Undaunted, I went on. “How does tequila and chili sound? My treat.”
Duke grunted again, something that I decided to take as a yes.
I said, “Let’s do lunch.”
26
Inside Aspen Meadow Barbecue, there was only one free table. I quickly nabbed it for Duke and me while scoping out the restaurant’s interior. All I needed now was someone I knew informing my new drinking buddy, Duke, that my husband was a cop. That could put a chilling effect on our lunchtime chat. But of the two dozen men ranging from scruffy to burly at the bar and tables, no one looked familiar.
Once Duke had seated himself and called greetings to a few of his pals, I slipped over to the bartender. “Two tequila doubles for my friend, but just give me water, because I’m driving us home. When I signal, bring us the bottles. Put water in mine. I can’t drink, but I don’t want him to feel as if he’s drinking alone.”
The bartender, who sported a stiff handlebar mustache, squinted at me appraisingly. “You trying to keep him away from the wheel, or you trying to get him into bed?”
I pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of my pocket. “Just please do what I ask.”
He palmed the bill in a way that suggested he’d been bribed before. “I’ll give you something besides water, to look more realistic. Tell you the truth, I’m glad somebody’s driving Duke home. Every Wednesday I gotta call somebody from the nursery to take him.”
Soon Duke and I were crying “Skol” and clinking our first glasses. I took a tentative sip of what turned out to be flat Mountain Dew.
“Whatcha drinking?” Duke wanted to know, his tone already mellowing from defensive to chummy.
“Different kind of tequila. Lime-flavored.” We chugged our second shots companionably and I sneaked a peek at my watch. Just past noon. I needed to be home to put together the doll club’s dinner no later than three. Subtracting time to get Duke back to his place, that gave us about two hours. I signaled to the bartender to bring us the bottles. The man was so inventive, I had no doubt he could provide a suitable container for my Mountain Dew.
Duke smacked his lips. “Ah. Well. So. What happened to you with that woman? You trying to get money out of the will? That’s what I’m doing. Lawyer says it’ll take at least a year ‘cuz a the criminal investigation. My plants’ll croak by then.” He shook his head unhappily.
“No! Actually, see, I have a different kind of problem. My ex-husband’s the one who’s been accused of killing her ? “
Duke grinned broadly. “Oh, boy: Mind if I smoke? It’s not tobacco, it’s a clove cigarette. Heard of ‘em?”
“No, but go ahead.” In a minute the spicy smoke rose in a cloud. I gagged but plunged onward. “I catered for Suz Craig, even though she was my ex-husband’s young, blond girlfriend. No grudges, you understand. But now her death has made a real mess for my family. You know, everybody blaming everybody. So my problem is that I keep looking back at what happened and thinking, How could I have prevented this?”
The bartender arrived and winked at me. He set a tequila bottle in front of Duke and a black ceramic decanter in the shape of an Aztec goddess in front of me. Cute. Then the waitress arrived and Duke informed her that we wanted two bowls of their hottest chili. I thought longingly of a crisp, cold arugula salad and how well it would go with iced coffee.
“What could you have done to prevent it?” Duke now repeated incredulously, shaking his big head. “Nothing. Not a damn thing. Some people are just that way. Bossy, impossible to please. Nothing you do is right for them. I always want to ask new clients, Are you an asshole? ‘Cuz if you are, I’d like to know up front. Save us both a lot of time. But, a’course, the nursery owner won’t let me.” He shook his head again.
“How was Suz Craig bossy to you? She seemed to like the landscape work you were doing when she showed it to me.”
Duke raised his bushy blond eyebrows, then tilted the tequila bottle toward his glass. “Oh, sure, she lied. You think everything’s fine, when all the time she’s getting ready to axe ya. But plain and simple? The woman was a bitch. Too damn smart. Never had to learn how to deal with regular people.
Tolerance, you know? She didn’t have none. Patience neither.” He quaffed another double shot. “For example. She trips on her in-grade steps made outa four-by-fours, the ones she ordered, and all of a sudden she wants new steps. Only she wants flagstone this time.”
