Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 02 - Crash Course

• Title Page
  
• Chapter ONE
  
• Chapter TWO
  
• Chapter THREE
  
• Chapter FOUR
  
• Chapter FIVE
  
• Chapter SIX
  
• Chapter SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  
• Chapter NINE
  
• Chapter TEN
  
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
  
• Chapter TWELVE
  
• Chapter THIRTEEN
  
• Chapter FOURTEEN
  
• Chapter FIFTEEN
  
• Chapter SIXTEEN
  
• Chapter SEVENTEEN
  
• Chapter EIGHTEEN
  
• Chapter NINETEEN
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY
  
• Chapter TWENTY-ONE
  
• Chapter TWENTY-TWO
  
• Chapter TWENTY-THREE
  
• Chapter TWENTY-FOUR
  
• Chapter TWENTY-FIVE
  
• Chapter TWENTY-SIX
  
• Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN
  
• Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
  
• Chapter TWENTY-NINE
  
• EPILOGUE
  

A TRUMAN KICKLIGHTER MYSTERY

by

Mary Kay Andrews writing as Kathy Hogan Trocheck

Smashwords Edition 2011

Copyright © 1997 Kathy Hogan Trocheck

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Originally published by HarperCollins

This book is dedicated with love to
Andrew Rivers Trocheck,
who daily gives us a one-man crash course
on raising a son.
What a joy!

Truman Kicklighter frowned at the mirror on his bureau. A thin, reddish-brown trickle weeped off the end of each of his eyebrows, giving him a clownlike appearance. Not what he had in mind. Not at all.

He blotted each eyebrow with a tissue. Now the ends were gray again, and the red-brown stain was soaking into his skin. It was the heat. August in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the air-conditioning at the Fountain of Youth Residential Hotel had once again gone on the fritz. He was perspiring so profusely that the Nice ‘n Easy was melting as fast as he combed it into his hair and eyebrows. Now it was trickling down his forehead, and into his ears.

Management, meaning young Mandelbaum, was making feeble excuses about how there was a problem with the wiring, which would be fixed just as soon as the electrician could get to it. In the meantime, temperatures hadn’t dropped below ninety since Labor Day and the old yellow-brick hotel was hell on earth.

The window air conditioner Truman had invested $199.95 for was useless now. Every time he plugged it in, all the lights on his floor winked on and off and then off. So now the unit sat on the floor, an expensive end table, while he propped open his only window with a brick.

He was waving a handheld hair dryer over his eyebrows when he heard the loud knocking on the door.

“Mr. K? It’s me, Jackie. Can I come in?”

“Just a minute, Jackie,” he called. Quickly he opened the top drawer of the dresser and swept in the Nice ‘n Easy, the toothbrush he’d used for application, the hair dryer, and the used tissues. One more hasty blot with the tissue. He scowled. Now it looked like he’d developed liver spots. He slipped his short- sleeved white sport shirt on top of his undershirt and buttoned it.

There was one chair in the room, a high-backed wooden number he’d brought from the old house after Nellie died. He sat down and picked up the paperback copy of
Sense and Sensibility
.

“Come on in,” he said, trying to sound casual.

Jackleen Canaday was feeling the heat, too. After working the Saturday early dinner shift, she’d gone to her own room at the hotel and stripped down to cut-off jeans and a white tank top. She came in carrying a newspaper.

“You weren’t at dinner,” she said accusingly. “Chicken croquettes and cream gravy and pickled beets. Mrs. Hoffmayer had two helpings.”

“It’s too hot for cream gravy,” Truman said, fanning himself with the paperback. “Besides, it’s my Great Books discussion group night. I’ll eat there.”

Back in the winter and spring, they’d had twenty members, a real lively bunch. But now they were down to only seven members, and he was the only man in the group besides old man Drewry.

They’d read
The Odyssey, Remembrance of Things Past, Ivanhoe, David Copperfield
, and
War and Peace
over the winter. He’d nominated
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
for this time, but the women, especially Elvida Hamm, a former librarian, had block-voted against “that smut.” Old man Drewry voted both ways.

Now they were plodding through
Sense and Sensibility
. He would quit, Truman had admitted to his friend Ollie, except that the refreshments served at this book group were of the highest quality he’d ever experienced anywhere. Each woman tried to outdo the other with her covered-dish offering: creamy, crumb- topped macaroni and cheese, garden-fresh vegetables, salty-sweet Coca-Cola-glazed hams, lemon icebox cakes, towering chocolate layer cakes. It was beyond description.

“Great Books,” Jackie said, waving a hand dismissively. “Bunch of old ladies reading poetry. There’s a car listed in the classified ads. I was hoping you’d give me a ride over to this car lot, Bondurant Motors up on U.S. 19 to check it out. It’s only six hundred dollars, and that’s exactly how much I have saved.”

“What kind of car?” Truman asked. “I didn’t know you could buy cars anymore for that kind of money.”

“A 1970 AMC Gremlin,” Jackie said, pointing at an ad circled on the classified page. “Says it’s a cream puff. Low mileage, radio, the works. What do you think?”

