by Tim Lockette
“She’s delightful,” he said. “What a sparkling conversationalist.”
“She just sat there and let you talk, Dad,” I said.
“Well, at least somebody will,” he said.
I went straight to the living room to confront Reagan directly. She was sitting daintily on the couch with Taleesa.
“What is up with you, Reagan?” I said. “You haven’t told a single lie or broken a single rule since you got here.”
“That would be rude,” Reagan said. “I’m a guest in this house. It’s not like school, where I’m a captive.”
Outside of school, Reagan was like an old lady, disciplined and set in her ways. She refused to drink tea or Coke after 5 p.m. She had to take her pill exactly at eight, and had to go to bed at exactly nine. Before bed she pulled a Bible out of her backpack and read.
“You can read the whole Bible in a year if you cover four chapters a day,” she said. “I’ve read it four times since I was seven.”
At bedtime, it was lights out. I lay on a futon on the floor and Reagan lay on my twin bed, staring up at the ceiling.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Now we can talk. You want to talk?”
“I’m praying,” she said.
I waited a few minutes. “Now can we talk?”
“Time to sleep,” Reagan said.
“Good Lord,” I said. “You’re like a soldier of sleep. Everything has to be done just right. What’s up with you?”
“Atty, there’s a good chance I have a mental illness,” she said. “The same one that killed my mother. This is how you manage that illness. Discipline. Faith.”
I wanted to say: “Maybe you’re not clear about the mental illness you really have. Maybe you’re obsessive-compulsive.” But I didn’t say anything. What do I know? I’m a twelve-year-old girl who talks to a toy squirrel.
And you know? She was right about not drinking tea after five. A minute or two after we talked, I was fast asleep.
It might have been hours later that I woke up again, but it seemed like moments. It was dark, and I heard the sound of a scuffle.
“Get off of me, weirdo!” Reagan said.
“Ahh!” Martinez gasped.
“Wha? What’s going on?” I said.
Reagan: “Your crazy brother is trying to get into bed with me.”
Martinez: “I was looking for Atty! Why are you in her bed?”
Me: “She’s a guest in this house, Martinez. She gets the bed, I get the floor. What is it you need, Martinez?”
My brother plopped down on the floor beside me. “I want to talk about Jethro. He’s innocent, I just know it. We can’t let him plead guilty.”
I shook my head. “We need to stay out of it. It’s not our case. We could get Dad in trouble. We probably already know more about the case than we should.”
Martinez sighed. “That’s not like you, Atty. Since when do you give up on somebody you know is innocent?”
In the moonlight, I could see Reagan rolling over and resting her head on her elbow. “So what is it you propose we do, kid? Ride around on our bikes, with little tassels and baskets, snooping around like amateur sleuths from some 1950s kids’ book?”
Martinez, excitedly: “Yes!”
Reagan shrugged. “I’m in. Sounds pretty cool, actually.”
“And we don’t even need bikes,” Martinez said. “We can use the hunt for Easy as an excuse and get Mom to drive us to all the key sites where we want to investigate.”
“I don’t know about this,” I said. “I don’t like lying to Taleesa. She’s taking a lot of time away from her freelance work to help us.”
Even now, as I tell you this, I feel terrible for even thinking about lying to Taleesa. But the fact is that within minutes, all three of us were on the floor with a flashlight, sketching out a list of the places we needed to get Taleesa to take us to do our own investigation.
PAWNSHOP
MARINA
JETHRO’S HOUSE
AMBROSE’S CHURCH
WHEREVER AMBROSE BOUGHT HIS
LOTTERY TICKET.
The thing I liked best was that Reagan was now in on our daily hunt for Easy.
I thought lying to Taleesa would be the worst part of the plan. But the worst was lying to Miss Megg.
I knew it was time to pull back on the search for Easy and spend more time at the shelter, doing my real job. One week during the search, I even missed my deadline to get the pets column in the Houmahatchee Herald. But I tried to put all that out of my mind and told Megg we were making one last push to get the word out and find the dog.
I think she knew something strange was up.
“Seems like you should do a really good search in the place where you saw him last, out near Backsley Graddoch’s house,” she said.
“Well, I’m thinking Easy probably got out of the area after being shot at,” I said. “So I’m thinking we’ll search in some new places. Maybe we’ll even go to Florida.”
“The state line is twelve miles from the last place you saw Easy,” Megg said.
“Well, dogs walk fast,” I said.
Megg narrowed her eyes a little, like she didn’t believe me.
“You’re a good kid, Atty,” she said. “You’re doing more than you have to do, and I know your heart’s in the right place. So I’m going to trust that whatever this is that you’re doing, it’s the right thing.”
What Megg said bothered me. But it really did feel right to pile into the car with Reagan at the end of the day, knowing I had a friend who was joining me in my work. A partner in crime.
“All right, dog hunters,” Taleesa said as Reagan plopped into the front seat. “Where to this time?”
“Jethro Ger—” Martinez started, before I put a hand over his mouth.
“Over by the Speedy Queen,” I said. “It’s a place we haven’t covered yet.”
