by Anne McAneny
“As a matter of fact, kids, Mr. Abel here has something he’d like to talk to Jack about.”
Annelise, humiliated and perspiring heavily, turned her toes in toward each other, lowered her head to her chest, and crossed her arms tight enough to wrap around her back.
“How can I help you, Mr. Abel?” Jack said. “You need some yard work done, or some of the young’uns need watchin’?”
So much for the national stage. Janie imagined this must be one of those situations where a colloquialism was called for, because Jack was laying it on thick. He’d helped with the Abels’ yard maybe one time six years ago, and he’d never once watched the Abel young’uns.
“Uh, no,” Mr. Abel said, torn between thanking Jack and continuing with the angry intent of his visit. “Did you bring alcohol into my home last night?”
“No, sir, I did not. Did someone say I did?”
Janie wanted to catch Annelise’s reactions, but she actually felt sorry for her ex-friend. The wretched girl seemed humbled for the first time in her life.
“Why should I believe you?” Mr. Abel said, sticking out his slight chest, which paled in comparison to Jack’s.
“Why shouldn’t you?” Jack said.
“Annelise here says you forced yourself on her in the cellar last night.”
Jack glanced at Annelise, a practiced look of innocence coating his handsome features, then back to Mr. Abel. “What do you mean, sir? I’m awfully confused.”
“You know exactly what I mean, boy.”
“Daddy,” Annelise murmured.
“Shush, now, child.” Mr. Abel turned his attention to Barton. “You know what I believe, Barton. Swift and severe punishment never did no child no wrong. This boy’s lyin’ through his teeth.”
“You sure it’s Jack who’s doin’ the lyin’?” Barton said with a smirk.
“My children know better than to tell me tales,” Mr. Abel said. “Perhaps if you’d brandished a little more discipline with your daughter, like I’ve done with Annelise here, things mighta turned out different for you.”
Barton was as steamed as he’d ever been. “What are you implying, Abner?”
“You know exactly what I’m saying. Your girl Bridget made herself available to all manner of—”
The cross punch that Barton threw never landed on Mr. Abel’s jaw because Mr. Abel demonstrated remarkably fast reflexes. He blocked the incoming fist and instinctively struck the old man in the gut with a short jab. Of course, it wasn’t as powerful as it could have been since Mr. Abel had trouble putting rotation behind it with his bum leg.
Mr. Abel, immediately regretful, reached out to support Barton, but Jack got to his grandfather first. With his other hand, he grabbed Mr. Abel by the shirt.
When Barton muttered that he was fine, Jack tightened his grip on Mr. Abel and pulled him in until their faces nearly touched. “Listen to me, neighbor, and listen good. I wasn’t at your goddamn house last night. I was here with my grandfather working on his truck. So why don’t you take your lying sack-of-shit daughter and find out who really boned her in your cellar last night before making false accusations?”
Mr. Abel tried to pull away, but Jack held tight and continued. “You wanna talk about someone making themselves available to all manner of creepy perverts in this town, well, as the Bible says, you might wanna put your own house in order first.”
Jack shoved Mr. Abel away, not hard enough to send him careening down the stairs, but not real gently, either.
Annelise turned tail and ran, all the way up the driveway. A silence hung over the porch, broken only by the distant sound of Annelise’s sobs and punctuated by the steady crunch of rocks beneath her feet.
Mr. Abel bucked up, walked down the stairs, then turned back to the Perkins family. “I’m right sorry ’bout this, Barton. I was wrong to strike you. Reflex from my boxing days, I’m afraid.” He lowered his head, but he wasn’t done yet. His voice came out softly. Combined with its interminable slowness, it sounded hypnotic. “I will wait and see what the Lord has in store for me now. He’s worked in mysterious ways with me many times. Very mysterious indeed.”
As he took off in his truck, Jack grinned. “It ain’t real mysterious,” he said. “You stick it in and the sperm fertilizes the egg.”
“Jack,” Grandpa Barton said, his tone holding no admonition.
