by john | May 22, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
15
Tommy Braxton waved at us from the bar when we walked into The Garden Cafe. I was a bit underdressed for the clientele Tommy wanted to attract, but about right for the clientele he actually had, so I didn’t mind sitting down in the closest thing that part of Union County had to a fancy steakhouse. Sheriff Dunleavy even pulled my chair out for me like a real gentleman and everything.
Leslie, Tommy’s youngest daughter, came over as soon as we were settled, and handed us menus. There were about three other tables occupied, two of them with elderly couples having dinner so they could drive home before it got full-on dark, and one a family with a young child sitting in a booster seat and trying in vain to have a decent dinner out with a toddler. I figured it was their first child and they just didn’t know any better. In a couple years, they’d be fine, but right now everything the poor little boy did was either a crisis or the greatest thing in the world.
I have always loved children, it’s why I spent so many years teaching Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. When I was a child myself, I wanted to grow up, get married, and have a house just bursting at the seams with young’s.
But as I grew older, I realized that my particular gifts make it hard to keep a relationship, thanks to odd hours that ghosts decide to visit me, and the general creepiness that most people see in somebody who actually converses with dead people, instead of just talking at them like most folks do. Add to that the unfortunate tendency of lingering ghosts to be nosy as hell, and I was not what most people would consider a “catch.” So children weren’t really in the cards for me. But I have been blessed with hundreds of boys and girls who love their “Miss Lila Grace,” and most of the time that’s been enough for me.
“Never wanted any, or never had the chance?” Willis asked.
My head whipped back around to look at him, and he just gave me a wistful smile. “Same here,” he said. “I always wanted them, but my ex-wife didn’t, and now it just seems a little late in the game.”
“I reckon that is one of the hazards of having dinner with a detective, ain’t it?” I asked. “He’s liable to know more than you want to let on.”
“Could be, except I’m not a detective anymore. I reckon I’m as close as what we’ve got for this mess, but if I’d wanted to keep dealing with murderers, I would have stayed in Milwaukee.”
“Is that where you’re from, Sheriff?”
“Willis,” he corrected.
“I’m sorry. Is that where you’re from, Willis?”
He gave me one of those little half-smiles again, the kind he had started doing when he knew I was being a smart-aleck but didn’t want to call me out on it. I kinda liked it. “That’s not where I’m from, originally, but I lived and worked there for thirty years, so I reckon it’s kinda where I’m from now.”
“Where are you from, originally?” I asked.
“Carrboro,” he said. “Just outside Chapel Hill.”
“I know it,” I said. “I knew a girl from there when I was in school. We went to Winthrop together.”
“I didn’t know you went to college,” he said.
“I did. I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English literature and proceeded to do nothing with it for most of my adult life,” I said.
“Never wrote the Great American Novel,” he asked, that teasing smile back for a second.
“No, I never wanted to be a writer. I thought I would teach, but that didn’t work out for me.” That brought back some unpleasant memories, and I guess they showed on my face, because Dunleavy wasted no time in poking that sore spot.
“What happened?” He asked. I looked up at him, and he shrugged. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I just thought it might be better dinner conversation than dead girls in cars in lakes.”
Of course the second he says the words “dead girls,” Tommy’s girl walks up with her little notepad out to take our food orders. The poor child looked so scandalized I couldn’t decided whether to laugh or cry, so I decided to fake a coughing fit and run to the bathroom, leaving Willis on his own to dig his way out of that one. It served him right, sticking his nose into everybody’s business. I washed my hands, splashed a little cold water on my face, and freshened up my lipstick before I walked back to the table, mostly composed.
“I hope you like escargot,” Willis said as I sat back down. “Because I ordered you an anchovy appetizer with an escargot main course. It’s the least I could do to thank you for leaving me in that mess.”
“I love snails,” I said, hoping desperately that he was teasing, but completely unwilling to ask him if he was.
“Just like I love explaining to high school girls that I am not a serial killer while their father has his hand on a sawed-off shotgun under the bar,” he said.
“I believe you were telling me about growing up in Carrboro,” I said, changing the subject.
“I wasn’t, but I will. I grew up there, and went to Chapel Hill. I studied Political Science, and was looking at law school when I decided to become a cop instead.”
“What brought on that change?” I asked.
“A kid I grew up with got shot in the head trying to buy coke from the wrong guy in the wrong part of town. The Durham police didn’t have a lot of time to look into the case of another dead black kid that summer, so I decided I’d become a cop to try and keep that from happening to anybody else.”
“That’s admirable,” I said. He looked up at me to see if I was picking at him again, but his shoulders relaxed when he saw I was sincere. I was, too. A life of putting yourself in harm’s way for the benefit of others is nothing to sneer at.
“Well, when I applied, I couldn’t get a job at any of the departments near home, and my dad had a sister who lived in Milwaukee. So I went to live with Aunt Gina for a while, got a job as a beat cop in the city, and worked my way up. Put in my thirty, got my city pension, and decided to come back home where I wouldn’t ever have to shovel snow again.”
“And where there’s a lot less chance of somebody shooting at you,” I added.
“That was a part of the thinking, yes. I’m not as fast as I used to be, so I wanted to go somewhere that the pace was a little slower, and a little safer. A man gets past fifty, he starts to think he probably wants to see sixty or seventy. A big city police department is no easy place to get old.”
“A woman does the same thing, Sheriff,” I said.
“You’ve heard,” he said.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Lila Grace, you play the old woman card pretty well, but if you’re a day over forty-five, I’ll eat my hat.”
I blushed a little. It had been a long time since a man commented positively on the way I looked, especially given my typical style of dress, and I had to admit, it felt good. I tried not to show it, though, as I grinned across the table at Willis. “Do you want some Texas Pete, or A-1 sauce, Sheriff? Because I’m fifty-years old, and proud of every one of them.”
“Well, I reckon there is something to be said for clean living after all, because you sure don’t look it,” he said.
