She reached out and grabbed my hand. Tears dropped from her eyes into her bowl. “I just don’t want to lose you too.”
I squeezed her hand. “You won’t. I’ll get through this so I can bring the pink beastie back to your yard and annoy the neighbors.”
She grinned. “I do wish you’d known your daddy better.” She released my hand and went back to the dumplings.
“Me too.”
She shook her head slightly. “No, I don’t mean that in just a general way. You were so young—I know you get most of your impressions of him from your mama.”
I wasn’t sure where she was going. “And?”
She chewed thoughtfully for a second. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved your mama with all my heart. She was my baby. My first. But she lost sight of a lot of stuff after he died, and she resented the time he spent trying to find out who murdered his mama.”
“I knew that part.”
“But did you know he was a really good man? I mean a good man. Sweet and kind, and when your mama brought him home the first time, Johnny and I couldn’t have been more thrilled for her. After his mother died, Bobby was never adopted. At first they thought he was mute, but that was because he didn’t speak English. He spoke French, and his mother warned him not to talk to strangers. So he didn’t for a long time. But he grew up in that home, learned English, and became a kind of leader among the boys. Encouraged them to do more things at school, get skills that could help them in the long run. He was old enough when his mother died that he had to have gotten that determination from her.” She paused. “Did you know that he and Susie met because they were both volunteering at a tutoring program?”
I didn’t, as a matter of fact.
“I think Susie left you with the impression that your daddy was either a driven, unrelenting lawyer or this untamable wild child.”
That did kind of sum it up.
“But he was so much more. And he doted on you. Lord have mercy, how he played with you and loved on you. He’d snatch you up when he got home at night and threaten to ‘steal all your sugar so you wouldn’t be so sweet.’ And then just smother you with kisses. You giggled and squealed like mad.”
She sighed. “He couldn’t even bring himself to punish you. When you acted out, Susie had to put you right. You’d stand in the front door, every day, waiting for him to come home.”
OK, now I didn’t like where this was going. “Gran …”
“After he was murdered, for weeks you’d go to the front door and just stand there. Waiting. It just about killed your mama.”
My eyes began to sting. “Gran …”
“And you are just like him.”
I blinked. The stinging stopped. “What?”
She took a deep breath. “Honey, I know you need to do this. I know it better than my own life. But this wasn’t a real obsession with Bobby until after he went to Vietnam. Sure, he collected information, but it was more like a hobby. After the service, he changed. Something happened to him over there.”
“I think he met someone who knew about the murder.”
She nodded. “Susie thought that too. But my point is that this was not a lifelong thing for him. While it was always there, in the back of his mind, he didn’t obsess until later, after the war. And I firmly believe that if he’d not found what he was looking for in Pineville, he might have let it go, if that clue had led to a dead end. So I want you to put that in the back of your head. You’re a good cop. You’ve got a marvelous life ahead of you. If this thing grinds to a dead halt in Pineville, let it go. Treat it as any other case. Walk away. It ate Susie alive and caused her to ruin her relationship with you. And we both know what it did to you and Tony.”
Now I really didn’t like where it was going. “Gran—”
She didn’t even slow down. Determination ran in both sides of my family. “But I really believe Bobby could have lived with knowing what happened even if he couldn’t have proved it. He could have lived with answers, even if justice didn’t come with them.”
Something in her words triggered one of my red flags, which popped to the top like a cork in water. I stared at her. “He found out, didn’t he? Before he died. He found out who killed my grandmother.”
Gran bit her lower lip for a second, then nodded.
“Who was it?” I couldn’t stop the demand in my voice.
She shrugged. “He never said. The day before he died, he called Susie, told her that it was about over, that he’d be home that next weekend. The next day she got the call from the sheriff.”
My heart broke one more time for my mother. “She must have become convinced she’d find the answer in his papers. And why she was so devastated that she couldn’t get hold of the ones he had in Pineville.” I stirred the chicken and dumplings in my bowl idly. It was getting cold.
“And that mudhole of a town has done enough damage to this family.”
I looked up, choking back a laugh when I saw how bright her eyes were with anger.
“So I mean it. You do this, but you be like your daddy, not like Susie. Solve or let it go.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Is that cold?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Gran stood up and snatched up both bowls. “Mine too. But we’ve eaten enough. Don’t want either of us to get fat. You’ll never get another man if you do, between getting fat and that mouth of yours. What about that police chief in Pineville? He a prospect?”
“What do you say we go upstairs and pick out stuff for the trailer?”
“Your love life off limits?”
“Don’t have one to put limits on. Besides, you still haven’t forgiven Tony like you promised to someday. You think I’m ready to bring anyone else around?”
“Maybe someday ain’t here yet. God’s in the forgiving business, so I don’t have to be.”
“Attic?”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
We spent the rest of my Sunday visit prowling through Gran’s attic, pulling out stuff for the pink beastie and frequently getting distracted by a pack of letters or a forgotten photo album. Gran gave me three new pictures of Mother, Daddy, and me. Just so I wouldn’t forget.
