“Of what?”
“Gossip. Aftermath. You know, the post-mortem, if you will.”
I cringed at Charlie’s choice of words, but he was caught up in his whirlwind of revelations. He wouldn’t have stopped talking if Fabio had climbed through the kitchen window wearing a thong.
“Despite the neat package they tried to wrap everything up in while going after your daddy, turns out it wasn’t all so kosher on the night Bobby was killed. There was a lot of super hush-hush chatter about Smitty’s and Jasper’s alibis, which were pretty much each other and their families. There were questions about the police hiding evidence or not digging deep enough into the forensics of Shelby’s case, and a bunch of stuff about the barn over on the Hesters’ place.”
“I knew about the barn,” I said. “One of the prosecutor’s theories was that my dad grabbed Shelby outside the barn, maybe even dragged her inside.”
The prosecution had never tried to claim that my dad raped Shelby because there was no evidence to back it up. But how many times in the history of civilized trials had a jury heard he dragged her inside the barn without filling in the follow-up phrase: and raped her. Despite the lack of evidence, I chose never to think about those few moments in the prosecutor’s imagined scenario. Some things are too sticky, even for Teflon.
“Right,” Charlie said. “And then your dad allegedly carried her to the creek and dumped her there, like he was some panicked idiot who’d never watched CSI.”
I was quite sure the television show CSI hadn’t been in existence when Shelby went missing, but I got Charlie’s point.
“Well, in case you don’t remember,” Charlie said, “that barn burned down about twelve hours after your dad was arrested.”
“I know. That Saturday night, right? Stupid kids up there having bonfires and smoking.”
Charlie looked at me like I was the sheltered fool who’d never watched a crime show. “No, A-lison,” he said, invoking the nickname kids used on me in middle school because of my good grades. “Where are your street smarts?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never given much thought to that fire.”
“Well maybe you should have.” He shook his head and the sweet scent of jasmine wafted towards me.
“Seemed like Shelby’s body and that rope around her waist were the focal points of the case against my dad.”
“Allow me to explain as if you are an idiot,” he said. “Shouldn’t be much of a stretch.”
I stuck my tongue at him.
“If there was evidence in that barn that your dad wanted to destroy, he couldn’t have burned it down himself because he was in custody.”
“Ohmigod,” I said, “what if it was my brother? What if he was trying to help my dad?”
Charlie rolled his eyes so high, I thought they’d stick to the ceiling. “Think, girl, think! At that point, unless your dad blabbed to your brother that he’d killed Shelby Anderson, your brother wouldn’t have known a thing about that barn being a factor.”
“Oh, right. Her body hadn’t been found yet. It wasn’t even a homicide at that point.”
“Exactly. Someone burned down that barn after Shelby went missing but before anyone knew what had happened to her.”
“So if someone else knew about a crime, they would want to get rid of that barn before her body was discovered.”
“Exactly,” Charlie said.
“Seems a bit far-fetched,” I said. “I mean, the barn was never central to the case.”
“I’m just telling it like I heard it back then. People were freaking out over so many weird things. Talking about the town being cursed, gang-infested, you name it.”
“So what does this all have to do with me... now?”
“I don’t know if the case feels like ancient history to you, but here in Lavitte, time moves like an old queen struttin’ for a baby gay on the beach. Slow and leisurely.”
“Your point?”
“You go plowing through this case again, you’re tromping on fresh soil. You’ve got Smitty’s family here and Mrs. Kettrick’s name still pops up everywhere and Bobby’s dad probably still has active business ties. I mean, despite being older than a wart on King Tut’s ass, he had his finger in everything, right?”
The image of the big, arched man haunted my fresh memory. The way he lurched into town under cover of his former enemy made me think of the devil coming to collect the bodies owed him. The type of character who’d be cast in an Alfred Hitchcock movie with all the melodramatic trimmings: dark glasses over jet black eyes, translucent skin, bony hands on long arms with unexpected strength at their tips.
“All I know is,” Charlie continued in a flutter, “you’ve pissed off the Smiths. And Shelby Anderson’s mom has already been contacted and told not to speak with you if you come around.”
