Four and Twenty Blackbirds (12 page)

The next morning, over coffee and some doughnuts Dave hadn't killed off, I dragged out a more recent phone book than the one at the restaurant and scanned through the Finleys again. No Marion magically manifested in the latest offering by Bellsouth, so I gazed at the R. M. and wondered if it would be worth my time to let my fingers do the walking. It might mean Roger Michael or Rebecca Marion, or anything else in between. It was a long shot, to say the least, but I could either see about calling or I could do something rash like pack my bags and strike out for Macon.

For a moment, I seriously considered going with the devil I knew instead of the one I didn't; but Eliza's specter loomed in my imagination, and I shook the thought away. No. Not yet.

Before I started pressing buttons, I went to the window and pushed the curtain out of my way. Mine was the only car in the drive; and when I peeked into the garage, it was empty. Good. They were both gone. I knew from experience that mere silence could not promise that I was alone, but if both cars were absent, the coast was probably clear.

I reached for the phone and checked the numbers on the newsprint-thin page. I punched the soft round buttons on the handset and listened to the seven-note chime. Then I held still, waiting while the connection went through and the other phone announced my call. Four, five, six . . . after seven or eight rings I was confident that I wasn't going to reach an answering machine, which was unfortunate. To hear a deep, manly voice declare that I'd reached Randall Finley would have made the process of elimination all the more simple.

I hit the button to cancel my call and looked at the entry again.

Beside R. M. Finley there was an address, one that implied a location on the other side of town by the East Ridge tunnel. I didn't know the area well, but it was midmorning, and even if I lucked upon the right home within thirty minutes, I wouldn't be surprising anyone awake.

I fished around in the oversized coffee mug at the end of the kitchen bar. From the bouquet of writing instruments contained therein, I selected a black felt-tip pen and used it to scrawl R. M.'s address onto my palm. Maybe R. M. was out getting breakfast or, as I realized the day of the week, still at church.

I took my time going down the mountain, which turned out to be a good thing. Otherwise, I might have hit a pair of gawkers who'd stopped in the middle of 27 to catch a good stare at the UFO house. As I grouchily swerved past, I wondered how many auto accidents the spaceship-shaped domicile had caused in the last twenty years. In my rearview mirror, I caught the tourists flashing their middle fingers and swearing—because God knows
I
was the idiot who parked on a busy highway's hairpin curve for a science-fiction photo op.

I survived the rest of the drive without incident, though, and I made my way over to the city's east tunnel around 11:00
A.M.
As you might expect of a city surrounded by mountains and ridges, Chattanooga has several tunnels that run conveniently beneath these ridges to provide a fast outlet into the suburbs at the east, northeast, and north sides of town. All other major points on the map find the city fenced in by the mountains or the Tennessee River, which bisects the burg at one point into north and south sides—the north side largely residential and the south side hosting downtown proper plus the detritus of industrialization.

Once you reach the ridges you're in terraced suburbia; and on the east/southeast end of town, you're practically in Georgia. In the suburb of East Ridge, Tennessee, cheaper gas is just a mile or so away in Rossville. Before I went looking for the mysterious Mr. or Ms. Finley, I took advantage of that fact and saved a couple of bucks on a fill-up.

I found my way back to my home side of the state line and drove around for a while, exploring the ridge neighborhoods and checking the street names. Mostly I was still killing time in case Finley was at church. This was a reasonable and very likely prospect, and despite the buffet arms race that prompts area services to conclude earlier and earlier, I shouldn't expect to find anyone home until after noon, at soonest. Even this was assuming Finley hadn't joined the rest of the faithful in the mad rush to the Golden Corral.

The street number inked onto my hand read 6769. I let go of the steering wheel and glanced down to make sure, then I slowed the Death Nugget to a crawling near-stop outside a green house with peeling paint and a yard full of trees.

On the mailbox I spied a tattered 6 and a possible 9, but the remaining numbers had long since worked their way free of the black iron. But on the mailbox at the next drive I could see 6771, so it looked like I'd found it. I parked on the street, pulling over into the gutter rather than subjecting my car to the badly graveled driveway.

