The Cantaloupe Thief (12 page)

“Got any biscuits?”

“Frozen ones. They aren't quite as good as Gran's, but close.”

“That'll do.” He smiled and she got a glimpse of the brother she used to know. He walked over to the refrigerator and rummaged around. “Got any tea?”

“No, but lots of Diet Pepsi and Diet Dr Pepper.”

“What have you got against sugar?” he complained, grabbing a can nonetheless.

As she banged around and found pans she'd not used since winter, he perched on a high stool at the center island. It felt funny not to offer him a drink. She'd never had a guest who
didn't
drink wine or beer at the island while she cooked. Branigan thought, not for the first time, how many hours must yawn before a recovering alcoholic.
What do you do with all that time you previously spent drinking?

“I'm really glad you're here,” she told him, putting water on to boil for the potatoes. “Last night I found a footprint in the flower bed just outside that window.” She pointed to the window over the sink.

Davison put his soda can down. “You're kidding. Do you have an alarm system?”

“Cleo.”

“Brani G, I don't like this. You're out in the middle of nowhere.” He strode across the den, slamming the screen door. She raised the window so she could hear him. His head soon appeared. “It's a tennis shoe like mine,” he said, stepping over the lantana and cantaloupes to fit his shoe in the print. “But a size or two larger.”

“I figured it might be the electricity meter reader or the cable guy or Uncle Bobby,” she said through the screen.

“When have you seen Uncle Bobby without work boots?”

Moments later, he came back in. “It's fine as long as I'm here,” he said. “But you need to get an alarm system. Bobby and Jeanie's house is — what? — a quarter mile away?”

“Or more.”

“Seriously. Please do that.”

“All right, all right.”

“So catch me up,” Davison said, sipping his Diet Dr Pepper. “Tell me about Mom and Dad and Chan and Charlie and Liz and Liam.”

She told him about the merger at their dad's bank and the scare with his heart that turned out to be indigestion. She told him about their mom's growing accountancy business and her election as a deacon at First Baptist. She told him about Liam's mission church and Liz's interior design business and Charlie's plans to attend the University of Georgia. But mostly she told him about Chan — every detail she could remember of her nephew's high school career. She told him about the soccer game against Grambling West, in which Chan's goalkeeper got lured out of the box, and Chan darted behind him to save the goal. She told him about the college scouts who had called from Division 2 schools, but how Chan had decided on Division 1 Furman because of its academics. She told Davison how handsome he looked in his prom tuxedo back in April.

“He's a wonderful young man,” she told her brother honestly. “Liz and Liam have done a great job. They have always treated him and Charlie alike.”

He nodded. “I knew they would.”

“Have you been in touch with Shauna?”

“Nah. She's not been back here, has she?”

Branigan shook her head. “It's like she fell off the face of the earth.”

“I wonder if Chan would be better off if we both had.”

She looked at him silently. She didn't want to jump in with a cheery dismissal of his behavior. But she didn't think that was true either — that Chan would be better off never knowing his real parents.

“I don't think so,” she said slowly. “I think it's always better to know the truth. And I especially think you're right that he needs to know his genetics. He's at a huge risk for addiction.”

Davison nodded. “That's what I wanted to come back to tell him. I don't want him to live like I have. I've messed up so badly.”

“Yeah, you have. But you're only forty-one. You've got lots of time left if you want to change.”

“I don't know about that,” he said, finishing his soda and crumpling the can. “Brani G, would it hurt your feelings if I ate this dinner tomorrow? I can't tell you the last time I slept in a bed, and Gran's mattress is calling my name.”

“Sure, that's fine.”

An hour later, she and Cleo ate alone, as they did most nights.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Malachi slid a fragrant cantaloupe from his backpack. Supper. Sitting on an upright section of cut log, he took out his pocket knife and sliced through the taut rind and into the soft, orange fruit. Down South, the variety was actually a mushmelon, he'd once read. A true cantaloupe had a thicker rind or something like that. But he preferred the word cantaloupe. Such a colorful word. A word his grandmother had liked.

