Amazing Grace--A Southern Gothic Paranormal Mystery

by John G. Hartness

  “What are you still doing here, Pap?”

  “I stayed to see you. I’m glad you came to the funeral.”

  “I felt like it was the right thing to do.”

  “For me or for you?”

  “For me. What you thought hasn’t been on my mind much since you wrote us out of your new life.” I could hear the bitterness in my voice, but I didn’t care. He hurt my feelings when he just up and abandoned us like that, and I reckoned he could know it.

  “I am sorry about that, Lila Grace.”

  “If you hadn’t done it, I reckon you wouldn’t have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “Well, you’re right about that. It was wrong, and it was selfish.”

  “So why’d you do it?”

  He didn’t say anything for a long time, and when he finally spoke, his words were slow, like he was picking them carefully. “After your granny died, I was a mess. We had twenty-seven good years together. I guess that ain’t really true. We had twenty-four good years, with enough bad days throughout to make up a year or two, and the last year was pretty rough. When your granny got sick, I didn’t do nothing but take care of her for a year. It was hard on me, but that’s what a husband is supposed to do.

  “Well, when she was gone, I didn’t have that purpose any more. I couldn’t remember what it was like to be anything more than the man with the sick wife, and every time I saw your daddy, or any of my family, all I saw was her face. It didn’t take long until I couldn’t stand that anymore, so I left.”

  “You always told me that a man faces up to what’s hard.”

  “That’s true. I just wasn’t much of a man right then. So I went away, and I made myself a new family, and I loved them. I know you probably don’t want to hear that, but I did. It was a different love than what I had for y’all, but it was a true thing just the same. But I never forgot you. I never forgot any of you.”

  “I never forgot you, neither, Pap. I tried real hard, but I didn’t.”

  “Thank you for that.” I saw a bright light start to form out of the corner of my eye, and Pap turned to see it. “Looks like my train’s ‘bout to pull out of the station,” he said.

  “You stayed here just to tell me all that? What if I hadn’t come?”

  “You would, eventually.” He smiled at me, got off the back of my truck, and walked into the light. It flashed brighter than the sun, then popped out, leaving me blinking and rubbing my eyes. I was alone in the cemetery, and I went back over to where the men had been running the backhoe, and I shed a tear over my pap’s grave. Not for his death, but for the life we never shared.

  I sat there for about an hour, just talking to Granny about Jenny, and Shelly, and the idiot Baptist preacher, and her soaps that I still watched every day so I could keep track of who’s alive and dead for her. After a while, though, my knees started really giving me fits, and my spine started to knot up down in my lower back, so I got up and moseyed on back to the truck. I ran my fingers across the stones as I walked, liking the feeling of the different granites used. Some were buffed to a high polish, but plenty were either too old for that, or just never cared to pay for it.

  I got to my truck and looked at myself in the mirror. I was born lucky—I have a complexion that lets me cry without turning into a red, blotchy mess. I fixed my makeup and put the truck in gear, pointing the old girl down the street toward the sheriff’s office.

  Chapter 10

  I never made it to the sheriff’s office. I stopped at Sharky’s Pub, the one bar in town. Sheriff Dunleavy’s car was parked out front between a Harley-Davidson and a Hyundai SUV. I pulled my truck into the gravel parking lot at the end of a string of cars and walked into the pub.

  “Pub” is by far the most generous word ever applied to Sharky’s. Most folks always called it “the beer joint,” since it was the only licensed drinking establishment in town. Some of the more religious referred to it as “that place,” but one thing nobody ever accused it of being was high class.

  The squat cinderblock building had four windows across the front, and every one of them was plugged with air conditioning units. It was painted a sickly shade of beige, kinda somewhere between spoiled egg yolks and baby poop. The door was the only thing that ever looked fresh, on account of Sharky having to replace it about once a month when he put some drunk through it.

