To Live and Die In Dixie (21 page)

E
LLIOT LITTLEFIELD HADN'T mourned “my little Bridget” for long. Eagle's Keep was lit up like a Stewart Avenue used-car lot. There wasn't an empty piece of curb for two blocks. No way was I going to park and run through the rain to deliver my report. Instead, I moved the yellow traffic barricade in front of Jake Dahlberg's drive and pulled in there. We were friends, after all.

“Jocelyn,” I said sternly. She sniffed and covered her face with her hands. “I'm going to run over to Littlefield's house. I'll be inside maybe five minutes. Can I trust you not to do anything stupid while I'm gone?”

“I'm okay,” she mumbled.

I wasn't exactly dressed for a gala: white jeans, a navy blue Euclid Avenue Yacht Club T-shirt, and my new white Reeboks. But then I wasn't in a gala mood either.

Littlefield answered the door, laughing, a martini in his hand. The hallway in back of him overflowed with pretty, suntanned people in cocktail frockery. The host wore spotless white duck slacks, an open-collared shirt, and a navy blazer. His ascot must have been at the
cleaners. He frowned at the sight of my rain-splattered personage. I held up the envelope with my report in it and fluttered it.

“This is really not a good time, Callahan,” he said. He was talking without moving his jaws. It's a good trick. “I told you it could wait until tomorrow,” he said.

“Actually, it can't wait,” I said. “If you'll give me five minutes of your time, we can conclude our business, and I'll get out of your life.”

He glanced around behind him. People were staring. Maybe they thought I was part of the entertainment.

“I don't understand all this urgency, but come along. We'll talk in the study.” He hurried up the stairway; I was right on his heels.

In the study, he nearly snatched the envelope from my hands, ripping it open. He eyed the statement, adding up columns in his head. “Looks reasonable,” he said, tossing it onto his desktop. Then he scanned the report, scowling when he read my conclusions.

“The police have this Madison person in jail,” he said. “Why would you be shadowing this poor schoolteacher and his family?”

“Because I'm not certain Madison murdered Bridget, or took the diary, and neither are the police. They still haven't charged him with anything except the mugging. Evidence is pointing to someone else.”

“And who would that be?”

“Elliot Littlefield, for one,” I said.

He smiled sardonically. “You know, at first it amused me that you suspected me. I find skepticism attractive, usually. Now I'm really very annoyed with you, Miss Garrity. Not only have you not made any headway with finding my property, you've managed to implicate me in a murder for which I am totally innocent.”

“Since we're discussing our innermost feelings, Mr.
Littlefield,” I said, “I should tell you I'm quitting because I don't like you.”

One of his eyebrows twitched, just slightly. “I have your report and your invoice. Your check will be mailed. I'd like you to leave now.”

“I'm going,” I said. “By the way, somebody killed Bridget's cat. Field-dressed her and left her on the hood of my car. The cops think it's somebody trying to scare me off this investigation.”

I turned and regarded him carefully. “What do you think?”

He opened the door and stood back to let me pass. “I've had enough of your asinine accusations, Miss Garrity. I've got a houseful of guests to return to and a party to host.”

The crowd in the downstairs hallway had grown thicker. I shouldered my way toward the front door, stopping only to help myself to a handful of stuffed mushroom caps and crab thingies from a silver platter being passed by a waiter.

Outside, the storm had lost its punch, the rain fizzled to a fine mist. I stopped to enjoy one of my purloined canapés, and from across the street, I saw Stanley Szabo, silhouetted in the light from his house, sitting on his front porch. I waved, and he returned the favor.

As I crossed the street I saw with relief that Jocelyn was still in the car. I was halfway afraid she might have bolted, but she was still there, waiting, listening to the radio.

I moved the barricade again, and backed out of the driveway, cautiously, to avoid hitting any of Littlefield's guests' cars. Jocelyn stared straight ahead. I turned on the radio to fill the silence in the car.

We were on Interstate 285 before I realized I didn't actually have a clue as to where I was going. “Directions?”

