"It's sweet," I said. "But I've lived here my whole life so it's nothing I can't handle."
She looked down, as if a fly might have landed on an ice cube, and then said, "That drink my uncle gave you, it was a cure-all."
"Uh-huh. I think that's what he called it."
"It doesn’t have much power if you don't believe."
"Meaning what, exactly?"
"That it was probably a test, seeing how his piddling affected you."
"Voodoo."
She made a sour face. "He don't use that word. Makes him seem so much like a joke. He’s already got it bad enough. People cross the street when they see him."
"Who?"
"Everybody," she said, smirking. "Somebody hears voodoo, they think about the devil. It's nothing like that. My uncle's a superstitious man, but he's no different than any other uneducated person his age. It's just that the superstitions have taken place of the other stuff, the stuff that has real power."
"Like the drink."
"Like the drink. The stuff people don't understand. There ain't no need to fear what isn't mysterious. Do you know what I'm saying?"
"Yes," I said.
"The fact is, that it is mysterious is powerful. People say they’re skeptical of anything that ain't got a direct explanation. But you look. Most folks still make a point to walk around ladders or build skyscrapers without floor thirteen. They still say 'God bless you' when you sneeze. Superstition is powerful, 'specially in a place full of spirits as the South."
She took a long drink from her tea and set it back on the table, matching up the bottom of the glass with the wet ring on the table. She saw me watching and said, "Old habit. My uncle's got some little things, some peccadillos, that he's caused me to take up. This is one of 'em. No idea why I do it, but I do."
"I know somebody else who does the exact same thing." I lifted my own glass from the table and finished the drink. "Let me change course, Janita. Your son, did he practice, um, the same habits as your uncle?"
"Emmitt had enough to set him apart. He was always trying to make himself the most normal person alive, had no stomach for his great uncle's...beliefs. Hated to go out in public with him. Made Emmitt crazy when the old man's superstitions popped up in public, like some kind of mania. So, no, I couldn't see him doing it. God, I could only imagine."
"Did you ever see your uncle put, I don't know, some kind of spell or something - God, I don't have the vocabulary to talk about this - or some other kind of whatever on him?"
She said she had never thought he would. It seemed off-limits to her. At this point, I was just trying to figure out how he was visiting me in my dreams.
"How did Emmitt spend time trying to fit in?"
"That's not what I'm talking about. He didn't change to fit in, to be popular. He just didn't want to be harassed."
"What are you talking about? I don't believe I understand."
Janita stood, taking both of our glasses from the table. They clinked together as she headed for the kitchen. She sighed. "Let's go back to his room," she said forlornly, "and we'll see what we can dig up."
In the kitchen, she poured the ice into the sink, placed both glasses on an adjacent counter.
"We don't have to go in there," I offered.
She turned and stared. "Yes, we do. Come on. Follow me down the hall."
Dozens of framed photos lined the walls, and I caught fragments of them as I walked, trying to avoid being too intrusive.
In one picture, a boy I assumed to be Emmitt smiled precociously from atop a step stool, his face alight. He couldn't have been older than six or seven. In another, he sat in his mother's lap, his hands folded respectfully in his lap, and in that photograph he looked to be about two or three.
"Lot of beautiful pictures," I said.
"I need to take care of them. They're all I have left."
"You have memories."
"Memory is unfaithful," she said. "You remember so well the night you got arrested?"
I got the point.
Emmitt's room was small and spare and neat, and the only mess - a pile of clothes at the room's center - seemed to have accumulated after he died.
"Still can't touch 'em," Janita said, referencing the clothes. "They got his smell on 'em, though, and that's nice."
I surveyed the place, taking in mental sips of the scenery.
"You're the first person to come in here since. Well. Anyway, I get people keep offering to come and help me clean up his room, and I keep telling 'em, 'He was just about one of the cleanest children I ever met. No need to come help me.' They don't understand. It's like a painting. The second I change something, it's like I painted over it."
We stood in awkward silence for a few moments. I almost thought I could feel the grief wafting off of her.
Finally, she turned and walked past me. "Might do you some good to be in here. I can't stand it for more than a minute."
I circled the room once, unable to focus on any single detail. After that, I stood in the middle and began to take a mental inventory. The furniture was old but well cared-for, clean and sturdy. Unlike the hall, the bedroom had very few pictures. None with his uncle and only a few with his mother. The rest were random school photographs.
In the corner stood a bookshelf, sparsely filled with classic works of no particular period, among them a dog-eared copy of Homer's Odyssey, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, among others. Stacked on the shelf below that was a small collection of more modern books: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Running with Scissors, Naked Lunch.
I walked to the corner and retrieved the guitar case, placing it on the bed and snapping each latch before opening the lid. The guitar inside wasn't extravagant, but it was nice. A beginner's guitar. The action on the strings might have been a bit high and the wood somewhat thin, but otherwise it was a good instrument. I looked around, checking behind me for some reason, as if somebody might oppose, and then called out, "May I take it out of the case?"
"What?" Janita yelled, clanging something around in another room.
