To Live and Die In Dixie (18 page)

“Eliza Adams of the Department of Family and Children Services,” I boomed. “Someone has reported an underage minor is caring for three preschool children in this home. I'll have to come in and make an inspection.”

“I'm not allowed to open the door,” the girl said hesitantly. “Mrs. Jordan told me not to.”

“Mrs. Jordan is in direct violation of Georgia Code six nine, oh oh seven, eight six,” I improvised in my best Jack Webb imitation. “Failure to yield children to an authorized agent of the state. Now open this door immediately before I have this home impounded and these children inoculated.”

A latch turned then, and the door opened an inch or two. The little girl stood bravely in the doorway, the baby boy clinging to her neck and the two toddlers cowering behind her.

“Aw you gonna put Twaci in jail?” the older of the two girls lisped. Pizza sauce was smeared over the children's faces, and all three were dressed in their father's oversize cotton T-shirts.

“No no,” I reassured them. “I'm just going to make an inspection and report my findings to the proper authorities.”

Quickly I turned to the baby-sitter, my pen poised on the open page of the notebook. “Name, age, address?”

The girl's lower lip trembled slightly. “Traci Hancock, age 10, 722 Crestview Court,” she whispered.

“And Mr. and Mrs. Jordan,” I said, “when do you expect them back?”

“Mr. Jordan went to a Braves game and Mrs. Jordan said she'd be back in a couple hours,” Traci stammered. “Am I in trouble? I watch Trevor and Megan and Jessie all the time. I'm real careful. Honest.”

My eyes swept around the room. The floor was littered with toys, games, and books, and the coffee table was covered with pizza boxes and empty beer cans. The VCR was on, and Lady and the Tramp were sharing a plate of spaghetti.

I felt bad about scaring this kid, but not so bad I was ready to quit.

“I'll have to inspect the premises before I fill out my report,” I said.

Using my notebook to write my “findings,” I wandered around the room. Stepping in front of the soccer photos I'd noticed on the television the other night, I picked one up to get a closer look. The kids wore red jerseys with
Riverview Raiders
written on them, and the
coach, Coach J, wore the same jersey, topped with an FSU Seminoles baseball cap. There was a framed photo of Kyle and Lissa Jordan on top of the television too, with Lissa looking baby-faced and extremely pregnant, and Kyle dressed in yet another soccer jersey, this time one that proclaimed him coach of the Westside Warriors. He wore the Seminoles cap in this photo too.

“Young lady,” I said sternly, turning to her. “Do the Jordans always have a lot of parties?”

“Well, not all the time,” she said. “Sometimes Mrs. Jordan gets bored when Mr. Jordan is at work all day. So her friends come over and they watch MTV or listen to CDs. Or they go to the movies or the mall sometimes.”

“I see. And what are Mrs. Jordan's friends' names?”

“Oh, Zak and Matt and Derek and Brittni and Kelly and Heather and some other names I can't remember.”

“All right,” I said, jotting the names down. “You stay here while I finish my inspection.”

I walked quickly to the hallway off the living room, looking in each of the small bedrooms until I found the master bedroom.

Lissa and Kyle Jordan were apparently in their “black phase.” A round king-size bed dominated the room, its black satin quilted comforter rumpled, with black satin pillows tossed about the room. A fancy black satin swag curtain kept any light from coming into the room. On the chrome night stand on one side of the bed there was a thirteen-by-eleven color photo of Lissa. It was one of those “boudoir shots” that were all the rage this year. In the photo, Lissa was wearing a French-cut black lace teddy, with one strap artfully allowing a stray breast to escape. Her lips were slightly parted and her eyes half closed in what looked like the throes of sexual ecstasy.

I walked quickly around the room, my fingers fairly
itching to open the dresser drawers and closets to search for some clue to this strange couple. But I didn't dare risk it; not with Lissa Jordan likely to return at any time.

In the kitchen, I opened the refrigerator. The shelves were crammed with beer cans and bottles of wine cooler, but I was gladdened to see that there was milk and juice too. At least these people had food for the children.

All three children huddled close to Traci on the living room sofa, the two girls sucking their thumbs and looking troubled.

