The Taking of Libbie, SD (Mac McKenzie #7)
Page 43“You should leave now,” Neske said.
Bizek sneered as if it had been his idea all along. He spun around slowly and walked from the building, moving as if he had all the time in the world. Tracie, Neske, and I watched him go, along with all the heads peering over the cubicle walls. A moment later, the hum of conversation returned to its original volume. Neske excused himself and disappeared into his office. I turned to Tracie.
“I think we just lost our ride,” I said.
The air was hot and hard to breathe. If that wasn’t bad enough, Tracie’s shortcut back to my Audi was along a dirt road. Wind and passing cars roiled up the dust, and the dust forced me to cough to clear my throat.
“So what was that all about?” I asked.
“Perry and Ed?”
“No, Penn and Teller.”
Tracie tilted her head and frowned; her hair was shiny in the slant of the afternoon sun.
“Perry Neske was born and raised in Libbie,” she said. “He left several times, but he always came back. The last time he came back, he brought a wife. Her name is Dawn. She hates everything about Libbie.”
“Except for Ed.”
“Except for Ed.”
“And everyone knows it.”
“Where the hell is my car?”
Tracie pointed down the street. I followed her finger, only it didn’t lead me to the government building where I had parked the Audi when we first went to visit Bizek. Instead, she was pointing at an ice cream parlor.
“My treat,” she said.
Back in the good ol’ days—whenever that was—I’m told that people would gather around the cracker barrel in the general store and talk it over. That’s something else I’ve never seen, a cracker barrel. In Libbie, they gathered at U Scream Ice Cream Parlor. There were about half a dozen people inside when we arrived, and another half dozen joined while we were there. I sat nursing a hot fudge sundae while the group discussed a number of subjects ranging from the economy to what’s the matter with kids today. After a while, I said, “What about that damn mall?”
I waited for someone to ask who I was, yet no one did.
“Yeah, the mall,” the man called Craig said. “Ol’ Ed really screwed that one up.”
“I hear that’s not all he’s screwing,” said another man whose name I didn’t know.
“Now, now, now,” said Craig, who chuckled just the same.
The owner of the ice cream joint was wearing a white smock with the name ron stitched in red over the breast pocket. “Good riddance,” he said. “A mall would have killed downtown Libbie.”
“Nah,” said a farmer sitting in the corner. “It woulda just moved it to the intersection.”
“A mall would have turned the city into a ghost town,” Ron said. “Instead of owning our own stores, we would have become greeters at one of theirs.”
“Woulda brought a lot of folks to town, don’t you think, from all over,” said Craig.
“It would have brought people to the mall,” said Ron. “They’d never set foot inside Libbie.”
“I gotta tell ya,” said the man without a name. “It would have been nice to have shopping close.”
Ron gave him a look that could have melted his ice cream.
“Losing the mall leaves Libbie in an awfully tough spot, doesn’t it?” I said.
Heads turned. The expression on several faces suggested that they thought they knew who I was but couldn’t remember my name. The fact I was sitting with Tracie probably helped, although she was staring at me as if I had broken one of the more important commandments.
“What tough spot?” Ron said.
“Some of the downtown businesses invested in the mall,” said the farmer. “They were all set to move, leaving us flat.”
“No,” said Ron.
“It’s true,” Craig said. “I heard some people lost a lot of money when the deal collapsed, and maybe now they’re in trouble, too.”
“Not me,” Ron said.
“What businesses?” said Ron. “I don’t know of any businesses. You, Tracie, you know of any businesses?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Tracie replied.
“But there were some,” the farmer said.
“Some,” Tracie said.
“See?” the farmer said.
Another man—I called him Bob because of the way he continually nodded his head—said, “A mall never would have lasted here. After six months the novelty woulda worn off and people woulda gone back to their old ways.”
“I don’t think so,” Joyce said.
“Old people, they have their habits,” Bob said. “They like what’s familiar.”
“Old folks are like everyone else,” said the man with no name. “They don’t want to pay any more for stuff than they have to, and malls, they have lower prices, don’t they?”