by john | Jul 10, 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.
22
I was sitting at my dining room table, going over the pictures of Shelly’s car for what felt like the twentieth time, when I heard a car pull up in front of my house. Heavy footsteps pounded up my steps, and there was a sharp knock on my door.
I walked to the front door, careful to keep an eye on the shotgun leaning against the wall, but relaxed when I recognized Willis’ form through the curtains. I pulled open the door to find him standing there on my front stoop holding a brown paper bag and wearing a goofy grin.
“I brought lunch,” he said, breezing right past me like he owned the place. “I figure if this morning pissed you off anything like it did me you’ve been up to your eyeballs in case files all morning and didn’t even realize it was two o’clock.”
My stomach answered for me, letting out a noisy rumble at the smells coming from the sack he carried. “I’ll get some tea. Come wash your hands and get some paper plates. The dining room table is covered up, so we’ll eat in the kitchen.”
He followed me through the dining room into the kitchen and set his bag down on the stove. I looked at my worn brown Tupperware tumblers and decided to use the good glasses, the ones made out of actual glass, for a change. Admittedly, they were old Smurfs glasses I got at the Hardee’s drive-thru twenty years ago, but I thought they were at least a little upgrade from the Tupperware. Mama taught me to put my best foot forward, and I’m sure she was rolling over in her grave at the fact that my idea of putting my best foot forward was choosing the Smurf glasses over the Tupperware. My mama and I never were on the same page as far as my feminine wiles went.
Willis laughed as I walked to the table holding out the cartoon glasses. “I see we’re using the good china.”
“I don’t scrimp when company comes,” I replied. “Now don’t give me no crap, or I’ll make you drink out of a Solo cup.”
“I don’t mind a solo cup. Now, I don’t know what you like, so I just got a couple of sandwiches, and if there’s one you don’t like, I’ll eat it.”
“What did you bring?” I asked.
“I stopped by the Grill and got a couple of cheeseburgers, a BLT, and a barbecue sandwich, with two orders of french fries.”
“That sounds great,” I said, turning back to the fridge. I pulled out a couple of squeeze bottles of condiments, a jar of homemade sweet pickles, and some Duke’s mayonnaise. Willis passed me a plate and we spread out the sandwiches between us. We each took a burger and some fries, and I cut the barbecue sandwich in half and put one piece on my plate.
“I’ll take the other piece,” Willis said, holding out his hand. Our fingers brushed as I passed it to him, and I looked up to see his ears blushing. I ducked my head so he wouldn’t see the flush on my own cheeks, silently kicking myself for acting like a nervous schoolgirl.
“Well, you’re right,” I said after I’d taken the edge off my hunger with half a cheeseburger and some fries. “I’ve been up to my eyeballs in case files all morning, and I don’t have any more of a clue than I did when we walked out of the school.”
“Me neither,” he admitted. “I hoped we could talk through some things after lunch and maybe come up with something. Is Jenny around?”
“No, and I haven’t seen Sheriff Johnny in a while, either. Jenny went over to the graveyard to talk to the Triplets, but I don’t know where Johnny is.”
“The Triplets?”
I explained about Helen, Faye, and Frances, and he laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “They sound like three peas in a pod.”
“Oh Lord, you ain’t wrong. They were thick as thieves in life, and death hasn’t made them like each other any less.”
“That’s kinda sweet, ain’t it?” He asked, a thoughtful expression crossing his face.
I swallowed a mouthful of barbecue and asked, “What do you mean?”
“Well, here you’ve got three women who were such good friends in life that they’re still spending all their time together even after they’ve passed. And you’ve got somebody like Sheriff Johnny, who loved his town so much that he wouldn’t leave even after death. He still wants to keep an eye on things, even though he can’t really do a whole lot about it now. It’s nice, you know? Says a lot of good things about a place, that people care that much about it.”
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” I admitted. “I reckon when you spend your whole life seeing dead people and trying to help them move on, you don’t stop to think too much about what would make somebody want to stay.” I chewed my sandwich for a minute or two more in silence, then picked up my napkin from my lap and laid it across the plate.
“I surrender,” I said. “If I eat another bite I won’t be good for nothing the rest of the day. Do you want to take that BLT back to the office? Eat it later?”
“I’ll see if Jeff wants it, but he probably won’t touch it. He’s real particular about his food.”
“Always has been,” I said. “Even when he was little, he had to have the crusts cut off his bread, and the sandwiches cut into little triangles. He always wanted plates with dividers, so his food didn’t touch. He’s real particular about most everything.”
Willis laughed. “God knows that’s the truth. I borrowed a pen from his desk one day and you would have thought the world was gonna end. I even walked over to the cabinet and handed him two to replace it, but it wasn’t the right pen. I haven’t touched his desk since. Just ain’t worth upsetting the apple cart.”
“His mama was like that, too. She was in charge of the bulletins at church for the longest time, and they were always beautiful, but heaven help you if they didn’t get folded just right. I watched her rip a deacon up on side and down the other one morning because he told her it wasn’t a big deal.”
“I bet he didn’t make that mistake again,” Willis said, chuckling. He stood up and put the spare sandwich in the paper bag, and looked at me. “Where’s the trash can? I’ll throw away the plates if you’ll fix us a couple more glasses of tea.”
I pointed to the sink. “Under there. Drop the plates in there and let’s go to the dining room. Maybe together we can see something in all this mess.” I opened the freezer and dropped a few more ice cubes in each glass, then topped off the tea and followed him into the dining room. I passed him his Papa Smurf glass and set my Smurfette glass down on a coaster.
“You got another one of those?”
“Smurfette glass? No, I just got the one set. I got Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Brainy Smurf, and Gargamel and that cat of his.”
“Aural,” he said. “But I meant a coaster.”
“Oh!” I grabbed him a coaster and sat down behind the stack of folders. “Where should we start?”
“Let’s look at your suspect list compared to mine, and see who I have an alibi for already,” he said. He leaned over and picked up a slim black briefcase I never even noticed him set down on the floor. An iPad and a portable keyboard appeared, and he looked up at me.
“Aren’t we Mr. Technology?” I teased.
“I’m old. Lila Grace, but I ain’t dumb. This thing is the best thing that’s happened to law enforcement since the bulletproof vest. Camera, communication device, and all my case files right in one place. I don’t know how I caught any bad guys without it.”
“Might have involved more running, old man,” I said with a grin and a poke to his belly.
“Hey!” he protested. “I’m a Sheriff now, I don’t have to run. I have people for that.”
“You have Jeff for that,” I corrected. “I’ve seen Jeff run. It looks like a cross between a very slow ostrich and a demented hippopotamus. That boy is a lot of things, but coordinated and athletic are not any of them.”
He laughed and nodded. “Jeff is an invaluable asset to the department, but he ain’t gonna win any 40-yard dashes, that’s for sure. Now, who do you have on your list that still looks good to you?”
“Well, there are the girls that didn’t make the cheerleading squad, but double homicide seems a bridge too far even for a heartbroken teenage girl, and I’ve seen some things in that regard.”
Willis looked like he was about to say something, but shook his head like he was changing the topic and said, “We talked to all the girls who tried out the past two years and didn’t make the squad. All but one of them had an alibi, and she was so tore up I can’t imagine it was her. Turns out Jenny was actually working with her some weekends to get better so she could audition again next year.”
“That definitely doesn’t sound like anybody with enough of an axe to grind to murder someone,” I said. “What about the kids from the church beach trip last year? Reverend Turner seems to think there may have been some alcohol involved, and possibly even…” I lowered my voice. “Sex.”
The sheriff grinned, but shook his head. “There were only half a dozen people on the trip in addition to Jenny and Shelly, and three of them were girls we’d already cleared. The three boys all have solid alibis. Turns out in a town this size, it’s pretty easy to account for most everybody’s whereabouts on a Friday night after a home football game.”
