Circled Read online

  Circled

  Part of the Crime After Time Collection

  Anne McAneny

  Farrington Press

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and events either are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2015 by Anne McAneny

  All rights reserved

  Published by Farrington Press 2015

  Cover design by Tyler Anderson

  For Big D and the Boise Idahos

  They made her a grave, too cold and damp

  For a soul so warm and true;

  And she’s gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,

  Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,

  She paddles her white canoe.

  ~From The Lake of the Dismal Swamp by Thomas Moore

  Chapter 1

  The Thump

  Macy LeGrange never saw the back of her own head. If she had, she’d have noticed long strands of honey-colored hair with an unexpected wave in the middle and a mild curl at the ends. A hat maker would have deemed it a wide head while a modeling agency would regard it as round, but none of that mattered to the driver about to hit her.

  His eyes were not on Macy’s head, nor were they on her rusty blue bike with the new horn and the old chain, and they most definitely were not on the road. The driver saw the fourteen-year-old softball star from neither the back nor the front. If he had, he’d have spied a smiling face that lit up Beulah, South Carolina, wherever it went. He’d have noticed the sneaky glint in the wide-set eyes that broadcasted a future in better places than a sleepy town on a murky swamp sourced by a raging river. He would have swerved his four thousand pounds of metal and parts because he’d have appreciated how others rose up in the morning with the sole intention of making Macy LeGrange smile and, if lucky, laugh. For hers was not a reticent childhood laugh, bashful in its insecurity. No, this girl with the heart-shaped lips and ever-pink cheeks possessed a laugh worthy of a jolly, self-assured woman, one with the confidence to decide what she found funny and what she did not. And she backed that laugh up with bright, jovial eyes that danced like blue fairies against the darkness of the swamp’s hungry waters.

  One thing the driver would have known for sure: Macy was bound for beauty, inside and out, because this—her innocent, hopeful stage of life—was her awkward stage, leaving others unable to fathom what adulthood might hold.

  They’d never find out, of course.

  There were those who, after the thump, nodded knowingly at the way Macy moved on to the next dimension. She flew gracefully, almost contemplatively, through the air—the tap of the car’s front bumper sending her from seated-and-coasting to airborne-and-feathery in the course of a millisecond—but in her final moment, her eyes alighted upon love. And she knew it would never leave her alone. She let it cradle her like a cocoon, and she sensed that it would follow her wherever she traveled next. As she reached the descendant portion of her trajectory toward death, she knew that it would never let her down.

  Chapter 2

  Twelve Years Later

  My tattoo burned. I’d swear a ghost was dragging a snuffed match along the underside of my forearm. Not as bad as the days it scorched me, but still annoying. I scratched at it after shifting my reluctant Subaru into third, but the sensation of fiery phosphorous on skin only multiplied. Maybe it was something besides my usual tattoo premonitions. I glanced down to make sure a family of fleas hadn’t taken residence on my flesh. Nope, nothing but the design I’d sketched for the Inks & Kinks manager years ago. I’d slapped down a fake ID and a folded hundred-dollar bill with only one request: no questions. Five minutes later, the biker with the shabby beard and wonky eye had pierced and tinted my skin, elbow to wrist—a series of 8-shaped links in the pattern of a long, thin oval. A strand of DNA? A tribute to infinity? Who knew? It meant different things on different days. But if I stared at it long enough, it began to move. Which is usually when I put the vodka away.

  I glanced up and nearly clipped a Ford parked on the side of the road. Jerking my wheel to the left in response, I almost swiped Chad Ryker’s Blazer as it whizzed by me doing seventy. High times on desolate Old Pleasant Road today.

  Despite the forty mile-per-hour difference in our speeds, Chad managed to wave as he passed, proving once again what a genial ex-boyfriend he was. Chad and I had ended on good terms because in Beulah, South Carolina, home of Black Swamp and its assorted wetlands, you either ended on good terms or you moved. Plus, he was the deputy sheriff; I’d no doubt need him as a source for future stories. We’d broken up eleven months ago, but I still missed the sex. Best of my life. Honest, raw, and pissed off. What could I say? We both had issues. But there was something about a guy who never believed he could be the best at anything that made him try that much harder—and he’d tried us both into ecstasy more times than I could count.

