The Show: A Mike Dodge Mystery

It started before I could respond, escalated before I could process it, and intensified quickly beyond my ability or inclination to intervene.

In my defense, I’d known them for more than two decades and had always found their deep and enduring friendship somewhat beyond nauseating. I certainly didn’t expect Tammy and Robbie to skip the eight steps from Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey to Bette and Joan and wind up duking it out in the Millington Performing Arts Center parking lot.

“Hell is this shit?” the old guy securing his Lexus beside me growled as Tammy swung Robbie by her purse strap into the side of I believe maybe Robbie’s own Sierra. Robbie emerged like a boss, using said purse (Vera Bradley, Sarah later recapped) to whip her BFF into the driver’s window. Tammy oofed, but fortunately, she’d stuck with that ‘80s Big Hair thing since her mallrat days, and rebounded nicely to wing Robbie with her Bradley before the strap snapped and it disappeared under the SUV.

“Friends of the wife,” I explained. Old Guy shook his head and limped off to join his wife. Mine had gone to retrieve our tickets from Will-Call, and now materialized at my side.

“What the hell happened here?” Sarah demanded, in that voice that implied I somehow had instigated Wallopalooza under the statue of Steven Douglas that watched eternally for space-straddlers and one-handed pissers on the Center lot. “Did you at least ask what happened, or try to break it up?”

“Would that really have been a winning strategy?” I posed. To no one, as Sarah already was sprinting over to part the gathering crowd. Tammy and Robbie were on the hot summer asphalt now, exchanging blows. Phones were out, as well they should be. Sarah’d neglected to give me my ticket, so I leaned against the hood of the Tucson like one of the cool aloof kids. My bride issued a simple directive, and her friends rolled to a halt. The mayhem apparently suspended, folks drifted back toward the steep concrete steps and the evening’s main event.

May/December was reputed to be one of the top 137 Four Seasons tribute groups, in a league with any of the great Beatles, Elvis, Temptations, Johnny Cash, Sinatra, Zeppelin, or (mamma mia!) ABBA replicants out on the dinner theater/Branson/corn festival/failing industry convention circuit. As the Boomer reign on Earth heads into the station, we’ve gone full-on Westworld/Mary Shelley/W.W. Jacobs, laying out heavy SSI for whatever tofurkey monkey’s paw mess someone could cobble together from the remains of the lyric gods.

I was the fourth third wheel in this particular Dead Popsters Society, somewhat of my own doing, as our hometown apres-theatre crowd often emerged to discover non-patrons eliminating on or indulging at the feet of Steven Douglas, which might have been OK with Old Abe but not with Sarah’s red hat/cheese casserole contemporaries. I was Watcher of Purses, Keeper of the Sensibilities, Buffer Extraordinaire. Plus, I was hoping to parley this sparkling evening of necromance into a date with Sarah and Jim Gaffigan in Peoria while the home folk were enjoying either National Chinese Opera or a Jeff Dunham knockoff. Little something/something for everybody in The Mill, depending on the given Thursday or Friday night.

So while I’d give up rehashed Law and Order and CSI Original Flavor for the Faux Seasons, I wasn’t ref-ing the Melee in Millington. As the sky blushed and bruised behind Senator Steve’s blocky head, Sarah appeared to have deescalated, and Tammy and Robbie were on their feet. Sort of. Tammy wobbled back onto her LifeStrides (after locating the left heel) before listing into the side of the Sierra and sliding like a slug on plate glass. The smaller Robbie made a valiant effort to stay within the yellow lines, but ultimately sought the comfort of a Prius bumper.

“We gotta call an ambulance,” I called, reluctantly. “I think maybe they broke something, or maybe got concussed or something.”

“It’s FINE!” Tammy snapped, flailing for a handhold on the driver side mirror. “I’m fine! The fucking show’s about to start!”

“Urgggh,” Robbie concurred, lurching as if she were about to spew on somebody’s EV.

“Somebody’s gotta look at them,” I insisted.

