twenty-seven

Scotty’s Brewhouse was located on Northfield Drive in a strip mall just west of Green Street. Francine drove herself and Charlotte there in her Prius. She’d already done enough driving of Charlotte’s boat of a car in the last couple of days. She realized too late that she should have at least checked to see if they were being followed. Although, as dark as it was, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to determine anything.

This being a Monday, Francine was able to find a parking spot not too far from the door. She elected to park rather than drop Charlotte at the door first. She reasoned that with Charlotte’s improvement in her knee, the walk would do her good.

They opened the door, and the drone of sporting events on the many televisions spilled out and assaulted their ears. Sports announcers sound alike in all manner of sporting events except golf, Francine thought. Golf announcers whispered like raising their voices would wreak havoc on the concentration of the competitors, even though they were located in studios far from where any golf swings were taking place. These were not golf announcer voices, though, not on a Monday night. These were basketball announcers and hockey announcers and professional wrestling announcers. Their voices were loud and brash, and they blended into a cacophony of noise amid the bright lights of a half dozen or more LED televisions glowing in the dark spacious serving room while smells of delicious food rolled out of the Brewhouse’s kitchen. It was an atmosphere that worked, and not just for young people. Francine and Jonathan and their friends had eaten there many times.

The women peered through the darkness and located the men, grouped around a couple of tables on the left side of the restaurant near a television broadcasting two scantily clad women about to engage in a professional wrestling bout. The men appeared to be only half watching the screen. They were more involved in ESPN SportsCenter, which was being televised on an adjacent set. On the table were beers and food.

Francine saw Toby notice them. He tilted his head to the side as if to ask if they were here to see him. Francine nodded and he waved them over.

He gave them a hug. The other men nodded in acknowledgement. “What are you two doing here?” he asked.

“We came to see Eric,” Francine said.

Eric seemed surprised. Since he was on the other side of Toby and there was no way the women could maneuver their way around to him, Eric traded places with Toby so they could talk without having to shout too loudly. “What do you need?” he asked.

“We need to know why your aunt named her firm Jacqueline Consulting,” Charlotte blurted out.

Eric wrinkled his nose. “You do? Why?”

Francine didn’t want Charlotte to say too much too soon, so she jumped in with a simple explanation. “We think it might shed some light on who killed her.”

“I don’t see how it could,” he said. “To the best of my knowledge, she took it after my middle name, which is Jack. I thought she just feminized it.”

“But she never confirmed that?” Charlotte pressed. “She never actually told you that?

Eric continued to look puzzled. “No. Do you know otherwise?”

Francine and Charlotte looked at each other.

Francine spoke hesitantly. “Does the name Jacqueline Carter mean anything to you?”

“Carter,” he repeated with just a touch of defensiveness. “It’s a common name. Or are you implying it’s somehow connected to the local Carters?”

Again the two women made eye contact. This time Charlotte spoke.

“Camille seemed to have a special fondness for a grave in the Carter cemetery that’s on Cass Carter’s land. The gravestone has ‘Jacqueline Carter’ on it. We thought that might be it.”

Eric stared at them. He had a distant look in his eyes.

“Uh, oh,” Toby said. Francine glanced over at him. But he wasn’t looking at her. He was squinting at a figure whose silhouette was framed by light coming from the kitchen area. He was holding a microphone and advancing toward their table. “Francine,” he said, “did you check to see if you were followed on your way over?”

“No,” she answered. “Why?”

“Because a certain individual who knows how to hack his way into electronics and thinks he is destined to be a stripper is on his way over here.”

There was a blip over the sound system and all the audio went dead except for the karaoke strains of a song.

“I can name that tune in five notes,” said Charlotte. “It’s Whitney Houston’s version of Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You.’ It’s from The Bodyguard.”

Tripper the Stripper began to sing as he slowly unbuttoned his shirt. Francine wasn’t sure how he had managed to do it, but the lights in the Brewhouse had come up in a sequence that highlighted his slow approach toward Charlotte. Lights elsewhere had dimmed.

