To Live and Die In Dixie (20 page)

“I hope you had the decency to put down the binoculars then,” I said sternly.

“I'm not a peeping Tom,” she said primly. “Besides, I had to park right in the sun, and it was about a gazillion degrees in my car, so I finally decided to leave.”

“Good,” I said. “That's the end of your career as a private investigator. That little red Hyundai of yours isn't exactly nondescript, you know. Somebody must have recognized it, or else one of the kids you called must have alerted the Jordans you were interested in them. I hesitate to ask, but before you went on your stake-out, did you find anything else about Kyle Jordan?”

“Just a little bit. Riviera High School is in Clearwater, Florida. But there was no answer. I guess
they don't have anybody working there in the summertime. The other school is in Jacksonville, Florida, and it's private. The secretary said she remembered Coach J. He was popular with the students there, too, she said. She said it was a big scandal when that cheerleader got pregnant and Coach J ended up marrying her.”

“So the rumor about Lissa was true,” I said.

“Now all we have to do is prove that Coach J did it,” Jocelyn said. “But how? How do we prove that he went to the house from soccer camp and killed Bridget and made it look like a break-in?”

“Good question,” Edna pointed out. She'd pulled the land yacht into the driveway at home and cut the engine.

Pointing to the van, whose flat rear tires made it look like a kneeling elephant, Edna said, “I called Mario at the gas station. He said he'd send somebody over late this afternoon to fix those flats.”

“Thanks,” I said meaningfully. I was in no mood to fix one flat, let alone two.

“By the way,” she said, pointing to the other car in the driveway, “Baby and Sister are waiting to tell you about their undercover mission. They wouldn't breathe a word to me. Said they'd wait until you got home.”

The two elderly women were sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the black-and-white television. “Buy a vowel,” Sister said loudly. “Get an
E
.”

“Hello, ladies,” I said loudly.

“Ooh, Callahan,” Baby said. “Let me turn off this mess on television so we can tell you 'bout what we found out.” She reached over and groped the control panel until her gnarled fingers found the off button.

“Let's tell Callahan and Edna about our visit,” Baby shouted at Sister.

“That's some nice houses they fixed up for those people
to live in over there,” Sister said. “And let colored folks live right there too. That's so nice.”

“We done just like you said, Sugar,” Baby said proudly. “Took some gospel tracts over to that Miz King and preached the good news about heaven and salvation. She invited us right in and we had some fine gospelizing. She done told us about her friend Josephina and her baby, burning up in that house fire. Miz King don't believe the little boy set that fire. She says Josephina slapped him so hard the last time he touched some matches that he had a handprint on his face for a week. He so afraid of fire he cried when they lit the candles on his birthday cake.”

“Real nice house Miz King got there,” Sister said, oblivious to Baby's conversation. “Course they got a lot of rules about can and can't. Can't have no clothesline outside. Can't park but one car in the driveway. Can't nobody else live there with them. Can't paint any different colors, or plant a little garden in the front.”

“Can't have no barbecue grill, either,” Baby broke in. “Now I think that's a shame. But Miz King, she say the Home for Hope people give her a house with good plumbing and a nice tight roof and good heat in the wintertime. So she say she don't complain about nothing, like if a little bit of water drips under the kitchen sink, or if they can't plug in a lamp in the living room.”

“Why can't they plug in a lamp?” I asked.

“Miz King say that wall puts out smoke when they plug the lamp in. So they quit using it.”

“Smoke? That sounds like a wiring problem. Did they report it to the Home for Hope people?”

“Miz King say Mr. Dahlberg, that's the man who runs it, he gets touchy about lots of complaints. Miz King don't wanna get in trouble, so she just leaves that lamp unplugged.”

Edna popped the top on two cans of beer and placed them on the table in front of Baby and Sister.

Sister tried to push the can away. “Ooh. That devil alkyhol,” she whooped. “Take that sin away.” But Baby took a healthy gulp, leaving a foaming white mustache on her upper lip. “Don't taste like sin to me,” she said loudly.

Then Edna sat down at the table with us. “Why on Earth are you asking all those questions about this Home for Hope thing?” she asked. “What's all this got to do with Bridget or Elliot Littlefield or Kyle Jordan or the price of tea in China?”

“Jake Dahlberg, the man who lives across the street from Littlefield, has this big blood feud going with him,” I explained. “I'm supposed to have dinner with Dahlberg tomorrow night. The other day when I was over there, he offered to show me these houses his organization had rehabbed, and while we were there, this tenant, Mrs. King, mentioned that her neighbor's house had burned down, and the woman and her baby had been killed. Littlefield hates that project, he says they are trying to reghettoize Inman Park.”

“Dinner?” Edna said. “What's Mac going to think about you having dinner with this man?”

“It's business, Edna,” I said sharply. “And anyway, if it's any of your business, which it's not, I don't have to clear my social engagements with Mac. That's not what our relationship is about.”

“Well excuuuse me,” Edna said, lighting up. “But I bet the tables would be turned if you found out Mac was having dinner with some woman he'd just met, business or no business.”