The road to the O'Bryants' was long and winding. With every turn the real estate got more expensive and more inaccessible. They'd chipped away part of a cliff side to build their home.

The front of their house was bathed by floodlights. Jocelyn unlocked the door, flipped a switch in the foyer, and the house lit up at once. She headed down a hallway to the right of the front door without looking back at me. “It should only take me a minute to get my stuff together.”

I wandered into the living room and sat down to wait. Floor-to-ceiling picture windows gave a dramatic view down a ravine of the Chattahoochee River, which flowed by the O'Bryants' backyard. At least, I thought it flowed. Even with the floodlights, a heavy mist rolling off the water made it look something like Transylvania.

I leafed halfheartedly through a stack of magazines on the coffee table:
Field and Stream, Vogue, Bon Appétit
. With my index finger I traced a line in the dust on the tabletop. Wouldn't hurt to leave a House Mouse business card, I decided. We take our business where we can find it.

After a while I got tired of waiting. Teenagers. They pack a steamer trunk for an overnight stay. “Jocelyn,” I called. “Let's go. I've got some stuff I need to do at home tonight.”

“Coming,” she called back. A moment later she emerged from the hall carrying a bulging overnight bag. “My room was kind of a mess,” she said apologetically. “It took me a while to find everything I needed.”

I pointed down the hallway. “Is the bathroom down here?”

I snapped the bathroom light on and sniffed. It smelled like a valleyful of Lilies of the Valley. In the
cabinet under the sink I found an aerosol can of room freshener. I touched the nozzle. It was still wet.

Outside, after we'd locked up, I handed Jocelyn the car keys. “You drive,” I said.

She took the hill at a creep, peering into the darkness to see the way.

“You're a good, safe driver,” I said. “You know, if you really wanted to kill yourself, you could do it in the car. It would be a lot quicker, a lot less painful, and the people who love you wouldn't have to watch you do it.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

But she knew. “You went into the bathroom back there and tossed the pizza you ate for dinner,” I said. “Don't bother lying about it. I'm a private investigator—remember?”

She jutted her chin defiantly. “You don't understand,” she said. “I ate all that pizza. It was just lying there on my stomach. All that grease and fat and calories. I could feel my thighs and my butt just ballooning. I had to get rid of it, Callahan. The whole time we were on our way out here, I felt like I'd explode if I didn't get rid of it.”

“Is that how you always feel after you eat?” I asked, alarmed.

She nodded miserably.

That's when I noticed the headlights. We'd been taking the winding road slowly and steadily because the pavement was still slick, even though the rain had stopped. The mist rising off the river that ran alongside the road made visibility touch and go. But the headlights in back of us seemed glued to our bumper.

“Blink your lights so this asshole will pass us,” I instructed her.

She blinked the Hyundai's lights on and off three times. But the headlights got closer.

“Speed up just a little to give him room.” But the car stayed right with us.

“How long has this guy been behind us?” I asked.

“I think he stopped at the bottom of the driveway to let us make the left turn,” she said.

“Did you notice what kind of car it was?”

“Some kind of big gray car. It looks new and it has tinted windows. I couldn't see whether the driver was a woman or a man.”

I thought for a minute. This was a lonely stretch of road. I hadn't seen any other houses around from the O'Bryants' house. The gray car's being there at the bottom of the hill was the kind of coincidence I don't like.

“Okay, Jocelyn,” I said calmly. “I think these guys are following us.”

“Well duh,” she said. “I do watch television you know. What should I do?”

“Just keep it at an even speed,” I said. “With the river right beside us like this, I don't want you to try to outrun him.”

“Like I could,” she retorted. “The fastest I've ever gone in this car is fifty miles an hour, and that's on flat road with only one person in it.”

“Keep your eyes on the road,” I repeated. “Does this street eventually intersect with Roswell Road?”

“It does, but not for another three or four miles,” Jocelyn said. “Why?”

Before she could answer the gray car bumped us savagely, so hard the Hyundai skittered into the opposite lane. Jocelyn screamed, but yanked the wheel back hard right.

