My Sister's Fear

by T. J. Jones

  I dropped Maggie off at home, then went to the construction site to talk to Luis. As was usually the case, he had everything under control, so I went home to pack some clothes and do some laundry. Half an hour after I got home my phone chimed, and I picked it up, expecting a text from Maggie.

  Susan Foster? Slater, need to talk to you, soon!

  I texted back. Can you call?

  No, in person.

  Short and direct, what I would expect from a government employee. I replied.

  Heading out of town on a case for a few days, can't delay. Can it wait?

  Call me ASAP when you get back, we need to meet.

  Susan Foster had been the woman working undercover with David Templeton when he was killed. She had a fake job as the receptionist at the talent agency that Davey ran. The agency was part of a larger network, a network that traded in the misery of young women, girls as young as thirteen that were often abducted and forced into prostitution. Davey Templeton had been pulled in, duped into thinking the Agency was legitimate by Maggie's uncle, the man we knew as the Diablo Blanco.

  Susan Foster had been working with Davey's help to expose the individuals at the top of the organization. She wasn't FBI or a US Marshall, and she claimed to work for Homeland Security. Whatever the agency, she worked closely with the Feds and had no trouble calling in the local police when it became necessary. We had formed an uneasy alliance predicated on our shared hatred of the people responsible for Davey's death. Some of those people were still at large, connected to organized crime and a couple of movers and shakers in Washington and beyond.

  Frank Jeffries, Maggie's father, had gotten in too deep financially and otherwise, and it cost him his life. Maggie knew about some of it, and soon I would have to tell her everything, including the fact that her Uncle Gary was still very much alive. I wasn't sure how that was going to go, but I knew it was too big a secret to keep from her for very long. Meeting with Susan would give me a chance to talk to her about that. Gary Jeffries was a protected federal witness, but Maggie had a right to know her uncle was alive.

  Chapter Five

  What is it, three hours?" Maggie asked as she tossed her bag in the back of my truck. I had opted to drive my old pickup.

  "This late there won't be much traffic. You found us a room, right?"

  "Yeah, but no bets on how nice it will be. It's a pretty small town."

  "Who's covering for you at the Gym?"

  "No classes this week. Luis is running your crew?"

  "It's his crew, he just lets me help sometimes. It isn't like they're going to miss me." We wound through the evening traffic in silence for a few blocks then hit the on-ramp of the Interstate that would take us west. Maggie seemed excited.

  "This is great PI, just like our first case, hitting the road together. Like old times."

  "That was just a few weeks ago, Red. Why did you start calling me PI all of a sudden?"

  "Why did you start calling me Red?" She shot back.

  "If I stop, will you?"

  "Probably not." I watched her auburn hair sway as she laughed and shook her head from side to side.

  "Alright, but if it's going to be Eric Slater PI all the time, I'm growing a huge cheesy mustache, just like Tom Selleck."

  "Yeah, maybe I'll have to find a new nick name. I'm not kissing you if your top lip gets any hairier."

  "I notice you haven't been kissing me much anyway." I said cautiously.

  "Sorry." She slumped down in the seat frowning.

  "I don't want you to be sorry, it's fine." I didn't want to be a whiner. "I'm not trying to guilt you into anything, I just want to know that we're alright."

  "Of course we are. I've just got a lot going on in my head. With Dad dying and then finding out Davey was my half-brother, it's a lot to process. I'm getting there. You didn't even hear what I said to Camille yesterday, did you?"

  "What, you think I don't listen?" I tried to sound surprised.

  "No, as a matter of fact I don't."

  "Well I do, listen. You said you were madly in love with me."

  "I did not say that." She eyed me skeptically.

  "It was implied, we all knew what you meant."

  "You're comfortable, like an old shoe, that's what I meant." She grinned and closed her eyes and I thought she might have fallen asleep. Then she asked the question I'd been dreading. "Slater?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Was my Dad, the Diablo Blanco?"

  No, but your uncle was. I couldn't say that. "No, but he knew about what was going on."

  "Why do you think he killed himself?" Her eyes were still shut and I was glad she couldn't see the emotion on my face.