“All right, Traci,” I said, making nonsensical scratches in my notebook. “I'm not going to take these children into custody at this time. Listen, is your mama home?”

She nodded yes. “Do you live close to here?” She nodded again.

“Good. I want you to call her after I've left and tell her the lady from Child Services said you're too young to baby-sit by yourself. You understand? And when Mrs. Jordan comes home, you tell her the same thing. Tell her the lady from Child Services said to straighten out her act, or she'll have her children taken away from her. All right?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Traci said. “I'm sorry.”

“That's all right,” I said. “Oh, one more thing. Were you unlawfully baby-sitting for these children on Saturday too?”

“Yes, ma'am,” she said. “But Mrs. Jordan was home by six o'clock.”

I marched smartly to the Hyundai then, started the engine, drove to the end of the block, parked, and congratulated myself.

C
ALLAHAN,” A VOICE SAID softly. “Callahan. Wake uuuup, your dinner is here.”

The smell of warm hamburger filled the car. I blinked my eyes open. Jocelyn was dangling a grease-spotted paper sack in front of my nose.

She got in the Hyundai and took a loud slurp from the biggest plastic cup I'd ever seen. There must have been a half gallon in that puppy.

I sat up as straight as I could and stretched. I'd dozed off in a funny position and now I had a crick in the small of my back. “Well, what did you find out?”

“Check this out,” Jocelyn said. “Zak Crawford got kicked out of All Saints in March, for burning a cross on Andre Bernard's front yard.”

I took a bite of my cheeseburger, slopping bits of bun and hamburger juice down my blouse. “Is Andre Bernard black?”

“Yeah,” she said. “His family just moved to Atlanta from Jamaica in February, and he was going to be star forward on the All Saints team. Zak and his friends didn't like having a black kid starting, so they burned
a cross in the Bernards' front yard. He bragged about it at school, and the word got around.”

“Sounds like a lovely boy,” I said sarcastically. “What does Zak do now?”

“He works as a lawn maintenance man for the apartment complex where he and his dad live. His parents are divorced and his dad travels a lot. He's some kind of salesman, I think.”

“And Zak hangs out at the Jordans' a lot?”

Jocelyn sucked loudly on her drink. “Yeah.” He cuts the grass and stuff, and he and Mrs. Jordan are, like, really tight.”

“You found out a lot of stuff,” I commented. “Who told you all this?”

“Different kids. I called a guy I dated when I was a senior, and he called some people. Stuff like that.”

“Find out anything else?”

She considered for a moment. “Well, somebody told me Mrs. Jordan got married to Coach J when she was still in high school.”

“When was this?” I asked. “Was it here in Atlanta?”

“No. Somebody said Coach was teaching at some private school in Florida, and Mrs. Jordan was a cheerleader, and she got pregnant, and had to drop out, but he married her.”

I thought back to the framed photos I'd seen at the Jordans' house. “Coach J has a bad habit of sleeping with students, it sounds like.”

“He's scum,” Jocelyn said. “He killed Bridget, Callahan. I just know it. You gotta help me prove it.”

“The police are working on it,” I told her. “I told one of the detectives about Jordan, and they were going to look into it. Unfortunately, we seem to be turning up more suspects, instead of eliminating them. I'm not convinced that it wasn't Elliot Littlefield. Or this poor
Gordo Madison guy. Or even Pete Vickers, this nutty guy in Stone Mountain who wanted to buy the diary.”

“You've got mustard on your chin,” Jocelyn said, swiping at my face with a paper napkin. “Coach J did it. I know it.”

“We'll see,” I said. “What did Edna have to say?”

Jocelyn dug in the pocket of her shorts and brought out a piece of paper. “Yeah, she said your neighbor came through with the mystery phone number. It's a phone booth over in Cabbagetown. Where's Cabbagetown? I never heard of it.”

“You wouldn't have,” I said. “Cabbagetown is a little mill village surrounding the old Fulton Bag plant. The plant closed years ago. It's a pretty rough part of town now, although it's only about a mile from Littlefield's house. Wonder what Pete Vickers was doing over that way?”

“Beats me,” Jocelyn shrugged. “Edna said to tell you she thinks she found the silver cup at an antiques mall in Chamblee.”

