Fortunes of the Dead

by Lynn Hightower

  I thought of cold beer and jerk chicken. “Okay.”

  “You know, Lena, you and I could work together. You could have an office here, I could do your background work, you could pay me with sex.”

  “Why am I not tempted?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not like I didn’t use to get it for free.… Ouch. Jesus. That hurt.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  London, Kentucky, is a friendly town. Not very big. There’s a tire store, several restaurants, and Laurel Lake, which has several marinas, places for canoe camping, and a wild-bird sanctuary that allows no motorized boat traffic to disturb the osprey and mule deer.

  The marinas in London are well run and beautiful and attract boaters from Ohio to Tennessee. It is well known in bordering states that Kentucky boating laws are lax; people come to Laurel Lake to party hearty and contribute to the local fatality rate.

  What isn’t well known is the London, Kentucky underground railroad, a stop-off for women who forgo the legal system for a myriad of reasons, and start a new life somewhere else. It works like the federal witness protection system, with fewer glitches. Joel knows nothing about this group. He won’t hear about it from me.

  I met Adrianne eight months ago when we worked opposite sides. My client was a graduate student, working toward a Ph.D. in archaeology. Two years prior, his sister, a single mother, died in a car accident, and he became the instant father of a three-year-old daughter. He’d had a messy breakup with a girlfriend after a year of cohabitation, and she’d taken off with his daughter. When I caught up with her, she was trying to convince Adrianne to take her on, and help her to a new identity and life in Seattle.

  My client was lucky. There was no question of custody to complicate the rescue. And Adrianne swears that the girl would not have cleared their background check, and never would have made it through the program. I always hope she’s right.

  I know of specific circumstances where Adrianne’s clients, as they are called, would be dead now, without the help of the group. Many of them had children who would also be dead. In spite of this, I always worry when a woman runs. Prey runs.

  Every situation involves a judgment call and some of the women who work with this group are too comfortable with their judgment. Some of them have gone from dedication to fanaticism. I sometimes wonder if once in a while a woman goes through who shouldn’t. A woman taking revenge on a man.

  On the other hand, nobody’s perfect. And the group’s track record is significantly better than the Kentucky domestic court system.

  When I arrived at the Cracker Barrel in Corbin—twenty miles south of London—Adrianne Lindstrom was sitting outside in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch of the restaurant. The chairs sold for about a hundred dollars apiece, and were looped together with a discreet steel cable.

  “Enjoying the sunshine?”

  Adrianne smiled up at me. “I was hoping you’d be on time.”

  “Always the incurable optimist.”

  I let Adrianne go ahead of me through the restaurant doors. She was in her sixties, had degenerative arthritis in her hips and knees, and she walked according to how badly she ached. She was a short woman, hair still red with the help of L’Oréal, and overdressed for the weather in a navy blue pea coat over a sweatshirt that had large reindeer on it and said I Love Grandma. She wore black polyester pants, low-heeled shoes that tied, and a maroon knit hat with a bobble on the top. Her small hands were covered in matching gloves.

  Adrianne is firm but motherly and I find her presence comforting; she has a gentle sense of humor, and more common sense than anyone I’ve ever met. I’ve asked her to adopt me, but she only laughs. I wouldn’t adopt me either.

  We sat in the nonsmoking section close to the seven-foot hearth, and the crackle of a real wood fire. Business was slow; we’d hit the dead time around three in the afternoon. No one was sitting at the checkerboard, no one was waiting to be seated. A waitress took our drink orders, and Adrianne shifted her weight carefully, trying to get comfortable.

  “You look good,” I told her.

  She smiled. “You look happy. Things going well between you and Joel?”

  I rubbed the hollow beneath my right ear. “We just bought a house together.”

  “Ah. I was wondering why you glowed. Except something’s bothering you.”

  “Adrianne, are you sure you’re not the reincarnation of my mother?”

