An Innocent Client

”Did you hear a word I just said? Did you hear?

Ma? ”

There was a knock and the door opened. A nurse’s aide stepped tentatively into the room.

”Is everything all right?” she said. ”I thought I heard someone shouting.”

It took a few seconds before I understood what she was saying. I suddenly realized where I was, like I’d just been awakened from a deep sleep.

”Everything’s fine,” I said. ”Please close the door.”

She turned and left. I got up from the chair and looked down at Ma.

”I guess I better go now. I’m glad we had this little talk.”

April 12

4:00 p.m.

Shitdammit. Erlene Barlowe missed Gus more than ever. He’d have been better than her at handling the TBI agent. As soon as she got away from him in the parking lot, she sat down at the bar and asked herself what Gus would do. She was worried. The TBI man didn’t strike her as the type she could hold off for long. She knew he’d be back, and she knew it would probably be soon.

Like she told the agent, Gus had been elected high sheriff of McNairy County when he was only twenty-six years old. It was nearly thirty years ago. Erlene hadn’t been much more than a baby, only twenty-two, and didn’t know the first thing about the world.

Her uncle on the McNairy County Commission helped her get a job as a dispatcher at the sheriff’s department. She and Gus were sweet on each other right from the get-go.

What she hadn’t told the agent was that Gus was married to another woman at the time, and his wife Bashie caught Erlene and Gus in a motel room in Gatlinburg on a Friday night. Bashie divorced Gus a few months later and he resigned from the sheriff’s department. There was also some talk that Gus was selling protection to gamblers and marijuana smugglers, but Erlene didn’t believe a word of it.

Gus met some people while he was sheriff who helped him get into the adult entertainment business in Hamilton County after he resigned. He asked Erlene to go with him, and she did. She was love struck, and it went deep down. Gus was big and strong and handsome, a real man’s man. He treated her like a princess. They weren’t able to have children-a botched abortion had left Erlene barren-

but they had a wonderful life together for almost thirty years. She and Gus owned four clubs in four different counties during their marriage. They’d either buy a club that wasn’t making a profit or build one on the cheap and start up. Gus ran the business and dealt with the customers; Erlene handled the girls. They’d make the club profitable, ride it for a while, and then sell it. They took in tons of money.

Along the way, they helped a lot of young girls who were in bad situations.

Erlene and Gus were planning to run the Mouse’s Tail for another five years and then move to the South Carolina coast and retire. But late last September, he’d been mowing the yard on a Sunday afternoon, keeled over, and was already dead of a coronary when Erlene found him. Her heart broke into a million tiny pieces. Her sweet Gus. He was there one minute, smiling and waving on the riding mower when she looked out the kitchen window, and then poof! Just like that. Gone. The only thing that kept her going was the knowledge that the two of them would be together again someday. Her Gus would be waiting on the other side.

After the agent left and she thought for a while, she called the bartender and all of the girls who worked the night before and told them to meet her at the bar at four o’clock, an hour before the place opened. Ronnie was the bartender. Mitzi, Elizabeth, Julie, Trisha, Heather, and Debbie were dancers. The other two were waitresses, April and Alexandra.

They were all beautiful, with wonderful bodies. The older Erlene got, the more she loved being around them. She tried to teach them to respect themselves and to stay away from bad men and drugs. It was a challenge, but she did the best she could.

Angel had waited tables the night the man was killed, but Erlene didn’t want Angel to be at the meeting. The man who was killed had behaved shamefully towards Angel, and Erlene was afraid that if the TBI man found out about it, he might suspect Angel of something. Besides, Erlene felt guilty for even having Angel working at the club.

She didn’t have any way of knowing it when they first met, but Angel wasn’t the type of girl who could handle herself in a place like the Mouse’s Tail. She was just too tender.

Erlene knew some of the girls thought it was a little strange that Erlene took such a shine to Angel right from the beginning, but they didn’t understand.

A lot of it was because of Gus. He had a daughter from his first marriage, a beautiful brunette named Alyse. After Gus and Erlene ran off together, Gus’s ex-wife Bashie hated him so much that he never got to see Alyse again, but he talked about wanting to see her all the time and he sent money for her every month. He’d always tell Erlene, ”She’ll come someday. You wait and see.”

Sure enough, about a week after Alyse’s seventeenth birthday, Gus got a framed photograph of his daughter in the mail. There was a little note with it that said, ”I miss you, Daddy. I’ll see you next year after I turn eighteen.” Gus hung the photograph up right next to the kitchen door, and every time he left the house, he blew a kiss at it.

Then the most terrible thing happened. Alyse and two other teenagers were killed in a car accident on New Year’s Eve, just a few months after Gus got the picture in the mail. Gus went down to her funeral, but Erlene stayed home. She didn’t think it would be proper for her to go. Gus was the saddest man Erlene had ever seen for the next few months, though he eventually came out of it and got back to being his old self again. But he never took the picture down, and he never stopped blowing kisses to Alyse.

After he died, Erlene left the photograph hanging right where it was. She even started blowing kisses herself.

When Angel showed up on the bus with Julie Hayes, Erlene’s teeth near fell out of her mouth.

Angel looked so much like Alyse that Erlene swore they could’ve been sisters, maybe even twins. When she first laid eyes on Angel, she heard Gus’s voice:

”She’ll come someday. You wait and see.” Erlene knew she had to take Angel home with her. It was like having a piece of Gus back in the house all over again, like Gus himself had sent Angel to comfort her. And doing for Angel, helping her, did comfort Erlene. It was healing, that’s what it was; it helped heal some of the pain of losing Gus and a lot of what she’d carried around ever since the doctor told her she’d never be a mother.

After Angel had been with Erlene only a little while, during some of those moments when they’d curl up on the couch in front of the fireplace and watch a movie, Angel started to open up a little and told Erlene some of the terrible things that had happened to her. That’s when Erlene knew she was right. She knew Gus-or God-had sent Angel to her. She didn’t really care which. Angel was the daughter she never had. She was meant to take care of her.

The girls showed up between four and four fifteen.

Erlene told them to sit at the bar. As soon as Julie dragged in-late, as usual-Erlene stood on the other side of the bar and gave them a little speech.

”There was a detective from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation here around noon. He was asking about a murder. He had a picture of the man who was killed, and he thinks the man was here last night. He may even think one of us had something to do with it.”

Erlene paused for a skinny minute and looked at their faces. She set such high standards for her girls.

They had to dress a certain way when they came into the club and Erlene was real particular about their makeup and the way they wore their hair.

When Erlene mentioned murder, the girls’ mouths dropped open and they started looking at one another.

”Is that the murder they’ve been talking about on the radio?” Heather said. ”They’re saying the man was a preacher. It made me think of that guy last night who was spouting-”

Erlene held up her hand.

”I haven’t heard anything on the radio,” she said,

”but I want all of you to forget about that man last night. He wasn’t here. I want every one of you to look at