“What? Who talked to her?”
“Believe it or not, one of Enzo Rodriguez’s uncles.”
“One of Enzo’s uncles? What the hell do they have to do with this?”
“You must have talked to Enzo.”
“So what if I did?” I said. “Enzo was the last one to see my dad and brother before all hell broke loose. I had a right to talk to him.”
“You know those Rodriguezes. They don’t like any trouble stirred up. A bunch of ‘em are still working for cash under the table. They must have quite a stash by now. I heard one of them is even selling cocaine.”
“Upgraded from moonshine?”
“Now I doubt that,” Charlie said. “Probably more of an expansion of the family business. Supposed to be good stuff, too.”
I wanted to laugh and giggle with Charlie, find out more about his life and loves, but I was busy feeling like a total idiot. Here I had stomped into town, kicked up a dust trail a mile high and expected no one to notice or care. Oh, it’s just li’l old Allison Fennimore, here to clear her daddy’s name. Well, not exactly true. More like come to town to do her brother’s bidding while he sat in a rehab facility listening to Brahms lullabies and exploring daddy issues. Either way, I felt like the queen dumbass for not realizing that if I cleared my dad’s name to any degree, someone else’s name would go down for the count. Unless it was all one big accident. Maybe Shelby had gone for a midnight swim at Licking Dog Creek, after lashing herself to a tree with a rope so she wouldn’t drift away. But then she’d tripped and fallen. And she’d broken her neck and a few other bones. And the force of the current had untied the rope from the tree. And Bobby Kettrick had committed suicide with his hands tied behind his back.
Yeah, not so much. It was no accident.
If Artie Fennimore came out of this smelling like a rose, someone else would be deemed the stinker. Against all odds, I had managed to make myself even less wanted in this town than any Fennimore already had been. Pretty heady accomplishment.
At least no one knew about my appointment with Jasper. If I could cut through the paranoid jungle of bull he planned to lay on me, maybe I could begin to make sense of Lavitte’s collective suspicion about my presence here.
“Thanks, Charlie,” I said. “I had no idea I’d stirred the waters so much already.”
“My dear,” he said, “you are the tide coming in. I suggest you grab your mama under your fin, swim your hot little tail back to those gorgeous New York men, and stay upstream, before somebody spears you in the back and serves you up at a fish fry.”
Chapter 17
Artie… sixteen years ago
The bullet opened a fissure in Lionel’s gut. His innards sprayed into the air like a white-hot firework before settling to the ground like cotton balls released from a cloud. Artie lowered the gun to his side while Kevin and Enzo whooped and hollered.
“I can’t believe you killed Lionel,” Kevin said. “He was my oldest friend.”
“You told me to shoot him!” Artie said.
“Only cuz he smelled like piss and B.O.,” Kevin said, reloading.
Enzo cringed at the description, subconsciously narrowing his nostrils.
“Told you not to leave him out in the rain all the time when you were little,” Artie said. “Those raccoons ended up using him as a nest and when they abandoned him, that retarded dog from the Simcox place would come over, lift his leg, and let it rip all over Lionel’s face.”
After laughing, Kevin nodded in agreement. “It was for the best.” He raised his tin can of hooch and announced, “To Lionel, the bestest, smelliest Teddy Bear a man could ever hope to use for target practice.” They clinked their cans and downed another sip of the poison Enzo had opened two hours earlier. By then, their cans had each seen a couple refills.
The air around the garage smelled of burnt cotton, dust, and a hint of huckleberry from the plants that grew wild behind the garage. Kevin stared through that same dust, sliced through by horizontal beams of hot whiteness from the workshop lights. Artie had aimed them outside so the three of them could see their targets. With the moon in hiding, it was their only choice. The score stood at Enzo, 5, Kevin, 8, and Artie, 3. Kevin raised his gun, inhaled, exhaled, held position and squeezed the trigger in one slow, steady motion, hoping he’d found that sweet spot between heartbeats when his hand would be at its steadiest. Ping! An oil can flew straight up into the air, somersaulted over itself twice and landed with a final clang.
“Dang, boy,” Artie said, “I wish I had your eyes.”
