It Takes Two (20 page)

My eyes overflowed. Turning away from the yawning hole that was Hillard Norris’s grave, I bumped into an older man, stepped on his foot, cursed, begged his pardon and stumbled around him.

Nearby, a woman screamed, “Bastard!” She took a breath, then repeated it, “Ba-a-stard!” followed by, “Lemme tell you all something.”

I turned toward her, half afraid she was speaking to me. Instead, I saw a thin brown woman with wild almond eyes and a wrenched-open mouth. The crowd parted in polite confusion as she fought her way over to the grave. The lapel of her green striped suit was unbuttoned, revealing a white cotton blouse. She was wearing a pair of maid’s or nurse’s shoes, powdered snow white. She looked to be my age or a little older, no more than thirty. She had full lips and strong hands.

“You burn in hell, Mr. Hillard Norris,” she cried, hurling what looked like a rhinestone bracelet into the flowers heaped on Norris’s casket. “My husband is dead on me—my Wash, my life, my brave soldier—and you killed him, Mr. Hillard Norris. You killed him dead just like you killed yourself. You killed him and them gambling people at that hotel killed him. You called them yo friends, and you drank poison with them, didn’t you?”

At first, nobody moved. And Willene didn’t even look up.

“My Wash was a decorated hero,” the woman shouted, running her fingers through her sleek hair wildly. “He served in the Army, came out clean. You! Miss Willene,” she cried, her voice rising to a shrill edge, her hand pointing. “You killed both our men sure as shooting ’em. You killed Wash and Mr. Hillard. You and them gambling people at that fancy hotel.”

By now, Hillary and her grandmother were on their feet. “Mary,” the old woman demanded. “Stop it. Stop it now.”

Hillary wailed, “Mary, Mary.”

Moving quickly, Willene did what under ordinary circumstances might have been most effective. Pushing past Mildred, she put her hands on Mary’s shoulders and tried to pull her into a comforting embrace. “Here,” she crooned. “Come sit by me, Mary. You’re upset.”

Instead, Mary almost knocked Willene into Hillard’s grave. Hysterical, she pushed back against Willene’s raised arms. There was a momentary struggle for balance, with hands grabbing hands and arms, before first one white shoe and then the other slipped on the grass matting. Clumsily breaking free, Willene scrambled safely away, clutching at her cousin Mildred for support. Mary landed in a sitting position on the casket, sobbing pitifully, smack dab in a heap of flowers.

The eldest of the undertakers was suddenly beside her. “My dear,” he said as he scrambled down, keeping his voice low, evidently practiced at handling such scenes. “My lamb, let me help you up.” Shielding the weeping woman’s face with one arm, he gestured toward his assistants with the other.

Sheriff Hollipaugh stepped in behind them, followed by Officer Hurston and the
News-Press
photographer. Hurston and one of the assistant undertakers pulled Mary up, and Hurston led her quickly away. The sheriff turned toward Willene, his arms extended, shielding her from the camera with his shoulders and Stetson hat. The family quickly surrounded them both and moved toward the street.

Four cemetery employees with shovels stepped forward immediately, removing the folding chairs and mats. Within thirty seconds, they’d begun showering the flowers and casket with dirt. We had to step back as they bent to their work.

The crowd had thinned to almost nothing before they finished. Nype, looking hot in his Sears suit, waited by the
News-Press
car as I headed for the cemetery gate.

“These people sure know how to throw a party,” I said. “Never seen a wrestling match at a funeral before.”

Nype, sarcastic himself, looked stunned. “Nobody expected it, not at all. I’d have thought our friend Mildred’s dramatic leave-taking would be the outside edge.”

“Whole thing just about beats the Gasparilla parade up in Tampa,” I said. “You gonna report it?”

“I’ll have to confer with my editor,” Nype answered, his composure regained, his lifeless grin restored. “In any case, I’m certainly glad you had a memorable sightseeing trip. If you’ve seen enough, I can offer you a lift. I have to get back to the office and write this up.” His death’s-head smile didn’t budge when he added, “Where’s your pal Spencer Wright?”

