Voodoo Daddy (A Virgil Jones Mystery) (13 page)

I took a stool at the mid-point of the bar and sat down with my burger and watched my father at the far end laughing with an attractive, middle-aged female customer. A row of clean beer mugs lined the drip trough on the tended side of the bar and when Delroy saw me he turned one over, set it under the tap and pulled a Red Stripe draft then placed it in front of me. My father walked down to greet me, looking back over his shoulder at the woman he’d been laughing with.

“Hey Pops. How’s it going?”

“Going just fine, son. Just fine.” He glanced back down the bar at the woman who was watching them in the mirror. “How’s the Governor’s main man?”

I sipped my beer and watched my father as he pulled two shot glasses from under the bar, and filled each with an ounce of over-proof rum. “I’m squeakin’ by,” I said, my eyes following his to the woman in the mirror. “Who’s that?”

“That’s Carol, you know, from over at County Dispatch. She’s going to help wait tables around here, mostly on the weekends. She answered the ad. Starts tomorrow.”

I felt a kernel of anger pop inside my chest and while I fought to contain it, in the end I put some teeth into my next question without really intending to. “Known her long?” I regretted the words as soon as I had spoken, but to my father’s credit he did not take the bait. Instead, he thought for a moment while wiping the bar between us. “You’re a grown man, son.”

“Point being?”

“Point being,” Mason said, “I was a grown man before you were ever born. I live my life, my way. Might not be your way, and that’s alright. But it’s mine.”

I looked at myself in the mirror and when I did, I saw my father’s face in my own, and sometimes wondered about who I saw staring back at me. I have always been comfortable with myself, but at forty-one years old I’ve noticed my hair already starting to turn gray at the temples, the lines in my face around my eyes growing more prevalent with the passage of time. I have a faint scar that runs the length of my jaw line on the left side of my face and it runs from under my ear then curves slightly upward to meet the corner of my mouth, a result of a boyhood injury I sustained many years ago. It is not nearly as noticeable as I sometimes think it is, but it flashes with white whenever I smile. I try not to smile, unless I want to scare someone.

I looked back at my father. “I just miss her, is all.”

“Jesus, Virgil. You think I don’t?” he replied, some teeth of his own. “One year, today. Not a day goes by, hell, not a minute goes by, I don’t think of her.” He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer. “I can remember walking in the park with her. We’d see an old couple, not old like me, hell, I’m only sixty-eight, but I mean old, eighties, nineties even, holding hands. Your mom, she’d smile and say ‘see that, Mason? That’ll be us some day.’ Well, that day isn’t ever going to come for me, Virgil. Not ever. That part of my life is over now. I don’t know what you’d have me do, but I know what your mother would want. She’d have me honor the time we did have together by getting up and getting on with my life. So that’s what I’m doing.”

He picked up the shot glasses and held one out for me. We had toasted my mother once a month for the last eleven months. “She’s gone Virgil, but she’s not forgotten. Not for a minute. I love her and I always will. But I’m done toasting the past. So here’s to you and me, Son, and whatever waits down the line.” My father drained his shot glass and set it down hard on the bar then walked away, leaving me sitting there alone, staring at myself in the mirror.

I suppose my father grieves his loss in ways I do not yet and hope never to understand. But I also grieve in my own way and not a day will pass that when I think of my mother I do not also think of her father, my grandpa. He died long ago, and when he passed, to say that things were never quite the same with our family would be a gross misrepresentation of our ancestral history. He was quite simply the center of our universe and we circled happily around him like planets around the sun, as if when immersed in his shining love there was nothing ever to fear, no darkness that could not be illuminated and laid bare for what it really was.

I have a picture of my grandfather that sits on the mantle of my fireplace at home. In it, he is sitting in his finished basement, facing the camera, his arms stretched just so while speaking with someone out of frame of the photograph. His back faces the descending stairway that was lined with light colored natural pine panels, and hung at eye level on the walls in a diagonal fashion are pictures of his grandchildren and a few other people I do not recognize. But one picture in particular hanging on the wall behind him always gets my attention. It is a picture of my father as a young man, perhaps taken even before he and my mother were married. It is black and white, and I think it is the most handsome picture of my father I have ever seen. There is a look of quiet confidence on his face and the way it hangs just over my grandfather’s shoulder in the photo tells me the love he showered on me was not exclusive. If you were a part of his life, you were a part of his love.

But when he died and we were forced to carry on without him, without his guiding influence in our lives, things slowly began to change. We began to drift apart, our exaggerated steps taking us further away from each other instead of closer together. Earlier when I spoke of the influence he had in our lives I used the analogy of the sun and the planets, and after he died if felt as if we no longer had his gravitational force around us to hold us together. Everyday we were together I remember a sense of anticipation and wonderment at what lay ahead, but after his death those hopeful days began to diminish as if our world had stopped turning and we were now stuck on the edge of an eternal night, locked in a phased elliptical orbit on the dark side of a place I thought I might never escape.

Eventually I learned a lesson from what happened to our family after my grandfather died, a lesson that clearly my father had learned along the way as well. I would honor his life and the lessons he tried to teach me by living my life to the fullest, the way he did.

Bottom line, if my father wanted to date another woman, who was I to judge?

A few minutes later I got up and put my rum behind the bar, and moved down next to Carol. We watched each other in the mirror for a few seconds, and then I turned on my stool so I could face her and said, “I’m Mason’s son, Virgil. Everyone calls me Jonesy. You must be Carol.” I smiled when I said it though I really didn’t intend to.

