Chapter 5 #2
“What do you mean? I have a provider. I’m on my .
. .” And that’s when the answer dawned. She’d been on Floy’s phone plan, and now she wasn’t.
She gritted her teeth. Yet another “if” issue had just been called to her attention.
She pulled out a credit card. “I want to sign up now with a provider,” she said.
But a few minutes later when they tried to run her card, it was declined.
Reality was hitting, one punch after the other. “Never mind,” she said. “Thank you for the information,” she said, and stomped out of the office and flopped into the front seat with the phone still in her hands.
“Well?” Quilla said.
Mayrene buckled up, then turned to face her mother.
“You have spent the last five years trying to get me back home, but now I have no cell provider and none of my credit cards work. So, you’re going to have to add me to your phone plan and subsidize my life, because there isn’t a soul within fifty miles of here who would give me a job. ”
Quilla’s eyes narrowed as she put the car in gear and backed away from the curb. Her war with Floy Beaudine was clearly over. Even though she’d succeeded in ruining their marriage, it was beginning to feel like he was the one who’d won the war.
Floy woke up from his nap just before eleven, eased himself out of the recliner, and went to wash the sleep from his eyes. It was habit that made him turn toward the basement door before he remembered he didn’t have to tend to Elvis anymore, so he went out on the back porch instead.
He wasn’t sure what came next, but whatever it was, it would not involve some damn woman.
He was still the Fix-It man. And things would still break and rot or stop up.
Roofs would still leak, and the world would still turn.
It was up to Floy to make the adjustment.
He didn’t know how the shame of public betrayal worked, but maybe his feelings would heal along with his body.
He glanced at the overgrown vegetable garden and frowned.
It was nothing but a reminder of another one of Mayrene’s schemes she’d let get to weeds.
A little like their marriage. When he felt better, he’d plow it up and let grass have it again.
His gaze slid to the junked car she had wrecked, and the old barn where he parked his truck when it was loaded with supplies for a job.
He frowned, trying to remember if he’d taken the wrecked car off his insurance policy.
Another thing to get rid of, including that car. Maybe he’d sell it for scrap.
There was a good breeze today, good enough to make sitting outside in the shade downright nice.
The wind played havoc with his hair, but it didn’t matter.
He needed a haircut as badly as he needed a shave, but the cut on his face had to heal and the stitches at the back of his head had to come out first.
Finally, he went back inside, combed his hair gently with his fingers, and checked his messages, then smiled.
Beau and Razor were on their way.
There were placemats on the table. He left them there, and put out plates and cutlery, then set glasses on the table. They might be bringing beer, but while he was taking meds for pain, alcohol was off-limits. He put a roll of paper towels on the table for napkins and called it done.
Beau was driving with Razor riding shotgun, balancing the to-go bag of barbecue in his lap, a six-pack of beers and a six-pack of Mountain Dew between his feet.
“Do you think Floy is ever going to be okay?” Beau asked.
Razor shrugged. “He’s already okay, but I don’t think he’ll be the same. I talked to Stuart Watts last night. He’s just the dispatcher, but he still knows all the P.D. dirt. He said Floy had some kind of breakdown in lockup.”
Beau sighed. “Well . . . How the hell would you have felt if you thought someone you loved just got swallowed up by your own pet?”
Razor nodded. “Yeah. . . Right.”
As they approached the turn-up into his driveway, Beau pointed at the mailbox. “ “Think it would be okay if we brought his mail to the house for him? You know, saving him the walk down?”
“Yeah,” Razor said. “I think he’d appreciate it.”
Beau nodded, braked, put the truck in park, and jumped out. He slid back behind the wheel and drove the rest of the way with one hand, holding the mail in his lap with the other.
They parked, gave each other a look, then got out.
Beau carried the mail and one six-pack while Razor carried the to-go bag and the other six-pack. The two men walked across the yard and up the steps. They weren’t sure what they’d be walking into, but they knew he needed them, and he wasn’t just their work boss. He was also their best friend.
What they hadn’t expected was a clean, orderly house, a light in Floy’s eyes, and an almost smile as he opened the door.
