First – Not one, but many old friends from my home state sent me this.
Second – I enjoy Ben Rehder’s Blanco County series. Very Hiaasen-esque. ( https://philh52.wordpress.com/2022/04/05/nvdt-random-another-book-review-3/ ) However, I agree with several “mainstream” reviewers who complained that often in these types of caper novels a likeable protagonist gets lost in the shuffle of characters and side plots. Even if the author comes close to tying it all up. The same can be said of Hiaasen. The truth is, I’m not sure Rehder’s lead protagonist is really my kind of “guy”. A very square, sincere, black and white, kind of socially awkward strong silent type game warden in central Texas. I wonder if more exposure might not overpower him and his cast of law enforcement buddies and a handful of repeater redneck ne’er do wells even more slovenly than Jimmy Pierce and Virgil Green from Sepia.
I mention all of that because Sepia began life as the dude who killed his buddy over being abandoned to be eaten by Bigfoot. But that character wasn’t one I wanted to follow around, nor did I think anyone else would. I started out with country/county cops, wireless video cameras, and a weaponless murder. I had no idea where it would go or who would come to play. “They” say if there’s a book you want to read and it’s not available, you should write it. Sepia is my version of some not as dumb as they sound country cops and the peripherals to a mystery murder.
Cutting Room Floor – What follows are the unedited backstory dumps that got yanked for one reason or another. Generally, for length or they got off in the weeds and I didn’t want to edit them at the time. Most of these will find their way back in, slimmed down, for the sake of continuity. You will be relieved to know this is only about half. I lost most from the first half when I reconfigured the cache for Ditto, not aware that such a move would zap everything in it. There are two bits about the Barrbie Jeep.
***
She stood back, arms crossed, waiting.
“Can’t be true or you wouldn’t be here. Much less with Barbie’s Jeep. Unless you did steal it and that’s a whopper you gotta tell.”
“It’s not a very pretty story.”
“Confession is good for the soul, or so the missionaries told us. If Indians were cars, know what kind missionaries would want us to be?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Convertibles.”
“Goddammit, Bash,” she snorted, “I’m trying to be serious here.”
“Nobody can be serious standing by a lifted, white with pink trim Barbied out Jeep Wrangler sitting on balloon beach tires. Clock’s running.”
“There was supposed to be a professional women’s beach volleyball league. In 2013, after the 2012 Olympics. Lots of hype, lots of promises, not much consumer interest. It folded after three games.” She released an arm to point at the Jeep. “This belonged to the league, or a sponsor, to this day no one knows exactly. I got an early earful of ‘Sorry, dolls, tear up your contracts. There’s no entity, no money, no league.’ I was supremely pissed, because they used us Olympic girls as unpaid promotional material for the league. When I found out it was done, and the checks bounced, I climbed in this Jeep with Jackie and drove it off.”
“Jackie being?”
“The girl in the Barbie Jeep poster. She was the only one of us who got paid anything. She didn’t want it,” again pointing at the Jeep. “I put it in a self-storage unit in California until I finished my Masters. Then I had a friend stick it in the back of a moving company van that was rolling this way with half a load. They dropped it, covered, at a truck stop west of the City. I bribed the manager with a hundred bucks to let it sit for a few days, wrangled a flatbed from a next-door neighbor of my parents’, hooked it to Dad’s truck, drove up and hauled the covered Jeep home between rolled bales of winter hay.”
“No one was paying attention because their checks were bouncing, too. There were, well, entities is a nicer word than shit heads, who wanted it, but had no idea where it was.”
“But people in California saw you drive it away.”
“Obviously they had no valid claim or couldn’t find it.”
“Every ‘entity’ shithead from the custom car shop who did it to one of the league honchos tried and none of them could prove they had any standing. The last one was Mattel, for the ponytail logo. Since no one could confuse this Jeep with a Mattel Jeep, and a female silver medal holder owning and driving this thing posed no threat of injury to their trademark…”
“That’s a bunch of lawyer speak. They all went away?”
She nodded, her upper lip pushed out by her tongue.
“We coulda used this at the river. It’s set up for beach runnin’. Is this what you meant by ”
***
Harden moved a stack of empty clay flowerpots, grabbed a broom from it’s resting place against the wall and swept leaves and funk off the two wood-slat rockers on Candi’s parents’ front porch, said “Pick your poison.” She chose the furthest from the steps. The Sheriff scooted his up, sat and propped his feet on the railing, accepted the cold beer she’d been holding. “You were sayin’?”
