Double blast, p.19
Double Blast, page 19
I’d since become a mother and had changed my mind.
And in retrospect, it was easier to understand my own mother’s approach to parenting—not in practice, but rather in theory—than Fiona’s just-don’t-make-me-bail-you-out-of-juvie method.
What happened to that happy carefree woman?
Some I knew: her husband robbed the bank and went to prison, her only child abandoned her in the aftermath, the town turned on her, she allegedly had an affair with her husband’s best friend, and he died soon after during a routine training mission on an aircraft carrier somewhere near Kuwait. Add all that up, and Fiona Simmons had baggage so heavy she’d been forced to keep what she had in Pine Apple after the bank bailout, or settle for an anonymous life of burger flipping somewhere else. Sitting in a small room rife with Fiona’s bitterness, I wondered if she’d made the right choice. Clearly, Fiona’s ghosts had all but driven her mad. One of them spoke up to say, “What do you want, Davis? Why are you here? You and I both know you don’t need a personal loan.”
She’d be surprised.
“Are you here to ask me where the long-lost money is hidden?” And at the mention of the money her husband stole, in what was clearly a nervous tick, she began tapping the business end of a thin silver mechanical pencil on her desk. The rapid staccato clip filled the space between us. “If so,” she said, “you’re wasting your time and mine.”
I stayed silent.
So she’d keep talking.
Which she did.
“I didn’t know where the money was then, I don’t know where it is now, and at this point, I’m not sure I believe there ever was any hidden money.” She dropped the mechanical pencil on her desk with a dull thud. “And you can forget a personal loan. I’m not in the business of loaning money to people who don’t need it.” She picked up the pencil again and trained it on the door. “So good day.”
I thought the first part of my meeting with Fiona Simmons would last a little longer, that we’d go through the personal loan motions for more than a minute before she cut me off at the knees, but if she wanted to get right to it, fine by me. With a sigh, I pushed myself out of the chair and gathered my mental reins. I crossed to the door, but instead of going through it as she’d suggested, I gave it a nudge. The glass slid across its well-worn path in the threadbare carpet and swished closed. Much to Courtney Carr’s disapproval. I took deliberate and slow steps back to Fiona, and rather than take my seat again, I stood. Right in front of her. “I don’t believe you, Fiona.”
She was forced to look up. “I don’t care, Davis.”
“I think you care very much. Clearly not about me, and what I’ve done to offend you so is a mystery I might never solve, but don’t say you don’t care about the money. I believe you found the money your husband stole from his neighbors, and with nowhere safe to hide it, you buried it with Eli Atwell. Then Florida showed up out of the blue with Eddie Crawford’s son, so you violated that poor man’s final resting place because you needed the money. Then you relocated both. The dead man and the money. What I want to know is why. You had to have had a pretty good reason to put yourself through that kind of horror. Moving a decayed body? In the dead of night? Through pouring rain? Why would you do that, Fiona?” I yanked the mechanical pencil out of her hand, mostly because I couldn’t listen to it for one more second, then pointed it at her. “Where’s the money?”
She shot out of her seat and reclaimed the mechanical pencil, jerking it out of my hand. Then pointed it at the narrow door of a supply closet to her right. A supply closet with a jimmy-resistant deadbolt. “The only Pine Apple money I have, the only Pine Apple money I’ve ever had, is right there. If you want it, take it.”
So that’s where Fiona kept the bank’s money.
Not in the vault.
Just then the ancient grandfather clock interrupted with three ridiculously loud and excruciatingly slow gongs. I waited the reverberations out, then toned it down to say, “Again, Fiona, I don’t believe you.”
“Again, Davis, I don’t care what you believe.”
I toned it down yet another notch. Just short of sympathetic. “I think you lost your whole family in one fell swoop. You didn’t respect your marriage enough to keep an eye on it and your husband went to prison. You didn’t pay enough attention to your daughter and lost her too. Until now. Florida showed up, with Eddie Crawford’s son no less, effectively forgiving you for whatever, and all of a sudden you have a second chance at happiness. I think you’ve been sitting on the money you swore under oath you knew nothing about waiting for just this day when you could make a run for it with your patched-up family and Pine Apple’s money.”
She didn’t break eye contact.
“But you still had a problem, didn’t you?”
I wasn’t sure she was breathing.
I leaned in and landed, “And it wasn’t Eddie Crawford.”
Her cheeks flushed.
“Because Deadbeat Eddie would be better at deadbeat dadding than he’s been at any other deadbeating in his life.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Your problem was his mother, right, Fiona? The battle for the future happiness of your second-chance family would be when Bea Crawford claimed her grandson. Which was why you dropped off Eli’s body at the diner. To implicate Bea. To keep her tied up long enough for you to finally leave this little town with your long-lost daughter, Bea’s grandson, and this town’s money.” I leaned in until we were all but nose to nose. “How am I doing?”
“Get out.” Her voice held no emotion. “Go back where you came from, Davis.”
Word-for-word, the same red advice I’d found on the police station door late the night before. “Give the money back to this town and I will.”
Just then, Courtney Carr reminded us we weren’t alone, yelling, “Do you want me to call the police, Fiona?”
