07-Peaches And Screams

by G. A. McKevett

  He chuckled. “Yeah. We gotta get lives, Van.”

  “Really. We’ll work on that when we get home. You can take me to Disneyland, and we’ll ride Splash Mountain.”

  “This is the secretary’s desk,” he said, opening the last drawer. “Nothing hidden here but a box of chocolate-covered donuts.”

  “My kind of woman. Don’t touch them! We don’t want anybody to know we were here.”

  “What? You figure she counts her donuts?”

  “Sure. Don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, but . . .”

  “Check his desk. The big one over there.”

  “How do you know it’s his?”

  “It’s got his name on it.” She pointed her light at the brass plaque on the front of the desk.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  While he searched those drawers, she shuffled through several folders on top of the desk. She didn’t have to look long before she found her brother’s.

  Opening it, she glanced over the various forms that had been filled out about his case.

  “Damn,” she said softly. “Goodwin’s ready to go on Macon. He’s dotting all the i’s and crossing the t’s. And I have to admit, if I wasn’t Macon’s big sister, I’d say he had an airtight case.”

  “All the more reason to nail the bastard, if he did it himself.”

  “Anything in those drawers?”

  “Nothing good. Not even any donuts.”

  Carefully, she replaced the folders, then looked around the rest of the room. “I don’t know how much more we’re going to find in here,” she said. “Maybe we should’ve broken into his house.”

  Dirk came to full attention. “No. Don’t even think about it. This is as far as I go.”

  “Pansy.”

  She walked over to a large trash can that sat beneath a table next to the computer. Beside a laser printer was a shredder. The can had been placed directly beneath to catch the narrow paper strips.

  On an impulse she pointed her light into the can and saw that it had been recently emptied. Only a few pages’ worth of shreddings were lying in the bottom.

  She had walked away when something rang a buzzer in the back of her brain. Returning to the can, she knelt beside it and looked again.

  “Oh, howdy!” she said. “Dirk, get yourself over here, boy.”

  He came at a fast trot. “Whatcha got?”

  “Shredded paper strips.”

  “Well, if it’s shredded, it’s worthless. You can’t read that stuff. I know, I’ve tried.”

  “Look.” She held up a couple of strands that were dark green. “I’ve seen this paper before. The judge had folders made out of this in his desk. Very classy looking.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Suddenly, Dirk was interested, too. “You figure this junk was the folder that somebody took outta there?”

  “I sure do.”

  “A lot of good it’ll do us. Like I said, you can’t read that stuff once it’s been through a shredder. No matter how hard you try, you can’t figure out how to put it back together again.”

  “Maybe you can’t. Maybe I can’t. But I’ll bet I know somebody who can. . . .”

  “Okay, but if I can’t even sneak a donut, you can’t take that trash either. He might notice it missing.”

  “No way. He’s a man. He’ll just figure his secretary—a woman—cleaned up after him.”

  “Do you think you can do it?” Savannah asked Alma after she had dumped the pile of shreddings in the middle of Gran’s kitchen table.

  “Sure, I can. It’s just another puzzle,” Alma said, running a few of the strips through her fingers.

  “I don’t think anybody can do it.” Dirk stood behind them, radiating gloom. “It’s impossible.”

  “You, Mr. Sunshine, can just keep your negativity to yourself.” Savannah gouged him with her elbow. “Alma is the all-time puzzle-putter-together champion. She did one that had two thousand pieces and was nothing but M&M’s. I’m going to help her and we’ll do it, no matter how long it takes or how cross-eyed we get.”

  “Speaking of M&M’s . . .” Alma grinned. “I could work a lot better if I had a plateful of your M&M cookies, Savannah.”

  “M&M cookies?” Dirk’s ears perked up.

  Savannah chuckled. “They’re like chocolate chip cookies only with M&M’s.”

