Circled

by Anne McAneny

  “You have close ties to the tragedies that occurred that week.”

  “I do?” He doubled down on his chins and crossed his arms so that they rested atop his belly. “How do you figure?”

  I counted off his tragedy links on my fingers while answering. “You owned the complex where both the LeGranges and the Whitakers lived. Macy LeGrange was the girl killed on her bike. Mr. Whitaker hit her, and Hoop Whitaker disappeared.”

  “Guess I never thought of me being tied to it that way, but you’re right. You know, I came up through school with Melanie LeGrange. And that Avis Whitaker—smart as a whip when he wanted to be, and hands-down hilarious when drunk. Came up with some hoot-worthy excuses for being short on rent, I tell ya.”

  “Did you collect the rents yourself back then? Before the lottery?”

  “Who else was going to do it? Let me tell you something, darling. People loved to paint me as the evil landlord, but if I didn’t collect rent, how could I keep the buildings up to code?”

  “Did you?”

  “Never failed an inspection. But try explaining that to people. They throw down a few ratty couches and think they’re entitled for life. But Richie Quail don’t run no squatter operation. Heck, there was a time or two I forced my way into people’s units and removed belongings myself. I’d put their stuff in storage and use it as leverage until I got my money.”

  “Interesting tactic. Did it work?”

  “Every time.”

  “Did you know Hoop Whitaker?”

  Quail scrunched up his thick, red lips, a droplet of spit hanging from the lower one. He leaned back. “It was a long time ago, but I think I did. Little wheeler-dealer, that one, which I actually admired. Skinny, wise-acre kid, right? Kind of scruffy?”

  I couldn’t decide whether to smile or cry. Hoop wore the swamp like a badge of honor. If he finished the day covered in mud, bugs, and swamp stink, he considered it a boastworthy accomplishment. Wouldn’t have thought himself scruffy for a second.

  “That was him,” I said.

  “Everything kind of blurred together back then with the excitement of the win, but I guess it was all the same week, wasn’t it?”

  I decided to push, reminding myself never to play this tape for the sheriff and Chad, as I might be dangerously close to defying their trust. “You bought the winning ticket at Boyd’s General Store, right?”

  “Yep. Boyd Junior sold it to us. Shame about the fire this morning.”

  “Yes, it was. How well do you know Boyd Junior?”

  “Not too well. Knew his dad, of course, but Junior keeps to himself. Can’t say as I see him out in town much, with a pretty girl on his arm or anything.”

  “Were you aware of any relationship between Boyd Junior and Hoop Whitaker?”

  “Relationship?” Quail looked confused, but then smiled knowingly. “You mean like drug-dealing? Because I heard tell of what they found in Boyd’s basement.”

  “No, I don’t think Hoop used drugs.” I made sure Quail was looking me right in the eye. “But you mentioned how you never see Boyd with a girl on his arm.”

  It took a moment, but Quail’s lips curled in disgust. “Now hold on a second. I don’t like where this is going. Thought you were here to talk about the lottery.”

  “The article covers the whole week, and now tragedy has struck two of the people involved in that week: the ticket seller and one of the winners. Just as tragedy struck back then. I’m curious about your insights, as landlord or otherwise.”

  He glanced at the recorder, and either paranoia or confusion flashed in his eyes. The shine dulled from his skin. “That best not be the angle you plan to play up in your article, young lady, making me look like a greedy ogre while others were suffering.”

  I planted both feet firmly on the floor and leaned forward. “May I ask you a controversial question, Mr. Quail?”

  Skepticism jerked on and off his face. He hesitated, but then leaned his beefy arms on the desk and forced an air of joviality. “You don’t ask questions, you don’t get answers. Shoot.”

  “It’s said that you evicted Melanie LeGrange, your former classmate, shortly after Macy’s death. Do you have any explanation for that?”

  Quail remained frozen, his seersucker jacket straining as it puckered at the shoulders like the wrinkled mouth of an old man. Then he inhaled with ferocity, as if surfacing from a near-drowning, and pounded his fist again. “I’m glad you asked that! About time I straightened out that misinformation.”

