Sweet Jiminy (12 page)

Chapter 12

L
yn gazed across
her kitchen table at the stranger sitting calmly in one of the chairs that Edward had carved. Jiminy hovered nearby, leaning in and out of the doorway like she was caught up in a current. The sheaf of onionskin paper lay on the table, flimsy against the wood.

“Do you recognize that report?” the man asked Lyn.

His name was Carlos, Lyn knew, and he was from Texas. Willa's granddaughter had explained why she'd wanted to get him involved, touting his history of successful prosecution of unsolved civil rights crimes. Before the run-in with Roy and Randy Tomlins near the interstate junction, Lyn never would have been persuaded to cooperate. But that night had proven that the hatred that had stolen her husband and daughter was now actively threatening another loved one in the here and now. It wasn't just about Lyn and her painful past. It was now about Bo—who looked so much like Edward—and a still-forming future. As the force of that realization struck her, Lyn had felt something stirring within, almost as though she was shifting out of neutral and into gear. She'd understood clearly that what had happened so long ago lived on, and she'd suddenly decided that she'd be damned if it outlived her. For the first time in forty years, she'd felt a compelling reason to stick around.

“No, I never saw this,” Lyn answered.

“Does it seem accurate, though?”

Lyn looked again at the first page of the onionskin pile. It was a yellowed transcript of her visit to the police station on June 24, 1966. She'd gone in two weeks previous to this visit in order to report that her husband and daughter were missing, but she'd been told that they'd probably just run off without her, and that it wasn't the practice of the Fayeville sheriff's office to get caught up in domestic disagreements.

Fourteen days later, the bodies of Edward and Jiminy were found, and Lyn returned to report their murder. The sheriff was dismissive, telling her that he didn't have resources to waste on a silly woman's delusions. According to him, it seemed likely that Edward and Jiminy had stopped to cool off in the river and gotten in over their heads. They didn't know how to swim that well, did they? Did they? He pressed Lyn. He raised his voice to intimidate her, suggesting with his jabbing finger that she might be getting in over her head herself.

Lyn had stayed very calm and pointed out that bruises and bullet wounds suggested something other than drowning. She said they had been driving home from a town upstate, and someone had run them down and killed them. But the sheriff waved her off, lamenting her “overhyperactive imagination.”

Lyn remembered all this as she read the transcript in front of her:

Lyn Waters made unsubstantiated claim that her husband, Edward Waters, and her daughter, Jiminy Waters, were murdered. All evidence points to accidental drowning. No charges will be filed.

Lyn looked up at the man across her table.

“Does it seem accurate?” she repeated. “That's what you asked?”

“I meant, does it accurately describe their attitude. Did you try to talk to the sheriff and was he that dismissive.”

“Yes,” Lyn answered.

Carlos nodded. Lyn reminded him of an olive tree, stately and gnarled. He was used to the resignation she emanated. He had seen her brand of empty expression on others, in previous cases. So much of the time the surviving relatives he encountered seemed defined less by the presence of ongoing life than by the absence of loved ones whose lives were cut too short.

“Do you remember it well? Do you mind talking about it?”

Lyn looked past him at Willa's granddaughter, who stared back, suddenly self-conscious.

“I'll just wait outside,” she said, slipping out the screen door.

Lyn was glad of this. She didn't want her around while she talked about the real Jiminy.

“You have something against her?” Carlos asked.

His tone was completely dispassionate, suggesting it was fine by him if Lyn did. That he was just there to observe.

Lyn shook her head dishonestly.

“She shares your daughter's name,” Carlos noted.

“Mmmmhmmm,” Lyn replied.

“Why does she?” he asked. “What's the story there?”

Lyn took her time answering, silently remembering the day she'd first found out.

Willa's daughter, Margaret, had called to let Willa know she was a grandmother. Lyn had been washing dishes, content to let the running water drown out the conversation. By the time Willa had hung up the phone and turned toward her, Lyn was drying plates with a freshly laundered towel. She couldn't remember the year or the season, but because she was at Willa's, it must have been a Tuesday or Thursday.

