"Folks ready for coffee?"

"You people got any pie?" Baby asked loudly. "Pecan pie?"

While the girls lingered over slabs of pecan pie and ice cream and decaf coffee, I brooded about all I hadn't gotten done. The girls had done their job, but rumor and gossip didn't fill in all the gaps. I still knew virtually nothing about Jackson Poole, or his relationship with Wuvvy.

I paid the check with my credit card because the girls had used up most of my cash. "You all still want to spend the night in a motel?" I asked.

Edna made a face. She likes her own bed, her own coffeepot, and her own s.p.a.ce. I waved the credit card around and promised to rent two rooms, so she could have her own bed.

The Regal Motel was only a mile outside of Hawkinsville. Its neon sign promised free color television, American ownership, and vacancies. I rented two double rooms for thirty-four dollars apiece and installed the girls in their room. Edna played solitaire for an hour before she went to bed, while I made notes about everything I didn't know about the tangled lives of Virginia Lee Mincey and Jackson and Broward Poole. "I'm getting up early in the morning to do some more interviewing," I told Edna.

"Just so long as you don't wake me up," she said. "These road trips are more work than I remembered."

Our thirty-four-dollar motel room came complete with a clock radio bolted to the bedside table. It said six A.M. when I opened my eyes. Edna never stirred as I climbed back into my sweatshirt, wool pants, and black flats and let myself out of the room as quietly as I could.

It was a foregone conclusion that I would go back to the pecan grove and Wuvvy's shack. All night long I'd pushed and pulled at the questions n.o.body could or would answer so far. Who was the other man in Wuvvy's life back then? What had he seen and why had she covered up for him all these years? Who stood to gain by Jackson Poole's murder so many years later?

It was still dark when I found Dry Creek Road and the red mailbox guarding the road to the Poole property.

I didn't relish the long hike back to the shack in the half-light of dawn. On a whim, I opened the red mailbox. Inside were yellowed newspapers, an abandoned wasp's nest, and at the very back of the box, a tiny key attached to a piece of string.

It was the first break I'd gotten in this town. Smiling to myself, I opened the padlock, pulled the Lincoln through the gate, then got out and shut it behind me.

I'd halfway thought about breaking into the big house to see what I could learn about the Pooles. Breaking in would have been a piece of cake. I parked the Lincoln in the driveway and studied the place. But those big yawning windows somehow made me feel vulnerable, exposed. I wondered if Wuvvy, the woman who'd lived for the last few years of her life in a single tiny room behind her shop, had felt the same way in Broward Poole's enormous house.

The shack, I thought. It was Wuvvy's place. The place where Broward was killed. I parked the Lincoln at the entrance to the path to the tenant farmer's shack, pulling far enough in that the car couldn't be seen by anybody who wasn't looking for it.

I ducked to keep the low-hanging branches off my neck. Something stirred in the dirt road ahead of me.

Wings flapped, and there was a flurry of movement.

CAAW. An enormous black crow rose up from the road, and another one flapped up to the branch of the nearest tree.

"Shoo," I said, waving my arms. The two crows looked at me with disinterest and stayed right where they were.

I picked up my snake stick where I'd left it the day before, and walked slowly around to the shack for another look.

I opened the plywood door as wide as I could and stood there a moment, waiting for the outside air to work itself into the musty, dirt-floored lean-to.

In the dim light of morning I could see the tall pile of haphazardly stacked wooden crates. If I pulled one down, the whole tower would probably come down on top of me. So I turned to the other stuff. A brown Naugahyde recliner with stuffing springing out of several places had been used as a resting spot for bundles of old magazines. Georgia Crop Report, The Pecan Grower, Field & Stream, National Geographic. The pages crumbled to the touch. An open carton was perched on the arm of the chair. I lifted the flap with the end of my snake stick. Faded fabric. I stepped closer, unable to resist the allure of an old textile. It was a homely thing, that quilt, made of dusty rose and pea-green squares of calico in a nine-patch pattern. A utility quilt, made for warmth, not show. I lifted it out and found another quilt, this one a nicely pieced Dresden Plate, done in lilacs, blues, pinks, and yellows. It was a Depression quilt top, made of old feedsacks, but its maker had never gotten around to giving it a filling and a backing, or doing the laborious job of quilting.

At the bottom of the crate were three leatherette-bound volumes. The Rebel Yell-Pulaski County Consolidated High School was embossed on each. The years were 1965, 1966, and 1967. I flipped open the cover of the top yearbook, the one for 1967.

