Rikud Temani
It's a lot like Stillwater, the sweating brunette decides. Only less lively. Gibbs' sleepy hometown had the lazy bustle down to a rural art. But this place is like the parting shot in an old western film; colorless, motionless melancholy. A funeral decorated in dust.
Her partner's gaze bounces from one dulled corner of Main Street to the next. There's charm, a Rockwell quaintness to the locale that had pleased him on arrival. The appeal had survived dinner at what Ziva would describe as a two-room shed. But this morning, Tony had apparently woken with a dawning aversion for quaint.
On the sidewalk, the team now stands with the local barber. His business had endured the bag-and-tag ritual yesterday and the financial loss has been considerable, he reports. Two folks had been turned away from their critically vital trims. Morton Banks, a man possessed of the belief that the comb-over is a statement, had the fortune of hosting the dead body, something that will undoubtedly stir his proprietor's pride the moment the team leaves. There will be a plaque on the door soon. For now, the length to which he's been put out is sharpening his disdain for the northerners before him.
Ziva dislikes the man, who has yet to put down his scissors though the crime scene label has kept the shop closed all day.
"Much to do around here?" Tony asks Mr. Banks, who'd already complained his way through an alibi for last night's murder.
"Town's ripe with excitement. Why, we had a real knock-down brawl in that tavern 'cross the way." His silver shears point to a drinking establishment across the road. "Called it the Fist Hoedown. Real exciting."
"When was that?"
"Nineteen and eighty three." The man's voice gives deadpan something to aim for. "Like I said to your older fella, we're restful people here. No thrills other than what the youth invent come Friday night. And that ain't worth sobering the sheriff for."
Said sheriff had certainly made an impression. Shaped like a traffic cone, he'd kissed Ziva's hand, which had left a deposit of barbeque sauce on her knuckles. Forgoing niceties, Ziva had wiped it off in front of the still-chewing officer.
Tony had called her rude, even as he'd passed the hand sanitizer.
And now, before an old building on an old street with an old man who maintains a gaze several inches below her chin, Ziva would gladly polygraph the entire population to gain a quicker result.
The notion is nibbled by their boss and swallowed with less agreement than Ziva had expected. Gibbs seems, despite being labeled the older fella, to enjoy the view. It's his idea to stall at the local eatery for a bite. Less a restaurant than a chicken coop with a sliding window, food is ordered, cooked in the darkness within and deposited on a bolted-on ledge, which represents the sturdiest part of the rest of the establishment.
"How does this town exist?" She huffs as she places her meal on the slowly rotting picnic table, damaged by years of irrational placement beneath direct sunlight and in a sprinkler's path. "This is not even the south."
"Hicks spring eternal," Tony quips around a mouthful of biscuit. "But their cooking redeems the breed."
"Inbreed, you mean." McGee's eyes disappear into his face with the force of his squint. "And positivity isn't what you were extolling this morning."
"There were crickets," Tony reminds his team. "In the tub. Live ones."
Tim's smirk is hidden behind a sensible sandwich. "Better than an iguana in your bed."
"Plus they serenade you," Ziva notes.
"Because my shower needs an insect symphony."
Ziva's neck cranes to one side, giving her a wax-figure-gone-melted look. "What color did the witness call the getaway car?"
McGee pushes a tricky lump of lettuce down. Past the sprigs of produce dangling from his lip comes, "Puce."
Ziva's eyes remain somewhere to the south, past the dust and through a morning fog that avoids their side of town like it's been insulted.
"Tony, describe this word puce."
Her partner pauses from ravaging the best in imitation southern cooking. "It aims for purple but doesn't have the guts."
"Actually, puce only means ugly purple in the U.S.. It's a brutal green in other countries."
"Regardless," Ziva says, "I aim to solve the case by following that purple-type puce car."
The men trail her pointed finger through dust, fog and a hefty dose of embarrassment. There, in front of a convenience store and borrowing more spaces than one vehicle is allotted, waits an affront to the sighted and its pilot, arms full of snacks and sodas. The land boat, an amalgamation of three different automobiles fused together like a Lego project, appears far too large for the tiny being to operate.
The agents approach, targeting one of the visible corners and watch the pale girl throwing plots at the oddly white door. The cradled purchases present a problem, the driver's window already rolled down in order to accommodate the need to climb in through the open portal. The task would be easier if the young lady would put down her purchases or had the foresight to have them bagged first.
It's only because she drops at least one item on three occasions that the team is able to surround the car. The dangerously thin girl doesn't realize her predicament and lifts one leg through the window. Tony taps her on the shoulder and three bags of chips, four sodas and a dozen individual Slim Jims tumble to the asphalt.
"Whatsa?"
Tony smiles at the attempt at speech. "I'm guessing they didn't offer the 'paper or plastic' option." His hand sweeps the ground and the variety of calories she desperately needs.
And then he steps back. Ziva leans in to cover his retreat and detects the cause. The emerging breeze picks up her scent and deposits it on their unprepared nostrils.
"Bathed in the stuff," Tony declares and all of Ziva's training is employed to ignore his correctness.
"This car," she informs the slightly dazed girl, "was seen at the barbershop yesterday."
The voice that escapes is reminiscent of a cartoon mouse. "Musta needed a trim?"
Brown sprouts from her crown, encroaching on a blond dye job which has been shoved to the final two inches of her shoulder-length disaster. Clearly the only water it's seen lately is rain.
"Your name?"
"Diamond."
Tony sighs. "Your real name?"
She has to drag the truth from the center of her disgust. "Betty. Ya know? No twenty year old outta get stuck with gramma's name"
McGee peers into the vehicle, pulls out an empty bottle. "Twenty year olds shouldn't drink bourbon. Especially when they're fifteen."
"And a half," she adds. "Anyway, it's my boyfriend's car. He don't have no hair so he weren't at no barbershop."
Tony kneels down, running a gloved finger along the border of the closed door. "You climb in through the window," he mutters to no one, then turns to Diamond Betty. "How long's the door been broken?"
"Can't open it today. Broke two nails trying." A hand is held aloft as proof. Blue polish, likely applied by a vengeful four year old, gleams in the sun.
Brushing dust from his pants, Tony tilts his head. "Probably has nothing to do with the bottom being welded shut."
The problem suffers under McGee's scrutiny. "Badly, too. Any idea why, Diamond?"
At which point the waif remembers that the mouth does not, in fact, need to be engaged. Betty clamps down rather painfully on her lips. Ziva, prepared to blame any moving thing for being delayed in this town, attempts the lethal glare. It shouldn't, but it fails.
As does Betty's legs, leaving a heap of bones to meet three sets of downcast eyes.
"That was different," Tim says, giving deadpan a patron saint.
And with such entertainment, Ziva hates this place just a little bit less.
Three months was longer than I intended my break to be. Please return for the next installment...