“When we got home from the Olympics and we were still, off balance I guess you’d say, there were promoters and managers everywhere. Volleyball isn’t swimming, or any other sport that makes headlines other than we got as far as we did, but everyone was buried under these people. What happened to us was we were pitched on a professional volleyball league. Sand and bikinis, sexist junk, but they were talking money, so most of us listened.”
“A publicity high, money talk and no time to think?”
“Exactly.” She took a drink, cradled the bottle between her legs. “There was a development time frame where we got paid just enough to stay on the hook if we lived on top of each other, but we were used to that. The Jeep was a part of the overall production and marketing. Half a dozen volleyball chicks in bikinis hanging off a white and pink Jeep, cruising the sand.”
“That’s hindsight talkin’.”
“I know. But in it, and this is going to sound cheap and pathetic…”
“It beat the hell outta goin’ to work?”
“Why am I telling you this?”
“Makin’ sure I don’t arrest you till I see the whole paper trail?”
“Possibly…”
“This ain’t gonna take all night, is it? ‘Cause all I need is the big picture.”
“No, the whole thing… I could draw that out for days. After all the smoke blowing and waiting and signing this and that contract complete with behavior standards and curfews and where and what was acceptable and representing the league at all times we got in four games of the first season. The checks started bouncing after game three. At game four they told us it wasn’t going to float, that it was our fault but the cameras were up and running and we had to play that fourth game or a dozen different factions with a hat in the thing could sue us.”
“You played?”
“We did. We all talked about what we were going to do to the bastards because we were suddenly broke, jobless, kiting checks ourselves and completely screwed over. I walked off the court, climbed in the Jeep and drove off. To this day, I can’t believe a camera didn’t follow me. But the broadcast crew’s checks were bouncing because the league’s checks bounced, so I drove off into the sunset in the Barbie Jeep unseen, unfilmed and unfollowed. I drove it across Ocean Boulevard into a garage size U-Store locker where I’d stashed everything I owned since I went full time Olympic practice. I moved some things around, parked it and dropped the door. I had a week left on the month to month for that place, and in California if you don’t pay on a month to month there’s no grace period. They auction the locker or dump your shit in the driveway. Which was good because I knew they’d come looking for me and the Jeep and I needed to get it gone in a hurry.”
“Okay. I see bein’ pissed, an drivin’ off in an asset. But it had to cost more to fight to keep it than it was worth.”
“I argued, or had it argued legally by a woman who came out of the woodwork, that a not quite finished and not street legal custom car wasn’t worth what they owed me, which was, the way I figured it and after some calculator work with the contract in front of me, was in the neighborhood of fifty-one thousand dollars.”
“For Volleyball? Sweet Jesus …” he whistled softly.
“That, and all the real and punitive for the bounced checks and other public embarrassment. And you have to realize they were only paying us about a third of our contractual per game, trying to keep the thing afloat without putting their own capital at risk and feeding us a line of shit about recoupable expenses at startup when that was nowhere in the contracts.”
“What you’re sayin, then, is you an your lawyer could cook up any figure you needed to make that Jeep look like chump change compared to what they owed you.”
“I think that was her leverage angle with everyone but the Barbie brand. With them, it was a cease and desist. My attorney’s ‘How can an upstanding Olympic Medalist driving a vehicle with only four small and one large pink silhouette logo and the word Barbie nowhere to be found possibly be bad for their image’ argument won them over. We went to their West Coast office, shook hands with a bunch of people shorter than me, everyone smiled big, phony, toothy smiles and they dropped the last suit.”
“This attorney of yours a female?”
Candi nodded
“She resemble Barbie any kinda way?”
“Down to the ponytail.”
“Women ever get organized, us men are a buncha screwed pooches. I’d ask how you managed to transport a highly recognizable stolen object halfway across the country, but I don’t think I wanna know.”
“In the empty back end of a partially loaded moving van. And a midnight transfer in Kansas where it got tarp-covered on a flatbed trailer behind a Dually Dodge that belonged to the man watching us from his porch down the street.”
“Now Candi, what’d I just say?”
“Couldn’t help it. Now you know. Most of it, anyway. Besides, Chief, removal of property for relief of a contractual debt, without intent to deprive the owner of their property for my personal gain isn’t considered theft. I’m actually not a crook.”
“You know, Cotton, outta everything you told me tonight, that’s what I most needed to hear.”