“That’s funny,” Kevin said. “’Cuz all the ladies love yours.”
“Well, I’m trying to deserve that,” Artie said. “I surely am. I wanna be a better man. One who deserves to have eyes that makes the ladies melt. And you know what?”
“Please, Dad. Don’t go getting all sappy on us again.”
“I’m sorry, Son, but I gotta say it. Your mother, she’s a wunnerful woman and she deserves a lot more than she got from me over the years. Don’t know why the Lord saddled her with me.”
“Come on, Mr. Artie, you’re a catch,” Enzo said.
“Tryin’ to be, Enzo. I surely am. Tryin’ to be a better dad, too, to Allison. But that sure don’t come natural to me.” Artie angled his head towards Kevin. “And as for your mom, I ain’t laid a hand on ‘er for goin’ on three years and I ain’t hardly said a cross word in her presence, neither.”
“I know, Dad,” Kevin said, his eyes shifting around uncomfortably at this blatant show of emotion. “It’s been great.”
“And Justine, well she’s the only one whose heart I care about melting.”
Enzo playfully rubbed his eyes. “Stop, Mr. Artie, stop! I won’t be able to see the targets with all these tears in my eyes.”
“Go ahead,” Artie said. “Have your fun. But I’m tellin’ you boys, all those years I bottled up my anger with customers and my frustrations with the garage—and disappointments in myself—and took it out on Justine and y’all. I’m finally learning to channel it right.”
“You got all this from a couple books?” Kevin said.
“Couple books, and I mighta gone to see Doc Baker once or twice.”
Kevin’s mouth fell open. He turned to his dad as Enzo took aim at a bottle of sour milk some customer had tossed in the grass.
“Now I know that’s the alcohol talking,” Kevin said.
“Maybe,” Artie said. “But it’s true.”
“You went to see Doc Baker after quacking every time he drove by for the past ten years?”
Doc Baker was the local psychologist/marriage counselor/therapist who looked like Abe Lincoln if Abe had gone completely grey and developed a hunchback. When the good people of Lavitte had a problem that couldn’t be fixed with a pill or a scalpel, they went to see Doc Baker—and tried to avoid being seen coming or going through his discreet back door.
Enzo helped himself to a second shot at the sour milk and found himself rewarded with an explosion of yellowed spatter spurting into the air like an overcooked heart. “Yes!”
“That’s gonna smell somethin’ awful, Enzo!” Kevin shouted, and as the sour odor reached their nostrils, they all howled with uncontrollable laughter.
“You gonna shoot again or what?” Artie said to his son.
Kevin turned to his dad and lifted the gun laterally, his arm strong and unwavering. Without turning away, he rotated only his head, got a shot off, and watched a sack of flour spray into the air like a dusty fountain of old granted wishes.
“Beauty in motion,” Enzo said, enjoying the show.
“You sure put that one to bed,” Artie said.
“Speaking of bed,” Enzo said, “I gotta head home. My uncle needs me to help him early tomorrow. He’s got a thing he’s trying with an old motorcycle engine, some rusted bicycle parts, and a near-new recliner the Kettricks put out to the curb last night.”
“Goddamn Kettricks,” Artie said, channeling his anger where he felt it rightly belonged. “Not enough money to buy their own tools but no problem tossin’ a perfectly good chair in the trash.”
“Tell you what, Mr. Artie. I’ll clean up out here while you and Kevin get the shop closed up for the night.”
Enzo spent a solid twenty-five minutes out back, cleaning up from the shooting session and picking up litter from customers who’d hung out in the back all week while their cars were being serviced. When he got around to putting new liners in the trash bins, two huge rats dashed for cover inside the garage. Enzo hoped they’d find their way out quickly. The toothy rodents bothered the hell out of Mr. Artie and Kevin, but Enzo found them kind of cute. Minutes later, he entered the last garage bay, closed all the automatic doors with the remote, and locked the window, a new habit they’d all acquired since Bobby’s break-in. There were two cars left in the garage, Bobby’s Chevy and an old Mercedes brought in by a local around 7:00 p.m., the one whose oil Enzo had worn earlier.
