Sugar on the Bones

Book 0: Hap and Leonard

by Joe R. Lansdale

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Private Investigators

Synopsis

In this holy mess of a case for the "perpetual bad boy" (New York Times) sleuths in the beloved Hap and Leonard series, PI Duo Hap and Leonard investigate the untimely death of a woman whose family stood much to gain from her passing.

Minnie Polson is dead. Burned to a crisp in a fire so big and bad it had to be deliberate. The only thing worse is that Hap and Leonard could have prevented it. Maybe. Minnie had a feeling she was being targeted, shaken down by some shadowy force. However, when she’d solicited Hap & Leonard, all it took was one off color joke to turn her sour and she’d called them off the investigation. Wracked with a guilty conscience, the two PIs—along with Hap’s fleet-footed wife, Brett—tuck in to the case. As they look closer, they dredge up troublesome facts: for one, Minnie’s daughter, Alice, has recently vanished. She’d been hard up after her pet grooming business went under and was in line to collect a whopping insurance sum should anything happen to her mother. The same was due to Minnie’s estranged husband, Al, whose kryptonite (beautiful, money-grubbing women) had left him with only a run-down mobile home. But did Minnie’s foolish, cash-strapped family really have it in them to commit a crime this grisly? Or is there a larger, far more sinister scheme at work?
Irreverent, wise-cracking, and full of atmosphere and bite, Sugar on the Bones is not to be missed. 

Release date: July 16, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 288

Sample

I could start this true story right in the middle of the bad business, as there certainly was plenty of that, much worse than we could have expected, and it came at us from an angle that damn near defied geometry.

I could do that, but I won’t. Not just yet. We’ll get there in time. I mean, it’s clear in my head. I can still smell the gun smoke and I can still see Vanilla, her long blond hair under a black wool cap, wearing a headlamp, dressed in black, climbing up the rocks with a bow, a quiver of arrows, and a rifle strapped across her back. Jim Bob just below her, minus his cowboy hat, wearing a ski mask, a good coat, and hiking boots, his coat pushed back to show a black-handled Colt revolver nestled in its strap holster like a happy snake in its den. On his left side, in a special-made holster, he had a sawed-off ten-gauge, and woe unto whoever stepped in front of that little buddy.

Me and Leonard climbed behind them, me starting to feel a little weak with mountain sickness, with a slight tremble in the nerve that ran up my right leg, Leonard wearing a ridiculous wool hat with bear ears on it, looking like he was doing fine, like he might decide to hang by one hand and drink a Dr Pepper with the other. If he’d had one on him, I wouldn’t have put it past him.

Up we went, into the jaws of death.

And I’m not being melodramatic.

But I won’t start there, as much as that memory clings.

Let’s start at the place where it truly began for us. A time before it went utterly wet, dark, and dangerous.

Marvin Hanson said, “I’ve had enough. I’d rather drive a rusty nail through my dick and into a sinking boat surrounded by sharks than spend another day being a cop. I got the years in. I’m getting out while I’m young enough to waste some of my life properly. What’s gone before just feels wasted.”

“You’re not that young,” I said.

“And for heaven’s sake, man,” Leonard said, “just think. You got to know us. That’s got to be a plus in your life. Right?”

“We are warm and fuzzy,” I said.

“Like a tiger’s butthole,” Hanson said. “Nope. I’m finished. Put in the paperwork. Done, baby, done.”

I said, “I guess Rachel is fine with this?”

“She’s been wanting me to hang up my cop shoes for years. Knowing she’s getting me away from you two is a capital reason as well. Wherever you guys tread, disaster follows, two times squared with shit-stained shoes.”

“Sounds kind of shaky as math,” Leonard said, “but you did talk a bit of Shakespeare there, so one might cancel out the other.”

“That wasn’t Shakespeare,” Hanson said.

“But it sounded Shakespearean,” Leonard said. “That’s worth a few points.”

“Rachel does hate us,” I said.

“With a passion,” Hanson said.

“You quit being a cop, then what you gonna do?” I asked. “Beg your wife for sex and not get any?”

