Nice spin, but predictable. I sat up.
“So you don’t think the police were just trying to close off a case early? Pile on my dad so they could check it off their log?”
“Your dad shot Bobby. Maybe he had Shelby tied up in there, too. Who the hell knows? She didn’t weigh much. Wouldn’t have been hard for your dad to stick her in a truck, drive her to Licking Dog Creek and dump her body. Why don’t you ask him? Oh, that’s right, you can’t.”
He spun around and strode towards the front door. I saw a shadow back away from it and knew Mrs. Smith had gotten an earful.
“Thanks for your time, Smitty. Great to see you. By the way, is Jasper coming to the reunion?”
He whirled around, his face frozen. “You have no reason to talk to him. He’ll tell you exactly what I’ve told you.”
That’s what I was afraid of. A little too exactly.
“Eh, you’re probably right,” I said, knowing my forced offhandedness wasn’t likely to sell.
“From what I hear, he’s kind of lost it,” Smitty volunteered, his tone lighter now that I’d stood to leave. “Talking in circles. Can’t separate fact from fiction anymore.”
Now it was Smitty’s offhandedness that wasn’t selling.
“Where is he these days?”
Smitty shrugged. “I don’t know. Oregon, last I heard.”
Oregon, my ass, Smitty. You may have graduated at the top of your class. You might have a job that requires a daily retinal scan to park your car. But inside, you’re the same, stupid kid who chose to hang around with Bobby Kettrick, jerkoff extraordinaire, because you thought his cool would rub off on you. It didn’t. Why did you lie back then? Why are you lying now—and how do you know Shelby Anderson didn’t weigh that much?
Chapter 10
Bobby… sixteen years ago
“Hey, Bobby, where’s your car today?”
The voice cut the thick air like a wasp buzzing too close to Bobby’s head. He didn’t feel like dealing with this bimbo right now. He was hotter than red coal and the smell of that dead possum a hundred yards back had glued itself to the inside of his nostrils. He’d been stuck without his car for a few hours already, and his loser friends were so lame they were either spoon-feeding their half-dead mothers or doing Tom Sawyer shit for their dads.
He stopped and turned towards the big, rectangular rock where the source of the voice had planted her ass. A redheaded, freckle-faced girl, from that big family that lived near The Willows Trailer Park. Her pink and green bike lay on the ground next to her and she sucked on the remnants of a red lollipop.
The girl stuck her tongue out, let it hang in the sweltering air, then used it to do another quick swipe of the candy. “Is it red yet, or still pink? My tongue, I mean.”
Bobby was glad he’d turned to look. Maybe this girl could offer a way to pass the time until Smitty and Jasper showed up. She’d grown some nice tits over the winter. They pushed apart the fabric between the buttons of her shirt and, with the sweat dripping down her pale chest, created a vertical stack of warm, wet invitations. The tails of her white top were tied at the bottom, revealing a deep, round belly button and a small scar above her right hip. Her face wasn’t half-bad either. Some acne dotted her chin, and her legs bulged out of her jean shorts more than he liked, but a nice rack usually came with extra chunk in other places. He could certainly make do with her for a few hours. What was her name again? Sheila? Shelly? Sheena? Shit, she’d mention it soon enough if he got her talking.
He flashed the teeth. “Still pink. You’re gonna have to keep sucking.”
She giggled, returned the lollipop to her mouth, and tossed some pebbles from the rock to the ground.
“What are you up to today?” Bobby said.
“I’m sooo bored. Kara and Becky are at the beach, and Tiff and Leigh Ann are grounded for sneaking some beers the other night. I had to get out of the house. Hotter in there ‘n it is out here. And my mom was like, ‘Shelby, go out and find something to do, or else you can start scrubbing that kitchen floor, girl.’”
So her name was Shelby. Bobby let her ramble on the way girls did whenever he was around. When she finally shut up, he said, “I made something today at the big barn on the Hesters’ property. It’s pretty cool. You wanna see?”
“Me?”
