by john | Aug 7, 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.
26
I explained Tara Miller’s history with Jeff as we sped over to the Miller home. When I added the details of Shelly teasing Jeff, Willis shook his head. “Stupid kids,” he muttered. “Messed with the wrong man, and now they ended up dead because of it.”
Jenny was frantic in the back seat, flitting in and out of the car and cursing her friend Shelly with every breath. “I knew she was being a bitch, but I didn’t do anything to stop her. Dammit, Shelly, why did you have to mess with his dumb ass?”
I didn’t bother trying to point out the beam in her eye while she fussed about Shelly, because this wasn’t the time to tell the poor dead child that she was as much to blame for her situation as Shelly. And honestly, neither one of them was much to blame. Sure, they didn’t need to torment poor Jeff, but that still didn’t give him cause to go murdering people, neither.
We pulled up on front of Jenny’s house less than ten minutes after Willis first banged on my door. It ain’t like it’s that big a town, after all. Reverend Turner was sitting on the front porch, a Bible in one hand and a flashlight in the other. There was a pump shotgun leaning against the wall behind him, and I wouldn’t put it much past the good Reverend to turn that scattergun on anybody he thought to be intruding on the Miller’s hour of grief.
“Reverend,” Willis said as we approached the bottom step.
“Sheriff,” Reverend Turner said, standing up and setting his bible down in the seat of the rocker he’d vacated. “Lila Grace,” he nodded to me. It was the most polite greeting he’d given me in better than ten years. I reckon our little heart-to-heart the other night had some effect.
“Reverend Turner,” I said. “I’m sure Mr. Miller appreciates you being here for him.”
The preacher looked a little ashamed, but gave me what passed for an appreciative nod. “David isn’t a regular member of our congregation, but Karen is one of the leaders of the church. I felt that if there was anything I could do, I should be here.”
“Daddy always says he has an important meeting every Sunday morning, at the intersection of Pillow Street and Blanket Avenue,” Jenny said. “But it means a lot that Reverend Turner would come out in the middle of the night like this.”
I reached out and patted the man’s shoulder. To his credit, he barely flinched at my unclean touch. Maybe he really was thawing towards me a little bit. Or maybe he was just too sleepy to fight. “I’m sure he appreciates it, even if he don’t say it, Reverend.” I said, moving past him into the house.
The Union County Sheriff’s Department ain’t exactly what you would call bustling, and there ain’t a whole lot of manpower allocated to Lockhart most nights. So it wasn’t a big surprise that there were only two people in the house when we stepped in. I recognized Larry Carter, the night shift man in the speed trap down on Highway 49, and a reedy little fellow ducked into the kitchen as soon as the sheriff walked in, but I was pretty sure I recognized the flaming red hair that couldn’t be anybody but Chuck Blackwell. Chuck was a good man, but lazy as the day is long. I knew if he was in that kitchen, it was because it was far from any possible crime scene, and close to any casseroles the grieving family might have left out on the counter.
“Larry, what do we know?” Willis asked.
“Not much, Sheriff,” the dark-haired man answered. “The call came in about half an hour ago, and I called for backup as soon as I got here and heard saw David had been hit upside the head. Told Ava to call up everybody she could find, but Chuck was the only one who picked up the radio.”
“What about Jeff?” I asked. Willis shot me a sharp look, but it was the only real question we were interested in, especially after my talk with the grapevine ghosts earlier.
“Ava said he had him a long weekend, talked about getting out of town. She didn’t even bother trying to reach him. Said when he went off the grid, he went whole hog about it. No radio, no cell phone—nothing. I reckon we won’t see him until Tuesday morning.”
I thought there was a good chance I’d see Jeff before that, but I didn’t want to say anything to Larry about it. “What does Mr. Miller say happened?” I asked.
“Not much, Ms. Carter. I talked to him, but he don’t know a whole lot.” He nodded at the despondent man on the sofa by the big picture window in the den.
I walked over to where David Miller sat on the couch, his elbows on his knees. He was hunched over, a man curling in on himself to keep the world out. The past week had been enough to break most people, and now his wife going missing on top of his daughter’s death had him wearing the haunted expression of a man who didn’t know if he had anything left to live for.
I didn’t wait for Willis to give me the okay, I just sat down on the couch next to Mr. Miller. I put one arm around his shoulders and pulled him tight to me. He was a grown man, not used to having somebody able to give him comfort, but I’m an old woman, and in a small town in the South that means I’m halfway to being everybody’s aunt. I’m not bound by the laws of normal manners. Besides, everybody already thinks I’m crazy, so I get to do anything I want.
“I’m so sorry you’ve got to go through this, Mr. Miller. We’re here, and we’re going to figure out what happened, and bring your Karen back to you. I promise,” I said. I saw Willis and Larry both stiffen and look at one another when I said that. I know, you ain’t supposed to promise somebody something you don’t know you can deliver, but I’m not a cop. I’m an old woman who hates to see people hurting, so I did what I could to help the man with his pain.
He shook in my arms for a minute, then I heard him take a long breath. I felt his shoulders tighten, so I relaxed my hold on him, and he sat up.
“Thank you, Lila Grace,” he said. “I appreciate it. I know you can’t really promise that, but it means a lot anyway.”
“Well, I promise to try my damnedest, how about that?” I said.
“I’ll take it,” he replied. “Now what do I need to do to find Karen?”
