Deadly Homecoming at Rosemont

by Chappell,Connie

  He held my gaze for an anxious moment before he spoke. “Apology accepted. Now, here’s my advice: Let Elmore set out to prove Clay guilty.”

  I squirmed in my seat, grumbling under my breath, cursing promises made and apologies rendered.

  “Hear me out,” he said. “We know Clay’s innocent. So all Elmore’s going to do is build an indisputable case that will clear Clay of any wrongdoing. Then there will never be a question in anyone’s mind.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, but I can’t sit around and watch that happen. I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

  His broad chest heaved with a great sigh, accepting the stalemate. “What’s Gideon’s take on the theft?”

  “Same as mine. The world is coming apart at the seams.” I smiled, hoping to break the tension. “The last update actually came from Clay. We had lunch. The Burglary Unit is waiting on the security guard to regain consciousness. While I was out, I drove over to Winding Trail to see what caused all the commotion.” I purposely steered past the two visits I made on prospective donors for Spinsters since both businessmen turned me down flat.

  “I’m glad you did. That’ll be helpful in the long run.”

  “Why?” I asked suspiciously.

  “I have a little something for you to do that isn’t going to take long at all. The folks out there are going to need some pampering.”

  “No,” I pleaded, anticipating the assignment. “I’ve got my piece for the paper. A draft by Saturday noon. That’s as long as I can put Irv off.”

  “That’ll work. Turn in your draft by noon, then go out to Winding Trail. Lucy’s putting together a report on the calls. The neighbors out there made a concerted effort, now it’s our turn. Go door-to-door and be my representative. Talk to people. Tell them we’re doing everything possible to expedite the repair. Make them feel warm and fuzzy, and make sure they know that it’s this office giving them that feeling.”

  He adopted an overly convincing tone I felt coaches must use in locker rooms at halftime. I countered his pep talk with a well-practiced pout, wishing I could will tears to spring from my eyes. The look he turned on me said the debate was over.

  Beaten, I spent the next few minutes filling him in. The culprit on Winding Trail was a sinkhole. It had taken on a life of its own, gobbling up all the fresh asphalt fed to it. A week ago, street crews repaired a leaky water line supplying a fire hydrant. They theorized that pooling from the leak forced the ground to shift and resettle, undermining the patch. To make matters worse, the streetlight illuminating the problem burned out during last night’s storm.

  “The man who lives up at the dead end swerved around the sinkhole, lost control at the curve on the wet street, and his pickup collided with a tree. Squad received the call around two-thirty.” On paper, Winding Trail forms a lazy S, rising uphill to a tight cul-de-sac.

  “He was hurt?”

  “Airbag saved him, but broke his nose. Blood everywhere, I guess. The crash woke the whole neighborhood. Everyone rushed out. The man was trapped inside. Both doors buckled on impact.”

  “What else?”

  “The tree has to come down. The owner knows.”

  K.C. pushed himself up from his chair and stepped to the doorway. He spoke to Lucy, asking her to begin contacting other council members until they worked down the list. I knew he wanted to relay information on the overnight criminal extravaganza before his six colleagues clicked on the evening news and heard it there.

  Turning, he caught me at my office door. “Don’t forget. Warm and fuzzy.”

  K.C. updated council members, one after another, on the two crimes, not forgetting the accident on Winding Trail. Work was interspersed between the calls, and the speech received a passing grade.

  Finally, with a lull, I stood behind my now-chaotic desk. The alley pictures lay there. I brought up two from the bottom: the first, a 1972 shot of Gillespie’s Print Shop. With the departure of the station, the depot clock found a home above the shop’s sign. In the second photo taken eight years later, the clock sat on a post at the curb overlooking Snowden and Berretta. After studying each and vainly awaiting the arrival of an idea, I restacked the pictures and began pulling stray paper into a common pile, hoping to find outlying corners of my desk blotter.

  Deciding I needed another ruled pad for notes, I sat and pulled open my bottom drawer. I heard K.C.’s chair squeak in the other room and saw his shadow pass both doors and into the front office. I lifted the remaining pad from my stash, revealing a small four-by-six-inch wooden box. Memories flooded back at the sight, more vivid and more dear to me today than ever before. Surprisingly, the credit for that went to a cop named Sherrie Lippincott.