  I held my tongue and waited. I was good at waiting.

  “Like I said, I knew Melanie and that no-good husband of hers, Darrell.” Quail screwed up his face as he said the name; if he could have spit on it, he surely would have. “And I did go to her place a couple weeks after her daughter died. I was newly rich and she was newly alone. But if you were to investigate, which is part of your job, you’d find that I certainly did not kick her out of her place. Quite the opposite. We talked for a good long while, and in the end, let’s just say she had the means to move on from the town that had buried her daughter and seen her husband leave her for some hussy.” He threw up his hands in disgust. “I mean, how was she supposed to stay in a town that allowed Avis Whitaker to stay on the road after multiple driving offenses? I think it’s fair to say she wasn’t going to find happiness here, not with reminders around every corner.”

  “And yet, you said you’d never leave.”

  Quail’s round nostrils flared into disquieted ovals. “Beulah has both its charms and foibles, Ms. Keyes. Just as every couple isn’t meant to be together, neither is every person and place.”

  “So you gave Mrs. LeGrange money to start over someplace else?”

  “I ain’t saying nothing, and I sure ain’t saying nothing on the record. But you infer what you want.”

  How had Quail just become the good guy in this scenario? I stared at him in unabashed awe. It was like seeing him through a funhouse mirror—or perhaps seeing his true colors for the first time. What had I built my beliefs on anyway? Childhood rumors? Prejudices against his appearance? I’d bought into the worn stereotype of the evil landlord from those who had failed to live up to their end of the contractual bargain. I felt duped. I just wasn’t sure by whom.

  He smirked and nodded. “Not what you were expecting, eh, darlin’?

  “I delve into my stories with no preconceived notions, Mr. Quail.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I call B.S. on that one. Because everyone in town has notions in their head about ol’ Richie Quail here.” He worked his lips around his face and finally settled on a confidential pout. “You want the real skinny on me, young lady—no pun intended?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m all business, all the time. Life ain’t nothing but one big deal, and in every deal, someone comes out on top. Why shouldn’t it be me?”

  Cold and straightforward. Couldn’t say I didn’t like it.

  “You ever heard of a coral snake?” he said.

  I recited the childhood rhyme that distinguished harmless snakes from those that would send a person into paralytic shock followed by death. “Red next to black is a friend of Jack; red next to yellow will kill a fellow."

  “That’s right. Your mama taught you well. But people up north,” he said with a wink, “they don’t learn such things. My first day showing an apartment, I was barely twenty-one. Had this weasel from Connecticut giving me a hard time. So we walk into the bedroom and he opens the closet door and BAM! Staring back at him was a big ol’ thick-as-your-arm snake. Yellow, red and black stripes, five-footer at least. Scared the bejeezus out of him! I swear he wet his pants. So I went over, grabbed that snake by the tail, and let it do its little dance for a while, you know, upside-down, wriggling like a ribbon in a storm. Then I marched over, popped open a window, and dropped the little fella outside. Everybody happy. And you know what?”

  I couldn’t imagine. I was still stuck on the image of a prospective tenant standing in urine-soaked pants. “What?
” I managed to say.

  “He signed the lease that day. Said he liked how I handled myself and wanted a landlord who took care of things head-on.”

  “Why weren’t you scared of the snake?”

  He pushed his chair back and laughed. “Wasn’t nothing but a harmless ol’ milk snake, red next to black! Couldn’t have hurt me if it wanted to. But I didn’t tell him that.” A guileful smile crossed Quail’s face. “Know what else I didn’t tell him?”

  I shook my head.

  “That I’d put that snake in there not ten minutes earlier so I could play the hero. Heck, I’d raised that snake up since it was no bigger ’n my finger. Fed it bugs, crickets, and the occasional frog. Freddy, I called him. Closed quite a few deals together, me and Freddy.” He pointed a thick finger at me and punctuated the air with it several times. “And that, li’l darlin’, is how you do business.”

