Dirty laundry lay in piles on the carpet, and the smell of stale sweat wafted from a pair of battered sneakers that were sticking out from under the bed.
Savannah didn’t take long to examine the room. There wasn’t much to see. Not much to define a young man’s life. The only signs of productivity a couple of expensive items stolen from some innocent person’s home.
Savannah felt sick at heart, a combination of sad, ashamed, and angry. What did her brother think he was on this planet for . . . to take up space and breathe free air?
He was smart, healthy, and he had been raised to know the value of hard work, the virtue of self-sacrifice, and the difference between right and wrong.
Macon Reid had no excuse for this mess.
She shifted through the stacks of laundry, finding nothing but soiled clothes.
The CDs and boombox represented her brother’s only diversions. She thought of Gran’s saying about idle hands being the devil’s playthings, and understood part of Macon’s problems. He didn’t have enough to do.
Another vow: If and when she got him out of this current predicament, she’d make sure he had more responsibilities . . . like helping his aged grandmother make ends meet, instead of being a drain on her.
But when Savannah knelt on the floor beside the unmade bed and looked under it, she discovered that her brother had at least one other pastime besides listening to rock and roll, eating junk food, and collecting unwashed laundry.
Strewn under the bed was an impressive—or depressing—collection of pornography. Having seen more than her share of the stuff, Savannah recognized the subject matter as more hard core than the usual newsstand fare.
Little brother Macon had exotic sexual tastes.
“Gr-r-rr,” she said as she shuffled the junk around, trying not to see what she was seeing, “I so-o-oo didn’t need to know this.”
But her uneasiness about the pornography evaporated as her hand closed around something small . . . round . . . cool.
Like a coin.
A coin with a strip of cloth attached to it.
“No,” she whispered. “Please, God, no. . . .”
Her fingers curled around it, and she pulled her arm out from under the bed. Slowly, with a sinking feeling of inevitability, she opened her hand and looked.
In her palm lay an old bit of tarnished metal with a multicolored ribbon. A medal. A Civil War medal . . . similar to the ones that remained in the murdered judge’s display.
“Macon,” she said, closing her hand around the medal and squeezing it, as though she could somehow make it disappear. “Oh, Macon, no. . . .”
Her throat tightened until she felt she couldn’t breathe. She sat down hard on the floor, leaned forward, and hid her face against the side of the mattress.
The last time she had experienced something like that, she had been sparring at her local karate dojo and had taken an unexpected roundhouse kick to her solar plexus.
As soon as she could draw air in and out of her chest again, she steeled her emotions and slid her other hand under the bed. She knew she would find another. She knew there would be at least five more beneath those magazines . . . because there were that many missing from the display. He might have divided them with Kenny Jr., but . . .
No, there were six.
Six. All of them under her brother’s bed.
One by one, she found them and laid them on the carpet. They glowed in the chandelier’s golden light, like jewels displayed on velvet in a window display.
Somehow, it seemed important to her to line them up in two rows. Two perfectly straight rows, side by side.
A faint voice whispered to her as though speaking from the far end of a long, dark tunnel. It said, “Evidence, Van. You’re handling it with your bare hands. Homicide. First-degree homicide.”
But the distant warning was barely perceptible because of other sounds, deafening in their clarity, and vivid images that flashed across the screen of her imagination: Macon sitting in a courtroom, the jury foreman reading the verdict, “Guilty, as charged”; Macon being held down by burly prison guards and strapped to a table, arms outstretched, Gran sitting behind the glass, watching, weeping quietly into a lace-edged handkerchief, her lips moving in prayer.
Savannah shook her head, trying to clear the screen. In one fast movement, she swept the medals up off the carpet. She held them so tightly, she thought she could feel the pictures, the words imprinting themselves on her flesh. The metal was no longer cold, but felt as though it were burning a brand into her skin.
