A Minister's Ghost: A Fever Devilin Mystery

by Phillip DePoy

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you say anything that bad about anyone,” I told him, covering up my amazement as best I could.

  “I don’t believe you ever told me to shut up before,” he countered. “It’s a brand-new day.”

  “Yes.” I stared out the window at the gathering gray nimbus. “It certainly is that.”

  “I know I’ve been strange lately.”

  I could tell from his voice he’d mustered most of his energy simply to produce that one sentence. He fell silent after it.

  “What’s going on, Skid?”

  “I can’t tell you everything,” he replied, stony. “But how about if you meet me over at Miss Etta’s and we have a professional exchange of information.”

  “Gossip, you mean,” I confirmed.

  “Right,” he agreed.

  “Good,” I said firmly, my mood already bolstering. “I’m starved.”

  “There’s a surprise,” Skid said expressionlessly.

  He hung up before I had a chance to counter.

  Miss Etta’s was approaching nirvana to me as I drove the several miles from my house into town. I’d exchanged my dress jacket for the black leather one, but the rest of the ensemble remained: I was a patch of midnight.

  Sense memory filled the air around my head with the steam of golden squash and onions, fried okra crisp as popcorn, cornbread more like cake than a bride would eat at her own wedding. I tried to remember what day it was. Tuesday lunch usually meant Crackling Catfish, a Good Housekeeping Prize recipe that Etta had invented when the world was young. She’d used the money to open her dining establishment, and without any further effort on her part, she had turned from twenty to seventy-two.

  When the neon of her namesake sign appeared in the distance, I almost cried.

  I parked fairly close to her door; the lunch crowd was long past and the weather would most likely keep latecomers away. Miss Etta closed at 3:00 P.M. anyway, so Skid and I were likely to be her last customers of the day. Generally her business was slow on funeral or church-meeting days anyway. I could see Skid through the window, he was already seated at a table by the door.

  I pushed into the place, nodded once at Etta, and sat. Skid and I exchanged looks.

  Etta herself arrived a moment later to deliver silverware wrapped in three paper napkins and two indestructible plastic plates big enough to hold an entire pumpkin.

  Etta was dressed in her uniform: a black print, calf-length dress, blue slippers, a man’s chocolate cardigan sweater; a wiry, gray bun. She retreated without a word.

  Instead of going into the kitchen right away, we sat a moment in silence.

  “So,” I said finally. “How’s your morning been?”

  “I went over to visit Eppie Waldrup and impound the Volkswagen.

  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “Yeah, Fever, I’m really sorry for the way I’ve been acting lately.”

  “God, am I glad to hear you say that, Skid,” I exhaled. “I’ve been very worried about you. Everyone has.”

  “Everyone has?” He seemed troubled.

  “You know, Girlinda’s called me several times,” I admitted uncomfortably, “and Lucinda, you know, is concerned.”

  “My wife’s called you?” He could barely say it.

  “She didn’t know what was the matter with you,” I stammered. “She thought you might have said something to me. Of course, as it turned out, I was more in the dark than she.”

  He slumped in his seat.

  “You know how we always used to make fun of Maddox,” Skid said softly after a moment, “and talk about how mean he was?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve been a short while on his job, and it doesn’t seem so ridiculous to me now.”

  “What is it?” I wondered, staring.

  “When you look at a beautiful garden,” he answered hazily, “you don’t think how many biting bugs, and poison spiders, and great big snakes can hide in there.”

  “And now your job in tending to the garden.” I said, “is rooting out the reptiles.”

  “Exactly.” He closed his eyes.

  “After a while, you don’t notice the dahlias anymore.”

  He took a breath, bit his lower lip. Then a slight flinch opened his eyes again.

  “You went with dahlias?” he asked, a semblance of his old self creeping into the sound of his voice, if not a smile to his lips.

  “Well,” I played along, “a rose seemed too obvious, and I thought cleome would be a trifle obscure for a person of your sort.”