“Thank you, Willis. You haven’t done too badly yourself, for an old coot.” We both grinned a little bit. “So how did you end up all the way down here? Were you reading obituaries nationwide looking for dead Sheriffs and police chiefs?”
He looked a little abashed, but chuckled as he said, “Well, almost. I set up a Google search for municipal job listings for a sheriff or chief of police position in a town of less than fifty thousand. This one popped up, and the county council was pretty happy to have somebody with my experience apply. Nothing against Sheriff Johnny, but the impression I got was that he wasn’t the most up-to-date in his techniques.”
I almost spit sweet tea across the table at him laughing. “You could say that. Johnny kept a baseball bat autographed by Buford T. Pusser hanging on the wall of his office. That was his hero, and his favorite movie was Chiefs. A fine piece of literature, I will agree, but not exactly what I’d call the forefront of police methodology.”
“What happened to him?” Willis asked. “I get that it wasn’t anything in the line of duty, but nobody seems willing to discuss it. Was he out with the wrong woman, or something?”
I laughed again. If he kept this up, the poor man was going to think I thought he was a moron. “No, nothing like that. I reckon it would be a little embarrassing, because he was caught with his pants down, after a fashion. Johnny was a fisherman, and he liked his liquor, like most fishermen do. Hell, most people around here like a drink or two. Well, Johnny was out in his little bass boat just tooling along Broad River, and he had him a jar, like he would most Sunday mornings. Johnny wasn’t much of a church-goer, you know. He said he felt like if God needed him, he’d know where to find him. Well, I reckon God needed him, because that Sunday morning, he found him, and he took him, right there in his boat.”
“What’s embarrassing about that? The fact that he was drinking? I can’t imagine anybody would care about that,” he said.
“Well,” I hesitated before going on, then I figured he was going to hear it eventually, might as well be over a good meal. “It wasn’t so much the drinking, or the fishing, as it was the fact of exactly how he went, that might be considered less than dignified.”
Willis made on of those “go on” motions with his hand, and took a sip of tea with his other. I waited for him to swallow before I went on, not relishing the idea of getting a faceful of the sweet beverage.
“He fell out of the boat taking a leak, hit his head on a rock, and drowned.” I said it all in a rush, so as to get it out all at once, like ripping off a bandage.
Willis did what just about everybody that hears the story of poor Sheriff Johnny’s demise does. He stared at me for a second, then his shoulders shook, kinda like a convulsion, then he couldn’t hold it back anymore and the laughter just blew right out of him like a cannonball. He laughed for about a solid minute before he wiped his eyes with his napkin and got himself under control.
“That has got to be the craziest death story for a cop I have ever heard, and like I said, I been at this for better than thirty years. I’ve heard more than one story about somebody getting caught with his pants down, but there’s usually a jealous husband, or wife, involved in those. This has got to be the first time I’ve ever heard of death by pissing. Damn, no wonder the poor man can’t move on. He’s got a lot to atone for before he feels like his legacy is secure again.”
I gave a little chuckle of my own. “Oh, that ain’t why Johnny’s sticking around.”
“So why is he still here? Waiting on somebody to catch the catfish that ate his nuts?”
“Don’t be crude,” I said. He held up both hands in apology, and I gave him a little grin to let him know that if it was crude, it was at least a little funny, too. “No, he’s just here until he decides if you’re a good enough replacement. If not, he’ll be here ’til somebody better comes along.”
Willis leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “Huh,” he said, a thoughtful look crossing his face. “He really loved this town, didn’t he?”
“The Thomases have been in Union County since they came over from England. His people have been here for hundreds of years. There’s a whole row of the cemetery with nothing but his kin. So yeah, he loved this place and its people. Still does, as a matter of fact.”
He leaned forward, fixing me with those blue, blue eyes. “You do too, don’t you?”
I thought for a second before I answered. “I do. It don’t matter if not all of them love me. It don’t matter if some of them think the things I can do make me a bad person, or mean I’m in league with some dark power. For every one of them, there’s somebody like Gene over at Sharky’s. Somebody I can help when nobody else can.”
“Somebody like Jenny Miller,” Willis said, his voice soft.
“Somebody just like Jenny Miller,” I agreed.
“You know we’ll find him, right Lila Grace?”
“The killer?” I asked. “Yeah, I know. We’ll find him, and we’ll make sure he pays for what he did to those poor girls.”
“Yes we will. But right now, I think we have something more important to focus our attention on.” He sat up a little straighter and motioned Tommy’s little girl over to the table. He smiled at the child when she arrived, and gave me a wink.
“And just what could that be, Sheriff?” I was starting to enjoy this side of Sheriff Willis Dunleavy. He was a sharp man, one that could be deep in conversation one second, and light-hearted and teasing the next. The man had layers. I liked that.
“Dessert, Lila Grace. We need to decide if we want to try the apple cobbler or the pecan pie.”
“Well, I do have you at an unfair advantage here, Sheriff,” I replied, smiling at the waitress. “Because I happen to know that this girl’s Granny Hope made a fresh peach cobbler just this afternoon, because I saw her this morning on the way to Farmer Black’s peach shed, and there ain’t nothing better this side of the county that Theresa Hope’s peach cobbler. So why don’t you get us a couple plates of that, darling, and you won’t even have to bother telling us about it?”
The girl grinned and turned around with a little flounce. “Yes ma’am, and I’ll be sure to tell Granny what you said about her cobbler. She’ll really appreciate it.”
I leaned forward when the girl was out of earshot. “That child’s grandmother thinks I had sexual congress with the devil himself to learn how to talk to dead people. Poor girl is going to be praying until daylight if she mentions my name in her presence. The old biddy can make a cobbler like nobody’s business, though.”
by john | May 15, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
14
Sheriff Dunleavy’s car was one of about half a dozen parked in front of Sharky’s when I pulled up. I parked at the end of a row to make sure I wouldn’t have any trouble getting out, since I didn’t plan on staying long. Jenny cocked her head at me when I turned off the truck and opened the door.
“I thought you said you were hungry.”
