by Kristin Gore
Jiminy absorbed this. Bo watched her cheeks blush crimson as she looked anywhere but at him. He reached out to touch her arm.
“Hey,” he said gently.
“I heard you the first time,” she snapped. “Could you please just drive?”
Bo kept his hand on her arm.
“No.”
Jiminy turned to him. On him, really.
“What kind of rescuer are you? Just get me out of here. Please! I’ll drive, if that’s the issue. Just scoot over.”
She made a move to switch places with him.
“You’re being silly,” he said. “You’ve got nothing in the world to be scared of, do you understand?”
“Move!” she replied.
She tried clumsily to switch spots with him, throwing her leg over his lap and reaching her hand past him to grab the edge of the driver’s seat to help hoist herself over. There wasn’t anything graceful about her maneuver, and she was about to be stuck in an awkward position if he didn’t help her out. So he obliged, scooting beneath her to the passenger side as Jiminy climbed all over him. It was the most intimate they’d ever been with each other, and for a brief moment all Bo could think about was how her breast had brushed his shoulder and how much her hair smelled like coconuts.
Jiminy was similarly flustered. She gripped the steering wheel to steady herself, acutely aware of how Bo’s skin had felt against hers, and that she wanted to touch him more. Her cheeks blazing, she kept her eyes averted and hurried to switch the gears from park to drive. But she stopped abruptly, distress joining the other emotions playing across her features.
“What’s the matter?” Bo asked.
Jiminy said something in a voice several decibels too soft for a human ear to decipher.
“What?” he asked again.
When she spoke this time, it was just barely audible.
“I didn’t know this was stick. I don’t know how to drive stick,” she whispered.
When she looked up, Bo kissed her.
Jean Butrell was aiming her rifle at some deer when she heard tires on the gravel. She sighed and put the rifle down. At least the sound of the car would scare the deer away from her flowers for an hour or so. But if they came back when she was alone, she’d pop ’em. To think that she’d once put a salt lick out there for their enjoyment. How naïve she’d been. Salt one day, prize-winning geraniums the next. They deserved to die.
The car had to be Jiminy, who’d been coming to Jean’s regularly ever since she’d discovered that Jean had an Internet connection, a rare and precious hookup among Willa’s friends. Most of them didn’t consider themselves members of the technological age and were happy to be bypassed by tweets and blogs, even by online shopping, which many of them would have found extremely convenient. The Home Shopping Network and the telephone were still their tools of choice.
Jean was an aberration. She’d had an Internet connection for five years now, and prized it above all else. During thunderstorms, she dreaded losing electricity almost solely because it would mean getting knocked offline. She had a real passion for games like Halo 3 and the ones on Pogo—the kind you could log on to and play against people from all over the world. Her grandsons had introduced her to them over a Christmas holiday, and she’d come straight home and ordered up service. She was addicted.
“Knock, knock,” Jiminy called from the porch.
“Who’s there?” Jean called.
She hoped for a knock-knock joke, but Willa’s granddaughter was too literal.
“It’s Jiminy.”
“Come on in,” Jean replied, covering her sigh with a bright smile. “Can I pour you some iced tea? It’s hot out there.”
Jiminy shook her head.
“No, thank you, I don’t need anything. How’s it going?”
Jean appreciated the attempt at small talk.
“Oh, I’m all right. My suck-egg dog of a son called again, but I screened him.”
The elder son who’d confiscated her driver’s license. Not the one who’d fathered the two grandsons who’d taught her how to play blackjack online. That son was a saint.
“Maybe he’s just worried about you,” Jiminy offered.
“I hope so! I hope he worries his little conniving, controlling squirrel brain sick,” Jean replied. “The computer’s all yours, sweetheart. I don’t have a game appointment for another few hours.”
“Thanks,” Jiminy said gratefully.
She hurried to the living room desk and logged herself on to her saved searches. There was the article that she’d come across the previous afternoon and been yearning to investigate further. Jiminy scanned it quickly, looking for the name she’d spotted.
