As they left, I heard the young mother whisper something to her friends about driving drunk. The gossip was quickly spreading.
Shiloh Weaver delivered the new order of shirts herself that afternoon. She was a short woman in her midtwenties, her brown pixie cut already showing signs of premature silver.
“Things are slow around the lot today,” she said by way of explanation, “and it was a nice day to get out of the office.”
I agreed with her. But Peter and Fowler had conspired to keep me trapped in the shop for the next few days.
“I really appreciate you taking these,” Shiloh continued as we checked off the sizes together. “Usually I get stuck doing all this by myself. It’s nice to get some help.”
“I know what you mean,” I said lightly. I didn’t bother saying her boss had done exactly that to me, and he didn’t even pay my salary. I didn’t want to sound like a whiner.
To be fair, Fowler had just taken advantage of Peter’s generosity with my time, but that didn’t make me feel any more kindly toward him.
Shiloh seemed reluctant to go back to the office, so I offered her a cup of coffee as an excuse to play hooky a little longer.
I locked up the shop with a word of warning to Bluebeard, and we walked next door. Chloe was at the counter, and she took our order with her usual side of gossip.
She recognized Shiloh, and pounced instantly. “I hear you have a new lot boy.”
Shiloh shrugged. “Yeah. Mr. Fowler offered the job to Travis Chambers, after, you know.” She couldn’t bring herself to actually say the words.
I wondered if I could get something more from her. “I saw them talking after the memorial,” I said. “I wondered what that was all about.”
Shiloh looked stricken. “Oh no! Mr. Fowler would never do anything like that. He’s really sensitive about what happened to Kevin, and he really cares about those boys on the team.”
I bet. “Those boys” make him look like a big man in town. He really cared about keeping them around. I wasn’t so sure he actually cared about the kids themselves.
The Lighthouse was empty except for the three of us, and Chloe was quick to accept my invitation to join us at a table near the counter. “You can jump right up if anyone comes in,” I said. “And I bet you’d be glad to get off your feet for a few minutes.”
She hesitated for a second, then grabbed a cup and filled it from a carafe. “I am supposed to get a break,” she said, slipping out from behind the counter.
“Me, too,” I said as I sat down.
Shiloh gave us a conspiratorial grin. “I don’t usually get a break when I’m in the office. Guess I might have to make up for that this afternoon.”
While we drank our coffee, I tried to question Shiloh about Fowler and about the car lot. I agreed with Felipe that Fowler was a self-serving jerk, although I wasn’t ready to label him a murderer—but I was curious how people closer to him saw him.
“Is Mr. Fowler really that much of a slave driver?” I asked. “You really don’t get breaks?”
Shiloh tried to laugh it off. “I don’t take them, that’s all. We’re usually pretty busy, and Mr. Fowler depends on me to keep things running smoothly.”
“Isn’t that his job?” Chloe said. “I mean, he’s the boss. Shouldn’t he make sure things go right?”
Shiloh shook her head. “No, he’s way too busy. That’s why he has me. I deal with the little things, and that lets him take care of the important stuff.”
“What’s more important than running his business?” The question was out before I could stop myself.
“It’s not like that,” Shiloh protested.
“I, I’m sorry,” I stammered. I wasn’t doing a very good job of being subtle. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that. It’s just that,” I scrambled for a logical explanation, “I have a small business, and I do all the work myself, except for a part-time clerk during the busiest part of the year. One of these days, I hope to be successful enough that I can have more help. It makes me curious what the other things are that I would have to think about.”
Shiloh brightened, and it looked like I’d recovered.
“He has a lot of community obligations,” she explained. “He’s the president of the Buccaneer Booster Club and he’s on a couple committees at the Chamber of Commerce, and I’ve heard,” she lowered her voice to a whisper even though we were still alone in the store, “he’s going to run for the School Board.”
I filed that piece of information away, wondering whether Kevin Stanley’s death would have any effect on Fowler’s political ambitions, if Shiloh’s rumor was true.
By the time she went back to the car lot, the three of us were best pals. Shiloh even volunteered to pick up the money from the shirt sales the next week, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to come down and hand over the proceeds.
I got the distinct impression it was an excuse to get away from Fowler Auto Sales for part of the day.
I didn’t have the same luxury. The display of memorial T-shirts still needed to be restocked, and I was pretty sure there were no T-shirt fairies who were going to do it for me.
I was just putting the last shirt in place when Jake Robinson came in the door.
He walked over to the display and picked up a shirt, unfolding it and holding it up against his broad chest. “I figured I ought to have one of these if I want to be part of the town. Think this will fit?”
I tried not to show my admiration for what he’d look like in the close-fitting shirt. “It ought to,” I said.
Jake carried the shirt to the counter, looking sheepish. “I probably won’t wear it,” he confessed. “I usually buy these things and then let them sit in the bottom of the drawer until I give them away.”
I had to laugh. “I don’t think anybody wears them, except maybe some of the school kids. It’s really about supporting the team and remembering Kevin.”
Jake handed over a check from the bookstore and tossed the shirt over his shoulder. “Thought any more about that coffee?”
