Burying the Honeysuckle Girls (24 page)

“Son of a bitch,” he said.

“I lost . . . ” she gasped.

“What?” He leaned closer.

“I lost my dress.”

He straightened, looked her up and down. “Looks like you’ve lost your mind.” Jinn couldn’t look him in the eye; she couldn’t have straightened her body, even if she’d wanted to. “Oh, Jinn. I
told
you.”

Then Jinn saw someone step out of the trees. She stared at the figure, her breath shallow, heart skittering, like it was some dreaded haunt from a ghost story. She felt a tear slip down her face and her nose start to run. A warm trickle ran down the inside of her thigh.

Vernon Alford was an average-size man, with knobby arms and legs and a soft belly that spilled over his work pants. A good head of white hair waved back from his temples and fell clear to his shoulders. He had a deep voice—everyone said he should’ve been a preacher—and through the years, he had dressed up as Santa Claus and gone to the post office, where the kids swarmed over him and told him what they wanted for Christmas. Jinn had never sat on his lap. She’d known he wasn’t Santa.

Vernon walked to his trembling daughter and hitched up his pants. “What’s this?” he asked Howell. He looked at Jinn, who shook her head, mute. He began to unhook his suspenders. “You’re gonna speak to me about this. Howell done got me up out of bed in the middle of the night, and, by God, you’re gonna speak.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Sybil Valley, Alabama

Jean had trailed off, her gaze drifting somewhere beyond us. The coffee had gone cold, and my stomach was rumbling. But I didn’t register any of it. I couldn’t think. I pressed my hands against my face, just to remind myself I was really sitting in this room.

My mother had been serious, deadly serious, that night in the clearing with me. The honeysuckle girl was a real person, and her name was Dove Jarrod. Jinn had known her. Collie had met with her and so had my mother. And Mom had meant for me to find her as well. To figure out what had really happened to Jinn. And why the secret had been kept from all of us.

“You’ve got to finish,” I pleaded. “You can’t stop there.”

“I’ve told all I know.” Jean sighed, looking tired and distracted, every bit her age. “I suppose Vernon beat Jinn. Back then, the men got away with that kind of thing, more than folks would like to admit. But what happened after that, what they did with her, I don’t know. Dove would never tell me.”

My eyes burned with tears. “So, after all this . . . after I learn the honeysuckle girl really existed and, not only that, actually knew my great-grandmother . . . that’s it? That’s the end of it?”

In answer, she rose, collected our mugs, and lumbered to the sink.

“You’re Vonnie Tippett’s daughter, aren’t you?” I asked. “The one Dove and Jinn prayed for?”

She kept her back to us. “I am.”

“How did Dove know your mother was pregnant? Did she really have a gift? Is that the miracle you were talking about?”

She faced me. “I’d sound like a nut if I said I believed that, now wouldn’t I? And they’d have to put me in Pritchard.”

“Do you believe it?”

Jean shrugged and went to work cleaning the mugs under a spray of water. “On the other hand, Brother Jarrod had a pretty professional outfit going. He had a solid reputation as a prophet and healer to keep up, and I can’t imagine he left much of that kind of thing up to chance.”

Jay cut in. “Look, Jean, it doesn’t matter if Brother Jarrod was lying or telling the truth. It matters if you are.”

She seemed unperturbed by his dig. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

“This is a small community,” I said. “There had to have been rumors about what happened to Jinn.”

“Oh, there were rumors, all right.” She stacked the mugs in a dish rack and looked out the window. “Let’s see. Jinn’s daddy and her husband caught her in a tryst with Tom Stocker. They caught her with Charles Jarrod—they caught her with
Dove Jarrod
—and chased her out of the valley, clear down to Birmingham. Or to Mobile. Some people said Howell put her in Pritchard. Some said, when Vernon and Howell caught her doing whatever she was doing, she was so ashamed and humiliated she ran up the mountain and jumped off the cliff.”

