May Might Mean Murder
A Xara Smith Mystery By Bill McGrath
Copyright 2009 Bill McGrath
Smashwords Edition
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Xara Smith Mysteries By Bill McGrath:
January Juggling The Jentons
February At Feldman’s On Fifth
March Of The Mustangs
April At The Antique Alley
May Might Mean Murder
June Jumping the Jaguar
July Jill's Justice
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
May 12, 1990 – GRADUATION DAY.
Officers Lewis and Asbury parked the squad at the office of the Kodiak Hotel. They did not wonder about the name of the hotel because it was on Kodiak street. Certainly no Kodiak bear had ever strolled through the foothills of the Ozarks but here in Beebe, Arkansas the streets had such strange names.
Neither Lewis nor Asbury minded getting the call. They worked the graveyard shift and had spent most of the dark hours running radar out on 67 without catching a single speeder all night. Now with the sun just coming up they would at least have something to write in their report in an hour when their shift ended.
The hotel clerk showed the officers the registration book and found that good old Mr. Jones was staying in yet another fine hotel room in their tiny town. According to the clerk’s story a young man perhaps high school age and what was obviously a prostitute had checked into the room two full days ago and paid cash for one night. Now the maids had found the room sealed with the chain from the inside and nobody responded when they tried to wake up the lodgers.
The two officers and the clerk walked down the row of rooms until they came to room 26 which was second from the end. Second farthest from the office.
The cops tried the door and found it just as locked as the clerk had reported. Officer Lewis asked the clerk which was cheaper to repair, a window or a door. The clerk said it was the door, and Officer Asbury threw his massive shoulder into the cheap wood of the door smashing the chain off and allowing them access to the room. It would all be in their report.
Neither officer had ever seen such a gruesome mess. The young boy was naked lying on his back on the bed and there was blood everywhere. It would not be hard to find the murder weapon because a hunting knife was still sticking upright from the boys heart, but that had been the last of perhaps a hundred wounds inflicted by the strong blade.
Because of so much blood it took them a few minutes to even notice that the boy’s hands were tied to the headboard. Their brief preliminary investigation recovered a small mirror with several smears plus two lines of what appeared to be cocaine. In addition they found a small baggie with what appeared to be marijuana, and they found an empty wine bottle. There was no sign of the prostitute but the bathroom window was unlocked and appeared to be large enough to allow someone to crawl through it out to the alley behind the row of hotel rooms.
They tossed a coin to see who would have to call the sheriff because neither officer wanted that duty. Officer Asbury lost the toss and dialed the phone waking Sheriff Tom Watkins.
“Sheriff Watkins, this is Officer Jim Asbury. I have some bad news, Sir. We found your son, and you are going to want to get here quick”.
MAY 01, 1990 – Eleven Days Earlier.
Mitty Stevens carried her tray once again to the loser’s table. Of course it was the girl’s loser table but it was right next to the boy’s version of outcasts. It was her senior year of high-school and thankfully it was almost over. What had started out so good and filled with promise had turned sour quickly and slid down-hill all year long since then. She had spent her freshman, sophomore, and junior years eating lunch with some of the most popular girls at the school. She had even been able to count herself amongst the “in crowd.” Now, as graduation approached she found herself once again laying her tray between that of fat Brenda who carried her cello everywhere she went, and tall Xara who never seemed to want to talk.
Mitty was a girl of many secrets. Some secrets were good, most though were bad. That is why she had to keep them secret. Today though she had a good secret and she was dying to share it with someone, anyone, everyone. Today, this morning, when she woke up, the pad she had placed carefully in blissful hope the night before, had a small smear of blood on it. Her period had arrived. It was a full three weeks late and she was quite afraid that she had become pregnant. That, of course, was one of the bad secrets. Nobody but Mitty and Kevin knew that she might be in trouble. Nobody but Mitty and Kevin knew that she had lost her virginity. Nobody but Mitty and Kevin even knew they were dating. They were all secrets which must be kept, so she could not share this joyous secret with any but Kevin, and she wouldn’t see him for another two hours. So she would sit here at the loser’s table eating the swill that the school-district insisted was food, listening to tall Xara’s silence and fat Brenda’s constant dribble about nothing.
There were just eleven days until the graduation ceremony and then Kevin and Mitty would rush off to a college in the big city of Little Rock where they could more easily blend in and share their love in a more public manner. They had both been accepted and had each done an early enrollment so that they could take a summer class together. That would give them a reason to leave town right after graduation rather than spending one more summer in the dreadful little town of Beebe. Mitty knew she could weather the last eleven days, and now that her biggest secret had resolved itself she might even enjoy her last few days here at Beebe High.
After lunch Mitty Stevens dutifully attended her American History class. She took her seat in the back and spread her study materials across her desk. They hadn’t learned anything new in days. The final for this class was in exactly one week and the teacher would today start a review that would consume every class until the final exam. She knew all the material and would not need the review to pass the test. Even if she completely tanked the final she would still pass the class, and even if her final grade for the class pulled her average down a point or two she still would graduate either fourth or fifth in her class of one hundred and thirty seniors. Therefore, Mitty was bored.
