07-Peaches And Screams

by G. A. McKevett

  “Oh,” she said, “well, that’s different. If you’ve got everything under control here . . .”

  “Like I said,” Savannah added, “Tom was just getting ready to drive me to the Patterson place to check things out. Weren’t you, Tom?”

  She turned to him, smiling brightly.

  From the scowl on his face, she half expected him to growl and snap at her like an irritated Rottweiler. Instead, with a stony calm in his voice, he said, “Sorry, Savannah, but like I told you before, I can’t just walk out and lock the door behind me when I’ve got prisoners upstairs.”

  She thought for a moment, then made her next move on the mental chessboard. “Isn’t that old fella . . . the pharmacist next door . . . let’s see, what was his name . . . Mr. Jeter . . . isn’t he a sworn, part-time, volunteer deputy? He could come over and watch things till Sheriff Mahoney gets back, right?”

  Before Tom could reply, Butch piped up, “I’ll get him. Here, Marietta, hold on to these kids, and I’ll fetch him straightaway.”

  Butch disappeared before Tom could utter a word, and only seconds later, a delighted, if rather frail and decrepit Mr. Jeter materialized. Excitement glittered in his eyes that were topped with bushy silver eyebrows. A neatly trimmed goatee sprouted from his chin, and in his white pharmacist’s smock, he looked like a mad scientist from a silent movie.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, practically snapping to attention in front of Tom Stafford. “Butch says you need me to take charge for a few minutes?”

  Tom looked down at the pharmacist, at Gran, whose stern expression dared him to do otherwise, then at Savannah. She gave him her best beguiling puppy-dog look and received a drop-dead one in return.

  “You don’t exactly have to be in charge of nothin’,” he said, sounding like a defeated soldier at the end of a bloody battle. “Just watch the desk till the sheriff gets back.”

  Savannah felt her heart leap with hope. Not a giant leap, but a definite, happy little skip in the right direction.

  “Sure thing.” Mr. Jeter dug a badge out of his smock pocket and pinned it proudly on his lapel. “I’ll keep everything under control. Sure will.”

  “Let’s go,” Savannah said, waving her family toward the door. “You guys get along home, and I’ll fill you in when I get back.”

  “How long do you figure you’ll be?” Gran asked. “Should we expect you for supper?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Savannah gave Tom another look. Yes, thunderclouds had definitely gathered on his brow. She predicted the storm would break the moment he had her alone in his car. “If I’m not home once it’s on the table, go ahead and eat without me. Tom here said he’d show me everything at the scene, and that’s bound to take a while.”

  As she watched her temporarily mollified family filing out the door, Savannah heard Tom say to Mr. Jeter, “By the way, Fred . . . when Sheriff Mahoney does get back, just tell him I had to run a couple of errands. And you don’t need to say nothing about . . . you know . . . all of these folks coming around. Mahoney would just get all riled up and we don’t need that, now do we?”

  “No!” Fred Jeter shook his head vigorously. “We sure don’t need none of that.”

  “Come along, Savannah.” Tom took her by the arm and propelled her toward the door.

  Yes . . . judging by the way his fingers were digging into her biceps, she wasn’t at all eager to be alone with him. Those thunderbolts would be flying right and left, and she’d have to be quick on her feet to avoid getting struck.

  “Let’s get one thing straight right from the get-go,” Tom said as he peeled out of the parking lot and headed his patrol car down Main Street. “I’m not doing this because you finagled me into it, though Lord knows, you tried hard enough. I’m taking you out here to make your grandma happy, ’cause she’s a fine person, and I think a lot of her.”

  Savannah dug her fingers into the car seat as he rounded a few more corners at breakneck speed. She was happy to be wearing her seat belt as she entertained fantasies of being hurled headfirst through the windshield.

  So much for dodging verbal lightning bolts. The Grim Reaper would more likely appear in the form of a fatal accident at the hands of a passive-aggressive male—one who expressed his anger by applying more pressure to the pedal.

  “So,” she ventured, “does that mean you’re not too sweet on Gran’s offspring at the moment?”