“Thought we weren’t saying ain’t,” Janie added.
They went inside together. It was nine months later that the three of them stood on the porch again, gifts in hand, as they started their trek to the Abels’ house to welcome Annelise’s baby boy.
CHAPTER 30
Someone had scrawled WASH ME a few feet to the right of the Abels’ front door. A shirtless boy with a sunken chest answered after I rang the bell a second time. Before he could speak, a familiar twang scraped at my ears from the kitchen.
“Jedediah Jr., I done told you to put a shirt on. You want the neighbors thinkin’ we run around here like animals?”
He wiped sleep from his eyes despite the late afternoon hour and addressed the source of the voice. “It ain’t no neighbor, Ma. It’s some short lady with blond hair.”
I could practically hear the intake of breath, the muzzled reprimand of the son, and the fluffing of the hair as Annelise Abel tried to make herself presentable. Yes, the unannounced visit was rude, but I didn’t want Annelise to have time to ensure her father’s absence. As hard as it was to wrap my mind around the idea of Abner Abel having anything to do with my mother’s death, some interesting cards were stacking up in his favor: his telltale limp and his heretofore unknown presence at Field Diner on the infamous night. At a minimum, he might have noticed something unusual at the diner. At a maximum, he was a ruthless, demented son of a bitch with nothing left to lose.
The boy disappeared, leaving the door ajar and me on display. I felt like the awkward middle-schooler leaning against the wall while her prettier friends accepted dance invitations. Finally, the door was pulled wide and Annelise Abel stood before me. The hair could have used more fluffing, or at least a style, and the growing wet spot on her peasant skirt, where she’d unsuccessfully tried to wash out a swipe of chocolate, should have been turned to the side, but other than that, Annelise didn’t look half bad. She had color in her cheeks and well-applied lipstick, almost enough to make her look refreshed. Unfortunately, no concealer could hide the dark bags of an overwrought mother living with her father while her husband made cross-country jaunts in his semi.
“My heavens!” Annelise said. “I thought it might be little Janie Perkins. Goodness, I haven’t seen you in years.”
Thirteen, to be exact, if that was the age of the charmer who’d answered the door.
“How is that handsome brother of yours?” she continued. “He came on TV yesterday and I hushed the kids straightaway. Told them how Jack and me were almost sweethearts. He has such a nice voice, let alone the rest of him.”
I repressed my awkwardness and amusement as she both lusted for my brother and lied through her teeth. “He is on TV a lot,” I said lamely.
“Come on in,” she said, gesturing big, as if she’d read that pretending you lived in an estate worthy of giant arm flourishes was half the battle. “You remember the place. Haven’t had much of a chance to straighten today, of course. Makin’ a cake for my daughter’s birthday.”
The place was a disaster. Toys, magazines, clothes, mud flecks, dirty dishes, crayons, empty soda bottles . . . you name it, it was scattered. Of course, I’d rarely been inside the Abels’ home as a child, except for the cellar. Maybe it had always been like this. Couldn’t imagine the ever-slouched Mrs. Abel had kept a tidy homestead.
“How many children do you have, Annelise?” I fully expected to hear twelve, given the quantity of socks on the floor, but Annelise had limited herself to four.
“There’d be more,” she s
aid, “but Jed is always on the road, if you know what I’m sayin’.”
I did know and really wished she hadn’t put that image in my head. Jedediah Matheny had been three years ahead of Jack and me in school and was the boy who’d stolen the Jack Daniel’s, along with Annelise’s alleged virginity. Hard to reconcile how Annelise could have been attracted to my brother while allowing the likes of Jed Matheny to bed her. He was everything Jack wasn’t, and that was the biggest compliment I could pay my brother.
We filled the next ten minutes with the ages of her children, their questionable accomplishments, and a full recitation of Annelise’s local activities, including her initiative to stop bullying in the schools. If I had to suppress an ironic guffaw at that one, I really deserved a pass.