“You call 9-11, they’ll send the cops!” Tammy wailed. “That bitch will say I started it!” And then, the surprise twist, as she hurled on the asphalt.

“St. Mark’s is seven blocks away,” I finally sighed. “You go on in – somebody oughtta enjoy the show. I’ll transport Thelma and Louise – text me when things are about to wrap.”

Oh, what a night.

**

Lotta shit going down in the St. Mark’s ER for a Thursday night – guy in a Harley jacket quite possibly holding something inside his knobby shaved skull, a ridiculously ancient couple who just may have come in on a BOGO deal, kid on a gurney blinking up at the fluorescents and bleeding from the thigh while the EMTs shot the shit with a nurse. I was about to get a fat face full of HIPPA from the admissions commandant when Genise appeared like a five-foot-nuthin’ force of some parallel Nature in teal scrubs.

“I got ‘em,” my neighbor stated in the manner that kept her six-foot-nuthin’ husband Ray in line. “Said I got them, Dana,” she repeated.

Vera Bradley and Tammy’s red pleather Pony Express satchel were slung painfully over my indoorsy shoulders as the tough little RN helped me help them to two curtained stalls. Securing groggy permissions from the two now-sullen women, I fished for pertinent insurance data. Genise had barked a few terse orders at the nurse’s station, and now a compact redheaded doc I recognized from a community wellness forum appeared through the curtain.

“Now, what precisely happened?” the doctor asked softly after conducting little gesticulations and rituals. We all got loud, simultaneous, stereo accounts out of a Tarantino film, including a few anatomical terms Quentin likely would have lost on the editing floor and I hadn’t heard since my wife’s racist uncle had responded to Hillary Clinton’s second debate performance and the Trump tour bus tape was released. Through a gap in Robbie’s curtain, I could see Harley Dumpty scooting to the other side of the waiting area, Croesus and Mrs. Croesus freezing like plesiosaurs in the headlights, and the kid on the gurney grinning as they finally wheeled him off. The best medicine, they say.

“Well,” Doc Ginger finally murmured. “We’re going to get some x-rays and maybe a few scans. I’m seeing evidence of concussion in Mrs. Breslin, and I’ll need someone to keep her awake and talking ‘til we know more.”

I nodded solemnly. Genise jerked her head toward the next stall, where I imagined Gurney Boy had been deposited. “I got…”

“Sure,” the physician said, and she disappeared through the curtain. I was still nodding, but the waggling halted as Doc smiled pointedly at me.

“Oh,” I squeaked. “Of course. Now, um, Mrs. Breslin is, ah…”

“The one next door,” he supplied with wholly unnecessary dryness. “Now, if you could excuse us while I examine Mrs. Wheatly…”

“Oh, shit, yes.”

**

And nearly collided with the cops. I recognized the female officer: She’d helped run evidence and manage crowd control for Curtis – Det. Curtis Mead – a few times I’d happened on a scene. The dude was a young shave-head who looked like he’d killed and eaten a family of wolverines for lunch.

“We understand you may have accompanied two women involved in a public altercation to the ER,” She said.

“Without calling either the police or an ambulance,” He said.

“They’re friends,” I said limply. “It was just a, you know, a thing. Who did call you guys?”

He looked like he was about to inform me who would be asking the questions. Instead, He shrugged. “Anonymous call I assume from somebody at the concert. They said it got kinda out-of-hand. You a friend of theirs, family, what?”

“They’re my wife’s friend.” She scanned the waiting area. “Yeah, she’s still at the concert. I told her, I mean asked her to, I mean suggested she should enjoy the show.”

“Soo we’re gonna need to talk to the two of them.”

“I’m suppose to, too. The doctor’s in with Mrs. Wheaton, Wheatly, but I’m supposed to keep Mrs….Tammy awake so she doesn’t, um, die.”

“Well, then, let’s start with her, then,” She replied, parting the curtain. I nearly stumbled over Tammy’s Big Red Purse, and quickly became attorney, arbitrator, and obstructer.

