Easy as One, Two, Three Mass market paperbound - 1999

Excerpt

Lost Pines

You see a ghost in the middle of the road. Naturally there's a full moon. Just how are you supposed to handle that? I was told it was exactly midnight on old Route 27. The hands of the clock were pressed straight up--like hands in prayer. The little girl seemed to just appear in the high beams of the Chevy. She was all dressed up in a bright red jumpsuit. The truck swerved to miss her and ended up in the McDonner corn patch. Mustard Abernathy and his pregnant wife, Sissy, were miraculously unharmed. Maybe it was on account of those praying clock hands on the dashboard.

Mustard put out his big old arm. "Hon?"

Sissy blew out a sizable breath. "I'm okay." Felt her stomach. "Baby's okay."

They both looked back to the road. It was empty. Mustard got out and looked for ten minutes, but there was no trace of the little girl in red. She was gone like smoke.

He had it in mind to hunt farther down the road. He was certain he saw some moonlit shadows moving in the ditch, but Sissy called out to him, "Sugar? I believe this baby's ready."

Mustard hustled back to the truck, tore up more of Mr. McDonner's corn patch, and peeled out to the hospital. Within the hour there was a new Baby Girl Abernathy in Stone County, and Sissy was fast asleep. Mustard was watching the late-night news. It was a story about Saint Patrick's Day in Savannah, Georgia--home of the biggest parade of its ilk outside of New York City.

Mustard leaned forward to make sure he recognized the face on the screen, then touched Sissy's shoulder. "Sweetie, your cousin Dalliance is on the TV."

Sissy went right on sleeping, but Mustard watched the rest of the item, even turned the sound up a little.

The reporter was interviewing the owner of the very popular nightspot Easy Two on River Street in Savannah.

"Would you say this was the largest crowd you'd ever had at your club, Ms. Oglethorpe?"

Dalliance Oglethorpe was not ever a big one for hyperbole. "It's a large crowd all right, but this is our first Saint Patrick's Day, so I've really got nothing to compare it to. I understand it's more or less always like this on Saint Patrick's Day around here."

The newscaster peered back into the camera. "There you have it, Phil, the largest crowd ever. I'm Melissa Tynan, reporting from River Street."

The next story was about rampant bungling in Cobb County government, so Mustard turned off the set--didn't want to disturb Sissy's sleep.

Now, me, I'm not a big believer in ghost stories--or in Saint Patrick's Day, when it comes to it. I'm a big believer in memories in place of ghosts, and in saints that really did something, like Brendan, maybe--and in Dalliance Oglethorpe, the finest pal a guy ever had. I asked her once how she'd gotten such a name. Said it had something to do with the transitory nature of love--or at least the brevity of the relationship between her mother and her father. But I digress.

I only meant to explain that I was not the least bit upset when the phone woke me up at four in the morning on March eighteenth.

"Hello?"

"Flap? You asleep?"

"Dally?"

"Aunt Dally to you."

"Aunt Dally? Too Old South. Sorry. Can't say it."

She giggled. "No, I mean I just got a call from my cousin up in Stone County. I'm an aunt."

I tried to be enthusiastic. "Hey. That's something." Tried to sit up. "But if it's your cousin, aren't you a great-aunt or a second aunt or something?"

"Oh, I'll be great at it, all right." She had to talk over the noise where she was. "Look, I'm coming home tomorrow. Meet me about . . . one? Late lunch. We'll take a little drive up north."

"Don't want to."

"Sure you do. And a happy Saint Patrick's to you."

"Is it that time of year again already?"

Somebody jostled her and knocked the phone out of her hand. By the time she retrieved it, I was nodding off again.

She talked too loud. "Are you going to meet me or not?"

I sighed. "Majestic?"

"I feel like vegetables. Let's go to Mary Mac's."

"Uh-huh." Southern vegetables: Everything's boiled for nine days in half a gallon of fat--but you'd have to admit the taste is out of this world. And two minutes later so was I.


Mary Mac's

Ponce de Leon used to be a central thoroughfare in Atlanta, now it's just another side street off Peachtree. It leads all the way from one of the hippest old movie houses in the country, the Fox Theatre, to Stone Mountain, the largest piece of exposed granite in the world. And it is a big old rock.

Once they tried to tear down the Fox Theatre, but citizen outcry saved it. Once Stone Mountain was surrounded by wild woods, but now it's a genteel citizens' park--admission twenty bucks. That's Atlanta: Tear it down or make money off it, one or the other.

On Ponce we find Mary Mac's Tea Room, purveyor of fine southern cooking for many a year. On a good day it's within walking distance for me. I could fall out of bed on Durant and roll there if I had to. From my joint you've got to head toward the Fox, and away from Easy. That's the club made famous by none other than Dalliance Oglethorpe and her unerring notion of what the citizens will go for. Easy Two is its younger sister in Savannah, where the Saint Patrick's revelry and merriment abound every March.

I don't care much what they say about April in any other place, March is fairly cruel in this man's town. Just when you think it's spring, around the end of February, and all the buds pop out and the azaleas start to show off, boom comes an ice storm and wrecks the whole agricultural ambience, or what have you. So you're always just a little cautious of everything in March. Looks like spring, but maybe it's not. Could be fine fishing, or could be the big freeze. And aren't the ides of March supposed to be bad news? Whatever the hell an ide is. Matters not to me. I'm the cautious type anyway. If it looks like storms or ides, I stay inside.