She looked up. Two rows ahead and one row to the left was Brian Vaughn. Oh the dreamy Brian Vaughn. For all practical purposes he was the root cause of many of Mitty’s secrets. He would never know that, of course. Mitty found herself day dreaming about how things had gotten so messed up.
It had all started at the end of her Junior year with a plan she had made for herself. During her junior year Mitty had blossomed into a very attractive young lady but was too shy for the boys to take her seriously. She dreamed often of the hunky Brian Vaughn. He was the most popular boy in the Junior class and it was sure he would win the next year’s early election for president of the student council. He was tall, good looking, rich, a good athlete, one of the captains of the football team, and he drove a new Mustang convertible. Who else could they possibly elect?
Mitty had decided that Brian was going to take her to prom at the end of her senior year, and it was really quite simple. She got a job that summer working as a lifeguard at one of the city parks. She had spent every day watching snotty little eleven and twelve year olds run around the public pool. She had only one close call that entire summer where she had to use all her training to pull a kid out of the deep water. The pay was not substantial and the hours were long. Mitty put up with this all for one reason and that was so that she could spend the entire summer working on her tan. She would return to the first day of her senior year a bronze goddess.
The second part of her plan had to do with student council. Brian had already told everyone he was going to run for class president, so she figured that if she got on the student council she would have a good excuse to be with Brian a lot during the year. Her good brain and bronze body would simply lure him away from the other girls who would be constantly throwing themselves at him. She knew that she could never hope to compete unless she was willing to give it up, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it.
Mitty looked over the different offices the council had and decided to run for class secretary. The choice seemed obvious to her. Brian would be president, he would hand pick one of his buddies to run as vice-president, Mitty did not want the responsibilities of being the class treasurer, so the only thing left was secretary of the council. She knew that meant she would have to take a lot of notes at the meetings but she felt it a small price to pay.
As she looked back on it though it had been the time and place that had spoiled her plan. Back in the late sixties and early seventies schools all followed federal mandates to integrate and some states went a little quicker than others. Arkansas lagged as long as they could just like Alabama and Mississippi. Even into the early eighties when all schools were officially integrated there were many small towns in Arkansas where the black children had the right to go to any school they wanted but few wanted to integrate into all white schools that had stood against them for so long. Of the entire hundred and thirty seniors at Beebe High there were only twenty-four African Americans who enrolled for the 1989-1990 school year.
There was an assembly on the Friday of the first week of school and part of that assembly was that each candidate for student council would get to make a little campaign speech. Mitty was first and her speech was short because she delightfully found herself the only candidate for secretary.
There were two candidates for Treasurer and they each spent four or five minutes telling the crowd what a good treasurer they would be. One was a cheerleader named Libby Corcoran, and the other was Amber Griggs, one of the popular girls who at the time was dating one of Brian’s best friends.
As Mitty knew there would be, there was only a single candidate for Vice President and that was Brian Vaughn’s best friend Jeff Lepley. Jeff was the starting quarterback, quite a good basketball player, and one of the best baseball players in the district. He was a shoe-in for athlete of the year and probably could have had any girl he wanted but the one he was dating was the popular girl that was one of the contestants for Treasurer. Just like Mitty, Jeff gave a very brief speech simply because he had no opponent in this contest.
Finally it was time for the presidential candidates to introduce themselves and the entire assembly was stunned when Kevin Osgood Davis, a black boy, stood up and walked to the microphone. Being black he had never been exactly popular but he was one of the second string basketball players so most of the students and all of the athletes knew him. He was also quite studious keeping his grades amongst the highest in the class.
Kevin gave a wonderful speech about what they could all expect to accomplish in their senior year especially with his leadership. He never seemed nervous and did not even once mention that he was not Caucasian or draw any attention at all to his minority status. For instance he never even suggested that the other African-American students might want him representing their interests. His speech lasted nine minutes and was, without question the best speech the assembly heard that day, but it was not to be the one they would all remember, and it was not the speech that would determine the winner or loser of the office of President.
When Kevin sat down to a smattering of applause from the stunned crowd the principal asked if there were any other candidates for the office of President of Student Council.
Brian Vaughn strutted to the stage. He did not introduce himself. He didn’t need to. Every single student in the room knew exactly who he was. There was a round of applause when he got to the center of the stage. He wrapped his right hand around the microphone pole and patiently waited until the applause died down. He looked at the crowd. When the crowd quieted he pulled the microphone slightly closer to his lips and then he said “I am running for President because I’m not ready to turn the school over to a nigger.”
With that he walked off stage and sat back in his seat. There was not a sound for about a full minute.
Brian had picked the wrong words at the wrong time. Had he made the speech in 1959 it wouldn’t have even made news. Had he made the speech in the early seventies there would still have been enough good old boys’ children in the audience that he would have received thunderous applause. Had he made the comment even into the early eighties he might have gotten away with it. But now in 1989 it was just too rude. There was too much pain associated with that one word. Brian Vaughn had, for once in his life, miscalculated.
