The first reason was Toopie Harding. Kim had gone with her dad to help out old Toopie, who lived in a shack down on the river. Donnie had been doing some repairs on her roof. Her dad never hesitated to help someone in need, even when chores at his own home remained undone.
Toopie was crouched down by the river when they’d arrived. She washed her clothes in the river, having no washer and no money to go to the Laundromat. Kim had gone because she wanted to help people, too. She figured she could do some yard work, even though she was only six. Toopie turned at the sound of their approach through the overgrown yard. What she hadn’t known was that a ten-foot gator had been waiting for an opportunity to strike. While Kim and her dad watched, frozen to their spots in horror, the gator grabbed her arm and twisted it right off.
Kim shuddered even now, remembering all the blood and the woman’s stoic mask of pain while her dad put a tourniquet on the stub. They’d stayed with her until the ambulance came. She’d survived, and her dad had gone out regularly to take care of things she couldn’t do anymore. Kim had never gone back. Nightmares of that attack plagued her for years.
“Forget that.” She reached down and patted Oscar’s head. “I’ve got enough to think about, like what to do with you. Grandma obviously loved you.” Oscar had more blankets than a hospital. Kim owed it to Elva to make sure whoever took Oscar would spoil him in the way he’d become accustomed. She needed to do that for the bar, too. Elva had worked hard after Pete left to build this place. There was even a rumor that Elva had run some marijuana up the coast of Florida back in the seventies. Kim wouldn’t put it past her. Elva would do whatever she had to as long as it didn’t hurt anybody.
Kim went through the drawers at the desk in the far corner of the kitchen until she found the financial books. She spread out everything on one of the long tables and then went over to the jukebox. Elva had invested in a newer one that held CDs. That was a good thing. The CDs themselves were not a good thing. Elva loved her old country classics, and that pretty much dominated the selection: Willie Nelson, George Jones, and Johnny Cash to name a few. She found a couple of oddball CDs, like the Black Crowes and Kenny Wayne Shepherd and wondered if Zell had anything to do with those. Kim wasn’t much into rock and roll, but they were better than the country and better than the silence, too.
She fiddled with the shell necklace her dad had made her years before and settled in to figure out if Southern Comfort was holding its own financially.
Kim Lyons was in the bar. The exterior lights were off, indicating Southern Comfort was closed as usual between lunch and happy hour. What was Kim doing in there, anyway?
Don’t worry. You took care of anything Elva might have had. You went through the drawers and file cabinets at both the house and the bar. You looked through everything, right?
Having keys to both places sure helped. Wouldn’t hurt to hang onto them until Kim left town again. Just in case.
Had Elva told her granddaughter about the situation? No, Kim would have come to Cypress sooner and would already be checking into things. As long as she settled the estate and left town without causing trouble, no one else would get hurt. Murder wasn’t pleasant, but sometimes it was a necessity. Elva had invited death upon herself. Kim would need to be kept an eye on. The two keys gleamed in the sunshine, bright enough to be blinding. Nothing like a visit here and there to make sure Kim behaved herself.
“Where were you last night?” Kim asked Simon a while later, hoping she didn’t sound like a nagging wife. “I was hoping to hear from you this morning.”
He sounded contrite, though he had as much trouble saying he was sorry as she did. “I went over to Cal and Anne’s for dinner. We had one too many bottles of Cabernet, and I ended up staying the night on their couch.”
She propped her feet up on the corner of the desk. “Are you going to stay at their place the whole week I’m gone?” Simon hated being by himself. That was why he’d pressured her to move in with him.
“Of course not. So, how was the drive down?”
Obviously, he’d been really worried, she thought with a wrinkle of her nose. “Fine. I’m at the bar now looking at the financial records. The place is holding its own, I’m happy to see. There’s a small reserve for emergencies, too. I found some weird payments I have to figure out.” A ledger listed five five-hundred-dollar payments, but not what they were for or whom they were to. Hopefully they weren’t Zell’s payments for the orchid loan, not that much a month. “There are a few snags.” She told him about the orchids and Oscar.
