Cracker Town

by WF Ranew

  Ginger Gail told him she had a high school beau who was coming home from Vietnam. Red really didn’t want to interfere with that romance. But he could fall in love quickly with Ginger Gail, even permanently. In that sense, her high school boyfriend could step aside.

  Even after knowing her for two days, he had a yearning for the woman Ginger Gail was.

  He turned to a clean page and drew a giant question mark.

  The phone rang, and he answered.

  “Hey, sugarman,” Ginger Gail whispered over the line. “Why don’t you come on over to Bainbridge and spend the afternoon.”

  Red’s heart throbbed. Suddenly, his day had changed.

  “When, where, sweetheart?” he said.

  “Not my apartment,” she said.

  “Well, why don’t you come over here to the Hotel Thomas?”

  “Hmm. Long drive. But worth the trip,” she said. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

  Red heard the clunk on the line. He looked around. The room was a mess. The day before, he was on a call with Matt and shooed the maid away. She hadn’t been back.

  He called the front desk and asked for immediate cleaning.

  He took a walk.

  * * *

  It was late May, just before Memorial Day, and the perfect time to stroll around one of Georgia’s most beautiful cities. A city with a history.

  And a city of money. But mostly, a city of roses.

  Red strolled down the sidewalk adjacent to downtown’s red-brick Broad Street. He walked as far as Archbold Hospital and turned around.

  As he neared the hotel, he saw Ginger Gail angle park in a space out front. He went over to greet her.

  They kissed lightly.

  “Hello, lovely you,” she said. “Let’s do this. I am going to step over to Neel’s and shop for a half hour. Then I’ll come up to your room. OK?”

  “Sounds as about as discreet as can be,” Red said. “Don’t buy out the store.”

  Red proceeded up to his room, brushed his teeth, and sat down at the desk by the window.

  He closed the notebook of doodles.

  * * *

  Red opened the door as soon as he heard the soft knocking.

  Ginger Gail stood there smiling.

  Red ushered her into the room and closed the door. He took her in his arms, and they kissed as Ginger Gail’s short body stretched up into Red’s embrace.

  They held each other for several minutes.

  Suddenly, urges overcame the warmth of their hugs and kisses. They disrobed quickly and jumped under the soft, clean sheets.

  Ginger Gail threw her right leg over Red’s torso and pulled him close.

  “I’ve wanted this for, what, forty-eight hours now,” she purred.

  “Hmm, you do feel good young lady,” Red said. “Divine, in fact.”

  * * *

  Ginger Gail proved to consume a lot of Red’s time. Mentally, physically, and emotionally. He had to focus on the work at hand, and that was finding the person who killed Jamison Elton.

  He still had the Goings family murders front and center. However, the investigation had slowed to a crawl with no suspects other than Cleet Wrightman. He had vanished.

  He’d talked to the son, Randy Goings, who was moving to Ridgecrest, North Carolina, to live with his grandparents until college began. He provided Red with their address and phone number. Randy promised to get in touch once he settled in at the University of Virginia in September.

  Then, Matthew Bailey called him at the hotel the previous afternoon. Red wasn’t there. He was curled up with Ginger Gail in a motel room near Cairo and didn’t get the message until later.

  His boss was furious that Red hadn’t called him back until late in the evening.

  “What the hell are you doing down there?” Matthew yelled over the phone. “We’ve got four murders and one elusive suspect. Someone from the college called the governor about the Goings deaths. The pressure is on.”

  “I realize that, Matt,” Red said. “I’m working as hard as I can, especially on what happened to Cleet Wrightman. I think he can answer a lot of our questions.”

  “You’d better find that crazy son of a bitch and quick,” Matt said. “My ass is in the frying pan up here.”

  It wasn’t the call anyone wanted to get from their boss. But it woke Red up to his primary mission.

  Still, Ginger Gail commanded most of his thoughts.

  * * *

  Red called and set a date with Ginger Gail. They’d meet in Thomasville at the rose garden, then find a place to have dinner.

