Mesopotamia Read online

  I skimmed through dozens of copies of these case histories loaded with phrases like subject seen going into and signs of intimacy evident. Photographic evidence of infidelity included was the one phrase frequently at the bottom of them. It painfully reminded me of Paul’s infidelities toward the end of our marriage. Feeling increasingly crappy, I finally slugged down the remainder of the Jack Daniel’s and knocked myself out.

  When I woke up late the next day, my drooling face was submerged in a pile of his canceled checks from the late 1990s. Despite a severe crick in my neck, the only thing I could take away from this endeavor was the answer why Vinetta hadn’t gone to the police: Loyd had nothing. No leads, no motives, no real suspects. Nada. For that matter, other than a colorful wall and Vinetta’s accusation, I found only evidence of a garbage-driven life.

  I clutched my throbbing head and staggered outside. As I opened the busted screen door to the trailer, I was treated to an Alvin and the Chipmunks rendition of “Don’t Be Cruel.” Some minor miscreant was screeching out his amends.

  “Who the heck are you?” asked some pint-sized terror blocking my path. It must’ve been the boy genius, Floyd Jr.

  “She’s here to help me find your daddy’s killers,” Mama yelled from the next room. Floyd Jr. grabbed one of the other kids and led him outside.

  Continuing on to the narrow living room, I found that Mama was dressed in a strange sequin dress with a silver tiara and star-tipped wand. She was supposed to be a fairy godmother. There was a plastic drop cloth on the ground and she was surrounded by a circle of four high chairs. Vinetta was playfully feeding the four youngest.

  “You’ve got an amazing level of concentration,” she said between spoonfuls.

  “Huh?”

  “I peaked down there this morning and saw you with your head in the pages so I didn’t disturb you.”

  I smiled politely.

  “If you have coffee anywhere …” I would’ve even chewed down some old grounds.

  “There’s still some on the stove.”

  I poured myself a cold, thick cup. She had no blue Equal packets but offered me a spoonful of molasses as sweetener.

  “You ain’t trying to take my mother for some ride, are you?” the eight-year-old asked, returning to the kitchen.

  “Huh?”

  “We got no money if that’s your game,” Floyd Jr. said as his sister went through the kitchen cabinets and shouted out items in stock. He was compiling a grocery list.

  “I’m not asking for anything,” I assured him.

  Mama entered still dressed in her outfit and led me into the living room. “They fear the fairy godmother,” she said, “makes them easier to handle.”

  “Can you talk a moment?”

  “I’m always starved for adult conversation,” she replied as she tried to spoon more food into their tiny mouths.

  “I remember reading on the Internet that Loyd died in some accident.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t an accident. They blew him up.”

  “Tell me about it?”

  “They wired the shed with explosives and when he went in to get a rake, kerblam!”

  “Why did the article say it was an accident?”

  “Probably cause Sheriff Nick works for Carpenter.”

  “Floyd was a private investigator?”

  “Yep.”

  “What exactly did he investigate?”

  “His bread-and-butter work was for divorce lawyers. Tracking down cheating husbands and such. He was good at it too. He got hired all over the western part of the state. It wasn’t exactly glamorous, but it paid steadily and there’s a lot of skunks out there.”

  “Maybe a divorced husband or wife who got a bad settlement killed him,” I suggested.

  “No, that wall chart says it all—Carpenter did it.”

  “You really should have gone through his papers before asking me or anyone else to do it.”

  “I would’ve, but frankly I was afraid to screw something up.”

  “That’s like screwing up an oil spill. Your husband seems to have saved every shred of paper he ever came across. Unfortunately, nothing really leads to anything.”

  “Nothing?” she asked, holding her serving spoon in midair for the first time. I let out a hopeless sigh.

  “If there’s a method to his madness, I don’t see it.”

  “But you’re a reporter, you’re not telling me you never did an investigative piece before.”

