Marcia Talley - Sing It to Her Bones

I wasn’t in the mood for one of Connie’s PB and Js. My mouth was all set for a thick, flavorful tuna fish sandwich on whole wheat (with fries) from Ellie’s when I remembered I had no money or credit cards to pay for it. I’d last seen my purse as the pond gulped down my car. I checked my watch. Bill Taylor was usually working the afternoon shift at Ellie’s. The last time I’d seen him he’d been standing in water up to his waist, rescuing my car. As a volunteer fireman I knew he would be tuned in to what was going on at the fire hall. Maybe they’d found my purse. He also might sell me a sandwich and an iced tea on a smile and a promise. I wanted to ask him about Katie and his former teammates anyway.

I pulled into the parking strip in front of Ellie’s and breezed into the store. Neither Angie nor her mother was about. Somewhere a radio played softly, but otherwise, the place was deserted.

I stuck my head into the kitchen. “Hello?” Nobody was there, either.

I was about to leave, when I smelled cigarette smoke. Curious, I ambled through the kitchen and stuck my head out the back door. Bill was sitting on the back porch, smoking.

“There you are!”

“Just taking a break, Mrs. Ives. Been kinda slow today.”

I didn’t want to hit him up for a sandwich right off the bat, so I asked, “Any news about my car?”

Bill took a drag from his cigarette and held the smoke in his mouth for an extraordinarily long time. “We towed it to the Exxon station,” he said as he exhaled. “Rutherford doesn’t want anyone to touch it until his forensic team’s been over it with their tweezers and magnifying glasses.”

“That’s good. How about my purse, though? Any word about that?”

He shook his head. “Probably sitting in the muck at the bottom of that old pond, Mrs. Ives. If I were you, I’d just buy a new one, claim the expense on your insurance. That’s what insurance companies are for.”

I slapped myself in the forehead. “I was here to pick up a sandwich for lunch, but I don’t have any way to pay for it. How can I have been so stupid?”

“You’ve had a lot on your mind lately.” The way he looked at me, one bushy eyebrow raised, made me wonder if he had heard about Paul’s predicament. “I think I could rustle you up a sandwich.” He crushed out his cigarette, and I followed him into the store, my mouth already beginning to water.

“How are you feeling today?” he asked from the kitchen as I nosed around the empty store.

“A little stiff.” In point of fact, I was a mass of scars, scrapes, cuts, and bruises, old and new, and my right arm was aching again. “But I’ll do.”

“You need to be careful, Mrs. Ives. First you fall off that boat; then you wreck your car. Makes me wonder.”

Is that how he saw me? Ms. Klutz? I wasn’t sure I liked this guy, even if he was making me lunch. “Makes you wonder what, Bill?”

“Wonder if they might not have been accidents. You come into town and all, pretty much a stranger, and the next thing you know, all these bad things start happening to you. Don’t you wonder why?”

I had wondered about that, but I didn’t feel like sharing my suspicions with Bill. No telling what he’d do with them. They might even end up in his book. “I can be just as careless or unlucky as the next person, Bill,” I said, peering into the kitchen as he scooped tuna fish salad onto thickly sliced bread.

“I’d just watch who you’re being friendly with.” He squinted back at me. “That’s my advice.”

“Bill, I hardly know anybody in Pearson’s Corner.”

“Sometimes it’s the people closest to you that you least suspect.”

“I think you’ve been staring at your computer screen too long. You can’t mean Connie.” Bill shook his head.

“Dennis?” Bill met my gaze with steady, unblinking eyes. “You think Dennis had something to do with my falling overboard? Or the accident? That’s impossible. He’s a cop, for Christ’s sake. Besides, I saw the guys who ran me off the road. I didn’t recognize either one of them.”

“You don’t have to be driving to be responsible for something.”

I felt a sudden chill, as if a shadow had passed over the sun and the wind had picked up. My intuition had been telling me the same thing, but I couldn’t make it fit. “Bill, I think you’re wrong. What possible reason could anybody have for bumping me off?”

“I don’t think they’re trying to bump you off. I think they want you to go home. Mind your own business.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Don’t know. Just a gut feeling I have.”

Don’t know or won’t tell? I checked off the people I knew: Connie and Dennis. Angie and her mother. Frank Chase and Liz. Bill here… and, Lord help me, Hal.

“Surely you can’t mean Hal? I hardly know the man.”

“That’s not what I hear.” He was folding waxed paper around the sandwich, making surprisingly crisp and neat edges.

“Well, you heard wrong. What is it with this place? Go sailing with a fellow once and every busybody in town has you heading off to Las Vegas for a quickie wedding.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about him.” He slid the sandwich over in my direction and wiped his hands on a dish towel.

“I’m sure there is, and it will probably stay that way.” I couldn’t protest too strongly without sounding sweet on the guy.

“Let me tell you something about that boyfriend of yours.”

“For the last time… he’s not my boyfriend!”

“Did you know that he used to be the coach of the high school basketball team?”

This was his big secret? A wave of relief washed over me. “Yes. Hal told me all about that. He was very proud of winning the state championship.”

“And did he tell you why he left?” I didn’t say anything. Bill wore a self-satisfied smirk. “I didn’t think so. He was forced to resign.”

“Forced? Why on earth?”

“Oh, it was all very hush-hush. Didn’t want to upset the parents, create a scandal.” Bill seemed to be enjoying himself, dragging out the telling of it.

“A scandal about what, for heaven’s sake?”

“It was never proven, of course, but he was suspected of providing some of the team with amphetamines and anabolic steroids.” The corners of his mouth twisted up in a hint of a smile. I wanted to smack it off his face.

“But you were on the team, Bill. Surely you’d have known if the allegations were true or not.”

“Not me. I was second string, one step up from water boy. Nobody told me anything.”

“I can’t believe Hal would do such a thing.”

“I believe the rumors, Mrs. Ives, because there’s more to it.”

“There’s more?” I hadn’t even begun to recover from the first revelation before he zapped me with another.

“I’m fairly certain that Hal was pushing other drugs, too.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Marijuana. Cocaine. Even heroin. That’s what I heard, anyway. Katie had to be getting them from somewhere. She was high as a kite at her sweet sixteen party, and she was high at the homecoming dance, too, if you ask me.”

My God! Maybe that’s what Angie was getting at when she told me that Katie was totally spaced out at the dance . “Amphetamines and steroids aren’t in the same league with hard drugs,” I reasoned. “Why do you think it was Hal who supplied Katie with the hard stuff? Couldn’t she have gotten them from someone else? Her sister perhaps?”

“Naw, Liz was a straight arrow. Had to be, didn’t she, to get into Harvard Law?” I thought that Bill’s confidence in the selection criteria of the admissions board at Harvard was a bit naive, but I didn’t say so.

“If you know all this, why don’t you take it to the police?”