“Still a Lincoln-Mercury man after all these years, huh?” Eileen noted as she looked around the cockpit of the Continental, Mason’s assets firmly within her grip.

Mason took his eyes off the road long enough to glance over at Eileen.  “I still have a thing for Continentals and Cougars.”  The double meaning was not lost on her, nor was the tighter grip lost on Mason McCullough.

“I’m looking forward to seeing your new place.  I’ve heard you pulled out all the stops and the place is gorgeous,” Eileen said as the Mason’s Continental Mark VI made its way west out of Fort Stockton and towards the ranch he called home.

“Still getting used to it.  Probably made it bigger than I needed it to be.”  Mason told her.  Truth be told, he was probably just as happy in the barn surrounded by his growing collection of cars, books, and bourbon.  It didn’t make sense for a man of his means to be living in a barn, though.  That’s what the accountants told him, anyway.

“Does it have a pool?” Eileen asked, tightening her grip.

Mason never knew exactly what to expect with Eileen.  He was at a loss as to how to respond to many of the things she said, much less those she did.  He nodded in the affirmative regarding the pool.

Perry told me you and Franklin bought the old place I grew up in,” she said.  “What were you thinking?”

“It seemed like a good investment.  The old place was wasting away.  An eyesore, really.  It’s still not turning a profit as far as cash flow, but give it time.”  Mason was wondering what she was actually getting at.  “With your sudden appearance back in town, bookings at Parker Oaks B & B have gone through the roof.  Maybe that’ll make it turn the corner.”

“Perry said you dug the whole damn place up during renovations.  Were you looking for my dear old stepdad?”  Eileen smiled as she asked.  Her grip on Mason’s manhood, coupled with the bluntness of the question, caused him to inadvertently swerve off to the shoulder of the road.  Corrective measures had to be taken to get the opera windowed-coupe back onto the blacktop safely.

“We put in an irrigation system.  Lots of landscaping.  You know.”  Mason seemed to be stammering a good bit.  Eileen just laughed.

“Did you find the gun in the attic?  Up above the garage?  Surely you had a look up there, too, right?”  Eileen was enjoying making Mason squirm, physically and mentally.

“No gun.”  Mason answered quickly.

“But you looked, didn’t you?” Eileen shot back.

“Maybe.” he replied.

“My mother told me it was up there.  She said my father put it up there about the same time she found out she was pregnant with me.  She had no idea why, but found it when she was looking for Christmas decorations.  Never said anything to my dad about finding it.”  Eileen released her grasp and slid back over to the far end of the grey pleated leather front seat and gazed out the passenger window.  The Southwest Texas landscape in the moonlight was still as haunting to her as it had ever been.

“She told me about the gun and said if I ever needed it, that’s where it would be.  She was referencing my stepfather without coming right out and saying it.  I thought about it a time or two.  In the end, it was easier to just go to Fort Worth than it was to the attic.  It took more effort to get into TCU than it would have to kill the son-of-a-bitch.”  Eileen had a tone in her voice that Mason had rarely heard before.

“I’m guessing one of the renters or squatters that lived in the old place probably found it before we did.”  Mason glanced over towards Eileen.  “Who knows.  Who cares?” she replied.

“Exactly.”  

They were each quiet till they got to Mason’s place.

Mason was anxious to get inside as soon as they pulled up to the house.  Eileen had worked him up into a pretty healthy lather on the drive from town.  Being a tour guide was not the first thing on his mind.  However, Eileen was nothing if not a master at prolonging pleasure in order to maximize the return on her efforts.  She insisted he show her the barn before even going into the house.

Eileen was impressed by the barn the moment she walked in the door.  The decor was rugged and manly, but done with a touch of style she was startled Mason possessed.  He continued to surprise her.  She recognized the yellow Cougar convertible over in one corner.  It was the one Mason had owned two decades earlier when they lived across the hall from each other at the Alamo Arms apartments.  The others on display were of equal interest.  It made her almost wish she had kept her triple black Mercury Marauder X-100.  The collection of books was more extensive than the collection of cars, taking up all of one wall and most of another.  “Have you read all these?”  The tone in her voice when she asked made Mason bristle.

“Do you think I collect them to stare at the covers?” he replied.

