Chapter Four
FOUR
BACK IN MOUNT ZION, I start looking around for accommodations, and it’s not long before I almost pass the Mount Zion Motel.
I pull Honey in alongside a few other cars, most of which feature Ohio or Indiana plates.
Families in town for the holiday weekend, then, or passing through on the way to visit their ancestral graveyard somewhere else.
There’s a brass bell on the desk and I tap it, wait, and then tap it again.
Eventually, a man emerges from the back room in a cloud of silver-blue cigarette smoke.
He’s on the small side—barely taller than I am—and very skinny with wavy white hair brushed back from his deeply lined mahogany face.
A pair of silver reading glasses sits just above the tip of his nose and a lit cigarette balances between his lips.
He wears a western-style white shirt and light jeans with a silver-buckle belt.
He barely glances at me while he clicks the mouse connected to the thirty-year-old computer. “How many rooms?” he asks.
“One.”
“How many nights?”
“Don’t know,” I say.
He gives me a look and I say, “I’m here for work and I don’t know how long it’ll take. Ideally, I’ll check out tomorrow afternoon.”
“Well, checkout’s at eleven.”
“Okay.”
“So … how many?”
“I guess at least two.”
He reaches under the desk and then slides a clipboard across to me. There’s a plastic ballpoint pen attached to the clip with a length of cotton string.
“Fill this out,” he says. “And I’m gonna need the card you’ll be paying with.”
I hand it over and start on the form. While I do, he click-clacks at the keyboard and then I notice him moving from side to side, looking around me.
When I finally catch his gaze, he says, “Goddamn, is that your car outside?”
“That’s right,” I say with a grin. I can’t help it. To this day the thought that Honey is mine-all-mine brings a smile to my face.
The man looks from me to Honey and takes the cigarette out of his mouth long enough to issue an impressed whistle.
“She’s a pretty thing,” he says. “Datsun 260Z? You don’t hardly ever see those. She looks pristine.”
“Yep,” I say. “That’s my girl.”
He chuckles and says, “You said you were in town for work. What kind of work is it that you do?”
I finish the form and slide the clipboard back to him. “I’m a private investigator.”
“No shit?” he says.
“No shit.”
He meets my gaze for the first time, his acorn-brown eyes, shining with interest. Reaching across the desk to shake my hand, he says, “Hollis Patton.”
“Annie Gore.”
“I’ve never met a real, honest-to-God private investigator. The hell you doing here?”
“I’m looking into the death of Ezra King.”
Hollis squints at me and says, “The preacher?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, hell, I heard about him croaking, but I thought it was a snake that got him.”
“Far as I know, it was.”
He takes a long draw on his cigarette, pulling the cherry all the way to the filter.
“So why you down here asking questions? Where’d you come from, anyway?”
“Louisville,” I say.
As if by magic, another cigarette appears in his hand. He lights it off the old one, which he pushes into a ceramic ashtray next to the computer’s keyboard, and says, “No, I got that from the form. I meant, where’re your people from? What county? You don’t look like a city girl.”
“About two hours south and a little west of here,” I say. “Cleberg County.”
“Damn. That’s about a hundred miles from nowhere.”
I shrug.
He takes another long draw from his cigarette and says, “So why are you asking about Ezra King?”
“His daughter hired me,” I say. “She didn’t find out about his death until this morning and, by then, he was already in the ground.”
“They already buried him? Damn. That was fast. ’Course I’d guess your body’s pretty damn nasty when you die from a snakebite.”
“Yeah.”
“I always said that’s what would happen. I think everybody figured he’d go like that. You screw around with rattlesnakes, eventually you’re gonna get bit. Surely his daughter knows that.”
“She does,” I say. “But there’s no other family and, with no autopsy, and her not being able to go to the funeral, I think she just wants to be sure that everything happened like she was told it happened.”
“Her money, I guess,” Hollis says. “Seems like a waste to me, but if she’s got it to spend…”
“Have people been talking about it?” I ask, hoping for a little gossip.
