Ed Lynskey - Isabel and Alma Trumbo 01 - Quiet Anchorage (13 page)

“Megan, we’re doing everything possible,” said Alma.

“I already know it, and thanks.”

“You’ll be out of here in next to no time,” said Sammi Jo.

They watched Rodney escort Megan back to her prison cell and left the station house. Quiet Anchorage had dipped into late afternoon, and as they neared the sedan, a series of deafening whistles went off. Their fire department even in this high tech age of cell phones, pagers, and beepers still called its crew the old-fashion, loud way. Each new whistle blast pealed out shriller.

A driver revved up the fire pumper truck inside the station and began the frenzied honking of its air horn. The three ladies watched in awe as the firefighters roared down the side streets and sprang out of their cars. The second fire pumper truck pursued the first one. As the furor subsided, Isabel pondered again why the fire department hadn’t responded swift enough to the house fire claiming Megan’s parents.

“Rodney sure bit on that bribe.” Sammi Jo put the sedan into gear. “It makes you think of things, now doesn’t it?”

“Like how deep the graft runs in our local law enforcement,” said Alma.

“For twenty dollars, I proved one deputy is crooked,” said Isabel.

“Pair Rodney with Clarence, and a disturbing pattern emerges,” said Sammi Jo. “It only takes two bad deputies to frame Megan for Jake’s homicide.”

“The same two deputies can also shred the contents of Jake’s file cabinets,” said Alma.

“And to think they’re paid to serve and protect the citizens,” said Isabel in a miffed but glum voice.

On the way home, the ladies decided to check on Megan’s apartment. The parking lot at this hour overflowed with the vehicles of the residents home from their jobs. At Alma’s request, Sammi Jo made a vigilant circuit around the apartment building as Isabel fanned herself with her floppy straw hat.

They spotted no lurking deputy cruiser, marked or unmarked, so they parked, and exited the sedan.

A shaggy, orange tomcat hunched on the dumpster hissed as they approached the apartment entrance. A knot of kids dressed in baggy, solid-colored khakis jerked their heads and necks in time to a boom box blaring a discordant noise. Despite straining her ears, Isabel couldn’t make out the lyrics chanted over the staccato bassline.

“Gangsta rap sucks,” said Sammi Jo. “I’d die laughing if the world awoke tomorrow morning infatuated by Gregorian chants. You could kiss off all the bad ass rappers with their fake steel teeth and macho swagger.”

Alma nodded off to their right. “Is that our Phyllis?”

“It is and why is she out here?” said Sammi Jo.

Phyllis looked chipper dressed in all blue from her floppy hat to her sneakers.

Sammi Jo handed the car keys to Alma and went over to her aunt, the exasperation putting a noticeable hitch in her stride. “Why are you hanging out in the parking lot?”

Phyllis smiled, hooking her elbow in Sammi Jo’s, and led them over to Alma and Isabel. “Because I’m an undercover agent.” Phyllis’s whisper evoked the atmosphere of mystery and intrigue. “My mission is a stakeout, and this bag lady getup that’s giving you hysterics is my latest brilliant disguise.”

“Phyllis, you’ve accomplished enough mission for one afternoon,” said Isabel.

“Aw, let her report in. Did you see anything suspicious, dear?” asked Alma.

“It’s been Dullsville, and I missed my beautician appointment,” replied Phyllis.

“You don’t use a beautician. I cut and perm your hair,” said Sammi Jo.

“Your quality has slipped a notch or two.” Phyllis touched her pin curls under the floppy blue hat. “I can pay a bit more for a superior cut in Warrenton.”

“You haven’t been to Warrenton lately since neither of us owns a car,” said Sammi Jo.

“Sammi Jo, I’m not pleased by your impertinent tone. Alma, am I right?” Phyllis’s glance appealed to her.

Her pat on Phyllis’s forearm was reassuring. “I asked Sammi Jo to help us straighten up at Megan’s apartment. Can you also lend us a hand?”

“Go ahead and I’m hot on your heels,” replied Phyllis.