  I picked up the little wood-and-peg puzzle that sits on every table at a Cracker Barrel.

  “Lena, don’t start with that thing. Do you still hold the record?”

  “Of worst score in the memory of my last Cracker Barrel waitress? Yes. She said she’d never seen anybody leave seven pegs and that she didn’t think she could do it if she tried.”

  “I remember, I was with you.”

  The waitress arrived. Neither Adrianne nor I had looked at a menu. I ordered unsweetened tea, chicken and dumplings, hash-brown casserole, and carrots. Sourdough toast.

  Adrianne went for the catfish. “Same order as always, Lena?”

  “I haven’t been here since you and I had dinner together back during you know what.”

  “Don’t mention any names, my dear.”

  “Sorry, Mom.” Adrianne doesn’t like what she calls “post mortems,” which she considers bad manners as well as a security risk.

  “Lena, are you going to keep worrying that puzzle, or tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “Joel and I are both working this Dunkirk investigation. He’s the pro, and I’m private, hired by the family. He was furious when I took the case, and he won’t share his inside information, which makes me mad, even though I know it shouldn’t. It’s making things weird between us. We haven’t even moved all our stuff into the house because we can’t agree on who should take time off to pack everything up.”

  “Hire packers, my dear. Tell me, has Joel ever shared this kind of investigative detail with you before?”

  “All the time.”

  “Then that’s why you’re mad. Makes perfect sense to me.”

  “And now I’ve got this competition thing going. I want to find out what happened to this girl, only this time instead of being motivated by the family, I’ve got this urge to win.”

  “Win?”

  “Poor choice of words.”

  The food arrived, distracting Adrianne and sparing me the lecture about how the word “win” has no place in a relationship or a divorce. I tried not to watch Adrianne eat the catfish. I don’t like catfish. We didn’t talk much while we ate. When the waitress returned to refill our drinks, Adrianne glanced at me across the table and grinned. “Starving, dear?”

  “I’m a healthy girl. Plus this is one of my favorite meals and I haven’t eaten here since I’ve been boycotting.” The Cracker Barrel restaurant chain had been in court twice—once with gay activist groups and once with black activist groups.

  Adrianne sucked Diet Coke delicately through a straw. “I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of information for you on Edgers.”

  Time for business, then. I ate the last of my tiny carrots, wondering how the restaurant cooked them to the perfect blend of sweetness and flavor. Maybe Joel could do it. I should ask him. After I won.

  Adrianne pushed her plate to one side. “I spent some time with Mira Flanders—she’s cleaned house for Cory’s stepmother since Cory was five. The most interesting thing I got was that Cory kept his room neat, like a little marine, and was … how did she put this … inflexible. That he ate the same thing for breakfast the entire time she knew him.”

  “What did he eat?”

  “Who knows?”

  “How could you not ask?”

  “I don’t care what he ate for breakfast.”

  “Adrianne, what could be so good that someone would eat it every single morning for years?”

  “Nothing, Lena. That’s the point. Cory Edgers has always been a creature of habit, in the sense of someone who has to keep a rigid control of
his routine. I could see him being quite difficult if something upset that routine.”

  “Did Mira Flanders say that?”

  “No. She doesn’t clean for anyone she doesn’t like, which means she won’t have anything overtly unkind to say. You have to read between the lines.”

  “What other things did you read?”

  “Ummm … he dated a lot in high school. Thought he was quite the little man, until he met Amy McAlister, and then he fell madly in love, pursued her all through their senior year, and married her the summer after he graduated. She didn’t graduate, by the way. Was kind of quiet and on the social fringes until she hit her junior year, developed a huge bustline, and got very wild.”

  “I didn’t know he’d been married before.”

  “Oh yes. According to what I know, he was crazy about this little girl, and there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her. I have it on good authority that she gave him holy hell after they got married. Most people in town blame her for the divorce, and think the world of Cory.”

