Austin and I sat in my car outside Vince Bascomb’s shabby brick ranch house on the edge of town. It was a beautiful Indian summer afternoon, the kind that made you want to rake leaves into a pile just to jump into them.
“This is so sad,” I said, taking note of the peeling paint on the trim, the weed-infested yard, and a front door that seemed to be held together with duct tape.
“When I was a little girl, the Bascombs lived in that big Victorian house on Jefferson Street. It was called Birdsong,” I told him, “and I think it had been in the Bascomb family for generations. Lorraine always drove a big Lincoln Town Car, and Vince bought a brand-new pickup from my daddy every other year. They used to have a lot of money.”
“Not anymore, from the look of this place,” Austin said, wrinkling his nose. He pointed out a battered brown eighties Honda Civic parked in the driveway. It was covered with pine needles and fallen leaves, and two of the tires were flat. “That ain’t no Lincoln.”
“Maybe he’s too sick to talk,” I said, starting to chicken out. “I should have called first. He doesn’t know me. This is ghoulish.”
“If he doesn’t want to talk, he won’t,” Austin said firmly. He got out of the Volvo. “Coming?”
“All right.”
The concrete porch of the house was caked in grime and more fallen leaves, and a black plastic trash bag sat beside the door, where it had seemingly been for months.
Austin rang the doorbell, and I took a deep breath. A minute passed, and then what seemed like five. “Let’s go,” I said, tugging at Austin’s sleeve. “I can’t do this.”
“Somebody out there?” a thin voice called. “Is somebody there? Tanya, is that you?”
“Answer him,” Austin whispered. “Or I will.”
“Mr. Bascomb,” I hollered, “It’s not Tanya. My name is Keeley Murdock. You used to know my daddy, Wade Murdock. Can you come to the door, Mr. Bascomb?”
“Hell, no,” he shouted. “I’m laid up on this sofa in here. You might as well come on in, since you’re here.”
The door pushed open without much resistance. When we stepped inside, we were hit with a blast of hot, urine-scented air. The room was dim, lit only by a low-wattage light bulb on a table lamp. A sofa was pushed against the wall, and I could just make out the shape of a man propped up there.
“Well?” he said. “Don’t stand there with the door open. I’m not paying to heat the whole damn block.”
As I stepped into the room, I could see him more clearly. He wore a red knit ski cap pulled down almost to his eyebrows and a gray sweatshirt. The rest of his body was swathed in a bright pink and blue crocheted afghan. The shocking thing was his size. The Vince Bascomb I remembered had been a big, stocky man. Now I doubt he weighed ninety pounds.
“Come on, come on,” he said. “What is it you want? Did Tanya send you?”
“Who’s Tanya?’ Austin asked.
“Tanya’s my so-called home health nurse,” the old man said. He squinted up at us. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m, uh, Austin LeFleur, Keeley’s friend.” Austin thrust a brightly wrapped yellow potted mum toward Bascomb. “We brought you some flowers. We heard you’d been ill.”
“Ill? That’s a good one,” Bascomb said. “I’m dying. Those flowers will probably last longer than me.”
Austin and I had been slowly inching toward him, until we were only a few feet from the orange-flowered sofa.
Bascomb reached out and knocked the shade from the table lamp and thrust the naked bulb toward me like a saber. I had to shade my eyes from the now-bright light.
“You’re the Murdock girl?” he asked. I noticed for the first time that he wasn’t wearing his dentures. His gums shone shiny pink, and combined with the knit cap and afghan, he reminded me of an overgrown infant.
“Yes sir,” I said.
“I know your daddy,” he said, satisfied that he’d figured out my pedigree. “Used to know your mama, too.”
Austin nudged me. I was getting bruises on my side.
“Yes sir. That’s kind of why I wanted to talk to you.”
“What about?” he asked. “What have you heard?”
“Well…” I looked around the room. The orange shag rug was matted with dirt, a low coffee table in front of him was covered with medicine bottles, a tissue box, and a tattered stack of Reader’s Digest magazines. On the far side of the room, a kerosene space heater glowed orange hot. Beside it were two chrome and plastic dinette chairs.
“Would it be all right if we sat down while we talked?”
“Can’t stop you, can I?” he said querulously.
“Could I get you anything first?” I asked, remembering my manners. “A drink of water? Do you need your medicine?”
