“No,” he said honestly. “Nothing.”
“Okay.” Nodding, she rubbed her hands together. “Looks like I have some homework to do tonight.”
As the wind blew in through her open car window, Jenna ended the call with Rick and stared out at the small, worn house in East Nashville. The yard had turned to dust and the house’s siding, once white, had muddied to a dirty gray. Two old tires lay under a half-dead tree with browning foliage that offered little shade. A broken bicycle leaned against the house.
Jenna got out of her car and moved with purpose toward the front door. Inside, she heard the blare of a television. She rang the bell but it didn’t work. She banged on the door once and, when she heard no sound, banged again. Finally, the faint sound of shuffling footsteps drifted out from under the front door. After several chains scraped free of locks, the door opened a crack. An older woman stared up at her, hair graying but eyes sharp as if she were always on the lookout for trouble.
“What do you want?”
“Mrs. Dupree?”
The dark eyes thinned to near slits. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m Jenna Thompson.”
“I don’t know you. What’re you selling?”
Jenna tightened her hold on her purse strap. “My parents called me Jennifer. My older sister was Sara.”
Mrs. Dupree shook her head. “This some kind of joke? Because if it is, it’s not funny.”
“You remember me?”
She clutched the fabric at the base of her throat as if she suddenly felt a flush of heat. “I remember all the trouble that my boy caused that family. And all the trouble the cops and reporters caused me.”
Trouble. Okay, if that’s what she wanted to call it. “I was hoping I could talk to you about your son.”
“Why?”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“I’m not talking.” She moved to close the door.
Jenna blocked it. “Ma’am, I don’t want to cause you trouble. But I’ve come a long way. I’d like to understand Ronnie better.”
“Why?”
For several beats her thoughts slowed and she heard only the birds chirping and the wind rustling. “I don’t know.”
A sigh shuddered through the old woman. “You have any idea what a nightmare my life was after all that?”
Old bitterness melted away her good intentions. “Have any idea what my life was like?”
Mrs. Dupree raised a defiant chin. “I didn’t know what he was planning to do. He never told me.”
“He gave you no hint of his plans for my family?”
“No. I told that to the cops over and over. I didn’t know.”
Didn’t know or didn’t want to know. She knew from her research that he’d lived in this house. Surely a house so small couldn’t hide secrets well. “Did he ever mention my sister, Sara?”
The dark eyes sharpened. “I ain’t giving my information for free.”
“You want money?”
She folded thin, withered arms over her chest. “I ain’t got much.”
Jenna dug in her pocket and pulled out five rumpled twenties. “One hundred bucks. That’s all I have.”
The woman took the money, counted it, and stuck it in the pocket of a housecoat. “He talked about your sister a lot. He said he loved her. Said they were going to get married.” She smoothed a well-lined hand over gray hair. “You look a lot like her.”
“I’ve heard that.” She glanced past the woman to the den styled with a recliner, a box television, and a coffee table piled high with magazines and papers. “How did Ronnie meet my sister?”
“You mean how did white trash end up at such a nice high school?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It is. But I ain’t going to deny who I am or what my boy was. Ronnie could play football. Wasn’t so smart but he could tackle better than anyone. He played on that fancy football team in exchange for the education. Then, he got his leg broke and couldn’t play anymore. The school gave him a janitor’s job, which he took ’cause that’s all there was to get. He’d been working at the school a few years when your sister came along.”
Sara had been a cheerleader, Ronnie a maintenance man, and they’d have crossed paths. Memories of her sister and father fighting reached out from the shadows. I’ll date him if I want to! Doors slamming. Her mother crying. Was it Ronnie who Sara had been fighting to date?
“Did they ever date?”
“He said they did. Ronnie stole one of my rings and sold it so he could pay for the tux and the rental car so he could take her to prom. He came home that night and was angry. Said Sara had ditched him for another boy.”
That would have been in the spring. By late August her family was dead. “Do you know where he got the gun?”
“No. We never had guns in this house.”
“Did he have friends who might have given it to him?”
“Ronnie didn’t have any friends. Billy was his best and only friend.”
She reached for a pad of paper and pencil in her purse. “Billy got a last name?”
“I never knew it.” A loud cheer of applause rose up from the television and Mrs. Dupree turned. “I’m missing my show.”
“I just have a few more questions.”
“Well, I ain’t got no more answers. I told you what I know. That’s all I’m saying.” She stepped back and closed the front door hard. Chains scraped back in place over the door.
Threading her fingers through her hair Jenna turned and walked back to her car. From her passenger seat she picked up her sketchpad.
The eyes glowed from the shadows of her memory and she began to draw again. She drew quickly, without thinking and this time, when she finished, she had eyes, a long, angled face, and thin, unsmiling lips on the page.
“Who are you?”