Raveled (12 page)

My mother seemed energized by chatting about the neighbors, as if she were one of them again. It brought her back to a time when her biggest worries were who liked whom and whose children were up to bigger shenanigans than her own.
I deemed it safe to take the conversation one step further because the visit across the street rubbed me the wrong way.

“
The Smiths and Kettricks weren’t friendly, were they?”

“G
oodness, no. The Smiths didn’t approve of their precious Smitty hanging out with that Bobby. They thought Bobby was a bad egg and a terrible influence.” She grabbed my elbow and leaned towards me with a sly grin. “But guess what? Mrs. Kettrick thought the same thing about Smitty. She’d say, ‘That Smith boy puts on a good face but it’s one of two he wears—and the second one is sneaky and mean.’”

I glanced at my mom and noticed a distant look entering her eyes. “Teenage boys
,” she said, her voice floating above us. “Not many of them are bound to be good influences on each another. They have a tougher time than girls controlling their impulses.”

“Wonder if Mayor Kettrick and Mr. Smith cared who their boys hung out with, or if they were too involved in their pissing contest over the cars.”

“Mr. Smith and the mayor?
No, they didn’t care for one another at all. At least… before that night.” The last few words came out with perceptible gaps in between, grief filling the voids. “But I remember, during the trial, the two of them sat together a few times. Seemed odd, but I guess Mr. Smith was able to offer some sort of comfort to Mayor Kettrick. Or he felt obliged to for some reason.”

My mom stopped in her tracks,
holding onto a bench that no longer sat horizontally because of the persistent roots pushing against it. She let her head drop with a sigh, her energy dissipating so fast, it shocked me. “Tragedy makes for strange bedfellows, Allison.”

“Come on, Mom. Time to
—”

“
I’m tired, I’m afraid. Can we head home? I’d like to take a nap.”

“Don’t you want
—”

“I’m so tired
, honey. Where’s the car?”

I sighed.
“Why don’t you sit here? I’ll go get the car.”

I walked the remaining block and turned the corner.
Wanting to kick myself for ruining my mom’s day, I settled for the car tires instead. I took a moment to lean on the warm roof and wondered what the hell I was doing here. A place so insignificant it could fall off the face of the earth and no one would notice, yet it held enough power to destroy lives.

As I
got in the driver’s seat and turned the key, I saw Smitty exit his house, a leather satchel slung across his arm, big enough to use as an overnight bag. He wore a pressed suit, odd for a Tuesday afternoon during a vacation. Urgent Pentagon business, perhaps?

He
stepped into the green Jeep Grand Cherokee that was parked next to the Caddy, checked behind him and took off. I watched him go, wondering how much checking behind him Smitty was doing lately—and how much it explained the newfound bond between the Smiths and Kettricks.

Chapter
16

Allison… present

As Mom settled in for her nap, a knock on the back kitchen door frightened me more than it should have. Perhaps the recent sighting of Mayor Kettrick had settled into my bones like a disease waiting to launch its attack. There was no way a guy like that ripened into kindly old man status. The Mayor Kettricks of the world went in one direction. Cruel to crueler. Heartless to evil.

The knock came again, hyper and rhythmic.
Unlike the peepholes of New York City that allowed the occupants the prerogative to answer, the inviting doorways of Lavitte, with their pretty curtains and wide windows, shouted
Welcome!
Not the sentiment I chose most days of the week but as soon as I stepped into the kitchen, relief washed over me. It was Charlie Loughney. Had to be. Same Beatles haircut from high school, same huge nose from third grade, and the identical lopsided grin that crossed the width of his bell-shaped face. At least he’d grown into the nose, and the hair hung like silk now, no doubt the result of celebrity-endorsed products with fancy names and big price tags.

I whipped
the door open. “Charlie!” We hugged and it felt foreign. The Fennimores were not often embraced in Lavitte. “How’d you know I was here?”

“Certainly not from you calling to tell me,” he said while looking me up and down. “Don’t you age? You
must have made a deal with the devil. Can I get his number?”

“My family
made a deal somewhere along the way. Just not a very good one.”

“Ouch!” he said, empathizing with the family, I guess. “Look who’s all spry and snappy.”

He sauntered in like he owned the place, smelling of cinnamon and pizzazz as if the years and events since he’d last entered didn’t exist. Over his shoulder, he wore a striped red and white man-purse decorated with liberal blue stars. It swung in concert with his hips.

“Nice bag, Charlie. Looks like Ev
el Knievel exploded.”

“
Ha! I’m gonna use that one. Got it in Vegas. Made my Elvis jumpsuit pop so much, it put Orville Redenbacher to shame.”

Then h
e actually snapped his fingers. Three times,
Z
formation.