“I need the truth, Jean.”

She turned. “Then you’ll have to talk to Dove because I don’t know it.”

“And how do you propose I do that?” I shot back. “Seeing as she’s dead.”

“I never said that.”

“You—” I blinked. Gulped. The room spun around me, sunlight and gingham and the smell of stale coffee whirling into a hot, smeary blur. What was she saying?

“Dove’s not dead,” Jean said and laughed. “She’s well into her nineties, granted, but she’s very healthy.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. I’m not. Dove Jarrod’s alive and well.”

I stood, my chair scraping the wood floor. “She won’t be for long, not if I don’t get to her soon. My brother’s after her, after her story, just like I am. I’m afraid he’ll hurt her if he finds her. You have to tell me where she is. Please. She’s in danger.”

“She won’t want to see you. It’s not safe, not for either of you.”

“I know. Don’t you understand? That’s exactly what I’m saying. She may have been safe before, but everything’s changed. If my brother figures out she’s alive—and I’ll bet he has—he’ll come for her.”

She wiped her hands on the dish towel and hung it neatly over the dishwasher handle. She studied me for a second or two, then seemed to arrive at a conclusion.

“She lives in a little house. Down in Tuscaloosa.”

My eyes widened.

“Right across the highway from Pritchard Hospital,” she went on. “But she’s not going to talk to you.”

Jay and I exchanged glances.

“Then you’re coming with us,” I said.

Back in Tuscaloosa, Jay, Jean, and I sped past the crumbling gates of Old Pritchard, and I sank deeper into the cushioned leather of the seat. But I couldn’t help looking back.

The spires stood out against the blue sky, and the brick walls of the place were furred with ancient vines. Honeysuckle, I thought, or, more aptly, poison ivy. The windows that weren’t boarded over with plywood gaped like empty eye sockets, lined with mold and cobwebs instead of scar tissue.

I thought of Jean’s story, all the things Jinn had told Dove that night at the creek about the honeysuckle wine, the money, and Tom Stocker. Her own mother, neglected and wasting away in that upstairs bedroom. The mutilated calf.

Of course the whole thing could be twenty-four-carat bullshit—a tale concocted by Jean or Dove or even Jinn. Dove hadn’t told anyone else the story. That, in itself, bathed the whole thing in a certain unbelievable glow.

It could all be a lie.

But if it was true, I had to admit my great-grandmother had faced a terrifying evil. The men Jinn lived with had been monsters—her son, father, and husband. And all she’d had to defend herself was the flimsy farce of spiritual protection offered by a carnival con woman. A woman who pretended she could bestow the power of God on people.

Jinn must have been desperate. She’d fallen under the spell of Dove’s mumbo jumbo, believing she’d received a miraculous gift. The men at the creek—Howell and Walter and Vernon—had witnessed Jinn’s breakdown. No doubt they’d wanted to keep it quiet.

“Is that it?” Jay asked Jean, interrupting my thoughts.

I followed his pointed finger to a simple white house in the distance. It was positioned just across the road from the Pritchard soccer field. The house sat in a thicket of cedar trees, and other than the immaculately neat yard bordered on all four sides by a silver-gray board fence, nothing about the place was remarkable. Jay pulled the car onto a slight rise on the side of the road, and we stared at the house.

“That’s it?” I asked. “That’s Dove’s house?”

“What did you expect?” Jean said.

“I don’t know—a little enchanted hideaway in a hollowed-out tree?” I let out my breath. “I can’t believe it. She’d been right across from the hospital, all along. I’d been a hundred yards away, and I never even knew it.”

I studied what I could see of the place. There was no car in the adjacent carport, which made sense. Dove was in her late nineties; she probably no longer drove. I wondered who looked after her, who picked up her groceries and medication. Did anyone come to cook or clean for her? Play cards or watch movies with her?

