She nodded. Armed with Vesuvius Hightower’s last name, she could search the paper’s archives for confirmation.
Liam took up the story. “A lot of times our guys don’t have any family to organize a funeral service. But Vesuvius did. He had aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters. We held his service yesterday. They had honestly tried to help him, I think, but he’d worn them out. That happens a lot with the mentally ill and mentally challenged. Their families don’t have resources for the basics, much less mental health care.”
Branigan knew this was why Liam had been so determined to hire a mental health counselor as soon as he could raise the money.
“Damn,” she said, then repeated a question she’d asked him a dozen times. “Doesn’t this work break your heart?”
Liam shrugged, held his palms up. “It probably should. But this stuff comes so fast and so often, it mostly washes right over you.” He smiled apologetically. “But I did think the angle of father and son dying the same way was a story that cried out for the Brani G touch. You can talk to Dontegan more if you need to. And anybody else.” He finished his bagel and tossed the wax paper into a trashcan as Dontegan left. “V was well liked,” Liam added. “He ran the laundry room most weekends.”
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll try to flesh it out with your men and the Hightower family, and have it ready to run Sunday.”
Liam picked up his coffee. “Now, how can I help you?”
“You remember the Resnick murder?”
“Sure.” The entire newsroom had been called in on the first few days of the notorious case in July, nearly ten years ago. Alberta Elliott Grambling Resnick, a cousin of Tan’s father, had been stabbed to death in the kitchen of her lovely shaded mansion, two blocks off North Main Street. The case was strange, start to finish.
Mrs Resnick was an elderly widow with two sons and a daughter, all of them well known in historic Grambling. Because the murder occurred over a long July 4 weekend, all the children and grandchildren had been gathered. And given Mrs Resnick’s wealth, all were suspects.
July 4 fell on a Thursday, and the family threw its lavish annual holiday party, followed by the city’s fireworks display, easily seen from the front yard. Around 11 p.m., the party broke up. The older son, the daughter and two thirteen-year-old granddaughters spent the night.
The next day, July 5, there was still plenty of activity at Mrs Resnick’s house. The family members who’d spent the night had breakfast together. The son then took his mother to a doctor’s appointment. The daughter dropped the two teens, her nieces, at the Peach Orchard Country Club pool, then returned to the hotel where her husband and sons were staying.
The son dropped Mrs Resnick at home after her doctor’s appointment. She assured him she could fix her own lunch, so he went home. The granddaughters walked back to their grandmother’s house in late afternoon, to find her lying on the kitchen floor, stabbed seven times.
Hysterical, the teens ran next door and flagged down a neighbor who was cutting grass. When he could make out the girls’ disjointed story, he yelled for his wife to call the police, sent the girls inside his house, and headed over to Mrs Resnick’s. He stayed until the police arrived, blue lights spinning, four minutes later.
Because of Mrs Resnick’s standing in the community, because she was a Grambling and because she had a large family, the house filled quickly. Police, the coroner, and city council members rushed to the scene. Detectives feared the crime scene was being contaminated, but it was hard for officers to keep out their bosses. Only when the police chief arrived three hours later — summoned from a theme park with his family — did he crack down on unnecessary personnel and send his bosses home. By then it was too late. Detectives were sure their crime scene had been polluted.
Meanwhile, officers herded family members onto a back porch for interviews. Neighbors brought plates of cookies, and coolers filled with soft drinks. One detective Branigan interviewed called it “Southern hospitality run amok”.
The Rambler’s cop reporter, Jody Manson, was one of the first on the scene, but police kept him and the rest of the media at bay in Mrs Resnick’s driveway. It wasn’t a bad vantage point to see family members arriving in twos and threes, some granite-faced, some crumpled and wailing. Jody and two other reporters gathered information at the crime scene while Branigan and the rest of the staff worked from the newsroom, preparing a front-page story about Mrs Resnick’s life and charitable contributions, and another in which Grambling society talked about the loss to the community.
That was day one.
