Too Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 2)

by Phillip DePoy

  Now, on this terrible night, because of the trauma of the storm, the two women delivered their babies together. Mavis had trouble. Ida didn’t, even though her baby was premature.

  J.D. arrived at his home in the first light of the next morning. When he saw the smoldering corn crib and the battered roof and the ruined garden, he just stood outside the house, afraid to go in.

  He was only roused to cross the threshold by the sound of babies crying. He rushed into the bedroom, and there were Mavis and Ida in bed, each holding a tiny newborn.

  When he came into the room, Ida woke up. Mavis didn’t. She had passed away in the night while the other three had slept; while J.D. had protected the Tifton Home Loan.

  He sat down on the bed and took up the child out of Mavis’s arms, and cried like the day Jesus was buried.

  Later he gathered up what he supposed to be his twin boys. Even though he had suspicions, he didn’t make them known. He left Ida sleeping and called the Peaker Family Mortuary, Caring Since 1934. Old Mr. Peaker made all the arrangements to bury Mavis Habersham Turner in her family plot at the Old Old Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia.

  When they were in high school, the boys had come home wondering why they didn’t look anything alike. They’d just had a biology lesson. At the dinner table Ida calmly tapped out the story she’d never before told to a soul and had kept all these years in her heart. Mr. Turner just stared at the food he was eating, like he always did at the dinner table. When the boys wanted to know which son belonged to Mavis and which to Ida, she said she didn’t know. When they wanted to know who was the father of the other boy, she said she’d never tell — except to say it was nobody they knew. They could see she was telling the truth, and never asked about it again.

  When they looked to their father for some kind of answer, he told them his opinion. “Sometimes your family ain’t what you was born with. Sometimes your family is who you say it is. I say you’re both my boys. That’s all.”

  That was good enough for everybody, and they’d never worried a minute about it since. They agreed that J.D. was their father; Ida was their aunt. It was settled because they’d decided it was settled. It didn’t take anything more than that.

  35 - Dream Reunion

  Peachy grinned, happy to have told his tale to another living soul, happy to see the effect it had on his audience.

  But I was confused. “So ... Lydia really could be some kind of relative.”

  Dally shot in. “No, she couldn’t — not to them, I don’t think.”

  “But she’s a Habersham, the mother and the aunt were Habershams ...”

  “Flap, take my word for it. Lydia’s not a Habersham.”

  Maytag nodded. “Took us a while to figure that one out, too, Mr. Tucker.”

  I looked at him. “And you really don’t know which is which, who’s the other father, none of it?”

  They shook their heads, but they were smiling. They really didn’t care. It really was settled in their minds.

  Dally wouldn’t let me go. “See, Flap: The event happens, devoid of any valuation. You impart the meaning to it.”

  “Shut up.”

  The boys looked at her. She responded. “That’s a little bit of Tucker horse manure that he’s always slingin’ around. He can dish it out, but he’s not much in the ‘takin’ it’ department, is he?”

  Peachy grinned at me. “She got you there, Mr. Tucker.”

  I kept my dignity. “Shut up, the both of you. I’m still trying to get why Lydia’s not related to you. Not to mention: How come you never told me your own mother was buried in the same graveyard where all that other business happened?”

  They looked at each other. Peachy answered. “Just ... didn’t seem to fit the line of conversation at the time.”

  Maytag agreed. “Besides, you know about it now.”

  “I don’t know anything now. I don’t know who you two are. I don’t know half of what Dally’s talking about. I don’t know who Lydia is or why we have to find her. And I don’t know who killed Lowe Acree or why.”

  Dally patted my arm. “Finished?”

  I shook my head. “I’m just getting started. And by the way” — I shot my gaze right back to the boys — “your father knew your mother less than two years and hasn’t forgotten her in the last twenty-seven?”

  Peachy was more serious than I’d seen him. “He loved her, Mr. Tucker. Permanently.”

