“Which one?” Lizzie asked, leaning down to get a closer look.
Brooke shook her head. “I don’t know. It looks like they listed the kids’ names alphabetically, but there’s no telling if they’re lined up that way.”
Lizzie reached for her cell phone and snapped a photo of the list, then flipped the photo over and shot one of the picture itself.
They leafed rapidly through the rest of the scrapbook but found nothing else that showed a boy who could be C. D. “Buck” Anthony.
“Now what?” Brooke asked, looking at her watch. “We’ve only got ten more minutes before closing. That’s not really enough time to go through any more scrapbooks.”
“We’ve got a list of the boys who lived with him in that cottage,” Lizzie said.
“And we know at least one of them is still living, or he was as of a few months ago, when C. D. ran into him at that reunion,” Brooke said. “But which one? And how do we contact him?”
“Through the alumni association,” Felicia said. “That’s how my alma mater always reaches out to put the squeeze to me for donations.”
They heard the door open, and Don Smalls popped his head inside. “All set, ladies? I need to set the alarm and lock the place up now.”
“But it’s not five yet,” Lizzie protested.
“Sorry. I can’t be late for that board meeting,” Smalls said.
“Can you do us a huge favor?” Lizzie asked, walking rapidly toward him. “We found a picture of my dad, along with the rest of the boys who lived in his cottage in 1948, the year he came here. And we found a list of the names of the boys on the back. I took a photo with my phone. Maybe you could take a look and see if you recognize any names? Dad said he ran into one of his pals at the last reunion, but he couldn’t remember the name because of the dementia. But it’s likely this man belongs to the alumni association if he came to a reunion, right?”
“Maybe,” Smalls said.
Lizzie scrolled through her camera roll until she found the photo, and then she enlarged it.
Smalls read the list aloud. “Hmm. No, never heard of Dicky Abbott or Sid Babcock. Dowling, Garber, Potts, I’ve seen their names in old alumni newsletters, but I believe they’re all deceased. But Mickey Beaman, yeah. Mickey’s still active in the association. His son drives him to all the meetings and functions.”
Brooke’s heart leaped. “Do you by chance have contact information for Mickey Beaman?”
“No, but this time of day you can usually catch him at his son’s business. He likes to hang out there and chat with any old-timers who wander in. Mickey’s pretty loquacious. He’ll talk your ear off if you give him half a chance.”
“What’s the business?” Lizzie asked eagerly.
“Mr. B’s Quality Beverages,” Smalls said. He jangled his key chain to signal that their time was up.
51
Mr. B’s was a liquor store on West Broad Street, on the fringes of the Savannah College of Art and Design campus.
“We used to try to use fake IDs to buy booze here when I was in high school,” Brooke remarked after she’d parked.
An electronic doorbell rang as they entered the store, which was dark and cramped with narrow aisles built of liquor cartons, the walls lined with shelves of cut-rate wine. A glass partition separated the cashier stand from the rest of the shop, and behind it, an Asian woman with white-streaked dark hair was counting back change to a college kid with a case of beer tucked under his arm.
“I don’t think this place has been cleaned since the last time I was in here,” Brooke muttered to Lizzie. “And that’s definitely the same lady who called the cops on us.”
She waited until the store’s sole customer had departed and stepped up to the counter and gave a friendly smile to the cashier, who remained stone-faced.
“Hi. I’m looking for Mr. Beaman?”
“My husband’s out,” the woman said. “What do you want? Not another charity donation, I hope. You people are bleeding us broke with all these silent auctions and wine dinners.”
“I’m actually looking for Mickey Beaman,” Brooke said.
“Why?” The cashier looked over Brooke’s shoulder, regarding Lizzie and Felicia, who were loitering near the door, with growing suspicion.
“Well, uh…,” Brooke stammered, caught off guard by the woman’s hostility.
“We’re trying to find somebody who lived at Good Shepherd at the same time as a relative,” said Lizzie, stepping into the fray. “We just came from there, and a man in the development office suggested we talk to Mr. Beaman.”
The woman rolled her eyes and turned toward a partially open door behind her. “Dad!” she hollered. “Dad! Some people wanna talk to you out here.”
She waited a moment. “I’m warning you, once you get him talking about that place, he’ll never shut up.”
The door opened, and an old man shuffled out of the back room. His thinning gray hair was combed across his balding head. He wore a Budweiser-logoed golf shirt stretched tightly over a massive stomach.
“These ladies want to ask you some stuff about one of your Good Shepherd cronies,” the woman said.
Mickey Beaman’s eyes lit up at the mention of his alma mater. “What do you want to know?” he asked, leaning against the counter.
“Not here,” his daughter-in-law said. She pushed a button and they heard a buzz, and then a door opened between the store and the cash stand. “Take them back to the stockroom.”
*
A small card table and four folding chairs were shoved up against an ancient refrigerator in the stockroom, delineating what passed as Mr. B’s break room.
“You ladies have a seat,” Beaman said with a gallant gesture toward the table.
“Mr. Beaman,” Lizzie started.
“It’s Mickey. Nobody calls me Mr. Beaman anymore,” he insisted. “Now, what can I tell you about Good Shepherd? Have you been out to see the new museum? Did you see the video? That’s me at the three-minute mark, talking about the values that were instilled in boys like me.”
“That museum is very impressive,” Lizzie said. “We only got to spend a few minutes there today, so we missed out on the video. I guess we’ll check it out the next time.”
“You do that,” Mickey urged. “Jimmy Yaz—that’s Jimmy Yazbek, he was three years younger than me—lived in the Blatner Cottage. His son is a big-deal cameraman on one of those TV shows, I forget the name of the show, but Jimmy Junior made that video. For free.”
“Speaking of your classmates, we’re trying to help a relative of ours, C. D. Anthony, put together some information about his early life, both at St. Joseph’s and at Good Shepherd,” Brooke said.
Mickey’s brow furrowed. “Say the name again?”
“C. D. Anthony. The nuns called him Charlie, but when we were at Good Shepherd just now, we saw a photo showing all the boys who lived in your cottage. He was listed as Buck Anthony,” Lizzie said. “Does that name ring a bell?”
“Buck? Oh yeah. I knew Buck Anthony. Like you say, we were both at St. Joseph’s, and then when we turned six, we were sent to Good Shepherd. I think I was maybe older than him. I’m seventy-nine, you know. Still drive, although Yvonne out there, she’s trying to get my son to make me stop. What can I tell you about old Buck? He was a hell-raiser as a kid, that’s for sure. He was always small for his age, but you didn’t want to cross him. The guy had a temper and a wicked undercut. We used to box, you know. I don’t think they teach boxing to boys these days, which is a shame. Boxing is a great life lesson.”