Count on Me (Petal, Georgia) (38 page)

Joyce Marie sighed. “I surely am sorry for all the loss you’ve seen.”

Caroline got Joyce Marie a cup of coffee, which earned a smile and a compliment about her manners.

“Sixteen years ago. And I can remember it really clearly because it was early November, near Halloween, and so numbnuts all over the neighborhood had firecrackers and kept lighting them off like it was brain surgery.” Joyce Marie shook her head. “My sweet PBC—short for peanut butter cup—hated the noise. So I’d been keeping him inside but he got out as cats are sometimes bound and determined to do. PBC was a mutt of a housecat. Brown all over but he had these orange/ginger spots. Like peanut butter and chocolate. My husband brought him home as a kitten. He’s gone now. The husband and the cat. But anyway, I’d been keeping an eye out for that cat to get him back inside. He hadn’t come back all day. I was dead tired and wanted to go to sleep, but I was too nervous with the darned cat still out. Finally I heard meowing at the back so I went to let him in. And that’s when I saw my neighbor hosing himself off in the side yard that abutted his house and mine.

“I thought it was odd. It was early November, like I said, so it was chilly that night. Way too cold to be using the hose outside. But being strange isn’t any of my business. I brought the cat in, and about five minutes later I saw he’d left a bloody paw print in the kitchen. I cleaned him up, thinking he must have cut himself. I didn’t find anything. But cats, you see? They get up to all sorts of great adventures when they’re not around so he could have done anything. I was relieved he wasn’t hurt and I went to bed.”

She sipped her coffee and ate some more of her doughnut before continuing.

“The next morning I was up early and went out to fill the hummingbird feeder. Another reason I remember this is that the days were so warm and clear the hummingbirds were still around. But it had been dry so there was dust everywhere. Anyway. I had a multiple bird feeder hanging on the tree to the side of the house, and when I went up on the ladder, I saw a puddle over on the concrete pad running next to my neighbor’s house. The sun hadn’t reached the patch between the houses or it would have dried up. There was a stain on the grass too. I could make up a story about how I saw it so clearly from my yard, but the truth is I’m a nosy old lady and I went over to get a closer look and it sure as shootin’ looked like blood on the grass and on a corner of that concrete. I went back inside but it niggled at me all that day, and then when I went into town the following day, I heard about your mother’s death and I called the police that afternoon.” Joyce Marie looked to Shane.

“What did they say, ma’am?”

He didn’t add anything like
can you remember
, which would have insulted Joyce Marie. Smart.

“They told me they had the murderer and that my tip was a dead-end.”

Caroline had been through the call logs and had never seen Joyce Marie’s name. Then again, there were missing pages so it could have been logged. They just had no way of knowing.

“I saw you on television and I listened to your story. I never believed your daddy was capable of such a thing. I was talking to my daughter about this whole thing, and she urged me to call the tip line.”

“Mrs. Petitbone, thank you so much. I most certainly appreciate that you called. Back then and now. People don’t like to get involved. I’m just grateful you did.” Caroline tried to bat the hope back, but it grew anyway. She needed not to count on this information meaning a damned thing. But her heart raced as her palms sweated just a little.

“Did I help?”

“You took a risk and you said what you knew and that helps no matter what. I don’t know if we’ll find anything. But it’s more than we knew before we came here.”

“You’ll tell me what happens?”

“As much as we can.” Shane smiled at her. “Do you know his name by any chance? Your neighbor?”

“Vernon Hicks. He owned the place for several years. Don’t know when exactly he moved away, but it was after I came here. Probably ten years ago or so.”

They stayed a while longer, thanking Joyce Marie and promising to let her know if anything came of her information.

On the road back to Petal, she called in and had flowers sent to Joyce Marie. She’d go over to the Honey Bear to see about maybe sending her doughnuts regularly too. She had kids and grandkids and a busy life, but it was always nice to be remembered.