Beau handed him his mail. “Thought we’d save you a trip to the mailbox.”
Floy took the mail with a grateful nod. “Appreciated. Come in,” he said, stepping aside for them to enter. “You know the way,” he said, left the mail on the hall table, then shut the front door before following them into the kitchen.
They were already setting food containers on the island, while eyeing the table and the place mats, and taking note of the faint scent of lemon air freshener. Clearly, this was part of him putting the house back together.
“Go on ahead and set the food on the table,” Floy said. “You know Beau will be the first one for seconds. No need for him to have to leave the table to get it.”
They laughed. Serving spoons went into the containers of potato salad and baked beans. The bag of buns for the chopped brisket was left open, and tongs were put in the brisket. There were two containers of sauce—one hot, one mild. And a container of dill pickles.
“I’m bartending today,” Razor said. “What’s your poison, Floy?”
“Thanks to my pain meds, Mountain Dew.”
Razor put some ice in a glass, popped the top, and poured until the contents of the can were in the glass. He set the glass at Floy’s place, then popped the caps off a pair of longnecks and carried them to the table.
As soon as the brothers were seated, Floy spoke. “Thank you for this.”
“It’s only because you have two black eyes,” Beau said.
“Next time is on you,” Razor added.
Floy grinned, and the meal began with the three of them talking about everything except the obvious. It wasn’t until they’d eaten their fill, covered up the leftovers to send home with Beau and Razor, and gone back into the living room with their drinks refilled, that the brothers finally asked.
“We’ve heard a thousand different versions of the hell you’ve been through, and if you don’t want to talk about it, we’re both good with that,” Beau said.
Razor leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “It would, however, be beneficial for us to know who all did you dirty. Your enemies are our enemies.”
Floy managed a crooked grin. “In brief terms, I did mention to Chief Arnold that the next time he needed something fixed, it wouldn’t be me answering the call.
As for the wild stories flying, I’d rather you hear the truth from me,” he said, and then began laying out the timeline and the shock of realizing Mayrene had gone missing, then finding one shoe at the back door and the other on the porch, then seeing Elvis stretched out in the backyard with a huge bulge in his body and believing it was her.
How he wound up with black eyes and stitches in his head.
The Langley brothers were silent, both from the shock of the story and from what Floy must have thought at that moment.
Floy continued with the story, relaying the arrival of the police, how they’d taken him into the station to get his statement, and that they’d let him sleep in the cell that night because he couldn’t bear to go back to the house.
“When the vet showed up the next day with a portable x-ray scanner to determine what Elvis had in his belly, all the time I knew if it was her, I would kill myself. I would never have been able to live with the guilt.”
Razor jerked. “Dude . . . For real?”
“For real,” Floy said. “Then the vet said, ‘I don’t know where Mayrene is, but Elvis didn’t eat her. He ate a hog.’ So the chief decided, since she was still missing, that I must have gotten all these cuts and bruises when she’d tried to fight me off as I murdered her. It went downhill from there.”
Beau frowned. “Chief Arnold sure as hell jumped the shark, bro. He’s gonna have a real hard time getting re-elected next year.”
Floy shrugged. “No, he won’t. By the time a whole year passes, there won’t be anyone left in town who even remembers this happened.
I rode in the cop cars up and down Main Street so many times that everybody had made up their minds I was a killer.
Then Mayrene called the beauty shop, of all the damn calls to make.
The kicker was, she was the one who first found Elvis in our yard.
She claimed she’d gone to get her phone to call me when her mother, who’d been in Dallas for two weeks, called to let her know she was back home.
Apparently, Mayrene cried on her shoulder.
Mama came and got her. She forgot all about me, and the panic I was in about finding Elvis.
She didn’t even bother leaving me a note, and she didn’t know she’d left her phone behind.
I thought Quilla was still in Dallas. She waited three days before she used her mother’s phone to try and call me.
But I didn’t answer, because my phone was in an evidence bag in the P.D.
So, she called the fucking beauty shop, instead. ”
Razor snorted.
Beau laughed.