Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem (33 page)

She walked alone up Sweetly Dreaming Lane. Francie June was in the air, singing about love lost to someone else who wouldn’t treat it right. Wasn’t that how it always went? People didn’t get what they wanted, and they didn’t want what they got. A human being was always a cat on the wrong side of the screen door. And right now, he was sitting inside hers and she wanted him out. She wondered how many times she would have to hurt that man’s feelings before he would go away.

She passed Asa’s reader board and the huge mailbox rack where two women were busy snatching each other bald over a circular in which there was a coupon for a free pack of Lucky Strikes. She walked between the cement lions and crossed the highway and entered the parking lot for the Blue Moon.

Melveena leaned against that boat of a Caddy, looking at the door as if she were actually considering entering it. As far as Raven knew, the woman had never set foot in the Blue Moon Tap Room. “What’re you doing here, lady?”

“Hatching a plan and avoiding soul-crushing boredom.”

Silver eyes met green. “You’re really going in there?”

“If you go with me.”

“Won’t your greatest mistake have a problem with it?”

“Let’s hope so.”

“Oh I have to go in, now. I need to see this. Are you actually going to touch the doorknob?”

“You touch it.”

The bar was full, the tables staked out, the pinball machines slamming and tilting under the full body weight of beer-bellied men. At Fossetta’s table, two chairs waited, empty. Melveena cleared her throat. “I guess we should sit with her.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not proper for her to sit alone at a bar.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want Fossetta to do anything that weren’t proper.”

“Hush, now.” They made their way over to the corner. Raven’s boots stuck slightly to a floor that needed a little more sawdust on it to mop up the spilt beer. Melveena’s strappy sandals were even more affected by the suction, but ever the lady, she pretended not to notice. She cleared her throat and smiled. “Good evening. Maybe there’s strength in numbers in a place like this?”

Fossetta looked up with those odd eyes. She didn’t appear to understand.

Raven translated. “Mind if we sit here?”

Fossetta smiled. The ladies took that as a yes and joined her, and both were soon transfixed, watching the effect she had on the men in the Blue Moon Tap Room. She appeared to be broadcasting some secret signal, a high tone of sexual availability that set the men to vibrating like telegraph wires. The hats kept tipping, the drinks kept coming. The long-legged men in their creased Wranglers kept coming over to pay their compliments.

Raven watched as Melveena slipped off her sweater, showing off her firm shoulders and arms. She let the dress ride up a little on her thighs. Fossetta sighed and leaned back, her unrestrained breasts moving liquidly under the satin. Good God, Raven thought, this is like sitting with a couple of professionals. “You two hoping to get laid tonight?”

“Not with one of these men.” Melveena sipped her drink through a straw that any red-blooded man in the bar would have paid twenty dollars to own. “Not a do-able one in the bunch.”

Raven nodded. “Always slim pickings at the Blue Moon.”

“Well, you have one of those boxer-brief wearing, 180-degree-erection-having young men in your bed. I don’t know why you aren’t back at your truck wearing him out.”

Raven barked out a laugh. Melveena could sum up a man, all right. She looked around a little. “Well, now that you’ve popped your Blue Moon cherry and trotted in here on those fancy high heels of yours, maybe you’ll come to the talent show on Saturday night.”

“That’s all anyone around here talks about here, isn’t it?”

“This time of year, you bet.”

“Maybe Fossetta here will join us, too.”

Fossetta pushed her hair out of her face and turned her head just so on that white column of a neck. Her chair creaked. Her glass was nearly empty, but four more were lined up on the table. She gave Raven the creeps. Soft and pink and yielding, a thing for a man to lie down on. Maybe she can enter herself in the talent show as a living mattress, thought Raven.

Melveena smiled. “I suppose you all wonder why I called you here, tonight.” Raven frowned. Melveena looked irritated. “That was a joke.”

“Jokes are supposed to be funny.”

“Hush. I do need to talk to you ladies. Both of you.” She looked over at Fossetta. “Can I trust you?” Fossetta gazed at her, empty and complacent. “Sometimes there are things a woman has to do because only a woman can do them.”

“Like what, give birth?”

Melveena didn’t smile. “I don’t suppose you two know the story of Judith and Holofernes.” Raven nodded, because she did. Fossetta blinked. Something almost like intelligence animated her odd eyes. And their three heads, two dark, one light, leaned in just the slightest amount as Melveena revealed what had actually brought her to the Blue Moon Tap Room that night. Fossetta listened in that waxy way of hers, shiny, still, and stupid. Raven felt an urge to kick her just to see a reaction. But she was too busy with her own reaction to Melveena’s plan, a plan so outrageous that it gave Raven a brand new understanding of just how crazy her friend was.

“Melveena, you’ve lost your marbles.”

“I have not.”

“You have. You’ve lost your damn marbles.”

Melveena leaned back and crossed her arms. “You know he did it.”

“He didn’t. I wish he had, and if he had I’d be happy to make sure he went to prison for it. Or the chair, if this state still fried men. But he was right up here at this bar all that night. He’s got five boys from Bone Pile who swear to it. He didn’t do it. And the main point here is that you have no idea who the hell you’re dealing with, you have NO IDEA what that man is.”

Melveena leaned back, her eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Why Raven LaCour, if I didn’t know for a fact that you’re not afraid of
anything
, I’d think you were afraid of Gator Rollins.”

“Don’t you go anywhere NEAR him.”

“For heaven’s sake. It will only take a second, Raven.” Melveena turned to Fossetta and opened her purse to offer just the tiniest glint of cubic zirconia. “We just have to get these in the right place.” Fossetta stared back at her. And blinked.

Raven shuddered. “I’m not even asking how you got those.” She stared at Melveena. “Or why you want to pin this on someone who didn’t do it.”

