Smith's Monthly #18 Read online

  When Innis went shopping to get ready for the Packers-Rams game, he never expected to meet one of them aliens.

  But he also never expected to meet a woman who ate beans either.

  A strange supermarket romance. Are there any others?

  ME AND BEANS AND GREAT BIG MELONS

  I have never thought, wondered, or even pondered the idea of having a supermarket love affair. If I had, I certainly wouldn’t have thought it would start and end in front of the green beans. I’m the kind of guy who really doesn’t eat green beans, red beans, black beans, or any other color bean. I’m not prejudiced in my bean selection. I pretty much just hate them all equally.

  And I flat don’t understand how anyone could even eat the things.

  I met my supermarket lover as I tried to figure out which Hamburger Helper would work for the night. I was an expert in Hamburger Helpers and all the different incarnations of the stuff. I could almost make it without looking at the box. Almost.

  “Excuse me,” a soft, husky voice said.

  I jerked around, realizing that my cart and my body had made an effective roadblock in the aisle. And I hadn’t even set up any detour signs.

  A woman stood there with one of those yellow baskets for small amounts of stuff. Just like me, she was wearing jeans and a blue tee-shirt, but unlike me she also had a brown purse over her shoulder.

  The purse, oddly enough, accented the wonderful color of her hair. I wondered if she had bought the purse because of that, or changed the color of her hair to match the purse. It was a question I would never think to ask any woman, even a woman I didn’t know.

  But yet, for some reason, she had made me think of it. I made a note to myself mentally to write down the weird supermarket moment. I hoped to be a writer in the future, when I could find the time, and often made notes about things that might come in handy in a story some day.

  I found myself attracted to this woman wanting to get past me, and I did an instant inventory of her appearance.

  Before I was laid off down at Sears, I had done lots of inventories of the warehouse, and had become known as “Innis, the Inventory King.” I had decided one day to practice the same craft on women I met, and grocery stores were great places, full of inventory.

  Using my skills, I instantly looked her over while moving my cart out of her way. She wore a loose blue tee-shirt with nothing written on it, tight jeans, and expensive tennis shoes. Total inventory cost of two hundred bucks. She had on no jewelry at all, not even an earring. She was an easy inventory subject.

  Miss Brown-Hair-Yellow-Basket: Two hundred bucks.

  “Sorry,” I said, as I finished my inventory and cart moving at the same time, leaving the cart in front of the green beans, never thinking that she might actually be trying to get to that area. If I didn’t eat green beans, no one else did I was sure.

  My first wife had called that self-centered-universe attitude my defining characteristic. I had considered that a compliment and still do.

  “No problem,” the brown-haired, two-hundred-dollar-woman said, giving me a wonderful, bright smile as she moved past me. The aroma of fresh soap caught me and I stared at her from behind for a moment, first watching her long hair move against her matching purse, then her ass under her tight jeans.

  I had always been an ass man, staring at woman’s asses before any other body part if the chance arose. This woman had a stareable ass, of that there was no doubt. Really tight.

  A stareable tight ass wasn’t worth anything on my inventory list, but it should be.

  She walked a few steps and stopped, looking at the canned vegetables.

  I went back to trying to decide which Hamburger Helper to pick to eat while the football game was on tonight. Packers against the Rams. Could be a real shouter.

  “Sorry to bother you again,” she said from behind me.

  I turned around to look into the deepest green eyes I had seen in a long time. If all women had eyes like her, I would shift to being an eye-man instead of an ass-man.

  She pointed at the bean section that my cart was blocking.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said, moving to pull the cart out of her way for the second time. “I didn’t think anyone ate that stuff.”

  She laughed. “Usually I like my beans fresh. But when I can’t get them fresh, I make do with canned.”

  Usually I’m not real honest with the women I meet, but this woman ate beans and had annoyed me by making me move my cart twice in the middle of my Hamburger Helper shopping. So I said the first thing that came to mind.

  “I’m that way with women,” I said. “When I can’t find the fresh stuff, I resort to the canned as well.”

  She stared at me for a moment.

  I returned her stare.

  The faint store music went away; the sounds of the other shoppers went away. It was a movie moment.

  Of course, I had no doubt this movie moment was going to end with the woman walking off in a huff. At least then I could watch her ass and get back to my shopping.

  But she surprised me.

  Suddenly her smile returned, followed by the richest, deepest laugh I had heard in a long time. It echoed off the cans of corn and surrounded me, pushing me back against the shelf of Hamburger Helper.

  “Now that’s an opening line I’ve never heard before,” she said after she caught a breath from the laughter.

  “Opening for what?” I asked.

  She smiled. “My legs.”

  I looked her right in the eye. “Now tell me why I would want to get between the legs of a woman who eats beans?”

  Again I was serious, and again she stared at me, stunned into a second movie moment right there on aisle four.

  Then she damned near lost a lung laughing that wonderful laugh of hers. I guess to her I was a real laugh-a-minute kind of guy.

  She finally caught her breath and stared at me, her bright smile lighting up everything.

  “Well?” I asked. “I’m waiting for my reason.”

