Long Black Veil (29 page)

“Look, my parents will be furious about this anyway. And they’re never going to let me go to the school I want to go to anyway unless I wash out of their top picks.” He took her face in his hands. “You have a shot, Devon. Let me do this for you.”

Devon felt cold all over, like the temperature in the room had just dropped by fifteen degrees. She huddled in Brock’s arms, feeling gooseflesh rise along her arms. It almost felt like when Jessamy was communicating with her. She looked around the room, but saw no sign of the family ghost.

Brock was still talking to her. “Please, Dev. Let me do this.”

She thought seriously about what he was asking. If he took the fall for this, he might have some problems getting into college, but his parents would probably fund his way in with a sizeable donation. He might not get a basketball scholarship either, but again, his parents wouldn’t have a problem coming up with the money for his education. It wasn’t a lot he was sacrificing if she let him take the blame.

Devon didn’t have those safety nets in place. If she went on academic probation, there went Duke. Her early admission was contingent upon finishing strong with both her grades and her behavior, and this would ruin her out. And she had no idea what this would do to her chances at a scholarship.

But it wasn’t right to ask Brock to shoulder this on his own. Not when they were both innocent. The cold grew more intense, until Devon could swear she was going to see her breath. She shivered. But if they couldn’t prove their innocence, what then? Was she willing to gamble her future on this, especially when Brock seemed so willing to help? He would have plenty of opportunities—he’d already had far more than she had—but she only had one. Didn’t it make sense to let him take the risk?

She put her hands on top of Brock’s, meeting his hazel eyes with her green. “No.”

“Why not?” He sounded confused, and a little hurt.

“Because I’m not my mother. I don’t need you to protect me. It's wonderful that you want to do this for me, but it wouldn't be right.” When he still looked confused, she lightly kissed him on the mouth. “Someone is setting us up. And I’m not going to let them get away with it.”

Now that she’d made her decision, she felt warmer, positively blazing with heat. She wouldn’t let Brock take the blame for the papers; she couldn't. It would be a lie, and she’d seen where all the lies had gotten the women in her family. If she wasn’t able to prove her and Brock’s innocence and she lost her full ride to Duke, then so be it. It didn’t have to be her last chance, and she wasn’t going to compromise what she believed.

“Are you sure?” Brock stared into her eyes, searching for something. Suddenly, he smiled. “You’re sure.”

She nodded. “We’re going to figure a way out of this mess. And we’re going to do it the right way.”

His smile turned into a grin. “Yes Ma’am.” He mock-saluted her. “You’re the brains of this operation,” he said. “So tell me what we’re going to do.”

"That's easy," she said, pulling his arm around her shoulders. She had a feeling there wouldn't be many chances for them to see each other in the future once her grandmother and his parents found out. "We find out who turned us in for this." She met his eyes. "And we make them talk."

Chapter Thirty

Devon had been right about not being able to see Brock. But surprisingly, it wasn't Gammy who did the forbidding. Brock's parents had rightfully freaked out over the news of his academic probation. This, coupled with the fight with Micah at the dance, just cemented their opinion that Devon was a bad influence on him. They'd put him in lockdown; he was only allowed to go to school for classes and then had to go straight home. The academic probation had benched him from the basketball team, which also didn't thrill his parents. They'd taken his cell phone and monitored his calls at home. Devon could only catch snippets of time with him in between classes during the day.

Gammy hadn't been exactly happy, but she believed Devon when she told her about the setup. She had instituted a curfew, but as long as Gammy knew where Devon was, she seemed content to let her granddaughter proceed as she usually did.

Since Devon had more time on her hands, she focused as much of her attention on finding Dwight Abernathy. Gil had told her that he had left town several years ago, and between the two of them, they were able to find out where he had settled after he left. But that didn't necessarily help them when they couldn't find an address for him. She was beginning to think they'd never locate the man, when a fellow churchgoer of Gammy's mentioned that he had been placed in an assisted living facility.