I wasn’t about to admit just how much I’d thought about it. “Coffee’s good,” I said as nonchalantly as I could muster.
He glanced around the shop. “You have time now?” he asked, careful to keep his tone light, as though the thought had just occurred to him.
I shook my head with real regret. “I’m sorry, I just got back from having a cup, and I have a lot to do this afternoon.”
It wasn’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Business was slow except for the T-shirts, my books were up-to-date, and I had cleaned the shop last night. The only thing I really had on my agenda was some more research on Uncle Louis.
Jake tried to hide it, but I thought I saw a flash of disappointment in his eyes, and I felt my resolve weaken.
No, I needed to figure out the mystery of Uncle Louis first. Jake was a mystery for another day.
“No sweat,” Jake shrugged, and the shirt draped over his shoulder slipped. He grabbed it before it hit the floor.
“Good reflexes,” I said.
He let the remark go without comment.
“Well, you’re busy. I better get back to the store. Maybe some other time.”
I nodded, biting back the impulse to say “Soon.”
The door closed behind Jake, and I watched through the window as he crossed the street with an efficient long-legged stride that looked effortless.
“Liar!” Bluebeard shrieked.
I IGNORED HIS SQUAWKING.
My search through the back issues of the News and Times with Karen had been incomplete. I knew there was at least one more issue with an article about Uncle Louis.
Checking the dates on the earlier stories, I started a timeline of my great-uncle’s life. If he bought Southern Treasures in 1945 after seven years in the service, he’d enlisted sometime in 1938.
That was where I should start my search.
Setting aside the 1940s papers I had initially selected, I dug through the stack f
or the 1930s. There weren’t many. I would have to get into the bundles I had stored in the attic at some point.
But there had been a third paper on the counter the night of Kevin’s accident. I still thought of it as an accident, even though I had accepted Bluebeard telling me it wasn’t.
Although I still had trouble calling it murder.
I locked the front door, flipped over the “CLOSED” sign, and laid the papers out on the front counter. Carefully turning the fragile pages, I scanned the headlines of each article for clues to Uncle Louis.
When I finally found the notice, it was a small box on the bottom of a page of wedding stories, birth announcements, and a column about several local students going off to college. Typical small-town news.
At the top of the page was the date: September 5, 1938.
Recent Keyhole Bay High School graduate Louis Marcel Georges reports for duty next week with the United States Army. Mr. Georges, Class of 1938, will report to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for basic training. The son of Mr. and Mrs. Emile Georges, Louis is well known as a standout on the Buccaneer football team, where he made his mark as running back.
That was all. A single paragraph and a grainy black-and-white photo a couple inches tall, a long shot of a slender teenager in a football uniform with a ball tucked under his arm. It was intended to be an action shot, and I had seen dozens exactly like it each football season.
I studied the photo, trying to reconcile the fuzzy image with the middle-aged man I remembered from my childhood.
Louis had been in his midfifties when I was born, and I had never known him as a young man. It was hard to connect his older self from my childhood with the scrawny teenager I saw in the photograph.
It was a familiar feeling for me. I had that same feeling looking at pictures of my parents as children. Recently, I’d begun to examine their later photographs, frozen forever in their early forties, just a few years older than the face I saw in the mirror every morning. I had my mother’s blue eyes and fair skin, and I looked more like her with each passing year, just as they looked younger with each year.
I gathered up the three papers I’d found—the enlistment article, the one about Southern Treasures, and Uncle Louis’s obituary—and carried them to my so-called office in the back. I didn’t use the cubbyhole in the storage room much since I usually did most of my computer work on the terminal out front, but my printer and scanner were in the back, out of the way.
I fiddled with the scanner for a minute, finally figuring out how to temporarily remove the cover so I could lay the paper across the scanner bed without folding it. The paper was old and dry, and I was happy not to have to put any more stress on the fragile newsprint.
I made multiple copies so I could share them with Karen, Felipe, and Ernie at dinner Thursday night. Since Karen and I had told the guys the story, I might as well bring them up to speed on what I had learned.
I put the copies in a folder and replaced the originals in their plastic sleeves on the sales rack. There might be more articles somewhere, but for the moment I had found the three that Bluebeard—no, that Uncle Louis—had left for me to find.
Restless, I wandered upstairs and rummaged around the apartment, then came back down. I picked up a book and then abandoned it. I even considered walking across the street and telling Jake Robinson I’d changed my mind about that cup of coffee.
Bluebeard was sensitive to my moods, and I knew my fidgeting would eventually stress him out. Or was it Uncle Louis that reacted?
Either way, I’d have an agitated parrot if I kept this up. I needed to do something, anything other than wander around the shop and apartment aimlessly.
I’d had these symptoms before. I’d been inactive for too long, my stroll around Lake DeFuniak about my only exercise lately. I marched myself upstairs and changed into my workout gear. A workout was what I needed.
Fifteen minutes later I walked through the front door of the Community Center, next door to the high school.
The facility was a compromise between the City Council and the School Board; overlapping membership between the two groups sometimes made cooperation easier, and sometimes made it nearly impossible. The Community Center was in the “easier” category.