  “Let’s just say, I’ve been sweeter . . . like when her offspring wasn’t twistin’ my arm outta its damned socket.”

  At the crossroads on the edge of town, they turned north onto a narrow, but smooth-surfaced asphalt road. Waves of shimmering heat rose from the black surface, and Savannah reached down to direct the air-conditioning vent onto her face.

  On either side of the road, cotton fields stretched almost as far as the eye could see. Exploding from their dark husks, the white tufts looked like tiny snowballs that were somehow immune to the heat of the afternoon sun.

  “How’s Mary Beth?” she said, cutting him a sideways look.

  “My baby sister is just fine, thanks for asking,” he replied. “But then, she hasn’t killed nobody lately, so I don’t have to go around manipulating people into doing things that goes against their conscience.”

  “Against your . . . wait a second. Hold on just a damned minute!” She grabbed his arm. “Stop the car. Right here, right now!”

  He did as she said, slamming on the brakes and bringing the cruiser to an abrupt halt. The stench of burned rubber filled the car.

  “Are you telling me, Tom Stafford,” she said, “that taking me out to the old Patterson place is violating some code of honor that you hold near and dear? ’Cause if it is, I’ll get out of this car right here and walk back to Gran’s. Lord knows, I don’t want an old friend to endanger his immortal soul by doing me any favors.”

  They sat for what seemed to her a long, torturous couple of hours and glared at each other. Though it was probably no more than five seconds.

  “You’re a civilian,” he said. “You’ve got no business at the scene. It’s wrong to take you there.”

  “I’m a damned good investigator with a heck of a lot of experience under my belt, who might—imagine this, if you can—see something at that scene that you missed. Ever think about that?”

  From the deepening glower on his face, she realized she had taken the wrong tack.

  “Oh, I get it,” she said, too angry to censor herself. “You have thought of that. In fact, that just might be part of the reason why you don’t want to—”

  “That’s enough, Savannah. You may be the best investigator that ever lived, the reincarnation of friggin’ Sherlock Holmes himself, but you’re a family member and you’ve got a vested interest that keeps you from being impartial.”

  “Oh, come on, Tom. In a town this small, everybody knows everybody and is related to most bodies. There won’t be one person involved in this case who’s not biased one way or the other. Who do you figure will be prosecuting Macon if he’s brought to trial?”

  Tom turned away and stared at a crow on a fence post a few moments before answering, “Mack Goodwin. He’s our P.A. now.”

  “Judge Patterson’s son-in-law. Now, how’s that for impartiality?”

  He punched the gas, and the cruiser shot forward. “You made your point. Let’s just say, I’m taking you there in an official capacity, as an investigator.”

  “Thank you, Tommy,” she said, using her softest, too-sweet voice.

  He grunted. “Just try to act like a professional, not Macon’s big sister . . . if you can help yourself.”

  “Okay.”

  “And stop calling me Tommy.”

  “As you wish, Deputy Thomas Gilbert Stafford . . . sir.”

  He just shook his head, sighed, and kept driving.

  Chapter 5

  Long ago, Savannah had come to the realization that few things appeared as grand, when seen through adult eyes, as they had when viewed as a child. But the old Patterson e
state had been built in 1855 with the intention of impressing visitors . . . an opulent display of Southern affluence. And even with jaded, experienced eyes, she had to admit the old plantation manor was, very simply, magnificent.

  Fields that still yielded some of the richest harvests of cotton in the state, hillsides lined with neat rows of pecan and peach trees, and the magnificent, Greek Revival mansion declared the wealth of the Patterson family. Theirs was a rare fortune that had survived the ravages of the Civil War; or, as the postwar generations of Pattersons had preferred to call it, “The Great War of the Northern Oppression.”

  After passing through enormous wrought-iron gates, visitors traveled a long driveway, lined with centuries-old live oaks that formed a graceful arch, shading the passersby. Like delicate, gray-green lace, Spanish moss hung from the oaks’ limbs, adding a feminine elegance that personified the “Old South.”