“I guess she likes her privacy. Except . . .” My eyes swept the place, and all at once, my pulse ratcheted up. “It looks like the gate’s open.”

The doorbell echoed through the house—the sound of wind chimes—but no one answered.

The minute we stepped over the threshold, I knew something was wrong. All the lights were on, and jazz music was playing from a stereo. Two back windows, one on either side of a neatly swept fireplace, were cracked open to let in the late-September breeze.

Nothing looked out of place. Framed photographs lined the mantel—Dove and her husband Charles, or just Dove alone, in black-and-white and color, through the years. She’d grown more beautiful with time, her red hair turning to silver, then white. I could see the ethereal beauty Jean had described. The girl Jinn had been drawn to.

“Something’s not right,” Jean said.

I picked up what looked like a recent snapshot—Dove in her garden, floppy straw hat hanging down behind her, head thrown back in laughter. She had on red lipstick, and her hair was smoothed back into an impossibly perfect chignon.

“I took that,” Jean said. “Her birthday.” She glanced around uneasily.

Jay called to us. In the kitchen, on the table, there was a half-eaten plate of food—wilted salad, brown rice, and a hardened wedge of cheese. An overturned glass of water lay broken in a puddle on the linoleum floor. I felt the panic rise in my throat.

“He has her.” I locked eyes with Jay. “Wynn.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. He could’ve taken her anywhere. To one of the rooms at Old Pritchard where he took me. Or farther back on the property, in the woods, near the cemetery.” I mopped my face with my hand. “He could’ve taken her back to Mobile.”

“Why would he do that?” Jean asked.

“It’s secluded, down by the river. He could take his time getting the story out of her. And then, when he’s gotten what he’s after . . .” I grabbed Jay’s hand. “If he’s gone home, I have to go after them. You and Jean search the hospital and the grounds.”

Jean listed slightly, then put out a hand to the counter.

“I’m coming with you,” Jay said.

“No,” I said. “You have to stay with Jean. If Wynn sees her, she’ll be in danger too.”

“I don’t want you going down there alone,” he said. “Not in your condition.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll be fine.”

His lips tightened.

“I’ll be careful, I swear. If I see Wynn has Dove, I’ll call the police. Right away. Look.” I pointed to the plate of food on the kitchen table. “Wynn—or one of his guys—surprised her while she was eating lunch. They can’t have been gone that long.”

He just stood there, shaking his head, eyes flinty.

I turned to Jean. “If I leave now, I’ll be in Mobile by five, right behind them. If you don’t hear from me by five thirty, call the police. Or the governor. Or whoever will listen to what you have to say. But if he’s really taken her there, I have to go now.”

“I’ll go,” Jay said. “You stay here with Jean.”

“No. And no way I’m setting foot back on Pritchard property.”

“He could kill you, Althea.”

“I won’t let him.” I put my hand on his arm. “Jay, listen to me. You have to let me do this. Face him on my own. It’s like you said before, don’t you see? It’s for all of them. I have to do this for Trix, Collie, and Jinn.”

“Listen to her, Jay,” Jean said.

“Thank you,” I said.

Jay inhaled once, then released the breath. Pulled the car keys out of his pocket and held them out to me.

“Five thirty,” he said.

I took the keys. “Five thirty. Call the police, make sure Jean’s safe, and then come find me.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Mobile, Alabama

I chanted the
Veni, Creator Spiritus
in a loop all the way down to Mobile. At first, tears streamed down my face, but after a while, they dried, and I felt a calmness steal over me. A strength I’d never felt before. I felt my mother near me. My mother and Collie and Jinn.

At last, I spun into the drive of my childhood home, behind a familiar-looking black SUV. I sprang out of the car and ran to the front steps, then pulled up short. There was no sign of life in the front windows, no lights on in the slanting afternoon sun. I could smell the salty air, see the river sparkling just beyond the house. But there was only silence. An eerie silence blanketing the whole place.

I rounded the side of the house, gazed upriver, then down.