  My hand closed around the box of mementos. I lifted it to the desk and wiggled off the lid. From the shallow container, I pulled a small card and a rolled sheaf.

  “What are those?”

  My head shot up. Lucy leaned against the doorframe. Swept back to the past, I didn’t realize she watched.

  I took a second to ponder the issue, then smiled. “Where’s K.C.?”

  “Downstairs.”

  I beckoned her in with the toss of my head. She scampered directly to my side chair, perched on its edge, and clasped her hands between her knees, all the while keeping expectant eyes on me.

  I put a look of ambivalence on my face. “This is kind of personal. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you.” Truthfully, I already regretted my impulsiveness. I held on to this story for nearly six years. Lucy and I were good friends now, but we were mere acquaintances back then. By the time I got to know her, I’d stored away the two cherished tokens I now held. Other keepsakes from this mothballed story were, and always had been, in plain sight. Lucy is innately nosy while I cultivate a quiet, personal reserve. This combination left her curiosity in check, behind a facade of good manners.

  In short, longsuffering Lucy would not be denied.

  “It’s personal! What kind of reason is that? Cut the crap, Wrenn. Like my life’s not an open book. The only thing you don’t know about me is I wear sweat socks to bed.”

  After we giggled about that, I submitted to Lucy and my reminiscent mood. “Let me start by saying one thing: It’s odd seeing Gideon’s and my relationship through someone else’s eyes—someone I didn’t know had any knowledge of it.”

  “Who?”

  A laugh popped out. “I met one of Gideon’s old girlfriends today.”

  “Another one. Where?”

  “Eastwood. She’s a cop. Working the Burglary Unit.”

  “You’re kidding. A cop? What’s she like?”

  I gave basic statistics for the blonde from this morning: name, rank, and cup size, then I summed her up. “Name’s Sherrie. Clay says she’s a good cop. I hope she is. She has a theft to solve. But she’s bitter about losing Gideon.”

  “Hmm. It’s been a long time not to have gotten over it.”

  I reached that conclusion earlier in the day. Not wanting to cover old ground, I jumped forward into the tale. “When I first met Gideon, I thought he was an arrogant bastard.”

  “Oh, my.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “This is going to be better than I thought.”

  “Yeah, well, Sherrie told me some things that made me think I was wrong with my assessment. Oh, he was a real charmer. I knew that from the start. He asked me out two minutes after he introduced himself, almost like it was a game—a race to beat his own best record.” I chuckled. “I remember saying that I wouldn’t go out with him unless the invitation was delivered from above on the wings of an angel.”

  Lucy chortled. “Nothing like setting the bar astronomically high.”

  “Don’t laugh. He managed it.”

  Her eyes bulged with surprise.

  Laying the card and rolled sheaf aside, I sent my gaze across the desk’s cluttered surface to its far corner. Arranged there, safely distanced from the chaos, were three items encircled by the fourth. I leaned in, stretched out an arm, retrieving first one item, then went back for a se
cond. This was a dream come true for Lucy. I knew the reward was worthy of the wait.

  The legal pad I fished for and found lay before her. I placed the first item there, a shiny brass hoop about eight inches across. Pinched between my thumb and forefinger was the quill-end of a delicately curved white feather. Its movement through the air lifted the feathery down, leaving the impression it itched to take flight if I would only release it. If held in my open palm, it would reach from wrist to fingertips, but I let it nestle within the golden ring.

  The few mementos I keep on the corner of my desk are slivers of my life. They’ve shaped it, leaving an everlasting imprint. Memories cascade from them like a waterfall in a jungle, a precious and powerful gift, entwining body with soul, connecting the past with the present, and going before me as a beacon into the future. I gather my strength from them, the delicate feather is equal to the rigid hoop in its measure. They are remnants of lessons learned, battles won and lost, and those I still fight.

