Double blast, p.12
Double Blast, page 12
I wasn’t sure there was that much coffee.
Before the Welcome to Pine Apple sign came into sight almost an hour later, my throat completely dry, despite the coffee, from spilling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, we passed a chicken wing truck going the wrong way. The West Wings. The truck was red, white, and blue—stars and stripes and such—with a Statue of Liberty hood ornament.
“That’s four,” I said.
“Let it go, Davis.”
“No,” I said, “not yet. Not until I try to talk them back into the cookoff. I still have time.”
He pulled into my parents’ driveway as dusk was descending. He cut the engine. His eyes wandered, incredulously, all over the yard, landing on Daddy’s gutters in ruins and scattered in the side yard. “Davis, the chicken wing cookoff isn’t going to happen. Face that fact. Then prioritize what you can make happen. Fulfill your promise to your dad to answer the station phone while you spend time with your family and take care of our children, say goodbye to Fantasy and wish her luck, then concentrate on supervising the restoration of this otherwise picturesque model of rural tranquility that you call home. And do it before your parents return. Stand down and let the feds solve the mystery of the disturbed grave. Keep the peace in Pine Apple, which shouldn’t be hard to do after the dust settles, and focus your energy on restoring your mother’s yard.”
“What about the money?”
“What about it? Do you truly believe someone dug up a grave for money?”
I believed it completely before he shot holes in all my quick judgements.
“Money stolen twenty years ago is long gone,” he said. “The only thing left is folklore.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I just listened to the whole sordid story, Davis. I’m very sure.”
“I’m not.”
“Has anyone asked the former bank owner? The father of your old high school friend who you say is the mother of Eddie Crawford’s love child? Has anyone bothered to ask that thief what he did with the money? Ask him. He’ll tell you where the money is. It’s nowhere. It’s long gone. Spent. Used to pay off his own debts. Or his partner ran off with it. You can’t hide that much money for twenty years in a town this small.”
I’d never considered that Frank Simmons might’ve had a partner back in the day. Nor had I ever heard anyone suggest anything close to it. It was an interesting theory, because last I checked, bank robberies were almost never solo endeavors. But I stopped myself from going down that speculative road, because for one, my head was about to explode, and for another, it wasn’t nearly as appealing as Bradley’s earlier advice. Reiterated just then with, “Davis, this isn’t your problem. Let it go.”
The thought of letting it go sounded wonderful. I’d done all I could for Fantasy, I’d arranged two acres of greenery to replace the goat damage in my hometown, and if nothing else, I could switch the chicken wing cookoff back to a potato salad competition in a heartbeat which would thrill Pine Apple’s Women’s Society because one of them would finally take the crown from my mother. The Memorial Day Celebration would go on with a parade and fireworks like every other year—and doing nothing but planting flowers in my parents’ yard until then sounded like heaven. I could see the baby napping in his Pack ’n Play under a shade tree while the girls and I turned the tender Alabama earth, and it sounded like a vacation in and of itself, because Bradley was right. I couldn’t save the world.
“Davis, let’s go get Bex, Quinn, and my boy.”
“That’s another thing.”
“What?” He was instantly alarmed.
“Your boy.”
“What about him?”
“Hudson. Your boy’s name is Hudson. Everyone here is calling our son Junior. Having heard it a hundred times since we rolled into town, the girls are even calling the baby Junior.”
“They are not.”
“Well, they’re calling him Junebug. Their version of Junior. Which is cute and worse at the same time.”
“We could put a stop to it if the two of us could land on what to call him. Like the goat lady said. Work it out between us first.”
“It is worked out. His name is Hudson.”
“Hudson isn’t working out, Davis.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Do we not get to name our own child?”
“Yes,” he said. “And that part is over. We have named him. What we have to land on is what to call him. The world is full of people who don’t go by their given names. How about your Roy Howdy?”