  “Because,” she said, “beans go well with franks at a picnic.”

  She stepped forward and grabbed my crotch, never letting her green-eyed gaze drop from mine.

  She rubbed me through my jeans a few times as again we were having a movie moment, only this time it was a sex scene right there in front of the Hamburger Helper. I doubted I was ever going to be able to eat Hamburger Helper without a hard-on again.

  “I assume little Frank here wouldn’t mind a picnic in the park.”

  “His name is Ben,” I said as she kept rubbing. “Big Ben. And he likes melons on his picnics.”

  “I think that could be arranged,” she said, rubbing one small, tight breast against my arm. Whatever she had thought, that wasn’t a melon. More like an apple.

  “Any other menu items?” she asked.

  Any man with a woman rubbing his crotch on aisle four of a grocery store might have trouble answering a question like that. I didn’t. “A television to watch the game while I eat.”

  Her hand came away from my crotch like Big Ben had lit a match and burnt her. She stared at me, then said, “My ex-husband would have rather watched television than make love to me.”

  “Did he like Hamburger Helper?” I asked, adjusting Ben a little to ease the tension of tight underwear.

  “Yeah,” she said, clearly upset at my request for a television at her picnic.

  “Figures,” I said.

  Now she was starting to get angry. A moment ago she was offering me a picnic, basket, apples, and all. Now she was mad. I had never had a woman mad at me on aisle four in a grocery store before. Two things new in one day, both on the same aisle. I would really have to write this down for the story I would do some day.

  “And why does it figure?” she demanded, as if I owed her an answer just because she had given Big Ben a quick rubbing.

  I shrugged. “You eat beans.”

  She made a choking sound, grabbed two cans of green beans, held them up for me to see like she was giving
me the finger, put them in her little yellow basket, and walked off.

  I watched her ass until she turned the corner and disappeared toward aisle five. Because her ass was so nice and tight, and her hand had felt so good on Big Ben, I thought for a moment about following her. But I knew there was nothing I could say to her to calm her down.

  Besides, she ate beans. I hated beans, and no amount of Big Ben rubbing was going to erase that difference.

  Also, if I spent time dealing with her over on aisle five, it might carry on to aisle six, and then even into the frozen food section on aisle eight, and if that happened I might miss the opening kick-off.

  No bean-eating woman with a nice ass was worth missing the kick-off to a Packers-Rams game. Even if she had offered Ben an offer he had trouble refusing.

  It seemed that my supermarket love affair had started and ended on aisle four.

  I went back to trying to figure out which Hamburger Helper to get, finally picked up just the standard, and headed for aisle two where the Pabst Blue-Ribbon Beer lived and breathed and waited for me. No Hamburger Helper football game dinner was complete without Pabst.

  I turned the corner onto the aisle. There was a short woman with a nice ass and short red hair parked right in front of the Pabst. She was studying the beer on the other side of the aisle as if reading labels would make the stuff any better.

  I knew right off she was an alien, off one of them big ships from some other planet that had landed a year or so ago. All the alien women that I had seen on Fox News had short, bright-red hair and great bodies.

  There had been hundreds of thousands of them, and all the countries of the world welcomed them to live. After awhile, they weren’t even headlines anymore unless one of them got drunk and punched a cop or something.

  The aliens had said they had come in friendship and just wanted to learn about us, but I had read stuff, and I knew better. More than likely they were going to kidnap us all and take us away and make dinner out of us.

  But still, alien or not, she was standing in front of the Pabst and I had a game to watch.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  She turned to look at me, a puzzled look on her very human but very alien face.

  Her dark eyes were like magnets, swirling pink and orange and brown. They held me with some unseen force. She was dressed in jeans and a blue tee-shirt, just like I was. Just like Miss Brown Hair had been. Only instead of apples in the tee-shirt orchard, she sprouted the biggest melons I had ever seen, especially for an alien as short as she was.

  I did a quick inventory. Same as Miss-Brown-Purse. Two hundred bucks. It seemed it was two-hundred-dollar-woman-day in the supermarket.

  “Yes?” she asked. “Can I help you?”

  Very formal, like the secretary at my doc’s office. But oh, Miss-Alien-With-Melons’ voice could melt grease in a cold frying pan.

  I pointed to the beer. “Hamburger Helper and a hand job are never complete without Pabst.”

  For some reason it was my day to be honest with women. And aliens it seemed. Maybe someone had put something in the grocery store air to make me do it. Or maybe it was the excitement of a good football game that was causing it. I would have to think about it later, after the game, if I could stay awake long enough to do so.

  She kept staring at me, then slowly smiled as she moved aside. “Aren’t you forgetting one thing?” she asked.

  “What’s that?” I asked, figuring an insult to be next out of her mouth. Something about the rudeness of humans in social situations and that we all needed alien training or something. I grabbed my half case of beer and placed it next to the Hamburger Helper.

  “A good Packers-Rams game.”

  Now it was my turn to stare at her like she was a winning lotto ticket. I didn’t know alien women watched American football. Fox News had never mentioned anything like that. Maybe there was hope for all of us after all.

