The Redneck Detective Agency (The Redneck Detective Agency Mystery Series Book 1) Read online

  Chapter 1

  The Redneck Detective Agency wasn’t a detective agency at all and Rusty Clay, its proprietor, claimed he wasn’t a redneck. He didn’t care what Gloria Davenport said.

  The Redneck Detective Agency was just a door. At the top, it read—The Redneck. At the bottom—Detective Agency. How it came to be was three years ago, when Rusty wasn’t even in the State of Alabama, The Redneck Detective Agency that didn’t exist came into existence. It was the central setting of a major motion picture that was to be filmed on location right there in Dolopia, Alabama.

  The film never saw the first day of production. The same day the producer pocketed over a quarter of a million dollars from three of Travertine County’s wealthier and greediest citizens was the day that the “Hollywood producer” alias international con man skipped town.

  Gloria claimed the fact Rusty now owned and operated out of that same office was living proof he was a redneck. That that door and Rusty were destined to be together. It was the perfect place for him to dream up his schemes that were going to make him a million dollars of easy money.

  Right now, sitting at his roll-top desk, he held a .45 bullet in his left hand and a pair of pliers in his right, making himself a blasting cap, that he was going to use tomorrow.

  He heard the downstairs door, the one that opened out to the street, creak open. He cocked his head like his cousin Ray’s old hound dog. Then he listened to the heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.

  Clomp, clomp. Rusty swiveled around in his wooden chair, laid the objects on the desk, then pulled down the roll-top. All without taking his eye off the door.

  A blurry, large silhouette appeared through the translucent glass. Rusty saw an arm being raised about shoulder high and then heard a firm, three-rap knock.

  Rusty walked over and opened the door. The man stood there, letting his hands hang by his sides.

  This fat man, who had gone to the trouble to walk up Rusty’s stairs, looked like a cross between Big Jim Folsum and George C. Wallace. Rusty never thought the major features of two opposite Alabama governors could be found morphed together in one person. But there he stood. Nowadays, half those trendy-seeking yuppies around the square wouldn’t know who Big Jim Folsum was. Shit. World was going to hell in a hand-basket.

  “Rusty Clay?” the man said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When you was ten years old you bare and single-handed caught a eighty-six pound catfish?”

  “Yes, sir.” That was common knowledge. Gloria’s daddy, Doc, weighed it in at the marina. Gloria still kept the 5x7 black-and-white, framed, glossy photo on the wall behind the cash register. They even got Rusty to autograph it, like he was a movie star or something.

  “Do you know you are the only person to ever grabble a catfish heavier than his own body weight?”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  “You’re the man I want to see,” the man said.

  Rusty motioned him on in. He led him past the roll top desk to the flat desk between the two big windows on the front wall. Rusty and the man sat across from each other. Either could have looked to their right or left respectively and had a grand view of the courthouse and much of downtown Dolopia, Alabama.

  “I want you to find my catfish and who stole it.”

  “Somebody stole some catfish of yours?” Rusty asked.

  “A catfish.”

  “I see,” Rusty said. Rusty was generally a man of his word, but right now he didn’t see at all. “Well, look, I’m not actually a licensed detective.” Rusty had no idea why he had said licensed and not just detective. That it was just a door.

  “I don’t care if you’re licensed or not. I just need the thing found.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Katfish King. I’m a grabbler, too.”

  “You’re the catfish king?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And somebody has stolen your catfish?” This had Rusty hook, line, and sinker, he thought, no pun intended. A fat man with a missing catfish had walked up his stairs, thinking he was a private detective.

  “That’s right. Here’s the story, Rusty. Two week ago I grabbled a two hundred fourteen pound catfish up near Kingston, Tennessee. Two hundred fourteen pounds, that’s enough for a world record. I had it transported, at great expense, to a catfish hole over here on the Elk River. I had the entrance to the hole barred. During the upcoming Clear Springs Catfish Grabbling Rodeo I was going to grabble my catfish out and not only win the Catfish Rodeo trophy but have a new world record for largest unassisted catfish ever grabbled.”

