One Lane Bridge: A Novel

by Reid, Don

“You will too, honey. So many dates that are important in your life just seem to stick with you. Why do you ask?”

  “I was just wondering.” Angela was back at the salad bowl eating snips of lettuce. “But didn’t you and Daddy go to high school together also?”

  “Sure did. We’ll give it a try—do it or die—at Hanson High. Your daddy lettered in baseball, and I was a cheerleader—and, of course, baseball is the one sport that doesn’t have cheerleaders. So I was traveling all over the state with the football team and the basketball team, and then when baseball season came around I couldn’t go to all the games unless I got a ride with someone. I caused a big stir his senior year.”

  “What happened?”

  “I went to the athletic director, Mr. Scone. And don’t think we didn’t have fun with that name. Anyway, I complained to him that baseball didn’t have cheerleaders and I didn’t think it was fair to the team in the name of school spirit and all that stuff. Well, surprisingly, he agreed with me and urged me to register a complaint—those were his words, ‘register a complaint’—with the principal and the school board.”

  “No, you didn’t!” And Angela began to laugh.

  “Oh, I’m afraid I did. I made quite the scene. Put up posters all over school.”

  “What did they say?”

  “The posters, or the school board?” And Karlie was laughing too.

  “Both,” Angela said through her giggles.

  “The posters said something like ‘Baseball is a school sport too’ and … oh dear, I don’t remember anymore. But the school board—I went to one of their meetings and they let me state my case, and then they discussed it. It was in the papers, and what a mess! Your granddaddy Bill finally said, ‘Enough,’ and it just sort of died away, but I had a lot of fun with it at the time.”

  “This was your senior year?” Angela asked.

  “That was my junior year. Your father’s senior year.”

  “So you two didn’t graduate from high school together?”

  “No. He was a year ahead of me.”

  Angela took a deep breath and remembered everything her grandmother had recently told her. How he had wanted to quit and wait for his girlfriend so they could go off to college together. And how he had not been the perfect student that first year.

  “If he was a year ahead of you in high school, how did it work out that you both graduated from college together?” Angela stared into the lettuce bowl, almost afraid to catch her mother’s eye. She was pretty certain they’d kept her father’s decision to leave school that first month a secret because it paralleled her own situation much too closely. She didn’t look up for fear of seeing the look on her mother’s face that surely told the whole story. But her mother’s answer and the tone of her voice gave nothing of the sort away.

  “I finished in four years, and your father took five. He worked part time all the way through school, so he took a lighter schedule than I did. He worked for an electrician that did mostly campus maintenance, and I used to tease him that he spent more time in the girls’ dorm than he did in the guys’. He was crawling around in every closet and attic and cubbyhole in the basements.”

  Karlie stopped what she was doing and looked directly and curiously at her daughter and said, “Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondered,” Angela said and tried to appear off-handed.

  “If you’ll set the table, we’ll eat in about fifteen minutes. That is, if your daddy is home, and he should be by then.”

  “Mamma, do you think, after we eat dinner, that it would be too late for me to go see Grandma again?”

  “Not at all. She stays up late like you wouldn’t believe. She’s always telling me who’s on Leno. I’m sure she’d love to see you.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Friday morning found the three Wickmans where they usually were at 7:00 a.m. Karlie was in the kitchen, dressed and making coffee; Angela was in her room, surely still asleep; and J. D. was standing in his bathroom with only his shoes and pants on, shaving. Last night had been a good and relaxing evening. After dinner, Angela had gone to Maple Manor to visit J. D.’s mother, and before going to close up the restaurants, he and Karlie had cleaned up the kitchen and talked more than they had in weeks. She told him about her early-morning visit from Katherine and then her later conversation with Lottie. They analyzed together what all of that meant and came up short of anything concrete. Later, they all watched a Woody Allen movie on cable, ate ice cream, and went to bed.