He yanked the neck of his sweatshirt down to expose a pale, shrunken chest. A blue patch was pasted above his left nipple, and a thin plastic tube ran to it. “My medicine’s right here,” he croaked. “For all the good it does me. You can sit if you want.”
We dragged the chairs as far away from the kerosene heater as we could, which meant we were only inches from the sofa.
“About my mother,” I started.
“Good-looking woman,” Bascomb said, nodding. “You favor her some, but I expect you know that.”
“How well did you know Jeanine Murdock?” Austin asked.
Bascomb leaned his head back against the sofa cushions with his eyes closed. At first I thought he’d drifted off to sleep.
“I suppose you know about my sorry marital history?” he asked, his eyes still closed.
“Yes sir. I knew Miss Lorraine, and I went to school with your daughter.”
“Lorraine was a fine person,” he said, opening his eyes now. “A real lady, unlike those other two tramps I was fool enough to marry. This cancer I have now, the suffering I’m going through? This is God punishing me for the way I treated the mother of my children.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
“Hell on earth,” he said. “And I brought it all on myself.”
“About Jeanine,” I hinted.
He sighed and looked right at me. “If you know about my history, I assume you know about your mother’s too. Is that about right?”
“I know she was having an affair with a man named Darvis Kane, who worked for my daddy at the car lot,” I said. “I know she and Kane used to meet out at your hunting cabin to have sex.” I bit my lip and decided not to pull any punches. “I went to see my mother’s cousin Sonya Wyrick last month. I knew she was Mama’s closest friend, and thought she might have some idea of where my mother went and where she’s been all these years.”
“Sonya Wyrick,” Bascomb said, smiling slightly. “Is she still up there in South Carolina?”
“North Carolina,” I corrected him. “She’s still in Kannapolis.”
“Sonya was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Lorraine,” he said. “There had been other women before her, but Sonya was more than Lorraine could bear. She found out about us, and there was hell to pay.”
He sighed again. “Hell on earth. Hell to pay. Living hell. That about sums up my life after Lorraine threw me out.” He licked his lips. “Does your father know you’re poking around in this matter?”
“He does,” I said.
“I traded with your daddy ever since he opened that lot,” Bascomb said. “Good man. What does he think of all this?”
“He thinks it’s about time we both got some answers to our questions,” I said. “It’s been almost twenty-five years.”
“You might not like the anwers you get,” Bascomb warned.
“We realize that. But Daddy has finally started dating. She’s a nice person, and he feels guilty about seeing somebody without knowing…about Mama.”
“Sonya was the one who gave Jeanine the key to the cabin,” Bascomb said. “But I didn’t have a problem with it, as long as she kept her mouth shut about what went on out there. I didn’t know at first who her boyfriend was.” He frowned. “Darvis Kane. Your father’s employee. I thought that was in poor taste. But who was I to judge? It wasn’t like we were holding Sunday school out there.”
Bascomb reached out and fumbled around among the pill bottles until he found what he was looking for. A tube of Chap Stick, which he then smeared over his colorless lips.
“Other people were also involved out there,” he said carefully. “People whose names I would prefer not to mention.”
“I already know that Drew Jernigan took Lorna Plummer out there quite often,” I said calmly.
“Sonya told you that?” He seemed surprised.
“Yes, sir. But I’d already heard about Drew’s affairs.”
“Drew is a Jernigan. He can’t help himself. He was my best friend for forty years. My business partner some of that time. And unlike Lorraine, GiGi chose to turn a blind eye to her husband’s extracurricular activities.”
I winced. “It’s called cheating. He’s a cheat.”
“In that respect, yes. But I’ve always found Drew Jernigan to be honorable in his business dealings with me.”
“In other words, he only screws women,” I said angrily.
Bascomb looked surprised at my sudden flash of emotion. “That’s a vulgar way to put it.”
“As far as we can tell,” Austin said, inserting himself smoothly into the conversation, “Jeanine and Darvis left Madison in mid-February of 1979. A short time after that, Darvis apparently drove Jeanine’s Malibu to Birmingham, Alabama, where he sold it. Right after that, he got on a Greyhound bus, and we haven’t talked to anybody who’s seen him since that time.”
“Lisa Kane managed to track Darvis down sometime in the eighties, and get a divorce,” I said. “But that still leaves Mama unaccounted for since the day she left Madison.”
Bascomb rolled the tube of Chap Stick between sticklike fingertips. He looked up at me, dry-eyed.
“Your mother never left Madison.”