Cheri on Top

by Susan Donovan

  How had she ever allowed herself to get so fucked up?

  “Yes, well, forgive me if it seems like an invasion of your privacy, but I have a question about Barbara Jean’s personal life before she disappeared.”

  Carlotta looked disgusted. “I said I’d give y’all a quote about my sister being a decent and lovely young woman—I ain’t airing out her dirty laundry. If that’s all y’all want, you can turn that pink car right around and head back to town.”

  Cheri looked around for somewhere to sit, and motioned to a still mostly intact picnic table. “Do you mind if we sit for a spell? It’s important.”

  Carlotta scowled at her, but gingerly stepped down from the stoop and headed to the table. Coming closer, Cheri could see her shins were covered in scabs and her nails were yellow and broken.

  “So yer the one who got all rich and fancy down in Florida, right?” Carlotta sat down across from Cheri and produced a grin. That’s when she saw that the woman had about four teeth left in her head.

  “Uh, yes,” Cheri answered her. “I was an accountant and then went into real estate.”

  “But you’re stayin’ in Bigler now?”

  Cheri pulled the new reporter’s notebook from her bag and flipped it open. “I’m not sure about my plans yet, Ms. McCoy.” She clicked on her pen. “Now, I understand you were willing to talk to me and I appreciate that very much. I have a couple specific things I’d like to ask you.”

  She shook her head and looked around the land. Granted, it was a lovely natural setting, in a fertile dip in the foothills, surrounded by trees, the mountains hovering just to the west, but Cheri wondered if the current state of things made Carlotta sad. She hoped the old lady at least had the comfort of good memories.

  “This place was always a hole. Once he got ahold of this land, my husband became a lazy good-for-nuthin’ who never lifted a finger to feed his family. He only lifted his hand to—” Carlotta paused. “Anyway, my three sons grew up to be just like their daddy, sad to say. One’s in prison down in Charlotte now. Twenty-five to life.”

  “Oh,” Cheri said. So much for that fantasy. “So, Ms. McCoy, about Barbara Jean. Do you know if she was seeing a man at the time of her death?”

  Carlotta turned her head slowly and examined Cheri again. “I can’t say.”

  “All right, well, the reason I ask is that now that the police are sure they’ve found her, they are exploring who might be responsible for her murder.”

  Carlotta frowned. “Honey, I’m old and poor—I ain’t soft in the head. I know what the police are lookin’ to do. All of ’em been out here enough times—the FBI, the CIA, whatever they are.”

  Cheri felt frustrated. Her first foray into reporting wasn’t going so great. And she was about to ask a question that was none of her business, but the issue was so glaringly obvious she couldn’t stop herself.

  “Why in the world don’t you sell this property?” Cheri spat out. “It must be worth a fortune, Ms. McCoy. You could get yourself a little place in town, have a very comfortable life, instead of living out here like this.”

  Carlotta’s mouth tightened and her eyes went wide. “Don’t ask me any more about that. It’s none of your goddamn business. It’s nobody’s business. If you bring it up again, I’ll throw you off this land.”

  Cheri leaned back, surprised by the vitriol of her response. She knew how people around here felt about land that had belonged to their families for generations, but Carlotta had just said her husband bought this property. So why was she so attached?

  “Of course. Forgive me,” Cheri said. “J.J. DeCourcy said you’d read my note and agreed to be interviewed, but maybe there was a misunderstanding. I’ll go ahead and leave.”

  That’s when Carlotta chuckled. “Lord-a-mighty, Miss Newberry. You sure are a stuffy one, ain’t ya? I did say I’d talk to you, but that’s because I knowed you have a sister. Everybody around here’s heard about the two baby girls that got left alone in the world back when your mama and daddy died. I thought about you girls when I saw your sister’s engagement announcement in the Bugle the other day.”

  Cheri straightened. “I see.”

  “That’s why I said I’d talk to you. I figured you’d understand how bad it hurt to lose my Barbara Jean.”

  Cheri sat frozen on the rickety picnic table bench, unsure how to respond. But Carlotta was waiting. “Yes, Tanyalee is two years younger than I am.”

