Amazing Grace – Chapter 28

by john | Aug 21, 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. 

28

I pulled my truck off to the side of the dirt road as soon as I saw the lights of the trailer up ahead. It looked to be about a quarter mile away yet, but my big old Bessie made enough noise that if Jeff was paying any kind of attention he already knew we were there. Willis got out of the passenger side and made some kind of gesture to me like he expected me to wait in the car.

I hate to disappoint people, really I do. Except it seems like my whole life has been one long string of disappointments to somebody. I disappointed my daddy by not being a boy he could teach to play baseball. I disappointed my mama by not being the normal little lady she wanted to raise and marry off. I disappointed more than a few boys in high school by keeping my knees together a lot longer than they hoped, and now I was about to disappoint Sheriff Willis Dunleavy, because there was no way on God’s green earth I was staying in that truck.

I opened the driver’s door and got out, leaving the door hanging open behind me. The dome light in old Bessie burned out about seven or eight years ago, and I never bothered replacing it. I left the keys in the ignition in case we needed to get out of there quick, and besides, the number of grand theft auto cases in the woods of Union County are about even with the number of votes George Wallace got in Harlem when he ran for President.

“Get back in the truck,” Willis hissed at me. “I am not taking a civilian into what might an active hostage scene.”

“Then you should have thought about that before you let the civilian use her truck to drive you to the scene. I’m going up there. Jeff and I have always had a good relationship. I might be able to help the situation.”

He glared at me, and I could see the wheels turning behind his blue eyes. I know he was weighing his chances of getting me to do what he wanted, and after a few seconds he came to the right decision – his chances were slim and none. And Slim just left town. I relaxed a little bit when I saw that acceptance come over him, because the last thing I wanted to do was waste time and energy arguing with Willis in the middle of the woods while Jeff was a couple hundred yards away maybe hurting Jenny’s mama.

“Come on, but stay behind me,” he grumbled, starting back toward the house.

I nodded, and reached back inside the truck for the double-barrel 12-gauge behind the seat. I was willing to go into the house, but I wasn’t going in there without a little backup of my own. Just because I wasn’t the son Daddy hoped for didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to teach me how to hunt, fish, and shoot. That old gun hadn’t been fired in months, but I took it out to behind Karen Montgomery’s house a couple times a year and shot up some tin cans to make sure I still knew which end to point toward the target. I cracked the gun open to make sure it was loaded, then slung it over my shoulder and caught up to Willis.

“I thought you told me you kept the shells in the glove compartment,” he said, his voice low.

“I keep the extra shells in the glove box,” I said. “Out here in the country we’ve got a name for an unloaded shotgun.”

“What’s that?”

“A bat.”

He snorted a little laugh, then sobered as we stepped into the clearing around the trailed. It was a single-wide that had seen better days. And better decades. It started life as white with a wide blue stripe around it, but most of that was replaced with rust. The underpinning, if there’s ever been any, was long gone, and what passed for steps was just a half dozen cinderblocks with nothing resembling a handrail. A couple of the windows were gone, and yellow lamp light shone from what I assumed was the living room. I saw a figure moving inside, waving his arms and pacing, and from where we were it looked enough like Jeff for me to decide we were in the right place.

Jenny appeared at my elbow, rising up out of the ground with Sheriff Johnny at her side. “Dad’s okay. He doesn’t have a concussion, so they’re sending him home. Is she in there?”

“We don’t know yet,” I whispered. Willis’ head whipped around at my voice, and I pointed to where Jenny stood, invisible to him. He nodded, then put his finger to his lips. I nodded, and fell silent.

Jenny walked up to the trailer, then through the door. It always strikes me funny, how long it takes for the dead to shake their hold on habits from life. She didn’t need to go through the door, she could have walked through any wall just as easily, but the habit of years had her use the door, even if she was passing through it. I made a mental note to myself to ask Johnny about that when we finished up here. Of course, he was less than half a year dead himself, so he probably still had quite a few hangups from his time walking the earth.

Willis started forward, and I put a hand on his shoulder. I leaned down close to his ear, so there was no chance of my words traveling, and said, “Jenny’s inside. She can tell us what’s going on in there.”

“I hope her mother is still alive,” Willis said.

“Me too,” I agreed. “The poor child doesn’t need to see that.”

Jenny returned seconds later, a worried look on her face. “She’s alive. He hasn’t hurt her, but he’s got her tied to a chair. The place is all made up with candles and flowers, like he’s trying to make it romantic. He keeps yelling at her, telling her how she ruined his life at the prom, how he couldn’t help it when Shelly and me said that to him about going out with him, how he’s sorry, but she’s got to see how much he loves her. He’s crazy. Y’all have got to get in there.”