By the time Enzo crossed through the waiting area and entered the office, both Kevin and Artie were passed out cold, snoring like buzz saws on the worn sofas. A couple of the cushions under Artie looked sorrier than Lionel the Teddy Bear and might have smelled even worse. All the lights were out except for the dim one on the desk that stayed on all the time.
“Hey, Mr. Artie,” Enzo said, shaking him by the arm. “Hey, Mr. Artie, you guys want a ride home? I’m okay to drive.”
Artie didn’t budge, except for the parts of his body jarred by Enzo’s shaking.
Enzo tried the same routine with Kevin and got only incoherent mumbling, something about sleeping it off. Enzo cringed. He knew from experience with his own family that Uncle Tito’s moonshine concoctions could wreak havoc with a man’s mind, the upside being that the man didn’t usually remember the havoc—only the headache that shrouded it.
Enzo checked the time on the cheap alarm clock behind the desk. The glare of red numbers told him he wouldn’t get enough sleep himself tonight, not with the way his head was feeling. And his uncle wanted to be up before sunrise.
Enzo covered Artie with a moth-eaten blanket that usually draped across the back of the threadbare sofa. Over Kevin, he threw a baby blanket that a customer had left behind last week. At least it covered Kevin’s chest and hips. The office was already filling up with the aroma of yeasty perspiration and wet grass, the latter’s source being the soggy-bottomed shoes of his employers. He headed to the pitch-black waiting area adjacent to the office to gather his things when the sound of shattering glass brought him to full attention. It had come from the garage. He froze in place and weighed his next move.
Chapter 18
Allison… present
Ravine Psychiatric Clinic didn’t advertise itself as such. The sign in front merely read RAVINE in flowing blue letters, probably some font with a water-themed name. How lovely. How peaceful. What was a ravine anyway? A chasm? A stream? Did anyone ever say, Let’s jump in the ravine, or, We’re going to picnic on the banks of the ravine today? No, definitely not. But saying the word aloud, as I did now without thinking about it, seemed to impart a peaceful feeling. Probably some hundred thousand dollar research grant that resulted in naming all mental illness facil
ities with a mandatory letter V for its soothing, welcoming tone. It even sent a meditative vibration through the lips and into the body. The same study had probably resulted in the earth-shattering recommendation to avoid naming such facilities with a hard K. For example, you’d never hear, Yes, Jasper, we’re committing you to RockFrick. You’ll love it. Such a harsh name would surely send the patients charging into their former workplaces with Rambo-like bullet-belts slung across their chests.
So, Ravine it was. The building failed to match its font. Undistinguished beige brick, reinforced windows, four stories of basic cookie-cutter construction, with one of its unique features surely going unseen—limited roof access for the patients. I pulled into the potholed, macadam lot. The six visitor spaces up front were filled, as were four of the eight handicap spaces. Reaching the end of the building, I wove around to the rear, passing an unexpectedly tasteful courtyard with a non-working fountain in its center. I parked, smiled into my rearview mirror to bring the necessary mood to the forefront, and walked around to the entrance with a forced but hopeful spring in my step. I really needed Jasper to like and trust me.
As I waited for the automatic double doors to open, the scent of antiseptic assaulted my nostrils. I trusted it was the floor cleaner and not what they rubbed on patients’ arms before injections. Hopefully, they did that stuff in a more clinical setting than the lobby or Jasper might be looking at serious Staph infection before he checked out. The doors refused to open so I waved my hands at the motion sensor, feeling foolish but maintaining the smile in case anyone was watching.
Through the glass, I spotted a guy with a gut bigger than my car trunk, about my age. He came around from behind the glassed-in reception area, revealing teal scrubs, and greeted me with an unreserved grin through the doors. He held up his index finger to tell me to wait. With minimal effort, he wrenched the stuck doors apart.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Welcome to Ravine,” he said, his tiny blue eyes carrying a sharp astuteness despite their near disappearance when he smiled. “Sorry about the doors. They’ve been sticking every tenth opening and the manufacturer is making us jump through hoops with a warranty claim. You know how that goes.”
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