Chapter 4

 

It was my lucky day after all. There wasn’t a drop of my blood or Evelyn’s or anybody else’s to be found. In fact, there hadn’t even been a gunshot.

The deafening noise I’d mistaken for a shotgun blast had actually been the sound of the back door of Jimmy’s Place slamming open.

Rick Rod Delozier careened out of the door. God knows how I recognized him, but I did. I hadn’t seen Rick Rod since high school, but there was no doubt about it. It was him alright, my best friend Amy Delozier’s more than a bit off-kilter brother.

Rick Rod was in the process of getting 86’ed from Jimmy’s Place and having the riot act read to him by a mean-looking, well-endowed babe in tight-ass jeans, her big yellow hair piled high like a lemon cake. She had him by the front of his T-shirt, her nose about an inch from his face, and she snarled something indiscernible, but clearly ugly, then tossed him into the parking lot. The door banged closed and she was gone.

“My Lord!” Evelyn exclaimed as Rick Rod Delozier stumbled and bounced off a few parked cars, then he landed across the hood of mine.

Luckily or unluckily, I hadn’t decided which, yet my car wasn’t rolling at the time.

“Oh, My Lord!” gasped Evelyn grabbing my arm with a look of sheer dread. “Make a run for it, Kimberly. Now!”

Rick Rod managed to peel himself off the hood, and then rolled around to my car window.

“How’s it goin’, Rick Rod?” 

Looking deeply confused and not unlike Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion, he eyed me long and hard. Then he peered in at Evelyn who muffled a scream, then gasped like a large-mouthed bass. Rick Rod’s glazed gaze fell back on me. My own alcohol blood level must have risen just from inhaling his vapors.

“Now hold the phone,” he slurred, the dim-watted bulb trying very hard to click on. “I know you, right?”

“Kimberly!” Evelyn was now climbing me like a koala. “Can’t you see he’s dangerous?”

I knew Rick Rod Delozier was a lot of things, but dangerous probably wasn’t at the top of the list.

Finally his headlights flicked onto low beam. “Hey, I know. Fogerty High, right? You’re Amy’s friend!”

“Bingo.”

Ah, Amy Delozier. Momentarily, my thoughts drifted back to the times when Amy and I used to spend hours in her grandfather’s hayloft concentrating on perfecting the French kiss. It had been her idea to get in some kissing practice before we started junior high when, according to Amy, there would be lots of boy action. Boy action hadn’t actually sounded all that great to me. Even then, it was clear that making out with Amy would be hard to top.

Somewhere along the line I’d heard that Amy had married a dentist and they lived in an enormous Tudor over in Terrace Park. For the record, dentists are notoriously bad kissers. Not that I’d ever kissed one or was likely to, but the information does come from more than one reliable source.

Curse my luck. Why couldn’t Amy Delozier have fallen across my car hood instead of her drunken, deranged brother?

Rick Rod looked confused again. “Now what was your name?”

Evelyn groaned heavily and slumped in her seat.

I told him.

“Kim Claypoole!” he said, pointing at me like I’d finally come into full focus. Then he leaned in a little too close for my comfort and said, “Lemme tell you somethin’, Kim.” He nodded over at the tavern. “This just ain’t a very nice place anymore.”

Like it ever was.

“Matterafact,” he went on, “this whole town’s goin’ to hell.” So it wasn’t just me who’d noticed.

“I’m kinda surprised to see you ladies here.”

“Actually,” I lied, “we were just turning around in the lot.”

I was as eager to hit the high road as Evelyn, but I simply had to ask.

“Say, Rick Rod, how is Amy?”

Rick Rod grinned. “Real fine.”

But I already knew that. I wanted more, but I was hoping I wouldn’t have to hear about the dentist again. No such luck.

“She married a dentist. Ask me, the guy’s a jerk. But hey, he makes the big bucks.”

“Well,” I said, rolling up my window, “tell Amy hello for me, will you?”

“Sure thing.”

Like he’d remember.

“Wait a minute,” he said, putting his paw on my window. “Now who are you again?”

“Martina Navratilova.”

“Can we please leave now?” Evelyn pleaded. By this time she looked a lot more pissed off than scared. She had a nasty squeeze hold on the back of my neck and it was starting to cut off circulation to my medulla oblongata.

“Take it easy, Rick Rod.”

He waved bye-bye as we left a dusty trail.

 

On the drive back to Tara Evelyn was uncharacteristically quiet. Actually, it was more of a sulk, but I wasn’t dumb enough to explore it. Instead, I enjoyed the peace and quiet while I frolicked in the sun kissed, breezy, daisy-studded fields of my mind with a possible present day version of Amy Delozier, a woman who probably hadn’t had a decent French kiss in twenty years. I wondered if Amy ever thought back on our happy times together in the hayloft. If she did, I’ll bet she didn’t mention it to the dentist.