“I am hungry,” I replied.
“Well, Sharky’s don’t serve food,” the girl said.
“How would you know? You ain’t never going to get old enough to go into a beer joint.”
“You act like anybody’s checked an ID in Sharky’s in, like, ever. All you need to get beer in there is have a single hair on your chin or on your—“
“Young lady!”
“I was gonna say legs, but that works too.” She gave me a saucy grin. “Now why are you really going in there?”
“Like I said, I think the good sheriff owes me an apology and a steak dinner for being rude to me earlier, and I plan to collect both of those things.” I closed the truck door with a hollow metal thunk and walked across the gravel parking lot to Sharky’s door. I looked down at what I was wearing and grimaced a little. I was in my normal weekday attire of a patterned shirt and blue jeans, with a pair of flat white tennis shoes. I didn’t look bad, but it wasn’t any real surprise from my wardrobe that I hadn’t had very many dates this century. Well, I wasn’t there to use my feminine wiles on the Sheriff, even if he was a handsome, strapping man with a conspicuous lack of a wedding ring.
Every head in the dim room turned to me when I pushed open the door. Sharky did a double-take, then jerked his head over to the right to where the sheriff sat in a booth with his back to the wall. It wasn’t like I couldn’t see him. Sharky’s place wasn’t very big, and there weren’t but about eight booths and four tables in the place. Somehow I would have been able to figure out where Dunleavy was sitting among the ten people that were scattered through the room.
Even so, I walked in that direction without bothering to pretend I was here to see anybody else. Hell, the only person besides Gene that I knew well enough to speak to in a beer joint was Edith Hardcastle, and she and I weren’t on the best speaking terms after she made disparaging remarks about my cherry cobbler three years ago at the Homecoming lunch after church. That biddy had the audacity to say I used a store-bought crust! I learned how to make that crust from my Gran in 1975, and have been rolling it by hand ever since I was tall enough to see over the counter. So I gave Edith a frosty nod as I walked over to see the sheriff.
“Bring me a bourbon, Sharky,” I said as I walked pas the bar. “And not any of that Ancient Age shit, either. If you’re out of Knob Creek, just bring me Turkey.”
I slid into the booth across from Dunleavy and gave him a smile. “Good evening, Sheriff. How are you doing?”
He just sat there, watching me with a baleful eye. “What do you want, Lila Grace?”
“Why do I need to want anything, Sheriff? Can’t I just come by and have a drink with a friend? Thank you, Gene. What do I owe you?” I said, taking my glass.
“Lila Grace, you know I ain’t gonna take your money,” Sharky said.
“I know, Gene, but it’s polite to offer, and I hold out hope that one day you’ll forget and let me start buying my drinks again.”
“Not gonna happen, ma’am. But thank you.” Gene turned and walked back to the bar, leaving me alone with the sheriff again.
“What did you do to him?”
“I think you mean ‘for,’” I corrected.
“Excuse me?”
“I think you mean, ‘what did I do for him,’ Sheriff. His mama passed, and she couldn’t move on because she didn’t leave a will, and there was some dispute between Gene and his brother Robert about what to do with her property. I called the three of them together and relayed his mama’s wishes to them, and they got over their differences and did what she told them to do. Gene credits me with saving his relationship with his brother, which was rapidly deteriorating on account off the money involved.”
“So you drink for free?”
“That was my fee, Sheriff,” I explained. “I don’t often charge people for what I do. I barter a great deal, and sometimes people do give me money, but usually I do what I do for one of two reasons. Either I have an overwhelming sense of justice and cannot let a wrong stand if I have the opportunity to make it right…”
“Or?”
“Or I have got some damn fool ghost hanging around at all hours irritating the ever-loving pee out of me to make things right with their loved ones.”
“Which one is this?” He asked, sipping on his drink. It looked like a Jack & ginger from what I could see, and to smell his breath, it wasn’t the first sample he’d taken of Lynchburg’s finest since he’d got off work.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Which is this, Lila Grace? Are you poking around in Jenny Miller’s death because you can’t stand to see justice ignored, or because that poor dead girl won’t leave you alone?”
“I’m going to ignore that question, Sheriff, and move on to the reason I am here. I—“
“Don’t,” he said. He didn’t move, just sat there, his elbows on the table and his eyes trained on the glass in front of him.
I took a closer look at the sheriff. He had aged since this morning. A fine brown-and-grey stubble poked out across his face. His shirt wasn’t creased, and there was a little gravy spot on his tie. All n all, it looked like he slept in his clothes, or didn’t sleep at all. I figured one of those was true. Sheriff Johnny spent more than one night laying stretched out in one of the two cells in back, trying to catch a few winks in the middle of a tough case. Looked like Sheriff Dunleavy was doing the same thing.
I thought for a moment before I spoke. “Don’t what, Sheriff? Don’t ignore the question that you only asked because you want me to feel as miserable as you do right now? Don’t come back here and try to help you because I have contributions to your case that nobody else has? Or just don’t act like I give a damn what happens to my town? What do you not want me to do, Sheriff? So I can be sure of exactly what I am telling you to kiss my ass over.”
His head snapped up and his brow furrowed, making a razor-sharp vertical line in the center of his brow. “Woman, I swear to—“
His mouth snapped shut and his eyes went wide as my palm cracked across his face like a rifle shot. “If I wanted to be spoken to like that, I could have married one of this rednecks around here. If you have something to say to me, you can call me Lila Grace, or you can call me Ms. Carter. But if you call me ‘woman’ like it’s an insult again, you can be damn sure there’ll be a matching handprint on the other side of your face.”
Dunleavy leaned forward, one elbow on the table, his eyes blazing. He stuck one finger out at me and started wagging it as he talked. “I should have you arrested for—“
“You want to keep that finger, you best put it away,” I said, my voice cold.
He stared at me long enough for it to be downright uncomfortable until he either decided we were both out of line, I was right, or that he wouldn’t likely be walking out of that bar full of hillbillies if he laid hands on the woman that taught most of them in Vacation Bible School when they were young’uns. He put his finger down and leaned back against the cracked and split red naugahyde of the booth.
