Raveled (33 page)

“Shelby’s case was never closed,” I finally said, pricking the edges of the truth I wanted to tell her.

“I wouldn’t let ‘em close it. Never was too sure about your daddy either way. Kind of shy in his own fashion, I s’pose. You never know ‘bout that trait in a man.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, a shy girl, she’ll either grow out of it or keep cats and ferns for company.”

Or tips and one-night stands.

“But a man, he’s got needs. Got a hard, inner core, different from a woman. You try to contain a man inside a shy body and the thing inside makes its way out somehow. It’s got to. Sometimes oozing, sometimes exploding, but it gets out. A shy man, it’s a constant rumble in there.”

I winced.
“You think my dad was like that?”

“Maybe.”

It was the saddest description of Artie Fennimore I’d ever heard—and I’d heard them all. Hell, I knew the opinions of famous newscasters, respected writers, and towering public figures who’d despised my father’s existence. But Mrs. Anderson was wrong on this one and it irked me that I couldn’t set her straight. Because my dad had let it out. On my mom. On the distant way he treated Kevin and me for most of our childhoods. He didn’t need a little girl on a bike.

I
took a few steps towards a rickety bench on a mulched bed, partially shaded by a giant oak. Mrs. Anderson’s direct words and the heat of the day were making me lightheaded. I gestured for her to have a seat first. She did, her negligible body weight failing to make so much as a creak. A plaque on the bench’s backrest indicated it had been here for twenty-one years, donated by the local Chamber of Commerce in honor of their long-deceased president. I sat a courteous distance away, the book now lying face-up between us, but then I scooted closer, realizing that the nature of our conversation deserved hushed tones and intimate spacing.

“Cops never did put together much of a case,” Mrs. Anderson said. “Treated the case the way her killer did her. Cast off, unimportant-like.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“Mayor Kettrick, I always thought.” She sneered at the sound of the name and it took fifteen years off her face. Resentment and hatred resonated well with some people.
I should know. “The mayor had
his
child’s killer so they just kinda tossed Shelby’s body onto the heap of a mess that was Bobby’s trial. Helped solidify their story was all. No one much cared. Fact is, I…”

She stopped talking, her eyes darting about more rapidly, as if tracking a
hungry bat.

“You what, Mrs. Anderson?”

She exhaled, letting out more air than seemed possible for her small frame to hold. Her eyes remained planted on her lap where her two dry hands took over the task of continual motion, pawing at each other for dominance.

“I always wondered about the timin
’, you know, with your daddy dyin’ and all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Seemed like Mayor Kettrick always fancied himself above the law. Wanted to be judge, jury, and executioner all himself.”

“But the jury was about to rule.”

Mrs. Anderson contorted her body as if accommodating a kink her spine was accustomed to. She locked visually onto a piece of thick, moist bark below while the deep brown of the weed-suppressing cover filled the ever-changing space between her shifting feet. I could suddenly see the shyness that must have taken root in Shelby. “Surely, it’s crossed your mind,” she said in a near-whisper.

I stared at her, as clueless as the scarred horse feeling the sting of the whip.

“Never mind,” she said. It came out more as a command than a dismissal. “Just crazy thoughts of a worn-out woman.”

“Please,” I said, reaching out a hand but no
t near enough to touch her. I worried that if I did, she might crumble like an ancient, clay statue already in disrepair. “I need to hear.”

Her head dropped so low, it seemed to compress her voice box and I feared she wouldn’t be able to form
the words. The fingers of her right hand picked relentlessly at the jagged skin on her left. Slowly, she raised her face to mine, a slice of sun illuminating the right half, leaving the left half shaded and hollowed. “The mayor didn’t want to share your daddy’s fate with no one else.”

Her eyes became circles of accusation, but not against me. Inside them swam an image of the mayor’s craggy face with Mrs. Anderson’s guilty sentence pronounced upon him, him deflecting it off, laughing at her.

