Legacy of Masks

by Sallie Bissell

  “Coming,” he said as they called to him. He dragged himself to his feet, walked over to stand beside Glenn Daws, moving in slow motion. Though he now smelled nothing but the sun-warmed pines, and heard nothing but the good-natured joking of the Baptist men, he still trembled inside. He had to do something before whatever was either in his head or out there in those woods turned and ripped out his heart.

  After pasting a sick grin on his face, Deke left the ground-breaking immediately after the photographer freed them from their pose. “I’ll talk to you later, buddy,” he told Glenn Daws. “I’ve got to go see about some things downtown.” He avoided mentioning Mary Crow’s name to Glenn—Daws had hated her since the moment she stood up in court on behalf of Ridge Standingdeer. That didn’t stop Deke, however, from actively seeking her professional advice. In legal matters both personal and professional, he intended to keep that woman on his side, Glenn Daws be damned.

  He got in his Lexus and roared back to town. His sweaty hands were slick on the wheel, and he tried to focus his attention on other, more pleasant things. Just remember that soon Standingdeer will be convicted, he told himself. Soon, too, you’ll be back on track with Avis. Though the girl had been more squirmy and distractible than most her age, soon he would have her just where he wanted her. He smiled at the thought of all that soft young skin beneath his fingers.

  He drove on, turning down Main Street. The afternoon sun glistened off the cars parked along the curb. He looked for the black Miata that still bore Georgia plates, but did not see it. She’s gone, he decided, his panic sharp and immediate. She’s stayed at home today, or worse, she’s out with that loser Walkingstick.

  Or maybe she rode into town with Walkingstick, he thought, forcing himself to remain calm. Maybe right now she’s upstairs in her office, going over the plans for Bear Den. Suddenly the name of the property sent a wave of nausea through him. He would have to call it something else. He no longer wanted anything to do with bears. He parked his Lexus in front of the Mercado Hispaño and hurried across the street, bounding up the stairs like a fireman rushing into a burning building. His heart sank when he saw Sylvia Goins shoving mail under Sam Ravenel’s door.

  “Coach Keener!” She brushed a greasy lock of hair back from her face. “What are you doing up here?”

  “I’ve got some business with Mary Crow,” he said. “Have you seen her?”

  “Not this morning,” Sylvia replied. Lord, he thought, she always speaks so slowly, it makes me tired just to say hello to her. “I can give her a message, though, if you like.”

  Yeah, right, Sylvia. Tell her that an invisible bear has twice lowered the temperature of my personal environment by thirty degrees, and has trashed one side of my car while growling like he wants to eat me alive. Just tell her that and see what she says.

  “No,” Deke said, loosening his tie. “I’ll check back with her later.”

  “I’ll tell her you came by!” he heard the big girl call as he hurried back down the stairs.

  He walked out of the cool building and into the bright afternoon. Again he looked for Mary’s Miata but saw only trucks and low-riding Fords parked in front of the Mercado Hispaño. A cluster of Mexicans stood by the side of his Lexus, pointing at the huge dent in the driver’s door. Oh, shit, he thought. What now?

  He crossed the street. Tito, the owner of the market, was standing there jabbering in Spanish to another man who wore cowboy boots and a pie-eyed boy he thought was Sylvia Goins’ boyfriend. He wondered, for a moment, if one of them hadn’t dented his poor car further, then as he drew closer, he saw what they were looking at. Now not only was his door smashed, but four long, deep scratches traveled down the side of the vehicle, from the edge of the window almost to the rear bumper. He gulped. It must have happened while he was having his picture taken, and he’d been too upset to notice before he took off for town.

  “Buenos días, Señor Keener.” Tito nodded, the gold tooth in the front of his mouth glinting in the sun. “We were just looking at your car.”

  He walked to examine them closer. He was speechless. They went all the way through the finish on the car, down to the bare metal.

  “Did you hit some kind of animal?” Tito’s tone was respectful, but his bright, dark eyes reminded Deke of the roosters that supposedly fought in his basement—sharp and clever, keen to find any weakness in the opposing bird.

  “I—I don’t know,” Deke replied, not knowing what else to say.