There were 130 seniors registered so if each of them voted there would have been 130 votes to count. In all there were fifty five votes cast. Most students just stayed away from the election and let it play out. In the end Kevin Davis was the only black student to cast a vote. Of the final tallies, since they were the only candidates, Mitty Stevens was elected secretary and Jeff Lepley was the new Vice-President. Collecting forty-nine of the fifty-five votes for Treasurer was Jeff’s girlfriend Amber Griggs. And finally, there had been seven votes cast in favor of Brian Vaughn and forty-eight in favor of Kevin Davis.
Within an hour of the final vote count there was a small private ceremony in the principal’s office where Kevin Osgood Davis was sworn in as Student Council President and Mitty Stevens was sworn in as Secretary of the Student Council. By that time Jeff Lepley and his girlfriend Amber Griggs had resigned from student government. The principal told Mitty and Kevin that there would be a special election shortly to replace the two but that never happened.
It really surprised Mitty at how long and hard Kevin would work for the students he now represented. Every home room would elect representatives who were supposed to be members of the council and attend the council meetings but word had spread through the school and none of these representatives attended any of the meetings. Mitty and Kevin would find themselves alone but at each and every meeting Kevin would show up with a printed agenda and he would then hold a council meeting according to the agenda with Mitty dutifully taking notes.
The students in the school would simply ignore any decisions the student council made. For instance, in the past each senior class had held several fund raisers throughout the year and used the money to help defray the cost of prom. Kevin and Mitty developed and worked several fund raising activities but none of them raised a single dime.
At first some of the popular students tried to convince Mitty to abandon the council but she held firm and soon found herself busy often with council business but being shunned by the other students who used to be her friends. Eventually she even found someone else sitting at her spot at one of the cool tables in the lunch room and that is why she found herself relegated a spot at the loser’s table where she sat out lunch periods for the rest of the year.
Meanwhile, Brian and Jeff and the other football players had a really good year so they were just as popular as ever. Their parties were legendary and seemingly everyone was always invited except Kevin and Mitty. When football season ended and Basketball started Kevin joined the team just as he had the previous two years but after five practices the coaches had to cut the size of the team down and Kevin found his name on the cut list.
Eventually, spending so much time alone together had gotten to Kevin and Mitty. Dreaming now she tried to remember the first time Kevin had kissed her, or was it she who had made the first move? It was all kind of blurry to her. Like many kids their ages they went from first base to third very quickly but then slammed on the brakes. They were high-school seniors and the year was turning into 1990 so they had sat through the health classes, gotten the lectures, and seen the films. They both knew how to get a girl pregnant. They both knew all about Crabs and AIDS and everything in between. Neither was ready for adult responsibilities but life was coming at them fast now.
They both started looking forward to their secret but frequent meetings where they would close the council office door and spend three minutes going over council business followed by forty-five minutes of heavy petting. They were two of the most intelligent students in the school so they quickly realized the trouble they would generate if anyone found out about their interracial love affair, so they kept it secret, and as the secret grew their passion did as well.
They kept their grades up and pragmatically looked for colleges they might attend together. The University of Arkansas at Little Rock campus seemed to be a logical choice. It was less than fifty miles from their dreadful little hometown of Beebe, so it would be close enough that they could visit their families often, but it also was in a big city where interracial dating was old news and nobody would care. Academically they each could have gotten into better universities, but being a state school in their own home state it would be affordable.
Their plan was simple. In addition to Little Rock they picked three other colleges and each sent in four college applications. They did well enough on their college board exams that they each actually got accepted by all four colleges. That being done they snuck away one Saturday and visited the Little Rock campus where they spent a blissful day wandering around holding hands in public and eating together in a public restaurant near the campus, and all day long no one at all gave them any trouble.
That night at home Mitty looked at the pictures on her parents living room wall and saw again the picture that had always been there of her grandfather in his Ku-Klux-Clan outfit. It saddened her so.
Mitty took a quick reality check. The American History teacher was still droning on and the big clock on the wall told her she still had eleven more minutes for her sweet day dream.
Four weeks ago had been the last baseball game of the year. The Beebe team was good, and the stars shone that night as all knew they would, but they were not good enough to beat the team from Searcy East, so they would not be going forward into the post-season state tournament. It was the last big sporting event of the year and for most of the senior athletes it meant they were now done with organized sports. Of course many would go on to play some college ball, but many would not.
Mitty had argued against it but Kevin had insisted that they make one more effort to raise some money for the prom, so they had pooled the rest of their meager student council budget and bought two hundred individual packages of those little coconut covered cupcakes with the gooey center. They would set up a card table at the baseball field and sell them during the game. In bulk they had paid just twelve cents a package and they would sell them for fifty cents each, so if they sold like you would expect the council would raise quite a nice nest egg to turn over for prom decorations. Mitty expected though that their card table full of calories would be ignored.
In all fat Brenda bought two of the packages and tall Xara bought one. Some lady they did not recognize who was pulling along a couple of kids also bought two packages. That was all they were able to sell though.
