Hugger Mugger

FOURTEEN

WE DIDN'T LEARN much in Alton. An Alton County Sheriff's detective named Felicia Boudreau was on the case. I knew her from eight years earlier, and Becker and I talked with her sitting in her car at the stable site.

Carolina Moon, she told us, had been a filly of modest promise. Her groom had found her dead in her stall when he went to feed her in the morning. She'd been shot once in the neck with a.22 long bullet, which had punctured her aorta, and the horse had bled to death.

"We have the bullet," Felicia said. "Vet took it out of the horse."

"We'd like to see if we can match it against ours," Becker said.

Felicia said, "Sure."

"Nothing else?" I said.

"Well, it's nice to see you again," she said.

"You too," I said. "Got any clues?"

"None."

"Lot of that going around," I said.

"What's it been, eight years?"

"Yep. Still getting your hair done in Batesburg?" I said.

"Yes, I am."

"Still looks great," I said.

"Yes, it does."

We talked with Frank Ferguson, who owned the horse. He didn't have any idea why someone would shoot his horse. I remembered him from the last time I was in Alton, but he didn't remember me. He had been smoking a meerschaum pipe when I talked with him eight years before. I thought of saying something about it, but decided it would be showing off, especially after my hair-done-in-Batesburg triumph.

We headed back toward Lamarr in the late afternoon with neither information nor lunch. I didn't mind about the lunch. The sausage biscuits from breakfast were still sticking to my ribs. In fact, I was considering the possibility that I might never have to eat again.

"That didn't help much," Becker said.

"No," I said, "just widened the focus a little."

We were heading west now and the afternoon sun was coming straight in at us. Becker put down his sun visor.

"Maybe it was supposed to," Becker said.

"So we wouldn't concentrate entirely on the Clives?" I said.

Becker shrugged.

"What is this, you give me an answer and I try to think up the question?"

Becker grinned, squinting into the sun.

"Like that game show," he said. "On TV."

"Swell," I said.

We kept driving straight into the sun. The landscape along the highway was red clay and pines and fields in which nothing much seemed to be growing.

"Okay, let me just expostulate for a while," I said. "You can nod or not as you wish."

"Expostulate?" Becker said.

"I'm sleeping with a Harvard grad," I said.

"The Emory of the North," Becker said.

"I have a series of crimes which, excepting only Carolina Moon," I said, "centers on a family made up of Pud, who's an alcoholic bully, and SueSue, who's an alcoholic sexpot, and Cord, who likes young boys, and Stonie, who, according to SueSue, is sexually frustrated. They are mothered by Hippie, who ran off with a guitar player while her daughters were in their teens, and Walter, who after Hippie ran off, consoled himself by bopping everything that would hold still long enough."

"And Penny," Becker said.

"Who seems to run the business."

"Pretty well too," Becker said.

"You know anything about any of these things?" I said.

"Heard Cord might be a chicken wrangler," Becker said.

"How about Stonie?"

Becker shrugged.

"SueSue?"

Shrug.

"How about good old Pud?" I said.

"Pud's pretty much drunk from noon on, every day," Becker said.

"Probably doesn't make for a good marriage."

"I ain't a social worker," Becker said. "I don't keep track of everybody's dick."

"Still, you knew about Cord."

"I am a police officer," he said.

"Okay, so Cord got in trouble."

Becker didn't comment. We pulled into the parking lot of my motel. Becker stopped by the front door. We sat for a moment in silence.

"These are important people, probably the most important people in Columbia County," Becker said. "Walter Clive is a personal friend of the sheriff of Columbia County, who I work for."

"You mentioned that," I said.

"So I don't want you going down to the Bath House Bar and Grill and nosing around there, asking questions about Cord Wyatt."

"I can see why you wouldn't," I said. "That the gay scene in Lamarr?"

"Such as it is," Becker said. "Tedy Sapp, bouncer down there, used to be a deputy of mine, spells it with one d in Tedy, and two p 's in Sapp. When you don't go down there like I told you not to, I don't want you talking to him or mentioning my name."

"Sure," I said. "Stay away from the Bath House Bar and Grill, and don't talk to Sapp the bouncer. Where is it located so I can be sure not to go near it?"

"Mechanic Street."

"I'll be careful," I said.

We sat for a while longer in silence.

"The family is peculiar," I said.

"And the horse shooting is peculiar," Becker said.

"What does this suggest?" I said.

"Can't imagine," Becker said.