“Hoo-wee!” said Charlotte. “He’s got an unbelievable voice. He could sing to me all day long.” She waved to him as though he weren’t already coming this direction. “Over here, Tripper!”

“This is way too creepy,” Toby said. “We need to get you two out of here before this gets any worse.”

But it’s already getting worse, Francine thought. Charlotte was climbing onto one of the chairs so she was tall enough to see Tripper coming. Once she reached it, her eyes searched for a way to get even taller. She eyed the table.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Charlotte,” Francine called, trying to raise her voice above the audio recording.

Tripper launched into the drawn-out chorus.

The crowd seemed mesmerized by what was going on. Every face in the restaurant was focused on the voice that came from the pipes of the skinny man slowly threading his way through the maze of tables toward someone standing on a chair. They seemed to not notice he was singing to a short, elderly woman with a crooked silvery wig.

Charlotte sang loudly in unison, her arms waving with abandon. She made no real attempt to hit the same notes Tripper was hitting. She didn’t care, and no one else seemed to, either.

“Train wreck,” Toby muttered, his eyes wide with alarm. “You don’t suppose Charlotte is going to …”

Francine knew what he was thinking. “She might.”

Charlotte began unbuttoning the sweater she was wearing. She didn’t look steady but at least she wasn’t dancing on the table. Though Francine worried she might try that next.

Then the music picked up. It morphed into a disco version of the song Francine had never heard before. It had a strong beat, and the tempo picked up. The crowd began to clap to the new rhythm.

Francine gripped Toby by his arm. “Please get her down before she hurts herself!” Or embarrasses herself, she thought. Or us. But she felt her face blushing and knew it was too late for the latter.

Toby got closer to the chair Charlotte was standing on. He was so much taller than her that his arms were at the same height as hers. He tried to stop her hands from fumbling with the buttons.

In one swift motion Tripper jumped onto an empty table, still some distance away from them.

One thing’s for sure, Francine thought, that Tripper is an agile guy.

The karaoke music moved on to the second verse, Tripper’s hypnotic voice crooning over the hijacked speakers.

Charlotte batted at Toby’s hands. He became more insistent. He shifted his gaze from Charlotte to the person she was focused on. Tripper had now removed his shirt to reveal his skinny torso.

Francine watched Charlotte become unbalanced on the chair as she fought off Toby’s hands. “Can you just pick her up and get her down?” she asked.

“I’ll try.” He swooped an arm under her legs, tilted her back, and caught her with his other arm as she fell. She was laughing. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek.

A black man in a Scotty’s uniform walked rapidly toward Tripper. He carried a snifter glass in one hand. Francine recognized him as “Isaac Washington,” the stripper who’d been auctioned off first at the benefit. So he really is a bartender, she thought.

“Tripper, please get down from the table,” Isaac said.

He continued crooning until he reached a spot where Whitney Houston would have taken a breath. “Can’t,” he said. “I’ve been hired to do a job, and I won’t rest until I complete my mission.”

Then he shifted back into song. He jumped one table closer to Charlotte and removed his belt.

Isaac advanced on the next table and held up the snifter glass. “If you come down now,” he shouted over the music, “we’re prepared to give you two complimentary glasses of cognac.”

Then quickly before the next line started, Tripper asked, “On the house?”

The refrain started up. Tripper didn’t sing. But everyone else in the restaurant did.

“It’s Prunier,” Isaac yelled.

Prunier? Francine thought. Really?

Isaac nodded. “But you have to come down before you take your pants off. If we see any underwear, the deal’s off.”

Everyone in the place was staring at the spectacle that was developing at the north end of the building. And they continued to sing, completely amused.

Tripper jumped to the next table. Unlike the former tables, this one had been occupied and not yet bussed. Glasses slid off and crashed onto the floor, splintering into glass shards that skittered in all directions. Isaac reached the table in time to nab an appetizer platter with his free hand as it teetered on the edge. His quick action prevented remnants of a Macho Nachos feast from splattering the ground like a Pollack masterpiece, but his shoes took a hit from the salsa. The sound of glass crunching under his feet made his eyes widen, but his attention never wavered from Tripper.

