The American Café Read online

  The same ambulance driver Lance had seen earlier at the murder scene drove up next to the curb and parked.

  “Let's not worry about paying right now,” said Lance. “We need to make sure you're okay.”

  As the paramedics stooped down to examine Hector, Lance began to survey the damage. He could see the large rock that had landed on the floor inside. He reached through the broken window, unlocked the door, and entered.

  The café appeared to be empty. He moved methodically throughout the entire building including the kitchen, a small bathroom, a storage room, and an upstairs office. Both the rear door and window were secure.

  As he returned to the sidewalk, one of the paramedics approached. “His arm may be broken. He doesn't want to go, but we're going to take him in to Tahlequah anyway. He hit his head on the sidewalk and might have a concussion.”

  Lance nodded in agreement, and in a few short minutes they were gone.

  “Dispatch, come in. Have you had any luck finding the owner of this café?”

  “No, I had to leave a message. I will let you know when I hear back.”

  Lance reported his findings to Maggie. “Is there someone we can call to put a piece of plywood over this window?”

  “I'll call the manager down at the hardware store. He'll take care of it.”

  Lance thanked Maggie for her help, grateful that she seemed to know how to handle all the messy details directly from her kitchen table. He climbed into his cruiser and began to write a detailed report. In less than five minutes, two men drove up in a truck and started to cover the broken window.

  Maggie's voice crackled on the radio. “This is dispatch. Chief, can you answer?”

  Lance listened while Maggie asked Stump to respond to a call for a disturbance at one of Liberty's churches on the east end of town. When he agreed to take the call, Lance picked up his transmitter and interrupted. “If you're not through with the murder scene, I'm about to wrap this up here.”

  “Negative. I'm closer than you are.”

  Lance frowned. “Roger, Chief. Then you want me to swing by to keep the murder scene secure?”

  “I took prints off both doors,” said Stump. “That's about all I can do.” His voice took on a condescending tone. “But if you'd like to lend your expertise, come on by.”

  Lance couldn't get used to small-town police work. If they didn't keep the crime scene secure until all the evidence was collected, there would be no way to solve the murder.

  “Roger, Chief. Just lock the door and I'll swing by and get the key from you.”

  “Can't lock the door,” Stump sneered. “Don't got a key.”

  Lance shook his head in disbelief. “I'm on my way.”

  When Stump arrived at the Liberty House of God Church, a crowd had already gathered. He grabbed his nightstick and worked his way around the people, up the steps of the church, and through one side of the double front door into the vestibule. From there he could hear loud voices inside. He turned the doorknob and slowly craned his head around the door to see what was happening.

  On the floor at the front of the sanctuary, right in front of the pulpit, the town's crazy woman, Pearl Mobley, flopped first on one side and then on the other. She let out a shriek from time to time and muttered a stream of words, all unintelligible. An Indian man, whom Stump presumed to be the preacher, stood on one side of her, holding his hands toward the heavens, praying as loudly as he could. The janitor of the church stood on the other side of her with a look of fear on his face, as if he might take flight at any moment.

  The chief stood in the doorway taking the whole thing in, unsure of what to do. He didn't want to act too fast and get mixed up in some religious ceremony.

  Stump wasn't what one would call a churchgoing sort of guy. His daddy had convinced him a long time ago that most of the people in Liberty lived one life inside the walls of the church and another on the outside. Bigots, he had called them, and as long as Stump could remember, that had been his father's excuse for refusing to attend church, unwilling to sit on a pew next to those sinners. Taking his daddy's philosophy to heart, Stump usually volunteered to work on Sunday mornings, the quiet time for criminal activity.

  The preacher finally noticed the chief and motioned for him to enter. Stump took off his hat, walked around the back of the pews and up the aisle close to the wall, and shook the preacher's hand.

  “We got a call, Preacher,” said Stump, holding his hat in his hand and gripping the nightstick under his elbow. “Do you need some help here?”