  “Good reporters know their turf, they slowly build up an investigation. You get to know your players, you have a thread of mystery that you work toward.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s this Carpenter guy! He’s your thread!”

  “Even if I had a better idea of what was going on, I just don’t have a lot of time and cash to pursue this.”

  “Look, I know the area and people. I can bring you up to speed, and you can stay here. I’ll feed you while you’re working on the case.” She accidentally dipped her magic wand into her food bowl. “In return I can grant a wish.”

  I went back to my car, got my cell phone and battery recharger, plugged it into a wall outlet, and to my amazement I got a signal. I checked my messages. First my editor Riggs called and again asked where the hell I was. Then Gustavo called to say I should get my ass down to Memphis pronto. Scrubbs was back in town and rumors of his infidelities were swirling like dust devils.

  Before returning the calls, I phoned the sheriff’s office.

  “Can I speak to the investigator who handled the Floyd Loyd case?”

  “That would probably be me.”

  “May I ask your name?”

  “Everyone calls me Sheriff Nick, but let me just say there wasn’t really a case,” he replied. “Floyd died when his crystal lab blew up. The coroner ruled him out of his skull on fumes.” My entire body tensed up.

  “Crystal meth?”

  “He had a long list of priors. He had been arrested for using, for manufacturing, and for selling.”

  I let out a deep sigh. “His wife didn’t say a thing about that. May I ask the date of his last drug arrest?”

  “Now we both know I can’t release that kind of information, but to save us both some time, I’ll say it was all about ten years ago.”

  “So he wasn’t convicted recently?”

  “No, but we found evidence of the lab all over his property after the fire.”

  “Where was this lab?”

  “It’s a burnt-out shack on the edge of the trailer park.”

  “And you looked for evidence of foul play?”

  After a bit of a pause he said, “Vinetta hired you, didn’t she?”

  “I’m conducting an informal inquiry for her, yes.”

  “Well, ma’am, I’ve gone down this road before with Vinetta and some other investigator. Her husband had a sizable life insurance policy. The fact that he got blown up invalidated it. And believe me, if there was even a remote possibility that he wasn’t at fault, I would’ve found it. I think the world of Vinetta, I really do. I’ve known her since she was a girl, and I know she’s under great hardship. But it was a simple case. Open and shut. Some of the locals testified that he would regularly sell ice in the B.S. parking lot. Others from the local mall saw him loading a box of cough medicine into his trunk. Hell, someone else at the Home Depot in the Murphy County Mall testified that a week prior to the explosion he bought two five-gallon canisters of propane.”

  “Who discovered Floyd’s body? Vinetta?”

  “No, she was away with the kids. It was his neighbor, the minister. He heard the boom. Like I say, it’s really all open and shut, but in the last three months Vinetta has gone on a letter-writing campaign. She’s begged and borrowed from everyone who crosses her path, telling some hullabaloo about Elvis Presley to try to enlist any aide she can to reopen the case—but there is no case.”

  I thanked him for his time and clicked off my cell. Searching through the root cellar the night before, I had seen no traces of ing
redients that might be used to cook meth. Still, it was time to move on. Gus was trying to help and Riggs was on the verge of replacing me, just as he had replaced the last reporter.

  Making a quick excursion through the ruptured field of shit to the burnt planks where the toolshed once stood, I now noticed little scraps of yellow police tape flapping around the former crime scene. Cannisters of paint thinner, plastic containers of starter fluid, and boxes of cold or diet medicines were all missing. There was no sign of hosing or metal pots to cook the ingredients in. I picked up one of the fire-singed wooden boards and sniffed it deeply. No sweet ammonia scent, customary for such labs.

  Still, I was pissed that Vinetta hadn’t disclosed this to me. I marched back into that giant beat-up breadbox, where I was about to scold her for wasting my time. But I saw something that jabbed the final toothpick through my martini olive of indignation: Minister Mo Beaucheete—that sleazebag I had met at the bar who allegedly called the police when he found Floyd’s dead body—was cradling the widow in his arms and they were both giggling. Suddenly I sensed who had broken that bed in the storm cellar. Disgusted, I sized up that hypocritical lamb of God, who had left those soiled lambskins on the cellar floor.

