by AR Simmons
“Adams, she really thinks that Mancie is still alive.”
“That’s crap. As soon as the DNA results confirm that it’s her kid, she’ll come up with something else. Wait and see.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think. I want your list. If you won’t give it to me, then I’m going to charge you with impeding an investigation.”
“You won’t do any such thing,” said Richard. “But if you want it, then take me back to the house. It’s on my computer. I’ll run you a copy, but there’s not a name on it that you couldn’t have come up with if you were doing your job.”
“Stop. You’re hurting my feelings,” said Adams with a laugh as he made a U-turn.
•••
“What’s going on?” asked Jill when Adams followed Richard inside.
“The detective wants my list of Molly’s acquaintances,” said Richard. “I’m getting him a printout.”
When Richard touched the mouse, the darkened screen lit. “What the—” began Adams when he saw the popup.
“I was looking up pedophile sites, and this crap has been popping up ever since,” said Richard as he hit the reset button. “Every time we go on the Internet that happens. I guess I need to download something to block them.”
“What interests you about that filth?” asked Adams, his voice heavy with disdain.
“Nothing. I just thought maybe a local pedophile took the baby. It’s a possibility you might consider.”
“I’ll check out more likely ideas first.”
“Yeah. Well, none of the people I talked to mentioned you. I guess you didn’t make much of an impression.”
The computer finally finished rebooting. Richard called up his database and clicked on “Print.”
“There you go,” he said. “Be my guest.”
Adams squinted at the paper Richard handed him. “This it?”
“That’s all.”
“I’ll let you get back to your dirty pictures, but I wouldn’t want it to get out that you’re interested in that kind of stuff. We’re kind of conservative around here. Most people aren’t too open-minded about that sort of thing.”
“I told you how that popup got on my screen. You tell anyone anything else, and I’ll sue you.”
“Yeah. You do that.”
“What an ass,” Jill said as she watched Adams pull from the curb. “Why does he have to act like that?”
“He’s diabetic and not taking care of himself,” said Richard. “I think he’s on edge most of the time. Maybe that’s why he’s jumped to his conclusion about Molly.”
“He may be right, Richard.”
“No. I don’t know what happened, but I know what didn’t. Adams is ignoring the fact that Molly seems to be the only person who didn’t want to bury this thing and forget about it. That’s not consistent with guilt.”
•••
The call interrupted supper. Richard’s answer touched off a well-primed charge.
“What the hell are you trying to do?” yelled an irate male voice.
All things considered, Richard was in no mood. “Well, tell me who in the hell you are, and maybe I can tell you,” he snapped.
“What have you been saying to the police about me?”
“Tinsley?”
“Damned right. What have you been saying?”
Richard mentally cursed Adams. “I didn’t tell them anything about you. If Adams is—”
“I’m going to get you for this,” interrupted Tinsley.
Richard imagined the powerfully built little man grinding his teeth. “Look, I know Adams is irritating, but I didn’t tell him anything about you.”
“Like hell you didn’t!”
“Hey! You believe what you want to believe. I didn’t do a damned thing, and if you know what’s good for you, you won’t give me a reason to!”
“Richard!” Jill said in astonishment.
“Stay out of this, Jill!” he shouted.
The outburst shocked them both. Jill’s mouth dropped open. Then she clamped it shut. Richard closed his eyes ruefully. He clicked off Tinsley in mid-rant and tossed the phone onto the couch.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never … I don’t know why I why I did that.”
“It’s okay,” she said softly.
But it wasn’t.
•••
September 22
Jimmy Pete had two faces, one a sour scowl. The other he took from cold storage when dealing with clients. He was born in the wrong century. He would have been much happier had slave labor been available to him. Instead, he had to make do with the next best thing, high school dropouts and immigrant labor brought up from Texas. The latter, Jimmy’s Lawn and Landscaping Service had temporarily lost due to problems with visas; the problem being that most of his crew had none, which had come as a complete surprise to Jimmy, trusting soul that he was. For the time being, Jimmy had to scrape for crew, which was why he took on over-aged, over-dressed, and over-qualified Richard Carter.
Grass cutting season was almost over, the Zoysia and Bermuda lawns having gone dormant brown, but Jimmy had landed a fat contract laying sod and landscape planting in the housing development where Eric Patterson’s roofers were working. The grueling work of rolling out and trimming in sod was stoop labor, but the mild, early fall weather made it bearable. Richard’s fellow workers were divided over whether laying sod in the summer heat or the winter cold was the truest foretaste of Hell, a place they uniformly hoped and believed Jimmy Pete would go.
Richard worked three backbreaking twelve-hour days in a row. As he sat on the freemasonry wall surrounding the new duplexes waiting for Jill to pick him up, Pete stopped his truck and slid down the window.
“Don’t come in tomorrow,” he said.
“Why?” asked Richard in surprise. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Come back on Monday. Don’t need you tomorrow.”
Pete rolled up the window and sped off before it occurred to Richard that working tomorrow would give him a forty-hour week.
