Twenty

  If lying were a job, I know some people who would be billionaires.

  –Anonymous

  Late October, five days before Dead Virgil

  Caledonia trudged into Slick & Junebug’s Diner and spoke to Earl and Clive, who were sitting on the stools at the counter. “Good morning, gentlemen.”

  “What’s good about it?” Clive grumped.

  “I’d have to wonder about that too, Felix.” Caledonia turned to Earl. “How you doing, Oscar?”

  “Living the dream,” Earl said with a toothless grin.

  “Must be nice,” she said, heading for her favorite booth where Paprika was already waiting. “Hey, Spice Girl.”

  “Hey, yourself. How you holding up, honey?”

  Caledonia took a deep breath and let it out. “It only hurts when I breathe.”

  Paprika patted her friend’s hand across the table. “I know, sweetie, and I’m sorry. I really am. I just felt it would be better to know the truth than to not know, you know?”

  Caledonia flashed a sad smile. “I do know, Spice Girl. I don’t blame you. You were just the middle man. I know you were looking out for my best interest. You were just doing what a friend should do. And believe it or not, I thank you.”

  “And you understand why Daisy and I did it, right? I mean, at first she was just flirting with him to see what he’d do. But then he talked about you like you were disposable, and we had to do something drastic.”

  “I get it. I do. It’s just gonna take me some time to get him completely out of my system. Although I do recognize I’m grieving for the man I thought he was and for the relationship I thought we had. Neither one were real.”

  “Honey, if there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that love makes you dumb.”

  “Before Virgil, I didn’t really know what narcissism was. I was so blinded by love for him—or who I thought he was—that I ignored the red flags. I’ve learned that narcissists are empty vessels. The only things they’re full of is themselves, insecurity and shame. They need a constant source to fill them up.”

  “Hence the constant sources on his cell phone,” Paprika said dryly.

  Junebug slid to a stop at their booth. “Morning, ladies.”

  “Morning to you too, Jitterbug. What’s new?” Caledonia held up her coffee cup for Junebug to fill.

  Junebug leaned forward to whisper, “There was another murder over on the outskirts of Bugtussle. That’s the fifth one now in just a matter of months.”

  Caledonia put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my stars. Who?”

  “This one was a man. Johnny says it looks same as the others. He said the last people to see him alive remembered he’d been drinking Goose Juice. Gives me the willies just thinking about it.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. That’s horrible.”

  “I don’t know why anyone wants to drink that stuff anyway. Maybe this will put an end to moonshine.”

  “Who needs the Goose Pimple Gazette when we have you, Jitterbug?” Paprika teased.

  From the kitchen, Slick hollered, “Order up.”

  Junebug said, “I’d better get. Y’all want the usual?”

  Caledonia nodded, “Yes, and some donuts too, please. Chocolate iced.”

  “Oh, so it’s a life-preserver kind of day, huh? Coming right up.”

  Mary Alice was having her own woes. An awful smell had awoken her at two a.m. The potent rotten-egg odor lulled her awake slowly until the smell was so overpowering she couldn’t ignore it. It smelled like a skunk had gotten into her bedroom. The odor was atrocious, and she pulled the covers over her head, trying to burrow down into a ball. It made her sick to her stomach. Her mind raced, wondering what to do. Was it possible a skunk had gotten into the house? She had never seen skunks anywhere near the house. And even if one had gotten in, why would it spray its odor? It didn’t make sense.

  She could still smell it under the covers with her nose pressed to her pillow. She managed to drift in and out of sleep that night, mostly sleeping completely submerged in the bed, but it wasn’t until the next day when she was telling a friend about it that it began to make sense.

  “It’s the weirdest thing. It reeked of skunk in my house, but when I went outside, there was nothing. No smell whatsoever. I assumed a skunk had gotten into the yard and the odor had seeped into the house. But why would it smell in my house and not outside? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Her friend looked at her for a long moment.