“Great,” I said. “That's fantastic. But Chamblee. That's a long way away from Inman Park or Poncey Highland, where I told her to look. I wonder how she tracked it clear out to Chamblee?”

“She said to tell you she called Hunsecker and left a message to tell him she thinks she's spotted it, but the antiques shop where the cup is at is closed. A sign on the door says the owner is on a buying trip to Maine.”

“Shit,” I said. “What else did Edna say?”

“She got the list from the lawyer. Edna says the lawyer said she unlocked the house for Littlefield, gave him her list of major pieces, and stayed for an hour or so, but she left because she got a call on her beeper. She said she went back by the house by six
P.M.
, and Littlefield was just finishing up.”

“So maybe Littlefield's alibi for Saturday isn't as firm as we thought. We've got both Littlefield and Jordan with big chunks of time unaccounted for that afternoon. And Vickers might have been in the area too.”

Jocelyn picked up the hairbrush I'd used earlier and fluffed her hair, then checked herself out in the rearview mirror. “Gross. I look like one of those bag ladies who live in their cars. I gotta get a shower.”

“Me too,” I told her. “It's an occupational hazard.”

“What do we do now?” she wanted to know. “Wait for Mrs. Jordan or Coach J to come home?”

“No,” I said. “While you were gone I checked out the house. The baby-sitter says Jordan went to a Braves game after work and that Lissa said she'd be back in a couple hours. I don't want her to notice this car still sitting here when she gets back.”

“So we go home?”

“You go home. I've got some people to see.”

“Who?” she said.

“Nobody you'd know,” I said. “Just some loose ends I need to check on.”

L
OOSE ENDS, I THOUGHT, AS I drove back downtown, toward Cabbagetown. Loose ends will trip you up every time. According to Edna's friend at the phone company, the pay phone we were looking for was in the parking lot of a mom-and-pop grocery store at the corner of Memorial Drive and Estoria Street. The twin brick smokestacks of the boarded-up hulk of the old Fulton Bag textile mill shadowed the store and everything in the neighborhood. The mill, which had been in operation since Reconstruction days, closed for good in 1981. The people of Cabbagetown, many of whom had come to work in Atlanta right out of the hills of Appalachia, were still scratching out a living, but the houses were falling down, and the children who played in the narrow trash-strewn streets reminded me of underfed stray animals.

At Estoria Street, I pulled into the grocery store parking lot. I got out of the van, walked over to the phone booth, and checked the number. It matched the one on Vickers's desk calendar. With the exception of my van and a beat-up yellow station wagon, the parking lot was empty.

Inside the store it was hot and smelled of roach spray and overripe bananas. Flies buzzed around a table heaped with sweet potatoes, onions, and cabbages. The girl at the counter, herself no more than sixteen, held an infant in her arms, feeding it a bottleful of fizzy orange drink.

I picked up a pack of gum and a package of crackers from a display of snack cakes, went to the cash register, and paid. The girl took my money wordlessly.

“I'm looking for somebody who might live in the neighborhood,” I said, after she let my change drop to the counter. “Somebody named Darryl. Do you know anybody named Darryl who comes around here?”

“No,” she said, her face expressionless.

“You sure?” I asked, offering a smile. “I really need to talk to him. I think he might have witnessed an accident my mother was in down the street last month. My lawyer says we'll pay his daily expenses to come to court to testify. But I need to find him.”

“Don't know no Darryl,” she said.

I got back in the van, unwrapped a stick of gum and thought about things. Good things come to she who waits, I reminded myself. So I waited.

For every hour I sat in the van I allowed myself a stick of gum. By nine o'clock I was good and sick of Doublemint. But I had company. The grocery store, smelly and understocked as it was, seemed to serve as a general store for the community. Cars pulled in and out, women came out of the store laden with paper bags, men with six packs of beer and cartons of cigarettes. By now the parking lot seemed full of teenage kids. Boys mostly. Sucking on quart bottles of malt liquor, perched or leaning against the hoods of cars, radios blasting. Late-model sedans cruised in and out of the parking lot, but there was no drive-
through window, no hot french fries or milkshakes being sold.