Dejected they loaded up the cupcakes into Kevin’s mother’s car which he borrowed often. They had not made a plan for what to do with the leftovers. Almost in desperation Kevin found himself driving back to his house. Kevin and his mother lived alone in one of the poorest houses on one of the poorest blocks in the town. They were not surprised to find the house vacant because Mrs. Davis cleaned commercial buildings as part of a crew that worked nights.
They went out to the back yard and sat in the two lawn chairs out there with the big bags of cupcakes on the ground between them. They each took a cupcake and carefully unwrapped it. Although the neighborhood was a mess they each carefully placed the opened wrapper into the bag it had come from. Sadly and silently they ate their cupcakes.
When Mitty was done with the first she reached into the bag and pulled out another. She unwrapped this one just as carefully but did not eat it. Instead she simply tossed it out onto the ground in front of them. She picked up a third and tossed it to the ground as well. Kevin joined her and he too started unwrapping the cupcakes and tossing them to the ground. They continued without saying a word until the bags were empty and they had a huge pile of cake, icing, and coconut on the ground in front of them. Still without saying a word they had each undressed and naked but together they laid down in their sticky bed.
The kissing soon started and quickly became heavy petting. For the very first time in her life Mitty did not stop Kevin when he went a little too far and there in the worst neighborhood in Beebe, Arkansas, on a dark night with no moon, in a pile of smashed cupcakes, Mitty Stevens and Kevin Davis lost their respective virginities.
Day dreaming now Mitty remembered little about the actual sex but remembered more clearly the fun they had afterwards hosing each other off with the horribly cold water from the garden hose continually inspecting with their hands to make sure they were getting all the cupcake goop out of every crease and crevice.
Within a week her period had missed its appointed start date and the worry had started. Now, after the welcomed blood this morning she finally had something good to tell her friend, her boyfriend, her lover, her life, Kevin. She had only to wait until this class ended. She and Kevin would be alone together in the small office delegated as the office of the student council right after this class. They would spend the last hour of the day there and Mitty was sad to realize that it would be the very last council meting of the year.
She would make no more mistakes, take no more risks. If Kevin wanted to screw her again she would allow it but he would wear a condom and that was that. She started wondering if Kevin happened to have a condom with him as the bell rang ending the American History class and speeding Mitty down the hall towards the office of the student council.
Brian Vaughn, Jeff Lepley, Brad Watkins, and Cash Atkinson huddled together around a concrete picnic table out at the state park half way between Beebe and Searcy. It was one of their usual spots for hiding out with a case of beer, or a bottle of Southern Comfort, or an occasional young lady of low virtue but high aspirations of joining the “A” list.
Tonight it was directly to the Southern Comfort poured over ice in paper cups. The four of them were the high-school elite. In many ways they were the cities elite as well. Jeff and Brian were, of course, well known as the two co-captains of the football team. They had gotten there partially because of their athletic prowess but, in truth, they had also gotten there because of their family money. Brian and Jeff were the ones growing up in the wealthy neighborhoods whose parents could afford to send them together to things like summer sports camps, and buy them equipment like home versions of weight-lifting machines. They were the ones who had private trainers and coaches helping them along in the off season. Brian and Jeff had grown up across the street from each other and could not remember a time when they were not best friends.
Brad Watkins was not quite as well off but he was for sure the best natural athlete of the four. His parents owned no business but his father had been elected the counties Sheriff when Brad was just a baby and he still held that post now, so Brad and his buddies already knew all the law enforcement people and many of the local cops were amongst their best supporters along the sidelines of the football games. Brad had met Jeff and Brian in first grade and the three had been, as they say, thick as thieves ever since.
Cash Atkinson had come along at the beginning of their freshman year of high-school. He was a good enough athlete to be on any of the teams but he simply wasn’t a star and never would be. Quite frankly he had bought his way into the group. The Atkinson family had moved to town when Cash’s father had bought the old steel factory and reopened it. They were without question the richest family in the town and were said to be close friends with another family whose family name was Clinton from Hope, Arkansas.
In spite of the money that each family could bestow upon their favorite sons, the Atkinsons simply were able to give Cash more, so he was able to more often pick up the check when they stopped for burgers. He had, two years ago, imported four prostitutes from Little Rock to take care of any lingering virginities the four boys might have. Tonight, after the pick-up basketball game they had joined in, when they stopped at the liquor store that they were officially too young to shop at, it had been Cash who had gone into the store and plopped a fifty down for the large bottle of Southern Comfort, the paper cups, the ice.
The four had enjoyed high-school. For them it had been four years of popularity, four years of friendship, four years of fun. There had been only one negative bleep on the radar in all four of the years and that was when Brian had lost the student council election, but in retrospect, even that had turned out positive, because when he had lost the election the entire school, including most of the staff, had ignored the council for the entire year simply because that is what Brian and his friends were doing. The incident had solidified their positions as leaders of the school and since they could not be the school’s official leaders they simply became the school’s unofficial leaders. It even gave them a target for the hatred that came with their occasional outbursts.
