Raveled (17 page)

I loved that my mother’s
memory remained strong when she needed it most.

“I most certainly will
,” my mother said.

“Do not speak ill of the dead, Justine. And in th
is case, the murdered.”

“My husband paid for
his alleged crimes with his life, Elise. What more do you want?”

“
I want her to shut her lying trap,” Mrs. Smith said, evidently surprised to hear such crudity coming out of her own mouth. But she shook it off and forged ahead. “At least my John went and made something of himself. He’s moved on, as I think we all should.”

My mother opt
ed for an understated, powerful glare from below, a mocking, disdainful glower that let Mrs. Smith know exactly how disgusted she was with her. Then she spoke, in measured, precise tones.

“
I agree with you, Elise. Now take your own advice and move on.”

Mrs. Smith remained
rooted, unaccustomed to anyone giving her orders.

“
Step aside, Elise. This is a public sidewalk and you’re blocking our way.”

“I will not. Not until
I hear you call off your pit bull of a daughter.”

“This is my final request.
”

They held a silent standoff for three of the longest seconds of my life. Longer than the time a customer pulled a gun on me
in Puccio’s before an undercover cop shot him. Longer than the three seconds it took each juror to say
Guilty
in the privacy of the room where they’d slurped coffee, eaten donuts, and decided my dad’s fate.

And then, s
low motion beauty kicked in. My mother reached out with an age-spotted hand at the end of her short arm, cupped Mrs. Smith’s wrinkly elbow, and shoved her to the side with surprising force. Mrs. Smith’s ungainly stumble made my day. She regained her balance soon enough, but as we marched past without looking back, the peripheral sight of her gaping maw made me smile—and proved to the world that Mrs. Smith was indeed still capable of facial expressions.

We
walked in silence for a solid minute, reveling in the afterglow and maybe feeling a bit of remorse—that last would be all on my mother’s part. We decided to skip the bite to eat and headed to the car. Before getting in, my mother turned to face me. “Allison, I need you to leave things be.”

“I can’t, Mom. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not up to you.”

“It’s as much up to me as you. I was his daughter, and Kevin his son.”

“What does Kevin have to do with this?”

I gestured for her to get in the car and spent the ride home explaining
some of the situation to her, along with Kevin’s pleas.

“I hoped it wouldn’t ever come to this
, Allison,” she said as we arrived home. “You really need to drop the whole matter, for everyone’s sake.”

“Why?”
I said. If she could give me a solid enough reason to stop, I’d give it due consideration.

A bit of her earlier ferocity returned.
“Trust me on this one. Let it be.”

Not even close to solid. “
If I stopped,” I said, “Kevin wouldn’t. It’s eating him away inside. I need to help him.”

She
shook her head and harrumphed as she got out of the car. She trooped into the house, good and pissed.

Chapter
22

Allison… present

The ringing of my phone shocked me late that night while I sorted through papers in the evidence box from my father’s case. The caller couldn’t be anyone from New York as this was probably the first Friday night I’d been available to answer my phone in years. Mondays and Wednesdays were my nights off, never Fridays. I searched for the phone on the pink and blue gingham bedspread of the guest bed my mother had put in after I moved out. Not sure anyone had ever slept in it besides me. By the sixth ring, I found the elusive device beneath a photo of Shelby Anderson’s bloated corpse, her body partially eaten by fish while it marinated in Licking Dog Creek for two weeks. I flipped the photo face-down, matching the way her body was found.

T
he number of my caller was unfamiliar so I answered blind. “Hello?”

“I guess I owe you for covering for me in Jasper’s room
.” It was Ray from Ravine Psychiatric, but his voice was the definition of jolly on downers.

“Hey, Ray, no problem. You were doing me a favor.”

“Against Ravine policy, I should stress again.”

“I know. Thanks again.
You rock. Hey, I called earlier to see how Jasper was doing but I couldn’t get any information.”

Ray sighed, long and heavy.
His voice splintered with his next few words. “That’s why I’m calling. You weren’t listed on the card or anything but I thought I should let you know. I couldn’t decide if I should or not ‘cuz I know you lied to me. But I’m erring on the side of me not feeling guilty for not having called.”

“You lost me
there, Ray. Could you break that down a bit?”

“Sorry,” the big guy said. “Okay, first, I have
terrible news. I’m sorry to have to tell you this but they transferred Jasper to Link General Hospital and he passed away late this afternoon.”

My heart stopped. Or it fluttered. Either way, it did something
arrhythmic it wasn’t supposed to do and I had to bend my head to my knees to stay conscious. I swallowed a huge lump and tried to speak but couldn’t. I had really liked Jasper; we were two odd peas in a pod that didn’t thrive well in Lavitte’s clay soil. Jasper dead? From clam sauce?

“Allison, you there?”

“MmHm.”

“I guess
you
found out about the coma. I didn’t even know until later. Don’t know why they were being all secretive about it, but he never came out of it.”

I tried to replay my phone
conversation with Jasper but heard only the blaring screech of my mind’s merry-go-round. Then, from within a deep layer of grey matter, my cynicism rose up and regained its captaincy. A question fell from my lips before its implications formed in my head. “Will there be an autopsy?”

“Oh, gosh,” Ray said, “I don’t know. I suppose there
might be.”

“
I need to know, Ray. It’s important.”

“Okay, sure. Here’s the other thing. I said
earlier that I knew you lied to me.”

“Yeah, about what?”

“Well, you weren’t a cheerleader.”

Seriously? He was gonna call me on that?

“Were you?” he said. Judgment and hope fought for dominance in his tone.

“
No, Ray. I wasn’t a rah-rah girl. Sorry I lied.”