***
Candi exited the elevator in the parking garage of her condo, a thick, satiny garment bag draped over her arm that went to Bash and a rolling suitcase that went to Ivy. She clicked a key fob and halfway down the aisle, a shiny, black ten-year-old Lexus SUV lit up.
With one hand on the lift gate and the suitcase loaded, she checked Bash. “No comments?”
“Not what I’d have put you in, but…”
“But you have no idea what you’d have put me in?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“It belonged to my mother.” The liftgate closed.
“Interesting. This one have the original GPS and the shifter in the middle of the dash?”
“Yes. If you can call this,” she made a small square with her thumbs and forefingers, “a display. Next?”
“I’m surprised is all. After what I’ve heard about your parents.”
“So was I. My mother drove dad’s five-year-old hand-me-downs. He bought a new car every five years. He died and instead of selling her Ford and driving his, she traded them both in on a loaded Japanese luxury SUV. Hang the dress bag on the passenger side, if you would.” She walked off down the driver’s side, stopped. “Unless you have more questions?”
“One,” reaching in the back door Ivy held open. “When was the last time you took what’s in here to the dry cleaners?”
“That’s important because?”
“My arm’s gonna smell too good for me to go in anywhere usual on the way back without gettin’ my ass kicked,” Ivy, wrinkled eyebrows and nose,. kicked his ankle. “So, uh, if you see me sittin’ on the side of the road with a gas can be kind enough to stop, will ya?”
***
“You look some worried, Chief,” Betty set a freshly reloaded cup of coffee on the desk. “Those two got you bothered? Her takin’ off outta here like a scalded cat, him trottin’ over to the courthouse to see what happened?”
“You’re a mind reader.”
“That’s why I get the big bucks. Nothin’ you can do. Times like this I pray.”
“Times like this, I wonder would it help? You know how you take one a them little jars a salsa home from Lucia’s an let it sit a few days in the fridge an you go to open it an the damn top blows across the kitchen? That’s what I’m worried about. They’re the mirror image of each other. All bottled up sportsmanship ethics and half-cocked middle fingers aimed at injustice an not enough goddam patience between ‘em to keep a fat cat’s eye on a lazy bird.”
“Heard that one as a sunbathin’ coon hound on a fat squirrel. Anyhow, he seems to be holdin’ his own, keepin’ the lid on. An that poor girl’s just dyin’ to talk to somebody, be around somebody who’s country themselves, but’ve seen the big bad world and have the same taste in their mouth over it. I figure it’s him. Birds of a feather, like you said.”
“You’re not worried?”
“Nah. An you shouldn’t be. What was it, ‘sportsmanship ethics’? They figure out it’s them against the world and not each other? All you’ll need to do is to keep your handle on the brake so they don’t go vigilante together over the price of free-range eggs at the farmers’ market.”
“You reckon?”
“I just told you. You gonna drink that coffee, Sheriff, or do I need to reload it? Again.”
***
“Daddy, you know the only thing I wish? I wish you’d have stopped Momma from sayin’ that ‘my youngest’ nonsense every time she introduced me. The way she says it, you know, like you can hear her eyes rollin’. ‘This is Ivy, my youngest’. Like I’m some sorta lost cause failure and there’s this whole passel of her other Green kids out there that’re all doctors and lawyers and the like.”
“Ivy, if I’d a knowed, or you’d a said…”
“Daddy, you never could tell momma squat. But I don’t hold that as any sorta fault of yours ‘cause nobody ‘cept a man throwin’ money at her could ever tell momma nothin’. I guess I’m sayin’ I wish somebody’d been able to tell her to stop trippin’ on me. You know what Ms. Cotton calls it? Appropriation.”
“I don’t think I…”
“It means people using you to enhance their fabrications, make themselves look better so people will think more of ‘em.”
“Sounds like bullyin’. But you gotta understand, some people’re just mean natured. Not completely, not like a man kicks a dog or beats a woman for jollies, but how they gotta be better’n you. I put up with plenty a that with Jimmy. Weren’t really no hard feelin’s, he just made it a point to make me feel stupid, so he’d feel better.”
“Accepting it still don’t make it right. And the worst part is momma’s not the only one.”
“No?”
“No. That goddam Aiden, telling everybody he’s my boyfriend an all that. An even Jimmy, his own daddy, goin’ on like it’s true. Just like momma. Droppin’ me inside their trips like I’m some kinda footstool or somethin’.”
