Chapter 25
Jack drove cautiously now, and I relaxed, actually enjoying the huge machine. There was something about being out in the openness, part of wind and nature. No cushioned steel doors and soft leather bucket seats, no roof overhead. Just me, Jack, the bike, a pleasant rumble between my legs, and the wilderness. I sort of missed my radio, though, which would have kept my mind off the trail of wondering whether Jack and I would still be together if we’d discovered the closeness of motorcycle riding earlier. My toes curled, and I sat back, away from Jack.
I would have overlooked the turnoff — probably more than once. A small steel rod with a red reflector light marked the drive. Jack edged in confidently. The underbrush grew thick on each side of the small, dirt path. Once the headlight shone briefly on a dingy gray bra dangling from a yupon limb. We bounced through puddles that splashed our jeans legs, and the bike slid on a downgrade. I grabbed Jack, but he kept the bike upright and eased the throttle higher to climb a small bank.
I couldn’t imagine bringing my Jeep through here. The holly, yupon, and briars would make short work of its paint job. A couple of times a branch reached out and snagged my jacket. We crossed a wooden bridge, planks rumbling, and I inched my head high enough to see over Jack’s shoulder just as the honky-tonk came into view.
A rickety wooden shack sprawled low to the ground beyond a sparsely-graveled parking lot. A half-dozen bikes plus three rusty pickups parked helter-skelter. A neon-orange bucket, tipped sideways, leaked a stream of neon drops from the bottom beside the purple letters: OLEY UCKET. Strains of an old Hank Williams tune filtered out. The door was propped halfway open, and I wrinkled my nose in anticipation of the noxious atmosphere inside as wisps of cigarette smoke drifted out.
Jack eased between a pickup and another bike, and cut the engine. He dropped the kickstand and slid off. I followed more clumsily, legs unsteady from being cocked at an angle on the footpegs. Jack slipped an arm around me until I got my balance, then stepped away, probably still pissed. Well, let him be. That was another major difference between us. Though a trifle scared when I faced my first ghost, the excitement of the moment still lingered. Jack’s just-the-facts brain was having trouble grasping something he considered nonfactual.
He snapped his helmet strap around the handlebar, and reached for mine, which he secured on the other side.
“Nobody will steal our helmets?” I asked.
“Bikers don’t mess with other bikers’ machines or equipment,” he muttered. “But you might want to hang onto your pocketbook.”
“I didn’t bring one. This is your treat.”
Ignoring the attempt to lighten the mood, he steered me toward the door with a hand on my back. No one paid much attention to us. The bartender, a gray-bearded guy of at least three hundred pounds, did glance up and nod. Tables scattered on the open floor, empty, and a row of booths lined the far wall. Everyone else was seated in the booths or gathered around the pool table, sipping longnecks. And every one of them had a cigarette either sticking between their index and middle finger or thumb and index finger. A leather-clad man at the pool table bent over his cue stick, cigarette dangling between his lips, ash threatening to drop on the green velvet. He eyed his next shot through a smoke-squinted gaze.
Our feet crunched on empty peanut shells flung amid scatters of sawdust on the warped board floor. I scooted onto a dirty, black-and-white cowhide upholstered stool, identifiable only because the dark gray areas were a tad lighter than the black. Jack leaned against the bar and propped one booted foot on a steel pipe running the length of it a foot from the floor. The bartender swished a beer mug in a sink of nasty-looking water and clunked it on the counter with a couple dozen other mugs as he quirked an eyebrow at Jack.
“Two Buds,” Jack answered the unspoken query.
“Make one a Bud Lite,” I said.
“Longneck or draft?” the bartender asked, already setting Jack’s bottle in front of him.
“Longneck, please,” I replied. The bottles had been through the bottling process and were cleaner than the mugs.
He grabbed my light beer from the cooler and set it in front of me. Then he added a smaller glass from his stock behind the bar, tipping it over the bottle neck. Red lipstick smeared the glass rim, and I clunked the glass back on the bar as Jack handed over some money.
Tiny pieces of ice slid down the bottle to melt on the bar. One thing Texas beer drinkers insist on is icy cold beer, summer or winter. I picked up the bottle and took a long swallow. Ah, it tasted good, especially in this smoke-filled, stifling bar. The bartender noticed my beer drinking skill and winked approval as he laid Jack’s change in front of him. Jack left the money on the bar, the age-old indication we’d be drinking more. He pulled out a half-empty pack of Marlboros from his jacket pocket, shook one partway out, and offered it to me.
