The List (9 page)

“Good. Who else is on it?”

“The joint party on the account is the Covenant List of South Carolina, Limited, Desmond LaRochette, director.”

Renny whistled softly under his breath. “I should've known.”

“I trust this is helpful to you.”

“Yes, I'm sure it will be.”

“If I can be of further assistance, please contact me.”

“Sure, thank you very much.”

“Good day.”

Renny set the receiver gently in its cradle. This List was tighter than he thought. Not only did it control the corpus, but it also had its finger on distribution. His father didn't have unrestricted ownership of the Swiss bank account. Why not? It was not typical for his father to relinquish control voluntarily. Therefore, the restrictions must have preceded his father's time. But why? How could this money be of help to anyone if the List held the trump card? He replayed his father's words, “Far more valuable than the combined value of the rest of my estate.” But how? If these men were nice old guys, perhaps they would let Renny withdraw a million or two or ten.

Barely acknowledging a greeting from two fellow workers as he headed for the front door, Renny left the office in a preoccupied haze. This knot was not going to be unraveled until he had the end of the string in his hand. That end was in Georgetown.

5

Yes, to smell pork.

T
HE
M
ERCHANT OF
V
ENICE, ACT 1, SCENE 3

U
sually Renny traveled light, and he rarely dressed up unless he had to. For this trip, however, he took his best suit. For all he knew, the members of the List wore tuxedos and sat around in leather chairs, smoking cigars and sipping brandy after dinner.

Georgetown was north along the coast from Charleston. Renny retraced his route of the previous weekend but, based on his renewed interest in his ancestry, decided to take a brief detour through Moncks Corner, South Carolina, his mother's hometown. Located an hour inland from the ocean, Moncks Corner was one of the first places settled when the early pioneers left the coast and began to move westward. Now it was a sleepy town in an out-of-the-way corner of the state.

Renny's maternal grandmother had died years before his birth, but his mother's father, Nathaniel Candler, a pharmacist in Moncks Corner, was in good health up to the day he suffered a fatal stroke when Renny was seven years old.

Renny knew that his mother loved her hometown and felt more at rest there than anywhere else. The community was peaceful, sleepy, or dead—Renny wasn't sure where to draw the line.

Just inside the city limits he pulled into a convenience store for gas. While filling up the tank, he heard a loud flapping sound. Turning, he saw a big red Dodge pickup with a flat tire limping into the parking area beside the store. The left front tire was shredded, and only a few pieces of battered rubber and steel remained on the rim. The truck rolled to a stop, and the sole occupant, a dark-haired young woman, went into the store.

The truck had Michigan license plates, and when Renny went inside to pay for his gas, its driver was handing a phone book back to the clerk.

“Thanks. Do you have a phone so I can call the tire store?” she asked.

The clerk shook her head. “I'm sorry, it's not working.”

Feeling chivalrous, Renny broke into the conversation. “You could use my car phone, if you like. I'm parked out at the pumps.”

The woman faced Renny, sized him up with her clear blue eyes for a second, and said, “Thanks, that would help me a lot. Let me write the number down on a piece of paper.”

Renny held the door open for her. “Is that your husband's truck?”

“No, it was my father's. It's exactly like the truck that went up into the tornado at the end of the movie
Twister
,” she said, smiling.

“Yeah, it was a shame about that truck,” Renny answered. “Just a second, and I'll be back with the phone.”

Renny kicked himself as he walked to the car.
What a stupid thing to say!
It was a toy truck in the movie; special effects could do almost anything. He might as well have said, “What happened to Peter Rabbit in Mr. MacGregor's garden sure was sad, wasn't it?”

As he started his car and pulled forward, Renny had a clear view of the damsel in distress. She was medium height with an oval face framed by fairly short dark hair in loose, casual curls. He guessed she was mid to late twenties, not a Barbie type, but with a figure that looked nice in her white shorts and loose-fitting blue shirt. She was only slightly tanned, consistent with Renny's perception that people in Michigan lived most of the year in snowbound isolation, coming out occasionally to shovel snow or ride snowmobiles across frozen lakes. Parking next to the truck, he unplugged his car phone and was met by a bright smile, blue eyes, and an outstretched hand.

“I'm Jo Johnston,” she said. “I really appreciate you taking time to help me.”

“Renny Jacobson. It's no problem at all. Let me call the store for you. Do you have a full-size spare?”

“Yes,” she answered. “But it's flat, too. I didn't check it before leaving on this trip”

Renny knelt beside the truck, wrote down the size of the tire, and called the store. Holding the phone, he asked, “Do you have any road hazard insurance? You shouldn't drive another block on the wheel rim. It would be better to tow the truck from here to the store.”

“Yes, I have a policy with Road Rescue,” she answered.

“Do you tow for Road Rescue?” Renny turned his attention back to the phone. “Great, we'll wait for you here.” Renny gave the location of the convenience store.

“Thanks for your help,” she said when Renny hung up.

“I'll wait here with you until the tow truck comes,” he offered.

“I don't want to hold you up any longer.”

“I'm not in any hurry. My mother grew up in Moncks Corner, and I was going to drive around town for a while before heading down to the coast.”

“What's your name again?” she asked.

“Renny. And you're Jo, right?”

“Yes. J-o,” she said, spelling out the two-letter name.

In a few minutes the tow truck came into view and stopped with a belch of black smoke. The driver, a middle-aged man with a well-developed beer belly that threatened to pop the bottom three buttons of his shirt, slid out and walked over to Renny. A large brown dog hung his head out the passenger-side window of the truck.

“Did you call for a wrecker?” he asked, taking a half-chewed cigar out of his mouth and spitting a few pieces of stray tobacco onto the ground.

