Deadline

“Don’t worry, I will,” she promised.

“You’d better. I gotta run. Make sure you stay in touch, kiddo.”

“I will. ’Night, Ronnie.”

After she ended the call, Tess felt more alone than ever. Despite what she’d told Ronnie, she couldn’t help wondering if she had made a mistake by coming to Mississippi. While she wanted the truth, and was prepared to deal with whatever she did discover, she hadn’t given a lot of thought to how her investigation would affect her grandparents—in particular her grandmother. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt either of them. Yet, didn’t they deserve to know the truth, too? she asked herself.

Deciding she was too tired and hungry to think straight, Tess stared at the exit signs. What should have been a three-hour drive from Jackson to Grady had turned into four-plus hours because she had left in the middle of rush-hour traffic. And based on the exit number, she still had a good half hour to go before she reached the exit to the Magnolia Guesthouse.

So when she spotted the sign indicating gas and rest-rooms at the next exit, Tess flicked on her turn signal. She’d stop, refuel and grab something to eat, she told herself as she took the dark winding off-ramp from the interstate that turned into a blacktopped country road. She stopped at the end of the exit, looked both ways and noted the light to her left had turned red. She had just pressed on the accelerator when a beat-up old pickup ran the light. Tess gasped as she slammed her foot on the brake. The pickup sped by, narrowly missing her car.

“So much for Southern manners,” she muttered before starting on her way. Five minutes later when she pulled the Mustang up to the gas pumps at the Quick Stop, Tess thought she spied the old pickup parked in front of the store. She considered going over and giving the owner a piece of her mind. And doing so, she reasoned, was not the way to start off her stay in Grady.

Lester De Roach saw the little red Ford Mustang pull up to the gas pump as he shut off his old truck at Bobby Ed’s Quick Stop. Some rich bitch using her daddy’s car, he figured, and chuckled to himself because he’d probably scared the hell out of her back there at the interstate.

Served her right, he thought. She probably didn’t know the first thing about what it was like to have to work for a living. Unlike himself who had been working his whole damn life. Climbing out of the truck, he ignored the Mustang and its driver and headed inside the convenience store to grab a six-pack of beer.

“How ya doing, Mr. Lester?” the kid behind the counter called out.

Lester ignored him and went straight to the cooler at the back of the store. He eyed the six-pack of beer in the cooler, and debated whether or not to spend the extra buck and buy his brewskies cold. He wiped the back of his oil-stained hand across his mouth, barely noticing the dry, cracked skin that never lost the scent of car grease, or the stiffness of the whiskers on a chin that hadn’t seen a razor in days. He’d spent the past seven hours locked up in J.W.’s garage working on a busted engine for that penny-pinching slavedriver. He hadn’t finished it yet. But he was close. And hell, he deserved a cold drink for all his hard work, not warm-as-piss beer. But he also needed to eat, Lester reminded himself. That’s the only way he’d been able to get that skinflint J.W. to give him an advance on his pay—by telling him if he didn’t eat, he wouldn’t be able to work.

He was a damn fine mechanic—the best one in Grady. Hell, he was probably the best damn mechanic in the whole State of Mississippi. He’d just run into some hard times. Wasn’t his fault that bitch Loretta he’d been married to had robbed him blind and bankrupted his mechanic shop, then run out on him. And it wasn’t his fault that he’d banged himself up in that car wreck and had taken to drink and drugs to ease the pain. He’d kicked the drugs and the drink, but not before he’d gotten the bad rap of being a drunk.

Well, he weren’t no damn drunk. He was a top-rate mechanic and he deserved to be working for himself, not for the likes of a prick like J.W. Hell, J.W. wouldn’t even own the garage if it weren’t for his shyster of an old man who had been robbing folks in these parts for years by jacking up the rates on work at that old service station of his. Maybe if his own old man hadn’t cut out on him, his sister and momma like he’d done, he’d have known better than to trust that bitch Loretta with the books. Well, he’d know better next time. Sooner or later, his luck was going to turn. He was due a break and he’d catch one. And when he did, he was going to get his old shop back and then he’d tell J.W. what he could do with his job because he’d be working for himself again. Yes, that’s just what he was going to do, Lester assured himself. Just as soon as he got on his feet again, he was going to show them. He would show them all.

But right now. Right now, he needed a drink.

“You finding everything okay back there, Mr. Lester?” the Smith boy called out from the front of the store.

“Yeah,” he snarled in response. Lucky little bastard, he thought, glancing in the direction of Bobby Ed and Mabel Smith’s snot-nosed grandkid. The punk had it made. He got to work weekends at his grandparents’ convenience store and gas station. According to Mabel, the boy was smart as a whip and would be graduating from Ole Mississippi come springtime, then going on to law school. In the meantime, he didn’t need to worry about working for dickheads like J.W. just to pay his rent or buy himself a couple of beers.

Just didn’t seem fair, Lester decided. It seemed that pricks like J.W. and the Smith boy got all the breaks while hardworking decent folks like him had to bust their asses. But then, it was easy to get breaks when you had money. Both J.W.’s old man and the Smith boy’s family had plenty. While he had never had a pot to piss in—except for that one time, back when he and Jody Burns had been friends.

At the thought of Jody, his old friend in prison all those years, and hearing about how he’d hanged himself, Lester’s legs went weak.

“Why are you doing this to me, Les?” Jody’s words echoed in his head. “Please, tell them the truth!”

Bells sounded at the front door of the store, signaling another customer had entered the Quick Stop. Lester tried to shake off the memory, unsure of where it had come from in the first place.

Don’t think about Jody. What’s done is done.