  In the meantime, he drove over to Valdosta to again interview B.J. Berresford about the Goings murders. He’d called the teen and asked if they could meet, and they decided on the Dapper Dan men’s shop where B.J. worked after school and during the summer.

  B.J. had just graduated and asked Lisa Gorman to marry him. The timing was fortuitous for Lisa; she just learned about her pregnancy.

  Red parked in an angle spot next to the men’s store. He got out and walked into the cool showroom that smelled of high-end men’s attire, from suits to sports coats, silk ties, and leisurewear.

  B.J. walked from the back to greet him. He said something to a gentleman by the cash register and turned to Red. They left the store and walked down the street to a diner.

  The young man dressed well, but then he worked in the city’s best men’s clothing store. He wore a short-sleeve blue button-down shirt, red and blue silk tie, and Glenn plaid slacks with an alligator belt. His shoes matched the belt.

  “B.J, so you’re a high school graduate,” Red said as they sat down in a booth. A waitress scooted over and asked if they wanted drinks. Red ordered an iced tea, and B.J. asked for a milkshake. “What are your plans?”

  B.J. looked around and seemed to have something weighing on his mind.

  “Depends on the draft. If at all avoidable, I’m getting married later this summer,” he said. “To my high school sweetheart, Lisa Gorman. Well, you know….”

  Oh, so that’s it.

  “Well, congratulations on graduation and the upcoming nuptials,” Red said. “I just finished an Army hitch myself about a year ago. Not a good time to be in the military, especially if you’re drafted.”

  B.J. looked up at Red as he sucked on the straw.

  “I guess the National Guard might save my ass from Vietnam,” B.J. said. “Hope so. My uncle’s the local commandant. He’s promised to sign me up soon as I’m ready.”

  “Don’t wait on that one,” Red urged him.

  “Exactly what he said.”

  Their drinks arrived, and Red prepared his with two packs of artificial sweetener. B.J. stirred his shake. Red brought out his notebook and opened it on the table. He took the cap off his fountain pen.

  “B.J., as you know, I’m still investigating the Goings family deaths,” Red said. “I know you’ve been over this probably two dozen times, but I have some questions about that night.”

  “Sure, whatever I can do to find the bastard who did that,” he said. “But you’re right. I’ve gone over it with you and your boss, the sheriff, and local detectives many times. Frankly, they suspected me of killing the Goings family.”

  Red nodded and jotted down some notes. He understood B.J.’s predicament in the investigation’s early stage when police tended to suspect anyone tied to a crime. B.J. stepped forward to try to help solve the case but was met with accusations from one detective.

  “No one who comes forward to offer eyewitness accounts should be treated that way,” Red said. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. But I am very glad you raised your hand. That’s why I’m here; to refresh my memory on what you saw back in April and subsequently told the other officers and me.”

  B.J sipped his shake. He shook his head and looked down at the table.

  “Looking back, that night scares me to death,” he said. “To think I was walking past a death house and didn’t know it. Anyway, I was on the way home from Lisa’s house. I l
ike walking around Valdosta, especially at night. There’s a lot you can observe about people. When I approached the Goings’s home, my radar went up when I saw a man in a light-colored suit just standing in their front yard. Wore a white hat. I was a half block away on the opposite sidewalk.”

  Red’s fast scribbling was audible as he filled one page and turned to a new one in the notebook.

  B.J. slowed down a bit to observe the man, who stood there in the yard.

  “In retrospect, he might have been waiting on somebody,” the young man said. “But who at that hour? As soon as he saw me, he moved and seemed to be heading my way on the sidewalk. Then he turned down an alley and walked much faster.”

  B.J. watched the man until he was hidden by darkness.

  “But, you know, Mr. Farlow,” he said. “That wasn’t the first time I saw someone at the house after dark. Two or three weeks before that horrible night, there was another man in the carport shadows. Best I can recall, the time was after eleven.”

  Red remembered something about a second man from his earlier conversation with B.J.

  “I kept my eye on him, as he didn’t see me at first,” the young man said. “He wore overalls like a farmer.”