  “Sound great. I mean, I’d be willing to try too, if—”

  “Okay, okay. Go get Tammy out of that burger joint and bring her over here, too. Alma might as well have a full crew to help her out here. And I’ll start baking right now.” She turned to Gran, who had just come in from the living room to see what all the fuss was about. “Gran, how about a pot of strong coffee? I figure four pots and about six dozen cookies should get us through the night.”

  “I told you it was impossible. What do you think people shred stuff for? It works. You can’t read it once it’s been shredded.”

  “Oh, shut up, Dirk, before I slap you with a frying pan.” Savannah pushed away from the table and ran her fingers through her hair. Since she had been doing that most of the night, her dark curls were practically standing on end. Along with her nerves.

  “It’s not that bad,” Alma said, though her voice sounded as tired as Savannah felt. “It’s only four,” she added, looking at the cat clock, “and we’ve already got a few sections together.”

  “Yeah,” said Tammy, who had actually broken one of her personal standards and consumed caffeine and sugar to stay awake, “but they don’t really say anything.”

  “They say a lot,” Savannah said, bending over the few winning combinations they had found and cellophane-taped to a large piece of cardboard. “We just don’t know what it means yet.”

  “Something about an expunged record,” Alma said.

  “And we’ve decided that might be part of a coroner’s report with all the medical terms there.”

  “This is promising,” Savannah said. “Really. It’s just a bitch to do.”

  “Watch your language in there,” came a voice from the bedroom.

  “Sorry, Gran. Are we keeping you awake?”

  “Only when you cuss.”

  Savannah sighed, stood, and stretched her knotted shoulder muscles. “More coffee, that’s what I need. And in a couple of hours, it’ll be officially breakfast time. We can switch from cookies to donuts.”

  Six hours, two dozen donuts, and a full Gran breakfast later, the gang was still at it, although they had taken turns slipping away and catching a few winks on the living room sofa.

  Every time someone suggested putting it away for a while and living life normally for a few hours, another section would come together and the accompanying adrenaline boost would keep them going.

  And they were so absorbed that they didn’t know they had company until Deputy Tom Stafford knocked on the back door.

  “Hey, y’all,” he said through the screen. “What are you up to there?”

  They all jumped, and for half a second entertained the idea of sweeping the ill-gotten evidence under the table, but it was too late.

  “Nothing much,” Savannah said, standing and hurrying over to the door. “How ’bout you?”

  She looked down at Beauregard, who was coercing a pet from Tom by nudging his hand with his muzzle. So much for the vigilant watchdog routine. Savannah silently promised to withhold the mashed-potato leftovers from his supper dish.

  Shifting first right, then left, she tried to block his line of vision. Behind her, she heard the flurry of shuffling papers and scooting chairs.

  He stood on tiptoe and craned his neck to see over her shoulder. “Oh, just came out to shoot the breeze with you for a while. How about some coffee?”

  “Sure!” She bombed out the door, moving faster than she thought she could after a night with no sleep. “Donut Heaven? The Burger Igloo? Anywhere you like! How sweet of you to buy me a cup of coffee, Tom.”

  She grabbed his arm and hauled him off the porch. “Let’s take your car, okay?” she babble
d on. “Gee, what a nice surprise. You’ve always been such a great guy with your . . .”

  “When are you going to tell me what was on the kitchen table?” Tom asked her, once they had their coffee and were settled into a booth at Donut Heaven.

  “When we get . . . uh . . . done with it,” she replied, locking eyes with him across the table.

  “I see.”

  “You do?”

  “No, but I will, eventually.”

  She smiled, thanking him for not pushing the issue. “You’ll be the first person we show it to.”

  He stirred several tablespoons of sugar into his coffee and shook his head. “Why does that send a chill up my spine instead of warm the cockles of my heart?”

  “Why did you come by the house, really?”

  He looked around, but other than the clerk behind the glass cases filled with pastries, the shop was empty.

  Pulling some papers from his pocket, he said, “I wanted to show you these. I mean . . . it’s not like I could show them to anybody else.”