  “What? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “It’ll make you mad.”

  “What, galldernit!”

  “There’s a spray that you can buy that simulates the smell of a skunk. They sell it at sporting goods stores. I think even Amazon has it.”

  “Are you messing with me?”

  “No, I’m not, but it sounds like somebody is.”

  “That lowdown, fatheaded degenerate, lousy cretin. Of all the nerve.”

  “You thinking of who I’m thinking?”

  “It’s not enough that he has to try underhanded shenanigans to try to get me out of town, but he’s got to harass me too? Well, now he’s gone too far.”

  “Why in the world would he do that to you?”

  “He wants to run me out of town so he doesn’t have to look at me and feel guilty for what he’s done.”

  “Mary Alice, in order for him to do that, he’d have to have a conscience. He doesn’t.”

  “Well, he still doesn’t want me around. He thinks he can make my life miserable and I’ll go away.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  The women were silent for several moments. Then in a small voice, Mary Alice said, “I’m gonna kill him, that’s what.”

  Twenty-one

  The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.

  –Stephen King

  Friday, November 2: Dead Virgil

  Mary Alice LaRue pulled into the Burger King parking lot and turned off the car. She wasn’t craving a Whopper, but she did want to catch a whopper of a liar in action. The Burger King sat next door to the tennis club, which is where her no-good lying ex had just pulled into.

  Through slitted eyes she stared at him not more than a hundred feet away and thought about what he’d done to her. Not so long ago he was Romeo, seducing her and talking sweet. Now he’d swung back the other way. “I don’t know how you think I’d stoop so low as to date you again. Don’t make me run you out of town. I can and will show you my mean side.”

  “Your mean side is the most honest thing about you, and I’ve seen more of it than I care to recall.” Mary grumped under her breath.

  As soon as he rounded the building and disappeared from sight, she got out of the car and slammed the door. She knew him, and she knew he was up to something. She was bound and determined to find out what.

  She wound her way around to the back of the tennis club property thinking about how many times he’d lied to her. He’s nothing but a liar.

  “Old tigers never get new stripes, and old dogs just keep on repeating the same old tricks,” she continued talking to herself as she followed the stepping stones. This old lying dog was about to get his collar yanked. She had a good mind to give him a choke collar.

  The sound of a tennis ball melodiously hitting the hard court abruptly stopped as she neared the tennis courts at the back of the property. A line of large boxwood shrubs bordered one side of the first court, and she crouched behind one, peering through the foliage.

  She liked Caledonia. She didn’t want to see her get sucked back in by that lunatic, something he excelled at. Pulling her cellphone from her pocket, she typed in a text message and hit send. A few seconds later she heard his familiar fanfare notification coming from the middle of the tennis court. She’d grown to really hate that fanfare alert sound. But she hated even more what she heard next.

  “Who is it?” she heard Caledonia demand.

  Mary Alice saw him stuff the phone into his shorts’ pocket. Her mouth flew open when she heard his next words.

  “Nobody important. Come here.” Mary Alice couldn’t believe what he’d just said. She saw him reach for Caledonia, and she smiled when she saw Caledonia walk away from him. Atta girl.

  Their voices were drowned out by a jet overhead. It finally passed, and she resumed her eavesdropping.

  “I think you’re adorable. I told you there’s nothing between Mary Alice and me. Don’t be such a baby.”

  “Then why does she keep calling you?”

  “She’s bored. That’s all. I have zero interest in her. You’re the only one for me. I realize that now. It just took me longer than you to get there, but now I am. I realize what I had, and I want it back.”

  Mary Alice marveled at how easily the lies rolled out of his mouth like water off a duck’s back. And his words were so familiar. How many times had he said the same things to her? Too many. She finally understood him. He couldn’t allow himself to be dumped. So he’d suck back in the woman du jour, and the cycle would start all over again.