My mind tried to slam the door as her allegation finally penetrated my thick skull. “You think the mayor—”

“I don’t know.” Her hands
darted up and fluttered in front of her, trying to either erase the idea or push it towards me faster to get it over with. “I don’t know. But it struck me as odd about the timin’ is all. ‘Cuz if Shelby’s case fell through, it mighta cast doubt on Bobby’s case. And the mayor wasn’t one for lettin’ doubt peek through in nothing. Things were black or white with that man. Cold or hot. Dead or alive. This way, Shelby’s case was never tried.”

I shook my head, rattling my brain so hard it seemed to bounce beyond
its boundaries.

She pulled into herself, her arms raised
in defense, as if I’d hurled a verbal accusation at her. “I’m sorry. I thought everyone figured it that way.”

Somehow, Mrs. Anderson disappeared moment
s later like a watery mirage, barely another word exchanged between us. I had no recollection of her physical departure from the cemetery. In her silent wake, she’d left a dazed daughter picturing an angry man on a tortured horse. In a warped way, there had always been something romantic about the notion of my father taking his own life, sparing my mother the grief of having to visit his jail cell, and his children the shame of his incarceration—but no fairy tale offered a villain so sinister that my dad’s lynching at the hands of an evil mayor could be construed as romantic.

Chapter
48

Allison… present

Smitty’s Cherokee was still in the driveway. Kendra balanced herself on the back bumper and reached up to the turtle shell storage unit mounted on the roof. Probably not a recommended activity for a pregnant woman. Behind Kendra, one of the twins hopped up and down, her arms whirling in circles like she was jumping rope backwards. Kendra pulled out a stuffed, rainbow-colored rabbit that must have been an essential for the ride and handed it to the frantic girl, then she locked the turtle shell and returned to the house.

So
, the happy family unit was ready to head out and leave Lavitte to suffer with the big, gaping wound Smitty had inflicted upon it years ago.

I’d considered going straight to the police but didn’t yet have
enough to convince them to reopen the case. And with the likes of Ervin Johnston lurking about the department, I couldn’t take any chances. I hid the incriminating pictures—the last ever taken of Shelby Anderson—beneath the passenger seat of my car. I took out a copy of Jasper’s letter that I’d made on the way over, leaving the original tucked next to the photos. Despite Ray’s disapproval of my television viewing habits, I had seen enough crime shows to know that original evidence could be destroyed by something as simple as a lighted match. Considering how much practice Smitty had in that area, I wasn’t taking any chances.

With
the letter tucked away, I reached for my door handle.

Pound pound pound pound pound pound!

I jumped in my seat, knocking my knee against the steering wheel. Scary enough to have a person sneak up on you when you’re looking the other way, but imagine the terror of seeing Mrs. Smith’s hardened, Scream-mask face pressed against your car window. I lowered the window, hoping it wouldn’t take her skin with it into the bowels of my car.

Her spotty arms rested like chicken wings on pointy hips, which were unfortunately covered by sun-orange shorts. They contrasted with her spray-on tan in the same way that mean ma
kes ugly pop.

“Mrs
. Smith, you—”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Uh oh, definitely wouldn’t accept tea this time. It’d be a regular spittoon.

“I’m here
—”

“John and Kendra are leaving. We don’t need last-minute drama from you.”

I cocked my head and let a long moment pass during which I filled in the blanks of Jasper’s letter. He’d stuck to the facts, but had left plenty of implications afloat. Smitty had been put on the witness stand against my father to prove that whatever Bobby was doing the night of his death, he wasn’t out carousing with his usual cohorts. Smitty’s assignment had also been to blow smoke up the Kettricks’ asses about Bobby’s character. It would allow the jury to empathize with the terrible loss Lavitte had suffered. Now, comparing Smitty’s alibi to the facts of Jasper’s letter, I realized that Mrs. Smith had been complicit in her son’s perjury. She’d backed him up when he claimed to be home early that night, tired from painting the porch and bored with Jasper’s company. Smitty had even named the television show he’d watched before turning in:
Quantum Leap
. Who’d provided him with that little morsel to toss in offhandedly? The same person who’d claimed that she’d caught the last fifteen minutes of the episode with him: Elise Smith, his mommy. The transcript of her statement to the police had read,
That Scott Bakula, he’s so handsome.

“W
ell?” Mrs. Smith screamed at me. “Don’t just sit there like you’ve had a stroke or something. Start this car and go home.” She banged on my car door as if that would turn the key and send me on my way.