"Virginia Lee Mincey-cla.s.s of '67" was written in a looping flourish on the flyleaf. I time-traveled back as I flipped through the pages of black-and-white photos. Fierce-looking football players stared into the camera, cheerleaders with bleached, teased hair did backflips, goofy teenagers mugged. I found Virginia Lee Mincey's senior picture on page 136. Her hair was white-blond, parted straight down the middle, showing off a half-inch of dark roots. Unsmiling eyes were rimmed with black eyeliner, parted lips caked with some pale, frosty lipstick, and big white earrings dangled from her ears onto the shoulders that had been bared by the black photographer's drape.

"VIRGINIA LEE MINCEY," the caption read. "Ginny. Vo-Tech 2, 3, Rebelettes, 1, 2, 3. Favorite quotation: 'All you need is luv!!'"

"Wuvvy," I said, surprised. "You were a s.l.u.t way back then."

I leafed over to the page containing the group photo of the Rebelettes, who turned out to be the school's majorettes. Wuvvy was in the back row, dressed in a baton-twirler's getup that featured the Confederate flag picked out in sequins.

I put the yearbook aside and picked through the other boxes. Old clothes, schoolbooks, a cheap white plastic jewelry box filled with bits and pieces of dime-store jewelry, even a white baton with red, white, and blue streamers dangling from the ends. When she'd married Broward Poole, it looked like, Virginia Lee had packed up her teenage years and put them in storage. She was a wife now, married to a wealthy older man, stepmother to a little boy. She was a Poole.

I was restacking the cartons when I found the record player. I recognized it right away because my older brother Kevin had one just like it-heavy, gray, with a hinged lid that revealed the turntable and record changer. I lifted the lid. There was still a record on the turntable. It was a forty-five. I picked up the record to look at the label. I'd expected it to be one of Wuvvy's rock 'n' roll discs, but it wasn't. The paper label was white, the lettering, in no-nonsense type, said CROW-GO. Mid-South Enterprises. Hammond, La. Playing time, 4 minutes, 30 seconds.

I put the record back but picked up the yearbook and stowed it in the front seat of the Lincoln. As I was starting the car and driving slowly down the lane I remembered the boxes I'd picked up yesterday from Bucky Deavers. More of Wuvvy's stuff-the stuff she'd begged me to retrieve for her. When I got back to Atlanta, I promised myself, I'd take a look.

After I'd gotten out of the car and opened the gate on Dry Creek Road, a dilapidated white pickup truck glided to a stop on the shoulder of the road. The driver raised his arm out the window.

"How you?" a man's voice called.

This was not, I hoped, somebody in a position of importance catching me trespa.s.sing on private property. Somebody who might notify the law. I closed the gate, popped the padlock in place.

"You doin' all right today?" the man called again.

I tramped over to the roadside to see what he wanted.

The driver wore faded blue overalls and a flannel shirt b.u.t.toned all the way to the top b.u.t.ton. His mahogany-colored face was creased and weathered, and his ancient moss-colored fedora was tilted far to the back of his balding head. "Do I know you?" he asked.

"No, sir," I said. "I was just looking around the Poole place. Got a party might be interested in buying it." Edna wasn't the only liar in the family.

"Somebody gonna work pecans again?" he asked, grinning. "There's some good trees back in there. Some of them trees done a thousand pounds an acre, easy. Mr. Poole, he knew 'bout as much about pecans as anybody in the state of Georgia."

"Did you work for Mr. Poole?" I asked.

"I sure did," the gentleman said. "Helped plant a lot of them trees. Elliotts, Creeks, Desirables, Sumner. Mr. Broward, he liked to have about eight or ten different varieties. Them's good trees. You can tell the man thinking about buying this place, Harley Lutz is ready to go back to work. I'm a nut man, through and through."

"Did you know Mrs. Poole?" I asked.

He pushed his hat down on his forehead. "She didn't have a lot to do with the farm. She kept busy with that young'un, Jackson, and her friends, up in Atlanta."

Cars were whizzing by on the road now, and it had started to drizzle, misty droplets ran down the neck of my sweatshirt. "Did you believe it when she said she killed him because he was beating her?"

Harley Lutz looked as uncomfortable as I felt. "She was too young for Mr. Broward. He was thirty-five years old when he married that gal. And she didn't like living on a farm, noways. I can't say what happened with them two. Mr. Broward, he did me right. I come to work here when I was fourteen years old. Got paid two cents a pound for picking pecans, cash money, paid me at the end of every day. That's when money was money, girl."

