To Live and Die In Dixie (10 page)

T
HE COLD BOTTLES OF BEER made a welcome clinking noise as I opened the refrigerator door. In the summertime Edna and I drink our beer and our Cokes out of bottles. Somehow they taste colder that way. The kitchen smelled like pot roast. A colander of string beans stood on the kitchen counter next to a cooling pound cake.

The troops had obviously escaped to the patio. I let the screen door bang to announce my arrival home. Edna looked up from the week-old issue of
People
magazine she was reading. The girls always bring in all the latest magazines from their jobs—a week late.

She got up, as if on cue, and walked into the kitchen. “Let me put my green beans on and check this roast,” she said.

“So what did you find out today?” she called from inside.

I had to raise my voice so she could hear me in the kitchen. The details didn't take long to tell.

The smile she wore when she came out of the kitchen could only be called smug. “I was able to do a little detecting of my own on your behalf.”

“Oh no,” I said wearily. “What did you do?”

“Don't take that tone with me,” she warned. “After Bridget's funeral I noticed a bunch of teenage girls standing around in the parking lot boo-hooing. So I stopped and walked over to them and struck up a conversation, acting like I was a family friend at first. I asked them if Bridget had any enemies at school, any new boyfriends, that kind of thing. From the giggles I got, when I asked about the boyfriend, I gathered they knew about him, but they wouldn't say anything. Closemouthed little twits. The one thing I did find out was that she and the mother fought like cats and dogs. Had a big blowup right before she dropped out of school and ran away from home. I was about to ask what the fight was about when the mother showed up. The girls acted real nervous around her and they took off as soon as it was politely possible.”

“Ma,” I said, a thought occurring to me. “How did you get those girls to talk to you? Most of the teenage girls I've had experience with wouldn't give you or me the time of day.”

“Easy,” she said, leaning her head back and blowing a puff of smoke skyward. “Right before the mother came I told them I was a private detective. Passed around a couple of cards and told them to call if they think of anything. They were impressed as hell.”

“You didn't.”

“Sure did,” she assured me. “Why not?”

“No.” I moaned. “We're not having this conversation again.” I got up and went over and kneeled in front of her chair, taking her face between my two hands, the way you do to a small child when you want to emphasize a point. “Listen. You are not a detective. You are not licensed to do this stuff. And you are going to get us
both in a world of trouble if you keep butting in on my cases. And in my life,” I added meaningfully.

I'd just gotten launched on my usual lecture about the possible results of Edna's meddling when the doorbell rang.

She set her jaw stubbornly. “Get that, will you, Miss Big Deal Detective? I've got to go check on my pot roast.”

Jocelyn Dougherty was standing by the front door, wearing an ill-fitting dress that looked four sizes too big. Her arms and legs, matchstick thin, hung from her clothing, the veins beneath the skin gleaming blue through the pale white skin. She'd scraped her hair back into a ponytail, and her feet were stuck into a pair of wornout rubber flip-flops. Her face wore an expression that said she was mightily pissed. In her hand she held one of my business cards.

“Mrs. Garrity?” she demanded.

“Miss Garrity. Or Ms. You're Jocelyn, right? Come on in.”

Reluctantly, she edged her way into the living room, finally coming to light on the floral chintz sofa that matched the armchair I sat in. She was so small, so thin, she didn't even make a dent in the thick down sofa cushion.

“Look,” she blurted, before I could say anything. “That old lady, is she your mother? She was at my sister's funeral today. One of my sister's friends gave me this. She was asking a lot of nosy questions. You people have a lot of damn nerve, you know that? You go to work for that pig Elliot Littlefield, the guy who killed Bridget, then you have the nerve to crash her funeral and ask a lot of questions and get everybody upset. My sister's dead, goddamnit. And my mother and father don't give a shit. The cops don't give a shit. Nobody cares. Except me. And I'm not gonna let this sonofabitch get away with killing my little sister.”

The girl's voice barely rose above a whisper as she spat out her diatribe against me. But the thin muscles in her neck stuck out, and her eyes were narrowed into furious slits.

When she paused to gather more steam, I had time to ask more nosy questions. “How old are you, anyway?”

She frowned. “I'm nineteen. What's that got to do with it?”

For a nineteen-year-old, the chick was pretty ballsy.

“Look, Jocelyn,” I said. “I'm not trying to cover up your sister's murder. Honest. I was at the house where she was found. I saw what the killer did to her. I'll never forget it. Believe me, I want to know who killed her, too. And if I thought Elliot Littlefield did it, I'd be all over him like white on rice. But he didn't do it.”

