14

NOT FAR BACK down that mountain road, Pearl seemed to become discombobulated. Sam said, “Bobby, it looks like her nose is worn out. I think we ought to stop and put her in the car.”

They did, and Pearl stretched out in the back seat and immediately began to snore.

Then they took a shortcut Bobby remembered, and it wasn’t long before they were back at the Gas ’N Grub.

“Maybe I ought to reconnoiter for a while,” Bobby said when they pulled up in Sam’s BMW. “I haven’t had any sleep for a while now. Think I’ll take me a little nap up at Mamaw’s house, then get cleaned up, start looking again.”

And maybe take a little peek around the corner for Miss Cynthia Blackshears, the young woman he’d done two years’ time for, see if she’d changed her mind about speaking to him—that’s what Sam thought.

She said, “I’ll leave you then, but let me use the phone before I go and see if Loydell came up with anything.” Loydell wasn’t home. “Well, I guess I ought to get on back to my friends.”

Friend, singular, was what she hoped. As in Kitty alone, as in, please God, let Jinx be off rustling up the ransom money, or, better yet, talking to the cops. She wrote her room number on the back of her card and handed it to Bobby. “Let me hear from you later today, even if you haven’t turned up anything.”

He said he would, and 15 minutes later Sam was standing in the Palace’s lobby staring at two messages.

The first was a fax from Harry. Damn his eyes! She scanned down the long page to his signature at the bottom. Love, Harry, indeed. If he’d loved her, he would have given her more room. Or less. Oh, hell. She jammed the sheet, unread, in her jeans pocket.

The second message was an invitation to join Kitty and Jinx for lunch at McClard’s Barbecue on Albert Pike Avenue, if she wasn’t too busy.

Olive, Harry, and now Jinx—what she was was oh for three. But she’d never in her life passed on a pork sandwich.

*

Given her familiarity with Harry’s barbecue business, Sam could tell from the driveway that McClard’s was the real thing. It looked right, a sort of funky 1920s low squat stucco building, both its parking lots jammed with a mix of Cadillacs, Chevrolets, and pickup trucks. Eleven-thirty in the morning, there was a line of folks waiting out the door. And most importantly, the air was sweet with a mix of pig and pepper and hickory smoke.

She peered through a big plate-glass window, and Kitty waved from a booth of red plastic, Formica, and fake wood.

It smelled even better inside. Sliding into the booth, she said to the waitress in khakis and a maroon jersey, “A sliced pork sandwich with beans and slaw, Diet Dr Pepper, thank you, ma’am.” That taken care of, she could concentrate on visiting with Kitty. And Jinx, if she had to.

“Where the hell have you been?” Kitty growled. She clearly didn’t feel as cute as she looked in her white slacks and the Elvis sweatshirt Sam had brought her back from Tupelo—where she and Harry had gone for a BBQ cook off, back in the good old days last year.

“Sweetheart,” Sam said to her, “maybe you need to have another cup of coffee.” But Kitty didn’t let up with the steely glare. Sam raised both hands to the heavens. “Okay, you really want to know, I was out running with a young man and a dog. What can I say? I can’t seem to stay away from either one.”

Flippant, she’d decided, was the right approach. They’d think she was joking, and she for sure didn’t want Jinx to know about Bobby Adair. The woman was perfectly capable of calling up the Hot Springs Police and turning him in for breaking parole, just to make Sam mad.

She turned to the former Miss Hot Springs—who was done up in an hour’s worth of big hair and makeup, a microscopic black skirt, teetery high-heeled black pumps, black stockings, and a bright blue silk blouse that made the most of her considerable cleavage—and patted Jinx’s hand. “What have you done with your morning, sugar pie, other than get yourself all pretty?”

Jinx didn’t say a word. She reached in the biggest black patent leather purse Sam had ever seen, pulled out a pair of movie-star sunglasses, and slapped them on. Then she turned back to her grilled cheese sandwich, which spoke volumes about her IQ, her taste, and her lack of qualification as a human being, as far as Sam was concerned. Anyone who would order grilled cheese in a place that smelled this good ought to be put out of her misery.

“I take it that you all did not have a very productive morning,” Sam offered.

“No, we did not,” Kitty sighed. “Though God knows we tried.”

“Well, do tell.”