  It had been as close to a normal night as he had spent in the past four days. And it would have been perfect if he could have shared with Karlie what had happened at the Clem house, but he knew that would only open up avenues he didn’t want to go down. He had finally decided it was best to enjoy the family moment and keep the rest to himself. He wasn’t used to doing that. He had never endured anything nearly as stressful as this without either Karlie or Jack. And it looked like neither one of them was with him on this one. As he was realizing more with each passing day, he was alone. Except for … and he almost laughed aloud as he realized for the first time that his only confederate and friend in this was now Lavern Justice. A more unlikely pair never roamed the west or solved a mystery. And here they were. Wickman and Justice.

  He saw Karlie’s face appear in the mirror, and her expression made him turn quickly and say, “What’s wrong?”

  “You won’t believe what I just found on the front porch.”

  “What?”

  “I went out to get the paper, and this box was lying there next to it.”

  “What is it?”

  The back doorbell rang, but she continued with another thought. “That’ll be Caywood. I called him just now before I ran up here. He was on his way to work. He was only a couple of blocks away. Come on down while I let him in, and I’ll show you both at the same time.”

  Caywood? J. D. thought. What was going on? What did she find that would cause her to call the police before she even told him about it? He tossed the electric razor back on its shelf and grabbed a shirt as he ran out the door and down the steps. When he reached the bottom of the steps, Karlie was just letting Bobby Caywood in the back door.

  “Good morning, Bobby, and thank you for coming,” Karlie greeted him.

  “You sounded scared. Morning, J. D. What’s up?”

  Karlie looked from Bobby to J. D. “I went out to get the paper off the porch just a few minutes ago and saw this box there beside it. I picked it up and opened it, thinking it was some sort of advertisement or maybe something from the paper man. I took the top off it and …”

  She took the top off the little box and held it out for Bobby and J. D. to see simultaneously. Bobby was the first to reach for it. He pulled the wad of money out of the box, held it up, looked at J. D. and Karlie and said, “How much is here?”

  “I don’t know,” Karlie said. “I haven’t had a chance to count it. Is it okay to touch it?”

  “Yeah,” Caywood assured her. “You can’t get prints off money—there’s thousands on there. Now the box is a different story. You may have messed up some on the box. Or maybe not.”

  J. D. reached for the money, sat down at the kitchen counter, and began counting. Caywood and Karlie said nothing until he was finished.

  “One thousand thirty,” he said, setting it on the countertop.

  “How much?” Caywood asked.

  “One thousand thirty dollars.”

  “That’s an odd amount. Does that number mean anything to either one of you?”

  Karlie shook her head and said, “No.”

  J. D. checked inside the box for a note or some other clue and said, “Maybe.”

  Bobby Caywood waited a few seconds, then impatiently said, “Okay, are you going to tell me, or do you want me to start guessing?”

  “No, I was just trying to figure. You asked me the other day how much money had been stolen from the restaurant, and I was trying to remember what I said.”

  “I can tell you exactl
y what you said.” And Caywood reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a small tablet. He leafed through it and said, “Monday, September tenth—two thirty—I asked you how much was missing. Karlie said less than a thousand dollars. J. D. said nine hundred seventy-eight dollars and change.” He looked at J. D. “You seemed pretty sure.”

  “Well, you know how that goes. If it were expenditures or income I would be sure. But when someone’s stealing from you, dollars can fall through the cracks. I could have been off some. How much difference is that? Difference between one thousand thirty to nine hundred seventy-eight. That’s only fifty-two dollars. I could easily have been off fifty-two dollars. It was only my best estimate at the time.”

  Bobby Caywood looked at both of them. “Where does all this stand since we left it at the restaurant Wednesday? Any confessions you two haven’t told me about? Any changes of habit?”

  “Yes and no,” Karlie interjected. “Katherine came back here to talk to me, and we had some uncomfortable words. She was hurt—but as far as a confession, no. Although she hasn’t been back to work since, unless she’s there this morning. And then Lottie and I talked yesterday. It was the same sort of conversation. She was upset because she had been suspected and wanted to know where she stood. But no one has come out and showed their hand.”

  “Crystal?” Caywood asked. “Has she said anything more?”

  “Nothing. You heard everything she had to say the other day.”