Her lips were pressed so firmly together that they formed a thin white slash in her pale, bony face. She obviously didn't believe me. “Who did kill her then?”

I sighed. This kid wasn't going to let me off the hook.

“That's not my job. I've been hired to help Littlefield track down some very valuable antiques that were stolen during the burglary. That's all. It's the cops' job to find out who murdered Bridget, not mine. There's a good possibility, of course, that the same person who took the antiques killed Bridget. There were thousands of dollars' worth of very rare Civil War artifacts taken from that house. Whoever killed Bridget probably did it because she caught them breaking into the house.”

She wasn't really listening.

“How much do you charge?” she said abruptly.

“Forget it. I've got a client.”

“You just said he hired you to find his stuff. Fine. I'm hiring you to find who killed my sister. If Littlefield didn't do it, there shouldn't be any conflict of interest—right?”

Such a pushy kid. I was never this pushy when I was nineteen. A little brassy maybe. But not pushy.

“It's not just a matter of conflict, Jocelyn. For one thing, I don't investigate homicides. That's a good way to step on the cops' toes. And for another thing, you can't afford me. I charge seventy-five dollars an hour, plus expenses.”

She was thinking, adding up her life savings probably. “I've got money,” she said firmly. “And I'm not changing my mind.”

“It's none of my business, but where does a nineteen-year-old get enough money to hire a private investigator?” I asked. “What are you, an heiress or something?”

She shook her head vigorously. “Nothing like that. I've got my college money. My grandparents set up a special account for me. There's like twelve thousand in there. That ought to be plenty.”

“Don't they expect you to use that for college?”

She crossed her legs and the fabric of her dress fell away in folds. It was one of those forties cotton housedresses, they sell them in the vintage clothes stores at Little Five Points. “I'm sitting out a quarter or two.

“So what about it?” she repeated. “Are you gonna work for me, or do I go to the yellow pages and find somebody else?”

I considered her proposition. I had no doubt this kid would do exactly as she threatened and end up forking over her college money to some cheesy ripoff artist. Or she could just get herself killed by whoever had murdered her baby sister.

“Let's compromise,” I said. “I can't take your money. But I could use your help. And maybe, but only maybe, we can be of some use to each other.”

She looked at me dubiously. It was a look I'd perfected
at her age. “Right,” she said, curling her lip. “You're going to let me help you. How?”

“By doing exactly what I say. And not one thing more. Understood?”

“Understood,” she said reluctantly. “Can we start now?”

My stomach was crying out for the dinner Edna was putting on the table in the other room, but my mind told me there was no time like the present.

“I guess so,” I told her.

“The main thing I could use your help with is your sister's friends and teachers at All Saints. We know Bridget had a boyfriend, and we know she had a pregnancy scare. But we don't know who the boyfriend was. Do you?”

“No,” she said sadly. “Bridge wouldn't tell me. I didn't even know she had run away and dropped out until she called me a couple weeks ago and told me where she was staying.”

“Didn't your folks mention it?” I said incredulously.

“Let's just say my folks and I aren't exactly close,” Jocelyn said tersely. “I'm house-sitting for one of my college friend's parents this summer.”

“Oh. Well, do you think she told any of her friends who the guy was?”

Jocelyn thought about it. “Maybe. Maybe not. Bridge totally changed this year. She'd dropped most of her old friends. And she was so moody. She and my mom had terrible fights. Her grades dropped, too, and Bridge has always been on the honor roll. She quit all her outside activities, drill team, drama club, everything except soccer. She was always such a jockette.”

“Could she have been doing drugs?”

Jocelyn laughed. “Little Miss Just Say No? Not hardly. She had this thing about her body being a temple. She'd quit eating red meat and drinking Cokes. She wouldn't
even take a Midol when she was in her period. No way she was into drugs.”

Teenagers had definitely changed since the 1970s, when my girlfriends and I had sat in the parking lot of our high school and washed down half a bottle of Pamprin with cheap wine in hopes of getting a buzz. “What about enemies? Littlefield told me Bridget said she'd had some scary phone calls.”

“She mentioned it, but she said she had no idea who it could be.”

Jocelyn sunk her head down to her knees, covering her face with her hands. Her voice broke. “I don't get it. Up until this year, Bridget was the good one in the family. The cutest, the smartest. The nicest. I was the screw-up, not her. Then bam. She drops out of school, runs away, thinks she's pregnant.”