I sighed. Time to get on up the road. But I had one more question.

"People say Mrs. Poole had a boyfriend. That Broward Poole caught her with the man that day. Do you know who the man was?"

He frowned. "None of that was none of my business. I didn't pay no attention to that gossip. I was trying to make me a living. But after Mr. Broward got killed, they just let the farm go. That was that. All them trees, n.o.body working it. When Mrs. Poole killed Mr. Broward, she didn't just kill him. She killed a lot of jobs for a lot of people. Folks around here don't forget that."

22.

I found a service station, filled the Lincoln's bottomless gas tank, and added a quart of oil.

My stomach was growling, and I was getting a headache from the low blood sugar Edna had invented for me. The only food the gas station offered was Big Red chewing gum and a Pepsi machine. I don't drink Pepsi. It's an Atlanta thing.

I thought back to my interrupted lunch the previous day at the Red Hawk Cafe. Maybe my talkative friend Robert Hickey would be back behind the counter. I could pick up sausage and biscuits and coffee for the girls before I went back to the motel.

The Red Hawk Cafe wasn't open for breakfast. My shoulders sagged as I walked back to the car. I'd seen a McDonald's on my way through Perry, but an Egg Mcm.u.f.fin is sorry consolation when you've got your appet.i.te set for country ham, biscuits, and deep-fried small-town gossip.

As I was opening the car door I glanced across the street. There was a drugstore and a diminutive white-painted cottage. The cottage was clearly the best-kept building in town, with pots of yellow chrysanthemums planted beside a cheerful bright red door. A polished bra.s.s plaque on the door said LAW OFFICES.

I crossed the street to get a better look at this civic marvel. By the time I was on the sidewalk outside the building I could see the smaller lettering on the bra.s.s plaque. RHYNE & RHYNE, it said.

Catherine Rhyne had been in no mood to talk to me yesterday. But that was then. She was in the middle of an old friend's funeral. Maybe it had been a tactical error to try to talk to her then. The sun had started to push through the gray clouds overhead, and it had quit drizzling. Maybe we could start all over again, Catherine and I.

Rhyne & Rhyne was unmistakably a family law office. The polished wooden floor in the outer office was covered with a threadbare Oriental carpet in deep reds and blues, and instead of framed law degrees, there were framed prints, florals and landscapes, and a sprinkling of what I a.s.sumed were family photos.

A very tiny, very elderly white woman sat erectly in a wheelchair that had been pulled behind the receptionist's desk. Her pink scalp showed through under a thin fuzz of white curls, and her lower jaw looked strangely caved in, as though the bones had just melted away with age. She wore a flowered white cotton housecoat, and her hands, on which she wore white cotton gloves, were folded demurely on the desk in front of her. Her head was tilted to one side, and she appeared to be having a long nap.

"Mother?" a voice called from one of the two open doors that led out of the reception room. "Mother, is there somebody there?"

"I think she's sleeping," I called back. "I wouldn't want to disturb her."

A younger woman popped her head around from the door on the left.

"h.e.l.lo!" she said, as though we were old friends. She nodded at Sleeping Beauty. "Don't you wish you could sleep like that? Mother does that all the time these days-just drifts off for hours at a time."

She held out a hand to shake mine. "I'm Kitty Rhyne. Can I help you?"

So this was Little Kitty. And Big Kitty was taking a catnap. Kitty Rhyne was obviously the beauty of the family. Taller and slimmer than her daughter, she had hair of a l.u.s.trous silver, cut in a straight bob that fell across high cheekbones. Her flawless skin was lightly tanned, her brown eyes lively behind stylish tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses. She wore Friday-casual duds: a hand-knit sweater and matching toffee-colored pants.

"I'm Callahan Garrity," I said. "I was actually looking for your daughter, Catherine."

"You're still here," Catherine Rhyne said, leaning against the doorway to her office. "I thought you'd gone back to Atlanta yesterday."

"I meant to," I told her, "but time got away from me. And I did want to come back and apologize to you for being so tactless yesterday. I realize you were under stress, losing Wuvvy so unexpectedly and having to deal with all these complications."

"How did you know Wuvvy?" Kitty Rhyne asked.

Catherine gave her an exasperated look. "She knew Virginia because she lives in the neighborhood where the shop was. Little Five Points."

Kitty Rhyne laughed. "You don't look like a hippie to me."

