Somewhere Between Luck and Trust (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

ON THURSDAY CRISTY
finished work early. There were no guests in residence, so there had been less than usual to do. Better yet Lorna said she could handle the weekend without her. Only two of the rooms were spoken for, and Lorna’s mother had agreed to help cook and serve, so Cristy was free to travel with Lucas and Georgia on Saturday morning.

She was glad to have the whole afternoon to herself. She planned to water the new berry bushes and study the lesson she and Georgia had worked on yesterday. She was working on her handwriting, too, copying words from the story Georgia had written for her. At one time her cursive had been acceptable, although she’d had almost no idea what she was writing.

Someday soon she was going to write Dara Lee a letter, care of NCCIW. When she did, she would explain why she had taken so long getting to it.

She was washing the day’s dishes when Beau began to bark. By now she knew his barks were tailored to individual situations. This sounded like the version she heard whenever she came home from work, a where-have-you-been-I-missed-you bark. She dried her hands on a dish towel and went to the door, getting there just in time to see Beau streak down the steps to greet Sully.

She wished she had taken time to change out of her work clothes and shower, but she had been hungry, and the moment she’d gotten inside she’d unwrapped the sandwich she hadn’t eaten at work and finished it before she could heat the canned soup for the next course.

The irony of being worried about how she looked to the cop who had arrested her last year didn’t escape her.

She went back into the kitchen, and when Sully knocked, she called for him to come in. “I have soup,” she said, “and I can make you a sandwich. Are you hungry?”

“I spent the morning with my mother, and she fed me enough to last the rest of the week. But thanks.”

She finished rinsing the last bowl and turned around as she dried it. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned your mom. You’re close?”

“She’s great. You would like her. She sent you something.”

“You’ve told her about me?”

“I have. She wants to meet you, but she’s in a wheelchair, so it’s unlikely that’s going to happen until we can get you back to Berle.”

“You know why
that’s
not going to happen.”

“Never say never. Anyway, you’ll like what she sent. Of course she made me do all the work to get it here.”

“You came all the way back here just to give me a present from your mom?”

He cocked his head. “Not entirely.”

For a moment she wasn’t sure what to say, since he had as good as admitted he’d wanted to see her. Then he lifted his hands palms up, as if to say,
Okay, here’s the rest of it.
“I thought maybe you would like to go for a drive. To see Michael.”

She couldn’t think of an answer. She took her time putting the bowl away. “Why is your mother in a wheelchair?”

“She was in an accident when I was eighteen, and it left her with limited use of her legs. My father was behind the wheel. He died. She nearly did.”

“That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

“She can walk a little, with her walker, and she can get herself in and out of the chair and up and down ramps. We’ve built raised garden beds for her so she can sit on the edge and tend her flowers. She does it all by herself, and she can still cook up a storm.”

“We?”

“My sister and I. You probably didn’t know Dee Ann. She’s four years older than me, and she got married right out of high school and moved to Knoxville. But she comes back to Berle when she can to help Mom. When Mom lets her, that is. Come see what she sent you.”

Cristy followed him through the house and out to the porch, where a flat of plastic pots sat against the railing.

“They’re perennials. Mom says if you want flowers for arrangements, this is a surefire way to get some faster. Black-eyed Susans, bee balm, yarrow, Shasta daisies, coreopsis—”

“You’re a flower gardener, too, or else you wouldn’t remember those names.”

“She talks about her plants all the time. It’s like they’re my brothers and sisters.”

She gave a tiny laugh that ended in a smile. “This is the sweetest thing, Sully. Will you thank her for me?”

“I’ll be happy to.”

She was glad he knew she couldn’t read, or right now he would be wondering why she was too lazy to write a thank-you note. She felt just the slightest buzz inside when she realized that before too long she might actually be able to do that.

“I watered the pots really well before I put them in my car, so they’ll last a few days like they are. And I brought some seeds, too. She had plenty of leftovers. But you can put those in the ground any day this week. Now we have time to go for that drive.”