“Most of the underage population is either in the parking lot of McDonald’s, the parking lot of the high school, or over at the dam parking,” I said.
“Some of them have started going out to the landfill now,” he added.
“That’s a new one on me, making out at the trash dump.”
“The older section of the landfill is pretty nice. They’ve put down sod and landscaped it. I think the county is talking about building a golf course out there once they get one or two more sections filled up,” Willis said.
“I think I’ll stick to making out in the comfort of my own home, thank you.”
“Is that an invitation, Ms. Carter?” He asked. “Because I have to remind you, I’m still on duty.”
I smiled at him, enjoying the flirting. “Why Sheriff, I thought you were on your lunch break.” I batted my eyes at him, then laughed out loud at the flush that crept up his cheeks.
“Lila Grace, you might be the single most infuriating woman I have ever met, and I was married. Twice!” He spluttered, laughing a little.
“Twice, huh.” I said.
“Yep,” he said. “Three times, if you count being married to The Job, which both of my wives accused me of on more than one occasion.”
“What happened?” I asked.
He sighed, then looked at me for a second, like he was making up his mind. “Well, I reckon we oughta go ahead and get this all out in the open. The first time I got married, I was twenty-three years old, full of piss and vinegar and raring to arrest every bad guy in the world. Gina, that was my wife’s name, was a great gal, good-looking, good cook, good job as a CPA for some high-rise accounting firm downtown.”
“What happened?” I repeated.
He gave me one of those “I’m getting to that” looks that men get when you’re trying to get them to talk about something they don’t want to talk about, usually their feelings on something deeper than football.
“She got pregnant and wanted me to leave the force. Said she couldn’t see herself raising a kid not knowing if I was going to walk through the door at the end of my shift or not. I didn’t want to quit, but she was dead set on it, so I filled out the paperwork. I was going to work security in the building where she worked, getting fat and watching security cameras.”
“But that didn’t happen,” I said.
“No, that didn’t happen. She lost the baby, and there were complications from the miscarriage that made her unable to get pregnant again. I stayed home with her for a week, then she practically pushed me out the front door to go back to work.” He looked at me with a sheepish grin. “I’m not real good at sitting still now, and this was thirty years ago. You can imagine what I was like then.”
“I’d rather not,” I said with a smile so he knew I was just teasing.
“So I went back to work, and after another week or so she went back to work, and we settled back into our everyday lives, then one day I come home and she’s standing in the kitchen with my paperwork to leave the force in her hand. She starts screaming at me about why I haven’t put in my notice yet, and how I don’t care about her if I’m going to keep putting my life in danger, and all this stuff about how me being a cop is selfish, and I’m just standing there with my mouth hanging open like a trout laying on a dock.”
He took a deep breath, then dove back in. “When she lost the baby, all the thoughts of leaving police work went out of my head. To me, that was the only reason I was quitting, and now that we weren’t going to have a kid, I figured I’d just be a cop the rest of my life. But to her, me leaving the force was more about her feelings and a lot less about the kid thing.”
“I see both sides,” I said, not wanting to step on his fragile ego and tell him that he was an idiot. He probably already had that much figured out.
“Yeah, and I was a kid, too. I’d see things a lot differently now, but back then, I could barely see past the end of my own nose. So we had a huge fight, and she threw me out. Told me I had to choose being a cop or being married, that I couldn’t be both. And, being stupid, and stubborn, and twenty-four, I became another statistic about cop marriages.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But at least you had her for a little while.” I didn’t mean to throw that out there. Didn’t mean to make it about me, but the look of pity that flashed across his face for just a second told me that’s exactly what I’d done.
“Yeah, I had a couple of good years with her, and a few really bad months, but all in all it turned out for the best in the end. She married a guy who moved up to become the CFO of that company she worked for, and she quit working at thirty-five to take care of three adopted kids and do charity work. We haven’t spoken in years, but I get a Christmas card every year.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “At least it ended up good. What about your second wife?”
His face darkened, and I knew that we’d crossed into a topic he wasn’t very comfortable with. “That’s a much uglier story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
His words were telling me to say no, but his eyes told the story of a man who really needed to talk. I leaned forward, put my hand over his, and said, “Talk to me, Willis.”
by john | Jul 3, 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.
21
We sat down at a table in the far corner of The Grill, the only restaurant in Maple Grove, and Willis nodded to most of the patrons. Everybody in the place recognized us, and there was more than one whispered conversation that started up as soon as we sat down.
“Do you want me to go listen to what they’re saying?” Jenny asked, a gleam in her translucent eye. I had the distinct impression that child was enjoying this whole undead detective thing more than just about anything she’d enjoyed while she was alive.
I shook my head, looking at Willis, but talking to Jenny. “No, sweetie, there ain’t no point. I can just about tell you what they’re saying. Beth Shillington over there is telling her husband Harold that she heard I danced around nekkid in my back yard under the full moon to get my power to talk to dead people. Harold is gonna nod and tell her that he saw the two of us at Shorty’s together yesterday. Then Beth is gonna get on him for going to Shorty’s after she has done told him not to drink during the week on account of how much it cost them to get out of his last DUI.”
I jerked my head at a table with half a dozen elderly women sitting by the window. “That over there is Helen’s Sunday School class. They’ll be talking about how sinful it is for us to be dining together, an unmarried woman and man breaking bread being nothing but temptation to fornication and all.” I very studiously did not look at Willis when I said “fornication,” but I felt the tips of my ears get red anyway. “This despite the fact that three of those women are carrying on with unmarried men themselves, and two of them are sleeping, unbeknownst to the other, with the same man!”
Jenny burst out laughing so hard she almost fell through her chair, and Willis looked at me with his eyebrows up. “And how exactly did you come by this knowledge, Lila Grace?”
I just smiled at him. “Willis, darling, I’m the only living person those three old dead busybodies have to gossip to. Where in the world do you think I got the information?”
“I don’t know, but can we revisit the idea of you dancing around nude under the full moon?” He smiled, and his grin only grew as I felt my cheeks flame.
“No, we cannot,” I said, unrolling my napkin from around my silverware and placing it in my lap. “Unless you’ve got a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle stashed somewhere in your office. You come up with some top-shelf bourbon, Sheriff, and we can certainly have a conversation.” I gave him what I hoped was a flirtatious smile, but it had been so long since I flirted I couldn’t promise any level of proficiency with it.
Just then I was saved my Renee Walkin coming up to the table, her little notepad in hand. Renee was married to Phillip Walkin, who owned The Grill, and she was the chief waitress, hostess, silverware roller, floor sweeper, and doer of everything else that didn’t involve the kitchen. Phillip ran the kitchen like he was a redneck Gordon Ramsey, and their son Phil Jr. was the dishwasher. I knew Renee and Phillip had high hopes for Junior taking over the place when they retired, but I’d never seen Phil Jr. aspire to anything more than catching enough fish to keep his belly full.
“Morning, Lila Grace, Sheriff,” Renee said with a smile. She always had a kind word for me, ever since we were kids. She was a couple years behind me in school, and we were never real close, but she was one of the few people in town who never made fun of me or looked at me funny. I asked her about that one time, and she just said “I was told to treat people like I wanted to be treated. I don’t like it when people are mean to me, so I try not to be mean to other people.” The world could use a few more Renees.
“Morning, Renee,” I said. “Anything special today?”
“We got blueberry pancakes, but they ain’t real good. I think the blueberries ain’t quite ready yet. But I’ve got a few chocolate chip pancakes left if you want something sweet.”
“I think I’ll just do two eggs over medium, with bacon, grits, and one of them big old cat-head biscuits you got back there.”
“I can do that,” she said with a smile. “What about you, Sheriff?”
