THE VIRTUOUS PROSTITUTE AND THE CHURCH SUPPER MURDER
By
Charles E. Schwarz

Why a big city hooker would settle in the town of Nodeal, Idaho, population five thousand, puzzled the hell out of me. On a summer Saturday evening, wearing knee high purple suede boots with a three inch heel, a leather skirt that fell two feet short of the top of her boots, a tight yellow sweater stretching over a Dolly Parton bosom, she climbed out of a beat-up red MG one leg at a time, one breast at a time.

The town's people never showed interest in me ... a fifty year old over weight, thinning haired, unemployed private detective who, for the past six months was living with Kathy, a waitress at Wil's Diner and Truck Stop ... but they certainly were interested in Bobbie O'Dell. If you were a man and your crotch hadn't turned to leather, you had to eye her with sexual speculation and appreciation. On that Saturday night two months ago at Wil's Bar and Package Goods abutting Wil's Diner, we were having our usual wild time watching the ten wheelers drive by on the state road, when everyone caught sight of Bobbie O'Dell struggling to get out of her MG. Nothing was said till she finished shaking her bright yellow hair and stretching her arms over her head pulling a tight yellow sweater taut, and sauntered into the adjacent Will's diner ... then the comments flowed in the usual imaginative vein from guys who spent every Saturday night in Nodeal slopping up beer. They ranged from the pithy "Wow," to the succinct "O boy," to the expansive "She's stacked."

I said to myself, "hooker," which wasn't an observation but comment. What I couldn't figure out was why she stayed in Nodeal instead of gassing up at Wil's Truck Stop and driving on to LA or Vegas. But she stayed. In fact she stayed in Wil's Motel, a brief ten steps from Wil's Bar and Package Goods Store.

Kathy's evaluation was quick, emphatic and never changed. "Tramp," she declared that night and from then on Kathy always referred to her as "that tramp," issuing daily comments about the amount of money "that tramp" spent on dying her hair blonde, or how much of "the tramp's" breasts were manmade or how old "the tramp" was.

During "the tramp's" stay she dressed in pants too tight, in sweaters too small, in skirts too short, and necklines were too low, heels too high, jewelry too brassy, lips and nails too red, hair too blond, and the voice too loud.

At first the talk of the bar was who was going to be first. She had been approached by several of the more adventurous or possibly the more desperate and when queried as to her price she responded "five hundred," a price none at the bar would have paid for a month of wall to wall Madonnas.

The question in my mind was: as an experienced hooker she must know she wasn't worth five hundred, and no one in this town nor any trucker passing through would or could come up with that kind of money.

So I asked myself why was she at Nodeal and if planning to stay, why charge so much? Another question bothering me was why did she advertise so blatantly? More intriguingly was the question, who were her customers? On satisfying whose lust did she earn her daily bread? From my advantage point as a town idler, I saw her approach many men and many men approached her but their meetings always ended the same way, each going off in opposite directions.

I broached her early one night stating, "Bobbie, no one in Nodeal can afford your price. You haven't turned a trick since you came here."

She got insulted and angrily answered, "Yeah, well there are a few in town who can and do pay the freight, and I'm worth every penny. Wil can afford a very special treat ... or Pops Wagoner ... or Jason James and since we're talking, you could come up with some heavy bread yourself if you wanted a night to remember."

The later reference to me was accompanied by a theatrical leer, the like of which hadn't been seen since Gloria Swanson leered John Barrymore into sin on the silent screen.

"What do you mean? I'm as broke as anyone else in the town."

She countered, "Men always lie about money. The ones that don't have money ... say they do, and the ones that do ... swear to heaven they don't. You say you don't ... therefore, you do."

I had to laugh at the convoluted logic. She continued, "Besides, how could you live the way you do? Not working, and with plenty to spend at Wil's Bar. Your tired old live-in waitress isn't keeping you in spending money. No deary, you've got bread salted away, and I'm your honey. Just lay your bread on me and it'll be sweet for you."

I told her thanks, but no thanks.

The following weeks she strutted and with the continued absence of observable customers, I speculated on the potential customers she mentioned. True, I had a few thousand put away but I wasn't in the same monetary league with Pops Wagoner, Jason James nor Wil, proprietor of every conceivable concern in Nodeal ... a small tight man, small in stature, tight with money. He had yet to treat for a drink at his bar, spring for a second cup of coffee in his diner, give free air at his gas station, an extra towel in his motel, or double bag groceries at his convenience store.