“Scott Bakula’s still pretty handsome, don’t you think, Mrs. Smith?”

Her eyes, forehead, and lips were devoid of the ability to express emotion, but she could still move her jaw. She clamped it tight before acknowledging my question. It gave her face a trapezoid shape. And trapped she was.

“Scott Bakula?
What are you talking about?”

“It’s not hard. I’m talking about Scott Bakula, the actor. I merely commented that he’s still good-looking. Almost as good-looking as he was years ago when he starred in that show….
what was it?
Quantum Leap
?”

“How would I know?”
As she leaned in through my window, her onion and vinegar breath clouded around my nostrils. She was breathing hard, her chest inflating and deflating beneath her breast implants. Guess her lungs were still the originals, much like her heart—the cold heart that sat in the front row of my dad’s trial every day as she hungrily waited to sink her teeth into the Guilty verdict. It would make for such delicious gossip in the years to come
. I was there, practically at Artie Fennimore’s side, when the judge pronounced him ‘Guilty.’ Ha! You should have seen the hatred and glee in the judge’s eyes. Hate for that animal who’d cut down one of Lavitte’s finest in his prime, and glee for the wisdom of the jury
. All the while, she knew her son was complicit in the companion crime, had in fact done worse. Artie Fennimore may have pulled the trigger, but John
Smitty
Smith had pulled the rope.

Smitty and Kendra exited the house
and headed towards the Cherokee. I reached to open my car door and Mrs. Smith slapped my hand back.

“No,” she said. “You’re not talking to him
, you pathetic, desperate creature. Get out of here. No one wants you around. Go back where you came from.”

“
Last I remember,” I said, “I’m from Lavitte, same as Smitty, Jasper, Bobby, and even Shelby Anderson.”

She
wrapped her bony hand around my wrist, digging her nails into my skin. I wasn’t sure whose pulse I felt pounding beneath her fingers. “How dare you? How dare you equate yourself with Shelby Anderson?”

“Why so angry, Mrs. Smith
?”

“What’s it to you, anyway? All this hostility towards John
? He never did anything to you. All the lies in the world aren’t going to change the fact that your father killed Bobby. Just let it be.”

“Lies changed a lot of other facts about that night
, didn’t they, Mrs. Smith?”

I peeled her
repulsive digits from my skin, shocked by their weakness, and discarded her hand. I shoved my door open, nearly slamming into her hip.

“Why are you doing this?” she
pleaded. “John has a nice life now. A wife and children. It’s perfect.”

I felt sorry for her lack of depth, her sadly shallow existence. “Only on the surface.” I shook my head. What must it be like to live life in one confining layer, never rising above, never exploring below? “How do you do it, Mrs. Smith? How do you wake up every day and do it?”

She swallowed. She knew that I knew. Maybe I brimmed with unprecedented confidence, the confidence that comes from the truth.

Smitty and
family were backing out of their driveway. Must have been the plan all along. To have Scream-face distract me while they skipped town. As if their lack of proximity would be enough for me to tuck my tail and scurry home. I stood behind the car, waving the letter. Smitty waited, baiting me, his foot on the brake, the car still in gear. He even let it roll back another inch or two but I didn’t budge.

“Shall I read it
aloud?” I shouted. “It’s from your old friend.”

He
jerked the car into Park, got out, and slammed the door, screaming to Kendra, “Wait here!”

As the twins
cried and Mrs. Smith opened the rear door to comfort her grandchildren, Smitty marched into the house. I followed, uninvited as usual. We got no farther than the overdone foyer before he spun around and spewed his defensive best at me. “What do you have, Allison? What am I supposed to be so scared of?”

“I know everything,” I said. “
The barn, the rope swing, you and Jasper.”

“You don’t know s
quat. What do you have there?” he said, pointing to the papers in my hand.

“A letter from Jasper. He
wrote it years ago. Left me instructions to find it. Before you killed him.”

“Before I
…? What? Are you insane?”

“Come on, Smitty,
don’t be boring. I’m giving you a chance to come forward on your own with the truth.”

“You’re as
crazy as Jasper.”