“Already living that lack of pleasure, so nothing new. The kids are long grown and doing all right. My niece is spending a couple years behind bars, but word is she’s learning the laundry trade and has made some friends. Rachel might not continue being as mean as a snake, now that I’m getting out of the cop business. Maybe I’ll get me some once a month or so. May have you draw me some instructions on where what goes and how it’s done, Hap. It’s been a while.”

Juvenile bullshit, but that was us. Old juveniles with bullshit.

We were sitting at a picnic table in mine and Brett’s fenced-in backyard. I had once been stabbed in that very yard and almost where I was now sitting in a chair. It was my birthday. The stabbing was not a present I had pined for. I nearly died. But I didn’t. I’m pragmatic. It didn’t bother me a bit now, sitting in that spot. I owned that space, not a bad memory. It was nice out, though the weather was starting to chill down a little, and in the next week or so I’d have to go for a heavier coat.

Hanson and Leonard were drinking beer, popping peanuts from a bowl. Me, I was having a glass of unsweet ice tea. Brett was out putting the sneak on a lady that was supposedly cheating on her wife. Gay marriage was starting to sound pretty much like any other marriage. I hasten to add: Except for mine. I was one happy dude in that department, and I got the impression that Brett felt the same.

“If I could retire, I’d want to be a dog,” Leonard said. “I’d lie around all day and lick my balls in the shade. Course, could be bad for my back.”

“And think about the strain of holding your leg up,” I said.

“I actually hadn’t considered that.”

“Just looking out for you, brother.”

Hanson took a swig of his beer, finished it off. “This is probably another reason to retire, so I can raise my level of conversation to a point higher than groundwater.”

“Really,” I said. “You retire, what you going to do? Got any real plans? Outside of getting some from the old lady now and then.”

“We bought a place on Caddo Lake. I’m going to open a bait shop, maybe. Sell worms and minnows, beer and ice, fishing equipment, might rent some boats. You know, jack up the prices and tell them it’s due to inflation.”

“Wish you luck on that one,” Leonard said.

“Who’s taking over your spot at the cop shop?” I asked.

“I’d thought Manny. She was the natural choice, so they naturally chose someone else. David Justin. He’s not from here. Brought in. Offered him better money than what I was making. He’s not a bad cop, but he can be a number one asshole. He lacks my sweet disposition. He won’t do you any favors, I can promise you that. As for Manny, she was born with the wrong equipment in her drawers. You know how the cop shop here is.”

We did.

“Manny got screwed,” Leonard said. “And not even by a friend.”

“Yep, but she got a chief of police job somewhere else. I forget where it is. It’s not far away. Still in East Texas. Oh, I remember. New Hope.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Chance moved there. They can be buds.”

“Chance moved?” Hanson said.

“Along with Reba, who has become her ward, as Batman used to call Robin. Oh, and Buffy the Dog went with them, of course. Chance is starting her own investigative business.”

“Chip off the old blockhead,” Hanson said.

“I think she believes she’s like Brett,” I said.

“Word is, and I wouldn’t say this to Manny, they were so desperate to have a chief at New Hope, they might have hired one of you jackasses, set you up with an online criminology course.”

“That would be scraping the bottom of the barrel,” I said. “They got Manny, they got the best they could get.”

“Agreed,” Hanson said, and made as if to get up, then hesitated.

“One last thing. Got something you might want to explore, make a little scratch, do me a favor. I wanted to catch Brett and talk to her too, since she’s the smartest of the bunch, but give her my apologies. I’m only telling you because you’re her employee and I’m picking up Rachel at her last day at work, then we’re off to Caddo Lake in a moving van. When this town is in my rearview mirror I may shit with joy.”

“That’s a unique kind of celebration,” Leonard said. “Will you wear a party hat?”

“Just tell Brett I’m sorry I didn’t consult her first, but she can call me at Caddo Lake, she wants. Here’s my number.”

He gave us a white card with his name, phone number, and address on it.

“You could just write on a piece of paper with a pen,” I said. “This is a waste of money.”

“That may be right, but there it is. I got a pocketful, so need to use them up. Rachel’s idea. Later we add something like ‘I sell worms and minnows’ to it. Again, tell Brett.”

“We’ll tell her,” I said.

“Wouldn’t want her to think I’d rather tell you two than her. I’d rather talk to her any day.”

“We can understand that,” Leonard said.