He takes another draw of his cigarette and then scrapes at the white stubble on his cheek with the pads of his fingers.
“Normally, they would’ve been, I think,” Hollis says.
“Snake-handling preacher dies of snakebite. But it’s been busy around here.
We’ve got bears ransacking tourists’ campers all up and down the road.
There was a house fire out on Route 6 and I just heard over the scanner about a three-car pileup on the other side of town. So … like I say, it’s been busy.”
“Have you ever been out to the church?” I ask.
“Hell no! Damn, aside from the fact that I got sense in my head and know it ain’t smart to mess with snakes, you’d have to pay me drive out through Brimstone Holler.”
“Because of the smell?” I ask. “I figured there’s a sulfur spring out that way.”
“Sure enough,” he says. “It’s an underground spring but a sinkhole lets out the fumes. Folks call it the Hell Hole.”
Before I can ask anything else, Hollis opens the drawer in the desk and hands me a metal key with a huge plastic tag attached. He says, “I gave you the big corner room. Down at the end, there. Number nine. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“And no smoking,” he says.
“Sure.” I turn toward the door. But, before I push it open, I turn back to him and ask, “Where can I get some grub around here?”
He grins at me and says, “Cherry Dairy. It’s over on Cherry Street, appropriately enough. Don’t look like much but the chow’s good, if you like the basics.”
“I do.”
I thank him and head out. Figuring I’ll check out my room and take a shower after I eat, I get back behind Honey’s wheel.
We drive the three miles back toward Mount Zion’s downtown and find Cherry Street and, soon enough, Cherry Dairy.
The parking lot is large and, on this Sunday afternoon, packed with the dinner crowd.
If you happen to be unfamiliar with the concept of a dairy as synonymous with a restaurant, you wouldn’t be alone.
I’ve noticed people outside the region hear dairy and think it’s a place to milk cows or maybe make cheese.
But, around here, the word nearly always means a small hometown eatery that might or might not have inside seating but always has ice cream and a walk-up window.
If it’s a walk-up-only place, they’ll usually have hot dogs and fries as well, but a place like the Cherry Dairy, with a hundred or more seats, features a full menu of delights.
Whether deep fried, pan fried, flash fried, or refried, there’s something for everyone.
The interior of the Cherry Dairy is all bright red and white and nearly every booth and table is completely full.
I manage to find an empty place at the counter and pick up a laminated menu.
A twenty-something-year-old waitress in an all-red uniform and a high ponytail appears immediately—pad and pen at the ready—to get my drink order.
I ask for a Coke, get it, and then she disappears into the crowd.
It’s nearly ten minutes before she returns, red-cheeked and sweating, and says, “Sorry about that.”
Next to me, a man with a long black braid down his back says to the waitress, “Hell, Frankie. You look plumb tuckered out. You can’t be the only one working tonight.”
“No,” Frankie says. “But we’re sure shorthanded. Zelda’s helping out, doing prep, and she pushed the new girl out from the kitchen too just for bussing, but the biggest problem is Crystal ain’t here tonight. She called in sick.”
“Shit,” the man says. “Y’all need more than that for the Sunday night crowd.”
“Well, I know,” Frankie says. “But I can’t drag Crystal in here by the hair. Much as I might like to sometimes.”
“You don’t think she’s really sick?”
Frankie rolls her eyes and says, “I don’t think Crystal likes working Sundays and I can’t blame her. The place is packed, there’s always a huge mess afterward, and the tips are terrible.”
The man beside me shakes his head.
“Sorry, Frankie,” he says.
She directs her attention to me and says, “I’m sorry, ma’am. What can I get you?”
I order a burger, cheesy tots, coleslaw, and a sweet tea to replace my now-empty Coke.
The wait for the food is blessedly shorter than my expectation and I dig in.
The cheesy tots, especially, are a first-class example of a classic dairy delicacy.
I can practically feel the salty, greasy goodness fortifying my insides for the evening to come.
As I’m finishing my meal, several people are getting up to go, apparently heading off to church.