She wanted him to stop pushing, but she understood he was doing this for her. Sully thought she needed a push, and he probably thought she needed a friend. He understood how frightened she was of seeing her baby again.

“We don’t have to go if you’re not ready,” he said, when she didn’t answer. “We could go for a hike, or drive down to Asheville or over to Hot Springs and have supper later.”

She bought herself some time while she considered his offer. “I’m not usually off work this early.”

“I thought you didn’t work on Thursdays.”

“My schedule changes every week, depending on when Lorna needs me most. This week I’m taking the weekend off. I’m going to Georgia with Georgia, my tutor.”

“With a name like that it sounds like she belongs there.”

“More than you know.” Cristy didn’t have her mind on the conversation. She was trying to find the courage to say yes to the drive to Mars Hill.

“If we get there, and you don’t want to see him, we can turn around,” Sully said, as if he understood what she was thinking.

“Can we take Beau?”

“If you like.”

“It’s just he’s here by himself when I work, so I hate for him to be alone again. I worry about him.” And just like that she realized that she was voicing concern for the dog when she had voiced very little for her son.

“What if I see him and I don’t feel anything?” she asked. “Michael, I mean.”

“You’re going to feel something. Lots of things, most likely. But you can’t fight that forever.”

“Why do you care so much what I feel or do?”

He looked as if he was trying to decide how to answer. “Because you were right before. I’m at least partly at fault for everything that’s happened, including you having a baby in prison you had to give to your cousin.”

He meant it. For a change Sully’s expression was unguarded, almost remorseful. More important, she realized she no longer held him responsible. The man who
was
responsible had fathered the baby they were going to visit this afternoon.

“You were just doing the job they pay you to do. I’ll go call Berdine and see if she’s going to be there, then I need to shower and change.”

He turned away, as if to hide anything else he was feeling. “I’ll wear out Beau while you do, so he travels easier.”

* * *

Berdine and Wayne’s home wasn’t quite an hour away, along scenic mountain roads, through Hot Springs with its close-ups of the French Broad River and Pisgah National Forest, then through Marshall, Madison County’s seat, with its quaint, historic downtown and granite mountainsides, which seemed in places to be no more than an arm’s length away from the car windows.

While never having seen an ocean or desert, Cristy had grown up with scenery like this, so she found herself paying more attention to the man in the driver’s seat.

She’d been quiet for most of the trip, but halfway into it, she finally said the words she had been carefully framing.

“If you’re feeling guilty about what happened to me, Sully, isn’t that as good as saying you think maybe I really was set up? I know you don’t trust Jackson. After all, you followed him up to the Goddess House to make sure he didn’t hurt me. And you agreed he ought to stay out of my life. You even hinted he might be dangerous.”

“You really want me to admit my concerns about Jackson out loud, don’t you?”

“I sure do.”

“Let me just put it this way. There’s more to Jackson Ford than meets the eye. You know it, I know it, and I would like to prove it. If I could, it would go a long way toward making me feel better about this world we live in.”

“Well, I would like that, too, although I would have liked it sooner.”

“I bet.”

She had served her own time, but there was more to the story than she could tell him, and much of it had to do with someone else. As if she wasn’t already feeling apprehensive, now her stomach felt as if she had swallowed a boulder.

“I’m curious about something,” Sully said. “Did Jackson ever talk to you about Pinckney Motors?”

“He complained about working there. His daddy was cycling him in and out of the family businesses, so Jackson didn’t really have a chance to get bored anywhere. He spent a lot of time checking properties his family owned out in the country, so he was always heading to one place or another.”

“So they own a lot of land in the county?”

From his too-casual tone she suspected this was not a revelation, but she played along.

“Jackson told me once that his father invested in rural real estate before the economy soured, thinking people were going to be hungry to retire near Berle. He bought land he could—what do you call it...” She thought a moment. “Subdivide. Of course he was on the town council for years, then ran it from the sidelines after that, so old Pinckney figured there wouldn’t be any zoning issues he couldn’t take care of with a bribe or two.”

