6: Ripples from the Pond, by Pete

 

MURDER AND MAYHEM AT CHERRY CREEK

EPISODE 6

BY: PETE

 

 

Ripples From The Pond

 

 

 

    Deputy John Edward Beauregard stepped out of Fat Sally's Diner and Lending Library. He let the screened door bang shut behind him. Beau, as his friends called him, always did lunch at the diner. There was something about the combination of good, home-style cooking and quality books that appealed to his appetites, both bodily and artistic. It's like peanut butter, jelly and bananas with an infused ambiance of anchovy paste, he thought. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Beau headed towards his old worn out cruiser and glanced up at the flashing neon sign under which he'd parked.

 

Fat Sally's Eats

"Be Better Fed and Be Better Read"

All You Can Eat Home Cooking

 

 

          Beau never knew the original Fat Sally. Even though he'd been born and reared in Cherry Creek, Fat Sally had come and gone before his time. Folks say she ran off with some fast talking carpetbagger, travelling shoe salesman. Just one day before Pumpkin Faulk's bank foreclosed on the diner. The Faulk never did find out what had happened to all the restaurant fixtures that were supposed to be inside securing Fat Sally's loan. And because he faithfully observed his great-grandfather's edict to have no dealings with Miss Dolly nor any of her descendents, he had no way of noticing the improved equipment at the Pale Rider Saloon and Restaurant.

 

          The diner's present owner was Miss Abigail Louise French. Comely and pretty in a plain sort of way, Abbey was a retired English Literature and Arts teacher from back east somewhere. She'd arrived in Cherry Creek going on ten years ago, and bought the empty diner from Faulk. The two garage mechanics had put her onto a good deal in used fixtures from the Pale Rider and she was in business.

 

 

          Miss Abbey believed her mission on earth was to bring the great works of literature to the common people. She added the library to the diner in an inspired moment of capital investment that nearly bankrupted her. It was hard those first few years. Abbey and the diner nearly went under half a dozen times. Fact is, if Cadlin and Scotty hadn't scheduled the twice-weekly dinner meetings of the Cherry Creek Knights of Salt Wash into the diner she would have gone bust.

 

 

          Abbey's biggest trouble in the early days was the tendency of long-haul truckers to check out books and never return. But her boundless love, enthusiasm and faith in the power of great art to improve the human spirit were borne out in the end. News of Fat Sally's spread far and wide until now gear-jammers the length of the country knew of the place. At first, the truckers trickled in. Big, tough, highway-faced men and hard looking women drivers would order their meals and glance sheepishly at the book shelves. They'd wolf down an all-you-can-eat meal of meat, gravy and bread then slip out with a Michael Crichton or maybe a Len Deighton page-turner hidden under an arm.

 

          In time, with Miss Abbey's encouragement and tutelage, they found themselves devouring weightier repasts like "Steak and Black Bread Pancakes with Tolstoy," or a "Canterbury Chef's Salad and Cranberry Pot Roast with Chaucer." Then almost before Miss Abbey could notice it, her shelves started filling back up with books whose disappearance was causing a stir of concern in almost every library within a thousand miles. These far flung librarians were at a loss to track down such borrowers as Big Red, Pedal Mama, Rubber Duck and Pig Pen.

 

 

          Deputy Beau paused in the gravel parking lot before climbing into the patrol car. He rolled a toothpick with his tongue. He gazed at the rutted, oil stained gravel. The neon sign all dressed up in spider webs and dead insects. He sniffed in the cool, sharp air leavened with the scents of fresh baking bread from the diner and diesel exhaust from the idling big rigs. He liked to think of this as soaking up the ambiance. Thoughts like this took up much, some say too much, of Beau's mental processes. Too often, as now, he portrayed himself to himself as the steely-eyed champion of law and order fighting the hordes of social decay.

 

 

          Beau had been a deputy for twenty years, and was not likely to ever be anything else. Yet, he saw himself first and foremost as J. Edward Beauregard, great American writer. His total lack of talent and small Mountain of rejection slips would have defeated a lesser man. But small details like that fell from J. Edward as leaves from a dead tree.

 

 

          This is not to say his writing had not attracted attention. It had. There wasn't a judge or prosecutor in the county that didn't dread his cases just as every defence lawyer and criminal prayed for them. Beau's artistic wont to add colour to witness statements and crime reports was what attracted the notice. In his hands, a simple speeding ticket became a thousand word essay on the quality of light as a perpetrator sped past.

 

 

          "He came flying past the diner in a cloud of black smoke as if he were fleeing the fires and the very hounds of hell with the grim and ashen look of a haunted man," is how Beau described young Judd Hansen's race down the highway and into town. This, he thought, gave a truer picture than what his radar gun merely and boringly reported as 96 miles per hour.

 

 

          Beau paused as an artistic battle raged inside him as to whether he should "gun the engine into life and speed of in hot pursuit," or if he should "hit the lights and siren and floor the gas pedal as he manoeuvres to give chase to the reckless desperado." Whichever it was, Beau spun out of the gravel lot and sped down the road after Judd.