Were it not for the tireless efforts of Carlos Castaverde, this long-ago murder would have remained unsolved, languishing in the cold case file cabinet in the basement of the Putner County Courthouse. But Mr. Castaverde refused to let justice die along with an innocent victim.
That was it: Carlos Castaverde. According to this article and another one in the Greenham Gazette, Carlos Castaverde was a persistent journalist-lawyer who had successfully reopened and solved seven civil rights cold cases. His latest efforts had led to the conviction and imprisonment of an eighty-four-year-old ex-Klansman who had kidnapped and lynched a young man by the name of Jackson Honder for “leering” at a white woman in September 1955. According to law enforcement officials at the time, no one in Jackson Honder’s small town had seen or heard anything, and no arrests were ever made. Until over a half century later, when Carlos Castaverde began investigating. After interviewing Honder’s brother and sisters, along with some neighbors and a sheriff’s deputy, Castaverde determined that contrary to the official record, pretty much everyone in town knew exactly who had committed the murder. A few more months of legwork and two eyewitness accounts later, and Carlos had his man. The Honder family expressed their incredulity and gratitude to the Greenham Gazette:
“When Carlos first came round, I thought, let’s let bygones be bygones and be done with it,” said Honder’s sister Maggie Jayce, aged eighty-two. “But now that Jackson’s killer is behind bars, I feel like somethin’ that was turned upside down in the world just got set right again.”
The killer was someone who’d continued to live right alongside the Honder family for fifty-three years. And they’d all known. All of them. Jiminy couldn’t imagine how that must have felt. How do you greet a man who murdered your brother? How do you stand in line at the post office with him, or pass him in the dairy aisle, or pump gas alongside him, knowing all the while? How did they stand it? And would they just have kept on standing it, day after day, had Carlos not come along?
She Googled Carlos Castaverde and immediately came across several hate websites. One claimed he was an illegal immigrant with a grudge against red-blooded Americans. Another listed his home address and offered a bounty for his head.
A more friendly site called him an unsung hero and thanked him for his service. Carlos himself didn’t have a website and seemed to prefer a low profile, though Jiminy was able to find a bio piece on him in the Greenham Gazette that detailed how, after being raised in Texarkana by a Caucasian mother and Mexican father, Carlos had gotten his degree in journalism and then put himself through law school at night while working for a string of small town newspapers. He’d first made a name for himself seven years ago, when, in the course of covering a disputed school board election, he’d stumbled across an account of an unsolved shooting that had taken place in 1964. His subsequent investigation had eventually led to the conviction and incarceration of the superintendent of schools. The town had been outraged; the victim’s family, grateful.
Since then, Carlos Castaverde had opened and pursued six other cases. He hadn’t won convictions in all of them, but he had forced several towns to confront their unpleasant pasts. Not all of them appreciated the experience, and they’d made their wrath known. In a short interview conducted after the Jackson Honder case was won, the forty-four-year-old Ca
staverde was asked what made him get up every day and pursue the life he’d chosen. He’d answered, “Consideration of the alternative.”
Abrupt gunshots startled Jiminy out of her admiring reverie. She whirled around, her heart throbbing furiously.
“Dammit, missed again,” Jean muttered as she sauntered in from the backyard, a rifle slung over one shoulder. “Sorry for the noise, I was trying to shoot the geranium-gobblin’ demon deer,” she explained.
Jiminy breathed in deeply, trying to calm herself down. It was only Jean. And everything was still alive.
“Do you hunt often?” she managed to ask.
Jiminy herself had never held a gun.
“Oh, darlin’, that’s not huntin’, that’s gardenin’,” Jean answered.
Jiminy nodded, eyeing the rifle.
“Where do you keep that?”
Jean glanced down at the gun.
“Wherever. In the corner by my bed, in the car occasionally—back when I was allowed to drive—but it’s by the kitchen sink generally. So I can grab it quick when those overgrown rats with antlers come around.”