  Chad flew past the stand of cabbage palmettos that fronted Boyd’s General Store, and then banged a hard right, skidding into the dusty parking lot. That was when I noticed thick strands of smoke performing a slow hula dance above the treetops.

  I followed his car into Boyd’s lot. I’d have followed him simply because I got paid to be nosy, but I was headed there anyway for my morning caffeine fix. I had a long day ahead at The Herald as I prepped for my big retrospective article: The Week. With its ups and downs, and emotions ranging from mad grief to ecstasy to uncompromising sorrow, The Week was the cruel scalpel that had redefined my childhood—the way tragedies always realigned the landscape of youth.

  Whoa. Unless I liked my coffee served at 450 degrees, I wouldn’t be sipping an extra-large-with-cream-and-sugar any time soon. Random SUV’s, along with Beulah’s two fire trucks and Sheriff Ryker’s black-and-white, occupied all eight parking spaces of Boyd’s General in a haphazard manner. Flames, now extinguished, had left the smoking remnants of the store ugly and plain—much like the owner.

  Dang! Boyd could be dead in there, as crisp and lifeless as the brisket he served on Sundays, and I’d just gone and lost today’s round of Dammit, Be Nice, Chloe. Wasn’t even 8:00 a.m. yet.

  But being nice would prove difficult without my morning cup of joe. Boyd Sexton, Jr., despite being an all-around sleazeball, brewed the best coffee in town. My morning had just grown worse, which was hard to believe given how it had started . . .

  #

  A little over an hour ago, I’d returned from my regular run, sprinting the last hundred yards along the river’s edge as I envisioned a wild pig pursuing me for motivation. Sucking wind, I’d rounded the final turn on the dirt path that served as my driveway and spotted a parked pickup truck. Carver Brothers Foundations and Roofs was painted on the side in a girly, yellow font. Might seem odd that I needed help with my foundation since I lived in a house on stilts, but those tall piles held up everything I owned, along with my view of Black Swamp, and lately, they’d grown worse for wear.

  My house sat where the Nuckatawny River met Black Swamp. Came complete with gators, the aforementioned wild pigs, beavers, turtles, otters, bald eagles, and countless bugs, plants, and trees. The stilts kept my house at the height I liked, with plenty of distance from critters.

  Not fond of strangers, I sidled up to the truck. No Carver brothers in sight. I climbed the fourteen steps to my back deck and found the door wide open. I sure hadn’t left it that way. Through the window, I spotted a guy in a brown cap leaning against my kitchen counter. He was smoking a cigarette and staring at my fridge. Apparently inspired by the promotional magnets dotting my freezer door, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a bright red one of his own, and stuck it on there. I could just make out the words: Carver Brothers. We Do Found
ations.

  Guess they also did breaking and entering, but maybe that wouldn’t fit on the magnet.

  I slinked in through the open door and heard my toilet flush. A second man, taller than the first, exited the bathroom, not even pretending to leave enough time to wash his hands. A bare memory of a hand-rolled cigarette dangled from his chapped lips. His hunched shoulders extended no wider than his hips, and his gangly arms were all sorts of apish. He looked about 40, but if he was the Carver brother I’d heard about, his skin was prematurely puckered from copious drug use.

  “No smoking in my place,” I said by way of introduction.

  Instead of being startled or apologetic, Carver-Brother-the-shorter slowly craned his head in my direction, flicked his ashes into my open trash can, and cocked a brow. “Why not?”

  “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Because I said so.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, I heard that one before.” He glanced at the tall one. “Never worked for Mom, did it, Zeke?”

  Zeke sucked on the last bits of his ciggy, then pinched it between thumb and forefinger as he popped it out of his mouth and exhaled. The smoke spewed through my kitchen via a mouth gap where one would normally expect a tooth. “It sure didn’t, Levi. Not even once.”