  “All of these are connected,” I said, indicating the two items from the box and the two on the notepad. “The morning after I met Gideon the first time, I left the house for work and found a dozen feathers like this one laying inside the ring on that bench by my driveway.”

  Lucy visited my home several times, so I knew she would recognize the setting. When I raced home for K.C.’s speech, I passed the iron bench and a large pot of geraniums on my way to the cottage’s front door.

  I watched Lucy’s entire face brighten. “The ring is a halo,” she said.

  Don’t let it be said this woman is not perceptive. She’s also a true romantic, sweat socks and all.

  “And the feathers plucked from angel’s wings,” I finished, then handed her the scroll of parchment. Even its appearance signified heavenly intervention. “This note sat on top of the feathers.”

  She examined its stiff texture and ragged edges, both suggesting the brittleness of an ancient age. Lowering her glasses to her nose, she gently pried the six-inch square open and read aloud: “‘When I deliver unto you thy perfect man, thou shalt accept his invitation to dinner.’” Then she looked quizzically over her lenses. “It’s signed ‘God’.”

  That last word was scripted in capital letters.

  All at once, realization dawned in her face. “An invitation from above.” She cheered for herself, having worked out another piece to the puzzle. “How did you not fall in love with him on the spot?”

  “Well, at the time, it sounded more like a scolding to me, and I fumed about it all the way into the office, dragging it with me. When I arrived, sitting on my desk was a single rose in a vase with this note.”

  She exchanged the scroll for the small card and recited, “‘The white rose represents purity of heart. The offer for dinner still stands.’” Her expression and tone changed to puzzlement as she lingered over the final word: “‘God’.”

  Again, the deity reference was penned in all upper case.

  “Turn the card over.”

  She did. “‘Gideon Osborne Douglas’. It’s his business card from Eastwood.”

  “Read it again.”

  “Gideon Osborne Douglas.” Her head began a slow shake, then her eyes grew round. “His initials! G-O-D.” She slumped back into the chair, then instantly sprung forward. “You figured it out?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “So, let me guess: Now you don’t think of him as the arrogant bastard you thought he was. Something this cop told you changed your mind. Am I right?”

  My smile revealed how right she was. “He told the cop about me either the same night we met or the next day. She said he was absolutely giddy.” My fingers sketched quotation marks around the words.

  “Giddy Gideon,” she quipped. “I like it.”

  “I thought he was just being cocky with the notes, even after I realized GOD was his initials. But now I know he told Sherrie—mind you, the woman he was dating at the time—that he’d fallen irreversibly in love with a woman he didn’t even know.”

  Dreamy-eyed, she asked, “Can you imagine that?”

  “I’ve been trying.”

  “Shame on you for thinking he was an arrogant bastard. Apologize to that man.”

  I smiled. “Maybe I will.”

  Dooley’s Bar

  The afternoon passed, and I felt my mind change gears, going from administrative to creative, brought on by another shuffle through the photographs. Time wandered forward in the shops around the alley. The scenes depicted showed modernization. Ceilings were lowered. Lighting was updated. Wall radiators and giant-sized oscillating fans disappeared completely. In one of the stills, a skillful photographer’s shutter captured the depot clock reflected through the front window of the Sportsmen Shop while the Fourth of July parade marched by.

  At five, I packed up K.C.’s briefcase and hustled him out in Lucy’s reliable hands. I promised his wife, Audrey, he’d be home on time. They had evening plans, and he couldn’t be late. K.C. might be mayor, but Audrey was the boss.

  In no time at all, the building emptied, but my reminiscent mood remained. It focused on Grams. Her precious heart failed a year ago in February. I was never too far away during her decline. When her heart finally stopped, I plunged into grief. That debilitating grief lessened when I filled her loss with the dream she always had for me. Writing. Writing was the place where I picked up and went on.

  My eyes slipped over to another memento inside the hoop. I picked up a tarnished buckle and lay it in my palm. Instantly, the floodgates opened. Memories rushed in from all sides, and I was a child again. Small. Fragile. Too stubborn to cry.

  I was just six years old when my world ended and began in the space of one loving heartbeat. That strong heart belonged to Grams, and I belonged to her. Let me tell you, split-second stops and starts are hard on a child.