I worked the conversation around to her dad and asked if he was home. “You know,” she said, “Daddy got Jed his truckin’ job and now he makes a pretty fine living. He even took on Daddy’s role as a sort of talk-show host to other truckers over his CB.”
“Isn’t that something?” I said. “What’s his handle?”
“Oh, he just took over Daddy’s, Big Ham. Like when Dear Abby took over her mother’s column and neither of them was really named Abby?”
The columnists would be so flattered by the comparison. “So your husband delivers meat, too?”
“No, he just uses the handle. ‘You got Big Ham. What can I cure for ya?’” She giggled a little too hard. “See? It’s funny ’cause it works two ways.”
I tried to smile but I no longer had it in me. Didn’t surprise me that Jed Matheny couldn’t come up with an original handle. In high school, he could barely rub two sentences together. On the rare occasions he had, they’d invariably included the words tackle or boo-ya.
“Is your dad around? I actually—”
“My dad? I’m afraid he’s—”
“What is it you want, young lady?” came a voice that couldn’t be mistaken for just any old humpin’ bastard.
I turned to see Abner Abel. Except for some gray around the edges of his brown cap of hair, he looked the same, but since he’d looked prematurely old my whole life, maybe he and time had finally met in the middle.
“Mr. Abel, how are you?”
“The Lord sees me through each day, and I’m blessed at least four times over living here with my grandchildren.”
As we all entered the kitchen, two of the blessings sprinted through, squirting water pistols. I wondered if Annelise recalled any water incidents from our own childhood. With her lips pulled tight and a quick, nervous glance at her father, she wiped up the puddle on the floor. It would be interesting to see when she would actually inhale again.
“You must have a lot of grandchildren by now, Mr. Abel,” I said.
“Fourteen. Hoping for more, of course.”
“Aren’t we all, Daddy?” Annelise chimed in. “Aren’t we all?”
She tied an apron around her waist and wore a tight grimace-smile as she iced the cake. A wave of pity washed over me for my childhood bully. Here she was, the doting mom, the bridge between generations, the daughter who’d replaced the mother, and the dutiful wife to a guy she’d been forced to marry. Heck, back then she’d gone from bathroom to bride so fast, she’d probably had to hide the pregnancy test in the shoddy bouquet of white carnations her brother had picked. Jack and I had spied through the hedges on her wedding day. The younger Abel girls had pulled out their fiddles to play some screeching excuse for a bridal march while the local pastor pretended to be thrilled for the happy couple. Mrs. Abel had wailed and nearly sunk to her knees in despair while Mr. Abel had looked like he wanted to impart only the shotgun part of the shotgun wedding. As soon as it was over, Annelise had vomited, blaming it on morning sickness, but we all knew better.
“Mr. Abel,” I said, “some information has come to light about the night my mother was shot.”
“Has it, now?”
“Yes, sir. Apparently, you were at Field Diner that night.”
Annelise sucked in a gulp of air, surprised at the revelation, but she immediately returned her attention to the cake as it collapsed in on itself under the weight of her drippy frosting. Did she spend every day either cracking eggs or walking on their shells?
“Not that it’s any of your business,” Mr. Abel said, “but yes, I went to Field Diner that night. What does it matter?”
“I’ve been told there was an . . . altercation between you and my mother that evening.”
He twisted his features into something sinister. “Your mother lied to me.”
That wasn’t what I was expecting. “About what?”
“Said she hadn’t been in a black Mercedes earlier that day, but I knew she had. I saw her. Turned out it was Grady McLemore’s car. And let’s just say, I put two and two together.”
“When did she lie to you? Did you ask her about it when she waited on you?”
“Of course. She got downright smart-alecky about it.”
“Perhaps she didn’t want to discuss it in a public place.” You dumb proselytizing fuck.
“Well, it became pretty public when Grady McLemore and his driver showed up at the diner a few minutes later.”
“And that’s when you put the two and the other two together and came up with a pregnant waitress?”
His glare made it clear my sarcasm was unwelcome. “Didn’t take a rocket scientist.”