“Might want to get Jim Bob in on this one for backup.”

“Oh, hell no,” Leonard said.

“It’s that kind of job?” I said. “Where we need Jim Bob? That sounds like more than I want to deal with right now. Maybe forever. Jim Bob is draining, and if he’s needed, I’m sure the job will be draining too.”

“I just thought of him as a help, since it might take a while, and the lady has money and wants to spend it to have this matter taken care of. You pass on it, you pass, but will you talk to her?”

“Who’s her?” Leonard said.

“All I’m asking is do me this one last favor. I’m doing Rachel a favor. It’s her who knows the woman. Name’s Minnie. Minnie said she thought it might be a tough, maybe even dangerous job, didn’t want to go to the police, hence my mention of Jim Bob. By the way, Rachel didn’t want you to know the favor is for her. Hating you and all that.”

“Understood,” I said.

“All I know about the lady is she’s big in community work and such. She and Rachel were in the same book club, and they are casually social. I guess you two came up somehow, and Rachel said Minnie called her and asked for help. Anyway, that’s how you folks come into the picture.”

“We’ve been pulling back lately on the muscle jobs,” I said. “It’s the muscle part. Mine hurt.”

“You owe me,” Hanson said.

“I like the way you said that, Hanson,” Leonard said. “Little tremble in the voice, glisten to the eyes.”

“There was no tremble and no glisten, so don’t try and fuck with me. Here’s her card. Name. Phone number.”

“You got lots of cards,” Leonard said.

“Remember, you owe me. Lots.”

Indeed we did. I took the card and looked at it. It was unlike Hanson’s personal card. It was glossy and white and had upraised gold letters on it.

Minnie Polson was the full name. The phone number and address were there too. I held the card so Leonard could look at it.

“We’re on it,” I said.

“You’re on it,” Leonard said. “Any possibility of having to be around Jim Bob and I might kill myself. More likely I’d kill him.”

“Tomorrow,” I said, smiling at Hanson.

“Don’t count on it,” Leonard said.

Hanson stood up. “Good enough. I’ve done my bit for Rachel. It’s up to you.”

He shook our hands, said, “So long, boys,” and walked out of the garden and into the house. We followed. He went through the front door with a little wave, like the queen of England used to do.

He really did look happy for a change.

Like the poster boy for retirement and the possible renewal of regular sexual activity.

Of course, he would still need to locate a supply service for the worms and minnows.

Next day me and Brett went out to see Minnie Polson. Leonard, true to his word, did not get involved, even though we hadn’t asked Jim Bob to do anything. As for the job, we didn’t have any expectations, we were just doing a thing for a friend.

Minnie’s house was out in the country. It was a big house with a long concrete driveway white as heaven’s carpet. When we got out of the car you could hear and see little cameras spinning this way and that on the roof, at the windows, and just above the door.

The bottom-floor windows had cool-looking tan shutters on them. There were blue curtains hanging in the top-floor windows, except for one with a run of glass that was like the view shield of a spaceship. It was minus curtains, blinds, or shutters. I thought I saw movement up there, but then it was gone.

In the driveway, Brett said, looking at that big house, “If we take this job, boy, are we going to stick it to her.”

I grinned at her. Like me and Leonard, she was more likely to do something for less than it was worth rather than bleed someone on price, but it was a cute thing to say.

Brett was looking cute, brown skirt, white top with a man’s tie, brown suede boots. Her legs were long and nice and her face was nicer. She pushed her thick red hair back with one hand over her right ear, which caused her to look studious as well as cute. I hoped I too looked cute. I had on new blue jeans and had combed my hair with a comb that had four teeth in it.

We sauntered up the brick walkway that ran from the drive to the concrete-slab steps that led to a side door. We had been asked to use that door, not the front, and not the back. It was just under a carport that was big enough to house a couple of tanks, a bulldozer, and perhaps a trio of tricycles if you shoved them in tight.

Brett punched the doorbell, and rather quickly, Minnie opened it for us. For whatever reason, I had envisioned Minnie to be either an old lady or possibly a mouse. She was neither. She was small enough to be a mouse, though, about four feet tall, eighty pounds at the most. When she was younger, she would have made a perfect cat burglar. She looked fifty, tops. She was in good shape and had a pretty face, and her brown hair was shaved on one side of her head and swept up in front. It’s a hairstyle that always makes me think they left the hairdresser’s chair during an emergency.