  The three of them sat in silence. Caywood was the first to speak. “I’ll take the box with me and have it dusted, but I don’t think you’ll find anything. It’s too easy to wear gloves. And if I had to say, I would bet this is the last you will ever hear of it. This is most likely the exact amount stolen, even if you can’t verify it. And my twenty years of experience tells me you will never know for sure who left it here this morning. And knowing you two, you probably don’t want to.”

  “I really didn’t want it to end this way,” J. D. said. “I know Karlie can accept this better than I can, but I’ve always liked things tied up and ended. ’Course, I’m learning more every day that’s not always the case, but it doesn’t keep me from wishing it was.”

  “Well, get over that, buddy. This is life. Not Perry Mason or Law and Order. You don’t always get the bad guy in the end. Sometimes he gets you. But if you had to make the choice of getting the money back or knowing who took it, wouldn’t you rather have the money back?”

  Caywood continued as he folded his pad and put it back in his inside coat pocket. “Everything that happens in life isn’t always tied up with a pretty bow on it. There will always be loose ends that keep us up at night. Facts that don’t add up. But you know what? You don’t grieve over the ones you can’t solve. Take the best from it. Give the woman, whichever one she may be, the benefit of the doubt and keep a closer eye on things in the future. But don’t fret over it. And don’t be too hard on yourself for not demanding an absolute and flawless answer. God knows there just isn’t always one to have.”

  Bobby opened the back door to leave, and Karlie said, “Thank you so much for coming by. We really appreciate all you’ve done.”

  “That’s okay. You owe me a free lunch, and we’ll be even.”

  “Owe you one?” J. D. said. “When was the last time you paid for one?”

  Caywood smiled and said to Karlie as he was closing the door, “Tell your husband I said good-bye.”

  Karlie stood in the middle of the kitchen floor with her arms folded, looking at the stack of money, while J. D. sat on the high-back stool, elbows on the counter, and rubbed the smooth side of his face.

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “I am so tired with everything that’s going on. You know what? How about we do nothing. If this is how it’s meant to be, let’s close the book on it.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Probably not, but I’m willing to try if you are. I’m trading in my pretty bows for loose ends. Save me some of that coffee while I go shave the other side of my face.”

  Eight o’clock found Karlie through with her makeup and J. D. finished with his shaving and dressing and the both of them at the kitchen table eating breakfast. J. D. had made a call to the downtown restaurant and was only mildly surprised to hear Katherine answer the phone. He told her to call him when the produce truck came later in the day since he wanted to be there when they unloaded. She seemed her old, natural self and said good-bye as cheerily as she said hello. Karlie asked if Lottie and Crystal were in, and J. D. replied that he hadn’t asked but was sure that if they hadn’t been, Katherine would have said so. The TV was tuned to The Today Show, J. D was checking the high school football schedule in the morning paper, and Karlie was reading the news on her laptop, which was sitting next to her toast and coffee. The serenity of the scene was at once added to and then disrupted by their daughter’s entrance.

  “Good morning,” she said with a song in her voice.

  Karlie and J. D. turned at the same time, shared looks of surprise on their faces. But as surprised as they were at her being dressed and downstairs at 8:00 a.m., they were even more shocked at what she was setting on the floor.

  “Is that your suitcase?” her mother asked.

  “It’s actually an old one of yours. It’s a little bigger than mine, and I wanted to take some more winter clothes with me.”

  “Where exactly are you going?” her father asked.

  “Back to school. Don’t you remember, Daddy, that I told you there was a mixer there this weekend I wanted to go to?”

  “Yeah, I remember, but then you said you didn’t really want to go.…”

  She laughed. “Of course I want to go! They’re going to have a live band and everything. And maybe I need to try a little harder or at least give it a little more time. I put that dress in here, Mamma, the one we bought last spring when we went over to Dillard’s in Charlotte. You know the pink one with that swoop neck?”