  On a blustery September afternoon, the school bus dropped me off at Grams’ gravel-and-dirt drive. A wind swirled around my skirt, and I hesitated, looking up to the house. A sadness hung over it, and I knew they were gone.

  I remembered my slow trod up the drive, eyes fixed on my shoes. They still looked new, shiny and black, dust settling on them as I went. I would clean them off, as I always did, on the seat of my shorts once I changed out of my school clothes. This entire memory has forever been overshadowed by a pair of shoes. I can’t imagine what it means. Some sort of damage to my psyche, I expect, but still, the shoes prevail.

  Grams, my mother’s mother, waited in the porch swing of the country house. When I scuffed close enough, she called me over, saying she had a story to tell about her papa. I crossed the porch and wiggled into the spot beside her. She gave my forehead a kiss. While she talked, I kept my eyes on my shoes, angled out in midair off the seat, my legs too short to reach the floorboards.

  The long and the short of the story was this: In an early fall, when Grams was just a little older than I was then, her papa walked into town to see the cobbler. Winter was coming, and he wore a hole in the bottom of his shoe. (Again with the shoes.) She told me how he did not return that night, nor for many nights, because the Wanderlust bit him along the way. After that, she remembered, he would often get the itch to travel.

  I cut straight to the chase at that point. Numbly, I said, “Mommy and Daddy are gone.”

  With the simplicity of a child’s mind trying to equate worn soles with missing parents, I thought getting them new pairs would set things right, but Grams’ answer came softly. “Family traits don’t work that way, sweetie.”

  That occasion was not the first. I had other hazy memories of abandonment, always left in Grams’ care, always they returned to collect me, sometimes just two weeks later, sometimes two months. With maturity came this knowledge: Grams stepped in to break the cycle once and for all when I was six. After that, contact with my parents was limited to telephone calls, stray gifts in the mail, and a visit at my birthday. They usually missed the actual date by a day or two.

  After that day in the swing, hearing Papa�
�s story, my daily ritual played out with a new ending. I changed my clothes. I dusted my shoes on the seat of my pants, and I turned them over, inspecting for holes. I don’t know what made me cut off the buckle from one of those shoes when they grew too small, but I was always glad I did.

  That first fall, Grams gave me a job: I pulled the weeds.

  We spent hours in her flowerbeds, her tall languid frame bent next to my scrawny one. She told me about the needs of the plants, the nourishment of flowers, the dry and the wet, the sun and the shade, new buds and withering blooms. She told me about life through her care of the yard, her gardens, and me. She let me work out the anger and hurt while busying my hands with decapitating weeds and ripping crabgrass out by the roots. It had been an adequate bandage for the scar tissue of my sixth year.

  This has also been my tether to the solid ground of Havens and my enchantment with echoes calling me to the past—other people’s pasts, their history, for I am not enchanted with my own.

  Grams encouraged me to write, to follow my dream, so I returned the buckle to its spot inside the halo and forced thoughts of Piedmont Alley inside my head. Before much happened on that front, my phone rang.

  “I’m not going to make it home for a while,” Gideon moaned apologetically.

  “How bad is it?”

  “I don’t have all the details, but it’s bad. Foss arrived a couple of hours ago and started grilling Adam about a discrepancy in the paperwork he filled out for the liability insurance.”

  “What kind of discrepancy?”

  “The kind that voids the policy and gets the company out from under a big claim.”

  “That’ll leave the university fully responsible.”

  “The only thing that’ll save us is recovery of the artifacts. Even then, Eastwood’s reputation will be scarred for life. Foundation funding is over. We’ll never see that again. It’s a mess.” He paused. “I’m pulling together some information. Someone financed this job, and someone got paid high-dollar to pull it off. I have more calls to make in that regard, but I wanted you to know I won’t be getting away anytime soon. We’re taking a dinner break, then Foss wants us back to review the application documents and the liability insurance forms. What’re your plans?” His voice dropped into a sexy baritone. “Is there a chance cake could be waiting for me when I get home?”