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  “Yes, the Delaneys did.”

  “I can’t imagine what that means.”

  “Was that the sorority Janie Rose pledged?”

  “Kappa Epsilon Chi? No. She pledged Gamma Delta Phi.”

  “Was Janie Rose…” Branigan hesitated, began again. “Charlie said something else. She said Janie Rose was jumpy, scared – even before the girls saw the hearse. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No.” Ina Rose was shaking her head as if trying to clear it. “No. Not at all.”

  “Okay, my last question. Can you tell me about your husband’s work?”

  Ina Rose looked bewildered, but answered anyway. “He runs a steel company. Shaner. You probably remember they moved the headquarters here from Philadelphia seven years ago. I’m from North Carolina originally and had always wanted to get back to the South, so I was happy to come.”

  Branigan paused for a beat. “Would anyone want to hurt you or your husband?”

  For the first time, she saw a veil drop over Ina Rose’s eyes. “Of course not. No. What does that have to do with Janie Rose?”

  “Probably nothing. But if things are as Charlie describes, the girls’ wreck was no accident. It was deliberate.”

  Ina Rose’s hand crept to her lips as this new horror hit her. Branigan watched as the realization dawned: there could be something worse than losing your daughter in an accident.

  Chapter Seven

  Malachi finished his salad, lasagna and brownie, slipping an apple into his pocket for later. You never knew when you might miss a meal, so it was good to have a back-up.

  He waited until the other ragged people cleared out, most of them nodding, tipping their baseball caps, murmuring “Malachi” as they passed. Some of the younger ones even said, “Mr Malachi,” before going back to their shoving and silliness.

  Malachi was respected on the street. Part of it was the length of time he’d been there, and part of it was his reputation. He wasn’t a big man, not at all. And he wasn’t a threatening one. It was more the way he carried himself. Well, that and stories about knives snatched and guns kicked away before an attacker had a chance to use them.

  Malachi was a Desert Storm vet, so the whispers went, trained in high-tech warfare. Or he was a tank gunner. Or a sniper. Rumors on the street ran pretty wild, and Malachi was credited with all manner of histories.

  He tossed his sauce-smeared plate into the trash, then heaved the full bag from the container, tying off the top. He hoisted the bag into a wagon of molded blue plastic and rolled it into the Jericho Road parking lot. He passed the flower beds, cleared out for winter, heading for the dented green dumpster. Malachi believed in “paying” for his meal by emptying trash, doing chores. Staff member Dontegan Johnstone thanked him when he stepped back inside. “No problem,” Malachi said, settling his backpack over his shoulders and leaving the church’s dining hall.

  The afternoon stretched before him. And he was thinking about Miz Charlie. He’d watched her grow up, shared pizza and Coke with her many a Friday night right here at Jericho Road. Watched her grow into a thoughtful and pretty young woman who was almost as worried about Grambling’s homeless as her dad was.

  He’d had Miz Branigan drop him at the library after going to the wreck site because he wanted to know what a 1950s hearse looked like exactly. He didn’t have a clear picture in his head.

  The thing was, he’d heard something unusual last night. He’d dismissed it at the time because most of what you heard under the Garner Bridge was worthless, untrue – or both. But the word was a black station wagon had been discovered deep in the woods, and Ralph and Maylene had grabbed it. Especially in winter, a car that could keep out water, wind and wildlife wasn’t half bad.

  So instead of heading down an abandoned street and across a worn path to his tent under the bridge, Malachi took the long way – through a thick patch of hardwoods and scrub brush that opened onto another vacant spot beneath the towering bridge. He found three tents, an open fire pit and a picnic table loaded with canned goods and bottled water. No one was around.

  Rather than going up a hill and crossing railroad tracks to his own encampment, he turned and walked out the way he’d come, peering more intently into the woods this time, pushing aside pine limbs and overgrowth. Now he saw it. Down a gentle slope, he watched Ralph placing a circle of rocks for a fire pit beside his new quarters.

  It could be called a station wagon all right. It was wide and long and low, a black faded to gray, with foot-long curtains hung inside.

  But after his hour in the library, Malachi knew it had another name as well. A hearse.

