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Chapter 2

2

Home. Such an odd-sounding word, like a Sanskrit syllable chanted to bring one peace. I’ve certainly never had that kind of mythical or spiritual attachment to my surroundings. After years of living here, Tallahassee still doesn’t feel like home, but neither does anywhere else I’ve been. I have gotten used to the city though, and perhaps that’s as settled as I’ll ever be. It grows on you, like the kudzu in neglected lots or the mold in your closets. Sometimes I think growing is what Tallahassee does best, although I fear the concrete and asphalt expansion may soon outstrip the organic. For now, if you go to the top of the new capitol building and look out over the city, lush green treetops still hide most of the human habitation. It's not nearly as pretty when you get to ground level, but then what is?

With the exception of portions of downtown, the architecture of the city isn't much to look at. My own modest house sits in one of the many wooded residential areas of Tallahassee. Typical of the neighborhood, it was built in the 1950s, plain brick with not enough windows and only one bathroom, but it's comfortable. There's a beautiful magnolia tree in the back whose broad shiny leaves and stately southern presence contrast nicely with the azaleas and camellias milling about in the shade. For a few months a year, their bright flowers bring a touch of Las Vegas to the back.

My front yard is a patch of lawn with a hodgepodge of plants, appropriate in a city that can’t decide if it’s really north Florida or south Georgia. A twenty-foot palm tree and some young palmettos face off in the corners closest to the street, and flowering trees and shrubs are flung randomly about the lawn. One of my neighbors has blueberries in the spring and figs in the early summer, while another has a gorgeous live oak, the kind you see draped with Spanish moss in every southern postcard. Incidentally, despite postcard tropes to the contrary, Spanish moss isn’t restricted to live oaks, at least not in Tallahassee. Silvery tendrils drape the trees indiscriminately, palms withstanding, making odd tinsel in a city that sees no snow.

In the dim streetlight, I could see that my teenaged neighbor Ben had been hard at work in my yard. I hoped the camellia nubs would grow back from their military cut. At least my personal favorite, the pampas grass, had been spared. The mass remained shaggy as ever, a slightly asymmetrical accent to my mailbox. In his destructive frenzy, Ben hadn’t quite made it to the curb with the snarls of vines and trimmings. Instead he’d left it in my driveway, so I pulled alongside the curb and parked on the street.

I knew something wasn’t right before I’d even stepped up on the curb. My door was apparently unlocked—ajar, to be exact—because a dim bar of light ran vertically in the doorframe. Now what? I could run across the street and ask to use Mr. Ginley’s phone to call… someone. I couldn’t even think of anyone. Certainly not the cops. I probably just forgot to lock the door this morning and one of the neighborhood cats snuck in. And if I went to Mr. Ginley, he’d start asking me again about my personal relationship with God. Mr. G means well, but ten p.m. is a little late to be worrying about salvation.

Slipping my purse strap over my head and across my chest to keep my hands free, I advanced on the door. Since I hadn’t parked in the driveway, the intruder may not even know I’d returned. If there was an intruder. I paused on my front step. If someone lurked inside, was surprising him really a good thing? My eyes scanned the darkness for a weapon. Ben had left my shears on the front step, but twelve inches of pointed metal was a little more than I wanted to commit to, even if they were frightfully dull. Instead I picked up a freshly watered, six-inch terra cotta pot of impatiens and crept inside.

The light from a small table lamp kept me from tripping over my furniture when I entered, but was too weak to travel much beyond a three-foot radius. I stopped for a moment to let my sight adjust, but ended up seeing more with my ears than my eyes. The sound of movement in the kitchen ahead of me seemed ridiculously loud to my straining ears, but the nature of the noise was unclear. The refrigerator door was open, its bulb the only illumination in the room. Unfortunately the bar style counter blocked my view of whatever was scrounging in my refrigerator. I slipped around the counter and raised my pot. At the last moment, a squatting figure turned and looked up at me.

“Syd!”

It was too late to stop—my arms were already arcing down. I managed to hold onto the pot, but the flowers and muddy soil dumped out onto the kitchen floor. “Jesus, Ben, you scared the s**t out of me!”

He grinned up at me. “Sorry, Syd. It was getting late, and I was worried about the fish. I came over to feed ‘em.”

It really was getting late, even for Ben, and it was rare that he let himself in when I wasn’t at home. He’d probably had a fight with his mom, though I doubted he’d admit it. “So the fish drink Barq’s and eat Doritos? No wonder Bruce looked so bloated this morning.”

“Ha, ha.”

Ben stood, stretching his legs to his full height. Five foot nine? Five ten? He must have grown an inch since yesterday. By the time he got his license next year, he wouldn’t be able to find a car he could fit in. Ben turned to close the refrigerator as an afterthought. Then he noticed the mess on the floor. “Ohh, man. I just planted those.”