It was easy to turn my back on Nype as I slid into his Chevy’s passenger seat. “Guess the crime wave keeps Bud pretty busy,” I answered, not knowing what else to say. “Did you expect him to be here?”

“He’s certainly too busy to return phone calls. Perhaps you could jog his memory? We called him twice this morning. My editor wants to give him a little more ink.”

“Speaking of that,” I said, “How come your paper didn’t mention the name of the motor hotel? Or that the dead colored man’s widow worked for the Norris family?”

Nype started the motor, shifted gears into reverse, backed up and shifted into first. “You’re very well informed,” he answered before pulling into traffic. “We didn’t print that, no. That’s true. Now perhaps you can tell me what Mary Davis has against your hotel? Couldn’t be the excellent food or the beauteous waitresses you’ve been hiring.”

“Beats me,” I replied, unwilling to even play at speculation. Norris’s unsuccessful attempt to reserve a hotel room for himself and a colored woman was none of Nype’s business. “Is that her name?” I said, hoping to sound uninterested. “Far as I know, she’s never been inside the door.” The latter statement was perfectly true.

“But you’ve been here only—what—since September? Perhaps she slipped in last winter.”

“As a guest? No, we observe state law. And she couldn’t have worked at the Caloosa and been Mrs. Norris’s full-time maid at the same time.”

“It’s a mystery, then. I’ll have to check it out.”

I still figured I could trade information with Nype. “Going back to the Norris obituary,” I said. “You listed everything about Hillard and Willene except their blood types. But you left out the link to the Klan. And you left out another detail—that the grieving Mrs. Norris shot up the Royal Plaza on Sunday morning and narrowly missed hitting three innocent bystanders.”

“We don’t ever report on Klan doings,” Nype answered primly. “Tends to stir up trouble. We did report that the body of a Negro was found on the scene. I had to convince my editor to include that fact. He isn’t in favor of covering Negro strife at all—because the
News-Press
, as a good public citizen, does not want to inflame passions. A killing, by definition, is strife. We report the news. We try not to make it. My editor is very careful about the niceties of our racial situation.”

“So you just ignore the fact that the colored man, whose wife worked for the family of the dead white man, had a bullet in his head?”

Nype stopped at another corner, turned, turned again and halted in front of the Caloosa Hotel. “Thank you. I was going to check just that very point with your pal Wright. But, in case he doesn’t call me back before my deadline, did you see the bodies close up? Did you have an opportunity to inspect the wounds?”

“All I saw,” I said, “was Willene Norris shooting at me. Bud knocked her aim off, or you’d have had another funeral to cover.”

Nype slipped the car into neutral. “Mrs. Norris was temporarily deranged due to excessive grief. That’s what the family physician told my editor, speaking strictly off the record. And thank you. I wasn’t sure you were there. Now you’ve confirmed it for me.”

I stepped out onto the sunny sidewalk in front of the Caloosa. Leaning down to face him through the car window, I tried again. “You gonna report that there were innocent bystanders but not that the woman shot at us? Anybody could see this is some kind of double murder. Your editor gonna ignore the fact that Mary Davis is out of her mind with grief too?”

Nype nodded. “To report on these women’s troubles would cause even more grief—not only to Mrs. Hillard Norris, a highly respected citizen, but to her daughter and her aged mother, who are both still living. I’m sure you can understand our position.”

“Fucking redneck mechanic swore the Jeep would be ready by noon,” Bud growled, looking up at me. He was stretched out in my office easy chair when I returned from Norris’s funeral. His shoelaces were untied and his feet propped up on a metal waste can. His slouched position caused his shoulder-holstered revolver to peep out from under his arm.

“You asleep on the job, Sarge?” I’d said when I found him there dozing. “Thought the last thing you’d miss was Hillard Norris’s decommissioning.”

“Hitched a ride over to the so-called garage at one-thirty,” Bud answered edgily. “Whole goddamn place was secured, with a note stuck to the door saying he’d gone to get glass cut and wouldn’t be back till after lunch.”