“Lila Grace, I am starting to wonder if I was brought to this town as penance for something I did in a past life, because I cannot for the life of me think of anything I did to deserve you in my life.”
“Sheriff, I assure you, there is nothing that you could do to deserve me,” I smiled as I said it, and he just shook his head.
A rueful chuckle escaped his lips and he picked up the glass of brown liquid on the table in front of him and knocked it back. He waved at Sharky for another, then gaped at me when I shook my head. “What’s wrong, Lila Grace, you don’t approve of me getting drunk? I assure you I do not intend to drive home intoxicated.”
“Sheriff, as pleased as I am to hear that you do not intend to wrap your patrol car around a white oak tree between here and your house tonight, and as little as I would generally object to you crawling inside a bourbon bottle on your personal time, I am afraid that you have other obligations this evening. Obligations that require you to maintain at least a modicum of sobriety.”
He raised an eyebrow at me, then held up a twenty to Gene. The bartender nodded, and came over with the check. “That’ll be fifteen, Sheriff.”
“Keep the change, Sharky,” Dunleavy said. Gene smiled and nodded, then took away our glasses and headed back to the bar.
“What, pray tell, are these obligations, Ms. Carter?”
“You are taking me to dinner,” I said. The butterflies in my stomach were migrating north, south, and sideways all at the same time, despite my internal protestations that this was not a date, that I had no interest in this man outside the professional, and that all I wanted out of him was a free meal and an apology.
“I am?” Dunleavy asked with a slight smile. “Why exactly am I going to do that? And did you have a place in mind, or do I at least get some input?”
“You are taking me to dinner to apologize for your atrocious behavior this afternoon. You are paying for dinner and dessert to apologize for your behavior this evening, and no, you do not have any choice in where we go to eat. There are only five restaurants in this part of the county, as I’m sure you know, and only one of them can prepare a steak with any semblance of skill. So you are taking me to The Garden Cafe.”
“I’ve heard the spaghetti at the Pizza Empire is real good,” he countered.
“You are not apologizing to me at any place with checkered vinyl tablecloths. I will settle for nothing less than white linen. Or at least someplace with cloth napkins. Our choices are limited, after all.”
“Well, if that is what I must do, then that is what I must do,” he said, sliding out of the booth and standing up. He wobbled a little, not too bad, but just a little. “Why don’t you drive?” He said, putting a hand on the back of the booth seat. “I can pick up my car later.”
“Good choice, Sheriff. I would hate to have to report you to the authorities,” I stood up and preceded him toward the door. Every eye in the place was on us as we walked out, the crazy ghost lady and the new sheriff. This would be all over the grapevine, living and dead varieties, within the hour.
“Y’all come back soon,” Gene called as I opened the door. I threw a hand up over my shoulder in farewell and stepped out into the sunset.
by john | May 11, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Promos/Giveaways, Serialized Fiction, Writing
Hey y’all, just a quick note to let you see the awesome cover that Natania Barron has made for Amazing Grace! I’m still not sure if this will release under my name or a pseudonym, but either way, we can fix that pretty easily if I decide the change the name. But here’s the cover Natania did up for me. Let me know what you think!
by john | May 8, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
13
I left the manse thirty minutes later with about half a dozen new names on my list, and a plan of action in my head. I drove back across town to my church and pulled into a parking space this time, instead of letting the vehicle sit there all cattywumpus like I was some kind of drunk driver.
“What are we doing here?” Jenny asked, passing through the door as I got out and closed mine.
“I’ve got a couple people I need to talk to, and this is the best place to do it,” I said, walking across the grass, being careful to keep my steps to the narrow path between the foot markers and the row of headstones behind. I knew full well the people in the graves didn’t mind me walking on them, I’d been told as much many times, but Mama always told me it was disrespectful to step on a grave, so I tried my best not to.
Uncle Luther was sitting on his headstone, like he was about every night. I didn’t have any idea where he went during the day, and really had no idea why he was lingering. Luther couldn’t speak, and no time in all my trips through the cemetery had he ever tried to flag me down or communicate with me at all. He just sat on that headstone every night, watching the street like he was waiting for somebody. It couldn’t be Aunt Lula, she passed ten years ago and didn’t linger a minute, just went straight on into the light the second her soul stood up from her body. Luther just sat there, night after night, not bothering nothing, so I didn’t see as how it was any of my business.
I made a beeline for Helen Wix’s plot. Helen was part of the town switchboard when she was living, and that didn’t change a bit when she died. The switchboard was what the locals called a network of old women who all went to church together, usually over at the Methodist church, and talked on the phone every morning. Whenever an ambulance or fire truck went down the road, you could be sure that Miss Helen, Miss Faye Comer, or Miss Frances Russell knew the whys and the wherefore of what was going on within five minutes of it happening.
Since she died, Miss Helen had become an even more important source of news and gossip around town. She was a rare ghost, one that wasn’t tied to one place, could talk, and didn’t seem to have any desire to move on. I asked her about it once, but all she would say was that Lockhart was her home, and it was her duty to keep an eye on things. I reckon it might have had more to do with her widower Mr. George and the fact that he had taken to stepping out with Julia McKnight about three months after Miss Helen was in the ground. After that happened, her little round ghostly form could often be seen flitting back and forth between her home and the McKnight place, trailing one of her long flowered dresses through the air like a Laura Ashley printed Casper.
Miss Helen was at home, so to speak, when I walked up. She was at her stone, standing with her arms folded watching the goings on around the cemetery. At any given time, there were a dozen or more regulars hanging around a church cemetery in any small town, and First Presbyterian was no different. Miss Helen was the unofficial mayor of the First Presbyterian dead, and she smiled as she saw me coming.
