Deb Baker - Murder Talks Turkey

Tony watched me out of the corner of an eye. Ruthie came in from the kitchen carrying a coffee pot. “Gertie, gee, I never expected to see you in here today.”

“I can’t stay away from your good cooking,” I replied, my eyes never leaving Tony. “We’ll have something quick to take with us, something that doesn’t need time to cook.”

Ruthie poured coffee into two tall Styrofoam cups and packed up a whole cherry pie from behind the cash register. “Looks like snow soon,” she announced. “I think I see a few flakes. Spring is going to have to wait. Hope it doesn’t kill the daffodils before they get a chance to bloom.”

“Daffodils are tough,” I said. “They’ll make it.”

I paid up, and Blaze picked up our order from the counter. That’s when I pulled Grandma’s handgun from my purse and laid it against Tony’s temple just like in the movies.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” I said. “I’m a little jittery from lack of sleep. I don’t want to blow your brains out before I’m good and ready.”

“Holy smokes, Gertie,” Carl said.

“Be quiet, Carl.”

Tony’s eyes weren’t shifty anymore. They were wide open. He tried to talk without moving his mouth. The ‘I’m so handsome’ grin wasn’t on his face. “What the hell are you doing?”

I could have asked myself the same thing. Other than his extra marital activities and accusations from a woman I didn’t trust that he’d planted evidence, I didn’t have anything on him. And last I heard cheating wasn’t a killing offense, although it ought to be.

It felt good to see sweat beading on his forehead.

I pushed the barrel of the gun against his head just a little bit more. “If my friend in the hospital dies,” I said. “So do you.”

“Do you know who you’re threatening?” Carl stammered. “Tony’s done a lot for our community. You’re over the top now, Gertie. Maybe it’s that change of life thing, you know, that women go through when they get older.”

Blaze just stood by the door with our bag of goodies, watching the action. The sheriff’s badge on his chest gleamed. I’d parked the truck where the restaurant’s diners couldn’t see it. “Go, Blaze,” I said. “I’m right behind you.”

I kept an eye on every man in the room. Ruthie, I could trust. She was one of my species, and would let this play out.

“Tony,” I said. “Anything you want to tell me before I squeeze the trigger? Anything at all?”

He licked his lips and thought it over. “No,” he said. “If I tell you what you want to hear, it’d only be a lie. Is that what you want? Or do you want the truth?”

“The truth works.”

“The truth is that I don’t know any more than you do.”

I let him live in spite of an itch in my trigger finger. My bluff didn’t work. Or else he was telling the truth. Or else he had nerves of steel.

Later in the truck, I began shaking so hard I almost drove into the ditch. Blaze had to take over. What was I thinking to put a gun to another human being’s head? The worst thing was that it felt good. I enjoyed it! What was I capable of? What if I had lost control? What if I had pulled the trigger?

Then I thought of Kitty. She might be dead right this minute.

It made me want to kill somebody all over again.

____________________

“I’m not taking them,” Blaze said to Mary, after a long embrace and a lot of explanation.

“The doctors say you have to,” she replied, trying to hand me six little brown bottles of medication.

“Why is he taking all of these?” I wanted to know.

“Two are so he doesn’t have seizures. This one’s supposed to knock out the infection in his head, this one’s for pressure in his brain. I’m not sure about the other two.”

“He seems perfectly fine to me,” I said. “Better than when he was taking them.”

“I never had any seizures,” Blaze said.

“No, you didn’t. But you might.” Mary would never challenge a doctor on any medical decision. I don’t have the same blind faith in them that she does. In my opinion, a current bad patient is a future live patient.

To make Mary happy, I took the bottles of pills. We’d decide later whether Blaze needed them. I’d seen very few signs of illness since we’d been hiding out together. Mainly little signs that indicated he didn’t remember everything that he should.

The family had been warned that even when he was well he might have trouble differentiating between the realness of his nightmares and reality. The lines could blur and they had. Imagine waking up from your worst nightmare and believing it really happened!

“How are you doing?” I asked Mary.

“I’m fine.”

“How’s Fred?”

“He’s out back. With Grandma Johnson inside your house and the guineas outside, he decided to move in over here.”

I ran outside in the rain and there he was. Fred came running like he was about to fling all hundred-plus pounds at me. He tried to stop at the last second, but I landed on the ground anyway. Fred towered above, lapping at my face.

I came up wet and happy.

Blaze bagged some clothes, kissed Mary, all the time ignoring her protests that he should turn himself in, that he wasn’t well enough for what we planned. He and I set out, leaving Mary crying in front of their house.

Blaze and I had chosen this path, and there was no turning back until the end of the road. We didn’t have a choice. We’d committed.

Fred leapt past Blaze when he opened the truck’s door and refused to budge from the seat. He rode between us.

“WHO KNEW YOU WERE STAYING in Walter’s trailer?” Blaze asked.

“George and Walter,” I said. “That’s it, besides the three of us inside.”

“You’ve been talking on the radio?”

“That’s how we keep in touch. We have our own frequency.”

“Frequencies are open to the public.”

“That’s why we have code names.”

“Quit using the radios. Throw them away,” Blaze said. “Someone’s been listening in. You’re lucky you aren’t all dead. Hand it over.”

My son threw the radio out the window and we drove along in silence, listening to the windshield wipers and watching rain turn to snow. Enormous flakes blotted out my view. “Better pull over,” Blaze advised. When I did, he got out and came around to my side. “I’ll take it from here.”

“I’m driving just fine,” I said.

“My memory’s coming back,” he said, pushing me over. “You don’t have a driver’s license.”

I should have given him the medications, kept him soaring in outer space. “Have a pill,” I said, holding up one of the bottles. He ignored me.

Blaze was wanted as a murder suspect. He had let me and Kitty escape while beading on the acting sheriff, had even put Dickey behind bars, and finally had broken out himself and was hanging with another wanted criminal.

And he was worried about a driver’s license?

____________________

Lyla was out in front of the Gladstone salon taking a break from doing customer’s nails and smoking a cigarette. Blaze dropped me off around the corner, and I walked up to her.

She gave me a surprised stare, took one long, deep drag, and ground out the cigarette under her shoe. “Stay away,” she said, smoke curling from her nose. “I can’t be seen with you.”

“I have a few questions, then I’ll go.”

Lyla glanced around, moving closer to the side of the building. “You’re wanted by the cops.”

“Believe me, I know. I heard about you and Tony. I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. Everybody who knows Tony loves him, but they don’t see what he’s like at home. He’s an entirely different person then, nothing like the easy guy others see. Him and me? We’re through.”