I kept my face next to Willis’ and relayed everything just as it came out of Jenny’s mouth. He nodded, then turned to me. “He’s devolving. We don’t have much time. If we don’t get in there in the next couple of minutes, he’s going to kill her. I’ll go in the front door, you go around to the back. If he draws on me, shoot him.”

“Give me thirty seconds to get back there. It’s dark as the bottom of a well out here,” I said. I took a deep breath, steadied my nerves, and peeled off to the right to creep around the trailer as best I could. I felt like I stepped on every branch and dry leaf in the county walking that fifty yards, and froze in my tracks three times waiting on Jeff to shoot me from a window, but I made it to the back door and up the rickety cinderblocks. The knob turned under my hand and I pulled the door open, sticking my head in a foot or so above floor level. I looked down the fake wood-paneled hallway toward the living room and saw Karen Miller’s back to me. She was tied to a ladder back wooden chair, the kind found in countless dining room sets all across the south.

I didn’t see Jeff at first, but he came into my view a second later, pacing and shaking his head. He was muttering something I couldn’t hear, but to be honest, all my attention was on the pistol in his hand. It was a boxy black thing that I guessed was his department-issued gun, and it looked like a handful of deadly in the light of the small lamp on the end table. Jeff’s head whipped around, and he trained his gun off to his left toward something I couldn’t see, then I heard Willis’ voice cut through the night like the crack of a whip.

“Drop the gun, son. This has to end right now.”

The second Willis spoke, I pulled the back door wide open and stepped up into the hallway. The top step wobbled as my weight shifted, and it threw me off balance. I stumbled forward and crashed into the wall. Jeff spun in my direction and fired his gun, missing my head by inches. The bullet dug into the wall behind me, and I dove onto my belly. My shotgun hit the brown shag carpet and tumbled away from me, leaving me unarmed and sprawled on my face less than twenty feet away from a murderer that I still remembered as a cherubic little boy in my Sunday School class.

I heard another shot boom through the enclosed trailer, and Jeff whirled around, firing his gun three times. There was a crash from somewhere in the living room that I couldn’t see, then Jeff was back in my line of sight, standing right in front of Karen Miller with his gun aimed at her face.

He looked down the hall at me, and as I got to my feet and picked up my shotgun, he got a confused look on his face. “Ms. Carter? What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to end this, Jeff. You need to let Mrs. Miller go and put the gun down,” I said, walking down the hall toward him.

He pointed the pistol at me, but I saw his hand shaking even as far away as I was. I didn’t stop. “You’re not going to shoot me, Jeff. You always liked me in Sunday School, and I always liked you. Now put that gun away and let’s talk about this.”

“I can’t talk about nothing no more, Ms. Carter. I done killed the sheriff, and I killed them two girls, and now I’m going to kill this bitch here. Then I’m going to shoot myself and go to Hell for all eternity where I belong.” Tears ran down his face, and rage mixed with terror at what he had done.

“Jeff, this isn’t you,” I said. “Tell me what happened. We can work it out. We can get you help. You—“

“There’s no help for this bastard!” Karen Miller screamed from the chair. She’d been so quiet to this point I thought he had her gagged, but evidently not. “Don’t you lie to him. You tell him the truth. That he needs to just blow his damn brains out and rot in hell until the end of time for what he did to my baby girl.”

“Mrs. Miller, that isn’t helping,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm while wanting to smack her upside the head with the butt of my shotgun. I looked over at Jenny, who shrugged as if to say “what can I do?”

I stepped into the living room and leaned the shotgun against the wall. “There, Jeff. See? I put my gun down. Now I’m not going to hurt you, and I know you don’t want to hurt me. So let’s talk about this, and see what we can figure out.” I looked past the distraught deputy, sweat stains soaking the armpits and neck of his uniform shirt, his normally neat brown hair disheveled, and tears streaking his cheeks.

Willis lay slumped against the far wall of the trailer, half on the threadbare carpet by the door, half on the worn linoleum of the kitchenette area. His gun was loose in his grip and his eyes were closed. I couldn’t see enough to tell if he was breathing, and the dark shirt he wore hid any signs of blood, but he didn’t even move an eyelid at my voice.

“I told you, there’s no helping me now, Ms. Carter,” Jeff wailed. “It’s just like high school, only worse! I should have never trusted her then, and I should have never spoke to her kid now. These damn women have ruined my life, and now I’m going to kill the last one, and be done with it. I’m real sorry, but since you’re here, I’m going to have to kill you, too.”

He raised the pistol to aim it at my face, and this time his hand was rock steady.

Amazing Grace – Chapter 26

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.”

Amazing Grace – Chapter 25

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.”