Jean finally registered the terror in Jiminy’s eyes and left the room to put the gun away somewhere out of sight. When she returned, she was carrying two glasses of iced tea.
“I know you said you didn’t want any, but house rules are you gotta have at least a glass in exchange for computer privileges.”
Jiminy smiled and took the glass Jean offered.
“I should be bringing you things,” Jiminy said. “I really appreciate you letting me come here. I’m happy to get the chance to work on this stuff.”
Jean nodded indulgently.
“And what is it exactly that you’re working on?” she asked.
Willa had told her a little bit, but not much. Jean had initially appreciated being spared the details, but now her curiosity was getting the better of her.
“I want to find out more about who killed Lyn’s husband and daughter,” Jiminy said. “I can’t believe their murders were never solved. You knew them, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” Jean answered.
Fayeville was a small place, and it had only been smaller back then. She’d known Edward since they were kids, and Lyn since he’d married her. The same year Jean had married her husband, Floyd the prankster.
Jean suddenly didn’t feel like talking anymore, but Jiminy was looking at her expectantly.
“Do you have any idea who might have killed them?” Jiminy asked.
Jean stared out the window, toward the woods that bordered her lawn. She stared a little too long.
“You do, don’t you?” Jiminy pressed. “You know something.”
Jean closed her eyes, wishing she’d been raised to know how to politely kick a guest out of her house. She felt a migraine coming on.
The river that curved around Fayeville was slow and cold. It was filled with rainbow trout and water moccasins that slithered across the surface and made their home along the bank. Jiminy had never been on or in the river. She’d never fished it, never swam it, never even stuck a hand or toe in it. Now that she knew about Edward and the first Jiminy, it made sense to her that the people who would’ve naturally taken her to do such things avoided the river as a matter of course. Still, you’d think they would’ve provided her with some substitute. You’d think they might have brought her to the pool in town, particularly on the hot summer days that made kids fall into sweaty boredom comas. But Jiminy had never been there, either. Until now.
As she pulled into the parking lot, she wished she wasn’t alone. At least there weren’t any cattle in sight.
The Fayeville Municipal Pool was shaped like a kidney bean and included a waterslide that was slightly the worse for wear, though the kids flinging themselves down it didn’t seem to mind. On the far side of the pool stood a tall lifeguard chair positioned to watch over all. The lifeguard was the one Jiminy had come to see.
Before she could make her way to him, someone called her name.
“Jiminy Davis, is that you?”
An enormously pregnant belly sandwiched by a bikini had asked the question. Technically, the mouth on the head attached to the belly had asked it, but all Jiminy could focus on was the belly. She forced herself to look up from it to acknowledge its owner’s face.
“Suze?” Jiminy asked.
Suze Connors had grown up on the farm across the river from Willa’s.
The smiling round face nodded.
“Yep, it’s me. Can you believe it?”
Jiminy wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a more pregnant woman.
“Congratulations!” Jiminy cried. “You look great!”
“Thank you, what a nice thing to hear,” Suze responded. “Some people say I shouldn’t be wearing a two-piece, but I say they should GET THEIR OWN LIFE,” she continued in a near shout, directing the accusatory part of her sentence toward a slender woman suntanning a few chairs over. The woman rolled her eyes and whispered something to her friend. Both of them giggled. Suze fumed.
“So, when are you due?” Jiminy asked, attempting to avert a rumble.
She was taken aback by Suze’s sudden fury. Jiminy remembered her being a mild-mannered girl—someone she’d played with a handful of times during her childhood visits.
“Tomorrow,” Suze answered. “But my first three were all a week late, so I’m not holding my breath.”
“This is your fourth kid?” Jiminy asked.
Suze was nodding.
“Bryce! Savanna! Come meet Jiminy,” she called to a blond-haired boy and girl who’d been playing on the waterslide. “Melody’s with her grandma,” she explained to Jiminy as her kids started swimming for the pool ladder.