Wynn’s boat was gone. Which meant he could’ve taken Dove somewhere. Out to the bay or out toward the gulf. Or the boat could simply be at the marina, getting its yearly service, for that matter. I studied the matted grass for some kind of sign—footprints or a dropped handkerchief or something for me to follow—then felt like laughing and crying at the same time. Like I had any tracking abilities whatsoever. Like Dove was going to know I was coming and was going to leave me clues.

I straightened, my eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the river. The distant putt of boat motors, the wind in the pines above me, a neighbor’s leaf blower. An egret squawked overhead, a great, deep-throated call I felt like I hadn’t heard in a hundred years, and my eyes snapped open. Should I go inside and search the house? Or just hide? Wait for Wynn to make the move first?

Somewhere, in the distance, a door slammed.

My head swiveled to the woods.

The sound had come from the other end of the property, from the vicinity of a broken-down wharf on the far side of the woods. The old dock was abandoned and concealed by the bramble of the woods, along with an old shed where my mother used to keep her crab traps.

Breaking into a run, I slipped into the thicket of trees. I ran through the clearing and back into the tangle, crunching over pine needles, stumbling. I broke through the opposite side of the woods and skidded to a stop. Wynn was standing just off the dock, on the shore, waiting. He had his hands in the pockets of his seersucker suit, a pink bow tie at his neck. He looked like he’d just come from an Edwardian-era ice-cream social.

I shaded my eyes against the setting sun. “What have you done with her?” I said. “Where’s Dove?”

He glowered at me. “You know you can’t just waltz out of a place like Pritchard. You’re in violation of a court order.”

“I’m about to lose my mind in two days,” I said mildly. “I’m just here to see if there’s anything I can do to stop it.”

He sighed, waved his hand. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

“I sent him home. I told him this was a family matter.”

He cocked his head. “Really?”

“Really. You and I can handle this alone. There’s no reason to involve anyone else. Not Jay. Not Dove.”

“You know that’s not true.” He jutted his chin, regarded me coolly. “Dove’s essential. She’s the one with the secret.”

“What have you done with her?” I asked.

He smiled.

I lunged at him. Buried my hands in his slick, black hair and clenched as hard as I could. Then, with all my strength, I pulled. He screamed and clawed at me, but I didn’t stop. I just kept pushing and pulling, yanking his head back and forth, my fingers anchored in his hair.

“Stop!” he screamed, and I finally did. He staggered backward among the mud and the reeds, and I saw what I’d done. His hair—his perfect hair—was actually a mass of plugs, running all along his scalp in neat little rows like they’d been planted by a miniature, methodical farmer. I’d pulled them out by the roots. Now many of them had come loose and lay on the shoulders of his suit. His head oozed red and white.

He glared at me and spit. “You little bitch!” He touched his scalp gingerly and examined his fingertips in disgust. He wiped them on his pants. “You know, I am getting really tired of dealing with you. I have been very patient. Endlessly patient. We all have, Althea, while you’ve done nothing but dragged this family’s name through the mud.”

All I could do was stare at him and those disgusting, bleeding plugs.

“I’m tired of making excuses for you,” he went on. “I’m tired of the constant, never-ending damage control I’m obligated to do because you won’t
pull yourself together
!”

He was trembling, and a blue vein throbbed in his forehead under a smear of blood. “I have a career to attend to, do you understand that? I have important—
meaningful
—work to do. I am carrying on Dad’s legacy. Does that word have any meaning to you?” He mopped his face and looked out over the river. “All of us—me, Dad, Molly Robb—would’ve been fine if you had just kept going down the path you were on. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not an easy thing to watch, someone you love destroying herself. But with you, it was an inevitability.”

He turned back to me. “Here’s the way it works. I am me. You are you. Molly Robb is Molly Robb. Do you understand? We all have our roles to fulfill. You don’t suddenly get to decide you’re someone else. Some hero. Some
whistle-blower
”—he spit this word out—“who can screw everything up for everybody else. You need to go back to doing what you do best, Althea. Killing yourself.”

