The Cantaloupe Thief (23 page)

She parked the Tahoe in the parking lot of the Methodist church on North Main Street. There were enough cars there so it wouldn't draw attention. She set out for Mrs Resnick's house two blocks away.

The day was sticky with humidity, and when she turned onto Conestee Avenue, no one was stirring in the mid-day heat. Rita Mae walked unnoticed along the buckled sidewalks that occasionally reared up four inches or more from the persistent push of oak roots. She circled the block, not wanting to approach the Resnick property from the front. Fortunately, it looked as if the neighbors to the rear were gone for the holiday weekend.

Rita Mae walked up their empty driveway, then through the jumble of woods that separated their back yard from Mrs Resnick's. The underbrush snagged and yanked at her pants, and she was glad she hadn't worn shorts. She emerged on the far side of Mrs Resnick's pool, directly across from the pool house. She walked around the pool, thinking to try the front door before resorting to the bathroom window. She was in luck again. Ben hadn't bolted the door; the knob turned at her touch.

She tiptoed through the recreation room and into the bedroom where they'd been the night before. She didn't see her shoes at first, and wondered if she'd lost them later. But then she saw the slight bump of the chenille spread and flipped it back to reveal her colorfully striped sandals.

Grabbing them, she quickly exited the pool house without a sound. She was almost to the place where she intended to enter the woods when she heard voices and a dog barking; the sounds came from the main house.

She wavered for a moment. Nobody had seen her, and if she cut straight through the neighbor's yard, in all probability no one would.

Mrs Resnick's voice rang out, commanding as always, but with an unaccustomed shrillness. Rita Mae was surprised at how well she could hear, but then she realized the house's back door was only thirty feet from where she stood. The density of the shrubbery and trees made it seem further.

She heard another voice, but it was pitched lower. She couldn't make out the words, partly because the dog's yapping was growing increasingly frenzied.

Mrs Resnick's voice came again, shriller still. Something wasn't right. Rita Mae's curiosity overrode her caution. She crept behind the tree line, and inched toward the main house. She hid behind a massive magnolia, confident that no one could see her. The tree's heavy leaves obscured the detached garage, and much of the parking area. But she could see Mrs Resnick standing in her kitchen doorway in a pink dress, one hand on her hip, giving somebody what-for. An obnoxious chihuahua danced at her feet, yipping in a continuous blast.

The other person's back was to Rita Mae, so she couldn't hear any words. But apparently Mrs Resnick could, and didn't like what she heard. She abruptly slammed her kitchen door with such force its window panes rattled.

Who is that?
Rita Mae stared intently at the person's back, unable to tell by the jeans and T-shirt if it was a man or woman.
A family member?

Then again, she had heard the stories, whispered at last night's party, about a man living in Mrs Resnick's pool house this spring. Was that him? From Mrs Resnick's anger, it seemed likely. If so, she was probably calling the police right now. Rita Mae had best get going.

Before she could creep from beneath the magnolia's embrace, however, the person leaned over into the flower bed that flanked the parking area, chose a river rock the size of a softball, reared back and hurled it through the window pane.

Rita Mae stifled a cry, too shocked to run. She heard Mrs Resnick's scream of rage from inside, heard the dog's bark rising in hysteria. Before thrusting a hand inside the broken pane, knocking shards both inside and out, the rock-thrower whipped around to look at the nearest neighbor's house, then at the deep foliage where Rita Mae hid.

In that moment, Rita Mae recognized the face.

CHAPTER THIRTY

PRESENT DAY

It took Branigan nearly ten minutes to drive through 5 o'clock traffic to St Joseph Medical Center, a mile and a half from downtown. She turned off the radio so she could think, and her mind ran perversely to Detroit.
What if I were facing real 5 o'clock traffic?
she thought crazily.

She parked in a lot beside the emergency room, then ran as fast as her heels would allow up its circular drive. A metal detector took another two minutes. “If you want to keep your cell,” said the security guard, “you need to turn it off.” She tapped it off without looking.

Two volunteers sat at the information desk. “Rita...” she said, then stopped short at their blank faces. She didn't know Rita's last name.