“And you aren’t really going to Jasper’s reunion tomorrow because you didn’t even graduate the same year, did you?”

I sat up fully in my bed, my feet finding firm ground on the hardwood floor. “Ray, what’s this about? How do you know all this? Has someone been asking about me?”

“No, no. It’s just that, well, I d
on’t know if Jasper even liked you and I hate to think I violated his room on the final day of his life with a sworn enemy. He scribbled over your picture, you know.”

“What picture?” I asked.

“The one in your yearbook.”

Y
earbook? So Jasper did have old yearbooks in his room. Maybe in that closet I hadn’t opened.

“
Talk to me here, Ray. I’m confused.”

Ray huffed and I
knew that he really would let the guilt gnaw at him until his dying day if he thought he’d disrespected Jasper in any way. “They sent me to his room to gather a few things and I came across some yearbooks in his closet. He had one from each year he was in school. I remembered what you said about being a cheerleader, and, well, I took a moment to peek through to find you and Jasper. But you weren’t in the group cheerleader picture—”

Yes, Ray, get over it. I wasn’t a
damn cheerleader.

He continued. “And you weren’t in any of the senior class photos
, but I did find you in the underclassmen, the year Jasper was a junior and you were a freshman. And that’s where I saw that he’d written right across your face.”

“He
wrote
across my face? Or crossed it out?”

“
Scribbled a bunch of random letters. Maybe an acronym for
You Were Not My Friend
.”

Curiosity pushed aside my grief. Could
Jasper have scribbled through my photo in anger over Bobby’s death? Or maybe he’d had the hots for Shelby Anderson and resented my entire family. Sins of the father and all that. But that didn’t seem Jasper-like. Could someone else have been thumbing through his yearbook, seen the Fennimore name and reflexively written something hateful? Not much of a stretch. But what if it was a message from Jasper? He knew from our conversation that I suspected he had a yearbook in his possession. It would seem a logical place for a message, but certainly not enough space for the promised thousand words.

“What letters
did he write, Ray?”

“I
don’t remember exactly. The book’s up in his room and I can’t leave the front desk.”

“
I need to know exactly what he wrote. I need to see that yearbook.”

“I don’t think so
,” Ray said, trying to exert some power over a hopeless situation and maybe exact a bit of revenge.

“
No, I really need to see that yearbook. In fact, all of them that he had. Can you hold onto them for me?”

“
Why would I? Besides, I can’t remove anything from his room. It’s possible the police may have to go through his possessions. They do that sometimes when a patient dies.”

The police? No. Not good. If it wore a uniform and carried a gun, it was possible Mayor Kettrick
wielded influence over it. And if Smitty’s parents were suddenly mingling with the Kettricks, and if Smitty had caught wind of my visit to Jasper... shit! I had signed my real name in the visitor registry. I wasn’t sure I’d even scratched the surface of this nightmare yet.

“Listen to me carefully, Ray. I know you don’t owe me, and I did lie to you. But with very good reason. This will sound dramatic, but I need
to see those yearbooks and I’m leaving right now. I’ll be there in a few hours. Is there any way you can get your hands on them for me?”

“Allison, why? What’s going on?”
The urgency I’d hoped for had entered his voice.

“It’s too much to go into
, but I think Jasper was trying to tell me something important.”

“
Oh all right,” he said, exasperated. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Have you told anyone else about Jasper’s death
?”

“
Not me, personally. His doctor probably called the people on his card. Let’s see. There was an uncle in Tennessee and another aunt and uncle in Florida. I guess both his parents had passed, as we know—”

I could barely stand the
chattin’ on the porch and settin’-a-spell
tone in which Ray was rambling but I held my tongue. I needed this jolly rodeo clown on my side.

“He hadn’t listed any girlfriend or partner or anything like that
,” Ray continued. “And, oh yes, I had to access the billing system for Dr. Graft so she could let the insurance company know. He was covered under some arrangement through a benefactor or something. I don’t remember. But we had to call him so he could get it straight with the insurance.”

“What was h
is name?” I asked.

“I’ve plum forgot.
There’s been a lot going on.”

“
Could you look it up again? Maybe in the billing system?”

“
No can do, Allison. I can’t access the billing system once they shut it down for the night. Besides, it’s confidential. HIPAA and all that.”

“Ray,
this is crucial.” I didn’t want my mind to go where it was yearning to go. I had signed on for turning over a few stones. I’d had no intention of heaving a shovel, chopping through roots, and digging a grave. But my mind zipped ahead anyway and once again, words fell from my mouth before I’d fully accepted them myself. “Lives may be at stake.”

Ray
gasped. He next spoke in a whisper. “I really can’t get into the system.”

“If I said the name of his benefactor, would you remember it?”

“I think so.”

“Was it Smith?
John Smith or Abel Smith?”

“No,
nothing that simple.”

“Was it
Enzo Rodriguez?”

Please let it be
Enzo. Please let his guilt over a few innocent shots of moonshine have extended to caring for all the injured parties touched by Bobby Kettrick.

“No, not that one either.”

“Was the insurance through a company called Lube Auto?”

“
Lube Auto? I go there all the time. No, definitely not them paying for Jasper’s stay here. That’d be pretty weird.”

I closed my eyes. “Was
the name Kettrick? Robert or Georgia Kettrick?”

“Yes! That’s it. Kettrick.
Robert Kettrick was the name.”

So
Mayor Kettrick knew exactly where Jasper Shifflett was and what he’d been up to. Did that include the names of his visitors or the contents of his phone calls?

“Does that help at all?” Ray said. “I can’t believe I remembered the name.”

Ray sounded like he’d won a carnival game. He may as well have just knocked the hell out of a sand-filled bottle with an old softball.

I felt like the bottle.