Willis stepped forward. “I know you’ve already gone over this with Officer Carter, but why don’t you fill me in a little bit on what happened tonight, just so I can hear it fresh?” He sat down on the coffee table, positioning himself directly in front of Mr. Miller. I knew full well this didn’t have a damn thing to do with him hearing anything fresh, and everything to do with making sure the man’s story stayed straight. I was sure that Jeff took Jenny’s mom, and I’m pretty sure that Willis was, too.
But I knew full well that the first suspect in any case was the husband, so it made sense to look at Mr. Miller while we got all our information together to go after Jeff. Besides, there might be something new that came out of his story, something he left out when he talked to Carter.
I stood just out of Mr. Miller’s line of sight, but still in the room. I didn’t have any real business being there, but since the sheriff led me in, nobody else was going to have the guts to throw me out. Jenny’s dad had an ice pack wrapped in a dishtowel pressed up against the back of his head, and a bruise blossoming on his cheekbone just under his right eye. Whatever happened, it wasn’t pretty.
“I heard a noise,” he started. “I was upstairs asleep, and something woke me. I don’t know what it sounded like, just that it woke me up. I laid there in the bed for a minute, listening to see if I could hear what it was, thinking maybe it was Jenny going down for a glass of water. Then I remembered…well, then I remembered, and I got up, moving as quiet as I could manage without turning a light on.”
“It sounded like somebody was trying to move through the house being real quiet, but they didn’t know where all the furniture was. Hell, with all the people that have been in and out of here the last week, I barely know where the chairs are supposed to go. So I heard another sound, like somebody walking into a chair and it scraping across the floor, and heard somebody cuss real quiet, like they couldn’t help it.”
“What did the voice sound like?” Willis asked, leaning forward. He was all cop now, attention focused like a laser.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Miller said, rubbing his bruised face. “It sounded like a man, but that’s all I can really remember.”
“Okay, that’s fine, David, just tell me everything you can remember,” Willis said, reaching out and patting the distraught man on the knee.
“I looked around the bedroom, but there was nothing there I could use as a weapon, really. We don’t keep guns…I mean, there’s a shotgun, but it’s over the fireplace, and I don’t know if it’ll even shoot. It was my granddaddy’s. I’ve never even shot the thing. So I kinda snuck downstairs as quiet as I could, and when I got to the landing, there was a man coming up at me.”
“He must have been as surprised as I was, but he reacted faster. The dude charged up a couple of steps and slammed me into the wall. My head cracked into the drywall behind me, and I saw stars. Then I felt something heavy hit me in the face, and I fell down. I got hit on the back of the head, and I passed out. He took me out in just a few seconds. I was useless.” He put his face in his hands and I saw his shoulders shake with sobs.
“Mr. Miller, I’m sure there’s nothing more you could’ve done,” Willis said. “But I need you to think for me, David. Do you remember any details about the man’s clothes? His shoes, his pants, his face?”
“He wore a mask. One of those ski masks, with one big hole cut out for the eyes. His shirt was dark, I didn’t notice really anything about it.”
“Okay,” Willis prodded. “What about his pants? When you fell to the ground, did you notice anything about his shoes?”
“His shoes…he wore boots, like work boots, but black. Blue jeans, I think, maybe blue work pants…I don’t know. Black socks, I guess. They didn’t stand out. I’m sorry, I can’t…my head really hurts.” A tear rolled down his face as he clutched his skull.
I looked around and say Peggy Barnette standing in the doorway. Peggy was one of the local EMTs, a stout woman who was every bit as capable of driving the ambulance and manhandling an unconscious adult as she was putting a bandage on a child’s skinned knee. I raised an eyebrow at Peggy, and she came over.
“Mr. Miller, I need to check your eyes.” Peggy knelt in front of the distraught man and pulled a small flashlight from her shirt pocket. She flicked it across his face, and he jerked back. She turned to us. “I think he may have a concussion. His memory might be a little foggy, and he needs to go to the hospital and get checked out.”
“And I need to find out everything I can about his missing wife,” Willis snapped. Peggy scowled at him, but didn’t reply.
I tugged on the sheriff’s elbow and pulled him up with me. “We might as well go upstairs and see if there’s anything up there,” I said. “He won’t be able to tell us anything useful, he’s too upset.”
Willis sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I know. It’s frustrating, is all.” He waved Larry over. “Deputy Carter, accompany Mr. Miller to the hospital. Sit by his bed in case he remembers anything. If he thinks of anything, no matter how small, you call me. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Larry said. He walked over to where Peggy was examining Jenny’s dad and bent down to speak to her.
Willis headed up the stairs, and I followed close behind. There were pictures all along the wall going up the stairs, smiling family photos from Christmas, Disneyland, a couple from when Mrs. Miller was pregnant with Jenny. We got to the top of the stairs, and I stopped, looking at Jenny. She hovered just outside the door to her parents’ bedroom, as if she was afraid to set foot in the room.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” I spoke softly, so the folks downstairs wouldn’t hear me. Didn’t need any crap about the sheriff dating the freak.
“I…I’m scared, Miss Lila Grace. I haven’t been scared this whole time, even though I’ve been dead. I guess it’s like there’s nothing left to be afraid of now. But this…she’s my mom. I don’t know what’s happening to her, I just know that he has her, and he hates her, and…” She turned away from me, her face in her hands. I reached out to her, but my hand passed right through her shadowy form.
“I’m sorry, honey,” I said. “I wish there was something I could do.”