  “Wait a minute. Isn’t that cheating? You planting the catfish. That sounds a little fishy to me.”

  “I grabbled that catfish fair and square. And there’s nothing in the rules about it. I read the rules cover to cover. No harm intended, but isn’t that what some of you local boys do? Know where a big cat is, then wait till the rodeo to grabble him out?”

  “It’s been done, I’m sure. But to transport one hundreds of miles? Why risk all this? Why not just have your catfish weighed up in Kingston. Claim your world record?”

  “No, no. It wouldn’t have been as official. It may have even been contested. Davenport Marina is an official weigh-in station.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And the publicity. Being Katfish King it is publicity that counts. It was perfect, all perfect, until I went yesterday to check the hole. The bars had been taken away. The catfish was gone! It was a blue cat. Ole Blue, I called him.”

  Rusty held up his hands. “Listen, you and your story are very intriguing, but this isn’t my line of work.”

  “You’re a grabbler. You live on the river in Clear Springs. You hear stuff. It is perfect for you.”

  “I used to be a grabbler,” Rusty said.

  “Oh, hell. Once a grabbler, always a grabbler. We both know that.”

  Then the fat man reached into his pants pocket and plopped a bundle of hundred dollar bills on the table in front of Rusty. And it wasn’t any little skinny stack of hundreds like Rusty had seen at the bank. It was as thick as a bundle of fifty ones. If they were indeed all hundreds, the man had just plopped down five thousand in cash. Not that five thousand would change Rusty’s life.

  Rusty pushed the stack back toward the fat man. “I’m sorry, sir, I just don’t think I can help you.”

  The man pushed the stack toward Rusty. “Please, please, Rusty Clay. I am not normally a desperate man.”

  “Oh, I can see that, but…”

  The fat man held up a fat finger to Rusty. Rusty shut up mid-sentence.

  Then the fat man reached down at his belt. He retrieved a cellphone and looked at it. He placed it back at his belt and then put his fingertips gingerly and in a very precise manner down onto the desktop.

  And now he rotated his fingertips around, like he was giving some secret sign. What? The man thought Rusty was a member of The Royal Order of The Cottonmouths or something? Well, Rusty wasn’t a member of anything.

  “Listen, Rusty. I have to go. You keep the money for now. How about we meet right here say at ten sharp Friday morning and go over all this? Could you do me that? Grabbler to grabbler?”

  “Sure. I can do you that.”

  The man stood up, shook Rusty’s hand, and then hustled over for the door, like he was late for something.

  Rusty went over, opened the door for him. Rusty closed the door, listened to the heavy, rushed footsteps echo out in the stairway. He walked to one of the window
s, to look down and see what kind of car the man was driving. From Rusty’s point of view, he saw nothing.

  “I should have known something like this was bound to happen sooner or later,” Rusty said aloud. Right now he didn’t have time to think about it. He had to get ready for tomorrow morning.

  Chapter 2

  The next morning, before the sun rose, Rusty drifted in the mouth of the Elk River, where it emptied into the Tennessee. He connected the cap and fuse to the five sticks of dynamite and put it at the stern of the sixteen foot aluminum flat bottom boat. This would show that cousin of his, Ray Clay, he meant business. That Rusty Clay was always willing to put his money where his mouth was.

  He looked to the east. The top of the sun touched the horizon now. He took pause in the moment.

  When Rusty Clay was five years old his daddy showed him how to strike a match, not so Rusty could light some kindling or his daddy’s Lucky Strikes, but so that Rusty could set off dynamite. That was fifty years ago.

  He stepped over into his wooden skiff and started to crank the eighteen horse Johnson. His daddy would have lit the fuse first out of contrariness, just to demonstrate his undying faith in a Johnson outboard.

  Out of respect for his father, Rusty let the crank rope be.

