Chapter 24

We talked a bit more, about this and that, as people will, and then Darlia asked, "How's the investigation going?"

"Well, we started out this morning thinking we had a good plan, and right now that plan's pretty much in the junkyard."

"What went wrong?"

"Ain't nobody talkin' to us."

"That's not usual, is it?"

"No," I said. "I never have known why or how, but I've always been able to get people to tell me things. This trip, though, all I'm gettin' is a lot of sneers and refusals."

Darlia took a drink of her sweet tea, looking out over the front yard and the road to the field on the other side. "I got a thought, Dad."

"You get a lot o' thoughts, 'Lia. Which one you got this time?"

"Well, always before you've been dealing with ordinary crooks. This time you're dealing with fanatics."

I turned to look at her. "Darlia Carpenter, you're a genius."

She grinned, pleased with the compliment. "I don't know if I'm a genius, but I'm not an imbecile."

"No, you ain't – an' you know that word, which most kids your age have never heard of. Since it was your idea, why don't you expand on it?"

"Sure. See, ordinary crooks, if you're not hunting them, and if they trust you, will tell you things. Even if they're the one you want—"

"Fix your pronoun, 'Lia," I said, one of the few times I've ever corrected anyone's grammar.

"Yeah, you're right. Even if he's the one you want, an ordinary crook will refuse to talk only as long as it's convenient. They're not brilliant, and they usually wind up talking, and about more sometimes than you wanted to know." She knows this stuff because she's the daughter of a PI and a PI gonna-be, both of whom are ex-cops, and listens well. "But the guys you're talking to – I'm gonna make an assumption here, but I bet it's right – these guys aren't ordinary crooks. They hate blacks on principle. If they commit a crime against our family, it'll be not for money but because they hate us."

"That's exactly what I realized when you said what you did. So you got any suggestions?"

"Well, you an' Mom are thinkin' of something, and I'd say keep it in mind. But meanwhile, why not go and sit in the store?"

I looked at her again, and reached out to shake her hand. "Darlia, you're definitely a genius. That never once occurred to me."

"You know better than I do, Dad, how much news people swap around in there."

She was right. Leanna is one of the few places in the world where people still sit around in what's essentially a general store, though it calls itself a market and is more like a small town grocery store in some ways, and pass time. There's a cleared out space back by the dairy cooler, with some old mismatched chairs and a couple of office-style trash cans, and usually you can find one or two old guys in there jawing. And depending on whether there's a gap in the work, you can walk in and find anything from a mechanic taking a break to a farmer who doesn't need to be back in the field right away to a pastor following up on a straying sheep.

"Yeah," I told Darlia, "I do know that. And I'm glad you reminded me." I looked at my watch. "I think I'll head on down there right now. Even if your mom came back right this minute and said she'd agree to anything I said, we couldn't act on my notion for a few hours anyway."

"Can I go with?"

"Sure, why not?" I finished off my Coke and handed her the bottle. "Go ahead an' take this to the garbage, and stick your glass where it goes, an' we'll take the Blazer since it's so hot and humid now."

She was back in about a minute, and we climbed into the Blazer. As I backed out onto the road Darlia said, "I'll call Mom and let her know where we're going."

"Sounds like a plan," I said, and pointed the Blazer toward town. I didn't know whether this would work any better that what Cecelia and I had tried, and I didn't know whether it would prevent us from having to do what I was thinking of, but was something to try, and that wasn't a bad thing.

Nor was Darlia's thought a bad thing. Cecelia had said the same thing in a different way when she'd pointed out that the people we were talking to were racists. Both were right. The average crook isn't bright, and has no principles other than what's in it in for me, and will tell every secret he has if he thinks it'll get him a lesser sentence ... never mind that he wouldn't have gotten arrested in the first place if he hadn't been committing crimes. But racists, fanatics as Darlia had called them, weren't in it for the money, but for a principle – however stupid that principle might be – and wouldn't talk so easily. They certainly wouldn't talk under any pressure I could provide.

The store was a block north of the intersection of Leanna's two main streets – Main was one, of course, and the other Broadway. There are tons of small towns all over the United States where those are the names of the main streets. And while you'll find Broadway in big cities, I've never yet seen a city which had a Main Street. I guess it's just not fancy enough for city folks.

I parked in front of the store in one of the slanted slots that are another feature of small towns, and Darlia and I went inside. I grabbed a couple of Cokes from the cooler – the old-fashioned glass bottles – and popped the caps off using the built-in opener. I set my opened bottle on the counter and gave the other to Darlia, and handed a dollar to the cashier to cover them. We walked back to the dairy section, which was in back on the right, and found two regulars there, and a farmer as well.

There was chorus of hellos as they saw us, and Darlia and I sat down. I looked at the oldest of the regulars, who had to be 80 at least. "How's the knee, Virgil?" I asked him.

"I always know when it's going to rain," he said, "but otherwise it's no worse."

"But he complains about it like it's hangin' off by a thread," said the other regular with a cackle of laughter.

"Well, he's got a good example in you," I said.

"He got you good, Red," the farmer said, laughing.

"Don't look at me, Mr. Red," Darlia said. "I'm on Mr. Jeff's side."

"You would be," Red said sourly.