Shine (11 page)

TEN DAYS HAD GONE BY SINCE PATRICK WAS attacked, and the police were no closer to finding Patrick’s assailant than when they started. When I was at the library, I read on the Internet that the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation had been brought in, since it was a case of “ethnic intimidation.” I didn’t see how it was ethnic, as Patrick was gay, not black or Hispanic or whatever. But because Patrick was gay, that made the attack against him a hate crime. I gathered that was the bigger point.

A reporter from Toomsboro interviewed Sheriff Doyle about the NCBI’s involvement, and Sheriff Doyle said it was because ethnic intimidation cases got more attention than regular old beatings.

Those were his exact words, by the way. As if “regular” beatings happened all the time.

In the article, Sheriff Doyle also reported that the pump nozzle was wiped clean of fingerprints, the handwriting analysis of the message scrawled on Patrick’s chest showed nothing, and that the weapon Patrick was hit with seemed to be a baseball bat, same as they first determined. Baseball bats didn’t leave many traces for the forensics team to go after. All paths led to dead ends, according to Sheriff Doyle.

But there was one path the sheriff hadn’t gone down, and I reckoned I knew why. I reckoned it would be tricky to bring Tommy Lawson in for questioning while at the same time bowing and scraping to Tommy’s daddy, who funded Sheriff Doyle’s election campaign. There was surely no conflict of interest in Sheriff Doyle questioning Tommy now, was there?

The
thought
of questioning Tommy myself made me feel sick. There was someone I could question about Tommy, however. Destiny Cooper. Destiny dated Tommy for two years, meaning that for two years she’d been one of the girl members of the redneck posse.

She and Tommy only broke up this past April, and for all I knew they were still in touch, so I hoped she might have some dirt on him and would welcome the chance to vent.

Since I had no legitimate reason to go to Destiny’s, I tried to think of a cover. The best I could come up with was that I was collecting donations for UNICEF, like we did on Halloween when we were kids.

Destiny was surprised to see me, to put it mildly. Her eyes opened so wide I could see each and every fleck of mascara on her lashes. Then her expression turned guarded.

“What do
you
want?” she said, holding tight to the doorknob. Behind her, I saw dark colors, low ceilings, and stacks and stacks of all sorts of things, from sewing patterns to old newspapers to sloppily folded clothes.

And hi to you, too
, I thought. “I’m, um, here to see if you—“

“Nuh-uh, no way,” she said, with a
talk-to-the-hand
gesture. “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it. Whatever you’re collecting for, I ain’t giving. So bye-bye.”

She started to shut the door. I jammed my foot inside.

“Destiny. I’m not selling anything. I just thought it would be nice to come over and say hey.”

“Is that so,” she said dryly. It wasn’t a question. It was her way of saying,
Oh sure, and next you’re going to pull out a check the size of a billboard and tell me I’ve won the lottery
.

“Fine. I want to talk about Tommy,” I admitted.

“Girl, that boy’s nothing but a hot mess. What’re you interested in him for?”

“I’m not,” I said. “I know full well that Tommy’s a jerk.
That’s
what I want to talk about.”

“Oh,” she said. She pooched out her bottom lip, which was red and shiny with lip gloss. “Well, come on then.”

She led me into the living room, where we sat on an overstuffed mauve sofa. I could smell cat pee on it, or maybe the odor came from the carpet, which was filthy. Rubbed
out cigarette butts had streaked entire areas gray. Destiny’s parents weren’t home, and she told me she was leaving to meet up with friends in just a bit.

“So make it quick,” she said.

I opened my mouth. Then closed it. Then said, “I don’t like Tommy.”

Destiny looked at me as if to say,
Really? That’s all you’ve got
? She stifled a yawn. Her fingernails were hot pink.

“But you know him better than I do,” I said. “So I’m curious what your thoughts are.”

“On what?” she said. “On how Tommy and all his kin think they’re God’s gift to creation, and the rest of us are just using up air?”

