One Deadly Sin (10 page)

“Oh, it wasn’t a child,” Mimsy said. “It was… well honestly, I don’t know what she was. A phantom from past.
My
past. Black hair all teased up and going every which way. Thick black eye makeup. I used to know a dozen girls like that.”

He looked down at Miranda. “So you met my friend, Edie.”

“Friend?” Mimsy said. Her eyes bored right into him. Matchmaking was one of her favorite hobbies.

To put any ideas to rest, he explained, “She’s Red’s new bartender. Where did you meet her?”

“In the library,” Miranda said, oblivious of the undercurrents running between her grandmother and her dad. “Playing with the big machines.” She drew the size in the air with two hands.

Holt looked up to his mother.

“Microfilm,” she explained.

What was Edie doing digging in the library’s microfilm room? She didn’t look like the studious type. In fact, he had trouble imagining her sitting still long enough to get any use out of a library.

Miranda tugged at his shirt. “Can I get a real one?”

“A real one what?”

“A fattoo!” The tone implying her father was not all there.

“Oh, sure.”

Her face lit up, and he hated to spoil that excitement, but hey, he was the dad. It was his job. “Some day,” he added.

She pouted. “When?”

“When you’re older.”

“How old?”

“Thank God you came home,” Mimsy said. “I’ve been running around those questions all day.”

“How old?” Miranda repeated.

“When you’re old enough, I’ll let you know.” Holt swept her up. “Come on, you.” He took her upstairs and put her to bed.

Covered in a comforter with pink doodads over it, she looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes. “Maybe I can get a flower,” she said.

He grinned. She was nothing if not persistent. “We’ll see.”

He closed her door and went across the hall. When he moved back to Redbud, he’d been a mess. No job, no desire to get one. His parents had taken him in and he was too tired to protest or do anything else. In fact, their kindness had been a welcome relief.

But he couldn’t bear going back to his old room, so he gave that to Miranda, and Mimsy had transformed it, burying his boyhood under a weight of pink ruffles and lace. Now, he bunked in what used to be the spare room, a narrow compartment that Great-aunt Ida used to sleep in when she came to visit. Far from lavish, it was clean and utilitarian, and suited him fine. He hadn’t added much to it in the five years since he’d been back. In the beginning that had been a hedge against making the room and the move permanent. But it had become permanent. He’d planted his feet and they’d stuck.

He opened his laptop. Spent a couple of hours searching for places to purchase black angels. Found a gothic clothing store, a 1946 movie, a rock group, but no retailers. Which meant he wouldn’t be able to trace the things through the net. That only left the rest of the wide-open universe.

At a momentary dead end, he tramped downstairs to the den, where his father was ensconced on the couch across from the TV. Holt paused in the doorway, taking in the room.

Like the kitchen, the den was worn and lived in. Old basketball trophies and plaques still decorated the bookshelves along with pictures that swept the realm of his life. His own high school yearbook picture where he looked impossibly young and goofy. Prom night with Cindy. Their wedding, her smile sweet and gentle and happy. And Miranda. A red-faced infant. A toddler with him and Cindy. And then… with just him. There were pictures of his parents’ life, too. James and Mimsy on a cruise. At the foot of the Eiffel Tower. In front of a tent in the Smokies. It was all a jumble, one on top of the other. But the pictures never changed. Just like home was always home.

It was precious. Even more so after today. Holt had seen his share of violent death, but it never went down easy. The images of the day circulated inside his head—the blue sheen of Dennis Runkle’s vanity car crunched and scraped raw. His body, crushed and bloody. In case Holt ever forgot how fragile we all were. How fast everything could be taken away. How vital it was to hold on to what was important.

He wondered what his dad would have done if Mimsy had died before she turned thirty, leaving him with a year-old baby. Would he have slunk back to his parents’ home?

Wouldn’t have been an option. His father’s parents were long gone by the time James Drennen had married and fathered a son. He’d started with nothing and made a good life for his family. Holt was proud of that.

Now James sat on the sofa staring at what should have been the Braves game. Instead, a diamond ring circled in close-up on the muted screen.

“Thinking of adding to your jewelry collection?” Holt strolled in and sat beside his father. “Dad?”

“Oh, hey, Holt,” James said.

“Hey yourself. What’re you watching?”

“Hmm?”

“The TV. What are you watching?”

James looked at the screen. He didn’t even remember turning it on. “Damned if I know.”

They sat in silence for a while, watching the ring sparkle and circulate. James tried to pull himself together, but his heart had been pumping like a gusher ever since he’d heard from Mimsy, who heard it from Patsy Clark, who was at Claire’s when Runkle plowed into that tree.

What did Holt know? That was the thing that kept James’s mouth dry and his palms clammy.

James clutched his hands together and leaned over his knees. He didn’t want to look at Holt while he fished for information. “Heard you had a rough day.”

“Not the best, no.” There was weariness in Holt’s voice, and James felt sorry for it. But not sorry enough to change the subject.

“Get everything cleaned up?”

Holt didn’t even ask how his dad knew what happened. He just nodded, accepting the fact that the town’s informal telegraph system was swift and efficient. “Car’s at Myer’s. Body’s at Ferguson’s.”

Myer’s meant a search for mechanical problems. Doc Ferguson was the county coroner. So that meant an autopsy. “How fast until you hear the results?”

