Champagne for Buzzards Read online

  ALSO BY PHYLLIS SMALLMAN

  Sherri Travis Mysteries

  Margarita Nights

  Sex in a Sidecar

  A Brewski for the Old Man

  C H A M P A G N E

  for B U Z Z A R D S

  P H Y L L I S

  S M A L L M A N

  McArthur & Company

  Toronto

  First published in 2011 by

  McArthur & Company

  322 King Street West, Suite 402

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5V 1J2

  www.mcarthur-co.com

  Copyright © 2011 Phyllis Smallman

  All rights reserved.

  The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the expressed written consent of the publisher, is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Smallman, Phyllis

  Champagne for buzzards / Phyllis Smallman.

  (A Sherri Travis mystery)

  ISBN 978-1-55278-912-4 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-55278-999-5 (ebook)

  I. Title. II. Series: Smallman, Phyllis. Sherri Travis mystery.

  PS8637.M36C43 2011 —— C813’.6 —— C2010-907605-2

  The publisher would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for our publishing activities. The publisher further wishes to acknowledge the financial support of the Ontario Arts Council and the OMDC for our publishing program.

  Cover and text design by Tania Craan

  Cover illustration © Dynamic Graphics, 2007

  eBook development by Wild Element www.wildelement.ca

  for

  Hazel Elizabeth Havard my mother ~ my friend

  CHAPTER 1

  The back door to the bar opened, filling the hot Florida night with foot-stomping loud zydeco music. A man stumbled through the open door and down the single step. Cursing, he grabbed hold of the tailgate of a red pickup to stop his fall. Slumped against the truck, the drunken man gave a loud belch and cursed again.

  While he clung to the truck and waited for the world to right, the door to the bar opened behind him. He threw his right arm back along the tailgate, swiveling his body to face the new arrival. With arms splayed along the tailgate for support, the drunk looked up. “What the fuck do you want?” His voice was slurred and thick but showed no fear.

  At the door, the second man looked down the empty hallway behind him and then reached back inside. The gooseneck light over the exit went out, leaving the alley lit only by a faint glow from the window of the men’s room. The door sighed shut. “What the hell?” the drunk mumbled.

  The shadow leapt off the step to where the drunken man was still splayed against the truck. “Get the fuck away from me,” the drunk said. Those were his last words. A hammer came down on his head.

  With a soft exhale of surprise, the victim slowly released the truck and began to slide down to the ground. His attacker stopped his descent, lifting and heaving the unconscious man into the bed of the pickup, grunting with the effort. Then the killer began smashing his victim’s head in with the hammer, giving a harsh groan of exertion with each blow, like a tennis player returning a serve. When he was done, the murderer leaned over the side and pulled up a tarp from the bed of the truck, tucking it around the dead man and hiding the body.

  The killer looked around to make sure he was unobserved before he ran down the alley to the street, taking the weapon with him.

  It was more than an hour before the back door to the bar opened again and a man came out. He stumbled off the step and fell forward into the tailgate of the red pickup. “What happened to the f-ing light? It’s darker than a whore’s heart out here.”

  His companion, still on the step, muttered, “Should’ve parked on the street.”

  They looked up at the light over the door while a third man, still standing in the doorway, blocked the door open with the toe of his cowboy boot and leaned inside to switch on the light above the door. “Someone forgot to turn it on.”

  No longer interested, the two men went to their vehicle. But the man on the step made no move to follow them. He stood by the door and watched, his hands smoothing the shirt over his paunch while he waited for the vehicle to exit the alley. Then he went to the red pickup and got in.

  It began to rain. A soft rain, it did little to wash away the heat of the day or the smell of garbage and vomit from the alley.

  CHAPTER 2

  In a strange awkward dance, a large black creature, its wings stretched out for balance, hopped around on the roof of the red pickup. Another perched on the tailgate while a whole convocation of the ugly creatures conferred on the ground around the truck.

  “What’s with the frigging birds on Big Red?” I asked Tully. Tully came and stood at my shoulder and looked out the kitchen window. “Buzzards. They’re not just birds — they’re buzzards looking for a meal.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, I’ve got all the freeloaders I can handle.”

  “Are you referring to me and your Uncle Ziggy?” I turned and grinned at my father over my coffee mug.

  “You’ve cut me deeply, Sherri,” Tully Jenkins said with his hand on his heart and a hurt look on his face. But he couldn’t sustain his impression of damaged pride. Tully was about as sensitive as old leather. Actually that pretty much described my old man. His gaunt face looked like it was made of old rawhide. In his early sixties, his dark hair had only a little gray and his black eyes still shone, the sparkle in them saying he wasn’t quite dead yet, thank you. Still a little dangerous, he wasn’t a man to be messed with. Well, at least not by anyone but me. Lately I found trashing my dad a whole lot of fun.

  My father and I were out at Riverwood, an hour and a bit northeast of my normal stomping grounds of Jacaranda, Florida. These three hundred acres of jungle were my partner’s new passion in life.