They strode halfway down the building’s hallway when a goateed man backed out of his apartment door. His batik shirt over his chino pants offset the yellow guitar he slung over a heavy shoulder. Their stares caught and held his eye.

“Hiya, Bradford,” said Phyllis.

“Bradford, we need to get into Megan’s apartment,” said Isabel.

He looked doubtful. “I’m not sure if I should let you inside.”

“Then you’re stuck with cleaning it. This morning the deputies left it as a pig sty,” said Sammi Jo.

“I’m too busy to fool with it.” He walked on with them before he set down his yellow guitar, selected a worn key on a ring, and undid Megan’s door. “Have at it, ladies. I’m late for my rooftop gig.”

The irrepressible Phyllis strummed her air guitar. “You’ll croon stardust memories.”

He grinned at her. “It’s just cooler and breezier up there.” He picked up his yellow guitar, and left for the nearby exit to the stairs.

Isabel, the last one through, shut the door. “I admire his stick-to-itive-ness. Is he any good at his singing and playing?”

“He’s vastly underappreciated,” replied Phyllis. “I’m his biggest fan, and he knows it. In ten years, I predict all of his CDs and DVDs will become collectors’ items. I’ll be sitting on a gold mine.”

“All singers like to think that way,” said Isabel.

“Meanwhile we’re left straightening up this squalor.” Alma’s hand circled to signify the disheveled rooms.

“Seeing it also upsets me,” said Phyllis.

Megan’s magazines, recipe cards, and phone directories sat heaped at the living room’s center. The deputies had pitched the cushions to her divan and upended the ottoman. Potted shamrocks had fallen off the window ledges and shattered on the floor. The pieces left to her swag lamp made it a total loss. Alma poked into a closet to rescue a broom and dustpan.

“The deputies were thorough.” Alma swept the potting soil and broken pieces to the lamp into the dustpan.

“No, Sheriff Fox was truthful that his deputies struck out,” said Isabel.

Alma leaned the broom against the butcher block table. “I only hope you’re right.”

Sammi Jo retrieved the tossed phone directories from the floor. “Bradford knew the deputies would go nuts and do this.”

“Bradford who’s pals with the deputies also knew we’d spruce it up,” said Alma.

“When Megan walks through her door, she can’t face this mess,” said Isabel.

“Go on, the bunch of you.” Phyllis shooed them back into the hallway. “I’ll scour the apartment from top to bottom, and Megan will never know the deputies set foot in here.”

“Aunt Phyllis, this can’t be a lick and a promise. You better come through,” said Sammi Jo.

“I said I’d do it, so I will,” said Phyllis.

“What a tremendous help,” said Isabel.

Phyllis halted at her apartment door, and the others strolling on to the outdoors heard Bradford’s guitar riffs filter down from the rooftop to replace the rap music. Alma drove them to Sammi Jo’s apartment over the drugstore on Main. She climbed out and waved as the sisters tooled away. The tinsel bugs splatted on the windshield, and Alma said it was a harbinger of ill luck. She agitated the windshield washer, and the wipers scraped the luminous bug remnants off the glass as if their ill luck could be cleared away.

“Who was that boy with the guitar who was sweet on you?” asked Alma.

“You’ve confused me with somebody else.”

“You and he sat on the wraparound porch—what Mama called ‘the verandah’—in the ladder-back chairs. You listened to the radio, ate his cherry-filled chocolates, and he made goo-goo eyes at you.”

“Did you kneel down in the hydrangeas and spy on us?”

“And you never knew it until now.”

“Of course we knew you were there.”

“His guitar wasn’t yellow like Bradford’s but blue. Oh, what the devil was his name?”

Isabel sighed. “The guitar was indigo, if you must know, and he dubbed himself ‘The Indigo Kid’. An odd pair of eggs, weren’t we? He sang the radio songs, took himself too seriously, and the townspeople snickered behind his back.”

“Why did he call himself ‘The Indigo Kid’?” The brakes Alma applied eased the soft halt in their driveway.