  The man with the cowboy boots began to snicker, rattling off something in Spanish.

  “Sí, sí.” Laughing, Tito turned to his friend, as if he, Deke Keener, the Prince of Pisgah County, was no more important than a fly. “Qué le espera un tipo que lo hace con niñitas?”

  The two Mexicans laughed as if at some private joke, then turned to stroll back in the store. Deke was left staring at his dented, scratched-up Lexus with Sylvia Goins’ Mexican boyfriend.

  “Well?” he said, furious at Tito’s arrogance. “What are you staring at?”

  “Your car, señor. It was once very beautiful. I can fix it back if you like.” The little man twisted the red bandanna he always wore around his neck.

  Deke’s first impulse was to laugh—the idea of a bunch of Mexicans working on his Lexus was ludicrous, but then he realized that if he took the car to his usual mechanic, everyone in town would soon know that he’d hit something with teeth and claws. Normally, that wouldn’t bother him, but with everything like it was now, it would probably serve him best not to attract any kind of attention at all. Zero. Nada, as his little Mexican friend would say.

  “How much?” he asked the little man.

  “Two hundred dollars.” He blinked, his eyes hopeful and wide.

  “Could you do it quickly? Pronto?”

  “Claro que sí.” He nodded, grinning. “You take me and the car to the house of my cousin, Luis. It will be finished tomorrow, in the morning.”

  He considered the Mexican’s proposition. After he dropped him and the car off, he could call Linda to pick him up. He could get a loaner from Bradley for the rest of the day, then get his Lexus back tomorrow. If José here fucked up, it would give him an excuse to come after Tito. If José did a good job, all traces of the bear would be gone without Randy Bradley or any other of those idiots knowing, and he would only be out two hundred bucks.

  “Okay, amigo,” he said, slapping the little man on the back. “Climb in. You just got yourself a job.”

  35

  “I can’t believe it.” Kayla lifted her face, looking as if she’d broken out in hives. “Coach Keener’s like our uncle. He’s been my father’s best friend, like forever.”

  Avis gulped as she thought of her own parents’ total adoration of the coach. How could the man who took her to ball practice and had given them a brand-new house be the same man on that tape? Yet they’d both heard him clearly, moaning with pleasure, telling Bethany how to do things Avis had never even dreamed people did. “I know what you mean,” she whispered. “My parents like him, too.”

  “But you don’t understand!” cried Kayla. “He’s always been there for us! Bethany acted really rude to him before she died, but he was the first one over here the morning Mom found her. Helping the cops, trying to calm everybody down. He took me out for doughnuts, just to get me away from everything.”

  Avis stared at her friend, wondering if she realized what she’d just said, but Kayla sat unaware, staring at the tape recorder, tears streaking her face.

  “How did Bethany act rude?” asked Avis.

  “Coach Keener gave us a ride home, after Bethany got off work. She acted like such a bitch! I called shotgun, but she made me sit in the backseat. She acted pissy all the way home and after I got out of his brand-new car, she slammed the door and started yelling at him! My mom had to come out and apologize!”

  “Didn’t you wonder why?” asked Avis.

  “Bethany was mean to everybody. My dad had made her quit seeing Ridge, and she took it out on all
of us.” Suddenly Kayla started sobbing anew. “But she wasn’t really being mean at all! She just hated Coach Keener!”

  Avis put an arm around Kayla’s shoulder. “Let’s put the tape recorder back in your dad’s office and go for a walk. Sometimes it’s easier to think when you’re moving.” Avis didn’t know if this was true or not, but she really needed to get out of this house. The enormity of what she’d just begun to suspect about Coach Keener was too big for Kayla’s room. She needed to consider it outside, where the big blue bowl of a sky might dilute its awfulness.

  “Okay.” Kayla sniffed as she removed the last tape from the machine and handed it to Avis. “But be sure and hide these again. I don’t want my dad to find them.”