  “I know she’s had trouble with the law, but did you’uns get along when you was little? Me and Barbara Jean was like Frick and Frack, I’ll tell ya. She was my big sister, like you are to Tanyalee, and I loved her with every bit of my heart. We lived outside of town, so she was also my playmate, my friend. I looked up to her. I wanted to be just like her.”

  Cheri tried to smile when what she really wanted to do was cry. Obviously, the Newberry girls had little in common with the Smoot sisters. Tanyalee never loved Cheri, or looked up to her, or wanted to be like her. Cheri never considered Tanyalee a playmate or friend. “How lovely for you,” was Cheri’s response.

  Carlotta shrugged. “I was sixteen when she up and went missing. I never finished school, and got myself married a few weeks after she disappeared. Never had a friend like her since.”

  “She was very beautiful,” Cheri offered, sensing that Carlotta might be thawing a little. “I remember as a kid thinking about her and what she had planned for herself, how she wanted to move to the big city. I sort of identified with her.”

  The old lady nodded. “She had big plans, that was for sure. Wanted to be in the pictures. But she shoulda got out while she had the chance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean she shoulda finished school and left instead of…” Carlotta stopped herself, looked at Cheri briefly, and dragged her eyes away. She almost looked ashamed.

  “Instead of what?”

  Carlotta shook her head. “Oh, you know how girls can fall for fancy-talkin’ fellas. I suppose you could say she was a bit of a wild child.”

  Cheri smiled. “My aunt Viv was one of those, I hear.”

  Carlotta’s head snapped around. She nodded, lips curled. It was only then that Cheri saw a hint of Barbara Jean’s beauty in her little sister. “She was older than us, but yes, we all knew about Vivienne Newberry’s rep-yoo-tay-shun, as they called it back then.”

  Cheri laughed, and before she knew it, she’d laid her hand on Carlotta’s, and the old lady was laughing, too. But not three seconds passed before Carlotta removed her hand and went silent.

  “That’s all I can say today.” She got up from the picnic table.

  “But—”

  “Good-bye, Miss Newberry. I enjoyed the visit.”

  Cheri scrambled to her feet and followed her toward the trailer, the dogs renewing their racket. She had to scream over the noise again. “But I thought you were willing to tell me something, Carlotta! I thought you were willing to help us!”

  “Help you?” She wheeled around, her eyes suddenly angry. “Help you make money off my dead sister’s bones? I don’t see that happening, no, I do not. Y’all should’ve did yer job the first time around.” She reached for the trailer’s door handle.

  “Please—”

  Carlotta Smoot McCoy looked over her shoulder. Her face was not kind. Her voice trembled. “This county is rotten to the core, girl. Look around you.” She waved a skinny arm over her property. “All these fancy new houses they’re puttin’ up look nice, but it’s all rotten underneath. Same for all this beautiful land everywhere the eye can see!”

  Cheri took a step back.

  Carlotta pointed a spindly finger down at her. “Believe me, Miss Newberry, anything good and true in this town is buried under a mess of thick, black mud, just like my pretty, pretty sister.”

  She slipped inside the door, leaving Cheri standing with her mouth open, confusion the only thing she’d be taking back to the newsroom.

  The new reporter’s notebook and pen? She needn’t have bo
thered.

  * * *

  “Are you absolutely certain?” Cheri scribbled on her legal pad and circled the information about ten times while the Cataloochee County clerk double-checked the information.

  “I’m sure,” she said. “On July 1, 1964, Wesley McCoy purchased the thirty-two-point-six acres in Maggie Valley from Winston Wimbley for a sum of ten dollars, thereby owning it outright. Everything is in order.”

  “But…” At the risk of sounding like a dolt, Cheri just had to ask again. “Ten dollars? For that much land? Wimbley basically gave it away.”

  The clerk sighed, clearly at the end of her patience. She’d already given Cheri about ten minutes of her time and the office sounded terribly busy. “Ms. Newberry, I can only tell you what the land records show—Mr. Wesley McCoy paid Sheriff Wimbley ten dollars. The sale was duly recorded and the property hasn’t changed hands since.”

