Raveled (34 page)

I felt faint. Hadn’t eaten anything
all day. I sat down.

“Tell me your version,
then, Smitty. What happened to Shelby Anderson? And to Bobby?”

“
Bobby? I have no idea. A bullet was destined to find the guy. I mean, the whole thing was shocking and all…” Smitty shrugged. “He was a good asset in high school, but let’s be real, the guy was a borderline sociopath. Maybe if they’d gotten him on the right meds… well, too late now.”

“And Shelby?”

“Can’t tell you exactly what happened, but I have a pretty good idea. All’s I know for sure is, I pulled her in. Tossed her a lasso I made and she grabbed it. Not exactly rocket science. Jasper was trying to be helpful but mostly he was spouting off about frogs and reincarnation and whatever else darted through his mind. I don’t know how well you knew him, but the guy could tie together any two random topics and make you think he’d written a thesis on it.”

I did remembe
r. And Jasper’s blackout toward the end of the evening now seemed conveniently contrived. The more Smitty talked, the more the edges of Jasper’s letter seemed to fray. Could its contents have been the musings of a madman?

I swallowed away my doubts.
Smitty was the scumbag. Look at him. He’d just referred to his best friend as an asset. And he was the only one still alive, the only one with something left to lose. Here he sat with a blank page in front of him, his version of events inked on it by whatever scenario he could create in his manipulative head. He knew it, too. If he played this right, and the evidence failed to materialize, there was no one left to contradict him. They were all conveniently dead. He’d even gotten a verbal preview of Jasper’s version of events during his visit to Ravine. He knew where to accede and where to stray. Oldest trick in the book—keep the core of the story and dress up the rest however you want. Same doll, different outfit.

“Anyway, Shelby took off like a bandit once she got her shirt back on. Must have been getting near eleven-thirty or twelve by then. We yelled at her to let us give her a ride home but she wanted nothing to do with us. Not that I could blame her. I hadn’t exactly been chivalrous to that point. I mean, come on, Allison, you know what sixteen-year-old boys are like.”

He tried to establish a sense of camaraderie with
a sheepish grin. No thanks. I was never a sixteen-year-old boy, and at that age, I had my head buried in books as I tried to forget my family.

He sheared the grin and continued. “I was a
ll hormones, no brains. Never even saw a naked girl before and all of a sudden, I strolled into that barn high as a kite, and there she was, hanging from the ceiling, flashing—”

“Thanks. I know the details.”

“I’m not trying to defend myself, but I was a kid. Not the person I am today.” He molded his malleable face into the most self-loathing expression he could muster. “You think a day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about my own daughters in that situation, about Shelby not taking a ride home with us? You think I don’t beat myself up over it? Jasper and I might have been wasted as all hell, but she’d have been a whole lot better off in my car. It was a dark Friday night in a town that attracts psychos like flies. It wasn’t safe for her to be out there.”

For now
, I’d pretend that the Smitty before me contained a grain of integrity. “You should have insisted.”

“
You ever try to skin a live snake? She screamed at us the whole time she was climbing down from that loft, threatening to yank those ladders if we even set foot on ‘em. Then she ran out, cursing for all she was worth. I can still hear her voice, young and reedy, you know. But it’s the biggest regret of my life—not giving her a ride. It’s why I came up with the fake alibi and never came forward. I basically sent her out to the wolves. And not to defend my actions but…”

Smitty hesitated and then shut off the spout completely.

“No way, Smitty,” I said. “You started this line of crap. You finish it.”

“I don’t think it needs saying,” he said. “Last thing I
want to do is piss you off all over again.”

“
Try.”

Smitty relented but did an awesome job of looking like he didn’t want to.
He added a dramatic sigh for effect. “I didn’t speak up to defend your father because him attacking Shelby made sense to me.”

My eyes minced him into
a worthless pile of bone and skin. “Fuck you, Smitty.”

“
Think about it. Do you know where Shelby lived?”

I narrowed my eyes, dreading where he might go with this.
“Near Jasper’s place in The Willows.”

“Exactly. To get home from the Hesters
’ barn, she’d’ve headed straight over Garbage Hill towards Artie’s Autos. Your dad could’ve grabbed her and done who-knows-what. I mean, not to pile on, but he already had Bobby tied up in there. Who’s to say he didn’t get hold of Shelby, too? Maybe Bobby called for help when he saw her passing or she heard him pleading for his life. Not a big stretch for your dad to have strangled her and drug her to the creek, then come back to finish off Bobby. From what I heard, the man was drinking straight poison that night.”

“It doesn’t excuse your lies.”

“It sure doesn’t. I was a scared kid with a mom and dad threatening to skin
me
alive if I said a word. They didn’t see the point of dragging my name through the mud since last I’d seen of Bobby and Shelby, they both left that barn walking, talking and breathing.”

Disappointment smothered me, making it
impossible to breathe. How could simple, dough-faced Smitty come out of this smelling like a fresh loaf of bread? How did his version of events both make sense and make my dad look guiltier? I fought the need to throw up, swallowing it back like I did whenever I had the urge to share my life with strangers. When I felt whole again, I fixed Smitty with a petulant pucker. “If you’re so innocent, why kill Jasper?”