  Red asked what happened.

  “The man jumped slightly when he saw me looking at him and stepped farther back under the carport,” B.J. said. “He disappeared through a walkway into the backyard.”

  Red asked him to think about the earlier sighting and describe the man’s clothing.

  “He looked like a worker of some sort,” B.J. said. “Somebody who did manual labor, you know. I thought he was a farmer. Not a professional. He also could have been a yardman, but who’d be mowing grass that late?”

  B.J. said all the time he felt eerie that the two men visited at the house on different nights, but he tried to make some sense of it.

  “Maybe the man in the suit was another professor at the college,” B.J. said. “Perhaps he had dinner with the Goings at their house that night. That’s plausible enough. But the other guy, the one I saw earlier. If he wasn’t mowing the yard or trimming the shrubs, why was he there? Then I thought he could be a plumber, called in to fix a leaky toilet. But I didn’t see a truck or anything that would make that a reasonable assumption. I’m grasping for it, as I have been every minute of the day since they died. Along with the horrible thought I saw the men who killed them.”

  Red nodded and shook the ice in the tea glass.

  “You said the suited man wore a white hat?” he asked. “Was the second man wearing one?”

  B.J. paused as if trying to joggle his memory.

  “He could have been, but I can’t be sure about that,” he said.

  “After you passed the house, did you look back to see if the white hat man returned?”

  B.J. wrinkled his eyebrow and took a moment.

  “I stood in front of the house and across the street,” he said. “I stayed there several minutes. And yes, after walking on past the house, I stopped and looked back but didn’t see him.”

  Red wrote two pages before speaking.

  “B.J., now this is important,” he said. “I don’t think we covered this before. Did either of the men look familiar? Or have you seen anyone resembling the men since those two nights?”

  B.J. nodded. “No, I haven’t seen anyone for absolute certain. But just last week, I was picking up my dad’s car at the garage after some repairs. The memory of that night came back to me. A man pulled up in an old pickup and went inside. He came out with what looked like a box of parts. For a split second, I thought he was the farmer-type man.”

  Red’s interest flared. “You recognized him?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t get a good look at his face. It was too dark that night,” B.J. said. “It was the way the man dressed, in coveralls, and how he carried himself. He was big and lumbering. Kind of like a big football defensive linebacker.”

  Red laughed. “I was one at Georgia, you know.”

  “Really, damned, I thought I recognized you when we first met,” B.J. said and continued. “But when he walked back to his truck carrying two boxes, he struck me as having a similar walk as the other man at the Goings home. Funny, I know. But that’s what struck me. I can see it still in my head. That night will never go away.”

  Red stopped writing.

  “An auto repair shop. Can you give me the name and address?”

  B.J. chuckled. “Yessir, that’s easy. My future father-in-law owns the place.”

  Red wrote down the address and thanked B.J. for his time.

  With any luck, he could talk to the shop owner before heading over to Thomasville for his date with Ginger Gail.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Eloise McIntosh pulled into the filling station as her car thudded and coughed. She didn’t know what was wrong, but she hoped Malcolm Mitchell might find out and fix the problem.

  She rolled down the window. The air conditioning cool fought with a whoosh of warm air.

  It was the first day of June, and the skies were clear, the temperature in the high seventies, and not too hot yet in the mountains. Rarely was it too hot in North Georgia. A gentle breeze brushed her face and reminded her of a trip into the mountains that afternoon.

  Except, dammit, I got car trouble.

  Eloise depended on her car as the salesperson for a line of health products she sold through home coffee parties in the mountain communities. She’d scheduled a party the next day in Blue Ridge. It was a big one at the home of a log cabin builder’s wife. Every lady who was anyone in Blue Ridge would be there wanting Eloise’s advice on healthy living.

  Eloise parked in from of the second bay door.

  Someone stood waiting as she steered the American gas guzzler and slowly braked to a stop.

  Eloise didn’t know the man; she hadn’t bought gas at Mitchell’s Gas and Auto Repair in months.

  “Hey, uh, is Malcolm in today?” she asked.