  “Who owned it before Wimbley?”

  “Well, let’s see … it looks like the land had been in the Wimbley family for at least a hundred years prior. I have a property tax notation here from right after the War of Northern Aggression.”

  “So, Winston Wimbley is referred to as ‘sheriff’ on the deed transfer? And the sheriff gave away his family’s land to McCoy for almost nothing?”

  “Look, Miss Newberry, hill people haven’t always done business like the rich and famous down in Florida. Transactions haven’t always been straight dollars and cents. Sometimes a deal includes barter or services rendered.”

  Cheri didn’t miss the swipe. “I understand, but I had Mimi Grayson, one of my reporters, check into Wesley McCoy, and he had no relationship with Sheriff Wimbley that we could find. He worked on the line at the tannery and got fired for chronic lateness. What kind of services could he possibly have offered to—”

  “I have no idea,” she snapped. “And just so you know, Mimi Grayson used to date my son back in school and broke his heart, so if y’all be needing any additional information, our property records are available for public inspection from nine A.M. to five P.M., Monday through Friday. Take care, now.”

  Click.

  Cheri hung up the phone and shook her head. Why would Sheriff Wimbley give such a valuable gift to McCoy? And just weeks after McCoy’s sister-in-law up and disappeared? Was it a wedding gift? A bribe? That Maggie Valley acreage wasn’t just another piece of property Wimbley had bought and sold. In fact—Cheri flipped through her notes to be sure she was right—Wimbley hadn’t even started buying and selling land until late 1965.

  What the hell was going on here?

  Cheri fell against the back of her chair. The fine hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood erect, electrified with a very ugly thought.

  What had Carlotta said? “Y’all should’ve did yer job the first time around … this county is rotten to the core … look around you.”

  Cheri stood. She walked to the window. The money. Follow the money. Her eyes wandered to the Smokies, a melancholy shade of gray today, and she thought … that Maggie Valley land was a payoff. McCoy knew something about the sheriff that Wimbley didn’t want spread around, something terrible enough that he’d give away his family legacy in exchange for McCoy’s silence. The connecting thread was Barbara Jean. It had to be.

  “… anything good and true in this town is buried under a mess of thick, black mud … like my pretty, pretty sister.”

  Cheri began to pace the publisher’s office, her head spinning. Was it possible that everything was somehow connected, part of the same giant, dirty lie that started with Barbara Jean getting thrown into the lake?

  Here’s what she knew for sure.

  Purnell started stealing money from Granddaddy right after Barbara Jean went missing.

  Wimbley paid off McCoy to keep him quiet.

  Wimbley directed the search for Barbara Jean’s car, but the police managed to miss it after four drags of the lake.

  A year after the disappearance, Wimbley suddenly had enough money to start buying and selling land from Asheville to the Tennessee line.

  When Daddy became publisher, he found something wrong with the Bugle’s accounting. He died before he could expose Purnell.

  Or somebody killed him. Wimbley? Purnell?

  Cheri suddenly had trouble breathing. “Oh, shit,” she whispered aloud. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”

  She spun around and stared at her family photos. A wedding. Children. A family. Normal—before it was torn apart from the outside. It did not happen the other way around. It was not my fault.

  Just then, Gladys poked her head in the door to the publisher’s office. “I’m sorry, Cheri, but there’s a gentleman on the phone who insists on speaking to you.”

  Cheri looked at her but didn’t say anything.

  “You all right, child? You look like you just saw a ghost!”

  Cheri blinked. “I did. More than one, actually.” She snatched her bag and notepad. “I’ll be out for the rest of the day.”

  “What should I tell the man on the phone?”

  Cheri shook her head to clear her thoughts. “I’m sorry, who did you say it was? Where was he calling from?”

  “He wouldn’t give a name but he sounded like a foreigner. His number came up as Incomplete Data.”

  Cheri rubbed her forehead. Something about that turn of phrase made her stomach flip, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it. There was something really important she needed to ask Gladys.