“Yes. It's my truck,” Jo answered.

The driver looked at Jo and looked at the truck. “I'll hook it up. Do you want to ride with me and Hercules?”

Renny spoke up before Jo could answer. “We'll just follow you in my car.”

“Suit yourself.”

Renny and Jo stepped back. “Are you sure I'm not holding you up?” she asked as the wrecker driver crawled under her truck.

Renny grinned. “I don't mind, unless of course you wanted to hold Hercules in your lap.”

As they followed the tow truck through the town's central square to the tire store, Renny pointed out the location of his grandfather's pharmacy, now a ladies' clothing store.

“He died when I was in second grade. My mother said the drugstore was an institution in the town. My grandfather sold everything from thermometers to red wagons.”

“What was he like?”

“He lived here before nationwide drugstore chains drove most locally owned pharmacies out of business. In those days the small-town pharmacist had a respected place in the community. He let most folks get the medicine they needed for their children even when they were behind in paying their bills.”

“Sounds like a pretty neat gentleman.”

“I guess he was. He was a very religious person, a little extreme, you know. I remember watching him pray out loud, asking God to heal a woman who came in for a prescription.” Renny shook his head. “It seems to me that divine healing would have cut into business.” Renny turned the air conditioner up a notch. “I guess it's never this hot and humid in Michigan.”

“Not like this. It makes me wish I was back in my igloo.”

“I knew it!” Renny laughed. “I always suspected people up North lived in igloos. I bet you have a huge, shaggy coat trimmed with fur.”

“Of course, but it's only cold in winter. During summer the weather is wonderful. Did you grow up near here?” Jo asked.

“No, my folks moved to Charleston years ago. I live in Charlotte now and work for a law firm. How about you?”

“I've spent all my life in East Lansing. I went to Michigan State and work as an operating room nurse in the cardiac wing of a local hospital.”

“That must be quite a job,” Renny said.

“It is. I always wanted to be a nurse and went into a cardiac OR specialty so I could train with a couple of outstanding doctors at the hospital where I work.”

Renny glanced at Jo's left hand resting in her lap. Nice fingers with pretty red nail polish. No engagement or wedding ring. She wasn't Mrs. Heart Doctor yet.

Jo made arrangements with the worker at the tire store. It was a small operation, but Jo's truck wouldn't be ready for an hour. It was a little past noon, and Renny's stomach tank was flashing orange for empty.

“Would you like to get something to eat?” he asked.

“Sure. I don't have to get to the coast until this evening either.”

Renny asked the man at the service desk for a phone book. Turning to the restaurant section, he ran his finger down the modest selection. “Yeah, here it is—Moncks Corner Carolina Barbecue. Would that be OK with you?”

“Sure, I'd like to try some ethnic food.”

Renny gave her a puzzled look. “I never thought of barbecue as ethnic food, it's just . . . well, it's just food.”

“I understand,” she said, chuckling, “but to someone from Michigan, it's as ethnic as German sausage would be to you.”

Renny asked the serviceman for directions to the restaurant. He wasn't sure barbecue was an ethnic dish, and it seemed almost blasphemous to compare it to German sausage.

The restaurant was less than five blocks from the tire store. The low-slung red building looked as if it had grown out of the red clay. Renny pulled into the gravel parking lot and pointed to a couple of red smokers the size of fifty-five-gallon drums mounted horizontally on legs and connected to smaller black boxes.

“Those are the smokers. The cooks put eight- to twelve-pound pork shoulders inside, build a fire in the adjacent firebox, and smoke the meat for six or seven hours. They slice off the fat, cut up the meat, and cook it inside the building for another thirty minutes. Then it's ready for the touch of genius, the sauce.”

“All great chefs are distinguished by their sauces.”

“Yeah,” Renny agreed. “However, most guys who run barbecue joints would rather be caught riding in a Mary Kay Cadillac than answer to ‘chef.'”

The Moncks Corner Carolina Barbecue Restaurant was the genuine article. The outside walls were decorated with old automobile license plates. A large, pink, plywood pig stood beside the banged-up front door and announced the hours of operation in green letters across his chest.

Renny and Jo found seats at a bare wooden table under a picture calendar of the local high school football team. The menu, a single laminated sheet, was simple: barbecue pork sandwich, barbecue pork plate, barbecue pork ribs, or hamburger steak. Brunswick stew, like coastal oysters, was occasionally available: “Ask your waitress.” Side dishes included baked beans, French fries, onion rings, and slaw. Peach cobbler was the only option to finish off the meal.

“I thought they made barbecue from beef, too,” Jo said.

“Maybe in Texas. Here, some folks refer to barbecue as barbecue pork pig—redundant, but it emphasizes that the only true barbecue is made with pork.”

An overweight waitress, her Moncks Corner Carolina Barbecue T-shirt permanently stained by dark red sauce in multiple locations, sauntered up to take their order.

“May I order for you?” Renny asked. “I want to make sure you get a comprehensive ethnic experience.”

“Sure.”

“Two pork plates with beans, slaw, and sweet tea, please. Do you have stew?”

The waitress turned her head and yelled toward the back of the room, “Fred, is there any stew on?”

A black-haired man with a three-day growth of beard and a completely stained T-shirt leaned out a door and yelled, “Yeah.”

“Let me have a bowl of stew, too. Thanks,” Renny said.

Renny grinned as the waitress headed to the kitchen. “Pretty classy place, isn't it?”

“Low overhead, I'm sure. I wonder if they have a license plate from every state.” The license plate motif continued on the inside walls of the restaurant. “There's one from Guam and a military plate from Saudi Arabia.”