Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem (10 page)

“Seltzer and lime, or iced tea with lemon.” Beau shook his head. “I have too many teetotalers in this bar. This is a bar, not a soda fountain.”

Memphis looked down at his seltzer and nodded.

“Beau?” A very young and very sleepy female voice came from the back room. “I’m about falling asleep. Are you coming back to bed?”

“In a minute, sweetheart.” He looked back with equal parts apology and self-congratulation playing on his lined face. “I better get back there before my luck runs out.”

Memphis cleared his throat. “Well. Good night, Beau.”

“Night, Sheriff. And pat Old Beau for me, would you? She says she’ll take out a restraining order if I go near him.”

Memphis nodded, wondering about that back room, who waited, warm and young and welcoming.

He shook his head and returned to his car.

FORENSICS WOULD NEVER
replace good common sense, thought Memphis as he took one last look around the parking lot. When he got back in the cruiser, Garth was on the radio. Memphis could hear fiddling in the background, and a few whoops. “Sheriff, how long do I have to stay here?”

“As long as I need you to.”

“You should smell the inside of this place.”

“Open a window and stay there. That’s an order.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Sunday:
just after midnight

RHONDALEE HOPPED AROUND
the kitchen in her robe, wild-eyed. “So you’re telling me that the Reverend left here in an
ambulance?!
”

Common sense, prayed Memphis. Please, God in Heaven, send this woman a little common sense. “Well, the Reverend left in an official vehicle, Rhondalee.” Memphis wasn’t ready to divulge the complete truth to her. “He wasn’t in any shape to walk.”

“He’s been
assaulted?
”

“That’s police business.”

“I don’t see why you won’t just tell us what’s going ON!”

“I will in due time.”

“I deserve to know NOW! I can’t BELIEVE this!” Memphis was transfixed by the herky-jerky dance of Rhondalee LaCour, his sister-in-law, his niece’s mother, grandmother to his beloved great-niece Annie Leigh, his brother Tender’s partner in trailer park management. “I am the
manager!
This is my
husband!
You are my
brother-in-law!
” she hollered, her arms slicing the air, her head bobbing.

“I’m not disrespecting you, Rhondalee. But I need some information. And I was hoping you could help me.”

Tender shot his wife a pleading look from under the bill of the John Deere cap he wore. “Rhondy, could you just tell Memphis what he needs to know and not make a scene of it?”

Rhondalee turned her angry little eyes from one man to the other, back and forth, back and forth. Her unhappiness hung damply around her like a load of dingy bed sheets weighing down a clothesline.

Memphis stroked down his mustache and gave her a smile. “Rhondalee? I’m counting on you.”

Rhondalee looked at his eyes. His eyes had always calmed her down and Tender’s had always riled her up, because Memphis had grey eyes, but Tender’s were quicksilver. “Well, Memphis, back in the day, he was somewhat of a wild one. I mean, I know he had Jesus in his heart, but he seemed to have quite a bit of the Devil in him elsewhere.”

“That’s what I keep hearing. But what about lately?”

“We talk when he comes by to pay his rent after church on Sunday. He’s a true man of God, now. He’s given up that Mormonism and got things square with the Lord.”

“No drinking. No philandering.”

“Oh no. He won’t go NEAR that woman next door. If he did, I think I’d have killed him myself.”

Memphis’s eyebrows shot north. “Is that right, now?”

“Oh for heaven’s sakes, that was just a figure eight of speech. Do you think
I
did it? Do you think
I
assaulted him?”

Memphis, who of course had never even entertained such a possibility, watched her pumping fists and wondered if indeed, the old girl had it in her. “Of course not. But I thought as manager and publisher of the community newsletter, you might have some information or insight.”

“Well.” Flattery always worked with Rhondalee. And the community newsletter was her pet project, a place where her ability to ferret out information paid off in inches of print devoted to happenings that were none of her business. “I was real busy, yesterday, I was setting up for the community meeting up at the Clubhouse.”