Martinez glared at me. “Don’t cover my mouth like that. It’s assault.”
“Listen, dummy,” I whispered in his ear. “The Speedy Queen’s next to Jethro’s house. We don’t want to tell Taleesa we’re going to Jethro’s house.”
It really was a place we should have put out flyers before. The Speedy Queen was a drive-in burger place where you could press on a button and order fries and a shake through a scratchy speaker, then wait for them to bring it out to you. It was always packed with old people in convertibles, moms and dads with little kids in the back seat, shirtless guys in pickups trying to flirt with the waitresses. The place was so full, we had to park across the street.
“Guess we’ll need to ask the manager if we can put up flyers here,” Taleesa said. “Do you want to do that, or do you want me to?”
This was our chance. “They might be more willing to listen to a grown-up,” I said. “I tell you what: you go in and ask about the flyers, and we’ll knock on a few doors down the street and ask people if they’ve seen anything.”
Taleesa looked back at me with narrowed eyes. “I don’t know if that’s safe,” she said.
“We’re high schoolers now, Atty and I,” Reagan said. “We’ll go in a group. And look, I carry pepper spray on my key ring.”
Taleesa looked back and forth to both of us. “Ten minutes. I want you back in ten minutes, tops.”
Across the street from the Speedy Queen sat a row of old houses, a couple with boards on the windows and FOR SALE signs in the yard, others with windmills on the lawn and furniture on the porch. And one with grass and weeds as tall as your chin, and a sign in front. “THIS PROPERTY IS IN VIOLATION OF CITY CODE. IF YOU ARE THE OWNER, PLEASE CALL CODE ENFORCEMENT AT 251-555-9301.”
“That’s Jethro’s house,” I said. “I guess he’s in trouble with the city for not cutting his grass. Hard to cut your grass when you’re in jail.”
“Well let’s go take a look,” Reagan said.
“It’s full of old aluminum cans,” she said. “How much Coke does this guy drink? How much beer does he drink?”
Martinez brushed right past us to the porch and tried to peer into Jethro’s windows. I followed. The paint pan on the porch was full of sky-blue paint, now dried, with the roller stuck to the pan forever.
“That’s weird,” I said. “The house is gray, the paint here is blue. What was he painting?”
Reagan tapped me on the shoulder, pointed upward. Most of the porch ceiling was covered in dirty, peeling white paint. About a third of it was fresh, sky blue—part of an unfinished paint job.
“Haint blue,” Reagan said. “My dad’s a fan of that, too. Some people say that if you paint your porch ceiling blue, it keeps bugs away. Some people say it scares away ghosts.”
Martinez turned to us with a serious look. “Nobody touch anything,” he said. “This is a crime scene.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s exactly the opposite of that,” I said. “You’re just saying that because you heard it on a TV show somewhere.”
Martinez shrugged. “The point is, there are clues here. We need to look out for clues.”
“Doesn’t seem like much to me,” Reagan said. “If you really want clues, you should talk to the neighbors. I bet Gersham has an alibi for where he was at the time of the murder. Let’s go knock on some doors.”
We both stood silent for a moment.
“What?” Reagan said.
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just weird, knocking on people’s doors uninvited. I have to kind of mentally prepare myself.”
“Oh, good heavens, we don’t have time for that,” Reagan said. “Haven’t you ever had to knock on a stranger’s door before? Witnessing? Girl Scout cookies? No?”
“Just give me a second,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” Reagan said, talking me by the arm. She strode across the yard to the neighbor’s porch and then held my hand up. “Make a fist,” she said. Then she proceeded to knock on the door with my hand.
A sleepy-looking old white guy answered just as I was pulling up a photo of Easy on my phone. I asked the man if he’d seen a dog like this one.
“I’m sorry, honey, I ain’t seen your pet,” he said. “You should try the animal shelter.”
“What if we tried next door?” Reagan asked. “This guy with the long grass. Does anybody live there?”
“That’s old Jethro’s place,” the man said. “You don’t need to go over there. He ain’t there, he’s in jail for murder.”
I tried to act surprised. “You mean Jethro Gersham? The guy who shot the pawnshop owner?”
The man nodded. “I seen it when they arrested him,” he said. “It was right over there in his yard. That sack full of beer cans, he was carrying it when they came to arrest him. I guess I should have moved it, and cut his yard, but I didn’t want to touch it because I guess it’s a crime scene.”
Martinez started poking me in the ribs, as if to say I Told You So.
“Why did he have a bag of beer cans?” Reagan asked.
“We ain’t exactly rich around here,” the man said. “A lot of folks collect old cans and recycle ’em for money. I do it myself when the price is up.”
“So he was collecting cans on the side of the road on the day of the murder?” I asked.
“Well, I reckon he was always doing that,” the man said. “I remember that morning, I saw him on his porch, painting. I was about to weed-eat my yard and he asked me to hold off so I wouldn’t get grass in his paint. Then about thirty minutes later he tells me he got a call and had to go to the pawnshop and could I hold off a little longer because he was going to finish painting when he gets back. And he has a trash bag in his hand when he says it. You know, he don’t have a car so he walks everywhere. So he always had a trash bag. And then he comes back about an hour later with the bag over his shoulder and the police just seem to show up out of nowhere.”