Rising to her knees, she shoved the medals into her slacks pocket and knelt there, shaking. For a moment, she tasted a bitterness welling up in her throat and she thought she might be sick, there on her brother’s stolen scarlet rug.
“Damn you, Macon,” she whispered. “Damn you, damn you!”
With all the self-control she could muster, she finally stood . . . and wondered briefly if her knees would hold her.
That was when she looked out the tiny, dirty window of the shed and saw the car pulling up in front of the house. The sun had set, but in the dim light that remained she could see it was Tom Stafford’s cruiser.
The driver’s door opened, and Tom stepped out.
When the passenger’s door swung open, as well, and Savannah saw Sheriff Mahoney haul himself out of the car, she felt the bile rise again. She choked it down.
The two men made their way to the front door of the house.
Savannah knew she had one minute, two at the most to . . . what? What the hell could she do?
Macon in the death chamber.
Gran crying.
Alma beside her, trying to comfort her, but . . .
The other image even clearer. The taped outline of Judge Patterson there in his library. His home. His bloodstains on the floor.
Cold blood. Murdered in cold blood in his own home.
“I hate you, Macon,” she whispered. “God help me, at this moment I really do hate you.”
She turned away from the window back toward the room. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the evidence. Homicide evidence that she had touched. With her bare hands.
Once again, she dropped to her knees beside the bed.
Feverishly she wiped the medals, one by one, with her shirttail and replaced them under the magazines.
Then she rose and stumbled out of the shed, slamming the door behind her.
The light.
She had forgotten to turn off that damned chandelier. The expensive one that her brother could never have bought on his own.
But it didn’t matter.
No longer able to choke it down, Savannah ran to the edge of the yard, leaned against the cement-block fence, and retched.
Suddenly, Tom was there, his arm around her waist, supporting her.
“Hey, sugar, it’s all right,” he was saying, his voice soft and reassuring. He patted her hair and pulled her against him until her face was against his broad shoulder. “You’re okay, Savannah. You’re fine now.”
She was only vaguely aware of Sheriff Mahoney standing nearby, watching, listening. No warmth or compassion radiated from his direction.
“I’m going to help her into the house,” she heard Tom say. “You . . . go on ahead.”
“Yeah, okay,” was the sullen reply. “But don’t take all night about it, hear?”
The strong, muscular arms around her tightened. “Come on, honey. We’ll get you inside and fetch you a cold drink. Then you’ll feel better.”
But Savannah knew, even as she gratefully allowed him to lead her along, that she wasn’t going to feel better about this right away. Maybe never.
Chapter 7
Savannah could have used a hot toddy before bedtime, but Gran didn’t allow such “tools of the Devil” as alcoholic beverages in her house. The list of banned items also included playing cards, dice, cigarettes, and television shows where the characters used four letter words or “the Lord’s name in vain.”
An
d although Savannah had never questioned those limitations before—it was, after all, Gran’s own home—a stiff toddy might have helped her get to sleep a bit faster. At least, before the crack of dawn.
Lying next to Gran on the fluffy feather bed, beneath the handmade quilt, Savannah had mentally removed and replaced those damned medals a dozen times before midnight . . . and that many more before the rays of the sun filtered through the lace curtains that covered the window beside the bed.
When she heard the crowing of the rooster, waking his hen harem and everyone else within cock-a-doodle-doo distance, she knew she was screwed. With basically no sleep, not to mention jet lag and the aftershock of severe familial trauma, this was destined to be a no-fun day.
She felt her grandmother stir beside her—not for the first time since they had retired. If her tossing and turning were any indication, Gran hadn’t gotten much sleep either.
“You still awake, darlin’?” Gran whispered.
Savannah turned onto her side to face her. “Yeah. Still.”
“Me, too.”
They kept their voices low, so as not to wake Alma, who had graciously offered to give Savannah her place next to Gran and was asleep on the sofa in the living room. Savannah could hear Cordele snoring in the adjoining back bedroom.