She spun back to me, a fury on her face, and I could almost feel the anger rolling off of her. The pictures on the wall shook, and I heard a muffled thud from inside the bedroom as one fell off the top of a dresser. She looked at me, her eyes blazing, and said, “There is. Find her. Find my mama, and make that son of a bitch pay.”
by john | Jul 31, 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.
25
Willis left a little while after he finished the dishes. We kissed on the couch for a bit, but things didn’t move any further than that. I felt like it wasn’t right to sleep with a man while we were trying to catch a murderer together, and to be honest, I was a little nervous. It had been quite a while since I’d lain with a man, and I wasn’t sure how fast was too fast, or too slow, or what I wanted out of things with Sheriff Willis Dunleavy. I knew I liked him, I enjoyed his company, and having a man who knew how clean up after himself was certainly welcome. I just didn’t know how serious I wanted to be, how serious I was prepared to be.
So I did what I always do when I’m all mixed up in my head about things; I went for a walk. I only ever end up one place. I go there so often it’s almost like there’s a path leading from my front door to the entrance. I ended up at the cemetery beside Woodbridge Presbyterian Church again, walking through the rows of stones with familiar names, lost in my thoughts.
I ended up sitting on a headstone marked “Good,” with two names etched in it, many years apart. There was a smaller stone set into the ground beside it, marked for Tina Good, Daughter, aged eight years when she passed. It had been many years since I’d seen my old friend Tina, but I talked to her often. This was one of the few times I felt normal, when I could go to a cemetery and not expect anyone to talk back to me. I’d watched Tina cross over with her mama, all those years ago, and she was looking down on me from a better place, just like so many people say about their deceased relatives. Unlike those people, I knew my friend wasn’t still there, so I could tell her anything and not worry about getting an answer.
But I couldn’t avoid the dead. Even in the far corner of the cemetery, they found me. The Dead Old Ladies’ Detective Agency, as they’d taken to calling themselves, gathered around me about twenty minutes after I started my visit with Tina.
“What do we know new, Lila Grace?” Miss Faye’s voice was sharp, like her piercing blue eyes, and quick, the way she had moved in life. She was all spiky energy and short, intense bursts of conversation.
“I don’t know much, Miss Faye,” I replied. “We’re pretty sure the killer knows something about police work, or maybe was in the military. He could have been an MP, I guess.”
“What makes you say that?” Miss Helen’s slow drawl always reminded me of a sweet old milk cow, never in a hurry about anything, just taking the world in. Her slow speech masked a sharp mind, though. She said less than the other women, but missed nothing, and it was always best to listen when she talked.
“He didn’t leave any tracks or forensic evidence, even at Jenny’s house. That murder was staged to look like an accident. If there’s any crime scene that would naturally be sloppy, that’s the one. But he took just as much care to cover his tracks there as with OTHER GIRL’s murder.”
“Then have you brought him in yet?” Miss Frances asked. She stood with her arms crossed. “I’m assuming not, since you’re here, but why not?” Miss Frances was a force to be reckoned with, even in death.
“We don’t have any evidence that Jeff did it,” I said.
“Well, not until you bring him in and he confesses,” Miss Frances said. “A few hours in the back of that police station with a rubber hose and he’ll sing like a canary.”
“You’ll have to excuse Frances,” Miss Helen said. “She likes to snoop in Julia McKnight’s old house and watch the old movies through the window. They’ve been playing a lot of old police movies this week.”
“We can’t beat a confession out of him,” I said. “What if he’s innocent? He’s a respected member of the community and a police officer. He has no reason to hurt those girls.”
“Not those girls, no,” Miss Faye agreed. “But he sure did have a reason to wish ill on Jenny Miller’s mama.”
“What about my mother?” Jenny asked, appearing beside me. Most ghosts can’t just pop from place to place, but Jenny was a strong spirit, with some extraordinary ability.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Miss Faye said, demurring. “I shouldn’t speak ill of the living.”
“It’s not speaking ill if it helps us catch a murderer,” I said. “If you know some connection between Jeff and Jenny’s mother, you need to tell us.”
“Now don’t get feisty, young lady,” the fiery ghost shot back. “Just because you’re still up and walking around visible, doesn’t mean you can smart off to your elders.”
I took a deep breath. She was right in one sense. I couldn’t force them to do anything, so I needed to keep the ghosts happy. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I was rude. Was there something you wanted to tell us about Jeff and Jenny’s mom? Were they connected somehow?”
“You didn’t know Tara Withrow when she was little, did you? Of course not, the Baptists don’t mingle too much, so you wouldn’t have taught her in Vacation Bible School. Well, she was a gorgeous child, grew up a little bit wild and a little bit too fast, if you know what I mean.” She made a gesture in front of her chest to indicate breasts, just in case I had even the slightest chance of missing her meaning.
She went on. “Well, Tara was a very pretty girl, and very popular, and she was always with the other popular boys and girls. The cheerleaders, the football players, the student council president, all of those things. Jeff…Jeff ran in a different circle, let’s say. He wasn’t the most popular boy in school, and he wasn’t quite smart enough to be useful to the popular kids, so he got a lot of teasing.”
“How do you know all this?” Jenny asked.
“Oh, honey, I was the secretary of the high school for thirty years. There was nothing that happened under that roof that I didn’t know about.” I knew from personal experience that between her and her two cohorts, their knowledge extended far past the schoolhouse walls, too.
“Senior year, Tara and some of her best girlfriends played a cruel prank on poor Jeff. He followed that child around for years like a puppy, mooning after her, carrying her books, giving her rides places when whatever boyfriend she was dating either got tired of carting her around or had something else to do, all sorts of stuff. I’m sorry, honey, but your mama was not the sweetest person when she was a teenager.”
