A Killing in the Hills

35


A single phone call.

That was all it took. Despite having grown up in Acker’s Gap, Bell did not understand it the way that Rhonda Lovejoy understood it. She didn’t have Rhonda’s connections. She didn’t have her network, that endlessly unfolding blossom of people and relationships radiating from the crucial rooted core that Rhonda Lovejoy had been born and raised here, and her parents had been born and raised here, and their parents, too, and on back, as far as you wanted to look, a reality that sent tentacles reaching out in every direction, branching through time and across geography, picking up aunts and cousins and histories along the way. It came from the essential fact that her family had stayed in one place for a long, long time.

While Rhonda dialed her cell, Hick settled back on the couch, crossing one leg over the other. He linked his hands behind his head and relaxed. He’d lost his argument, but he was good-natured about it; that was one of the qualities that Bell most appreciated about him. He was partially redeeming himself in her eyes.

‘Hey, Doreen,’ Rhonda said into her phone. She was using her cell and not the office phone, she had explained to Bell a minute ago, because she didn’t want RAYTHUNE COUNTY PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE to pop up on Doreen McAnn’s caller ID.

‘But doesn’t she know where you work?’ Bell had asked.

‘Sure she does,’ Rhonda had replied, scrolling through her cell’s address book with a scarlet thumbnail. ‘But as long as it’s not staring you in the face, you tend to forget the details. To Doreen, I’m still just Ron-Ron, Cecil and Virginie Lovejoy’s little girl. My older brother Earl always called me Ron-Ron, and Doreen’s kids picked it up from him. Oh, and Doreen used to buy butter and eggs from my great-aunt Bessie.’ Rhonda paused, having found the number. She pressed the appropriate space on the screen. Still talking to Bell as she settled the phone beneath the flabby pouch of her jawline, Rhonda added, ‘Doreen McAnn is the retired personnel secretary of the Acker’s Gap Board of Education.’

Once the call connected, Rhonda’s voice suddenly shifted from explanatory to chipper-cheerful.

‘Hey there, you! It’s Ron-Ron.’ Rhonda giggled. ‘We’re all fine, thanks for asking. Earl’s still over in Pittsburgh.’ A pause. ‘I’d love to do that, Doreen. I’ll make a point of stopping by when I’m out that way. I will.’ Another pause. ‘If my mama’s up to it, then I surely will bring her along, too. She’s got that bad hip, you know. Pains her something awful. Hey, listen, Doreen.’ Rhonda’s voice slid into a casual, neighborly, just-between-us tone. ‘I need a favor, sweetie. I know you heard about the terrible thing that happened to Dean Streeter. Now, he used to teach driver’s ed at the high school, didn’t he? Thought so. Well, I’ve heard that he’d got himself into a little bit of trouble. In fact, I heard that maybe he retired sooner than he wanted to, on account of a problem he had there at the school. Something about a side business, maybe.’

As Rhonda listened, she looked intently at Bell. ‘Uh-huh. I see,’ she said into her cell.

A pause. ‘Oh, no, no, I gotcha, Doreen. Those records are confidential. I’m all over that. Won’t say a peep. I know how those things go. You agreed not to press charges and he agreed to leave without a fuss so’s he could hang on to his pension. Everything’s kept quiet. Hush-hush.’ Another pause. ‘Gotta agree with you there, Doreen. It’s a real tragedy. Three old men, just minding their own business.’ Pause. ‘Couldn’t say, Doreen. Maybe we are going straight to hell in a handcart. Sure looks that way sometimes, doesn’t it? You take care of yourself, sweetie.’

Rhonda clicked off her cell.

‘Dean Streeter,’ she said, in a voice that was now all business, ‘was forced to retire from his teaching job at the high school last March. There was considerable evidence that he was selling pills to students. He cut a deal with the school board. He resigns – and they decline to prosecute. Gag orders all around.’

‘You need her, Bell.’

Bell and Hick were sitting across from each other in Ike’s Diner. Rhonda had left for an arraignment – she’d suddenly peeked at her watch, shrieked, slapped her cheeks, squirmed her way off the couch, and dashed out of the office – so the two of them had come for a late breakfast by themselves, sliding into a booth and plucking big plastic menus out from behind the salt and pepper shakers at the end of the table. They didn’t need the menus, having long ago exhausted the culinary possibilities of the diner. It was habit, though. The menu-pluck was generally the prelude to any serious conversation in Ike’s.

Bell was glad for the chance to talk to Hick alone. She still wasn’t sure that Rhonda Lovejoy was worth the aggravation – the missed appointments, the tardy arrivals, the lost files, and the general air of discombobulation that followed the young woman like a skirt hem unraveling behind her.

‘I need her, Hick?’

‘You do. You really do.’

Bell looked hard at Hick. She respected him. She even liked him. Lately, though, when he’d insisted on defending Rhonda, Bell’s regard for Hickey Leonard dropped a notch or two.

‘Tell me why.’ Bell took a slow, appreciative sip of the coffee that Georgette had just set before her. It was worlds better than the crankcase oil she’d been drinking all morning at the office. ‘Because the way I see it, Hick, she was on thin ice before this week – and now there’s no ice there at all, thin or otherwise. I’m about this close to firing her.’ With her left thumb and index finger, Bell indicated a sliver of space. ‘If we weren’t so damned busy around here right now, with the Sheets trial and a killer at large and figuring out Dean Streeter’s secret life and everything else, I swear I’d let her go. I would.’