  Savannah had only ridden this road once before, when her elementary school had been treated to a Halloween field trip to the plantation to receive a com-plimentar y pumpkin for the class jack-o-lantern.

  On that occasion, while bouncing along in the back seat of the school bus, the young Savannah had allowed herself a fanciful journey back to a time when ladies in hoop skirts and yards of crinoline rolled along in carriages, spinning lacy parasols. In her fertile imagination, gentlemen in hunting jackets rode great roans and bays, as a pack of hounds bayed at their heels.

  Such a grand image . . . until you completed the scene by picturing the slaves working in the nearby fields.

  Like many poor Southern kids growing up in the fifties and sixties, Savannah had spent her late summers picking cotton for money to buy school clothes. And since those days, no work she had ever done compared to that back-breaking, miserable labor.

  All too well, she knew the heat, the humidity, the dry, thorny husks of the cotton bolls that scratched and jabbed your hands until they bled. Stooping for hours, dragging a bag of cotton behind you that held your bounty, which was worth . . . if you were lucky . . . three cents per pound. The agony of the first hour of the day, when stiff, aching muscles and swollen fingers cried for rest and healing. But rest wasn’t an option.

  A talented picker who picked fast and hard from sunrise to sunset could harvest that magic number—one hundred pounds in a single day. And earn three dollars.

  But only if you were white and free. The slaves had received only the minimal sustenance to ensure that they would be able to return to the field the next day. Screaming muscles, bleeding fingers and all.

  No, Savannah didn’t envy the people, black or white, who had worked those fields. Thankfully, mechanized harvesting had rendered that particular form of torture basically obsolete.

  She had wondered, then as now, if any of the Patterson family had been troubled by the way their wealth was accumulated. And now, as then, she decided it probably hadn’t bothered them one iota.

  The few memories she had of the judge and his wife were of an aloof, conceited pair, who may have opened their home every Halloween for the fifth graders of McGill Elementary, but they expected the fortunate little beggars to be oh-so-grateful for their paper cup of orangeade and the free pumpkin. And they reminded the children as they left to be sure to tell their parents to remember the kindnesses of Judge Patterson in any upcoming election.

  “With Judge Patterson gone, is that the end of the Patterson clan?” Savannah asked, deciding not to add an editorial about how she figured that wouldn’t be an unbearable loss.

  “The Patterson name, yeah,” Tom replied as he guided the cruiser into the circle at the end of the drive and parked in front of the mansion. “Patterson only had the one daughter . . . officially, that is. He’s littered the county with unofficial offspring that polite folks don’t talk about.”

  “Except behind his back.”

  “Of course, that’s why they’re considered polite. His daughter, Katherine, married Mack and—”

  “The county prosecutor?”

  “Yeah, and they had one little girl. Katherine died last year. It was a real shame, her not even being thirty yet.”

  Savannah’s investigator’s ears perked up. “Natural causes?”

  “Don’t get all excited. Talk around town said it was a pregnancy gone wrong or one of those female ailments.”

  “Female ailments aren’t usually fatal in your twenties. What was it exactly?”

  “Well, this one was fatal. And I don’t rightly know what it was. That’s another thing polite guys don’t do—go around asking for particulars about ladies’ problems.”

  He swung open his door. “Do you want to see this crime scene, or do you want to talk about embarrassing topics like female ailments?”

  When Savannah opened her own door, the heat enveloped her with suffocating humidity. A chestful of dry, eighty-degree air in Southern California seemed to contain a lot more oxygen, she decided, than the same deep breath of Georgia atmosphere.

  Looking up at the imposing mansion, with its gleaming white Corinthian pillars—eight, not the standard antebellum six—she experienced a momentary surge of insecurity. For a few seconds, she was eleven years old again and painfully aware that this house, this world, was a million miles away from the humble shotgun house on the other side of town where Gran had raised her and her siblings.

  But at the thought of Granny Reid, Savannah’s backbone straightened, along with her resolve. She might have been raised on the opposite side of town, far away from the local aristocrats, but she was of noble blood, nevertheless.