I'd been away from police work for a while, which could explain why the attraction to the store seemed so odd at first. Now I remembered this corner and this store. Remembered it from a brief stay on the vice squad. I'd stumbled into a meat market for teenage hustlers.

At nine thirty I went into the store and bought myself a Miller Lite. The girl behind the counter acted like she'd never seen me before. I walked out slowly, pausing on the broken sidewalk in front of the store. Two kids, maybe ten and twelve, were sitting on the curb, taking turns playing one of those hand-held video games my nephews seem surgically attached to.

“Who's winning?” I asked.

The older kid looked up. He was barefoot, with dirty brown hair that fell across his eyes. “I got a perfect game goin',” he said. His pale face was sprinkled with freckles.

“That's a nice game,” I observed.

“Friend of mine give it to me,” he said. His pal snickered.

“Nice friend,” I said.

“He's a fuckhead,” the kid said, glancing at me to gauge my reaction. I shrugged. “Those things aren't cheap.”

“I'm looking for somebody named Darryl,” I said. “You guys know Darryl?”

The kids exchanged wary looks. “How much does a new game for one of those things cost?” I asked. “Twenty bucks?”

“Target's got Tetra for eighteen eighty-eight,” the younger kid volunteered.

“Tetra sucks,” the older one said. “Terminator's twenty-four bucks.”

I unfolded a twenty and three ones from my pocket. “Twenty-three is all I've got,” I said. “You guys say you know Darryl?”

The money was snatched out of my hand before I could draw it back. The older kid tucked it in the pocket of his ragged cutoffs.

“See the guy talking to that dude in the 'Vette?” He nodded toward a white Corvette that had pulled into the parking lot. A slim-hipped boy, maybe a little older, like sixteen or seventeen, was leaned over, his head stuck in the window of the car. He was tanned the color of mahogany and the only clothes he wore were a pair of tight-fitting jeans stretched over the cutest little butt I'd ever seen.

“That's Darryl.”

“Does he have a lot of regular friends?” I asked.

“Yeah,” the older kid said. “Darryl does pretty good. Except every once in a while his old lady sends his step-father over here lookin' for him, and if he catches him here, he'll beat the livin' shit out of Darryl.”

“Darryl's no homo,” the younger kid said. He had bright blue eyes and a mouthful of broken, rotten teeth. “He's okay.”

“I'm sure,” I said quietly. As we watched, Darryl pounded the roof of the sports car, accepted a beer from the driver, and waved as the car pulled back into traffic.

“Thanks, guys,” I told my new friends. They nodded seriously.

Darryl had arranged himself across the hood of an ancient blue pickup truck, his back against the windshield. He watched me approach through half-closed eyes. His hair was probably naturally blond, but he'd helped it along with something that turned it a green-gold under the halogen street lights.

“How's it goin'?” I said, stopping and standing in
front of the truck, my hands jammed into the pockets of my skirt.

“Not too bad,” he said. “What's the deal? You a cop?”

“Private detective,” I said. “You know a guy named P. G. T. Vickers?”

His face registered a blank. “Drives a big Olds,” I said. “Pete. Pete Vickers.”

He smiled lazily, giving me the combined benefit of a cleft in his chin and those high cheekbones. “Yeah. Pete. He's a buddy of mine. So?”

“You usually see him on Saturdays?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” he said. “What's the problem? His wife find out about his other hobbies?”

“Nothing like that,” I said. “I was just wondering if you saw him last Saturday, like late in the day?”

“This gonna get Pete in trouble?” Darryl asked. He wasn't crying or anything, but I was touched at his concern for his “buddy.”

“Out of trouble, is more like it.”

“I seen him Saturday,” Darryl said quickly. “He picked me up here around four. We shot some pool, hung out, like that.”

I had a pretty good idea of what “like that” included, and I was fairly certain it wasn't a discussion of Confederate flanking maneuvers. Which was why Vickers had gotten so flustered when I'd asked for his whereabouts on Saturday. He'd been in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time, for all the wrong reasons.

“You wouldn't lie to me now, would you?” I asked. Darryl looked like somebody who lied as a matter of habit, but it wouldn't hurt to ask.

“Shit no,” Darryl said. “Me and Pete were together last Saturday. I won ten bucks off him, shooting pool.”