A teenager bustles around nimbly with a big plastic tub, cleaning off one table after another.
Frankie pauses in front of me, watching the room with the thousand-yard stare of a woman who still has another five hours of this ahead of her.
She pours herself a huge glass of ice water and takes a long drink.
To my left, a couple dressed for evening church service gets up and leaves. Frankie scowls at them as she pulls their dishes off the counter and swipes her towel over the salt and ketchup they’ve spilled.
“Assholes order off the menu every time and never tip,” she mutters, shaking her head. Looking back at me, she says, “Can I get you anything else?”
“A dipped cone, if you don’t mind. And the check.”
She nods and goes away as a short, stocky guy in a camo ball cap eases onto the stool next to me.
The smell of his mentholated chewing tobacco wafts toward me along with the scent of engine grease.
He gives me a quick nod, half smiling, before he spits a trickle of brown dip into a mostly empty Mountain Dew bottle.
“Hey, Dean,” Frankie says as she returns. She hands me the plastic tray with my bill on it and I dig in my bag for my wallet while she leans toward Dean and smiles at him. “You want the usual, hon?”
He nods, spits a brown stream into his bottle. I stick my credit card under the tab on the tray and hand it back to Frankie.
“Be right back,” she says. She starts away and then stops, suddenly, as if she’s hit a wall. Then she turns, and blinks at me.
“Annie Gore,” she says, holding up the tray with my card on it. “Wait … you’re not Annie Gore, Private Investigator, are you?”
“Um … yes?”
“Ha!” she barks. “Seriously? I just finished the My Sad Fancy about you!”
“What? My sad…”
“My Sad Fancy,” she says, very loud, shaking her head like she can’t believe I don’t know what she’s talking about.
“The true crime podcast! She did a whole five-part series on the Applehead Doll case! The last episode came out a few weeks ago. Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re in here.
My sister is going to flip when I tell her. She loves that podcast.”
“Ah,” I say. I can feel eyes in the room turning toward me, people hushing up as they realize something different or interesting is happening at the counter. I glance at my watch. If I don’t leave soon, I realize, I’m going to miss the start of the church service.
“What are you doing here?” Frankie asks, apparently oblivious to the shift in attention. “Just passing through or…”
My stomach turns over. It’s in a private investigator’s best interest to stay …
private. At least for a while. At least until you’ve got a feel for a place.
Unfortunately, that’s not always possible.
And, if I’m going to be running around this tiny town asking questions, it won’t behoove me to come out of the gate with a lie.
“I’m looking into Ezra King,” I finally say.
“Oh my God,” Frankie says. “Wow. He used to come in here, you know. He would sit right over there”—she points at the end of the counter—“and he would order black coffee and steak, rare. He always gave me the creeps. I mean, he was as nice as he could be and his voice was like nothing you’ve ever heard—but just the thought of those snakes… ”
She pauses long enough to wriggle her body in an exaggerated shiver and then says, “I wasn’t even a little bit surprised when he died from a snakebite.
No, ma’am. So he’s why you’re here? Was he leading a cult or something?
My mamma always said never trust a man who plays with snakes. Oh my God, Dean, can you believe—”
She looks for the man next to me but he’s gone. He’d been scrolling through his phone during her speech and then got up, took his cap off and left it on the counter, and headed toward the bathroom.
“Shoot,” she says. “I’ve got to get his order in. Hang on a second—”
I open my wallet again, pull out some bills, and say, “Actually, I’m heading to the evening service up at Ezra’s church. I’d better run.”
“Oh!” she says. “Oh yeah. Didn’t mean to hold you up.”
Before she can race off again, I hold a twenty out to her and open my hand so she can return my card. She takes the hint and trades me and I put another twenty down on the counter.
“Thanks,” I say, as I slip off the stool.
“Good luck with your investigation!” she says, loud enough that everyone in the room turns to look at me.
I grimace and push open the door. In a small town like this, you’d have to figure word of a private investigator would get around fast; I just hadn’t expected it to be announced to the whole restaurant.