  I stepped toward them. “Do I look like your mom?”

  Levi ran his eyes up and down the length of my five-foot-nine-inch body, clad as it was in a bright, clingy shirt and black running shorts. The shorts boasted an enhanced waistband that I’d jiggered six months earlier with limited sewing skills. Levi took his time, and I let him. I wasn’t much in the boob department, but I didn’t sport a lot of jiggle, either, and I’d been told by some that my face wasn’t half-bad—not bad at all if I put on make-up or curled my poker-straight brown hair. Though I rarely did.

  “Nope,” Levi said with a grotesque glint in his eye. “You definitely do not look like dear ol’ Mom.”

  Zeke guffawed on cue.

  “Johnny sent us over to work on your foundation,” Levi continued, “and Zeke here needed to use the bathroom. Figgered you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Door was open,” Zeke added by way of explanation for stinking up my entire kitchen.

  “Foundation work is usually performed outside,” I said. “And I told Johnny not to send smokers.”

  “Why?” Levi asked.

  “I find them gross and dirty, and they invariably litter.”

  Levi blew a plume of smoke toward my ceiling. “That so?”

  “You guys armed?” I said, taking two more steps in their direction.

  The geniuses exchanged a look of surprise. “Armed? No.” Levi smirked. “Should we be?”

  I reached around to my waistband and pulled out a pea shooter—hadn’t dragged that sewing machine out for nothing. I grabbed a rag from the kitchen table and rubbed it up and down the abbreviated shaft of the cute .22, drying it off after a sweat-inducing run. “No,” I said. “Just thought you might want to know that I am.” I held my piece casually, with confidence, as if I could shoot the stink off a skunk, which in this case might prove useful. And then their eyes saw something, in my expression or stance, and they knew: it would be nothing for me to remove those cigarettes from their cold-sore-infected mouths with a nice set of matching bullets.

  Zeke’s mouth fell open and I was surprised a family of flies didn’t make an escape. He snuffed out his cigarette in my trash can, but Levi didn’t prove quite as cooperative. “What are you planning to do with that, little lady?”

  “Nothing, yet. But just so you know, I’m more than capable of disarming you.”

  “Told you, we ain’t armed.”

  “Wrong arms. Ever try holding a cigarette with your foot? Need real flexible toes, not to mention hips. And lighting the match is a bitch. ”

  Levi’s eyes narrowed. I’d made an enemy for life, but he’d hardly be the first. He jammed his cigarette back into his mouth and raised both hands. “All right, all right. We’re going.” He gestured for Zeke to follow, and the two of them skittered past. I moved back just enough to let them by and heard Zeke mumbling some vague threat about a wench and gator chowder, but he kept moving.

  Levi, on the other hand, turned back after passing through the door. “I heard about you,” he said, tossing his cigarette butt onto my deck. “You’re that reporter chick. Chloe something. The one who keeps a ten-foot gator for a pet.”

  Never one to dispel a good rumor, I glanced at my kitchen clock, then back at Levi. “Feeding time, as a matter of fact. Now you tell Johnny to send over a new crew or he’s going to find himself on the front page of The Herald with a none-too-flattering headline.”

  Levi’s body tightened as he realized I was indeed the Chloe he’d heard about. I kept polishing and glanced at his discarded cigarette butt. “I told you, Levi. I don’t like litterbugs.”

  He bent down and scooped up the butt. “All right, now, let’s stay calm.”

  As he scraped the ashes with his fingernail, desperate to erase all traces of himself from the premises, I stepped onto the deck. “Do me a favor, would you?”

  He swallowed hard and stood up. “What’s that, ma’am?”

  “Tell your brother to wash his hands after using the facilities. Nobody likes a pig.”

  “I sure will. You can count on that.” He scampered across the deck, his bottom tucked forward as if anticipating a bullet. Then he dashed down the stairs, joined Zeke in the truck, and the two of them peeled out. Their back tires spit up mud before finding traction and they left a divot in my driveway, but Johnny would fix that. In fact, Johnny would be fixing my foundation for free.

