The Cover Story

by Deb Richardson-Moore

  “What can I say? Everyone in my day dressed like them.”

  Branigan’s mind was spinning ahead. “I’m interested in the Robies too. Any trouble besides drinking?”

  Again, Dr Eckhart and Ira Powers exchanged glances. “Hazing,” he said. “Some pretty serious charges. Remember I told you about another fraternity getting shut down entirely when a pledge died from alcohol poisoning? I think the Rho Beta Iota incident came in the next year or so. Sylvia, can you look it up?”

  Dr Eckhart pulled a hard-backed notebook from her purse and flipped through several pages. “Let’s see… that was seven years ago – Rho Beta Iota was shut down for a year. That wasn’t just rush probation. That was no activity at all. Sometimes a chapter will fold after that. But they bounced back.”

  “What did they do, Granddaddy?”

  “They made a drunk pledge walk around the ledge of his dorm roof, three stories off the ground,” he said. “When he sobered up the next morning, he realized how close he came to dying. He was angry enough to bring them before the Honor Council before he transferred out.”

  “That was brave.”

  “Yes, it rarely happens like that. Usually the administration finds out or a parent complains. Hardly ever a student.”

  Branigan paused to eat a few bites of her muffin. “Can I tell you something in confidence? I don’t have it verified yet, so it’s not something I can print.”

  Her grandparents and Dr Eckhart nodded assent.

  “It’s about the Robies,” she said. “A homeless man I know through Jericho Road said a boy named Jones Rinehart led an attack on a homeless man under Garner Bridge last winter. From what he described, it sounded like a pledge outing.”

  Dr Eckhart looked shocked. “Jones was pledge chairman last year, and he’s president this year. But I never heard anything like that. What exactly do you mean by ‘led an attack’?”

  “Supposedly, they had him on the ground, kicking him.”

  She drew in a sharp breath. “That would definitely be a police matter. Was it reported?”

  “I doubt it. Liam Delaney, the pastor at Jericho Road, says homeless people don’t always report crimes. They may have warrants out on them and don’t want police nosing around.”

  “That’s awful. Is it too late to talk to the victim and get him to report it?”

  Branigan forced herself to meet Dr Eckhart’s eyes. “He’s dead. Not from that. He was killed last summer.”

  Rudelle reached over and patted Branigan’s arm. Dr Eckhart, presumably having read about the events of last summer, didn’t inquire further.

  Her grandmother’s pats turned into a tap for attention. “I don’t want to interrupt, Branigan,” she said. “But your mention of the Gamma Delta Phis reminded me of something Arlene Samson said. You remember Arlene next door?”

  Branigan nodded.

  “Well, she teaches Intro to Economics and a freshman seminar. Your grandfather and I were working in the yard last spring and she mentioned one of her students, a freshman, who had left school. She had been a Gamma Delta Phi in her day, and that’s why she mentioned that the girl was too.”

  “You’re right,” Ira Powers added. “I’d forgotten that.”

  “It had to be Janie Rose, because Maylene was in Dr Carlton’s seminar,” said Branigan.

  “That’s just it. It wasn’t Janie Rose. She said another name.”

  Now Branigan was interested. “You’re saying another freshman pledged Gamma Delta Phi and left school the same spring semester? Do you remember the name?”

  “Heavens, no. I just know it wasn’t Janie Rose Carlton. Knowing Ina Rose, I would’ve remembered that.”

  “How about you, Granddaddy?”

  “Heck, no. I wouldn’t have remembered the conversation at all if Rudelle hadn’t brought it up. As I recall, we were talking about how colleges have abandoned the idea of in loco parentis – of serving as surrogate parents or guardians. That’s why Arlene mentioned it.”

  Branigan turned to her grandmother. “Can you get the student’s name?”

  “I can call Arlene.”

  “I mean, can you get it right now?”

  “Very well. Excuse me, Sylvia.”