  I shredded a piece of my napkin. “I’ve met him. I can see how he could give a good impression, if he wanted to. But he is not a good person, Adrianne.”

  “It’s hard for me to judge.”

  I ate a bite of bread, even though I was full.

  “Let me ask you something, Lena. Do you really think he killed that girl, Cheryl Dunkirk?”

  “I don’t know. I did at first. Now I think her disappearance is tangled up in some big ATF case, I just don’t know what it is. But I have no doubt whatsoever that if he decided she was in his way, he’d have no qualms about getting her out of his way.”

  “How sure are you?”

  “The truth? This guy scares the living shit out of me.”

  “My dear, you are nothing if not colorful.” Adrianne tapped a finger on the table. “He’s remarried, you know. I met his wife years ago. Have you talked to her? They used to live near the lake, but they moved. Cory always described her as something of a recluse, and said she didn’t like to socialize.”

  “She’s next on my list, if she’ll talk to me. Which she probably won’t.”

  Adrianne pushed her plate away. “You have some time this afternoon?”

  “I can make some time.”

  “I don’t think I’ve told you, but I have a new project, called Reach Out—funded by a federal grant, by the way.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. We try to ease at-risk women back into the workplace. We mentor them, give them advice on schooling or job training that will get them an income big enough to actually support them. We’re big on the little things, too. We help them get their hair done, their nails done, buy professional clothes, drive them to and from interviews. All those little things nobody thinks of that can make or break someone on the edge. Amy has been an alcoholic for the last fifteen years. She’s been sober for six months—she’s got the AA medal to prove it, and she just got her GED. I’ve got a home visit scheduled with her today. I’d bet she has an interesting insight on Cory Edgers.”

  The test lunch was over, and I’d passed judgment. There was never any kind of casual interaction with Adrianne Lindstrom, no matter how it might look from the outside. The southern good ol’ boys had nothing on the steel magnolias.

  Adrianne reached for her purse. “You want to go with me and see if she has anything to say about her ex?”

  “They always talk about the ex.”

  I followed Adrianne along a complex switchback of country roads that had me confused after the first ten minutes. She drove her Mazda 686 just under thirty-five miles per hour, though I’ve heard they’ll go faster. You would never know that Adrianne is a superhero.

  I once saw her confront a six-foot-seven, ex-football player who had to weigh close to three hundred pounds. The image is one I’ll never forget—the man with a tire iron in his fist, and Adrianne wearing one of her horrible sweaters, this one pink with brown teddy bears on the front. She was slightly stooped that day, arthritis worse than ever, and had refused to tell him where his wife was, though he knew and she knew that she could have told him if she’d wanted to. I had run toward them, with no idea what the hell I was going to do when I got there, but she’d held her palm up at me.

  “This sort of nonsense is beneath you, Brent. I understand you’re frustrated and panicked. I’m sure you think the only way to relieve the pressure is to see her and talk to her and make everything okay. But that’s not love, my dear, that’s an addiction or a temper tantrum, and neither are very pretty. Raging at her and being violent makes you feel better because it raises your endorphin level, but I’m not going to let you do that at Cherry’s expense. I can offer you a Xanex if you’d like one. And would you please put that tire iron down? You’re not really afraid of me, my dear, are you?”

  And Brent, God bless him, put the tire iron down. Another one of Adrianne’s judgment calls, and one I’d never have made, not having a death wish.

  When I’d asked her about it later, she’d referred me to a book on male depression by Terence Real. “Society betrays girls around the age of eleven. But boys get worked over before they’re even three years old, poor little lambs.”

  I figured Adrianne knew. She’d raised four boys alone.

  Amy McAlister lived in a mobile home on a small grassy lot off a two-lane road that saw a lot of traffic. There were two cars in the gravel drive—a ’92 Ford Escort, and a ’99 Subaru. Adrianne pulled her little Mazda in behind the Escort and I parked my Miata in the yard.

