He turned to Mom. “Gotta get to work.”
Mom came to the kitchen side of the bar, put her hands on it and said over it, “Why the hurry? I thought you were off the case.”
“Body found early this morning just inside the city limits.”
I drew in breath and it was so loud Colt turned back to me.
“Somethin’ else, looks like a drug sale gone bad.”
Mom shook her head. “I remember a time when we didn’t have homicides and the only drug around was weed.”
“City’s stretchin’, ten more years, it’ll engulf us,” Colt said. “City spreads, crime spreads.”
This was the ugly truth. There used to be miles and miles of cornfields between us and the city. For fifteen years, each time I came home more of those fields were gobbled up by strip malls and housing complexes. We still were protected by a thin shield of farmland but it was weakening fast.
Colt’s attention came back to me. “Scour these books, Feb. Don’t go into J&J’s until you’re done. I’ll expect a call by noon.”
I opened my mouth to say something but he was again moving, around the bar. He went into the kitchen and bent to kiss Mom’s cheek. Dad came in from the side and Colt gave him a wave and then a “Later,” and then he was gone.
“Where’s he goin’?” Dad asked the door Colt closed behind him.
“Work, some drug person was murdered last night,” Mom answered, moving right to the cupboard where the mugs were knowing exactly where to find them.
“Shit, I ‘member a time when worst thing that happened around here was a bar fight at J&J’s. Cops came, tossed the boys in a cell to dry out overnight and let their wives take ‘em home the next mornin’.” He went up to my Mom and kissed the side of her neck. “We got out just in time, Jackie, darlin’.”
Dad could say that again.
He and Mom got out just in time.
Though, bad news for me, when they got out, I got back in.
* * * * *
Mom was cleaning Colt’s house. Dad was over at Dee and Morrie’s doing something Dee needed done that Morrie never found time to do. I had my cell in my hand and I had to make the call.
I’d spent an hour going through the names on that list and looking at every face in Colt’s yearbooks and reading what people wrote in it deciding, from what she wrote, that Jeanie Shumacher was a traitor (she pretended to be my friend!) and a slut (even though now she had three kids, taught Sunday School and used to be president of the PTA). And deciding from what Tina Blackstone wrote she was just a bitch (she’d always been after Colt, even now she’d slither up to him at J&J’s and give him her patented look and although I was avoiding him, I always smiled to myself when I saw him shoot her down, time after time). And I noticed Amy Harris never wrote anything at all.
Nothing shot out at me. Most of the names on the list were people I didn’t even remember and only barely remembered when I crossed-checked them with photos. A bunch of them were gone, didn’t live in town or even Indy anymore. I looked, I thought, but nothing came to me.
Nothing but one guy.
I flipped my phone open, found Colt’s name when I scrolled down and then I hit go.
“Feb,” he said in my ear.
“Loren Smithfield,” I said back.
“What?”
If we’d used the word back then, Loren Smithfield would have been known as a player. He was tall, dark blond with a bit of rust to his hair, good build but not an athlete.
No, Lore was the school flirt and definitely the school horn dog.
I had no idea how many girls he nailed. I just knew he nailed Jessie in her senior year of high school after sweet-talking her for the first three. She finally went out on a date with him and on date three, he got in her pants and took her virginity.
There was no date four and Jessie was heartbroken and humiliated even though she tried to hide it.
Loren tried to nail Meems, he tried to nail me, hell, he tried to nail everybody.
He sat beside me in that Geometry class and he flirted with me outrageously, not something many boys did seeing as they all knew about Colt and me and seeing as, if Colt ever found out, everyone knew he’d mess them up. Loren flirted with me all through school, especially during that class and in our junior year when he sat beside me in Psych.
He was smart, really smart, got good grades but it was more. He was what my Dad would call sharp. He was a quick thinker, good with words, thought things through three times as fast as anyone else which made him an excellent flirt.
He had great handwriting and signed his name cool and weird. Creative. Taking his time, even at the top of tests, putting these rock ‘n’ roll flourishes on it that I always thought were super hip even though he always made me feel a bit funny.
“Loren Smithfield,” I repeated to Colt.
“Feb, Lore doesn’t fit the profile.”
No, it was more that Colt didn’t want him to. Lore was a drinking buddy of Colt and Morrie’s. He didn’t come in regular, say, every night, but he was in J&J’s often enough, a few times a month and when he was he was sitting beside Colt at the end of the bar, Morrie in front of them, all of them engaged in man conversation, some nods, some knowing grins, sometimes low, rough laughter.
“He sat beside me in Geometry class. He flirted with me all through school. He nailed everything that moved.”
There was a hesitation then Colt said, “Lore’s been married three times, three kids, two with the first wife, one with the last. He works for his Dad’s construction firm and he drives a Ford F160.”
“So?”
“February, this guy we’re after, he’s got a desk job. Lore works with his hands. And this guy probably can’t get it up, not unless he’s doin’ somethin’ sick. Lore made those kids the old fashioned way, not through a test tube. And you think Lore would be as successful as he is if he’s into sick shit?”
I knew what Colt was saying. Lore had three wives because Lore had not changed. He still nailed everything that moved. He didn’t search for his pieces out of town but did his thing right under everyone’s noses. His wives, eventually getting sick of it, kicked his ass out.
I’d been around, I knew there were folks out there who liked their kink and sometimes that kink could get dirty and even creepy. But I didn’t figure in this ‘burg, which happened to be placed smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, that there would be that much choice of women who’d put up with dirty, creepy kink.