Willis looked at me like I was speaking French, then asked, “What in the world is a cat-head biscuit?”
Renee and I both laughed, drawing more nasty looks from the Sunday School biddies, and Jenny looked confused too. “It just means it’s a great big ol’ biscuit, Sheriff. I don’t use no biscuit cutter, so my biscuits alway turn out too big, and not real round, so they look about the size and shape of a cat’s head,” Renee said.
“I assure you, Fluffy was not harmed in the making of Renee’s biscuits,” I added.
Willis smiled and said, “Then I’ll have two eggs, scrambled, with double bacon, hash browns, and a biscuit. It can be the size of whatever animal you see fit.” He gave Renee a warm smile to let her know he wasn’t picking on her for talking country, and she walked off with a grin.
“I like her,” he said. “She’s funny.”
“She’s a good woman,” I said. “She’s done a good job raising her kids, and keeping Phillip in line. I swear, to know him growing up you never would have thought that boy would turn out to amount to nothing.”
“Why’s that?” Jenny asked. Her face was a little glum, and I wasn’t sure if it was because she wasn’t going to grow up, or just because she had to sit there smelling all that good food and couldn’t eat any of it.
“Well,” I said. “He raised plenty of hell back in his day, wildcattin’ around with the boys. He once wrecked two identical cars in the same curve on the same road, a year apart, driving like a bat out of hell on these back country roads. I reckon if you would have asked me when I was twenty who I knew that was least likely to see thirty, it would have been Phillip Walkin. But here he is, a respected businessman, father, and I think he’s a deacon over at the ARP church. Just goes to show you can’t never tell.”
“Yeah, I reckon not,” Jenny said. She stood up, and drifted off. “I’m going to go talk to the ladies at the cemetery and see if we can come up with anything else. I’ll meet you back at the house later.”
“Okay, honey. I’ll see you in a little while,” I said, still trying to look at Willis while I talked to her spirit.
“She okay?” Willis asked.
“I don’t know. I know she was real disappointed when Ian turned out to be innocent. He was a good suspect, and if he turned out to be guilty, she could move on. I think she might be starting to feel the permanence of the whole thing.”
“Death?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Some spirits don’t really get that it’s forever at first. It takes some time, and when they do, they have to adjust to that. It’s hard, especially if they were real active in life and had a lot going on, like Jenny did.”
“She was real young, too,” he added.
“Yeah, that can have something to do with it. I’m not sure it always does, but it can.”
We finished our breakfast and left, Willis nodding to even more people on the way out. He dropped me by my truck back at the high school and headed to the police station to review crime scene photos and forensics from Shelly’s car.
I went home and found Jenny and Sheriff Johnny sitting on my porch swing. I sat on the rocker beside them. “Hey, Jenny,” I said.
“Hey.” She didn’t look at me.
“I reckon you’re disappointed with how this morning turned out.”
“Yeah.” Monosyllabic answers is one of the reasons I was glad I never had teenagers, and why I stuck to teaching elementary school kids in Sunday School. I’ve never known how young’uns that will mouth off at the drop of a hat can become almost mute whenever you try to ask them a question.
“Well, we ain’t giving up, sweetie. Ian was a good suspect, he had all the reasons in the world to hate y’all, he just didn’t do it. But we’ll figure out who did, I promise.”
Sheriff Johnny’s head snapped around to me, and he wiggled his fingers in the air. “I know, Johnny. I ain’t supposed to make promises I don’t know if I can keep. But I’m going to do everything I can to keep this one. This child has done made herself important to me, and I don’t like the idea of disappointing her.”
He nodded, and stood up, walking through the front door into my house. I sat there for a few seconds before he stuck his head and torso through the wall and waved at me to follow him.
“I swear, child, if I live to be a hundred, I will never get used to that.”
Johnny wiggled his fingers at me, and I feigned anger at him. “No, Johnny, I am not already a hundred! Dammit, old man, if you don’t quit wiggling them smartass fingers at me, I’ll wiggle one back at you!” I got up and mock-stomped into the house, but I noticed Jenny cover her mouth to hide a giggle as I did.
Johnny was standing by the back door when I got to the kitchen, kinda looking around everything. “What do you see, Johnny?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t see anything, either,” I said.
He wiggled his fingers at me. “That is a little strange. You’re right, there’s nothing here. It ain’t just like the guy who broke in wore gloves, it’s like he didn’t leave any mud or anything behind. That’s pretty good for a high school kid, ain’t it?”
Johnny nodded, then made a sweeping arm motion around the kitchen. “Yeah, there ain’t a speck of mud or nothing. And it ain’t like I stayed up late to mop the kitchen, neither. Just swept up the broken glass in put if in Sheriff Dunleavy’s evidence bags. But there wasn’t a single scrap of dirt or fabric left behind. Whoever did this knew what they were about. This wasn’t their first rodeo. I reckon I oughta go see if I can figure out what I’ve got in the dining room that was worth them breaking in here.”
I went into the dining room and sat down in front of a stack of folders. These files were copies of all the crime scene photos and police reports from Jenny’s basement, both visits, and from Shelly’s car. I spent a solid three hours digging through those files, and didn’t find much.
Both girls died of broken necks, which made sense for Jenny, since she got pushed down the stairs, but not as much for Shelly. Jenny’s house showed no signs of forced entry, and so far the police had no idea where Shelly was killed. The time in the water pretty much destroyed any trace evidence that might have been in Shelly’s car, and the time that passed between her death and it being ruled a homicide meant that there was no real evidence available in Jenny’s basement either. Whoever killed these girls was the worst kind of person – ruthless and smart.
by john | Jun 26, 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.
20
Nine forty-five saw us sitting in the Principal’s office with Mr. Robert Mitchell behind his desk and Ian Vernon slumped into a chair facing us. We were crammed into the little office like sardines, since the office was dominated by Mr. Mitchell’s huge oak desk. I swear, you could have just about landed a helicopter on the thing, and it made me wonder what in the world he was trying to compensate for.
Robbie Mitchell had been the biggest hell raiser in my Sunday School class for two years until his parents up and decided to switch to the ARP church and my life calmed down considerably. He never liked me much, since I didn’t let him run wild like some other folks did, and I made him recite bible verses every time he misbehaved. He had about memorized every word of Song of Solomon and Psalms before he changed churches. I reckoned if he’d stayed much longer, he probably would have gone to the seminary, and the world would have been deprived of a man with absolutely zero skill in education or administration, so naturally he went into exactly that field.
“Now Ian, you know that you can request your parents be here for this conversation,” Mr. Mitchell said, but Sheriff Dunleavy held up a hand.
“Actually, Ian, according to these records,” he held up a file that I knew contained nothing but blank sheets of paper, since I had watched him pull them out of the copy machine in the main office and stick them into the folder. “According to these records, you’re eighteen. That means you’re legally an adult, and no, you cannot ask your mommy and daddy to be here when we’re talking to you.” Willis made it a point to make “mommy and daddy” sound as ridiculous and babyish as possible, to keep the boy from asking for his parents.
“You can, however, ask for an attorney. Although, if you can’t pay for one, you’ll probably get a court-appointed lawyer from the ambulance chasers that hang out down by the emergency room,” Willis added.
I knew this was a lie, since there wasn’t an emergency room for fifty miles, and there were’t any court-appointed lawyers in Lockhart. If the boy needed an attorney, they’d have to come from Union, or probably Spartanburg. That would take several hours to round one up and get her over to the school.
“I ain’t done nothing, so I don’t need no lawyer,” Ian said, his tone sullen and his words slurred. He looked everywhere around the room except at me, and I wondered why that would be. I didn’t remember ever having any interaction with the boy, unless he maybe was with his father when he delivered my liquor once or twice. But his daddy delivered liquor to half to houses in town, so it’s not like anybody cared.