Shane took her back to her building. “I’m going straight to work on finding who this Vernon Hicks is. I have a vague memory of him, but let me dig and I’ll get back in contact. You did great today. You’re good with people.”

She wanted to ask if he thought it was a good tip. Wanted to ask what he thought. But so much had happened. Everything could change because of what she’d just heard. It was so exciting and terrifying all at once that she just needed to lock it down.

“Thank you for going with me. I’m going to have Ron look into Vernon Hicks too. Two sets of eyes might help.” Plus Ron would have access to sources Shane might not, or might not want to use.

“Yes, that’s good. Have him get with me if he finds anything.”

Her smile was wobbly but she held on to it like armor as they went inside.

Shane went off to work and she filled everyone in. The mood was cautiously hopeful, and after everyone had wandered off and she’d left a message for Shep, she looked up at Royal.

“You okay?”

She shook her head. “Nope. But I will be. I will work today and stay busy, and then I won’t be checking my messages every five minutes. I’ll be here all day. Client meetings and some research and writing. And when I get home, I’ll let it all go. But you need to scamper that fantastic butt of yours back home.”

“You trying to get rid of me, sweetheart?”

“Listen, I ride that stalker line enough as it is. I could be with you all the time and be totally content. But I
hate
how much time this takes away from all the stuff you need to take care of.”

He kissed her quickly. “Hush with that. I like being around you too. I want to be here to help. The farm will always need me but you’re important to me.”

“Enough. You’re going to make me cry.”

“All right, Caro. I’ll see you tonight. Maybe I’ll make you cry my name instead. Once we’re alone I mean.” He gave her a roguish look and with a little wave he left and she got on the line with Ron to get him working on Vernon Hicks.

Shep showed up after he got out of school, and she filled him in on everything they’d found out so far.

“Are you okay? You must be, wow, blown away.”

“I’m working on being okay. I mean I’m held together by duct tape, paperclips and some gum, but so far so good. You have to manage your expectations. I’ve gone through this before. If you get your hopes up too high and it doesn’t work out, the fall is worse. Each time we got news back that our appeal had been denied or we’d lost on something that was so stupid and technical that it weighed more than his innocence. That one took me a month. I was an undergraduate. My junior year. I had a job and a full schedule so I would go to work or class and pretty much cry the whole time I was at home. I learned after that to just treat everything like a probably won’t happen so that if it doesn’t, I’ll be sad but not so devastated my whole life falls apart.”

“Falls apart? You carried a full load and worked. You cried in carefully defined times. Jeez, Caroline. If that’s your idea of falling apart, you’re an even bigger control freak than I thought. This is all new to me. You’ve been alone with all this before and now I can help. We can lean on each other. I don’t know what to think. I get it, keep your expectations low. Dad’s dead, Caroline. I hate that. But he’s not depending on you. This is something else. We’ll clear his name. You can count on that. But I sure as hell do hope this is our guy so they can arrest him and get him off the streets for good. I want you safe, and that’s not going to happen until he’s been arrested. I know this is old hat to you, but I hate it. I hate that you’re exposed and unsafe. I’m working on it, but you’re so strong and you never get scared. I’m not there yet.”

She blew out a breath. “Hah! It’s an act. I feel like…” She shook her head and took a different tack. “One of the friends I made once I delved into the Innocence Project stuff, he’s an attorney in a small former Soviet country and things are horrible for him. He defends people the government picks up and tosses into jail for months or years at a time. Sometimes without ever even charging them. So people disappear off the street in the middle of the day, and six years later that same person, only forty pounds lighter and near death, gets tossed back on a front step. Sometimes they never come back at all. And my friend, he gets death threats all the time. Like on a monthly basis. He’s been kidnapped twice. Picked up and arrested. Beaten and interrogated. And he gets up every day he’s not in jail, he packs his case and he goes to work. I admired that before, but now? Now that I’m scared out of my skin all day long every day from some
threats
? Now that I know just a small slice of what he must deal with I guess I’m having a learning moment. This shit is crazy scary, Shep. I’m freaked out all the time. And I can’t stop living, but at the same time, I want to hide. I’m not perfect. I save all my strong for when people are looking at me.” She smiled at him. “I hope this is different. I want it to be different. It might even feel different. Shane will hopefully have at least part of an answer soon enough.”