Smitty
leaned forward and lowered his head until our eyes were on the same plane, as if he were placating a child. The better to be understood, said the wolf to Little Red Riding Hood. “The real question might be, why are you insisting Jasper was killed?”

I pulled back in my seat.
“His heart attack was a little too convenient. He had just agreed to meet me, and all of a sudden, he ends up dead?”

“How would I have known he agreed to meet with you?”

True. When I’d spoken with Jasper, he’d already had a morning appointment.

“You knew I wanted to talk to him
,” I said, feeling weaker.

“Yeah, I figured
,” Smitty said. “Like I said, I wanted to see what version of events he planned to lay on you.” He tapped the letter on the table. “This one, apparently.”

“Why did you leave your house in a suit right after the Kettricks arrived? Some grand plan between all of you?”

“I barely saw the Kettricks. They showed up at the house and I didn’t stay around long enough to find out why. My mother probably called a meeting to tell them about your return. Who knows? I had to get a new I.D. photo taken for work. Last-minute thing for a higher level of clearance. That’s why I was in a suit. Next morning, I drove up to see Jasper. But it was useless and I was only there like twenty minutes.”

“
The whole visit conveniently outside the facility. Where no one could witness it or see you poison him.”

Smitty guffawed, slouched back in his chair. Then
he cocked his head in that way parents do when they’re about to explain where pets go when they die. I wasn’t in the mood for his patronizing belittlement.

“Spare me, Smitty. You’ve had years to come up with an answer for everything.
”

My phone rang. It was Ray
from Ravine.

“I’ve got to take this,” I said,
letting my phone chime on as I stood above him. Despite my misgivings, I decided to leave on a strong note. “You’ve been warned, Smitty. You have a small window of opportunity to come clean, because if I find out you’re lying, I’m going so public, you’ll be begging the National Enquirer to print your version.” Then I surprised myself by grabbing his weak chin and leaning down to his level so my breath would coat his face. “And we both know Mommy wouldn’t like that, now would she?”

It worked, or maybe I imagined it, but I thought I saw a glimmer of
fear crisscross its way through his dead eyes.

Chapter
49

Allison and Artie… sixteen years ago

Artie Fennimore barely raised his head when his petite daughter entered the conference room. When he did, he made more eye contact with Fred than he did with her. He nodded at Fred and offered a smile of gratitude. Fred was doing a special favor by allowing him to meet with Allison alone.

Artie’d seen Kevin a bunch of times ‘cuz the boy was trying to serve as a second lawyer, but he hadn’t seen much of Allison these last six weeks. There’d been a collective effort to shield her from most of the goings-on.

Allison took a seat across from her father, wishing for nothing more than the presence of her mother. Rarely had she and her dad been alone in the same room in her fifteen years. Even on the occasions when they were the only people in the house, they’d been mostly unaware of it. Allison would be in her room doing homework and Artie’d be tinkering in the garage or setting in front of the television watching NASCAR or football.

“Hey, you,” Artie said, his voice filling with years of regret over his failure to embrace his daughter.

Allison looked at his chin, not his eyes, and even then, only for a moment. Inside, her heart pounded so hard she was sure her ribs had bruised it. “Hey, Dad.”

Artie never was one for chit chat. He launched right in, having planned lots of things he wanted to tell his only daughter. “Allison, I’m real sorry about all
of this.”

“I know,” she said. Her mother had instructed her to be agreeable and upbeat if she could.

“And I’m sure they’re not sayin’ nice things about me at school and such.”

“It’s alright,” she said. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Naw, I don’t ‘spect there’s much you can’t handle.” He wanted to say more, to laud her academic achievements, to praise her iron will, maybe even tell her she was pretty as a picture despite looking more like him than her mother. He’d have said that last with a little laugh so she’d take it as a compliment, but it all remained unspoken in his throat, caught beneath a lump so big he thought he might choke.

Allison filled the void, knowing she couldn’t handle the sight or sound of her dad crying any more than she could with her brother. “Feeding you alright in here?” she said. “‘Cuz
Mom and I made some oatmeal raisin cookies this morning and I sneaked a few into my backpack for you. They made me leave ‘em out in the hall, though.”

Artie patted his stomach, amazed at his daughter’s strength and poise. “Fact is, I been eatin’ too good in here. I didn’t know it, but Fred’s wife and a couple of the others do most of the cooking for the, uh…”
—he couldn’t bring himself to say the word
prisoners
, and
suspects
didn’t exactly lighten the mood, “—for the guys in here.”

“Oh,” she said, a flash of disappointment straining her lips into a false smile as she remembered that Fred’s wife won first place in Baked Goods every year at the county fair so of course her dad wouldn’t want her lousy cookies.

They spoke over each other then, both about to launch into another inane topic, when they stopped and gestured for the other to continue with a quick, “You go ahead.” The jinxed utterance seemed to cancel out the mutual attempts at glossing over the awkwardness.