“Because he was a starry-eyed nobody from nowhere who cultivated big dreams. His boyish passion, I suppose, is what swept me away. Thankfully after a month—or was it less?—I came to my true senses. Fame and fortune weren’t in the cards dealt to him, only he couldn’t read the cards, so I told him straight out.”

“Oh-oh.”

“Oh-oh is true. We went for a ride one drizzly midnight, and I doubt if you followed our detour to stop on Lakota Bridge. He began the usual rigmarole young couples do when parked on the dark, remote bridges, but this session I didn’t indulge him. Instead, I laid it on the line, telling him his prospects to make it as a singer were spotty, and, mister, you’d better face up to that music.”

“What did he say?”

Again Isabel sighing stared out the windshield at the bushy hollyhocks overdue for a trim. “What do all the boys say when you poke holes in their improbable dreams? He accused me of dashing his spirit. Maybe I did, but I didn’t back down.”

“Bravo for you. What happened next?”

“Well. On the spot he burst into a sob. I was aghast and told him to take me home, but he didn’t, not right away. First he threw a tantrum and stalked to the far end of the bridge, the indigo guitar held in his shaking fists. I knew what he’d taken in his head to do.”

“It wasn’t pretty, was it?”

“It was silly. He smashed the indigo guitar over the bridge rail into smithereens. Still raving, he stomped on the pieces, and I never batted an eyelash, but I can tell you the ride back to the house was the longest ride I ever took.”

Alma chuckled. “At least The Indigo Kid spared you from hearing more songs.”

“Yes, and that put an end to our torrid romance. It’s ironic how years later I heard that he’d made a fortune by playing the stock market. So, who was the real fool?”

“You weren’t foolish, just young and in love for the first time.” Alma paused. “In all candor, did you like Jake Robbins?”

Tilting her chin, Isabel stared out again. The moonlit azaleas also looked a bit shaggy. “As a worker, Jake was tireless, a strong point in his favor. But I saw an aloofness in him. Arrogance, I often thought, but maybe it wasn’t. How did you see him?”

“Dark and handsome, he was catnip to young ladies, and his carefree ways broke Megan’s heart. I should’ve told her all bets are off until the man says ‘I do’ and even then it’s a roll of the dice.” Alma laughed as if at the absurdity of permanent love.

“Don’t give all marriages a failing mark. For better or worse and richer or poorer, I stayed married to the same fellow until we grew old, and Max dropped dead on me.”

“So you did.” Alma paused again. “Your marriage upset a lot of the locals. The races all those years ago didn’t mingle too well.”

“I know it, but I never groused nor gave a fig what the other people thought. If our marriage broke any laws, I never heard it from the sheriff. Max and I lived our quiet lives, riding with the prejudices that got thrown our way. I lost count of how many restaurants we left still hungry. All in all, we managed to pull it off with grace under pressure, I believe.”

“I agree wholeheartedly. Do you hear any word from his family?”

“Not since our wedding day, and I don’t expect any communication with them.”

Alma nodded. “Anyway, I also found likeable qualities in Jake. If you could draw a conversation out of him, he said perceptive things. But also like you, I never completely relaxed around him because he always seemed to be coiled so tight.”

“Maybe he just felt the world more intensely than we did and only shared his deepest feelings with Megan.”

Alma fished out the house key from her purse. “I couldn’t put it any better. I worry a lot about her. She’s mature and levelheaded but love, especially first love, distorts our clear judgments.”

“She loved him enough to marry. They may’ve made a good life and raised a nice family. We’ll just never know.”

“Amen to that.”

“If he made any enemies, they shouldn’t be hard to shake out.”

Alma snapped open her door latch, and the sedan’s dome light flickered on them. “It’s possible his enemies didn’t live in Quiet Anchorage. He traveled to the Carolinas, Georgia, and anywhere else the boys go to race their cars.”

“It’s a bigger sport than even that nowadays.”

“Then maybe somebody in the big, fast sport of race cars murdered him.”

Isabel also opened her sedan door. “Tomorrow let’s take Quiet Anchorage’s drag strip by storm.”