"The guitar, can I take it out and look at it? Just a hunch."
"I reckon so," she said, a bit timidly.
"I don't have to."
"No, no. Go ahead."
I gently retrieved the guitar, pushing the case aside before taking a seat on the bed. The instrument felt nice in my hands, comfortable, and I finger-picked an old blues lick, expecting a wild sensation to overtake me, something from my dreams. I got nothing. Just the satisfaction of playing guitar again. I'd sold my own years ago. It hurt to press down on the strings, but I fingered a C and then strummed a generic rhythm.
Something didn't fit. Emmitt Laveau was no blues man, like the dreams I'd had. He was educated, happy, seemingly soft-spoken, not the sullen, wild-eyed man I had met in my subconscious. "Was Emmitt into the blues much, Janita?" I called.
"No. uh-unh. Not whatsoever, that I can recall."
Hmm, I said under my breath. It made no sense, in relation to the Boogie House. Old building had nothing to do with either the life or the death of that young man, and yet, it was the reference point for everything.
Frustrated, I flipped the guitar over and checked the back, looking up and down the neck and body. It had been recently cleaned but not played.
When I turned it back over, I noticed a white triangle in the sound hole. Some companies will glue a logo inside the guitar, but this wasn't part of the original construction. I flipped the guitar back over, with the sound hole facing the ground, and shook it, hoping for the object to fall out. Same tactic I had used to retrieve lost guitar picks.
I turned it back over. Peering inside the sound hole, I saw that the white edge was in fact the corner of a picture, and the picture had been taped inside. It wasn't impossible to accomplish, if you had small hands and did it while the strings were off.
If I used one hand to push the strings out of my way, I could get the other almost completely inside.
With my middle finger, I scratched at the small rectangle of scotch tape.
Finally managing to scrape the adhesive from two corners, I pulled evenly on the picture and brought it out.
It was a Polaroid, only a couple of years old. Emmitt stood on the left, wearing a long sleeve rugby shirt and baggy jeans. He was leaning against another young man, arm wrapped around his shoulders. Both men smiled carelessly at the camera, mutual body language suggesting they knew each other quite well. Intimately, even. In the background, an old, quaint river roiled past, and I recognized some of the landmarks. They were in Savannah, posing next to River Street.
The other person in the picture, smiling in a way I had never seen before, confident and careless and happy in a childlike way, was none other than Jeffrey Brickmeyer.
* * *
I held the photograph inches away, glaring as if I didn't quite believe what I was seeing. It wasn't easy to accept. I replaced the guitar in the case and sat on the bed, dumbfounded, staring at Jeffrey and Emmitt.
Janita reappeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on an old dish towel, and I folded the picture with one hand so that it couldn’t be seen. "Whatcha doing?" she said, her brow creased.
In that moment I had to make a decision. Either I could hide the picture, or I could be honest with a dead man’s mother. Something about the sadness in the woman’s eyes made my decision for me.
"This came out of the guitar," I said, standing up. The picture felt electric when I let go of it, and I watched her eyes grow wide with comprehension.
"Oh, Lord," she said. A tear slid from her eye and bounced off her dress before landing somewhere on the floor. "Oh, Lord, Lord. Uh-unh."
I shoved one hand into a pocket and clasped my chin with the other, searching the carpet. "I'm sorry," I said. I was speaking entirely on instinct. "I wish I hadn't found it."
"No, no. The truth is the truth. And this," she said, brandishing the picture, "is one hell of a truth, I tell you what."
She placed one hand on my forearm, nodding, and pulled my hand out, into which she placed the photograph. "I always suspected. No. No, that’s not right. I knew. A mother knows her son. But I never, not in a million years, knew this." Flicking her eyes up, staring into mine, she said, "I promise that. I would have told you. Lord, have mercy."
I felt pressure on my forearm, and I realized that she was gently pushing me away. I stepped back and watched her. She, in turn, ran one palm down the length of the bed, straightening the wrinkled sheets, and then collapsed.
My hand shot out to grab her, but she landed wholly on the bed, face-down. She rolled over and sobbed openly, arms outstretched as if in embrace. She looked like a woman touched by God in a Pentecostal church, quivering on the ground and speaking in tongues, made dumb by the spirit of the Lord.
Except, of course, she wasn't praising God. "Leave me," she said, between great, heaving cries, and that's exactly what I did, nodding and sliding the picture in a pocket before sneaking out the front door.
Backing out of the driveway, I took one last look at the house. A trick of the mind caused the house to quiver like it labored underneath an unseen weight. I turned to look at the main highway, and I didn't glance back at the Laveau house.
* * *
I went directly to the newspaper office and spoke to an old friend. Doris Allworth had worked at the paper since people started putting ink on paper, and I knew her because she had played bridge with my Aunt Birdie for years back when I was a kid.
She smiled and stopped typing when she saw me. Even though she was older, Doris had maintained mental sharpness through a seeming inability to quit writing.
“You haven’t come to give me the scoop of a lifetime, have you?” she asked.
