F Is for Fugitive

attention aside from that. Two stools over, a woman in her fifties looked on with a sloppy smile. I pegged her as Shana Timberlake, in part because no other woman in the bar looked old enough to have had a teenage daughter seventeen years before.
    At ten, the bikers cleared out, motorcycles rocketing off down the street with diminishing thunder. The jukebox was between selections, and for a moment a miraculous silence fell across the bar. Someone said, "Whew, Lord!" and everybody laughed. There were maybe ten of us left in the place, and the tension level dropped to some more familial feel. This was Tuesday night, the local hangout, the equivalent of the basement recreation room at a church, except that beer was served. There was no hard liquor in evidence and my guess was that any wine on the premises was going to come from a jug the size of an oil drum, with about that much finesse.
    The man on the stool next to mine on the right appeared to be in his sixties. He was big, with a beer belly that protruded like a twenty-five-pound bag of rice. His face was broad, connected to his neck by a series of double chins. There was even a roll of fat at the back of his neck where graying hair curled over his shirt collar. I'd seen him flick a curious look in my direction. The others in the bar seemed known to one another, judging from the banter, which had largely to do with local politics, old sporting grievances, and how drunk someone named Ace had been the night before. The sheepish Ace, tall, thin, jeans, denim jacket, and baseball cap, took a lot of ribbing about some behavior of his with old Betty, whom he'd apparently taken home with him. Ace seemed to revel in the accusations of misconduct, and since Betty wasn't present to correct the impression, everyone assumed that he'd gotten laid.
    "Betty's his ex-wife," the man next to me said, in one of those casual asides meant to include me in the merriment. "She kicked him out four times, but she always takes him back. Yo, Daisy. How about some peanuts down here?"
    "I thought that was Pearl," I remarked, to keep the conversation alive.
    "I'm Curtis Pearl," he said. "Pearl to my friends."
    Daisy scooped what looked like a dog dish full of peanuts from a garbage pail under the bar. The nuts were still in the shell, and the litter on the floor suggested what we were meant to do. Pearl surprised me by chomping down a peanut, shell and all. "We're talkin' fiber here," he said. "It's good for you. I got a doctor believes in cellulose. Fills you up, he says. Gets the old system powerin' through."
    I shrugged and tried it myself. No doubt about it, the shell had a lot of crunch and a sharp infusion of salt mingled nicely with the bland taste of the nut inside. Did this count as grain, or was it the same as eating the panel from a cardboard box?
    The jukebox sparked to life again, this time a mellow vocalist who sounded like a cross between Frank Sinatra and Delia Reese. The two women at the end of the bar began to dance again. Both were dark-haired, both slim. One taller. Pearl turned to look at them and then back at me. "That bother you?"
    "Why should I care?"
    "Not what it looks like anyway," he said. "Tall one likes to dance when she's feeling blue."
    "What's she got to be unhappy about?"
    "They just picked up the fellow killed her little girl a few years back."

Chapter 7
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    I watched her for a moment. At a distance of half the bar, she looked twenty-five. She had her eyes closed, head tilted to one side. Her face was heart-shaped, her hair caught up in a clip on top, the lower portion brushing across her shoulder in a rhythm with the ballad. The light from the jukebox touched her cheek with gold. The woman she was dancing with had her back to me, so I couldn't tell anything about her at all.
    Pearl was sketching in the story for me with the practiced tone of frequent telling. No details I hadn't heard before, but I was thankful he'd introduced the subject without any further prompting on my part. He was just warming up, enjoying his role as tribal narrator. "You staying at the Ocean Street? I ask because this fella's dad owns that place."
    "Really," I said.
    "Yep. They found her down on the beach right in front," he said. Residents of Floral Beach had been telling this tale for years. Like a stand-up comedian, he had his timing down pat, knowing just when to pause, knowing just what response he'd get.
    I had to watch what I said because I didn't want to imply I knew nothing