“That’s interesting. So Jackson was managing the properties?”

“I never saw them, but that’s what he told me. He was taking care of the land until the economy improved, and his father could develop and sell it. There was always one problem or another out there, and Jackson would have to head off to take care of them.”

“So he put that ahead of selling cars?”

She tried to remember, because for months now, she hadn’t wanted to think about Jackson.

“He was out in the country a lot—or he was lying to me and really going off with other women, which might be true, too—but I can’t say what he put ahead of what. He was a manager at Pinckney Motors when I met him, but he moved over to the GM dealership a few months later. His daddy wanted him to know everything about the business. Jackson said he even had to work in the service department a few weeks, just to see how it was run.”

“Poor Jackson.” There was no pity in Sully’s voice.

“I would like to see Jackson in those greasy coveralls they all wear, wouldn’t you? Next to seeing him in an orange jumpsuit.”

“So he knows cars inside and out?”

“I suppose. Although I don’t think he can fix a thing by himself. That’s what Duke and Kenny did for him. One of them was as good a mechanic as the other. They could fix anything, and either one of them would have given a gallon of blood for Jackson if he asked for it. So if there was a problem, one or the other was always right there to fix it.”

“Duke worked for Pinckney, didn’t he?”

“I think he did, on and off. Duke blew up as easy as a hand grenade. Pull the pin and watch him explode. Jackson said he would get mad about something and just walk out, and Jackson would have to work on him to go back. But he was so good at what he did, Pinckney always hired him again.”

“And Kenny?”

“I don’t think Kenny was ever official over at Pinckney. Jackson said Kenny was a man with few needs and didn’t want a regular job. He lives in the house out in the country where his grandfather grew up—or he did until he was arrested for killing Duke. His parents gave the property to him when they moved out West. It’s a shack, but maybe you’ve seen it?”

“I was out there, yes.”

She supposed Sully had been there the day the sheriff arrested Kenny. Sheriff Carter had wanted the publicity for himself, most likely, and she tried not to think about that afternoon, or imagine the expression on Kenny’s face when he realized the cops weren’t there to see if they could find a part for somebody’s vintage Chevy.

“Kenny didn’t care what his place looked like,” she said, hating that she was now referring to an old friend in the past tense, because Kenny
had
been a friend, if a distant one, funny and kind, and as loyal to those he loved as a redbone coonhound.

“He could do what he liked best out there,” she went on, “and that’s all that mattered. Hunt, fish, target practice, cars. Lots of people just took their cars out there and left them, and when Kenny got around to it, he’d fix them if they could be fixed and if not, he’d remove all the working parts. He always had a spare this-or-that if somebody went looking.”

“So Kenny never worked for Pinckney?”

“I think Jackson told me that if they got in a real bind, and there was a problem nobody in the service department could figure out, then Kenny would go in and help out. But like I said, not officially.”

“And yet he lived out there in the boonies without a care in the world. Bought all the beer he could drink. Drove a late-model Sierra Denali with every upgrade I’ve ever seen—”

“Beer and a pickup. That’s what he would spend money on, all right. And that’s it.”

“Expensive hobbies.”

“Look, if your sheriff has his way, Kenny’s going to end up on death row anyway. Why do you care how he earned his money? You probably tore the property apart looking for evidence he killed Duke. Did you find a meth lab?”

“Kenny had friends.”

“What do you think you know?”

“I don’t know anything.”

“That’s not the same. That’s not what I asked.”

“It’s all I can say.” He glanced at her; then he smiled a little. “For now. But, Cristy, if you remember anything at all Jackson told you about Pinckney Motors or his daddy’s GM dealership, or even what he was doing when he was roaming around the countryside, anything that seemed unusual to you at the time or even suspicious, you’ll tell me?”

“Me, a sheriff’s informant. Who would have thought?”

“Just for the record, I’m not using you. I didn’t suggest coming with you today to get information. If you never tell me anything, that’s okay.”