by Anne McAneny
Chloe high-fived her friends, thankful that everyone’s problems disappeared on the field.
Two minutes later, a mint-green Cadillac with a dented door and over 150,000 miles on its odometer pulled up to the side of the road. It jolted to a stop just before a muddy ditch that was threatening to encompass the eastbound lane soon enough.
The passenger door opened and out stepped Hoop Whitaker, his dirty-blond hair peeking out from beneath a red and black USC Gamecocks cap. He had a sack full of bats and balls over his shoulder and a folded cardboard box under his arm. His trademark green-and-black flannel clung to his waist and fanned out like a peacock tail as he ran to the field. If anybody saw Hoop Whitaker without that flannel, they’d think something in the world had surely gone amiss. Even on hot days, he’d wear it in case he needed a pillow while napping on the edge of the swamp. Claimed it was a lucky shirt, but in Hoop’s world, everything resonated luck, from a pen to a fishing lure to a smelly white sock he’d tied to the back of his bike like a challenge flag.
“Play ball!” he shouted as he threw down the bag and started tearing up the box to use as bases and home plate.
The group, which had somehow grown to thirteen since Chloe’s arrival, let out a series of whoops and hollers and broke into teams. Macy took shortstop because she played the position like nobody else. One thing about Macy, she never ducked—didn’t matter if a ball threatened to break her foot in a vicious grounder or rocketed toward her face in a line drive. If it was in her vicinity, she’d grab it, seams, hide, and all. Boys teased her that she’d end up like a toothless witch if she didn’t stop staring balls down, but in response, she’d rub mud on her front teeth, get up in their faces, and say, “What’s wrong with a witch?”
Five minutes into the game, Chloe picked up a rare one that got by Macy and missiled it to bucktoothed Ian on first for an out. Hoop came up to bat next. Chloe crossed her fingers that he’d hit a double.
Hoop, as always, made a big show of warming up. He got everybody laughing by pretending to trip over his own feet before transforming the fall into a flip. Then he joked about the batter’s box being a literal cardboard box. While others were either enjoying the show or jeering at him to get on with it, Chloe caught a glimpse of Boyd Junior watching the game from the back of the store, a crooked face atop a crooked body. Reminded her of a scarecrow left hanging in a field too long, the pole jutting one shoulder up too high, the head skulking too low, and the sun taking its toll on all the mismatched parts. He had inherited the store eight months ago when his father died from a 4-pack-a-day habit. His dad’s cause of death hadn’t made much of an impact, obviously, because a cigarette hung from Boyd’s thin lips. Despite the distance, Chloe could see the weathered twenty-year-old watching Hoop. Smoking and watching. Even when someone in the field yelled something funny, or when Maxine the cheerleader turned a cartwheel to kill time, Boyd never tore his gaze from Hoop.
Chloe knew from fierce, slightly jealous observation that most grown men, given their druthers, would stare at Macy, no questions asked, or at least at Maxine. So what was wrong with Boyd? A sensation of fingers grabbing her spine worked its way to the nerves in her stomach and made her feel queasy. She jerked her head away as Boyd let out a thin plume of smoke. Heck, he’d always given her the willies. Like her mom said, every town has a few. At least he never talked much. Took people’s money and kept his thoughts to himself, however dark they might be.
Hoop finally made contact with the ball, hitting a solid double. Aaron Belfour chased it down and followed up with a respectable bullet to Chloe, but nobody and no-how could outpace Hoop Whitaker. The kid, according to his own legend, had outrun gators and jumped clear of rattlesnakes with time to spare, so getting to second base in a dusty patch of turf didn’t exactly present a challenge.
Hoop overran Chloe’s base by four steps, giving her a whiff of his strong, musky deodorant. She relished the scent, figuring he applied it more than once a day, even on top of sweat. She caught the ball and tossed it to the pitcher. Hoop returned soon enough, barely out of breath.
“Geez, Clover,” Hoop said, “you’re growing like a weed. Must have an inch or better on me now.”