The thought that this small, tight, ferret of a man was draping one hundred dollar bills over our happy hooker was absurd.

If Wil owned the town, Pop Wagoner the biggest cattle man in the area owned the landscape. As Wil was small and tight, Pop was large and expansive. He carried a stomach as large as any bull in his herd, while his hand gestures and voice were as expansive as his land holdings. He continually roared through the town in a white Cadillac convertible, raising dust, raising noise, but was he raising anything else? I doubted it. He was within months of his eighty-third birthday. Today the only action Pop was interested in were his bulls.

Lastly, Jason James or J.J. was the proverbial town banker. Wil owned the town, Pop owned the landscape, and J.J. owned people, or more correctly, a lot of people owed J.J. If J.J. wasn't at the bank then J.J. was at home. Each morning J.J. walked the hundred feet or so from his front door to his bank's door and retraced his steps in the evening. Even though J.J. at forty was the right age and was not too tight with a buck he orbited in a universe that measured one hundred feet across. To envision his meeting Bobbie for dark alley tricks or games under the trees at the midnight hour would require an imagination greater than mine. None of Bobbie's examples, myself excluded, fitted the role of a high roller in passion.

Nine weeks after Bobbie came to town she banged on my motel door. She picked an awkward time, ten p.m. ... early enough for people to see her enter my room yet late enough for people to get the wrong impression especially as everyone knew I was alone. Kathy was working the four till midnight shift at the diner.

Her conversation, a monologue, revolved around the axis of twin topics: I was the only decent guy in town, a man who never made dirty jokes about her, never treated her rough, or, in her words, "Never physically or emotionally abused her." What could I do but agree with her when she said, "I was sensitive," "I was a real man," "I cared for people." For the love of a man like me, Bobbie swore she'd give up hustling. What bothered me during this panegyric was Kathy, who not having Bobbie's perspicuity to uncover my spiritual virtues, might think Bobbie and I were exploring some of my wonderful physical attributes.

The other twin star around which Bobbie's rambling conversation gravitated was how tough she had it. Men (I was the exception) just use, abuse, misuse, degrade, taunt, cheat and rob her.

After several minutes of self pity, she dropped the bombshell. "I have AIDS." Just returned from Boise her blood test confirmed the diagnosis and the doctors wanted her to go to San Francisco where there are hospitals, treatment centers, and support groups for people with this disease.

Shit, I couldn't believe my ears. This hooker is standing in the middle of my room telling me she's got infectious AIDS. She actually started to reach out and grab my arm. Discrete I backed away and opening the door, invited her to step outside.

"This is all kind of personal. Can't we talk inside?" she pleaded resisting my overture to get her out of my room.

Thinking to myself, "Kathy will have to clean the place with Lysol and bleach ... hell, I'll just move to another unit."

As I desperately tried to figure out how to get her out of my room she continued her self pitying litany of woes.

"My family is no help. They threw me out when I was fifteen. Since then I've had to make my way in life on my own. That's why I'm working the streets. My father sexually abused me when I was only twelve. He ..."

"Look Bobbie, I'm very interested in your sad story but I've got to insist you get out of the room. We can talk just as well outside."

"There is no one I can turn to," she droned on inching her way closer to me as I kept inching to the door.

"What do you want from me? Look, let's get outside. I feel more comfortable talking in the fresh air." She was breathing all over the place. At that very moment I was breathing some of her exhaled air. "Look Bobbie, I've got to insist we go outside."

"Before we leave," and again she made a gesture as to touch me, "there is something I've got to ask. I'm dying and I need help, and only you can help me."

"Yeah, yeah, Bobbie. You can count on me. Let's just step outside." (Damn, this broad won't leave. She'll stay here till I'm infected.)

"With no friends or family I've got to do something I'm ashamed to do, beg. I'm dying and in desperate need of help. In San Francisco there are places that help people with my disease die with some dignity. I'm begging you for a loan."

"Forget it Bobbie. You're wasting your time. My financial situation is not as flush as you seem to believe. Now let's get out of ..."