  Chin up, she headed for the wide steps that led to the verandah and the massive front door with its beveled glass. The Pattersons might have once been proud and powerful. But the judge himself had been murdered right here in his mansion, and the patriarch who had meted out justice as a lifelong career was in need of some old-fashioned justice himself.

  Whoever had killed him, Savannah was sure—pretty sure—it wasn’t her brother. And that meant the real murderer was still running around as free as a crow.

  Yes, the mighty Judge Patterson needed this little girl, all grown up now, from the other side of town, whether he knew it or not. Even if he was past caring, he needed a good investigator.

  “A bit intimidating, ain’t it,” Tom said as he fell into step beside her. “Remember when we were kids and the school brought us out here at Halloween?”

  “Hmmm, I was just thinking about that. The place gave me the creeps even then. Remember the skeleton they had hanging from a noose from that big oak tree?”

  He looked over at the giant, gnarled oak that shaded a white lattice gazebo and laughed. “Yeah, I remember being freaked by that thing, too. Pretty tacky, now that I think of it. Very tacky, in fact, considering the brutal history of this place. Legend has it that more than one lynching victim still haunts that tree. People say they’ve seen them hanging there at night sometimes, when there’s a full moon. But I don’t reckon you need to hear about that now.”

  As they started up the steps, he slipped his arm through hers. It was a simple gesture, but one that went straight to her heart. Tom had always been attuned to her feelings; that had been a large part of his appeal. And, of course, the fact that he actually enjoyed kissing, for long, long sessions in peach-scented groves on a summer evening, didn’t hurt.

  The bright yellow police tape stretched across the door jerked her back to the present. Putting old memories, bitter and sweet, aside, she switched into professional mode.

  “Has the house been sealed since it happened?”

  “Sure.” He gave her a sideways glance and a half smile. “What do you think, we’re a bunch of country bumpkins down here? We watch Court TV. We know how to process a crime scene as good as the next guy.”

  Reaching into his pants pocket, he pulled out two pairs of surgical gloves. “Put these on,” he said, handing a pair to her. “I don’t want no California bimbo contaminating my scene.”

  After donning his own, he took a set of keys
from his pocket and unlocked the heavy oak door with its beveled glass oval. “This door wasn’t the original one, you know,” he said as he ushered her into a dimly lit, black-and-white tiled foyer. “The Yankees knocked down the first one when they set up their temporary hospital here.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember our teacher telling us about that.” Savannah felt a slight shiver, despite the sultry heat of the day, as she walked across the entry and heard her footsteps echo through the heavy stillness of the house.

  To her left, an arched doorway led to an old-fashioned parlor with Victorian-style furniture: diamond-tufted sofa, leather wingback chairs, Tiffany lamps sitting on marble-topped tables with clawfoot legs, and a graceful fireplace with an intricately carved mantel.

  A matching door on the right opened into a formal dining room with a Waterford crystal chandelier hanging from the center of the ornate plasterwork ceiling. Mahogany wainscoting covered the lower half of the walls, dusky-rose moiré silk the upper. Heavy silver service gleamed on spotless linen that covered the table, where twelve guests could be comfortably seated.

  “Oh, man, we could have used a table like that at our house,” she said. “We’d have put Waycross and Macon at opposite ends and avoided a lot of food fights. More than once, Gran sent those boys to the bathroom in the middle of a meal to wash the mashed potatoes out of their hair.”

  “Yep, those brothers of yours always were a handful,” Tom replied. “I remember when Macon got busted for selling little bags of grass at school.”

  Savannah smiled. “Well, at least he wasn’t misrepresenting his product. He said it was grass, and it was . . . lawn clippings, not pot. So what if some of the kids tried to smoke it and got a little nauseous?”

  “Did you know that I busted him myself that time when your gran came out to California to visit you for a few weeks?”

  “No way!”

  “Yessiree. He was making moonshine there in her bathtub, and it sent a couple of guys from the pool hall to the hospital.”