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Flying
Through Forty
ISBN#1-931742-29-4
An Amateur Sleuth Mystery
By R.P. Dahlke
Available from:
WhoooDoo Mysteries, a division of Treble Heart Books.
www.trebleheartbooks.com
and Baker and Taylor
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Chapter
1
It was August, which meant I'd been up
since three, sending ground crews scurrying, handing pilots their map
coordinates, and listening to anxious farmers twitch at the first fluffy
little cloud. And now a man, a paunchy, balding, traveling salesman,
was standing between me and my first decent cup of coffee. It's not
that I don't understand when guys wax poetic over the chrome-trimmed
tail fins of my '58 El Dorado, I just wish they could resist the urge
to fondle them.
Seeing I was impatient to get about my
business, he half-heartedly offered to buy the Caddy. I sighed and gave
him my standard reply. "No thanks, I got her in sort of a trade a couple
of years ago and I'm still having fun. You wouldn't want her anyway.
The air conditioner's busted and the radio only gets AM." Like admiring
an unavailable girl, it helps to know her beauty is only skin-deep.
I ticked off a few more flaws, eventually disconnecting another unhealthy
fantasy. He got into a company car and took the on-ramp for 99 and long
stretch of freeway bisecting the San Joaquin Valley of California. I
patted my belted jeans for the pager I naturally forgot to wear, and
the recorder I did manage to remember, then lugged my accordion folder
of county papers through a parking lot full of step-side pick-ups.
A small Honda Civic had all four windows
halfway down and Spike, Patience McBride's psychotic, ankle-biting Chihuahua,
was running the interior like a gerbil's gymnasium as he baptized innocent
passersby with ear-piercing doggy-curses. He had wisely been banned
from Roxanne's Truck Café. In order to avoid his insane yapping, and
since I was wise to his antics, I detoured two cars over, then broke
for the front door.
The café's air conditioning was kept blissfully
on overdrive, which accounted for the frequency of my visits. This morning,
I noticed the café was packed full up with farmers, chemical salesmen,
and crop-dusters like me, having coffee, breakfast and gossip. Roxanne's
children, Terrill and Maya, worked at the café between college semesters.
On an athletic scholarship at Berkeley, Terrill's parents had effectively
blocked all interested football scouts, and instead managed to extract
their son's promise to graduate before turning pro. And since both his
parents were the size of line-backers, nobody argued. Today, Terrill,
his voice ridiculously off-key to the Walkman in his ears, was doing
some fancy footwork with a mop. I patted his muscled, coppery shoulder
as it rippled in the sleeveless T-shirt. "Keep your day job, college
boy."
Oblivious to anything beyond the hip-hop
between his ears, Terrill smiled and nudged the pail toward the kitchen.
I watched him execute a few sensuous dance-steps with his stringy haired
partner before sliding the bucket through the door. The girls at Berkeley
had better watch out.
I took a worn green vinyl stool at the
counter and wound my long legs around the stem in an ancient habit to
keep them out of the way. Not that it mattered. There would be no gawkers
this morning. I was as well accepted as any other six-foot ex-New York
model-turned-crop-duster can be.
Roxanne deftly positioned a hot cup of
coffee so I wouldn't miss the handle. Black, no cream and wonderfully
fresh. Just as I was thinking kind things about her, she leaned her
elbows on the counter and said, "So, what do you want on your birthday
cake? I don't think we're going to be able to do candles this year,
the fire marshal won't allow that much fire power in the place."
"Oh, thanks, Roxanne. Just how I wanted
to start my day," I said, rustling through the morning paper left on
the counter.
"Humph. That's the thanks I get for my
efforts? What's your problem, Lolla? It's Caleb's birthday too, and
he doesn't seem to be having any trouble with it."
I sighed my usual litany of complaints,
"Caleb is a guy, forty doesn't look so bad on him, and nothing he eats
goes to his hips."