  The man rested his left forearm above the driver-side window and leaned in close.

  “Yes, ma’am, but he’s on the phone right now. Can I help you?”

  “Oh, and who are you? Don’t think we’ve met.” Eloise extended her well-manicured right hand out the window. It was getting on to the Fourth of July next month, and she’d gotten an American flag manicure the day before. Red and white diagonal stripes with little stars. Of course, her feet were unseen, but the pedicure depicted fireworks exploding on each toenail.

  The man gently shook her hand. “I’m, ah, Johnny Craven. Pleased to meet you.”

  The man wore a crisply laundered jumpsuit with “Johnny” embroidered over the right chest pocket. The garment was clean, save for several grease smudges here and there.

  As Eloise looked into Johnny Craven’s brown eyes, she felt a jolt of something. Deep down. Her heart thumped along as usual, but there was a spin to the beat. A rocking rhythm. Excitement, sort of.

  He’s a pretty fellow. Something about him, though. Something.

  “This car’s just off warranty, naturally, but don’t know what’s wrong with it,” Eloise explained. “Thumps and bumps and whirs. Hell, I don’t know. Could you take a look at it while I wait in the office?”

  Johnny explained he was new and didn’t work on cars. Just pumped gas and cleaned windshields.

  “Yes, Malcolm’ll take a look,” Johnny said. “Please leave your keys in the ignition and go on in where it’s cool.”

  Eloise stepped out of her car and went into the office. She heard Malcolm talking to someone about a repair that didn’t take.

  Malcolm finished the conversation, stood up, and greeted Eloise. He told her to sit tight while he went to check on her car.

  Twenty minutes later, Malcolm walked back into the office. Johnny went to wait on another customer.

  Malcolm Mitchell’s station served people the old-fashion way. Its attendants pumped gas, and its mechanics repaired cars as quickly and efficiently as possible. Eloise knew Malcolm to be an honest
mechanic, but he’d frustrated her in the past. One time, on another of her cars, she knew it was time for a tune-up, according to the manual. Malcolm insisted she wait until the next oil change. Save her some money, he said. Two weeks later, the car broke down with a busted fan belt.

  On that June day, Malcolm ran down the problem. “Got a timing belt that ain’t working properly, Miss McIntosh. Don’t need a new one, but it’ll take my other man to do the work.”

  Elise knew to whom Malcolm referred. He was Mike Wilkes. When he was sober, Wilkes was the best mechanic in Ellijay.

  “He’s due in later. I’ll get him on it tonight. Should have it ready by ten in the morning,” Malcolm said.

  Eloise thanked him and walked across the street to the used car dealer. She rented a loaner for her appointments that afternoon.

  As she drove out of the lot, she saw Johnny Craven leaning up against a gas pump. He smiled and waved his fingers at her.

  She felt a ripple roll up through her abdomen.

  * * *

  Eloise McIntosh never married. She had a daughter who’d just turned twenty and was away at college.

  At the young age of sixteen, Eloise got a visit at her locker between high school gym class and biology from a new kid named J.D. Culbertson. He’d just moved down from Murphy, North Carolina, with his family. His dad ran one of the local banks.

  Eloise had a body to kill for, especially so at sixteen. But at that point in her life, she’d never met anyone as cool and smooth in his approach to romance as J.D.

  “You’re the prettiest girl in the school,” he said to her. “Can’t believe you aren’t on the arm of a big football player.”

  “How would you know I don’t have a boyfriend? Aren’t you the new kid?”

  “Yes, I am. Name’s J.D. Culbertson. I want to ask you out.”

  “Well, ask away, I guess,” Eloise said.

  He did, and she accepted.

  This was in November of Eloise’s sophomore year.

  She’d made out with several boys, but only one tried to move his hands around in places where he had no business. Eloise took care of him pretty quickly. One night, as they were parked behind the elementary school and kissing, the boy squeezed her left knee. She said nothing at first. But when his fingers started walking up her inner thigh and pressed against her panties, she did what the home economics teachers told all the girls to do in such a situation.