Dark River Road

by Virginia Brown

  Blue eyes blurred by tears looked back at him for a long moment. Then Mikey nodded. “I will. But you come back, Chantry. He’ll hurt you if he can. I know he will.”

  Because there wasn’t anything he could say to that, he just nodded and stood up. Miss Pat and Doctor Callahan stood in the entrance hall, and Miss Bettie had tears in her eyes. She pressed a brown paper bag in his hand.

  “For the trip down there. Sugar cookies. With icing.”

  He didn’t tell her there wasn’t any way he could get anything down his throat this morning, just said they were his favorite. She nodded.

  “I know.”

  An air of despair rode with them in the expensive car all the way to Cane Creek. Miss Pat tried to pretend everything was all right but they all knew better. When the outskirts of Cane Creek appeared in the windshield, Chantry sucked in a deep breath.

  It looked too familiar. Like it’d have changed in five months. But then, he saw it almost every night when he went to sleep. Saw Mama, Rainey, Tansy and Dempsey—and Cinda. Only Dempsey and Cinda were left there now. One he couldn’t see to keep safe, the other he couldn’t see to keep Mikey safe. Cinda . . .

  No point in thinking about her. That wouldn’t change it.

  Winter blight left cotton fields in stubble. Sunshine sharply lit fallow dirt rows, glinted off windows. Picked out trash. Made the town look slovenly, pointed out all the flaws.

  Mr. Pace met them at the police station. With him was another attorney licensed to practice law in Mississippi. Sergeant Gordon leaned against a wall, and looked over at Chantry with something like a smirk. That wasn’t a big surprise either. The past always had a way of coming back around somehow. Chantry just stared back at him until he looked away.

  Bert Quinton showed up when they got to the courthouse, looking like he’d always looked, in an expensive suit that came from a foreign country, and an air of success tainted with the smell of brimstone. He greeted his lawyer, smiling, nodding to people he knew, then finally looked over at Chantry. The smile stayed on his face but the eyes got cold and hard. That was okay. Both of them were comfortable with mutual hatred.

  When the judge came into the court room, everyone stood up, then sat down again. It was over a lot quicker than Chantry had imagined. Mr. Pace and his partner argued there was no proof Chantry had ever had access to or took any money at all, and Quinton’s attorney said a trial would give the court enough proof to convict Chantry Callahan on charges of grand theft. The judge in the courthouse agreed with Quinton’s attorney and set the bond at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which both attorneys opposed, and bail was made and he was free again. For a while, anyway.

  They went out into the sunshine on the courthouse steps. Quinton came out right behind them. He stopped to look at Chantry.

  “Son, this wouldn’t be necessary if you’d tell where you hid the money. We could work out a deal, perhaps, show some leniency if you’d cooperate with the courts.”

  “This isn’t about any money,” Chantry said. “I know that. You know that.”

  Quinton shrugged. “I loaned Rainey Lassiter that money in good faith. I expected it to be paid back.”

  “That money went to hell along with Rainey. You can get it from him when you get there.”

  A half smile lifted one corner of Quinton’s mouth. “You’ve always been a cocky little bastard.”

  “If anyone knows about bastards that’d be you, wouldn’t it,” Chantry said back, and had the satisfaction of seeing fury spring into Quinton’s eyes as he took a step forward.

  “Enough,” the doctor said, looking straight at Quinton when he did. “You’ve filed false charges against my grandson and I don’t take that lightly.”

  Quinton’s gaze shifted from Chantry. “Be careful, Dr. Callahan. You’re harboring a criminal.”

  Before his grandfather could say anything to that, Miss Pat stood tall and straight and put her finger right up in Quinton’s face. Chantry didn’t think anyone had ever done that before, and he had to look as surprised as Bert Quinton.

  “Don’t you dare say one more word against my grandson! You caused my daughter a great deal of grief and heartache with your selfish actions, and I will not allow you to continue persecuting Chantry. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but it’s obvious to me that you’re a man with much influence and little morality. Truth will always out, Mr. Quinton, whether you want it to or not. Sometimes it has a way of coming out at the most inopportune times. Keep that in mind.”