“Was that Jesup who came in late?” Savannah whispered.
“Yes. It was one-forty-six,” Gran replied. “I’ll have to have a talk with her about that carousin’ till all hours of the morning. She’s going through one of them rebellious teenager stages, I think. Gets something new pierced every week. I swear, she looks like she got caught in a barbed-wire fence.”
“Teenager? Gran, Jesup is twenty-three.”
“Yes, but she’s still an adolescent. Takes some longer to grow up than it does others. Jesup’s what you’d call a late bloomer in the maturity department.”
Savannah sighed. “You know, before this visit, I thought I knew my siblings better than I do. I had no idea how much crap you’ve had to put up with lately. Why don’t you toss them all out on their ears? Sink or swim, but either way, they’d be out of your hair.”
“Easy advice to give, but when it comes to the doin’ . . .”
Savannah thought of the medals. “That’s true. It’s not easy to leave them there in the deep end. Even when you know it’s the right thing to do.” A knot caught in her throat. “It’s so hard to know . . . if you’re doing the right thing or not.”
Gran reached over and laid her hand on Savannah’s arm. Savannah felt the softness of her grandmother’s flannel gown against her skin. Since she could remember, summer or winter, Gran had worn those long-sleeved, ankle-length nightgowns, made of flannel and spangled with tiny pastel flowers. This one had pink rosebuds and lace around the sleeve and neck edges.
And Gran always smelled nice. For years, when she had tucked Savannah into bed, leaned over and kissed her, and heard her bedtime prayers, Savannah could always smell the clean, fresh scent of her bath soap and hand lotion.
Lying here beside her grandmother, in her bed, the same fragrances took Savannah back to a time when this had been the safest place in the world. Gran’s bed was the ultimate sanctuary from thunder and lightning, scary monsters, creepy ghosties, and even the Boogey Man himself. Nothing evil, nothing even remotely bad could touch you . . . if you were lying next to Gran.
“It is hard to know what’s the best thing to do sometimes,” Gran said, patting her forearm. “But you don’t need to worry. I think you did right.”
Savannah looked across the pillows into the older woman’s eyes and saw a quiet peace that she only wished she could feel herself.
“Thanks, Gran. But you don’t know. I—”
“I know.”
The hand on Savannah’s arm tightened, and Gran nodded.
“You . . . you do?”
“I saw Sheriff Mahoney leaving with that little brown paper bag with the red tape sealing it up. I figure I know what was in it. I figure you do, too.”
“But how? How would you know?”
Gran sighed, rolled over onto her back, and stared up at the ceiling. “You ain’t the only one in this family with a nosy streak, you know. Where do you think you got that need to know everything about everybody that’s served you so well in the business you’re in?”
That was true, Savannah decided. Gran had always known everything about everybody, often before they even knew it themselves. It could be quite aggravating at times.
But was she trying to tell her that she had seen the . . . ?
“I saw them medals.”
Savannah nearly gasped. “You? You knew they were there? But how did you . . . ? When did you . . . ?”
“After we came back from the jail this afternoon, while you were at the Patterson place with Tommy Stafford. I went out back and searched his room. And from the look of things, I should’ve done it a long time ago. All that mess under his bed, those filthy magazines, and the place looks like a pig’s sty. It smells funny, too, and I don’t think it’s just from the dirty laundry.”
“But you saw those Civil War medals?”
Gran nodded.
“Did you know what they were? Did you know where he got them?”
“Of course I did. Everybody in the county knows about Judge Patterson’s collection of War Between the States memorabilia. There’s only one place those could’ve come from, and only one reason they’d be under Macon’s bed.”
“But you left them there. Knowing.” It was a statement of amazement, not a question.
“Yes, I did.” She drew a deep, tired breath. “And so did you.”
Savannah lay there, unable to speak for what seemed like a very long time. Her amazement subsided, turning to relief.
“Then you think we did the right thing?”