Kitty looked at Jinx, who was otherwise engaged, staring back at a large young man in the next booth who was wearing a gimme hat that said Peterbilt across the front. He’d had a forkful of chili spaghetti halfway to his mouth when he’d spotted Jinx and frozen.

“I’d forgotten that she had that effect on men,” said Kitty. “You should have seen the look on Jinx’s friend Bo we went to visit this morning—like a deer caught in the headlights.”

“And who’s Bo?” asked Sam.

“President of the Hot Springs Amalgamated Savings Bank.”

“The bank’s open on Sunday?”

“It is if your name is Jinx and you went to high school with Bo.”

“I see.”

“I imagine he had a lot more hair and a lot less gut back in high school, but that didn’t keep him from being hot to trot, I’ll tell you that. He couldn’t wait to get Miss Jinx into that big old private office of his.”

At that Jinx turned and pulled the sunglasses down a tad on her perfect nose and said to Kitty, without stopping to breathe, “Bo begged me to go to the homecoming dance with him our senior year, but I didn’t. I already had a quarterback and a nose guard duking it out for the honor. Anyway, he’s called me at least once a year ever since then, no matter if I was married or not. He’s always been married, since he knocked that Darlynn Millsaps up his freshman year at U of A. But, anyway, I guess he’s still a little sweet on me. That’s why he was willing to do me a tiny little favor.”

“Which was?” Sam asked, knowing, a bank, it had to have something to do with the ransom money, but she wanted to hear the straight poop from Jinx.

Who was still giving her the freeze. As if Miss Beauty Queen herself hadn’t been the one who’d chunked the first Coke.

“Okay,” said Sam. “I’ll bite. He loaned you a million dollars on your signature alone, with your virginity as collateral.”

Jinx took a miniscule nibble of her grilled cheese and chewed it with rapt concentration, as if Sam weren’t in the room.

“But wait a minute,” Sam said, “I’m being so stupid. You have a million dollars you won in that lottery. Tax-free. So what were you doing at the bank?”

The silence was broken only by the waitress who arrived with Sam’s order. “Anything else I can get y’all, y’all just holler.”

Sam wasn’t letting any kidnapping or any ransom negotiations or any beauty queen stand in the way of food that smelled this good. She dug in. The white bun was warm, the meat was beautifully smoked tender white pork shoulder, the sauce an absolutely perfect blending of spicy sweet and piquant with a big hit of hot.

“Listen,” she said when she’d eaten enough to be sure she was going to live, “this Q was worth the trip, so if neither of you wants to talk with me, that’s okay. I’ll finish this, and then maybe another one, or maybe two, and then I’ll be on my way. Olive still hasn’t turned up, and I’ve got plenty to do looking for her.”

“Oh, hell,” Jinx said finally. “What difference does it make? You might as well know.”

Kitty gave Sam a look: Wait until you get a load of this.

But while Sam was curious, she remembered she really didn’t want to know too much. She certainly didn’t intend to get snookered into this kidnapping problem of Jinx’s. “Look, don’t do me any favors. It’s none of my business. You’re right. You should handle this the way you want to. Tell you what, I’ll get another couple of sandwiches to go, and I’m out of here. You carry on.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Jinx. “You’re dying to hear about how screwed up this whole thing is, and you know it. I swear to God, I wish I’d never come back to Hot Springs. I am so mad at Speed.”

An interesting attitude, thought Sam. Blame the victim. But she didn’t say it.

“He encouraged me, you know, to do this whole thing up right. I said I wanted to have this big blowout of an engagement party. He said, Go right on ahead. So I did. I already paid the caterer and the country club and the wedding planner and ordered my gown from Vera Wang, who does those to-die-for dresses up in New York. I flew up there to pick it out and for my fitting, and they’re doing a super rush-rush, which is twice as expensive, but Speed said, So what, sugar pie, you want it, go on ahead. No problemo. Speed says that all the time, no problemo.” Jinx wadded up a little piece of white bread and popped it in her mouth. “I used to think it was real cute, his saying that, No problemo, back when we met.”

“Which was how long ago?” asked Sam.

“A month. Thirty-two days, to be exact.”

“And what exactly is it that you’re mad at him about?”

Kitty’s look told her they were about to get to the good part.

“Well! He said, Go on ahead, do this, do that, and I did, writing checks left and right—”

The light dawned. “So you were paying for all this.”