  #

  I parked my Subaru behind Chad’s Blazer, blocking him in, and then I glanced at Boyd’s General Store. If it hadn’t been for the five minutes I’d spent cleaning my bathroom after Zeke’s malodorous visit, I might well have been inside Boyd’s when the fire started. Maybe I owed those Carver Brothers a debt of gratitude.

  Nah.

  I gazed at the remnants of the store and felt a jolt of emptiness. While Boyd’s had never enjoyed a heyday, it had stood as a Beulah landmark—a wooden, one-story building with a grey, wood-slat porch and a rickety wheelchair ramp added for Boyd Senior before he died. Multiple, slipshod additions—made of whatever material was on sale at the time—had added to its questionable character over the years. Allegedly, a substantial basement existed below, but Boyd Junior never let anyone down there. The place had always struck me as an ugly, misshapen box that had blown off a garbage truck and landed in the middle of a field. Alone and isolated, it sat against the backdrop of a cleared patch of forest—one of Richie Quail’s abandoned development projects. But the clearing had served as the perfect field for baseball and soccer games for every kid who’d come up in Beulah. Scored more than a few home runs there myself.

  Now, the bare metal frame of Boyd’s waved at me from behind a curtain of rising steam, the beams surely mimicking the dance of the earlier flames as they flagellated like charmed snakes. I grabbed my camera, stepped out of the car, and snapped some pictures. My editor would love me for it.

  The metal sign reading BOYD’S GENERAL STORE & SUNDRIES lay on the ground, folded over on itself, half-melted. It was a wonder it hadn’t shaken the whole town when it landed. Behind the sign, every fireman, deputy, and volunteer in Beulah milled about, fighting to be useful so they’d have a good story to tell tonight.

  I crept up to where I wasn’t allowed, but as the town’s crime and features reporter, I eschewed boundaries daily; no one seemed to notice anymore. Besides, I had a way of acting like I belonged. People usually fell for it.

  Some firemen lumbered by, minus their heavy gear, meaning it must be safe to enter. I waved to a few of them, then ventured in through the former front door. I’d been in and out that door so many times, it felt strange not to pull its handle. I sniffed. Definitely no coffee, but the odors ran the gamut: charred wood, burnt chemicals, wet paper, and devastation. What remained of the endcap d
isplays looked like the cypress knees that dotted the swamp, water dripping onto them from the few remaining beams that were still wet from the hoses’ onslaught.

  I stepped over the hot metal of the register that lay sideways on the floor. Oddly, it showed a balance of $0.33 due. I snapped a picture since I’d need it for my retrospective article, anyway. The article included profiles of the Lucky Four lottery winners who represented the up part of The Week. They’d purchased their winning Power Pot ticket right here at Boyd’s, twelve long years ago. I glanced at the depressing image on my camera. Hardly the photo I’d been hoping for. I’d envisioned one where the four winners would reunite at the checkout counter, jointly holding a replica of the winning ticket: 03-08-10-28-31-41. I knew the sequence by heart because those six numbers had been my only note on the article for weeks. While I’d jumped at the chance to cover the story, I hadn’t been nearly as eager to tackle the nitty-gritty. Too many wounds—still open.

  I cruised down the Staples aisle that had confounded me as a kid: no staples, no staplers. My friend, Hoop, had explained what it really meant when we were about nine. Then he’d mocked me for it until the day he vanished, six years later.

  Rory McShane, Beulah’s bluest-eyed fireman, raced up from the basement with an unexpected grin. He’d moved to Beulah from Ireland when he was seven. Poor guy had carried the reputation of the tough-guy-bad-student through early childhood, but as it turned out, he’d suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia. Through it all, he never lost his Irish brogue or his requisite twinkle, and people couldn’t help but find him adorable.

  “Hey, Rory,” I said. “Everyone all right? Any word on Boyd?”

  “Hey there, Chloe. There’s a word, all right. Try felon.”