“We can’t have a pig,” Simon said in the fatherly voice he used when chastising her for leaving her socks on the floor. “We’ve got six more months left on our lease. A lot of residential areas won’t let you have potbellied pigs either.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to keep him.”
“You had that sound in your voice, like when you saw those puppies at Patsy’s place.”
She glanced at Oscar, who was snuggled in his pile of blankets. He was no puppy, that was for sure. “I don’t plan to keep him, but I do have to find a home for him. I’ve got to sell the orchids. It’s a mess. I phoned in ads to the local papers about the orchids and Oscar, so hopefully I’ll get some bites.” She gave him the number at the bar. “If you need me.” If he needed her…that was a laugh. Companionship, that’s what he needed. Anyone would probably do. She wondered if he’d even remember her birthday on Monday. Heck, she didn’t require anything fancy. Even some redneck roses, the wildflowers that grew by the side of the road, would do.
“I’m going out with Jackson and Cliff tonight. They’re going to take me out to some hip-hop clubs. Should be interesting.”
“I bet.” She didn’t mention the fact that he never took her out to the clubs. He seemed to think that because she worked in one, she didn’t want to spend her free time in one. “Have fun. I’ve got to get through these papers, so I’ll let you go. Tell the guys I said hey.”
She gave him plenty of opportunity to say something meaningful; at least an I miss you. All he said was, “Sure will. Bye.”
“Yeah, me too,” she said to the silence and wondered why she felt as hollow as an empty beer keg. But she didn’t want something heavy, she reminded herself. That’s why she picked guys like Simon.
She got up and walked over to the jukebox searching for one song in particular. She chose it for an upcoming selection. “Rocky Top” was the song that reminded her of the only man she’d given her heart to, and he’d broken it but good—her dad. Not that he’d meant to. Most people didn’t intend to die. She couldn’t forget that her dad had had alcohol in his system that last night. Winnerow had only a trace amount, but Kinsey had probably given the alcohol time to leave his system before testing him.
When the song played, she kicked her feet up the way she and her dad had. Her dad was always the first one on the makeshift dance floor and he danced like a sinner on Sunday. And like a sinner, he tried to get everybody to join in, though no one danced as crazy and as vivaciously. He threw his whole body into it and didn’t care what he looked like. When Kim was out there with him, she’d done the same.
She was halfway through the song when she got the impression that someone was there. It was that eerie, unexplainable feeling, that change in the atmosphere that some part of the brain picked up on. She whirled around and saw a man with a rounded back and white, scraggly hair that stuck out at the sides watching her with a smile.
“Just the way you and your pa used to do it,” he said, making himself comfortable in one of the chairs at the long table where her papers were laid out.
She pulled the plug on the jukebox to kill the music, irritation at being startled not nearly as bad as being caught dancing like a silly fool.
“Smitty!”
He looked worn and tired, but he had that same twinkle in his eyes. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” He lifted a key. “I let myself in like I always do.”
Oscar sauntered over and greeted him, and Smitty
scratched his back. When he hit a spot on Oscar’s side, the pig fell over grunting and writhing in pleasure.
She joined him at the table, her irritation melting away. “I thought you’d deserted me.”
He looked a little chagrinned as he pulled out some rolling papers and set a line of tobacco down the center. “Yeah, I suspect you would. I’ve had a lot on my mind, what with Elva being gone all of a sudden like. It’s been hard.”
She’d sometimes wondered at Elva’s and Smitty’s relationship. They were together a lot and acted like an old married couple, finishing each other’s sentences and knowing what the other liked and didn’t like. Back then it had grossed her out to think of her grandma in a romantic relationship.
“I know you two were close. I wish I’d come down more, called her more. I figured she’d be around forever.”