“Can you tell me about that?”

She shrugged. “There’s not much to tell.” Her face lit up with the self-righteous glee of the put-upon. “I always do it a certain way, you know. Tender mocks it, but I like it that way. And I never get any help with set up for the meetings, do I? Other people get all kinds of help, but I never do. I manage this park and take care of my granddaughter while her no-good mother gallivants all over the countryside in that mechanical nightmare she uses to make a living, and I can’t get any help at ALL.”

Tender stared at the table, his eyes shaded by his John Deere cap. But his shame was not the issue. Memphis nodded at Rhondalee. “And were the usual people there? I mean, was there anyone in particular you expected to see that you didn’t?”

She thought. “Well. You know, that busybody teacher, Melveena Strange, is usually there. She might have moved, but she still manages to get her nose into Park business. But she wasn’t there last night.” Melveena Strange had lived in the Park for a year when she and her husband first came to this county. They’d since moved to Ochre Water, but Melveena taught an aerobic kickboxing class every week and made every community meeting. “I’m surprised, because all she does lately is just drop by unannounced and pester me about letting Annie Leigh go to school with those Bone Pile kids.”

“She’s supposed to be a fine teacher.”

“Annie Leigh is wild enough already. I don’t need those hill critters rubbing off on her. And Tender has taught her to read and write and they’re working on math.”

Memphis made a note. “What was the main topic of discussion at this meeting, Rhondalee?”

She cocked her head. “Well, I always make up the agenda based on the contents of the tenant suggestion box. It was parking, Memphis. Sunday parking.”

“Parking?”

“Parking is serious business, Memphis. I should have seen it coming. I should’ve known that a heated discussion of the Sunday parking problem would lead to the Reverend’s being attacked.”

The brothers’ eyes met in a glare of repressed mirth before they both looked away. “We don’t know the cause of it. We don’t even know if it was purposeful. He might have been injured in a hit-and-run, perhaps by a drunk driver. We just don’t know yet, so please don’t jump to any conclusions.”

“Is he going to be okay, Memphis? Can you just tell me that much?”

There in the trailer’s yellow kitchen, Memphis let his eyes graze the fiercely cheerful wallpaper border of hens and roosters, the hanging towels appliquéd with hens and roosters, the ruffled white curtains covered with silver thread, stitched into the design of chicken wire. Every make and model of magnetic poultry in the universe covered the refrigerator. The paper napkin holder, shaped like a little henhouse, held paper napkins printed with a design of hens and roosters. The cookie jar seemed to be the only variation on the theme. For some reason, Rhondalee kept her cookies in a big yellow ceramic lemon.

Why did men marry, if it meant you had to have a kitchen like this, he wondered.

A shiny black head of black hair appeared in the kitchen. “What’s all the racket?”

And there she was, Memphis thought. Why men married.

“Uncle Memphis!” She climbed him like a tree. Four feet of flannel nightgown, silver eyes, gappy teeth, and smooth skin stretched over bird bones. Memphis allowed himself a moment to cradle her, to breathe deeply of the smell she always carried. The outdoors. She always smelled like she’d just been outside.

“Annie Leigh. Isn’t it late for you to be up, little one?”

“What about you? You’re real noisy. Are you having a party? Can we play cards?” Her smile turned to a wince as Rhondalee grabbed her by the ear and wrestled her off Memphis’s lap.

“Young lady, you are going to GET to bed, right this INSTANT, you worthless little piece of street-running…” and so on, out of the room.

Tender looked pained. “I suppose it is awfully late for her to be up.”

“Yes. Too late for a child.” They sat in silence.