“You should have fessed up,
taken responsibility. Everyone would have written it off as a terrible teenage tragedy, but they would have forgiven you.”

“Fessed up to what?”

I rolled my eyes. “Your accidental lynching of Shelby Anderson. Your disposal of her body. And your loathsome ability to keep quiet about it for two weeks while they searched for her body, then for two
months
while they built a case against my dad, followed by sixteen
years
while you bettered yourself and buried your past. Did it become easier as time wore on, Smitty, or more difficult?”

He
knew his petty denials wouldn’t work anymore. A visible strategy shift showed itself as he pulled back his shoulders and puffed his plume. A smile that pitied me almost brought life to his dead face.

“Allison
Fennimore. You were supposed to be the smart one.” He meandered into his mom’s dining room and took a seat at the table, a heavy glass rectangle atop miniature Roman pillars. Tacky, three-dimensional artwork protruded from the walls like gargoyles, while the thin Persian carpet, made falsely plush by a thick pad underneath, looked faded where Mrs. Smith had scrubbed it to remove stains. The room smelled garlicky and stale and looked like the set of a never-released Elizabeth Taylor film. Smitty leaned back, as if awaiting his after-dinner brandy and cigar.

“
Do you not remember Jasper’s personality?” Smitty said. “The stories he’d fabricate when he was supposedly of sound mind? He had teachers believing aliens lived beneath his trailer and that his mom had a career as a consultant that she managed from her sick-bed. He convinced us that smoking his pot would allow us to see into our past lives. Even made money from the dumb jocks by telling them they used to be kings, warriors, and gigolos while they were high. Marty Becker wrote a paper about his life as Caesar’s childhood buddy, for Christ’s sake.”

“Too bad he didn’t tell people about their current lives
,” I said. “He could have shared with all of us how you’re a spineless mama’s boy with no balls. Or how Bobby was a sadistic lunatic who got off on manipulating little girls.”

Smitty pointed to my letter, waving away its potency. “I suppose Jasper told you all about his dashing heroics in the Hester barn. That
fairy tale where he leaps to save the plunging Shelby only to wind up killing her.”

“
Something like that. You don’t come off real well, by the way.”

“He told me the same story the other day.”

I didn’t hide my shock. “You admit you visited him at Ravine?”

“It was never a secret.
I just didn’t think it was any of your business.”

“
Why didn’t you sign in using your own name?”

“Sign in? We met outside,
in the courtyard around back.”

Damn. I
remembered that courtyard. But at least he admitted he was there.

“Why did you go to see him?” I asked.

“I told you I was thinking about it. I felt bad about how things had turned out for him.”

“Bullshit. You went there to shut him up.”

“Sure, I preferred that my name not get tangled up in what happened that night, and I knew you might be snooping around. But he had nothing on me because, really, nothing happened that night. The visit to Ravine was a bust, though. He was beyond hope, living in a total fantasy world.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jasper and I did go to the barn that night, alright? And we did see Shelby on that lame swing Bobby made. Bobby was so clueless. The proportions were all off, which is why Shelby got stuck out there in the first place. Anyway, after Bobby left to get the rope from his car, Jasper started tripping. He’d been smoking a ton that day. I don’t know what he wrote in the version he told you, but if it’s the same thing he told me, the boy was way higher than I realized.”

The photos. They were my proof. I refused to be sucked in by Smitty’s self-preserving lies. But what story did I have from the photos? They only took me as far as Jasper and Smitty’s arrival at the barn
.

“Same old Jasper,” Smitty continued. “Delusions of grandeur.
Used to convince himself he was living in a castle instead of some crap trailer that always smelled like cat piss. Painted himself as the hero of every story, and his dad as some secret agent shot in the line of duty, not the asthmatic, rail-thin miner who dropped dead trying to roll a strike.”

“Th
at has nothing to do with that night.”

“
It has a lot to do with it,” Smitty spat out, then calmed himself. “I tried to talk him down the other day, remind him what really happened, but he wouldn’t have it.” Smitty raised his hands in front of him and held them horizontally at different heights. “It was like we existed in the same world, but on different planes. And his plane was far removed from reality.”