The Cantaloupe Thief (9 page)

“Do I? Whatta you think? Them po-lice was here for months questionin' my Billy. But it warn't him. He was here with me all day.”

Branigan made a note to check with the South Carolina Department of Corrections, and asked a few more questions about Billy. Learning nothing that wasn't already in the police reports, she thanked Billy's grandmother and told her she'd return shortly with lunch.

There was a McDonald's within three miles of the house, so Branigan kept her word. As she tiptoed gingerly across the porch once more, she saw a shadow pass before the window. But when the old woman met her at the door, reaching eagerly for the fragrant sack of cheeseburgers, fries, apple pie and sweet tea, the living room behind her was empty.

Branigan asked to borrow the most recent picture of Billy. His grandmother shrugged and nodded, her hands occupied with the McDonald's sack. Branigan walked once more to the table with its montage of a mill village family. She slipped Billy's photo out of its frame, careful not to bend the picture of the menacing young man.

CHAPTER TWELVE

JULY 4, TEN YEARS AGO

Amanda and Bennett entered her mother's house by the same back door Amanda had exited hours earlier. Bennett Jr and Drew, dressed in khakis and nearly identical blue dress shirts, trailed behind. As they entered, Ben Jr dutifully took off his baseball cap and shoved it in a back pocket. Amanda shot her older son a grateful look. They could hear chatter from the dining room, glasses clinking, laughter.

Tabitha was in the kitchen, pulling a cookie sheet of hors d'oeuvres from the oven. “Hello, Miz Amanda, Mr Ben,” she said, setting them down and nodding at the boys.

“Anything I can help you with?” asked Amanda, not particularly eager to join the party.

“No, Miz Amanda. You a guest tonight.”

Amanda gave the elderly housekeeper a quick hug, squared her shoulders and entered the dining room.

“Ah, Bennett. Amanda. Boys.” Ramsey grabbed his sister in a bear hug. “How are you, old man?”

Bennett smiled, showing no trace of his distaste for his brother-in-law. The nephews shook hands formally with Ramsey. Seeing him only once a year, they had none of the easy familiarity they had with their dad's family in Atlanta.

“Want to get a plate and go out to the
ver-an-dah?”
Ramsey whispered.

Amanda burst into laughter. She picked up a glass of pinot grigio and turned to Bennett and her sons.

“You guys get something to eat. I'll mingle out front.”

She saw Ben Jr edging toward the bar, and started to say something. She stopped herself.
He's twenty-one. Let it go.

She hooked her arm into Ramsey's and they strolled toward the front door. “Where are Mother and Heath?” she asked.

“Not sure,” Ramsey said, looking over the crowded room. “I saw them earlier.”

“I need to talk to you about her afternoon craziness,” Amanda whispered.

“As opposed to her morning or evening craziness?” She snorted. “Right. But sometime tonight, I do need to tell you about it.”

They reached the sprawling wraparound porch, which had another open bar and buffet set into the curve. Amanda saw the Powers couple from two blocks over. “Bank president, right?” she mouthed to Ramsey.

He nodded. “And accountant.”

Amanda glided over to speak to them, her wide-legged black pants swirling like a long skirt.

“Paul, Eileen, hello.”

“Amanda, it's good to see you,” said Eileen Powers. “Are your boys here? I want to see them.”

“You can't miss them,” said Amanda. “They're dressed like Twiddledee and Twiddledum.”

Eileen laughed. “I should be able to find them, then.”

“And your twins? Are they in town?”

“Yes. Branigan works for
The Rambler.
She's working tonight, in fact.”

There was a pause, heavy with the absence of the unremarked-upon twin. Amanda thought she remembered something about a scandal with the son, but she couldn't quite recall what it was. So she just stood there, feeling like an idiot.
These small Southern towns are minefields,
she thought.

The silence stretched on, uncomfortable. Finally, not knowing what else to say, Amanda ventured: “And your son? Is he here?”

Eileen smiled sadly. “We aren't in touch with Davison. We miss him terribly.”

Amanda placed a hand on the woman's arm. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Families are hard, aren't they?”