She introduced herself as Minnie and let us know her pronouns were she/her.

“My pronoun is Brett,” Brett said. “This is Hap. I’m not wearing any panties, and he has mine on.”

“Oh,” Minnie said.

“Fucking with you,” Brett said.

Minnie’s face wore inner conflict for a moment. I think her hand flexed to slam the door in our faces, but she didn’t.

The interior decor was somewhere between discarded Buckingham palace goods and the stuff you might find on sale at Pier One. Minnie, for all the size and beauty of her property, seemed to be trimming her style.

She offered us a seat on an uncomfortable couch, one of the Pier One items, I assumed, and studied us carefully while we listened to the central air hum.

“Rachel recommended you,” Minnie said.

“For what, exactly?” Brett asked.

“It’s a bit complicated.”

“We deal in complications,” Brett said.

“I’m having second thoughts about hiring you, to be honest.”

“That’s all right,” Brett said, “I’m having second thoughts about us being hired.”

“I don’t like that you made light of my pronoun announcement.”

“Does my knowing your sexuality and gender matter that much?”

“It’s progress.”

“For you? I have a feeling you’ve done just fine without it. How about I be Brett, he is Hap, and you are Minnie, and we don’t talk about your gender or who you prefer to fuck or how flexible you are on the matter. Because frankly, lady, I don’t give a shit.”

It went downhill rapidly after that. A few more words were exchanged, and a moment later we were standing on the carport steps with a slight breeze blowing our hair.

“Usually, it’s Leonard that gets sideways,” I said.

“I guess I’m making up for him not being here. Let’s go home. I need to get this place out of sight and memory.”

“For the record, I’m not really wearing your underpants,” I said.

“Of course not, I made that up,” she said. “But I wasn’t kidding about me. I don’t have any panties on. We get in the car, you want, you can have a peek.”

Next day we were in the upstairs office of Brett Sawyer Investigations. The morning light was slicing through the blinds. Leonard, who had recently arrived, sat down and stretched his feet out on the ottoman while Brett explained why we hadn’t taken on the Minnie job.

Leonard said, “You’d have thought I’d gone with you, way things turned out.”

“I didn’t like her,” Brett said. “She’s like those people that want you to know they drive a Prius because they’re saving the environment, only with her, it’s pronouns.”

“We drive a Prius,” I said.

“Not the point,” Brett said. “We give a little to environmental causes and recycle, but I don’t meet people with ‘Hello, my name is Brett, I drive a Prius and recycle, and I’m a self-righteous asshole.’ She just rubbed me wrong.”

“I’m with you on that,” Leonard said. “I never meet people and say, ‘I’m Leonard, I’m queer as a three-dollar bill, and can I see your dick if you’ve got one?’ Well, if I thought I might irritate someone I didn’t like, I would. And calling a person ‘they’ confuses the dog shit out of me. It sounds like I’m speaking to someone possessed and in need of an exorcist.”

Brett and Leonard looked at me.

“I’m riding the neutral wave on this one,” I said. “Like some hamburger companies: Have it your way.”

Leonard reached into his coat pocket and took out a folded newspaper, opened it, stretched it over his knees.

“Not to make an irritable morning any more irritable, but there’s another reason I dropped in. Reading the town paper over coffee, all eight pages of it, I saw that Wilbur the Water-Skiing Squirrel is coming to town. There will be numerous performances, all out at the civic center.”

“Didn’t the squirrel have a different name last time he passed through?” I asked.

“Last time was maybe ten years ago,” Leonard said. “He’s been replaced.”

“That sucks. I hope the old squirrel had a good retirement plan.”

“Hap, his retirement plan was he died. Squirrels don’t live that long. If he died in the bosom of a Southern family, they probably ate him with a side of greens.”

“I know I would,” I said.

“Me too, for that matter,” Leonard said.

I had some bad memories about a particular squirrel from some years back, and it had nothing to do with water-skiing and everything to do with rabies. I decided from that point on to remain silent on the matter.