They’d been quiet as kids, Memphis remembered, even when they’d been allowed to speak their original language. The LaCour boys came from the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota. Their mother’s name was Winona Three Ravens. Their surname, LaCour, had come from a father they’d barely known. Neither boy remembered much about him aside from height and a guitar. There was a moment of being tossed in the air and caught for Tender, an afternoon by a lake with fishing poles for Memphis. Their childhood had ended when they were removed from the home of their mother and delivered to the echoing school where nuns had cut off their hair and forbidden them to speak the only language they knew.

Memphis had been intrigued by the gravity and ritual of the Catholic faith. Tender had been beaten into tolerating it. Their musical ability had emerged early, their voices harnessed for the choir, their hands given over to the piano, the violin, and the deep thrumming ache of the cello. They were trotted out to exhibit their respectful manners and musical genius, which were interpreted as successful assimilation.

But the Catholics hadn’t been able to keep either of them. They’d snuck out to a tent meeting to hear the music and carried some violins with them. Somehow they’d been brought onstage, and after they’d done their instrument-tossing trick, the preacher had given them each a banjo and the promise of a job if they’d ditch the fish-eaters and get dunked Baptist-style. Memphis turned eighteen, finished school and was free to leave. Tender was such a flight risk that they’d barred his windows and set a priest on his door at night. Memphis finally got him out through a bathroom window.

Their first stop had been their mother’s home. Her eyes had shone at their songs. There was something pained and resolute in her, something that enforced a reserve on the brothers as far as asking about their father; who he was, where he’d come from, where he’d gone. Canada was the answer to the second two questions, and of course the name was a clue. He was the source of their light eyes, strange names, and Memphis’s impressive mustache-growing abilities. Working up their nerve, they asked their mother for more details. Her eyes fogged over with memories, whether good or bad they could not say.

“Occasional,” she’d finally said in her English, improved over the years by her work at a Shell station. “Your father was occasional.”

This would have to do.

The brothers talked about what was next. They knew if they stayed on the reservation, the priests would come hunting Tender. They could go find jobs, hoping their Indian blood wasn’t too obvious, but both of them spoke with the cadence of their original language, even though they’d lost its words. And now there was music, but that would involve a dunking. They asked their mother what she thought they should do.

She thought for a bit more. “Make some money.”

They got baptized in the river and took to the stage.

The LaCour Boys were a novelty act. They played anything stringed, whether it was fiddle, banjo, guitar, dobro or mandolin, their voices rising together in a harmony of heavenly praise. Press clippings called them “the Indian Everly Brothers for Christ.” They worked the fair circuit, and revival after revival, living in a world where they couldn’t get jobs as dishwashers because of their Indian blood, but were put on stage as minor celebrities because of it. It was a fine life, and they kept themselves upright, following their mother’s advice. They visited their mother when they could, until she gave up the ghost. And then came Rhondalee.

Memphis didn’t even like to remember it.

Once they’d stopped playing together, there were long years in which the brothers didn’t speak. Memphis joined the Coast Guard. and rose through the ranks while stationed in North Carolina, then attended school in Tuscaloosa for an Admin of Justice degree. After that, he went west, ending up at the Ochre County Sheriff’s Department. Through it all, he missed his brother.

Eventually there was a call, a call in which Tender invited him to watch Raven perform at a revival in a neighboring county. A niece, imagine that. Of course he would come, of course he would be there. He hadn’t even known about the girl.

A revival was not much fun if you didn’t believe in God and you weren’t playing music. Memphis sat through the preaching. The auditorium went dark and a voice boomed out. “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Littlest Angel for Jesus, Miss Rowena Gail LaCour!” A spot came up, illuminating a big pink cowboy hat. Was there a child under that?

He’d thought her name was Raven.

She swayed, stepped from one rhinestone-shining boot to the other. Her hands moved on the guitar. She lifted her voice.

He is in me…

Oh, her voice was strong enough to carry the weight of faith, and pure enough to break the heart of any believer. But she didn’t mean one word she sang. What’s worse, she hated it up there. He fought the urge to sweep her off the stage and carry her away from that place.