The four had planned on doing college together and sometime in the distant future they would open some sort of business there in Beebe where they would run the town for the rest of their lives. The first step though was college. Between the four of them they had plenty of money to attend any school they wanted, and their grades, while not being stellar, had been average or even a little better. They had, though, enjoyed sports all the way through high-school so they wanted a school that had a decent set of sports teams, especially football.
At the beginning of their Senior year they had followed the area college sports games and had taken a road trip once to Norman, Oklahoma to watch the awesome Sooners of the University of Oklahoma do battle with the Cowboys from Oklahoma State. As it turned out the Sooners had not been anywhere near as dominant as everyone expected and had to come from behind with a last minute touchdown to beat the Cowboys. The boys had started talking about how cool it would be to be on the Cowboy team that finally beat the hated Sooners, and from that point on Oklahoma State University became their college of choice.
Some of them though had taken things a little more seriously than the others. For instance Brian had gotten really drunk the day before the S.A.T. test so his scores were way to low. He ended up taking the test again a month later but by then they should have already gotten their college applications in. One by one the boys had gotten their acceptance letters.
On that particular day Brian had played in the pickup basketball game with Jeff and Brad and Cash and the rest of the guys. The four had plans to hang out so Brian rushed home for dinner. When he got there he found, unopened, his letter from Oklahoma State. He hurried through his meal and quickly changed clothing. He took the letter with him so that he could open it and read it in front of his friends. It would give them a reason to do something they were going to do tonight anyway, celebrate.
It was already dark when they arrived at their concrete table but they took a lantern out that they kept in the trunk of Brian’s Mustang so they would have a little light. After the first round of Southern Comfort Brian pulled out the letter and told his friends what he expected it was. He opened it and got closer to the lantern so that he could read it. In just a few short paragraphs their dreams were crushed as Brian read out loud his rejection letter. The letter stated that his athletic abilities would be quite welcome at the school but his grades and S.A.T. scores were just a bit lower than what they demanded. All would have been bad enough but the letter continued one sentence too long. The very last sentence read “Perhaps we could have admitted you had you been able to include some other positive activities, for instance, had you been on the student council we are sure we would have considered you a candidate for admission.”
Brian let the letter fall from his hand but it was only an inch or so to the table top so the offensive paper just lay there mocking him in front of his friends.
Brian said “That nigger has ruined everything. He will have to die.”
Not much else was said that night in the way of celebration but the boys did empty the bottle of Southern Comfort before going home.
May 09, 1990 – TUESDAY NIGHT.
It was known as a heat storm. It was late enough in the spring for the summer temperatures to rise a good deal during the daylight hours, but at sunset the temperature would start plummeting. If the clouds were low it would spawn a thunderstorm including rain. If the clouds were high in the sky though you would get lots of lightning and thunder but no rain. These rainless lightning storms had, at least here in Beebe, always been called heat storms.
Elated that they would not have to face the drama and trauma of an unwanted teen-aged pregnancy Kevin and Mitty grew more bold with their love affair. This was Tuesday night. There would be classes Wednesday and Thursday but no senior would be expected to learn any new material at this point. All final exams had been given and graded. Freshmen, sophomores, and juniors might still have to carry a school book around but the seniors had turned them all in the day before. On Friday they would arrive at school at their normal eight o’clock, attend a couple of assemblies where they would pass out trophies and ribbons, eat their last lunch in the school cafeteria and line up in their caps and gowns. By the three P.M. bell they would each have their diploma.
All of that meant that this Tuesday night was a night of celebration for most of the seniors in town despite the fact, or maybe because of the fact, that mother nature was providing quite a brilliant but dry light show.
Mitty’s mother had already given her a graduation present and it was a new Polaroid camera that slid the printed film out the second you shot it and you could watch it develop. She had given it to her daughter early incase she wanted to snap a few pictures of her graduating friends. So far Kevin had been the only one she had pointed it at.
With so little left of their lives in town, and so much to look forward to they had not hidden their love for each other. It is not like they had purposefully flaunted it, but they now felt free to at least walk around the black section of town together.
Kevin’s mother had taken the car with her this particular night so the young couple found themselves afoot. It hardly mattered to them because the town of Beebe was small enough that they could easily walk from one side to the other if they needed to, but they would not need to. The fast food restaurant in the black section of town was less than a mile from Kevin’s house. They shared burgers and Cokes at the outside picnic tables just like all the other couples. None of the black couples seemed to care that Mitty was a white girl.
They would not, of course, walk hand-in-hand through the white neighborhoods of Beebe. They were not that foolish. Kevin though wanted to be a gentleman and walk his girlfriend home. They had the choice of walking along the road that skirted around the woods that separated the black section from the rest of the town, or they could simply cut through the woods.
Since Mitty lived in a house just to the other side of the woods they decided to take the short way through the woods rather than the long walk around. They knew it would be a lot safer to stick to the street because you could not well see in the woods at night, but that would mean that they would have to walk together in the open down the road into the white neighborhood.
They made it without incident through the woods and to Mitty’s front porch where they spent just two or three minutes saying good bye and Kevin headed off down the blacktop. Being alone he would follow the road back around to his side of town.