  “Well, looky here,” Beaucheete said as I entered. “It’s the girl who God forgot.”

  “She’s researching poor Floyd’s case.”

  “Oh really,” he said. “Did you discover anything?” They both had this air of concern that made me feel like the world’s biggest idiot.

  “Unfortunately, I did not,” I replied loud and clear.

  “Well, you’ll have to excuse me. There’s never enough time to prepare for a good sermon.” And with that, the strapping man of the cloth was gone.

  “Vinetta, I got to go too,” I concluded.

  “You seemed a little rattled to see the minister here.”

  “I saw him the other day at Blue Suede.”

  “All the fellas in town hang out at the B.S. and Minister Beaucheete has helped me in infinite ways since Floyd’s passing. We go to his church for Sunday services.”

  “I just heard from the sheriff that he was the one who heard the explosion and found Floyd’s body.”

  “That’s cause he’s right across the field,” she replied. After a short pause, she both divined my thoughts and answered them: “I hardly think he’d kill a man a stone’s throw from his own church.”

  Silently, I looked at my watch and said, “My editor is screaming at me. I got to get back to my story down in Memphis or I’ll get fired.”

  “I really need your help,” she muttered sadly.

  “Tell you what,” I said to pacify her, “I’ll try to make some inquiries about Floyd from Memphis.”

  “Please call me with anything you find.” Her eyes were misting up.

  I bade her and her band of balladeering children a fond farewell and drove out of Babyland, and back through the maternal hell of Mesopotamia southward.

  I didn’t know if she, he, or both of them were in on it, but seeing that large lusty preacher cradling that cute little widow spelled out ample motive to eliminate a tired pack rat husband. The only thing missing from their plan was the insurance money, and I guess she figured that if I—a desperate Elvis-baited tabloid reporter—could come up with a weird murder motive, just an iota of evidential doubt, they could all live happily ever after.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  En route back down to Memphis, after a forty-eight-hour absence, I finally called Jericho Riggs, boy editor. “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve called everywhere in Memphis looking for your drunken ass!”

  “Please don’t use that kind of language with me,” I said. “I told you I left Memphis.”

  “And then you vanished for an entire day! Christ, I thought you were dead!”

  “I was up in Daumland, Tennessee, investigating Missy’s family and I stumbled on something big.”

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s more of a hunch really,” I said without a clue of what I was going to say next.

  “You had better tell me something good, and if you fake bad cell phone reception, don’t call back.” He had anticipated my next move.

  “I have reason to suspect,” I took a deep breath, “that Missy Scrubs might still be alive.” I pulled the lie right out of my ass hoping it might just cut me a little more slack.

  “What reason?”

  “A tip.”

  “From who?”

  “Just give me some time.”

  “Give me a name—who?”

  “The wife of a dead private investigator.”

  “What’s the private investigator’s name?”

  “Floyd Loyd,” I said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m dead serious.”

  “All right,” he said, “I’m going to Google that ridiculous name and if nothing turns up you’re not just fired, I’ll have you blackballed.”

  “He’s dead. They said it was accidental.”

  “Did he live down there?”

  “Yes, in Murphy County,” I replied, utilizing one fuck-up to cover another.

  “If this clown died down around there, I’ll give you twenty-four hours, then I’m calling up the next brilliant out-of-work twelve-stepper who desperately needs another chance.” He hung up. Life was only getting easier. I called Gustavo to get some idea of what lay ahead.

  “Oh my lawd,” he said, “I was certain you’d be retreating back through the Holland Tunnel by now.”

  “I would but my home has been condemned. I have no where to go but Memphis.”

