Sassafras, Part 20

Joan


I picked up my dress at the cleaner’s and drove home. Billy was on the computer again, but he just ignored me when I came in. I saw Jenny's jacket lying across the back of a kitchen chair and remembered finding it last night hanging on the wall at Tanner’s. I picked it up and held it for a minute. I ran my hand over the design on the back, a giant dragon holding the world in its claws. I sat down and stared off into space. Jenny always loved dragons. She used to collect them. She had dragons everywhere, little dragon figurines, dragon posters, even little dragon stickers all over her notebooks. She still loved dragons, but you had to look for them now, like the dragon coffee cup I brought home from the diner.

I threw the jacket back on the chair, but it slipped to the floor. When I picked it up something fell out of the pocket. I bent over and picked it up. It was a little plastic black and silver square. I felt in the pockets and found 3 more of them.

I held them up and looked at them, but didn't have any idea what they were. "Billy, what are these?" I asked, but he wouldn't look at me. I walked over and held them in front of him. He finally looked at them. "Are these computer chips?"

He never looked at me, or stopped typing on the computer. "Those are memory chips for Mom's camera. They're like little rolls of film that you can use over and over," he explained when he realized I didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

"You mean there are pictures on these?"

"Yeah, there ought to be. Mom has a digital camera, but it's an old one and only holds about a dozen pictures. We couldn't afford a new camera with more memory, so she just bought a bunch of these chips on eBay. She always had her camera with her. That's where she got all the pictures on her blog. She'd take a bunch of pictures, then come home and put them on the computer.

"Could we see what's on these?" I asked him.

"Sure, we just have to get the camera," he said and sighed loudly, finally looking at me before starting to push papers and floppy disks around on the desk. He got up and looked around the entertainment center and the coffee table. "Where is it?" he muttered. "Sorry, Aunt Jo, I can't find the camera."

"Do you think she had it with her the night she died?"

"Probably. She used to carry it around with her all the time."

"Well, just put them in the computer."

"You can't do that, you have to hook the camera to the computer."

"So we can't see what's on these?"

"Not without the camera." He thought a minute. "Unless Mom already put them on the computer."

We spent the next hour looking at pictures on the computer. Some of them I recognized from her blog. Billy gave me a guided tour of the photo files, explaining what was going on in them, and who different people were that I didn't know. He showed me pictures of science projects he had made, places Jenny had taken him on vacations, lots of pictures of him and his friends at home or school. I think I learned more about him in that hour than I had the entire time he had been alive. I was glad he was finally talking to me.

The only thing left to do that day was go to The Home to see Mom. I asked Billy if he wanted to go with me, but he said no. Even when I tried to bribe him with lunch at Don’s first he still wasn’t interested. I guess since his mom worked at Don’s his whole life going there one more time wasn’t really much of a bribe.

Don was working when I got there. I hadn’t realized how old he was. He was thin and gray, wearing black pants and a white dress shirt, the only thing I could ever remember seeing him wear. He walked around the counter and gave me a big hug. “Joan, it’s so good to see you,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“I’m doing okay. It feels good to be back in town.” When I said that I realized I meant it. I hated Sassafras, but it felt good to be back.

“We all miss Jenny. This place will never be the same without her. I don’t guess you’re looking for a job, are you?”

I laughed. The idea of following in Jenny’s footsteps was as appealing as eating a bowl of thumbtacks. “No, I have a job in New York. I’m just going to be in town long enough to take care of everything and then I’ll be leaving again.”

“Well, I just hope you stay long enough to try my chili. I’ve improved the recipe since you were a girl.”

“I know. Jenny said you won a prize for it.”

“Yes, first place at the state fair. I knew it was good, but I was still shocked when I won. There was a lot of good chili there.”

“Well, Jenny wasn’t surprised. She mailed me a copy of the newspaper clipping. She said she tried to mail me a bowl of chili, but the envelope kept leaking.”

“That sounds like Jenny,” he said. “It feels like I lost a daughter, not just a waitress.”

I sat down and Don told the waitress to get me anything I want, on the house, and make sure to bring me a bowl of chili.

While I waited for my hamburger I flipped through the papers from the coroner. The first was just a death certificate, but there was also a copy of the coroner's report. I recognized one page from Court TV. It looked like two gingerbread men covered with red marks showing the injuries to Jenny, front and back. There was a lot marked on her head and arms, a couple of big marks on her chest, one on her thigh.

I wondered if she suffered, if she was in pain, lying on the side of the road like a dog. In the cold, without her jacket. That kept bugging me. Why didn't she have her jacket on? I asked the server what the weather had been like Monday, the night Jenny died. She said it had been cold. There had been a football game at school that she had gone to that night, and she had been freezing because she only wore a sweater.

When my food came I put the papers back in the envelope. I didn't want to keep looking at that, but I couldn't stop seeing it. Or thinking about it. All those red lines on her arms and head. There was something else I learned from Court TV. Those looked like defensive wounds. Hit and run victims usually have both legs broken, right where the bumper hit them. She only had one injury, on her upper thigh. I opened the envelope back up and pulled out the file. Her leg wasn't even broken, just deeply bruised. Weird. And why was she walking in front of Scott’s? Nothing made sense.

When I finished eating I started looking through the papers again. Something else caught my eye. The blood alcohol level wasn't that high, but what really stood out was the lab said her stomach had whiskey in it. That couldn't be true, because she never drank whiskey. Not since a party when she was a senior and got so drunk she passed out and woke up in the neighbor's back yard covered in vomit. She only drank beer or wine after that, never hard liquor and definitely no whiskey. Besides, the bartender said she only drank a couple of beers.