Branigan looked around wildly, hoping Liam was waiting for her. She turned back to the volunteers. “‘Rita' is all I know. She's homeless.”

“Oh, you're clergy,” one volunteer said. “Your colleague is already here.” Branigan didn't correct her. “Your lady is in Trauma Bay 4.”

Branigan nodded her thanks and ran to the door they indicated. She followed some rather confusing signage until she saw cubicles marked with numbers, encircling a large nurse's station. In the fourth cubicle, she saw Liam pressed against a wall, white-faced, trying to leave enough room for the doctor and two nurses bending over the bed. If Rita was in the bed, Branigan couldn't see her.

A young woman holding a Bible turned.
Chaplain,
Branigan read on her nametag.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“Time of death, 5:33 p.m.,” said the doctor.

 

Abruptly, Branigan's adrenaline was gone, and she sagged into a chair in the hallway. Liam conferred for awhile with the chaplain, then motioned for Branigan to accompany him. “Let's get some coffee,” he said, leading her on a byzantine pathway to the hospital cafeteria. They poured coffee and paid in silence, then chose a small table well away from the early diners.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Rita had the chaplain call the church,” Liam said. “She told her she was a member at Jericho and wanted to speak to me. She wasn't, but that doesn't matter. The chaplain didn't think she would last long, so I called you and drove right over.”

“But what happened?”

“Hit-and-run.”

“Oh no! Again? When? Where?”

“Around midnight. On Conestee Avenue.”

“Mrs Resnick's street? How did I not know?” She grabbed her phone from her purse and sure enough saw two missed calls from Jody. But they were received well after 5 o'clock that afternoon.

“I guess because it wasn't a fatality at first?” Liam hazarded. “Your police reporter isn't looking at all traffic accidents.”

“Yeah, but to think we were running around all day trying to find her and she was right here. My story on Vesuvius's hit-and-run ran
yesterday!
They couldn't let me know there was another one? I gotta get back to the newsroom.”

Liam wasn't listening to her hissy fit. He looked pensive, stricken even.

“Sorry,” she said. “Did she say anything to you? Rita, I mean.”

“Not really. She was rambling. They had started morphine.”

“But what did she call you for? To talk about God? Or hell? What?”

“Yeah.”

“What did she want to know?”

“The usual. Did I believe in heaven and hell? Did I think God could forgive her?”

Branigan stared at Liam. He wouldn't meet her eyes. Why was he being strange about this? Did he think she wouldn't understand the pastoral part of his job?

She waited him out.

“I read her the twenty-third psalm,” he said finally. “There's nothing better for someone who's dying.”

She tried one more time. “But nothing about an old lady getting stabbed or her getting rich or anything like that?”

“No, nothing like that. I promise I'd tell you anything like that, Brani G.”

Maybe so. But there sure is something you're not telling me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Liam trotted from the hospital, ducking the huge raindrops that a thunderstorm had blown in. Some weeks, especially as it got hotter and more humid, there'd be one of these every afternoon. It was as if the air got so suffocating that it reached a tipping point. Black clouds rolled in, thunder crashed, lightning bolted, and the temperature plunged twenty degrees. Then came fat drops of welcome rain.

There were other kinds of summer, summers of drought, when the endless sunshine went on and on, unbroken, unabated. Lakes shrank. Crops shriveled. Cows languished. So it was an unspoken rule: no one besides Little League coaches complained of afternoon rain.

But today, Liam hardly noticed the cool, heavy drops. He hopped into his SUV and drove to the church. He left it in the Jericho Road parking lot, and splashed through the sliding doors. He turned right for the receptionist's office, locked for the evening. Shelter curfew was monitored out of the staff lounge down the hall. He fumbled for his office key and unlocked the receptionist's door, slid open the top drawer of the desk and found a ring with a single key on it. The key to the cargo van.

Liam locked up and headed back into the rain. Then he did something he'd never done before. He jumped into the bulky cargo van and drove it home.

