Drowning Barbie by Frederick Ramsay Page B

Franklin. The year before, Chester’s wife had emptied the joint bank account and run off, they said, with a twenty-five-year-old fitness guru. Chester was left alone with two teenagers, payments on a new Chevy Silverado which also went missing, and a mortgage. Darcie, on the other hand, had finally put the death of her husband, Whaite, behind her, and she and Chester had connected at the office Christmas party. Shortly thereafter, Chester had stopped making payments on the truck.
    Romance.
    Ike shook his head. Maybe he and Ruth could share whoever they could persuade to do the honors and have a double wedding. What had he and Ruth been thinking? They hadn’t been thinking, that’s what.
    Rita, now officially off duty and on overtime, she hoped, plunked down in Ike’s only other chair.
    â€œOkay, what do you want to know about Ethyl Smut?”
    â€œWhat do I need to know, Rita? The woman is dead. I have the impression she was disliked by any and all, and that no one who knew her is surprised or even cares that she’s dead. There is also the daughter and her troubles. I don’t know why I don’t know either of their stories, but I don’t.”
    â€œYou probably don’t know because most of her sorry crap went down while you were away doing whatever it was that nobody around here talks about but everybody knows was for the government. And then she dropped out of sight for a while. Her daughter is a different story and one I can only guess at, on account of nobody talks about that either. So, we’re dealing with rumors and outright lies.”
    â€œWow. Okay, start where you want. I need as much as I can get and for now I’ll even take the lies with the truth.”
    â€œOkay, let’s start with the girl. Remember, a lot of this is hearsay. People don’t like to talk about stuff like this.”
    â€œWhat kind of stuff?’
    â€œChild sexual abuse kind of stuff. Remember, Ike, this isn’t the big city and we are not so calloused about things as those folk are. We still hold onto old values and standards—is that what I want to say? You know what I mean. We haven’t caught up to Hollywood yet. Some things are just plain evil and that’s that.”
    â€œI hear you. So the ‘abuse’ mentioned in the files wasn’t just assault and battery of someone, the child?”
    â€œNot even close. I’ll get to that in a second. So, okay, Ethyl lived hard and fast even before she started doing drugs. Once she discovered methamphetamine the world changed for her and everyone around her. She got mixed up with that ex-Marine, Mark somebody, and the next thing you know, she had a baby, a daughter. That is when it really got bad. I mean it’s one thing to sell yourself for a hit or two, another to pimp out your daughter.”
    â€œShe traded her daughter for smack?”
    â€œSmack, glass, whatever you call it now and anything else that was moving down the highway from Baltimore and Washington or up from Norfolk. If it blew your mind, Ethyl smoked it, snorted it, shot it, or drank it. Back then I swear she’d shoot up with diesel fuel or talcum powder if she thought it would get her high. So, yeah, from the time the kid was seven or eight, Ethyl allowed as how the girl was available for the right price. Do you have any idea how many men lust after little girls?”
    â€œYes, and I wish I didn’t.”
    â€œWhatever number you may have heard it’s probably on the low side. Hell, even one is too many. They say that the poor kid was raped for most of her young life just to keep Ethyl on a perpetual high.”
    â€œWhat happened to the girl?”
    â€œDarla? She up and disappeared a few years ago. Some say she got picked up by the children’s bureau, some say she died. Some say she ran away to Chicago or D.C. I don’t know. All I know is Ethyl was mad as hell that her meal ticket, you could say, had