The Lady in Question

[good4somethingbum]

The Lady in Question ©2014 Robert George BMI

It’s been seven months now since the cops
Paid a morning visit to my auto shop
Said a couple vanished in thin air
And my card was on their Frigidaire
Neighbors said the husband was a transport driver
And a drunken, mean philanderer
But his brother hates the wife and did his utmost
To insult and slander her
All he did was run off at the mouth
Said she killed him and then headed south
So I said, “Detectives, there’s one thing I do know
She hates Mexico”

Then they asked if I was doin’ well or deeply in debt
Chuckled at my vintage poster of the Sir Douglas Quintet
Both of them were condescending, arrogant and pompous
Grilling me all morning as if I was her accomplice
I said, “I can make a few suggestions
But I barely knew the lady in question

You can write it down in your report
That I changed the oil in her old Ford
She said half the men in Tennessee
Were her cheatin’ husband’s enemy
And it wouldn’t shock me none if all night workers
On some moonlit Mississippi docks
Drained a whiskey jug and wrecked their forklift
And then found him in a damaged shipping box”
And then one cop squinted and his weathered face turned red
He glared at me and said…

“We found blood stains in their carport on a rusty step-stool
Bones were dug up in a field outside a nearby prep-school
And we’ve heard the wife’s got roots out west in Mendocino
And her mobbed up cousins run a Gila Bend casino
Wicked wives just give me indigestion
So we’ll be in touch about the lady in question”

He was taped up in the trunk just like a runway model’s boobs
When I took that old Ford to the wrecking yard and had it cubed
And the cops had nuthin’ solid and they soon moved on
So I sold my shop and made a payphone call to Mazatlan

Maybe I was foolish and the cops’d call it murder
But how many times could I just let him hurt her
Now I’m drivin’ south and playin’ Trombone Shorty
Passin’ where the Mississippi meets I-40
And my conscience has no good suggestions
How I could’ve better helped the lady in question

Epilogue…

Well, we fell in love and even learned to speak a little Spanish
Then we heard her husband’s loudmouth brother vanished
Then he turned up in a dumpster near a Knoxville Johnny Rocket’s
Double tap to his forehead and an ace of spades inside his pocket…