“Thanks,” I said.

While I was waiting to pull out onto Memorial Drive I decided to pay a visit to Littlefield's nosy neighbor, Mr. Szabo. I'd eliminated one suspect tonight. Now that only left a handful of others. I guess that could be called progress.

Stanley Szabo was sitting on his front porch listening to a Braves game on a transistor radio. I could see the shine from his bald head from the porch light.

“Mr. Szabo?” I called, as I climbed the front steps.

The wicker porch rocker he'd been sitting in creaked loudly as he pushed himself to a standing position. He picked up a pair of reading glasses from a small table and put them on, sizing me up.

“You're the girl detective,” he said, making it a statement.

“Callahan Garrity,” I said. “I guess you know I'm working for Mr. Littlefield. Could we talk for a moment?”

He gestured toward a rickety wooden chair beside his own, and I sat down.

“I was wondering if you saw anybody or anything out of the ordinary in the neighborhood last Saturday,” I said. “Were you at home?”

“I was here all right.”

“And did you see anything?”

“Told the police what-all I saw already,” he said.

“Could you tell me?” I asked politely.

He sighed and scratched his belly. “Let's see. All kind of cars and coming and going commotion that day. Wore me out just listening to the car doors slamming.”

“And you didn't notice anything in particular? No strange cars over at Mr. Littlefield's house?”

He shook his head. “Never saw anything but strange cars over there. That's why the neighborhood
association got on him about those parties and such. Damned nuisance.”

“Not too many of the neighbors like Mr. Littlefield,” I said. “I understand your other neighbor, Mr. Dahlberg, has a big feud going with him.”

“I keep out of it,” Szabo said. “I mind my own business, missy. But now, that Littlefield, he goes too far.”

“Jake Dahlberg told me Littlefield flew a Nazi flag from his front porch to make some movie people mad,” I said.

“Jake had all kind of fits over that flag thing,” Szabo said, laughing wheezily.

“Well, you can hardly blame him, since his father had a stroke and was paralyzed after he saw it,” I said.

Szabo's eyebrows shot up. “Who told you that?” he asked. “Ed had a stroke all right, but it was two or three months before the movie thing. And he was already in a nursing home at the time. He wouldn't have known if Littlefield had flown the Goodyear Blimp from his front yard.” He laughed that wheezy laugh again.

“Are you sure?” I asked, feeling my face growing red. I hate being suckered.

“Hell yes,” Szabo insisted. “Jake put him in the nursing home not long after Miriam, that was the mother, after Miriam died. Jake moved in here right afterward, and Ed went over to Oak Haven, over near Emory. Ed raised hell about being moved out of his house, but he'd gotten kind of batty, wandering the streets in his undershorts, scaring the little kids. Ed was always a little batty, even when he had all his marbles. Hell of a pinochle player though,” he said reluctantly.

“I see,” I said coolly. “Maybe I misunderstood. Do you happen to know if Jake knew Bridget, the girl who was killed?”

“Sure he knew her,” Szabo laughed, “I saw her hanging
around over there at Dahlberg's house all the time. They'd have a pizza delivered and eat it right there on the porch. Made Littlefield madder than anything too. I saw him run across the street one day, when she was sitting out there with Jake, he come up to the porch, grabbed her by the arm and jerked her clear across the street. And he was yelling at Jake to keep away from the girl.”

“Did you happen to see Jake over there Saturday?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said. “But I was in and out of the house four or five times. WSB was running a contest to win a trip to Panama City Beach. I kept going in to call every time they played the sound of waves crashing. Little nigra girl won the contest. Now what's a little nigra girl going to do at the beach?”

I wasn't really listening after that.

“They really hate each other,” I said to myself. “Maybe Littlefield's not as paranoid as I thought.”

“Paranoid?” Szabo said, his voice quavering with laughter. “He's a nut, that's what Elliot Littlefield is. A nut and a nuisance. And you can tell him Stanley Szabo said so. I hear he's going to prison this time, for murdering that girl.”

“Maybe so,” I said, picking my way down the porch steps. “Or maybe not.” I turned around and gave him the Tomahawk Chop. “Go, Braves,” I said.

“Attagirl,” he answered.