I was just working out my approach, trying to decide on my opening lines, when an old but well-cared-for Lincoln dragged its mighty bulk onto the rocky set of wheel ruts I'd opted to avoid. While the dull silver automobile worked its way into a docking position on the left side of the house, I climbed out of my car and shut the door, standing beside it and waiting for the other driver to emerge.

She was slender and dressed in a sharp pantsuit and high heels. Her hair was more perfectly silver than the car, and it was cropped short in the flattering, stylish way that most southern women of a certain age forgo in favor of something more easily fluffed with hairspray. She closed her own car door and cracked open a clasp on her purse, dropping her sunglasses into the bag and then finally looking up at me.

"Can I help you with something, sweetheart?" she asked, which was a fair question since I was standing just outside the grassy ditch a few yards from her front door.

"Maybe," I admitted. "I'm looking for a woman named Marion Finley."

"Huh." She looked down to her purse again and unsnapped the clasp once more, pushing past the sunglasses to extract a pack of cigarettes. "Then I guess I'll need these," she said, and though she said it with three-quarters of a grin, I didn't hear any humor in the words.

"Why's that?"

"Because it's Rhonda now. And no one who knows me by Marion has come calling in twenty years—at least no one I wanted to talk to." She looked me up and down, tapping the soft pack against her wrist. A tiny lighter popped out of the pack. She used it to gesture at the porch.

I felt like I ought to say something, so as I walked around my car to approach her I said, "I wanted to talk to you about—"

"Oh, I can guess," she interrupted. "Hell." She put the cigarette in her mouth and lit it up, never blinking or taking her eyes off me. "Now that I see you better, I can make a couple of real good guesses, in fact."

I paused, one foot in the grass and one in the air, but she waved me on. "Come on," she urged. "I'm not that kind of old lady, come on in. I'll get you a drink, if you like. Sweet tea?"

"Sure," I agreed as I followed her up onto the porch. "Tea's good."

Inside, the home was lined with hardwood floors and nicely kept furniture that would qualify for antique status in another twenty years. Two big ceiling fans spun lazily above us, and two big cats stayed just as lazily immobile on the end of the couch. One of the felines opened a sleepy yellow eye to appraise me when I came in, but the other only shuddered and yawned.

"Don't mind them," Marion said, "unless you're allergic. You're not, are you?"

"No."

"Then have a seat. Take the end of the couch if you don't mind the boys."

I did take the couch, at which point both of the "boys" raised their fluffy, wedge-shaped heads and leaned a pair of whiskered noses toward me. I held out a hand and let them get a sniff; they decided I was neither food nor foe, and returned to their apathetic repose.

In the kitchen, I heard the clatterings of cupboards and appliances, and before long Marion returned with a tall, tea-filled glass. She took the chair across the coffee table from me, and sipped at her own drink between drags on her not-quite-finished cigarette.

"You're Leslie's baby, aren't you?" She put a question mark on the end for form's sake, but I didn't have to nod to tell her she was right. "You look like her a little, more like her mother, though. She's the one who named you, I think. Your grandmother. She's the one who started calling you Eden."

I swigged gently at the tea, and the big boxy ice cubes shifted together. "How'd you know it was me?"

"Because I'm not an idiot. You're back in the news, kid. They were running a picture of you on Channel Three, talking about that crazy boy shooting the girl and thinking it was you."

"Oh. Crap."

"Naw, it was a good picture. So what brings you looking for me, anyway? I mean, more than the obvious. You want to know about Pine Breeze, that's a given. They done tearing it down yet? I'll be . . . relieved when they do. Yes, relieved."

"Is that what you really mean? You say it like it's not."

She spent a second or two too long with the cigarette at her mouth. When she moved it aside to speak, there was a faint smudge of coral lipstick on the white filter. "It's what I mean. It's a closed chapter—it's been one for me, for years. I'll feel better when it's gone to the rest of the world, too."

