by Mike Stewart
Epilogue
Christmas Eve turned out to be the warmest day of December. Kai-Li spent an hour on the phone with Sunny and hung up with some new kind of peace or happiness. I seemed to be forgiven. She wanted to go shopping for presents in Fairhope later in the day, to “do something normal” and make it feel like a holiday. We had something to celebrate, she said.
Around ten, Sheri Baneberry stopped by with Christmas cookies. I smiled. It seemed unlike her. She smiled too. A shy and genuine smile. “Mom always baked cookies for friends at Christmas. I wanted to do it this year.” She paused. “I wanted to do it for you.”
I thanked her. I felt as though I’d been kicked in the stomach.
Kai-Li went to the kitchen to make coffee and to leave me alone with my client. Unfortunately, neither Sheri nor I seemed able to say much.
Finally, I asked, “You heard from Bobbi?”
Her blonde hair moved against her face as she shook her head no. “I think she’s gone. The police came by asking about her.” Some time passed. Then Sheri walked to one of the beachside windows as if something had caught her eye. “Who’s that?”
I walked over to stand beside her. Out on the beach, seemingly hovering on the sand like a Halloween raven cut from black construction paper, stood Zion Thibbodeaux. I glanced over at Sheri. She looked frightened. “Stay here.”
“Is that him?”
I nodded. “He’s not someone you want to confront, Sheri.” I turned to look full in her face. “Can you stay here and let me go talk to him?”
“Can I …”
“You know what I mean.”
She turned and walked away from the window. “I’ll stay.”
I stuck my head in the kitchen and told Kai-Li what was happening. She hurried into the living room, where she sat beside Sheri on the sofa.
I left by the back door—the one Chris Galerina had watched with trepidation the night he shot himself—crossed the deck, and stepped down into the yard. Zybo didn’t move. I kept walking until I was standing on the shore, five feet from him.
The Cajun stared at me.
I said, “You got my message.”
He nodded slowly with a small ducking motion, but his eyes never left mine.
“Bad timing. Sheri Baneberry’s inside.”
“So what you want?”
“I ran into Jonathan Cort yesterday over in Gulf Shores.”
He nodded again, and I filled him in on my conversation with Cort. I didn’t add anything. I tried not to emphasize anything. It was a report, and it included Cort’s claim that Zybo had killed Kate Baneberry.
When I finished, Zybo said, “Dat what he say? He ready to finger me anytime it look like trouble?”
“I think that’s a fair interpretation.”
“Unh-huh.” Zybo’s eyes grazed across the sand at his feet. “A clean kill, huh?”
“Yeah. He sounded proud of it.”
The dark man turned his back to me—something like a sign of complete trust in his world. Time passed. He was thinking. “Tommy? You ever clean a empty swimmin’ pool? A big old cement one?” He kept his eyes on the horizon, his back to me and my guests.
I studied the black leather stretched across his back. “I was a life-guard one summer in high school.”
“What you use to clean it?”
“Why?”
“Go a minute here. Answer de question I’m askin’.”
“I think …” I looked up at the house. Sheri and Kai-Li stood at the window watching. “We used bleach. Ten or twenty gallons of Clorox.”
“Cort, he got a pool in his backyard. Did you know dat?”
“No.”
“Yeah. He got a big un.” He pushed his hands deep inside the pockets of his coat and rolled his shoulders like he had in the diner. “What you tink ah dis, Tommy Boy? Let tings calm down round heah for a few month. Get on back to normal. Den sometime in March, maybe early April, Cort he decide to get his pool ready for warm weather.” He paused and then spoke the next sentence with no accent at all, mimicking a television reporter. “Apparently overcome by the fumes.” He went back to his roots. “Dats what I’m tin-kin’.” Zybo turned his profile to me now and smiled. “Let him lie there in a couple feet ah bleach and fuggin marinade over de weekend,” he kicked a puff of sand into the water, “turn de man as white as dis.” He turned to face me. He glanced up at the house and then back into my face. “Now, Tommy Boy, dat would be a clean kill.”
“It’s Christmas Eve.”
He grinned. “Merry Christmas.”
“I can’t talk about this today. Not any day.” I turned and walked back across the sand, over dead winter grass, and up onto the deck before glancing over my shoulder.
Zybo had disappeared. Other than the slow drift of clouds and the lapping of water at the shoreline, the only movement was the gentle rocking of the floating Christmas tree—its lights painting colored trails in the late-morning mist.
Sheri met me as I stepped back inside the house. “What’d he want?”
“We needed to wrap some things up.”
Her eyes were wide, her skin tight and pale. “Is he going away?”
“Yeah. I think he’s going away for now.”
Kai-Li put her arm around Sheri’s shoulders. “What do you mean ‘for now’?”
I looked out at the beach, at the sand and water and the impossibility of the lonely lighted tree floating on the bay.
Sheri asked, “Is there somebody we should tell? I mean, a man like that—are we safe?”
I nodded. “We’re safe, Sheri.”
I turned to look at my frightened client. I pictured her at ten years old, standing on a kitchen chair while her mother—tired but smiling after a long day at the construction company—hemmed a Dracula cape for a Halloween costume that would never be worn. I thought of Kate Baneberry lying dead in a hospital room, of two dead punks in a Jeep Wagoneer, of Judge Luther Savin with half his neck blown away, and of Laurel Adderson sitting in the psyche wing of her own hospital. I thought of Jonathan Cort standing in the surf at Gulf Shores, grinning at me.
Kai-Li’s voice broke the chain of nightmare visions. “Talk to us, Thomas. Are you going to do anything about him coming back? Are you going to warn anyone?”
I turned to look back out at Mobile Bay. “No,” I said, “I don’t think I am.”
This one’s for Amy
Also by
MIKE STEWART
Dog Island
Sins of the Brother
A Perfect Life
About the Author
Mike Stewart is an attorney who lives and writes in Birmingham, Alabama.