“Then you won’t mind if we ask you some questions?” Sheriff Dunleavy asked. He pulled out a small digital recorder and clicked it on.
“Nah, y’all go ahead. Ask whatever you want.” Ian stayed slumped in his chair, working very hard to maintain his disaffected appearance. It wasn’t working, at least not with me. His eyes kept sweeping the room, taking in every detail. He was paying very close attention to everything, he just wanted us to think he wasn’t. I didn’t know if that was the demeanor of a guilty person, or just a boy who doesn’t want the adults to know he’s scared.
“You understand that anything you say to the sheriff can land you in jail, don’t you, Ian?” Mr. Mitchell asked, and I shot him a look that would have burned a hole right through his chest if I had anything like that super-hot vision that Superman throws around.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ian said. “Like I said, I ain’t done nothing, so won’t be nothing.”
I wasn’t sure what that sentence mean, or even if it was really a sentence, but I ignored it and focused my attention on the boy’s feet. Sure enough, they were clad in a pair of heavy black combat boots with thick rubber soles. I couldn’t see enough of them to see if the treads looked anything like the boot print we found in my yard, but they were definitely a military style boot.
“Where were you last night?” Willis asked, setting the recorder on Mr. Mitchell’s desk.
“Home.”
“When did you get home?”
“After school.”
“Did you go anywhere between leaving school and home?”
“No.”
I could tell the brusque answers were annoying Mr. Mitchell, and they were having a similar effect on me, but Willis seemed unfazed by them. I assumed that in his time working in the big city he’d found ways to get information from recalcitrant suspects.
“What if I said I don’t believe you?” He leaned forward, dominating the skinny boy with his uniformed presence. Ian looked younger now, with the sheriff looming over him. His black jeans, black boots, and black t-shirt just made him look pale and nervous, not tall and intimidating like he certainly wanted. His spiky bright blonde hair wavered a little as he shrank back from Willis’ sudden invasion of his personal space.
“I’d say I don’t give a shit what you believe, because it’s the truth,” Ian jerked forward in the chair, almost nose to nose with the glowering sheriff.
Willis leaned back, a little smile tweaking the corner of his mouth. He got a rise out of the boy, got a full sentence out of him, which was some sort of progress. I enjoyed watching him work. He was good at this, working the push and pull of the boy’s resistance.
“Have you ever been to Ms. Carter’s home?” He asked.
Ian’s eyes went wide, then his brow furrowed as he looked at me. “Her? Why would I go over to her house?”
“I don’t know, Ian. Why don’t you tell me why you went to her house?” Willis asked. I pushed down a smile as I saw what he was doing, getting the boy to admit to going to my house, then spinning that around to him being there last night.
“I didn’t, man. I told you,” Ian insisted. “Or if I did, I went there with my old man, to drop off some liquor.” He glared at Willis, all his hatred of authority restored in a blink. “Is that what this shit is about? You trying to use me to put the old man in jail? Shit, all you gotta do for that is ask. Yeah, he makes moonshine. Sells the shit out of it, too. Sells this old biddy a case whenever she calls, sells it to just about everybody in town. Except that asshole BAR NAME? Shorty, he says Pop’s liquor ain’t good enough for his little pissant joint. Man, you want to get that old bastard on bootlegging, I’ll tell you anything you want. You want to know about them half a dozen scraggly-ass weed plants he’s got growing in the tool shed, too?” Ian leaned back, all smug viciousness at having turned coat on his father.
“We’ll come back to all that,” Willis said. I could see him mentally putting a pin in this point of the conversation. I knew from drinking with him at Gene’s that he could care less about a little moonshining, but growing marijuana might be a whole different operation in his mind.
“I want to know why you were at Ms. Carter’s place last night, poking around in her house. Why were you there, Ian?” Willis asked, his voice and eyes hard as flint.
“I wasn’t, man! I done told you, I ain’t never been there but to drop off liquor with Pops. What would I want in her house anyway? It ain’t like she’s rich or nothing.” He got a crafty look on his face. “You ain’t, are you?”
I almost laughed out loud at the clumsy boy, but managed to hold it in. “No, Ian,” I replied. “I’m not rich. I have some antiques, but most of them are too big to move easily. You’d need a truck and help to get them out of the house. That’s what makes this all the more confusing. Why would you break into my home?” I knew why, of course, I just wanted to keep him off-balance, to show him as few of my cards as possible.
“I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I ain’t a thief. I ain’t no kind of crook. I ain’t no pervert, neither, no matter what them two dead bitches did to my phone. That’s what this is about, ain’t it? Y’all think since I hated them snotty bitches that I killed them. Well I didn’t. I didn’t break into nobody’s house and I didn’t kill nobody. I’m a good person! I just…I just don’t know how totally to people sometimes, and sometimes people want to make out like I’m shit because my family’s shit, and that pisses me off, ‘cause I ain’t nothing like them assholes, and then I get mad, and then they say that proves they was right all along, and…and…and…shit, I don’t know. I just know I didn’t break into nobody’s house and I didn’t kill nobody.”
He leaned back with his arms across his chest and a scowl on his face that only an aggrieved teenager can manage. I looked at Willis, but he didn’t return my glance. He was studying the boy, all his attention focused on Ian’s face, the set of his jaw, how he held his shoulders, whether his hands shook. He stared intently at the teen for several long moments, then leaned back abruptly, startling us both.
“Well, Ian, I reckon we can sort this all out real fast, if you’ll agree to it,” Willis said.
Ian cocked his head to one side, his distrust of Willis, all law enforcement, and everybody who could possibly be considered an adult evident in his face. “What you got in mind, Sheriff?”
“We took a photo and a mold of the boot print that the burglar at Ms. Carter’s house wore. It was fresh, so we were able to get a very detailed impression. I’d like to compare that with your boots. If it’s not a match, and those are the only boots you own, then you obviously didn’t break into Ms. Carter’s home.” I noticed that he very carefully did not mention Jenny and Shelly’s murders. It was one thing for him to throw away a burglary conviction, but if he mentioned anything about the boots in conjunction with the murders, and the shoes didn’t match, we could have ourselves a regular O.J. Trial down here.
“Well, shit, Sheriff, why didn’t you just ask?” Ian said, leaning back in his chair and propping both feet up onto the table in front of him. My mouth fell open as I stared at the bottom of the boy’s feet. He had apparently carved all the tread from the center section of his boots, then epoxied or glued somehow letters down the center of each foot. They looked like the brightly colored letter magnets that children play with, except on his right foot it spelled out “P-I-S-S” and on the left foot is read “O-F-F.”
This was not the boot print of the person who walked through my backyard the night before. The boot print we had was normal, nondescript, and almost pristine. Ian’s shoes were anything but. He was innocent, and he was our best lead.
“Are those the only boots you own, Ian?” Willis asked. I could read the disappointment in his every motion. His eyes were downcast, looking at his papers while the boy’s grin burned a hole in the top of his head.
“Nah, I got another pair,” Ian said with a smirk. Sheriff Dunleavy’s head snapped up, then his shoulders sagged at Ian’s next words. “I carved ‘Suck It’ on the bottom of them. Those are for the days when I’m feeling real bright and sunny. They don’t get much wear.”
Ian stood up and pushed his chair back under the table. “I guess I can go now, right? I’ve got lunch this period, and I’d really hate to miss it. It’s fish stick day, and I can’t wait to see what they’re calling fish this week.” He walked out of the office and slammed the door behind him.
Mr. Mitchell looked at Sheriff Dunleavy and I, his ears a little red from embarrassment. “Well, I suppose that didn’t go quite as planned,” he said, standing. He gestured to the door, and we walked out into the main office.