  “What the hell is cleome?”

  “I rest my case.” I smiled. “Sometimes they’re called spider something-or-other, though, so you see why I thought of it.”

  “Right,” he said, sitting up. “That would have been a good one.”

  Without further ado, he stood, scooped up his plate, and headed for the kitchen.

  I followed.

  We had the place to ourselves, surveying the vegetables simmering on the oversize stove. I knew better, but I loaded my plate with a few dabs of everything Miss Etta had cooked that day: sweet creamed corn, stewed-all-night beef, “white cloud” turnip-potato-butter mash. An unbelievable array of earthly delights winked their bubbles in my direction, and I forgot everything bad about the world in favor of inhaling those aromas.

  God invented gastronomy, that much was certain to me.

  A moment later and we were back at our table by the door, and I’d already finished two chicken wings, all the white cloud mash, most of the pickled beets, and half of the carrots with tarragon.

  I glanced up to find Skid staring at me.

  “What?” I managed around a mouthful of corn bread.

  “You’re eating like a condemned man.” He laughed.

  “You don’t know the day I’ve had,” I said, returning my attention to my plate.

  I finished my meal in as much silence as fork scraping plate would permit and sat back.

  “Damn,” Skidmore admitted, “that was some powerful eating.”

  “I’m thinking about seconds,” I said, casting a wistful eye in the direction of the kitchen.

  “No, you’re not,” he insisted. “You sit right here for three minutes and let your stomach catch up with your mouth, you’ll be complaining about how full you are.”

  “Not likely, but I’ll take a break to talk for a second.”

  “Good.” His face instantly lost its cheerful expression.

  “After I heard about the toxicology report from Millroy, who is, by the way, a strange young man, I thought I should nip over to Pine City and check with this person at the movie house to see if the girls had had dates that night. And they had.”

  “Nickel Mathews,” Skid said, eyes cold.

  “And the Riddick boy.”

  “Tony’s his first name.”

  “And Andy Newlander, this usher at the theater,” I concluded, “told me that he’d sold the drug to Nickel. That’s all. No one saw anyone give the drug to the girls, and the report from Millroy isn’t remotely conclusive.”

  “Yes”—Skid nodded—“but there’s more to the story. As I was saying on the phone, I can’t tell you all of it, but I can tell you that there’s a larger drug problem in our little hamlet than you would ever imagine. Melissa and I have been talking about this situation for quite some time now.”

  “You and Melissa seem to spend a lot of time together,” I interrupted.

  Skid’s lips narrowed and his eyes burned.

  “I said I can’t tell you everything,” he whispered through loosely clenched teeth. “You don’t have any idea what all is involved.”

  “All right,” I rejoined unsteadily, “for the moment let’s just get on with your story.”

  “Nickel is messed up,” Skid said plainly.

  “Beginning with his name,” I agreed, hoping to lighten the moment.

  “Do you have any idea how he got it?” Skid challenged, still tense.

 
“It’s a nickname, obviously.”

  “Not exactly.” Skid leaned his elbows on the green Formica tabletop. “His father didn’t name him anything when the boy was born. It just says ‘Boy’ on the birth certificate. And when Nickel was old enough to ask about it, he went to his father and wanted to know what his name was, instead of boy. And his father told him he wasn’t anything that needed a name. Said he wasn’t worth the trouble it would take to think one up. Told his own son he wasn’t worth a dime.”

  “And then started calling him Nickel,” I guessed.

  “Exactly.”

  “Sounds like a good way to turn a child into a drug addict, the sort of boy who would throw rocks at a rabbit.”

  “Rocks at a rabbit?” Skid asked, scowling at me.

  “Nothing,” I hurried on. “So you and Melissa were talking about Nickel’s problem.”