“No underwear,” he cautioned.

Tripper was now only one table length away from Charlotte and Toby. Finding the table to be mostly empty now, he hopped on one foot and removed a slip-on shoe from the other. The karaoke machine moved on to the third stanza. He breathed the words into the microphone, going for a husky, pity-me effect.

Isaac slid the platter onto another table and showed Tripper the snifter again. “I’m losing my patience, but if you get down now you can still have the cognac.”

Toby, wrestling with a squirming Charlotte in his arms, tried to back away from the action. Unfortunately he hadn’t accounted for Charlotte’s leg sweeping across the table Tripper was on. Tripper saw it coming and hopped on one foot again, but the movement made him tip to one side and lose his balance. He hit the table, rebounded with a jump, and launched himself toward Isaac. To his credit, he did a somersault in midair, missed Isaac, and stuck the landing.

The music might have gone on, but Francine couldn’t hear it. The applause in the room for Tripper was deafening. As it died down, Tripper picked up the end of the third stanza.

The crowd joined Tripper once again with the refrain. They sang so loudly that when the song ended, Francine couldn’t hear him, though she was standing right next to him. Tripper took Charlotte from Toby, held her in his arms, grinned ear to ear, and sang a capella, just as Whitney had done at the end of the song, only faster. He wore no shirt, only one shoe, and both socks, but he still had his pants on.

Isaac looked relieved.

Tripper set Charlotte back on her feet. “Mission accomplished,” he said, and saluted her. “I’ll have that drink now.” He took the snifter from Isaac.

Francine saw the spinning lights of two Brownsburg Police cars pull up in front of the restaurant. Officers came through the front door, guns drawn.

“It’s okay, officers,” Isaac said. “I think the situation’s under control.”

“Darn tooting we’re okay,” said Charlotte. “This is one of the most fun nights I’ve had in a while.” She waggled her eyebrows at Tripper. “I’m your baby now,” she sang, slightly off key and off lyric, but giving a fair rendition of another Whitney hit. This brought more laughter from the throng.

“A few broken glasses,” Isaac recounted to the older of the policemen, “but nothing that couldn’t have happened with a careless server. We won’t file any charges. And I’m hoping this is the last we’ll see of him attempting to be a stripper.”

“I don’t know about that,” Tripper said. “I thought I did a pretty good job. And I don’t have any other talents.”

“You have your voice,” Francine answered. “You have an amazing singing voice. It’s like Jim Nabors performing ‘Back Home Again in Indiana’ at the Indianapolis 500. All anyone could think of when they looked at him was Gomer, the character he played on The Andy Griffith Show, but then he opened his mouth and this beautiful, confident, melodious voice came out. That’s you! You do the same thing.”

Tripper blushed.

Somewhere, Tripper’s hacking into the sound system was undone. The noise of the televisions and their various sporting events roared back over the audio channels. Servers rushed out to clean up the mess that had been made, which didn’t appear to be too bad.

Francine breathed a sigh of relief. She’d have to talk to Marcy about finding some singing gigs for Tripper. Maybe the women could help him with whatever demons still plagued him from being in the war. She hoped so. He may be troubled, she thought, but he certainly feels the call to duty. He could probably hold a job. And what a voice!

Francine found she still had her purse slung over her shoulder. She dug out her keys and started toward Charlotte, who’d been offered a margarita by a group of young people watching American Ninja Warrior. “It’s going to be tough pulling her away from all this attention,” she said. She’d intended to mutter it to herself, but then she discovered Toby was standing next to her.

“That’s our Charlotte,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Have you seen Eric?”

Francine looked around. She didn’t see him, but the lights had gone dim again for watching television. “Maybe the restroom?”

Toby shrugged. “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. He looked worried. “I’m going to go check.”

That was when she realized that she hadn’t seen Eric since they’d told him about the gravestone for Jacqueline Carter. Tripper’s escapade might have provided the perfect cover for his exit.

She wondered if he’d taken it.