"It isn't gone, not all the way, not yet. It will be before long, though. They've got all the equipment up there, and a couple of the buildings are torn down. The rest aren't far behind."

"Good. Glad to hear it. You went there, then?"

"Yeah, I went there."

"Creepy, isn't it?"

The way she said it, I wondered if she knew more than she was saying. I wondered if she'd felt the same thing I'd felt out there on the overgrown hills and in the decrepit buildings. I wondered if anything had spoken to her like it had spoken to me. But I didn't ask. Instead I just said back, "Yeah, it's creepy."

"You were born there. It was a mess. A big mess. The whole thing. It never should have gotten so out of hand."

"It," I echoed, again thinking of the word's corollary,
our problem
.

She caught it too. "You," she amended. "Not your fault, though. Do they treat you like it was? I hope not. Your grandmother meant well, in her own way, but I never thought she was kind. Do you know what I mean? She was looking out for her own, in the way that seemed best to her, but I thought it was too bad for a baby to be caught in the middle."

I held the tea, not drinking it, just feeling the condensation drip down over my fingers and onto the knee of my jeans. "My grandmother?"

"Your grandmother, yes. Tall woman. Angry. Furious, even. I knew her kind. Enraged at her offspring, but determined to protect them such as she could."

"Them?" I was down to monosyllables, now.

"Them, yes. All three of those girls. When the one—your mother—went off and got herself in trouble, she did it in a big way, or so I was led to understand. If the news can be believed, her mother knew what she was doing to try to keep you all away from them." Marion crushed the cigarette into an ashtray on the coffee table, briefly rousing the gray tomcat, and prompting an ear twitch in the orange one.

"But wait." I wiped the side of the glass and took a swallow of tea to wet my mouth, but didn't taste it. "My grandmother knew, then? She knew my mother was pregnant?"

"Of
course
she knew. What kind of establishment do you think I was running? Your mother was a minor; I couldn't provide her with any kind of medical treatment at all without a parent or guardian's consent."

"But Lulu said she didn't know. She said nobody knew."

"Lulu? One of the other girls?"

"My aunt, yes. She raised me, her and her husband. She said nobody knew Leslie was pregnant."

"Don't go looking all betrayed, now. Your aunt probably told you the truth so far as she knew it. She told you the important part, anyway. Neither of the other two girls knew. Grandma saw to that. She was good and vague—she stonewalled the entire family. Those other two girls were madder than hell when they found out, too."

"That makes sense," I admitted, nodding so hard I startled the tea and its melting ice. "I've never known much of my grandmother. Lulu took me when I was little. She and Dave adopted me legally at some point, but I don't remember my grandmother caring one way or another. For that matter . . ." I thought hard and made sure I was remembering right before I said the rest out loud, "I don't think she was even there at Malachi's trial, either. I could barely tell you what she looks like. She's never had much interest in me, or if she has, Lulu kept it from me."

Marion—or Rhonda, whichever she preferred—laughed. "I bet she did. I saw your aunt once, if Lulu's the one I'm thinking of, at a hearing investigating your mother's death. She wasn't supposed to be there. But she was a fireball of a thing. Spitting image of her mother, or how I figured her mother must have looked as a teenager—damn, but you all look alike. Tall and angry. And not at all intimidated by anyone, or anything. I half thought she was going to jump the table and throttle the poor man asking the questions. She was out for blood, she was. And she took you?"

"She took me."

"Then I'm glad to hear it. She made a home all right for you, it looks like. You've grown up into a tall girl yourself, and healthy looking. People may've given you a lot of grief as a little girl, but they'd think twice before it now, I bet. You're one of them, plain as day. All the women in your family, cut from the same cloth. Intractable bitches—all of you. And I mean that in the good way."

She paused to light another cigarette, and I took another draught of tea, deciding to agree that it was a compliment. "Thanks," I said.

Marion tipped her head to me. "Is this something like what you had in mind?"

"What?"

"You came here, wanting to talk to me. Is this what you wanted to know?"