  “She’s the one who got me onto this investigating drugs in the first place. She’s got a personal stake in it, you understand, so we pursued it, and then we uncovered some incredible … I feel like the world I’m living in has no relationship whatsoever with the one I was in a year ago. I don’t quite know what to do.”

  “You need peach cobbler,” I said immediately. “I saw some in the kitchen.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” He glared.

  “Many people will tell you the sun is a lemon,” I lectured, “or an orange, but I believe this is a less accurate metaphor than the peach. A peach is at once yellow and rosy, like a sunrise. And when it is peeled, a peach is the very image of sunlight at noon. When sliced and spiced and heated with the sort of witchery of which Miss Etta is capable, no one can argue with me that the result deserves its rightful place at the center of our culinary universe: the sun of all realities.”

  “You need help.” He grinned.

  “You need cobbler.” I stood.

  “Fever,” he said, stopping me. “I just can’t tell you everything that’s going on.”

  “You keep saying that, Skid,” I said quietly, frozen in my standing position by the table. “But it somehow involves Melissa, right?”

  “We were together,” he whispered, his voice hollow, “on the night the girls were killed.”

  No amount of prying or insisting after that would convince Skidmore to make any further confession—or get me any closer to peach cobbler.

  I knew that his reticence was due partly to a natural, mountain-bred obstinance. Something else was on his face, though, that affirmed my worst fear and the lowest town gossip. Skid and Melissa were having an affair.

  The thought was barely in my head before my mind reeled at the prospect. Businessmen in Atlanta had affairs. Adults on Blue Mountain were single, courting, or married. No other category existed.

  Sadly, that conceit was a product of my own mind, obviously a part of the fantasy I’d constructed about my hometown. It was a carefully crafted illusion to avoid facing more obvious realities, mundane and paltry.

  No place on earth was untouched by dark matter.

  Skid and I stood on the sidewalk in front of Miss Etta’s, neither of us knowing what to say.

  Finally I leaned on my truck, folded my arms, and reverted to the safety of my lecturer persona.

  “Are you familiar with the concept of dark matter in astrophysics?”

  “Honest to God, Fever,” he said, shaking his head, “I don’t know where in the world you come up with half the stuff you say.”

  “Time magazine, usually,” I told him. “So when some group of astronomers tried to measure the rotational speed of certain galaxies, they came across something of a mystery. They discovered that most galaxies rotate more than twice as fast as they should be able to, and that creates a problem. The gravity around them shouldn’t be able to hold them together. According to Einstein, they should be flying apart. But they weren’t flying apart, something else besides gravity was keeping the galaxies together. One scientific explanation is that most galaxies are surrounded by some form of ‘dark’ matter, something that can’t be observed by any method we know.”

  “Then why do they think it’s there?” He sighed, his patience strained by my erudition.

  “X-ray telescopes have discovered huge clouds of impossibly hot gases in clusters of galaxies.” I folded my arms. “These hot gas clouds provide an independent measurement of dark matter. The measurement shows that there must be at least four times as much dark matter as all the stars and gas we observe, or the hot gas would escape the cluster.”

  “I see. There’s more darkness all around us than there is light.” He nodded. “You should really look into Girlinda’s perennial suggestion to you and start seeing a therapist. I believe you might suffer from that clinical depression she’s been reading about.”

  “I’m almost finished,” I snapped. “One possible explanation for dark matter is the white dwarf.”

  Skidmore’s head shot up so quickly it made his neck crack.

  Which told me one of the things I wanted to know. Skidmore had met, or at least seen, Orvid Newcomb.

  I kept my composure, feigning indifference to his surprise.

  “A white dwarf,” I continued easily, “is the final condensed state of a small star. White dwarfs are known to exist in abundance in the universe. They could explain the presence of dark matter if young galaxies produce white dwarfs that cool more rapidly than we think they do.”

  “Oh.” He was clearly shaken.