“Oh, don’t bother them, it’s okay . . . ,” Jiminy attempted.
But the kids were already hurrying to obey their mom. Jiminy was surprised at how quickly they were in front of her, gazing upward.
“Jiminy and I used to play when we were around your age,” Suze told her son. “Are you here for a while?” she asked Jiminy.
Jiminy wasn’t sure how to answer.
“I think so. Probably another few weeks, at least.”
“We gotta get together then!” Suze cried.
Jiminy nodded.
“Sure, that’d be great, definitely. I mean, you’ll probably be pretty busy with your baby and your other kids, but if you get some free time . . . Are you married?”
Suze looked offended.
“Well, I should hope so! What kind of girl do you think I am?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—I just didn’t want to assume—of course you’re married.”
“Brad’s on a tour of duty overseas now, but he should be home by Christmas. SAVANNAH, DON’T YOU DARE PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH!”
Jiminy jumped. Behind her, Savannah released a small frog she’d caught in the grass by the side of the pool. She obeyed her mother, but she wasn’t happy about it.
The shouting had caught the lifeguard’s attention. He stood up quickly, gave a disapproving glance, then resumed his vigil. For an old man, he seemed remarkably spry and alert.
“I need to go,” Jiminy said to Suze. “It’s good to see you again, and meet your kids. I’ll see you around.”
Suze smiled and nodded, but she was already preoccupied with helping her son wrestle a pair of flippers onto his feet.
“Don’t forget to come see me,” she replied distractedly.
Jiminy weaved past Savannah and made her way to the lifeguard chair, aware of how pale her skin was compared to the tanned bodies around her. Looking down at her arms and legs, she saw that her skin was even whiter than usual, thanks to the SPF50 she’d failed to completely rub in.
The lifeguard stared down at her. He was the ruler of this domain and prided himself on knowing everyone. This small, pale woman standing below him was a stranger, though she resembled people he knew. She’d have to explain herself.
“May I help you?” he asked.
�
��Are you Walton Trawler?” Jiminy asked.
“Indeed, I am,” he answered.
Walton was old, certainly, but he emanated a youthfulness that matched the energy of the kids surrounding him. He’d been the town doctor for fifty years and now filled his retirement with volunteer work and various other projects. His face was tanned and wrinkled, and he wore a weathered fishing hat to protect his bald head. His swimming trunks were decorated with fuschia palm trees.
“Who are you?” he inquired.
He wasn’t as friendly as Jiminy had hoped he’d be.
“I’m Jiminy Davis, Willa Hunt’s granddaughter. I’m interested in learning more about Fayeville, and Jean Butrell suggested I talk to you. She said you’re kind of the town historian, published and all.”
Walton had written several books about the region. He looked more intently at Jiminy, before shifting his gaze to scan the pool.
“I can’t talk now, I’m on the job. Stop by Grady’s Grill this evening and we’ll chat.”
Jiminy nodded. It didn’t seem as though he was going to say anything more to her, so she turned to walk away.
“You have your grandpa’s eyes, you know,” Walton said.
Jiminy paused and turned back.
“Really?”
No one had ever told her this before.
“Spittin’ image,” Walton nodded. “You must break your grandma’s heart.”
Roy Tomlins always took his lunch break on the benches of the courtyard lawn, and he generally stopped by Grady’s Grill for his post-work beer. He liked the feel of Grady’s—the sawdust on the floor, the ashtrays on every table, the counter lined with bottles of local hot sauce. He liked that it was generally filled with men he knew, with men he’d known all his life.
They were dying off now, the men of his generation. There were only a handful of them left, and they were vastly outnumbered by the women. Old women live forever, Roy mused. His wife would likely outlast him by decades, continuing to be a waste of space long after he was gone. Roy hated feeling overwhelmed by women, hated the way they banded together when their husbands died off. There was no helping the situation though. This was what it had come to. At least now that Roy had grasped the reality that the guys were on their way out, he felt a new appreciation for their company.