  While Kayla went downstairs to return the tape player, Avis hid the tapes in the bottom drawer of Kayla’s dresser, beneath her underpants. Moments later they stood outside, hoping the hot sun would toast away the icy, chill fear inside them. With Darby huffing along behind, they crossed Kayla’s backyard and retreated to the woods just beyond the service road. Walking in silence, each pondered the magnitude of what they’d just learned. The most powerful man in Pisgah County; the man responsible for the quality of their lives and their families’ fortunes, had molested Kayla’s sister. Who and whatever else he might have done was still too frightening for Avis to give voice to, so she just followed Kayla along the creek, wondering sickly what Coach Keener might have in mind for her.

  “I just can’t believe it,” Kayla repeated for the hundredth time, plopping down on a log that had fallen over the small stream. “I mean, he’s been so good to us. All of us. Even the stupid softball team.” She looked up at Avis. “I wonder how many of them he’s fucked?”

  Avis lowered her eyes. She knew, of course, what fuck meant, but she’d never once spoken the word aloud.

  “You ride to the games with him,” Kayla said accusingly. “Is he putting it to you, too?”

  “No!” Avis said quickly. “But sometimes I think he’d like to. . . .”

  “What do you mean?” Kayla’s face twisted in new horror.

  “Every time he gives me a ride to the game he always touches me,” Avis admitted, her pale face growing red with shame.

  “Touches you where?”

  “So far, just my legs and arms. He jokes around. Says he’s checking to make sure I have enough muscles to play softball.” She swallowed hard. “But the way he does it really creeps me out.”

  “And that didn’t clue you in to something, Miss Private Detective?”

  Avis shook her head, humiliated. She didn’t know why she’d ignored her own revulsion. She just thought that was the way it was here, that was the way the coach treated all the girls on his team. She’d only wanted to fit in. Now she’d be a pariah for the rest of her life. Nobody would want to be friends with a girl who had allowed herself to be touched by a middle-aged pervert.

  “I just can’t believe any of this,” Kayla cried. “First he fucks Bethany, now he’s about to fuck you!”

  Avis looked at her new friend, then squared her shoulders, preparing to share what had become clear to her in Kayla’s bedroom. “Kayla, I think he did a lot worse than fuck Bethany,” she said, the word fuck feeling deliciously mature on her tongue. “I think he killed her.”

  “You what?” Kayla said, her voice high and breathy.

  “You said it up in your room,” explained Avis. “Bethany was rude to him. They argued about something after you went inside your house. She probably told him that she was going to take her tapes to the police. That’s why she had Ridge bury them, for safekeeping.”

  Kayla didn’t speak for so long, Avis wondered if she’d heard her, then she started shaking her head. “You actually think Coach Keener killed Bethany?”

  “Think about it, Kayla! It all adds up! Coach Keener is like the king of Hartsville. Nobody in the world would suspect him. But we have his voice on tape. We know that he and Bethany argued just before she was killed, and you said he was at your house when they found her body. You said he even helped the police.” Avis paused to let her theory sink in, then spoke again. “He probably put the cops on to Ridge!”

  Frowning, Kayla tried to see the logic of Avis’s reasoning. For a long moment she just sat there, squinting at the sunlight dancing upon the water, then she turned and looked at her newest friend. “If that’s true, then we’ve got to stop him. Before he kills some other girl.”

  “I know,” said Avis. “First, though, we’ve got to figure out how.”

  For a long time they sat on the log that spanned the creek, watching the water rush below them, each lost in her own thoughts. Everywhere they looked they saw Deke Keener—from the service road that bordered the subdivision, to the new sneakers on Avis’s feet, purchased at a real shoe store instead of the Goodwill, with money her father had earned building yet another Keener development.

  “So what are you thinking?” Avis spoke after what felt like a lifetime of silence, desperate to reestablish a connection with Kayla. Already she’d felt a cooling in their friendship. She was marked, damaged. She had been fondled by Coach Keener: Kayla had not.

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Kayla replied miserably. “I wish I didn’t have to think at all.”

  “Then I’ll think for both of us,” said Avis. “I think we should take those tapes to the police. They can do voice prints on them, just like they do fingerprints in a crime lab. That’ll definitely prove it’s his voice.”

  “Coach Keener’s friends with the new sheriff,” said Kayla. “He’s not going to rush out and arrest his pal for murdering my sister.”