  “Angela,” Karlie began, her tone more concerned than bewildered, “are you going back to school, or are you just going back to this dance? And then pop in here again next week with the same story? If you are, I think we had better have …”

  “Oh, Mamma, don’t be silly. I’m going back to school. That’s what you want me to do, isn’t it? I mean isn’t that what you both want me to do?”

  “Yes, that’s what we want you to do,” said Karlie. “And I hope that’s what you want to do. But if this is not settled in your mind, I think now is a good time to settle it. You need to make a commitment and stick to it. You’re either in school or you’re not. Can you keep your commitment?”

  “Yes. I know I can. Tell her, Daddy. I know if I go back that’s it. And I’ll see you at Thanksgiving or maybe once before depending on if I can get a ride.”

  “Speaking of a ride,” said J. D., “how are you traveling this morning?”

  “Jenna is picking me up. She comes home a lot of the time during the week. She has a weird schedule. I called her last night.”

  “You decided last night you were going back to school?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  “Sweetheart, I don’t want to say anything that might make you change your mind, but I have to risk it. When did all this change? And why? Less than forty-eight hours ago you were standing right here on this very spot, adamantly telling us you weren’t going back to school until January. Now you have your bags packed. Excuse me—your mother’s bags packed. What happened?”

  “Do you really want me to tell you?”

  “Certainly I do. I’m a little baffled. Happy but baffled.”

  “Grandma changed my mind.” Angela sat down at the table between her parents and spoke to them like the adult she was bound to become. “She told me some things I didn’t know. She’s always full of surprises, but this time she told me about her feelings when she went to college. And how she and Granddaddy both had that nervous, uneasy feeling in their stomachs being away from home for the first time. Tha
t everybody has that feeling, and that it’s not just me. And, Daddy, she told me about you coming home on Thanksgiving break that first year and telling the whole family you were quitting school for a whole year. And she told me why.” The tears started in her voice and then welled up in her blue eyes. “She told me you wanted to wait on Mamma so you could go all through college together. Oh, Mamma, I think that’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life, and I don’t hold it against you for not telling me the whole truth last night.”

  She leaned over and hugged her mother so tightly she nearly lost her balance. As J. D. was reaching for her arm to keep her from falling, a car horn blasted three times from the driveway.

  “That will be Jenna. I love you guys.”

  “Call us when you get there,” Karlie ordered.

  “I will. Bye, Daddy. Tell Grandma I love her. I told her last night, but tell her again for me.”

  They kissed her good-bye and, their offer of help refused, watched her sling the family suitcase into Jenna’s trunk, then watched the car back out into the street. They closed the door slowly but didn’t return to their seats at the table. They stood looking at each other.

  “Did your mother and dad go to college?” Karlie asked.

  “Not that I know of. Dad might have gone to some night school after work at one time, but I’m pretty sure Mom never set foot on a campus. And what’s all this about me wanting to quit school so we could graduate together?”

  “Something Miss Beatrice put in her head. I have no idea.”

  “Well, it worked. While everything we were saying was falling short of even reaching her ears, Miss Beatrice’s words worked magic.”

  They laughed, and Karlie said, “That’s your mother. I wonder what other stories she makes up and tells about you and me to those sweet old ladies over there.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  After a morning like that, J. D. didn’t need any more excitement to make this day memorable. He was hoping it might take on some degree of normalcy, yet he was anxiously awaiting a call from Lavern Justice that could make everything that had already happened today pale in comparison. But by noon that call hadn’t come. He walked up the street to the Coffee Cup and had just what the name suggested with Rollie Doyle, his nearest competitor. They were joined by a couple of other merchant friends, and he enjoyed the diversion of small talk. They agreed to have their monthly poker game the following week, and he issued the invitation to hold it in his basement. It would be one of those friendly little games with no more than twenty bucks at stake. J. D. didn’t really think of it as gambling. It was just good, cheap fun. A night out at the movies could cost Karlie and him a lot more than he could lose in one poker sitting. The ticket price for two plus popcorn and Cokes would be closer to twenty-five dollars, and they always ran the chance of seeing a bad movie. At least with poker night, he always knew what to expect, and it was fun—win, lose, or draw.