“I told both to put a rush on, but you know how things get done around here. When they get done.”

That meant—what? Days until James could relax. He nodded, stared out at the room again. Didn’t see anything.

“You okay?” Holt asked. “First I find you at the crack of dawn wandering on other side of town, now you’re watching QVC.”

Christ, he had to do better than this. He sighed. “Guess it’s unsettling, all this bad news coming one on the heels of the other.”

“Tell me about it,” Holt murmured. “Look, Dad, how well did you know Dennis Runkle?”

James froze. “Me?”

“Whoa, slow down,” his son laughed. “This isn’t an interrogation. Just thought you could, you know, throw some insight my way.”

James tried to loosen up. “I didn’t know him much at all. Just to say hello to. Or, you know, city business.”

“Much of a drinker?”

He told the truth. “Never got a call on him. Never heard he had a problem. Why? Think he was drunk?” Wouldn’t that be helpful.

“Don’t know. Maybe he was just driving too fast. Man that age should know better.”

“Hey”—James tried a chuckle, and it came out choked—“one day you’ll be a man that age.”

“Well, I hope I’ll know better by then,” Holt said dryly.

James paused. How to bring things around to the next concern? Couldn’t think of any way other than outright asking. He took a breath. “You find anything on that black angel?”

Holt groaned. “Aw, geez, Dad, you’re not going voodoo on me, too?”

Voodoo? Was that what the town was saying? “Just asking. Not saying there’s anything to it. But there’s going to be talk until you can come up with an explanation.”

“Talk I can handle. And I’ll find an explanation. One that doesn’t involve black magic or the devil. You can count on that.”

James nodded. As long as it didn’t involve him either.

13

A
rlen Mayborne still worked at Hammerbilt, although no longer as an accounting assistant. He was head of the department now and Edie had little trouble getting in touch with him.

She told him she was a business writer doing a story on the economics of small-town America, and arranged an appointment with him on her first day off. A shift must have ended because cars streamed out of the gates as Edie pulled in.

The plant itself was a sprawling complex that seemed to stretch for miles on the north side of town. Edie stopped to give her name at the guardhouse and to get directions to the office area. Once there, she asked for Mayborne at the reception desk.

She sat in a vinyl-covered chair to wait. Copies of
HVAC Today
were scattered over a nearby coffee table. The hard clink of metal on metal drifted in from a distance along with the industrial odor of steel, grease, and sweat.

Edie had eschewed makeup, leaving her face pale and unremarkable. Her hair was up, but she’d taken care to keep it neat and presentable. Black slacks and a blazer completed the discreet costume. Her arms were covered; she didn’t want her body art to distract.

And it didn’t. Mayborne gave her a perfunctory smile when he came to get her, but there was nothing in it that said, who is this freak? A look she often got in her usual getup. Not that she cared. She was a freak. Had been all her life. And it all started here, somewhere in Hammerbilt.

She followed him down a corridor, past the mailroom, and around a corner, rigid with anticipation. Would she run into anyone she knew from the bar? Mayborne had never turned up at Red’s, and she could only hope he never would. But Howard worked here. So did his friend, Russ. Would they recognize her in her nunlike costume? She gripped her hands waiting for someone to shout, “Hey, Edie!”

But no one did, and by the time they reached the accounting department, she had loosened up enough to feel the tension in her neck and shoulders.

The accounting department was a wide room with four desks and a private office to one side. Gray metal file cabinets lined the walls, a copy machine and a paper shredder stood in one corner. Cold and impersonal, the place smelled of paper and copier ink.

Two men in dull white shirts and Wal-Mart ties, neither particularly crisp, occupied two of the desks. A woman in a lumpy stretch top sat outside the private office. Department secretary? The other woman was young—younger than Edie. Wearing a suit that hung on her bony frame, she looked barely out of high school. Of the four, she stared frankly as Edie came in with Mayborne.

Was this where her father sat? A place like this could drive anyone to despair.

Mayborne led her into the little office, offered her a chair, and sat behind the desk. He was a thin man, tall, with a concave chest that hung inside a too-large shirt. A pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. The lenses were dirty and spotted but he didn’t seem to notice. Edie tried not to.

“So what would you like to know, Miss Swann?” He gave her a polite smile that stretched his pale skin. Atop his head thinning red hair looped in lean curls.

On the drive over, she’d plotted the route of the interview, starting with the innocuous. She took out a notebook and pen, held the pen poised over the paper. “Tell me about coming to work for Hammerbilt.”

“Well now, I came right out of high school in the spring of ’86,” he said. “Completed my accounting degree at night. Hammerbilt had just started a program to help employees who wanted higher education. Still running, too, I’m proud to say.”

She pretended to take notes. “When was that?”

“A year or two after I came. One of the previous department heads, Swanford, he started it.”

Her pen skidded to a such a hard stop it poked a hole through the paper. She hadn’t expected her father’s name to come up so easily. She forced herself to breathe normally.

“Swanford? Can you spell that for me? I’d like to get in touch with him.”

A tiny pause. “Well, sorry to say, he passed. Years ago. Very tragic. Took his own life.”

As it always did, her stomach clenched at the phrasing. “How awful. Why?”

He leaned over the desk, lowered his voice. “Rumor had it he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak.”

“Embezzlement?”