  “Glad to hear it. I have to return my car to the rental agency by tonight, but my paper actually gave me just enough to stay in a cozy motel. My room has twin beds and a blue movie channel,” he invited. “Also, I did find out some juicy goings-on about our Mr. Scrubbs.”

  I told him I’d see him soon.

  We were a partnership by chemistry. Unless he was intoxicated he couldn’t work. Though I found it difficult to write while drunk, I could still drive. Mutually imbibed, he said we jointly had the capabilities of one mediocre journalist.

  After the long drive back to Memphis, I dragged my shopping bags up to his motel, a Comfort Inn, and knocked on his door. He greeted me with a smile and showed me inside. On his bed was a large brand-new metallic suitcase. Flipping the tiny combination lock, he snapped the latches open. The contents resembled an assassin’s rifle case, complete with crisp cut-out cushions. It held a variety of photographic equipment—two digital cameras, a Polaroid with zoom lens, and a heavy-duty tripod attachment.

  “Where’d you get all this?”

  “Won it in a poker game from a drunken photographer during my last big story.”

  “Why’d you bring it?”

  “Let’s face it, they only really care about the pictures. And we got to shake a leg, so grab a camera and let’s go.”

  “With all this technology, you can probably take photos of the future,” I said, prying one of his cameras loose from its form-fitting foam. A tiny digital camera with an enormous zoom lens looked like a robotic pygmy with a large steel erection. He grabbed the Polaroid. “So, where we going?”

  “Thucydides Scrubbs is back home!”

  We jumped into his rent-a-wreck and he had me drive to the Scrubbs estate as he loaded film into the Polaroid and checked his minirecorder.

  “What exactly did you discover?”

  “That Scrubbs could be innocent.”

  “What proof?”

  “Just a vibe.”

  “That’s probably the DTs from all your drinking.”

  “I spoke to everyone I could who met the guy and learned he doesn’t have a temper. He’s not jealous. He’s got no history of violence. He’s been divorced before. No one’s ever heard him raise his voice. He’s even been cuckolded before and remained friends with the wife who cheated on him. By all accounts he was cynical about this relationship from the very start. He even had a prenup.” Too bad you
can’t sell a vibe.

  As we pulled up to his neatly manicured estate, we saw the ever-multiplying swarm of photographers converging in his rolling driveway. Scrubbs was just exiting his place.

  “Return to Camp O.J.,” Gustavo said, and holding his camera like a pistol, he joined the fray. It was like an army of fire ants going after a stray dung beetle. The crowd pelted Scrubbs with questions, shoving their cameras tightly toward his face.

  “Why’d you kill your wife?”

  “Has she been kidnapped? Why don’t you tell the police?”

  “Where’d you bury her?”

  “Did you strangle her? Did you cut her up?”

  “Do you think she’s dead?”

  “Who do you think killed her?”

  “Where’s the million dollars missing from your account?”

  A thousand questions simultaneously buffeted the middle-aged man as he attempted to act as if it were just another day. I tried my best to shove into that mosh pit, holding Gustavo’s pygmy camera above my head, hoping to get a single photo if only to show to Jericho Riggs that I was in Memphis, doing my sober best. Unfortunately, nothing worked. I couldn’t get the miniscreen to light up. I was techno-illiterate.

  When Scrubbs finally closed the door of his SUV and drove off, a few followed in slow pursuit.

  We just stood there with the rest of the First Amendment mob. Gustavo finally grabbed a sterling silver flask from his back pocket and took a deep swig. Then he explained that the grand jury was expected to be filing charges against him imminently.

  “I thought he was already indicted.”

  “Not yet … Hey, you should try these, they really mellow you out.” He pulled out a burnt-orange container of pills and rattled it.

  Right then my phone chirped, with Vinetta’s name on the display. I let it go to voice mail. Without asking what the pills were, I gulped down two without water. “Did you say that you had some sort of scoop or lead or whatever they call it nowadays?”

  “Yeah, I’ve tracked down someone who worked for Scrubbs.”

  “Who?”