•••
September 23, 12:05 PM
Richard filled Friday by finishing the back porch. James Mill didn’t allow trash burning, but there was only a little over a five-gallon bucket of scrap wood left from his repair job. A fifties era brick barbecue pit sat, albeit in disrepair, at the back of the lot. Since there surely was no law against barbecuing, he decided to burn the wood inside it. He was congratulating himself on finding the loophole in the no-burning ordinance when it began raining. He went in and turned on the local weather. Radar showed the splotch of rain stretched all the way back to the Texas panhandle. He smiled at his good fortune. Had he been dropped off for work and then the sod laying had been called off for the day, he would have had to find his own way home. On the other hand, Jimmy Pete might have kept them at it while he supervised from the comfort of his truck cab.
He turned off the TV, wondering what he could spend his time doing while waiting for Jill to come home. Neither reading, watching TV, nor going on the Internet appealed to him. He thought only momentarily about sending e-mails to his mother in Florida and to his friend Kevin in Covington, Indiana, but he didn’t know of anything that he wanted to say to either of them. What he needed was work, but the dishes and housework were done up. He could cook something for supper and save Jill the trouble, but he couldn’t start that for at least another four or five hours.
While he was casting about for something to do, he heard a knock at the back door. Molly had come to break his heart. When he let her in, she smiled.
“You didn’t go to work today, huh? Are you sick?”
“No, the boss decided thirty-six hours was as much work as I was capable of this week.”
“Yeah, I’ve had me some bosses like that.”
“I got some coffee on. Can I get you some?”
“That’d be real nice,” she said with a shiver. “Raining harder than I thought when I started ov
er. Can I use a towel to dry off?”
“In the bathroom. Help yourself.”
He poured the coffee, wondering how to rid himself of her as soon as possible without hurting her feelings. Without a car, he was stuck with no means of escaping her. He wondered gloomily if he would ever be free of Molly and her dead child.
“I sure wish they’d hurry with that DNA thing,” she said, coming back into the kitchen.
He handed her a cup of coffee without meeting her eyes. “Molly, you should try to prepare yourself for the possibility that it was your child that they found.”
She took a sip of the coffee and shook her head dismissively. “It wasn’t Mancie, Mr. Carter. I don’t need no DNA to tell me that—but I know you do. I’ve been thinking about it, and it ain’t reasonable for me to expect you to know what I know, but Mancie and me still need you to help us. That’s why I want them to hurry up.”
He studied her face. It had changed a lot since he first met her. Hope alone made that difference? She was so sure things would turn out all right. Richard was sure of just one thing: he didn’t want to be there when it all came crashing in on her.
“Molly.” he paused and drew a deep breath before continuing. “If the test shows that the baby they found is … is your girl, I can’t do anything else for you.”
“Don’t worry about that, Mr. Carter. It ain’t her. And you know, if it was, I wouldn’t … Well, I suppose I’d like to see whoever done it caught before some other poor momma loses a baby, but I wouldn’t be interested in vengeance. That’s for the Lord to take care of.”
From meth-head to Holy Roller! he thought sadly. How far are you going to fall from grace this time, Molly?
“I’ve been thinking, Mr. Carter. Don’t they say that most crimes are committed by family?”
“Violent crimes, yes. Not necessarily all crime.”
“Child abductions, though. They usually are, aren’t they?”
Richard realized her question wasn’t hypothetical. “Do you have a definite idea of who did it, Molly?”
She shrugged. “I ain’t certain. I guess I’m trying to be upbeat about the whole thing—you know, wanting to believe that whoever took her did it ‘cause they loved her.”
“You don’t mean your ex-husband?”
“Pat? No. But Grandma and Grandpa Allsop might have. They never treated me bad or nothing, but they never liked me a whole lot neither.”
“Why didn’t they like you?”
She smiled bitterly. “Because I was ‘trailer trash.’ They thought Pat could have done better for himself.”
Adams had to have talked to the grandparents early in his investigation. Maybe that’s where his negative impression of Molly came from.
“I never thought much of them either, seeing as how they looked down their nose at me,” she continued. “I pray to a merciful God that they’ve got her because I know they love her.”
Mancie was dead, and the sooner Molly accepted that, the better off she’d be.
No, he realized. Her life will be over. Mancie is all she had.
“I didn’t just come over to tell you about Grandma and Grandpa Allsop, Mr. Carter,” she said. “I got a confession to make.”
Richard feared that Molly was about to confess she was in love with him. His face flushed in anticipation. Molly didn’t notice.
“I come over because I was sure you was about to quit on me. I couldn’t let you do that without trying real hard to stop you. No momma could. I know you got to work and all. And your wife don’t like what you’re doing for me, but me and Mancie really need you. You’re the only hope we got.”
Relieved at being spared the love thing, Richard concentrated on finding a way pry her from her delusion.
“Molly,” he began gently.
“I need to apologize too, Mr. Carter. Not for bugging you to help us, but for laying that thing on you about it being the Lord’s will and all. I do believe God sent you to help us, but I don’t expect you to believe that. It’s my faith, Mr. Carter, not yours, so you don’t need to pay no attention to it.”