‘I get that, Bell. I do. But look at what she just did.’

Bell waited. She didn’t say ‘What?’ or ‘Tell me’ or anything else that might make Hick think she was being persuaded. She simply looked at him.

‘Okay. Listen, Bell, you’re a smart woman. I would even go so far as to say you’re brilliant.’

‘Come on, Hick. Don’t try to—’

‘Wait.’ He held up a firm hand, like a crossing guard halting a sixteen-wheeler in a school zone. ‘Before you get all modest on me, hear me out. You’re brilliant. Fine. Great legal mind. Terrific. Brains to spare. Hooray. But that’s not all we do around here. This isn’t the Supreme Court. We don’t hash out the finer points and subtle nuances of constitutional law. We’re prosecutors in a small county in West Virginia. We deal with people. People – not issues. We deal with people and their problems.’

‘Okay.’

‘Rhonda was born and raised here and—’

‘Just like me.’

‘No, Bell. Not like you.’ He hesitated. ‘For one thing, she never left. She’s always been in Acker’s Gap, except for college and law school, and even then, she was home every weekend. She’s a part of this place. She comes from a big family that’s older than dirt. She’s got second cousins and sisters-in-law in every corner of this county. Hell, if you throw a stick in any direction, you’ll hit six Lovejoys without even taking aim.’

‘And?’

‘And that means you need her. You need her connections, her understanding of this town, her grasp of it, her feel for it. Rhonda gets around. She knows people. She talks to them – and they talk to her. That’s why I encouraged you to hire her, Bell. And look at what just happened here today. She tells you that Bob Bevins has been keeping company with the sister of the man who murdered his son – a fact that nobody else has bothered to disclose to us yet. A fact that’s pretty damned relevant.’

‘Okay, but she found it out when she was getting her hair done. Not to mention her nails. And maybe a quick spell in the tanning bed. Might as well throw in a pedicure while you’re at it.’

‘So what? You or I could get a bikini wax once a day, every day, for the next hundred years or so and not come up with one-tenth of the information that Rhonda can get from a single trip to her sister-in-law’s salon.’

Bell shook her head, trying to shoo away the mental image of Hickey Leonard undergoing a bikini wax, when they were interrupted by Sammy Burdette. He leaned over their table – or more accurately, his belly did – and he shook Hick’s hand and then Bell’s.

‘Care to join us?’ Hick said.

‘Nope. Just on my way out,’ Sammy said. The toothpick on the left side of his mouth told the story. With a twitch of his lip, he waggled it. ‘Wanted to say hello, is all. And to wish you two luck. Hell of a time we’re going through around here. Hell of a time.’

Bell was struck, as always, by how much Sammy’s face resembled his sister Dot’s. Those pushed-together eyes were a dead giveaway. Their bodies, however, had chosen entirely separate career paths: Sammy was chunky, while Dot was still as skinny as she’d been on the day of her high school graduation two decades ago.

‘Bet you’re wishing,’ Hick said, ‘that you’d never run for county commissioner in the first place. Nothing but hassles, all day long. That right, Sammy?’

Hick was being ornery. He knew good and well that Sammy’s political connections didn’t do a bit of harm to his insurance business.

‘Don’t know as I’d go that far,’ Sammy said. ‘Gotta give something back, you know. Gotta serve the public.’ Without using his hands, he moved the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. Then he scooted away, because Georgette had come up behind him, bearing their breakfasts.

French toast for Hick. Poached eggs and corned beef hash for Bell.

‘Careful, folks,’ Georgette said. ‘Plates’re hot.’

She slid the heaped-up platters in front of them with muttered instructions to enjoy it, and then she was gone. Ike’s was swamped this morning; Georgette had no time for pleasantries.

‘Take, for instance, this Streeter thing,’ Hick went on, picking up where he’d left off.

He squinted critically at the syrup bottle. Lifting it, he tapped its round glass side with his palm. Then he peered at the pour spout, which was crusted with dried syrup. ‘Rhonda knew who to call and what to say when they answered. It would’ve taken us days, Bell, to get a subpoena for those personnel records – if we even could’ve found a judge to give us one. Which isn’t likely, given the speculative nature of our case at this point.’

Resigned to a syrupless meal, Hick upended the bottle just for nostalgia’s sake. To his surprise and delight, the syrup came out in a soft brown ribbon, falling across his French toast – the slices were stacked beneath a thick white blanket of powdered sugar, like a cantilevered hillside after a snowfall – in luxurious folds.

Bell used her fork to explore the flakes of her corned beef hash. Hick was winning her over. She didn’t mind losing the argument, but she hated to go down without a fight.

‘She’s loud, Hick,’ Bell said, ticking off the final items on her hastily compiled list of Reasons to Fire Rhonda Lovejoy. ‘She’s loud and crude and coarse and – okay, did you get a load of that dress? I mean, it makes Dolly Parton look freakin’ Amish.’

Hick laughed. He came close to choking on the entirely too large hunk of French toast that he’d stuffed in his mouth when he did so, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

‘Well, boss, send her a Talbot’s catalog and a gift certificate and hope she gets the hint,’ he said, once he’d swallowed safely and then secured another large hunk of French toast on the end of his fork. No lesson learned. ‘But keep her on the team. Not, Lord knows, just to be nice. Not because you like her fashion sense. Keep her because you need her.’