“Yeah, well, no offense, kid, but I’m not a big fan of impatiens. Or anything else bubble gum pink. Give them to your mom.”

“Yeah, right,” he said. He was already squatting again, trying to scoop soil, leaves and petals back into the pot. I couldn’t see his face.

“Just leave it, Ben. I’ll get it later.” And I would. I’d put the pot in the windowsill where he could see it every time he raided my refrigerator. Warning or warm and fuzzy message? It would depend on my mood. I reached for the soda, chips, and a folding laminated chart next to the phone. “C’mon. Let’s go out back and feed the mosquitoes. What’s our constellation of the day?”

Amateur astronomy was our latest kick. Before that had been field guides of birds, trees and shrubs, and reptiles. We’d learn one or two items a day, more as an excuse to sit in the back and hang out than out of any motivation to better our minds. We’d spend as many days or weeks as it took to master the backyard, our little chunk of the world. Reptiles hadn’t taken long—with the exception of sunning anoles, they’re uncooperative little buggers—but there was an astonishing array of plant life, most of which I’ve since forgotten. (I can’t remember people’s names either, so I don’t think the funky vines were offended.) We’d soon finish astronomy. Tree branches above us kept us in perpetual shadow and blocked our already limited view, although in our neighborhood, the humidity and cloud cover did more to obscure the night sky than the lights of the city.

When we’d gotten one under our belts, fudging a little to make the constellation fit what we actually saw in the sky, I tentatively approached the subject I knew he didn’t want to discuss. “So, Ben, what brings you over this time of night?”

Even in the dark I could feel the suspicion of his gaze. “I told you. It was getting late, and I thought Jackie and Bruce might be getting hungry.”

“Hunh.” I grunted noncommittally, nodding my head as I rocked up and back on a plastic lawn chair, its formerly straight legs buckling and bending. Ben should feel some responsibility toward Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. He’s the one who convinced me I needed some other living beings in my life, helped me pick out the fish (our compromise between ferrets and sea monkeys), and gave them the spectacularly nimble names they can never hope to live up to. Bruce and Jackie were a good choice, pretty and calming, something to talk at that has a heartbeat (I think) without being demanding. But they don’t exactly bark or beg or even do somersaults when they’re hungry.

I sat rocking, counting my breath. When I got to ten, I repeated my question. “So, Ben, what brings you over this time of night?” His head turned in my direction, but he didn’t respond. “Fight with your mom?”

Ben lived alone with his mother. I had some vague notion of teenage angst and familial discontent, but I didn’t know how they manifested their brand of dysfunction. All I knew was that when he wasn’t with his friends, Ben spent a lot of time with me, and I suspected his mom spent a lot of time with someone else. Or various someone elses.

“Back off, Syd.” There was an edge to his voice I didn’t often hear, and I don’t think he did either. It was gone when he spoke again. “I got my dose of Oprah this afternoon.”

“On my TV, no doubt.”

“The boys were looking depressed. I thought they might feel better if they saw how bad the air-breathers have it.”

I laughed before I could stop myself, and we passed the danger zone. He told me about the latest prank on his “fascist” math teacher, then drifted off into cafeteria adventures and who was caught making out next to the deep fryer by the grease stains on the ass of her jeans. I finally kicked Ben out around eleven p.m. He had school the next day, and even if he didn’t need to sleep, I did. Or so I thought. My active brain had other plans. I told myself I’d had caffeine too late in the day, but I really didn’t want to go to sleep. I was afraid of my dreams.

I made use of my insomnia by going online to check out newspaper archives. Most didn’t go back to the time of Vanda’s death, but I still thought there might be something. I was sorely disappointed. Apparently the small town domestic killing hadn’t held the media’s attention. Nothing piqued my own interest until nearly four a.m. There was no coverage of Isaac Thomas’s case, but there was a short article on his death. He committed suicide by hanging, just as Noel had said. The article didn’t say what kind of “homemade noose” he had fashioned, only that he had been found during a routine early morning head count. I wasn’t familiar with the prison, but I did have a stroke of luck with its location. In a state littered with prisons, Isaac Thomas had been serving his life sentence for the 1980 murder of his wife in the Panhandle, near all of my potential witnesses.

My subsequent searching brought up nothing else, not even an obituary, so I downloaded the single article and printed it before shutting the computer down. Noel was coming by my office again tomorrow, and I wanted to have a copy to show her. My eyes and mind were losing their focus, but I forced myself to label a folder before heading to bed for a few hours. A disorganized person by nature, I love the illusion of organization that a labeled folder gives me. As I slid the article inside, my dry, fuzzy eyes caught something on the printed page that had escaped me on the computer screen—the date. Isaac Thomas had committed suicide on October 12th, 2002, not four or five years ago as Noel had said, but less than two. Why was my client lying to me?