We arrived back at Tulza shortly after three. Our stomachs had gone from queasy to growling, so I asked Imelda to scramble us up a meal. Sounds easy, but you have to remember that this was the Army, and the Army has mess halls, and the Army tells you when you can eat and not eat. Three o’clock is one of those “not eat” periods. But you also have to remember that this was Imelda Pepperfield, who can make rocks cry.
She came huffing back into my office, followed by two of her female legal clerks, both of whom were strikingly deficient on the looks side but undoubtedly had stellar clerical skills. Imelda snorted a few times as her assistants plunked down several trays loaded with meatloaf sandwiches and mashed potatoes larded with a thick, pasty, gravy.
“Any trouble?” I asked.
“Nope. That mess sergeant tried to say no, so I kicked his butt a little, and he snapped to.”
The thing about Imelda is that she was raised in the rural backcountry of Alabama and has all the inflections and manners of a poor, uneducated southern Black girl. And if you are too stupid for words, you buy into that act. I could have looked up her IQ in her military records, but I never bothered. The truth was I never wanted positive confirmation that she is much smarter than me. I did know one of her secrets, that she’d earned two master’s degrees, one in criminal justice and the other in English literature. She never went anywhere without a few thick books hidden in her duffel, usually written by some of those Russian writers with long, impossibly tongue-twisting names.
Delbert and Morrow were eyeing the meatloaf sandwiches with pure disgust, while I launched in with gusto.
Imelda gave them a speculative glance, then flapped her arms once or twice. “You got some kinda problem with that meal?”
Delbert very foolishly said, “Actually, I do. I like to eat healthier.”
Imelda bent toward him. “You’re not one of those health food pussies, are you?”
“I try to take care of my body,” Delbert replied stiffly.
“This is Army-issued food. If Uncle Sam says it’s good for you, it’s good for you.”
“It’s greasy. And it clogs the arteries.”
Morrow was watching this exchange, and I saw her quickly grab a sandwich and start chomping. Smart girl, that one.
Imelda straightened back up, and her eyes turned into blazing hot lasers that bored searing holes into poor Delbert’s forehead.
“Okay, fancy pants, I’ll remember that. I’ve got your number.”
Delbert’s eyes shifted in my direction. Unsure of her connection to me, he was imploring me to either intervene or give him a signal to fire at will. Like I’d be stupid enough to step into the middle of this.
“Who are you looking at?” Imelda barked. “Don’t you look away when I’m talking to you. You either eat that food or you’re gonna get bone-ass skinny these next few weeks.”
“I like salad,” he said with almost pitiful politeness. “Could you get me a salad?”
“Salad?” she roared, as though he’d asked for a plate of pickled horse manure.
“Yes, please.”
“I don’t fetch rabbit food.”
“Then I’ll get it myself,” he announced, then stood up and left.
Imelda flapped her arms a few more times, grumbled something that ended with one of my favorite anatomical organs, then stomped from the room herself.
Visibly relieved, Morrow placed her half-eaten meatloaf sandwich back on the plate. “Who won that round?” she asked.
“Who’s fetching the rabbit food?” I answered.
“She’s the real McCoy, isn’t she?”
“Last of the breed,” I replied, reaching over for my third sandwich.
“Did Delbert just start a war?”
“Hardly. She was only checking his mettle.”
“How’d he do?”
“Not bad. She saw you pick up that sandwich, though.”
“Was that a mistake?”
I scratched my nose. “Hard to say. Time will tell.”
These two thoughtful creases appeared between Morrow’s eyebrows. The truth is what I just said made absolutely no sense. Took her a moment, but she figured that out.
“You run a loose ship, don’t you?” she complained. “She was very disrespectful. I would have thought a former infantry officer would instill a little more discipline in the ranks.”
Did I mention before that Morrow is an astonishingly beautiful woman? Well, if I didn’t, she is. And there’s nothing like having a great-looking woman challenging your manhood, which was exactly what she was doing. Her perfectly shaped eyebrows were arched up, and her lips were kind of pointing downward, and the average guy would choose just that moment to flex his muscles and mutter something tough and virile to confirm he had something inside those jockey shorts.
I said, “That’s why stereotypes don’t come with guarantees.”
See, Captain Lisa Morrow was obviously scared to death of Specialist Seven Imelda Pepperfield. She just wanted to shame me into protecting her. Like I said, she’s a smart girl.
I finished my third sandwich and glanced at my watch. Unless I missed my guess, there should’ve been a witness waiting outside our door. It actually wasn’t a real hard guess to make, though, since that morning, before we’d left for the morgue, I’d asked Imelda to contact Lieutenant Colonel Will Smothers to request his presence at 1530 hours, which, to the uninitiated, is pretty much the same thing as