Chapter 32

 

I dialed Amy’s home number and the dentist answered. He sounded pompous and anal, exactly as I expected. No, Amy wasn’t at home, she was teaching class and no, he didn’t know when she’d be back. Yes, he’d let her know I’d called. Have a nice day.

I could only hope that Dr. Smith had just stopped by the Tudor long enough to pick up clean underwear and he was already headed back home to Mommy or, at least he was off to the tennis court to have a heart attack. What had Amy been thinking when she’d married this guy?

I wasn’t looking forward to telling Amy about the threatening call. As it was, she had enough stress on her plate, but it wouldn’t be fair, or even safe, to leave her out in the cold. I figured that Amy couldn’t get herself into too much trouble conjugating French verbs with a roomful of first-year francophiles, but I left a message for her with the community college office secretary anyway.

The call to Ted could wait.

“See you later, Evelyn.” I headed out the door to the Toyota. WFOG was my destination. She looked up from her gardening and shook her finger at me. “Don’t forget what I said.”

“I won’t forget,” and I wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean I was going to take her advice. At this stage of the game, it was a little too late for that anyway. “Have fun at Kings Island,” I said, sliding on my Elvis shades and starting up the car.

“If you change your mind...,” she said.

I wouldn’t do that either.

 

I parked next to Abbott’s Dodge Charger in the gravel lot in front of the radio station. Either Abbott’s ghost was the DJ on duty or one of the boys had taken to driving the Dukemobile. I was itching to nose around the field, but that would have to come next. I’d found myself checking the rearview more than once on the drive over, but all I’d spotted was a ribbon of empty road, miles of rolling, green countryside and a baby-blue sky dotted with sheep-shaped clouds, a gratifying outing—almost.

The cooled air hit me immediately when I walked into WFOG and it felt good. It was probably close to 100 degrees outside again and the humidity was starting to get oppressive.

The music was loud and energetic. It was bluegrass instrumental, the good stuff. Cousin Alonzo waved to me, then nodded over at the fridge. “Grab yourself a cool one,” he said. “Be with you in a minute.”

“Thanks, Alonzo.” I took him up on his offer. Inside the fridge there were a couple of six-packs of Hudy Delight and a rotten banana. I grabbed a beer, popped it open, took a cold sip, then got comfy on the sofa. I settled back, enjoyed the icy beer and watched Alonzo for a while. Like probably nowhere else in his life, at WFOG he was confident, competent and totally at ease behind the controls. He’d been at this for years. It was kind of sad to think it might all come to an end.

“The weather’s gonna be the same as yesterday,” Alonzo said to the listeners in radio land. “It’s gonna be hot, then hot some more. He he he. So stay cool. Now let’s have some more of that classic country. Here’s a couple by Roy Acuff, startin’ off with one of my favorites, Wreck on the Highway.” Alonzo cued up the music, disentangled himself from his DJ gear, then came out of the booth. He wore his Garth Brooks hat, frayed jeans cut-offs and a jaundice yellow tank top with a faded imprint of Minnie Mouse that hugged his budding spare tire. He was barefoot.

“Made a few programming changes,” he said, cheerfully. “I call this Alonzo’s Hour of American Country Classics.” Sure beat the heck out of an hour of geeky new country singers.

“I like it.”

“What’s up, Cuz’?” Alonzo said. He gave me the Claypoole bear hug, then went to the fridge and grabbed a cold Hudy for himself.

“Just thought I’d stop by and say hi.” A lie, but a small one.

Alonzo leaned against the fridge and drained off about half of his beer. “Evelyn gonna sell this place or what?”

“She’s still not sure.”

“I really hate the thought of goin’ lookin’ for job.” He took another long drink, then belched loudly. “Hey, I got some free Kings Island passes. Me and Evelyn are plannin’ on going this afternoon. Wanna come?”

I gave him my busy schedule excuse.

He shrugged. “Suit yourself. But there may not be a whole lot of free passes in our future, if you get my drift.”

I was sure that Alonzo had no concept of the profundity of his last remark. He probably had no concept of profundity at all.

He took two new beers out of the fridge, brought me one, and kicked back next to me on the sofa. We sat quietly for a few minutes, drinking our beers, while the ghostly, old-time country sounds of Roy Acuff filled the station and occupied the air waves of greater Fogerty.

“Alonzo, do you think Rick Rod Delozier killed Abbott and Jimmy Jacobs?”

“Yep,” he said. “Why, you don’t?”

“Maybe.”

“Whattaya mean maybe?”

I took a generous sip of the ice-cold Hudy. “Maybe someone set Rick Rod up. It happens.”