I appreciated the sentiment, especially coming from her. In her miniskirt and tight pink T-shirt, she was as different from the Lawsons as she could be. Her blond hair was teased and big, and pink cowboy boots finished the look.

“I hear you,” I said. “But, I was actually talking more about the hate crime.”

She cocked her head. Her left earring, long and sparkly with multiple strands of cut crystals, got caught in her hair.

“What happened to Patrick?” I prompted.

“Ohhhh
,
”
she said. She untangled her earring and adjusted her features to show she was with me. “At the Come ‘n’ Go. Right. It sure was the talk of the town, wasn’t it?”

Was
the talk of the town? She was as bad as the easily bored reporters.

“When I heard about it, I was like, for real?” Destiny said. “What kind of monster would do that?”

“Exactly. I’m not saying Tommy had anything to do with it, but—“

“Whoa,”
she said. “Tommy’s a dick, but he ain’t that kind of dick.”

“I know,” I lied. “I
know
. I’m just trying to find out everything I can, because he’s a really good friend of mine. Patrick, I mean.”

She took my words at face value as far as I could tell. Destiny was two years older than me. She didn’t have the slightest interest in my social life, and she certainly didn’t keep up with who I did or didn’t hang out with.

“What do you want to know?” she said.

“Patrick was with Tommy the night it happened. Tommy and my brother. Some other people, too.”

“Like who?”

“Um . . . Dupree, for one.”

“Mama’s boy,” Destiny said scornfully. “Pretends to be Mr. Big Bad Businessman, but he’d wet his pants if his mama found out what he was up to.”

“Making sandwiches?” I said. “I’d hardly call him a businessman.”

She twitched her lips like I was such a dumb bunny. “If that’s what you want to think, go right ahead.”

“I don’t
want
to think it,” I said. “I think it because it’s true. Dupree works at Huskers with Beef.”

“Day job,” she said breezily. Then she switched gears. “I’m
not saying I’d throw him out of my bed or nothing. He’s got it going on with that lazy smile and those eyes of his. He ain’t the marrying type, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Ah . . . okay.”

“That mama of his—you seen how fat she’s gotten? Makes me want to puke. But no woman’s ever gonna take the place of Dupree’s mama, so don’t bother trying.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I said.

Destiny laughed. She crossed her legs and said, “Who else?”

I frowned.

“At the party,” she said. “The night Patrick was beat up. Ain’t that what you want to talk about?”

“Oh. I’m not sure it was a party, exactly. But that was mainly it: Tommy, Dupree, Beef, Christian, and Patrick.”

“No girls?”

“Oh yeah. And Bailee-Ann.”

She made a face. “Watch out for that one. Little cock tease, that’s what she is. Tried to steal Tommy from me back when me and him first got together. You know that?”

“Well, she’s with Beef now, so . . . yeah.”

“I
know
she’s with Beef now. I’m just saying watch out.”

“Um, okay,” I said. “But back to Tommy. I saw him at church, and guess what? He cussed at me even though his grandmother was standing right there.”

“Lord,” Destiny said, rolling her eyes. “That woman.”

“You don’t like her?”

“Does
anyone
like her?”

Good point.

“Ever wonder why the Lawsons stay in this Podunk town when they’ve got enough money to live anywhere they want?” Destiny asked.

“Why?”

“Because
she
refuses to move, that’s why. Tommy’s daddy is none too pleased about it, believe me. Like, one time Tommy’s daddy decided to take his mother to Asheville for a fancy meal, right?”

I nodded to keep her going.

“Me and Tommy went along. I wore a dress and heels and everything. And afterward, we were going to look at houses. ‘Just to see,’ Tommy’s daddy said.” Destiny dropped her voice. “I’m pretty sure Mr. Lawson had a retirement home in mind, so he could get her nice and put away.”

“What went wrong?”

“Well,”
she said. “We got to the restaurant, and they had cloth napkins and special glasses for water and little pats of butter in the shape of seashells.”

“Seashells?”