When the school district couldn’t afford to upgrade the athletic buildings, they teamed up with the city to provide a multi-use facility. Now the sports teams had a state-of-the-art workout space that they shared with the rest of the town.
It had taken some time to get the schedules to mesh, and there were still occasional clashes, but for the most part it worked pretty well.
Climbing the stairs to the cardio room, I heard the whine of elliptical machines and stationary bikes, punctuated by the intermittent clang of pumping iron from the space below.
An antiseptic tang tickled my nose, and for a moment I thought I was going to sneeze.
At the top of the stairs, the expansive cardio room was emptier than I expected. Two thirtysomething women stood next to an elliptical machine where a third was just finishing her session. A white-haired man pedaled doggedly on a stationary bike, headphones clamped over his ears as he stared at the television screen suspended in the corner, where a helmet-haired newsreader silently mouthed her story.
I claimed an empty treadmill, and by the time I had my water and towel arranged, the women had left. I was about to start my walk, a book propped on the rack in front of me, when Coach Bradley walked in.
Danny Bradley was a couple years older than I, a friend of my cousin Peter’s until Peter’s folks had moved to Montgomery. I’d been a tagalong third wheel when Peter’s mother insisted, though the boys hated the idea.
At the moment, he looked several decades older than me. He moved with the tentative step of an elderly man afraid of losing his balance, and his usually ramrod-straight posture—a reminder of his stint in the Marine Corps—sagged.
Danny spotted me as he came in. There was a flash of puzzled recognition, as though he knew he should know who I was, but he couldn’t be sure.
I seized the opportunity, waving at him across the room. “Hi, Danny,” I said, as though we’d been on a first-name basis all along, instead of twenty-five years ago. “How you holding up?”
It was a question he’d probably heard a million times in the last week. He shook his head slowly as he crossed the room to my perch on the treadmill. Our six-inch height difference camouflaged by the treadmill deck, I looked Danny in the eye.
He seemed defeated.
“It’s a tough one for us,” he said softly. “Kevin was a good kid.”
It was the same thing everyone was saying. And I wasn’t interested in whether Kevin was a good kid. I wanted to know why he died. Why, according to Uncle Louis, his death wasn’t an accident.
“But how are you doing, Danny? It’s not just the team; you’re pretty tight with all your players. It must be hard.”
Surprise registered on Danny’s face. I doubt anyone had asked about him personally in the last week, and yet he’d clearly suffered a loss. “He was special,” he conceded. “The most talented kid I’ve coached, I think. He could have had a helluva future.”
I stepped off the treadmill, moving closer to Danny, and lifting my face to look him in the eye. “He was that good? I’d seen him play, but I’m no expert.”
Danny hesitated. I saw something shift in his eyes, and for the first time, I saw the man behind the tough shell of the coach. Hurt, loss, and anger battled for control.
“He was.” Anger won out. “The whole team looked up to him, followed his lead. He could have made them all look good. Instead, he had them out slamming beers in the woods.”
His mouth set in a grim line. “If he’d been caught I’d have had to suspend him for at least a month, but he’d be alive. Such a damned fool thing to do! Hurt the whole team.”
He stopped, his face reddening as he bit back the rest of his tirade. Kevin’s death had inflicted a lot of damage on the team and their chances, but Danny saw what m
ight have been, and it made him mad.
How mad?
I wasn’t sure, and he held back any more comments. Judging from his expression, he hadn’t intended to share those feelings.
“I hadn’t thought about that,” I said, keeping my voice low in a show of confidentiality. The only other person in the room was the old guy on the bike, with his headphones firmly in place, but Danny was regretting what he’d said, and I wanted to reassure him.
“It’s sad that sometimes kids can’t see the bigger picture. I guess that’s one of those lessons you learn as you get older,” I said.
“Well,” the anger was still in Danny’s voice, bitterness seeping into every word. “Kevin won’t be learning any more lessons.”
He muttered something under his breath. Anyone else would have just heard a vague growl, but I’d spent years listening to Bluebeard mutter, and I was pretty sure I understood what Danny said.
“And he won’t be ruining anyone else’s season.”
“THANKS, BY THE WAY, FOR TAKING CARE OF THE MEMORIAL T-shirts.” Danny not-so-subtly signaled that the discussion of Kevin was closed. “I appreciate it. Fowler would do it, but he’s got a lot on his plate. The Booster Club will need all the help it can get this year, and your offer is really appreciated. It means a lot to the team, too, to know the town is behind them.”
There was no sense in trying to tell him it wasn’t my idea. And if Peter was going to volunteer me to do the work, then I’d take the gratitude. It was likely to be all I got out of the deal besides the tiny commission that would barely cover my expenses, so I might as well enjoy it.
“Thanks, Danny. I actually had to get another load of shirts this afternoon; we’d sold out of almost everything I had.”
For a moment Danny’s eyes glittered, and he blinked rapidly a couple times. “That’s good to hear. The team hasn’t even been in to get their shirts yet.” He snapped his fingers. “I need to check with Fowler on that. He usually holds back a bunch for the players when he does something like this for special events and things like that, but I’m not sure if he did this time.”
Murder Buys a T-Shirt Page 10