She looked up at me and there were tears running down her face. “I was pissed when she told me that. Here I am, in college, still a virgin and she's having sex and she's only a junior. And now this. I don't get it.”

A sob caught in her throat, but she choked it back, rubbed the tears away and stood and straightened her shoulders. I walked over and put my arm around her shoulder but she shook me off. “I'm okay. So where do we start?”

“Let's start with her best friend.”

“Sara Parrish,” Jocelyn said quickly. “They were best friends since parochial school at St. Thomas More. But she and Bridge had a fight. They weren't speaking. You want her phone number?”

“No,” I said, looking around for my purse. “I want you to go with me to her house. It's an investigative technique we call ambushing.”

A
BEAT-UP RED HYUNDAI was parked at the curb in front of our house, sticking a good eight inches out into the street. My heart gave a small skip. “Is that Bridget's car? The cops have been looking all over for it.”

The car door creaked as she opened it and slid into the driver's seat. My door made the same sound. I moved a pile of sneakers and books, and got in. “It was our car,” Jocelyn corrected me. “We shared it. But when I went to college in Athens my Dad made me leave it behind for Miss Perfect. When I came home we agreed to take turns using it. I picked it up Friday morning.”

“Damn,” I said, looking around. The car was an archaeological dig of contemporary teenage culture. It smelled a lot like french fries, a smell I normally enjoy. There were empty fast-food wrappers, wads of dirty clothes, a box of cassette tapes, two more pairs of shoes, a Judith Krantz paperback novel, a hairbrush, and a pair of neon purple-and-green in-line skates.

“What?” she said. “So it's messy. Big deal.”

“That's not it,” I said, poking at the glove box until it opened. There was an empty box of Tampax, half a
package of moldy-looking cheese crackers, and a rolled-up pair of pantyhose. “It would have been helpful if whoever killed Bridget had had the car in his possession. We might have found something to link him to it.”

“Sorry,” she said. “See anything in there that looks like a clue?”

“Not really,” I said, shutting the glove box. “So where we going?”

“Dunwoody,” she said absentmindedly. “Beautiful Downtown Dunwoody.”

Jocelyn drove fast but expertly through the vestiges of rush hour traffic. Although it was after six, heat shimmered off the blacktop Interstate and the car's tinny little air-conditioner rattled powerlessly against the oppressive summer temperature.

“Jocelyn,” I said tentatively.

“Yeah?” She was absorbed in some rap song on the radio, something about killin' and chillin' and illin'.

“Have you been sick? I saw an old family photo in Bridget's things and it's obvious you've lost a good bit of weight.”

The rapsters' ranting took over the car for a minute, the heavy bass beat thumping so hard and so loud it seemed to vibrate my seat cushion. I reached over and turned the volume down to ear-bleeding level.

“No big deal,” she said lightly. “I've had sort of an eating disorder. I lost about forty or fifty pounds while I was away at school, and my parents put me in the hospital.”

“Forty or fifty pounds,” I repeated. Personally, I would have given my right and left arm to lose that kind of weight. But this kid was only nineteen, and she couldn't have weighed much more than one twenty in the photo I'd seen of her. “That can't be healthy.”

She giggled. “That's what my doctors said. See, I
gained some weight when I first went to school. Freshman fifteen, they call it. I was really bummed out, until this girl in my dorm hall told me about eating Correctol. It was great. I could eat all I wanted in the cafeteria, chocolate donuts, double mashed potatoes, really scarf out. Then I could take my Correctol. I lost the fifteen and kept going. It felt great to be thinner than anybody I knew. My mom was bitching about it, but there wasn't anything she could do to make me stop.”

“And then you got sick?” I suggested.

She nodded. “Guess it got out of hand. I'd skip classes so I could lock myself in my room, pig out, then take the Correctol. When my parents got my grades, they freaked. My mom put me in one of those private hospitals they have for kids.”

“Adolescent treatment centers,” I prompted. “I've always wondered what they treat at those places. Snottiness? Bad attitudes? Poor study habits?”

“The usual,” Jocelyn said. “Drugs. Alcohol. Psychosis. Neurosis. Bulimia. Anorexia.”

“And the program works?” I said. “What exactly do they do?”