  I wasn’t sure. “Yeah, but ...”

  Dally helped. “Maybe if she’d lived, she’d be complaining about his snoring by now; he’d be grouchy about her reading in bed or somethin’ — but as it is, she died while he was still in love. Nothin’ can help that.”

  I gave up. “Okay. But the rest of it. It’s making me nuts.”

  Dally put a cooling hand on my shoulder. “You know what you need? You need to do your little trick. You need to get right in your mind and find Lydia and solve the murder of Lowe Acree and go back home to your nice loud apartment in the city and come over to Easy and character up the place.” She patted me. “That’s what you need.”

  The boys were nodding at me. I didn’t know if they understood anything about what she was saying, but they were very supportive. There was little choice involved. Dally said it was time: It was time.

  “Got another room or something where I can go and have a moment to myself?”

  She smiled. “How about what used to be the assistant manager’s office?”

  “Funny.”

  “Remember where it is?”

  “Not even remotely.”

  She pointed. “Around the corner, first office on the left. We’ll wait here.”

  I nodded. The boys smiled. Dally waved. I was up and around the corner in what seemed to me an awkward silence. Once I was in the office, I could hear that they had resumed conversation, but I couldn’t hear the words at all. It was just a kind of pleasant murmur.

  I sat in the only chair in the room. I tried to get everything out of my head. All the weird family histories and connections and gothic idiocies. I tried to see the golden curtain wafting in front of me. Since I didn’t have the luxury of looking out at the sea, I tried to breathe like the sound of the waves. I know it sounds wacky, but it helps.

  I don’t know how much time went by just breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, seeing nothing. But finally it came back: the waking dream, the family reunion; everybody sitting around tables eating fried chicken. The Turners and the Acrees and Horace from Atlanta and Pevus Arnold and his wife, and all the strange inhabitants of my recent days — they were all eating fried chicken and drinking from mason jars that said Rusty’s Barbecue on the label on the side.

  And there, across the yard, was Lydia waving, her face turned away from my view. ‘‘Hello, Flap. Good to see you again.” She was standing by the stone angel, laughing. The graveyard by the church was dark and filled with open graves and magnolia trees. Lowe Acree was popping up out of one of the graves. Lydia was laughing at him uncontrollably. I came over to stop her, since no one else seemed able to do it. When I got there, still with her face turned away, she said, “Hello, Flap. Good to see you again.” It was like a broken record. It echoed in a kind of musical way.

  I walked closer to her. I had a very strong feeling of finally scratching an itch I’d had forever. It was very satisfying. In that moment of relief I found myself right next to Lydia. In the darkness her voice sounded so familiar. She said, still keeping her face turned away from me, “You have to come tonight. It’s the last night I’ll be here.”

  I reached my hand up to brush the hair away from her face, and turned it toward me so I could finally see her clearly. It was like trying to move my hand underwater, in slow motion.

  When I finally touched her, and saw who she was, the shock of seeing that face snapped me out of my reverie like a rifle shot through the forehead.

  36 - Stone Angel

  I shoved myself up; scrambled around the desk and out the door. “Dally!”
<
br />   “Flap? You okay?”

  I rounded the corner, moving fast. She could see I wasn’t okay. “We gotta get back to the churchyard now.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  I was madder at her than I think I’d ever been. “You know what’s the matter.”

  My being mad like that, it made the boys nervous, which just poured gasoline on the fire of my suspicions about them. They had no idea what was up with me, but they could see it wasn’t good. Nobody made a peep. They could see it would set me off. They could see nobody would want to set me off in the shape I was in. It could have international repercussions. We just gathered ourselves up and zipped like hornets out the door.

  We must have been a sight, the four of us, God knows what hour of the night, traipsing up from the river and on toward the cemetery. We were four silhouettes from two different worlds: two urban swells, two simple farm boys. Or two suckers and two killers, that was a possibility too.