  I stepped into the dim, smoky room, and Sharky looked up from the bar. “Hey there, Lila Grace,” he called out, and conversation slammed to a halt. I was not a regular, but this was certainly not my first time in the bar. When there’s only one place in town to get a cold beer that’s not your own refrigerator, everybody who likes a nip now and then will pass through the doors.

  “Hello, Stan,” I called back. I think I was the only person in town that never called him Sharky. I just didn’t like the name. I didn’t think it fit. Stan was a trim man, slight of build and thin of mustache. He looked a lot more like a ferret than a shark, but he went away down to Florida to work construction one summer, and when he came back, he told us everybody down there called him Sharky. I doubt anybody ever called him Sharky a day in his life, but if it made him feel better, who was I to call him out on it? So after that, people called him Sharky.

  The bar was about what you’d expect from a small-town joint in South Carolina. There were half a dozen stools with cracked pleather seats in front of a bar that had four beer taps on it. Sharky’s served Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors on draft, and a couple more selections than that in the bottle. Corona was the sole nod to an import beer, but I knew Stan kept a six-pack or two of Red Stripe in the cooler for his personal use. There were two rows of bottles on the glass shelves behind the bar. The selections topped out at Jack Daniels and Jim Beam. Anything fancier than that or Grey Goose, and you were going to have to either drink it at home or drive to another town. Sharky also kept a few jars of Uncle Dargin’s apple pie moonshine tucked away, and he’d bring that out on special occasions or for special customers.

  Today must have been pretty special because there was a Ball jar sitting on the bar with the top off, and a shot glass in front of the sheriff and its brother in front of Stan. “Y’all having a little taste?” I asked, pulling out a stool to sit next to the sheriff.

  “Just a little bit, Lila Grace. Y’all want some?” Stan asked. I nodded, and he pulled me up a shot glass from under the counter. He wiped it down with a rag, and I honestly wasn’t convinced that took any germs or dirt off the glass. It looked like the rag started life a whole lot dirtier than the glass, but I wasn’t too concerned. Uncle Dargin made his ‘shine stout, and I figured it’d kill just about anything in the glass before it got my lips.

  I took the offered drink from Stan and raised it to my lips. “May we be in Heaven half an hour before the devil knows we’re dead,” I said, and took a long sip of the moonshine. Apple pie ain’t shooting ‘shine, it’s sipping liquor, and this batch was as smooth as any I’d ever had.

  “That’s good stuff, Stanley,” I said, putting the glass down. “Tell Dargin I said so.”

  “I’ll do it, Lila Grace,” Stan said.

  “Go see if Jerry needs a refill, Sharky,” Sheriff Dunleavy said.

  “Jerry passed slap out, Sheriff,” Stan replied, not getting it. He had that problem in school, too. It caused him to repeat fifth grade a couple of times, and by the time he finally got through eighth grade, ol’ Stan was through with schooling.

  “Go check on him, Sharky.” The growl in Dunleavy’s voice left no question as to whether or not he was asking this time. Stan started, like he was surprised at something, then walked over to sit at a small table in the corner where Jerry Gardner was lying face down on the faux wood surface.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Carter?” the sheriff asked.

  “I reckon I was going to ask you the same thing, Sheriff. You sitting in here all alone day drinking, I thought maybe you was in need of something.”

  “I am,” he said. “I am in need of a drink.
Then that drink might put me in need of another drink. I might even require a few more to follow that second one. I am almost certain by the time I get to five or six drinks, I’ll be just about right, but I’m liable to have two more after that just to make sure.”

  From the sounds of him, he’d already had more than one drink, but it wasn’t my place to judge. I just sat there and sipped my apple pie. “You talked to Shelly’s parents, I reckon.”

  “I did.”

  “That the first time you’ve had to notify parents their child has passed?”

  “It was.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  The sheriff sat there for a minute, then poured himself another shot. I knocked back the last of my moonshine and held out my glass. Dunleavy looked at me sideways for a second, then topped it off.

