Close to the Broken Hearted (26 page)

But tonight, she had a little boy at home who needed her to push all of this aside and be there for him as his mother and, even if it killed her on the inside, to show him that she accepted his pa's death.

Because her boy wanted nothing more than to know about his pa. And he had every right in the world to get his wish.

B
y the time my mother returned from Miss Sylvie's, I had stopped crying. I still didn't know why I had flipped out in my front yard. I was starting to think I might have some emotional problems or something like people on TV were always talking about. The worst part was I knew I was in for it the minute I heard her car pull in the driveway. Normally, I couldn't even give my mother the slightest “tone” (a word she used a lot that I didn't rightly understand), and this time, I outright screamed at her for five whole minutes. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I had never wished I was Dewey so bad in all my life.

I heard every detail as she walked into the house. I listened to her take off her shoes and put away her keys. Then she checked the fridge. She was supposed to make chicken-fried steak and potato salad tonight, but I didn't think she still would. It was getting on quite dark and when I heard Carry come home at least an hour or two ago, I was sure I heard her fixing something to eat before she headed to the living room to watch television.

She never once wondered where I was or, if she knew, why I was in my room. My sister didn't really pay much attention to my life. We got along okay. We still did things together, like the day we made the swords, but I had found that more and more it required a lot of begging on my part to get her to be an active participant.

Or I wound up having to paint her toenails once a week for an entire month. Things like that.

Finally, after what sounded like my mother going through the mail, she left the kitchen and came down the hall. She didn't come right to my room; she went to her own first. I started thinking that maybe she'd forgotten what had happened.

But then I realized nobody could forget all that.

And she hadn't. She was in her room about ten minutes before she came in and sat on the edge of my bed. I was facing away from her, toward the wall with my window. I didn't turn around.

“Abe?” she asked. “You awake?”

Her voice was very calm, which can sometimes be even worse than when she sounds upset, so I've learned not to trust it. I've also learned never to lie to her, so I said, “Yes.”

“Will you turn around?”

I turned over in my bed, leaving my head on my pillow. I could feel the stains from my tears still on my face even though it had been at least an hour since I stopped crying.

I expected to see her looking full of anger.

Only she wasn't.

“Are you okay now?” she asked.

Her question confused me. “I—” I started, then answered with, “Yeah.”

“Do you know what happened outside?”

I just shook my head. It was the truth.

“I think I do. I think you got a little overwhelmed by everything that's been going on lately.”

I hesitated. Was I not going to get in trouble? “What do you mean?”

“Well, first, I think I made a mistake taking you to Eli Brown's that day. Second, this whole thing with your new grandparents and that woman who's your aunt—I reckon it's got you thinkin' 'bout your pa and that's drummed up a bunch of feelin's you just don't know how to handle. And I've been very selfish, not tellin' you things 'bout him. So that's gonna stop. Right here. Right now.”

There was something on the bed beside her. She'd brought it in with her. It was something I'd seen before, but not for many years: the shoe box from her closet that I “stole” the picture of my pa from, the one I kept in the drawer beside my bed and carried around in my pocket for good luck.

Seeing it now made my heart start hammering against my chest. What was she going to do?

Slowly, she lifted the top off the box. It was exactly as I remembered it: full of scattered photos of different sizes.

“I want to go through some of these with you, and tell you 'bout them. Tell you how old your pa was when they was taken and where we was and stuff we were doin'. That is, if you want to hear 'bout it?”

I gave her a big smile. “Boy, do I!” Then my throat went dry and felt too tight to get any more words out.

“And then I want you to have them.”

I blinked, stunned. “Have what?” I managed to ask.

“The pictures.”

“All of them?”

“Yes. As long as you'll take good care of them.”

“Yes. I will.” I couldn't believe it.

So we went through the pictures one at a time. Some we skipped on account of them being similar to others, but she told me stories about how my pa used to play football with his friends in the afternoons and how they used to go camping and hiking and then after Carry came along how they would take her down to the beach in Mobile and then they'd take me after I came along and how much I loved the waves and the sand. I listened to every word as though it were coming from the Gospels.

Then she reached into the box and stopped talking.

Her face fell sort of flat of emotion. She looked like somebody had just told her some very bad news.

“What is it?”

“Just—I forgot this was here,” she said, pulling out a gold ring.

“What is it?”

“My wedding ring. I put it in here when I put the pictures away.”

I watched her face, waiting to see if she was going to get angry the way she used to when I would bring up my pa. Or maybe she'd start crying, the way I remembered her doing a long time ago when things would remind her of him.

But she didn't do either. Instead, she just put the ring in her shirt pocket.

“What are you gonna do with it?” I asked.

“I'm not certain,” she said. “But you certainly don't need it.”