“Wow, I bet the police quizzed you all about that,” I said.
“Not a bit,” the man said. “Some lawyer-man came around and asked. In fact I should probably shut up about it. Maybe they’ll ask me to come to court.”
We thanked the man and left. The ten minutes were almost up.
“I’m impressed, Atty,” Reagan said as we walked back to the Speedy Queen. “You’re as good a liar as I am. ‘You mean, the guy who killed the pawnshop owner?’ What an actor!”
“Yeah, too bad she didn’t learn anything,” Martinez said.
“Oh, I think there’s some evidence there,” I said. “If you’re carrying a lottery ticket in your pocket, why bother to collect old beer cans for money? Why stroll through town picking up beer cans when you’ve got a murder weapon in your pocket? If I killed a guy, I’d run straight to Red Creek and toss the gun off the bridge.”
Reagan nodded. “Good stuff. But not good enough to get him out of jail. And it sounds like stuff your dad already knows.”
“True,” I said. “But to me, it’s a good sign. It’s a sign that we’re right, that he didn’t do it. And it’s evidence we collected by ourselves. You know, I really think we can do this.”
Our next stop was First Baptist Church of Red Creek, the place where Ambrose went to church. It was a complete bust. When Taleesa agreed to take us out there, I expected to walk in and start asking the pastor and the choir director a bunch of questions. Instead, the gravel parking lot was empty, the big wooden church doors closed and locked. We wound up stapling “have you seen this dog” flyers to the power poles along the street, just like we told Taleesa we would.
“I could have warned you that wouldn’t work,” Reagan said as we trudged down the road, staple guns in hand. “Unless a church has a day care, it’s going to be closed during the workweek. You’re the smartest girl I know, Atty, but you don’t know a lot about church.”
I laughed. “So this is the point where you start witnessing to me?”
“I might,” she said. “When the time is right. I might even pray for you sometime, but not in a mean way.”
“No need to pray for me,” I said. “Pray for Easy. Pray for Jethro. Pray for justice. Okay, you can pray for me a little. Pray I get my homework and the Herald column both finished this week.”
Reagan pulled a rolled-up newspaper out of the pocket of her hoodie. “That reminds me. Let’s see how the column came out this week.”
“Wait, where did you get that paper?” I asked.
“I slipped it out of the mailbox at that house back there,” she said, thumbing through the paper. “You didn’t even notice, did you? Expert shoplifting skills.”
“Reagan! You beat all I’ve ever seen,” I said. “One minute, you’re preaching at me, the next minute you’re stealing from people.”
“How big am I?” she said, arching an eyebrow. “What do I contain? Say it.”
“Large,” I sighed. “Multitudes.”
“Anyway, I’m just borrowing it,” she said. “We’re going to pass the same house on the way back and I can retu— oh wait. Oh, no. Oh, no.”
“What is it?” I said, grasping for the paper.
“‘Plea hearing Friday for murder suspect,’” Reagan read. “It’s right here on Page 3A. It says Jethro’s going to court Friday morning and is expected to enter a guilty plea.”
Looking over her shoulder, I read it myself. My heart
sank. How could Dad do this and not even tell us?
“This is serious, Reagan,” I said. “We have to step up our investigation. We have three days.”
15
Bing.
Checking your phone in bed can make you temporarily blind. I read that in a newspaper article. On my phone. Probably in bed. I just can’t resist. Not when someone’s sending me a message.
Princess P: On Friday morning, it’s over for your murderer friend. You lose again.
Bing. From Princess P, a photo of the Swamp Monster, dead in the back of a pickup truck.
Who does this stuff? Why is someone so intent on making me suffer? I started to send a message back, then thought better of it.
Don’t feed the trolls, Atty, I thought. Think. Think about what we’re going to do with the time we have left. Think about how we win—how Jethro Gersham wins—not how Princess P loses.
I typed out a message. To Martinez.
Atticustpeale: What’s the plan? Are you up? What’s the plan?
Bing.
CinqueMartinez: We skip school and ride our bikes to the places we want to investigate. The marina. The store in Florida where he bought the lottery ticket.
I shook my head, even though I was in the dark and no one could see me.
Atticustpeale: This is real life, not a movie. We skip school, we get grounded and can’t work. And maybe the cops come looking. Plus do you know how to get to the marina?
Bing.
CinqueMartinez: Jerk.
Bing.
CinqueMartinez: Well, we have Friday.
Friday was the day Jethro’s plea hearing was scheduled. It was also a school holiday. I hear that up north, school systems have makeup days for snow: make it through winter without a snow day, and you get a day off anyway. In Strudwick County we have hurricane days. Make it to mid-October without school closing for a tropical storm, and you get a four-day weekend for Columbus Day. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Columbus Day.
So that meant we’d be able to do a little investigation on the same day the plea deal came up. But the courthouse opens at 9 a.m.