  “Don’t go giving me the side-eye, Sheriff,” I said. “I been drinking Dargin’s home brew since I was a teenager fooling around in the back seat of Bobby Joe Latham’s Chevrolet.”

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a drinker, Ms. Carter,” he said.

  “Well, I ain’t a professional at it, like you seem to be, but I can hold my own if I need to.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He turned to me like he wanted to say something else, but stopped.

  “Which part?” I asked.

  “That crack about me being a professional drinker. What did you mean by that?”

  “I meant you’ve got two dead girls, no real leads, and instead of being out there trying to find out who killed them, you’re in here drinking moonshine in the middle of the afternoon because somebody’s mama or daddy hurt your feelings while you was doing your job. Well, I got news for you, Sheriff Dunleavy, you put on the badge, you strapped on that pistol, that means you get to take the bad days with the good ones. Most days, sheriffing in Lockhart ain’t nothing but overnight drunk tank visits, spray paint from teenagers, and speeding tickets, but right now we need a real damn lawman, not some stereotype of a Sam Spade movie sitting in a bar like a moody little bitch.”

  I allowed as how calling the sheriff a bitch might have been excessive, but finding him hiding in a bar instead of out looking for a murderer riled me up a little.

  “I don’t appreciate your tone, Lila Grace,” the sheriff said. He didn’t look at me; that’s how I knew he knew I was right.

  “I don’t give a good goddamn, Sheriff,” I replied.

  “Willis,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “My name. It’s Willis. I reckon if I’m gonna call you Lila Grace, and we’ve got to the point where you’re comfortable enough to read me out in a bar, we might as well be on a first name basis. So, you can call me Willis. Unless we’re out in public doing something official. Then I’m still ‘Sheriff.’” He stood up, tossed two twenties on the bar, and put his hat on.

  “We’re leaving, Sharky. I’m confiscating the rest of this jar of pie, though.”

  “Aw, come on, Sheriff,” Stan whined. “That’s my last jar!”

  “I left you forty bucks for it, Shark. I know you don’t pay Dargin but fifteen, so shut your cake hole.” He walked out the front door.

  I followed, nodding farewell to Sharky as I passed him. “Stan,” I said.

  “Bye, Lila Grace. Y’all come back now, ya hear?”

  Like there was a single other option for a place to get a beer in this town.

  Chapter 11

  The police station was full when I walked in behind the sheriff. Deputy Jeff was standing behind the small wooden counter that served to separate the small area with four desks where he, Ava the Dispatcher, and Victor, the other deputy, sat. Half a dozen people were milling around the counter, every one of them trying to talk to Jeff.

  Silence fell over the room when we entered; then it exploded into mayhem as everybody turned to Dunleavy all at once. I staggered back at the ruckus, almost walking right through Jenny. The girl was waiting in the truck for me when I walked out of Sharky’s and rode to the station without a word. I reckon she was trying to process Shelly’s death and trying to figure out why she was lingering while her friend moved on without her.

  Sheriff Dunleavy held up his hands for quiet, and after a few seconds, the room settled down. “Now I know all y’all want to help, and I know everybody is anxious to share any information they have that might aid the investigation. But we ain’t but a couple of people here, so we are going to have to follow some kind of order.

  “I am going in to my office to consult with Ms. Carter here on some research she is doing for me on these investigations. I need all y’all to line up and give Jeff your information in an orderly fashion. Make sure he has your phone number written on the statement, and we will follow up with y’all as we move forward. Thank you all for coming out. I appreciate your assistance and patience in this trying time.”

  Sheriff Dunleavy put his hands down and bulled through the packed people. I followed along in his wake like a girl waterskiing behind a boat, and a minute later, we were sitting in his office with the door closed. The noise from the front was down to a dull roar, so I reckoned Jeff had it under control.

  “Now what was so damned important that you had to pry me away from some very important drinking and haul me back here?” Sheriff Dunleavy asked as he took a seat behind his desk.