“Yeah,” she said, unaware of her slouching shoulders, “I don’t like it much. Seems flat-out weird to be taller than most of the boys.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, patting her roughly on the arm. “When they catch up, they’ll be after you sum’n fierce.”
Chloe blushed, making it clear she didn’t believe him for a minute, but loving that he’d said it.
“’Cept me, of course,” he added.
Chloe’s heart contracted. Her lungs followed suit and it became hard to breathe, but she hoped her fake smile covered the pain.
Hoop touched her arm again, then craned his head until she was forced to meet his gaze. She hadn’t realized she was avoiding it, but once her eyes were locked in, she wished time would freeze and let her linger there forever.
He grinned shyly at her. “I didn’t mean except me being after you. I meant except me catching up in height.” He paused a moment in that thoughtful way of his. “I mean, you seen my old man? That guy is no great shakes in the height department.”
Chloe didn’t know what to say. She considered blurting out that even if Hoop were a foot shorter than her, she’d still marry him, but the crack of a foul ball sidelined the comment. “Maybe your mom was tall,” she said a moment later, immediately regretting her insensitivity. She waited for the rebuke, but Hoop only nodded as if impressed by the idea.
“Maybe she was,” he said. “Gonna have to ask my dad. Only pictures I have of her, she’s either sitting on a motorcycle or perching on a bar stool. Hard to tell.”
Hoop’s mom hadn’t been around since he was six or seven, and no one in town knew the whole story. It was the rare topic Hoop didn’t discuss openly, but maybe because no one felt comfortable asking.
Chloe and Hoop watched Lissette take her tenth pitch and then whiff her first strike, knowing two more would follow. Poor Lissette still wore her hair in the bowl cut her mom had inflicted in preschool, and her athletic skills seemed equally stunted. But she was a good sport, and on a dismal field in a swampy town, that’s all it took to be part of the team.
Hoop nudged Chloe. “So I hear you got eyes on that leprechaun fella, Rory.”
Chloe tapped Hoop hard with the tattered glove she’d pulled from his bag earlier. “Rory’s nice,” she said, blushing, “and he talks awfully cute, but you heard wrong on that one.”
“So who is it then? Who you got eyes on?”
Chloe swallowed, barely able to look at the boy she’d had eyes on since second grade. Her smile found the ground. “Can’t say.”
“Come on, maybe I can make something happen for you,” he said with his eternal grin. “That’s my specialty, you know. Making things happen.”
Chloe may have been lovestruck and shy and awkward, but once in a while, she could get some gumption going. “Doesn’t look like you’ve made much happen between you and Macy.”
Hoop waved away her comment as Lissette struck out and Ronnie came up to bat. “That don’t mean nothing. She’s just not in a place right now where she can fit me in. Lot going on at home.” He wiggled around on the base, burning off excess energy and readying his legs for a sprint to third, maybe even a home plate steal. “But our time is coming, believe me.” He winked. “It’s her birthday real soon.”
Crack! Ronnie smacked a solid one that sailed over the outfielders’ heads and into the woods.
“See ya, Clover!” Hoop shouted as he took off for third.
“Hope you brought extra balls,” she shouted, watching him move rapidly away.
He smiled back as he rounded third. “You know I did!” he shouted. “Hoop Whitaker is always prepared!”
The declaration made his team hoot and whistle as he sailed toward home plate.
It was the last run he’d ever score in Beulah.
Chapter 1
3
As Chad and I left Mrs. Elbee’s house, his cell phone rang. A picture of Sherilyn with last year’s orange hair appeared on his screen. “What’s the word, Sherilyn?” he said into the phone, but his tone implied that he expected the word to be dismal or dire.
He listened, his face turning from casual to serious to confused. Without realizing it, he took several steps away from me and began to mumble. By the time he hung up, his head was hanging low.
“What’d she find?” I said, coming around and planting myself firmly in his sights. “It was Hoop’s blood in Boyd’s basement, wasn’t it?”