“Look, Allison,” Artie said, pulling his chair closer to the table and, in turn, to his daughter. “No matter what happens, no matter if you never want to think about me in the future or even acknowledge that I was your dad, please know this. I didn’t kill that boy…” Artie fought harder for composure than for anything he’d fought in his life. He wasn’t about to rot in a prison cell or die a convicted murderer without painting some image of himself that his little girl could turn to in the future. He needed to reassure her that her father wasn’t the unspeakable nightmare portrayed in the papers and despised by the neighbors.

And then an anchor grabbed hold of Artie’s heart and pulled it to the dank bottom of a pit of despair. He realized he didn’t have much of an alternative picture to paint. What had he been to this girl but a cold, grunting figure who’d never seen fit to read one of her essays, even when her teachers had recited them aloud for the other students? What had his reaction been when she’d won the seventh grade science fair? Only an empty observation that he’d never been much good at that stuff himself. And when she’d built an automated feeding system for Rusty in case he came looking for food when Artie wasn’t there, he’d told her the cat would be best off hunting for itself on those days. All of these memories congealed in Artie’s shattered mind, growing so thick and indefensible that they crowded out any room for a vision of a decent dad.

Allison couldn’t wait any longer for him to finish his thought. Why did he only deny killing Bobby? Shouldn’t he also explain about Shelby?

The bleakness of the blank walls in the room started to make her dizzy. Why couldn’t that nasty Miss Delorma—the spiteful one at the front desk who’d sneered at Allison and who wore perfume that smelled like mosquito repellent—have put some knick-knacks on the walls so a visitor could make out where the dense atmosphere ended and the walls began? So a person would know where the room stopped and the outside world started? Then Allison realized with a start that the outside world didn’t exist for her father anymore. This man who’d spent so much time outside, leaving his shop doors wide open even on rainy days, would no longer be able to enjoy the fresh air she always took for granted. No more whistling while he built birdhouses in the garage or tinkered with British sports cars in the driveway. She thought about how he took Kevin and her for rides on Sundays when she was still small enough to squeeze into the back seat. He’d speed way over the limit and her hair would whip around like kite tails caught in a hurricane, her smile bigger than the car grill. She should tell him how proud she was that no car had been invented that he couldn’t handle—like they’d all been custom-made for his hands. She should remind him of all the hours she spent reading in the tree fort he’d built her when she complained about not having the right
ambience
—a word she’d just learned—to enjoy her books. She wondered if he recalled the time she sliced up her knee while Mom was at Garden Club and he’d patched it up with glue. Mom had worried herself to death about infection, but that cut had healed up better and faster than any other. She still played with that spot on her knee sometimes, searching for that small ridge of glue.

But she
remained silent. The memories would only make him sad because he wouldn’t be free to make more. It’d sound too much like a flood of final reminiscences. She scraped her chair back and stood, catching a look of disappointment and confusion on his face. Couldn’t leave him like that. She needed to give him something he could be proud of.

“I gotta go,” she said, forcing a smile. “Need to help my teacher put a mat around my social studies project. She’s putting it on display, on a bulletin board and everything. She’s been real nice to me through this whole thing and I got the only A in the whole class.”

Artie tried to smile through mushrooming tears. He didn’t even know what the project was about. He wanted to tell her how proud he was. He wanted to grab some wood and build a frame for her project. He wanted to tell her he loved her. But he knew if he made too big a deal of it, she’d sense he was trying to make up for the last fifteen years and it might seem too much like a final good-bye. Besides, one decent paternal reaction couldn’t fill a fifteen-year void.

“That’s real good, Allison.” Did the words sound as garbled to her as they did to him? “Never was much good at that stuff myself.”

Artie died a little inside. He regretted the sentence the moment it left his mouth but if he spoke another syllable, he’d lose all composure and he didn’t want to put his daughter through that.

Allison took Artie’s words as a high compliment, one of the few she’d gotten from him over the years, which made her treasure
it all the more. She’d always considered her dad smart as a whip, even if he didn’t go showing off to everyone all the time. He knew all about the world and could figure out how stuff worked, like he had X-ray vision and could see all the gears and mechanisms inside of a thing.

She figured she should leave things between them real casual-like, as if they were going to see each other soon under regular circumstances. And who knew? Maybe they would.
Even if he hadn’t said anything about not hurting that Shelby Anderson from school.

Allison
knocked on the door to be let out. “Okay, well, I’ll see you, Dad.”

Fred opened the door and peeked in. His face dropped when he saw the puffiness around Artie’s eyes. “All right,
little lady, let’s get you outta here,” he said, ushering her into the hallway. “I know your dad’s real happy you came by.”

“Sure thing,” Allison said in her best imitation of chipper. “Bye, Dad.”

Artie had never felt more like a failure. He hadn’t remained composed enough to say what he wanted to say, or strong enough to mention Shelby’s name. He hadn’t even told his daughter he loved her, and he’d forgotten to get those cookies.