“Now you’re wishing somebody’d tell ‘em all? As a nobody sittin’ here, I’m bettin’ that lady policeman could shut ‘em all the hell up. If you were to ask her. An she just might, for you. But I reckon you don’t want that.”
“I guess not. But there’s times it’d nice.”
“Then as your daddy, an a sorry one I am for not seein’ this botherin’ you nor sayin’ nothin’ when you was comin’ up that’d help, an seein’ as how now you ain’t so inclined as to let it run off like water on a duck. An seein’ as you’re grown to a point and lived with that woman we call your momma, here’s what I have to say. Next time somebody pulls their shit on you, you hold up a hand an stop ‘em in the middle, or maybe you gotta punch ‘em in the face to get their attention, and when you have it you say, ‘Who said you could drag me into your bullshit? Stop fuckin’ with me or I’ll start fuckin’ back.’ Might not hurt none to take some karate lessons, but most times just bein’ in their face sayin’ your piece is enough.”
***
“I understand. Believe me, I do. I’ve lived like a refugee since I left my parents’ house.”
“I don’t think you could sell The Rose, or your’s and Carson Locke’s luxe condo as refugee camps to anyone with less than a boatload of money.”
“Carson and I are not—”
“Didn’t say you were. Don’t think you would, hope you wouldn’t, but his name pops on your address.”
“Why would you be looking up my address?”
“I remembered reading a case report about him, written by you as both eyewitness and investigator. Yesterday I went back to it. I ran the address and surprise! Carson Locke and Candi Cotton, involved in an event that occurred outside a residence you share ownership of.”
“That wasn’t an answer for ‘why’.”
“Before I wasn’t a BIA cop anymore, I got tagged as a local security asset to hold hands with the State Troopers assigned to protect that waste of skin when he was campaigning over on the wild side of the interstate. Twice.”
“You don’t have a very high opinion of him.”
“Your politics are your own. For me, the man’s a three-time loser, for good reason. He needs to be absorbed back into the trust fund or get a real job.”
“My comment was a statement, not a question. I’m not much of a fan, either.”
“Yeah? Couldn’t prove it by the pictures. You think hangin’ your future on Locke might be part of your ‘compatibility’ problem with the job?”
“I wasn’t ‘hanging’ anything on him, and this conversation isn’t going anywhere near where I wanted it to go. I was trying to empathize.”
“With?”
“Your… austerity. Don’t start it again. Furnished doesn’t necessarily imply comfort.”
“Is this the ‘alone in a crowd’ justification?”
“Goddam, you are the perpetual ass buster. NO. The Rose is designed to imply homey-ness. But it’s manufactured, it’s not me. I make a lousy guest because I know who designed it the way they did and why. The condo is the same. Just the right couch, the right amount of complementary metal, leather, glass and textiles. The right rugs, the right… everything. Being there isn’t being home. It’s a place to live. Convenient arm candy slash hostess was the price I paid to have a nice place a few blocks from the statehouse where Carson could throw evening networking hors devores parties for lobbyists and local party leaders. The trouble was they all liked his shrimp cocktail better than they liked him.”
“You mean they liked your shrimp cocktail better than they liked him.”
“I never cooked for him. I don’t cook for me. And I damn sure didn’t walk around with a drink tray or a plate of designer meatballs. I said, ‘How do you do’ and ‘How nice to meet you,’ and ‘Have you met so and so’ and held the same drink for a couple of hours till it was over.”
“You’re either a champion cheapskate or a lightweight.”
“It wasn’t my money, Bash, I just… Are you laughing? God dammit. You are!”
“Look, you floated ‘arm candy’ out there like nobody would nail you for it.”
***
“I don’t have much to do at the non-profit during the summer. What I have to say is seasonal. Colleges in fall and pre-graduation. Young and old after Christmas.”
“‘Don’t Let Your Parents Fuck You Up is a college tour?”
“There you go with that shit-eating grin. I have a niche that works for young women, and men, out on their own for the first time, or have been on their own and are having trouble with the baggage. Colleges, institutional giants, public and private schools, fraternities, sororities, Chambers of Commerce…”
“So these ‘institutions’ pay you to make it look like they’re conscientious.”
“My take on that is ‘Yes, probably.’ But if I get just one Ivy Green out of a weekend, I did something valuable for someone’s life.”
“Who did it for you?”
“No one. That’s why I’m doing it for anyone who lives with their crazy parents in their back pocket and will listen.”
Not Very Deep Thoughts 