 

 

          Main Street, Cherry Creek, mid-morning. The day was turning hot and sultry. A gaggle of old timers were already playing checkers, whittling and spitting tobacco juice out front of the remade Sav-A-Lot Market and Convenience Store. A couple of hounds were in under the front steps waiting for someone to drop something tasty or rotten, which was the same thing to a hound. The morning was so quiet even the dust was too bored to do anything but lay on top of everything.

 

 

          Down the street, Sheriff Pat Wallace had just finished a light snack of Miss Dolly's very good cherry pie inside The Pale Rider Saloon and Restaurant. Out the front window and across Main Street was the three-storied edifice of the courthouse cantered in the lawn and trees of the town centre.

 

 

          Sheriff Pat watched a flock of pigeons paint a bronze statue of Colonel Abner Joseph Lafayette Faulk. This was the founder of the Faulk & Company Bank, and Pumpkin Faulk's great-grandfather. The sculptor depicted the old colonel astride his favourite mount Tecumseh. Never mind that the original Colonel Faulk never got far enough outside of New Orleans to ever see a real cavalry mount, let alone any part of the Civil War. That was the statue he wanted and he got what he paid for.

 

 

          Miss Dolly was a direct descendent and namesake of the Miss Dolly who fought off that original Colonel Faulk and prospered when all the rest of the town burned down in Cherry Creek's early days. She was famous for her pies. In fact, Sheriff Pat was regretting not having ordered a larger piece. But he had his ever-improving waist to consider. With a last mournful look at the empty plate, he rose to leave. He exchanged a few polite words with Miss Dolly and headed for the door.

 

 

          This was when Judd Hansen came roaring down Main Street trailing an immense cloud of black smoke. Somewhere back in the smoke was Deputy Beau in hot, soaking up the ambiance, pursuit. Judd's old pickup was rattling and screeching like a bucket full of steel cats getting their tails pulled. Judd paid the sounds no mind if he even heard them. He was in a flat out dead-body panic. Wasn't nothing short of judgment day going to stop him before he got to the Sheriff's Office at the courthouse.

 

 

          Sheriff Pat stepped out onto the sidewalk just in time to see Judd's race from hell and hear the mournful call of Deputy Beau's siren. Suddenly, with a shriek, the engine in Judd's pickup fused into a solid mass of metal. Judd was now in a hopeless out of control skid. This didn't do much to improve his state of mind. Neither did it have much effect on his speed. What it did do was take any pretence of control right out of his hands. It all took on the surreal quality of a slow motion movie disaster.

 

 

 

          Sheriff Pat watched the old men jump and run. Checkers and boards flying, hounds howling. Judd's locked tires pouring out clouds of white smoke burst into flames. The pickup hit the curb, rocketed across the courthouse lawn and took the statue of Colonel Faulk head on like a canon shot. The bronze Colonel shuddered as the equally bronzed Tecumseh wobbled from the blow. But the memorial fantasy of horse and rider held on. They might just have made it except for Deputy Beau who was right in the middle of being J. Edward Beauregard absorbing the sudden transition from coal black exhaust to the acrid white smoke of skidding rubber tires. Beau had just hit on using the adjective "acrid" when all of a sudden the only noun he had time for was "Oh Fuck!"  The curb took both axels out from under the patrol car and it ploughed through the lawn right into the rear of Judd's pickup. This was one too many for the Colonel and Tecumseh.

 

 

          The last thing Judd remembered before he passed out was the Confederate Colonel's bronze sabre slicing through the cab roof, missing him by a fraction as the rider and horse smashed down onto his hood. Judd never told anyone, but he’d have sworn that old bastard Faulk was smiling, as if to say, nearly had you that time boy.

 

 

          Sheriff Pat stood still. His face was caught somewhere between surprise, anger, fright, hysteria and bawling. In under a half minute his town had been transformed from a peaceful half asleep haven into a scene from "Apocalypse Now". People started to shout and the hounds essayed a few howls. But mostly it was everybody waiting for everybody else to admit they'd all just seen the same impossible thing. A couple of bindle-stiffs who'd just got out of the county lockup were the only ones with sense enough to start laughing.

 

 

          Sheriff Pat heard the sirens of the fire engine and the town ambulance approaching from opposite ends of Main Street. This pretty much guaranteed that neither was going to hear the other. The thick cloud of black and white smoke entwined with the steam pouring from the wrecks eliminated any hope of them seeing each other. The Sheriff turned and quietly stepped back inside the Pale Rider and closed the door. He shushed Miss Dolly with a finger to his lips. He paid no mind to the new sounds of a colliding fire truck and ambulance. He asked Miss Dolly for a big piece of her cherry pie, and he suggested she top it with a generous decantation of brandy. Miss Dolly brought the bottle, and they shared the pie.

 

 

          "You know, Dolly," Sheriff Pat said. "My great-grandfather always said that horse was too much stallion for the old Colonel to handle. Damned if he weren't right." Miss Dolly swirled a cherry in the brandy on her plate. She popped it in her mouth and fetched a smile.

 

 

"Damn fine pie, Dolly," the Sheriff said. "Damn fine."