  And what do you know: It actually is darkest just before the dawn. The night was late, moon was set, and outside the protection of the streetlights it was black as the belly of the beast.

  We slouched into the boneyard like grave robbers, looking every direction at once. I was in the lead, strong and holy from the vision I’d had. Okay, maybe the magic didn’t always work like this, but it was powerful and terrifying when it did.

  I headed straight for the stone angel where Ida had left her voice so many years before. Somewhere close, the remains of somebody’s mother lay resting. And not far away was the last earthly evidence of strangers who gave their lives in the Revolutionary War so that we would all have the inalienable right to mispronounce English in America.

  There was somebody already standing by the angel. She was in a white, airy summer dress, and in the thick, humid night anybody would have put her down as a ghost. The others hung back, unsure of what was going down. They stayed in the shadows. I, only, am escaped, alone, to tell thee. I approached the apparition.

  She was staring at the angel so intently, I thought it might bust. It seemed more glowing than before. I walked heavily to announce my presence, but she was undistracted. I sidled up next to her. She knew I was there. We just stood, the both of us, looking at the angel.

  Finally she looked my way, calmly. “Hello, Flap. Good to see you again.”

  “Hello, Lydia.” Only the name wasn’t Lydia when I knew her before. She used to be called Sylvia. Cousin Sylvia.

  37 - Cousins, No Kissing

  I might not have recognized her if I hadn’t met her first in the dream thing. It had been quite a long time since I’d last seen her. But all kinds of things were coming back to me. I was remembering how my cousin Sylvia was something of a very free spirit, even in the young days. She used to tell everybody she was from another planet. Lots of people believed her.

  When she was in the third grade, she made up her own language — a complete language with its own rules of diction, grammar — everything. The last time I’d seen her was when the family visited her in the state mental hospital in Milledgeville. She wasn’t nuts, she was just very smart and significantly strange. It’s a combination you really don’t want to be in the South. It’s not tolerated. Dumb-and-strange is fine. Smart-and-conservative is admired. Smart-and-strange gets you locked up in the loony bin. Just like my poor old grandma.

  I’d have to admit that I’d always been a little nervous about the same thing happening to me sometime. In plenty of nightmares I’d seen Cousin Sylvia, wide-eyed and unbelieving, standing in the hall at the hospital, clutching a little rag doll that she used to talk to in her special language, surrounded by older people who were babbling in tongues — tongues that had no diction nor grammar. She was waving goodbye to me, and I was very ashamed that I didn’t wave back. I was afraid, somehow, that if I waved, they’d all know I was like her — and they’d keep me there too. I hadn’t really thought all that much about my childhood in a very long time. Just as well.

  I did my best to match her casual delivery. “So, where’ve you been keeping yourself?”

  She smiled. “Here and there.”

  “I’ll bet. Do you have any idea where you are now?” Just checking.

  “I’m saying good-bye to the angel. I had to. The Turners brought me here a few times to talk to the angel, so I had to tell her good-bye.”

  “Ah. And?”

  “I did. My work is done here. I’m going back to the sea.”

  “Yeah, Sylvia ... or Lydia. Um, that’s what I’d like to talk to you about.”

  She sighed. “It really is good to see you. You never can tell, you know.”

  “I know.” But I had no idea what she was talking about. I was doing what they call humoring her. “So. What’ve you been doing lately?”

  “Oh, this and that, Flap. This and that.”

  I could see that she had only gotten stranger as the years had passed — and that was saying something. I was contemplating the problem when Dally came up behind me.

  “So it really is her.”

  I shot her a look that could have knocked over a steamship. “I presume this is your little secret?”

  “I wasn’t sure it was your cousin. I only met her once or twice — and I was about six, so I didn’t want to say when I wasn’t completely sure.”

  “But you suspected.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “From the beginning.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How? What made you suspect?”

  She looked down. “I just had a feeling. Sally too. I remembered things ...”