This particular cantaloupe had rolled off a truck backed up to the Grambling farmers' market. Well,
rolled off
might be a stretch. Rolled off, with a little help.

The small Martin farm in the sometimes dusty, sometimes lush countryside beyond Hartwell had produced fine cantaloupes — and tomatoes, corn, okra, squash, string beans, and watermelons. Malachi and his grandmother had sold them at a vegetable stand at the end of their dirt driveway every Friday and Saturday. Malachi urged her to sell on Sundays too, but she harrumphed and didn't bother to answer. Sunday was the Lord's Day, and Granny wasn't about to sell on the Lord's Day. Malachi suspected she didn't want her reading time interrupted, but he kept that opinion to himself.

As he got older, somewhere in his early teens, Granny left him on his own at the vegetable stand so she could help his grandpa with the chores around the farm — feeding the chickens, slopping the hogs, picking and carrying more fruits and vegetables from the garden patch to the stand.

That's how he came to be the only witness to the original cantaloupe thief.

The first time Malachi saw him, the man was driving a black station wagon with South Carolina license plates, water skis tied securely on top, car laden with cold drinks — and children. It was the Saturday before the Fourth of July, and the family was plainly headed to Lake Hartwell.

The car passed Malachi's stand and cruised on for another 100 yards, past a gentle curve in the road. If Malachi's stand hadn't been perched on the highest point around, if his grandfather's pecan trees had been nearer the road, he wouldn't have seen what happened next. The car stopped, two doors flew open, and two boys of around seven or eight ran with the precision of a mini-SWAT team to the edge of the Martin melon patch. Before Malachi could yell or even get off his stool, really, they had plucked what looked to be two cantaloupes; laughing and squealing, they dived back into the car, which took off in a burst of ditch dust.

Malachi sat with his jaw dropping. Did that white family just steal cantaloupes out of his grandpa's melon patch? A part of him was indignant and couldn't wait to tell his grandparents. Another part of him was tickled. After all, the hogs got more than their share of mushy cantaloupes, the fruits ripening too fast for the family to eat or sell them all. In the end, he didn't tell.

The next year, the Fourth of July fell on a Monday. The Saturday before, Malachi was minding the stand. He saw the black station wagon as it slowly passed, the driver a handsome, laughing man, his wife smiling, at least four children and a large collie bouncing between a back seat and a rear-facing third seat.

Bemused, Malachi watched them re-enact the scene from the year before, only this time, sending out a boy and a tiny girl, no more than five, to steal the cantaloupes. The girl struggled to carry her fruit from the patch, and another boy, maybe ten, jumped out to help. Then with squeals and laughter, they hurled themselves into the back seat, and the car sped off.

Malachi shook his head in amazement.
Is this a white family's idea of bad-ass?
he wondered?

The next year, on the Saturday before the Fourth, he was on the lookout for the family, but they didn't return. Malachi found himself watching for them all day, wondering what had happened. Had they taken another route to the lake, stealing from some other melon patch? Had they gone to the beach instead, helping themselves from a farmer's sandy field in Horry County? Strangely, he missed seeing the family, so full of excitement at their tiny larceny.

More than thirty years later, Malachi held to a strict moral code — with a few exceptions. Taking — he never thought of it as
stealing
— was allowed in a few instances. Ketchup and mayonnaise and sugar packets from fast-food restaurants. Cups and plastic knives and salt and pepper packets from Jericho Road. Margarine and soap and toilet paper from St James African Methodist Episcopal Church. And cantaloupes — as many sweet, delicious cantaloupes as he could eat — from the farmers' market or roadside stands or farmers' fields.

The way he figured it, he saw that family take cantaloupes from his family's patch twice. But who knew how many people stopped how many times during the good years of the Martin farm, helping themselves to a watermelon here, a tomato there, a cantaloupe?

The way he figured it, sometimes justice had to be snatched.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The first full day Davison stayed at the farm, Branigan made it a point to get home early. It wasn't even 6 o'clock when she pulled into the driveway.

