Baldwin drove slowly, and Taylor stared up the treelined median, a small smile playing on her lips.
“What are you looking at?” Baldwin asked.
“I’m waiting for George Bailey to come running down the street.”
Baldwin did a double take, then laughed. “God, Taylor, you’ve nailed it. This looks exactly like Bedford Falls.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“Too bad that whole movie set was just a creation. The idyllic town square… I always thought it would be fun to live in a small town. Have a routine, eat at the diner every morning, walk everywhere, wave hello to the people who’ve known you your whole life.”
She shook her head.
“Oh, no, not me. I’d go mad with that level of accountability. Nashville is plenty small. Besides, everyone already knows my business.”
They got out of the car, and she looked up and down the street. “This is ridiculously charming. I can’t imagine Ewan Copeland here. It’s just too normal. Too sweet.”
Baldwin saw a man in uniform standing in the window of the drugstore, gesturing for them to come in.
“Look, the chief’s waiting for us. He’s waving from the window over there. Let’s go.”
They walked past the diagonally parked cars in the median and entered the drugstore. They were met with red vinyl, shiny chrome and the overwhelmingly delicious scent of frying burgers.
“You must be the folks from Nashville,” the chief said, shaking their hands in turn, then pointing them toward a booth in the window. He was trim, about five foot nine, with gray hair. His face was lined and weathered, someone who spent a lot of time out of doors. Taylor guessed he was in his mid-fifties.
“What gave it away?” she asked with a smile.
“I know all the folks round here who have guns, that’s what. Plus, your faces were all over the news, that brouhaha down in Nags Head. North Carolina law enforcement’s had a rough couple of days. Sakes alive. Hopefully the worst is past us now. Unless you brought the mayhem with you?”
“I hope to God not,” she said.
“Good. I’m not in the mood to chase bad guys.” He smiled wide. He was missing a molar on the right side of his mouth. His eyes crinkled with good humor. Taylor liked him immediately.
They settled into the booth, and a young woman came to take their order. She had a small silver ring in her over-plucked left eyebrow. Her hair was tinted red. Henna, maybe, or cheap drugstore dye. It suited her creamy pale skin and brown eyes.
“The biscuits are good here, if you’re wanting breakfast. Burgers are, too,” Chief Morgan said.
Taylor’s stomach grumbled in anticipatory protest, they hadn’t taken the time to refuel on the way down. “I think I’ll have the burger, then. Well done, American cheese, please. With fries. And a Diet Coke.”
“Pepsi okay?” the girl asked.
“Ugh. Yes, if I have to.”
“All we got down here. What about you, sir?”
“I’ll have the same,” Baldwin said, refolding the small paper menu and sticking it upright beside the napkin holder.
“Make that three then, Amy. Throw some of that thick-slab pepper bacon on mine.”
The girl nodded and whisked away. Morgan watched her go. “Amy’s family has owned this drugstore since the early 1900s. If you walk along that back wall toward the bathroom, you can see a mural of what Main Street used to look like. All the old storefronts. It’s changed now, but a few places are originals. At the very least, the preservation society has stepped in and declared a few landmarks, so there’s funding from the county and state to help with the upkeep. The bookstore next door is a perfect example. They did a great job renovating that place. Tallest building in town, don’tcha know.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “But that’s not why you’re here. You need to talk about the Copelands.”
Taylor could hear the note in his voice, the mixture of revulsion and sadness. She steeled herself. The story to come wouldn’t be antiseptic, printed on the page, open for interpretation. They were about to get the meat of the tale, find the answers to the terror that had haunted her for months. She swallowed involuntarily, mouth suddenly dry. Amy appeared with their sodas. Taylor slipped her straw into the Styrofoam cup and took a long sip, ignoring the chemical taste she abhorred in favor of a caffeine rush.
Morgan ran his finger along his nose, composing his thoughts, then began.
“Elizabeth Biggs Copeland always had problems, from the time she was a little girl. She was the kind of girl folks called delicate, meaning she was totally crazy and full of piss and vinegar to boot. There wasn’t a soul in this town who wasn’t afraid of her, especially those of us in her class at school. Betty Biggs, you can only imagine the names she was called. She got teased quite a bit.
“She wasn’t overtly bad, just…things happened around her. Cats went missing, only to show up days later dead in their owners’ yards, bad things done to them. She was suspected of starting a couple of fires. They started off small, dustbins and the like, but as she got older…” He shook his head. “Two of her friends’ houses burned to the ground in the middle of the night. The first time, she was about eight, and no one was home. The second, Betty was twelve. A little girl named Tabitha was killed, along with the family dog. Betty’d been fighting with Tabitha at school that day. I can’t say that I remember exactly what about. Some boy, probably. Betty had a hard time with the opposite sex in her younger years.”
Baldwin leaned forward in his seat. “You say suspected. No one ever prosecuted her for the fires?”
“Nothing to prosecute. There was no proof she had anything to do with any of it. My dad was chief before me, and his dad before him. They were good cops. They didn’t have the tools we have now. They had to rely on actual grunt work, investigations that hinged on eyewitnesses, unreliable eyewitnesses at that because, first off, we were children who were scared to death of getting in trouble, and second, we were even more scared of Betty skinning us alive if we ratted her out. We don’t have the kind of violence y’all do up in the city. All ours now is drug related-the kids around here have nothing better to do than get high, and they do that well. But back then crime was infrequent, and minor. To have a child accused of murdering her friend, well, that just wasn’t going to happen.”
“It got swept under the rug, then?” Taylor asked.
“Not exactly. Most folks steered clear of Betty after that. Tabitha’s family moved away, the story was only whispered about. It put the fear of God in Betty though, she calmed down, and the strange happenings slowed. She managed to get through high school without any major mishaps. Started dating Roger Copeland her senior year. He was a couple of years older than us, and a god around these parts. A talented minor leaguer with an eye to moving up. He was being groomed, was a damn good ballplayer. No one knew what he saw in Betty outside of the fact that she was putting out. I mean, she was pretty enough, but vacant. Distant. Something in her eyes always gave me the chills.
“Anyway, Betty got pregnant right after graduation. They married, had Edward, then Ewan and Errol. Things seemed okay on the surface. Both her parents were dead by then, the restaurant gave a decent income. Betty settled into motherhood all right, though all three of the boys were always sickly. Strange stuff, not the usual kid sicknesses like chicken pox. No, the boys were always in the hospital, getting some sort of exploratory surgery, or undergoing expensive tests for diseases no one had ever heard of. We’d never seen the likes of it, to tell you the truth. But she wasn’t doing anything wrong that anyone knew of. Not obviously, anyway.”
Chief Morgan grew quiet. With perfect timing, the food arrived, steaming hot. They all settled into the business of eating. Morgan was right, the burgers were good. Hot and juicy, seasoned perfectly, the thin shoestring fries crispy, just the way she liked them.
Baldwin wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Good choice, Chief.”
“I’m glad you like it.” He settled his burger back in its greasy wrapping paper. “Where was I? Oh, yeah. So Betty’s kids were always sickly. Roger’s career wasn’t going the way he wanted, he’d been told again and again that his time was coming, but you know how it is. Promises made, promises broken. He was drinking some, quiet- like, on the sly, and took up with a barmaid. Stephanie Sugarman. Got her pregnant, of course. Betty found out. She went absolutely around-the-bend nuts. Threatened the girl, threatened Roger. Made a big stink out of it. Publicly. Roger slunk away for the season, left the girl and Betty and his boys behind. He got called up to be a third baseman for the Braves just a month into the season. It was his big chance, going to the show. The whole town was