  “As you know, my studies in folklore and mythology have led me to believe that nearly everything we think and everything we observe is metaphorical. The practical science of dark matter is less important to me than the symbology involved. We do seem to be surrounded by more and more darkness. I make this observation because it seems to apply to the immediate, terrible reality of Tess and Rory.”

  “Yes.” His face was drained of color. “I see that.”

  “And you see that no matter what you say, I can’t really stop looking into it. I was doing it at first for Lucinda. But now I’m convinced that these boys gave Tess and Rory a drug that made them unable to recognize the danger they were in when they were sitting on the train tracks. I have to find out if it’s true, and if it is, I have to make certain that you get those boys and readjust their lives. I’m telling you this because I want you to know that with or without your help or permission, I’m going to do this.”

  “Okay.” He ran his hand over his hair and took in a deep breath. “I understand.”

  “I also want you to know that no matter what you’ve done or what you’re doing,” I offered more softly, “I’m your oldest and best friend. I won’t let you go too far wrong before I start yelling at you to turn around.”

  “You mean in the investigation?” he asked uncertainly.

  “Or anything else.”

  “Um,” he stammered. “All right.”

  I was puzzled by his seeming lack of comprehension concerning the real meaning of my compassion, but before I could explore the matter further, we were both startled by Miss Etta.

  She had shuffled to her door, swung it open, and called out:

  “Devilin! That you?”

  “Miss Etta?” I answered, a little surprised that she knew my name.

  “Telephone for you,” she grumbled.

  “For me?” I thought she was mistaken. “In your place?”

  “Well, do you want to get it or not?” She didn’t wait for an answer. The door swung closed behind her.

  “Who would even know I’m here?” I asked Skid.

  “Better get it,” he encouraged.

  Still a little confused, I stepped onto the sidewalk and followed where Miss Etta had gone. She was back in her usual place behind the register, eyes closed. The phone was on the counter in front of her, receiver off the hook.

  I picked it up carefully, trying not to disturb Etta any further.

  “Hello?” I said gingerly into the phone.

  “Dr. Devilin,” the voice said quickly, “I’m glad yo
u’re still there. It’s Melissa Mathews. I would have just come over there to Miss Etta’s, but I’m not supposed to leave this desk while the sheriff is away. We’ve had a notice of disturbance at your house.”

  “What?”

  “Well,” she said, attempting to apply her official voice to the matter at hand, “Lucinda Foxe called us a while ago. She was looking for you and called your house and a strange man answered the phone!”

  “What?” I demanded. “Are you sure?”

  “That’s what she said,” Melissa confirmed.

  “She just dialed the wrong number.”

  “No,” Melissa said uncomfortably. “I asked her that. She was very upset. I’m sending a man up there right now.”

  “Did you know that Skidmore was here with me?”

  “Oh my gosh,” she sighed. “No, sir. Could you please let me talk to him, then?”

  “God.” I was barely comprehending what I was hearing.

  Skid had come in and was staring at me, wanting answers.

  “And then you call Ms. Foxe, hear? She’s really worried,” Melissa insisted.

  “Yes,” I managed into the phone. “Thank you, Melissa. I’ll call Lucinda and go right home.”

  “Okay,” she said cheerily. “You let us know if there’s anything stolen or messed up, hear?”

  I motioned for Skid to take the phone.

  “Right,” I told Melissa absently. “Here’s Skid.”

  He took the phone from me.

  “What?” Skid asked Melissa.

  “An intruder was in my house,” I told him, astonished, “and answered my phone when Lucinda called.”

  “Yes,” Skid said, his lips tight, “you were right to call Dr. Devilin. I’ll handle it now.”

  “I’m calling Lucinda this minute,” I said to Skid.

  He nodded.

  “All right, Melissa,” he said into the phone. “Damn.”

  He pushed the button on the phone, hanging up on Melissa, and handed me the receiver.

  I dialed Lucinda’s number. It barely rang once.

  “Fever?” she said anxiously into the phone.