**

“You kept upping the ante,” I noted once I’d danced Millington’s second and third finest off their feet and Tammy and Robbie’s case. “There was every chance you two could be charged with assault, public nuisance at the very least. You were, and you should pardon, making asses out of yourself in a hospital ER. You know better, and so does Robbie.”

I actually didn’t know that, but I’d seen her in action with a designer handbag.

“So why? Why escalate when the battle was over? Cause you wanted to make the battle as public as possible, with as many witnesses as possible, at the show, at the ER. Why?

“Just what were they seeing? Two best buds beating the shit out of each other. And, incidentally, Robbie’s SUV. It seemed kinda staged, once I got thinking about it. But, again, why?”

“Always wondered what Sarah saw in you — yappy pencil-neck desk jockey—“

“Uh, reporter. Pencil-neck?” I questioned, fingering my wattle.

“And fucking so-called ‘humor’ nobody understands and $10 words and all this snowflake hugginess. Sarah’s ex may have been a jag, but at least he acted like a normal man…”

“Yeah, that sure worked out good for you.” I suddenly wasn’t sure an IV tube and side rails were enough to keep her tethered to the bed. “Sorry. Stan seems like a good guy, the couple of times we met. I guess I meant, yeah, that sure worked out well for Robbie. Right?”

Her eyes darted to the wall between the stalls.

“I remember him. Paul. The retirement dinner for Sarah’s old boss. He didn’t want to be there, and didn’t want Robbie there. They almost had a big knockdown drag-out right at the table, and they left before cake.”

Tammy’s body seemed to relax. “Paul. Woulda been a real knockdown, there hadn’t been a roomful of people who’d have loved to clean his clock for the way he treated Robbie. Sarah ever tell you about the girls’ Chicago River tour on the during the annual company convention back, geez, 15 years ago?”

He’d been the only spouse on the boat, Sarah’d recounted, and almost ordered the boat back to shore after she asked the guide a couple innocuous questions. “Didn’t care what she did or liked or what was bothering her, but kept her within reach every second,” Tammy muttered. “Asshole.”

“So, what, was he pissed off about Robbie going out tonight? You two have been best friends for what, 40 years?”

“More like 45.”

“So she comes to pick you up and, what, Paul’d roughed her up?”

“Her face looked like she’d gone a round with Tyson. He’d stormed out to go drinking, and I tried to convince her to call the police for once. Wouldn’t do it. Too ashamed and scared. After 26 years, she’s got that Swedish thing?”

“Stockholm Syndrome. So having just been slapped around, with Paul coming back any time drunk and pissed, probably furious if he finds her gone, Robbie still goes to the show. And you two stage a brawl to, what, ‘alibi’ her for the abuse?”

“She was embarrassed to have anybody know.” Tammy glanced at the wall again.

“You could have tried to convince her to pack a few things and taken her to a shelter or to a Greyhound to her son’s or her sister’s. But instead, you put on a show for the world, with a woman too embarrassed ‘to have anybody know.’

“You made one mistake, by the way. I texted Sarah to see if she’d retrieved Robbie’s purse after the fight, and she said no. Robbie was two rows away from her car. I’d seen the purse go under the Sierra. Right about where you collapsed. You two clobber each other, end a beautiful friendship after 45 years, call each other, well… But as I’m about to take you both to the ER, you recover your ‘ex-friend’s purse, even with a potential concussion. Convincing little drama at the Center. You got a mean right hook, by the way.”

“I had to learn,” Tammy murmured. “I’m not a Stephen King fan, but I love Dolores Claiborne, where Kathy Bates’ husband’s always whaling on her and one night, she just up and brains him with a pitcher and tells him enough of that shit. Literally rings his bell, though I can’t get up and cheer cause Stan’s sitting right next to me on the couch and I can see he doesn’t like that shit one little bit. But next day, I root around in the basement and find my mom’s old pewter pitcher — she grew up on the farm, and I wonder if Grandpa ever got a workout with it. Anyway, next morning, Stan comes to breakfast, catches sight of that pitcher in the middle of the table, just drinks his coffee, and help me God, it was the last time he lifted a finger. Well… Robbie never had a Stephen King moment.”