The Delaneys lived in a downtown neighborhood in the process of regentrification. Liam and Liz had bought the two-story red brick house as newlyweds nineteen years before, when they had two steady, if small, salaries. At that time, the neighborhood along the western end of Oakley was wavering, with half rentals and half homeowners. It wasn't at all certain which way these blocks would go. But Liz's eye was unerring, and soon the Delaney property was alive with roses and geraniums and lantana in the sun, and in the shade of towering hardwoods, azaleas and blue hostas as big as tires. The rental next door was purchased and refurbished by new owners who moved in; then, like dominos, the next was purchased, and the next. Now, the neighborhood was almost entirely owner-occupied, and the value of the Delaney house had tripled.

Liam pulled the van into his cracked driveway, seeing Liz's car and the twins' Jeep parked ahead of him. That didn't mean both Charlie and Chan were home. They split their car time, and rode bikes on alternate days.

Liam ducked under the car port, entering the house through the unlocked kitchen door. Liz stood at the refrigerator, pulling out salad ingredients. “Hi, hon. Dinner in half an hour?”

“That's fine. Is Chan home?”

“Upstairs.”

Liam dashed off in search of his son, taking the stairs two at a time.

He rapped on Chan's bedroom door, scarcely waiting for a reply before pushing it open. He closed it behind him, so he didn't see Charlie creep up to listen through the crack.

“Hi, Dad. What's up?”

“I drove the church van home,” Liam said.

Chan kept his face straight, but Liam glimpsed a nervous swallow. “Yeah?”

“I know you've sometimes ‘borrowed' it when it was Charlie's turn in the Jeep. Did you borrow it last night?”

“No. Yesterday was my turn for the Jeep.”

Liam thought for a moment. He did remember seeing Charlie come in on her bike shortly after he returned home from evening service. For the first time in the last hour, he allowed his shoulders to relax. He blew out a breath, and laughed.

Chan looked at him oddly.

“Okay, so where were you last night?”

“Well,” said Chan, “you saw me at the 6 o'clock service, right?”

Liam nodded.

“Then Winston and Mark and I went for burgers, then swimming at Mark's club.” Liam knew Mark's parents were members of Peach Orchard Country Club. “The pool was open 'til eleven 'cause it was opening weekend. Then I came home. Why?”

Liam was so relieved, he saw no harm in answering Chan's question.

“Kind of a long story. But there was a hit-and-run of one of our homeless women last night. Rita.”

“Oh, no. Dad, I'm sorry.”

“Anyway, she wasn't killed instantly. She asked to see me at the hospital before she died this afternoon. And when I got there, what she wanted to tell me...” Liam hesitated, not sure whether to burden his son with this.

“You have to tell me now, Dad.”

“What she wanted to tell me was... it was our church van.”

Chan looked as if someone had sucker-punched him. He swallowed again. “The church van ran her over?”

“I think that's what she was saying. This morning, Branigan and I noticed a strong smell of bleach on the front bumper. So you can see why I was scared when I thought you had borrowed it.”

“Jeez, Dad.”

“I'm not saying you'd deliberately hit someone and leave the scene. With Rita being so little, the driver might not have realized he hit a person.”

“But the bleach?” Chan said. “That says he knew.”

“Yeah. Now I have to ask the staff. And the volunteers. Even the shelter residents could have sneaked that key.” Liam stood up. “I'm just glad it wasn't you.” He grabbed his son in a fierce hug, giving the top of his blond head a “noogie”, as Chan had called the headlock when he was five. Then he turned and left the room, unaware of the gentle closing of his daughter's door across the hallway.

He leaned against the wall. His reporter instincts were not just kicking in: they were kicking and screaming. Chan was telling the truth about not driving the cargo van yesterday.

But he wasn't telling the truth about everything.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Another friggin' hit-and-run of a homeless person and the newsroom hadn't called her? What the heck was going on over there?

Branigan parked her Civic with a screech, and ran into the pouring rain. She dashed past the newspaper's security desk, and bounded up the stairs, too angry to wait for the elevator. Tan saw her first and barked, “Help Jody with a 1A for tomorrow's edition. He's already got something online.”