“Good, because I don’t plan to tell you. But I have them, and I need to get rid of them, and I think I might as well put them to use while I do. I want to make this work.”

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to kill
him
, too?”

“Raven, for your information, I don’t have these rings because I killed the Reverend.”

“Hey, it’s fine with me if you did, Melveena. He was a dirty old skunk. But I
ain’t
going anywhere near Gator Rollins, and I
don’t
want in on your plan. No woman in this world should ever be alone with him.”

“Oh for heaven’s sakes, Raven, he’s a Mormon. How bad could he be?”

Fossetta stood and headed in the direction of the ladies room. Melveena rose as well, following the traditional rule that ladies accompany one another to the restroom. And all the masculine eyes watched the twin glory of Miz Melveena Strange and Fossetta Sweet from behind, walking side by side to the restroom. It was enough to make a man howl at the moon. A few did. Another poured a glass of ice water over his head. Two others stood up and began to savagely punch the be-Jesus out of each other without so much as a word.

Raven felt like the top of her head was going to blow off, and no drink in the world would cure that. How stupid did Melveena have to be, walking around with a purse full of a dead man’s rings? She’d gone off the deep end, that’s what had happened, television rotted the brain and she’d spent too many nights staring at Clyde as he stared at the TV, she’d soaked up the plots of one too many Rockford Files, and she was just insane from it, now.

But was she insane enough to kill? Melveena had to have killed the Reverend. She had no idea how, or why, but why else would she have those rings? Why else would she be so dead set on framing Gator Rollins?

Good God, had Melveena really committed this murder?

She stood up so fast her chair fell down behind her. “I’m out of this,” she muttered, righting the old ladderback. “I’m shooting some pool. And getting drunk. Real drunk.”

She strode over to the pool tables where Quentin Romaine argued with a pair of Mexican men. He pointed to some silver coins on the edge of the pool table. “These are good, honest AMERICAN quarters, not PESOS, you wet-backed, job-stealing grease balls, and I want to play the winner of this last match!” Raven sincerely hoped that one of the dark-eyed, smiling men would bash him with a pool cue, right in the nose, so the male blood flowed red and thick. That would be an antidote to all this female fussing and plotting.

She needed to calm down. She went to the jukebox and plugged in some dollar bills. Beau had the best jukebox in California. She read and punched and sang along, tapping a boot along with Joe Ely song about a dog, thinking of her skinny-legged daughter jumping around to this nonsensical song.

Annie Leigh loved that song. Beau was there with a drink, the first bought for her that evening.

“Who sent this over?”

“Me. You look kinda shook up, Raven.”

“Just tired.”

“You going to do the talent show?”

“Nope.”

“What would it take to get you up there?”

“Maybe the word of God.”

“God doesn’t speak much in this bar, Raven.”

There was one of those subtle shifts in the atmosphere that let her know that trouble was on the way. The door of the bar opened. “God might not have much to say in here, Beau, but the Devil does.” He moved toward her with his usual smooth propulsion, as if he were powered by something oilier and smoother than human feet. She felt every hair on her head rise and prickle, and her heart slowed to a deep, empty thud.

Gator looked at Raven. “Babygirl, we need to talk. Beau, will you please excuse us?”

Beau frowned. “Are you all right with that, Raven?”

She wasn’t, but she’d be damned if she’d let a soul alive know how not all right she was.

Gator smiled his flat line smile as Beau made himself scarce. “Look, the past is the past. Can’t we just set aside our differences and talk?”

She found her voice. “I don’t see why you keep bothering me. I don’t see why you’re here, in this bar and in this park or this state, even.”

His face betrayed nothing. “It isn’t you I’m bothering with, trust me. I’m done with you. But I still want that guitar.”

Raven thought about that old black National with the case like a coffin. She thought about how her father had tried to play it and pronounced it impossible. Tender could play anything at all, but the strings wouldn’t stay in tune for him. “That guitar ain’t mine.”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” He took off his glasses and polished them up with a hanky he had in his back pocket, one that some doting woman had stitched with his initials. “Listen. Those Bone Pile boys backed out, and I have a lot riding on that talent show. I need the opportunity. I hear that guitar has a special sound, one that could make a man stand out.”

“I don’t have it.”

He looked at her with his bare eyes, looking for a point of entry. “I tell you what. You get me that guitar and you’ll never see me again. Never hear my voice on the radio. Never pass my truck on the highway. Never again, as long as you live. If you just get me that guitar.”

Of its own accord, her hand moved.

“Put your knife away, Babygirl. You can just say no. You don’t have to stab me.” He turned away from her. Showed her his back. Because he had no fear of her. He had never had the slightest bit of fear where she was concerned. Other men gave her a respectful distance. Not Gator. He’d assessed the chances of retaliation at zero. Nothing about her frightened him in the least, and this was what frightened her most.

Raven looked over his shoulder into a pair of wise, placid eyes, one green, one brown. Fossetta glowed like a haystack in the sunset. Her smile was a soft breeze through barbed wire. This is how she looks to men, Raven knew. This is what she is to them. All promise and comfort and love.

Melveena stood beside Fossetta. She shifted on her long legs and gave him a challenging smirk. She looked like a horse that would kick when you smacked its tight flank, step sideways and buck you off. But she would be the ride of your life. And this is how she looks to men, Raven knew. She’s something wild to slap and master and tame.

One is safety. One is danger. And they were offering this to Gator Rollins.

He looked them over. Choosing. Raven should have said it, then. She should have spoken up and warned them both away. Told them what he was, what he did for sport, his hunting and hurting of young women. But she was as stone silent as she’d always been.

As silent as the woman Gator took with him when he left the bar.

MELVEENA PACED A
path in the darkest corner of the Cactus Arms Motor Hotel parking lot. “Let’s give her one more minute.”