“We all did.” He sighed as he concentrated on rolling a perfect cigarette with yellowed fingers and licking the edge of the paper to seal it. When he was done, he finally met her gaze. “I did desert you, young’un. Ya see, I’m in a bad position. Loyalties,” he added when she waited for further explanation. “On the one hand is Elva. I owe Elva, and she did love this place. This bar and Oscar were her life.” He studied her a moment. “Now I see that guilt coloring your face ’cause you’re thinking you should have been part of her life, too, but you never came back around.”
All she could do was swallow hard and nod. How had he seen it? She hoped she wasn’t that transparent.
He nodded toward some of the pictures on the wall. “You were still part of her life. She has pictures of you all over the place. She knew it’d be hard for you to come back, even for a visit. And you did invite her to come up many a time. She considered it, even though she swore she’d never leave Cypress. She kept saying, ‘I got to call that girl, see how she’s doing.’ When someone dies, you get left with a bunch of should-haves and could-haves. She had them, too, young’un, so don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“You were talking about loyalties,” she said, unable to say anything else. Unable to thank him for that release. She kept rolling and unrolling one of the papers on the table.
He lit up his cigarette, filling the air with the scent of vanilla tobacco. “Loyalties.” He said the word as though it weighed heavily on him. “I have loyalties to Elva. To the bar.” He glanced around. “But I also have loyalties to the Macgregors. They’re kin, after all.”
Smitty’s daughter, Nancy, married Winnerow’s brother, Calvin.
“How is Nancy? I saw their airboat tour signs coming into town.”
“Calvin’s parents live with ’em now. Keeps ’em busy, I s’pose. Nancy and I don’t talk much. She’s busy with her life. We pass a friendly word now and again, and she brings me a ham big enough to feed fourteen people for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I didn’t mind; me and Elva had our holidays together.”
Now he was alone. She could feel the pain of his loneliness as though it were her own.
He didn’t dwell on it, though. “So you see, even though I’m not a blood Macgregor, I owe it to my daughter to lean in that direction should any strife come up.” He looked her straight in the eye. “And you, young’un, are strife personified.”
Kim crinkled the paper she’d been rolling. “I did what I had to do.”
“I understand. Winn Macgregor took away your daddy—”
“It had nothing to do with that.”
He regarded her for a moment. “You sure?”
“Of course, I am.” She was, wasn’t she? Yes, definitely. “I never lied about what I saw. Zell and Charlotte were the liars. They said I made it up because Winnerow killed my father, but they were the ones making up stories about me.” Even after all this time, the anger was still there. Maybe because the whole thing had cost Kim her home and ten years with her grandma. She felt a sense of importance that she get her side across to Smitty. “I saw Winnerow’s truck go down that road into the swamp. I’m pretty sure I saw Buck with him, which made sense because they were always hanging together. The next day when I walked down the road, I found that girl’s body.”
“It tore the town apart. Tore Elva apart, too. People stopped coming to the bar because she’d taken your side. It was hard times for a while.”
“I…I didn’t know that.” Kim hadn’t gone to the bar during the year between the investigation and the trial because people had been hostile toward her. “I’m sorry.”
“It didn’t matter to Elva, not all that much. Things were tight, but she was tough.”
“I didn’t know,” she repeated, softer this time.
Finding Rhonda Jones’s body was worse than seeing that alligator tear off Toopie’s arm. At first Kim hadn’t recognized the mass as a body at all when she’d seen something floating in the swamp near the old shell road. Her long, brown hair floated on the water and tangled in air plants that were growing on a log. Her skin had been gray, her eyes open wide and seeing nothing.
Kim had gotten sick twice before making it back to Heron’s Glen and calling the sheriff’s substation. Even now, her stomach lurched at the memory of it. Mack Kinsey hadn’t wanted to believe her story about seeing Winnerow’s truck. He’d tried to trip her up by confusing her about the timeline and making her doubt what she’d seen.