“Maybe he’s got a girl,” I said, sinking into the chair behind the desk. “Could have been taking a nooner.”

“He’s too fucking old. Too fat and ugly to cut it. Too married.”

“Married guys never screw around in this town? That right, Sarge?”

“Not if they don’t want to get shot dead, looks like.”

Telling him he’d missed a good show, I ran through the funeral’s highlights, emphasizing the push-and-shout finale.

He whistled and leaned forward. “Mary Davis, huh? Sounds like a calf-roping in August. You know she worked as Mrs. Hillard Norris’s house-maid till two, three months ago. Regular part of the family is what I heard.”

“And the dead colored man at the Royal Plaza was Wash Davis, short for Washington, I guess?”

“Right. Yes. Thing’s getting crazy, isn’t it? Hey, I got the Jeep outside. You want to go somewhere?”

I said, no but that we could both use a drink. The club room was just down the corridor. Or we could drive over to the Legion Hall.

Bud smiled wanly. “Long as I’m buying.”

“Champagne for me,” I answered, rising and coming around the desk.

“I’ll give you champagne,” he said, smirking suggestively. “From my hose.”

I dropped down beside him, slapped his flat gut with my open hand and then pushed past his belt buckle. “Lemme uncork that thing,” I said. “I’ve been wanting some La Belle bubbly.”

Glancing at the open door and pushing me gently aside, he got to his feet and began to tuck loose shirttails into his pants. Then he reached inside his coat to pat his gun. “You want me to stash this weapon?” he said. “Like the Hollywood cowboys when they visit the dance-hall girls?”

“Your boss was riding herd on the gun-toting widow today,” I said, gesturing for him to leave the holster buckled. “Looked like to me, anyway. How married is he?”

Bud said he’d never heard any gossip connecting the boss with other women. “They’re probably just good friends,” he said.

“Real good friends,” I joked, bowing him out the door. “Like some others I could name.”

“Stow that,” he said. “Let’s see about those beers.”

“Beer, hell,” I said, pinching his shoulder blade.

For cocktail time on a weeknight, the Caloosa Club was moderately busy. Betty and the boss plus two other couples danced to Tommy’s piano version of “Some Enchanted Evening.” A poker game was in full swing in the corner. Carmen was polishing glasses behind the bar and Lou Salmi had just dumped a bucket of ice into the ice chest.

Tommy looked up from the piano when Bud and I entered, shifted into “Anchors Aweigh,” then returned to the theatrical South Pacific with “Bali H’ai” and “Happy Talk.”

Stopping by on the way to the bar, I asked Tommy to play me a little funeral music—“St. James Infirmary Blues,” “When the Saints Go Marching In”—that kind of thing.

Tommy rolled his eyes, nodded and immediately bridged “This Nearly Was Mine” into a bluesy, wordless “Frankie and Johnny.” Then, with hardly a break, he shifted again, parodying the blues lyric:

Well, I went to the sheriff ’s infirmary,

I saw my Ford dealer there,

Stretched out on a long card table,

So clean, so white, so bare.

Maybe nobody else was listening. Certainly Bud wasn’t paying attention to Tommy’s biting words. I looked around the room. Nobody looked back except Tommy. I glared at him. Shrugging, he shifted into a popular Caribbean rhythm:

Stone cold dead in Fort Myers,

Stone cold dead in Fort Myers,

Stone dead in Fort Myers,

I kill nobody but two husbands.

I left him stone cold dead in the hotel,

Shot dead in the hotel,

Shot two men in the hotel,

I kill nobody but two husbands.

Jesus
, I thought,
this is way too sassy for Fort Myers. Tommy should know better
. Which, of course, he did. As I stood up to speak to him, he spotted me coming and shifted again, into a more-or-less straightforward and, for the moment wordless, version of “Saints.”

I sat back down. Bud and I were the only people at the bar. Carmen, his eye makeup heavier than usual, had set us up with long-necked Regals and pilsner glasses. Pushing the glass away, Bud swigged deeply from the bottle.