  Branigan opened the door to the kitchen so she could hear her grandmother’s side of the conversation. She heard her grandmother’s preamble, asking her next-door neighbor about her holiday plans. She raised her eyebrows in exaggeration at her grandfather, who chuckled. “You’re surprised?” he said.

  Finally Branigan heard her grandmother get to the point of her call. She waited in silence for an extended period, presumably while the professor searched her notes. A few minutes later, Rudelle said her prolonged goodbyes and returned to the dining room with a sheet of paper.

  “The girl’s name is Mackenzie Broadus. Address at the time of her enrollment was 215 La Montagne Street, Columbia, South Carolina. ‘Montagne’, spelled like that,” she said, pointing to the paper.

  Branigan looked at her grandmother with admiration. “Wow. Good work, Grandmother. Is that address as ritzy as it sounds?”

  “No idea. And Branigan, Arlene said that when she talked to the dean about Mackenzie’s withdrawal, she was told the girl left with no exit interview. That’s highly unusual. All the dean knew was that she had transferred to an all-women’s college in Columbia. And he got that only after repeatedly calling the girl’s parents.”

  “It could be nothing,” said Branigan. “But it is a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  Sylvia Eckhart sipped her coffee. “What are you going to do?”

  “Maybe track down this Mackenzie to see what she knows. It’s probably a wild goose chase, but I always say that when you start shaking things loose, you find the most interesting things.”

  Dr Eckhart nodded. “It does seem rather far afield to go all the way to Columbia.”

  “Yep, and if I achieve nothing, it won’t be the first time.”

  Branigan pulled a business card from her purse to leave with the professor, thanked Dr Eckhart and her grandparents profusely, then left through the kitchen so she could say goodbye to Marisol.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Malachi sat on his favorite bench in front of Grambling’s courthouse. He had the whole square to himself today. He was trying out his full-length coveralls from the Army Navy Store, zippered and insulated, the dull green of an army Jeep. He’d saved awhile for these, given up some drinking in October and November to buy them. It was like walking around in a sleeping bag.

  It really wasn’t cold enough for them yet – high 40s or low 50s now that it was mid-day, he figured. But Malachi wasn’t about to leave them in his tent. They’d get stolen, sure as the world. So he unzipped them to his belly button every now and then, until he got chilled in the sweatshirt underneath, then zipped them back up again. He was thinking about going to the library to read, but he’d get hot in there. So he sat on a cold bench of iron and wood.

  He’d been there an hour or more, he guessed, when he heard his name called. Tiffany Lynn stood on the sidewalk, waving two lid-covered coffee cups. Like Malachi, she was bundled into a shapeless mass of bulky clothes, layer over layer, topped by a solid green cap with a green and white pompom. Machine-made, Malachi had heard Pastor Liam instruct his donors, who wanted to give hand-knitted caps and mittens to the homeless. They didn’t realize the wind whipped right through the holes of those hand-knitted things. What you needed was the tight fit of a machine-made cap or gloves, even if they were cheap polyester.

  “Look what I got!” Tiffany Lynn called again, waving the cups. “Want one?”

  “Sure.”

  Tiffany Lynn waddled over, her clothes slowing her usual bouncy walk. Stringy blonde hair fell below the cap, past her shoulders. She handed Malachi a coffee and pointed up the street. “Church kids was handing these out,” she said. “T
hey had plenty, so I took two. And candy canes.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out some small canes and tossed them on Malachi’s lap.

  “No san’wiches?”

  “They had some, but they all gone.”

  “Have a seat.”

  Malachi held her coffee long enough for Tiffany Lynn to shed her backpack and settle on the other end of his bench. “That was a good paintin’ you did at Jericho,” he told her.

  She grinned, showing missing front teeth, top and bottom. “Pastor was sure happy ’bout it.”

  “I like the way you use brighter colors as the story got brighter.”

  She appeared delighted. “You seen that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought Pastor and Miz Charmay in the art room was the only ones who’d get that part.”

  “Nah, anybody who know that Good Samaritan story would know. Even if they diden understan’ the art part of how you did it, they’d know.” He tapped his chest. “In here.”