Must have been around
eighth grade when I began to suspect that my childhood buddy might be batting for the other team. Since I’d departed in ninth grade and never looked back, I didn’t know if he’d ever come out of the closet. In all honesty, I hadn’t thought about Charlie much in the intervening years. His happy-go-lucky demeanor no longer fit into my thought patterns. He evoked a carefree time and place that had been washed away by denial and blues, evasion and booze. There was no room for a Charlie in Allison’s warped world of drink-making, sarcasm, and reclusiveness, but here in Lavitte, we fit together like two tightly snapped puzzle pieces.

“I thought your family moved,” I said. “A few years after I left.”

“We did. No welcome mats in Lavitte for a hipster queer, you know.”

One bombshell removed from the proverbial closet.
I turned a twisted grin in his direction. “I didn’t know, you know. Officially.”

He gasped.
“You didn’t get the gilded announcement in the mail? I send it Certified and everything, little pink unicorns on the envelope.”

I slapped him on the arm, then grabbed the same appendage to lead him to the kitchen table. “You want something to drink? I’m fresh out of pink umbrellas and sugar-rimmed glasses, but I could whip up something
smart.”

Charlie put his hands on his hips with exaggerated swagger
. “Well, don’t hold back, Sweetheart. Jump right on that stereotyping bandwagon.”

“Thought I did.”

“And for your information, I prefer a salted rim.”

“I bet you do.” I wasn’t sure if we were
dabbling in double entendre territory here, but the energy level in the house increased tenfold with Charlie’s arrival and I welcomed it.

I poured two sweet teas, and put out a plate of ladyfingers.
Not all of my southern hospitality had gone missing. “So tell me about the life of Charlie. And include a detail or two about why you’d possibly be back in Lavitte.”

“
The 15-year reunion, of course.”

“It’s not our year.”

“Networking is networking. I was two counties over for a conference anyway, so why not? I’ve been to reunions in Tennessee, Nebraska, even one in New Jersey where I had to pass as a 43-year-old.”

“
Strange hobby.”

“I’m a headhunter
in Charleston, mostly for the software industry, but also anything technology-related. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to score business cards and lunches with folks when they’ve had a few and think they already know you from the good old days.”

“Do you ever fess up?”

“Rarely. I say I went to school there from eighth to tenth grade. That way, I’m not in their senior yearbook. Or I just tell them I’m there with a friend. That’s true half the time anyway.” He slapped his hands on his thighs. “Boring! Tell me about you.”

A sigh told him enough. He jumped back in. “Listen, I’m not just here to shoot the bull. Although I’m loving it. The truth is I’m here to warn you.”

“About what?”

“Word is you’re digging up skeletons.”

I slanted my head, letting a long, slow blink say
it’s a possibility
.

“Don’t,” Charlie said.

“Why not? And who did you hear this from? Would it be insulting to call you a gossip queen?”

“
Not at all. But you’ve clearly forgotten how small this town is. Smitty’s wife mentioned something to Larry. Remember Larry?”

I nodded.

“And Larry married Joanna from our class. Joanna couldn’t tell me fast enough. But whatever. Once Smitty’s mom finds something out, assume it’s all over town. Oh my God, have you seen her eyebrows? The poor woman must use the same expression for boredom as she does for orgasm. I swear to God, if she’s not a screamer, Mr. Smith’s not gonna know if he put her to sleep or gave her the best sex of her life.”

Charlie had not changed at all. How had I ever doubted his team loyalty?

“The Smiths’ sex life aside, tell me if I should be worried about someone tying cinder blocks to my feet and asking if I want to take a swim.”

“Yes.”

“Jesus, Charlie. Are you serious?” Shock and curiosity gripped hold of me, way ahead of fear.

“Here’s the thing. After you left
and your brother took off and your mom became a hermit-slash-outcast, your whole family was kind of out of the loop.”

“Of what?”

“Gossip. Aftermath. You know, the post-mortem, if you will.”

I cringed at
Charlie’s choice of words, but he was caught up in his whirlwind of revelations. He wouldn’t have stopped talking if Fabio had climbed through the kitchen window wearing a thong.

“Despite the neat package they tried to wrap everything
up in while going after your daddy, turns out it wasn’t all so kosher on the night Bobby was killed. There was a lot of super hush-hush chatter about Smitty’s and Jasper’s alibis, which were pretty much each other and their families. There were questions about the police hiding evidence or not digging deep enough into the forensics of Shelby’s case, and a bunch of stuff about the barn over on the Hesters’ place.”

“I knew about the barn,” I said. “One of the prosecutor’s theories was that my dad grabbed
Shelby outside the barn, maybe even dragged her inside.”

The
prosecution had never tried to claim that my dad raped Shelby because there was no evidence to back it up. But how many times in the history of civilized trials had a jury heard
he dragged her inside the barn
without filling in the follow-up phrase:
and raped her
. Despite the lack of evidence, I chose never to think about those few moments in the prosecutor’s imagined scenario. Some things are too sticky, even for Teflon.