"All I need is ten thousand. Just ten thousand to help me leave this dirty work and go quietly to a small corner of the world to die with some dignity."

She grabbed my arm and started to go to her knee. Just five thousand, for the sake of God, just five thousand, that's all it would take. Please have mercy ..."

Damn. I was tired of being polite, sympathetic, and sensitive. "Look Bobbie, take your diseased hooker's ass out of my room." With that I grabbed both her wrists and half walked, half dragged her out.

After locking the motel room and telling Bobbie to give her mouth a rest I started towards Will's bar. Should have ran because she hopped in front of me.

"Look Mr. Big Heart. If you won't help me out of charity, then I'll tell your precious waitress-mistress I have AIDS and we've been intimate on numerous occasions. How will she feel about going to bed with a man who may have AIDS? With a man who paid five hundred big ones for another woman. How will all your friends in town act, thinking you may be an AIDS carrier? If you couldn't bare to touch me back there in your room, how will your friends treat you if they think you have it."

We arrived at the bar's side entrance. With my hand on the door knob I told Bobbie, "Put a sock in it. If you try to give me some grief, I'll kick your fat ass from here to San Francisco. Now, for the last time, get lost." Then I ducked inside to get a lot of some strong alcohol to disinfect my insides and maybe slop a little on my hands.


[[ Editor's Note - It should be noted that although some of the fears of contracting AIDS expressed by the characters in this story are common to the general population, AIDS can only be contracted by direct contact of one's own bodily fluids with the bodily fluids of an AIDS sufferer. AIDS can *NOT* be contracted via some of the means feared by the characters in this story. ]]

I knew Bobbie didn't spread her story because Kathy was the same as usual in bed, neither great nor terrible. In fact, Kathy was dropping irritating hints about marriage. It was getting to be "Put up or shut up" time. Either I surprise her with an impetuous proposal of marriage, sweeping her off her thirty-four year old flat feet with a burst of sudden ardor, or I'll be packing my bags. Since there was no chance I was going to propose marriage I decided to move out of Nodeal.

Bobbie tried to shake me down on Thursday. On Saturday, one of the biggest social events in Nodeal, a church social dinner and dance, attended by every man, woman and child, was to be held in the church basement.

That Saturday afternoon while sipping a beer at Wil's Bar with a few habituals I turned and saw Bobbie standing at the entrance who gaily announced she was leaving town tomorrow. Tonight was her last night in town and she was saving her dances at the church social for all her friends at Wil's Bar. With a kiss blown from purple stained lips and tossed by purple polished fingertips, she turned on purple sequined shoes, and bounced and shook her skin tight purple clothe ass out of the bar knowing all eyes were on that ass followed by jokes about the town's only prostitute dining and dancing in the church's basement.

So Bobbie had gotten someone to spring for her trip to San Francisco. Bobbie talked ten grand and in Nodeal, that was serious talk ... talk nothing, that was deep profound philosophical conversation. The list of money people in Nodeal was brief: Wil, Pop Wagoner, and J.J. Over a double scotch I speculated on who was the sugar daddy.

The dinner was scheduled for six thirty, but rather than hang around Kathy putting on clothes and dropped hints of marriage, I moseyed over to the church basement early and sat at the back of the room by the entrance.

The church's basement was filled with long rows of wooden tables covered with white paper tablecloths anchored with place settings of paper plates, plastic utensils, cardboard cups, and paper napkins with the feel of toilet paper.

The serving tables spread across the room's width opposite the entrance. People would arrive, take seats, then go to the serving tables and help themselves to the food.

It was early and from my seat furthest from the food and closest to the entrance I casually surveyed the room. Besides the women working over the food at the far end there were only a few early birds. Across from me, sitting at another table by himself was Wil, fingering the table condiments as he alternately stared at the basement entrance and then down the room towards the serving tables where his wife was working as one of the servers.

Catching his eye I gestured I would join him but he turned away, freezing me in my seat. So much for the sociability of the church social.

At first, a trickle, then in a steady stream, people flowed into the room filling the seats closest to the food first and only reluctantly taking the seats further back. If the food represented the head of the table, where I sat at the foot there was still plenty of room. I felt biblical looking at the few other humble people seated at the table's foot waiting to be served last. Except for Kathy, sitting next to me, the only other "last will be first" group was a surprise collection seated at the table I faced. Wil had been joined by Pop Wagoner and J. James. Entering with their wives as town leaders Pop and J.J. sent their spouses to help serve the food while they seated themselves with Wil.

