Chapter 8

The ‘coop flyer’ had arrived at Mary’s house out on River Road. He had been careful to stay out of sight of the roads on the way and had made better time by cutting across a few corn fields on the way. He was now squatting in the brush around the house watching and waiting for Mary to show up. He thought she might actually go back to work and he was, therefore, prepared to set up camp for a few hours.

He was a little surprised and very relieved when she pulled up not ten minutes after he had arrived.

Mary had gone back to the Puddle, explained the situation to her boss, looked around unsuccessfully for Kyle and left for home. Now, pulling up to her house she saw Kyle’s old, beaten pickup in the gravel drive. She parked next to it, exited her car with a angry slam of the door and entered her house, adding another angry slam.

Joe crept up to the house to peer in through a window filled with light. He had assumed the pickup to be Jimmy’s and therefore, Mary to now be alone, but was playing it careful and safe. It was a good thing he did, because as he looked through the window into Mary’s living room he got another shock to add to a long list of them thus acquired this evening.

Mary stood in the middle of the living room glaring down at a man asleep and slumped on the couch. Joe instantly recognized him as one of the guys that had been in the lineup with him. Joe’s eyes went wide with paranoid disbelieve and his jaw literally dropped open as he watch the scene unfold.

Mary forcefully kicked Kyle Foggle awake.

“Owww!”, Kyle yelped grabbing his shin and dropping the bottle of whiskey he had been holding.
“What the sam-hell were you doin’ in that damn lineup?! Christ, Kyle, you had me scared half to death!”
“Damn, woman,” Kyle said, rubbing his shin, “I say, what knavery behooves thee to inflict such bodily injury?”
“Now ain’t the time fer yer fancy talk, Kyle. What were you doin’ down there?”
“I swear upon my honor, good lady, I was engaged in strictly my own affairs. Conversin’ and cavortin’ with a few of my dear and close friends. We was merrily exchangin’ evenin’ ‘How now!’s and ‘What say you, my good fellow?’s in yonder coach and carriage lot of the Puddle. We was nearly upon takin’ our leave and adjournin’ to the tavern proper when we was beset upon by the local constables. They behooved my goodly friends and myself to trot with them down to to ye old constable quarter’s. Next occurrance I knowed, I found myself betwixt my dear friends in a smallish world of a room which was, in fact, all a stage. We’d been unwittingly landed in the line-’em-up-an’ point-’em-out room. After they exuented us from their sinister lair an’ sinewy clutches I rode like Apollo in his chariot of fire straight like an arrow sent by the bow from the quivver of Cupid out here to wait for you, my fair Juliet. What say you?! I am the very pink of curiosity. How did it come to pass that you knowed I was enscorned and enmeshed in the constable quarter’s at all ends?”

At this point Mary sat down on the couch beside Kyle and related the events of her evening: Jimmy confronting her about seeing someone else, putting Jimmy on the scent of the music store guy, dropping him off there, going to work, getting taken to the station by the police, seeing Kyle in the lineup, indentifying the music store guy, spinning a fantastic web of numerous lies to the police, looking for Kyle at the Puddle and finally arriving back home.

Between her flustered sobs and words Kyle comforted her with a few tender lines, “There, there, my fair child”, “What cunning villainry they possess”, “Most unhappy and cursed fortune!” along with a few shots of whiskey from the bottle. When she had finished Kyle worked on convincing her that everything had worked out just fine and there was nothing else to worry about.

He got up and began to gesture dramatically and stubble drunkenly around the living room, “I say, Juliet, good and saintly idol of my idolatry. All’s well that ends well. This most foul eve’s happenstances are concluded in a mighty proper fashion. So, trouble yer lovely self no longer. The evil swine Jimmy’s gone fer good, gave up his ghost, exuented this realm fer the undiscovered country of Hades”, he glanced at his watch, “And must surely by this here dark hour of night be crossin’ old river Styx with Charon and the hellhounds. And what’s more to the good, the local constables have swiftly and surely sundered and vanquished his murderer. Oh, Justice be mighty and swift! And at that fer sure fer those what done such treachery and wrongdoin’s. And Justice may most assuredly never sleep the slightest wink, not even the quickest of little sleep perchance to dream’s, because of all of the dangerous plottin’ and schemin’ villain’s that the cruel and cursedly mad world is full over with, because . . . ”

Mary, and other women he had met, liked it when Kyle quoted Romeo and other Shakespeare love scenes, but tired quickly of anything else he raved on about tirelessly. He used this aspect of his strange obssession with Shakespearean dialogue to get women to support him for a while, claiming he was an Actor with High and Mighty Ambitions of taking the theater world by storm. Eventually, all of his girlfriends found out that his real ambition lay in storming their bank accounts, bars and whiskey bottles and promptly dumped him.

Mary was starting to reach the stage of being annoyed with non-love scene dialogue, but had not yet reached the stage of being annoyed with Kyle completely. She tried to move him back to what she saw as more productive topics, “Klye, honey, why don’t you come set down here and whisper some sweet nothin’s in my ear?”

Kyle sat next to her on the couch, faced her, took a swig of whiskey, started rubbing the inside of her thigh and said, “Ah, my delicate flower. My sweet and lovely Juliet . .”