She'd win that bet.

I
LEFT EDNA STANDING THERE, stalked to the back bedroom, and called Hunsecker at the copshop. Linda Nickells answered the phone. She said she'd see if he was around. “Sorry. He just left to go to dinner,” she said briskly.

“Bullshit. I know he's there, Linda. Tell him it's important. Please tell him I really need to talk to him.”

“I'll try,” she said.

After five minutes on hold, Hunsecker picked up. “What the hell is so important that I couldn't go to dinner?” he barked.

“You need to listen to this, C. W.,” I said, my teeth clenched as I tried to control my rising anger. “Jocelyn Dougherty, Bridget's sister, received a series of threatening phone calls last night. The caller threatened to put her in the family plot with her sister. Then sometime between last night and this morning, somebody slashed the tires of my van, and killed Bridget's cat and left it on the hood of my van.”

“What have you and this kid been doing to stir up trouble?” Hunsecker asked.

“I've been investigating the theft of property from my client's home and she's been assisting me,” I said.

“You've been meddling in a murder investigation,” Hunsecker said. “I know you, Garrity. So who'd you mess with this time?”

I'd run out of ways of tap-dancing around the truth. “We've been running surveillance on Kyle Jordan. Remember, he was Bridget's soccer coach? After we learned that Jordan was Bridget's lover, we confronted him with that, but he denied everything, except for admitting that he'd slept with her, but only once. So we watched the house. It's a hangout for some kids from All Saints. And we discovered that Kyle Jordan wasn't the only one sleeping around. His wife, Lissa, is having a fling of her own with a kid who got kicked out of All Saints for burning crosses on a black kid's lawn.”

I filled Hunsecker in then. He was dubious, but from the questions he asked, I could tell he intended to follow up.

“Anything else I should know about?” he asked caustically.

“I told Linda to have you call me,” I said in my own defense. “We think at least one of the items taken in the burglary, the silver shooting trophy, is in a shop in an antiques mall in Chamblee.”

“That's what your mother's message said,” Hunsecker said. “How did she find it?”

I told him how a dealer Edna had talked to in Virginia Highlands had gotten a call from another dealer to ask if she knew anyone interested in Civil War—era antiques. “But the Chamblee dealer is in New England on a buying trip and the shop's closed,” I said.

“We'll track her down.”

“It's about time,” I said.

“Go to hell, Garrity,” Hunsecker bellowed. “Bring
that Dougherty girl in tomorrow, and we'll get her to make a statement about those phone calls. And in the meantime, you and that kid stay out of my murder investigation. You hear?”

Lightning cracked through the air as I hung up the phone, and the drizzle quickly escalated to a driving torrent.

“The windows,” Edna cried. She and Jocelyn dashed madly from room to room, slamming down the opened windows. I went into the dining room and switched on the air-conditioner, crossing my fingers that it would work. There was a click and a rumble, and then a puff of cool air kissed my ankles near the vent on the floor.

“God bless central air,” I said fervently.

“God bless warranties,” Edna corrected me. “We didn't have to pay a penny for that new compressor.”

She lowered her voice. “Jocelyn's in the kitchen ordering us a pizza for dinner. What are you planning to do with her after that?”

I knew what Edna was getting at. “There's no question that she can't go back to stay at the place she's been house sitting. And she can't stay at her parents' place alone either. She'll have to stay here, I guess, at least until we can get word to the Doughertys to get back here to Atlanta.”

She nodded. “I told her she'd have to sleep over, but she says she needs to go back out to that house to get her clothes and contact lens solution and stuff.”

“I'll run her out there after dinner,” I promised. “I want to get that report and final statement typed up for Littlefield before we go. Then we can drop it off at Eagle's Keep on the way out to Ryverclyffe.”

“You're getting off the gravy train then?”

“I'll tell him when I drop off the report.”

Edna opened a bottle of red wine and I sipped a glass
while I typed up the report on my little portable electric typewriter. I hesitated about including all the details of what I'd discovered in the past week, but I like to give my clients value for the dollar. So I put it all in, including the part about how I thought the shooting trophy was in a shop in Chamblee and how I'd come to the conclusion that it was doubtful that an alcoholic schizophrenic could have pulled off the burglary and murder at Eagle's Keep without setting off the burglar alarm or otherwise getting caught. I also detailed our surveillance of Jordan's home, leaving out Jocelyn's presence. In the end, I had a three-page double spaced report, a statement billing Elliot Littlefield for forty hours worth of work and a pleasant buzz from the Chianti.

When the pizza came, I put the typewriter away and slipped the report in a brown envelope to protect it from pizza stains.

We deliberately talked about trivia at dinner, how the Braves were doing, what new movie Edna and Agnes were planning on seeing after dinner, chitchat that had nothing to do with murder or death threats or adultery.

“Let's go,” I said, as Jocelyn picked a mushroom off a piece of pizza. She'd been eating the whole time we had, but she'd barely made a dent in the pizza slice Edna had served her. “I want to get this confrontation with Littlefield over with.”