  At the southwestern most tip of Travertine County, right where the Elk and Tennessee met, sitting on the point--The Point they called it now--stood a five story condominium building. Condominiums on the river south of Clear Springs. Who would’ve thought shit like that would ever come to pass right here in Alabama? If his dead daddy could see this, he would be turning over in his grave so fast he’d just be plowing up that ground at the Mt. Sinai Cemetery.

  He reached into his shirt pocket and got out a box of Fire Chief matches. He struck one and lit the long fuse. The end of the fuse lay on top of the back thwart of the aluminum flat-bottom boat. Though it was late spring, the metal of the boat was still cool to the touch. The feel of aluminum gave Rusty the willies. And the name on the outboard gave him the shivering fits.

  He couldn’t believe he’d let Jenny pawn this thing off on him in their divorce settlement. She’d sold a real boat and motor right out from under him, then gave him this piece of shit in replacement. At the time, Rusty didn’t argue with the judge. He just wanted the thing over with. Now, he would even the score.

  He reached back and yanked on the cord. The Johnson started right up. He slid the outboard from neutral to forward and pulled away, made a teardrop loop on out in the Tennessee and came back by the other boat and headed up the Elk.

  He did a ninety degree like he was heading over to the west bank of the Elk. But he just wanted a clear view, so he taxied along cutting across the channel.

  The boat sat there a hundred yards back. Then it exploded into a big red and yellow ball. The diameter of the initial flash was about three times the length of the boat. If his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, he saw the outboard lid blow up into the air whole. Then it appeared the gas tank exploded a millisecond later right at the top of the initial flash.

  Then the aftershock hit Rusty. Hit him just right. Almost knocked the wind out of him. “That was a good batch,” he mumbled. “Or I’m a little too close, one.”

  A fireball rose high enough he bet it could be seen five miles away at the county courthouse square. And let the condominium tenants figure that one out. They were probably calling Homeland Security about now. Mistook it for an atomic mushroom cloud. Figured somebody had bombed the nuclear plant.

  At the very least he woke up his ex-wife Jenny and maybe even her doctor fiancé. He better get the hell out of here before he got put on some terrorist list. Nowadays, they could probably send your ass to jail without a trial for making dynamite without a license.

  Then, swoosh, plop. Something landed. He looked right in front of him, not twenty feet away. The outboard top floated on the water. Yamaha just staring at him. The very thing he tried to blow up. What were the odds of that?

  Well, maybe pretty good. With Rusty’s luck lately, he couldn’t even blow up a Yamaha outboard right. The world was going to hell in a hand-basket.

  Rusty reached into the toolbox at his feet, got out his daddy’s Army issue World War II Colt .45 automatic, chambered it, and emptied seven shots into the stupid outboard lid. That filled it with water and sunk the son of a bitch into the deepest channel of the Elk.

  Rusty cruised on up the Elk. The river was about a quarter of a mile wide along here. He went under the Lee High Bridge, and headed to the Davenport Marina.

  The marina, Gloria’s café, and what he could see of the RV park were full capacity. The Catfish Rodeo was still two weeks away and he could tell it was going to be a shit bucket of confusion this year.

  When Rusty taxied up to the marina, he saw the place looked like the weekend. All these assholes coming in from Mississippi and God knew where.

  You could thank Edsel McCormick for all these mud-stirrers invading Clear Springs. He put up all the cash prize money--three thousand in four different categories and five thousand for biggest catfish grabbled unassisted.

  Edsel was one of the three local victims of The Redneck Detective Agency movie con. The embarrassment made Edsel convert from his greedy ways. Rusty figured if the man wanted to be a philanthropist he could find a better cause than muddying up the Elk worse than it was.

  At least somebody hadn’t taken Rusty’s boat slip. Gloria let him have one on the main pier that was protected by a tin roof. She didn’t charge him, so Rusty did her all the favors he could in return.

  He moored his boat, staring down at the dock cleat. He heard, “I finally got it figured out.”