  I don’t do country. For me Riverwood was only a place to stash my old man and spend an occasional weekend. And yet, to be honest, I seemed to be spending more and more of my free time hanging out at Riverwood with my dad, just sitting on the porch and having long conversations that went nowhere.

  Clay Adams, my business partner and lover, seemed to treat Tully’s stay at Riverwood as part of the normal course of events. Tully hadn’t said he was moving to Clay’s ranch, certainly no one had asked him to; he just sort of went out there and hung around for longer and longer periods of time, moving more of his junk into a bunkhouse that had once housed hired men. The day his fish smoker arrived in the back of his rusted-out pickup, I knew Tully was there to stay.

  And Tully wasn’t my only family at Riverwood. Uncle Ziggy had moved in with Clay and me after a fire wiped out his home and left his face and hands badly scarred. He’d moved out to the ranch when he had stopped needing his dressings changed. The idea had been that he would stay at the ranch while he looked for a new place to live. It had become the longest property search known to man — so long, I no longer asked how it was going.

  Now Uncle Ziggy stepped through the door of the kitchen, letting the screen slam closed behind him. The polar opposite of my father, Uncle Ziggy is about six-foot-three and pushing up near three hundred pounds, a huge barrel of love and joy.

  “Mornin’, sweet pea,” he said.

  “Where you been, Uncle Zig?”

  Uncle Ziggy scratched his head and looked sheepish. The right side o
f his face flamed to match the fire-chewed color of the left. “Ah, nowhere much.”

  Well, well, well, this looked like fun. Uncle Ziggy had a secret.

  “Zig’s in love,” Tull drawled. I spewed coffee.

  “Easy, girl,” Tully said, patting my back. “Those fine ladies you been hanging out with are going to run you out of town, you act like that.”

  I checked out the suit I’d just spent the price of a college semester on. The cost of the suit had given me heart palpitations. I brushed down the black material with my hand, checking for stains. The suit was Clay’s idea. Somehow he’d convinced me I needed to dress to project my new station in life, to look like a serious businesswoman.

  The ensemble wasn’t my idea of flattering. Just to make myself feel like I was still alive, I wore a trashy little black bustier underneath. No need to take this self-improvement thing to extremes — a girl could die of boredom.

  I grabbed a tea towel and patted at a damp spot on my chest. “Who’s the lucky girl, Uncle Zig?”

  “Oh, don’t you listen to Tully, he just likes to tease me. Ain’t nothin’, just like goin’ into town for my breakfast, better’n that shit he likes to fry up and I need to get out now and then, blow the stink off and get away from Tully’s constant chatter.” He shuffled to the coffee pot. “’Sides, you’s taken, pretty little thing, I has to look elsewhere if I want a little something in my life.”

  His remark wasn’t as weird as it sounded — wasn’t some Southern thing that Northerners always suspect us of. Ziggy wasn’t my real uncle. He and Tully had met in ’Nam before I was born and stayed tight so we’d long ago forgotten the little matter of DNA.

  I made another pass with the tea towel.

  Tully took the cloth away from me and said, “You look fine, girl. Where ye’ goin’ all rigged out?”

  The joy went out of the morning. “I’m going into Jacaranda, got to meet with that decorator Clay hired.” Clay had called from his building project up in Cedar Key and asked me to go in and have a look at Laura Kemp’s plans for the decoration of his ranch house. He sounded worried. The ranch was supposed to have been finished weeks ago, which was why I had planned on having Clay’s birthday party out at Riverwood and not at the Sunset.

  I saw Ziggy and Tully exchange looks. What did they know that I didn’t? For sure, it was something I wasn’t going to like.

  Wagging a finger back and forth between them, I asked, “Have you two met Laura Kemp?”

  “Yup,” Tully replied. Uncle Ziggy ignored the question and went to the fridge for milk.

  “And?” I asked.

  “And what?” Tully answered. “She came out and measured, told a bunch of guys what to do and then went away again.”

  They were acting way too casual.

  I turned back to the window. “I’m going to pick up the champagne for Clay’s birthday party. What’s with those stupid buzzards anyway?”

  “Clay’s right,” Tully told me. “You should get rid of Jimmy’s truck.”

  “It isn’t Jimmy’s, it’s mine.” The truck and the tattoo on my ass that said “Jimmy’s” were the last remnants of ten years of marriage. I was stuck with the tat but I couldn’t explain even to myself why I clung to Big Red. I was more than happy to have my no good, shithead husband out of my life, but I held onto the truck against all reason, and the more Clay nagged me to get rid of the pickup, the more stubborn I got.

  “Who died in your truck?” Uncle Ziggy asked, coming to stand behind me and putting a hand on my shoulder. “Those birds sure as hell are making a mess of it. Want me to go hose it down?”

  “Naw, there’s no time. I’ll do it in town.”

  “What you been carrying in Big Red anyway?” Tully asked.

  “It’s seafood. Miguel bought fresh fish and some crab from the dock yesterday. He used my truck. And I picked up those plants in the afternoon, which by the way I expect you two to help me plant when I get back. I want this place to look perfect for Clay’s party.”

