"Don't get smart, boy," Bonnie said, stepping a little closer to the counter.
"All's I could tell was, she didn't look like the one he used to bring. This one was closer to Mr. Smith's age." I thought about Jolene the Dish Girl, twenty-four, bleached white-blond, and stacked.
"What color hair? What did she look like?"
The clerk thought a moment. "Um, brown hair, you know, dark hair. Kinda cut short, maybe curly. Had a pretty smile. That's all I could tell."
A Mercedes pulled up behind my VW under the portico. An older businessman stepped out of the driver's side door and started toward us.
"Are you done?" the clerk said.
"You ever seen that woman come in here with another guy?" Bonnie asked.
"Nah," the kid answered. "And she wasn't pro material, either."
Bonnie nodded, satisfied. "Just wondering," she muttered to me. "I just can't figure how Vernell keeps coming up with pretty women, as dog-butt ugly as he is!"
We reached the door at the same moment the businessman did. He held the door and I walked out, but Bonnie stopped, looking from him to the young woman waiting in his car.
"Go on back to work, you old fool," she said. "You got a wife and young'uns, don't you?"
The man's face reddened and he walked right on past her, into the office. Bonnie stepped out into the driveway and glared at the blonde in the Mercedes.
"Hussy," she said. "Rodney would've loved this place. Would've saved him taking his pickup out to High Rock Lake and fooling around in the broad daylight!"
I wasn't listening. I was thinking. Vernell had been coming to the Twilight Motel for the past few months with a woman. Vernell, single again, had no need of a motel. He had a mansion. For some reason, this woman wouldn't come to Vernell's stone palace. Why?
I slid into the car and cranked the engine. Bonnie was still going on about Rodney leaving her and his history of seducing women. Rodney, never too proud to show his ass when he was drinking, apparently showed it off regularly to the bass fishermen of High Rock Lake. The idea of getting sweaty on the underside of Rodney while lying on the bed-liner of a pickup truck did nothing for me, but Bonnie seemed to think Rodney never lacked for partners.
"Bonnie," I said, "Vernell's new honey must be married to someone he knows or someone who lives in the neighborhood. Why else would she come here every Friday?"
Bonnie, in the middle of her monologue about Rodney, stopped talking and stared at me.
"Guess that's why they pay you the big bucks," she said. "Of course." Bonnie looked out the window as I pulled out into traffic. "Guess we're going to the Satellite Kingdom, huh?" she said.
"Why?"
Bonnie snorted. "On account of that's where he met up with his last honey," she said. "Men ain't free thinkers, you know. They're creatures of habit. Betcha five dollars she's the new receptionist. That's how Rodney got his out at the dealership. Just you wait and see."
We headed north on Battleground, homing in on the Satellite Kingdom. Bonnie was humming to herself now, something that sounded like "Faded Love."
"Bonnie," I said, not looking over at her. "What do you think it means when a man tells you he doesn't want to get involved and then kisses you?"
Bonnie snorted. "Baby, just let me tell you one damn thing: Men are like fish. You can't just plop your line in the water and think they're gonna see it for what it is and run with it."
She was looking at me now, I could feel it. I focused on the traffic, which in a town where everyone feels entitled to having it their way, is a good idea. Vernell's kingdom was straight ahead, just outside of the main business drag, across from Wal-Mart and next to a lot where a guy sat in a truck and sold rocks to wealthy gardeners.
"Naw, a man's gotta mouth the bait a little," she said. "I take it we're discussing your detective fella." I nodded ever so slightly. "Honey, he's a big 'un. Them kind slip up, try and take the bait off your hook, then run if you ain't watchin'. You gotta wait 'em out. Don't go yanking on the line and trying to reel him in. He's got a lot of fight in him. You can tell that, just by the way he walks."
I couldn't let that one go. "How can you tell what a man's gonna do by the way he walks?"
"Your boy walks slow like he's prowling," she said. "Remember, I've met him. He came into the shop when Jimmy got hisself murdered. Thought he could get to you by going through me. Huh!" she snorted. "Yeah, right, like I'd talk about you to the police." Bonnie reached in her purse for a cigarette, remembered I didn't like smoking in the car, and dropped the pack back into the leather pouch. "That detective can't keep his eyes off of you, that's another sign. You got him, but you gotta give him room to run."
I had no idea what Bonnie was going on about. The way I had it figured, it was hopeless. My head knew this, but my heart and a few other parts of my anatomy didn't want to throw in the towel quite yet.
I pulled into the gravel lot of the Satellite Kingdom and stopped in front of the doublewide Vernell used for a sales office.
"Now here's where the rubber meets the road," Bonnie said, and opened the car door. "Five dollars says it's the receptionist." And with that she marched up the stairs and into the building.
By the time I reached the door, Bonnie was stomping out. "Clever ruse, that Vernell has," was all she said as she walked past me and down the steps. She was fumbling with a cigarette and a lighter and apparently had no intentions of returning. "Just make it snappy. I need to get back to the shop as soon as possible. They can't keep the place going more than an hour without me there to watch 'em." She gave me a sharp glance and touched my arm. "I mean, unless you need me to whip that one inside into shape." She looked back toward the door and shook her head. "There's more to all this than meets the eye, honey."
I had no idea what she was talking about and Bonnie wasn't sticking around to explain. She walked off across the parking lot, headed for the car and her smoke break.
I pulled open the glass door and stepped inside. The receptionist looked up and smiled, her gray hair piled neatly on top of her head.
"Can I help you?"
"You're new," I said.
The woman adjusted her thin framed glasses, pushing them back up her nose and squinting through them to see me better. Her face was a maze of wrinkles and laugh lines. She was the double for Vernell's grandmother.
"Oh dear," she sighed, "now just tell me you're someone important and I'm supposed to know you." She shook her head. "I told Bess I didn't need a job, but she had to have it her way."
"Bess who?" I asked.
The woman stood up from behind the desk and walked around to stand in front of me.
"Bess King, my daughter. She's the one told me I needed something to do now that Guthrie's gone. She said Mr. Spivey needed help, and here I am." She smiled and I couldn't help smiling back, but inside my heart had skipped a beat. Bess King. Nosmo King.
"Don't mind me," she said, "I wander on." She stuck out her hand. "I'm Eugenia Price. Welcome to the Satellite Kingdom. I'd be glad to help you with all your satellite needs but as you can see, I don't know a thing about newfangled technology. Our salesmen are, um"-she looked around-"out in the field today."
Out in the field, indeed. With Vernell gone, and paychecks missing, it meant the sales team hadn't shown for work.