  Quail had himself another hearty laugh, even pulling out a picture of a thinner version of himself holding young Freddy. I didn’t know whether to be impressed or horrified, but as I appreciated how quickly Quail’s own stripes could change, the picture of the snake in front of me set off an urgent thought in my head.

  “Mr. Quail, you mentioned putting tenants’ items in storage.”

  “Not official storage, but sure. Never cost me nothing.”

  “How’d you pull that off?”

  “Early in my career, I bought a historic property over in Flinton. I’d planned to fix it up and turn it into a B&B, but later inspections revealed it to be unsound. I sued the seller and lost.” He leaned forward again and winked. “I’ve upgraded lawyers since then.” Then he sat back, not overly distraught about his bad investment. “Would’ve cost me a bundle to get the place in shape, and with the inspection on the record, I’d’ve lost money selling it. But I found plenty of uses for it over the years.”

  I admonished myself for daring to hope. “What about the Whitakers’ stuff, sir? What would have happened to their things after Avis Whitaker died?”

  “What would have happened,” he said. “I sure don’t know.”

  My optimism deflated. Something of Hoop’s—something containing a trace of his DNA—would be the only way to link him to the grisly evidence in Boyd’s basement. Or better yet, to not link him.

  Quail then lit up with a duplicitous sparkle. “But what did happen, I know exactly. Their stuff’s in the attic of that house. Been meaning to clean it out for years.”

  My breath caught as hope shot through me. It ignited a pain in my head but a warmth in my heart. A link to Hoop, after all this time. One that might finally reveal his fate.

  Chapter 16

  Twenty minutes after leaving Quail’s office, I turned off a somewhat busy road in Flinton and wound back to the three-story Victorian that he’d left to rot. It resembled a gingerbread house from which someone had taken a few bites. It sat at the rear of a 1500-acre farm, half of which had been subdivided into lots now hosting cookie-cutter homes with identical trees, mailboxes, and fences. The house had once belonged to the matriarch of a family that made its money in tobacco. Her great-grandchildren, far removed from any sentimental attachment to the place, had sold it to a young, naïve Richie Quail.

  Quail told me there might be workmen lurking about doing some repair work, but from the looks of it, only one workman was needed: a wrecking ball operator. While the house’s core surely held promise, the exterior, and presumably the interior, had been left to the mercy of the elements for quite some time.

  The steeply pitched, uneven roof lines gave it a severe appearance, though the porches on the lower level softened that impression. The former green and pink exterior paint had faded to foggy reminiscences of their original shades, while the coned roof of the tower had begun to sink on one side, as if tipping its hat to visitors. But I didn’t feel welcomed. Instead, I sensed the cold glare of a discerning eye beneath the hat rim, determining my worthiness to enter and likely deeming me unfit.

  Shaking off the feeling, I followed the long, looping driveway around to the rear. The pretty stone pavers that marked the first half gave way to a muddy path that ate my tires. As my tread got a grip, I glanced at the note Quail had scribbled for me: Back door, yellow, 31-8-17-20-5. The five digits represented the combination to a padlock that would grant me access to the Whitakers’ things.

  I made the final turn to the back of the house . . . and nearly hit Chad’s Blazer. Worse yet, Chad was still in the driver’s seat, talking on his cell. When he glanced over and spotted my Subaru, his jaw stopped moving, and then his head tilted as he shoved the phone back in his pocket. I parked nose to nose with him before we both exited our cars and met at my front bumper.

  “Remind me, Chloe. Who’s the deputy sheriff and who’s the reporter?”

  I smiled apologetically but in truth, I hadn’t wanted to share Hoop’s belongings with anyone else. At least not yet. “Richie Quail just told me about this place,” I said. “How’d you find it?”

  “Not from you calling me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Nurse at the hospital used to work for Quail,” he explained. “She mentioned it, so I called Quail’s office and got the details.” From hot little Sarah, no doubt. “Figured there might be something inside with Hoop’s DNA.”

  “Any luck at the hospital with Avis Whitaker’s DNA?”