“Sorry.”  Eileen regretted putting him on the defensive.  “Why don’t you pour me a drink?”  

He went over to the bar and poured them each a Kentucky bourbon, straight up.    “To be fair,” Mason admitted, “that’s the first thing everyone asks when they see the place, and it always just kind of irritates me.  Don’t know why.”

They sat down on the leather couch.  Eileen’s eyes gazed up and down all the shelves, making note of all the books.  “You’re definitely into history and biographies, aren’t you?”  Mason nodded up and down slowly.  “And murder mysteries,” she smiled.

“Even the ones upon you didn’t write.”  He laughed a little bit.  So did she.

“Tell me about Saint Jo, Missouri,” Mason said after a long silence.

Eileen smiled.  “You come up with some of the most random topics.  Maybe it’s all the murder mysteries on those bookshelves.  What do you want to know?”

“I heard you were in Saint Jo,” Mason said.  “I heard that the guy you banged at the Shamrock Hotel while you were there doing research on the Greenlease kidnapping years ago ended up in the dumpster behind the motel.  Someone paid for his early demise.  And then somehow, his kids wound up with a pot full of cash.”

Mason seemed like he had more to say, but thought he might give it a rest and see if any of the information he’d just recapped for Eileen would warrant a response on its own.  Eileen smiled, took a sip of her bourbon, set it down on the table and smiled even bigger.  “Just to clarify,” she began, “you think that I may have orchestrated Rusk Hamilton’s murder?”

“I’m just saying you are a common denominator in the events that took place,” Mason replied, wondering if it was a mistake to bring it up.

“And the motive?  What would that be?” Eileen asked.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” Mason noted.

“So just to recap, I go to a small town in the midwest to research a brutal and senseless kidnapping and murder of a child.  In the short span of time I’m there, I get involved with an attractive young man working at the cheap motel that I’m staying at, not knowing he’s married and has kids.  I enjoy, and don’t take this the wrong way, a few weeks of the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.  In the end, I find out he’s married, as I’m leaving town.”  Eileen paused for emphasis, just like in one of her movies.  Mason nodded, indicating she should continue, though he almost wished she wouldn’t.

“I return to my hometown in Fort Stockton, sell a book and some magazine serials, and get noticed in Hollywood.  Move to California.  Become semi-famous.  And wealthy.  And successful.  But despite all that, I seek revenge on the guy that banged me silly a decade earlier.  I put a contract out to have the father of two kids killed because he neglected to tell me, in the throes of hot steamy passion, that he was married?”Eileen wasn’t upset.  Wasn’t mad.  Was almost chuckling a little bit to herself.  “Mason, you are so Fort Stockton!”

When Mason heard the whole thing laid out from her perspective he felt a little foolish.

“Let me tell you something,” Eileen said.  “I’ve had more stars in between my sheets than the Hollywood Freakin’ Walk of Fame.  More of them were probably married than not.”  She laughed a little out loud.  Mason felt silly for thinking it, much less bringing it up.  

Then it dawned on him, “Why were you in Saint Jo, then?

“I was on my way to Parker County, Indiana,” Eileen began.  “A family was murdered there, just for the thrill of it.  They didn’t take long to get caught since the mother survived.  It was completely random.  Brutal.  Just the kind of story that makes the perfect movie.  I wanted to look into the eyes of the four savages that did it.  Sometimes that’s the only way you can get the real story, peering into their soul, or where a soul should be, if they had one.”

“And you decided to swing through Saint Jo for one more romp with Mr. Sexual perfection?” Mason said.  Eileen could tell he was actually a little jealous, for some reason.

“I got a call from one of the cops I interviewed for the Greenlease case.  He mentioned Rusk had been killed.  He’d read the book, remembered me, and thought I’d be interested.  I was.  And I just  happened to be close enough that it was worth the detour.”

Mason got up, went and retrieved the bottle, and poured them each another drink.  Eileen waited till he sat back down.

“There had been a contract on poor ol’ Rusk, but I had nothing to do with it,” Eileen continued.  “And his kids did come into cash, but it had nothing to do with the Greenlease kidnapping.  That wouldn’t even make a believable Hollywood movie.  I’m surprised at you.”

“Then what happened?” Mason asked.  He was sucked into the story, just like the readers of Parker McHale’s books were.