  Quinton glanced at Chantry, then back at his grandmother, and nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind, Mrs. Callahan. Perhaps your grandson should, too.”

  The look he gave Chantry said he’d better keep his mouth shut, that some truths could be dangerous, then the lawyers came out of the courthouse and hurried to their clients, quickly segregating them before incriminating things could be said.

  “I’d like to know how the hell my grandson got charged with grand theft when there isn’t a damn bit of proof,” the doctor said to Mr. Pace when they stood a distance away.

  Chantry answered before the lawyer could. “Quinton always wins. He always gets what he wants, and he wants me in jail.”

  “Why?”

  That question came from the lawyer, and Chantry looked at him for a minute. He’d never told him everything, figured Miss Pat had done that, but there were things he’d never told her, either. It hadn’t seemed to much matter then, and he wasn’t sure it would now. It’d be just his word against Bert Quinton’s word. And he knew how that’d go.

  “Because I know things he wishes I didn’t,” Chantry said after a minute. “He’s always thought I was just some dumb ass kid he didn’t much care for, but he’s got to know now that I could tell things that wouldn’t make him look too good.”

  The lawyers and the doctor looked at each other. Then the other lawyer, the one brought because he had a license to practice law in Mississippi asked, “What kind of things do you know, Chantry?”

  It probably wouldn’t do any good to say, only bring more trouble down on him, but he took a deep breath and said, “Insurance fraud, for one.”

  There was a long silence before the lawyer said, “Let’s move over here where we won’t be easily overheard.” They went down the steps and over to a concrete bench that stood beneath a skinny new tree probably planted by Dempsey.

  Mr. Pace asked, “Chantry, can you prove that allegation?”

  “I can if you can find any copies of Mama’s insurance policies that weren’t burned up with the house. Rainey got money from Quinton after they cashed in Mama’s life insurance policies. Rainey and Quinton cheated somehow. I don’t know how. I just know that Rainey was supposed to only get five thousand, and there was another policy for twenty-five thousand. Both had a double payment clause. You can guess who must have got the rest.”

  “But why would Rainey settle for only a third of the money when he could have had it all?”

  “Because he wouldn’t have gotten all of it. It was supposed to go to me and Mikey, in some kind of trust fund. To take care of us. To fix Mikey’s legs and make sure he got well. I saw the letters from the insurance company. They were hidden in Mama’s Bible.”

  “And your stepfather had a new truck as well as ten thousand in cash?”

  Chantry nodded. “He had to have gotten the cash from Quinton, but there were check stubs from some corporation for over forty-thousand dollars that said payment to the Carrie Lassiter estate.”

  “Can you remember the name of the corporation?”

  “No. I meant to take it all to Mr. Ledbetter to help me figure out, but the fire started that night.”

  “Well.” Mr. Pace looked over at his grandfather. “Maybe we can get this over with more quickly than I thought. I have a few contacts to make first. We have to move quickly, however. It will involve a private investigator and his expenses.”

  The doctor nodded. “Whatever it takes.”

  Once they were back in the car, Mi
ss Pat looked over the back of the seat at him. “You did very well, Chantry. No wonder Carrie placed so much trust in you.”

  He’d never thought of it like that. Mama hadn’t trusted him. She just hadn’t had anyone else who loved Mikey and would make sure he got taken care of, that’s all. There was no point in saying that, though. Sometimes it was better to let people think the best than to be told the truth.

  Miss Pat put her hand on the doctor’s arm. “Michael, I’d like to go by the cemetery.”

  Chantry froze. No. He couldn’t. Mama wasn’t there anyway. She was dead, and he’d been so mad at her for so long, not just for marrying Rainey, but for lying to him about his own father, letting him believe those lies for years, believe the dreams that had just been lies. Why hadn’t she left? Why had she stayed here and married Rainey, traded in the truth for a fiction that turned into a horror? He’d never understand. He didn’t understand his anger either, but it was a lot easier to bear than the hurt of betrayal.