“We don’t smo — ” I began, before I caught the warning glint in his eyes. Okey dokey. When in Rome...or a Texas bar...and all that stuff. I rolled the cigarette around in my fingers. It wasn’t that I hadn’t once been a smoker — a two-pack a day, hard core, gotta have my cigs with my morning coffee smoker. I justified the heavy habit by telling myself that I probably burned up at least half of each cigarette in the ashtray as I worked at my computer, forgetting I’d lit it. But I knew better. And when it got to the point where the morning coughing and hacking made me sick at my stomach, I quit. Cold turkey, too, and I was damned proud of myself.
I’d never quit wanting one, though. I stared at the Marlboro as Jack held out a disposable lighter, flame burning. I hesitated, then told myself I wouldn’t inhale and bent forward. Damn, that smoke felt good in my lungs, even though it did make me slightly light-headed. Uh-oh. I wasn’t going to inhale. I laid the cigarette in an already overflowing ashtray — there was one in front of each bar stool — and picked up my beer.
“Ain’t seen you folks in here before,” Bartender said.
I stayed quiet — like a good little biker babe — and let Jack handle the conversation.
“Heard about it a while back,” Jack said. “Decided to have a look.”
“It don’t get goin’ for another hour or two,” Bartender said. “And we gotta couple rules. Any fights go outside. And...you carryin’? Smoke or hidden?" I knew the language. He was asking Jack if he had drugs or a weapon.
“Nope,” Jack said.
“Take your word for it, but I find out different, you won’t be back." He came up with a short-barreled shotgun from under the bar, held it in sight for a second, then slipped it back.
A commotion erupted over by the pool table, and I swung around. The stool squawked, and I vowed once again to lose that extra ten pounds. Two burly men pounded leather-clad on the shoulders. I’d played a few games of pool in the past, and I scanned the table. He’d cleaned off all the solid balls, and the eight-ball was missing. Several striped balls still scattered on the green velvet, so he’d won the game.
“Hey, tarbender,” one of the congratulators called. “Put Bubba’s beer on my tab!”
“You ain’t got a tab,” the bartender called back. “It’s bucks up front.”
The man pulled a ragged billfold attached to a chain on his belt out of his pocket and strolled to the bar. “Howdy,” he said to Jack as he handed the bartender a twenty, then stuck out his hand. “Rick.”
“Jack,” Jack replied as they shook hands.
The bartender stuck a hand across the bar, too. “Max.”
Jack shook. He didn’t bother to introduce me. This was a man’s world, although a couple other hard-looking women nursed their drinks in the shadowed booth in the farthest corner.
“You ride?” Rick asked.
“Harley,” Jack said.
Rick and Max grinned with approval. “Buy you a beer?” Rick asked.
Jack held up his still-full bottle. “Maybe later.”
The bartender slapped some bills and change on the bar, and followed it with three longnecks from the cooler. Rick st
uffed the change in his pocket and grabbed the beers. “Later,” he said to Jack, and strolled back over to his buddies.
“What next?” I asked Jack quietly.
He picked up two ones from his pile of change and handed them to me. “Jukebox,” he said, slanting his head at the elderly machine over by the pool table.
Ah, man, just what I wanted to do. Sidle through that mass of half-drunk testosterone to play some songs for their enjoyment. But I slid off my barstool. In bars like this, women did grunt work like playing the jukebox.
I carried my beer with me to signal that I already had a date, in case someone hadn’t noticed me come in with Jack. As I approached the pool table, leather-clad emitted a low wolf whistle, which in another life might have given me a feminine flutter. His only made me wish I hadn’t removed my jacket and left it on the barstool. My black T-shirt was a flea-market special: cheap. I bought it for the saying, not quality, and it shrank the first wash. I lingered long enough for leather-clad to read the saying: I’VE GOT PMS AND A HANDGUN. ANY QUESTIONS?
Rick said something in an undertone to leather-clad, and he glanced at Jack and stepped back to give me room to pass. I slid the first dollar into the opening, and the jukebox slurped it up. It spit the second one back. Damn. I ran my fingernails along the edge of the bill to straighten it out. No go. The machine still didn’t like it.
“Here, honey." Rick held out a crisper dollar bill.
“Thanks,” I said, handing him the worn one.
Rick shook his head and strolled off. “Just play something slow and easy,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s early yet.”
Rick’s dollar found a home, so I browsed the selections. There wasn’t a song newer than five years old, although I did see a couple of Garth Brooks. Mainly, though, considering where I was, I punched buttons for some early Grand Old Opry type numbers. The first, a Loretta Lynn number, gained grunts of approval from the pool players, so I finished out the selections that way. With one remaining, I rebelled and chose a rock song — Credence Clearwater.
Duty done and pretending I didn’t want to interrupt the pool game, I strolled to the far side of the bar on my way back to Jack. The two women bent close, in low-voiced conversation. One was a dyed-blonde; the other had black hair from a bottle she should have diluted first. Evidently, I wasn’t not-obvious enough. The blonde jerked her head up and glared.