Brian, Jeff, Brad, and Cash had gotten drunk every single night since the horrible news that Brian would not get into Oklahoma State University. None of them really knew what they were going to do. The parents of Jeff and Brad and Cash encouraged their sons to attend the college without Brian Vaughn. The parents thought the boys should cut their losses and proceed with life. Perhaps it would even be a good lesson for them.
Brian’s family wanted him to simply pick another school to attend. He had been accepted to a couple of smaller Arkansas colleges, and they could easily afford the higher tuition that some of the private colleges charged.
Brian wanted only revenge. The other boys did not argue with him when he talked about killing Kevin Davis. They knew that Davis would leave town right after graduation and that way the storm could be diverted. Still they did take part in the many discussions that centered around how to kill Kevin. They would rarely talk about justice or getting away with murder. What they talked about was causing Kevin pain. They had come up with dozens of ideas but by far the favorite was to tie his ankles to the bumper of Brian’s Mustang and drag him through downtown Beebe. Of course the boys all knew the discussions were not serious and that they were only blowing off steam. On this night though they were all a bit scared when Brian tossed a long rope into the trunk of his car.
They had been alternating nights between Southern Comfort and beer and it just happened to be a beer night, and instead of stopping at the state park they were cruising the streets of Beebe looking for trouble.
Kevin turned once when he was about fifty feet down the road to wave to Mitty. She was still on the porch and he saw the flash of her camera. Somewhere he seemed to remember that the flash was only supposed to be good for a short distance, something like ten or twenty feet. He noticed several more flashes and then watched as Mitty turned to go into her house. Mother nature provided him with a few brilliant flashes as well. He was in a good mood. He could almost count the hours until he and Mitty would leave this dreadful little town and take their places at the university of their choice in Little Rock. He walked just twenty or so more feet when he saw the four white boys. Without saying a word one of them punched him in the face and the beating was on. He did the best he could to protect his face. Suddenly his body shot out feet first and he found himself being dragged rapidly down the pavement. He lost consciousness after about fifty painful feet.
Mitty, not knowing what drama was unfolding right outside her door took her camera and pictures into her bedroom. She was disappointed that the camera did not take good pictures in the dark. She could make out Kevin’s frame in the blackness of the night, but she could not see his features. In one of the pictures she could see a car passing and it had the distinctive back tail lights that even she recognized as a Mustang. In the next picture, the last she had taken, she could see the Mustang parked on the side of the road and the doors opening. Although she could not tell from the picture she knew for sure who was getting out of the car because there was only one new Mustang in all of Beebe. Silently she said a prayer that Kevin would get home safely. She thought of calling him but decided against it when she found her father using the phone.
MAY 01, 2005 Dallas.
My new girlfriend Jana wanted to go with me but the relationship was way too new to complicate it now with family matters. I was not, at this time, willing to put her through a round of canasta with my father who had never accepted my orientation, and I certainly did not wish to put her through the constant barrage of which young men might still be available for an attractive girl like me which I was sure my mother would supply from the moment I arrived until the blissful moment of my departure. No, I would not take Jana with me.
My partner Jill also expressed an interest in going with me and I almost agreed to allow her to accompany me because it would be a lot easier to introduce my parents to a female business partner than a new girlfriend, but, if I allowed Jill to accompany me it would be harder to explain to Jana why she couldn’t go. Therefore I would make the pilgrimage alone.
My name is Xara Smith. I am a thirty-one year old tough tall blonde female private investigator who solves cases in the Dallas, Texas area.
I couldn’t help myself and soon found I was actually looking forward to the trip. I had three things on the agenda. My parents lived in the town I was headed for and seeing them would be good even though we do not exactly get along. I mean it had been about four years since I had last seen them. At least after the visit, and extending on for the next year, I would, for a time, be spared from my mother’s phone calls always starting with an admonishment for my not visiting lately.
The second thing I had to look forward to was my fifteen year high-school reunion. I had skipped the five year reunion because I was in the Navy at the time, and I had skipped the ten year bash simply because I was, at the time, stuck in the typing pool of a law firm. Now, at least, I had some success I could brag about to all the people who had not befriended me in my youth.
The third thing going on was that one of my former classmates had scheduled his wedding (I think it was his second) for a Sunday afternoon and it happened to fall one day after the big party for the fifteenth reunion. I was not sure but I expect he had specifically picked the date just to make sure more of us could attend simply because we were going to be in the area for the reunion.
Normally none of those three reasons would be enough to get me to do the pilgrimage to Arkansas, but all three parlayed with the fact that I was still healing from injuries received during my last case, made a vacation like this necessary. That is why I found myself upstairs in my bed room looking through my closet wondering where all my cool clothes were.
I am a big tall woman who towers at six feet three inches and tips the scale at a muscled two-hundred pounds. My square shoulders and strong long limbs tend to make me appear a bit mannish so that is the main reason I keep my blonde hair long and curly.
My profession demands, and I am most comfortable in jeans and a sweatshirt or an occasional long skirt under a denim blouse, however for this trip I would need several nice outfits but my closet seemed bare of dresses. My utility black dress was quite muddy from a recent funeral/shoot-out so it was at the cleaners. I don’t own many dresses because, at least to me, I look like a really bad transvestite when I wear a girly-girl type of dress. Why bother.
