Murder at Mabel's Motel Page 5

  His words had quite an impact on Earle.

  Stella watched, amazed, as Earle turned an even grayer shade of white in the light of the single bulb above the store’s back door. He started to tremble like a dried-up oak leaf in a stiff, late-October windstorm.

  “It wasn’t me that hurt her,” he said, on the verge of tears. “Deacon neither. It was Billy Ray. He got the idea in his head that she liked him—which she didn’t. He told us he was gonna, you know, do her—soon as the garage closed.”

  “And you two knuckleheads did nothin’,” Stella said. “You did nothin’ at all to bring a terrible thing like that to a halt before it got started. What kinda men are you anyway?”

  “We tried!” Earle protested. “We told him it was a stupid idea. That he’d get caught.”

  “Did you mention it was a horrible, cruel, immoral thing to do to a sweet girl?” Manny said.

  “Sayin’ something like that to Billy Ray woulda just got me in trouble, and it wouldn’t have done a bit of good. Billy Ray don’t see it that way. I mean, she’s just a . . . it’s not like she’s a . . .”

  “What you mean is, she’s not a white girl,” Stella supplied, resisting the urge to slap him.

  He shrugged and looked down at his black combat boots that had bright white laces. “Yeah. Somethin’ like that.”

  Stella glanced up at Manny and was surprised to see that his face was flushed a deep red, like she had never seen it before.

  She could hear his breath coming hard and fast when he said in a low, ominous tone, “Every woman in my jurisdiction, young or old, Sunday school teachers or hookers, with skin that’s white, brown, or black—they shouldn’t even have to think about something like that happening to them. Let alone worry about it. Let alone suffer having it done to them!”

  “I know. I know, Sheriff,” Earle said, holding his hands in front of his face as though he was expecting to be struck at any moment. “I feel the same way. That’s why, once Billy Ray had her out there in back and got out his knife, we told him he had to stop! He was all mad, ’cause she was tellin’ him, ‘No way!’ We thought he was fixin’ to kill her, and I think he would’ve if we hadn’t hollered at him, told him not to.”

  Manny seemed unmoved by Earle’s supposed “gallantry.”

  So was Stella. “So y’all figure you did the girl a good turn, standin’ there and watchin’ while he whacked off her pretty hair?” she asked, her voice as bitter as the taste in her mouth.

  “And when he tore her blouse?” Manny added.

  “He was intendin’ to do more’n that!” Earle protested. “But we warned him. We heard somebody comin’ around back, and we told him we’d all better make tracks. Coulda been you, makin’ a nightly check like you do.”

  Stella thought of Dolly, a tiny, scarcely five-feet-tall woman, who wouldn’t weigh a hundred pounds if she’d been dipped in lead paint. If the Loners had known it was her interrupting Billy Ray’s party, instead of the sheriff, who knows what might have happened instead?

  She shuddered to even think of it.

  Thank goodness for Dolly Browning and her half-flat tires that needed inflation.

  “What did Deacon come here to tell you?” Manny asked.

  Earle looked back down at his shoelaces, and Stella knew he was deciding whether or not to tell the truth.

  “Speak up!” Manny shouted. “Now, man. Time’s a’wastin’! I got bigger fish to fry than you.”

  “He was all excited, ’cause you and . . .” He pointed to Stella. “. . . your friend was there at the station. The ambulance, too. He said that gal wasn’t dead after all. He was watchin’ across the street when they loaded her into the ambulance, and he said she was awake and talkin’ to y’all.”

  “He thought she was telling on you three,” Manny said.

  Earle shrugged. “Yeah. Somethin’ like that.”

  “And poor Raul heard what you said,” Stella added.

  “He did. That’s when he grabbed that plunger and tore into us. Deacon ran off and left me to get the worst of it, and I hadn’t even done nothin’ wrong.”

  “Except stand by and watch while your jackass of a leader terrified and damaged a sweet, innocent girl,” Stella said.

  “Well, yeah. ’Cept that,” Earle replied.

  For a moment, Stella thought she saw the glimmer of some unspilled tears in his eyes. Maybe there’s a smidgeon of hope for Earle Campbell after all, she thought.

