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Bunky had barfed up a grass ball on the pillow next to me. Maneuvering with caution, I gingerly hopped out of bed and performed a nearly surgical removal of the offending green wad which I promptly flushed down the toilet.
    Then I showered for the meeting with Bud Upton.

 
    Chapter 10
     
    Clearly, Bud Upton had spent some money on his office décor, but it was not terribly tasteful. It looked like he’d hired the same decorator who’d done all the McDonalds.
    Bud showed us into his inner sanctum and pulled out plush chairs for Evelyn and me, then took a seat in the big leather chair behind his desk. I was relieved to note that the furniture wasn’t made of molded yellow plastic.
    Bud was aging well and was about the same as I’d remembered him—tall, dark and humorless. Maybe that’s how he remembered me too, if he remembered me at all.
    He slid on a pair of half-glasses, straightened his notes and hopped right to it.
    “As standard practice I make it a habit to find out what I can about anyone who offers one of my clients a large sum of money,” Bud said. “I’ve done some checking on our Mr. Larry White and what I’ve discovered is that, well, he doesn’t actually exist.”
    “Huh?” I said, sounding a lot like the waitress at Sparkie’s Lounge.
    Bud took off his glasses. “Ladies, there is no Larry White.”
    Evelyn said, “But that can’t be. I talked to him myself on the phone.”
    Bud offered a small, professional smile. “My source tells me that as one follows the identity trail of Mr. Larry White, it eventually disappears into thin air. However,” he said, raising a finger, “on the brighter side, the money really does exist. And it’s right in the account, just where he says it is.”
    “Huh?” I said again. I felt as if I’d somehow been dropped into an Alfred Hitchcock film, one in which I was having trouble following the plot. It could have been any number of them. In the words of my cousin Abbott, I said, “So what’s the deal?”
    Bud Upton shrugged. “Can’t say for sure, but whoever’s behind this deal wants to remain anonymous. Maybe it’s fishy, maybe it’s not. Either way, it’s a lot of money.”
    “There must be lots of honest reasons why someone would choose to remain anonymous.” There had to be a least a few.
    Bud Upton grinned, the sly dog in him showing its face.
    “There are some.” He pushed back his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I can do more snooping around, but it may be, shall we say, less complicated to leave a few rocks unturned. One does have the option to simply take the money and say thank you.”
    Evelyn looked worried. “There’s no way I could I do prison time over this, is there?”
    Bud and I chuckled. “Absolutely not,” we said in unison. Maybe I should have been an attorney.
    “Think it over. Let me know,” Bud said.
     
    The meeting with Bud Upton left me feeling like the rug had been pulled from under me and not the fluffy kitchen rug where Nancy and I had mamboed the night before in my dream.
    Maybe it was just my typically obsessive nature kicking in, but I kept wondering who was this guy who called himself Larry White? And why all the secrecy? Why would anyone spend that much money and go to all of the trouble to cover their tracks for the procurement of a failing country radio station in the middle of nowhere? The more I thought about it the less it made sense. Things just didn’t add up.
     
    These were the questions that hounded me as I drove into town to Sparkie’s Lounge that night to meet Amy Delozier where, as it turned out, another rug was going to be yanked.

 
    Chapter 11
     
    Off and on, I subscribe to the theory that zest for life starts to lose its carbonated fizz about twenty seconds after high school graduation. This does tend to make life one long and winding road, which, ironically, was my senior class song.
    A somewhat bleak theory, but all in all, it seems a far better course to face the