When he didn’t respond, she continued. “None of that makes any sense, does it?”
“It makes perfect sense, Molly. I’ll tell you what. When the DNA results come in … Well, let’s let that decide what I do, okay?”
“Sure,” she said eagerly. “If it’s not Mancie, then we’ll keep working on it, right.”
“Right, but if it is—”
“Then I won’t bother you no more.”
•••
5:35 PM
“She is manipulating you is what I think.”
“She’s sincere, Jill. That’s all I was trying to tell you. I just hope that faith of hers can somehow carry her through what’s going to happen when the DNA results come in.”
“The delusion won’t end when the results come in.”
“You think she’ll refuse to accept it. I never considered that.”
“Well, I did. That woman has sunk her claws into you, and she’s not going to give you up without a fight.”
Richard tried to pass it off. “No, you’re misunderstanding her. This is all about Mancie, not me.”
His tone finally clicked it all into place for her. From the beginning, Jill had known there was something wrong. She had always been intuitively uncomfortable with Molly’s monopolizing of Richard’s time. Now she saw it clearly. It wasn’t Molly so much as Richard. The tragedy had given his life meaning, something she was apparently unable to do. Her hurt seemed childish. Yet, if she was honest with herself, she had to admit that she was both jealous of Molly and angry with Richard for his unconscious betrayal of her.
“What’s wrong, Jill?” he asked, noticing her distracted expression.
“Nothing. Just make sure that … you don’t do anything to encourage her—I mean after the results come in. It will be hard for her to accept. Don’t be so soft-hearted that you encourage her to— Don’t give her any kind of false hope.”
“Do you think she’ll want me to continue … you know, like when the shock wears off?”
“You hope so, don’t you?” Jill said sharply.
“What?” he asked, surprised again by her reaction. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? We have bills to pay, and all you want to do is play detective. This is a job for the police, and you know it.”
Richard thought Jill had it all wrong. He tried to back off and consider the disparity in their differing assessments of what was happening. She had a point, but was blowing it all out of proportion. The “playing detective” thing rankled, but was not entirely unjustified. To restore harmony, he decided to concede the point (in principle).
“It is a job for the police. I just wish they’d do it. And speaking of bills, how short are we?”
“I’ve paid the rent, but we’re about fifty dollars short on utilities. I’ll drop the cable or the Internet. You choose.”
“When is the bill due?”
“Yesterday.”
“Then write the check. Today was supposed to be payday. I’m going in to get my check from Pete instead of waiting until Monday.”
“I’m not writing an insufficient funds check. We’ll cash your check and then I’ll go in and pay cash and apologize.”
“Apologize for being a day late?”
No, apologize for being late period.”
•••
6:38 PM
When he got to the job site, Richard saw a new man working with the crew. Jimmy Pete’s truck was parked at the entrance to the development. Pete scowled in his direction as he got out of the car.
“Need your pay already, huh?” he said disdainfully when Richard approached.
He made no move to get out of the truck. Richard thought of a mounted overseer on an antebellum cotton plantation. It was almost enough to make one believe in reincarnation.
“Bills are due,” he said.
Pete hunched to the side i
n order to pull a wad of cash from his pocket. He counted twenties from the outside of the roll, and then unfolded it to get at smaller bills.
“I can wait if you want to write me a check,” offered Richard.
“Simpler this way,” said Pete, handing over the cash. “Now you don’t have to give it all back to the government. What Sam don’t know won’t hurt him.”
That confirmed what Richard already suspected. People don’t insist on cash-only transactions for simplicity sake. They are tax-evading thieves more than willing to let honest taxpayers pick up the whole tab for public works and services. Richard decided to keep careful note of his pay from Pete and make sure to account for it all when he paid his taxes. As Pete rolled up the window to the pickup, Richard counted his pay. He frowned, and then pecked on the window. His boss rolled the window back down again.
“You made a mistake,” said Richard. “I worked thirty-six hours. You only paid me for thirty.”
“I don’t pay for lunch and your breaks,” said Pete. “Only for the time you actually work.”
“I didn’t count those, Mr. Pete. I worked thirty-six hours.”
“You miscounted.”
“No. I did not take two hours of break a day.”
“Hey, I keep good records. If I was you, I’d just take the money and be glad I had a job.”
“All I want is what I worked for.”
“You don’t appreciate the job? Well, I don’t need no lazy troublemakers like you around.”
“You’re stealing nearly forty dollars from me,” said Richard.
“Yeah? Well, go tell anyone you want to about that. See if anybody cares,” said Pete. “By the way, I think one of my sod cutters is missing. I’ve got a suspicion one of my workers stole it. Know what I’m saying?”
“I know exactly what you’re saying,” said Richard. “You’re saying that not all psychopaths kill people.”
Getting the last word could have been satisfying if Jimmy Pete had understood Richard’s wit. As it was, he walked away with a little more than two hundred dollars and one more lost job.