Hissy Fit (33 page)

Austin and I
sat in my car outside Vince Bascomb’s shabby brick ranch house on the edge of town. It was a beautiful Indian summer afternoon, the kind that made you want to rake leaves into a pile just to jump into them.

“This is so sad,” I said, taking note of the peeling paint on the trim, the weed-infested yard, and a front door that seemed to be held together with duct tape.

“When I was a little girl, the Bascombs lived in that big Victorian house on Jefferson Street. It was called Birdsong,” I told him, “and I think it had been in the Bascomb family for generations. Lorraine always drove a big Lincoln Town Car, and Vince bought a brand-new pickup from my daddy every other year. They used to have a lot of money.”

“Not anymore, from the look of this place,” Austin said, wrinkling his nose. He pointed out a battered brown eighties Honda Civic parked in the driveway. It was covered with pine needles and fallen leaves, and two of the tires were flat. “That ain’t no Lincoln.”

“Maybe he’s too sick to talk,” I said, starting to chicken out. “I should have called first. He doesn’t know me. This is ghoulish.”

“If he doesn’t want to talk, he won’t,” Austin said firmly. He got out of the Volvo. “Coming?”

“All right.”

The concrete porch of the house was caked in grime and more fallen leaves, and a black plastic trash bag sat beside the door, where it had seemingly been for months.

Austin rang the doorbell, and I took a deep breath. A minute passed, and then what seemed like five. “Let’s go,” I said, tugging at Austin’s sleeve. “I can’t do this.”

“Somebody out there?” a thin voice called. “Is somebody there? Tanya, is that you?”

“Answer him,” Austin whispered. “Or I will.”

“Mr. Bascomb,” I hollered, “It’s not Tanya. My name is Keeley Murdock. You used to know my daddy, Wade Murdock. Can you come to the door, Mr. Bascomb?”

“Hell, no,” he shouted. “I’m laid up on this sofa in here. You might as well come on in, since you’re here.”

The door pushed open without much resistance. When we stepped inside, we were hit with a blast of hot, urine-scented air. The room was dim, lit only by a low-wattage light bulb on a table lamp. A sofa was pushed against the wall, and I could just make out the shape of a man propped up there.

“Well?” he said. “Don’t stand there with the door open. I’m not paying to heat the whole damn block.”

As I stepped into the room, I could see him more clearly. He wore a red knit ski cap pulled down almost to his eyebrows and a gray sweatshirt. The rest of his body was swathed in a bright pink and blue crocheted afghan. The shocking thing was his size. The Vince Bascomb I remembered had been a big, stocky man. Now I doubt he weighed ninety pounds.

“Come on, come on,” he said. “What is it you want? Did Tanya send you?”

“Who’s Tanya?’ Austin asked.

“Tanya’s my so-called home health nurse,” the old man said. He squinted up at us. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m, uh, Austin LeFleur, Keeley’s friend.” Austin thrust a brightly wrapped yellow potted mum toward Bascomb. “We brought you some flowers. We heard you’d been ill.”

“Ill? That’s a good one,” Bascomb said. “I’m dying. Those flowers will probably last longer than me.”

Austin and I had been slowly inching toward him, until we were only a few feet from the orange-flowered sofa.

Bascomb reached out and knocked the shade from the table lamp and thrust the naked bulb toward me like a saber. I had to shade my eyes from the now-bright light.

“You’re the Murdock girl?” he asked. I noticed for the first time that he wasn’t wearing his dentures. His gums shone shiny pink, and combined with the knit cap and afghan, he reminded me of an overgrown infant.

“Yes sir,” I said.

“I know your daddy,” he said, satisfied that he’d figured out my pedigree. “Used to know your mama, too.”

Austin nudged me. I was getting bruises on my side.

“Yes sir. That’s kind of why I wanted to talk to you.”

“What about?” he asked. “What have you heard?”