“He isn’t my Roy Howdy, thank you. The baby has nothing in common with Roy Howdy.”
“See? You don’t even call him Hudson, Davis. You tell other people to call him Hudson when you don’t. Anyone listening to you long enough would think we named our son The Baby.”
“He’s only five months old,” I said. “Give it time.”
“He’ll be six months old next week and time is something I have too little of,” he said. “Especially now that my dreams of becoming an adjunct professor are dashed—”
“Since when was it your dream to be an adjunct professor?”
“I was kidding,” he said. “Although I’m not kidding when I say that with my academia career cut short, I should be behind my desk in Biloxi. Not only do I have the fallout from Fantasy’s last stand in the casino—”
“What do you mean by last stand?”
He looked away from me. Stared at the destroyed yard. “You know I’ll try my hardest to do right by Fantasy, the Bellissimo, and everyone else involved, Davis, but I can’t tell you what that will look like in the end.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know.”
He impatiently tapped the steering wheel. I didn’t know if it was because he’d woken up expecting another day in Texas, but by late afternoon found himself in Alabama, or if I’d overloaded him. Probably both. “When will you go home?”
He checked the time. “I want to see the children for a little more than hello and goodbye. So let’s say tomorrow. We’ll leave for Biloxi tomorrow.”
“Who is we?”
“Me, Fantasy, and I suppose we should put Whiskey back in the Bellissimo drunk tank where he belongs.”
“Whiskey’s sober.”
“He is not.”
“He is, Bradley.”
“Finally,” he sighed, “some good news.”
Not such good news, because sober Whiskey babbled relentlessly, but I didn’t go there, because Bradley had left one Biloxi player out. “What about No Hair?”
“He’s driving.”
“The eighteen-wheeler he rode in on?”
“No. We’ll take the new Bellissimo truck Fantasy commandeered.”
I didn’t go there either.
I expected his next words to be, “Davis? Did you take a baseball bat to the computer of the new Bellissimo truck?” but they were, “Davis? Who’s the woman in the rocking chair?”
And there in the shadows behind the latticework of the wraparound porch was Florida Simmons.
THIRTEEN
I remembered fun, competitive, and brilliant Florida Simmons. She had an innate knack for the sciences: physics, chemistry, and biology. Our junior year in high school she won first place in the Alabama State Science Fair with something about constructing or deconstructing or reconstructing RNA molecules. Maybe it was DNA. It was so long ago, I didn’t remember. Although I did remember her scoring a perfect 36 on the ACT. The last time I saw her before everything blew up in both our lives, she was flying down Main Street on her way to my house waving a sheet of paper above her head like a victory flag. She’d received Early Action Admission to MIT and was on her way to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
I wondered how that girl wound up driving a chicken wing truck.
But then again, I knew.
Everyone knew.
Because a week after she’d received the coveted MIT letter, just seven little days later, her life fell apart when her father robbed Pine Apple Bank & Trust. At the time, my young life had suddenly plunged into such shambles for reasons unrelated to Florida, I barely noticed when she vanished in the aftermath of her father disappearing with both teller drawers, every dime in the vault, every stock and bond certificate, and every item from every safe-deposit box at the bank, which was after he sold and cashed in on every mortgage the bank held on every inch of land Pine Apple had entrusted to him. And it was barely a bleep on my life radar when Frank Simmons confessed his crimes three days later after a statewide APB turned him up at VictoryLand Casino in Shorter, Alabama. With less than a hundred dollars in his wallet. I’d been long gone from Pine Apple by the time he was convicted of a Class A felony under Alabama Code Title 13A, sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison for the robbery, an additional year for endangering the welfare and livelihood of an entire town, with a “no money, no parole” clause tacked on because Frank refused to give up the location of his ill-gotten gains. The judge’s last words to Frank Simmons before the gavel smacked were, “Cough up the money and we’ll talk.”