Shaking, I watched him amble down the dock. I felt hollow, like my insides had just been scraped out. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t make a sound.

He was already at the end of the dock, where he fumbled with the door of the rotted shed and then disappeared inside. Before I could start toward him, the door banged open again and he reappeared, pulling a woman behind him. He pushed her to the end of the wharf, all the way to the edge, then turned her to face me.

I caught my breath, felt my heart thump in my chest.

Dove.

She was tiny, a bird of a woman. Her white hair was smoothed back in a bun, just like in the pictures at her house, and she wore a white caftan, which hung off her delicate bones like a waterfall. Her face was bare, save for a smudge of red lipstick. The way the light of the dipping sun glowed behind her, I thought she might be some kind of character out of a movie. An angel. Or some strange twist of my own imagination.

I dug in my pocket for my phone and, with shaking fingers, tapped out a call to 9-1-1.

“Put down the phone, Althea,” Wynn shouted to me.

I froze, lowered it. I could hear the faint sound of buzzing.

“Come down here,” he called. “Come talk to Dove.”

I moved toward them, down the wharf, stopping just a couple of yards short. Wynn had a vise grip on Dove’s arm, and he was breathing hard, blood smeared down his temples.

“My God,” I whispered. “You’re real.”

She smiled, dimples cleaving both cheeks, and I could see the network of veins beneath her translucent skin. As I studied her, she searched my face too, each of us cataloging the other’s features. She reached out a hand, like she meant to brush my cheek with her fingertips, but we were too far apart and she lowered it again.

I felt my skin tingle where she would have touched me.

“Hang it up, Althea,” Wynn said. He nodded down at my phone. I realized there was a voice, tinny and faraway, coming from it. “Hang it up now. And throw it in the water.” He twisted Dove’s arm, and her smile turned into a wince. I hit the button.

“If you want to hear her story,” he snapped. “If you want her alive, you’ll throw it in the water now.”

I did.

“What are you going to do, Wynn?”

Behind us, the sun was sinking into the bay, way down at the mouth of the river. The river was high, detritus from recent storms swirling past the slimy, sunken piers. Water sloshed up in the gaps left by rotted boards, turning the whole surface of the dock into a slippery, treacherous square.

It was getting darker by the minute, and we were hidden from everyone, beyond the curve of the tangled bank. Soon to be cloaked in total darkness. No one would see what happened here.

“I like drowning,” Wynn said. “It’s an efficient way to go. And it happens frequently enough, accidentally—to elderly ladies on medication, in their bathtubs. To addicts with suicidal tendencies.” He regarded me coolly. “I should probably take care of you first. She can’t run.”

“Wynn,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Let’s go back up to the house. Let Dove tell us her story.”

He barked out a laugh. “No. No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I give a shit about her story anymore, Althea. All I want to do is finish up with you two here and find someplace to get myself a good, stiff drink. Or three.”

Dove looked out over the river. She didn’t seem scared. She didn’t seem worried in the least. I took one tentative step closer to them.

“You can’t commit murder to keep our family secrets buried,” I said. I took another step. “Politicians get away with all kinds of stuff. Affairs, drug addiction, tax evasion. Just call a press conference, tell them everything, and it’ll blow over in a month.”

“Don’t be so naive, Althea,” he growled. “Our uncle was Klan. So I already have that one, massive, humiliating strike against me. I may win governor, but can you imagine what it’s going to take for a man with a murdering white supremacist in his bloodline to get into the White House?”

“Killing Dove is not going to fix that.”

He sent me a scornful look. “Didn’t you learn anything from all your detective work? It wasn’t just Walter who stirred shit up. There are other stories—other questionable events that our family has been involved in—and I will have to account for every single one of them in a presidential campaign. It’s not right. It’s not fair. Because, God knows, I didn’t do anything. But that’s the way it works these days. The media doesn’t let anything go. All it takes is one news report, one Internet article, and you’re finished.”