Nothing I ate ever went to my hips either,
but it sounded good. An intelligent and educated black woman, Roxanne
may be sympathetic, but she's not stupid. She wiped her hands down ample
hips and said, "You don't got a spare ounce on that bony hide and you
know it. You're just mad 'cause you're turning forty. Forty ain't so
bad. Been there and then some. You got to start learning to say, 'Hi,
I'm Lolla Bains and I'm forty.' Go on, say it. Practice on it a bit.
Say each word slowly and try not to stutter. It'll come naturally after
awhile."
Her husband Leon grinned at me from the
pass-through to the kitchen. Something was up, I could smell it, and
it wasn't just the plates piled high with eggs, sausage, and bacon.
"What?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at
them both.
Roxanne lifted her big shoulders and shrugged.
"What do you mean?"
"You're a lousy liar, Roxy," I said, sipping
my coffee and watching her face. Sure enough, she couldn't take her
eyes off the paper I was holding. I looked down at page three--Lower
right hand corner. A black and white photo someone had purloined from
my third grade. class album. It was me alright, pigtails and that big-space
that used to be between my front teeth.
I groaned. The caption read, "Lordy-Lordy,
look who's forty!"
The entire café, which until now had been
holding its collective breath, erupted into laughter.
"Whose bright idea was this?" I yelled,
holding up the paper and giving it a good shake in the hopes the print
would slide off the page.
"Roxanne? This your idea?" I waved the
paper under her nose as if cornering a puppy that had piddled on my
morning news. That is, if you could imagine Roxanne as a very large
Rotweiler. She bared her teeth at me, the dimple in her right cheek
flashing humorously. My friend was having fun with her gullible buddy
again, to everyone's amusement but mine.
"Why me? I don't see Caleb's mug anywhere
on this page!" I felt a hand clamp onto my shoulder and jerked around
ready for battle.
"Sure am," he said, smiling broadly. "Page
four," and reached over my shoulder to flip the page.
It was Caleb alright. Though Caleb's blond
buzz cut was the same as in third grade, it now showed some tanned scalp
through the blond.
"Come on, Lolla. Take it like a man. It's
only a birthday," Caleb grinned, the corners around blue eyes crinkling.
And why not, I thought. Forty is prime
for sheriffs. My friend Caleb and I share the predisposition of those
Northern Europeans who grow as straight and tall as beanpoles. When
we stand side by side, people tend to accept us as kin. We both have
wide-spaced eyes tucked behind epicanthic eye folds left over from some
Mongol splashing across our genetic gene pool. On Caleb's long face,
his light blues looked like chips off an iceberg. My eyes are sea green
and infinitely photographable, or so I'm told. It worked out O.K., I
guess: I got fashion photographers and Caleb, being Sheriff, got to
scare the bejesus out of questionable suspects.
I gave them all my best phony perfect-for-the-camera-smile
and hoped they'd go back to their own business of comparing crop prices
while I muttered at Caleb, "Don't you have bad guys to pick on, Sheriff
Stone?"
"Sure I do," he said, reaching over me
to collect a breakfast sandwich from Roxanne. "But, the good guys gotta
eat too, ya' know."
"No offense to Roxy's cooking but since
when did scrambled eggs between two slices of bread take precedence
over sausage and eggs at home?" Roxanne, I noticed out of the corner
of my eye, was giving me sour looks. "What? I didn't offend Leon's cooking."
Roxy shrugged, gave me another dirty look,
smiled kindly at Caleb, and then turned away to rinse dishes.
Caleb had a wife to cook him meals while
I lived with my widowed father who's breakfast dialogue consisted of
monosyllabic work related instructions issued from behind the wall of
the morning paper. I'd rather eat wadded between the local's at Roxanne's
than suffer the terminal silence at my own breakfast table. And since
Caleb seemed to be here or at our house a lot lately maybe things weren't
so good at home. We'd have to talk about that when we got a chance.
Caleb said, "Don't be mad, Lolla. I'll
make it up to you Saturday night," Then he leaned over to whisper in
my ear."We can have a food fight with our cake."