In the confusion of the murder, no one noticed that Mrs Resnick’s car was missing from a detached garage. So the lead story on day two was that the murderer had apparently stolen Mrs Resnick’s 1980 Thunderbird from her garage and abandoned it a mile away in the parking lot of a vacant grocery store — the very lot where Branigan’s Honda Civic was now parked outside Jericho Road. Inside the store, three homeless people, squatters, lived without running water or electricity. Police interviewed them repeatedly, but they seemed genuinely bewildered by the whole thing.
On day three, The Rambler had another blockbuster: a witness had seen Mrs Resnick’s distinctive gray-green T-bird streaking by early on the afternoon of July 5. The young man laughingly told friends later that day, “She’ll have fun, fun, fun ‘til her children take the T-bird away.” The comment made its way back to neighbors, who told police, who brought the young man in for questioning. He’d been on a bicycle and didn’t get a look at the driver, he said. That was why he assumed it was Mrs Resnick. Police assured him she was dead by then.
For a week, a month, three months, police chased leads, interviewed and reinterviewed family members and neighbors and service providers. Mrs Resnick’s neighbors were understandably nervous and eager to speak with officers. The net was cast broad and wide, for Mrs Resnick’s sons had hired numerous workmen at her home in the weeks preceding the July 4 party. So workers from a fence repair company were interviewed, painters, landscapers. People who were visiting neighbors came under suspicion. In a city with no unsolved murders, this over-the-top stabbing in broad daylight stymied police.
Now, as the tenth anniversary neared, the case was on Tan’s mind. Which meant it was on Branigan’s.
“Tan-4 has asked me to do a piece on Mrs Resnick’s murder,” she explained, “looking at the investigation and how it could have gone unsolved this long.”
Liam nodded. “There’s still a lot of interest. But how can I help?”
“Well, you remember how every lead fell through on the family members, the workmen she’d had in, the neighbors?”
Liam looked thoughtful for a moment. “Yeah, and remember that stranger living in her pool house? And then coming inside her house and playing her piano? Looking back, I’m sure he was mentally ill. At the time, we didn’t know what was going on.”
“Exactly. Once every logical suspect fell through, the police wondered if it wasn’t some transient who killed her, hopped on a train, then left.”
“Okay.”
“Who would know better about that population than you?”
Liam’s eyes widened. “Now I see where you’re going.”
“Could you ask around? None of us knew these folks ten years ago. But now you do.”
“I guess so,” Liam said slowly. “But there’s no reason to believe a transient would have returned.”
“I know. It’s a long shot. But I’ve been at the police station for a week, looking through boxes and boxes of files. Believe me, Liam, these guys were committed. They eliminated everyone who had the remotest connection to Alberta Resnick. I’ll be spending most of my time looking over their shoulders and interviewing family members. But what if it was a stranger? Someone with no reason — no sane reason — to kill her? Someone who just stumbled in during that window of time between her son leaving and her granddaughters returning?”
“We always thought that was a possibility,” Liam said. “Especially with h
er car left here where homeless people were sneaking in and out. Man, I haven’t thought of that case in years. Probably since I left the paper. That was the last story I worked on.”
“It was?”
“Yeah. I left that August for seminary.”
“Anyway, that’s what I’ll be doing between now and July 5. If any of your guys have memories that go back that far, please ask ’em.”
“Can’t hurt.”
As Branigan rose to leave, her eye fell on a slim table half hidden behind Liam’s desk. He had a new picture of the family — himself tall and freckled, Liz, tiny and olive-skinned beside him. Charlie was her father’s daughter, tall and fair-skinned, with long, red-gold hair caught in a ponytail, blue eyes laughing in a way dear and familiar. But it was Chan, almost Liam’s height but looking nothing like him, who made Branigan nearly stop breathing. With his sandy blond hair and tanned skin, the boy looked like neither of his parents. In fact, Chan looked far more like her.
“Have you seen him?” she asked, her voice strained.