“It's a girl,” Willa had said, her voice an odd, strained pitch.

Lyn looked up because of the tone. She wondered whether it meant that something was wrong with the baby, or if perhaps Willa was just being sensitive to the fact that Lyn would never have a grandchild of her own.

“Congratulations,” she said evenly.

Willa stood and took a few steps in Lyn's direction. For a moment, Lyn thought she was going to touch her, and she braced herself. But Willa stopped, and rested one small hand on the counter.

“She named her . . .”

Lyn didn't pause her drying. The fact that the baby had been named wasn't earth-shattering news.

“She named her Jiminy,” Willa finished.

Lyn didn't drop the towel, but it felt like something inside her was dropping things left and right.

“I don't know why she did, Lyn. I didn't even think she remembered. But she did love Jiminy, and I guess the name stuck in her brain.”

Lyn nodded, and kept drying. She set her posture and expression to communicate that she didn't want to talk about it any further. Because Willa didn't either, they'd never discussed it again.

Now, twenty-five years later, this brown-skinned out-of-state investigator was watching her, waiting for her to speak.

“Willa's daughter loved Jiminy,” she finally offered. “And remembered her more than we thought she did.”

“Your daughter obviously left a deep and lasting impression,” Carlos replied. “Even on the mind of a child.”

“You have no idea,” Lyn replied.

She was frustrated that she couldn't convey just what Jiminy had meant to anyone who came into contact with her. She'd been a miracle, really. She'd always been the most alive, interesting personality in any room. She'd been curious and bold, exceptionally smart and utterly charming. People had fallen for Jiminy whether they'd wanted to or not.

“Did you get along with Willa's daughter, Margaret?” Carlos asked.

“For the first seven years of her life, we did. Then I lost interest.”

“After the murders.”

“There wasn't much point.”

Carlos leaned back in his chair, so that its front two legs rose up in the air. Lyn winced, feeling the strain on the back two legs somewhere deep in her chest.

Carlos noticed and righted himself.

“Edward made them,” Lyn explained.

“They're beautiful. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking.”

Lyn nodded. She loved those chairs. She loved running her fingers over them. When she did, she felt almost like she was touching a part of Edward.

“How did Henry and Willa react to the murders?” Carlos asked.

Lyn closed her eyes for a moment. She saw Henry in the room with the doctor and the bodies. Saw him reaching for her, knew she'd stopped him with a stare. He and Willa might've wanted to give her comfort, but she'd moved beyond that by then.

She opened her eyes and stared at the wall.

“They were devastated, same as me,” she said. “They didn't go with me to the police station, but they went separately. Equally,” she added with a wry half laugh. “They told the sheriff that there had been murders that needed to be prosecuted,” she finished, sober once more.

Carlos's face remained still.

“Their report should be somewhere in here,” Lyn continued, shuffling the onionskin pile in front of her. “Find that one, too?”

Carlos shook his head.

“Not yet.”

Lyn stopped shuffling.

“It's not in this pile?”

Carlos shook his head again. Lyn was silent for a moment.

“I see.”

“It doesn't mean it didn't happen,” Carlos said. “Back then, people misplaced plenty they didn't want to see the light of day. The sheriff might not've even had a report written in the first place, just to save him the trouble of tearing it up.”

“He had one written up of my visit,” Lyn said.

“He did,” Carlos agreed.

“So.”

“You said yourself Willa and Henry were devastated,” Carlos said. “I'm sure that they were. Didn't Henry pass away not too long after?”

Lyn nodded. And she didn't say it out loud, but that had probably been for the best.

 

Perched in his lifeguard station at the Fayeville pool, Walton Trawler heard all kinds of things people didn't expect him to. They just forgot about him, sitting up in his chair, keeping his eyes on the water and his fishing hat on his head. They became accustomed to his steady alertness and grew to think of him as an object—as furniture that belonged with the pool, rather than a living, listening human. If they did remember his presence hovering just above them, they thought immediately of his age, and what they assumed was his poor hearing. They didn't consider the possibility that all five of his senses worked as well as a twenty-year-old's, and that he was consequently soaking up every interesting fragment of gossip that floated by. Sound carries over water, even the length of a swimming pool. Walton just sat and listened and learned even more about the town he already knew better than just about anyone. The truth was, his interest in gossip was one of the reasons he kept volunteering for this job, despite his age.