  "You knew about the girlfriend down in Lauderdale, right? Your Dad got mixed up with some very heavy hitters, organized crime, and he was in over his head. He screwed up somehow, and they gave him a choice as a reminder of who was running the show or a punishment of some sort. Someone had to die, Maria and her son, or you and Angela. He came home to Jacksonville that night thinking an assassin was going to kill Maria and her little boy. I don't know if it was that guilt, the terrible things he'd done to Angela, or just the fact that you and she would always be at risk as long as he was alive that made him hang himself. With Frank dead, there was no reason for them to come after you."

  "Maria and her son, they were killed?" She asked, wide-eyed.

  "They sent an assassin, but I shot him. They're both fine, the babysitter too." She just stared at me, putting the pieces together, pieces that had to hurt. "If I'd realized what your Dad would do, killing himself that way, I would have tried to stop him or called or something. I'm sorry."

  The truth was that I expected Frank Jeffries to go on with his miserable life even if he thought he was responsible for the death of his young girlfriend and her child. That was the kind of narcissistic, miserable bastard he had been. Had I suspected what he was going to do, I couldn't say with any certainty I would have tried to stop him. Cold, but I had witnessed some of the destruction he and his brother had wrought on a young woman's soul, and he deserved whatever Hell there was available as far as I was concerned. The remainder of the trip was quiet.

  One motel room, two beds. It's what I was expecting, so it wasn't hard to hide my disappointment. We tossed our suitcases on the beds and walked across to the Outhouse and our first encounter with Levi Davis.

  Later, we climbed into our respective beds and turned off the light. Maggie hadn't said much after the bar and I could tell she was deep in thought. I was waiting for the second shoe to drop. My eyes were heavy and I was close to nodding off before she spoke.

  "Slater, you awake?"

  "I'm awake."

  "I do, you know."

  "You do what, Red?"

  "Love you, a lot."

  "I love you too, a lot." Good to hear and good to finally say it.

  She was quiet for a long time. "That bastard tried with me once."

  "Your father?" There it was.

  "Mom and Angie were gone somewhere, and he came into my room. I was eleven. I had just started wearing a bra, and he must have noticed. He came in and sat on my bed and asked me to show it to him. He said it was a right of passage, a girl needing a bra, and that he wanted to see it. I thought it was odd, but bras are no different than a bikini top, so I opened my shirt and showed him. He said he wanted to see the back, so I took my shirt down and turned around." She stopped for a long minute. "He came up behind me, telling me how pretty it looked and started touching my neck. When he slid the straps off my shoulders I freaked out. I knew that wasn't right, or normal."

  "Did he try to force you?" I don't think I ever hated anyone more in my life than Frank Jeffries in that moment.

  "No, I started crying and yelling. He pushed me against the wall, and maybe he would have kept going, but I kept fighting him and screaming as loudly as I could. He finally left, but not before telling me that if I said anything to my Mom, he would make me regret it. After that, anytime I had to be alone wi
th him I was terrified it might happen again. I hated flying with him, but I went anyway. A small part of me was still jealous of Angela, which seems sick."

  "None of that was your fault Maggie. Something was very wrong with him. I don't know what made him that way, but it wasn't anything you did." She was up suddenly and pulled the covers of the small bed back, sliding against me and wrapping her arms around my neck.

  "Can you just hold onto me?" She said through tears. I held her as she sobbed against my neck for a good long time, then kept her from falling off the bed when she leaned back to look into my face. "Do you know the worst part?"

  "I can't imagine what could be worse." I admitted.

  "I was so afraid of him that I never said anything, not to Angela, or to my Mom. I should have told someone, a friend or a counselor at school. Angie was sixteen then, and he'd been raping her for years. I could have said something. I should have told, I could have made him stop!" She buried her face against my chest and started sobbing again.

  "Maggie, you were a little girl. Eleven years old isn't mature enough to deal with anything like that. It isn't a child's job to be responsible for their parents, and you weren't responsible for what happened to Angela. You were the little sister, Too Small, remember?"