Chad jerked his head up. “No, sorry. She doesn’t know that yet. It’s just . . . one of her staff found something weird.”
Sure, to Chad, this whole thing could be passed off as weird, maybe even fascinating. He hadn’t grown up in this thermos-sized town where good and evil commingled and gelled, sealed up like some Twilight Zone experiment until everyone and everything took on a hue of eccentricity and improbability.
“Tell me,” I blurted while he fidgeted.
“She got partial DNA results back from that piece of duct tape.”
I fought the sickness growing within me, ready to start a conversation about anything from aardvarks to xylophones in order to avoid hearing the results. A door was about to slam on my past, shaking the flimsy foundation upon which I’d built a tenuous adulthood.
“There are two sets of DNA on the tape.”
“So one person put it on another person.”
“Maybe.” His face changed to one of hope, as if he’d just found an escape hatch. “Or maybe one person ripped it off another person.”
“Okay. So whose DNA was it?”
“One set belonged to my dad.” He stepped back, waiting to see if I’d strike. I didn’t. I didn’t even know whether to feel relieved or confused.
“Your dad? That makes as much sense as Boyd Sexton’s DNA at a nunnery.”
“I agree.”
Relief suddenly dominated my swirling emotions. I paced back and forth on Mrs. Elbee’s front walkway. “All right, so if your dad’s involved, maybe it’s nothing.” A frantic smile popped onto my face. “Maybe I blew everything out of proportion. I mean, it was just a piece a tape and a random piece of flannel.” I worked hard to convince myself of what I was saying. “Even Boyd must have owned a warm shirt for cool nights. Maybe he tore it up, used it for dusting.”
Chad remained silent, no doubt envisioning the same ridiculous scenario I was: creepy Boyd Sexton playing housekeeper and sprucing things up for demanding cannabis clients . . . dusting a metal pole in a dirt-floored room and leaving handcuffs around as a whimsical touch.
“What about the second set of DNA?” I said. “Anything on that?” My voice was losing the battle to keep things light.
“Nothing yet.”
I waited. Something in his tone left the sentence hanging. And then he ran his perfect, proportional hands through his perfect tunnel hair—the same motion he performed before breaking up with me.
“There’s more, though,” he finally said.
My insides shrank to the size of a pebble, nearly doubling me over.
“There were hairs embedded in that strip of flannel. Hairs from a human head. The DNA from those hairs did match the DNA from the blood on the wall, and . . . ”
“And what, Chad?”
“There were multiple sets of DNA on the handcuffs.”
“Oh, God. Multiple people held down there over the years?”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “Two sets belonged to prostitutes who were in the system.”
“Are they both still alive?”
“Yes.”
I felt relieved, not for the prostitutes, but for the as-yet-unidentified person. “And the third set?”
“The third set matched the hair and the blood.”
I drew in a deep breath and winced. “So whoever was wearing the shirt was handcuffed to the pole, and also bled onto the wall.”
“It’s possible, yes. And all of them matched the second set of DNA from the duct tape.”
My eyes remained open, but I saw nothing. My lungs emptied and felt hollow, drained of life.
“Listen, Chloe, it still doesn’t mean anything conclusive. We have no idea who the other set of DNA belongs to. You’ve got to keep it together a little longer.”
My voice came out robotically. “Theoretically, someone in that basement, probably wearing a green flannel shirt, had duct tape over his mouth, was cuffed to a pole, and then either bled to death or was tortured. But I should keep it together?”
“No one said anything about death or torture.”
“No one had to. The blood is screaming it.”
“The quantity of blood on that wall isn’t even enough to suggest a serious injury, let alone death.”
“How much blood got absorbed into that dirt floor? Or eaten by bugs and rodents? Hey, maybe Boyd used soil from that room to grow his pot. Maybe Hoop Whitaker’s blood fertilized every joint smoked in Beulah for the last twelve years.” I threw my hands up. “I’ve partaken a time or two. Think I got high off my friend?”