For the fourth or fifth time my friend and business partner Jill Feldman, who was sitting on my bed at the time, suggested that she would go to her room and dig out some clothes for me to try on. My new girlfriend Jana Little, who was also sitting on the bed, answered also for the fourth or fifth time that Jill’s clothes would never fit me. I surely did envy the two their short female stature and narrow female frames.
In desperation we three made plans for a quick trip to Wal-Mart which was just three miles down Route 183 from my house/office in Irving, Texas. I was confident that Wally-World would not carry any classy clothing in my size but Jana and Jill hushed me up and off we went.
It was all quite pathetic when you analyze it. I mean my bank account was fatter than it had ever been because my business had taken in almost half a million dollars in just the first four months of this year, and here I was at nearly midnight trying on clothes in the Wal-Mart dressing room while Jill and Jana fetched more things for me to try on, and carried away the ones I rejected. We ended up buying three dresses after the girls convinced me that I did not look like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster in them. In addition to the dresses Jill had insisted on three tops that she swore would look good with jeans but I had my doubts. Still, I was wise enough to admit that between the three of us Jill was the only one that might be considered fashionable. Of course the new clothing forced us to also go try on shoes. Oh well, at least I was also able to pick out some new underwear that I liked.
We drove back to my house and packed up the clothing, and then loaded the two suitcases into the back of my Taurus. My original plan was to leave around five or six in the morning but it was already after one A.M. when we got finished with the packing so I sat up with Jana and Jill talking for an hour then hopped into the car and headed east. Beebe, Arkansas, the home town of my youth, was 365 miles away. For just a moment I figured I could drive one mile a day and it would take me a year to get there. On the other hand, if I stayed to the speed limits, I would be there in time to have a nice breakfast with my parents.
MAY 02, 2005 - EARLY.
One leaves downtown Dallas on route 30 and heads for Texarkana. It is just under half the trip eating up one-hundred-eighty miles. I had gotten an early start so getting through the center of Dallas had been a breeze. The land is flat and the road straight so the miles roll by quickly. The speed limit told me to drive 65 but I had the cruise control set for 69 miles per hour. I would have rounded it off to 70 but felt the cops would be more likely to forgive four measly miles than a full five.
I was born in the seventies and did most of my growing up in the eighties but my favorite music has always been the southern power rock of the late sixties. That is why my CD case is loaded down with Lynard Skynard and ZZ Top and Stevie Ray Vaughn. If you look real close you will also find a CD or two by Charlie Daniels like the one that was in the compact disc player at the moment filling the car with the rich fiddle section of “Devil Went Down To Georgia.”
The temperature would probably top out around ninety in this area today but now, in the middle of the night, it was in the seventies so I had the windows open and considered it perfect driving weather. I would stay on route 30 until I hit Texarkana and at my current rate of progress that would be just before five A.M. At that hour I would expect no trouble getting through that city. I would pick up Route 67 there and follow it to Little Rock and eventually to my final destination of Beebe, Arkansas.
The long drive with the good music and rolling flat land gave me a lot of time to think. With my destination Beebe and my plan to go to my fifteenth high-school reunion, I just couldn’t keep my thoughts off of high school.
We had been such a typical small town school and it had been such a typical year. We had all been quite surprised at the two awful crimes that marred our last few days prior to graduation.
Three days before graduation the student council president, Kevin Davis, had been found dead on a dusty side street on the far south east side of Beebe. His body had been beaten up severely and based on the rope that had been found tied around his ankles the medical examiner stated that it looked like he had been tied to a car and dragged until he was dead. Small patches of his ripped skin could be found almost half a mile from the spot where his body had been found. While I was in town I would ask my parents and then discretely talk with the local police, but to the best of my knowledge the crime had never been solved.
Two days later, while rumors were flying all around school and final rehearsals were done for the graduation, someone noticed that Brad Watkins was not present. I am not sure exactly what the local cops did to try to find the boy, because, of course, a rich boy skipping a day of school near the end of the school year was not exactly unexpected, but, while we were dressed in our caps and gown lining up for the actual ceremony we got the news that Brad had been found dead. Within a day or two the story came out and the final version said that his nude body had been found in a motel room on the west side of town. He had been tied to the bed and stabbed about one hundred times. His toxicology screen proved he was legally drunk and high on cocaine. Everyone sort of assumed he had hired a Little Rock hooker for kinky sex and things had gone too far.
So we had graduated one-hundred-twenty-eight seniors and two unsolved murders rather than graduating one-hundred-thirty.
I rolled through Texarkana without incident and headed northeast on route 67. You can definitely tell when you leave Texas and enter Arkansas. Northern Arkansas is definitely part of the Ozark mountain chain, and the middle part of Arkansas, where Beebe is, is considered the foothills of the Ozarks. Here, across from Texarkana, in southern Arkansas it is not considered the foot hills, but it certainly is hilly. We Texans get used to having mile after mile of flat land to drive across but as soon as you cross over into Arkansas you notice the car constantly climbing and descending. The cruise control becomes much more active trying to maintain a steady speed. It was not yet turning light so I could not easily see the country side but I knew it would now be a good deal more lushly green than the golden brown that I am use to from north Texas.