Mary got up, “Hold on just a sec, lover-boy and I’ll git some cups from the kitchen fer our drinkin’ pleasure.”
“Partin’ is such sweet sorrow,” Kyle said with a flourish and Mary disappeared into the kitchen with a giggle.
It took her all of fifteen seconds to get two cups for further whiskey consumption. Which was a full ten seconds too late in returning to the living room before Kyle had passed out.
“Gawd-dammit, Kyle . . .,” she said bitterly.

Joe had watched this entire drama unfold and was able to hear most of it as well. Especially the part about Mary telling Jimmy that he was her secret boyfriend in order to protect Kyle. Finally, he could take it no longer, marched up to the front door, opened it and entered the living room. Mary was completely dumbfounded upon seeing her ex-lover’s killer leaning against the inside of her closed front door panting, sweating and totally dishevled with his hands, arms, shirt, face and hair smeared with blood and grime, a wild glare fixed squarely on her.

“You unbelieveable lying bitch,” Joe pointed at her.
Mary dropped the plastic cups and was headed for the kitchen’s back door before they hit the living room floor. Joe was too quick for her and tackled her on the kitchen floor.
She started crying again and begged Joe not to kill her. He picked her up, dragged her back into the living room and threw her on he couch next to a slumbering, snoring Kyle.
“Sit still, shut up and listen to me,” he began, “I’m not going to kill you. I want you alive so you can straighten out this mess.”
Mary was still seized with fear, “And then, yer gonna kill me?”
“Shut up!”, he yelled, “As long as you tell the cops the truth and get me cleared I am NOT going to kill you.”
“I didn’t mean to git you into any trouble.”
“Right. Sure. That’s why you told Jimmy Hollowy I was your lover and drove him over to the store to have a chat with me.”
“I didn’t think anythin’ much would come of it. I figured maybe he’d beat you up a little and that would be the end of it.”
“And that would have been a satisfactory ending to you?!”
“Well, you didn’t have to go and kill him!”
“He didn’t have to attack me. And you didn’t have to lie to him, drop him off and then lie to the cops, either!” Joe was getting more hysterical as this conversation wore on.
“Yer gonna kill me, aren’t ya?”, Mary whispered in a terrified, trembling voice.
“NO, dammit! I want you alive. I NEED you alive, because you’re the one person that can clear my name by convincing the cops that we aren’t lovers, that Jimmy came looking for me because of you and that I killed him in self-defence.”

Mary looked at him uncertainly.

He went on, “Look, the cops think I killed Jimmy in a jealous lover’s rage and it’s all because of what you told them. You’ve got to tell them it isn’t true. You probably won’t get into trouble because they’ll think you were all upset and freaked out or hysterical with grief or something. Your lover boy Romeo-Kyle won’t be in trouble because they already KNOW I killed Jimmy, but they DON’T know it was in self-defense.”

Joe was trying his damndest to explain all this, but the only thing Mary could think about as she looked up at this bloody, goggle-eyed murderer of her ex-lover was that he was certainly going to kill her.

She said, “How do I know you won’t kill me and tell them it was self-defence?”

Joe finally lost it.

He looked around the room intently. Upon spying an old battered acoustic guitar in the corner, he walked over, picked it up and brought it back to Mary. He said, “Do you know how I killed your boyfriend, Jimmy?” Mary’s eyes got wide and she shook her head ‘No’. “With a guitar. It’s my weapon of choice,” he raised the guitar up as if to hit her with it, “And I feel another homicidal rage coming on if you don’t go and tell the damn police the truth, you stupid, lying bitch!”

Mary cringed and looked sincerely confused, “You . . . you won’t kill me if I g-g-go to . . . g-g-go to the police station?”

“YES! Right now and tell them the truth! Or else!” he shook the raised guitar mightily.
Mary couldn’t believe her good fortune. The warpainted, wild-eyed maniac was going to let her go and even telling her to go staight to the police. Not surprisingly, she quickly agreed. As she grabbed her keys and headed for the door Joe carefully explained what she had to tell them in order for him to be cleared of the murder charges. She nodded endlessly, as if listening to him intently, occassionally throwing in an ‘Okay’. She, of course, heard absolutely nothing he said and was only hoping he wouldn’t change his mind and kill her before she was safely in her car on the way to the police station to tell them she had been threatened by Jimmy’s killer and knew where he was hiding out.

After she drove away, Joe stood in the middle of the living room feeling completely drained. He didn’t know if it was wise to remain at Mary’s, but he could think of anyplace else to go. The cops would surely have his own place staked out by now.

He looked at Kyle snoozing on the couch. He looked around the room for another place to sit and spotted a chair in the corner. The seat was loaded with old newspapers, junk mail and other odds and ends. He picked up the pile, sat down and threw the stuff on the floor.

A cassette tape bounced out of the bundle and landed right between his feet.

Joe stared at the tape for five full seconds before jumping up, exhaustion forgotten.

The tape! He had forgotten about the tape at the store! It would have the audio of his confrontation with Jimmy on it!

Two seconds later he was out the door running across Mary Gulder’s front porch towards Wither’s Music Store.