Mr. Mitchell walked us to the door of the main office, then said, in a voice pitched particularly for the student office monitors to hear, “I told you that Ian wasn’t your burglar, Sheriff. You need to focus on catching real criminals instead of coming here and harassing my students. If you come back, you’d better have a warrant!”
Willis looked at him sideways for a minute, then nodded and walked out into the morning sun. I followed, and held up my palm to Jenny as she drifted over. “Not now, honey, I need to go over to the Grill and get some pancakes with enough syrup to wash the taste of teenage jerk out of my mouth.”
“I’ll drive,” Willis said. “I’m gonna need a whole lot of bacon to mask the taste of the crow I’ll have to eat the next time I need anything from Mitchell.” A disappointed sheriff, an embarrassed psychic, and a dead cheerleader headed off to breakfast. If that sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke, then you are beginning to understand how I felt. Like the beginning of a joke.
by john | Jun 12, 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.
18
The three of us descended my back steps out into the small fenced in yard. Johnny floated straight off toward the back of the yard, past my four lone tomato plants, which still produced more of the red fruit than any three people could ever eat. He walked through the laundry I hung out that morning before I started my investigation, and went straight to the back fence.
We followed, and Willis drew his pistol in his right hand and a small flashlight in his left. He didn’t do that funny cross grip like the police on TV, he just kept his gun pointed at the ground with his finger off the trigger, and aimed the flashlight at the ground in front of us.
I held up my hand when Johnny stopped and floated over one specific spot in my yard. I directed Willis’ flashlight to the spot, and it illuminated an almost perfect men’s boot print in one of the few spots devoid of grass in my yard. Maybe we had caught a break after all.
“This is good, Lila,” Willis said, pulling out his phone and wallet. He took a dollar bill from his wallet and laid it on the ground next to the footprint.
“You know Johnny’s dead, right?” I asked. “You don’t have to give him a tip.”
“The dollar is for scale,” he said. “It’s an old trick to get a photo with a size locked in when you don’t have your crime scene kit with you.” He took a few shots with his phone, with and without flash, then picked up the dollar and put it back in his wallet.
“Stay here, but don’t touch anything, including the fence right there,” he said, all cop. “I’ll be back in a minute with the good camera and my kit. Maybe we can catch another break and he left a print on the fence.”
I cast a dubious look at the split rail fence along my back yard, thinking it was going to be a cold day in hell before we got a fingerprint off the rough wooden surface, but I kept my doubts to myself. I watched the new sheriff walk around the side of my house, admiring the view as he went. The man definitely filled out a pair of blue jeans.
I turned to the former sheriff, who still stood beside me at the fence. “Thank you, Johnny. This could be just what we need to catch whoever hurt those girls.”
He nodded. He knew exactly what a clue like this could mean, of course, as long as he’d been in law enforcement. We waited by the print for Sheriff Dunleavy to return, and he came around the side of the house moments later carrying a bit toolbox in one hand with a camera bag slung across the opposite shoulder.
He set the toolbox on the ground, and the camera bag beside it. First, he opened the toolbox and pulled out a small LED light on a stand, which he aimed at the print. Next, he pulled a big, professional-looking camera out and started snapping pictures of the footprint and the surrounding area. He pulled a ruler out of the toolbox and laid it on the ground next to the print, getting a more precise measurement than his dollar bill trick. Next he pulled out two jars and a small Dixie paper cup, poured something from each jar into the Dixie cup and stirred it with a tongue depressor, then poured a white mixture into the print.
“What is that, some kind of plater?” I asked.
“Kinda,” he said, not looking up from his pouring. “It makes a malleable rubber cast of the print, and will also pick up any loose dirt from the impression, along with any trace evidence that was left behind from our visitor’s shoe.” When the footprint was filled with a thin layer of the white substance, he stood up and pulled out his flashlight again.
“While that dries, I’ll see if there is any other evidence our friend left for us to find,” he said, all business now that he was back on the job.
“Can I do anything to help?” I asked.
“You can hold the light while I take pictures,” he said, passing me the big Maglite. I took it, and he put the camera around his neck. I followed as he walked toward the fence, careful not to take the most direct line to the print from the low point of the fence, but to walk beside the natural path. I pointed the light where he told me, and he snapped photos as we walked.
“I don’t see anything,” he said. “But in the low light it’s easy to miss something. I’ll put the pictures on the big monitor when I get back to the office, and if there’s something that will point us in the direction of a suspect, I’ll find it.”
“You’re going back to the office tonight?” I asked. I felt a little disappointed at that. It’s not like I was planning on him staying over at my house, not at all. I just thought we were nice and relaxed, maybe our evening didn’t need to end quite so soon.
“Yeah, as soon as that cast dries. I’ll scan the boot print and run it through a database of manufacturers. We don’t have everything catalogued, but if it’s a boot by a major shoe company in the US, I bet we’ll have it.”
“You have a computer program with every shoe print made in the United States?” I felt a little like Big Brother was watching, and he had a foot fetish.
“Distributed in the US,” he corrected. “Most shoes sold in America aren’t made here. But yeah, the FBI created a shoe print database a few years ago, and local law enforcement can access it. It’s not free, but there’s grant money available. Besides, I didn’t spend all our budget on that tank the National Guard wanted me to take off their hands, so we can afford to look up a couple of footprints.”
“I will never understand how law enforcement works,” I said.
“Be glad of that, Lila Grace. Aim that flashlight over here.” He pointed at the fence, then frowned. “Yeah, I can’t pull any prints off that. The surface is way too rough and uneven. Our guy probably wore gloves climbing over it, anyway. Wouldn’t make sense to carry gloves through your back yard just to put them on at the door.”
He crouched by the fence, going over every inch of it closely. I got down on one knee beside him, feeling the dew soak through the knee of my pants. My crouching days were over long ago, arthritis in my knees making it painful and a little middle-aged spread across the hips making my balance treacherous. The last thing I needed was to sprawl on my behind in the middle of a crime scene.
“Do you see anything?” I asked, keeping my voice low. I don’t know why I felt the need to whisper, my lot was sizable and unless someone felt the need to be standing on the other side of the fence, they couldn’t hear me if I spoke in my full voice. I guess it was the suspense of it all.
He turned to me, and as he did I caught a whiff of the smell of him. Laundry detergent, spicy aftershave, Jim Beam and just a hint of sweat blended together to make me swoon just a little. It had been a long time since I swooned, and I was out of practice, but I remembered what it felt like. I liked it. I was also very glad I wasn’t trying to maintain my balance, because I would certainly have plopped down on my butt in the wet grass, a mood-killer if there ever was one.
“No, there’s nothing here,” he said, his voice low like mine.
I didn’t feel like I needed to argue with him right then, but he was wrong. There was very definitely something there. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I was very interested in finding out.
He stood up, and I followed suit. He packed up his tool kit and held out his hand. I stared at it, not knowing exactly what he wanted, then put my own hand in his. It felt good, the rough calluses of his palm against my own far-from-smooth hands. I work in my little garden too much to have very girly hands.
“While that’s nice, Lila Grace, and I’m certainly not complaining about holding your hand, I need my flashlight back.”
I was very glad it was too dark for him to see me blush. I let go of his hand and passed him the light, then turned and walked back into the house. We got to the living room and I turned to the couch. “Are you…gonna stay a little while?” I felt tentative now, like we needed to figure out how to start all over again. He shuffled his feet, like a schoolboy trying to figure out whether to kiss the girl on the playground, pull her pigtails, or both.
“I better go ahead to the office and get these photos logged. Can’t mess up the chain of evidence, you know.”
I did. I knew he had an excuse to leave, so he would. Damn you, Sheriff Johnny, for finding clues! “I reckon I’ll talk to you in the morning,” I said.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Come on by the station around ten or eleven. I might have heard something about the shoe prints by then. We can figure out anything else we need to do then.”