“Good lord, Faye, who is? I seem to recall you beating up half the boy’s baseball team in ninth grade because they told you to join the softball team with the other girls,” Miss Helen’s drawl cut across the night.
Faye grinned at her, a fierce, wolfish thing. “I had a better fastball than that Bolin boy ever dreamed of having, and a strike zone too small for any of them to hit. They should have let me play, and they could have been state champions.”
I cleared my throat, and Miss Faye’s attention snapped back to the story. “Anyway, Tara and Gene Gilfillan had just broke up for what she swore was the last time, on account of him getting drunk down at the dam and making out with my cousin Winifred on a picnic table. I loved her, but Winnie was a pure-T slut when she was young. So Tara was single around March, and it was prom season. All the senior girls were buying dresses, and making plans, and here was Tara, queen bee of the cheerleading squad, without a date. So she gets a bright idea to soak poor old Jeff for a night on the town with all her friends.”
“Now, hold on a minute,” Jenny said. “How do you know that’s what she was thinking? Maybe she just felt bad for him and wanted to give him a night where he felt good about himself.”
Faye looked at her, and I could feel the “oh, honey” in her eyes before she opened her mouth. “Oh, honey,” she said. I knew it was coming. “Oh, honey” is almost as ubiquitous as “bless your heart” as a synonym for “you poor, ignorant bastard” in the South. It’s not quite as insulting. But close. “Didn’t I say there wasn’t nothing going on in that high school I didn’t know about? Two of the other cheerleaders, I don’t remember both their names, but Ellen Nance was one of them, well they were office monitors sixth period that spring, and I would hear them talk about everything under the sun. And that included what Tara was doing to Jeff.”
“Now, I ain’t saying that the boy didn’t get something out of it, too. Not like that, Lila Grace, don’t look at me like that. Tara wasn’t that kind of girl. But it did Jeff a world of good to be seen going to the movies with the popular kids, and to have it known all over school that he was going to the prom with the prettiest girl in the county.”
Jenny beamed a little at hearing how pretty her mother was in her youth. Maybe in some way that balanced out hearing that she was a royal bitch as a teenager, in some odd kind of mental ledger than only teenage girls understand.
“So prom night came, and Jeff and Tara went out to dinner in Rock Hill with all of Tara’s friends, and there was a limo, and there were group pictures, and she looked beautiful in her dress, and Jeff cleaned up pretty well in his tuxedo and matching vest. I’d say he was downright dapper.”
“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” I said.
“Oh, darling, do you ever,” Miss Faye confirmed. “Things started to go sideways once they actually got to the prom. As long as they were still in the dinner and limo part of the night, Tara kept on being nice to Jeff, and all her friends followed her lead. But when they got to the school, everything changed. I was chaperoning that year, like I did a lot of years, to keep the punch unspoken, not that people even really did that except in movies. But I liked to put on pretty dresses and see all the girls all dressed up, so I usually volunteered.”
“Well, the gym was decorated like an undersea fantasy, in a Little Mermaid theme. There were blue lights everywhere, and ripple effects casting waves on the walls, and blue and green streamers stretched all over the gym making a canopy and hiding the rafters and basketball goals. There was a huge castle that everybody walked through to get into the dance, and tables all around. Tara and her girls walked in and went straight over to a table, which had just enough chairs so that Jeff was left standing behind her, without a place to sit.”
“Then they all went to the bathroom, and Jeff was left with the football players who were dating all of Tara’s friends. They all did just a fine job of making it clear Jeff wasn’t welcome with them, either. Tara and her friends came back, and they all started dancing, except for Jeff, who got pushed to the side as football player after football player stepped in and danced with his date while he stood behind her chair, watching. Every time he moved toward her, she stepped away to another boy, leaving him watching just like he’d done for years.”
“The last straw for Jeff was when Gene showed up and Tara danced with him for about a half hour straight, kissing him on the dance floor and all but making out in front of the whole school. Jeff finally stepped up and tried to cut in, but Gene just laughed at him. Jeff tapped him on the shoulder again, and this time Gene shoved him. Jeff stumbled back and fell, and everything on the dance floor just stopped. Every should turned and looked at Jeff, sitting on his butt in the middle of the gym, looking up at his date hanging on the arm of her ex-boyfriend, looking down at him without even an ounce of remorse in her eyes.”
“She looked at Jeff sitting there for a minute, then pulled Gene back to her, kissed him right on the mouth, and went back to dancing. Jeff eventually got up and left the gym. I heard later from a friend of his that he walked all the way home, five miles in rented patent leather shoes along the side of the road, with promgoers and classmates driving by the whole time.”
Faye gave Jenny a gentle look. “I know she’s your mama, sweetie, but when she was seventeen, she was a bona fide bitch. What she did to that boy was enough to break a grown man, much less a boy. Jeff never came back to school. His grades were good enough that he could lay out the rest of the school year and still pass, so he did. He didn’t show up for graduation, either. Just got his diploma in the mail. I didn’t see him for several years after that, until he came home about ten years ago and took a job at the sheriff’s department when his mama got sick.”
“God rest her,” Miss Frances said.
“What happened to Mrs. JEFF LAST NAME?” I asked.
“She got breast cancer about ten years ago, and Jeff came back to be with her. It went into remission for a long time, but it came back on her last year, and by the time they caught it, it had spread to her lymph nodes. She died about a month ago,” Miss Frances replied.