“A man was murdered, Savannah. Killed in cold blood.”
She swallowed hard. “I know.”
“And justice . . . justice is underestimated these days. It’s a holy thing. You can only interfere with it so far. Even for love of kin.”
Savannah allowed the words to touch, to soothe, to heal her troubled spirit.
“And we’ve gotta remember that,” Gran continued, “no matter what comes of it all. Like I’ve told you before, you can’t judge the rightness or the wrongness of an act by its outcome. A lot of good decisions have caused a heap of misery in the world, but that don’t mean those decisions weren’t right. We’re gonna hold on to that. You hear me, Savannah girl?”
Savannah nodded as a warm tear trickled from the corner of her eye down into her ear. “I hear you, Gran.”
The biscuits, the peach preserves, and the grits were even better than Savannah remembered. Sitting at her grandmother’s table, shoveling in the goodies, she promised herself to get rid of the store-bought pastries in her own cupboard and celebrate her Southern heritage more often when she returned home.
So what if you lived in California with the beautiful, skinny people? They just didn’t know what they were missing at the breakfast table.
Whole-grain granola and yogurt indeed.
But the food proved better than the family politics.
The meal began peacefully, as only Savannah, Gran, and Cordele were at the table. For some reason, the rest of the gang had decided to provide for themselves and were blissfully absent.
But problems started when sister Jesup dragged herself to the table and plopped herself onto the chair across from Savannah’s.
“Hi, Van, good to see ya,” she mumbled, burying her face in her coffee cup and draining more than half of it before coming up for air. She didn’t look particularly ecstatic, Savannah thought. “When did you get in?”
Savannah had seen heroin addicts with rosier complexions. And Gran had been right about the piercings. Six studs in each ear, one in her left nostril, another through her lower lip, and when she spoke, Savannah was sure she had seen the glimmer of silver on her tongue.
And the tattoo, a Celtic chain, l
ike a choker around her neck.
In Jesup’s black pajamas, Savannah thought she looked dressed to attend some sort of ritual—like burying a dead cat at the crossroads by the light of a full moon.
“I got into town yesterday afternoon,” Savannah replied. “Right after . . . you know . . . Macon was arrested.”
Cordele, wearing an almost identical white shirt and dark skirt as the night before, sat primly beside Jesup. Giving her a contemptuous, sideways glance, she said, “I would have found out about Macon earlier, but I was at school. Where were you, Jes?”
“Hanging out with my friends. Where do you suppose I was? I didn’t hear about it until we all stopped at the Burger Igloo for supper.”
“And what time was that?” Cordele wanted to know.
“About eight. What’s your point?”
Gran cleared her throat. “That’s enough, girls. No snapping at each other at the breakfast table. You can save it for when you’re washing dishes later.” She turned to Jesup. “But you should have come home, Jes, when you first heard there was trouble in the family. We needed you.”
Jesup blushed under the gentle criticism. Savannah was relieved to see she wasn’t such a hard-bitten case that she couldn’t still take Gran’s admonitions to heart.
With a little shrug, Jesup said, “Why would you need me for?”
“When a family’s in trouble, it needs everybody. We need your strength, Jessie, girl. We need your ideas, your opinions. You’re a precious part of this family, and I think you might have forgotten that for a moment last night.”
“I’m sorry, Gran. Next time I’ll . . .”
Her apology was interrupted by a seldom-heard cacophony of barking, growling, and baying, all coming from Beauregard as he bounded off the back porch and sailed around the side of the house, ears and jowls flapping.
“We got company,” Gran said, slowly rising from the table, “and they must be strangers. Sounds like Beau’s gonna eat ’em, if we don’t put a stop to it.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s gotten into that animal lately. He’s been so high-strung and nervous, with all that’s goin’ on. And now we got company. Who do you reckon it is, callin’ at this time o’ the morning?”
Peaches And Screams (A Savannah Reid Mystery) Page 8