Not sure, but it might have been that I hadn't left the apartment since the day after New Year's. I'm not saying I'm genetically disposed to the shut-in mentality. I just had no particular place to go. Dally was in Savannah. There was nobody else I especially wanted to see, and what with take-out food delivery, I just didn't see the point of getting all agitated and dressed and whatnot. And I had reading to catch up on, after all--although nothing in particular. Still, it was a pretty day at lunchtime on March eighteenth, and a stroll seemed just like what the proverbial doctor might have ordered.

Now, an azalea is a bush from China or some such, but it's done quite well by southern towns. At a certain moment in the spring every single one of them will conspire to produce red or purple or white flowers that flush out a shrub to no end. And it was along such a bounteous hedge I wended my way to Mary Mac's Tea Room. This is to say that my mood was very bright and gay as they used to say in the old songs. It was spring. I was out. Food was good. And I was about to see Dalliance.

She was waiting out front of the place. Too nice a day to wait inside. She was wearing one of those spring type of dresses that reminds your head of tulips while the rest of you is caught remembering what it was like to be a teenager. She saw me coming and made with the biggest smile possible for a human face--although mine was by all means giving hers a run for its money.

"So, big boy--you miss me?"

"Not much." I felt like dancing. "I just haven't been out of my apartment since you left."

"Well, that was some New Year's Eve party. Would have killed a lesser man."

"Oh, I've still got scars."

"You seem to be healing nicely." She touched my face.

"Yeah." I nodded. "You look good too, kiddo."

She sighed, like she had more to say, but in the end it was just, "Let's eat."

Mary Mac's can get right crowded of a lunchtime. But we were late, the line was short, and we got a table right away. It was after the big-business types and luncheon blue hairs had cleared out.

The order tickets were always on the table along with a slew of pencils, so you made out your own order. By me there's no beating the chicken livers. Dally got the country-fried steak, the choice of gourmands. Tea so sweet it comes with a side of insulin. Rolls so good you want to eat the basket they came in.

I glugled a little tea and took in her countenance. "You do look good. I guess being an aunt agrees with you."

"Dutch aunt."

"Uh-huh, but it's quite a drive you're asking me to do, up to the mountains, and all."

"You suffer from midtowner's disease." She made a face. "If it's more than a half hour's drive from home, you don't want to go."

I nodded vigorously. "Absolutely."

"But that means no mountains, no beach, no farms, no fishing . . ."

"All of which I can watch on the TV, which I got cable."

"What kind of a life is that?"

I shrugged. "My kind."

"Uh-huh. Are you going to go with me to visit my kin, or else?"

"That's right, threaten me. That'll make me want to spend five hours in the car with you."

"It's not five hours."

"Three."

"Okay." She tore a roll. "At least three. But it's a pretty drive."

"Oxymoron. Drive and pretty are mutually exclusive."

"Says you. And don't call me a moron."

Luck brought lunch before any more witty retorts could fly. Very fine eats indeed. We were both hungry, and all we talked about for a while there was the food itself.

Then, about coffee-and-bread-pudding time, Dally told me the funny thing about the birth of her new niece.

"On their way to the hospital Mustard and Sissy ran afoul of the Little Girl of Lost Pines."

"The who?"

"Usually happens in the early spring like this, or late winter. They saw the ghost."

"Is that right."

She told me the story of Mustard and Sissy's trip to the hospital, complete with the vanishing youngster and the ripping up of some poor schmo's cornfield and all. Belonging, as I do, to the First Church of the Insistent Skeptic, I didn't buy. "It couldn't be that Mustard and Sissy were just tired, it being midnight? Or all wound up from nerves on account of they got a baby arriving? Or maybe they just caught a little red reflector from somebody's mailbox, even?"

She dipped a spoon into my bread pudding. "See, that's your problem. You got no sense of romance."

"Romance?"

"They saw the ghost of the little lost girl, and then they had a baby girl themselves? You don't think it's cool?"

"Not in the least. It's not even lukewarm."

"Must you always play the Doubting Thomas?"

"Must you always regale me with hooey?"

"Hooey?"

"You heard me."

"Listen, buster." She leaned back. "I've got a good mind not to even let you go to the mountains with me this afternoon."

I folded my arms. "Anything but that."

"Everybody in the nation"--she shook her head--"loves a good ghost story."

I raised my eyebrows. "Now I'm unpatriotic?"

"Like always."

"Listen, missy, I'm quite fond of a ghost story upon a chilly night beside the campfire, roasting marshmallows and weenies and whatnot. But in general I would rather read a bus schedule than a spook tale."

"Spook tale?"

"I've heard 'em called that."

"In your crowd? I'd imagine you have."

"My crowd? Who's the one always hangs out at your bar?"

She knew I had her, so she shifted left. "Come on, Flap, let's go to the mountains."

I gave forth with dismay. "Aw . . . they got no good wine up there, not one drop."

"They got their own wineries up there, for chrissake."

"So-called. You know my feelings about American wine."

She looked down slowly. "And you know my feelings about this trip."

"You're not going to let me out of it, are you?"

"Not really."

"What's the big deal?" I squinted.

She was a little sterner than I thought she needed to be. "It's important to me. I have to go."

"Uh-huh. And you're just going to make me miserable if I don't go with you?"

"As only I can."

"I see." I nodded. "Then I actually have little choice."

She nodded right back. "That's how I see it."

"In that case I'd be delighted."

She smiled sweetly, like the rest of the conversation had never taken place. "I knew you'd come."

Media reviews

"Anytime Phillip DePoy wants to bring back Flap Tucker, I'm ready."
--S.J. Rozan, Shamus Award-winning author of Concourse

"A series that accomplishes the tricky task of being satisfyingly different."
--Mystery News