Devon tried every assisted living and nursing home in the tri-county area. There were a surprising number of them, and many wouldn't give out information to someone who wasn't a family member. She'd had to think on her feet, inventing a sob story up on the spot, and eventually found him in a small nursing home about thirty minutes away.

Gil drove her to the Manor House—the nursing home where Mr. Abernathy was staying—one Saturday in early March. It was lodged at the base of the mountains, a sprawling one-story building with several smaller buildings behind it. They pulled into the parking lot and took a closer look. It was made of pinkish-red brick, and boasted a set of columns on either side of the entryway. There was a long cement porch—more like a patio—that wrapped the front of the building. Devon guessed that when the weather was fine, the residents could sit outside and get some fresh air and sunshine.

They walked up the somewhat overgrown front lawn. Weeds had sprouted up, and it looked like they didn't have anyone on full time to take care of the natural areas. Gil held the door open for her and they went inside. Devon felt depressed as she looked around the reception area. It reminded her of her mother’s prison visiting area—bare, neutral, and utterly impersonal. Even the staff had a sort of dead-eyed look about them.

Gil leaned into her and said into her ear, “I will gnaw a vein open if I get stuck somewhere like this place when I’m old.”

They approached the desk. The woman behind it looked up at them with a bored expression on her florid face. Devon smiled, going for friendly and approachable. “We’re here to see Dwight Abernathy.”

“Sign in.” The woman pushed a large log book at them. “Reason for your visit.”

Devon and Gil had argued about this on the way down. He had wanted to go with the tale that they were his grandkids, finally come to visit the old man. Devon had nixed that idea—what if the old man didn’t have any living family? She’d suggested an interview for a history project. Gil had grudgingly admitted that made more sense, but that his idea had more style. Devon had rolled her eyes.

“Class history project,” Devon answered smoothly while Gil scrawled his name in the book in the handwriting of a future serial killer.

The reception nurse waved them on, giving them Abernathy’s room number. They walked down a hall that smelled of antiseptic and urine, looking at the numbers on the doors. They stopped in front of the half-open door of room 156. Devon knocked quietly on the door and waited until a gruff voice yelled for her to come inside. Gil gestured broadly for her to go on ahead, and for a moment she wanted to punch him. Coward.

“Mr. Abernathy?” Devon asked of the old man sitting sunken in an easy chair that faced the window.

“Yep. Who are you?” His voice was loud, in the way that hard of hearing people were loud: like he had no idea of his volume setting.

“I’m Devon and this is Gil.” She came closer to the man in the chair. He had commas of white fluffy hair above his ears, and a set of glasses sat perched on a beaky nose. He was thin and frail looking, his skin almost transparent. He had to be in his eighties. “We have a history project due in school and we were hoping we could interview you for it.”

Dwight Abernathy sat up a little straighter in his chair, almost preening at the perceived attention. Devon waited while he adjusted himself in his chair. “Are you willing to talk to us?”

“Depends on what you want to know,” he said slowly, still a little too loud for her comfort. He waved for the two of them to have a seat.

Devon perched at the edge of his bed, unwilling to get to comfortable. There really wasn’t a place to sit and talk; the only chair was the one Abernathy sat in. “We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions about the Jackson Duvall trial.”

A shadow seemed to pass over his face, but then it cleared. When he spoke, it was in a steady voice. “What you got?”

Devon nodded to Gil. He was going to be asking the majority of the scripted questions. Devon would pipe in if he forgot something or she needed clarification on one Dwight’s answers. Gil cleared his throat nervously. Devon had her pencil in hand, ready to begin taking note of Abernathy’s answers.

“What do you remember about the night of the shooting?”

Dwight blanched, going whiter if that was even possible, but he swallowed and began to speak. “It was late February. It had been snowing like a sonuvabitch all day long. Nobody wanted to be out in it much, but I had to drop everything and run all of the errands for folks as couldn’t do for themselves.” He paused, watching his audience for signs of boredom.