“He's trying to kill us,” she cried.

“We'll be all right,” I said. “If we get to Roswell
Road, there'll be lots of traffic, and the Fulton County Police precinct is right there. We'll find a cop. Pick up your speed just a little bit now.”

She tapped the accelerator and the Hyundai scooted, but the gray car kept pace. I turned around to stare, but the car's tinted windows kept the driver's identity a secret.

I glanced over at Jocelyn. Her hands gripped the steering wheel and her face was contorted into a mask of fear and anxiety. Up ahead the road curved in a wide arc to the right, following a bend in the river. Jocelyn eased off the gas a little and the gray car let a few feet of distance fall between us. I relaxed a little. In the next second the gray car sped up again, and bashed us, harder. The Hyundai veered across the road. We hit a metal guardrail and then we were airborne.

We hit the ground with a bone-jarring crash. Then everything was still and dark.

I don't think I ever lost consciousness because I knew I'd hit my head on the dashboard. There was a warm trickle down my nose, from between my eyes. And my hands and knuckles were stinging. I held one up to my face, and I could see that it was crisscrossed with cuts from the broken glass of the windshield.

And then I felt wet.

We were in the river. Frigid water flowed through the smashed windshield. I looked over at Jocelyn. She was slumped over the steering wheel, not moving. I put my hand to her cheek, and it was warm. I could feel the rise and fall of her ragged breathing.

“Jocelyn,” I said, loudly. “Jocelyn. Wake up. We're in the river.” I struggled to extricate myself, but the seat belt was wet and my fingers were numb from the cold. I fumbled for the metal release and nearly cried from frustration. Finally, the belt clicked. I turned and knelt
in the seat, trying to unfasten Jocelyn's belt. She stirred as I worked, and she wrenched away when I pushed her torso back away from the wheel.

“Wake up, Jocelyn,” I screamed in her ear. She struck out at me, trying to push me away until I caught her wrist and held it in mine.

“It's Callahan, Jocelyn. We've had a wreck. We're in the river. We've got to get out and get to shore. Understand? Are you hurt?”

She opened her eyes, but her pupils looked funny. She was in shock. The water was waist high in the car now. I tried my door, but something was jammed against it. I reached over, shoving Jocelyn back again, to try her door, but it too was jammed. It was pitch black. My window was rolled down halfway, and I managed to roll it down the rest of the way. I hauled myself through the window, perching with one leg in and one leg out of the car. With my right leg, I felt around in the water. It was icy, but the current didn't seem to be ripping too badly. Gingerly, I let myself all the way down, gasping at the coldness. When my feet met bottom, I stood up. The water was moving, but it was only chest-high where I stood. Clinging to the edge of the car, I inched my way around to the other side. At the left front edge of the car, my foot slipped on the moss-covered rocky bottom, and I plunged headlong into the water.

Somehow though, I managed to grab hold of the car's bumper and pull myself upright again.

After forever, I could make out the dim outline of the driver's side window, and the slight figure sitting there. I reached in and felt for her. “Jocelyn,” I screamed again, my teeth chattering so loud they nearly drowned out the scream. “Wake up now. You've got to help me get you out.”

I felt an arm snake out of the car, and slowly, she
twisted and managed to get her upper body half out of the window. I half-dragged, half-carried her out the rest of the way.

Dry, and standing under her own steam, Jocelyn Dougherty probably weighed less than one hundred pounds. But wet, in shock, limp and dazed, she was lead weight and felt twice as heavy. Somehow though, slipping and sliding, we made it to the riverbank.

As soon as I loosened my grip on her waist, she sank to the weed-covered bank in a heap. I flopped down beside her, wrapping my arms around both of us, trying to generate some warmth. We were bloody, soaked, and chilled to the bone, but we were alive.

I
DON'T KNOW HOW LONG I crouched there in the weeds at the side of the road, torn between wanting to flag down a car for help and being terrified that the driver of the gray car would come back to finish us off.

Desperation finally flushed me out of hiding. I stood in the middle of the road, arms flung wide, and closed my eyes to the headlight glare of an oncoming car.

