There was a clink of glass on glass. “I’m glad,” came Elmore’s slurred voice, “I’da hoped the person who sent me this would show up. I left a little Johnny for you to have some. I ain’t got anything personal against Oleta. Or didn’t, that is. And I wasn’t the one wrung her neck, that’s for sure. She just was causing me a bucket of problems with that ‘memoir’ thing and all those e-mails calling me every kind of whipsnake there ever was on earth.”
“Hurts a man’s pride,” Starla prodded.
“Pride, heck! Coulda flattened my pocketbook.”
“Couldn’t have hurt that much, judging by this place.”
“Hell, this is jest a hideout. Doesn’t mean I ain’t got a wad or a lot of ‘em up north in Reno. Or maybe something big comin’ in. Doesn’t mean I can’t take a hot little number like you out for a real big night on the town. What’s yer name again, honey?”
“Starla.”
“Now ain’t that purty? Almost as purty as Mr. Walker here, he is some flash dude, huh? I kin be a flash dude, too, when I wanta be. What can you be?”
“A lot of fun, honey.”
“Waal, my little sweet potato, you sure are cinched in tight to all those sparkly clothes. Maybe I can help ease up the bindings under your saddle blanket.”
“That old lech,” Electra fumed. “He wasn’t any hot stuff when he was thirty years younger.”
“Viagra,” Judy said, rolling her eyes. “Makes a man into a blowhard.”
“First,” Starla said over the wire, “I gotta make sure you won’t throttle me accidentally in your sleep.”
“Nah. I never throttled anything lately but this bottle. I was mad at Oleta, but I never woulda killed her.”
The women in the van exchanged glances. This wasn’t the damning confession they needed.
Temple leaned forward. “Go, Starla! Push it.”
“You were hanging around the convention with the Black Hat Brotherhood,” Starla prodded. “You must have wanted something from her, or you’d have stayed away.”
“I asked her to can the memoir crap. Nicely.”
“And she said?”
“Never.”
“You sure you didn’t kill her to stop her?”
“I didn’t have to, honey. Someone else did it for me.”
“Your non-ex-wife, Electra.”
“Don’t you call her that! Everybody’s claimin’ to be my ex or my current or my soon-to-be. A guy gets tired of that. His past trailin’ after him blightin’ his future. I wished they’d all jest go away.”
“If Electra had been charged with Oleta’s death, that would have happened.”
“Yup. But that didn’t happen.”
“Elmore sounds real regretful about that,” Electra commented sarcastically.
“Stop that, you naughty thing!” Starla said, giggling. “I’ll have a tad more scotch.”
“Me too,” Elmore said.
Glasses clinked again.
“This is sooo0 sleazy,” Phyll commented enthusiastically. “It’s like on TV.”
“Soap opera or cop show?” Judy asked.
“Maybe both.”
“Shhh!” Temple said. “Sleazy” wouldn’t help solve the murders.
“What about that woman who was taping the events?” Starla probed between giggles. “She was dead in that chair in thestores area when you were making like a female impersonator. What on earth made you even try that?”
“Oleta’s stupid ‘Hat Heaven’ booth. See, she’d always fancied herself a writer. Liked to play with words. When that `lost’ hatbox showed up and went out for all to see, I spotted that it was the only hatbox she’d ever had with a mounded top. That was all wrong. See, women stack those things. Oleta had one closet all with stacked hatboxes inside. You don’t make the tops mounded.”
“Ah, real smart, Elmore.”
“Right. I knew right away that would be where she’d hide her tell-all manuscript. It would be with her even when she was outta town, see? By then I was a suspect character, so I figured that if I looked like all those dressed up dolls, no one would spot me.”
“It worked.”
“Except for that miserable little Pink Hat brat. She’s the one who put the hatbox up for bidding, and I bet she found the manuscript before she did it. She deserved a nice little throttle, but—”
“But—?” Starla’s voice was tight with hope and tension. Elmore stayed silent as the women in the van held their breaths and waited for a damning confession.
“But,” he finally said after an audible bolt of scotch, “someone else beat me to it. These hands ain’t made for strangling. They’re made for—”
“Stop that!” The sound of a slap. “Those hands aren’t touching anything on me until I know you didn’t kill those women.”
“I didn’t, I tell you.”
“That’s not good enough. I need evidence. I need to know who did.”
“Now, sweet potato, why would I know that?” he wheedled. “You wouldn’t starve a man because of what he didn’t know.”
“He’s lying,” Electra said.
“Yes, but what about?” Temple said, frowning.
“Come on, girl, you don’t want to hold out on your future sugar daddy.”
“All the sugar you’ve got’s in your lying words.”
“No. Swear to God. I’m gonna have a pile as high as the Luxor. I’ve got me ranch land up in Reno. Dirt-poor, but it’s like you, sweet potato. It’s what’s under the surface—”
A scuffle was heard. Starla giggled and pretended to pretend to resist, that much was clear.
“We might have to rescue her,” Judy said. “I don’t know how much pawing a Red Hat woman should have to put up with.”
Temple hesitated. This scheme had been a bust, except for the store that had sold them the bottle of Johnnie Walker.
“Wow!” Phyll whispered from the front of the van, peering between the seats through the tinted windshield. “Who’s that heading for Elmore Lark territory?”
They all crowded to hunch behind her while the receiver broadcast sounds of heavy breathing and slap and tickle as Starla tried to fend off Elmore without turning off his expansive tipsy monologue.
A tall, thin woman in blue jeans and boots and a plaid blouse was striding toward Elmore’s door. She never hesitated to knock, but jerked it open.
Starla screamed on the receiver. A thump sounded as she or Elmore fell to the floor.
“You idiotic bastard!” the newcomer shouted in a deep, disgusted voice. “I leave you alone for a few hours and you’re with some drunken floozy.”
“Hey, lady. I’m not drunk. He is.”
“Even worse!” the woman shouted. “Get out of here.”
“I just need to get my things together.” Starla was playing for time, wanting to record this interloper who apparently knew Lark well.
“Cheap whore! Go, or you’ll be sorry.”
“Just a minute. My—my purse.”
“Forget it. You’re not getting paid for anything.” There was a silence where all the rapt listeners could hear was heavy breathing from all parties involved.
“Bunnie, honey,” Elmore began wheedling.
“You’re not just a little out of it,” the new woman said. “You’re downright drunk. What did you tell her?”
“Nothin’, honey. I told her nothin’. I said nothin’, I told her I did nothin’ to those women, jest got dolled up a bit in those Red Hat duds. Even Dustin Hoffman does drag sometime.”
“Get outta here, you stupid chippie!” The woman obviously had Starla by the jacket lapels and was shaking her. “I oughtta wring your neck.”
“And she’s the one who did it!” Temple jumped up, only avoiding braining herself on the van’s ceiling by being so short. “Come on!”
Phyll and Judy put their weight into pushing the side van door open so all of them could pour out onto the hot pavement.
The two guys fiddling with the car suddenly jumped up and headed for the door, one pulling it open before Temple and company could reach it.
Starla had been leaning against the door. Around her neck was a Red Hat scarf. The strangling ends of it were in the hands of the long tall woman who’d popped in on Elmore Lark.