“Speed had a little temporary liquidity problem. Something about the yen and German marks and the float. You know what I mean?”

What Sam knew was that she could smell fish in the air, and there was none on the menu.

“So I went ahead doing what I wanted to do, knowing that Speed was going to make it all good. After all, the man is rolling in it.”

“Was rolling in it. Maybe,” said Kitty. “Perhaps. We’re not sure.”

Sam said, “You ladies want to spell this out for me? I’m a little slow.”

“Oh, hell!” Jinx was exasperated, and more than a little embarrassed, Sam could tell, airing her dirty linen in front of Sam. “We went over to the Hot Springs Amalgamated because that’s the bank Speed said handled all his big-deal international financial transactions.”

“Let me guess. He’s bust.”

“Not only that, he never had it, never was,” said Jinx. “Bucks up, that is. And only because I am a close personal friend of Bo do I know this, otherwise I would still be in the dark, and I’ll tell you what, I’m glad I found this out before I married the man. This kidnapping has its up side, I’ll tell you that. It sure saved me a lot of grief.”

Sam hit herself on the ear. Could she be hearing this right?

Jinx said, “Don’t give me that look, like I’m an ax murderer or something. I meant what I said. If he hadn’t gotten kidnapped, I never would have gone to the bank to see about taking the ransom money out of his account. Though why I wouldn’t have checked up on him anyway is beyond me. I ought to know better. You can’t trust anybody anymore. The world is absolutely full of people pretending to be something they’re not.”

Sam decided to let that one go, though it was awfully tempting.

However, Jinx was only getting warmed up. “He never had a pot to piss in, or at least not in recent memory. Bo, that’s my close personal friend down at the bank, he said Speed had had about five thousand when he blew into town. It went up and down, depending on his luck at the track, but the man was a fake. He’s a common gambler. I asked Bo, and he looked it up, and said none of that stuff he told me about was in his portfolio. He didn’t even have a portfolio.”

“Oh, dear,” said Sam, making only a minimal effort to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

“No portfolio. No house in Carmel. No condo in the hills above Monte Carlo. No cabin cruiser. No polo ponies. No apartment in Manhattan.”

“Wait a minute. Didn’t you say you were in New York buying your wedding gown?”

Jinx’s eyes narrowed, and her mouth drew tight as a rubber band. “Yes, I did, and yes, we were. And we stayed at the Plaza because he said he was redoing the apartment, it was too tacky for me to see.”

Sam didn’t have to ask whose American Express card the hotel bill had gone on. “So he’s bust.”

“That’s right. The man has nada. Nothing. Zilch. Zero. He’s a fraud and a fake and a liar and a cheat.” Then her blond head fell into her carefully manicured hands. “Oh, God. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Well, gee, I think that’s terrible,” said Sam. “That he misled you to think he was rich when he wasn’t, but I guess the part I don’t understand is why you were dealing with his finances in the first place. I thought you were going to the bank to withdraw the ransom money from your account. From that million you won in the lottery.”

At that, Jinx burst into tears. She sobbed so hard the man in the Peterbilt hat got up and came over and handed her his red bandana handkerchief. “You let me know if there’s anyone you need beat up,” he said with a grin that was missing a couple of teeth.

Jinx blew her nose on the bandana without even saying thank you to the man, then handed it back to him, wet. “I can’t take the money from my account because I don’t have any money,” she wailed.

Sam found that difficult to believe. “You mean you already spent a big chunk of your lottery winnings?” It hadn’t been that long ago that Kitty had pissed her off, calling her on the phone and waking her out of a sound sleep at the crack of dawn to see Jinx and her damned altar and her damned million dollars on one of those early morning TV shows.

“I mean it’s all gone,” Jinx sobbed. “Practically every last cent. I spent the last of it on this wedding—that’s not even going to come off.” A fresh torrent coursed down her cheeks.

“Sugar, you want to get married, I’ll be more than happy to hitch up with you.” That was the Peterbilt man again, who was still standing there with his damp handkerchief in his hand.

Jinx whirled, facing the man nose to nose. “Would you please mind your own business and buzz off!”

He said to no one in particular, “I’ll tell you what, some women, the only way to treat ’em is you snatch ’em bald-headed.” And then he stomped off.

Sam said, “You really spent a million dollars in six months?”