  “Good.” Tiffany Lynn sat back with a satisfied smile. After a moment, she spoke again. “That sure was bad ’bout Pastor’s girl.”

  “Yeah, Miz Charlie a good one. I watched her grow up.”

  “People say Ralph tried to run her off the road, tried to kill her, ’cause Pastor was trying to get Maylene away from him.”

  Malachi was used to the wild rumors that flew around the street, but this was a new one. “People say a lot of things don’ make no sense.”

  “Yeah, but that Ralph had a bad temper. You seen that yourself.”

  “I seen Maylene’s black eyes, if thas wha’ you mean.”

  “No, I mean that time Elise was in jail and Ralph thought Slick was being a little too nice to Maylene. He beat the crap outta him.”

  Malachi sat up straighter. Tiffany Lynn prattled on. “And that time before Maylene even come to Tent City. That time those boys beat up Max Brody. You ’member that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “’Member Ralph took off after ’em? All by hisself?”

  “No,” said Malachi. “I don’ ’member that.”

  “Well, he did. Most ever’body else gone back to their tents. But I stayed longer. When those boys ran back in the woods, Ralph took off after ’em. I thought maybe he gon try to catch the slowest one.” She laughed.

  “Did he?”

  “Don’ know.” She shrugged. “I din see him again ’til the next mornin’. And he had a broke nose.”

  Malachi sat back. Ralph was violent, sure enough. If Tiffany Lynn was right, he had a run-in with those college boys from Rutherford Lee. And then the hearse was stolen from the college. And then one of the boys was in Charlie’s hospital room.

  Were he and Miz Branigan looking at this all wrong? They had assumed the driver of the hearse was after Janie Rose Carlton because her daddy had money. But what if he’d been after Charlie all along? After Charlie out of some misguided anger at Pastor Liam?

  Malachi stood abruptly.

  “Where you goin’?” asked Tiffany Lynn.

  “Hospital.”

  If he walked, it would take an hour to get to St Joe’s. So Malachi walked the six blocks to Jericho Road and got Dontegan to unlock the basement where his bike was. He hopped on it and headed to the hospital.

  Malachi was glad to have the coveralls to cut the nippy wind as he rode. But by the time he arrived, he was sweating. There was nothing to be done about it but unzip to his belly button.

  He walked past the information desk and took the elevator to Charlie’s floor. He was relieved to see a cop reading the newspaper outside her door. Just to be sure, he stuck his head in the room.

  The cop stood up. “Help you?”

  Miz Liz looked up from her own newspaper. “Malachi!” she whispered, smiling and nodding at her sleeping daughter. “How nice of you to come!” She walked to the doorway and gave him a sideways hug.

  “It’s fine,” she told the policeman. “He’s a friend.”

  Malachi knew Miz Liz from a hundred Friday night pizza dinners. But he didn’t really have anything to say to her.

  “Jus’ want to make sure Miz Charlie, she okay,” he mumbled. He touched the peak of his ball cap and turned to leave. “You tell her I said ‘hey’.”

  He left Miz Liz staring after him, no telling what she was thinking.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  After the cappuccino and muffin, Branigan didn’t want lunch, so she was the first of the special team reporters to arrive back at the office. She waved at Bert, then sat at her desk. With a name and address, she quickly came up with a listing for Broadus on La Montagne Street in Columbia. She dialed the number, and a woman answered – young, from the sound of her voice.

  “Mackenzie Broadus, please.”

  “This is she.”

  “Hello, Mackenzie, this is Branigan Powers from The Grambling Rambler in Georgia,” she said. “I’d like to –” She heard a click, then a dial tone.

  She redialed. This time an answering machine picked up, with a man’s voice announcing it was the home of Al and Cynthia Broadus. Please leave us a message. Branigan gently replaced the receiver without leaving one. Al and Cynthia were Mackenzie’s parents, she assumed. She’d need to think about what she wanted to say.

  She leaned back in her chair and studied the ceiling. Then she made a decision.