"How 'bout if I just mash that cake in
your face?" I replied, bristling at his sass. I picked up the paper
and shook it out, ignoring his chuckling departure.
Rustling through pages, and desperate
to find something to take my mind off my impending birthday, I found
just the thing on page ten. I read it aloud at Roxanne's back while
she dumped coffee grounds down the sink. "It says here, 'exhibit and
rodeo entries will be accepted in one week for the Stanislaus County
Fair.' Think they allow Ag Cats to run barrel races? How about floral
arrangements? I do great plastic. Oh, here's one: Mother used to tinker
with recipes. I'll bet I could enter one of her concoctions for jam."
"Jam?" Roxanne said, coffee pot in mid-air.
"Are you out of your mind, girl?" Her heavy bosom rumbled with laughter
at the thought of her friend mixing it up in a competition for which
she had no experience, no talent, and certainly no previous inclination.
"Hey," I growled, "It could happen. Maybe
the judges are bored with the same old apricot and pineapple jam. Maybe
I'll experiment with a recipe and come up with something that will win.
Maybe I'll come back here with a blue ribbon."
Boyd Lincoln, from his usual place two
seats down, stopped slurping on his coffee and hooted, "Yeah, right.
My cow got one of them at the fair. Been meaning to bring it in and
show it around. I guess if a cow can get a blue ribbon so can you, Lolla."
Snickers broke out amongst the regulars. I made a one-armed swipe at
Boyd, but missed. Boyd Lincoln had been causing me grief since kindergarten.
"I get all the compassion of a pet snake
in this place. Alright, that's enough, you guys. You wouldn't know gourmet
cooking if it hit you in the face."
"That's the problem, Lolla," someone else
piped up, "neither would you!" The row of plaid shirts quivered in a
wave of amusement, though this time they had the sense to keep their
heads down.
Their laughter only yanked up my competitive
spirit all that much more. "Hey! Nobody's keeping you from entering
this year, Marlon Whittaker. Come on, who wants to go up against me
in the jam making contest?"
I felt pretty safe in this crowd. Obviously
if any of them could cook, they wouldn't be hanging out at Roxanne's
Truck Cafe on a daily basis.
I noticed Patience McBride at the end
of the counter, her recently permed bottle-blond locks bouncing along
with the jeering.
"You want to enter something, Patience?"
I asked calmly, refusing to allow this crowd to intimidate me.
She primped at the curls and adjusted
her heavy glasses up a notch. "Who--me? Oh, I don't know, I have my
piano lessons and all." Patience was sixty, widowed, her only son dead
of a drug overdose, or so the story went at Roxanne's. And, except for
her piano teaching and the sophomoric entertainment at Roxanne's Cafe,
she was all alone.
I leaned over the counter and around the
amused spectators to encourage her. "Oh, come on, it'll be fun. You've
got a whole week before the fair. It'll give you something to work on
besides those smart-ass kids."
Certain that I had the grand prize sewn
up with my mother's recipes and some noodling I intended to do on my
own, I was not a bit concerned when she fluttered her piano playing
fingertips in the air and giggled. "Oh. Well, if you insist."
Patience's enthusiasm made Roxanne smile,
and because it pleased Roxanne, I was pleased. Teaching me a bit about
tolerance, Roxanne broke me of more than one bad habit. Not the least
of which was mashing my wad of chewing gum into the little glass ashtrays
she kept on the tables. At least it was a bad habit in her mind. After
all, she was the one who had to clean up after inconsiderates like me.
She's still hard at work on the rest of my bad habits.
"There, it's settled. I'll see you ingrates
in a week with my blue ribbon," I said through my phony smile.
Roxanne just rolled her dark eyes towards
heaven, picked up another dish to be deposited onto the growing pile
from the noisy breakfast crowd, and went back to wiping the worn countertop
with a clean, damp rag. As I got up to leave, she waved her dishrag
in benediction at my exiting backside. "I'm giving you my blessin' now,
honey, 'cause nothin' else gon' help you win that contest."
She just didn't know how
true her words were going to be.
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