Rhonda had been hit on the head, strangled, and sexually assaulted with a stick. Because there was no semen found inside her, and since she’d been in the water, there was little physical evidence. Kim’s testimony was all they had. Kinsey was pressing for the case to be dropped against Winnerow for lack of evidence, just as it had been dropped against Buck Waddell. Kim had contacted the Naples Daily News with information about the case, and they had run a story. What had pushed her to talk to the newspaper was seeing Rhonda’s young son, Ernest. The boy had looked so lost and confused at the funeral. Kim knew that expression, knew those feelings too well. He was the catalyst to seek justice no matter the price. And it had cost big-time.
With public pressure, the case went to trial. Investigating detectives found a witness who’d seen Winnerow giving Rhonda a ride two weeks before her murder. One of her hairs was found in his truck. The case had gone to trial in Naples, the city forty minutes north of Cypress.
The prosecution’s best shot was Kim’s testimony. For the first time, Winnerow Macgregor was going to be judged for his sins. Most of the folks in town thought Winnerow couldn’t actually commit such a heinous crime. Sure, he’d killed her father, but that was an accident.
From the beginning of the investigation, Kim had moved in with Elva, unable to live with the Macgregors anymore. She knew Elva had sacrificed the town’s goodwill to harbor her granddaughter and had appreciated it. She never knew how much of a sacrifice that had been.
In the end, it had all been for nothing. Winnerow was acquitted. The hair in his truck? Sure, he’d given Rhonda a ride. Most people in Cypress would give a ride to someone walking along the side of the road. Half of the town was character witnesses, singing Winnerow’s praises. Those same folks also testified that Kim was vindictive and spiteful. Zell and Charlotte had testified that Kim’s behavior leading up to the murder indicated her venomous hatred toward her stepfather. They made up fights that hadn’t happened. It was believable enough to make the jury doubt.
Kim had left town sure there was nothing there for her. In the ten years she’d been gone, she’d dreamed about the swamps and waterways and everything that was Cypress. She’d wanted to come back, but not this way.
She wanted to thank Smitty for being there for Elva; thank you came almost as hard as I’m sorry. “You were a good friend to her.”
“We were a lot more than friends, young’un.”
“I kind of wondered about that.” After a moment, she said, “You found her, right?”
His mouth tightened. “When she didn’t show for lunch, I got worried about her. Saw her truck at the house, skiff was gone. I took my johnboat out and went looking for her.” He shook his head. And found her
, he didn’t say. “I tied a ribbon to a branch near where I found her. So, I could go back sometime.”
Not knowing what else to say, she said, “I’m surprised she didn’t leave you the bar.”
He’d been scratching Oscar’s belly the whole time, leaning slightly to the side to do it. “I’m happy enough with my little salary and something to pass the time. A man like me don’t need much in life.” Something in his expression told her he’d needed Elva, and it closed Kim’s throat.
“I’m glad you and Elva found happiness together,” she said at last. “Why didn’t you two ever get married?”
“She wouldn’t have me, if the truth be told. She liked her independence, liked her time on her own. Zell advised me to give her space or I’d lose her. I was happy to get what I could. That was enough.”
A thought occurred to her. “Would you like Oscar?”
“Can’t have a pig in the trailer park. Rabbits they’ll let me have, but not pigs. Zell asked me, too, and he had that same desperate kind of look on his face that you do. It was nice of him to take in Oscar, especially when he had no obligation to do it. And didn’t particularly want to. That boy is either here or out working, so he doesn’t have time to tend to an attention-monger like Oscar here.”
Kim found it slightly bizarre that she and Zell had anything in common, and that he had taken in Oscar because he was nice. She liked thinking Zell was that spoiled, brooding teenager who would lie under oath to protect his no-good father. “Zell and Elva were friends?”
“I think he saw her as a sort-of grandma. He lost both his mama and grandma when he was young, see. He was closest to his grandpa Zelwig. Mighty fine man, he was, nothing like Winn. Zelwig passed on when Zell was fifteen.”
I'll Be Watching You Page 6