It struck me odd, the richest men sitting together at the foot of the table. These were men who expected and were expected to be at the head of any social gathering where they could be seen, not huddled together in relative obscurity. Part of the puzzle was answered when Bobbie came in. All three hurriedly signaled her to join them. Surprisingly, a conservatively dressed Bobbie in a gray skirt and white blouse joined the three and stayed with them the entire evening. Though the men went up to the food service area and returned with paper plates tilted dangerously from heavy loads of food, Bobbie ate nothing, just smiled and patted each man's hand as she quietly conversed with them.

After the main course was demolished and plates thrown in plastic refuse cans desserts were assaulted.

Feeling guilty about my plans to sneak out on Kathy next morning I told her to stay seated and I'd get our dessert and coffee. In front of me on line was James and Wagoner. Wagoner was carrying three coffees his wife gave him, while James was picking up two pieces of apple and cinnamon pie his wife served him as well as a cup of coffee. Placing one pie on top of the other he carried them with one hand while carrying a hot cup of coffee in his other.

The coffees were placed in the table's center as were the pies. The four helped themselves to a coffee and Bobbie and Wagoner and each had a piece of apple pie. Although Bobbie ate nothing during her meal she directed her attention and her plastic fork enthusiastically at the apple pie.

Patty Wagoner came down the crowded aisle dropping off little ceramic black and white cows containing milk at each table. After giving Kathy and me a cow for our coffee she leaned over and put her last cow in front of Bobbie with malevolent forcefulness. The foursome continued to talk in low tones as they drank their coffee with Bobbie and James eating the heavily sugared pie.

Suddenly Bobbie jumped up and announced to everyone and to no one in particular that she was ill.

Hell, I thought, she was going to make one of her patented scenes and announce she had AIDS after eating with practically the whole town.

She didn't. After telling everyone she was sick, she stood quiet for a moment, then grabbing her throat and grasping for air, screamed "I'm dying," and did just that, falling dead across the table head first into James' unfinished pie.

The poor broad went out with a splash. Things were pretty confused, congested, and chaotic but Wil, Wagoner, James and the town's part-time police officer, Harry Duggy, with some help from me, were able to clear the hall.

After she was removed and someone had cleared the table, the three men and investigating officers sat down at the table sipping coffee.

Obviously she was poisoned, and it had to be in the coffee or the pie Wagoner and James brought to the table, given she touched no other food. The suddenness of her swan dive into the pie ruled out the poison ingested prior to her arrival. This poison acted quick. So who had the opportunity to tamper with her food? It was James's wife who gave the coffee and cake to James, and Wagoner carried the coffee back to the table. Patty Wagoner who placed the milk cow in front of Bobbie. What was Wil doing while I was away getting Kathy her desert? But he couldn't doctor the coffee or cake till James and Wagoner had delivered the food and then everyone would be able to see him. The poison was in the cake or the coffee but I could not see how it was administered.

I ruminated over the two months poor Bobbie O'Dell lived in Nodeal, her outrageous behavior, her outrageous clothes, her outrageous price, her outrageous disease, her outrageous death. She was a puzzle but there was one clue. Her attempt to extract money from me, threatening to go to Kathy when her appeal to my sense of humanity failed.

She had once enumerated all the money men of Nodeal. Wil, Wagoner, James and myself. If she tried to get money out of me, it was certain she approached each of the others. Getting ten or so thousand from each of us would add up to forty-thousand, a sum that would enable her to "die" in San Francisco in style.

It was going on one in the morning as everyone gathered about Bobbie's table, my three suspects, their wives, the town's part time police man, two uniform state troopers, and three investigators from the State Criminal Investigation Unit who, in the presence of the accumulated wealth of Nodeal were tangential in their questions and indirect with their references.

The question in my mind was should I tell the State Investigators about Bobbie's confessed illness. If I mentioned how Bobbie tried to shake me down, the only person in danger of being arrested was myself, the transient outsider who stupidly admitted he had the motive to kill the town tramp.