"I'm not," I said. "I'm a private detective. I'm afraid I upset your daughter by asking a lot of snoopy questions yesterday after the services. I was pretty insensitive."

"It's been a hard time for all of us," Catherine murmured. "There's so much none of us know."

"That's the truth," Kitty said, rolling her eyes. "It's hard to believe any of this has happened to that sweet little girl from out in the country. She's become Klondike's most famous-or should I say infamous?-native."

"She wasn't from Hawkinsville?" I asked.

"Lord, no," Kitty Rhyne said. "But then, n.o.body who's from Klondike ever says they're from there. It's just a little b.u.mp in the road. They don't even have their own mailing address. Wuvvy's people didn't have very much."

"She didn't have a pot to p.i.s.s in when she married Broward Poole," a surprisingly st.u.r.dy voice piped up from the desk.

The senior Mrs. Rhyne was sitting up straight in her wheelchair, hands clutching the arms, wheels spinning furiously but going nowhere.

"Big Kitty!" Catherine yelped.

Kitty Rhyne smothered a giggle. "Now, Mother, be nice. This lady here is a private investigator. She was a friend of Virginia Lee's. You know, Virginia Lee is dead now. Jackson is dead, too."

"He's the boy broke his arm in two places when he fell out of the swing at our house," Big Kitty said succinctly. "He's dead now. They say Virginia Lee Mincey killed him. Killed his daddy, too."

"Did you ever hear the story of how she got the name Wuvvy?" Kitty asked, trying to change the subject. "That was Jackson. He was a toddler when Broward married Virginia. When he tried to say Virginia, it came out Wuvvy instead. We all thought it was the cutest thing."

"I never called her Wuvvy," Catherine said stiffly. "I never heard Broward call her that, either."

"After she got out of prison, Virginia had her name legally changed to Wuvvy," Kitty said. "No last name, just Wuvvy. I think she thought it was sort of-avant-garde."

"Broward caught her with another man," Big Kitty announced. "Never did say who it was. I always thought it was a n.i.g.g.e.r man. Or maybe one a them Mexicans Broward had working over there. That's why it was all hushed up."

"Come into my office, Callahan," Catherine Rhyne said hastily. "Big Kitty, would you like Mother to take you outside for some air? It's stopped raining now."

"No, thank you very much," Big Kitty said. "I'll stay right where I am and mind the phones."

Catherine motioned me into her office and Little Kitty followed us in. She closed the door, leaving it open a crack. Catherine sat at the chair behind her desk, and Kitty stayed standing in the doorway, openly amused at her daughter's disapproval of Big Kitty Rhyne.

I took a deep breath.

"My client believes there was some problem with the business that took over Wuvvy's store, Blind Possum Breweries, that could be connected to Jackson's death."

"What kind of problem?" Catherine asked, rolling a pencil between her fingers.

"We're not sure," I admitted. "Jackson called my client the day he was killed and said there was something wrong at the new location. I don't know that much about microbreweries, but I do know that it's a very capital-intensive business. Jackson and his investors spent close to half a million dollars to open their first pub in Roswell, and they will spend close to that by the time the Little Five Points store is completed."

"I didn't even know it was legal to make beer in this state," Little Kitty Rhyne said. "Guess that shows how long ago I went to law school."

"It's a fairly recent thing," I said, parroting some of the facts and figures Anna Frisch had reeled off during my visit to Blind Possum earlier in the week. "Microbreweries only started opening around the U.S. in about 1983, when some independent brewers started lobbying to have laws changed to allow beer to be brewed in the same place it's consumed. Brewing beer for anything more than personal consumption has only been legal for a couple of years in Georgia."

"The big beer distributors fought that law tooth and nail," Catherine Rhyne said slowly. "I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. But I do remember that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms regulates those kinds of places. Surely, if anything had been wrong, Jackson would have called them."

"Catherine has always been active in government," Little Kitty said proudly. "She was a delegate to the Democratic Convention way back when she was still in college. She was in the legislature, you know."

"That was a long time ago," Catherine said, dismissively. "One term only."

"Not that long ago," Kitty said.

"One term," Catherine said, interrupting her mother's proud recitation of the daughter's accomplishments. "The Georgia General a.s.sembly is a circus. I didn't go to law school to be part of a sideshow.

"Besides," she said, glancing at Little Kitty, "I keep busy enough with my practice in Atlanta and the work Mother and I do down here. Mother was the politician in the family, really."