“That’s your report?” Brett said. “The old squirrel retired and there’s a new one? That’s the irritable news? It wasn’t like I had tickets to Wilbur’s show and it was canceled.”

“Nope. Something else. But I would like to point out—” Leonard held the newspaper up. “Wilbur got a front-page spread.”

And there Wilbur was, on skis, clutching a handle on a rope, a little mechanical boat pulling him over the surface of an artificial pool. He had one leg lifted so a ski was out of the water. One of his tricks, I figured. His fur was damp. Wilbur looked intense. I wondered if he really wanted to do that.

“But the main thing I wanted to mention is on page two, minus any kind of picture and surrounded by store ads,” Leonard said, putting the paper back on his lap, turning the page. “It’s a news article that was trumped by Wilbur the Water-Skiing Squirrel. I remembered the name on the card Hanson gave you. Minnie Polson. I didn’t know how that job worked out until this morning. But her/she, or she/her, got turned into a crispy critter last night.”

“How’s that?” Brett said.

“Got burned up. Her and her house and everything in it. Couldn’t even save the mineral rights on that one, it burnt up so bad. Fireman, a Frank Bozeman, says here in the paper that… ‘had the fire been any hotter, Satan would have used a water hose on it.’ Said he wouldn’t rule out arson.”

“Damn,” Brett said.

That put a smell on things, and not the pleasant aroma of barbecue.

“According to the paper, and not fireman Bozeman, unofficial consensus is it was an accident,” Leonard said. “Roast forgot in the oven, a wire-chewing rat, or something like that. But there hasn’t been a true investigation yet.”

I could see the color go out of Brett’s face. “Doesn’t mean her being burnt up has anything to do with the case she wanted us on,” I said.

“But it could have,” Brett said.

“And it might not,” Leonard said. “It’s not like you failed her on a job. Fact is, she never hired you. Didn’t want to. Odds are it’s just a coincidence.”

“True enough,” Brett said, nodding, but she didn’t sound or look convinced.

Lying in bed that night, feeling amorous, I reached over and put my arm across Brett’s chest, my lips close to her ear.

“I’m not in the mood, baby,” she said.

“That’s all right,” I said. “Could you get in the mood?”

“Nope. Not tonight.”

“Could you pretend you’re in the mood?”

“You mean service you even if I’m not wanting to?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

She laughed a little. “Really? I’m lying here feeling unromantic and kind of guilty, so no.”

“Still thinking about Minnie?”

“Yeah. I mean, I didn’t need to reply to her when she said ‘she/her.’ I could have just said, ‘Hi, I’m Brett, this is Hap.’ But—”

“You didn’t.”

“No. I didn’t. Maybe I’m the one that’s self-righteous.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Don’t start on me, Collins.”

“Sorry. It’s a hard road to walk because I’m on the side of everyone who has felt left out, and I’m on the side of those that don’t fit in. Some things are hard to change with. We get locked into our own time periods. Thing is, things have gotten so PC that someone can find almost anything to condemn your whole life. It’s hard to joke. It’s difficult not to offend because so many folks want to be offended. But on the other hand, you got those who talk anti-PC, and to some extent I’m one, but they talk it so they can get by with saying awful racist, homophobic things. That said, I’m having a hard time keeping up with pronouns and, like you, find it unnecessary. But I accept there are others that find it important. I think the bottom line is how well we treat people. You and I both try. Leonard tries sometimes. Of course, to be fair, sometimes we shoot people.”

“Are you trying to get a job as a professor? Because that sounded like academic gobbledygook.”

“Sorry.”

“Listen, in the morning, I say we investigate how Minnie died, just to find out if there’s any question it might not have been an accident. I think that would make me feel better.”

“All right.”

“I think that would take care of things for me a little, you know, if it was an accident,” Brett said. “A parakeet caught on fire and flew around the house starting the blaze, got caught up in the curtains or some such shit. She left something on the stove or was killed by spontaneous combustion.”

“Or a meteor hit the house and started the fire. Maybe a cigar-smoking kangaroo stopped by, dropped his cigar in a trash can full of paper while trying to sell her tote bags.”

“That would satisfy,” Brett said.

“You feeling a little more in the mood now that you’ve got that off your attractive chest?”

“No. Good night.”

. . .