Coming Home To You

At eight o’clock she stuck her notebook in her purse and set out on foot in search of food and information. The sun was a ball of fire against the descending curtain of twilight, and a solitary star announced the coming darkness.

She walked from her motel through the center of town, an uneventful trip of no more than ten minutes that did nothing to improve her first impression of the place. Grim. Small. The narrow buildings were mostly two stories and leaned against each other like weary soldiers after a battle.

As far as she could tell, the only choices for dinner were the Burger Barn down from the motel and the Old Hickory Grill on the courthouse square. She found an empty booth at the grill and ordered the All-You-Can-Eat Pork-Rib Special. Her plate came with a quart jar of iced tea and a roll of paper towels for cleaning her hands.

The waitress was a weathered blonde named Marleen whose plump body was threatening the seams of her uniform. “Hon, need anything else?” Marleen asked when Kate had finished her second plate of ribs.

She wiped her mouth. “I’d like information about someone, but I don’t want him to know I’m asking.” She gave the waitress a wink. “You know how men are when they think a woman’s interested in them.”

“Oh, I gotcha,” Marleen said, winking back, a willing conspirator. She slipped into the seat across the table. “Hey, Tammy,” she called to the other waitress, “I’m takin’ a break.” Then to Kate, “Okay, who’s the guy?”

“His name’s Bret Hayes. He’s a horse-breeder. Owns a place out on Highway 54 west of here. Do you know him?”

“Big good-lookin’ fella, but unfriendly as all get-out?”

Kate chuckled. “That sounds like him. His late brother was a famous singer and musician.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that. The guy I’m thinkin’ of has these killer blue eyes.”

“That’s Hayes. What do you know about him?”

Marleen didn’t know much. He kept to himself, she said. He came to town every Saturday morning at eight, sat in the same booth and ate a breakfast of bacon, eggs, grits and biscuits. He always ordered a second meal to go.

“And he has this major thing for peach cobbler,” Marleen added. “Comes in a couple times a month and buys a whole one to take home.”

“What about close friends or girlfriends?” Kate asked. “Ever see Hayes with anyone?”

“No, no one except that Logan woman from Pine Acres.”

“Pine Acres? What’s that?”

“A place they send kids who don’t have anyplace to go.”

“You mean a children’s shelter?”

“Well, sort of, but it’s a ranch. The kids live there until they find homes for ’em or they’re old enough to get their own place and stuff. Kind of like an orphanage, only real nice, and they’ve got adults who live with them and watch over everything.”

“Is he dating this woman from the orphanage?”

“Don’t think so.”

“But you said you saw him with some woman named Logan who works there.”

“Jane Logan. She runs the place, but I don’t know if he’s dating her. I saw them at the movies once, but they had a bunch of the kids from the ranch, so I figured he was helping.”

“A chaperon?”

“Yeah, I reckon he does that, since he built the place.”

Kate felt the familiar surge of adrenaline that came when she had a good lead. “Bret Hayes built this children’s ranch?”

“Yeah. Didn’t I tell you? He bought the land and donated the money to get it goin’.”

PINE ACRES. Back in her motel room Kate set up her laptop computer and inserted the name into her files. She wouldn’t have difficulty getting information. Most of what she needed would likely be at the county probate office or the library. She flipped open the telephone book and copied the addresses.

Her next step was to call Marcus at home. The phone rang three times before the answering machine came on. Kate waited through the brief message. “Marcus, if you’re there, pick up.”

Instantly he was on the line. “Kate, where are you? I’ve been worried to death.”

She smiled, amused at his overprotectiveness. Marcus was two years younger, but of all her brothers he watched out for her the most. He was also the best researcher around and had worked with her for the past four years.

“I’m in Lochefuscha, Alabama.” She spelled it for him from the name on the complimentary notepad by the telephone. “I’m at an exquisite little place called the Highway Hideaway, decorated in Early American Garage Sale. A trucker’s paradise, according to the sign out front.”

“What’s going on?”

“I got a lead on Bret Hayes, so I thought I’d fly down and see if it panned out. I struck pay dirt, Marcus. He’s living here.”

“No wonder he was so hard to find. What’s he doing in Alabama?”

“Breeding horses, apparently.”

“You’re kidding. Are you sure you’ve got the right guy?”

“Positive. And he didn’t deny it.”

“You saw him already? How’d it go?”

She sighed. “Horrible. He wouldn’t even think about helping.”

“Sorry, sis.”

“Me, too, but I’m not giving up. I’ve still got four months until deadline, and I’ll spend every minute of it, if I have to, trying to get Hayes’s cooperation.”

“But what about the book on Marshall? You said you wanted to get started on that right away.”

The late Thurgood Marshall was the subject of her next biography, but she was having difficulty calling the James Hayes book complete. The research on James was solid. The writing was the best she’d ever done. But the story had gaps, unanswered questions about his life that only someone very close to him could answer.

And that was the problem. James, the band, their manager, Malcolm Elliot, the equipment handlers—all had been on the plane the night it left Rome, Georgia, on its way to Chattanooga, Tennessee. It had crashed in a thunderstorm in the north Georgia mountains, killing everyone on board.

Only Lenny Dean, the bass guitarist, was alive. If you could call it living. A drug addict, he had tripped out one too many times on PCP, and his mind was gone. He hadn’t been on the plane the night it went down. He’d been wasting away in a mental hospital for the past nine years.

James’s mother, Marianne Hayes Conner, had refused to cooperate on the book. So had his stepfather, George Conner, and his sister, Ellen Hayes. Bret, his younger brother, represented not only Kate’s best chance to get what she needed on James, but her only chance. She had to get his cooperation, and get it quickly. Otherwise, this biography would never be what she’d envisioned.

“Pull off the Marshall research for a couple of days,” she told Marcus. “I’d like you to follow up on what I found out here. Maybe we can come up with something that’ll help me when I approach Bret Hayes again.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Find out what you can about a place called Pine Acres. It’s an orphanage or foster-care facility. And do some more digging into Hayes’s finances. I want to know why someone who inherited millions of dollars is living like a country bumpkin.”