Chapter Three

Back in Clyettville, Blaine knew he had to shake himself out of the exhausted disbelief that was paralyzing him.  It was dangerous for him to stay in this stupor.  He had to mobilize his energy and get his head back in the game. Tanjee was right. This was a crazy, mixed-up mess. Tanjee… he realized it had been some time since he had seen her.  He remembered her leading him into this room, but that was a while ago. Where had she gotten off to?  He had to go out to Big Carl’s house and look through his papers, but he was definitely not going out there alone.  That old clapboard house was too scary in the dark.  He pushed himself up from the couch and went to look for Tanjee.

The town folk were all there, milling through the various rooms of the old two story house that had been Clyettville’s funeral home for the last 60 years.  When Blaine was in elementary school, the Coker family owned the funeral “parlor” and Mr. and Mrs. Coker and their five children lived upstairs. All five of those kids had a creepy look to them, in Blaine’s opinion. The sons tried to run the business when they grew up but they had married women who didn’t relish the idea of being undertakers’ wives. So, now one Coker boy was selling real estate and the other one drove to Lakeland every day to work in a warehouse.  A national mortuary chain bought the funeral home and turned the upstairs rooms into offices.

The mayor and entire City Council had turned out for Big Carl’s viewing, each with a disinterested spouse in tow.  A sense of propriety is strong in a small southern town and the expression on some faces made it clear that the only reason that some of them were there was so they would not be talked about for not being there.

“How ya holdin’ up, boy?” the mayor bellowed as he grabbed Blaine’s shoulder and gave it a little shake. Buddy Carlton was a caricature of a small town, southern politician.  He must have seen too many episodes of “The Dukes of Hazzard” as a child. Blaine could swear Buddy’s Southern accent had developed much more of a twang since he was elected.

“I’m holding up fine, Buddy.”  Blaine refused to call someone “Mayor” who was the booger eater of the third grade. “Have you seen the woman who came in with me? Short woman. Long black hair.”  The mayor broke into his best campaign smile. “Well, Blaine Roberts, have you finally brought a girl home to meet us?  We were starting to think you were going to carry this wild bachelor thing right into old age.  Men live longer who have a wife. Don’t you know that?” He poked Blaine in the arm.

Blaine fought the impulse to roll his eyes. “No, Buddy, I wasn’t aware of that. And she’s not a ‘girl.’ She’s a colleague who came into town to help me.  She was just here.”

A squeaky voice came from beside the mayor. “Um, I think I saw her leave about an hour ago.”  It was the mayor’s big-haired wife.  Buddy Carlton was such an imposing figure that Blaine had not even noticed that there was a woman standing next to him.

“Left? Out of the building or left, left?  Did you see which way she went?” 

Big Hair spoke again, “She drove away in a little black car. Towards 17.” 

Blaine felt a tiny panic start to tap at the back of his brain.  His thoughts began to race. Tanjee would be completely out of her element.  They had talked a lot about Wahneta, but surely, he thought, she wouldn’t go out there by herself.  Blaine knew, even as he was forming this thought, that it wasn’t true.  She absolutely would go out there by herself if she had the impulse to go.  Blaine hoped she hadn’t. Hoped she’d just gone for a ride to get away from these in-bred rednecks.

That thought made him look up at Buddy. “If you’ll excuse me...” Blaine’s voice trailed off as he reached into his pocket for his phone.

The mayor turned to his wife.  “Let’s go, Monteen.  See you tomorrow, Blaine.”  Mayor Buddy did a half-turn as he walked away.  “You need anything while you’re in town, you just call Ms. Mini, you hear?” Blaine nodded without looking up from his phone.

Minina Light was the mayor’s secretary. Everybody in Clyettville, especially Buddy Carlton, knew that Ms. Mini was the power behind the powerful in town.  She had served 10 administrations, managed five computer conversions and worked through and around the construction of three City Hall buildings. She was the one who confronted swindlers and reporters and corporate types who were up to no good.  She feared no one.

Ms. Mini went through each day like a very efficient Oklahoma tornado. No mayor ever considered replacing her. She could get more done before noon than the rest of them accomplished all month. She had single-handedly covered up more mayoral messes, personal and professional, than the townsfolk wanted to list. And they could list them. In great detail. Even though Ms. Mini took appropriate, masterful steps to undo the effects of the bad decisions, social gaffes and inappropriate dalliances the Mayor was always perpetrating, invariably, word still got around.  And Southern folk like it that way.  They want to know what’s going on, they want to have the inside scoop, they want to feel like there’s no proverbial wool being pulled over their metaphorical eyes.

There is also a belief in the South that it’s a good thing when someone covers up the failings of politicians. Cover-ups are all that stand between Good Southern Folk and total moral decay. You can’t just live life all out in the open. What would we be teaching our children? The communal consensus is this: “We understand that nobody’s perfect so we won’t run you out of town. But, by God, we’re not going to just act like what you did was okay. We are going to talk about you. But only behind your back, of course. Out in public, at the church picnic, Friday night at the football game, we’re all going to act like nobody knows a thing.”  So, yes indeed, there had to be someone responsible for the covering up. And Ms. Mini had been that person for decades. Ms. Mini had skills. Blaine decided that he would give her a call the day after tomorrow. He might need her help. Right now, he needed Tanjee to pick up her phone and answer his call.

Twenty miles from Wahneta, Tanjee’s purse started chirping. She fished out her phone and squinted to see who was calling.  Blaine. Well, it’s about time, she thought. Maybe they would finally have a conversation about the events of the last few days. Maybe she would finally get some answers. She intended to set him straight. She cleared her throat and looked down to press talk.