Raveled (21 page)

Chapter
28

Allison… present

I returned home at 5:00 a.m., my brain on overload. I’d spent half the car ride home reliving every moment with Detective Barkley to be sure I hadn’t imparted anything that could compromise my position—while a primitive iota of my brain begged to be compromised. The other half of the ride revolved around Jasper’s code. The final message from my former chemistry partner had read:
Letter and evidence in well behind Willows. In roof floor. Do not let fall
.
Jasper had used the seasonal section of his senior yearbook to relay the last word. Each of four pages had shown photos of one season. Winter! Spring! Summer! Fall! It was one of the easier clues to find as
fall
was the only word on the page.

I’d seen enough movies to know not to write down the message. The only place it existed was in my
head. I had to get to that well but there was nothing I could do until daylight. Of the many ways to get a shotgun in your face in the remoter parts of North Carolina, traipsing around The Willows in the dark surely topped the list. My body demanded rest but every time my eyes closed, I sensed a madman tinkering with the neurons in my brain. I finally drifted off only to startle awake at 8:45. My head felt like a sneaker tossed in the dryer, thoughts banging into the confined limits with each rotation.

M
y mother dropped something heavy in the kitchen. The follow-up rattle of several pots and pans couldn’t be a good sign. She always got clumsy and tended to flit about the kitchen when she was in one of her spells.

I
arrived in the kitchen twenty minutes later in jeans and a long-sleeve, button-down shirt. Hardly August fashion in Lavitte, but if I had to enter the wetlands of The Willows today, I wanted protection.

“Hey,
Mom,” I said, “you sleep okay?”

“That
Bobby was a rat, you know.”

So that’s where we were today. My
mind already felt locked in a vise from lack of sleep and overstimulation so I pretended we were having a normal conversation.

“D’you make coffee already?”

I heard Selena straightening up in the craft/dining room. She yelled from there, “Coffee’s made, Miss Allison, but we’re a little low on cream.”

“Thanks, Selena.”

I drank it black anyway. I didn’t think one should count on having sugar and cream on hand at any given moment of the day so I’d learned to take it as offered. Like most things in life.

“
A rat,” my mother mumbled as she placed another pot on the countertop.

“You know something I don’t,
Mom? Or you just going with the general consensus?”

“
Blundering about.”

“
I’m gonna be out most of the day.” I said. “You need anything?”

“I don’t know, though. I don’t know about the rope
,” she said.

Part of me wanted to stay and help bring her back, but naps
or a fresh sunrise proved the most effective remedy when she was like this. I just wished she could get stuck in some other day from the past. There’d been years of good ones, including Christmas mornings and hours spent at parks, trips to the beach and afternoon picnics, but admittedly, none were as searingly memorable as the day they arrested my father for murder.

I kissed
my mother on her soft cheek. “I’ll be back later this afternoon and then I’m headed out on a date tonight.”

That got
Selena’s attention. She rivaled Mrs. Smith when it came to gossip, except she held court in the expanding Hispanic community of Lavitte. “You got a date, Miss Allison? Who with?”

I was about to answer when I remembered that
Enzo’s uncle had somehow gotten word to Shelby Anderson’s mom not to talk to me. If Uncle Tito had links to Shelby’s clan, then the spider web of connections in Lavitte had grown too tangled for my liking, and I sure as hell knew that Selena would know all of Enzo’s uncles, cousins, nephews, and nieces. No thanks.

“Ooh, it’s a mystery, Selena
,” I said. “For me to know and you to find out.”

“Not a mystery to me,” my mother mumbled to herself
, unaware of the context of the conversation between Selena and me. “Not a mystery at all.”

Selena’s long body loped out of the
dining room to the kitchen, where my mother had begun scrubbing clean pots.

“Oh, I’ll find out, Miss Allison. I’ll find out. And maybe you invite me to the wedding, eh?”

Probably not going to happen, Selena, unless Charlie Loughney decided to switch teams—and his penchant for stars-and-stripes man purses didn’t bode well for the chances of that trade.