“I hear you stormed out of the diner. Why was that?”
“I merely stood my ground when she got mouthy. I demanded the respect I deserved. She was rude and obscene so I took my leave. There was no altercation, as you call it.”
“How did you happen to see my mother in that Mercedes? Was it when she was returning from the Aberdeen Hotel?”
“The Aberdeen!” Annelise said, desperate to lighten the mood. “What a place! You used to deliver meat there, Daddy, remember?”
Mr. Abel fixed his daughter with a glare that would sterilize a stray, but she was too busy trying to thicken her icing with additional sugar and flour.
“I don’t recall,” he said. Each word dropped into the room like a time bomb.
“Sure you do,” she said, working that smile overtime. “You used to bring us those little soaps with the fancy As on them that the manager, Moss Wise, gave you. I remember him because we called him Most Wise. And one time, he gave you a whole sheet cake left over from a meeting and you brought it home, remember?”
In contrast to Annelise’s prattling, Mr. Abel sucked in the slowest breath of air since Methuselah drew his last. “I had many stops on my routes, Annelise.”
“Very true,” she said. “You know, Janie, my dad has kept up his trucker’s license all this time. Still picks up jobs now and again. Must know every back road in the entire state.”
A lightbulb went off. “Did you see my mother at the Aberdeen, Mr. Abel? Is that how you knew she was with Grady McLemore?”
“No. I told you. I saw her in a car with Mr. McLemore’s driver. Why are you twisting what I say?”
“It’s just that you seemed awfully interested in my mother that day. And Lucinda Lowry, the other waitress, said you’d just returned from a long haul. But if that were true, why were you driving around town hours earlier, passing my mother in a car?”
“What’s your angle here, young lady?”
“I’ve got a dead mother in the game, Mr. Abel. What’s your angle?”
“I will not be spoken to this way.”
Annelise accidentally dumped a whole cup of flour into her icing. She tried to beat it but it was like trying to whisk a wet beach.
“Did you see anyone suspicious at the diner? It’s possible the Haiku Killer was actually there.”
“What are you playin’ at? Grady McLemore shot your mother. There was no Haiku Killer. Is it such a stretch to believe that a grave sinner like McLemore wou
ld also be a liar?”
“As I said, I’m privy to new information. Did you see anyone unusual or suspicious? Someone my mother may have encountered?”
“Absolutely not.” He’d given the question no thought at all. “I was minding my own business.”
“And my mother’s.”
He tried to silence me with his eyes, but his ability to intimidate me had evaporated as surely as water from a hose on a hot summer day.
“Since you were keeping such a close eye on her, monitoring her sins and all, did you see her pick up a note from a customer at any time during the evening?”
He looked uncomfortable, the tendons in his neck twitching. “This is crazy. You mean like a haiku? You’re spinning some wild yarn in your head, young lady, but it’s come unraveled. Of course I didn’t see your mother receive any kind of note.”
“After you stormed out of the diner,” I said, playing off something Mickey Busker had mentioned, “you stayed and watched my mother from the parking lot across the street. Did you see her take a note from anyone then—or do anything out of the ordinary?”
Abner Abel sucked his cheeks into his teeth. It made his chin pucker and point. He held the pose for a prickly moment while Annelise compulsively smeared her lava-like concoction onto the cake. “Your implications offend me to the core,” he growled. “I enjoyed a smoke now and again after my supper, and I might have stayed around for a cigarette, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Now, Daddy, don’t get yourself—”
“Quiet, Annelise!” he said, keeping his eyes on me. “That doesn’t mean I was watching your mother. Who’s spreading these lies?”
Annelise dropped a blob of icing on the counter and stared at it like it might burst into flames.
“Where did you go after the diner, Mr. Abel? Did you follow my mother home?”
“We lived next door to each other! If we had left at the same time, it certainly would have looked that way, but I left before her. You have some cheek, young lady, suggesting anything sordid. It was late and I had children to tend to.”