  “Anybody, like Sheriff Mahoney?”

  “Yeah. Exactly like Mahoney.”

  The first paper he showed her was a phone record. She didn’t recognize the number at the top.

  “Alvin’s or Mack’s?” she said.

  “That one’s Mack’s.” He gave her a second one. “This one’s Alvin’s.”

  Her eye skimmed the columns. “Seems they’ve had quite a bit to say to each other.”

  “Yeah. Considering that they didn’t call each other even once before the evening the judge died.”

  “Tragedy’s a bonding thing,” she said with a grin.

  “So’s collusion.”

  Her mood rose several notches. Tom was coming around, and just in time.

  “They’ve talked to each other several times a day,” she noted.

  “Until Friday night.”

  “When Alvin croaked.”

  “Exactly.”

  He pulled a third paper from his shirt pocket. “This is the judge’s record. The last call he made was to Mack. And if I’m to believe your brother’s version of what happened that night, the call would have been made right after the judge threw them out of his house.”

  “So, after he killed the judge, Mack picked up the phone and punched in those nonsense numbers to throw y’all off if you checked the redial.”

  “Yeah. It’s kind of insulting that he didn’t think we’d check the actual phone records.”

  “Don’t take it personally. Even the smartest criminals don’t think of everything. That’s how we get ’em.”

  Savannah curled her fingers around the coffee cup, enjoying its warmth and the small victory of the moment. They had an important ally. And he had crossed the line just when they needed him most.

  “Then there’s these. . . .” He produced still more papers.

  “Bank statements, too. You’ve been busy,” she said.

  “The judge was killed last Monday night.” He leaned back in the booth and rubbed his fingers across his eyes as though he had a headache. “On Wednesday morning, Mack withdrew $35,000 from his accounts. On Thursday afternoon, Alvin deposited $28,000. I don’t know what he and Bonnie did with the other $7,000. Probably pissed it away. Friday night, Alvin’s dead.”

  “So, was the money a payoff for a hit, or was Alvin blackmailing him?”

  “I figured you could tell me. You guys seem to be about a million miles farther down that road than I am.”

  “No, we’re not, Tom. Just a few steps. But they’re pretty big steps. Come back to the house with me, and we’ll get you up to speed.”

  Chapter 23

  When Savannah returned with Tom to Gran’s house, she was greeted at the door by an excited Alma, who practically pulled her into the kitchen.

  “We’ve got something, Savannah,” she said. “We’ve got more of that autopsy report thing and another couple of pages, too. Dirk says it’s good stuff. He said it was nails in Goodwin’s coffin.”

  Savannah glanced back at Tom, who was following close behind, and saw the mixture of excitement and apprehension on his face.

  In the kitchen, none of the gang appeared to have moved from their chairs. Dirk sat, as he had been, at the head of the table, with Tammy on one side and Gran on the other. The cardboard sheet in front of them held several blocks of paper strips, taped together to form pages.

  Dirk gave Tom only the briefest look, tinged with something resembling petulant jealousy, then turned to Savannah. “You were right, Van. It’s the coroner’s report on a young guy who died by strangling.”

  “And it says he had ropes around his armpits, too,” Gran said. “Why do you suppose somebody would do something like that? I mean, if you’re hanging a guy, why put ropes there?”

  Savannah sat down at the table and looked at the fruits of their long night’s labor. One of the pages they had reconstructed bore a diagram of the ropes’ ligature marks around the victim’s neck and upper arms.

  “It was supposed to be a joke,” she said, suddenly overcome with a deep sense of sadness. “A stupid, cruel joke. The ropes around his arms were probably intended to support his weight and keep him from actually strangling. But, as we can see, they didn’t.”

  Dirk pointed to another of the partial pages they had reassembled and said to Tom, “Take a look at that, Stafford, and tell me what a fine, upstanding citizen your Mack Goodwin is. How would the voters in this county feel about their handsome, charming prosecutor if they read that?”