“Oh good Lord, child, come here and let me get a look at you!” She squealed a little when I approached. She once confided to me that she got a little bored with the conversations she had in the cemetery, and looked forward to my visits since I was alive and could actually talk with her, instead of just talking at her, like her daughter and granddaughter had to do. The dead are typically very much locked in to the world and opinions they held when they died, so I could see how talking to ghosts all the time could get boring. I often wished that the ghosts I talked to could be a little more boring and little less murdered.
“Hey Miss Helen, how you doing today?” I said. Had she been alive, she would have hugged my neck. As it was, we just gave each other awkward little waves on account of her insubstantiality.
“Fine, I’m fine, darling. Hope you are. And who is this little darlin’?” She asked, looking at Jenny.
“I’m Jenny Miller, ma’am. Pleased to meet you.” Jenny stuck out her hand.
“Oh sweetie, I’m sorry, but—“ Helen’s mouth fell open as Jenny was able to touch her and shake her hand. “Oh my goodness, honey, I am so sorry! You know sometimes it is so hard to tell who is who, especially with y’all that ain’t been gone very long.”
Helen turned back to me. “What in the world is going on, Lila Grace? Why did you bring this dead child to my plot? Do you need some help, honey?”
I wasn’t sure whether she was talking to me or Jenny, but maybe it was both, so I just said, “Yes, Miss Helen. I do need some help. Jenny here was murdered last week, and I was hoping maybe you could help us figure out who did it.”
“Oh, sweetie, I am so sorry!” Helen reached out and wrapped Jenny in a big-armed, muumuu-wearing hug that probably would have suffocated the child, or at least popped a rib, if she’d still been drawing breath. As it was, she was fine.
“Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate that,” Jenny said.
“Miss Helen, were you anywhere near the Miller place last Friday?” I asked.
“I don’t think so, which one is the Miller house?” She asked.
“It’s over on Pecan Lane, the brick house with the blue shutters,” Jenny said.
“Oh yes, I know that place. What an unfortunate decision about them shutters. I really think they could have done better than that baby blue, it just clashes with the brick in all kinds of ways. I’m sorry, honey, I know that’s your home and all, but it just ain’t attractive.”
“No, ma’am, don’t be sorry. You’re right. Mama told Daddy when he bought that paint they were going to be butt-ugly, and she was right,” Jenny agreed.
“Okay, now I know the place. No, I wasn’t anywhere close. I was over watching the ball game. Is that when you died, sweetie?” Helen asked, turning her head to Jenny.
“How is it she can see and talk to me?” Jenny asked.
“Well, honey. It’s just like you could talk to Sheriff Johnny. Y’all all exist in the same plane. Of course she can see you,” I explained.
“Lila Grace is too sweet to say that there ain’t been nothing happening in Lockhart for forty years that me and my girls ain’t seen,” Helen said with a laugh. Two other ethereal women appeared to stand next to Helen, all three of them with broad smiles on their faces.
“She’s too polite to say that not even the grave can shut your bog old mouth, Helen,” a slight, woman with a boyish haircut and a broad smile said, her grin denying her waspish words.
“Oh, be nice, Faye,” the other woman said, a twinkle in her eye. She was a big woman, not round, like Miss Helen, but tall and imposing. There was a presence to her that hadn’t diminished, even in death.
“Ladies,” I said with a nod and a smile. “How y’all doing this evening?”
“Fine, fine,” Faye Comer said with a nod, her bright blue eyes set deep in a wrinkled face. She wore much the same clothes she had on most days in life, a white striped blouse and a pair of blue jeans.
“We’re all just excited to have some company with something to talk about other than how they died,” Miss Frances said. She wore bright red and white floral blouse with dark slacks and comfortable shoes, the kind of outfit I’d expect to see on a woman attending a church meeting, which Miss Frances did quote a bit of before she passed.
“Speaking of that, I need to talk to y’all about how this poor child died,” I said to peals of laughter from the trio.
“Of course you do, sweetheart,” Miss Helen said. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need the assistance of the greatest investigators in Union County.”
“Or the nosiest bitches in the Carolinas, if you want to be more accurate,” Miss Faye said with a wry twist to her lips.
“Ignore those two, precious,” Miss Frances said to Jenny. “What do you need to know? If we don’t know it, we can probably find it out for you.”
She wasn’t kidding, either. Being dead had done nothing to quell these women’s curiosity, and since a fair portion of their gossip network was also dead, they had a finger on the pulse of the town, as ironic as that sounds.
“We’ve got a bunch of people, and I need to know where they were Friday night,” I said, showing the women our list of people who might hold grudges against the girls. “Anybody we can eliminate from suspicion in Jenny’s murder is almost certainly innocent of Shelly’s as well, and that will be better, since we don’t have a good timeline on when Shelly died yet.”
“Oh, that poor child, drowned in her car like that,” Miss Faye said.
“We don’t know that yet, Faye,” Miss Helen said. “They ain’t done with the autopsy yet. She might have been dead before she ever rolled into the lake.”
“She’s right,” I agreed. “I hadn’t considered that before, but the lake might have just been a place to dump the body and not where Shelly was killed.”
“Well, that would be good,” Miss France said.
“Why’s that?” Jenny asked.
“With as many hollers and old gully and patches of woods as we’ve got around here, if they pushed her car into the lake to hide the body, then the killer is either stupid, or ain’t from around here. Either one is good for us.” The woman said.
“She ain’t wrong,” Miss Helen agreed. “Okay, Lila Grace, hold up that list. We’ll memorize it and put the Dead Old Ladies’ Detective Agency on the case!”
They took another look at the paper, then each of them nodded at me. The women went off in three different directions to talk to he dead in their relative cemeteries. I turned to Jenny and said “Well, if there’s anything known about your murder by any ghost in this part of the county, we’ll know it in a few hours.”
“What’s next for us?” Jenny asked.
