Sal raised his fists. “You better get up, Cowboy, so I can knock you down again.” Mama’s face was redder than Dab’s duster ’do. She rushed to her groom’s side. But Sal kept stomping toward Houston, as if Mama wasn’t hanging from his arm like a suitcase. Houston got up. He hung his shirt from an elbow, hefted his boom box onto his shoulder, and then headed for the door.
“It’s been fun, ladies, but a fight’s not part of the show,” he said over his shoulder.
“Don’t turn your back when I’m talking to you.”
Sal’s voice was chilling. Mama let loose his arm and retreated into the safety of the crowd. Houston stopped, put the boom box on a table, and spun slowly toward Sal. His hands flexed into fists. I could almost see the testosterone coursing through his veins.
Linda-Ann breathed in my ear: “Your mama’s beau better watch out. Word is Houston is a bastard in a bar fight.”
I sized up the fighters. Weighing in at well over three hundred pounds and standing six foot four, Sal wore his customary golf duds. Today’s knickers were peach-and-aqua plaid, with a pom-pom beret in matching fabric. I had to wonder where he found peach knee socks to go with the golf shirt.
Houston squinted at Sal like a gunfighter in an old Western. Was it for effect, or had the haze of smoke from the kitchen fryers finally gotten to his eyes? He was a half-foot shorter and at least a hundred pounds lighter than Sal. But there were muscles on top of his muscles in his arms and broad shoulders. And, from all those years of hanging on to bucking broncos, he could squeeze Sal’s neck like a toothpaste tube if he ever got him in a leg hold.
I was still calculating odds when Sal pounced like a panther, fat but still fast. Before the cowboy knew what hit him, Sal had lifted him off the floor. Then he spun him around like a TV wrestler, and sent him flying into the food table. When Houston rolled off, weaving, hot sauce from the platter of wings coated his bare back like bright orange suntan oil. An onion ring hung from one ear.
He’d just lunged at Sal when the manager, fully awake now, stepped in between the two men with a raised baseball bat.
“You gentlemen are gonna have to take this outside or we call the cops. Ladies, if either of them makes a move toward the other, dial 911.”
Suddenly transformed from a hormone-addled audience to a crowd of upstanding citizens, a half-dozen women scrambled through purses and pockets for cell phones. Collecting his hat, the boom box, and some bills scattered on the floor and buffet, Houston made for the door. As light slanted in, and then disappeared with the closing door, Mama rushed to the victor’s side.
“Are you hurt, Sally? Is anything broken?”
“You mean besides my heart? I can’t believe you’d kiss another man like that, Rosie. We’re supposed to walk down the aisle tomorrow.”
Mama traced a pine knot on the dance floor with the toe of her boysenberry pump. To my surprise, Maddie stepped forward. “It was all in fun, Sal. We just got a little carried away. Mama only went along because C’ndee arranged for Houston to come perform. She didn’t want to hurt your cousin’s feelings.”
C’ndee piped up, “That’s right, Sal. I thought I’d ruined the party until Rosalee got everyone involved. It was innocent fun.”
He looked at me. I unrolled the two dollars I’d been clutching in my hand and showed him the crumpled bills. Maddie and Marty did the same. Hitching up his pants, he blew out a mouthful of air.
“Well, I didn’t see nobody else kissing the guy. And I didn’t see his paw on nobody else’s butt.”
“Mama’s the bride, Sal. She had to go first,” Marty said. “We do this at bachelorette parties all the time. It’s traditional.”
Maybe in New Jersey, I thought.
Marty was lying like a car salesman with a quota. But she sounded so sincere, and those blue eyes looked so innocent, that Sal bought it. When his shoulders rose in a What-are-ya-gonna-do? shrug, I heard Mama’s relieved sigh all the way across the dance floor.
Since the stripper was gone and the food table was trashed, the party started breaking up. Linda-Ann caught me by the door of the bathroom. “Can I ask you something, Mace?”
I glanced at my watch. One forty-five. I’d promised Rhonda I’d be back to work by two o’clock.
“Sure.” I stepped into the bar, where it was dark and quiet. Linda-Ann followed me.
“I was just wondering if you know what time Ronnie got killed on Monday?”
“Not exactly. In the morning, though, sometime before nine o’clock. We were supposed to meet him at the VFW. I went to look for him when he didn’t show up.”
Linda-Ann tugged at one of her dreadlocks. “I heard you found the body. That must have been weird.”
I nodded, not wanting to relive the experience. “Why’d you want to know about the time?”
Her eyes darted around the bar, like she was afraid someone might be lurking in one of the booths. Finally, her gaze settled on a spot on the wall, somewhere north of my right ear. “No reason, really. I was just curious.”
“C’mon, Linda-Ann.”
She studied the end of her dreadlock. Finally, she raised her eyes to mine. “It’s about Trevor.”
I waited.
“He’s been staying with me, and normally he sleeps really late because he’s up half the night researching animal rights stuff on the Internet.”
“Um-hmm,” I said.
“It’s just that he wasn’t in bed when I woke up for my shift on Monday.”
She had my attention.
“I even went out to the porch to look for him. I thought he might have fallen asleep on the couch, where he has his computer set up. But the computer wasn’t on. And when I looked out the window, Trevor’s car was gone.”
Rhonda clamped a manicured hand over her mouth. “No way, Mace!”
I raised my right hand, courtroom style. “Sal helicoptered the half-naked cowboy right into a platter of hot wings. If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin,’ Boss.”
“What is it with your family’s parties and food fights? Don’t y’all know you’re supposed to eat food, not roll around the floor in it?”
I shrugged. “Don’t blame me. I’ve always believed I was switched at birth from a much classier family.”
The phone rang on Rhonda’s desk. She answered, and raised a pink-nailed index finger for me to wait. But the conversation started veering into budgets and volunteer hours and I knew she’d be a while. I curled my hands into paws and put them up next to my face—our shorthand symbol for critters. Rhonda motioned me toward the door, and I went to check on the animals.
The park was deserted, just as I liked it. On a weekday, parents were at work and their kids were in school. By June, most of the tourists and snowbirds had fled back north for the summer. First stop: Ollie’s pond. The gator lolled on the sandy bank with a cattle egret perched on his back.
“Hey, bird,” I called. “You feeling lucky today?”
Neither member of the unlikely duo paid me any mind.
I continued across the open area between the pond and the animal pens. My eye caught a flurry of movement to the right. A red-tailed hawk flew from a high pine, intent on making something small and furry into supper. I scanned the field, seeing if I could spot what the hawk saw. And there it was: a flash of dark brown against the parched, dun-colored grass. At this distance, I couldn’t tell if it was a mouse or a young rabbit. It made no difference to the hawk, who dove just at the edge of the woods.