Oh, I definitely wouldn’t. And most of all, I wouldn’t forget that I now knew, with certainty, that someone in Pineville had been helping my father. MW1 wasn’t just my mother’s assumption. Someone knew, without a doubt, who had killed Esther Spire. I just hoped they were still alive to tell the tale one more time.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pineville, Alabama, 1972
“BREMER, YOU FOOL. You go to jail and that racist becomes a martyr.”
The fuzzy gray figures on the television moved about in a silent puppet play, with photos of Arthur Bremer and George Wallace punctuating the announcement of Bremer’s sentence for his attempted assassination of Alabama’s most well-known governor.
“Like that would make a difference anywhere to anybody,” muttered Roscoe as the figures shifted to news about the dying war in Vietnam. “What y’all gonna talk about when there ain’t no more body counts, huh? Make it up?”
Nah, there’s always something bad to talk about. Just over a week ago, the news about the Tuskegee Experiment had broken, and folks were still buzzing about that. Roscoe looked down at the latest letter from Bobby Spire. Always something bad going on. Roscoe had been exchanging letters with Bobby Spire since they’d met in Cam Ranh Bay. The letters were sparsely written and infrequent, and Bobby never put his name or return address on his. Smart boy. Roscoe always mailed his on the way to work, at a drop box far from anyone who knew him. He always made a copy too, which he kept tucked, along with Bobby’s, in a cigar box on a high shelf at the back of the pantry, where not even Juanita would look, much less the kids.
Now there was cash in there as well, sent in Bobby’s latest, urging Roscoe to get a post office box in Gadsden. “This isn’t an in-country mission, Roscoe,” Bobby had written, “but I well know it could be more dangerous. Be care
ful, and never take anything or anyone for granted.”
Given what Roscoe had written in his last note, Bobby was probably right. Time to be more careful.
Like I told you back in the Bay, I saw more than one that night. Two, at least, probably three. Thought I knew their voices, but I was a kid and not around many white folks much. We stayed to ourselves back then. Just safer that way. Ain’t much different now, even after Martin came and went. Too easy to get killed just for being black, much less going up against people like them.
I went hunting last weekend, just me, quiet, because most things ain’t exactly in season right now. Turns out I wasn’t out there alone. Not going to mention names, just in case. But we need to talk soon.
Anyway, I perched in a big oak, looking out for anything we could eat, mostly deer or turkey. Had settled for a few squirrels. Two old boys came wandering through. Father and son. I knew them right away. These ain’t the kind of people to be messing with lightly. They got some serious power in this town. And outside of town too, so I hear. Stuff neither one of us want to be messing with. Federal. Both were carrying shotguns, but they weren’t looking for game. The old man is walking with his head down, and the son, he is giving his old man a world of hurt, cussing and fussing. If I talked to my daddy like that, you’d find me in the woodpile with a blistered behind, even at this age.
Then I heard this. “That was eighteen years ago! JoeLee buried it for us, just like they buried her. Don’t you go digging either of them up just because you feel guilty. It was an accident. Over and done with. Let this bone go!”
Then they got out of earshot. Bobby, eighteen years ago was 1954. They had to be talking about your mother. We both know it wasn’t no accident. But maybe the old man didn’t see how it happened, so they got him convinced it was. Nothing certain. But now I know who to start digging around. Now I know what sheet and pointy hat to look under.
Roscoe folded both letters together and put them back in the cigar box and closed the lid. Dangerous, all right. More than either of them realized. Maybe more than in-country. ’Cause that was just you against the enemy. You knew who would be doing the shooting. This was home. Neighbors. Family. Especially family that lived in this house.
“Roscoe?”
He looked up. Juanita leaned against the doorframe, her nightgown limp from the heat and humidity that hung in the air. “Why don’t you turn off that nonsense and come to bed? It’s always the same.”
He shook his head. “Can’t sleep with William snoring like that.”
She crossed the room and ran a hand along his shoulders. “It won’t be long. He’ll find something, then he and Maybelle can get their own place. Come on, I’ll turn on the window fan. It’ll help drown him out.”
Roscoe snagged her hand and kissed the back of it. What would he do without this woman? “In a minute, baby.”
She leaned over and kissed him, then smiled sweetly. “Don’t be too long. I might actually go back to sleep.”
“I won’t.” He took a deep breath as she headed back down the hallway, then he stood, watching the flickering television. They’d switched to local news, and he could tell the report was about the new gas line going in on the other side of the ridge. Lots of jobs. Yeah, if you’re white. William hadn’t been able to find a job after coming home from the war, and so far, Roscoe had not been able to help his brother. Lots of folks hated the vets, especially the black ones. Life seemed to be changing in other parts of the States. But not here. Here, Martin Luther King Jr. might have never led a march. Here, white men could still kill white women and get away with it. A black man would just vanish into the mist. Or up a tree.
He turned off the set and picked up the box. “Bobby, it’s about to get real ugly around here.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Pineville, Alabama, Present Day
BLENDING IN AND being inconspicuous was no longer an option. And in hindsight, that might not have been the best plan of action anyway, especially in a community like Pineville, where everybody’s business was everyone’s business. What I could tell you was that there was something about living in a twenty-six-foot-long silver egg with a big pink flamingo on the side that made people want to show up on your doorstep for a chat.