Who the fuck else would he be talking to? “Sure,” he said. “Why not you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her green eyes wide. “I don’t even know what it is and besides, I didn’t even think you knew my name, really.”
“Of course I do, Shelby.”
She giggled at the sound of her name coming out of Bobby Kettrick’s mouth.
He laid it on thick. “I’ve noticed you around school.”
“You have? But I’m only gonna be a freshman.”
“Yeah, but you came to the football games last year, right?” he said.
She plucked the sucker from between her lips and left her mouth gaping where the candy had previously occupied it. “You picked me out of the crowd even with all that gear on your head?”
“Hard not to notice you with all that nice red hair.”
She smiled and ran her fingers through the heavy mop of crimson that reached the middle of her back. “It gets so frizzy in the summer, I can’t stand it.” She planted the lollipop firmly between her cheek and teeth as she twisted her hair up into a bun, tucking the end in to create a ball of fuzz almost as big as her head. “Makes me hot, too.”
“You need to cool off,” Bobby said. “How ‘bout I go into town and get us some beer to take back to the barn? You drink?”
She looked at the ground for only a quick second before spitting out her answer. “Of course I drink, Bobby Kettrick. I’m no prude.”
He definitely didn’t think she was a prude. He knew for a fact she’d let Kyle Thompson feel her up in the boys’ bathroom last year at the high school. Little did Kyle know he shoulda held out a few more months and he’d have had more to work with.
“Wait here. I’ll be back in twenty minutes and then we’ll walk to the barn.”
“Wanna borrow my bike?”
Bobby glanced at the rusty bike with its remnants of plastic tassels hanging from the handlebars. It looked too small even for the five-foot Shelby. Probably got it for Christmas years ago. Although Bobby considered himself cool enough to pull off being seen on a girl’s bike, he knew he couldn’t ride it and carry beer at the same time.
“Nah. Just wait here.”
“Ya never did tell me where your car was.”
“Does it matter?” he said dismissively, as if she should feel lucky to have encountered him, with or without a vehicle. As he took the first few steps towards town, he gave her a quick glance back. “And when I get back, you make sure that tongue is good and red.”
“Oh my God, Bobby!”
As Shelby sucked for all she was worth, Bobby sauntered into Lavitte proper to steal beer from Westerling General Store. Bobby and Jasper usually pulled off the heist together, but he could do it on his own if none of the employees was smoking in the alleyway. Every Friday afternoon, Westerling’s was shorthanded, so he and Jasper would get one of the red, plastic carts and fill it with water pistols and cheap T-shirts, anything to hide the beer they put in on aisle 6. Then they’d wheel around to the snack foods in the last aisle. When no one was around, Jasper would climb up a couple shelves until he could reach the window behind the gallon-size peanut jars on the top and unlock the window from the inside. Bobby would then hand Jasper the beer to place next to the window. After returning all the other crap to the wrong places, they’d buy a pack of gum and head to the alley. Jasper would climb onto Bobby’s shoulders, open the window, snatch the beer, and they were good for another Friday.
At his new height of over six feet, Bobby was pretty sure he could maneuver the beer back there by himself, and if he stood on a couple crates in the alley, he’d definitely be able to retrieve it. But once he entered the store under the gre
eting jingle of the year-round Christmas bells, he tossed his plans out the window. This would be as easy as convincing Mrs. Abernathy to change his grade on last year’s science final by promising her a touchdown in September. There, behind the Westerling’s checkout counter, all by herself, was a bony, awkward girl with a drawn-out face and stringy, dark hair. She’d had a crush on him since third grade, maybe even kindergarten. All these years later, he should’ve learned her name, but damned if he could come up with it. He walked right up to her, looked at her name tag, and blurted, “Hey, Amber. Thank God it’s you.”
If humans could melt, Amber would have been a puddle of blush and bother right then. Her eager smile revealed new braces to which she was still adjusting. “Hey, Bobby. How are you?” She wiped away the spit that landed on the counter.