Lester swiped his hand down his face, tried to make that image of Jody swinging from a rope in the jail cell go away. No point in thinking about Jody now, he told himself. It was too late to change the past. Yanking open the cooler door, he grabbed the six-pack of cold beer. His stomach grumbled, reminding him he hadn’t had any food that day. So he snatched a bag of chips from the rack beside the cooler and then began making his way up the aisle.

Damn, but he needed a drink. That’s all that was wrong with him.

“Will that be cash or charge, ma’am?” the Smith kid asked the tall brunette woman at the counter.

“Credit card,” she said and handed over the piece of plastic.

Impatient for a drink and still shaken by the memories of Jody, Lester wrestled one of the beers free from the plastic loops that held them together. He popped the lid, and the hiss had the Smith kid looking his way. Ignoring the disapproving look the boy shot at him, he drained half the can in one swallow. The cold brew hit his empty belly like an icy fist and he sighed with pleasure. While he waited for the chick to finish so he could check out, he took another swig. He could feel the beginning of a buzz. Already he was feeling better. Except for the two beers he’d had when he went home for lunch, he hadn’t had a thing in his belly all day. By the time he got home and finished off the six-pack, he wouldn’t be thinking about the likes of Jody Burns or anyone else that night.

“Here’s your receipt, ma’am.”

“Thank you,” she said and stuffed the receipt and credit card into her purse. “Could you tell me how to get to the Magnolia Guesthouse from here?” she asked the Smith boy.

“Sure thing, ma’am. When you pull out of the parking lot, go down the road to the first light,” the kid explained, gesturing toward the highway. “That road’ll put you back on the main drag. Once you get on it, go down past three lights and then take the first street on your left. You’ll be on Magnolia Lane then. The Magnolia Guesthouse is the big white house. You can’t miss it. Enjoy your visit.”

“Thanks,” she said and turned around.

And as she did so Lester dropped the half-empty can of beer and chips, spilling the liquid on his grease-stained work clothes before it fell to the tile floor with a thud. The rest of the six-pack hit the floor with a crash, breaking free of the plastic loops and rolling in several directions.

“Mr. Lester, you okay?”

Lester’s hands began to shake. Instantly sober, he felt something damp and cold on the front of his pants, and wasn’t sure if it was the beer or if he’d pissed himself. Either way, he didn’t care.

“Sir, are you all right?” Tess asked him.

Unable to move, Lester felt the blood drain from his head as he stared at her face.

“Mr. Lester?” The Smith boy came from around the counter.

“Sir, are you ill?” Tess asked and started to step toward him.

“Stay back. Stay away from me,” Lester warned as he shrank back and stared at the face of a dead woman.

“Mr. Lester, what in the devil has gotten into you?” The fresh-faced young man who’d waited on her had come out from behind the counter. Although the boy was only of average height, he was built like a football player and had placed himself between the disheveled-looking guy and her.

Tess didn’t feel in any real danger and didn’t know what to make of the man’s outburst. She’d watched him exit the beat-up pickup truck that nearly hit her when she’d exited the interstate. When she’d spotted him at the back of the store eyeing the beer in the cooler she decided not to bother confronting him. Last year she had done a feature for the news station on alcoholism and the senior citizen. So she recognized the signs. The unsteady hands, the restlessness, the total focus on that next drink. She knew from her interviews that the urge for a drink was a daily battle, one that never went away. Judging by the man’s demeanor, she assumed that he had been struck by that urge tonight. And given his appearance, she’d concluded that he’d either just come off a drinking binge or was about to start one.

Seeing him up close now only reaffirmed her suspicions. The stench of beer and perspiration on him was strong. He was dressed in a set of standard garage-issue workman’s clothes that she suspected had once been navy, but were now faded with wear, axle grease and sweat. The beer he’d spilled left a new set of stains to compete with the engine grime on his clothes. His black work boots were scuffed and dull, stained with what she assumed was engine oil. The man’s hair was mostly gray and looked as if it hadn’t been shampooed or combed in days. His face was thin, his lips chapped, his skin pasty. Surprisingly, his teeth were white. Several days’ growth of salt-and-pepper whiskers covered a weak chin line and a jaw that had gone soft. But it was the man’s bloodshot brown eyes that surprised her most. She’d expected to see despair, hopelessness, maybe even regret. Instead, what she saw was fear.

“I mean it. I don’t know why you come back, but you stay away from me,” the man yelled at her. “Stay away,” he shouted again, staggering backward as though terrified, until he crashed into a display of two-liter sodas. The plastic bottles went tumbling to the ground.

“Look out,” the clerk warned and grabbed the man by the arm to stop him from falling to the floor.

One of the two-liter bottles came barreling toward her like a bowling pin hit by a ball and Tess jumped, dropping her purse and keys in the process.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” the boy asked, glancing back in her direction.

“I’m fine,” Tess assured him as she stooped down and retrieved her purse and keys. She still didn’t know what to make of the man’s reaction to her. Was it possible that he thought she was her mother? From old family pictures Tess knew that she resembled her mother. She had the same almond-shaped gray eyes, the same strong cheekbones and pointed jaw. But she had her father’s straight dark hair, not her mother’s honey-blond curls. And her lips were fuller, her nose a shade longer. Still she supposed it was possible that the man had mistaken her for her mother.

“You okay now, Mr. Lester?” the clerk asked, having turned his attention back to the older man he was holding upright.

But Lester didn’t respond. He simply continued to stare at her face through dark, terror-filled eyes.

“Mr. Lester?” the boy repeated. “Are you all right?”

Finally, he jerked his gaze back to the young man. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Let go of me,” he said, shrugging off the boy’s hold.