Then Jinx sniffed and went wide on defense. “Well, I still owed a lot to begin with, from when Harlan went bankrupt and then got hauled off to the pokey, leaving me without a red cent. You can’t imagine how quick the bills pile up.”

Sam said, “Were you making anything off your altar business?”

Jinx sniffed, “Yes, I was beginning to. But I was trying to get connected in higher circles in Dallas, and with those people, you have to keep up, or they don’t want to do business with you. You have to have a house in Turtle Creek, and you have to have it done by the right decorator, and drive the right car, and go to the right exercise trainer, and wear the right designers, and there are all those dinner parties, well, I’ll tell you, it made me tired, which is one of the reasons I gave up and bought a new house in San Antonio, where I still had a life.…”

Sam got the drift. Jinx had blown it, the whole ball of wax. Little of which was in retrievable assets, except maybe the houses, and real estate had taken a nosedive in Texas like everyplace else.

“So you came to Hot Springs for the races, ran into Speed—who looked like the real thing, bank account-wise, the answer to your prayers.”

“He did! He couldn’t do enough for me. Long-stemmed roses every day, a dozen, two dozen, sometimes three. We flew down to the Bahamas one weekend. We’d go to dinner, no matter which place I picked, there’d be a bottle of my favorite champagne, roses on the table, a little note already waiting. It was like I’d think of something, and there it was. He was like a magician.”

Right. Doing tricks. Dazzling the lady. Making her think what wasn’t was. Just like she was doing. It looked to Sam like both of them got scammed.

“So you were marrying him for his money, which he didn’t have?”

“Well, I loved him.”

Both Kitty and Sam laughed at that one.

“I did! I did, too!”

“I’m hearing an awful lot of past tense, as in not anymore,” said Kitty. “Ever since our little trip this morning down to your friend Bo’s bank when you discovered he was bust.”

Jinx stuck out her bottom lip. She’d had an awfully cute pout back in school. All she had to do was look like she was going to tune up for a good cry, boys would be falling all over themselves running to get whatever it was she wanted. But now? There were faint little lines when she pursed her mouth like that. A couple of years more, she’d want to avoid that maneuver at all costs.

Jinx said, “It does make him less attractive. And he was fooling me all the time, pretending to be something he wasn’t. Why would I marry somebody like that?” She paused, reached over, and took a sip of Sam’s Dr Pepper.

“Besides which, if I’m bust, and he’s bust, well, what’s the point?”

Indeed.

“So, I guess that’s that,” said Sam. “You’re calling off your engagement.”

“That’s right.” Jinx tapped her golden fingernails on the Formica twice for emphasis.

“In absentia,” said Sam.

“What do you mean?” said Jinx, narrowing her eyes again, as if Sam were trying to pull a fast one.

“I mean you’re giving Speed the boot even though he’s not around. Of course, when the kidnappers get in touch, I guess you could tell them that the engagement’s off, let them pass the word along to Speed.”

Jinx was mulling that over. She looked like she thought that was a pretty good idea.

Kitty couldn’t stand it any longer. “Good Lord, Jinx!” she exploded. “Don’t you think that’s kind of cold, his kidnappers giving him the Dear John news? The man’s life is in jeopardy.”

“Now, we don’t know that.” Jinx held out her left hand, the one sporting the huge rock. “Most of the time, these kidnappers are bluffing.”

“Bluffing! What the hell are you talking about?” Kitty was getting loud. People were staring. Sam was pleased as punch.

“Oh,” Jinx said, “I bet when they see they’re not getting any money, they’ll let him go.”

Sam said, “So you’ve definitely decided you’re stonewalling on the ransom?”

“Well, I’m not giving them any money, if that’s what you mean. I was going to buy them off with Speed’s, but seeing as he doesn’t have any…” Jinx toyed with a straw wrapper, trailed off.

Sam said, “Then you might as well call the cops. Let them take it from here.”

“Well,” Jinx said slowly, “I guess I could have. But I didn’t.”

“What do you mean you didn’t?” said Sam, realizing Jinx hadn’t finished the story.

“What are you talking about?” said Kitty.

Jinx turned to her. “I guess I didn’t tell you this part, but after we went to the bank, I went back to our suite at the hotel to freshen up, and one of those kidnappers called and got real pushy on the phone, and I said they could take Speed and shove him. Whatever they wanted to do, I said, they weren’t getting a penny from me, he was their problem.”