Zell had set out on the counter. I decided to take Miss Sallie up on her offer to babysit in case I did get busy later in the day.
When I stopped off on my way downtown, she was out in her soggy front yard directing the rejuvenation of her ingrown bed of irises after all the rain. She employed the same lawn service as Aunt Zell, and Mr. Ou smiled and ducked his head at my greeting and continued to separate the tubers while Miss Sallie popped the puppy into the carton with its sibling, the only pup she had left after farming out the others with dog-loving friends.
'It does fret me not to know what happened to poor old Queenie,' she said as she walked me out to my car. The sun was already converting rain puddles to steam. Beneath the broad straw brim of her gardening hat, her beautiful wrinkled face was pink and troubled. 'Alice Castleberry's bull terrier's been missing two weeks now. Some man was coming up from Wilmington to mate his bitch with him and now he's got to find another registered champion. You don't reckon that sorry dogman's back sneaking around town?'
At one time, 'dogmen' ('catmen,' too, for that matter) use to roam the countryside picking up any stray they could find to sell to various laboratories as test animals. Public outcry eventually put a stop to their activities, and testing regulations have changed so drastically since then that few labs are willing to chance the penalties that illegally obtained animals can bring.
'Surely not,' I said.
'I hope you're right,' said Miss Sallie. 'It'd purely break my heart to find out Queenie's hooked up to some horrible old machine just to see if mascara or nose drops hurt her eyes.' * * *
It was still early when I got to the courthouse, so I circled around and pulled into the parking lot next to the Coffee Pot. I only meant to have a cup of coffee, but the smells of fried sausage and hot bread suddenly made me ravenous.
Herman's Reese was seated at the counter, and as I slid into the empty stool beside him, I told Tink Dupree, 'I'll have the regular if I can get it in five minutes.'
'Only take three' he assured me and hollered through the kitchen pass-through, 'Retha! One fast reg’lar for the judge!'
'Coming up!' she sang back.
Ava came around the corner of the counter and smiled shyly before disappearing behind the partition with a trayload of dirty dishes from the four booths along the back wall.
'You feel as rough as you look?' I asked Reese.
He stubbed his cigarette in an ashtray shaped like a blue tin coffee pot, pushed his cap to the back of his head, and gave a sheepish grin. 'Yep. Makes me glad I'm only going to be crawling around a hundred-degree attic rewiring an old house today, 'stead of out in a field priming sand lugs like A.K.'
Tink set a mug of coffee in front of me. It was just the way I liked it: hot as hell and black as sin. I sipped cautiously as Reese mashed another pat of butter into his grits.
'Talked to your mother today?'
'That's why I'm here and not over at the hospital. Annie Sue and me, we've got to keep the business going. Mama says Dad's some better, but they've got to finish up some more tests. She says we can do more good here than there.'
He swallowed some sausage and glanced at me sideways. 'You don't look bad for somebody that found a dead man last night.'
As Tink brought me my breakfast plate, he caught the end of Reese's remarks. “Y’all talking about Carver Bannerman? He eats lunch here three or four times a week. Was you really the one found him, Miss Deb'rah?'
His question was polite formality. The Coffee Pot opens at six A.M. and I was sure he'd had the details a dozen times by seven. Hearing it all over again from one of the horses' mouths would make fresh gossip for the lunch trade; but I wasn't sure if Annie Sue's involvement was generally known, and I certainly didn't want to broadcast it.
'Bastard got what he deserved,” Reese growled and Tink nodded in such sympathetic agreement that I realized Reese'd already mouthed off.
'Was he really buck naked when you found him?' asked Ava. Trade was slack at the moment, since most of their customers begin work at eight, and she had wiped up spills and straightened all the sugar bowls and creamers along the long counter till she'd worked her way down to us.
Although Ava Dupree is only in her early twenties, her long thin face has little of youth's glowing elasticity. Plastic surgery smoothed away most of the burn damage there, but the skin on her neck is mottled pink and red where it disappears beneath her high, long-sleeved smock, and shiny scar tissue on her hands has pulled and tightened until they look like the hands of someone old and crippled with arthritis. Was that why Bass Langley ran out on her? Not wanting to make love to that body? Not wanting those hands to touch him anymore?
Normally, I don't look twice at her scars. Except for wearing long sleeves year-round, Ava never seems self- conscious about her looks. But this was the first time I'd been in the Coffee Pot since last Thursday when Herman reminded me about the fire, and I busied myself with egg, sausages, and grits till I could get over my own self- consciousness.
'I heard he didn't have a stitch on,' Ava nudged.
She took back the grape jelly Tink'd given me and rummaged in the jam basket till she found my favorite orange marmalade.
I always appreciate people remembering things like that and suddenly she was just Ava again, another human being trying to get along in the world, a good-hearted waitress who enjoys good gossip.
'No, he had on all his clothes,' I said, 'but he was flopped over a sawbench like a bag of fertilizer.'
Between bites of biscuit and egg, I told her so many gory details about Bannerman's body and the bloody hammer and how my skirt was ruined that I finished eating and had paid my bill and Reese's too and we were both out the door without Annie Sue's name even being mentioned.