  Mary Alice watched, and she saw what looked like Virgil pleading with Caledonia. When Caledonia’s racket hit the top of Virgil’s head, he dropped like the little gnat he was. Mary Alice’s first reaction was horror quickly followed by delight with regret closely on delight’s heels. She’d wanted to be the one to put the old mule down. She had a hunch there were a lot of women who felt that way. A slow realization washed over her as she watched him tonight. He would never be a one-woman man. He would never be an honorable man.

  Mary Alice hurried to Virgil as soon as Caledonia was out of sight. He was starting to come around from his momentary loss of consciousness. He swatted her away as if she were a fly. She sat on the bench a foot away from him and picked up a tennis racket lying there. Sitting slightly forward with her elbows propped on her thighs, she twirled the racket between her knees.

  Virgil sat up slowly, rubbing his injury. He rested his forearms on his bent knees and hung his head. “I’m gonna get that woman arrested for assault and battery if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “If you ask me, she should get a medal.”

  He glared at her. “What are you doing here?”

  “Woman’s intuition.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. I had this theory that you use and discard women like old tennis balls. My hypothesis has been confirmed, and I feel free.”

  He groaned as he stood up, shakily. “Can you yap at me another time? My head is killing me.”

  She ignored his plea. “Here’s how I see it—correct me if I’m wrong. You meet a woman. You go out. You charm and seduce her. You make her feel like she’s the only one in your life. Then you cheat on her. Now we’re onto the charm, cheat, and lie-about-it phase. The duration of the cheating and lying may vary with each woman, but eventually the woman discovers your lies. She finds out and breaks it off with you. Then you spin it so that it was her fault, not yours. Sometimes you even make up stories to spread around just to be spiteful. Rinse and repeat. If the woman doesn’t come running back, you charm her some more. You hoover her until she gets sucked back in. Is it a power thing? You don’t want to be the dump-ee? You may still have another woman on the side, but as long as one woman is rejecting you, it’s a game of cat and mouse. It’s a game of I’ll say anything to get her back and then I’ll cheat on her again. Rinse and repeat. That about it, Mr. Silver-Tongued Devil? And cheating on me wasn’t enough for you, was it? You had to mess with my best friend. You just do whatever you want, and as long as it’s good for you, who cares about how it affects anyone else.”

  She took a breath, watching her words register on his face. She could see he was shocked because nobody had ever figured him out before. The worst had happened. She’d exposed him. In a calm but firm voice, she added, “You’re nothing but a liar and a lunatic.”

  She watched his expression change as she said that last sentence. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Mary Alice, for the love of Dennis, quit being infantile.”

  “Did I miss something? Who’s Dennis?”

  He sighed heavily, as if he were explaining to a moron. “It’s an expression, Mary Alice. The use of Dennis instead of Pete is a private joke.” His hand rested on top of his head where Caledonia had hit him. “Now call 911. Do something besides running your mouth.”

  “No.”

  “No? What do you mean no?”

  “How about I do something more useful than calling 911 or helping you up? How about I put you down. Like the lying, no-account peckerwood that you are and always will be.”

  His chuckle turned into a laugh and then a jeer. “Hardy-har-har. Your little story is pretty entertaining and all. You could take that act on the road. That was really something.”

  Here it comes, she thought. He can’t stand to be proven wrong, so he’ll go on the attack.

  “Stop being so childish. You always were a pushover; you know that? You were too easy to control. There was no challenge. We both had it pretty good there for a while. And now you want to paint me as some horrible guy?”

  “Horrible?” She reared back and gawked at him. Her voice was shrill. “Horrible is fire ants up your pants. Horrible is stepping on a Lego piece with your bare foot. Horrible is coming out of a public restroom with toilet paper stuck to your backside. Horrible is falling asleep in the sun for three hours with your iPhone stuck to your face. Horrible is your house reeking of skunk odor. Horrible is dating a woman and simultaneously joining an online dating site. Horrible is being with one woman and secretly dating other women. Horrible is never owning up to your mistakes. No, you haven’t been horrible. You’ve been loathsome . . . detestable . . . lousy . . . revolting . . . despicable–”

  “That’s about enough out of you, Mary Alice–” He stood and walked toward her.