“Was she always trouble?” Gloria Travail was asking, with a flip of her frosted blond hair.

Walton had delivered Gloria twenty-four years ago. He'd taken out her tonsils when she was seven, and her appendix when she was nineteen. The sight of her tanned abdomen always reminded him that he hadn't left a noticeable scar. Gloria flaunted her body for the other people at the pool, most of them women with children. She thrived on contentious relationships and delighted in being a friend one day, a foe the next. She had directed her question at Suze Connors, with whom she'd recently been fighting but had apparently made up. Suze was nursing her new baby under a towel. Walton double-checked to make sure the baby's whole body was covered. He was there to save the lives of anyone who might otherwise drown, but sometimes he just felt like standing up on his chair and yelling at them all to get out of the sun. Wasn't he failing at his duty by watching them slowly kill themselves with cancerous ultraviolet rays? He didn't care as much about himself; he knew his days were numbered.

“I don't know what she was like when she was in Illinois. It's real different there,” Suze was saying. “But I never woulda expected something like this. I mean, can you imagine?”

“No, I absolutely cannot,” Gloria declared. “The thought of it makes me sick. Where's her momma in all this? What's her grandmomma doing? Though that Willa Hunt is an odd one, I've always thought.”

“I expect Willa's just too old and tired and worn out to control her.” Suze shook her head sadly. “I told Jiminy to call me up. Told her I'd loveta see her. I wish she'd come to me first.”

Gloria patted her arm.

“Don't blame yourself, now. You've had your hands full.”

Suze shrugged in a martyrish way and adjusted the towel covering her nursing baby. Her other three kids were playing Marco Polo in the shallow end of the pool, shouting and splashing. The youngest of them was outfitted in water wings that were blown up so tight they looked like they might pop.

“You'd never let one of your kids, would you?” Gloria asked.

“Are you joking?” Suze replied.

She sounded deeply offended.

“I wouldn't, either,” Gloria agreed.

“This world's hard enough,” Suze said sagely. “Life'll bring you down if you let it, you don't need to bring yourself down ahead of time. I just don't know
what
she was thinking, I honestly don't. He's nice enough, apparently, but that's not the point. He's beneath her.”

“For real, sounds like,” Gloria said with a snort.

“You're so bad,” Suze replied with a shake of her head.

“Maybe this isn't even new for her,” Gloria continued. “Maybe he's not her first.”

Suze shuddered.

“She should just move along and let Fayeville be.”

Gloria opened her dark tanning oil bottle and spread a fresh coat over her browning legs. Suze eyed them enviously. Gloria started giggling.

“What?” Suze asked.

Gloria capped the oil and looked up with a devilish grin.

“Would you rather . . .”

“Oh, Lord, Gloria,” Suze rolled her eyes and looked around to make sure her kids were out of earshot.

They were still in the pool, though Bryce was trying to hoist himself up the wrong way onto the waterslide now, followed by Savannah. Melody and her overinflated water wings watched. Suze moved her baby to her other breast.

“Go on,” Suze said.

“Would you rather screw a black or a spic?” Gloria asked, her voice low, her wicked smile wide.

The shriek of Walton's whistle pierced the air.

“Not allowed!” he bellowed from the chair above them. “Stop right this second, that is NOT ALLOWED!”

He pretended he was screaming at the kids. Startled, Gloria and Suze covered their ears, and Suze's newborn started wailing.

 

The first thing Bo saw when he pulled up to his aunt Lyn's house was Jiminy sitting on the porch. He hadn't expected her to be there, and he felt unprepared for an encounter. He shifted into reverse to back out before she saw him, but he was too late. She looked up.