As Patty Wagoner leaned over asking me to pass her some "Sweet n'Low" from my table, Wil groaned, "The notoriety of a prostitute killed at Nodeal's church dinner will hurt the town."

"Yeah," interjected James. "Property values will drop if this town gets a bad reputation."

"What about the kids, the young girls?" Pop Wagoner solicitously asked. "Can you see our young girls telling people they're from Nodeal a town with prostitutes and murderers.'"

They talked trying to find a murderer. As an unemployed outsider I decided it was time to look out for "El numero uno," and do some serious thinking. First there was always something phony about Bobbie. She was always on stage, never getting out of character, or rather always being in character. Her dress, conduct, talk were all too loud, too much the street walker. After everyone knew her business, she still advertised. Why charge so much you drive customers away? Simple. She was playing the role of a prostitute. So she dressed and acted the role. The high price was to insure she did not have to become the role. The theater has no reality and her role had no real customers. She was not a hooker.

If she wasn't making money on her back, where does the money come into the picture? Easy. She hit me up for ten thousand with her AIDS complaint. If she wasn't a prostitute then her AIDS story was also phony. Her prostitute act made the AIDS story plausible. The whole two months was a con job. Establishing the prostitute character in everyone's mind served as the basis for the AIDS gambit and with the AIDS she could threaten a hell of a lot of men. But she didn't want to threaten a lot of men, just a few rich ones. She guessed wrong in my case. Looking over to Pop, J.J. and Wil I saw the other three men she would have tried to con and since the only motive for her murder was blackmail, it had to be one of them.

Who gave her the poison and how was it administered? She only had the coffee which Pop Wagoner and J.J. brought back and the apple pie J.J. carried, which their wives served. I also remembered the milk which Bobbie put in her coffee delivered by Patty Wagoner.

One really suspicious thing after Bobbie's dive into the apple pie was the table being cleaned up, the disappearance of her coffee cup and the remains of her apple pie. Her last supper was probably in one of the thirty gallon plastic garbage cans scattered about the hall. The police noticed the absence of the coffee and pie and lamented the fact that someone innocently threw them away. (The fact important evidence was lying in one of a dozen garbage cans didn't seem important, probably because no one wanted to start rummaging through discarded food. Everyone was leaving it for someone else to do later.)

Both police and suspects were gathered together, trying to figure out how to make Bobbie's murder a suicide.

I went over everything that happened during the entire time I was at the church supper. Then it came to me. With all the things on the table there was one thing that was not there and the missing object told me who, how, and why. If I told them what I thought, it would be my logic against the murderer's influence, money and reputation. The result? I'd be in jail charged with Bobbie's murder.

I knew two things: the murderer was carrying at least ten thousand dollars and the cops wanted a suicide. The question was how to get the ten thousand and give the cops a suicide without getting burned.

I asked the murderer if we could talk privately. No objections were raised, though curious glances were exchanged as we left. Once outside I laid it out for him. "Bobbie told all of us, you, me and the other two in there she had AIDS. She didn't. Her story was a scam to blackmail each of us into financing her trip to the next town where she'd do her act again."

Defensively he said, "I had nothing to do with her. We were never intimate, so why should I care if she had AIDS?"

Continuing I told him, "Though none of you saw good old Bobbie in her professional capacity, if she went to our wives, none of you would sleep with your wives, no matter how many blood tests proved you were clean."

He came back. "I never believed her cock and bull story about AIDS. Sure she tried to hit me up for twenty-thousand but I told her to shove it and get out of town." He was beginning to turn mean and hard.

"None of us believed poor Bobbie," I continued worried that he may not let me finish. "The poor broad was a lousy con artist as well a lousy hooker. I knew when you all sat down with her and each of you let her pat your hands at the beginning of dinner. If any of you believed her story, you wouldn't be in the same building with her, never mind eating dinner with her and letting her touch you. Her sympathy angle didn't work, and her threats to tell your wives didn't work either.

"Why didn't it work? Probably for the same reason it didn't work on me with Kathy. None of you gave a damn what your wives thought. For me I'm leaving Kathy and this town, so whether she told Kathy or not didn't bother me."

