“What was your role, Fred? Look-out guy while the mayor lynched my father? Did you steady the sheet while my father squirmed? If anyone had checked, would Artie Fennimore’s neck have contained the fingerprints of the men who forced a noose around it? ”
“Stop that right now! Yes, I was the goddamn look-out for your father, but I was helping him, not hurting him. The mayor was nothing but a crumpled imitation of his old self by then. Living more off his reputation and past strengths than anything going on those days. I even heard he was a little fried in the head the last ten years. He had nothing to do with killing your dad.” Fred swallowed hard. I could almost hear him closing his eyes and gathering the strength to continue. “Fact is, I tried to help your dad from the morning we found Bobby’s body.”
“How?”
“I was the one who told Kevin never to mention that damn cat’s blood again.”
My head swirled as surely as the water churning over the tiny waterfall the local scouts had built for the pond. “What cat blood, Fred? What are you talking about?”
“Kevin found it on those tools that Bobby stole. Rusty’d been missing ‘bout a week by then. On the way into the station, I told Kevin to keep quiet about it ‘cuz it’d only serve to make Artie look guiltier, like he had yet another reason to hate on Bobby.”
“But the tools were taken into evidence,” I said. “I read about it in the report. There was no mention of blood on them.”
Fred’s response was barely audible, the rasp of a guilty man. “That’s right.” I filled in the blanks during the pause that followed. “Weren’t no mention of cat hairs on there, neither.”
Blood and hair. It would have all washed down the drain just the same. In a grimy bathroom in the basement level of a deserted police station, where a sympathetic man of authority had tampered with evidence before turning it in. The chief’s lapse in professionalism and ethics hadn’t been enough to save my father but it was heartening to learn that at least one person had been bending the rules to curve in my father’s favor.
“I understand.”
“Now you listen good, Allison, ‘cuz I’m only gonna say these words once, for the first and only time in my life.”
“I’m listening.”
His somber tone made me hunker over and curl into myself, as if about to hear a secret I knew would scare me. “I personally brought Artie his breakfast that morning. Cissy had cooked up something real special for him—omelet, coffee cake, fresh strawberries. We knew it was gonna be the worst day of his life, what with the verdict coming in and all. But before I even opened his cell, he held up a hand and asked for a moment to pray. That threw me, of course. Hadn’t known the man to pray for anything more than a royal flush in all my years. But I knew he’d been working on himself in ways that men are too ashamed to talk about, trying to be a better person and all, so I agreed to give him ten minutes. And that’s when I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“The sheet that he’d turned into a rope. Had it tucked behind him real good but a piece was showing and I knew. I glanced at the bed and it was all made up for the first time, with the blanket draped just so to hide the missing sheet. He saw me noticing and looked at me with those eyes of his, those damn hypnotic eyes. What was I supposed to do?”
Had my father heard the crowd outside? The one that writhed and wriggled in anticipation of his verdict, its tongue flicking hungrily from its mouth in search of fresh blood?
“What did you do, Fred?”
“I respected his decision. Can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing in his position, though I don’t know if I’d have had the guts.”
“You knew he was going to hang himself and you walked away?”
Fred huffed. “Any other prisoner and I wouldn’t have. We had procedures in place for that kind of thing, not that we ever needed ‘em, but Artie was my friend. And things just kept stacking up against him. Plus… I knew.”
“You knew what?”
“Same thing I’m guessing you know. And that Justine knows. Artie told me. As a friend, not a cop.”
Fred knew about Kevin shooting Bobby.
“I waited outside that door. Even stopped a guard from going in. Told him Artie had the right to pray just like anyone else. And damn if I didn’t hear him struggling in there. Hardest minutes of my life. When it was over, after I heard nothing for a good while, I carried that tray back in, knowing full well it wouldn’t get eaten but I had to play my part.” Fred’s voice cracked. “I was the one who pulled him down. I made sure of that. I wanted it done with dignity.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks. “Thank you, Fred.” I wiped the tears away and flicked them into the pond, the fish gathering so fast, you’d think it was holy water.
“It wasn’t no lynching,” he said.
“I know that now.”
“One last thing.”
“Yes?”
“He loved you an awful lot. That last visit the two of you had, he tried to tell you. Just wasn’t his way, I suppose. Called you an old soul once, during one of our poker games. Said he never could figure how he got so lucky with his kids when they’d gotten so unlucky with a father.”
“We weren’t unlucky, Fred. We weren’t unlucky at all.”
***
By noon, my legs dangled beneath me as I sat on the same bench where I’d met Abby Murphy Westerling in what felt like a previous life. I watched a young mom make excuses for her golden-haired brute of a boy after he’d thrown sand in a girl’s face. Life cycled on, I supposed. Despite that, I smiled.
Blake should be here any minute. Said he had big news about a possible job transfer. I hoped it might be to the northeast where I was currently splitting my time between Puccio’s and NYU as a chemistry student. I swung my feet forward, letting them brush against the uneven sidewalk below where the underground forces had made their presence known. An obstinate, brown root poked clear through the concrete, a tiny green plant emerging from one of its dirt-filled grooves. Who knew? Maybe one day, it would even flower.
The End
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my literary agent, April Eberhardt, for taking a chance and believing in me. Thank you to Ellen Canepa for your tireless efforts, creativity, and friendship. You’re always fair and always there. Thank you to MJ for your indefatigable energy and astute observations. Thank you to D.P. Lyle, M.D., forensics expert extraordinaire, quick responder, and author of many excellent books. Thank you to Jack Matosian, screenwriter, for your title suggestions, deep thoughts, and many laughs. Thank you to Rita Toews for your professional and personalized service in designing my cover. Thank you to my earliest critics and unwavering sources of praise—earned or not—Dan and Pat, my parents. Thank you to the people of North Carolina, who are among the friendliest and kindest in the world, for allowing me to carve from your homestead an imaginary town where the people aren’t quite so friendly and kind. Thank you to my husband and children for your responses to the random things I shout out day and night, and for your admirable patience whenever I’m in the middle of a sentence. And finally, a heaping of gratitude to all of you, the readers, for giving life and meaning to the squiggles on the page.
About the Author
Anne McAneny honed her writing skills as a screenwriter for many years before turning to novels. Several of her screenplays became finalists in contests and still circulate through Hollywood on a regular basis. Her first novel, the humorous and heartening CHUNNELING THROUGH FORTY, became a top-selling e-book. Her other books include FORETELLER, a fast-paced mystery with a touch of the psychic, and OUR EYES MET OVER CANTALOUPE, an amusing tale of a woman’s rise from a half-baked state of existence. Represented by April Eberhardt, Anne lives in Virginia with her family, as well as an adopted puggle, an ever-hungry cat, and the cat’s many feline friends.
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