“Yes, yes, they are,” said Eileen, with a knowing look at the younger woman. “You know that as well as anyone.”

At that moment, Alberta Resnick, dressed in a navy dress of as yet unwrinkled linen, appeared at Eileen's side.

“Eileen, dear, might I borrow my daughter?”

“Certainly, Alberta. Lovely party.”

“Amanda,” her mother asked, drawing her away from Eileen. “Can you spend the night?”

“Yes, we have the hotel for the night, as always.”

“No, I mean here. In the house.”

“Whatever for?”

“I'd just like for you to. Ramsey is staying. And Caroline and Ashley,” she added, referring to Ramsey and Heath's teenage daughters. When Amanda still looked uncomprehending, her mother said, “I don't ask you for much. Can you do this one thing?”

“Well, okay. I guess I can find something to sleep in.”

“Very good,” said her mother. “Thank you, Amanda. I need to get something straightened out.”

 

Ben Jr got a bourbon on the rocks from the bartender in the dining room. Twenty minutes later, he got one from the bartender on the front porch. Then the dining room. Then the porch. Within an hour, he had four under his belt.

He looked around for some good-looking girls in this overgrown Mayberry, but apparently that was too much to ask. The only young girls he saw were his cousins. Carlisle was chatting up the adults, bootlicker that she was. Then there were flighty Caroline and Ashley, in their “rat stage”, as he thought of thirteen. Flat chests. Curly hair. Skinned knees. He could hardly tell them apart.

He stumbled slightly as he navigated the steps from the front porch to the yard.
A swim. Maybe that's what's called for. Yes, a swim.

The old lady — he never thought of her as “Grandmother”, though that was what she insisted upon being called — kept swim trunks in the pool house. Though who knew what was in there after the famous episode of the re-tard living in it? Maybe he took the swim trunks when he left.

As Ben walked round the back, he pulled his crunched baseball cap from his back pocket. He smoothed it out, gazing reverently at the NYU Law logo. This was his ticket out of Atlanta, out of the South, to the big time.
NYU Law, here I come.

He fitted the cap snugly over his brown curls and swaggered into the dimness created by his grandmother's trees. Six cars filled the space between the detached garage and kitchen entrance. Ben bumped a few of them as he made his way to the hedge.

Good grief, you can barely get through the hedge and onto the path. What's wrong with the old lady? Is it really that hard to hire a landscaper?
He'd heard his mom tell his dad that his grandmother had a thing against keeping the grounds trimmed. Something about Uncle Ramsey and Uncle Heath wanting her out of the house. Sheesh. Re-tards were running the place.

He pushed his way along the path, shrubbery and low-hanging branches crowding in. A splintered branch stabbed him in the forearm; he yelped and dropped glass number five. It landed on soft ground, but most of its precious amber liquid spilled. Ben let loose a string of curses.

He finally reached the pool, which didn't look that inviting. Certainly not the clear blue he remembered. But it wasn't filthy either. He could see the bottom, at least, through the bottle-green water.

Ben walked to the pool house. He knew Uncle Ramsey had installed a new lock after throwing the homeless guy out. Sure enough, the door was bolted. But Ben knew about a window at the back that didn't lock. He circled the house, pushing through dense undergrowth and gathering a few more scratches, until he came to the bathroom window. He pulled out a credit card to flip the screen tabs. He removed the screen, then shoved upward on the glass pane. The window screeched, just as he remembered, but opened. Ben boosted himself over the sill and plopped head first onto the closed toilet seat. He slid to the floor, and lay there a moment, the room spinning.

He heaved himself to his feet and went in search of swim trunks. He found the bedroom chest of drawers all right, but the drawer he pulled open held something unexpected — a makeshift crack pipe and a small cloth pouch. He upended the pouch, and several yellowish, irregularly shaped rocks tumbled into his palm. Powdered cocaine was Ben's drug of choice, but he'd seen someone smoke one of these.

Clearly the police hadn't searched this room when expelling the vagrant. He laughed out loud to think of the old lady getting arrested on a drug possession charge.