Fiona’s head snapped in Courtney’s direction. “She is the police, you idiot.”
Courtney yelled back, “Ya’ll are making me nervous! Okay?”
Everything reset when Fiona and I said the same words on the same beat: “Then leave.”
Courtney grabbed her purse from somewhere behind the teller counter and flew out the front door. Then it was just me and Fiona. Who stood to her full height and spat, “Who do you think you are, Davis? Blowing back into town like you own the place. Nosing around my life so full of yourself. So self-righteous. So quick to judge me. So sure you’ve figured it all out.” Shaking her head slowly with scorn for me filling every deep worry line on her face, she finished with, “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I’m not sure where we’d have gone from there—cat fight?—had my phone not interrupted. I didn’t bother to look until it stopped ringing, then immediately started again. I opened my mouth to deliver a parting shot along the lines of if I was right and she intended to sneak out of town in a chicken wing truck in the dead of night with her daughter and grandson, she’d better not take a single Pine Apple nickel with her, when my phone started ringing for the third time in a row.
Considering how many smoldering fires I had burning, I had to look. It could have been my sister about my children, my husband with an update on the Fantasy fiasco, my father with news from Canada, or the impatient fireworks man asking about the hill at the corner of Wright and Oak Streets. But it was my grandmother with, “Davis, you’d better get to the church quick.” I could hear Pastor Gene’s wife, Gloria, yelling in the background.
Which was fine.
I’d had all I could take in the stuffy bank full of Fiona’s rage.
I hiked my messenger bag on my shoulder and turned on my heels. I stopped at the door to meet her eyes one last time. “She’s going to find out she has a grandson, you know.”
Fiona stared a hole through me.
“And when she hears,” I said, “if she hasn’t already, she’ll hitchhike back to Pine Apple if she has to. Like you, Fiona, Bea Crawford has a hole in her heart as big as a bus. A hole a grandchild she never thought she’d have would fill. And she’ll make it her mission in life to have him all to herself.”
I thought I saw her right eyebrow twitch.
“She’ll sue.”
I thought I heard a small noise from deep in her throat that wanted to be a scoff.
“You’re right,” I conceded. “Even Smerle T. Webb, Esquire, will laugh her out of his office, but not before pointing out that while there isn’t a court in this state that would take the boy away from his mother to award custody to his paternal grandmother, they’d all be sympathetic to his wronged father. The father, denied his parental rights for all these years, could sue for custody. And what would custody mean to Eddie, Fiona? Child support. What would child support mean to Eddie? The thing he loves most in the world. Something for nothing.” I lowered my voice to one click above a whisper. “Are you up for that kind of fight? Bea Crawford will make yours and Florida’s lives living hells.” I let that sink in before slowly adding, “And where will that leave Cole?”
She fell back into her chair and started the engine on her mechanical pencil.
And my phone began ringing again.
“For what it’s worth,” I said in parting, “I’m sorry about how things turned out for you.”
It felt like she opened her mouth to say something substantial, but quickly thought better of it. “Get out.”
TWENTY-ONE
On my way to the Baptist church, I tried to shake it off. I might as well have been trying to shake off a broken leg. The enormity of Pine Apple’s darkest day climbing out from the rock under which it had been hiding for two decades, and on my watch, combined with Fiona’s baffling and bone-deep resentment of me, clung to me like another layer of skin. Add to that, very few of the darts I threw hit the Fiona board. Her denials of my accusations were absolute, leaving me to wonder what in the world was going on with her. She wasn’t innocent by a long stretch, although I left the bank without a clue as to what she was guilty of. So I detoured to pop my head in my sister’s backdoor. Seeing her, my children, and my niece might help sweep away the anxiety, frustration, and heartache of it all.
I found Bex and Quinn at the lunch counter on both sides of their cousin, Riley. Each girl had a stack of bright pink construction paper, safety scissors, and their own tiny container of Elmer’s glue. Between them were three bowls: one full of brightly colored pom poms, another with googly eyes, and a third holding a rainbow collection of shiny sequins. They’d be busy for hours. I kissed the tops of heads and asked Riley where the baby and her mother were.
“On a walk?” she said. “Try Town Square.”
No doubt I’d run into them.
And I did. On the front porch of The Front Porch. Meredith was in a rocker. My sleeping baby boy was in her arms. She immediately held a finger to her lips. I stepped over, touched my baby’s sleeping head, and pantomimed walking with my fingers. Then praying.
Meredith whispered, “You’re going to heaven?”
“Church,” I whispered back.
I tapped my wrist where a watch might be and held up ten fingers. As in ten minutes.
She nodded.
I tiptoed down the first step only to turn back when she stopped me with, “Wait. How’d it go with Fiona?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Did you ask her why she hates you so much?”
I rolled my eyes the other way.
“Tell me later.”
I gave her a nod.
On the sidewalk, I ran into Courtney Carr making her way back to the bank. She didn’t slow down when she angrily hissed through her teeth, “Leave Fiona alone, Davis. She’s been through enough.”
“She’s trying to finish what her husband started, Courtney.”