I laughed. “No. I'm happy with the pictures.”

“I'm sure I'll find some use for it.” Her voice sounded very far away.

“Mom?” I asked after a moment of silence.

She sort of jerked back to my room. “Yeah?”

“You okay?”

She reached down and hugged me. “Yes, I'm fine.”

“Mom, when am I gonna meet my new grandma and granddaddy? You said we was going.”

Sitting up, she replied, “Whenever I can get time away from work to drive to Georgia. We'll need a whole day. Right now Miss Sylvie's takin' all my time.”

I frowned. “Does she have to call the station constantly?”

“Hey!” my mother snapped. “Sometimes people really
do
need the police to help them.”

“Does Miss Sylvie?”

She thought that over. “Let's just say I don't think Miss Sylvie's as crazy as other people do.” From the way she said it, it was obvious the topic was to be left at that.

It didn't matter; I was more interested in getting back to the photographs, anyway.

We continued going through pictures another thirty minutes or so. Then she asked me if I felt like eating anything. I told her I hadn't had any supper on account of she told me to go straight to my room and stay here until she got back from Miss Sylvie's.

“Well, I have potato salad already made,” she said. “Let me quickly fry you up some steak Then I think it's bedtime.”

“Okay,” I said and got out of bed and followed her to the kitchen with the shoe box full of photos underneath my arm.

While she cooked, I kept looking through the pictures, feeling closer and closer to my pa. I was happy my mother was able to talk about him without getting angry or sad. It seemed to me that must be a definite improvement in the way she was handling him being gone. But then, I was just a kid, so what the heck did I know?

Well, I knew I loved chicken-fried steak and potato salad, which I had two helpings of before putting the pictures safely away in my own bedroom closet and going to bed for the night.

 

Not much later, Leah decided to go to bed early. During the summer she always went to bed before her daughter, Caroline, who didn't really have a bedtime through the summer break. But tonight Leah retired even earlier than usual.

It was around ten when she walked into her bedroom and turned on the lamp beside her bed. She began undressing so she could get into her pajamas when she remembered the wedding ring she'd put into her pocket earlier on.

Pulling it out now, she stared at it a long while under the soft glow of her bedroom lamp. It brought up strange emotions. A year ago, she wouldn't have been able to hold it in her hands without throwing it. Now, she just felt oddly empty looking at the big O it made.

When Billy died, she could very well have pawned it out. She threw out a lot of things with his memory attached to them, but something had made her keep this ring. There must've been a reason. She had hidden it away, but she'd kept it nonetheless.

Now the ring more intrigued her than upset her.

She had no idea what to do with it now that she'd given the shoe box to Abe. So, gingerly, she placed it on the table beside her bed right beneath her lamp where it continued to sparkle in the warmth of the golden glow.

By the time she woke up the next day, she'd forgotten it was even there.

T
he first thing Leah did after getting back to work was call directory assistance up in Arkansas and ask for all the numbers they had matching any Jolayne Thomases. She was given five.

She dialed the first one and nobody answered.

She called the second, asked to speak to Orwin, and was told, “I don't know no Orwin.”

On the third try, she got lucky.

“He's out of town,” the woman on the other end said. Her voice was deep and gruff. “Who is this, anyway? If you one of his ex-girlfriends you ain't got no business callin' here. How'd you get this number?”

Leah just hung up. “Yeah, he's not in town,” she said to herself, “on account of him bein' here in Alvin.”

“You say somethin'?” Chris asked from the desk beside her. He was doing the crossword in the newspaper.

“Nothin' important.”

Using her computer, she looked up the area code of the telephone number she'd just called and discovered it was in Pine Bluff. That was another good use for the computer; it could do reverse phone numbers for most telephone listings in and around Alabama and had information for every area code in the country. Putting in another call to the Pine Bluff sheriff's office, she told them who she was, gave them her badge and station number, and asked if she could acquire information on Jolayne Thomas.

“You got more than just a name for us to go on?” the officer at the other end asked. He sounded a bit put out by her request.

“I got her telephone number.” She gave it to him.

“So, what sorta stuff you lookin' for?”

Leah had learned from what happened with Tom Carson.
Don't overlook anything
. “Everything,” she said. “Financial records, medical records, a background check, the works.”

“You wanna know what size of panties she wears?”

Leah didn't laugh. “I'd really appreciate the favor if you could do this for me.”

“This information
that
important to you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think it may be.”

She heard him sigh. “All right. Let me see what I can do. What's your fax number?”

Luckily, Ethan had gone out and replaced the busted fax machine last week so she had a number to give him that would work.

“Some of this stuff is gonna take some time,” the officer said. “I'm gonna have to make some calls. It's gonna take a while. You want me to send everythin' at once after I get it all, or would you rather have it in bits and drabs as it comes in?”