Shep nodded as he put his hands in his pockets. She thought of him at two, toddling around, laughing and giggling as their father had teased that he was going to eat him up.

“I’ve read six years of letters so far,” he said quietly and quickly.

She hugged him.

“I couldn’t decide to start at the beginning or the end. But then I felt like I needed to start at the beginning and get to know him that way. Who he was at that time. I spend hours every day just reading them. I’m paranoid Grandma will find them and take them away so I have them in my trunk.”

“If you like, you can keep them here. Or at Royal’s house.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I just know I’m so sad.” His bottom lip wobbled, and she scooted next to him on her couch, her arm around his shoulder. “He loved me. Oh my God, Caroline, he loved me and they always told us he didn’t. It hurts to read his words. It hurts to know how alone he was. I didn’t know him two weeks ago. And now I know him a little bit. Did he write you little stories?”

She smiled at that memory. “He did. For like three years he’d send me a paragraph here and there until he finished one of them. Sometimes poems. A memory he had that he wanted to pass on to me. He did love you. Don’t be sad about it.”

“I feel so guilty for not helping him.”

“Sweetie, you’re not even a legal adult yet. There wasn’t a damned thing you could have done. Anyway, I’m just saying, be sad. Feel bad and miss him. Be angry or curious. But don’t be guilty.”

She went home, and then got dragged out to bowling where she was thoroughly trounced by Beth and consoled herself with a five-gallon jug of sugary sweet icy stuff and a giant pretzel.

She’d been busy trying not to recoil from the bag of fresh crackling handed her way when her phone rang.

“Give those to Royal. He loves them.” And that she still allowed him to kiss her after knowing he ate them was a true testament to her love for him.

She answered.

“Caroline? It’s Shane.” Pressing a hand against her other ear, she moved away from the lanes to hear better.

“What’s going on?”

“I’ve found out quite a bit about Vernon Hicks. I wanted to talk to you about it. It sounds like you’re out, though. We can talk about it tomorrow too.”

“Are you kidding? I’m at the bowling alley with our goofy friends, or as they’re also known, your family and extended family.”

He chuckled. “That’s right. I forgot it was moved to Thursday this month. I’m not too far away.”

Royal came into her line of sight, and he moved to her, concern on his face.

“We can meet you at the station or the office or whatever. I’m really interested to hear what you’ve got.”

“I’ll meet you at the bowling alley in ten minutes, I can give you the rundown then.”

“Thank you, Shane.”

And ten minutes later, she and Royal were sitting in the back of the café area that no one ever used.

“Vernon Hicks moved away from Petal six years after the murder to Porter, a city just outside Macon. He’s been arrested seven times for domestic violence, including violating protection orders. He did a two-year stint for nearly killing someone in a bar fight. I have calls into the cops on the DV stuff for more detail, but it looks like Vernon has himself a stalking problem. Those seven arrests were for four different women.”

“Four? And this guy is free to stalk Caroline? After he did all that? You tell me how that makes a lick of sense.” Royal was pissed and she sure didn’t blame him.

“I don’t make the laws. I don’t handle the trials or the sentences. I just uphold the laws other people create. And I don’t think his history started the moment he moved away from Petal either. But I didn’t find much about him here. Our recordkeeping sixteen years ago wasn’t always as thorough as it could have been. But I spoke to a few old-timers. They routinely had to haul him to the drunk tank. He liked to hang out near the old beauty college that used to be out where the big-box hardware store is between here and Millersburg. I also think he might have changed his name when he got here. I can’t find anything on him before he arrived.”