“Gertie’ll skin you alive if you eat that,” Buster said.
“What she don’t know won’t hurt her,” Willard replied.
“You think anything happens in this town that Gertie don’t find out about?”
“Pshaw.”
I pulled up a chair for Hope, then sat down beside Buster.
Willard raised his hand. “Myrtle, darlin’, would you bring me a piece of that pie? And don’ you go lecturin’ me or lettin’ on to Gertie.”
“I won’t play no part in you killin’ yourself. I’ve got some nonfat yogurt in the back if you want somethin’ sweet.”
“Hell,” he grumbled. “Can’t get away with nothin’. My wife has spies all over town.”
After the waitress brought the yogurt, a Danish for Buster (who apparently had no wife watching his diet), and coffee for Hope and me, I started in again. “Were you all around during the late forties?”
“Hell, we’ve been here all our lives.” Buster took a swig of coffee. “Both of us have.”
“Any idea who Edsel Wortner was?”
Both men nodded. “He was a older German guy,” Willard said. “Some folks thought he was a spy during the war. Rumor had it he was sent to an internment camp.”
“What happened to his house?” I asked. “The records at the courthouse show he still owned it in 1948.”
“His daughter rented it out,” Willard said. “It was always run-down and trashy-looking.”
“Do you remember who lived there in September of 1948?”
“Ha! I can’t even remember whereIlived in September 1948.” Buster laughed loudly at his own joke.
“Why do you want to know?” asked Willard. He spit a mouthful of tobacco into a coffee can sitting on the table, wiped his mouth with the back of his red-splotched hand, then spooned a huge scoop of yogurt into his mouth.
“My great-uncle had a job that involved a lot of travel, and hehad a lady friend here,” Hope said. We’d discussed this on the trip from the courthouse; I’d advised Hope that older folks in Mississippi were so intrinsically polite they might be reluctant to talk about the scandalous behavior of a young woman’s direct ancestor, so she might get better results framing the story around a more distant relative. She pulled out a picture of her grandfather—one of the few she’d found that fully showed his face. It showed a young man gazing at the camera with a tender expression—no doubt because he was in love with the photographer. “He was a drinker and a rounder. The lady ended up having his baby.”
“My, my, my—a real soap opera of a situation,” Willard said.
Hope nodded. “We’re trying to find out what happened to the baby. The problem is, we don’t know the mother’s name. When we found the dog tag with the address, well, we thought it might be a clue.”
Buster squinted at the photo. “I don’t recognize him.”
Willard took the photo, looked at it, and shook his head. “I’ll tell you who might—Darlene Lynch. She’s in the nursing home on Elm Street.”
“Yeah.” Buster nodded. “Darlene might know.”
“She was the hostess at the Red Lantern honky-tonk out on the highway,” Willard said.
“What’s the connection to the Wortner place?” I asked.
“It was kind of a flop house within walking distance of the bar,” Buster explained. “When customers were too drunk to go home or needed a private place to hoochy-cooch...” He cast Hope an apologetic look. “Pardon my French, ma’am. Anyway, the Red Lantern put ’em up there. For a fee, of course.”
“Is Darlene still in her right mind?” I asked.
“Don’t rightly know. Probably as right as it ever was.” Willard looked at Buster, who let out a loud guffaw. “Just know she’ll be easy to spot. She’s always had a tower of flame-red hair.”
Hope’s face lit up. “Thank you. Thank you very much!”
It worried me, how optimistic Hope looked. She seemed to think this was all going to work out.