“I'll take it as it comes, if that's all right with you.”

Another sigh. “Doesn't matter to me either way.”

Leah thanked him again for his time and hung up, hoping the officer would actually do what he said he was going to do.

After the call into the sheriff's office, Leah wasted no time in getting on to her next task: running a background check on Orwin Thomas. Opening the cabinet containing the five hundred or so gray five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy discs that made up their station's computer database, she found the one listed in the T section between Ta and Tm. If they had any data on the computer for Orwin Thomas, this would be where she'd uncover it.

Returning to her desk, she slipped the disk into the drive and waited while the computer read it. It chunked and whirred like it always did. Pulling up data on the computers wasn't fast, but it was a helluva lot faster than going through drawers of file folders. She only hoped someone had entered the information from the file folder onto the disc.

While she waited, she chided herself for not considering Orwin a suspect immediately.

The goddamn house was still locked when Sylvie came home, Leah,
she thought.
Why didn't you think of him right away? Why did it take so long to consider it might just be someone with a key?

She knew the answer. It was because she had Eli Brown on the brain. And Sylvie was partially to blame for that, and so was Leah's son. But that was no excuse.
It shouldn't have mattered; you're a goddamn detective. Do your job
.

Eli Brown was an innocent man in all this whose father-in-law managed to finangle a ranch at such low cost there wasn't any chance of even a dime being left over for anything even remotely resembling an inheritance for Sylvie. The bank wouldn't even have got half of what was owed to them on the place.

When the background check finally loaded, it was full of surprises and yet, at the same time, none of them really surprised Leah at all.

The first surprise was how much information on Orwin Thomas was available on the computer. Someone (likely Chris) had gone through all his files and entered everything into the system. That made things a lot easier. As an adult, Orwin Thomas's record was absolutely clean, but his record as an adolescent was another story. It showed three counts of theft, one with aggravated assault, one count of possession, and “a noted history of fighting.”

Unfortunately, because he was a minor, it was a juvenile record, and it was frustratingly vague.

“Chris?” Leah asked.

“Yeah.” Chris had just returned from using the “facilities” and swung around in his chair so he was facing her. He had back-straddled it.

“I need you to work some magic for me.”

“What kind?”

“That thing you can do with juvey records?”

“You mean get all the dirt?”

“Yeah, I need you to do that.”

“Just give me a name,” he said.

“Orwin Thomas.”

“Orwin Thomas? Star tight end? Torn ACL?”

“That'd be the one.”

“You suspect the superstar might not be so shiny?”

“Well, his adult record looks like it's been Turtle Waxed it's so clean, but from what I can see, there are hints that his juvey one might show a different picture.”

“I'm on it.” Chris grabbed a handful of floppy discs from the database cabinet and began inserting them into his computer one after another while madly typing away. Soon, he began making telephone calls, receiving calls, and receiving faxes. This was something the man truly had a gift for. Leah had no idea how he did it. He must have connections in all the right places because, literally, less than an hour later, he put a compiled report in Leah's hands.

“Okay,” she said. “Sometimes you really do astound me.”

“Oh, I bet you say that to all the boys.”

“Warn me now, anything I'm not gonna like in here?”

“Depends on whether you're lookin' to nail him to the wall or to a cross.”

“Okay . . . that sounds interesting. I'll leave it as a surprise.”

The reports outlined everything and more.

Orwin Thomas got caught twice stealing from Applesmart's Grocery, and he once walked into Fast Gas with a tire iron and asked the person behind the register to empty it into a bag. He also got caught for possession. It was just a small amount of marijuana, but it was enough to almost get him tried in adult court (he'd been seventeen years old at the time).

There were also five separate incidents of fighting where police were called to the scene, although no arrests were made. Still, the report definitely showed a notable history of violence in his teen years. And these were only the fights where the police showed up. Leah was certain there were probably many more that went unreported.

The first happened when Orwin was fourteen and the last was when he was eighteen. Even at eighteen, no legal action had been taken against him.

Twice when he was brought in on the other charges he was evaluated by a psychologist, a different doctor each time. The first one said Orwin showed violent outbreaks throughout their discussion and acted angrily toward some of the questions being asked. The report said the doctor found this pattern “disturbing” and that Orwin displayed an inherent distrust of authority figures.

The second psychologist suggested that Orwin showed signs of mental illness and even went so far as to say, at times, his behavior was borderline psychopathic in nature. The report stated, if left untended, Orwin's mental condition could grow into a potential risk to himself or others.

Orwin had been seventeen when that second assessment had been made. He'd managed to stay out of trouble ever since.

This fact did little to comfort the empty hollow expanding inside Leah's gut as she read.