“Who?” Liam started idly, then saw where her gaze had landed. “Oh. No. Of course I’d tell you if I had, Brani.”
She nodded, blinking rapidly to clear her vision. “Great picture of Charlie and Chan,” she said.
She closed the door quietly behind her.
CHAPTER FIVE
JULY 4, TEN YEARS AGO
Amanda Resnick turned her powder blue Mercedes off North Main, cutting her speed automatically, watching for children to dart into the street. She’d played on these streets as a child and knew how one could lose all sense of danger when chasing a ball or a cat.
She passed a giant magnolia tree, and her mother’s elegant, three-story stone house came into view. Her mother’s house — that’s how she always thought of it, though she’d lived in it herself for twenty-one years. She and her brothers Ramsey and Heath had built forts under that magnolia, caves really. No sunlight could penetrate its huge branches and flat, glossy leaves.
The spacious front yard was nicely trimmed, she could see, grass low, shrubbery squared off. Thank goodness. Amanda knew what a chore it’d been for Ramsey and Heath to get Mother’s permission to let landscapers prepare for this party, to get the iron fence on the side repaired, to have the front porch painted. Or the ver-an-dah, as her mother throatily intoned. She also knew they’d had no such luck with the back yard and pool area. Mother had put her foot down, accusing them of trying to sell the house out from under her.
What an old bat.
She turned the Mercedes into the driveway, arching oaks overhead making it a dim tunnel. The car purred to the back of the house, where the driveway widened into a slate expanse large enough to hold six cars. On one side was a detached three-car garage, wooden, painted white. On the other side of the parking area was the house itself, with a simple white door breaking up its flat stone face, wood on the bottom, six glass panes on top.
Beyond the parking surface, the path to the pool was barely visible through the wildly growing hedge. Little had changed since she last lived here, twenty-four years before.
Amanda sighed, and rummaged in her bag for the key she used once a year.
“Mother,” she called, knocking and turning the key simultaneously. Dollie, her mother’s chihuahua, walked to the door and yipped twice. Seeing it was Amanda, she turned and waddled back to her pillow in the laundry room. Amanda stepped into the kitchen, dim like the driveway, and dated, its yellow and brown wallpaper hideous. The cupboards, once gleaming white, were faded and yellowed. Depressing, Amanda thought, and unnecessary. The house was once a showhouse, and could be again if Mother would let go of a few dollars.
At least it was clean, she could tell, sniffing pine-scented floor cleaner. Tabitha had seen to that.
She walked through the kitchen into the spacious dining room, set up for tonight’s party. Through an arch was the living room — or par-lah, according to her mother — with its handsome hardwood floors, cabbage rose rug and gleaming black grand piano. The formal rooms, at least, retained their grandeur. She found her mother, seated at the silent piano.
“Hello, Mother,” she said formally.
Alberta Resnick, regal even in gray slacks, paisley blouse and black ballet flats, raised her head with a start. “Amanda. I didn’t hear you come in.”
Amanda came forward and hugged her mother stiffly.
“Where are your boys?”
“By the hotel pool by now, I imagine.”
“But they’ll be here tonight?”
“Of course.”
“I... I... need to tell you something, Amanda. Before everyone arrives.”
“Okay.” She settled into an armchair. “We’ve got hours before the party.”
“You heard about that man who came in the house last month, the one I caught playing the piano?”
Amanda laughed. Her brother had shared the bizarre story about a mentally ill homeless man who had set up residence in the pool house, then had dared come into the main house. “Ramsey said you gave him what for.”
Alberta Resnick didn’t join in her daughter’s laughter. In fact, she looked at her a long moment.
Finally, Amanda said, “I’m sorry, Mother. It wasn’t funny. It was sad, or even scary, I suppose. But it was so like you. Eighty years old and not afraid of a stranger in your house.”
“And I’m not afraid now,” her mother continued. “I’m... wary, I guess you could say.” Then abruptly, “I think Heath was behind it.”
“Behind what?” asked Amanda, bewildered by her mother’s sudden shift.