  He waited in the car when they stopped at the cemetery, looked the other way instead of toward the grave that had no headstone. Rainey hadn’t let go of any money for one, said it was a waste since she was just as dead with or without it.

  Across the grass that’d soon turn to green, he saw a familiar, stooped figure working on the beds that bordered the church. Dempsey looked up, straight at the car, and nodded like he knew Chantry was there. Maybe he did. He’d always known everything and it wouldn’t be a big secret that Quinton had pressed charges against Chantry.

  He wanted to get out of the car and go over to him, but knew better. It’d only make trouble with Quinton, and Dempsey had to live here now. But he did get out of the car and lean up against it, arms crossed over his chest like he was just looking around. He’d sent back the money Dempsey had given him, put a fake name on the return address so the post office workers wouldn’t run off and tell Quinton, but stuck two one hundred dollar bills inside a nice card he and Mikey had gone and bought at the Hallmark store. It’d said To A Great Dad on the front of the card, and had a nice verse inside. Chantry just signed it. Sometimes there weren’t any words that’d say what he felt. Mikey drew a red heart and made up a poem that was really pretty good on the cardboard back of the front flap.

  His grandparents walked back across the dead grass toward the car, and Chantry gave a last glance at Dempsey, who’d stopped digging in the beds and stood up straight. He took off his hat and put it over his heart and stood there, straight and still as they drove off. Miss Pat, with tears in her voice, said how nice it was for strangers to show such respect. Chantry didn’t tell her any different.

  A few weeks after that trip to Cane Creek, Miss Pat came to Chantry in his room. He sat on his bed, a biology book open even though he’d been looking out the window facing the rain-slick street. The window was up so he could hear passing cars make slushy noises. He’d been thinking of that day he’d first come to this house with Mama and Mikey. He hadn’t known then who lived here or why they’d come, only that Mama was upset. It’d been raining then, too.

  Miss Pat knocked on his open door, then came in and sat in a chair next to his desk. “I thought you’d want an update on what the investigators have learned.”

  He nodded.

  “While there weren’t enough fragments of money to make a positive identification left in the ruins of the house, they did find enough money bands with the bank’s stamp on them to verify that Rainey did have a great deal of cash on hand. The metal box wasn’t found.”

  “Quinton would have made sure of that.”

  She looked at him. “Quite possibly. He seems very determined to send you to jail. Is there more you haven’t told me, Chantry? Something that might make sense of this single-minded persecution?”

  “Nothing that’d make sense of it.”

  Miss Pat didn’t seem convinced. He thought of her that day confronting Quinton on the steps of the courthouse, how she’d stood right up to him and shook her finger in front of his nose like she was scolding a third grader. It’d reminded him of Mama. Except Mama had let Quinton get the best of her somehow.

  He looked at his grandmother. “I think Quinton is involved in selling drugs.”

  She blinked. “You mean, he’s a drug dealer?”

  “No, not like that. Rainey’s boys are drug dealers. I think they worked for Quinton. I think Rainey was in on it, too, only not like they were. He got drunk and talked too much. But Beau and Rafe know how to keep their mouths shut about stuff. Rainey thought they made all their money being rod busters, but they’d never make enough to buy their booze and new trucks doing iron work. I saw them with some guys one night out at the Hideaway. One of the guys worked for Quinton. The others I didn’t know, but the guy I did know had had his picture in the paper a while before that. He got caught with a lot of drugs in his car over in Arkansas. Then he paid his bail, and the charges never did stick. And he was back in Cane Creek not too long after that. Working for Quinton again.”

  After a moment, his grandmother drew in a deep breath. “But you have no proof of any of that.”

  He shook his head. “Not a lick. Guess Quinton worried I might figure it out. Especially after I caught Beau and Rafe dealing drugs and now they’re doing time. I think he didn’t step in for them because of me. Maybe he thought it’d work out better to have them out of sight for a while.”

  Miss Pat looked thoughtful. “I’d like to share what you’ve told me with the attorneys. Perhaps they can come up with something that will make a difference to Quinton.”