“Just a couple weeks before Jenny was killed,” I said.
“And just a few days before Shelly reminded him of the worst night of his life,” Jenny said.
I spun to look at her. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Shelly asked him to go to prom with her,” she said. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, she was always picking at people. But it was at one of the home football games, and NAME was messing with Jeff after the game, and she asked him to go to prom with her.” Her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh my god.”
“What is it, honey?” I asked.
“She said we’d both go with him. Shelly told Jeff that we both wanted to date him. She set him off. Shelly got us both killed.”
I stared at the girl, who leaned against a headstone, shaking her head. Just then, a patrol car with lights flashing sped by the cemetery and pulled up in front of my house. I watched Willis jump out of the car and run up my steps. As he banged on the door, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed his number. I watched him pull his phone out of his pocket and look at the screen, then put the phone to his ear.
“I’m not home, Willis. I’m at the cemetery. I’m walking your way. What’s going on?” I put my feet in motion so my actions would match my words.
“Is Jenny with you?” He asked.
“Yes, and we’ve got some information about Jeff that you need to hear.”
“Bring her with you. We’ve got to go.”
“Go where?” I asked.
“The Miller house. I just got a call from Jenny’s father. Someone kidnapped Mrs. Miller. Jenny’s mother is missing.”
by john | Jul 24, 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.
24
“I’m in the dining room!” I called out in response the knock on the front door. “Shit,” I muttered, looking at my watch. It was half past six, so that must be Willis. Sure enough, his broad shoulders filled the space in my doorway almost to the point of blotting out the last rays of late afternoon sun right about the same time I realized what time it was. He was grinning like a high school boy that just got his first car, but his smile melted when he got a good look at me and the mess I was in the middle of.
Pork chops and mashed potatoes were not steaming on the table, that’s for damn sure. The only thing on my dining room table were manila folders and crime scene photos, and they were spread out all over the place like a paperwork grenade went off in my house.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really thought I’d have dinner ready, but I got to looking through all this stuff, and then Jenny and Sheriff Johnny came and started going over it all with me…” I waved a hand at where Jenny sat at the other end of the table, Johnny by her side. They looked up from the coroner’s report they were poring over, waved absently like they thought Willis could see them, then went back to the paper. I didn’t know what they thought was so interesting in that report, we’d read it three times.
“Don’t worry about it,” Willis said, year of marriage almost making him good enough to hide his disappointment. Almost. Oh well, if he had wanted to go out with a normal girl, he wouldn’t have come over for lunch with the town psychic crackpot. He sat down at the nearest chair and glanced over the mess. “What have we got?”
“Nothing,” I said. “And not just the normal ‘I don’t know what’s going on here’ nothing. According to Johnny, these photos look like the scene was scrubbed by somebody who knows what they’re doing.” I pointed to three photos that Johnny had picked out for me. “Look here. There should be footprints here if the killed broke into the Miller house by the basement window, like y’all think he did.”
The photo showed the exterior area of the Miller home. A basement window was nestled in the wall a few inches above ground level, and I knew from looking at the other pictures that the window wasn’t locked. Jenny said she didn’t know anything about whether or not it was usually open, because she ever went down into the basement. So it could have been left open for days or more. In front of the window was a small strip of bare dirt, then a small fifteen-by-forty vegetable garden that Mrs. Miller kept to have some fresh tomatoes, green beans, squash, and one watermelon plant that overproduced so much the poor woman had to put a folding table up in their yard loaded down with watermelon sporting a sign that said “FREE – Take One! Please!”
In any kind of normal world, there would have been footprints or at least some kind of trace of the killer’s passing left either in the dirt right in front of the window, or in the garden itself. But there was nothing. No rain fell in the few days between Jenny’s death and the realization that she hadn’t actually had a fatal accident, so that wasn’t to blame. There was no other way to get to the window, unless Spider-Man was the murderer, and I hadn’t heard of anyone named Peter Parker having a grudge against the Miller family.
“Somebody knew what they were doing,” Willis said, looking at the pictures. “I thought of that.”
“You did?” I asked. “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“Mostly because I wanted to see if you came to the same conclusion,” he admitted. “I don’t like what this implies.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. I didn’t, either. I thought any way of narrowing the suspect pool from everyone who ever came in contact with Jenny or happened to be passing through town that night would be positive progress.
“It makes me think that someone with law enforcement experience of some sort maybe be the killer,” Willis said.
“Well, isn’t that good?” I asked. I was still confused. There couldn’t be that many people with law enforcement experience…”Oh,” I said.
“You got there, didn’t you?”
“I see why you don’t want it to be anyone n law enforcement.”
“Not only do I not want to think that a man that has carried the badge could murder two high school girls in cold blood, I certainly don’t want to think that it might be somebody I know and trust.”
“Well,” I said, not wanting to say what we were both thinking. “I reckon that means we need to see who all in town has worked security on jobs in the past or maybe served as an MP sometime.”
Willis let out a breath, relief flooding his face. “Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good idea. I can call the local Army Reserves and National Guard units. They’ll have records of any former or active-duty personnel with law enforcement training.”
“I’ll touch base with my second cousin Janice over at the Marine recruiting station. She can get me the information on Navy and Marines.” Willis stood up, and I reached out to grab his arm. He turned and looked down at me.
I stood up, very close to him. I could smell the very lightest hints of his cologne, still clinging to his shirt collar after hours of work. “Later,” I said, my lips almost grazing his chin. I let my breath carry across his neck, and smiled at the shiver he gave.