  Tom leaned over Savannah’s shoulder and read aloud, “Victim’s face has been smeared with an unidentified black substance with white around the mouth in a crude imitation of minstrel makeup.”

  Dirk leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Those rich frat boys took one of their own, and in part of a hazing ritual, they made him up in black face and then strung him up, lynch-style, from an oak tree there on the family plantation. Nice, huh?”

  Tom buried his hands deep in his slacks pockets and closed his eyes for a long moment. “They were stupid kids. It was years ago.”

  “It was a horrible crime,” Savannah said. “And this autopsy report was suppressed. In spite of all this, the coroner ruled the death a suicide. All this time, they’ve let that poor kid’s family think he’d killed himself.”

  Gran stood, walked over to the refrigerator, and got herself a glass of water. “I can’t imagine Mr. Goodwin doing something so awful as that. I don’t imagine his political career in these parts would be worth a plugged nickel if folks knew what was in those papers.”

  “Do you suppose,” Tom said, “that’s why he killed the judge . . . or had Alvin do it? Patterson was going to let this out?”

  “I think so,” Savannah told him.

  “But why? After all these years, why would the judge want to expose Mack now?”

  “Because Patterson’s daughter was dead; she couldn’t be embarrassed by the scandal, like she would have been if it had come out before. And because the judge wanted to get his hands on his granddaughter. He saw her as some sort of substitute for Katherine. He wanted her to come live with him so that he could raise her, mold her as his own. And Mack wouldn’t have it.”

  “Okay.” Tom nodded thoughtfully. “But where do Alvin and Bonnie fit into all this?”

  “I think we’re going to have to find Bonnie before we’ll know that.” Savannah sighed. “I guess I could go talk to Elsie again. She’s been pretty helpful so far.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t bother her,” Gran said. “She’s kinda under the weather.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I saw her at church last night, and she said she was feelin’ poorly on account of worryin’ about his honor.”

  “The judge?” Dirk asked. “He’s the last person we have to worry about now. He’s layin’ dead out in the cemetery.”

  “That’s just the problem,” Gran replied solemnly. “He’s not restin’ easy. Elsie says he’s been cau
sin’ her a heap o’ grief, hauntin’ the mansion there. Especially at night. She’s thinking of having Pastor Greene come out and pray over the house, see if they can put him to rest.”

  “A restless haunt, huh?” Savannah raised one eyebrow and looked across the table at Dirk. “Yeah . . . an exorcism might be exactly what the Patterson mansion needs.”

  After an extremely vigorous argument, Tom and Dirk had decided to allow Savannah to “ghostbust” the Patterson mansion alone. Not because they had been eager to acquiesce to her wishes, but because she had yelled the loudest and the longest, and had threatened physical violence if they didn’t see things her way.

  Too much human activity in the form of heavy-stepping males would be enough to scare off any self-respecting haunt. And she was determined to catch this one.

  Armed with her Beretta, Dirk’s large flashlight, and a detailed map of the interior of the mansion—courtesy of Tom and the local library’s historical section—she entered the back door of the house at just past midnight.

  Thanks to a full moon, there was enough light coming through the windows that she could see well enough to move about without bumping into walls and furniture.

  It sure looks different in the moonlight, she thought as she crept through the kitchen and into the hallway. Feels different, too. She had to admit, she regretted her decision to have the guys stay behind and let her do this alone.

  You don’t believe in haunts, do you, Savannah girl? she asked herself.

  Of course not. Don’t be silly.

  Then why don’t you want to check the library?

  Oh, shut up and check it yourself.

  Okay, I will, chickenshit. You just watch.

  She was grateful no one could hear the multiple personalities warring inside her brain. And she was equally glad that Dirk and Tom weren’t around to hear her teeth chattering on this hot summer night.

  Every ghost story that she had heard as a child at her grandmother’s knee, every tale of Civil War atrocities . . . some happening within these very walls . . . came back to her with unsettling clarity as she walked up to the library door and quietly pushed it open.