  Manny must have seen them, too, because his manner softened a bit. He backed away to a more natural distance and put his hands into his slacks pockets. “Mr. Ortez wanted to know where Billy Ray was, right?”

  “Yes, sir. He was quite determined on that point.”

  “You told him?”

  “I had to. He was fixin’ to murder me with that plunger. I tell ya, he’s stronger than he looks, that guy.”

  “You told him Billy Ray was at the pool hall?”

  “I did. Like I said, he was madder than a frog in a sock and swingin’ that thing like a baseball bat. He was shoutin’ stuff like, ‘That Billy Ray’s got days to live! Maybe hours!’ I thought I was a goner, too, ’cause he thought I hurt her, too, and—”

  The back door of the store flew open, and Violet appeared, her eyes bright with even more excitement than she’d shown before.

  This here’s a banner day for Miss Violet Wakefield, Stella thought. One she won’t forget for a month of Sundays. Maybe a year of ’em. The rest of us either, for that matter.

  “Begging your pardon, Sheriff,” she said breathlessly, “but your deputy—not the smart one, but the other one—just called me on my store phone. Said he figured you were here, since this’s where he sent you last. Said you’d better get over to the pool hall right pronto. Apparently, it’s World War Two and a Half over there right now.”

  “Gee,” Manny said, as he took Stella’s arm and led her back into the store. “I can’t imagine why.”

  As they made their way through the building and out the front door, Stella was somewhat surprised that Manny wasn’t rushing. He wasn’t dawdling, but he certainly wasn’t breaking into a run or anything remotely like it.

  “Are you worried about what might happen to Mr. Ortez?” she asked, when he casually opened the passenger door of the cruiser and graciously seated her inside.

  “Not particularly,” was the nonchalant reply.

  He walked around to the driver’s side, opened the door, and got in. As he stuck the key into the ignition and started the powerful car, he mused, “Let’s see now . . . A father, a hardworking farmer who performs hard labor every day of his life, versus a punk who sits on his rear end in a rented basement apartment, day after day, smoking dope and playing video games where he can deliberately quash frogs trying to cross busy streets just so he can hear them splat . . . No, my money’s on the outraged, hale and hearty daddy every time.”

  Chapter 5

  Manny and Stella arrived at the pool hall in less than thirty seconds, but by the time they did, the activity had spilled from inside the establishment out onto the street in front of it.

  A crowd of at least a dozen of McGill’s least law-abiding citizens were assembled and in the midst of them stood Raul Ortez. He had Violet’s plunger in one hand and a pool cue in the other. Both were bloody. As he waved them in front of him, like a ninja wielding two swords, he was yelling obscenities that Stella had never thought she’d hear on Main Street in McGill, let alone from this gentle fellow.

  Hell hath no fury like a man whose daughter’s been messed with, she thought.

  “See, I told you,” Manny said. “We didn’t have to worry about Raul getting the bad end of this.”

  “I reckon not. But Lord help us,” Stella said, trying to make sense of what she was seeing but only able to register the copious amount of red that seemed to be smeared all over everyone present.

  The streetlamp provided little light. Mostly, it was the red neon sign in the window, blinking the words POOL HALL that illum
inated the scene, making the red appear even redder. The entire scene looked as though it had been washed in blood.

  “Somebody’s dipstick’s gonna show them a quart down at least,” Stella said.

  “Yeah, the source of it’s on the ground over there by the door,” he said, pointing to something that looked like a heap of dirty, bloody laundry on the walkway, leading to the entrance.

  “Billy Ray.” She watched for movement and saw none. “Is he dead?”

  “No such luck.” Manny turned off the cruiser’s ignition, then froze and stared straight ahead. “What in tarnation is my deputy doing here?” he said.

  She turned her head to see what he was referring to and saw Mervin Jarvis standing near the now wriggling body of Billy Ray Sonner. Jarvis was holding wads of what looked like brown paper towels from a bathroom dispenser in each hand.

  When he bent down and tried to press them to an apparent wound on Billy Ray’s arm, the unhappy “patient” kicked him soundly on the shin.

  Mervin promptly returned the kick and caught Billy Ray squarely on the backside.

  A second later, Manny was out of the cruiser and heading toward his deputy, his stride determined and his face dark.

  “What the hell’s going on here!” he roared.