Alberta gazed at her steadily.
“Behind the crazy man playing your piano?”
Her mother nodded.
“Mother, that makes no sense. Ramsey said the guy was mentally ill and thought he lived in your pool house. What could Heath possibly have to do with that?”
“Heath wants me to sell the house,” Alberta said stubbornly. “He’s been after me to cut the shrubbery and list the house. When nothing was working, I think he tried to scare me out.”
Amanda’s lips parted, but no words came. She stared at her mother. Finally, she got her thoughts together. “Heath? Mother? Do you hear yourself? No offense, but you’re eighty years old. Heath has money of his own. What possible reason could he have for wanting to sell your dam... to sell your house a few years early?”
“He does,” Alberta said with finality. “And I want to cut him out of my will. Tomorrow. I want you to take me to my attorney’s office tomorrow.”
Amanda breathed out noisily, already exasperated after just two minutes with her mother. Why couldn’t the old lady go quietly?
“Mother, I don’t think this is right. I’m going to have to think about it.”
“Think about it, and let me know tonight,” her mother said, effectively dismissing her.
Amanda sat for another moment, but it was clear she had lost her mother’s attention. As always. She rose with a silent shake of her head and walked toward the kitchen, heels ticking on the hardwood, then less stridently on the linoleum. She let herself out of the kitchen door, checking to make sure she had locked it behind her. She was puzzling over her mother’s request, but puzzling too over something else. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Her mother was as aggravating as ever, but something was a little off.
Amanda didn’t want to get in the middle of her mother’s war with her younger brother. She’d distanced herself from her family, and that’s how she liked it. She’d made a life with Bennett and their sons, and now she wanted nothing more than to find her husband and get his take on her mother’s request. He would know what to do.
She was so engrossed in her thoughts, in finding Bennett and sharing this latest weirdness in her family, that she didn’t glance toward the hedges that blocked the pool.
Even if she had, she wouldn’t have seen someone crouching, watching, so thick was the tangle.
CHAPTER SIX
She was hungry. When w
as the last time she ate? She searched her mind, but couldn’t come up with an answer. She squinted from the shade of the bridge to an abandoned warehouse. The trees in between were casting almost no shadows, so it must be midday. Lunch time. She’d had no breakfast, obviously. No supper last night. Come to think of it, no lunch yesterday either.
Her mind couldn’t go back further than that. Maybe she’d had breakfast yesterday at that ol’ mission church that looked like a grocery store, where they let men live but not women. What the heck was up with that? Everybody would tell you the streets were harder on a woman.
Maybe she’d go back there. There were all kinds of do-gooders around that place who would give you crackers, or canned goods with ring-tabs, if it wasn’t time for a meal. Specially if you could find a time that Pastor Liam wasn’t around. He’d want to talk about re-hab. You’d think re-hab was the gospel itself to hear that freckled freak go on about it.
She sat up and unzipped the dirty backpack she was using for a pillow. Was there a little something in there to get her going? Her hands grasped a bottle, but when she pulled it out, it was empty. And worse: a brown spider came with it and went scurrying up her arm. She flailed wildly, a screech erupting from her parched throat.
A head popped through the flap of the tent closest to her. “You all right, hon?” asked a heavyset woman, her head wrapped in a blue kerchief.
She nodded mutely, suddenly scared that she might be heard by Demetrius. She wanted to stay as far away from his swatting hands as she could get. She glanced around the campsite, but no one else was paying attention. At the far end of the shaded area, a small fire was going, with a grill rack propped on rocks, and a battered coffee pot on top. Two men, one black, one white, were avoiding its heat, trying to bring days-old coffee to a boil.
Her neighbor was chatty. “Elise and Slick got arrested last night,” she said, with a nod up the concrete incline to the plywood shack under the bridge’s girders. Perched on no more than four feet of concrete ledge, it was tucked directly beneath the roadway. She blearily wondered how the builder had gotten the large plyboards up the incline without tumbling off.
The Cantaloupe Thief Page 3