“But…” his protest was a token, and we both knew it.
“Later,” I said, more firmly. I poked him in the chest and pushed him back a step. “Now get out of my way, Sheriff. I promised a good-looking man pork chops for supper, and at my age you do not want to disappoint the most eligible bachelor to move into the county in thirty years.”
I stepped past him, dodging his oncoming kiss, and ducked into the kitchen to start mixing up the flour for the pork chops.
***
“You’ve known him a long time, do you think Jeff could do something like this?” Willis asked, pushing back from the table, a pair of decimated pork chop bones all that remained of a helping plate of home-cooked food.
I thought about my answer for long seconds before I let out a sigh. “I don’t know. If I’m being honest, I’d have to say I can’t think of anybody in town that I would think could kill two little girls like that. But I wouldn’t have thought that Jerry Westmoreland would run a still in the woods behind his house until his sister died and told me all about it. I wouldn’t have thought that Alexander Lee Evans would have driven drunk and totaled his mama’s car, then blamed it on a random car thief, but that’s what he told me happened. So I reckon you just can’t ever tell with people.”
“I don’t think he’s good for these murders, but we’ll have to take a real good look at him. I know he was working the football game the night Jenny was killed, because he works every home game.”
“That doesn’t really do anything to clear him,” I said. “By the time Jenny got home, Jeff would have had plenty of time to direct traffic out of the school parking lot and get over to her house.”
“Yeah, it’s not like it’s a long drive. He wouldn’t even have to speed.”
“Or worry about being seen if he was in his patrol car. It’s totally normal for the local boys to be running around town arresting speeders or breaking up parties and fights after home games. He could have parked right in front of the Miller house and no one would even notice.”
“Or think to mention it when we interviewed the neighbors,” Willis growled. “I’m having a hard time with this, Lila Grace, I gotta admit. I know I’m new here, but Jeff doesn’t seem like the type to hurt anybody. I had my concerns about his ability to use his sidearm when I took over the office.”
“I know, Willis, I know. He’s a gentle soul. I’ll agree with you there. I was surprised when he decided to go to work for Sheriff Johnny in the first place. He never showed any inclination toward law enforcement when he was little.”
“How old was he when you taught him?” he asked.
“I taught Jeff in Sunday School from fourth grade all the way through high school, off and on. I floated back and forth among the grades as other teachers came and went. Since I’d been doing it forever, I just filled in for a year or two wherever there was a need. And I reckon I taught him in Vacation Bible School for almost that long. Most of the kids stop going to Bible School when they get to high school, but Jeff stayed involved with the church youth programs right up until he joined the Sheriff’s Department.”
Willis sat back, looking up at the ceiling light like he hoped there was some kind of answer written there. I could have told him there wasn’t nothing in that ceiling light but a couple of dead mosquitoes and some spiderwebs I hadn’t got around to cleaning, but I let it go. If he wanted to use my shortcomings as a housekeeper to inspire his deductions, so be it.
“Who else?” He asked, not taking his eyes off the ceiling.
“Who else what?” I replied, not having a single idea what he was asking. Sometimes I wonder how men communicate with each other, since they always want to try to use two words to ask a ten-word question. When they’re alone with one another, do they just grunt and scratch themselves? I don’t really want to know, I reckon.
“Who else has any military or law enforcement experience in town?”
“Oh good Lord, Willis, you might have to narrow it down a little more than that. There ain’t a whole lot of people who’ve been police, but just about every grown man in town has served at least one tour in the service, one branch or another. And everybody here can shoot, and drive, and has watched way more CSI and Law & Order than is healthy.”
“I know that, Lila Grace,” he snapped, then took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I just want to make sure we’re not missing anybody. Who has recent military experience, and might have been in school with the girls. If there’s somebody that graduated when they were freshmen, he could have gone off to serve, and come back recently.”
“Well, Josh Massey just got back from Afghanistan a few months ago, and he’s just about twenty-one, so he would have known the girls in school, but he didn’t do this.”
“How can you be sure?” Willis asked.
“He left a foot back in Afghanistan and is still learning to walk again. He won’t get his first prosthetic for another month or two,” I said.
“Yep, he’s out. Anybody else?”
“Leonard Furting enlisted right out of high school, and there was some talk that it was because he got Barbara Harding pregnant. She never had a baby, though, and Leonard’s been walking around with Jennifer Campbell ever since he got home. I don’t think he knew Jenny or FRIEND NAME, but I’m not sure.”
“Well, we’ll look into him. Anybody else?”
“I can’t think of anybody else right off the top of my head. I mean, there’s Gerald Comer, he was the deputy before Jeff, but he’s better than seventy now. Gerald’s son Erskine grew up around the department and the station, but he’s over three hundred pounds and walks with a limp. He ain’t any more likely to sneak up on Jenny in her basement than he is to run a marathon.”
Willis chuckled and got up from the table. He started clearing the table, and I stood to help. He motioned me to sit. “No ma’am. You cooked, I clean. You just tell me where the trash can is and I’ll throw these scraps out.”
“Just pitch those out the back door,” I said. “Professor Snape will take care of them.”
“Professor Snape?” He turned to look at me. “Does the ghost of Alan Rickman haunt your garbage?”
I laughed out loud, throwing my head back and about falling out of my chair. “Oh sweet Jesus, Willis Dunleavy, you are a wonder! No, Professor Snape is what I’ve taken to calling this fat raccoon that prowls my backyard at night. If I toss him the scraps from my dinner, he doesn’t go rummaging around in my garbage can. And he keeps the snakes away.”