I gestured to my mother who was still mumbling about
rodents and such. “Keep a close eye on her today, will you, Selena? She seems a little more animated than usual and I don’t need her burning the house down.”

“Sure thing, Miss Allison. Now you go out and
do some shopping for your date.”

Chapter
29

Allison… present

I’m not sure that stepping in mud three inches deep would constitute Selena’s idea of date preparation but, in a way, I was prepping for the evening. Smitty would be at the reunion tonight, and whatever I garnered from Jasper’s secret message might involve him.

T
he Willows used to refer to The Willow Park Terrace Homes, but the area had been downgraded in the local vernacular to The Willows Trailer Park and then just The Willows, muttered in either a disgusted or shameful tone depending on the status of the speaker. Some ramshackle homes had sprung up around The Willows over time, including Shelby Anderson’s. Safe enough ten or fifteen years ago, the whole area was now depressing and mildly dangerous. Drug dealers had moved in, and the law let the place run itself—straight into the ground.

I parked at a convenience store about 400 yards down the street from The Willows, not wanting anyone to question
my presence at Jasper’s old place. When I reached his stretch of road, a hopeful yet gloomy sight greeted me—young kids playing hopscotch with lines they’d scraped into dried mud. One of the taller boys wore an old Lavitte High soccer jersey, three sizes too big. I hoped it didn’t belong to a former classmate of mine. Last thing I needed was someone sticking their head out the door, hoping to fritter away the hours by reliving their glory days.

Jasper’s empty trailer, along with the twenty that surrounded it, hadn’t trailed anything in decades.
All the structures looked as permanent as concrete-foundation homes. They hadn’t gone the way of many trailer parks, which seemed to be up into the air, gripped by tornadoes. No, The Willows had roots now. Ugly, mangled ones, sure, but they were here to stay. The shrubs framing the front yards were more mature than me, and half a dozen residents had put down asphalt for driveways complete with cemented-in basketball hoops.

I’d checked with Kevin via e-mail to see who owned Ja
sper’s place. Surprisingly, still Jasper. Had he kept the place to keep his secret? Had the secret been a big enough deal to get him killed? Most of me didn’t believe my own theory, but then again, most of me wondered why in the world I was standing ankle-deep in mud peering at a broken-down trailer. The mold creeping along the exterior brought to mind a patient, unflappable octopus extending its arms one millimeter at a time around the structure, ready to swallow it whole within a few years’ time. A branch from an overhanging hickory tree had pierced a rear corner of the trailer long enough ago that several thin saplings sprouted straight up in a desperate attempt to escape the clutches of the skulking octopus. Despite overwhelming evidence that the place was uninhabited, I needed to confirm that some homeless wanderer wasn’t squatting in it. Didn’t want to trespass across their
possession-is-nine-tenths-of-the-law
property.

A
twig cracked behind me and I jerked around, certain I’d see some redneck with a 12-gauge pointed at my head, loaded for bear. I was ready to go all Elephant Man on his ass and scream, “I am not an animal!”—but the marshy yard stood empty and still. Probably a doped up squirrel who couldn’t stick the landing.

“Hello?” I shouted
, just in case.

Nothing. I
stole my way to the back and climbed up the sad excuse for a deck. It had long ago given up the battle to remain horizontal and served more as a broken-down, makeshift ramp now, the pine 2x4’s having cracked into multiple pieces. I found solid footing near a window that wasn’t completely obscured by grime. Tolerating a constant drip on my shoulder from a dangling, rusted gutter aimed at me like a rifle, I peeked inside Jasper’s home. The sticky layers of dust would tempt even the untidiest of housekeepers to whip out the Pledge, while the dark stains in the carpet would prompt its quick removal. The fallen hickory branch had clearly provided an easy entrance for critters who’d left liberal droppings in at least two corners of the living room. A shudder ran through me as I felt the tiny but sure feet of a thousand mice climbing up my jeans and across my body. I shook the sensation away and fought the mental image of black widows lowering themselves from the pipe above, hungrily eyeing my nest of hair as a hideaway.