  “Bert,” she called. “I’m going to dump what I have from this morning, then head to South Carolina, okay?”

  He swiveled in his chair. “What for?”

  “You’re gonna have to trust me,” she said. “It’s the Rutherford Lee angle you asked me to follow. It leads there.”

  “And what is it you’re going to dump?”

  “Some really good stuff on Maylene for Lou Ann’s story. I’ve already touched base with her, so she knows it’s coming. She can weave it in.”

  He swiveled back to his laptop. “Stay in touch.”

  * * *

  Over the next hour, Branigan drove to the farm, packed an overnight bag, and carried food and water to the barn for Cleo. She punched up a mound of hay for the dog’s bed, then took a well-worn tennis ball from a shelf and threw it into the cotton patch. Cleo bounded in to fetch it. They continued this game until the dog was panting. Branigan hugged her and propped the barn door open.

  “See you tomorrow, girl,” she promised.

  The trip was at least four hours, probably more with all the small towns she’d hit. The alternative was to take I-85 north to Greenville, then cut back south and east. She chose the back roads; if they were too awful going down, she’d take the interstate back.

  Driving through the rural winter landscape, she felt herself relax. An empty road stretched before her, and she wondered how Charlie and Janie Rose must have felt as a hearse bore down on them in just such a place.

  Janie Rose and Maylene. Young women with every advantage, cut down before they had a chance to begin their adult lives. Janie Rose, according to Charlie, frightened, watchful, even before the wreck. Maylene, living in a homeless camp, getting beat on by an ex-con. Branigan didn’t care how justice-minded she was, that was off the charts. Plus, she couldn’t get that last picture of Maylene out of her head: the beautiful young girl curled into a fetal position in a dark alley, estranged from all those back home who surely loved her.

  Was there a link between those girls and Mackenzie Broadus? Or was she on a wild goose chase?

  She fumbled to get a disc from the soft-covered CD holder on the passenger seat, and popped in an oldie from the Four Tops. There was no decent radio reception out here in the hinterlands.

  It was well after dark when Branigan pulled into Columbia. She used her GPS to guide her to 215 La Montagne Street, and was not surprised to find it in an expensive subdivision. There was a Christmas party in the neighborhood, so cars lined the curbed stre
et. Parking her Civic across from the Broadus house would not raise concern.

  She turned off the ignition and studied the two-story house of stucco and stone with wings on both sides. From the looks of it, some kind of plant conservatory was on one side, a three-car garage on the other. It looked like many of its elegant neighbors, landscaped with a mix of currently naked hardwoods, evergreen shrubs and the ubiquitous palmettos of the South Carolina Midlands.

  Lights were on inside the house, but Branigan didn’t see movement. Maybe the Broaduses were at the party. And now that she was sitting still, she grew sleepy. The effects of that pre-dawn meeting were kicking in.

  After twenty minutes, Branigan shook herself and employed the GPS again – this time to locate the nearest Embassy Suites. She figured she had a fifty-fifty chance of getting reimbursed by the newspaper. If not, it would be a Christmas present to herself.

  The next morning, Branigan enjoyed a rare hot breakfast of bacon, grits, toast, juice and coffee from the hotel’s lavish spread. She then packed and checked out.

  She was back in front of the Broadus house by 8 a.m., looking over The State newspaper and keeping an eye out for movement. At 8:45, the garage door rumbled up. Branigan strained to see the person backing down the driveway in a large silver van. She almost laughed when the van passed her, the driver more intent on the radio than on her driving. She had long, sleek brown hair and, if Branigan wasn’t mistaken, pearls around her throat. Yep, this one was a Gamma Delt all right.

  Branigan made a U-turn in the spacious street and followed the van out of the neighborhood and onto a four-lane road. Three days before Christmas, Mackenzie could be shopping, meeting friends, attending an early-morning drop-in or, from the size of her van, picking up a soccer team. With only two flashes of a turn signal as warning, the van turned into a Barnes & Noble Booksellers, and slid into a space at the front door.