My rescuer didn't seem terribly surprised to see a wet, bleeding woman standing in the road. In his late forties, he was huskily built, wearing a dress shirt, tie, and a baggy business suit. To me he looked like the cavalry. He turned on the car heater and made me stay in the car while he went back for Jocelyn. I heard her whimpering before I saw him struggle up the riverbank, carrying her in his arms like a discarded bundle of rags.

He loaded her in the back seat, took off his suit jacket and draped it over her. Then he got back behind the wheel. “Where to?” he asked. “Only reason I came across you was I made the wrong turn somewhere back there and got lost.”

Disoriented, I couldn't think how to tell him to get to Johnson Ferry Road, where Northside and St. Joseph's hospitals compete for the city's sickest, fully-insured patients. Clenching my teeth to control the chattering, I told him to keep following the road until he saw the street lights of Roswell Road.

Thank God for dumb luck. Somehow, we made our way back to the land of fast food, all-night supermarkets, and instant teller machines. After ten minutes, he pulled up to the entrance of the north precinct of the Fulton Police Department, lifted Jocelyn out of the back, and came around to my door.

He looked embarrassed. “I'm gonna have to sort of let ya'll go in under your own steam,” he apologized. “My ex-wife's got a warrant out for me for back child support and right now I don't need any more hassle in my life. You understand?”

There was a wooden bench beside the front door to the copshop. “Just leave her there,” I said. “You've been wonderful.” He set her down on the bench and touched my arm. “Sorry.” Then he sprinted to his car and drove off.

The police dispatcher on duty took one look at Jocelyn and me, and in an instant, the precinct lobby was swarming with cops.

“I'm a private detective,” I told the sergeant on duty. “We were run off the road and into the river back on Old Riverside Road. It's a red Hyundai. I'm all right, but my friend here is in shock and she may have a head injury.”

They gave me a blanket to wrap up in and Jocelyn a ride to Northside Hospital. Before I'd give them my statement, I made them let me call Edna.

“We're all right,” I said as a preamble. After I told her what had happened to us, she came unglued for a
moment. But only a moment. “Call Hunsecker and tell him what happened,” I told her. “Ask him to meet me up here at Fulton County. See if you can sweet talk him into coming by and picking up some dry clothes for me. Then head over to Northside's emergency room. Call me as soon as you know something about Jocelyn.”

The police dispatcher, a five-foot-tall middle-aged white lady named Marylee, rescued me from the sergeant. She went off shift at eleven but not off duty, making me strip off my wet clothes and outfitting me in a set of pale-blue drawstring pajamas, the kind they issue to prisoners who are being kept in the precinct holding cells. When I was dressed, she unlocked a vacant office and insisted that the sergeant could take my statement there, rather than in the crowded, noisy bullpen. Then she brought me a steaming mug. “Cup-A-Soup,” she said, apologetically. “French onion. I don't dare give you the coffee here, it'd kill you for sure.”

I sipped the soup slowly, answering the cop's questions, grateful for being warm and dry.

By the time Hunsecker and Linda Nickells bustled in, I'd told everything I knew about our encounter with the gray car. Worry was etched on Hunsecker's face. “Are you all right?”

I touched the welt on the bridge of my nose, felt the small abrasions that covered my forehead, cheeks and chin. “Don't I look all right?”

The Fulton County cop slipped out of the room, and Hunsecker took his vacant chair. Nickells kept standing, leaning against the wall.

“Your mama wore him out on the phone,” she said, laughing. She held out a paper sack. “Here's your clothes.”

“I don't ever want to mess with that lady again,”
Hunsecker agreed. “She had a point though. I blew off all the stuff you were trying to tell me, because I resented your remarks about my private life. That's bad police work, and I'm ashamed to say it.”

“Callahan understands,” Nickells said gently.

He glanced down at the incident report he had in his hand, the one the sergeant had handed him before leaving the room. “Any idea who ran you off the road?”