  “You said you remembered being here in the newsroom the day Barbara Jean disappeared.”

  Gladys frowned so hard her penciled-in brows formed a black vee over her face. “Yeah. I was here.”

  “Okay, good.” Cheri knew she couldn’t make Gladys feel like she was ratting out her boss of nearly fifty years. She was loyal to Purnell, that much had always been obvious.

  “Tell me, as quickly as you can, what you saw.”

  She cocked her head. “When?”

  “That day! That day Barbara Jean went missing!”

  Gladys shrugged. “No need to shout. Well, it was crazier than a run-over dog in here, is all, with people hollerin’ at each other and the phones ringing and the typewriters bangin’. Garland was shouting out assignments to everybody left and right.”

  “I see. And everyone was at work as usual?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, I’m just curious about how the paper operated back then, you know, whether people outside of news operations would come to work in a time of crisis.” Cheri nearly rolled her eyes at how stupid she must sound.

  Gladys shook her head. “I can’t see what that has to do with the price of eggs, but as far as I remember, the business end ran same as always that day. Purnell was at his desk. Chester Wollard was at the circulation desk. Everybody was here as far as I could tell.”

  “Were there any visitors to the newsroom?”

  Gladys nodded. “Well, I remember Sheriff Wimbley came in right early. We exchanged pleasantries.”

  “He went to see Granddaddy?”

  “Yeah, but he stopped off at Purnell’s office first—they were all close since school you know, the three of them, Garland, Purnell, and Winston.”

  Cheri smiled, trying to hide the panic now rising to high tide inside her. “Um, Gladys? Was there anything unusual about Purnell that morning? Anything you might remember?”

  “Huh,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. He was a little hungover and he’d cut himself shaving again. I remember because he asked me if I had a Band-Aid and I was rooting through the first-aid kit when someone came by and told him about Barbara Jean.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Nothing. He was horrified like all of us and walked away without taking the bandage, went into his office and shut the door.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s it?” Gladys stood with her hands open at her sides.

  “Yes. I appreciate your help.”

  “But what about the caller?”
>
  “Take a message, please,” Cheri said, walking around Gladys and into the newsroom.

  “But what do I tell him?”

  “Anything you want.”

  “Well, all right,” she said with a shrug. “You’re the boss.”

  Chapter 25

  When Cheri arrived at the lake house, Tater Wayne was busy setting up the barbecue, a huge barrel-shaped contraption with a decorative sheet-metal pig snout and ears at one end and a curly metal tail at the other. The rental people were unloading tables and chairs on the lawn. The liquor store deliverymen were rolling the kegs up onto the porch.

  It suddenly occurred to her that two hundred people would be here by noon tomorrow. How was she supposed to throw a party and deal with all this crap at the same time?

  Cheri saw Turner’s SUV and J.J.’s pickup parked in the grass near the dock. She could see the two men standing in conversation by the water, and she ran toward them.

  “Whoa!” J.J. said, laughing as she raced their way. The smiles they’d had on their faces faded fast—she must have looked as shell-shocked as she felt.

  “Are you all right?” J.J. caught her as she came to a stop at the dock edge.

  Cheri shook her head. “No. Yes. I’m fine.” She planted a quick kiss on his lips, then looked to Turner. “Did you ever wonder how Sheriff Wimbley got the money to start his real estate business?”

  Turner’s hazel eyes immediately lost their friendly sparkle. It was as if a shade had just been pulled down. “Why do you ask, Cheri?”

  “I mean, where did Wimbley suddenly get a bunch of cash to go out buying up land and making real estate deals in 1965? He couldn’t have made a lot of money as sheriff, right?”

  “Nope,” Turner said. “The pay sucked just as bad back then as it does now.”

  “So where did he get the money?”

  Cheri heard J.J. chuckle. She turned to him.

  “You see where I’m going with this?” she asked him.

  J.J. nodded.

  “No,” Turner said. “Fill me in.”

  “She’s following the money,” J.J. said. “All the cash missing from the Bugle—”