  “I was over at the Miller house—”

  “What?” he interrupted.

  “I was asking Jenny’s father some questions, and—”

  “You were what?” He interrupted me again, and I turned my best Sunday School teacher scowl on him.

  “I was asking Jenny’s daddy if he had any idea who would want to hurt his daughter. Then her mama…” I stopped, because Sheriff Dunleavy’s face was getting some kind of red, and I was a little scared he was going to blow a gasket. “Are you okay, Sheriff?”

  “No, Ms. Carter, I am not okay. You mean to tell me you went to talk to the parents of the victim in what has recently been determined to be a murder investigation without my permission, without any official authority, and without any accompaniment?”

  “Well, when you put it like that, I reckon it sounds pretty awful. But yes, that’s what I did. He told me about a boy at school that may have had a grudge against Shelly for doing something nasty with his phone—”

  “Ian Vernon,” the sheriff said. “I had Victor interview him this morning.”

  “Oh, you knew about him? Good. Well, he also mentioned that we might want to talk to girls that—”

  “—didn’t make the cheerleading squad,” he finished my sentence for me. “We have interviews scheduled with all of them for tomorrow at school. Of course, in light of today’s events, we might have to postpone those.”

  “If you know everything I’m going to say, why are you having me say it?” I asked. I was a little perturbed at his attitude.

  “Because I’m trying to come up with a good reason not to charge you with interfering with a police investigation, obstruction of justice, and impersonating a police officer.”

  I stood up and put my hands on his desk. “What in the hell are you talking about, Sheriff? I was just trying to help you! All I did was talk to that poor man.”

  “That, and get his wife so riled up she called over here and told me that if anybody from my department set foot on her property again without somebody calling 911, that she’d sue us so hard we’d be writing tickets out of the back of a used Chevette.” There was a little vein pulsing in his forehead, and his face was so red it was almost purple.

  I sat back down, feeling like somebody had just let all the air out my sails. “Well…I’m sorry?”

  Sheriff Dunleavy sat down and let out a huge breath. “You’re sorry?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “What more would you like me to say? That it was a mistake? Well, obviously it was. That I’m sorry I upset the Millers? Well, I certainly am. That I won’t do it again? I
don’t know that I’m going to say that, Sheriff.”

  “Oh, I reckon you are going to say that, Ms. Carter. You are going to say that, and you are going to mean that, and you are going to stay the hell away from this investigation. You are going to leave the police work to the police, and you are going to go home and prune your tomatoes, or whatever you do in the afternoons.”

  “You don’t prune tomatoes, Sheriff,” I said with a smile.

  He didn’t smile back. “I don’t care. Obviously, what I’m saying is not getting through. You cannot be part of this investigation, Lila Grace. You are not a police officer, and I let myself get caught up in your…unconventional sources of information and gave you an incorrect impression.”

  “What impression is that, Sheriff?”

  “That you are part of this investigation. Which you are not. You are not working with the police. You are a private citizen, and you are going to do what private citizens do, which is to stay out of the way and let the police do our job. Do you understand me?”

  I felt my lips purse, and I took a deep breath before I spoke. When I did, there was not a hint of a tremor in my voice. “I understand perfectly, Sheriff. I will stay out of your way from here on out. You have my word.” I stood up, looked down at him, and asked, “Will there be anything else?”

  “No, Ms. Carter,” he said. “You can go. I do appreciate the help you have given us to this point. It has been very valuable.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff,” I said, and turned to the door. I walked out through the office and pushed my way through the throng in the front of the counter. I stepped out into the bright sunshine and got into my truck, pulling out into the street and driving home without taking any notice of anything around me. Almost in a daze, I walked into my house, fixed myself a glass of sweet tea, and walked out onto my back porch. I sat down on the steps and looked out over the small vegetable garden I had coming up. Just half a dozen twenty-foot rows of tomatoes, beans, squash, and potatoes, with two pumpkin and three watermelon vines going wild at the end of the rows.