“Well…” I looked around the room. The orange shag rug was matted with dirt, a low coffee table in front of him was covered with medicine bottles, a tissue box, and a tattered stack of
Reader’s Digest
magazines. On the far side of the room, a kerosene space heater glowed orange hot. Beside it were two chrome and plastic dinette chairs.

“Would it be all right if we sat down while we talked?”

“Can’t stop you, can I?” he said querulously.

“Could I get you anything first?” I asked, remembering my manners. “A drink of water? Do you need your medicine?”

He yanked the neck of his sweatshirt down to expose a pale, shrunken chest. A blue patch was pasted above his left nipple, and a thin plastic tube ran to it. “My medicine’s right here,” he croaked. “For all the good it does me. You can sit if you want.”

We dragged the chairs as far away from the kerosene heater as we could, which meant we were only inches from the sofa.

“About my mother,” I started.

“Good-looking woman,” Bascomb said, nodding. “You favor her some, but I expect you know that.”

“How well did you know Jeanine Murdock?” Austin asked.

Bascomb leaned his head back against the sofa cushions with his eyes closed. At first I thought he’d drifted off to sleep.

“I suppose you know about my sorry marital history?” he asked, his eyes still closed.

“Yes sir. I knew Miss Lorraine, and I went to school with your daughter.”

“Lorraine was a fine person,” he said, opening his eyes now. “A real lady, unlike those other two tramps I was fool enough to marry. This cancer I have now, the suffering I’m going through? This is God punishing me for the way I treated the mother of my children.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

“Hell on earth,” he said. “And I brought it all on myself.”

“About Jeanine,” I hinted.

He sighed and looked right at me. “If you know about my history, I assume you know about your mother’s too. Is that about right?”

“I know she was having an affair with a man named Darvis Kane, who worked for my daddy at the car lot,” I said. “I know she and Kane used to meet out at your hunting cabin to have sex.” I bit my lip and decided not to pull any punches. “I went to see my mother’s cousin Sonya Wyrick last month. I knew she was Mama’s closest friend, and thought she might have some idea of where my mother went and where she’s been all these years.”

“Sonya Wyrick,” Bascomb said, smiling slightly. “Is she still up there in South Carolina?”

“North Carolina,” I corrected him. “She’s still in Kannapolis.”

“Sonya was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Lorraine,” he said. “There had been other women before her, but Sonya was more than Lorraine could bear. She found out about us, and there was hell to pay.”

He sighed again. “Hell on earth. Hell to pay. Living hell. That about sums up my life after Lorraine threw me out.” He licked his lips. “Does your father know you’re poking around in this matter?”

“He does,” I said.

“I traded with your daddy ever since he opened that lot,” Bascomb said. “Good man. What does he think of all this?”

“He thinks it’s about time we both got some answers to our questions,” I said. “It’s been almost twenty-five years.”

“You might not like the anwers you get,” Bascomb warned.

“We realize that. But Daddy has finally started dating. She’s a nice person, and he feels guilty about seeing somebody without knowing…about Mama.”

“Sonya was the one who gave Jeanine the key to the cabin,” Bascomb said. “But I didn’t have a problem with it, as long as she kept her mouth shut about what went on out there. I didn’t know at first who her boyfriend was.” He frowned. “Darvis Kane. Your father’s employee. I thought that was in poor taste. But who was I to judge? It wasn’t like we were holding Sunday school out there.”

Bascomb reached out and fumbled around among the pill bottles until he found what he was looking for. A tube of Chap Stick, which he then smeared over his colorless lips.

“Other people were also involved out there,” he said carefully. “People whose names I would prefer not to mention.”

“I already know that Drew Jernigan took Lorna Plummer out there quite often,” I said calmly.

“Sonya told you that?” He seemed surprised.

“Yes, sir. But I’d already heard about Drew’s affairs.”

“Drew is a Jernigan. He can’t help himself. He was my best friend for forty years. My business partner some of that time. And unlike Lorraine, GiGi chose to turn a blind eye to her husband’s extracurricular activities.”

I winced. “It’s called cheating. He’s a cheat.”