  Following close behind him, Stella saw Mervin jump when he spotted his boss coming toward him.

  In a hurried, mindless gesture, Mervin tossed the paper towels in his hand down onto Billy Ray and folded his arms over his ample tummy.

  “Deputy, step away,” Manny told him. When Mervin didn’t comply fast enough, Manny repeated, “Step away, Deputy Jarvis. Now!”

  Jarvis seemed to come to life. He jumped backward in what Stella decided was the liveliest movement she had ever seen the slow-motion lawman make.

  Like Shirley Reid, in the town of McGill, Deputy Mervin Jarvis was known for three things: not wasting a bit of energy he didn’t absolutely have to, sweating twenty-four hours a day and every day of the year including Christmas, and his Pac-Man addiction. If he was in a place where there was a Pac-Man machine, nobody got a chance to play until he left.

  Rumor had it, his obsession had cost him his new Chevy truck.

  Those quarters added up.

  The M.P.D. had a third member, who was far more confidence-inspiring than Mervin, but Deputy Augustus Faber had recently gotten married and was on his honeymoon in Savannah.

  So, Manny was stuck with Mervin and, apparently, not too happy about it.

  “I told you to stay at the station house and man the phones,” the sheriff was telling his deputy under his breath, so the bystanders wouldn’t hear. “Who told you to come down here?”

  Mervin shrugged. “I knew you were at the grocery store and there’s nobody at the station but ol’ Elmer, sleepin’ it off. Figured I oughta . . .”

  “. . . oughta follow orders, maybe?”

  “Yeah. I reckon. But looks like Billy Ray’s about to bleed out.”

  Stella and Manny studied the wounds on the fallen man’s arms. Three of them. Indeed, all three were bleeding, but none as bad as the one on Yolanda Ortez’s head.

  Manny bent down to look closer and Billy Ray raised his leg again as though to kick the sheriff, too.

  “Don’t even think about it, Sonner,” Manny told him. “You already assaulted one officer of the law today, and that’s all you get.”

  Billy Ray scowled up at Manny, and Stella thought, not for the first time, what an ugly fellow he was.

  It wasn’t the fact that he had numerous teeth missing and the ones he had were broken and yellowed. In a town as poor as McGill, a lot of folks had less than straight, white, movie-star smiles.

  It wasn’t that his clothes were dirty. People in McGill worked for a living and that often meant their clothes were destined for the washing machine.

  It wasn’t even that his head was shaved, and blue veins tended to pop out on his gray scalp when he got angry—which was most of the time.

  “Your deputy done kicked me,” he yelled, literally spitting mad. Though, since he was lying on his back, most of the saliva landed on his own face.

  “Yeah, I saw that,” Manny replied.

  “I’m gonna sue this town for all it’s worth!”

  “This town’s worth about a plug nickel,” Manny replied. “Go ahead. But don’t spend it all in one place and upset the economy.”

  Turning to Mervin, Manny said, “Deputy, this guy has to go to the hospital for some stitches, and the ambulance is tied up at the moment, taking his victim to the emergency room.”

  “My victim?” Billy Ray objected, wriggling around on the sidewalk. “What victim? I ain’t got no damned victim.”

  “Oh, yes, you do, and we both know it.” Manny glared down at him. “Billy Ray Sonner, you’re under arrest for assaulting Miss Yolanda Ortez. You have the right to remain silent, and I strongly suggest you do so. If you can’t afford an attorney, we’ll get you a free one. Understand?”

  “Yeah! I understand my rights! You got no reason to arrest me! I didn’t do nothin’! I’m gonna sue you, too, Sheriff. See if I don’t!”

  “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Manny turned back to his deputy. “Have some of these guys help you put the prisoner in the back of your vehicle. Take him to the hospital to be treated. Watch him every minute until I get there to relieve you. Got that, Deputy?”

  “What!?” Deputy Mervin was outraged. “He’s bleedin’ like a stuck pig. I don’t want him in my car!”

  “That’s exactly why he’s going in yours instead of mine.” Manny gave him an unpleasant grin. “Plus I have to interview our . . . um . . . perpetrator.” He nodded toward Raul. “Go on, Mervin. Shake a leg. Git ’er done.”

