CHAPTER TWELVE
We spent another hour staking out Earl at his next honey’s house. This one was less eventful, which I wasn’t sure was such a good thing given Lauren’s push for drama, and afterward we headed back to the Dollar General in the hopes of catching Otto’s cronies off guard.
I wondered if they would even be there at eleven in the morning, but sure enough, they were lounging at the table, looking less clean-cut than the day before and already three sheets to the wind. Since Karen and Lauren weren’t surprised to see them, and each of the guys had a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam, it wasn’t hard to deduce what Karen had been up to when she’d disappeared for a while an hour earlier.
Chuck didn’t want to risk hooking microphones up on two drunk guys, so he pulled out the overhead mike, and Dixie and I started questioning Al and Fred.
I held out my hand. “Hi, I’m Summer, and I want to ask you a few questions about your friend.”
Fred shook my hand with a wicked glint in his eyes. “Tiny?”
“No,” I said, squinting in confusion. “Otto.”
“Too bad,” Fred said with a leer. He reached for his crotch. “Tiny wanted an introduction.”
“Eww!” I said, taking several steps backward. What man would willingly name his pecker Tiny?
“What?” Fred asked. “I may be old, but I ain’t blind, and you’re one foxy lay-dee.”
“Did you eat some of Big Dave’s jambalaya again?” Dixie asked him like he was a naughty five-year-old.
“Maybe . . . ,” he said in a pout.
“I keep telling you to leave that shit alone, Fred. It’s gonna ruin you for life.”
“Whiskey done ruined me for life.”
“Nevertheless,” she said, “that jambalaya’s gonna get you arrested for indecent exposure, and then you’ll have to dry out in jail.”
I had so many questions for Dixie when we were done.
“We wanna ask you a few things about Otto, but you be sure and leave Tiny where he is,” Dixie said, putting her hand on her hip. She gave Fred a death stare, and he finally put his hands on the table. “When was the last time you saw him?” she continued.
“I don’t need to see ’im,” Fred said with a leer. “But he’d like to see you, Dixie.”
“I’ve seen enough of Tiny to last a lifetime,” Dixie said.
“I think we’re gettin’ off track here,” I said.
“So when did you last see Otto?” Dixie prompted again.
“Sunday morning,” Al said. “He was in a bad way.”
“How so?” I asked.
“He don’t usually come around on Sundays,” Al said. “He tends to go to church, but when I asked him why he wasn’t at church, he said he’d seen something bad, and he was a bad person for not tellin’ Luke what it was.”
Dixie shot me a worried look.
“Did you ask him what he saw?” I asked.
“Of course we did,” Fred grunted. “I wanted to be the first to tell Maybelline so she could put it on her Facebook page. But he was buttoned up tighter than a nun’s habit.”
I was tempted to point out the shortfalls of his analogy, but I didn’t want to digress down another raunchy path.
“Did you notice anything else about him?” Dixie asked. “What was he wearin’?”
“His church clothes,” Al said. “He said he’d planned to go but chickened out at the last minute. Falene stopped by to pick him up, but he hid in his house.” When he saw my confusion, he said, “Falene’s picked him up every Sunday morning for the last six months. She takes him to church on account of him losin’ his driver’s license, and his car, years ago.”
“So Falene came by to pick him up, but he changed his mind and came here still in his church clothes?” I asked.
“Yeah. But he was already well on his way to bein’ drunk by the time I saw him. Then something spooked him, and he took off back home.”
“What spooked him?” Dixie asked.
“No idea,” Al said. “But he beat it outta here.”
“And you haven’t seen him since?” Dixie asked.
“Nope,” Fred said, “but tell him he still owes me five bucks.”
“Yeah, we’ll be sure to tell him when we see him,” Dixie mumbled, walking over to me.
I clasped my hands in front of me. “Thank you, gentlemen, but we’ve gotta be goin’. We may be back to ask more questions.”