“In that respect, yes. But I’ve always found Drew Jernigan to be honorable in his business dealings with me.”

“In other words, he only screws women,” I said angrily.

Bascomb looked surprised at my sudden flash of emotion. “That’s a vulgar way to put it.”

“As far as we can tell,” Austin said, inserting himself smoothly into the conversation, “Jeanine and Darvis left Madison in mid-February of 1979. A short time after that, Darvis apparently drove Jeanine’s Malibu to Birmingham, Alabama, where he sold it. Right after that, he got on a Greyhound bus, and we haven’t talked to anybody who’s seen him since that time.”

“Lisa Kane managed to track Darvis down sometime in the eighties, and get a divorce,” I said. “But that still leaves Mama unaccounted for since the day she left Madison.”

Bascomb rolled the tube of Chap Stick between sticklike fingertips. He looked up at me, dry-eyed.

“Your mother never left Madison.”

“Your mother’s dead,”
Vince Bascomb said. “So you can tell your daddy to get on with his life now. And you go ahead on with yours. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

I blinked and tried to catch my breath. Suddenly I could not breathe that foul air for another second. I made a mad dash for the front door.

I collapsed on the edge of the porch, gulping in great swallows of fresh air. A patch of gray clouds had moved in, obscuring the sun. One small golden leaf sifted down from a nearby tree and landed on top of my shoe. I picked it up and traced its jagged outline with the tip of my finger. It was a ginkgo leaf.

Indian summer had slipped away. Soon this yard and all the others in town would be blanketed with leaves. I thought back to another autumn day like this one.

Mama had helped me collect fallen leaves from our yard, only the very finest, blemish-free specimens. We’d had a ginkgo in our yard too. Back inside the house, she’d set up the ironing board. With a hot iron, we’d pressed the leaves between squares of waxed paper torn out of the blue and white box in the pantry. The smell reminded me of melted crayons.

When we were done, we’d mounted the pressed leaves on cardboard squares that came back from the laundry with my father’s dress shirts. Mama had me carefully letter the name of each leaf on the cardboard. Red Maple. Pin Oak. Sycamore. Pecan. Ginkgo.

I’d loved the look of the leaves, which we pinned up on the kitchen walls. But I’d been a little mystified about the reason for the project.

“Why?” I’d asked, watching as the hot iron sealed the leaves inside the waxed paper. “Why do we do it this way?”

“So they’ll last forever,” she’d said, ruffling her hand through my hair. “Nature has a way of letting beauty disappear. If we left these leaves alone, they’d turn brown and crumble like dust. But we’re going to trick nature so your leaves will always stay just as pretty tomorrow as they are today.”

She had been right. The leaves’ brilliant color had stayed locked inside their waxen coat for months, until we’d replaced them with construction paper Easter bunnies made from cotton balls and broomstraw.

I heard the front door open behind me. Austin sat down on the stoop beside me. He patted his perspiring face with a handkerchief. “Well, we won’t have to have a steam facial this fall.”

“No,” I agreed.

“You all right?”

“Sort of.”

“Want to go back in now? The old guy’s getting pretty tuckered out. I don’t think he’s used to talking this much.”

I nodded and followed Austin back inside.

“I’d like a glass of water,” Bascomb said to me. “In the kitchen. And there should be a bottle of Scotch in the cabinet, under the sink. You could top it off with the Scotch. Three fingers should do.”

“I’ll get it,” Austin said.

I sat back down in my chair. When Austin brought his drink, Ba-comb took a sip, nodded, then put it down on the coffee table.

“How did my mother die?” I started, a flood of questions swirling around in my head. “Who killed her?”

He held up his hand. “There was no murder. It was an accident. Just a freak accident.”

“Then why didn’t you tell somebody?” I cried. “You son-of-a-bitch, you knew she was dead all these years?”

“Keeley,” Austin took my hand and squeezed it. “Let the man talk.”

Bascomb picked up the Scotch and downed half of it in one long gulp.