The rap song had ended, so Jocelyn fiddled with the radio dial, trying to find some more mood music. “Well, you've got daily sessions with a shrink. Then weekly group sessions. And you meet with this dietitian and they work up a food plan. You're supposed to write down everything you eat. And they have these really lame exercise classes. Oh, yeah, and because I was a binger and purger, while I was in the hospital I had a staff person baby-sitting me at mealtime and afterward. They wouldn't even let me go to the bathroom by myself.”

“Gross,” I said faintly.

“No shit,” she agreed. “When I was discharged even the shrink, who is a total jerk, agreed that I shouldn't be around my mom. She's got this control thing. She wanted to run me and Bridge's lives. So I'm staying at a friend's house, while she and her family are down at their beach house in St. Simon's. And I have to see the shrink every week.

“Here it is,” she said, taking a sharp right turn into a driveway in front of a large two-story redbrick house that looked exactly like every other house on the street.

“Run up and see if she's home,” I suggested. “We don't want to talk to her in front of her parents, and we definitely don't want mom and dad to know I'm a private investigator.”

“Wow,” Jocelyn said. “You've really got this ambushing gig down.”

“It's my job,” I said modestly. “Go.”

In a moment she was back in the car. “Good news. Sara's over at the swim and tennis club. It's just two streets away.”

The “Club” turned out to be a fenced-in slab of concrete with a dinky kidney-shaped pool set in the middle. Hordes of small children swarmed in and around the water, with a bored-looking lifeguard sitting high above the crowd. Beside the pool was a single fenced-in tennis court where a pair of tennis-togged women swatted a ball desultorily over the net.

We parked and got out. Jocelyn stood at the gate, hands shading her eyes as she looked for her sister's friend.

“There she is,” she said, pointing to a girl stretched out on a beach chair near the bend of the kidney.

Sara Parrish was a cute little number, with pixie-cut short brown hair, a sunburned nose, and a bright orange bikini that could have been a Cracker Jack prize. Her
hazel eyes brimmed over with tears at the sight of her dead friend's sister. “Oh Jos,” she said, her voice breaking.

Jocelyn sat down beside Sara, put her arm around the younger girl, and looked up at me. “Sara, this is Ms. Garrity. She's, uh, a friend of mine. We're trying to find out who killed Bridget.”

Sara's eyes widened. “For real? Are you a cop?”

“Used to be,” I said.

Sara shrugged herself out of Jocelyn's embrace. “The real cops came to the house this morning. My dad came home from work to be there while they talked to me. My mom's really upset, Jocelyn. She's talking about sending me to stay with my aunt up north until they find whoever killed Bridget. What a bummer. I told the cops I don't know anything. Bridget and I broke up as best friends. She wouldn't even look at me in the hall at school.”

Jocelyn interrupted gently. “We know, Sara. I'm sorry. But we really need to know who Bridget's boyfriend was. She told you everything.”

Sara examined her toenails carefully, brushing a red ant off her ankle. “I don't know who it was.”

“Sara,” Jocelyn said. “I bet that fight you had was about her boyfriend, wasn't it?”

She looked up angrily. “This was the first year we were allowed to go on car dates,” she burst out. “We were gonna double date, pick up guys at the mall. We had it all planned. Then one day at lunch, I go in Bridget's purse to look for some Life Savers, and what do I find? A package of Trojans!”

“Oh man,” Jocelyn said in a breath.

“I know,” Sara said. “We were supposed to be best friends, but here she doesn't even tell me she's not a virgin anymore.

“That's when we had the fight. Bridget said I didn't
have the right to judge her. She said I was worse than a nun. So I called her a slut.”

“That must have been hard for you,” Jocelyn said. She'd obviously picked up a lot from all her therapy sessions.

“It was,” Sara agreed. “I've been bummed ever since I heard about her being killed.”

“Who was the guy, Sara?” Jocelyn persisted. “I know she told you. Bridget could never keep a secret. She always used to tell me what she was giving me for Christmas and birthdays days ahead of time.”

Sara's lower lip pooched out stubbornly. “I promised I wouldn't tell. I swore on the Blessed Virgin Mother's eyes.”

“Come on, Sara,” Jocelyn coaxed. “Bridget is dead. It doesn't count now.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

“Swear you won't tell anybody else?” Sara said, glancing around to make sure she wouldn't be overheard.

“Swear.” I only hoped Jocelyn had her toes crossed.

“It was Coach J,” Sara whispered.

“Who?” I said, loudly.

“Shh,” Sara said. “He'll know I told.”

“Shit,” Jocelyn said. “Coach J. I should have known. He's a major stud. There were rumors about him and Ashley Gates my senior year. Sara, are you sure? Cross your heart?”