“I know. It was classy. We ordered our meals, but when the waitress brought ‘em over, old Mrs. Lawson had a cow.”

“What did she do?”

“She was all,
‘Where
is my
cornbread?’”

My lips twitched, because Mrs. Lawson sure did love fussing. As Aunt Tildy said, she’d complain if Jesus Christ came down Himself and handed her a five-dollar bill.

“The waitress said they’d run out of cornbread, but that they had absolutely
delicious
homemade yeast rolls,” Destiny said. “But nuh-uh, Mrs. Lawson wouldn’t have nothing of it.”

“Let me guess. She’d ordered green beans for one of her sides,” I filled in. My aunt Tildy followed the rules about what made a proper meal, and she would sooner do a hula dance in her underwear than put a dish of green beans on her table without a cake of cornbread to keep it company.

“‘Ronald, I would like to leave,’” Destiny said, adopting Mrs. Lawson’s snooty tone. “‘
Immediately
, Ronald.’”

Destiny uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other direction. Her pink cowboy boots caught her attention, and she leaned over and rubbed at a scuff mark.

“These are the wrong shoes, aren’t they?” she said.

I felt myself frown. “Uh. . .”

“So wrong,” she pronounced, springing up from the couch. “Am I going to a rodeo?
No
.”

She headed out of the living room. “So anyway,” she called over her shoulder, “the whole ride back, she went on about how she grew up in Black Creek and she’d die in Black Creek. She also mentioned how tacky our waitress was, how the iced tea wasn’t sweet enough, and how the air-conditioning was turned up too high, if you can believe that.”

Her voice was fading. I could make out the words, but it was strange holding a conversation from different rooms. Were we holding a conversation?

“Hey!” Destiny said, louder. I leaned back against the sofa
and craned my neck to see Destiny standing in the door of what I assumed was her bedroom. She had one hand on each side of the doorframe. When our eyes met, she let go with one hand and made an impatient come-here gesture. “What’s the problem? You gonna just sit there?”

“Oh,” I said. I hopped up and hurried down the hall. On the way to her room, I passed another room crammed floor to ceiling with plastic bins, cardboard boxes, and wire hangers.

“So that’s why she’s bound and determined to stay in Black Creek,” she said, picking up where we’d left off. “Never mind that even here in Black Creek, she thinks everyone’s out to get her. Did I mention that part?”

I was distracted, because unlike the rest of the house, her room was spotless. On top of her chest of drawers was a set of nesting dolls, separated from one another and lined up in order of height. Other than that, there was no clutter.

“I’m sorry?” I said.

“For what?” she said.

“No, I mean . . .” I pushed a stray hair behind my ear. “Why does she think everyone is out to get her? Mrs. Lawson?”

Destiny studied me. She made a
hmmph
sound and turned back to her closet. “Supposedly, checks have gone missing from her mailbox, and she saw a
Dateline
report about how
criminals
can do all sorts of stuff with bank account numbers.” The way she said “criminals” made it clear she was mocking Mrs. Lawson’s concerns. “Whatever, right?”

“Tommy bought a new mailbox for her,” I said. I sat cautiously
on the end of Destiny’s bed, which was twin-size and pink. I didn’t want to mess up the covers. “One she can lock.”

Destiny straightened up. A pair of black heels dangled from her index finger. “Well, that was nice of him, I guess. Tommy’s not
all
bad.” She lifted the shoes. “Yes or no?”

I didn’t know. I didn’t know about shoes or outfits or makeup, and my stomach clenched up. “Yes?” I ventured.

She looked at the shoes, held out one bare foot, and nodded. “Yeah.”

As she slipped a shoe on, hopping to keep from falling, I said, “Do you think anyone really stole from her?”

She slipped the strap of the second shoe over her heel and straightened up. “It happens. Freakin’ tweakers, coming out like zombies in the night.”

Tweakers
, meaning anyone dumb enough to do meth. They were zombielike with their gray teeth and pocked skin, if they let it get that far.

“You thinks
meth heads
have been stealing her checks?” I said.