“You know where to find us,” Al said.
Fred just snickered.
Lauren called “Cut,” then told the crew to pack up and head toward the First Baptist Church downtown so we could interview the minister about Otto.
I told Lauren I needed to go to the bathroom and then slipped inside the Dollar General. Dixie came with me, and we asked the employees if they had seen Otto since Sunday. No one had information for us, and they couldn’t remember anything remarkable.
Lauren and the crew had left by the time we went outside, but I wasn’t worried since they had to set up at the church.
When we got into the truck, I looked at Dixie. She’d been a little quiet and subdued since our interview outside. “Do you think Otto was really scared, or do you think his pervy friends were making it up to be on TV?”
“Call me crazy, but I think he saw something. He always goes to church. Something must have happened to make him skip it.”
“What do you think Otto saw?”
“I have no earthly idea.”
“Do you think the minister at the church would know?”
“Maybe . . . ,” she said, twisting her mouth to the side.
“What we need to do is ask his neighbors if they saw anything,” I said. “If something scared him, then he probably went home, like Al said, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”
She frowned. “Yeah, me too.”
“Have you heard anything more about the body that was found this morning?”
“Nothing.”
“You know, it’s been bugging me that I didn’t describe the motorcyclist who dropped that money to Cale. I think I should call him. And maybe tell him what Al and Fred just told us about Otto. Who knows, he might let something slip if this is related to Otto.”
“Lauren’s gonna be pissed,” Dixie said.
“She might not realize it was us. We can pretend it was an anonymous source, like whoever contacted Reality Jane.”
Still parked in the Dollar General lot, I got out my phone and looked up the number for the police station.
“I have Cale’s number,” Dixie said. “If that’s what you’re lookin’ for.”
I cast her a questioning glance, and she shook her head. “We went out on a couple of dates. There was no spark, but I still have his number. It would probably be the fastest way to reach him.”
“Okay.”
I saved the police-station number for future reference, then put in the number Dixie gave me.
“Malone.”
“Cale, it’s Summer.”
“Summer,” he said in surprise, “what can I do for you?” He paused, then said, “Please tell me you haven’t been snooping around the murder we’re investigatin’.”
“God, no,” I said. “I know this is a bad time, but I’m calling for a couple of reasons. Did the owner of the money I found turn up at the station? I realized I should have described him a little better.”
He hesitated for several seconds. “Sorry. I had to switch gears there. Yeah, as a matter of fact, he did. He was grateful someone as honest as you found it.”
“Wasn’t that an awful lot of money to be carrying in a paper bag?”
He laughed. “You really have been gone awhile. A lot of people deal in cash here. Ed works on bikes, and he sold one to the guy working the counter at the dry cleaner’s.”
“Oh.”
“You’re actually taking this reality show seriously, aren’t you?”
“Well . . . I don’t know about my producer, but yeah, I am. In fact, I know that Luke talked to Gretchen McBride about Otto being missing, and I have some new information.”
“On Otto?” He paused a second. I heard someone calling Cale’s name in the background. “Otto runs off from time to time, Summer. He always comes back.”
“But something scared him, Cale.”
I heard him push out a breath. “Sorry, Summer, I know you’re worried, but he’ll turn up. Right now we’re tryin’ to deal with a real case.” Then he hung up.
His attitude pissed me off, but I also understood. I told Dixie Cale’s explanation about the money, and she didn’t look surprised.
“Sounds like Ed Reynolds. He owns a motorcycle shop, and he does like to deal in cash. But he’s usually not so careless.”
“You didn’t recognize him in the parking lot?” I asked. But then again, he’d worn a helmet. Maybe she hadn’t.
“I never even saw him. I was too busy trying to distract the crew pretending to be attacked by a giant spider. I sure as Pete hope they don’t put that in the show.” She motioned to the dashboard. “We better get goin’. Lauren’s gonna tan our hides.”