“Rusk hadn’t changed his ways.  He was still banging young, attractive guests who happened to stay at the motel.  By this time, however, it was his motel.  The aunt and uncle who’d owned it had died by then and left it to him.  He was no longer writing jingles for the radio station, he was sharpening the pencil with every attractive young thing that checked in.  Unfortunately for him, one of those conquests was the girlfriend of someone from Kansas City with mob connections.”  

Eileen drained the last of the bourbon and reached into her purse for a cigarette.  She handed Mason the long gold lighter and bent over for him to light it as hot dangled out of the corner of her mouth.

“The girl ended up pretty well beat-up.  Enough to teach her a lesson, but not disfigure her pretty face.”  Eileen took a long drag from the Chesterfield and then exhaled.  “Rusk didn’t fare as well.  The boys sent to visit him removed his wand, the one he’d used in the chamber of secrets, and stuffed it into his pocket before they finished him off.”

Mason crossed his legs and bent over slightly at the thought of it.

“The cash his wife and kids received was from an insurance policy Rusk had, and the sale of the motel. Pretty simple explanation, really.”  Eileen finished her drink, then her cigarette.  She dropped what was left of the Chesterfield into the bottom of the glass, got up from the couch, and walked over to the yellow Mercury convertible.  She leaned against the trunk, hiked her skirt up ever so slowly, and put one foot on the back bumper.  “Now come take this Cougar for a spin,” she said.

They were both hung over the next morning when it was time for the Parker McHale Day Parade.  Mason elected to skip the whole thing, driving to the Grounds for Divorce before the street was closed and sitting in the booth near the back.  Lucinda kept the Folgers coming; the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch kept him entertained and somewhat hidden from the other customers.

“Nothing like caffeine and the morning STD to make it all come into focus,” Lucinda said.  Mason’s head pounded.

The sound of the Jim Bowie High School marching band rounding the corner let Mason know the parade was soon to be out front.  The ‘Marching Knives’ were in formation playing Paperback Writer by the Beatles behind the lead car,  a black 1963 Lincoln Continental convertible with a blood red interior.  Baird Callahan had lent the city his classic convertible for the event.  

Chief Martin was behind the wheel of the continental, the 430 cubic inch V8 groaning to do more than the three miles an hour the parade was traveling at as it went down Austin Street.  Mayor Goodman was riding shotgun, passing out red, white and blue balloons that said ‘Parker McHale Day’ on one side, and ‘Mayor Goodman:  Good Man for Fort Stockton’ on the other. 

Eileen Parker / Parker McHale was atop of the deck lid behind the back seat wearing a tight pink outfit that accentuated every curve and asset at her disposal.  Her lipstick was a perfect match for the pleated red leather upholstery of the Continental.  The pink outfit made her look like a wispy cloud rising above an inky sea of mystery.  The choice of a pink outfit while riding in a dark Lincoln convertible in the Texas sun was not a coincidence.  Some in the crowd appreciated the irony, others thought it crossed a line.

As the parade passed, Eileen saw Mason inside the Grounds for Divorce and blew him a kiss.  Every male gathered on the street thought it was for him.  Mason hoped the headache would go away before the dinner to be held that evening in Eileen’s honor.  He made a note to contact Baird Callahan about buying the Continental.  It would be the perfect addition to his collection.

As the full marching band finished Paperback Writer, the wind section started playing Delilah.  Atop a ’53 flatbed Ford, Jenny Andrews from the All-Girls Jim Bowie High School Choir began her solo performance:

I saw the light on the night that I passed by her window

I saw the flickering shadow of love on her blind

She was my woman

As she deceived me I watched and went out of my mind

My, my, my Delilah

Why, why, why Delilah

I could see, that girl was no good for me

But I was lost like a slave that no man could free

At break of day when that man drove away I was waiting

I crossed the street to her house and she opened the door

She stood there laughing

I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more

My, my, my Delilah

Why, why, why Delilah

So before they come to break down the door

Forgive me Delilah I just couldn’t take anymore

Mason drank his Folgers, watched Eileen slowly pass by and wave, listened to the marching band and the Andrews girl singing Delilah just a little off-key and tried not to focus on how badly his head throbbed.  And wondered how he was going to get through the reception and dinner that evening.