As I continued on towards Little Rock I slid Charlie Daniels out of the CD player and replaced him with ZZ Top.
I tried to get my mind off the two tragedies so I searched my memory banks for other class mates I could remember. There was, of course, Brian Vaughn. He was the most popular boy in school and it seemed he was captain of everything. It was, in fact, he that would wed in a few days. I was an outcast in high-school so I did not much care for Brian and the rest of his popular friends. Brian was one of those people I had known and gone to school with for twelve solid years but he had never been to my house and I had never been to his. In a town as small as Beebe that should be impossible.
I could remember the names of most of the popular crowd and as I brought the face of each into my mind I vindictively placed age lines on their pretty faces and imagined them in professions they would not consider worthy. For instance, Jeff Lepley I assigned to the job of pushing that cart through town that sold frozen Popsicles. Instead of a career for his girlfriend Amber Griggs, I pictured her as Jeff’s wife working hard in a double wide to try and stretch a meager amount of ground beef supplemented with a bunch of Crisco into a meal for herself, her husband, and her seven or eight loud obnoxious demanding children, one of which was hanging from her hip, another of which was screaming from a nearby bassinet.
It was fun fantasy. Just for laughs I made her seven or eight months pregnant again. Oh what power my mind holds.
I thought briefly of Mitty Stevens wondering what had become of her. From chatting at our lunch table I knew she had planned on going to U of A at Little Rock, but she left town the day after graduation and I never heard anything about her again. Of course I also left town soon after graduation and I had certainly done nothing to try to keep up with news about my classmates.
I remembered a girl they all called “Fat Brenda” and I cursed myself for not remembering her last name. I mean I hated being an outcast and they had hung a lot of derogatory nick names on me but the one I graduated with was “Tall Xara.” If I hated being called tall Xara, I should have at least remembered something to call her other than fat Brenda. I did remember her lugging that big old cello around with her. I know she had played in the school orchestra, but I really do not know if she was any good or not.
There were, of course, many other students in class, and I remembered some of their names, and many faces that I could no longer name. I started hoping they would make us wear those stupid sticky labels that say “Hi. My name is” and then you write your name on them.
Hitting Little Rock at just after eight in the morning caused me to slow down a bit. My original schedule would have put me in Little Rock around ten-thirty or eleven, but I had left the house three hours early and here I found myself. It wasn’t really that bad. Little Rock is a big city compared to others in the area but it is no Dallas.
I was able to follow Route 67 through the city central and out the west side until the city melted away and I found myself driving up and down hills less than fifty miles from my old home town.
724 Wolford Street did not look much like I had remembered it so I sat for several minutes in my Taurus looking it over. It did not look much like I remembered it, but it did look exactly like what it was. It was a two bedroom one bathroom clapboard track house built in 1940 by a developer who put up sixteen of the exact same floor plan with eight forming the block on one side of Wolford and eight more facing off with them across the street. I am sure the contractors had even painted them similarly when they were first built but now, sixty years later, they each had obtained their own individuality.
724, the castle of my parents, was now basically white with a slate blue trim but both the trim and the base needed fresh paint. I tried to remember a time when the house had needed paint in the past, and couldn’t. In fact I remembered a very different picture.
My father worked for the railroad, and although we were never rich, we were well off enough to afford a good vacation about every second summer. As my memory told the story we would take some sort of taxi from our house to the train station. We would board the train and head out to who knew where always having some destination like Niagara Falls, or the Grand Canyon, or even Washington DC. We would party like tourists for two weeks and when the cab delivered us back to our little abode we would see a freshly painted house. It was my father’s duty to schedule the painting for the time we were away, and the colors he chose were always a secret, so it was always my mother’s and my final vacation surprise.
The house now looked like it had not been painted in five or six years. In addition to the flaking paint, I noticed that the window screens needed replacing, but they were probably not as much a priority because my parents had installed central air right after they had bought the place.
My parents were not the original owners. They married in 1970, bought the house in 1971, and delivered me shortly after that. I now wondered if the poor old house had always looked this bad and I just remembered it better than it really was, or if it had declined a good deal in the last four years since my last visit. It was just after eight-thirty on a Wednesday morning.
I realized I had been sitting in my car for nearly five minutes. It was time to end the stalling. I grabbed my suitcase and treaded the sidewalk from the car to my old front porch. Along the way that old thing wandered through my mind “Step on a crack and break your mother’s back.”
I was maybe three hours ahead of schedule so wasn’t even sure my mother would be awake but she met me at the door with a fierce hug. I must have missed every crack so I am happy that I can report that there was no damage to my mother’s back. She led me into the kitchen and poured us each a cup of coffee. We would probably sit there most of the morning catching up on news, most of which I would not be interested in, but which I would politely listen to as she faithfully reported every detail.