“Flagstone,” I repeated. “Like the patios?”
“Yah. So we order more flagstones and put ‘em in the garage with the stuff we’ve hidden from the vandals. We build the steps. She doesn’t like the way they look. Fifteen thousand dollars and two weeks’ work time from my crew, and she says, Take out the flagstone, I want granite. Where’m I supposed to get granite steps? I say, Ya want an escalator? I know a guy.”
“Someone did fall down the steps and sprain his ankle,” I pointed out.
The tequila bottle was rapidly emptying. “Oh, I know, believe me. Big fat guy, shoulda watched where he was going. But it isn’t just them steps. She wants white tea roses alternating with pink musk mallow. This is a harsh, dry climate, I keep telling her. Ya want tea roses, ya need Florida. Even if ya put in rugosas, ya need irrigation. Fine, she says, just do it. So we put in a water tank and a drip system. But then she doesn’t want to see the water tank, right? So we have to wait to put in the rugosas and mallow until a picket fence goes up. And then she says, Ooh, ooh, I need stepping-stones around the picket fence. I say, How ‘bout marble? And she gets all huffy.”
Our chili arrived. One bite of the fiery concoction almost sent me running for the creek with my flame- spewing mouth wide open. Instead, I drank deeply of the Mountain Dew, right out of the decanter.
“Damn,” said Duke admiringly.
I ripped into several packages of saltines, dumped them over the chili, and ate cracker crumbs as I unabashedly wiped tears from my eyes. When I could finally clear my throat, I asked, “So what finally happened?”
He stopped shoveling chili into his mouth, chewed, and considered. “After all her complainin’ and moanin’ and us tryin’ to accommodate her? One day we show up as usual, though I’m thinkin’ I’m going to have to give my crew a year’s worth of free beer to keep ‘em on this job, and she comes out and says we’re fired. The fat guy’s fallen down the steps and she doesn’t want to get sued. I say, Fine, lady, we just need our tools, and she says, Make it snappy.”
He ate more chili. I filled his two double-shot glasses. He drank, then sighed. If the chili was scorching his throat, he gave no sign of it.
“Down by the picket fence there are thc rugosas and musk mallow that we just planted. But doggone if she hasn’t put in a friggin’ half-dozer marble stepping-stones, next to the plants, around the fence. Did she do it herself or hire somebody else? I say, Hey lady, who did this? I was only kid ding about the marble, I say, and she says for us to get out pronto and send her a bill.” His face turned morose. “So the nursery, you know, it takes then about a month to itemize the bill. She hasn’t even gotten our bill and she’s dead.” He ate more chili without a wince, then slugged down another double shot.
“What a mess,” I said comfortingly. Duke shrugged. His eyes had taken on a wet, bleary look. “I asked the cops… I said, Could we at least have our plants back? Because I figure we earned them.” He drained another shot glass. “They said… You know what they said to me?”
“Probate.”
“Yah, they said I’d have to wait until probate was over. Until the investigation was done. I said the plants would be dead by then. We never put a pump in the irrigation system.” He scraped the last spoonful of chili from the bowl, poured another double shot of tequila, and downed it. How many had he had? I’d lost count at ten. “Some night when I’m trashed? I’m going to go back over there. Dig up those plants we put in. Nobody’ll miss them. Pee on her patios, too, while I’m at it. Matter of fact, I should go right now.” He regarded me sadly. “Wanna come?”
I said no thanks and paid the bill. By the time I’d deposited Duke at his apartment-he lived in the same complex as Frances-I’d come up with some more questions. But Duke was no help. He stumbled to his door and declared he was ready to dive into bed. At least he didn’t ask if I wanted to join him for that, too.
It wasn’t too surprising, I thought as I turned the van in the direction of home, that Suz had been so demanding about the landscaping. In the case of the catered lunch I’d done for her, I realized in retrospect, she’d been eager to make nice and accommodate the ACHMO people from headquarters. She’d wanted to seem calm and
