The Coggins’s small house smelled of medical balms and lavender candles. Television, couch, end tables, recliner, coffee table, all lined the wall with geometric precision. There were no bookshelves, but doilies aplenty, plus wooden wall plaques laden with homilies: Worry Ends Where Faith in God Begins, Faith Makes Things Possible, Not Easy, If You’re Smoking in Here, You Better Be on Fire, and so forth. A painting of Christ hung above the couch, the frame plastic, with a small nameplate at the bottom saying Jesus of Nazareth.
Miz Berlea Coggins was a skinny and plain-faced woman in her late thirties, a prominent mole adjoining her nose and a mouth that appeared to have come direct from sucking a lemon.
Miz Coggins’s father, Mooney Coggins, peered from around a corner, a wizened man in an electric wheelchair, oxygen tank in back, plastic tube running to his nostrils. I saw him grabbing glances at Cherry’s hindquarters as if branding it in his memory – for which I could find no fault – but his teeth remained civil.
When Cherry asked about Tandee Powers, the old man gave me a twisted leer. He began opening and closing his hand, holding it high to make sure I noticed. Thinking dementia, I turned back to Cherry and Miz Coggins, the latter’s mouth tight as she answered Cherry’s question.
“I dunno I should say such a thing about poor Tandee. Ain’t nothing can be done about things now, let her rest in peace.”
“Miss Coggins, you know me. It’s not my place to hurt someone’s reputation, but to find out who killed Miz Powers.”
Berlea Coggins went to an old spinet piano, a bible resting on top. She touched the book as if drawing solace, then turned, her eyes down.
“It was a dozen years back or so. Tandee led the church home-school committee, and I was secretary. There was a meeting with a sister congregation down in Franklin, Tennessee. The church sent Tandee and me, bought us a room at the Red Roof Inn.”
Her hands began to fidget, like she was knitting with invisible yarn. “Tandee and me had supper with the other church folks, but the big home-school meeting came the next day, so we went to our room for bed. When we was getting undressed Tandee started talking about … about men and what they liked to do.”
“Sex?”
“Just jokey gossip. We put on our nightgowns and Tandee kept talking about how a man she used to know would sneak on up behind her and try and, uh, slide his hands over her … her …” Miz Coggins turned crimson.
“Her bosom?” Cherry said.
“Yes. And then she … Tandee … showed what happened.”
“She touched you?” Cherry asked.
“It didn’t seem so awful, both us being ladies and all. I was laughing cuz it was funny how men try and get their way with ladies.”
“What happened next?” Cherry asked.
“Tandee dropped to her knees and yanked up my night gown. She tried to kiss me on my … my womanness. I pushed her away and told her if she didn’t leave me be, I was going to run down the hall screaming.”
“What happened?”
“We never spoke of it again. We hardly ever spoke to one another, neither.”
I stepped away to give Cherry some woman-to-woman time with Miz Coggins. I walked past the old man, nodding politely. The clasping hand had returned to his side. He thumbed a button and the wheelchair whirred back against the wall.
“Hey, boy,” his voice hissed to my back. “C’mere.”
I turned. Cherry was still engaged with Miz Coggins. I went to the wizened old gent. One blue-white claw of a hand waved me closer and I leaned down until we were face to face.
“That Cherry woman’s sure got a high round ass on her, ain’t she? You tapping that keg, boy? Goddamn, I would. I’d slurp it up like a three-scoop sundae.”
“Excuse me, sir. I have to go make some notes.”
I had three steps between us when the old guy cackled out a whisper. “I knew that lady y’all are talking about, Miz Powers. I knew her inside and out, you get my drift.”
I turned, walked back. “Sounds like you knew her pretty well, sir.”
His eyes lit with humor. “Tandee Powers had one a these on her.” He did the strange hand motion again, opening and closing it rapidly. “That’s how Tandee’s pussy was,” he grinned. “It just kept goin’ and goin’, like that battery bunny on them commercials. Man or woman, didn’t make no difference. Just keep that pussy working. Weren’t many people know that about Tandee Powers, but I did.”
“May I ask how?”
He stuck out his tongue, unfurling an appendage rivaling Gene Simmons’s taste organ. Had I been in water I would have run for the shore screaming alligator! The old guy let it dangle a few seconds, then slurped it back between his lips. He wiped his mouth on his shoulder and grinned up at me.
“This was when Tandee was in her thirties. I was twenny years older, but my pecker and tongue could party all night. Wanna see it again?”
“That’s OK. How often did you and Miz Powers see one another?”
He shivered his hand, meaning not much. “I was married back then, had to sneak around. My wife’d go off to visit her kin in Missouri and Tandee an’ me’d run up to the gamblin’ boats on the Ohio River, get a room. When me and Tandee got together, buddy, it was something to see and hear.”
“When was the last time you and Miz Powers were, uh, together?”
“Been over fifteen years.” He paused. “Tandee started gettin’ too nasty for me.”
One wrinkled claw was rubbing beside his zipper. I nodded my thanks and moved quickly away. Cherry had her hand on Miz Coggins’s shoulder as she passed over one of her cards. Ms Coggins nodded and retreated to the kitchen. Cherry and I let ourselves out. The fresh air was a welcome relief.
“You get anything else?” I asked her.
“Just what you heard: Tandee Powers was probably a lesbian.”
We got in the cruiser. Cherry fired up the motor. “Actually,” I said, “she was probably a nymphomaniac. Surreptitiously screwing a small group of the like-minded of either gender. Between appearances at church socials, of course.”
Her head spun to me. “Where’d that come from?”
I looked toward the house. The old man had whirred to the door in his scooter. He was parked at the threshold, winking at me, his hand tickling in his lap as he slurped that monster tongue in and out.
“I see you made a new friend,” Cherry said as she backed down the drive. “He seems happy you visited.”
“What’s the next step, Detective?” I asked when we’d put a couple miles between us and the tongue.
“I want to make sure I get everything tight for Bob, I mean Agent Dray. So I’m heading back to Sonny Burton’s crime scene to make sure there’s nothing I missed.”
“Deep in the woods, right?” I didn’t like the idea of Cherry alone in the forest with a psychopath on the loose. There had been cases of law officers being stalked and cut down when the moment presented.
“I’ll be fine. Lee McCoy said he’d go along.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I said.
We arrived at Sonny Burton’s murder scene a half-hour later, back a long fire lane. The nearest house was a mile away, down a long hollow. Hemlocks soared above, filtering the light into a gentle yellow that turned