I wasn’t around to witness the details of Frank’s wife, Fiona, playing the role of Suspect Number One either. I later learned her life was turned completely upside down. She’d been endlessly interrogated by the authorities, badgered by destitute Pine Apple residents, harassed by angry local businesses, and evicted from the historic Colonial that had been the Simmons family home on Banana Street after learning her husband had sold the mortgage out from under her, trading it for a rundown one-bedroom clapboard rental with iffy plumbing on the edge of town. Away from the anguish. Away from the accusations. Away from the anger. She surely would have disappeared too had she not been under a court order to stay put. And things didn’t get better for Fiona until six weeks later when Eli Atwell, her being-held-without-bond husband’s best friend, stepped forward with an alibi for her. Just as she was about to be arrested for aiding, abetting, conspiracy, and possession of stolen property, Eli Atwell told the authorities Fiona had been at The American Inn on the Camden bypass at the time of the robbery. And sure enough, the owner of the rundown no-tell motel on the side of the road identified and placed Fiona at his establishment on the night before, the night of, and the night after the bank robbery.
General consensus said Fiona and Eli had been together. General consensus went on to assume that his wife having an affair with his best friend was plenty of motive for Frank to rob his own bank and run. And when Pine Apple had no choice but to accept that Fiona hadn’t been in on the robbery and truly didn’t know where the money was, general consensus decided Frank had hidden it. And the treasure hunt began.
Years later, when I returned home and was sworn in as a Pine Apple police officer, the treasure hunt was still on. The money had yet to be discovered. And not for lack of looking.
I’d been back almost a year when I asked my police chief father, “Why is this still a thing?” I waved another fishing expedition incident report I’d been working on steadily for two days.
He shrugged. “Small town boredom?”
At least once a month, I had to placate the new owners of the old Simmons home when they woke to a new dig under their barn. I issued citations at least every six weeks after catching search teams digging around the bank property in the dead of night. I left Pine Apple as a teenager knowing three things: Florida was gone, the bank had been robbed, and the money hadn’t been recovered. I returned as an adult and the same three things were true. The case had never been solved.
“What happened?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Daddy answered.
“Frank Simmons practically turned himself in.”
“He was captured, Davis.”
“He was hiding in plain sight.”
He stood. “How about a cup of coffee?”
I stayed seated. “How about you start at the beginning? Start before the robbery. Help me understand what we’re dealing with.”
“It’s over, Davis. We aren’t dealing with a thing.”
“We’re dealing with ongoing property destruction.” I waved the incident report again. “Tell me why.”
Daddy said, “There’s nothing to tell.”
“There’s nothing to tell about Frank Simmons or Eli Atwell? There’s nothing you can tell me about Florida? Can you at least tell me how Fiona ended up running the bank her husband robbed? Daddy, tell me what happened.”
“No one knows exactly what happened.” He made a move for the door. “Let it go, Davis.”
“Let it go?” The ink was still wet on my Criminal Justice degree. I didn’t want to let it go. “Don’t you want to know what really happened, Daddy? Don’t you want to know where the money is?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t. What I want is a cup of coffee.” He had one foot out the door when he turned back to say, “If you want to try to find your friend Florida, go ahead. Otherwise, don’t poke a sleeping bear, Davis. Leave the bank robbery alone.”
It wasn’t a suggestion.
That afternoon, and very much without my father’s blessing, I quietly requested the trial transcripts. I pored over the court documents for weeks when I wasn’t otherwise occupied being miserably married to Eddie the Idiot for the second time or honing my school guard crossing skills. I landed on what felt like one truth right away: the alleged affair wasn’t nearly enough motive for what Frank Simmons had done. In addition, according to the trial transcripts, Fiona’s alibis, the no-tell motel owner and three other motel guests, who turned out to be nosy motel residents, thus reliable witnesses, all agreed they’d noticed someone slipping in and out of Fiona’s room each of the nights, but were never asked to identify the someone as Eli Atwell. More than that, I realized reading through Eli Atwell’s testimony, he never said he was there. Only that he knew for certain Fiona was. And it was as far as I could get on my own. So I turned to my grandmother. Who couldn’t resist what she called scuttlebutt. On my day off, I treated her to lunch in Greenville. Bates House of Turkey. Her favorite.