  “Well, sir,” said the preacher. “Mrs. Mobley's been here for over an hour, I guess. I can't understand a word she's saying, except for when she says something about Goldie Ray. I got word a while ago that something terrible happened to Mrs. Ray. I don't know anything about that, but I think maybe this lady here needs some help. Maybe you could call those doctors at that hospital over in Vinita.”

  About that time, Pearl stopped flailing her arms and looked at the ceiling.

  The preacher kneeled beside Pearl and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Pearl, do you know what happened to Goldie?”

  Pearl stood straight up. “Well, if she wasn't already dead I'd be happy to shoot her again.” Then she dropped onto the front pew and wept.

  Stump replaced his hat and nodded at the preacher. “Come on, Pearl,” he said. “Everything's going to be all right.” He took hold of Pearl's arm, and she reluctantly followed him down the aisle and out the front door.

  The crowd that had gathered backed away from the steps when Pearl Mobley and Stump appeared. A few began to disperse while the others watched Stump guide Pearl into the back seat of his cruiser. He got in and pulled the vehicle into the street, then drove through town toward the police station with Pearl Mobley sitting tall in the back seat.

  When Lance arrived at Goldie's house, he could see through the front window that Stump had left the fingerprint kit in the middle of the living room floor. He used his handkerchief to let himself in through the front door, wondering if he should take it upon himself to retake prints. Either that or maybe call the OSBI. But he figured, being the new man in town, he'd better keep a low profile.

  Goldie's house was small and very orderly. Her eclectic collection of furniture was old but well cared for. A clock on the fireplace mantle ticked like a metronome, overwhelming the stillness. When he stepped into the living room, the worn wooden floor offered up an eerie creak, causing Lance to hesitate before continuing his examination of the room. Crocheted doilies covered every available surface, even the back and arms of the red velvet loveseat, which looked as if it had never been used. Lace curtains hung like a new petticoat behind the matching chair. An ornate upright piano stood against the wall between the two pieces of furniture, covered with family photographs and handmade Cherokee baskets.

  Three doors led from the living room, not counting the one through which Lance had entered. He hadn't had a chance to see anything but the kitchen when he and Stump had been there earlier, so he made the rounds,, careful not to disturb anything.

  In the bedroom, the messy bed bothered him. He wondered if perhaps the killer had been looking for something, but why disrupt only the bed? It could also mean that Goldie simply hadn't gotten around to straightening the sheets that morning, but this detail seemed out of place in a house kept in perfect order.

  Lance used his handkerchief again to pull open the top dresser drawer which contained nothing unusual except for a small beaded suede pouch. The pouch was obviously old, yet in pristine condition. Lance didn't recognize the bead pattern as being Cherokee, but he knew instantly the intricate design had been applied by a skilled artisan.

  He closed the drawer and moved on to the closet where he coaxed the closet door open with the toe of his boot. Goldie must have lived a simple life. The dresses were worn but clean, probably her work clothes. Two pairs of sneakers and a pair of dress shoes lined the floor of the small closet.

  On a shelf above Goldie's clothes lay so
me kind of a long gun secured inside a beautifully beaded suede cover. Lance pulled the gun off the shelf and untied the leather strip releasing the flap over the butt of the gun. Careful not to touch the weapon, he let the beaded sheath fall away to reveal an old Remington .410, engraved with elaborate scrollwork surrounding Goldie's name. Lance stared at the masterpiece and its intricate work and searched for the obscured initials of the engraver. They were hard to make out, but one of the letters looked like a Y.

  Knowing the gun was too small to have delivered the size of shot that killed Goldie, he replaced it in its case and retied the leather strip. Then he took a minute to admire the beadwork on the side of the suede case. It matched the work on the small pouch he'd seen in the dresser. Once again he detected two small initials: MY. He replaced the gun, pulled out his notebook, and made a note.