I walked on in and sat across from her impossibly messy desk. Books, Diet Coke cans, and old newspapers - of course - covered every square inch.
The picture of Emmitt and Jeffrey was in my front shirt pocket, and I wanted to slide it out and throw it on the desk, but I didn’t want to show my hand before the ante.
“I need you to work with me on something,” I said. “It is big news, but I want to manage the way it is released, and I’ve got to know I can trust you before I hand any of it over.”
“Young man, it is not my policy to make deals for information. Even though this paper is a weekly, and we often have more pictures than words, I will not compromise my journalistic reputation because your aunt and I used to deal cards every so often.”
The picture almost felt hot in my pocket. “I have uncovered something that could change the Emmitt Laveau case instantly.”
For some reason, I snapped my fingers for emphasis. Doris only stared at me.
Apparently unimpressed, she said, “To be a reliable source, you have to be reliable, Rolson.”
“Yeah, I read the article about my accident in the paper a few weeks ago. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I’m making amends, and this may help.”
And yet, I didn’t want to show her. My fear was that releasing the picture would not only ruin the Brickmeyers - the intended purpose - but it would heap unnecessary anguish on the Laveaus.
She leaned back and clasped her hands on her lap. “Just show me what you got, Rolson. I’ll take care of the rest. No promises, if it gets away from me, but if this thing is as juicy as you say it is, I’d rather have it and not get everything my way than to get none of it.”
I balanced the two possibilities. What would Janita Laveau think of me outing her son to the entire community? More importantly, what would her uncle think? Or what would he do?
In the end, I suppose there hadn’t even been a choice. I’d come straight to the paper, holding the picture like a hot potato. Any attempt in me to be coy about my intentions was mere self-preservation.
I showed Doris the picture of Jeffrey and Emmitt. A cynical twinkle emerged in the news reporter's elfin face.
“What am I looking at?” she asked.
I pointed to Jeffrey Brickmeyer. “Leland Brickmeyer claims to have never met Emmitt Laveau. This picture is pretty clear evidence-”
“It’s not that clear,” she said, cutting me off.
“But it’s clear enough evidence that either what he is saying is a lie, or else that at least one of the Brickmeyers has - had - a close relationship with the deceased.”
“I see where you’re going with this, but we don’t run a gossip mag. This is just a picture. It is uncorroborated by anything factual. One picture a scandal does not make.”
“Leland Brickmeyer is a liar, and he is hiding something about his involvement with this case. If there is any one entity that should have a vested interest in making sure the truth comes to light, it is this newspaper.”
“And it is your vested interest to bring down that man, I assume.”
That one almost stung me. “I don’t care about Brickmeyer, in the broader sense. He might not be part of the plot to cover up the kid’s murder, but he’s got some questions to answer.”
“Or at least need to be asked,” she added.
The air conditioner blasted a wave of cold on me as I sat there, watching her, trying to figure out in what direction her wheels were turning. "Interesting," she said. "Bet they didn't figure this sort of thing would emerge."
The Examiner had done little more than glorify Brickmeyer’s PR offensive, and I hoped this might help to turn the tide somewhat. "I can’t run the story without the picture.”
My heart sank. “I know,” I said.
“I also need to have it scanned.”
I nodded, adding, "Long as it ends up in my hands by the time I hit the door."
She smiled in a way that both comforted me and sent my heart into my throat. “Leland Brickmeyer is going to shit a brick when he sees this. I’ve got to be honest. We can run an article tomorrow."
“Do you have enough time to put something together before the issue hits print?”
She exhaled. “Won’t be much in there. Speculation, mostly. I
’ll reach out for a comment, but who knows how that will go.”
“You’ve heard all the rumors, though. You know most of the information is solid, even if it’s not totally confirmed. And it’s not like you have to say anything is definite. You’re just going to ask questions that need answers.”
“All right, all right,” she said. “Stop selling. Rest assured that I’m not going overboard with this story, though. It’s going to be a grounded question mark, not an exclamation point.”
“I understand that.”
“Good,” she said.
“This’ll be a ‘crucible’ moment for him. He’s got to decide how well he can hide in plain sight.”
“Let’s get to work. I need you to sit down and tell me everything you know. The police department has been stonewalling us, of course.”
“I could have come to you sooner,” I said.
“They’re still going to know I’ve talked to you. You’re the only person who would get within sniffing distance of Brickmeyer and the Laveau kid’s death.”
“It just needs to be out there in the world. Leland Brickmeyer cannot just win because people are afraid of unsettling him.”
She made a raspy, phlegmatic sound, the smoker's giggle. "We can put it on the site as well as in print. People will have the weekend to talk about this, and if the simmering anger grows to a boil, Leland will have some tough questions to answer on Monday. And I'll be the one to ask them."
* * *
After I left the newspaper office - picture in tow - I flipped open my cell and stared at Janita Laveau’s number as I walked to my car.
She needed to know about the picture, needed to know that it was probably going to be splashed all over the newspaper tomorrow, but I sort of hoped that Doris would take care of that. If there was anyone she needed to speak to about the story, it was Janita.
Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery Page 26