“It’s all right,” he said, smacking his lips. “She can’t say anything to me that I haven’t said myself.”

“What happened?” I demanded. “How did she die?”

“I wasn’t there, not right when it happened,” he said. “Sonya called me, at two in the morning, hysterical. Lorraine had already kicked me out, and I was sleeping on the sofa in my office. I went right out there, but it was too late. She was dead. Past help, you understand?”

“No,” I said stonily.

He reached for his drink and clasped it tightly between both hands.

“This is why she died,” he said moodily, staring down into the amber liquid. “The booze.” He looked up at me. “I quit after that. Didn’t have another drop until after the doctor told me about the cancer. Now I figure, what the hell?”

“Just tell me what happened, okay?” I said.

“They’d all been out at the camp that night, drinking. Darvis Kane, your mother, Drew, and that Plummer woman.”

“Lorna.”

“Yes. According to Drew, your mother and Kane had been out there all afternoon, drinking and fussing and cussing. Kane had an ugly temper, and it got even uglier when he drank. At some point, Drew said, Kane hauled off and slapped Jeanine right across the face. That’s when Drew sorta suggested that things were getting out of hand, and Kane might want to leave. And Kane did leave. He drove off in Jeanine’s Malibu in a big hurry, stranding Jeanine out there in the middle of the woods like that. So she called Sonya and asked her to drive out there and bring her home.”

Bascomb put his head back against the sofa cushions. “Twenty-five years. I didn’t realize it had been that long ago. After it all happened, it seemed sort of like a dream. So that’s what I treated it like, a dream that never happened.”

“That dream of yours was more like a nightmare for my daddy and me,” I said. “And it never would go away. What happened after Kane left? How did my mother die?”

“Kane came back to the cabin,” Bascomb said. “But this time he had a gun. He was waving it around, threatening to kill Jeanine. He got off a couple of shots before Drew tackled him and tried to wrestle the gun away. Somehow, another shot was fired. And this time, Jeanine was hit.”

He picked up the Scotch and drained the last sip from the glass.

“And that’s when Sonya walked in. Jeanine was bleeding, and Lorna was screaming, and Kane, when he saw what had happened, bolted. He was gone before anybody could stop him.”

“And my mother was dead.”

“There was nothing anybody could do for her,” Bascomb said. “They couldn’t call the police. How would they explain the circumstances? The married president of the local bank, in some remote cabin in the woods with his mistress? Drew was about to run for reelection to the County Commission. A married woman shot through the chest? And blood all over the floor of my cabin. They panicked. They’d all been drinking, and they just panicked. By the time I got out there, it was over and done with. All we could do was clean up the mess and get our stories straight. So that’s what we did.”

“Where is she now?” I whispered. “What did they do with my mama’s body?”

“I don’t know,” Bascomb said. “Drew never would tell me. It’s out there somewhere. He and Lorna hid it somewhere, but they never would say exactly where. I never have known.”

“You didn’t know?” I screamed, standing up. I was in a rage. A blind rage. I stood over Bascomb with my fists clenched, and he cowered back against the sofa cushions.

I picked up a sofa cushion and whapped him on the head with it. The knit cap flew off, and his bald head shone softly in the lamplight. “Don’t,” he whimpered.

“You didn’t want to know,” I cried. “You didn’t give a rat’s ass. None of you did. You could have called the police, told them what happened. Told them it was an accident. A big deal like Drew Jernigan,
he never would have gone to jail. They could have blamed it all on Darvis Kane. And at least we would have known. At least we could have buried her.”

I had the cushion cocked and aimed again, but Austin wrenched it away from me. “Keeley,” he shouted. “Keeley!”

There were two more sofa cushions, but the fight had gone out of me. I looked down on the shrunken, pathetic husk of a man who stared up at me now, waiting…

“I don’t want you to die yet,” I said. “Not until you and Jernigan and Lorna Plummer answer for what you did to my family.”

I left the front door open and scuffed out through the carpet of softly fallen leaves.