The smoke had abated and the truck and a crew checking for hot spots had left. The eye-watering smells from the fire lingered. There is no odor quite like a burned-out life. Otherwise, the trailer park had not changed in the two hours since they’d last been there.
Karl scanned the area, one eyebrow cocked. “Weren’t we just here a couple of hours ago, Ike?”
“This is the place. TAK, are you sure you found the right address?”
“Yes sir, the Lonesome Villas Park. At least that’s what the data search said.”
“Karl and I were here earlier for that fire over there. They found a dead guy in the ruins.” Ike paused. His expression changed marginally. “Dellinger!” he snapped. “You mean to tell me that Ethyl Smut was living in the same trailer park as her ex-husband?”
“Her ex-husband?”
“TAK, you see that smoldering mess over there? That used to be the mobile home of Mark Dellinger, he was—”
“The missing girl’s father. Yes, sir, I know. Ms. Smut’s unit is three down.”
“This case is becoming weirder by the minute. When did you say she moved here?”
“Umm, I’ll have to check my notes—not too long ago.”
“Karl, go back to the manager and get us some occupancy dates on both these units.”
It didn’t take long to search Ethyl Smut’s living quarters. Druggies don’t own anything valuable. If they did it would have been sold, hocked, or traded for the poison of their choice. They usually don’t care about the rest of their possessions either. Aside from what looked like a decade of unwashed laundry and dirty dishes, the place was empty.
Except for the blood trail.
***
Leota noticed the car exiting the mobile home park as she slowed to turn into it. The young man at the wheel, whoever he was, seemed so absorbed in conversation with the others in the car he nearly forced her off the road. Good. Not good for being forced to swerve to one side, but good to have gone unnoticed. The last thing she wanted was to attract attention anywhere near Picketsville, especially now and especially under the circumstances that had brought her back. Until this morning, crime and the people who pursued it, as in either perpetrators or police, did not interest her. But…well, she hoped she hadn’t turned paranoid, but she could have sworn the vehicle that nearly hit her was a police car. That begged the question: what were they doing here? Was Mark in trouble again? Is that why the phone line went dead? Worse, did they somehow find out something about Mark and Ethyl? What would they find?
She pulled up in front of an old Airstream near the entrance. It had a handcrafted sign affixed to its side that read Manager. She sat and studied the sign on the trailer for a moment, hesitant to make her next move. She could still reverse course and head home. Mark was history, after all, and the passage of time meant that no possibility of any sort of reconciliation existed. Common sense told her to quit now before something bad happened. She had neither the courage nor the skill to sort out whatever was at play here. Common sense notwithstanding, she screwed up a modicum of courage, alit from the car, and knocked on an aluminum door that hung on its hinges by a force that seemed to have no relationship to either the condition of the hinges or the laws of gravity.
A man who stood only inches above her five-feet-two answered the door. She asked for the number of Mark Dellinger’s unit. The man looked at her a moment, turned and neatly delivered a brown stream of chewing tobacco spit into a Coke bottle he held in his right hand. Leota noticed that there were several stains on the floor, some undoubtedly very old, which suggested his aim wasn’t always that good.
“Dellinger, Mark Dellinger,” she repeated, a bit too loudly.
“Ain’t no Dellinger staying here, lady.” The old man started to swing the door shut. It was then Leota smelled the residual aroma of fire. Not a bonfire, not a barbeque. Something had burned—a house—here? She felt the first signs of panic rise in her stomach.
“Mark Dellinger. He might have used a different name. He used to…” What did he used to do? When he had all those run-ins with the police he’d sometimes used his mother’s maiden name. What was it?
“Wait,” she said still too loudly. “What happened here?”
“What happened? Are you kidding? Is your nose broke? We had us a fire. Fellow named Simpkins got hisself burned to death here this afternoon.”
Simpkins. Madge Simpkins married Robert Dellinger and they had a son, Mark. That was it.
“Cops came, them CSI type of people, lots of excitement, for sure.”
“The man said his name was Simpkins?”
“Yep, that’s what he put down on the rental form. I didn’t check and the coppers got pretty shirty about that, but hell, he paid cash money and seemed okay to me. Anyway, they said his name wasn’t Simpkins after all.”
“Who did they say he was?”
“Who? Didn’t catch it. Makes no never mind now. He’s dead, ain’t he?”
“Yes, of course. What did they want to know?”
“Know? Well, shoot, they was trying to figure about how the fire got started, I reckon. Then, ’bout an hour ago, they come roaring back. Only this time they’re looking for that Smut woman. Seems to me they could have saved themselves some gasoline and time if they asked about her the first time they come. Police…what do you expect? Like to find that woman my own self. She owes me back rent for her place. But she wasn’t here. If I ain’t heard from her by Tuesday, I’m locking her out, and if I ain’t had no contact by October, I’m auctioning off the trailer. Say, who are you?”
“I’m a friend, you could say, of both of them. What did the police want with Ethyl?”
“Want? How the hell would I know what them police wanted? They just barreled in here and tossed her unit looking for God-knows-what. Drugs is my guess. She was one of them users you read about, you know. Looked like hell. I’da warned her about men and parties. I got my rules, but who’d want to party around with someone who looked like that, I ask you?”
“Thank you for your time. By the way, you might as well go ahead and sell the trailer. She isn’t coming back. She’s dead.”
“Dead? You don’t say. Well, that’d sure explain the cops and all. Funny how they had to come out twice. Once to find out about this Simpkins fella and then for the woman. Dead, you say?”
“Yes, dead. Did they say what they wanted of the other man…Simpkins?”
“Beats me. Whatever it was went up in the fire, I reckon. I tell you, lady, if you’re in the market for a used mobile home, best be careful what you buy. Them old units like the one Simpkins lived in are a problem. Some of them had that aluminum wiring which, you maybe heard about, is a fire hazard and they sometimes go up if there’s a short or something like that.”
“You’re saying it was an accident?”
“I don’t rightly know. Now the cops, they think maybe someone set the whole shebang on fire.” He paused to make another donation to the Coke bottle, this time with less accuracy. “See, the man, Simpkins, or whoever, was in it and all, so they’re naturally suspicious. But I think it was them aluminum wires. See, I heard this pop like you get when there’s a short in the electrics and then, pretty soon, there’s smoke. Somebody called the fire department and then the trucks came. The chief, he thinks it’s arson, but I ain’t so sure. I mean who sets fires to trailers unless they’re insured and then it’s the owners doing it for the money, right?”
“I suppose so. Thank you.” Leota left him muttering on his doorstep and wandered over to the burnt-out ruins of what she now knew to be her Marine’s last home.
“Mark, what happened here? What were you doing that got you killed and why the old picnic place? Why did you let her out there of all places?”
She stared at the tangled and charred remains for what seemed like an hour or more. Then, a decision made, she walked back to her truck and turned it toward Picketsville. It was time to settle things with her cousins, Flora and Arlene.