  “Don’t know nothing ’bout flowers and such,” Uncle Ziggy said, scratching his head and looking worried, like I asked him to perform a lobotomy.

  “Well, neither do I, but how hard can it be? We just make sure the green end is up when we stick them in the ground. Everything should be fine. Mostly, plants survive without any help from people. At least I hope so.” I set my mug in the sink. “I’ll be back in three hours — we’ll do it then.” I quickly kissed them both.

  I’d gone my whole life without exchanging embraces with any of my kin, but lately that had changed. I didn’t want to think too closely about the why of this. These days there were lots of things beneath the surface I was choosing to ignore.

  I went down the hall and picked up my purse and checked myself out in the mirror in the front hall. I didn’t look at all like me: no glitter, no long legs under a wickedly short skirt above dangerously high stilettos. But damn I looked good — if good looking was a mortician’s assistant. Plain black, severe and matched with faux pearls, the suit was supposed to turn me into a lady who lunched. I should be able to carry it off until I opened my mouth.

  Clay might think he’d turned a sow’s ear into a silk purse, but I knew better and so would Laura Kemp. Fortyish, at least ten years older than me, and stylish in a way that I could never be, Laura had once had a relationship with Clay and she was looking forward to another.

  No one in Jacaranda expected the love affair between Clay and me to last. Truthfully, I think Clay and I were as shocked as those who watched as cultured and refined met smartmouthed trailer trash. It was a little like George Clooney dating Britney Spears — jaw dropping and impossible. What were the odds of that working? I asked myself that question every day but I was willing to do pretty much anything to keep it going, even putting on this outfit.

  There seemed to be even more buzzards around the truck as I stepped out on the back porch. “Holy shit.”

  “Don’t know if it’s holy but there will certainly be shit,” Tully said as he joined me on the porch. “You better get Jimmy’s truck washed right away or the acid in their droppings will strip the paint.”

  “You haven’t been carrying roadkill in my truck, have you?”

  “Now why would I be putting roadkill in Jimmy’s truck?”

  “My truck,” I corrected. “Because I know how you can’t pass up a free meal.”

  “You sayin’ I eat roadkill?”

  “Oh yeah. You made me late for grade eight commencement because you stopped to pick up a deer that the car in front of us hit. We had to deliver it to your friend the butcher before we could go to the school. All dressed up and you take me to a butcher’s.”

  Tully said, “Sometimes you really are your mother’s daughter. You both have a long and nasty memory for trivial details.”

  I approached the truck warily, watching the buzzards hopping in and out of the bed of the truck. With bald heads that looked diseased, feathers that seemed to shine with a pomade of filth, and feet that were scaly and evil, the buzzards gave me the willies.

  Tully seemed to be having the same reaction. He moved closer to me and took me by the arm as if to hold me back. “You sure you want to drive it? You can take my truck or Ziggy’s.”

  Tully’s truck was a rattling wreck, held together by baling wire and hope, while Uncle Ziggy’s was newish but stuffed with junk. We’d have to unload it first if I wanted to get the champagne and other supplies in it. That would make me late for the decorating maven.

  “It’s the seafood,” I told Tully, “That’s what they smell. I’ll park away from the office. No one will know I arrived in a pickup covered in bird shit and stinking of dead fish. I’ll get it washed after I go to the decorator’s. Help get them away, will you?”

  Tully roared and flapped his arms, charging at the buzzards and looking rather like a caricature of the creatures he
was trying to shoo. As they rose into the air, I ran to the truck with my purse over my head. One thing about sensible pumps, you can move a lot faster than you can in fuck-me shoes, something I might need to consider if I was going to spend any time out here in the great nowhere.

  I waved to Tully and backed out quickly before the stupid birds could settle back down.

  CHAPTER 3

  On my way out the quarter-mile to the road, a small black horse named Joey raced the pickup along the white rail fence.

  Clay raised horses on Riverwood Ranch. Florida Cracker horses, horses that had carried people through the palmettos since the time of the Spanish conquistadors. When the first Spaniards came to America and loaded their ships with treasures for the return trip, they left behind their horses, cattle and pigs. The wild horses became breeding stock for the early settlers. Over the centuries the isolation of the Florida peninsula kept the stock unique and became the basis of the Cracker horse.

  The number of these horses is dwindling; fewer than three thousand are left now that ranchers use three-wheeled off-road vehicles to check on their beef. Clay seemed to have taken their survival as his personal mission in life.

  “Why do you love them so much?” I’d asked Clay.

  “They built Florida. A man on a Cracker horse can cover seventy miles in a day. They’re versatile, tough, durable and uncomplaining.”

  “Exactly like me.”

  “Did I mention they have a short but strong back?”

  “Also like me.”

  “You smell better.”

  “And I’m more fun.”

  Clay gave a disappointed shake of his head “But they have a ‘coon rack.’”

  “Do I have one of those racks or just the normal kind?”

  “A coon rack is a gait, a fast walk, almost a running walk.” His hands were doing interesting things at the time of this conversation so you’ll understand my confusion between a coon rack and what was happening.