I stepped in to him, pressed my lips briefly to his, and then slipped back. His hands were full, and he was making his escape, so there wasn’t going to be any kind of real goodnight kiss. “Good night, Sheriff.”
“Good night, Lila Grace,” he replied. “I’ll call Jeff. He’s on patrol tonight. I’ll get him to make sure he gives your place a drive by every couple of hours to keep an eye on the place. If you need anything, you can call me direct. I’ll be over here in a heartbeat.”
I didn’t bother exploring all the things I might call him in need of, not right at that moment, I just smiled and said “Thank you.”
We did that awkward dance of good nights and see you laters that people do when they aren’t real sure where they stand with one another, then he was gone. I heard the trunk of his car close, then the big engine roared to life and disappeared down the street toward the police station.
I sat down on the couch, leaned my head back against my grandmother’s throw pillows lined up across the back of the sofa, and let out of frustrated sigh. “Sweet Jesus, Lila Grace, why didn’t you just jump the man? You are nothing but a horny old woman, there is no way that fine piece of man is going to be interested in you.” I said to the empty room.
As happens so often in my completely bizarre and slightly dysfunctional life, the empty room spoke back to me. This time in the voice of a dead teenager. “I don’t know about that, Lila Grace, he seemed pretty damn interested to me.”
“What would you know, child?” I asked. “You died a virgin.” I clapped my hand over my mouth the second the words escaped, and looked at Jenny, my eyes big as saucers. “Oh shit honey, I am so sorry.”
The ghost child in my armchair gawked at me for a second, then laughed, throwing her head back and letting out a peal of pure joy and amusement. “Oh, good lord, Lila Grace, that’s the funniest damn thing I’ve heard since I died!” She had another long laugh at my expense, then looked me in the eye. “First off, I was a cheerleader. Understanding what men want, both in high school and after, was kinda my thing. Second, I did not die a virgin, and thank to me, neither will Alexander Zane.”
“Alex Zane?” I asked. “Isn’t he a sophomore at the University of South Carolina?”
“He is,” Jenny confirmed. “But he wasn’t two summers ago when he gave me a sob story about not wanting to go off to college a virgin when all his friends had lost their v-cards in high school. So we did it in the back of his daddy’s old Suburban. He got pretty good at it before he went away to school, too.” She gave a little smile at the memory.
“Do you think he could have…” I didn’t quite ask the question, but I made it real clear what the question was.
Jenn thought for a few seconds, then shook her head. “Nah, we split up on good terms. Even got together a few times last summer when he was home. But we were never anything serious, and when he got a girlfriend this year, he called to tell me he couldn’t see me over Christmas break. I think he expected me to be a lot more upset about than I was. Which is to say, I wasn’t upset at all. He was a nice guy, but I knew we were never going to be anything more than friends with benefits.”
“Was there anybody else that might not have been so happy about breaking up with you as Alex?” I asked.
She looked a little offended, but she was the one that brought it up. “Well, I wasn’t a slut, if that’s what you’re saying. I only ever slept with three boys. There was Alex, and Keith, my boyfriend right up until the end.”
“That’s two,” I prodded.
“The other one was this boy I met at the beach last summer. I…kinda don’t remember his name.” This was a night full of firsts for me. I’d had my house broken into, made out with an officer of the law, and now I had a blushing ghost in my living room.
“That’s okay, honey. We all have our wild oats to sow,” I said.
“Did you?” She asked.
“Baby girl, I sowed entire fields when I was in college. But that was a long time ago. Now I’m going to go to bed and try real hard not to dream about sheriffs that smell good enough to slather in syrup and eat up like a stack of flapjacks.”
by john | Jun 5, 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.
17
Willis came back through the house, his gun holstered, to where I sat on the front porch swing with Jenny. “The place is empty,” he said, turning the rocker sideways and sitting down to face me.
“I told you that,” I said. “Jenny did a thorough job of checking the place out before she’d even let me go get Daddy’s gun and walk through the whole house myself.” I reached out and patted the ancient twelve-gauge leaning against the wall beside me. Daddy’s old gun had seen a lot of use when he was a younger man, bringing home dinner more than once when deer was in season. Since he passed, it mostly got used to scare crows out of the pecan tree in the back yard, or to take care of the occasional copperhead in the summer. I keep it loaded, though, with a shell of birdshot in first, then four shells full of double-ought buckshot just in case somebody’s stupid enough to still be in my way after I dump a bunch of pellets into their behind.
“How did you know someone had been inside your house, Ms. Carter?”
“I’m Ms. Carter, now?” I asked with a smile.
“Well, I am conducting an investigation. But it could be that we might get a little less formal once my questions get answered. But not before. So, how did you know someone had been in your house?”
“It was too clean,” I said.
“So someone broke into your house and…cleaned up?” Willis Dunleavy gave me almost exactly the same look he gave me the first time we met, when I told him I had a gift for talking to dead people.
“The stuff on the dining room table had been straightened. I left it all in big piles, but when I came back, it was all straight. And then there’s the busted window on the back porch.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of a dead giveaway,” he agreed.
“Plus Jenny felt somebody’s presence,” I added.
The sheriff’s pen stopped moving and he looked up at me. “Now, you see, that’s the kind of thing I can’t put in my report.”
“I can’t possibly see how that’s my problem, Willis,” I said with a smile. “It’s the truth. I know it, you know, and poor old dead Sheriff Johnny standing behind you knows it.”
He jumped up and turned around like his butt was spring-loaded. I reared back in the swing, laughing fir to beat the band, and he just turned back around and sat back down in the chair in a huff. “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” I said, still laughing a little bit. “Johnny ain’t behind you. He wandered off after I called you, and I ain’t seen him in half an hour. I was just pulling your leg.”
“That’s not funny, Lila Grace,” he grumped, but I saw a little hint of a smile.
“Oh, don’t be an old fuddy-duddy, Willis. If you can’t laugh about the dead people that won’t leave you alone, what in the world can you laugh about?”
“You are a very strange woman, Lila Grace Carter,” he said, flipping his little notebook closed.
“You have no idea, Willis Dunleavy,” I said, standing up.
He stood, and all of a sudden we were standing on my porch, very close to each other, almost face to face. I felt his breath on my face, warm in the slightest chill of the evening air, and felt a warmth build inside me to match it.
“Well—“ he started
“Would you—“ I started at the same time, then stopped. “Go ahead,” I said.
“No, you,” he waved a hand.
I took a deep breath to quiet the butterflies in my stomach. “Would you like to come in for a drink?”
“That would be nice,” he replied.
“I don’t have anything but Jim Beam, I don’t keep much in the way of mixers,” I said as I stepped past him into my den. I flipped on the light switch. It had gotten dark while we were sitting out there. CHECK TIME OF DAY.
“That’s fine,” he said, following me close, almost close enough for me to feel that hot breath again on the back of my neck. I slowed down a little, let him get closer. I could smell him, the warm man-smells of him. He smelled like leather from his gun belt, oil from his gun, and a hint of aftershave left over from the morning. Or maybe he splashed a tiny bit on before he came to my house? Either way, he smelled good. Strong, like a man should smell.
He pushed the front door closed behind us and I heard him click the lock. I wove my way past the recliner in the den, past the dining room table with all my notes stacked too neatly on my grandmother’s quilt that I repurposed for a tablecloth a few years ago, and walked into the kitchen. I got two jelly jars down out of the cabinet and put a few ice cubes in each one. I turned to walk back to the dining room but stopped when I almost bumped right into Willis, filling the door frame with my three-quarters full Jim Beam bottle in his hand.
“Sit down over there,” he pointed to my ancient formica-topped kitchen table. I did as he said, and set the two glasses on the table. He put the bottle down in front of me, then turned and walked out the back door onto the small back porch/mud room where my washer and dryer, deep freezer, and tool boxes sat.