  “No, but they’ll be sending his old medical records to the station once they dig them up. You never know.”

  I glanced at the back door. It may once have been yellow, but now it looked more like a white door someone had peed on. Moisture—hopefully not urine—had taken a toll on its flushness with the frame, thus the need for a padlock. Seemed like the entire house was nothing but a flimsy layer trying vainly to shield its contents from critters, rain, and humidity.

  “Be amazing if anything inside is intact,” I said.

  “DNA’s like a good postman,” Chad said. “Neither dust nor heat nor termites nor moths . . .” The sentence faded. “Well, maybe termites.”

  As he worked the rusty wheel mechanism on the cheap lock, I wondered why Quail had saved the Whitakers’ belongings at all. Had he thought the scruffy kid would return to mourn his father or to claim his junk? Neither had happened. The sad truth was that hardly anyone had shown up to grieve for Avis Whitaker. My parents and I made up most of the crowd, alongside Strike and Jacqueline Ryker. Difficult for most folks to well up sympathy for a drunk driver guilty of vehicular manslaughter, but we’d attended for Hoop’s sake.

  Chad yanked the lock open. The snapping sound made me start. Why had I never thought to search for Hoop’s things before? Discovered earlier, they might have hinted at his fate or provided a clue as to his whereabouts. Instead, I’d wasted time mourning him, contenting myself with the few treasures I did possess: an orange-checkered snakeskin he’d given me, now crumbled into grey powder in a shoebox somewhere; an alligator tooth necklace he’d sold to every girl in the class; and, an essay he’d written about his future. The latter was my most treasured.

  Three weeks before his disappearance, our English teacher, Miss Farlow, had stapled his My Future essay to the cork board in the hallway. In red ink, she’d written, “So imaginative!” After The Week, I’d forced myself through the minimal motions of life, but one day while staying late at school, the empty halls had beckoned and drawn me down the halls toward the English classroom. My chawed fingernails dug behind the staples and peeled Hoop’s essay from its cork backing. His words and dreams didn’t belong to the school, and certainly not to the students and staff who breezed past them every day without due amazement. No! Hoop’s future belonged with someone who would both revere it and lament its loss. It belonged with me.

  I’d secreted all three pages of the essay away in my backpack, stashing the staples in my pocket. Those staples had poked and scratched me all the way home, but I didn’t adjust them; instead, I welcomed the pain. I deserved it for letting him disappear. In one fell swoop, he’d lost his fat
her and his favorite girl when the two collided like sin and purity, in the most cataclysmic way possible. It annihilated his world. What kind of night must he have spent? Had he been at home? On the banks of the swamp? Had he run, blind from tears, and drowned in treacherous waters—or had he been kidnapped and handcuffed by Boyd Sexton, Jr., overpowered by a lesser being while at his lowest point?

  At home, I’d flattened the wrinkled essay and tucked it into a drawer beneath my pajamas. I’d left the staples in my pocket for days, until my leg bled through. It wasn’t the last time I’d bled for him.

  Now, staring at the dilapidated house that held whatever remained of him, I realized the pain had never really stopped.

  I reached in front of Chad and pushed the door open.

  Chapter 17

  Wisps of sunlight cut through the unshaded portions of the multi-paned windows in the front of the house. Dense, twirling dust danced in the shafts of radiance, giving the dank place an illusion of life. But the stale odor of deterioration made it clear that the structure was but a sarcophagus for forgotten projects and displaced objects.

  We’d entered into some version of a family room. Two sprawling tables that would normally be found in a kitchen occupied most of the floor. They were covered in blueprints, sketch books, stacks of files, and random office supplies, as if Quail had actually done some work here—or plotted his next money-making scheme. But even from a distance, I could see that the files hadn’t been touched in years, and the paper clips had probably rusted into permanent closure.

  “What a waste,” I said to Chad. “With the high ceilings and huge rooms, this place could be gorgeous.”

  Chad took a step and the floor sank beneath his weight. “Christ,” he said, “I feel like I’m in the swamp.”