Courtney stopped. And spun. “She’s trying to keep it from happening again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her face flushed.
She stomped off.
“Courtney!” I yelled at her back.
“Mind your own beeswax, Davis. Okay?”
I might have run after her, but my phone stopped me. Probably my grandmother to tell me she’d solved her own problem by hanging Pastor Gene’s wife from the sanctuary’s highest rafter, but it wasn’t Granny. It was Roy Howdy. Who last I’d heard was busy receiving intravenous antihistamines at the Regional Medical Center of Central Alabama in Greenville.
“Roy Howdy?”
“Hey, Davis.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Good.”
I waited.
“Great,” I added.
He still didn’t respond.
So I tacked on, “Wonderful.”
He cleared his throat in my ear to say what he’d obviously been working up to. “Thanks for saving my life, Davis.”
“Anytime, Roy Howdy.”
“And I mean both times you saved my life today. Once with those people—” he was talking about the representatives from the Death Investigation Discipline “—and then you saved my life even harder at Dr. Urleen’s.”
“Really, Roy Howdy, I was just doing my job.”
By then, I had a foot in the Baptist church parking lot.
“Could you save me one more time?”
“It’s four in the afternoon,” I said. “How many times is your life going to be threatened today?”
“Come again?”
“What is it you need?”
“A ride.”
“A ride to where?”
“Home.”
“From where?”
“The hospital,” he said. “The ambulance that gave me a ride here says they don’t give rides home. I’m not calling those yuber people because I don’t want to get robbed.”
“Of what?”
“Come again?”
“Never mind, Roy Howdy.”
“So you’ll give me a ride?”
“Can’t you think of anyone else in town who might have a little more free time than me?”
“Maybe Dill Barter. But you have to ride with him.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you’re my responsible part.”
“Excuse me?”
“The part responsible.”
“Responsible for what?”
“The hospital ain’t free, Davis.”
Did Roy Howdy not have health insurance? Of course he didn’t. He didn’t have a high school diploma, he didn’t have a funeral home license, and he barely had a lick of sense. “How am I responsible for the bill, Roy Howdy?”
“They asked me what happened, I told them about the poison oak on the hill you made me clear, and the lady said that made you responsible for my allergic reactions. Then a little bit later she asked me who was responsible for my party, and I said, ‘You just said Davis was responsible,’ then she said, ‘For what?’ then I said, ‘For everything,’ then she said, ‘Then she needs to pay this invoice,’ and I said, ‘I’ll call her,’ and this is me.”
I waited.
“Calling her,” he said.
The door to the Fellowship Hall was open.
“Her is you,” he clarified.
I could hear my grandmother and Gloria going at it, and I could see small clusters of slot machines scattered in twos and threes around the room. Still packed in huge crates. “Roy Howdy, where’s the forklift?”
“Are you talking to me?” he asked.
“Is your name still Roy Howdy?”
“Last I checked.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m talking to you. Where’s the forklift?”
“What forklift? The one I borrowed from Yonder Apple Farms? That forklift?”
“That forklift.”
“Are you thinking I can drive it home? I didn’t even bring it.”
I counted to three. “Roy Howdy, I’m asking if you returned it.”
“To Yonder Apples?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Where is it?”
“Not here. Why?”
“Because we still need it. I’ll come get you and pay the hospital bill—” if my debit card would let me “—but I need you to work when we get back.”
“You know, Davis? You’re what they call a workhorse. You know what a workhorse is? It’s somebody who works somebody else like they’re a horse. If I was a horse, I’d need a ride home from the animal doctor’s in Ackerville. Not the people doctor’s in Greenville. Your daddy’s never seen the day when he worked somebody as hard as you work somebody.”
“Who saved your life twice today?”
“Okay,” he said, “you win. Come get me. And could you bring two Whoppers with bacon and cheese and a big Coke?”
I hung up.
What I was really hoping was to wind up my Pine Apple day and work in my parents’ yard until sundown. Not drive to Greenville.
I stepped into the Fellowship Hall. Gloria and Granny slowed down long enough to mark my presence. Granny said, “Tell her, Davis.”
“Tell her what?” Having just been through my own tug of war with Fiona at the bank, I had no desire to get in the middle of Granny and Gloria’s, but there I stood between two old women hurling insults and accusations at each other between yelling their sides of the story all over each other and directly at me. The surface fight seemed to be about placement of the slot machines in the Baptist church’s Fellowship Hall. But the underlying problem was money. I wondered why it was that the underlying problem was always money.
“We’ll line three walls with slot machines,” I said. “Twenty on each of the long walls, ten machines on the back wall. And I will empty the cash boxes. Not you, Granny, because they’re too heavy.” (No, they weren’t.) “And not you either, Gloria.”
“Why not?” she demanded.
I didn’t tell her it was because she had sticky fingers, but I did tell them both to take a break and that I’d meet them back at the church in an hour. Then I sent a text message to my sister to tell her something had popped up, I’d be another hour, while on my way to the station to grab the keys to the patrol car to drive to Greenville. Then all my plans flew out the window when I opened the blood-red door and found the biggest mistake of my life sitting at my father’s desk.