“Why Professor Snape?”
“I was watching the first Harry Potter movie when he appeared in my window one night. Scared the fire out of me, just in a scene where Snape was yelling at Harry about something. So I called him Professor Snape. Sometimes if we’re getting along particularly well I call him Severus.”
“You are a strange, strange woman, Lila Grace Carter,” Willis said. “She talks to ghosts and names wild raccoons.”
“Don’t forget seduces police officers,” I teased.
“I haven’t forgotten,” he said, and the smoldering gaze he turned on me said he might not be teasing.
by john | Jul 17, 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.
23
He smiled across at me, his blue eyes squinting a little. It was a slow smile that started at his eyes and flowed down like molasses, but never grew very big. “It’s not a huge tragedy, Lila Grace, don’t worry. I’m not so noble as to have say by her bedside for a year while she slowly withered from cancer or anything like that. No, it’s a boring story with a few exciting moments, but there’s unfortunately nothing unusual or even uncommon about it.”
I didn’t speak, just held on to his hand and kept looking at his face.
“Okay, fine,” he said after the pause grew to uncomfortable lengths. “Nancy and I were both married before, and both divorced when we met. It was one of those rare things – we met as adults not in a bar, not as a hookup from friends, and not in a church.”
“Where did you meet, then?” I asked. He’d hit the top three places I knew of that grown-ups met, so I was genuinely curious.
“Waiting in the lobby of an oil change place. I was getting my cruiser worked on, and she was getting the brakes checked before a road trip. I needed new windshield wipers, and she turned out to need new brake pads, so we started talking. I ended up sticking around an extra hour after my car was done, just to talk to her.”
“That’s sweet,” I said.
“Yeah, well, she was easy to talk to, and easy on the eyes. I reckon back then I probably wasn’t too bad to look at myself. I was a good forty pounds lighter, with a little more hair on top, and a lot less hair in my ears.”
“You’re not doing too bad for an old man, Willis,” I told him, patting his hand.
“Flattery will get you pretty much anywhere you want to go, pretty lady,” he replied, and I felt the blush creep up my chest to my neck. I looked away from his eyes for a second, and he resumed his story. “So we went out a few times, and after a little while we decided that we liked each other more than casually. She wasn’t crazy about the idea of marrying a cop, but I’d made detective by then, so I wasn’t walking a beat anymore. At least I worked hard to convince her that was safer, anyway.”
“We dated for about a year before we got married, and were married for a good eight years.” He chuckled. “I usually tell people I was married for six good years, and two lousy ones, but that’s not fair to Nancy. She was great to me, right up until the time it all fell apart. I wasn’t as great to her, though.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Same thing that happened with Gina. Same thing that happens to most cops, I guess. At least from talk around the stations, anyway. I got promoted to Homicide, started spending more and more time out at night, at crime scenes and dealing with informants, suspects, and other unsavory types. It made me a darker man, and I was never exactly the life of the party. After a while, I wasn’t the man she married anymore, so…”
“So…what?” I asked. “You’ve got to remember, I’m the old spinster. I’ve never been married, to a cop or to anyone else, so I don’t know what ‘so…’ means.”
“She cheated,” he said bluntly. My eyes snapped up to his face, and I could tell by the set of his jaw and the flat gaze he directed at the table that it still hurt him to the core, even now. “She cheated, with a guy from her work. A middle manager named Rico, who was in good shape, used a lot of hair product, and pay her a lot of attention.”
I eyeballed the buzzed grey stubble sticking out maybe a quarter-inch from his head. “I can see how you would lose out in the hair product department,”
Willis laughed, a genuine laugh with just the lightest hint of self-deprecation behind it. “Yeah, I didn’t do a lot of that kind of stuff even back before I started going thin on top. Once I hit thirty-five, my hairline didn’t recede, it went into full retreat.”
I chuckled, and said, “That’s funny, that’s about the time my boobs started moving south for the winter and never came back north.” We both laughed with the ease that only people who have grown into being comfortable with themselves can have.
His smile faded away, and he said, “There’s more. Because when you have a man in his late thirties, who’s spent a life in law enforcement, and he finds out that his wife is unfaithful, you have one of three possible outcomes. Way too often, it ends up with the cop knocking his wife around. Well, the only redeeming quality I held onto in this mess is I never hit Nancy, or any other woman that wasn’t actively trying to kill me.”
I filed that away for future investigation, because I thought there was a little too much specificity in that sentence to not have an interesting story buried in there somewhere, but I kept my mouth shut. I just sat there, waiting for the rest of his moment of confession.
“Well, it’s pretty obvious from the fact that I’m sitting here that I didn’t swallow the barrel of my service weapon, although I’ll admit I thought about it more than once. This whole scene cost me years of therapy.”
“So that means you did exercise Option Number Three?” I asked.
“Yep,” he nodded.
“Which is what, exactly?”
“I waited outside their work, followed them to a motel where they met up to have sex, and when they went into the room, I waited about fifteen minutes then knocked on the door.”
“Oh no,” I said.
“Oh yeah. Rico came to the door, and I broke his nose with it. I shoved the door into his face, then shoved my way into the room. I beat the shit out of him with my wife naked and screaming the whole time. I broke his nose, three ribs, his collarbone, one arm, and three bones in my right hand. I went full crazy on his ass. I’m not anywhere close to proud of it, but it happened, and I’ve got to carry it with me.”