“Well, sweetie, I reckon next for me is going to be a bite of supper. I ain’t had nothing to eat in a considerable time, and my belly’s going to start gnawing on my backbone if I don’t correct that oversight in the immediate future.” I walked to the truck and got in. “Besides, I think Sheriff Dunleavy owes me an apology, and maybe a steak dinner.”
by john | May 1, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
12
An hour later, I had a list of suspects that didn’t like Shelly, a list that didn’t like Jenny, a list that might have a grudge against both of them, and a list of the kids at school that hated everybody and everything. I figured that list was nothing but a dead end, but if I was going to poke around in people’s lives, I might as well be thorough.
I looked at the clock on the cable box, and it read half past five. Too late to find out anything at the school, so I decided to go talk to the one person who wasn’t on either list, but was in both girls’ lies. As much as I hated the idea, I had to go talk to Reverend Turner.
The manse at the First Baptist Church of Lockhart was a modest ranch on a small lot beside the church. I walked up the two steps on the porch and opened the screen door, then knocked twice. I heard Reverend Turner’s wife call out from inside the house, and a few seconds later her blonde head appeared in the little rectangular pane of glass in the front door. She opened the door, a welcoming smile on her face.
“Well, hello, Lila Grace. How are you? What brings you by our place this time of day?”
“Hello, Mrs. Turner,” I replied. “I do apologize for dropping by unannounced, and right here at suppertime, no less. I just need to have a word with Reverend Turner.”
“Aaron? Well, let me just go get him for you. Do you want to come in? I was just putting supper in the stove, so it ain’t gonna be ready to eat for a little while yet, but I could slice up a couple pieces of my lemon meringue pie if you’d like a little something.” Marie Turner was one of those Southern women who thought every problem in the world could be solved with sweet tea and dessert. She was a Peach Queen over in Gaffney before she met the Reverend, who was a serious boy in school and grew up to be a serious man.
Marie was a lively child, and beautiful to boot, but years of small-town life and home visits beside the Reverend had turned her from a slight, active girl into a lively, smiling, round woman who bubbled over with enthusiasm about everything. She was, in short, one of the sweetest, happiest women I’d ever known. I had no idea how she maintained such a positive outlook on life being married to such an awful sourpuss as Aaron Turner.
The sourpuss himself came to the door when he heard my name, that perma-scowl carved into his face like granite. “What are you doing here, Lila Grace?” His tufts of brown hair almost vibrated in his obvious anger at me having violated his sacred private space. Never mind that his sacred private space was paid for by the congregation of his church, and he was paid a salary and some living expenses besides.
Aaron Turner was a rail-thin man, with the grumpy disposition most often found in the painfully thin. I’ve always imagined that going through life being made up of nothing but sharp edges and bony points could make one irritable, but as I’ve been a woman of some substance ever since my breasts came in when I was in middle school, I was spared that pain. He was in his middle forties, about a decade younger than me, but if you were to ask anyone, they would assume him to be older, as his hair was greying almost as rapidly as it was vanishing. His narrow hazel eyes squinted as he looked down on me, and I couldn’t hold back a sigh.
“I need to speak with you, Reverend. Would you like to chat on the porch, or should I come inside?” I asked.
“Outside,” he said. His voice was clipped and curt, but I knew that would be his answer. There was exactly one way that an official Servant of Satan like myself was going to get into his house, and that was in the dead of night creeping through a window. Since those days passed long ago, I stepped over to one of the rockers on his porch and took a seat.
“Should I get a couple glasses of iced tea?” Marie asked, her voice as sweet as a bird.
“No, we’re fine,” her husband snapped. “Go watch the food.” Marie’s face flushed and she fled back inside the house.
“There’s no need to be rude to her just because you don’t like me,” I said, mentally kicking myself for breaking my promise to myself with nearly the first thing I ever said to the man. The whole drive over, I’d been lecturing myself on ignoring his jibes and his little pokes at me and my Christianity and my gift. I’d been telling myself to stay on track, to not get distracted by his stupidity. So of course the first thing I do is get in his business about how he talks to his wife.
He whipped his head around to me, but then he took a deep breath and said, “You’re right. I will make it a point to apologize to Marie when I go inside. But what can I do for you, Lila Grace?”
My mouth fell open. If there had been a fly buzzing by my head just then, It certainly would not have survived the trip. “Excuse me, Reverend?”
“No, excuse me, Lila Grace. I am working to become more inclusive in my thinking and my behavior, and despite the fact that I think you’re either a charlatan or a fraud, and almost certainly bound for Hell once you die regardless of which, there is no cause for me to be as discourteous as I have been in the past.”
I took a second to parse out exactly what he was saying, but after a minute, I was pretty sure I had it unwrapped. “So you’re saying that you think I’m terrible, and I’m stealing people’s money, but you’re gonna stop being an asshole?”
“To put it crudely, yes.”
“I’ll take it,” I said, extending a hand. The clearly uncomfortable minister shook it, and we leaned back to keep rocking. “I need your help, Reverend.”
“I assume this concerns the deaths of poor Jenny and Shelly.”
“It does.”
“You are wondering if there was anyone happening at church that may have led to their untimely passing.”
“I am.”
“You want me to tell you every intimate detail of their private lives, including anything that they may have confided to me in confidence.”
“I ain’t told that man nothing in confidence,” Jenny said, standing right on the far side of the Reverend’s chair. “He’s a jerk.”
“I don’t want you to violate your principles in any way, Reverend, but I do want to remind you that these girls are dead. Nothing you tell me can hurt them, but it might be the key to locking up the man that did them harm.”
He sat there for a long minute, steepling his fingers on his belly like he was thinking, but I could tell all he was really doing was trying to make me sweat. Too bad for him I had lived too long to fall for that garbage. I sat there watching him patiently, not saying a word. If I’ve learned anything about men in my years on this planet, and you can decide for yourself if my lifelong spinsterhood says that I have learned nothing about men or that I have learned far too much about them, it is that they can’t wait out a patient woman. Women go through hours of excruciating pain to bring life into this world. Men participate in a few minutes of the pleasurable part of childbirth. We women are wired for more patience.