  She jumped up, raised the racket over her head, glaring at him. She swung, but he ducked, and she missed him. Her face flushed red out of anger and embarrassment. She turned on her heel and walked away to hide her mortification.

  “Where you going? I’m hurt. I need help.”

  “You need help, all right. But I’m done trying to fill that empty bucket. There isn’t enough help in the world sufficient enough for that. Goodbye, Virgil.”

  Twenty-two

  If you tell the truth, you do not have to remember anything.

  –Mark Twain

  Saturday, ten o’clock, the morning after Dead Virgil

  Chief Johnny Butterfield handed Caledonia a paper cup full of water. “Sorry we don’t have ice.”

  He’d brought Caledonia back to the police station to talk after she made her confession at the diner. Now she sat in the chair in front of his desk looking like she was about to throw up.

  “Caledonia, are you sure you don’t want to have a lawyer present?”

  “Well, since I killed my lawyer and the only other one in town hates me, I’m not sure one would be of benefit to me.”

  “Caledonia, we can call around and get someone else in here for you.”

  Caledonia dropped her face into her hands. “I doesn’t matter, Chief. I did it. I killed him.”

  “Now hold on. Don’t go getting carried away, and don’t go saying things like that.”

  Caledonia looked up with pleading eyes. “I didn’t mean to kill him. It was just a reaction when he tried to touch me. It was like the racquet had a mind of its own.” She mimicked having a racket in her hand. “Bam!” Her pretend racket sliced through the air. “It hit him over the head, and down he went. I didn’t intend to kill him. I mean, there were plenty times when I’ve wished he were dead, but wishes aren’t deeds, you know? It was just wishful thinking. Do you think my wishes directed my hand?”

  “No, I do not. Why did you wish him dead?”

  “Because he was a no-good snake in the grass, that’s why. The man never told a truth in his life. He hooked me and reeled me in, and I feel like a fool for believing him. He wooed me, talked marriage, and the whole time he was pursuing other women behind my back. What kind of man does that?”

  “Well, the fact remains he’s a dead man. Tell me everything that happened. You said he reached for you and you reacted without thinking, hitting him over the head?”

  Caledonia nodded.

  “Where exactly on his head did you hit him?”

  Caledonia’s back straightened, and a puzzled expression came over her face. “It was about here, I guess.” She touched the top of her skull. Johnny scribbled some notes.

  “And what happened after you hit him?”

  “I told you. He dropped like a dead fly.” Tears came to her eyes.

  He peered at her over his reading glasses. “You only hit him once? And only on the top of the head?”

  “Well, yeah. Once was enough.” She smiled sheepishly. “It did the trick.”

  Johnny’s lips twitched as he tried not to smile. “What did you do then?”

  “I went to him and saw he was breathing. Then to my everlasting shame, I walked away. I just plumb walked away from the bum. I didn’t think he was near death. I’m a murderer, Chief.” Her face fell into her hands.

  “Do you still have the racket?”

  “No. I left it there beside him.”

  “Okay, so you hit him on the top of his head, he fell, you checked him, and he was still breathing, so you dropped the racquet and left. Is that about right?”

  She nodded. “Yessir. Will the judge go easy on me since it wasn’t premeditated? Will I do less time?”

  Johnny sat back and put his hand to his mouth, absentmindedly rubbing his forefinger against his lips. He ignored Caledonia’s ramblings and stared out the window in thought. Finally, he turned back to Caledonia. “You spent a lot of time with Virgil. Who do you think would want him dead?”

  Caledonia shook her head. “I don’t know, Johnny. Virgil could sell ice to an Eskimo. He was a smooth talker, that man. Maybe somebody figured that out and didn’t like it.”