her face, and the way she bared her teeth, I was thinking she saw things like I did.

“Time for a little reconnaissance,” I whispered. I backed the Camaro down the street, away from Raydean's cop-mobile, and parked under a thin stand of pines. I leaned down and grabbed a pair of aerobics shoes from under the front passenger seat and pulled off my stilettos. Then I reached under my seat and started rooting around for a weapon, just in case.

I know, if ever there were a case for carrying concealed, it would be me. Dancers are life's little idea of target practice, and so most of us carry, but not me. The way I see it, an attacker would only use the gun to kill me. The truth be told, I was scared of guns. But for some reason, I wasn't scared of knives.

My fingers sought and found the Spyderco that lay just under my seat. They curled around the smooth casing, caressing the steel back of the blade. You grow up in Philly, and you learn how to defend yourself with your own hands. A knife is just an extension of my fingernails. My brother Francis gave me the Spyderco. He didn't say much and I know it set him back a pretty penny, but it was his way of letting me know that while he accepted my decision to dance, he would still worry about his baby sister's safety.

It was now my turn to worry about Ma and Raydean.

“You stay here, Fluff,” I said. Of course, Fluffy was gonna do what she wanted to do, but it gave me a sense of being in control just to say it.

I got out of the car and started creeping down the street, sticking close to the side of the road and trying not to be seen. When I came up even with the Plymouth Fury, I realized I had every reason to be worried. The front and backseat were littered with pieces of pine branches. An empty Piggly Wiggly grocery sack lay on the front seat along with an empty package of black shoe polish. Ma's purse was open, the contents scattered in with the pine needles. Worst of all, Raydean's shotgun lay out in plain view on the backseat. Those two wouldn't walk off leaving their valuables unattended. Where in the hell was Ma?