  So, with that encouragement, I went ahead and asked the all-important question.

  “Do you eat beans?”

  She made a face. “Are you kidding? No human or alien should eat those things.”

  “Good,” I said. “How’s your ass?”

  She turned around to show me, then said, “Engineered to be as tight as they make them. How’s your big fella?”

  “Big,” I said.

  She smiled and I smiled back.

  I loved those alien eyes.

  Then after my third or fourth movie moment of the shopping trip, this time right there in front of the beer, I stuck out my hand. “I’m Innis. I count things and hope to write stories.”

  She took my hand, her smooth skin sending wonderful warm sensations through my body right there in the cold beer section.

  “Here on your planet, in your language, I’m called Melody,” she said. “I’m not from around here. I rub things and hope to paint things. And if we don’t hurry we’re going to miss the kick-off. How big is your screen?”

  Her eyes seemed to swirl and she smiled with that question.

  “Sixty inches,” I said, proud of the moment I could say that to an alien woman.

  She smiled even wider and then reached down and touched Big Ben through my jeans. “Sixty inches, huh? Mind if I join you? I’ll buy the hamburger.”

  “Deal,” I said, enjoying the fact that Ben was getting a work-out right there in the supermarket.

  She put a second half-case of Pabst in my cart, left her empty cart in front of the other beer, and helped me push mine to the meat section, letting one of her wonderful large melons rub firmly against my hand.

  It pleased me that she hadn’t intended on sharing my Pabst. I really had to know a woman, or an alien for that matter, before I let that happen. Even if she was sharing her melons.

  On the way past aisle six, we passed Miss Brown-Hair-And-Matching-Purse, who gave me a very, very long and angry look.

  “Wow, what is her problem?” Melody asked, turning with me to watch the angry woman walk away. “Besides the fact that she has a tight ass.”

  “Very tight,” I said, agreeing. “But she hates football and eats beans.”

  “Oh, that explains it,” Melody said, shaking her head. “One of my people’s biggest puzzles about your planet is how anyone could eat beans. They are poison to us. It may be a mystery we will never solve.”

  I was starting to really like these aliens.

  “Let me know if you do,” I said.

  “The moment we figure it out,” she said, laughing a high laugh that sounded very off-worldish. With that, me and my first alien supermarket lover headed for the check-out counter and a Hamburger Helper football game.

  The retired Las Vegas detectives in the Cold Poker Gang work hard to solve cold cases. Sometimes, those cases bring back personal nightmares.

  Deciding to tackle one of the coldest cold cases in the files, retired detectives Lott, Rogers, and Andor uncover far more than simple murder, and possibly the worst serial killer ever.

  A twisted mystery that will keep you reading to the last page.

  CALLING DEAD

  A Cold Poker Gang Novel

  For Kris.

  Thanks for all the positive support while I battled this to the end.

  All characters and places in this novel are fictional. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely by chance and not intended.

  Calling Dead is when a poker player calls a bet that the player has no chance of winning.

  PART ONE

  The Deal

  PROLOGUE

  August 7th, 2000

  9:30 A.M.

  In the desert outside of Las Vegas, Nevada

  DETECTIVE BAYARD LOTT stood in the old mine tunnel, staring at the eleven dead women sitting in a neat row on the dirt floor in front of him. Lott had his hands on his hips and was doing his best to keep his breathing level.

  And failing.

  Not easy. Not easy at all with such a horrific sight.

  The tunnel was supported by square and
rough wooden pillars about a foot or so apart and not much more than six feet over the hard-dirt floor. The timbers looked old and very dry and some had visible rot on the edges. Dirt and dust filtered down in around the timbers with almost every sound.

  It felt to Lott as if the entire thing might come down at any moment. He had always hated enclosed, tight spaces, and this mine was not helping that hatred in any way.

  In fact, what he wanted to do was just turn and get out of there, but the bodies in front of him made that impossible.

  He was only ten paces inside the boarded-up entrance. The light from the bright day outside helped his flashlight illuminate the scene clearly, while at the same time casting strange and odd-shaped deep black shadows that made the dead women seem even more horrific, if that was possible.

  The heat had to be over a hundred inside the tunnel and the air felt used and contaminated with the death he faced. He was sweating, even though the August day outside hadn’t gotten that hot yet. It would, later in the afternoon. He couldn’t imagine staying in this mine very long now, let alone in the high heat of the desert summer day.

  He knew that going deeper underground was cooler, but not this close to the surface in this kind of intense desert heat. This felt more like the interior of a closed-up car.

  The smell was like a musty dry cloth that had gone sour. The stench clogged everything in Lott’s senses, which was part of why he was breathing through his mouth instead of his nose.

  Beside him, his partner, Detective Andor Williams, took slow, loud breaths through his mouth as well.

  Andor was shorter than Lott’s six feet by five inches, but was a bit wider. Standing side-by-side, they almost touched both sides of the mine walls with their shoulders. Lott’s head was only a few inches under the closest timber holding up the dirt above and he had walked bent over to just get this far inside.

  Now, seeing what was in here, neither one of them had wanted to take a step farther than what they had already done.