  “And you didn’t share. Imagine how that makes me feel.”

  “Let’s not get into this now, Flap.”

  “Oh, let’s. I’m just about as mad at you as I’m ever going to get.”

  “About this?”

  I burned her with a look. “Why couldn’t you just tell me I might be looking for my own crazy cousin?”

  She avoided eye contact. “I know how you feel about your family.”

  Dalliance Oglethorpe was talking about my aforementioned fear of being crazy myself. When you have a couple of really nutty relatives, you start to worry about your own stability. When you’re partly raised by a woman who gets signals from the radio, you have to wonder if any rubbed off. You have a cousin who was shuttled off to a mental hospital when she’s seven, you have to think twice about anything out of the ordinary about yourself. And I think just about everybody would agree I was plenty out of the ordinary.

  So all I could do was nod.

  Dally didn’t get me in the eye. “Look, I don’t want to go over, right now, how much I saw this thing with Lenny get to you. I watched you night after night over in the club, sloshin’ down that snooty French grape and figurin’ again how you could have done it better, how you messed up, how it all went wrong.”

  “I don’t like to be wrong.”

  “Yeah, that’s my point.”

  “I don’t like loose ends.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re the neatest straight guy I know.”

  I was still impatient with her. “So?”

  “So I know how reminding you of some of your kin just puts the depression thing into a tailspin sometimes.”

  “So that’s why you didn’t let me in on this little secret?”

  “I just didn’t see the point in even bringing it up if there wasn’t anything to it. I didn’t think you’d be clear.”

  “Clear, Dally? Clear?”

  “I didn’t know if you’d be thinkin’ right.”

  Lydia interrupted. She was Lydia now — not Sylvia anymore. I could see that. Okay by me. You can be anybody you want to be, in my book.

  She smiled at me. “She’s right, Flap. If anybody ought to know how badly a person’s affected by not thinking right, I think you ought to agree it’d be me ... pretty much?”

  I sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah. I guess I’d have to say you know more than your share about that.”

  The boys couldn’
t stay away. Maytag slipped up and put his hand on Lydia’s shoulder. He was very soft and very sweet. “Hey, darlin’. Glad you remembered to come back here like we told you to — if you was ever lost in Savannah.”

  You could actually see her face brighten when he touched her, the way some kids respond when they get a clinch from mom. “Hey, Maytag.” She peered into the darkness. “Peachy? You out there?”

  He appeared. “Sugar-bee. We come to get you home.”

  She smiled at that too. Okay, so they were family, of a sort. You could tell.

  Dally let them be. “See?”

  I wouldn’t have it. “I’m not talking to you, maybe ever again. And this isn’t coincidence.” I looked all around me in the black night air, and hot as it was, I had a chill. My paranoid genes were acting up — but that’s what you get when you’re nuts.

  Maytag interrupted what could have been a mighty incident between me and my former best friend. “Hey. Mr. Tucker? Thanks for helpin’ us find Lydia.”

  I looked at him. He had the face of an angel himself. Looking at him at that moment, I couldn’t believe anybody could ever have thought him capable of murder.

  And speaking of which, I had to ask, partly to calm myself down: “So, Lydia, who killed Lowe Acree ... in your opinion? I’m collecting answers.”

  She looked back at the angel. “Oh, I did. He really deserved it.”

  I blinked. “He deserved it?”

  “Oh, my, yes.” She closed her eyes.

  I looked at Dally, still a little out of sorts with her. “Well, I’m going to have to sit down to hear this one.”

  So we marched our little party back to the benches where Dally and I had contemplated French Symbolists and thieves. We all sat down. It was a late-night historical discussion group, or a ghost hunters’ club in a boneyard.

  I began. “Okay, then, Lydia: Spill. What’s the story?”

  She didn’t know quite how to start. “Well ...”

  Maytag finally got it. “Wait a minute.” He looked at me. “I just figured out: You know Lydia some kinda way.”