  Avis started to protest, believing that most cops were honest fighters of crime. Then she remembered a mystery she’d read last winter, where a DA had intentionally destroyed important evidence because he’d fallen in love with a girl who’d poisoned the mayor of the town. Coach Keener owned their town. Who’s to say that evidence against him wouldn’t get “accidentally” lost?

  “Okay,” she said, scrambling to come up with an alternative plan. “Then we’ll go play the tapes for our parents. They can figure out what to do.”

  Kayla regarded her with utter scorn. “Avis, my dad would beat the shit out of me if I showed him those tapes.”

  “Then we’ll take them to my dad. Or my mom.”

  “And just how long do you think Coach Keener would let you live in that brand-new house of yours?”

  Avis gulped. Of course Kayla was right. She knew her parents would go to the police with these tapes. And then her father would be out of a job, all of them out of a home. They would have to load up another rented truck and go back to Greenville. There, she would again have to share a room with her grandmother and listen not to Ringo Starr, but to all her grandmother’s hellfire-and-brimstone preachers on the radio. Even with Coach Keener, here was better than back in Greenville. She looked over at Kayla. Though she was sitting on the log right beside her, Avis knew in reality she was far away, and growing more distant every second. If Avis didn’t come up with something fast, she was going to lose her one friend forever. The thought of life without Kayla made her heartsick. She was gazing down, growing slightly hypnotized by the sunlight on the water, when suddenly she had an idea. Though it made her tremble inside, she knew it was the one foolproof way to nail Coach Keener.

  “Why don’t we set a trap for him?” she said, her voice breathy with fear. “And use me for bait.”

  Kayla turned to her, her eyes wide. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll take your dad’s tape recorder. I’ll hide it. Then when Coach Keener starts rubbing my leg, I’ll—I’ll . . .” Avis gulped. “I’ll make him start saying those same things he said to Bethany.” Though Avis had no idea how she was going to manage that, she went on. “Once we have two tapes where he’s doing things to girls, and me as a victim who’s willing to press charges, we can go to the cops. We’ll have proof.”

  When Kayla finally spoke, her voice was like stone. “
You’re so full of shit, Avis. Nobody does stuff like that, except in your stupid books.”

  “So? That doesn’t mean it can’t be done!” Avis knew this was her last chance with Kayla. If she couldn’t convince her of this, she might as well plan on staying in her room, friendless, until she graduated from high school.

  “Then how are you going to do it? Where can you possibly hide that tape recorder so he won’t see it?”

  Avis thought. As tiny as the recorder was, it was still too bulky to hide anywhere on her toothpick of a body. She could, she supposed, stash it in her gear bag, but Coach Keener would find it odd if she kept shoving that big thing in his face every time he talked. She racked her brain, desperate, then suddenly she had it. “I’ll wear a cap! One of my father’s big ones. I’ll tape the recorder to the inside with duct tape, then tape the microphone to one of the air holes.”

  Kayla gave her a cold blue stare.

  “I can do it tomorrow night. He’s picking me up and bringing me back from the game—my parents are going to Greenville after my dad gets off work, to buy a new car.”

  “How are you going to get Coach Keener to do anything?” Kayla asked sullenly. “I mean, nobody’s going to send him to prison just for rubbing your stupid leg.”

  “I’ll pretend I really like what he’s doing,” Avis said wildly. “When he rubs my leg, I’ll groan.”

  “You’ll groan?”

  “Yeah. You know, like they do on TV. Unnnhhhhh.” Avis tried to replicate the orgasmic groans she’d heard on her mother’s soap operas.

  Kayla tilted her head, marginally impressed. “What if he goes crazy? What if he like puts his hand down your pants or tries to take off your bra?”

  Avis couldn’t answer. She felt a million different things, all at once. Disgust at the idea of an old man slobbering over her; embarrassment that Coach Keener might touch her in places that had heretofore been solely her own; a worse fear that he would laugh at what he discovered—breasts the size of peas, a crotch that was still as bald as a baby’s. What would she do if he laughed at her? What would she do if the other girls on the team found out?