“What happened after that?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the whole sordid story, but he seemed like he needed to get it all out, so I figured I’d better let him lance the whole thing, as it were.
“I sat down in the one chair in the room, you know how those cheap motel rooms are set up, with a little crappy table by the window and one chair over there. Well, I sat down in that chair and just stared at Nancy. She was scared, and I couldn’t blame her. I figured she would be, that’s why I made it a point to leave my gun in the car.”
“I sat there for a minute, then she called to cops. I didn’t go anywhere, but I did tell her she might want to think about putting some clothes on before they got there. She wore a sheet into the bathroom and came out about the same time the first patrol car got there. I was still sitting at the table, my badge out in front of me, both hands in plain sight. Rico had managed to sit up, and had his back to the dresser, a towel over his junk, and another one pressed to his bleeding nose. He was spouting all kinds of crap about suing me and making sure I spent the rest of my life in jail, but it was all crap.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’m a big dumb ox sometimes, Lila Grace, but I ain’t stupid. I knew going in there how everything was going to play out, and it went just about how I expected it to. I got busted back down to a patrolman, spent a month suspended without pay, and ended up giving Nancy pretty much anything she wanted in the divorce. She got the house, both cars, and all our savings. I got to keep five grand in our bank accounts, my clothes, and my bass boat. I had to borrow a truck from a friend to tow the boat out of our driveway so I could sell it for enough money to buy a beat up Saturn.”
“But I didn’t serve any time. I knew the cops that came to arrest me. I went through the academy with one of them, and I’d met the other one a few times at union meetings. They didn’t hassle me much, and I didn’t give them any crap. The DA didn’t push too much, and Rico couldn’t get them to press anything more than assault charges. Intent wouldn’t stick because I left my gun in the car, so I obviously didn’t want to kill him. I paid a fine and did community service for that, and the whole thing was behind me. I haven’t seen Nancy since we met in the lawyer’s office to finalize our divorce. She sold the house and moved to Phoenix, and I decided that I’m pretty much not the marrying type.”
“I don’t know that I think that’s very fair, Willis,” I said. “But if that demotion is one of the things that kept you from getting a job in a bigger city, I can’t say as how I don’t like it at least a little bit.”
He smiled at me, a shy little thing that kinda danced around the corners of his mouth and eyes for a few seconds, then ran away when it saw me looking. “I ain’t proud of what I did, but I’d do it again. That little sumbitch needed an ass-whooping, and I reckon it was on me to deliver it.”
“Is this where you go into some stupid diatribe about the man code?” I asked, taking a sip of my tea.
“No, this ain’t got nothing to do with the man code,” he said. “This is just about being a decent human being. Marriage is supposed to be sacred, and it ain’t something to interfere with. I wasn’t the best husband to Nancy, I know that. But I didn’t deserve having that little snake come into my relationship with his good teeth and his hair gel and steal my woman away from me. It hurt my pride, probably more than it heart my heart. If I was to be honest about it, me and Nancy had been growing apart for a while, and it was almost something of a relief when we finally split up.”
“But your pride demanded that you beat somebody up over it,” I heard the disapproval in my voice, but I didn’t mean it much. I grew up in a small town around men, and I knew them to be fragile creatures. The big idiots could cut a finger off with a chainsaw and keep going with it wrapped in duct tape, but God forbid you hurt their feelings.
“Yeah, it did,” he sighed. “It ain’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but it makes the top five, that’s for damn sure. Come to think of it, most of the rest of them involve a woman, too.”
“Where does going out with a woman who talks to dead people rank?” I asked. My voice was softer than I wanted it to be, and the joking lilt I planned on being there was missing somehow.
He reached across the table and took my hand in his. “Lila Grace, I know you ain’t crazy. I know you ain’t evil. I don’t know how it is that you see and hear the things you do, but I know them to be true things. So as far as I’m concerned, you ain’t a woman who talks to dead people, you’re just a woman. A woman I’m mighty interested in getting to know a lot better, and I don’t give a good goddamn who in this town thinks they’ve got something to say about that.”
“That might be just about the sweetest thing anybody’s ever said to me, Willis.” I meant it, too. Growing up the freak of a small town made for a lonely life, at least among other warm bodies. “I’m pretty interested in getting to know you a lot better, too. But not at the cost of your job.” I pushed back from the table and took my glass over to the sink.
“Now you been over here way too long for any reasonable lunch break, so why don’t I wash these dishes while you get on back to the station and try to catch some bad guys?”
He stood up and walked over to stand behind me, close, his breath tickling the little hairs on the back of my neck. “I’ll go back to the station,” he said, his voice low and husky. “But when I get off at six, I’m coming right back over here and we’re going to explore that whole ‘getting to know each other better’ idea.”
“I’ll have pork chops and mashed potatoes ready by six-thirty,” I said, looking down at the sink. I didn’t trust myself to turn around, or I was liable to jump him right there on my poor kitchen table.
“Keep talking sexy like that and I’ll never leave,” he said with a laugh. Then he put his arms around me from behind and kissed the side of my neck. “I’ll see you later, Lila Grace.”
I braced myself on the sink against a sudden rush of weakness in my knees. “See you soon, Willis.”
I didn’t turn and watch him go. I didn’t even sneak a glance out of the corner of my eye at his firm butt in his uniform khakis. And I most certainly didn’t sit down in my chair at the table, downing a whole ‘nother glass of tea while fanning myself vigorously with the latest issue of Southern Living. Really, I didn’t.
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.