“Right,” Charlie said. “And then
your dad allegedly carried her to the creek and dumped her there, like he was some panicked idiot who’d never watched
CSI
.”

I was quite sure
the television show
CSI
hadn’t been in existence when Shelby went missing, but I got Charlie’s point.

“Well, in case you don’t remember,
” Charlie said, “that barn burned down about twelve hours after your dad was arrested.”

“I know.
That Saturday night, right? Stupid kids up there having bonfires and smoking.”

Charlie looked at me like I was the
sheltered fool who’d never watched a crime show. “No, A-lison,” he said, invoking the nickname kids used on me in middle school because of my good grades. “Where are your street smarts?”

“
I don’t know. I’ve never given much thought to that fire.”

“
Well maybe you should have.” He shook his head and the sweet scent of jasmine wafted towards me.

“Seemed like Shelby’s body and that rope
around her waist were the focal points of the case against my dad.”

“
Allow me to explain as if you are an idiot,” he said. “Shouldn’t be much of a stretch.”

I stuck my tongue at him.

“If there was evidence in that barn that your dad wanted to destroy, he couldn’t have burned it down himself because he was in custody.”

“Oh
migod,” I said, “what if it was my brother? What if he was trying to help my dad?”

Charlie rolled his eyes so high, I thought they
’d stick to the ceiling. “Think, girl, think! At that point, unless your dad blabbed to your brother that he’d killed Shelby Anderson, your brother wouldn’t have known a thing about that barn being a factor.”

“Oh, right. Her body hadn’t been found yet. It wasn’t even a homicide at that point.”

“Exactly. Someone burned down that barn after Shelby went missing but before anyone knew what had happened to her.”

“
So if someone else knew about a crime, they would want to get rid of that barn before her body was discovered.”

“Exactly,” Charlie said.

“Seems a bit far-fetched,” I said. “I mean, the barn was never central to the case.”

“I’m just telling it like I heard it back then.
People were freaking out over so many weird things. Talking about the town being cursed, gang-infested, you name it.”

“So what does this all have to do with me... now?”

“I don’t know if the case feels like ancient history to you, but here in Lavitte, time moves like an old queen struttin’ for a baby gay on the beach. Slow and leisurely.”

“
Your point?”

“You go
plowing through this case again, you’re tromping on fresh soil. You’ve got Smitty’s family here and Mrs. Kettrick’s name still pops up everywhere and Bobby’s dad probably still has active business ties. I mean, despite being older than a wart on King Tut’s ass, he had his finger in everything, right?”

The image of the big,
arched man haunted my fresh memory. The way he lurched into town under cover of his former enemy made me think of the devil coming to collect the bodies owed him. The type of character who’d be cast in an Alfred Hitchcock movie with all the melodramatic trimmings: dark glasses over jet black eyes, translucent skin, bony hands on long arms with unexpected strength at their tips.

“All I know is,” Charlie continued in a flutter, “you’ve pissed off the Smiths. And Shelby Anderson’s mom
has already been contacted and told not to speak with you if you come around.”

“
What? Who talked to her?”

“Believe it or not, one of
Enzo Rodriguez’s uncles.”

“One of
Enzo’s uncles? What the hell do they have to do with this?”

“
You must have talked to Enzo.”

“So what
if I did?” I said. “Enzo was the last one to see my dad and brother before all hell broke loose. I had a right to talk to him.”

“You know th
ose Rodriguezes. They don’t like any trouble stirred up. A bunch of ‘em are still working for cash under the table. They must have quite a stash by now. I heard one of them is even selling cocaine.”

“
Upgraded from moonshine?”

“Now I doubt that,” Charlie said. “Probably more of an expansion of the family business.
Supposed to be good stuff, too.”

I wanted to laugh and giggle with Charlie, find out more about his life
and loves, but I was busy feeling like a total idiot. Here I had stomped into town, kicked up a dust trail a mile high and expected no one to notice or care
. Oh, it’s just li’l old Allison Fennimore, here to clear her daddy’s name.
Well, not exactly true. More like come to town to do her brother’s bidding while he sat in a rehab facility listening to Brahms lullabies and exploring daddy issues. Either way, I felt like the queen dumbass for not realizing that if I cleared my dad’s name to any degree, someone else’s name would go down for the count. Unless it was all one big accident. Maybe Shelby had gone for a midnight swim at Licking Dog Creek, after lashing herself to a tree with a rope so she wouldn’t drift away. But then she’d tripped and fallen. And she’d broken her neck and a few other bones. And the force of the current had untied the rope from the tree. And Bobby Kettrick had committed suicide with his hands tied behind his back.