A wall
clock with a faded brass pendulum had stopped running at 10:43… A.M. or P.M.? Had it continued to run for years after Jasper’s mom died? Had it kept marking time as Jasper closed the door with his final exit until, one day, the clock followed its owner to expiration and a dense silence overwhelmed the place? I did a double-take when my visual angle shifted, bringing a hospital bed into view. Easily the most expensive thing in the room. It came with all the fixings: surprisingly shiny metal railings, a black, hard-wired controller, and all the adjustable settings. It lay flat now but it had been inclined about sixty degrees when it served as the setting for that unnerving photo of Jasper and his mom. Behind it was the blue and yellow chenille couch that had added necessary color to the image’s background. Pushed into the corner between the couch and a standing lamp was an I.V. pole with a bag of liquid still attached. My stomach wrenched as I felt too close to the corpse that the bag had inevitably stopped sustaining.

To the right of the couch sat a ratty blu
ish chair, some of its material ripped from the left arm. A small, round table at its side offered up two unmatched wine glasses. Had Jasper sat there while visiting his mom, picking at the arm chair with his left hand while the right swirled cheap wine and raised it to his lips? I strained my eyes to see if either glass contained a mouth stain or a hint of dried liquid at its base. It would make Jasper seem closer, maybe even here to guide me on my mission, but the windows were too dirty and the dust too impenetrable to see such detail. There seemed to be a television missing from the stand where it would naturally have been. Had Jasper taken it to prevent thieves’ temptations? Or had his mom lain there in silence listening to the clock’s countdown as her final minutes ticked by?

O
ne thing was certain. No one was squatting in there illegally. It was like a snapshot of the word
depressing
and even the most desperate of beggars would have spruced the place up a bit.

I turned from the window and peered into the thicket of trees behind me. A
ccording to my internet map search, I needed to head straight back until I came to a trail where I would turn left and eventually find the well. But a little girl’s shout of, “There’s someone! She’s in the back!” made me whirl to the side.

I waved
to the frantic, kinky-haired girl in some indecipherable effort to convey my innocence, but she ran away, shouting, “Behind the dead lady’s trailer, Officer! I seen her!”

Officer
? Her? Me?

T
hat crack from earlier echoed in my harried head. From behind a tree, its likely source materialized. A lanky, hawk-faced man in a uniform. Armed and ugly.

“Help you, M
a’am?” he said innocently, as if he’d come upon me looking lost in a grocery store, desperately searching for the jam aisle.

“Hey there,
Officer,” I said, trying to remember how to do small talk well. First rule of trouble in the south: go overboard on courtesy. “Nice to see you. How are you on this fine morning?”

“Mighty hot
one today, wouldn’t you say?” he said.

Nothing about his acne-scarred
skin and suspicious scowl indicated he gave a shit about the temperate conditions of my Saturday morning snooping. His forward-leaning posture and smacking lips gave the impression that he was eager to pounce, maybe even rape, if he weren’t wearing a nametag announcing
Ervin Johnston
as the perp.

Ervin
walked towards me as I descended the deck and stepped away from the trailer. His feet found hard ground but mine gurgled in the mud with a crude squishing sound. I felt myself grow shorter as I sunk into his shadow. He stood at casual conversation distance plus one extra foot in case he needed to draw the unshackled weapon where his scrawny hand was lingering.

Stupidly, I hadn’t prepared any excuse for a Fennimore’s presence in
The Willows. My mother, the only Fennimore left in town, pretty much stuck to her own yard but our infamous reputation went county-wide.

“I
don’t mind the heat,” I said. It was all I could come up with. “You?”

“You don’t live here in
The Willows, now do you, Ma’am?”

“No, Sir. Matter of fact, I don’t.”