“You got a nose problem?”
I gave her back glare for glare. Women in places like these had a set of go-by rules, too, and backing down wouldn’t gain me any status. I swigged my beer, then said, “Just checking out the competition." I nodded at the bar. “That one’s mine.”
Dark-hair checked Jack out. “Lucky bitch.”
“Yeah,” I acknowledged. And strolled on over to Jack, slipping onto the barstool, knowing without looking that there were two pairs of female eyes on me. Looping my index finger in the back of Jack’s belt, I leaned close. He chuckled, gaze on the mirror behind the bar, the women in the corner reflected in it. His mouth quirked into that devilish grin that had drawn me to him so many years ago.
“I’ve been staked out as private property, huh?”
“They’ll come around to get to know me. See what there is about me that attracts such a handsome hunk." Jack laughed and swigged his beer, then played his part by draping an arm across my shoulders so I could cuddle even closer. The gesture brought back some memories I didn’t need, and I stiffened momentarily, then relaxed. It was only a game.
Max said, to me this time, “I wouldn’t get too chummy with those two. Tildy — the blonde — she’s on the tequila tonight. Drownin’ her sorrow over Bucky.”
We hid our start of interest. Jack tipped his beer up again, and I started to take a swallow of mine before I noticed the bottle was already empty.
“Bucky,” I said thoughtfully. “Oh, that man they found murdered at the plantation near here? What’s its name? Spirit something?”
“Esprit d’Chene,” the bartender said in perfect Cajun French. “Means Spirit of the Oaks. And yeah, Tildy was once married to Bucky.”
“Don’t know them,” I lied. “Can I have another beer, honey?”
Jack frowned. “You already drank that one? I don’t wanna have to tie you on the bike to get you home.”
I batted my eyes. “I only had a few before we came here.”
“You finished off that six pack,” Jack growled. “Oh, hell." He nodded at Max, who pulled out another Bud Lite and slapped it in front of me.
“You ain’t heard about the murder?” Max asked Jack.
Jack grinned down at me. “I been sorta...busy lately. Her old man’s a trucker, and he’s been off on a cross-country run the last three days.”
I elbowed Jack — hard. That was going a little too far. “Shush, honey,” I muttered.
Max winked at Jack. “Seems like they found Bucky in the swimmin’ pool at that fancy plantation. Somebody lopped off his head." He shook his head sadly, the brushy beard sweeping across his wide chest. “Bucky was one of my best customers, but he left me high and dry with his monthly tab. Even for the drinks he and Katy downed here a couple weeks ago.”
“Katy Gueydan?" I tried for confusion, but the mirror told me I looked more like a puppy eager for a kiss. “Doesn’t she own the plantation?”
“Ladies,” Max said with another blatant wink at Jack. “They do like the gossip, don’t they?" To me, “I suppose you wonder what a lady like that was doing in this dive. Lemme tell you, it wasn’t the first time. Usually she kicked up her heels a bit, but that night she and Bucky was more interested in talkin’ over in that booth Tildy’s usin’.”
Jack emptied his bottle and handed it to Max, who affably set another in front of him and retrieved the price from the bills on the bar.
“You gotta admit,” Jack mused, “women like that Katy’s supposed to be aren’t usually seen ‘round our hangouts.”
Max shrugged. “Maybe she’s like the lady in that ‘Tight Fittin’ Jeans’ song.”
Someone came in the door, and my eyes widened. This could complicate our undercover operation. I slid off the stool. “Honey, I left my powder puff in the saddlebag. Be right back.”
At the door, I eased over to Uncle Clarence, who was staring at Tildy in the corner booth. I didn’t see Tildy’s friend. Maybe she was on a potty break. Uncle Clarence was overdressed for the Holey Bucket, trousers and starched white shirt, black string tie with a turquoise-eyed cow skull clasp. Uncle Clarence dressed to his own tastes, not anyone else’s idea of casual.
I feigned a misstep and brushed his shoulder. “Excuse me, Sugar,” I simpered. “How could I miss a good looking man like you standing there?”
Uncle Clarence frowned, then glanced at the bar. He must have recognized Jack, because he said sotto voce, “Doin’ a little investigatin’, Alice?”
“Don’t blow our cover,” I whispered.
He smiled and leaned on his walking stick. “Why, little lady,” he said louder. “Ah’m sure it was my fault. Can Ah buy you a drink to apologize?”
“I’d like that, Sugar, if my boyfriend — ” I flicked my head toward Jack “ — doesn’t mind.”
“Ah’ll be sure to get his permission,” Uncle Clarence said with a regal nod.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I hurried through the door.