I gave it some thought. “Well, I saw Littlefield tonight. I sort of got carried away. I told him ya'll weren't convinced Gordo Madison killed Bridget. I quit the case but told him I didn't intend to quit investigating until I found out who killed Bridget.”

“Goddamn,” Hunsecker moaned, running his hand across his face. “You got a big mouth, Garrity, you know that?”

“I know it,” I said. “He pissed me off, C. W. The car that ran us off was a big gray sedan with tinted windows. That's all I know. It wasn't one I've seen before. It was waiting for us at the bottom of the hill when we left the O'Bryants'.”

“We haven't given up on Littlefield,” he said. “We have somebody working on getting all his phone records; to see if he'd been trying to sell any of the stuff taken in the burglary. Before I came out here, I sent somebody over to his house, to find out if he left the party tonight, or if any gray cars are parked in the vicinity. And we'll be questioning that soccer coach, too. We ran a check on him, by the way.”

“And?”

“Nothing. He may have an overactive set of hormones, but he's never been arrested for anything. The principal at All Saints told me Jordan is an excellent biology teacher and the kids love him. He's aware of the
relationship between Jordan and the dead girl. He says he counseled Jordan, and he swore it was a one-shot deal that was over.”

“Over,” I said woodenly. “It's over because somebody killed Bridget. Because she thought she was pregnant.”

“There you go again,” Hunsecker complained. “If you can't make up your mind who did it, you better shut up altogether and go home and let us do our job.”

Linda Nickells came to my defense. “Aw, C. W., ease up on her. She's had a rough night.”

“Thanks, Linda,” I told her. “What do you see in him, anyway, if you don't mind my asking?”

She winked. “I guess he's a father figure. For an old fart, he's not too bad.”

“Old fart,” Hunsecker said bitterly. “Linda, tell her about Gordo Madison.”

“He's back in the prison ward at Grady Hospital,” Nickells said. “He started having seizures again. Poor old guy.”

I stood up and stretched. It felt like I'd tried to run the hundred-yard dash with a concrete block in each hand. I ached all over. “I'm going to go get out of these jail clothes,” I announced.

Marylee knocked on the door then, and poked her head in. “There's a phone call for you. Pick up this phone and dial three one.”

It was Edna. “Jocelyn is going to have a bad headache tomorrow, and some interesting bruises. Otherwise she's fine. I lied and told them I was her grandmother so they'd treat her. I'll take her back to our house as soon as I get done filling out all the paperwork. How are things at your end?”

“Dandy,” I said, not bothering to suppress a yawn. “As soon as I get changed, I'll hitch a ride home with Linda and C. W.”

“Did they send a posse over to roust Littlefield?” she wanted to know.

“They're questioning him now, and they're going to talk to Jordan too,” I said. “Can we finish talking about this tomorrow? I'm whipped.”

“Are you sure you're all right?” she asked. “I'd feel better if you'd come over here and let one of these doctors look at you.”

“Mom, I'm fine,” I snapped. “I'll see you at home.”

As I was hanging up the phone there was another tap at the door. I turned and Mac was standing there.

“Hey,” I said weakly.

“Hey your own self,” he said, glancing at Hunsecker and Nickells. “I heard you took a dip in the 'Hooch. Everything all right?”

“I'm tired,” I said. “Otherwise, as I keep telling everybody, I'm fine. Did Edna call you?”

He came over, tilted my head up, and gently touched the bridge of my nose. “We'll have matching scars now,” he said. “You'll grow to like it. It's a good conversation starter. Yeah, your mother called and gave me orders to come get you and drag you to the emergency room. She knew you wouldn't go on your own.”

“I'm not going,” I said stubbornly. “How about taking me home, instead?”

Mac looked to Hunsecker for approval. “You don't need to hold her for questioning any more?”

“We ought to hold her for orneriness,” he said, “but she's too mean to keep around for long. Get her out of my hair, would you?”

I dozed on the ride home. Mac woke me up when we got there, took me in the house, and fended off Edna's questions while he trundled me off to bed. He kissed me lightly and was gone.