  He nodded, even though he didn’t have much faith that’d happen. Bert Quinton had always been slick as goose grease. He’d slide right out of any trouble with not a drop sticking to him. And leave Chantry covered with it.

  It might have turned out that way, too, if not for Dale Ledbetter. The court case got a lot of coverage in Quinton County, and up in Tunica County, and even in Memphis. Anything to do with Bert Quinton was news, it seemed.

  But before the trial seated all the jurors, Mr. Pace called a meeting with Quinton and his attorneys. Dale Ledbetter showed up, looking calm. He nodded at Chantry, then at Quinton, and Chantry didn’t know what was going on.

  Then Mr. Ledbetter said he had a few things to say that might make a big difference. He said Rainey Lassiter had come out to his place the day before the fire, claiming he’d come into a lot of money and wanted to buy a Catahoula dog.

  “He was drunk, and I had no intention of selling him a dog, but Lassiter kept talking. He said some very interesting things.” Ledbetter looked over at Quinton. “Talked about his late wife’s insurance policies, and how he and Quinton were coming into a lot of money the next day. Unfortunately, the policy he showed me is made out to her sons, not to her husband.”

  “Mr. Ledbetter, with all due respect,” Quinton’s lawyer stood up and said, “this is all hearsay. Lassiter isn’t alive to verify or contradict your claims.”

  Ledbetter lifted a brow. “I’m well aware of that. That’s why I decided to bring this to the attorneys.” He tossed what looked like a copy of an insurance policy to the long, gleaming table that separated them. Quinton’s attorney sat down real quick.

  It got all loud then, as Quinton’s lawyers saw Farmers Insurance in big letters and knew it couldn’t be good. It was the original policy, not the one that had the name of one of Quinton’s corporations written on it, the same one that had paid out money to Quinton as executor for Carrie’s estate.

  Quinton leaned forward on the desk, his voice calm, a placating smile on his face. “I can clear this all up, gentlemen. This came to my attention a few weeks ago. One of my employees, a new man and not yet fully trained, made a mistake. Carrie Lassiter was employed by the county school system, which as you all know, reports to me as the administrator. There was an odd misinterpretation in her policy, and I was named executor. Therefore, to save time and get benefits to her survivors as quickly as possible, I simply acted as the middle-man. Perhaps not the wis
est thing to do, but I felt Carrie’s children should be cared for quickly rather than have to wait any longer. I had no idea Rainey Lassiter would squander their money.”

  “That’s a lie,” Chantry said softly, and Quinton gave him a swift, hard look. “You knew what Rainey was. Everyone in town knew what Rainey was. Mama left that money to Mikey and me, and you made a deal with Rainey to get your hands on most of it.”

  Mr. Pace put a hand on his arm but Chantry shook it off and stood up to look down at Quinton.

  “You didn’t need that money, you just wanted to make sure Mikey didn’t get it. You knew giving any money to Rainey meant he’d blow it all so there’d be nothing left for Mikey, and you knew that was the best way to get at me. You’re a greedy, heartless bastard.”

  “No, let him go on,” Quinton said softly when his lawyer started to object. “I’m quite interested in hearing what he has to say.”

  “I’ll bet you are.” Chantry looked at him, and knew what he meant. There were things that could be proved, and things that couldn’t. There wasn’t much point in saying stuff he couldn’t prove. Quinton would only laugh at that. So he leaned forward and said something just for Quinton’s ears. He’d know what it meant. “I know about Ted. One of these days, everyone will know.”

  Quinton kept the smile on his face, but a tic beat beneath his left eye as he stared back at Chantry. Dead silence filled the room. No one spoke for several moments, or even moved. Not so much as a paper rustled until Chantry straightened and looked at his lawyer.

  “Mr. Pace,” he said, “I’m going to put a letter in a sealed envelope for you. If I die under suspicious circumstances, open it. “

  It was something he’d once seen on television, and may be melodramatic, but he wanted Quinton to know he’d taken precautions. It wasn’t much, and probably wouldn’t work anyway, but to Bert Quinton, it might be important that no one knew what his oldest son had done.