He opened the second drawer long enough to see the swim trunks he'd been looking for. But now, his curiosity aroused, he opened the third drawer as well. A dozen paperbacks were stacked neatly inside. Ben flipped through them:
The Old Man and the Sea, Requiem for a Dream, Ironweed, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Shipping News, Invisible Man.
And that high school staple all over Georgia,
Cold Sassy Tree.

What the heck?
Ben knew these books hadn't been here before. And he knew as well as he knew anything they weren't his grandmother's. But the man living in her pool house had been a retard. Surely he didn't bring these.

Ben's mind was fuzzy, but he was coherent enough to reach an obvious conclusion. Had two people been living in the pool house this spring?

Ben was startled by a sharp knock on the front door. He dropped
Cold Sassy Tree.

He wobbled through the recreation room that took up most of the pool house, the giant trees rendering it darker than the time would suggest. He saw a man's outline through the sidelight, and hesitated.

What if someone was still living here?

The knock came again, then his name. “Ben. Open up.”

He peeked through the window and relaxed. He flipped the new bolt, and opened the door to his Uncle Heath.

“What are you doing in here, Ben?” his uncle asked sternly.

“Looking for my swim trunks.”

His uncle frowned. “You're going in that dirty water?”

“Sure am.”

Heath's glance darted all around the cavernous room. “How did you get in?”

“A window that we kids know about.”

“Window, huh? I guess we better lock it too, if we don't want any more homeless guys moving in. You heard about that, I guess.”

“Yep.”

“Well, be careful in that pool. You might be joined by some slimy friends.”

“Don't say that about your kids, Uncle Heath.”

Heath chuckled. “Okay, wise-ass, don't call me if you get bit by a water snake.” His uncle playfully pulled the cap from Ben's head and plopped it on his own.

“NYU Law, huh? Not too shabby, kid.”

Ben reached for the hat, but his uncle stepped away.

“You don't want to get it wet,” he said. “I'll keep it safe for you.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PRESENT DAY

Grambling's downtown consisted mostly of Main Street, a long, straight stretch anchored by the courthouse on the north end and
The Rambler
on the south. The street-front stores were a mix of New South and Old Dixie — five trendy restaurants in addition to Bea's and a diner called Marshall's. A hardware store stood side by side with a vintage clothing store, which resided next to a state-of-the-art fitness center favored by young professionals. Two banks, three bars, a drugstore, a florist, two men's clothing stores, a stationery store, and several women's specialty shops filled the rest of the spaces. On the shady courthouse lawn soared a Confederate monument: a twelve-foot Johnny Rebel, musket in hand.

Johnny was covered in toilet paper every time Grambling High East played Grambling High West in football; no matter how the game went, the winners celebrated by rolling the statue. Johnny was also the subject of frequent letter-writing campaigns to pull him down. So far Old Dixie had won that battle.

Branigan headed to Resnick Drugs, the domain of Ramsey Resnick. Ramsey's designer wife had created the feel of an old-fashioned drugstore, without the grime. Ramsey Resnick worked the store, but he was landlord of another four businesses on Main.

As Branigan pushed the door open, cords of dangling bells announced her entrance.

“Hi, Mr Resnick. I take it 3 o'clock is your slow time?”

“Sure is. Come on into my office. I can hear those door bells from there.”

He took a glass bottle of Coca Cola from an antique ice chest and offered it to Branigan.

“I sure can't turn that down,” she said reverently, inserting the bottle's metal cap into the opener on the side of the chest. It popped with a satisfying burp, and she tasted the ice-cold sweetness. Heavenly.

“So you want to talk about Mother's murder?” he prompted.

“Yes,” she said. “As you probably know, it's the only unsolved murder in Grambling. The police covered every logical angle. With it going unsolved this long, we at the paper always suspected it might be a transient with no real connection to your mother. So I've asked Liam Delaney at Jericho Road to check with any of the homeless men who might know something.”

“Interesting.”

“Meanwhile, is there anything that's occurred to you since that day? Anything that seems odd in retrospect?”

Ramsey Resnick looked skeptical. “Do you think I haven't gone over this every day for ten years? There's nothing.”

“Let's go over the day of July 5,” she suggested. “Start when you woke up.”