I caught the catch in Tammy’s narrative. “What did you two do? Paul didn’t get pissed over Robbie going to the show, did he?”

“Robbie was always the hot one,” Tammy shifted. But it wasn’t a shift. “When he’d get a few too many in him, Stan’d say he should’ve found a sweet little dumbass like Robbie instead of a cow like me. And he was never too good at hiding shit when she was around — why we didn’t do much together, the four of us.” A smile rippled along Tammy’s split lip. “Paul woulda killed him.”

“Jesus,” I managed. “Whatever you two told him about Stan and Robbie backfired, and when Robbie showed up at your place, you realized whatever you’d planned for Paul and I guess Stan was shot if she had motive all over her face. And that brings us back to the car. The fisticuffs were to cover up Paul’s abuse, but the damage to the Sierra was insurance, wasn’t it? For whatever ‘accident’ you two geniuses dreamed up for him. You realize that if Paul killed or even just seriously rearranged Stan, you couldn’t set Paul up for whatever hit-and-run or driveway oopsie you’d planned?”

Tammy shrugged, grimacing with the effort. “Dead, in jail. Stan would just be the icing, or at least he’d be on the cops’ radar. Sarah said you hang out with some cop guy. You gonna tell ‘im?”

“I will not be sharing this with Curtis,” I promised. “Mainly because nobody’s getting murdered this week, at least by you two. You should maybe try harder to get Robbie to leave, or press charges, or whatever works. And then maybe follow your own advice.”

Tammy sighed. “Sarah’s lucky. So are you.”

Coming from her, that last bit gave me a slight chill. “And I guess, in a twisted sort of way, Robbie’s lucky to have a friend like you.”

Then she fell silent, her bruised knuckles gripping sheet. “Yeah, don’t know if she sees it that way right now.”

And Tammy told me the rest, before Genise arrived for her cerebral photoshoot and suggested I take it somewhere else. I did hastily, taking the long way around to the lot as a shit-ton of paramedics slammed into the ER with a bloody mass of man who, from whatever jargon I could suss out from nine years of House-watching was about to get rerouted to eternity. By the time I reached the Tucson, Stan Breslin was securing his Lexus three spaces away. He did a double-take, then jogged over.

“Hey, um, Mark, right? Sarah’s husband?”

“Yeah. Mark. Everything seems to be OK right now – they’re taking Tammy for tests.”

“What the hell happened? Any thoughts?”

I considered as I heard the phone bing. The Faux Seasons must have powered through their third encore

“Walk like a man, my son,” I advised perhaps the luckiest man in Millington that night

**

It was wedged between an interview with the University’s winningest coach ever and a protracted discussion of the morning jock’s gout issues the next morning. Paul Wheatly had been pronounced, I guessed, about five or ten minutes after I beat it out of the ER, after losing a scrap with the rail underpass on Market. My guess was, they’d squeeze an impressive BAC out of whatever was left. My guess was, he’d taken the same route Robbie had taken for her girls-and-one-boy night at the theater.

“God,” Sarah said, head popping up from her morning Quordle. “Poor Robbie. And after all that craziness last night. Probably why Tammy never returned my text. They never could stay mad.”

I’d given her bare bones on the way home from the musical extravaganza Sarah Dodge called, “Meh, just OK.” I didn’t imagine we’d see either one of them after whatever “celebration of life” Paul would score, and I wondered if they would, either.

“It was supposed to be just one punch, enough to do some damage,” Tammy’d confided. “Then I got to thinking about Stan and that milk pitcher and Paul about to throw that poor boat captain overboard and Robbie’s constant excuses for…well, everything. And what a mess she was dragging me into. And I just couldn’t stop. And I suppose she thought about it all from her perspective, and she couldn’t stop.”

Never punch down, a friend once advised me. But if you can’t punch up or just simply walk out of the ring, there will be scars.