“I believe the part about low mileage,” Truman said. “Those cars only went a couple times around the block before they quit running. You don’t want a Gremlin, Jackie. Those cars were so bad they quit making them after just a few years. Hell, AMC went out of business. A Gremlin’s a joke.”

“It’s only six hundred dollars,” Jackie said. “And I’ve got to get a car. I can’t stand riding that bus or begging rides another second.”

“We’ll go out tomorrow, see what we can find,” Truman offered.

“Never buy a used car from a dealer. That’s my policy. Besides, we’re reading
Sense and Sensibility
. I can’t miss Jane Austen.”

On the first Saturday night of each month, Great Books night, he was always greeted at the door of the Mirror Lake Adult Recreation Center with a chorus of glad cries and gratitude. Each month, he managed to slip enough leftover food into his canvas book bag (specially lined for the occasion with tinfoil) to snack on for a week.

“Come on, Mr. K,” Jackie pleaded. “This car sounds perfect for me. Besides, you hate Jane Austen. You told me Harold Robbins and Ian Fleming are a hundred percent better than her.”

“Well, if we’re talking contemporary novelists, sure,” Truman said. “You ever read
The Carpetbaggers?
How about
From Russia with Love?
Anyway, I happen to know that Maggie McCutcheon is leading the discussion tonight.”

It was nearly time to go. He got up, went to the bureau, and got his bottle of Old Spice aftershave. If there was anything that could cool him off, it was a splash of Old Spice on his face and neck. He rubbed a little extra on the Nice ‘n Easy stain, which had faded to a dull purple. Then he ran the comb through his still damp hair. Was it a darker red than usual? Maybe he’d gone overboard this time.

“Which one was Maggie McCutcheon?” Jackie demanded. “The one with the hearing aid that buzzes?” Truman had dragged Jackie along to Great Books group once. Talk about boring. You might as well sit home and watch PBS.

“Miss McCutcheon happens to have perfect hearing,” Truman said, picking up his car keys. “She is a prodigious researcher. And, she’s promised home-made peach ice cream and sour-cream pound cake tonight. Sorry, Jackie.”

She sighed a martyred sigh and stood up. “Guess I’ll just have to take that nasty old bus.”

“Guess you will,” Truman agreed. He liked to get to his meeting after the discussion was started, but in plenty of time to plan his attack on the buffet table. Refreshments were served from eight-thirty till nine. He always left at nine. Sharp. Any later than that, the widows would be inviting him home to help finish up their leftover food—and maybe take a look at why their cable reception was so poor or their dishwasher made a funny thudding sound during the spin cycle.

Jackie reached up with both hands and jerked hard at the upper sash of the metal window, grunting out loud with the effort. It squeaked and the window slid open maybe five pathetic inches.

“Have mercy,” Jackie said, slumping back in her seat. Of all the days to catch a city bus with a malfunctioning air conditioner. First the hotel and now this.

Was there any place cool left on the face of the planet?

The sweat had soaked through her shirt, and now the front of her shorts were damp, too.

August. Supposed to be off-season in Florida. Tell that to the college kids. Forty of them, must be. All of them staying at the Fountain of Youth. It was old man Mandelbaum’s idea to make the place a youth hostel. After the church deal went sour last year.

That was the idea, make the place a youth hostel for the summer, once the snowbirds had gone back up north for the year. Just a handful of regulars stayed there year-round. The regulars, most of them retired, like Mr. Kicklighter and Ollie and that nasty Mrs. Hoffmayer, groused about the college kids, but it wasn’t like they could afford to live anyplace else. Her either, for that matter. She’d moved into a one-bedroom efficiency at the Fountain of Youth in May. Her own personal Independence Day.

Jackie bent down and rubbed her aching shins. Jesus. The college kids packed the place, two and three to a room, for twenty-five bucks a night. Ran up and down the halls all hours of the night, even though the front door was supposed to be locked and lights out at eleven. And they could eat like there was no tomorrow. Breakfast and lunch was what they liked. Cheap and filling. Pancakes, eggs, sausage, grits, hamburgers, french fries, pizza. Pie. Anything salty, greasy, or sweet. She had to keep an eagle eye on her tables. Some college kids were okay. But others thought being poor was a game. Cute or something. They liked to ditch a check, sneak out without paying. Let one of ‘em try it on her. She’d jerk a knot in their tails all right.

She had her face pressed up against the open bus window, looking for the right street address. Suddenly the bright red-and-yellow Bondurant Motors sign loomed up ahead.

At the same time she pulled the cord to tell the driver to let her off, she saw something red out of the corner of her eye. Candy-apple red. Devil red. Jackie caught her breath and stared. The bus lurched to a stop at the curb and she stumbled off. She knew this place now, but had never paid attention to its name. It was the same tired old used-car lot she’d passed a million times on her way up U.S. 19. The same old pink car, some kind of Cadillac, an old one, fifties, maybe, with gigantic shark-like fins, spun lazily around a shaft mounted on the flat roof of the concrete-block office building, its headlights blinking in the purple- dusk sky.