  Rusty looked up and there stood Gloria herself on the dock at the bow of his boat. How did she do that? Rusty considered himself to have an alert mind, to be aware of what was around him, to always have his radar on. But she appeared on the dock like magic.

  Gloria herself was magic, a work of art. Fifty-nine years old and from behind she looked like twenty-five, a slim shapely twenty-five. She had a flat stomach going for her, too. Face looked forty-ish.

  “What you got figured out now, Gloria?”

  He stood up straight in his boat. He was eye-level with the wide, tight crotch of Gloria’s jeans and that was just fine with him.

  “You in denial about being a redneck.”

  “Denial. You been watching Okra?”

  Rusty had never watched the Oprah Show but just from second hand talk knew what kind of things were on it.

  “Let me tell you something. I’m not in denial. And I’m not a redneck.”

  “Yes, you are,” Gloria said.

  “I can run off fifteen or twenty reasons I’m not a redneck. I’m a river man, first and foremost. A Southern gentleman. An entrepreneur. A rascal, at times, if you will. A scalawag--maybe. I am forever trying to improve my lot.”

  “I know all that.”

  “You can’t name me just one reason I’m a redneck.”

  “You’ve been married three times,” Gloria said.

  “So, what? You’ve been married three times.”

  “Yeah, but not to the same person.”

  Gloria cocked her head in a smug, sort of way. She knew she had won that round.

  Gloria stepped her game up on her accusations against Rusty about the time she and husband Al split up. Rusty’s logical, observant mind picked up on stuff like that.

  Not to mention the manner of Gloria’s dress had shifted from her usual perky, girl-next-door, river rat casual toward double-take hot.

  If she was trolling and cast that bait a little closer, Rusty might just bite. And Gloria just better be willing to handle what she’d caught.

  “Oh, speaking of my darling other half, remember Al says he needs about three sticks of dynamite to blow some tree stumps out.” Al was Gloria’s soon-to-be ex-husband, and Rusty didn’t mind doing him a favor. Even if Al was somewhat of a mystery and wasn’t from around here.

  “I didn’t for
get. I had to take my nitro soup, mix it with some clay to stabilize it into dynamite.”

  “I never knew putting a Clay into the mix ever to stabilize a damn thing.”

  “That’s a good one, Gloria,” Rusty said, staring straight at her crotch without reservation.

  “And the main thing. I got to go to a wedding for my sister’s niece-in-law and listen to them McAllister’s bullshit for three straight hours next Saturday. Did you check to see if you had any more peach moonshine?”

  Rusty reached down into the bottom of the boat, got the paper bag, stepped up on the bow thwart and then up onto the dock. Gloria took his hand and helped him up. Her very touch sent a bolt of electricity through his body. She held on a bit longer than she needed and let go very gently.

  “You smell like gunpowder,” Gloria said.

  “Thank you.”

  He handed her the bag. She opened it, looked down into it, while Rusty stared at her face.

  “Tell Al to be careful,” Rusty said. “It was a strong batch. I wouldn’t be having it around any playing radios if I was you. The right radio wave could set it off.”

  Maybe Gloria didn’t care if her soon-to-be ex-husband blew himself up or not. Maybe it would simplify things for her. Rusty just didn’t know the situation there, and it was always safe to assume the worst.

  “I will.” Still peering down into the bag, she said, “Why don’t you put your moonshine in a fruit jar like everybody else?”

  “Because I’m not a redneck. Whiskey doesn’t belong in a mason jar.”

  Gloria looked up, looked him right in the eye, like she was going to say something smart ass. Rusty didn’t give her the chance.

  He said, “I had a pint left. Is that enough?”

  “Yeah. If I drink it on an empty stomach.”

  Chapter 3

  Rusty spotted Ray’s pickup in the gravel parking lot on the other side of the café. He climbed the gentle slope and stepped into Gloria’s Café.

  Harriet worked the register, was chattering on to a couple patrons, adding up their bill. She looked past them when she caught sight of Rusty.