Davison and Cleo were piled on the sofa, watching TV news. Davison's straggly locks were gone, replaced by a near-buzz that accentuated his strong jaw line. The two of them followed her into the kitchen, where she put on water to boil for tea. She asked Davison what he'd done all day, and he smiled broadly.

“Mostly ate,” he said, lifting his shirt to show that his sunken stomach was already showing signs of changing shape. “You'll know when you go into your fridge.”

“That's all?” she asked, laughing.

“Well, Cleo and I walked through the pastures and scared Uncle Bobby's cows. We threw rocks in the lake. We drowned some worms, but caught squat. And we slept. Cleo's always up for a nap.”

“Sounds like the life.”

“Oh, and I took a ride on your girlie bike.”

“So that's how you got your hair cut. You're a better man than I to ride on these roads.”

“It wasn't too bad. I stopped at that barber shop at the crossroads, so I didn't have to go all the way into Grambling.

“I can't tell you how great it is to be back here,” he continued, waving his arm around Gran's kitchen. “Do you know, I can smell cantaloupes even when they're not here?”

She laughed. “They are here! Right outside the window. Didn't you see them when you went out there last night?”

“Oh, you can smell them through the screen,” he said. “Duh. Glad to know I'm not going crazy. I always heard that the sense of smell is the best trigger to memory. Guess it's true.” After a moment he added, “But how do you like living this far out of town?”

“It's worth it,” she said. “After those years in Detroit, I never want to live in a city again. And I couldn't keep Cleo in an apartment. This is perfect for me.”

He looked around the kitchen and the connecting, light-filled den that Pa had renovated from a garage. Branigan had kept its practical tile floor, but now it sported her cotton-upholstered pieces in old-fashioned green and rose — florals for the couch and two-seater, stripes for a pair of armchairs, a solid mint green for the antique lounge chair she'd been given by their Powers grandmother.

She'd painted the walls too, in mint green, and hung them with paintings she'd collected, mostly watercolors, mostly landscapes, all the work of artists she'd met, including one from Jericho Road. Down a hallway, her office — with its sliding glass door onto the back porch — allowed her to look out over the cotton field and see the barn and one corner of a chicken house in the distance. In winter, when the trees were bare, she could make out the first lake, blackberry bushes crowding its shoreline, winter sun glinting off its surface.

“You've done a good job with it,” Davison said. “Got rid of Gran's kitsch without losing the farmhouse feel. It's like before, only better.”

“Well, it's as much yours as it is mine,” she said. “I'm just renting it from Mom and Uncle Bobby.”

“That reminds me,” he said. “I can't wait to see the beach house. It's been — what? — twelve years since I was there. I'm surprised Mom and Dad still have it.”

“Yeah, Mom keeps crunching the numbers and saying they aren't losing money on it. Yet. I've got one stop to make at the lake on Friday, then we'll head straight there.”

 

On Thursday Branigan felt comfortable enough about Davison to work late. She was leaving the newsroom around 6:30 when Jody waved her over.

He was still on the phone, so she waited by his desk as he scribbled something on a legal pad.

Colonial Inn,
she read upside down.
8 p.m. Augusta Room.

He hung up. “You're not going to believe this.”

“What?”

“Do you remember that psychic the police brought in for the Resnick murder?”

As with any murder investigation, the publicity had brought out the crazies. At least seven so-called psychics had contacted the Grambling police, offering help. Nine months into the investigation, a desperate Chief Marcus Warren had finally invited one in — Marla Demarnier from New Mexico. Mrs Demarnier came highly recommended by the Albuquerque Police Department. They claimed she had led them to three burials in the desert they would not have otherwise discovered.

Jody and Branigan had talked to Mrs Demarnier when she visited the spring following Mrs Resnick's murder. They'd been impressed with her — not because she presented any new information, but because she wasn't a publicity seeker. Marla Demarnier was a reserved and attractive woman in her mid-sixties. The reporters got the impression she would have much preferred to stay on her family's ranch outside Albuquerque, but she was plagued by visions and dreams. The Albuquerque police had developed a respect for her insight. They were quick to tell Chief Warren that her work wasn't always helpful, but she'd had enough offbeat successes that they didn't dismiss her.