Wordlessly, Sara crossed her teeny bikini top.

“Okay, thanks a lot,” Jocelyn said. “I mean it. See ya around, Sara.”

I had to break into a near run to keep up with Jocelyn as she sprinted back to the car.

“Shitfuckdamnhellpiss,” Jocelyn said, pounding the Hyundai's plastic-wrapped steering wheel. “Coach
Jordan. Her stinking soccer coach.” She pounded the steering wheel some more, this time with her forehead.

“Calm down,” I said, lifting her head up. “And tell me who this Coach Jordan is.”

“He's old,” she said, her voice dripping scorn. “He's old, and he's married, and he has about a million kids and he spits when he says his
T
's.”

“He sounds revolting,” I said. “Now tell me something else. Does he live around here? Do you feel up to another ambush?”

We zipped over to a nearby Burger King for a strategy session. I had a Whopper with cheese and fries, Jocelyn had a diet Coke. “Aren't you supposed to eat?” I asked.

“You sound like my mother,” she snarled. “I'm on a strict plan. I'll eat dinner when I get back to my house. Don't worry. No more laxatives. I'm cured. I couldn't stand another second in that nuthouse.”

I tore open a package of Sweet'n Low and poured it into my iced tea. “Good. I don't want you back in the nuthouse either. You're too good an interrogator.”

It took a while to find the right Coach Jordan, but after some calling around, Jocelyn recalled the coach's first name. Kyle. Kyle Jordan. I called the house, and when a masculine voice answered, asked to speak to Mrs. Jordan. “She's not home,” her husband said. “Call back around eight.”

I hung up and flashed Jocelyn the victory sign. “Let's go for a visit.”

Mr. Jordan's neighborhood was a mile or so from Sara Parrish's house, and several rungs down the Atlanta social ladder.

The houses here were smaller, set on tiny lots, with aluminum siding instead of brick, and economy compacts parked in driveways instead of Dunwoody's
maxivans and Volvo wagons. Yards were littered with children's riding toys, plastic wading pools, and snarls of bicycles.

We rang the bell four times. From inside the house, we could hear a television and the sound of an extremely cranky baby. “Hold on, I'm coming,” said the same voice I had just talked to on the phone.

Kyle Jordan had golden brown hair nearly the same shade as his tan. There was a dangerous-looking cleft in his chin. He wore a YMCA T-shirt, black soccer shorts, and a wailing diaper-clad baby on his hip. He flashed an apologetic smile. “Trevor here is just waking up from his nap. What can I do for you?”

Jocelyn and I exchanged uncertain glances. In the meantime, Jordan had a chance to study her and to recognize the family resemblance.

“Jocelyn, isn't it? Jocelyn Dougherty? I saw you at Bridget's funeral today. I'd like you and your family to know how sorry I am. Bridget was a great girl, a really valuable member of our team. Such a sweet kid.”

“You're a pig,” Jocelyn said bitterly. “You slept with my sister. She dropped out of school and ran away from home because of you. Because of you, she's dead. I'm reporting you to All Saints. I'm reporting you to them, and to the archbishop of Atlanta and to my parents and the cops…” Her voice became shriller by the second.

Baby Trevor screamed, louder, at the sound of the angry voice. Jordan reached in his pocket, brought out a pacifier, and stuck it in his son's mouth. Instantly the child calmed down. Kyle Jordan looked as though he could use something to suck on too.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, that's not right. Come in. Okay? Just come inside so the neighbors don't get the wrong idea.”

The Jordans' living room was smaller than mine,
crammed with a big-screen television, a black leather sofa and matching recliner, a weight bench, and a brightly colored playpen overflowing with children's toys and stuffed animals.

Jordan sat briefly in the recliner, balancing the sucking baby on his knee. He got up, paced the room, and stopped to place the baby in a wheeled walker. Then he stood in front of Jocelyn and me, who were seated on the sofa. He stood there, hands clasped behind his back, legs slightly apart, ready for team roll call.

“You've got it all wrong,” he said.

Jocelyn snorted and rolled her eyes.

“Do you deny you slept with Bridget?” I asked.

He looked at me angrily. “Who are you? What business is this of yours?”

“She's a private detective I've hired to find out who killed my sister,” Jocelyn volunteered.

“I didn't do it,” he said. “I swear to God I didn't do it.”

“You slept with her,” I said. “She thought she was pregnant. She told you she planned to keep the baby and you told her you'd marry her.”