  Although a dirty apron covered the bottom of the empty laundry basket, everything else was clean. Even the towels in the bathroom looked fresh and unused.

  Lance made his way on through to the kitchen where the coffeepot still held the morning brew. He opened the refrigerator and wasn't surprised to find it fairly bare. He supposed if a person worked in a restaurant, she would have very little need to cook when she got home. He decided to check the trash again. When he raised the lid, he reacted with a groan. An aluminum pan had mysteriously appeared since he had checked the container earlier. He picked it up by the corner and looked closer. The brown sticky residue in the pan reeked of brown sugar and cinnamon. He placed it on the kitchen table and replaced the cover on the trash.

  Moving on, he opened the back door. The spring on the screen door sang as he pushed it open and made his way onto the back porch. As he stepped he almost tripped, sideswiped by a bumblebee. He took off his hat and fanned at the insect. As the bee flew away, Lance noticed that the flowers in a whiskey barrel planter had been disturbed. He searched through the blooms. Nothing. He pilfered through the rest of the flower garden until he had a good mental picture of the scene, then returned to the porch.

  Noticing where several pellets lay embedded in the porch, he pulled out his pocketknife and fished a couple out of the wooden floor. He rolled them between his thumb and forefinger, then pulled a piece of paper from the small spiral-bound notebook in his pocket and carefully folded them securely inside. He spent the rest of the afternoon lifting fingerprints from windows, doors, and various items in the kitchen and bedroom.

  As he worked, his thoughts kept returning to Goldie Ray and why someone would want to kill an old woman. He had never met this woman, but he felt as if he knew her. She obviously had an appreciation for Indian baskets and beadwork, and that moved her up one notch in his book. In all his years of police work, he never seemed to get over the helpless victims. Crimes against them seemed so senseless.

  With nothing left for him to do at the murder scene, he decided to return to the police station. After the short drive through the streets of Liberty, he parked in front of the police department and got out. As he climbed the steps, the lonely sound of someone singing greeted him at the door. It sounded like a tune he must have once known, but couldn't quite place. Stump, sound asleep on the couch in the lobby, didn't flinch an inch when Lance closed the door. Lance opened it again and let it slam. Stump almost rolled onto the floor before he caught himself.

  “Damn, Smith,” fumed Stump. “Can't you make some noise or something before you start slamming doors? You're going to give me a heart attack.”

  “Maybe you should do your sleeping at home then.” Lance didn't try to hide his disgust as he dropped the fingerprint kit on Stump's desk.

  “Can't leave.” He moved into an upright position. “Got a prisoner.”

  “No kidding.” Lance sounded sarcastic. “Who's the lucky tenant?”

  “The crazy woman, Pearl Mobley.”

  “Pearl Mobley? Someone decided to file charges from the incident at the café this morning?”

  “Nope.”

  “What then?”

  “She killed Goldie Ray.”

  “Oh? I thought you said earlier you didn't think she was involved in the murder. What changed your mind?”

  “She went nuts over at the church and confessed to the preacher. I heard everything she said.”

  Lance peered through the window in the door that led to the holding cells. He could see Pearl Mobley rocking back and forth on a cot, singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

  Suddenly Lance remembered the hymn, sung at the Kenwood Indian Baptist Church the last Sunday before he left for the Marine Corps. The preacher had insisted the young recruit stand at the front of the church while the congregation sang all four stanzas, followed by “Amazing Grace” in Cherokee.

  Lance shook his head and hesitated before he spoke again. “Does she have a record? I mean, does she have a history or something?”

  “Not really. She spent some time over in Vinita, you know, at the state mental hospital. Is that what you mean?”

  “No, I mean has she ever been arrested for anything? Done anything violent?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then what makes you think she killed Goldie?”

  “’Cause she said so.”

  7

  “Time's up, sweetheart. Move it.” The female police officer spoke with a growl that sounded as if it came from some sort of disgruntled animal. She stood with her feet shoulder-width apart, one hand on her nightstick and the other in front of her .38 Smith and Wesson.

