Love Songs: The Wrong Note - A Collection of Short Stories

4

Bobby said he'd have to go deeper inside the abandoned tomb. Toward the back warehouse. Cleve knew exactly where Bobby meant. There was an old shed that all the male workers knew about. The bosses too.

That little building, unpainted and looking like a big puff of wind would blow it down, was home of some of the best poker games in the county.

At certain times, Big Mae Butler was known to show up.

Cleve smiled.

The memory of that line of horny men outside that ramshackle of a dump was hilarious. But then again, Cleve had stood in that line every chance he got.

Why not?

Big Mae was the best, and nobody could ever top her on the list of five hundred best whores you've ever bedded.

And he still owed that old broad more money than he'd like to admit.

"Good thing, you're dead," he muttered, chuckling that at least one huge debt would never have to be paid.

As he rounded the corner, Cleve was amazed. That shed was still standing. The roof looked like a swaybacked mule, and the walls were just-this-shy of vertical, but it hadn't collapsed beneath the weight of its own rot and ruin.

Bobby had said the body would be there. In the shed. For a hefty sum, Cleve only had to get rid of it and keep his mouth shut.

At the time, the sum Bobby offered made Cleve salivate. The fact that it was a corpse made it easier to argue with himself that it was a pretty good deal.

Cleve didn't have to kill anybody.

It was disposal duty. Trash detail. The deed was done. The cleanup was all that needed to be handled. At least, that's what Cleve told himself at the time.

Now, he wasn't so sure he should be within two hundred miles of this place.

Something shiny caught his eye. Cleve bent down and picked it up.

It was a copper hair fork with hammered trees, a hair accessory that Cleve had seen Big Mae wear back in the day.

Cleve's stomach dropped out of the toes of his old work brogans. What if it really was her? What if she was the one who'd crossed that gang of thugs that Bobby Crowe hung out with and . . . But that was crazy.