“I will share the girls’ confidences with you, but you must not divulge your source unless it is absolutely critical to apprehend the murderer. I cannot under any circumstances have my congregation thinking they can’t trust me,” Turner said, the piety dripping from every syllable.
I mentally counted to ten before I spoke, so I wouldn’t say anything untoward and fracture this new and likely very fragile peace that the good Reverend and I had wrought. “I would never let anybody know that any of my information came from you, Reverend. I will hold your words as close as the confessional.” He looked a little askance at the mention of Catholicism, but I gave him my most grandmotherly smile and he let it slide.
“Now, was there anybody that the girls mentioned to you as being particularly troublesome to them in any way?” I asked, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees.
“Jenny was much less…forthcoming than Shelly. Shelly was such a dear child,” the preacher said, wiping a crocodile tear from the corner of his eye.
“What he meant was that Shelly dressed like a slut when she came to talk to him about stuff, and I didn’t let him look down my shirt,” Jenny said, leaning against the wall to the left of the reverend’s chair.
I developed a sudden coughing fit to cover my laughter, and I grabbed my pocketbook from the floor next to me. I dug around in there, looking for a peppermint to help with my “coughing” and to hide my face from the preacher. I swear if I had looked at him right them I probably would have laughed so hard I spit a mint right in his eye.
“Are you okay, Lila Grace? Let me get Marie to fetch you a glass of tea.” He got up and stuck his head in the kitchen door. His voice was muffled by my coughing and the door, but he came back with a glass of tea in a few seconds. Marie probably just grabbed one of the tea glasses set up for their supper, poor woman.
“Thank you,” I said, taking a long drink. She made good tea. It obviously wasn’t instant, that was good, and it had the right amount of sugar in it. Sweet, but not so much that it makes your teeth hurt. I smiled at Reverend Turner and motioned for him to proceed.
“Well, like I said, Shelly was more open that Jenny, but there were a few names that popped up whenever both girls talked about school.”
“Who were they, Reverend?” I asked.
The reverend rattled off half a dozen names, all of them already on my legal pad. I dutifully wrote them down on a clean sheet of paper, just in case the source somehow became important later.
“Was there anybody at church, Reverend Turner?” I asked after he named all the names he could think of from school. I knew I had to go gentle with this, because Turner was way more likely to be protective of his own “flock” than of some child from school he didn’t know.
“There was an incident last summer on a youth group trip, but I don’t believe it was anything serious.” He looked uncomfortable, like he didn’t really want to talk about it, which made me think it certainly fell into the category of “things Lila Grace wants to know.” I was also intrigued because it happened a year ago, was a big enough deal that the preacher remembered it, and Jenny hadn’t mentioned it to me before.
“Why don’t you just tell me about it, Reverend? If it turns out to be nothing, then at least we know.” I said. I took a huge chance and leaned forward, patting him on the knee. He didn’t burst into flame, something I’m sure came as a huge surprise to him. He also didn’t leap to his feet shouting “Sinner!” which surprised me no small amount.
He looked around the room, as if to make sure we were alone. “I heard from one of the chaperones that he caught the girls in one of the boys’ rooms after they were all supposed to be in bed for the night, and there was beer involved. It was even said that…one of the girls may have been topless!” His eyes got big, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek real hard to keep from laughing in his face.
Imagine that, a bunch of teenagers go to the beach and they find some way to get beer. Horror of horrors, one or more of them even ends up naked! I guess if there was sex involved, and somebody got jealous, that could cause a problem. Or if somebody got pregnant… I sighed and turned my attention back to Turner, who sat on the edge of his seat with the prurient anticipation of someone who got to do their favorite thing in the world – tattle.
“Thank you, Reverend. That could be very important. Do you have a list of the children on the trip?”
by john | Apr 24, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
11
The police station was full when I walked in behind the sheriff. Deputy Jeff was standing behind the small wooden counter that served to separate the small area with four desks where he, Ava the Dispatcher, and Victor, the other deputy, sat. Half a dozen people were milling around the counter, every one of them trying to talk to Jeff at one time.
Silence fell over the room when we entered, then it exploded into mayhem as everybody turned to Dunleavy all at once. I staggered back at the ruckus, almost walking right through Jenny. The girl was waiting in the truck for me when I walked out of Sharky’s, and rode to the station without a word. I reckon she was trying to process Shelly’s death, and trying to figure out why she was lingering while her friend moved on without her.
Sheriff Dunleavy held up his hands for quiet, and after a few seconds, the room settled down. “Now I know all y’all want to help, and I know everybody is anxious to share any information they have that might aid the investigation. But we ain’t but a couple of people here, so we are going to have to follow some kind of order here.
“I am going in to my office to consult with Ms. Carter here on some research she is doing for me on these investigations. I need all y’all to line up and give Jeff your information in an orderly fashion. Make sure he has your phone written on the statement, and we will follow up with y’all as we move forward. Thank you all for coming out, I appreciate your assistance and patience in this trying time.”
Sheriff Dunleavy put his hands down and bulled through the packed people. I followed along in his wake like a girl waterskiing behind a boat, and a minute later we were sitting in his office with the door closed. The noise from the front was down to a dull roar, so I reckoned Jeff had it under control.
“Now what was so damned important that you had to pry me away from some very important drinking and haul me back here?” Sheriff Dunleaby asked as he took a seat behind his desk.
“I was over at the Miller house—“
“What?” he interrupted.
“I was asking Jenny’s father some questions, and—“
“You were what?” he interrupted me again, and I turned my best Sunday School Teacher scowl on him.
“I was asking Jenny’s daddy if he had any idea who would want to hurt his daughter. Then her mama…” I stopped, because Sheriff Dunleavy’s face was getting some kind of red, and I was a little scared he was going to blow a gasket. “Are you okay, Sheriff?”
“No, Ms. Carter, I am not okay. You mean to tell me you went to talk to the parents of the victim in what has recently been determined to be a murder investigation without my permission, without any official authority, and without any accompaniment?”