  A markedly morose Mervin shuffled away and began to canvas the crowd for volunteers. By then, most had moseyed back inside, and the remaining lookie-loos seemed reluctant to offer assistance of any kind.

  “I ain’t touchin’ him,” one said. “Who knows what kinda diseases he’s got.”

  Another added, “That’s for sure! I hear he keeps his fee-on-say in his uncle’s barn. She’s a mighty wooly girl. Don’t say nothin’ but, ‘Ba-a-a-a.’ ”

  The crowd guffawed.

  Billy Ray fixed the speaker with an evil eye and bellowed, “That’s it, Calvin Ketchum! You’re a dead man! Soon as I get outta that hospital, I’m comin’ after you and by the time I get done with you, you’ll—”

  “Shut up, Sonner,” Manny told him. “Believe me, you got bigger problems than somebody casting aspersions on your love life.”

  From the corner of her eye, Stella saw Raul coming their way. His weapons were lowered, but the look on his face showed her that his rage hadn’t yet been spent.

  Manny saw him, too. He leaned down, gathered up some of the paper towels that had fallen to the ground, and handed them to Billy Ray. “Hold those on that biggest cut there on your forearm, the one that’s bleeding most.”

  Once Billy Ray had reluctantly done as he was told, Manny left him and walked over to Raul. He took the older man by the arm and turned him around, so that the object of his rage was behind him and at least temporarily out of sight.

  Stella walked behind the men as Manny led Raul over to his cruiser, took the plunger and pool stick out of his hands, and stuck them in his trunk.

  “Collecting evidence, Sheriff?” Raul asked, a slight grin on his deeply lined, sun-damaged face.

  “Not unless ol’ Billy Ray croaks from those injuries,” Manny told him. “I don’t reckon there’s much hope of that. He’s got enough meanness in him to keep him going.”

  “Those cuts weren’t from those weapons anyhow. They were from a broken beer bottle. It’s inside. Probably on the floor, if you think you’ll need it for the murder trial.”

  “There won’t be any murder trial, Raul. He’s not gonna kick any buckets, and I wouldn’t waste my time and the court’s charging you, even if he did. There’s not a jury in this county who’d convict you of doing what any other ma
n would do under the same circumstances.”

  Raul sighed and his shoulder sagged. He leaned back on the cruiser’s fender, as though suddenly too tired to stand on his own.

  Stella felt for him. Other than when he’d lost Maria, this had to be one of the worst days of an otherwise difficult life.

  “Thank you, Sheriff,” he said. “I appreciate it. More than you can imagine.”

  “You’re welcome. But that said, Mr. Ortez, you’re done now. Don’t you even raise your hand, a pool cue, or a toilet plunger to another person in this town. Let alone a broken beer bottle.”

  “Oh, I didn’t go after him with that. He was the one who broke it and tried to use it on me. I took it away from him.”

  “And cut him with it.”

  “He ran into it! I swear.”

  Manny glanced toward the other cruiser, where his deputy was trying, single-handedly, to get Billy Ray into the back seat. “Ran into it several times, I see.”

  Raul smirked. “He did. Billy Ray’s always been the determined sort. Determined to repeat his mistakes, that is.”

  “True,” Stella said under her breath. “He’s a fool, and you know the old saying, ‘A fool’s born ever’ minute and ever’ darned one of ’em lives.’ ”

  She stepped over to Raul and put her hand on his shoulder. “You’ve had a busy day, sir,” she told him. “You must be worn to a frazzle.”

  “Now that I stop to think about it, I am, Mrs. Reid. But I’m not done yet. I gotta get to the hospital and see how my daughter’s doing.”

  “We saw her,” Manny told him, “and I’d say she’s going to be all right. Of course, you want to see her for yourself.”

  “I do, Sheriff. I truly do.”

  “Your girl was far more worried about you than she was herself,” Stella said. “Afraid you’d get the awful news and, well, take it bad.”

  For a second, Raul looked a bit sheepish. He stole a glance over at Billy Ray, whom Mervin had just managed to get into the vehicle. Merv was studying the blood on his uniform and scowling.

  “I guess I did . . . take it bad, that is,” Raul said. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. I wasn’t thinking. If I’d been thinking straight, I’d have gone to the hospital first, taken care of my girl, and then asked you to take care of that sonuvabitch that hurt her.”