“For God’s sake, Chloe.”
I shook my head. “Could Sherilyn tell how old anything was? Was it from twelve years ago?”
“The tape is at least ten years old.” He sighed. “Guess it stands to reason the blood would be, too.”
At least ten years could sure as heck mean twelve. “So Boyd Sexton and your dad were somehow tied up in Hoop’s—”
“Now hold on! No proof of Hoop’s presence yet. Maybe Boyd kept a dog down there or something.”
I smirked. “Pretty tough to handcuff a dog, last I checked.”
“Maybe—”
“You’d better find out what’s going on, Chad, and you’d better not cut me out of the loop. I know you’re—”
“I won’t, but—”
“But what?”
“You can’t be jumping to conclusions. I don’t need you . . . doing anything rash.”
I glared at him, but I understood. Maybe certain rumors had found Chad, after all.
“Because right now,” he said, “there’s nothing tying Boyd or my dad to Hoop Whitaker, and nothing tying Hoop Whitaker to any of this.”
“We need a sample of Hoop’s DNA.”
“It would help, but that won’t be easy to find.”
“Hoop’s dad was in lock-up more than a few times. His DNA would be close enough.”
“Nobody takes DNA samples for drunk and disorderly.”
I gasped. “What about when Mr. Whitaker was in the hospital after the crash? They must have taken his blood.”
Chad frowned. “I’m sure they did but that was over a decade ago. No one would have kept a tube of his blood around.”
“It’s worth looking into.”
“Fair enough.” He jotted a note in his little book. “I’ll head over there, see what I can find out. But I’m not getting my hopes up.”
“You never do, Chad.”
Chapter 14
On my way to interview Richie Quail, a vicious caffeine headache clutched my skull. I never had gotten coffee today. My morning stop at Boyd’s had always been a perfect, well-oiled, 50-second jaunt. Whenever I entered, Boyd would be stocking shelves. I’d leave a dollar on the counter and give a wave. He’d grunt or nod. That was it. Cordial enough to remain civil, cool enough to reinforce our distaste for one another.
A few minutes later, as an added insult to my throbbing head, I passed Boyd’s. Crime scene tape surrounded the scarred remains of the store like a perverse Halloween decoration. Despite the flimsiness of the yellow barrier flitting in the wind, already torn and waggling in one section, a chill shot through me. Had crimes other than drug-related ones been committed in the bowels of that establishment?
A forensics team, basically two guys with gloves, bags, and cameras had violated the barrier with authority and were marching toward the building. Meanwhile, an unmarked car o
f an uppity sort sat perpendicular to theirs. It served as the leaning post for a dark-suited, trim guy in sunglasses. Couldn’t the FBI at least switch up the look a little bit? Wouldn’t surprise me to see J. Edgar Hoover saunter into view any moment.
I veered right and reluctantly steered my car over the bridge toward New Beulah, which had sprung up after The Lucky Four put Beulah on the map. The publicity after the big win had outed tiny Beulah as a business and tourist-friendly destination with good weather, great taxes, and an up-and-comer vibe. I turned right off of the bridge, my car juddering like a jackhammer because public officials had chosen cobblestone for New Beulah’s busiest roads, claiming it complemented the cutesy shops that always made my stomach turn. The proprietors of the establishments struck me as phony come-heres who would use the town up before abandoning it like a spent hooker, desperate and worse for wear. The bars served cocktails called Angostura Alligator, Swamp Sucker Punch, and Pluff Mud-Slides, while the pubs concocted vegetarian versions of turtle and alligator soup. The boutique shops conducted most of their business on-line, yet managed to get written up as adorable whimsies that thrived on curious visitors and loyal locals.
I pulled up to Grinder Minder Coffee Shoppe, built with reclaimed wood and recycled cork. They charged oodles of first-world dollars for third-world coffee beans and tried a little too hard to be Charleston in Beulah.