  Rosalee Singer placed the grimy receiver back on the wall phone and followed the woman back to the tiny jail cell in the basement of a building she thought must have been built around the turn of the century.

  The Cherokee County Courthouse was indeed a landmark. The gray limestone building took up an entire block near the middle of Tahlequah. It housed the county sheriff and jail, as well as a myriad of county offices, courtrooms, and judges—a convenience for anyone entangled with the county bureaucracy.

  Rosalee winced and her body stiffened when the door clanged shut behind her, leaving her alone once more in the cold, lonely cubicle. Realizing she was about to be shut off from the rest of humanity again, she yelled after the officer who was walking away. “He said he already wired the money. How am I going to find out what happened to it?”

  The officer turned and frowned at Rosalee. “Don't worry, sweetheart. I'm sure someone will let you know.” Then she turned on her heel and disappeared through the doorway at the end of the hall.

  Rosalee leaned against the wall and slid into a heap on the floor. How in the world had she ended up here? “Oh, Logan, how could you leave me like this?” she wailed. She dropped her face into her hands and sobbed.

  When she stopped crying, she thought of her friend, Logan Ross, who had literally saved her life. He had been a drummer for a local band, a baby-boomer trying to relive his youth by losing himself in forty-year-old rock songs. She loved his passion for life. The first time she met him he had been trying to coax a bass drum into the backseat of a Ford Mustang behind a bar on Highway 10 north of Tahlequah. As usual, she had drunk too much and wandered out the back door of the bar looking for a place to throw up. Just before she fell onto the shiny hood of his car, he abandoned the drum and ran to steady her on her feet. Then he walked her around the parking lot until she began to sober. He took her home, cleaned her up, and introduced her to Alcoholics Anonymous. It was the organization, he said, that had already saved his life and the lives of many of his friends.

  That night changed her life. She had now been sober for more than six months, following all of the rules, doing all the right things. She attended AA three times a week, learned and lived by the guidelines. By the time her old gang had graduated to manufacturing their own methamphetamine, she had already moved away, hoping none of them would ever find her in northeastern Oklahoma. Even though they knew she had grown up there, they would never believe she could return to such an economically barren part of the country.

  She had
no idea she could ever care about anyone like Logan—especially since he was a Cherokee. It seemed everywhere she went she found herself surrounded by Indians of some sort. She had grown up around plenty of Native people, but her mother had forbidden her to have Indian friends. Indians were drunks, her mother told her, and lived off government handouts and welfare. Certainly not the kind of people Rosalee should ever hang around.

  That had been years ago. An older and wiser Rosalee realized her philosophy of life did not necessarily need to reflect her mother's. She loved Logan and his gentle ways. He helped her face the day without a bottle in her hand and remained by her side no matter what time she needed him, day or night. That was, until the night a brawl broke out in the bar where his band performed every weekend. A stray bullet found the brawny Cherokee in the middle of the melee, where he was banging people in the head with his drumsticks trying to break up the fight.

  Now it was all over. He was gone. Everything was ruined. They said he died quickly, but that didn't make it any easier for Rosalee. She drove her worn out red Jeep straight to the first liquor store she could find, tanked up on beer and vodka, and remembered nothing else until she hit the floor of the same cell in which she was now sitting, charged with “driving under the influence.” The word “influence” seemed to be about right.

  Perhaps mother was right. Maybe Indians are too wild.

  Rosalee climbed onto the iron bed to wait and pushed her stringy bleached hair out of her sad, swollen eyes. Her throat felt like sandpaper, and her mouth tasted like bile. She wiped her runny nose on the back of her forearm, wishing more than anything she could remember where she'd been and what she'd done for the last two weeks. She swore to Logan's memory she would never end up like this again.

  She didn't know if her brother would come through with the bail money or not. He promised he would on the phone, but depending on another drunk didn't leave her with very good odds.