  The house was turquoise and rust where it used to be turquoise and white, and had been top of the line in the late seventies. Stacked concrete blocks served as the front steps, and Adrianne had to take my arm and lean on me heavily to make it up and into the trailer.

  Inside, a radio played Allison Krauss, and the stench of Marlboros was more like an assault than a smell. Everyone was in the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a long bar. A woman on that divide between slender and emaciated sat on a stool with her head tilted back into the kitchen sink, and an overweight blonde with a blue smock over a white tailored shirt and loose jeans was massaging red dye into her hair.

  The woman with her head in the sink held a burning cigarette between her fingers. “Is that you, Adrianne?”

  “Yes, my dear, but don’t get up.”

  The woman giggled. “I wasn’t going to.” Her voice had the husky edge of a long-term smoker.

  “I’ve brought a friend. Lena, that’s Amy with her head in the sink.”

  “Better than in the oven,” Amy said. She waved the cigarette. “How are you?”

  “And that’s Milly there at the sink.”

  She looked at me over her shoulder. “I’m learning salon techniques and Amy is my guinea pig.”

  “Don’t believe her,” Amy said. “She’s been doing my hair since high school.”

  Amy pronounced hair like har.

  A young woman in her mid-twenties was setting out acrylic nails, red polish, little containers and sponges and a tiny professional drill. She had long black hair with a streak of white. She stood up and shook my hand.

  “Good to meet you, I’m Elyse.”

  “But we call her Skunk,” Amy said.

  “Drown her, will you, Milly?” Elyse sat back down at the table. She took one of my hands and shook her head. “A biter?”

  “Not usually.”

  “Want your nails done while you’re here?”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Come on, we’ve got time. Milly still has to cut and dry and God knows what else to Amy’s hair. Sit right there.” She pointed to a metal chair.

  Adrianne leaned against the kitchen counter. “Go ahead, Lena. I hear it’s better than therapy.”

  I knew I’d never find Joel getting his nails done while interviewing a background witness, and I wondered if that made me better or worse.

  “We’ve all been wanting to meet you,” Amy said.

  “Th
at’s true.” Elyse was looking at the size of my nail beds and matching each one to a white acrylic nail. “You sure have teeny hands. Sit down, hon, take the load off.”

  Milly looked at me over her shoulder. “We heard all about you from Adrianne and—”

  “Milly. No names.”

  “Sorry. Anyway, we heard all about you.”

  “Are you working on a case?” Elyse asked. She cut the tip off a small bottle of glue, applied it to the edge of a white nail, and pressed it in place over my chewed-up nail.

  “I’m here for your help,” I said.

  “Help with what?” Milly asked.

  “Information. On Cory Edgers.”

  Amy lifted her head out of the sink. “Cory Edgers?”

  Elyse applied glue to the base of another white nail. “You’ve surely come to the right place.”

  Amy McAlister’s bustline had lost a certain amount of magnificence with severe weight loss. She sat at the table with a towel wrapped around her head, and though her face was drawn and angular, tightened by years of heavy smoking, she still had a certain prettiness that would stay with her forever. The cheekbones were classic, proportions nicely symmetrical. She had a bon vivant presence at odds with her air of being a woman with significant personal demons. There were books on the kitchen table—computer programming, French II, Algebra II, and trigonometry. A stack of spiral notebooks lay beneath. Fifteen years of addiction is a hell of a thing to fight, but Amy McAlister seemed like a woman who could pull it off. She had a cigarette in one hand, another burning in an ashtray, and an open bag of Skittles candies in front of her on the table. Sugar and nicotine to keep the cravings away.

  “Cory Edgers loved me like you think you want a man to love you when you’re a little girl.” Amy glanced around the small kitchen, making sure she had everyone’s attention.

  It always happens this way. Interview someone, and they are reluctant to talk at first, but then the pleasure of being listened to, really listened to, begins to kick in and the next thing you know you can’t shut them up. Amy McAlister clearly liked the limelight. This was going to be good.