“I like your braces,” he said. “Gonna look real nice when those come off. You always had the prettiest smile in middle school.”
“Ohmigod,” she said, hiding her mouth with her hand. “Stop it.”
“Hey listen,” he said, leaning forward and letting his hand linger within a couple inches of hers, “I need to get some beer. You think you could let me slip out of here with some if I buy something else?”
The conflict between panic and desire made Amber want to pee and puke at the same time. Amber never cheated on tests, never spoke back to her parents, and never received attention from handsome boys. And this was Bobby Kettrick, no less. She gave him a weak nod and then put her considerable General Store intellect to good use. She rested on her elbows, her shirt falling forward to reveal measly mosquito bite breasts. She whispered, “Buy one of them Styrofoam coolers we got in the back. You put some beer in it and no one’ll ever know. I won’t ring it up, okay?”
Bobby reached out and touched her bony arm. “It’ll be our secret, Amber. You’re the best.”
Amber figured she could up and die right about then ‘cuz life wouldn’t ever get any better.
Sauntering out of Westerling’s a few minutes later with his new cooler, three six-packs of beer, and another item he’d stolen on a whim, Bobby waved good-bye to the last girl he’d ever see, save for the one that would wind up dead a few hours later.
Chapter 11
Allison… present
Arriving home around four, I found Selena searching the pantry for a snack to stuff down her gullet for her lengthy drive home, all of four miles if I calculated correctly. She came up with a bag of pretzels, glared at them disapprovingly, and shoved them in her purse anyway.
“How’s she doing?” I asked.
“Seems good. An old friend from work called and they chatted for twenty minutes.”
“Someone she’s actually met?”
“No, a phone friend from the west coast,” Selena said as she headed out the door and waved good-bye.
My mother had worked for years as an at-home medical transcriptionist until the company centralized their operations last November. It had been good, steady work, but lonely, especially for an ostracized widow. Her only contact with co-workers had come during monthly teleconferences. They’d known her as Justine who made the occasional joke before the manager came on the line. It allowed her to escape her surname and brought in some much-needed money. I wondered sometimes if the loss of the job contributed to the current worsening of her mental state.
My mom entered the kitchen from the dining room. She looked good, lively. “What would you like for dinner tonight, Allison?”
“You cooking?”
“Don’t I always?”
No, but I wasn’t going to call her on technicalities. The pots left boiling on the stove last May and the lasagna that transformed into a black brick on my previous visit were best left unmentioned.
“As it turns out,” I said, “I stopped and got salmon at that seafood place where the print shop used to be. Think you can turn it into something fabulous?”
“Salmon itself is fabulous, but there’s nothing wrong with dressing it up a bit.”
As my mom unwrapped the fish and started to concoct a maple-brandy marinade for it, I jumped into the conversation that had been awaiting one of her clearheaded moments.
“I ran into Mrs. Smith today.”
My mom’s back tightened as if all her muscles had cramped at once but she let them relax with her next exhalation.
“You two ever talk anymore?” I asked.
“Oh, no, honey. Her son was one of poor Bobby Kettrick’s friends. You know that. Well, maybe you don’t. You were so young, after all.”
The revolving door of Bobby Kettrick perceptions was spinning again. In lucid moments, Bobby was a dear boy. Sometimes a poor thing. In the newer, confused moments, Bobby was inevitably a rat. One thing he never was… the boy your father shot. She wouldn’t believe that if I showed her a video of it. I always gave Mom the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the woman who turned the other cheek and gave the shirt off her back to less-than-charitable neighbors was the real Justine Fennimore.
“I remember her son,” I said. “Smitty. He’s actually in town for the high school reunion.”
“Do you ever do things like that, honey? Go to your high school reunions?”
Needed to rent Carrie for my mom sometime. A bucket of blood on my head would be the least of my worries. She turned to me as she sprinkled a bit of salt on the fish. “I mean the school in New York, of course. I certainly wouldn’t expect you to attend anything Lavitte-related.”