“You visiting someone, are you?” he said, the smirk on his face so smug, it almost dared me to lie.

“I knew the man that lived here. At least I think I’ve got the right address.”

“This here trailer’s been empty for some time. Used to be the Shifflett place.”

“Great
,” I said with a smile usually reserved for scoring big tips. “Then this is it.”

“What exactly is your business here?”

I stuck my hands in my back pockets and swayed to the right, then the left, a regular show of unwavering innocence. “Did I do something wrong, Officer?”

“I don’t know
, Ma’am. Did you?”

Chris
t, he must’ve trained at the Barbizon School of Deputizing.

“Not that I know of, Officer,” I said, adding a goofy
grin. “I sure hope not.”

He waited. The question hanging
daintily in the air between us was
why the fuck is a nice-looking white girl sneaking around the bowels of The Willows by herself?

I outwaited him.
Not a hard thing to do when you’ve spent years waiting on customers. That’s all the job was half the time. Wait while they made up their minds. Wait while they searched for the point to their story. Wait while they pulled a few crumpled dollars from their pocket or a showy, black credit card from their metallic Swiss Wallet.

“You’re a Fennimore, ain’t ya?”

Officer Ervin clearly hadn’t scored honors in Barbizon’s
don’t show your cards too soon
seminar. No way he’d determined my last name from casual observation. My giveaway eyes were shielded behind sunglasses and he couldn’t have run my plates with my car parked down the road. Unless… he’d followed me. All the way from my mother’s house. How long had he been watching and waiting? Hours? Days? And who had told him to do it?

“I am a Fennimore. Yes, Sir.”

Wait... Wait… Wait...

“You’re on private property
, you know, even if you used to know the family.”

“
You got me there,” I said, my calm expression belying the cyclone of lies spinning in my head. If I strayed too far from the truth, he’d know. Perhaps truth sprinkled with color would cut it, a subtle hue or a pale pastel to pretty it up a little. But I had to wait. Wait while he decided between whiskey and beer. Could he spare the calories for the beer? Was he in the mood to gulp or sip? Which glass was manlier? What vibe did he want to send out to the ladies—cool sophisticate or suave sex god?

My money was on direct-to-the-gut beer gulper. No savoring.
Five-minute quickie.

“
Well you’re guilty of trespassing,” he said. Yup, direct-to-the-gut type. “People here don’t take kindly to strangers on their neighbors’ private property. They look out for each other.”

“
Neighborhood Watch and all that,” I said. “Good program. Great stuff.”

“I need to know what you’re doing here
, Ma’am. And I need to know now.”

It wasn’t
actually Ervin who needed to know what I was doing here. The police force, the FBI, and the mayor combined couldn’t give a rat’s turd about who was doing what to whom in The Willows. And then something clicked. In Jasper’s senior yearbook, there’d been a section called
Hey Cuz
that had linked all the cousins in the senior class. Not surprisingly, it had stretched over two pages and had made me think it was dangerous for anyone in the class to mate, at least if they wanted children with ten fingers and two ears. The layout had been in flow chart form, tiny pictures inside circles with lines connecting them. Jasper had left one of his clues on the second page of
Hey Cuz
, right next to Smitty’s picture. And Smitty had been attached to homely twins, Earline and Esther Johnston, as cousins.

“Happy to tell you
what I’m doing here, Officer,” I said. “But first, I gotta know. You by any chance related to Earline and Esther Johnston? They’re good people.”

Ervin lit up. Cousin Smitty
, if he was behind this surprise visit from the law, would not have approved. “I sure am. They’re my sisters. You know ‘em?”

Not a whit.

“Sure do,” I said. “Went to high school together. How are they?”

“Well Earline’s got twins herself now. Two of the prettiest little things you ever did see. And Esther moved away. We don’t hardly see her no more.”

“Where’d she go?”

“Down the road a stretch. Hardyville. Work
s at a big department store. Gets all sorts of discounts.”

Hardyville was
only 25 minutes away. Keep going, Esther.