  She laughed a little through her tears. After another minute she kissed me softly before going back to her own bed. "Thanks Slater, I'll be okay." It was another five minutes before she spoke again. "Maybe I'll talk to that shrink Angela is seeing, couldn't hurt right?"

  "Sounds like a good idea to me. Goodnight, Red."

  The next morning, we asked the guy at the front desk where we could get breakfast and he directed us to Maryetta's Diner in the middle of town. Maryetta was the original proprietor, apparently deceased and enshrined in a series of large pictures scattered around the place. There were four pictures of just her, and two with a bespectacled thirty-something man with a large nose and shock of curly brown hair that was all plastered to one side. I guessed him to be her son, same nose. Judging by the photos, she had been a matronly robust woman, undoubtedly smelling of pancakes and piecrusts, capable of encircling her son and the patrons of her establishment in a warm embrace while she doled out fresh coffee and wry wisdom with a gentle smile.

  "I worked for her for five years." The grizzled waitress with the tattoos and assortment of hardware in her lip commented when I asked her about the pictures. "Meanest bitch ever walked the face of the earth. My guess is her kid photoshopped that smile on her face, because I never saw one. You can make anybody look good with computer technology. My boyfriend, he's the cook in the back, he bought the place from her kid this fall. He was the one that hung all the pictures up and we just never got around to taking them down.

  He's some sort of a highfalutin photographer somewhere, but he come back last summer to wait for the old lady to die and sell this dump to my old man. Don't know how he ever pried the cigarette out of the old bat's mouth long enough to take those pictures." She stared angrily up at the nearest framed photo for a minute, then threw her pad down on the table between us. "What'll it be, I don't got all day."

  "Nice place." Maggie smiled as she sipped her coffee. "Quaint, plenty of local charm."

  I grimaced. "I thought it would be a step up from the Outhouse, now I'm not so sure."

  We'd gotten up early and the Diner was bustling with locals, most of whom appeared to be on their way to work. Levi Davis and another young guy had been sitting at the counter and must have finished their breakfast. They stood, and while his friend paid, Levi swaggered over.

  "Morning you two." He stared at Maggie. "Ya'll are looking lovely this morning."

  "Thank you." I winked at the redhead. "Or were you just talking to her?"

  "Nice, Mr. Slater." Levi laughed. "Who knew a Yankee would have a sense of humor."

  "Born and raised in Jacksonville, but yeah, we kind of sound like Yankees over that way. Twenty years in the Navy probably changed the way I talk."

  "Yeah? Well, thank-you for your service. Makes you pretty long in the tooth, don't it?"

  "He keeps up just fine." Maggie smirked. "I thank him for his service every night."

  Levi laughed cautiously, confused by the double entendre, then seemed to catch on. "Well, that makes him the luckiest man in Georgia, that is for sure. Still need a pool partner for Saturday night, just in case you change your mind, Maggie. You can bring Grandpa along if you want."

  Alright, that was a little funny even if it was at my expense. I went along. "Us old guys hit the rack pretty early, and I'm scared of the dark. Maggie hates to see me sleep alone."

  He leered at Maggie again. "Luckiest man in Georgia, like I said. Ya'll have a good day. Me and my brother Kyle here got to get to work."

  Kyle nodded, touched his cowboy hat and smiled shyly at Maggie as they left.

  "That wasn't so bad." Maggie said. "I wonder if he knows Wallace?"

  "Riff-raff, since he's not white. Odds are if he does know him, he's not a fan of his Art. Probably can't spell Art." The Grandpa crack was wearing on me.

  "Wow, why don't you like my pool partner?" That didn't even deserve a response. Our food came and we started eating.

  "Best hash in Georgia, right?" One of the extra chairs at our table slid back, and a small giant of a man sat down without being invited. Maybe a real giant, there was nothing small about him. He extended a frying pan paw. "Sorry to interrupt, but I figured you must be Eric Slater and Maggie Jeffries. We don't get many strangers around here, and you look fresh off the boat. Early, and I'm officially off duty today, but I thought I'd introduce myself. Sherriff Alex Henderson."

  We shook hands and I put down my fork. "Nice of you to stop by to say hello, or is this more of a business call."