* * *

As the night went on I worked the bar with my dad but neither one of us had much to say to the other about a shared loss we continue to grieve in very different ways, which is, as I suspect, the way it should be. We had a decent crowd, and our band brought the house down with their original and covered Reggae. With two hours to go until closing my father took off his apron and walked over to where I stood and ruffled the hair on top of my head like I was still a little boy. “See you tomorrow, Son.”

I watched him and Carol as they walked out the door, then took my shot glass of Rum from the drip tray where I had left it earlier in the evening, held it up for a second and then drank it down. “See you tomorrow, Dad.”

Delroy walked over and put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Your father…he loves you, no?” He patted me twice on the chest then went back to work, singing along with the band, his voice carrying across the bar. A few minutes later he looked over at me and smiled, still singing, and just for a moment I could have sworn I was looking at my grandfather.

* * *

Half an hour later Miles, Donatti, and Rosencrantz came in and took a table in the back. I drew two pitchers of Red Stripe, placed them on a tray with four frosted mugs and joined them at the table.

“Alright,” I said. What have we got so far? Ron?”

“Well,” Ron said as he took a long pull of beer, then let a small belch escape his mouth, “to put it as professionally as possible, we ain’t got dick.”

We all sat with that for a moment. “He’s right,” Donatti said. “We got nothing on the canvass from this morning out at Dugan’s. The houses are all too isolated, and well, hell, Jonesy, you know that crowd. They’re good people and all, but when you’ve got that kind of jack, unless you’re at one of those fancy social functions, everyone keeps to themselves. And besides, it was just early enough that most of the husbands were gone, the wives weren’t up and the help hadn’t arrived. All in all, I’d say that whoever did this had it pretty well planned out.”

“What about the print off of the shell casing?”

“Blank. Who ever it was, they’ve never been printed.”

“So,” Miles said. “I stand by my original statement. We ain’t got shit.”

“You said ‘dick’ the first time,” Rosencrantz said.

Miles looked out over the top of his glasses. “I’m pretty sure I said ‘shit.’

“No, no,” Donatti said. “He’s right, you said ‘dick.’ I heard it.”

“Yep,” Rosie said. “I think you’ve got dick on the brain. Is there something you’d like to talk about?” He wiggled his eyebrows at Miles.

Put four cops around a pitcher of beer, I thought, and this is what you get. “Maybe we could stick to what’s important here?” I said. “Rosie, do you have anything at all?”

“Yeah, your sign’s wrong. The food’s good. And the beer is ice cold too.”

“Tell me again why I hired you.”

“My superior investigative skills.”

I stood from the table. “Work it out, guys. We need leads and I want a plan of action by tomorrow morning. The Governor and the press are going to be breathing down our necks, so let’s show ‘em something.”

As I walked away I heard Rosie tell Miles again that he was positive he’d said ‘dick.’

* * *

Twenty minutes later I was ready to pack it in for the night. I told Delroy I hoped to see him tomorrow, but I couldn’t be sure.

‘Dat alright, mon. Every ting come in its own time, no?”

“I guess so, yeah.”

“Your father, he worries about you.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, mon. Of course dat’s right. He wants you here, run the bar wid ‘im. Safer for you here, you know what I mean?”

“He’s never said anything like that to me, Delroy.”

Delroy laughed. “Yeah mon, you two a couple of talkers, you are.”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Hey, what do I know? Probably not my bidness anyway, mon.” He nodded over my shoulder toward the front entrance of the bar. “Dat probably not my bidness either, but here come your woman.”

I turned and looked around just as Sandy slid onto a stool next to me. She wore a loose blue halter dress that hung almost to the middle of her thighs and a pair of platform sandals.

“Delroy,” Sandy said, her hand over her heart, “that voice of yours melts me every time I hear it.” Then to me: “Buy a girl a drink?”

* * *

I leaned over the bar and drew two Red Stripes from the tap. My eyes met Sandy’s in the bar mirror and I thought they were about the sexiest damn eyes I’ve ever seen. Ever. I set the mugs down and took a seat next her. “You don’t look too worse for wear. How you holding up?”

Instead of answering me right away, Sandy took three long drinks from her mug and set the half empty glass back down on the bar. Then she turned her head and saw the rest of the investigative team at the table in back. She looked back at me, picked up my mug and started toward the back.

“Hey, where are you going?” I said.

She stopped and turned back. “Gonna see what’s shaking back there. I love working for you, Jonesy. Have I told you that yet? But I’m either in or I’m out, you know what I mean?”

I thought her eyes were made of liquid blue. “Sandy, it’s not that.”

“It’s not what?”

“Well, it’s not…uh, well, hell, I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I just sort of thought—“

Sandy walked toward me and leaned in close, her mouth right next to my ear. “I know what you thought, Jonesy.” She kissed me on the cheek, then leaned away. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” Then, almost as an after thought, “You look pretty good your damn self.”

I watched her cross the bar. So did everyone else in the room.

* * *

I moved behind the bar and pulled Delroy aside. “A minute ago you said something.”

“What’s that, mon? Delroy always saying one ting or another, no?”

“When Sandy came in. You said, ‘here comes your woman.’

Delroy laughed and shook his head. “I also say it probably not my bidness.”

“Yeah, you did. But she’s not my woman. She just works for me.”

“Yeah, mon. Dat’s all right. You keep telling yourself dat.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

Delroy put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m just a happy go lucky Jamaican bartender. What do I know?”

I scratched the back of my head. “I don’t understand.”

“Hah. I tink you do. I grew up wid my family, you know? We live right by the beach. When I was little, after school get out, I’d run and play in the water. Sometimes when I do I see a fish and tink to myself, ‘there go a fish.’ Simple as dat, mon. Plain as day, no?”