She paged down to a list of Orwin's known associates and saw the usual suspects. Even for being a small town, Alvin had its share of troubled teens, just like everywhere else. And they tended to flock together like black sheep.

Then her eyes settled on one name in particular: Darius “Dee Bee” Baylor. Leah wasn't sure what it was, but something about that name was setting off alarm bells in her head.

“Chris?”

“Mmm?”

“Where have I heard the name Darius Baylor 'fore?”

“Dee Bee? He was part of that takedown I made. Remember?
The Biggest Bust in Dixie?
I think that's what the
Alerter
called it.” He smiled smugly.

“Oh, right. Now I remember.”

Leaning back in his chair, Chris interlaced his fingers, pushed out his arms, and cracked his knuckles. “Yep,” he said. “Four of
them
.
One
of me.
Incredible
odds.”

“So I heard,” Leah said, as disinterestedly as possible. “Like I said, you're a superhero.”

The fax machine began slowly rolling out a thin sheet of paper. Chris got up out of his chair and, with an arrogant sashay to his step that made Leah wish she'd never asked about Darius Baylor, he strutted over and patiently watched each page crawl out and curl onto the gray carpet.

Picking up the cover sheet, he said, “Financial records for someone named Jolayne Thomas livin' in Pine Bluff, Arkansas? This for you?”

“That was quick,” she said. “And you were sittin' right here beside me just over an hour ago when I made the call askin' for the records. Didn't you hear me?”

He shrugged. “Guess I wasn't listenin'.”

Chris continued watching as each separate page crept from the machine and curled up onto the floor.

“You know watchin' it don't make it go any faster,” Leah said.

“I know. I just find technology fascinatin' is all.”

Finally, when it was all finished, Chris brought all the sheets to Leah's desk and handed them to her. She scanned them and quickly concluded things weren't exactly right with Jolayne Thomas.

At one time, near on a year ago, the woman had a fair amount of money in the bank—just over a hundred grand.

But since then, she had drawn almost all of it out. And it came out in just three lump sums. The first happened pretty near ten months ago and was for the curious round number of seventy-five thousand dollars. The other two were for amounts around fifteen thousand dollars each, and both happened in the past six months.

There was another interesting tidbit of information inside these pages. Jolayne Thomas had two credit cards, but they were both attached to the same account. One was in her own name, and the other was in the name of Orwin James Thomas.

“Well, that answers
that
question,” Leah said.

“What question?” Chris asked. He was back at his desk, more interested in what Leah was doing than his crossword.

Instead of answering him, Leah focused on that seventy-five-thousand-dollar withdrawal. She jotted down the date and did a quick calculation in her head. Despite what she'd wanted to tell Chris, she remembered his coke bust well. She knew exactly when it had happened. And this withdrawal took place within a week before that time.
And
now that she thought about it (and again, this was something she couldn't believe she was only thinking of now), Orwin Thomas had disappeared from Sylvie's life the day after Chris brought in those four guys and all them drugs.

Her brain quickly put two and two together. Orwin Thomas had once been a pretty big high school football superstar. He'd have connections. She was willing to bet one of those connections offered him an investment he couldn't turn down. Buy low, sell high. Easy money for Orwin, who was in need of some easy money. He just needed to find the funding for the deal.

That would be where Miss Jolayne came into the picture.

“When you, you know,” she asked Chris, “single-handedly caught them guys with those drugs, you found money on them too, right?”

“Sure did,” he said. “About sixty-three thousand dollars. Them DEA guys that come up from Mobile figured they musta sold some of that coke 'fore I managed to nail 'em.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm, what?” Chris asked.

She searched his eyes. “What would you say if I told you I think I know who bought it?”

Chris gave a little laugh. “I'd say I wish you woulda known that ten months ago so I coulda caught him with it and put him away, too.”

Leah mulled this over. Orwin was back in Alvin, and there had to be a reason he was back, and it wasn't just to get Sylvie all riled up. No, that part was a distraction, Leah figured. Orwin probably thought that if Sylvie called the police enough times with false alarms that the police would stop coming out and that would make her place a lot safer to get in and out of.

Leah turned her attention back to Chris. “I think he still has them. The drugs, I mean.”

Chris gave another little laugh. “Now you're just teasin'.”

“I reckon it was Orwin Thomas who bought 'em and when you made them arrests he got scared that one of them guys you put behind bars was gonna go on and tell you who they sold it to, so he hid the stuff and left town. And now, I think he's come back to get 'em.”

“Why now?”

That was a good question. Leah considered it. “I don't rightly know. Maybe enough time has gone by that he no longer feels afraid that someone's gonna squeal on him.” The dwindling balance left on the financial records sitting in front of her popped off the page. “Maybe he needs the money, so he needs to sell 'em.”