“Granny.” We were just past the Welcome to Pine Apple sign with twenty miles of road ahead of us. “Tell me about the bank robbery.”
“So that’s what this is about?”
“This is about spending time together.”
“Uh-huh.”
A quiet mile later, Granny said, “Davis, honey, the bank robbery almost ruined Pine Apple. No one wants to open that old wound.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“If what you’ve noticed is your daddy not wanting to beat that dead horse, just remember, most of his job is keeping the peace. Stirring up the bank robbery business will ruffle feathers again. Maybe you should leave it be.”
Five quiet miles later, and barely above a whisper, Granny said, “Frank Simmons was a dicer, you know.”
I knew she’d crack. “A whater?”
“A dicer,” she said. “He rolled the dice.”
Ah.
“Where is there in Pine Apple to roll dice?” I asked.
“There isn’t,” she answered. “There’s Wednesday Night Bingo with the Presbyterians and that’s it. He closed the bank at noon on Fridays and hit the riverboats in Mississippi.”
That made sense too. I didn’t think a thing about it at the time, because I was a teenager who didn’t think about anything that wasn’t directly in my face, but Florida’s father was never around on the weekends.
Granny leaned across the console to take me into her confidence even though we were the only two people in my squad car. “And I’ve heard tell he was a bookmaker on the sly too.”
A bookwhater?
Granny explained that legend had it Frank Simmons went from dice to sports betting. He made so much money betting the ponies, his Pine Apple friends wanted in on the action. Within six months, he was taking bets from all over Wilcox County. Mostly on horse races, but on SEC and NFL football too. On the World Series. On The Masters. On Wimbledon. Granny said she’d heard it told that back in the day he’d have given odds and taken bets on a game of stickball.
“I know nothing about gambling, Granny, but I doubt there’s much middle ground. It sounds to me like that could only have gone one way or the other for Frank the Bookmaker.”
“Half the town thinks it’s one way,” she said, “that he had more money than God.”
“That makes no sense. If he had all that money, why would he rob his own bank?”
“That’s what the other half says.”
We passed Moose Harwell on his tractor. He waved; I beeped.
“The other half says what?” I asked.
“That it went the other way. And that Frank robbed the bank to pay off Biloxi thugs before they gave him a pair of concrete boots and sent him swimming with the fishies.”
“That makes more sense,” I said. And was an excellent motive to rob one’s own bank, I didn’t say. Nor did I say it was a reasonable explanation for him to hole up in a ratty casino barely an hour from Pine Apple, immediately confess, and not lift a finger in his own defense. Frank Simmons needed the protection of federal prison. And although I had no way of knowing it at the time, I’d just taken my first step down Casino Detective Lane.
“What about Fiona?”
“Strange bird, that Fiona. What about her?” Granny asked. “Where is she?”
I didn’t particularly care where she was, but with the thought, I realized I hadn’t seen Fiona in weeks. But then again, I hadn’t been to the bank in weeks either. And Fiona sightings around town were rare.
“If you want to know what Fiona’s up to, or if you want to change your checks from cute little kittens to a big smiley face background, or even if you want to say ‘Boo’ to her, you have to go through Courtney.”
Courtney Carr. Pine Apple Bank & Trust’s only teller and Fiona’s only friend, and a woman who’d lost her way in 1978. The year Grease hit the big screen. Courtney knew every line in the script, every song on the soundtrack, and to that day still dressed in a rotating Grease wardrobe that could have come straight from the set. I’d never seen it live, but I’d heard she dressed as Blanche Hodel, Secretary at Rydell High, every year for Halloween.