It started before I even got the thing parked.
Doc Taylor and his wife, Maude, had this gorgeous Victorian just off the square and behind the drugstore. Doc and Maude are Jack Sprat and his wife—Doc once told me they weighed exactly the same, even though he was six four and Maude barely topped five one. But I’d never met two people who seemed more like two halves of a single unit. I went out to dinner with them one night, and you would have thought they had one plate. She ate off his and he ate off hers in a rhythm that would have made an assembly-line architect jealous. He was more of a talker than she was, and he once told me they had grown up together, gone to school together, and except for his time in the military, they hadn’t slept apart since the day they’d married. They thought so much alike, they hadn’t had a fight since the presidential election of 1960—they were both Democrats, but apparently he was a bit more anti-Catholic in those days.
Call me a rebel, but such a life felt like a confining prison to me. For them, it was heaven on earth. God bless ’em.
Anyway, the Victorian sat on almost an acre of prime downtown property. At the back right corner sat a small barn that Doc had mostly stuffed with gardening equipment. He wanted me to snug the beast in next to the barn so that the trailer door faced the back of the house. I knew all too well that there were two reasons for this.
First, Maude’s nosy. She’d been driving him nuts with questions about me. This would give her access, and she could see my comings and goings firsthand.
Believe it or not, I didn’t mind this. Maude was one of Miss Doris’s girls. I could use it.
Second, it faced the flamingo away from the Victorian and directly toward his backyard neighbor, Jacob Beason (father of Vic, the newspaper editor), with whom Doc had been feuding for close to thirty years. It started over a fence that separated their yards, a fence that had been gone since 1990.
Now, while I’d never really thought about a six-foot flamingo as being akin to dropping your drawers and mooning your neighbor, I could see where Doc and Jake might. Jake appeared on his back porch as I pushed and pulled the pink beastie into place. Once we were satisfied with its location, Doc helped me unhook Belle and anchor the trailer. I was still chocking the wheels as Jake marched across, raising a ruckus about it. Doc reminded him that the historic section was on the other side of town, and if he wanted to start a homeowner’s association, he was welcome to try.
Maybe Jake would come to like the flamingo. It was certainly starting to grow on me.
The neighbors trickled in not long after. Doc and I set out the awning, which was the size of a small patio. I pulled out two lawn chairs, a small table, and a charcoal grill. Jake had retreated, fuming and threatening to “call codes on this!” by the time Doc started a fire in the grill and dragged over two more lawn chairs. I got out hot dogs and the fixings and popped open Cokes for both of us.
I flipped the hot dogs, then plopped down onto one of the chairs. “How long do you think it’ll take?”
Doc sat, stretching out his long legs and running a hand across the few gray tendrils that slicked across his red scalp. “Look down the driveway.”
I could just barely see the edge of the street. A long boxwood hedge stretched from the back of the barn down the drive, blocking most of the view. His drive, an old-fashioned one-car access with twin strips of concrete running in the tire tracks, barely left enough space between the hedge and house for the beast and Belle. So I could see, maybe, a five-foot sliver of pavement.
Two men, three women, one child, and a dog stood there, peering at the beast.
I waved, then motioned for them to come on in. They all waved back, but one couple moved on, smiling. Ah, two down. They were probably old hands at this and knew they could find out
what they wanted to know at church without getting involved.
The other four, a couple with a four-legged powder puff on a tether and a young mother with her son, headed up the driveway. When a motion to my right caught my eye, I saw Maude coming down the back steps with a tray loaded with more wieners, paper plates, cups, and condiments.
“We’re going to need another table,” I muttered.
Doc scrubbed his hands together. “I love a good picnic!” He launched out of the lawn chair and headed for the barn. On the way, he motioned at the man. “C’mon, Brady. Help me with this!”
Brady handed the puff’s leash to his wife and veered toward the barn as Maude, laughing, greeted the women and started introducing me. I knew Maude would give me a refresher lesson later, so I just shook hands, nodded, and said “Nice to meet you” a lot.
The puff’s name was Precious, aka “Demonspawn” (according to Brady), and she pranced around, exploring all feet and the occasional tire. I gave them a tour of the beast, to plenty of oohs, aahs, and questions about, um, waste management (from the nine-year-old boy).
When we emerged, I paused in the door. At least eight more people had joined the party, and Doc had dragged tiki torches, more chairs, and several citronella candles out of the barn. Maude gave a little bounce when she saw me, her eyes sparkling. “There are more hot dogs in the freezer!”
Two more people wandered down the drive. “How about a side of beef?” I called back.
Word spread through the neighborhood like beets through a baby’s backside. Around six, I stopped giving tours of the beast and just left the door open to all comers. I hadn’t moved anything important in yet, and all curiosity would be resolved. I still had plenty of questions to answer. I would say that I might never understand the infinite fascination of young boys with the elimination of human waste. The good news was that people who asked questions tended to be a little more open to answering some, in the name of making the new neighbor welcome. This was especially true after the cooler of longnecks showed up around seven.
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