Page 26 of Bad Seed

It was a typical day at the Bar and Grill until Justine came back, only to find her guitar man gone. She giggled, then shouted out as she slapped the bar for attention.

“Hey! Bartender! Where’d the guy go I was dancin’ with?”

Louis frowned. Her laughter was shrill and forced and she was slurring her words.

“He probably left to get ready for the afternoon show,” Louis said.

“Wha’ever,” Justine mumbled. “I need a drink.”

Louis shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss, but you’re over your limit. How about a cup of coffee instead?”

The smile slid off Justine’s face. “I don’ wanna cup a’ coffee. I want a drink, dammit!”

Louis shook his head. “Sorry, but I can’t do that.”

Justine started cursing, and the room went quiet.

Everyone was staring at the woman at the bar.

Mike, the bouncer, was already at her elbow to escort her out when Louis shook his head. “She’s too drunk to drive,” he said, and reached for the phone.

The moment the bartender turned his back, Justine grabbed a bottle of beer from a man at the bar and threw it at the back of Louis’s head. It shattered, cutting his head, leaving glass embedded in his hair and scalp, and spilling beer all over the back of his shirt.

The pain was abrupt and unexpected, but Louis didn’t hesitate as he called the police. The dispatcher answered.

“Jubilee Police. What is your emergency?”

“This is Louis Glass at Trapper’s Bar and Grill. I have a drunk and disorderly I need picked up, and make it quick,” he said, then disconnected.

Mike the bouncer had her in a light restraining hold when all of a sudden, she twisted out of his grasp, then turned and clawed the sides of his face with her nails, and made a run for the door. But the floor was tilting, and the room was beginning to spin.

Instead of moving forward, she went sideways, fell across a table full of diners, knocked two of them out of their chairs, and upset the food. The meal they’d been eating was on the floor, and both women who’d fallen out of their chairs were crying. One woman wasscreaming about the pain in her arm, another was holding on to her side and crying.

Justine was in the act of trying to escape when she slipped in a puddle of ketchup and sat down on a basket of french fries.

“Shit,” Louis muttered, and turned around and made a second call for an ambulance.

The dispatcher sent out the call, and as luck would have it, Officers Pope and Leedy were in the act of passing the bar and grill when the call went out.

Wiley Pope hit the lights and siren, made a quick U-turn, and pulled into the parking lot as Doug Leedy was calling in their response. They began hearing screams inside the bar the moment they got out of the cruiser, and took off running.

But once inside, it was hard to figure out where to look first—at all the blood on the bouncer’s face, the people in the floor, a half-dozen other diners standing around them and food all over the place, or Louis, who was coming toward them holding a bloody bar towel on the back of his head.

“What the hell happened here?” Wiley said.

Louis pointed to the woman in black Lycra who was sitting in the floor.

“She happened. I quit serving her drinks. She had a fit, threw a beer bottle at the back of my head, clawed Mark’s face to shreds, and made a run for the door, then fell into the table of diners before we could catch her. I’ve already called for an ambulance, but not for her. Thewomen she knocked out of their chairs are injured. The drunk blond in the floor is the only one of all of us who isn’t injured. That red stuff all over her face and hands isn’t blood, it’s ketchup. She slipped in it and sat down in a basket of fries.”

Wiley blinked. “Do you know who she is?”

Louis shrugged. “She introduced herself to every man at the bar as Justine Beaumont. She ran up a bar tab, and I will be pressing charges for assault on me and my employee, for personal injury of my customers, and for destruction of property and the unpaid bar tab. Can’t speak for the ones she injured, whether they will sue her for personal damages.”

A slow grin spread across Wiley’s face. “Justine Beaumont? The hell you say. Hey, Doug, since that’s ketchup and not blood, we don’t have to wait for the EMTs before we move her. Help me get her up and out of here before she does any more damage.”

“I’ll cuff her, then you get her out of the fries,” Doug said.

Aaron Pope was entering the bar with a trio of other officers, with the EMTs right behind them. When Aaron saw his brother and partner in the thick of it, trying to get a drunk cuffed and up off the floor, he headed toward them.

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