The mention of leaving town relaxed him as I continued, "Poor Bobbie was threatening you guys where you didn't live. She was shooting blanks. I figured she must have talked to you last, seeing you were the closest to home, and when she reached you, she must have been one mad frustrated lady. Instead of thousands from the frightened quaking hands, she was getting her ass kicked but good.

"When you gave her the same 'drop dead' answer she lost her head and threatened to tell not only your wife but the whole town she had AIDS and had relations with you. Inadvertently she kicked you where you lived. You weren't worried about your wife, it was the AIDS story itself. She has a soap opera talk show mentality thinking sex and wives run the show when all the time it's money.

"To save your business, Wil, is why you killed her. You're the only one of the four of us with a real motive. Who would sleep in a motel where a prostitute with AIDS lived? Who would eat in a diner where she had eaten? Who would drink at the bar where she drank? What car or truck would gas up with a reputation of being a hang out for prostitutes with AIDS. If she spoke that one word you would be bankrupt. You couldn't even sell your property. She might as well threaten to spill radioactive waste over everything you owned. If you paid her it wouldn't take her long to figure out where your crotch really was and then she'd be after everything you ever had."

Looking hard and mean Wil asked, "So how did I get the poison into her?"

"Simple, she poisoned herself. It wasn't in the pie because it would have been impossible for Pop to slip poison into one pie while he balanced coffee and pies in both hands. The same with J.J. carrying three cups of coffee. He would have needed a third hand. Patty Wagoner could not have done it since she gave just one milk cow to your table and she knew you all took milk with your coffee. J.J.'s wife couldn't have done it at the serving table since she couldn't guess who would get the poisoned pie. Besides, the wives never knew about the AIDS B.S. As the owner of the town's only diner you had to know how people liked their coffee. Sitting here I noticed that you and Pop take sugar, and J.J. only takes milk."

"So what's new about that?"

"A few moments ago your wife asked me to pass the "Sweet n'Low". Bobbie, with that figure of hers, took artificial sweetener with her coffee. All you needed to do was insert poison into the packet and reseal it. Arriving early you took all the artificial sweetener packets out of the holder and left just one packet, the one you doctored. Only Bobbie would take it, but to be sure no one else took it you stayed at the table and let the others get the food. What gave me the idea was when your wife asked me to pass her the sweet n low from my table. Each holder had about twenty packets of sugar and twenty packets of sweet n low, every holder but the one I saw you fingering before the others arrived for dinner."

"Soooo," he said.

I had showed him the whip, the fact that I knew everything. Now to show him the carrot.

"For a financial consideration we go back inside and I tell them that Bobbie was afraid she had AIDS and talked about suicide rather than wasting away and loosing her good looks. You back me up and say she said the same think to you. If we both mention her concern, you can be sure Pop and J.J. will join the bandwagon. Fearing she had AIDS she took poison and went to church to beg God's forgiveness and to die. If we all get behind the story, it will sail. Hell, it will sail to hell and back."

"Sounds good," he answered. "But if it gets out she had AIDS, I'd be ruined."

"She didn't have AIDS. It was part of her con. The medical examiner will find she's clean. A poor, cheap hooker thinking she was ill commits suicide while seeking forgiveness in a church. It's great bull shit. Everyone will buy it."

"What's in it for you? You mentioned financial consideration."

I knew he had twenty-thousand on him. He must have promised Bobbie the money at the end of the church social and brought it to show her and keep her at the table. If I asked for all of his money he'd balk. "Five grand is the price," I said. "Then we go in, give our spiel to the cops ... they write it up, and it's finished. I'm gone tomorrow morning."

"How do I know this is the end of it?"

"Once the cops write it up, it's official. It'll be my word against your's, Pop's, J.J.'s, as well as the written official version."

He counted out five thousand and we returned practically arm and arm. I gave them the suicide motive, the boys enthusiastically backed me up, the cops wrote their report, and within less than an hour we were finished. Early next morning while Kathy was still asleep I left town.
###
Charles E. Schwarz has been writing fiction mystery short stories since 1990 and is an active member of the Mystery Writers of America. His work has appeared in numerous magazines including "New Mystery" for which he has been awarded the Blaggard Award for Best Mystery Short Story, 1993. A recently retired professor of Mathematics at a New Jersey University, Dr. Schwarz is currently writing a mystery novel.