“I was out that night, late. I couldn’t sleep so I thought walking would clear my head. I lived just off of Oak, just one block over from the Town Hall. I took a shortcut through the public lot and came out in the alley between the Town Hall and the library.”

“Pretty dangerous. You never know what might have been out there,” Devon commented. The old man ignored her, his eyes fixed inward on the memories that unspooled behind his eyes.

“Turns out I came out right as the shot rang out. I saw this man crumple to the ground, and when I looked up, I saw someone who looked an awful lot like Duvall.”

“Did you recognize Mr. Duvall then or did you pick him out of a lineup?” Devon broke in with her question before Gil had a chance to ask his. He gave her a dirty look. She mouthed the word: Sorry.

“No, I recognized him. He was a friend of Deacon’s—over at the Mackson house all the time.”

Devon stiffened, but managed to hold her tongue and let Gil handle the next question. “So you were also at the Mackson house? That wasn’t mentioned in the newspaper articles we read.”

The man’s eyes clouded over for a moment, as if he were confused. “I used to work for the Macksons. I handled their landscaping and yard work, like I did for almost everyone in town.”

“How long did you work for the Mackson family?” Gil asked, glancing over at Devon as she wrote furiously.

“Oh let’s see now,” Dwight began, closing his eyes for a moment. “Twenty odd years, at least. I still helped out with the yard until I retired.”

“Were you ever married?” Devon broke in again, playing a hunch.

Abernathy’s face seemed to shrink into itself, the sad, blasted expression swallowed by the folds of his skin as he sank back into his seat. “I was.” Tears gathered in the corner of his eyes. “Her name was Rose.”

“We’re so sorry, Mr. Abernathy,” Gil said, shooting Devon a quelling look. “Did she die recently?”

He shook his head, breaking out of his sorrowful reverie. “It was cancer. She’s been gone for,” he stopped to do the math, “about fourteen years now.” He looked over at a framed picture standing on the dresser.

Devon got up and retrieved it, taking a close look at it. It was a wedding photograph, in grainy color, of Dwight and Rose Abernathy standing in front of a church. She was lovely, her hair dark and curling around her face, with pink cheeks and an open smile. Dwight Abernathy looked shell-shocked, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. His grin was about eighteen miles wide.

“She’s beautiful,” Devon said, handing him the photograph.

He nodded, his shaking fingers tracing the contours of his dead wife’s face in the picture. Devon gave Gil a look that signaled she was going to take over the interview now. Gil nodded once to show he understood. He pulled out his phone so he could record the conversation.

“Mr. Abernathy,” Devon began, her voice low and soft. She didn’t want to frighten the man; she just wanted the truth. “I’ve spoken with someone who insists that Jackson Duvall was with them on the night of that man’s death.” She looked at him and asked gently, “Is it possible you were mistaken?”

Abernathy closed his eyes. When he opened them, he stared at the photograph of his wife. “She had just gotten sick. We were doing alright, but we weren’t what anyone would call well off. I was worried about the money for her treatments, about how I was going to take care of her. I didn’t want to put her in a home to suffer.” He looked around his room, as if imagining his Rose confined to someplace much worse.

“Jackson Duvall didn’t shoot that man, did he?” Devon made sure to keep her voice soothing.

Dwight Abernathy shook his head. “He didn’t. I don’t know who did.”

She risked a glance at Gil, whose eyebrows had decided to lodge near the top of his hairline. Holy crap, he mouthed silently at her. She flicked her eyes to his phone to make sure he was recording. He gave her a thumbs up.

“Can you tell us what really happened?”

He sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter now. Everybody’s dead, or nearly so, even that poor boy that got sent away for it.” He rubbed eyes that suddenly looked sunken and dark. “I never saw who did the shooting. I wasn’t even outside that night. But when the offer came to me, it was just too good to pass up, what with Rose’s sickness and all.”