  "Little of both." He shrugged. "I talked to Wallace Weston's niece yesterday and she said you'd be coming up this way to see what you could find out. Real polite gal, she made it clear you just want to clear his name, not like ya'll think we're incompetent here or anything."

  "Not that at all. You’re a busy guy, and eighteen-year old girls can move away anytime they want, right? Nobody expects you to spend a ton of time looking for her."

  "That's good." He looked at the coffee the waitress tried to hand him and waved her away with a nod. She scowled, but didn't say anything. "I'm sympathetic to your cause, Mr. Slater. Seems unlikely old Wallace did anything to that girl. Peculiar though, she just didn't show up for school one day. Good student and none of her friends knew about her going off, or if they did, they're not talking to me. Kids see me, sometimes they clam up. But you'd think she would have stuck around long enough to graduate. Might be she just got sick of her Daddy ripping on her all the time. Evert's an asshole. He drives a roller for Davis Paving when he's not too hungover. He's the one been carrying on about Wally doing something to Lilly and got the whole town stirred up."

  "Perhaps he doth protest too much?" Maggie asked.

  The big man got the reference and smiled. "Lilly's Dad doesn't have the stones to kill anybody, but I think it bothered him she liked Wallace so much. If he had stayed home once in a while, she might have cared more what he thought. I can try to protect Wallace, but the best thing would be if he went to live with his sister in Jacksonville until this all blows over, or Lilly comes back."

  "Free country though, right?"

  "Sure, people are free to live where they want or hate who they want, even when there's no sense to either one. But a girl disappears and it gives people an excuse to be nasty and think the worst. Bottom line, all I know is that her cellphone is inactive and if she was planning to run off, she never said anything about it to anyone except for the note to Wallace. It comes off as a little weird that she would leave him that note, but I had someone look at the handwriting and it checks out, most likely hers. I kept it for evidence, just in case. I can put her name and picture in the data base and hope I get a hit, but she didn't even have a driver's license, much less a credit card. Without some evidence of
foul play, I'm as far as I can go."

  "Any thoughts for us?"

  "Yeah, take Wallace and go back to Jacksonville." He chuckled. "Lilly worked here last summer waitressing part time, maybe Bonnie can tell you something. Good luck with that one, she can be mean as a snake some days." He stood and nodded to us.

  "What'd Mr. Bigshot want?" Bonnie the waitress asked when she circled around with the coffee pot. "Comes in here expecting free coffee all the time. Lousy tipper to boot."

  "He wanted to talk to us about Lilly Franklin, we're kind of looking for her." Maggie said.

  "Might want to look in the Ochlockonee, plenty of rain and she's running high; high enough to carry a body away. Then again, old man Weston might have just buried her somewhere."

  "Wally Weston, he's seventy-something, isn't he?" I tried. "Doesn't see so good, doesn't drive, and he's only got one leg. Hard to imagine him overpowering a healthy eighteen-year old girl, much less disposing of her body without getting caught."

  "He's lucky Leo Davis isn't around here, he'd have got more than a beating."

  "Who's Leo Davis?" Maggie tried to keep her talking. "I met Levi Davis, seems like a nice guy. Are they related?"

  "Brothers. Leo, everybody just calls him Lee cause of Robert E Lee. Anyway, he and Lilly were going out kind of on the sly, her being black and all. But she was a really good kid. I worked with her most of last summer. Her and Lee, Christ those two used to fight! Young love, you know how that crap goes. Lee kinda flipped out last July. Got so damn mad he went and got a job in the oil fields in the Dakotas, just to get away from her and get her out of his system, or so I'm told. Course, there was that trouble with his brother. But according to Levi, Lee and Lilly kept talking and Facetiming, so I was betting they would get back together. But it's been three, four months."

  "Funny he wouldn't come back if he cared that much, her disappearing and all."

  Bonnie leaned in and lowered her voice. "Makes me wonder if she snuck up there to be with him. Lee's Daddy didn't like him dating a black girl, even though her old man works for them. I heard tell there were some horrible fights, Lee and his Daddy. I hear a lot of what goes on in this town, 'cause of me working here."