“Well, when you put it like that, I reckon it sounds pretty awful. But yes, that’s what I did. He told me about a boy at school that may have had a grudge against Shelly for doing something nasty with his phone—“
“Ian Vernon,” the sheriff said. “I had Victor interview him this morning.”
“Oh, you knew about him? Good. Well, he also mentioned that we might want to talk to girls that—“
“—Didn’t make the cheerleading squad,” he finished my sentence for me. “We have interviews scheduled with all of them for tomorrow at school. Of course, in light of today’s events, we might have to postpone those.”
“If you know everything I’m going to say, why are having me say it?” I asked. I was a little perturbed at his attitude.
“Because I’m trying to come up with a good reason not to charge you with interfering with a police investigation, obstruction of justice, and impersonating a police officer.”
I stood up and put my hands on his desk. “What in the hell are you talking about, Sheriff? I was just trying to help you! All I did was talk to that poor man.”
“That, and get his wife so riled up she called over here and told me that if anybody from my department set foot on her property again without somebody calling 911, that she’d sue us so hard we’d be writing tickets out of the back of a used Chevette.” There was a little vein pulsing in his forehead, and his face was so red it was almost purple.
I sat back down, feeling like somebody had just let all the air out my sails. “Well…I’m sorry?”
Sheriff Dunleavy sat down and let out a huge breath. “You’re sorry?”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“That’s all you’ve got?”
“What more would you like me to say? That it was a mistake? Well, obviously it was. That I’m sorry I upset the Millers? Well, I certainly am. That I won’t do it again? I don’t know that I’m going to say that, Sheriff.”
“Oh, I reckon you are going to say that, Ms. Carter. You are going to say that, and you are going to mean that, and you are going to stay the hell away from this investigation. You are going to leave the police work to the police, and you are going to go home and prune your tomatoes, or whatever you do in the afternoons.”
“You don’t prune tomatoes, Sheriff,” I said with a smile.
He didn’t smile back. “I don’t care. Obviously what I’m saying is not getting through. You cannot be part of this investigation, Lila Grace. You are not a police officer, and I let myself get caught up in your…unconventional sources of information, and gave you an incorrect impression.”
“What impression is that, Sheriff?”
“That you are part of this investigation. Which you are not. You are not working with the police. You are a private citizen, and you are going to do what private citizens do, which is to stay out of the way and let the police do our job. Do you understand me?”
I felt my lips purse, and I took a deep breath before I spoke. When I did, there was not a hint of a tremor in my voice. “I understand perfectly, Sherif. I will stay out of your way from here on out. You have my word.” I stood up, looked down at him and asked, “Will there be anything else?”
“No, Ms. Carter,” he said. “You can go. I do appreciate the help you have given us to this point. It has been very valuable.”
“Thank you, Sheriff,” I said, and turned to the door. I walked out through the office, and pushed my way through the throng in the front of the office. I stepped out into the bright sunshine and got into my truck, pulling out into the street and driving home without taking any notice of anything around me. In almost a daze, I walked into my house, fixed myself a glass of sweet tea, and walked out onto my back porch. I sat down on the steps and looked out over the small vegetable garden I had coming up. Just half a dozen twenty-foot rows of tomatoes, beans, squash, and potatoes, with two pumpkin and three watermelon vines going wild at the end of the rows.
I sat there, sipping my tea and looking at my garden as I went over and over what the sheriff had said to me. I didn’t like his tone, but I couldn’t disagree with the facts as he presented them. I had overstepped. I never should have gone to the Miller house, and I certainly shouldn’t have talked to Mr. Miller alone.
Who was I kidding? I was no detective, no redneck Miss Marple solving mysteries and bringing killers to justice. I was just a half-cracked old lady with a little bit of a talent for hearing dead people.
I stood up and made to go inside when I caught sight of Sheriff Johnny standing on the other side of my screen door. Jenny was beside him, and both of them looked grim.
“What’s the matter, y’all?” I asked, pulling the door open and stepping inside. I set the empty glass down by the sink and turned to look at my visitors from Beyond.
“Please don’t quit, Ms. Lila Grace,” Jenny said. “I know the new sheriff was mean to you, and I heard what Mama said, but please.” The child’s voice took on a pleading tone. “There ain’t nobody else that can see me, or hear me, and I know that if you quit looking, ain’t nobody going to figure out who…who killed me, and now killed Shelly, too. I just know it!” The dishes rattled a little in the drying rack by the sink, testimony to the strength of the poor child’s upset. She was actually able to interact with the material world, which took either a ghost of tremendous power or one that was very upset. Jenny certainly seemed to fall into the latter category.
“I don’t know, darling,” I said. “Could be Sheriff Dunleavy’s right. I might be doing more harm than good, particularly where your parents are concerned. I had no right to go out there acting like some kind of TV detective and getting your daddy all upset.”
Sheriff Johnny stepped forward and held up a hand, like he was telling me to stop. His lips started to move, and I shook my head. “Johnny, we both know you can’t—“
He held up that hand again, and I closed my trap. He screwed up his face, like he was working really hard to think of something, then I heard it. His voice sounded like the wind whispering through a cemetery late at night, all kinds of rasp and hiss to it, but it was unmistakably his.
“You do good, Lila Grace,” he whispered, and I could see his image dim with the exertion. “You can’t stop. No one else will speak for usssss.” The last word trailed off into a long hiss, and he turned and walked through my back storm door. I watched him walk off, fading into invisibility as he did.
“I thought you said he couldn’t talk,” Jenny said.
“I didn’t think he could,” I said. I heard my own voice sound hollow, like it was coming from a long way away, or through a tunnel or something.
I stood there, leaning with my back against the sink for several minutes before I finally gave myself a little mental shake and walked into the living room. I picked up a little yellow notepad from the table beside my recliner and waved for Jenny to sit on the couch over to my left. I angled the chair a little bit so I was facing her more than the TV, even though it was off. That way I could look at her and not have to turn my head the whole time.
“Sit down, sweetie, and let’s get to work.” I said. “We got a murderer to catch.”