“You think there'll be one?” Edna asked, as she tossed our paper plates in the trash.

“I don't think he'll take my resignation gracefully,” I told her.

We ran through the rain to the Hyundai, slamming the car doors shut just as another bolt of lightning tore through the dusky-colored sky.

“Thanks for letting me stay at your house tonight,”
she said shyly. “I haven't been nervous about staying at the O'Bryants' at all up until now. But those calls last night really spooked me. Every noise I heard I thought someone was trying to break in. And then the poor cat…”

“No problem,” I said. “Have you got a pen? I want to write Littlefield's name on this envelope, in case he's not home and I have to leave it in the mailbox.”

I grubbed around under the seat, thinking I might find one down there, but instead I came up with a handful of paper. Candy wrappers. I reached down again and brought up more candy wrappers, empty potato chip bags. Even an empty two-pound bag of Chips Ahoy cookies.

“Those are from when I was sick before,” Jocelyn said. “I really need to clean this car, don't I?”

“Pull over to the curb here, will you?” I said, my voice even. She did as I asked. “Give me the keys,” I ordered. Her face clouded, but she handed them over. I got out of the car, ignoring the rain pouring down my head and my back, and opened the trunk.

It was a junk food junkie's dream. She'd arranged all of it neatly, in small plastic baskets like the ones I keep at home for sorting socks. There were baskets of cookies, Chips Ahoy, Oreos. Baskets of candy bars: Mr. Goodbar, Snickers, Hershey bars. Another basket held boxes of miniature doughnuts and boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes. She'd been mainlining chocolate.

I slammed the trunk closed and got in the car again. She was weeping, her head and arms draped over the steering wheel. “I tried, Callahan, I tried,” she said, sobbing. “I wanted to be good. You were so nice to me. I wanted to be good.”

The glove compartment door fell open to the touch. The space where I'd earlier found hairbrushes and lip
stick was now crammed with what looked like a lifetime supply of Correctol. There must have been twenty or thirty boxes, but I didn't count them. I felt a wave of nausea.

“You've been doing it again,” I said flatly. “How long?”

She kept crying. I leaned over, jerked her head up by the chin. “How long, damn it? How long have you been bingeing?”

“Since, since the fu-funeral,” she stammered, hiccuping and gulping for air. “Every, every night. I'd go to the store and buy my food. A lot of times I'd go back to Coach J's house and sit there and eat, and watch the house. I hate that bastard. Then I'd go to McDonald's. They have nice clean bathrooms, and the stall doors go all the way to the floor, so people won't ask you if you're all right.”

She started to sob again. “Are you going to turn me in to the police? I'll pay for it, I swear.”

I picked out a handful of boxes and looked at the price stickers. Each was from a different grocery or drugstore.

“You shoplifted this stuff,” I said, disbelievingly. “You have money. Why would you steal laxatives?”

“I, I didn't want anyone to know,” she blubbered. “They'd, they'd tell.”

I turned the laxative box over and read the label. “Take two to four as needed,” I read aloud. “How many of these things have you been taking, Jocelyn?”

“A lot,” she cried. “I can't help it.”

“Tell me how many,” I repeated. “No more lies.”

“Maybe forty or fifty,” she whispered. “Not as many as before I went in the hospital. They don't work unless I take that many.”

“Good Lord,” I said aloud. The little con artist had
Edna and me completely fooled. Here we'd been thinking what a together kid she was, and she'd been bingeing and purging right under our noses. She'd taken enough laxatives to kill an elephant.

There was a gas station on the corner a block ahead. “Pull in to that Amoco station up there,” I ordered. She wiped the streaming tears away, sniffled loudly, and did as she was told. At the gas station, I opened the glove box and emptied the laxatives into my purse. I took the keys again and opened the trunk. And then I took every cookie, candy bar, donut, and snack cake, and all those boxes of Correctol, and dumped them in the trash barrel by the gas pump. The junk food filled the barrel completely.

“I need it, I need it, I need it,” I heard her screaming from inside the car. She pounded the dashboard and shrieked as though she'd been stabbed.

I walked around to the driver's side and made her switch places. On the way to Eagle's Keep I kept trying to think of something useful to say. I didn't know anything at all about this disease that had her in its grips. Didn't know anything about cognitive therapy or any of those other psychotherapy buzzwords. What I wanted to do was grab her by the hair and ask her why she wanted to kill herself with food.

Instead, calmly, I went over my plans. “We'll go to Littlefield's house. You stay in the car and lock the doors. I'm just going to give him my report, and tell him I've decided to remove myself from the case. I'll tell him I have another client.” I glanced over to see her reaction, but she only sniffed and looked out the window.

“After that, we'll go out to Ryverclyffe and get your stuff. You'll spend the night with us. And tomorrow, I
want to call your therapist and talk to him. You can't go on like this, Jocelyn.”

She started crying again, and hunched her knees up to her chest. “Don't tell my parents, please,” she pleaded.

I didn't want to betray her to her parents, but I didn't know what else to do. “We'll talk to your therapist,” I reassured her. “See what he says.”