Alonzo shook his head. “This ain’t Murder She Wrote. The police got Rick Rod red-handed.” Alonzo belched again. “He did it, all right.” Alonzo crushed his beer can and tossed it in the general direction of a cardboard box across the room. “So help me, if I ever get my hands on that guy...” Alonzo took a deep, soulful breath. “You know, Abbott wouldn’t have liked my idea for the American Country Classics hour. He liked the modern stuff. We argued about it on and off.” For a minute, I thought Alonzo might burst into tears, but he successfully fought them off. “Well, guess I better get back at it, Cuz’. Thanks for comin’ by.” He slapped me lightly on the back. “Hey, you ever think of movin’ back home?” he asked.

“I think about moving a lot of places.”

A slow grin crept over his mouth. He had puppy-dog eyes, a big head of dark, glistening hair and pouty, red lips. He looked a little like Elvis if you really stretched your imagination. “You are quick, Cuz’. Always admired that.”

Aw shucks. “Thanks for the beers, Alonzo.” I set my empty down and picked up my car keys. “Maybe I’ll take a little walk around before I go, stretch the legs.”

“Sure, stretch your legs.”

Alonzo gave me another crushing hug before I made it out the door. It was a family thing. “Don’t be a stranger,” he said.

 

The field behind WFOG was daisy-studded, grassy-fragrant and waving in the scorching heat. If I’d had a butterfly net, I could’ve bagged an entire collection in about three minutes flat. Call me a bug lover, but butterflies seem to be at their most enchanting when they’re flitting around freely from blossom to blossom and not pinned to some science freak’s butterfly board.

The field was longer than it was wide. In the distance, was the edge of woods where Amy and I had hugged the turf the night before to avoid a grim rendezvous with Officer Mike and Charlene. Remembering how close we’d come to getting tromped on and subsequently discovered by a pair of potential psychos made my skin crawl all over again.

Knee-high in field flora and fauna, I meandered among the flitting butterflies. The grass was still tromped down in places and the old beer bottles were lying right where they were the night before.

What had Charlene dragged Officer Mike out here to see? And who the hell had followed us last night? I could rule out Officer Mike and Charlene. They were definitely in front of us. So who was tailing our tail?

And speaking of tails, suddenly I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that, once again, I was being watched. Furtively, I glanced around, but, as far as I could tell, it was just me, the flutterbys and a lot of fence posts. I stopped and listened carefully for any tell-tale sound, but all I could hear were the occasional gusts of wind in the trees along the fence row, a cawing crow and the rapid beating of my own tell-tale heart.

I couldn’t help but notice that my crawling skin crawled a little more when I replayed last night’s caller’s hideous message in my mind. It crawled about another ten feet when I considered again that there was a very good chance that whoever was the owner of that hellish voice probably also owned the car that had followed Amy and me only hours earlier.

But I needed to keep my mind on the task at hand and turned my attention back to the field. Had something been lost here? Had someone buried something or someone? I pawed and scratched and stomped around until I couldn’t paw, scratch or stomp another moment. A good half hour had passed and, once again, I’d found nothing, another frustrating and fruitless search.

Defeated and sweating like a Finn in the sauna, I headed for the fence row where I plopped down under a massive shade tree. Boy, was I a lousy detective. The crow that was loitering on the branch above me agreed. He taunted me with a barrage of nasty caws. I told him he should consider himself fortunate. If I had Ted’s .357, I’d shoot him. He just cackled back at me.

It was hard to believe that I hadn’t turned up anything except the same beer bottles I’d turned up the night before. About the only constructive thing I’d managed to do was shake off a bad case of the heebie jeebies. I mopped my brow with the tail of my T-shirt and tried to figure out my next move.

I was on the verge of embarking on some serious figuring when there was a loud whap whap whap. It took me a moment to realize that the racket was coming from overhead. It sounded like a two-ton butterfly was descending. The noise got louder. Startled, the crow above me gave a last cackle, flapped his oily black wings and took to the sky.

It wasn’t a two-ton butterfly, but I wasn’t that far off either. It was a helicopter. A sleek, black flying machine and it was circling the field. I watched as it slowly circled twice then hovered about dead center. I squinted into the sun but couldn’t make out any markings on the copter. I hunkered down low in the weeds, hoping they, whoever they were, hadn’t come looking for me. I was hoping that I’d seriously overestimated my popularity.

The copter swung its tail left then right, hanging tight to the air like a giant ebony dragonfly. It was one of those bubble models, but the bubble was so darkly tinted I couldn’t make out the pilot or passengers. Then, just as quickly as it appeared, the copter abruptly made like a runaway helium balloon, sailing up over the treetops and then it was gone.