After the trial, I’d gone to Brooklyn to live with my aunt. My mom had thought about selling the house and moving north to join me, but five realtors had told her the house wouldn’t sell for a good, long while. Not with the history of its only owner. She’d tried selling it herself, but teenagers had continually vandalized the sign. When she’d finally attracted an out-of-town couple, the neighbors had sought them out immediately and filled their heads with venom. The offer had been retracted like a forked tongue finding no fly and my mom had taken the house off the market. By the time she’d thought it reasonable, if not ideal, for me to come home, I’d been accepted into an elite program at the Brooklyn school and we’d all agreed I should stay put. Despite missing my mother, my old life felt foreign to me by then and I had no desire to return.
“Uh, no,” I said. “Never even occurred to me.”
“You did make friends up there, though.” It was a question disguised as hopeful sentiment.
“Of course,” I lied. “I mean, I studied a lot, but the geeks and I commingled.”
“Those were hard years. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you more.”
“Mom, please. You had more to deal with than any human should have to.”
I brought the conversation back to where I wanted, which was definitely away from the topic of me. “You ever hear anything over the years about Smitty knowing more than he admitted about that night?”
That night was Fennimore code for, well, that night.
“No!” my mom blurted. “Definitely not. Who would talk to me, anyway?” She whisked her marinade too hard and a few dark drops splattered on the white counter. She wiped them up immediately. “I can’t spend my time thinking about it. And you shouldn’t either. You have a good head on your shoulders and you need to put it to better use than worrying about that night. Now where’s the garlic powder?”
She leaned towards a low pantry shelf in search of the yellow, metallic container, but I refused to be distracted by a condiment. “I talked to Smitty about it.”
My mother shot up from her bent-over position. Hadn’t seen her move that fast since avoiding a strike from my dad. “Why? Oh, Allison, why would you do that?”
“Things come up.”
“I can’t imagine how awkward the coming up of that topic must have been. I certainly hope Elise wasn’t within earshot.”
“You really care what she thinks? She doesn’t even speak to you.”
She harrumphed as she sprinkled the garlic powder. “Everyone in town was asked about their whereabout
s that day. The police tried to figure out where Bobby had been all day, along with that poor Anderson girl. They even questioned Elise’s son about what time he’d finished painting the porch, who he’d been with, all that type of thing. She never forgave us for her family’s integrity getting dragged into the whole mess. And of course, Abel Smith was the one who testified about…”
My mother turned back to the pot where the butter, brandy, and maple syrup simmered together. Although she could make any marinade with her eyes closed, she pretended that this one suddenly required her undivided attention.
“Mom?” I said. “What did Mr. Smith testify about?” I had read most of the trial notes by now, but couldn’t remember anything about Abel Smith, Smitty’s dad.
She turned around, brows crossed, mouth tight. She resented me for driving these memories to the forefront of her delicate mind. “Mr. Smith is the one—the only one—who placed your father anywhere but at the garage that day. Said he saw him walking back from the direction of the creek… where Shelby’s body was found.” Her voice cracked. “Out past the Hesters’ barn.”
“Why would Dad—”
“He must have been looking for that scraggly cat.”
Justine Fennimore was known to love all animals. Even discouraged my dad from shooting the gophers and rodents near the shop. But if my dad’s search for that cat had linked him to Shelby Anderson’s corpse, she’d never accept it. It had to be damning when a reliable witness had placed Artie Fennimore near the site of the body disposal on the very afternoon Shelby’d gone missing.
Instead of stirring the marinade with the wooden spoon, my mom now stabbed at it, possibly envisioning old Rusty, the stray my father had adored. “He loved that cat,” she said. “I never understood it.”
She removed the pot from the heat and grabbed a few basil leaves from her window plant. Chopped at them in such a way that I curled my fingers in. “Abel Smith barely knew where his own son was most hours of the day or night, but he somehow managed to keep tabs on your father on the one day when it made a difference.” She was practically hyperventilating. I eased towards her, not wanting the knife to come flying up in my direction.
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