“What are you doing, Willis?” I called after him.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “Just pour the whiskey.”
I gave a little shrug and did as I was told, content for the moment to let him have his little secret. Until I hear a horrendous banging coming from my back porch, that it. Then I shot up like a rocket myself, and hustled to the door to see what the hell he was doing.
What he was doing, was nailing a little piece of cardboard over the hole in my back door. He turned to me and gave me a sheepish little grin. “It won’t keep out anything more determined than a wasp, but at least you won’t have bugs getting in all night.”
“Thank you, Willis, I appreciate it. You didn’t have to do that, though. I wasn’t going to make you work for your drink.” At least not that way, I thought.
He smiled and put the hammer aside. “I don’t mind. I don’t get much chance to do things with my hands except shoot nowadays. I kinda miss it.”
I stepped forward and stood up on tiptoes to kiss him on his rough cheek, enjoying the feel of his salt-and-pepper stubble on my lips. “Well, thank you, kind sir. Here is your reward.” I kissed his cheek again, and handed him a glass with three ice cubes and two fingers of whiskey in it.
“I dusted the knob for prints, but there was nothing but smudges. Not even your prints, which tells me either you wipe down your house every day, or the burglar wore gloves and took measures to make sure he wasn’t discovered,” he said, sipping his drink.
I took a drink of my own, hearing the light tinkle of ice cubes shaking against the sides of my glass. I hated that noise, because I wasn’t rattling the ice around on purpose, my hands just wouldn’t quite hold still. “Do you think it was the killer?” I asked. My voice sounded strange to my ears. It was a light, querulous thing, not the voice of a strong woman who lived on her own most of her life. It was the voice of a scared, delicate thing who needed protecting. I hated that voice a little bit, and knocked back the rest of my whiskey to drown that simpering wretch.
Willis raised an eyebrow as I refilled my glass, but I didn’t respond. He took another sip and replied. “I can’t imagine it would be anyone, else. Just about everybody in town knows you’re working this case in one way or another, and if they don’t know it directly, they could probably figure it out from seeing us together in Sharky’s twice in one day.”
“Yes, I don’t expect they would think much of my chances in the dating pool, so the logical assumption would be that we are working together.” I heard the bitterness in my voice and tried to tell myself it was the whiskey talking, and not the decades of sidelong glances from my neighbors, who were quick enough to knock on my door when they needed something, but had an alarming tendency to find something pressing on the other side of the street when they saw me on the sidewalk otherwise.
“I think your chances of landing a lawman are pretty good, if you ask me,” Willis said. “And I don’t mean Jeff.”
We both laughed out loud at that. Willis, because he probably thought Jeff just another hapless yokel, and me because I would always see him as the sweet but slightly dim boy in my Sunday School class. “No, I don’t think I’ll be having a steak dinner with Jeff any time soon. He’s sweet, but he’s a little young for me.”
“But you don’t have a problem dating a cop?” Willis asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. His gaze became suddenly intense, and I thought for a second that I could see myself reflected in his deep brown eyes.
It took me a long moment to find my voice, but finally I said, “No. I think dating an officer of the law might even be a little bit…exciting.” I let the last word linger, a little tease in the air. It had been a long time since I played this game, and I was rusty, but it was much more fun than I remembered. Maybe that’s because I’d only played it with boys before, and this time I was fencing with a grown man. A very grown man.
I straightened up suddenly as Sheriff Johnny walked through the back door. He didn’t open it, of course, he literally walked through my back door, making not the slightest sound to tell Willis that his predecessor had entered the room.
“What is it?” Willis said when I sat up. His cop instincts were on point, and he was on his feet with his gun out in an instant. He spun around to follow my gaze, but of course he saw nothing. He was face to face with Sheriff Johnny, who just stood there looking Willis up and down like he was some kind of interloper poking his badge in where he didn’t belong.
“It’s Johnny,” I said, holding up my hands in a calming gesture. “He just came in through the back door and he’s motioning like he wants us to follow him outside.” I stood up, and the room wobbled just a little bit. Drinks with dinner, a nightcap after, and now a strong drink in my kitchen amounted to more than my normal intake of liquor, and I was feeling the effects. It made Johnny less distinct, harder to see and thus harder to understand.
Alcohol dulls my sensitivity, which is why I spent the month after my mother died drunk as a skunk. I didn’t want to see her ghost, I just wanted to miss her like a normal person. Like every daughter that loses a mother, there were things between us that had been better left unsaid. And just like every strong-willed woman who came from a strong-willed woman, nothing remained unsaid between us. So when she died, I crawled inside a bottle of Seagram’s gin and didn’t crawl out until I had it on good authority that she was no longer hanging around my house or hers. I haven’t had a sip of gin since. Nowadays the mere smell of it makes me sick to my stomach.
I got hold of my equilibrium and followed Johnny out the back door and down the concrete steps. I opened the door, a concession to my physical form that Johnny still didn’t have to make. I was also apparently going to have to have a conversation with him about making concessions to my privacy, because if things moved the way I hoped with Willis, it certainly would not do to have a dead sheriff wandering into my home unannounced. I have enough issues with intimacy without turning my love life into a spectator sport, thank you.
by john | May 29, 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.
16
We walked out of the restaurant and down the steps, our feet crunching in the gravel. “Well, I reckon this is goodnight, Lila Grace,” Willis said, turning to me. He had that awkward look of a man that ain’t sure if he’s supposed to hug me, shake my hand, or try to kiss me.
I just wore my normal expression. Sheriff Johnny used to say I looked like I knew something he didn’t. I replied that I usually did. “Why should this be goodnight, Sheriff?” I asked with a smile. I leaned back against the fender of my old truck and gave him a direct look.
He spluttered a little bit before he managed to spit out “W-well, I reckon it don’t have to be, I mean, um…”
“You mean you still need a ride back to your car?” I said with one eyebrow up.
“Huh?” He looked for all the world like a bulldog chewing on a wasp, like there was something hurting his head, but he wasn’t real sure what it was.
“We left your car at Sharky’s, Willis. Unless you feel like walking three miles across town to go get it, I reckon you ain’t getting rid of me that easy.” I pushed off from the truck, reached out and closed him mouth with two fingers under his chin, and walked around to get into the driver’s seat.
He slid in on the passenger side of the big bench seat and put on his seat belt. “Don’t you ever lock your truck?”
“Why in the world would I? This truck is almost thirty years old, has almost four hundred thousand miles on it, a rusted-out rear fender, and a bed held together pretty much with Bondo and paint. I don’t keep anything in it worth stealing, except the shotgun behind the seat, and if there’s anybody in the county that don’t already have something better than a double-barrel four-ten, well I reckon they’re welcome to it.” I pulled the truck out onto the highway in the wake of a log truck hauling a late load of pine. I love the smell of fresh-cut pine logs, but I did hang back far enough not to get sap on my windshield.
“You keep a shotgun behind the seat of your truck? You know that’s against the law, right?”
“It ain’t loaded, Willis. The shells are in the glove box, and it’s locked. Usually. Sometimes. Well, at least the shells are in the glove box,” I said. “Besides, what are you going to do, arrest an old woman for concealing a three-foot long shotgun? Judge Comer would laugh your ass right out of his courtroom.”
He chuckled, and rolled his window down, letting the warm air and the scent of honeysuckle filter into the truck’s cab. “You ain’t wrong, there. I swear that man thinks I ain’t nothing more than a Yankee carpetbagger. He all but said so the first time I went to the courthouse to introduce myself.”
“Well, maybe if that wasn’t the first time I’d heard you say ‘ain’t’ in the time I’ve known you, people wouldn’t think you such an interloper.”
“Now come on, that’s not fair,” he protested. “You use just as many big words as I do, if not more.”