“Wynn—”

“So I’m taking care of it now. I’m burying everything
now
.”

“People died, Wynn.”

He sighed. “Oh, who’s to say what really happened? It was so long ago. Regardless, it’s our family, Althea. Our business. Walter understood that. And Dad.”

He shook his head and turned back to Dove.

My gut twisted. So our father had done something horrible, too.

I moved toward them but his free arm shot out, warning me from coming any closer. As he did, both rotted boards underneath his feet cracked and split. With one jerk and flail of his body, he fell into the gap, his entire lower half disappearing into the river below.

I cried out, and Wynn clawed at the surrounding planks. He dug his fingers into the cracks and blinked down at the swirling, black water.

“Jesus,” he gasped. “My leg. I think it’s broken.”

I dropped to my knees and reached out to him, now wedged between a narrow two-foot gap.

“Jesus, it really hurts,” he said, sputtering. “I think the bone tore through.”

I studied him for a split second. He was my brother. He needed me.

“Give me your hand,” I said.

He didn’t, though, just tilted his head back, an offering to the sky, now sprayed with stars. He started to laugh, a manic, high-pitched cackle that rose up into the darkness. I sat back on my heels and watched him for a couple of moments.

“This is fucked up,” he said, after winding down. “So fucked up.”

I looked over my shoulder. “Dove? Are you okay?”

She nodded, and I turned back to Wynn. His face was a mess of blood and water, and it shone a pale, greenish hue in the moonlight. He looked bad. Weak. I wondered how bad his leg was.

“Give me your hands,” I said. “I’m going to pull you out.”

“You can’t. I’m too heavy. I’ll swim around,” Wynn said.

I eyed him. “What about your leg?”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll go under the dock and swim to the bank.” He gave me a look I couldn’t quite read, at least not in the dark. “I’m sorry, Althea,” he said. “Okay? I’m really sorry. For everything.”

I didn’t know how to answer.

“Althea. I said I was sorry.”

And then, his body seemed to rise out of the water slightly, almost imperceptibly. He looked down at the choppy water in confusion. Then it happened again—he bobbed up, then back down again, as if buoyed by something beneath him.

“What—” he said, then stopped.

Behind him, pushing the water into the shape of a long, deadly arrow, I saw the brown, pebbled back of an alligator. I wanted to yell out, to warn him, but I couldn’t make the sounds connect to one another. I couldn’t push them out of my throat.

But Wynn could. From between the broken boards, he let out the most piercing, high-pitched shriek I’d ever heard. And he began to move too—thrashing back and forth wildly, flailing his arms in the air in an effort to grab hold of something, anything. He managed to snag a piece of the dock, dig his fingers into the soft wood.

He groaned and tried to heave himself up. But he was weak, and he couldn’t manage to lift himself more than an inch or two out of the water. His head dropped to the wharf, and he scratched at it fiercely, panting like he’d just run a marathon.

Before I was able to reach him, he was screaming again, kicking and bucking in the churn. I extended my arm. He caught me, and we held fast. I hooked one hand under his armpit, pulling him in a bit, bracing myself with the other hand. His eyes flashed a wild, metallic sheen. Something primal I’d never seen before.

“I’ve got you,” I said.

He pressed his face against mine and made a strange sound in my ear. A low, whining hum. I locked my arm around his torso, tried to dig the toes of my shoes into the crack between the boards.

“Hold on,” I said. I felt one of his arms tighten around my back. “I’m going to get you out.”

“Jesus, Althea,” he gasped. “My leg . . . It got my leg . . .”

“I know. It’s okay. I’ve got you.” I growled through clenched teeth and pulled with all I had, straining to get his sodden body over the boards. I threw my weight back again and again until the muscles in my back cramped.