“That’s true, but I have the benefit of living my entire life below the Mason-Dixon Line. You are at the distinct disadvantage of having spent three decades in Minnesota, a place as foreign to most residents of the South Carolina Upstate as Kathmandu. Besides, I say all those big words with an accent. Gives it style.”
We both laughed and I pulled into the parking lot of Sharky’s. There were a lot more cars in the lot now, but plenty of space around Willis’ cruiser. Seemed like nobody wanted to risk having one too many and clipping the police car on the way out of the lot.
“You want to come in, have a nightcap?” He asked, opening the passenger door and slipping off his seatbelt.
“No, I think I better get home. All them cats get ornery if I stay out too late.”
His face got a panicked look. “You have cats?”
I busted out laughing. “Lord, no! But I thought it would be funny to pretend to be the stereotypical crazy cat lady for a minute. No, I don’t have any pets. They don’t like all my unannounced visitors. Cats don’t like ghosts, and I don’t like cat pee on my hardwoods. Dogs are too stupid to care about random dead people showing up, and that means they’re too dumb for me to tolerate. So no pets for me. But I’m still gonna pass on that drink. Two glasses of wine with dinner has me feeling just right. I think I’m going to go home, take a bubble bath with a trashy romance novel, and go to sleep with the ceiling fan on.”
“Sounds good,” he said. He walked around the side of the truck and leaned in my open window. “I had a nice time tonight, Lila Grace. Does this clear my debt, or do I need to keep apologizing?”
I leaned forward a little. “I reckon I’ve almost forgiven you.”
He moved closer. “Well, that means I’ve still got some work to do.”
It had been some time, but I was pretty sure I knew what was supposed to come next, and I was pretty sure I wanted it to happen. I leaned a little closer. “Well, then get to work, Sheriff.”
He pressed his mouth to mine, and I let out a little sigh. His lips were strong, and firm, and he reached up to stroke the side of my head right behind my ear. I opened my mouth and felt his tongue slide between my lips, probing gently, dancing across my teeth just long enough to be promising, then pull back. We parted, and he gave me a look that melted me right down to my core.
“Enjoy that bubble bath. And that trashy romance novel,” he said, his lips just inches from mine, Then he pressed them to me again, this time more chaste, but still strong, passionate. I sighed again, like some silly girl in a Nicholas Sparks movie, but I couldn’t stop myself. The firm lips, the strong hand on my face, the stubble scraping my cheek as he moved forward to whisper “It’s gonna take me a long time to sleep tonight.” All that combined to make me real glad I was sitting in my truck and not trying to stand, because that man made me weak in the knees like nobody in a very long time.
I gave him one last peck on the lips. “I had a lovely time, Willis. We’ll have to do it again. Real soon.” Then I cranked the put the truck in reverse and got the hell away from that man before I jumped his bones right there in Sharky’s parking lot.
Jenny was sitting on my porch when I got home, on the two-seater swing next to Sheriff Johnny, both of them grinning at me like damn Cheshire cats. “Don’t say a word, young lady,” I warned as I walked up the steps and unlocked my front door. “I am allowed to go to dinner with a man if I want to, and I am allowed to kiss him if I want to.”
“Did you want to?” Jenny asked, her voice sing-songy as she kicked her feet on the motionless swing. I was glad it wasn’t moving. I had enough trouble with the folks on my street without my porch swing moving all by itself on a night with no breeze at all.
I felt a slight blush creep up my neck and across my cheeks as I very carefully did not look at the ghost. “I did. Want to, that is?”
“So did you?” Jenny asked.
“I don’t know that I feel the need to tell you that. A woman deserves to have some secrets, after all.” I smiled as I pushed the door open.
“You might as well tell me. If you don’t, I’ll just go over to the cemetery and ask the Three Musketeers.”
I laughed in spite of trying to act mad at her being all nosy. “Is that what you’re calling those women? The Three Musketeers?”
“Well, it sounds a whole lot nicer than the Three Stooges,” Jenny said, a little defensiveness creeping into her tone.
“Oh no, honey, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fine. It’s just that’s what they called themselves when they were alive, and I think it’s funny that’s what you came up with to call them after death, without knowing it before.”
“Oh,” she said, mollified. “Okay, then. As long as you weren’t making fun of me.”
“Perish the thought,” I said.
“Well, did you?” She persisted.
“Make fun of you?” I asked. “Maybe a little, but—“
“No, silly! Did you kiss him?” She barreled right past me into the living room and stared at me, then her eyes got big and she froze. “Somebody was here.”
I didn’t take another step into the house. “Are they gone?” I whispered, moving back out the door, trying hard not to make any noise.
“Yeah, they’re gone now,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. There’s nobody here but us. I can kinda…sense, I guess, living people now. I can feel them. Y’all, I mean.”
That was new to me. I hadn’t heard of spirits being able to sense the presence of the living. It kinda made sense, I reckon, since there are some living people who can feel ghosts when they’re around. “And you’re sure nobody is in there?”
“No, nobody’s nearby but you. I can feel Mr. Martin in his bedroom next door, and Mrs. Cline over on the other side. I can even kinda feel the Jenkins kids home alone on the other side of Mrs. Cline, but that’s all.”
“Johnny, can you do that?” I asked. He was standing behind me, looking worried. He shook his head. I wasn’t too surprised by that. I learned a long time ago that ghosts have different abilities. Johnny can’t talk, and Jenny can. Both of them can move around freely, while some ghosts are stuck near a specific place. That sort of thing.
I turned back to Jenny. “How can you tell somebody was here if they’ve already left? Do people leave some kind of psychic residue behind?”
She looked at me, confused for a minute, then laughed. “Oh! No, there’s a busted pane of glass in your back door, and a muddy footprint in the dining room. I saw it, that’s all.”
“Dammit!” I said, stomping into the house, flipping on every light I passed. Sure enough, broken glass lay scattered all over the floor of my mud room, and there were several muddy footprints on my linoleum. “I just mopped this yesterday, now some son of a bitch had to come in here and make a damn mess.”
“Miss Lila Grace, do you really think that’s what you oughta be upset about right now?” Jenny asked. I turned, and saw Sheriff Johnny flitting from room to room behind her. He walked over to us, held up his hands in a helps gesture, and shrugged.
“Nothing’s missing?” I asked.
Johnny shook his head.
“So something is missing?”
He shook his head again.
“Hold up one finger if you can’t see anything missing, two fingers if you can.” Sometimes working with a deaf-mute dead law enforcement officer is downright exasperating.
Johnny held up one finger. It is a mark of the level of gentleman that his mother raised that he used his index finger instead of a more demonstrative digit.
“So somebody broke in here just to…what? Track mud all over my kitchen? Hell, they could have waited until morning and come to the front door. Really piss me off and track dirt across the carpets.”
“I think they were looking for this stuff,” Jenny said. She stood at the dining room table, looking over the notes I had written from my interviews and the crime scenes. I walked over to join her and picked up one of the yellow legal pads I kept all my thoughts and theories on.
“What makes you say that, Jenny?” I asked. I saw Johnny standing behind the girl nodding, so obviously he thought the same thing.
“Everything is a little too neat. You left things kinda lying all scattered around, because you knew wasn’t nobody but you going to need to use the table. But now everything is in neat stacks, with everything perfectly straight.
I took another look at the table. With the exception of the legal pad I’d just laid down, she was right. Everything was at perfect 90-degree angles, and every pile was now a neat stack. I looked a little closer, and all the stacks were organized by type of information, too. Interviews were in one stack, crime scene notes in another, stuff I thought of while talking to Jenny in another. Whoever went through my things left my house in better shape than they found it, except for the broken glass.
“Well, shit,” I said.
“What’s wrong?” Jenny asked. “I mean, besides the obvious.”
“Now I have to call Willis. And I was going to make him call me.”