  Chapter Eight

  Branigan wrote a compelling story about Janie Rose to run with childhood pictures Ina Rose sent over. One, taken at age six, showed a skinny, gap-toothed girl in a gymnastics leotard. One, at thirteen and in braces, had her posed on a boat dock, a slalom ski tucked under one arm. One, at sixteen and in the Montclair High cheerleading miniskirt, showed the girl’s startling development: her teeth were white and straight, her brown hair glossy, her petite legs shapely. A fourth photo had been taken for the Rutherford Lee yearbook. Shot during the girl’s first semester, it showed a beautiful young woman with her mother’s pale skin and long dark hair. Branigan thought Janie Rose’s hazel eyes looked clear and hopeful. But maybe that was her imagination.

  The pictures affected her in a way her mother’s descriptions had not.

  Branigan sighed and signaled to Julie Ames, the Style editor, that the story was ready. She glanced at her watch. She would barely have time to get to the farm and bake cookies before the staff party. Too bad she couldn’t come up with an excuse to miss it altogether.

  An early dusk was falling when Cleo leaped up to meet the Honda Civic, energetically lapping the car several times. “Sorry, girl,” Branigan greeted her. “But we don’t have time for a run.”

  Branigan tapped in the code to her alarm system, then flipped the oven dial to pre-heat before going to her bedroom. She shed her watch and rings, boots and jacket before returning to the kitchen to lay the ingredients for Crunchy Jumble cookies on the island. She looked at them morosely, then poured herself a glass of pinot noir.

  False cheer is better than no cheer, she told herself.

  By the time the cookies were done, Branigan had showered and changed into fitted jeans and a silky white sweater that set off her green eyes. She started to put her hair up, but with no humidity, it hung straight and sleek. She decided to let it hang loose.

  She stacked the cookies into a plastic canister and headed for the door where Cleo moped.

  “I know, girl. I promise we’ll run tomorrow, okay?”

  She set the code on the farmhouse’s alarm and stepped into the dark night of the countryside, where no streetlights interrupted the gloom.

  “Staff party” was a somewhat hopeful name for a dismal affair. When Branigan had joined The Grambling Rambler at twenty-two, management paid for extravagant holiday parties at the Nicholas Inn, directly across the street from the newspaper building. It was a historic hotel, rather grand even then. More recently, it had been renovated and restored to its early twentieth-century glory; unfortunately, its journalistic neighbors could no longer afford it.

  The staff was going the way of most newspaper personnel, with forced retirements and layoffs siphoning nearly two-thirds of their number. For a while during the decline, holiday parties moved to the home of publisher and editor Tanenbaum Grambling IV. But then even he couldn’t stomach inviting people into his home at Christmas and laying them off the next summer.

  So now the parties were held in the home of whatever mid-level editor could be coerced. Tonight it fell to Bert Feldspar, the city editor.

  Bert’s wife answered the door, and hugged Branigan. “Food in the dining room.” She pointed. “Bar in the living room.”

  Branigan veered
first into the dining room to drop off the cookies and grab a handful of almonds, before going into the living room for a glass of red wine. She greeted several colleagues, then spotted Jody getting a beer. They plopped down together on a small sofa.

  “Tell me what’s new,” she demanded. “Anything on your end?”

  Jody was an old friend who’d stayed with The Rambler through the years Branigan worked in Detroit. He knew the city as well as anyone. “Actually, yes. I just read the story you posted, with Charlie Delaney saying she was run off the road by a hearse. The police got a report today about a stolen hearse.”

  Branigan sat up straight. “You’re kidding.”

  He nodded. “A sorority at Rutherford Lee had an old hearse for some reason. They reported it stolen around 5 o’clock today.”

  “The Kappa Eps?” Branigan said.

  “Now how did you know that?”

  “Janie Rose’s mother mentioned they had one. For homecoming floats and stuff like that.”

  “Apparently, someone took it from a parking lot behind the sorority house. But they don’t know when. The police report said they haven’t used it since Halloween, so they really haven’t been keeping an eye on it. They realized today it was missing, but it could have been taken any time in November or December, right up until yesterday.”

  Branigan stood. “If you’re ready to abandon this party, why don’t we pay a visit to the Kappa Epsilon house?”

  Exams at the private college ran on longer than at the state school, so most of Rutherford Lee’s student parking lots remained full. Branigan and Jody found space behind the university chapel, its floodlit cross commanding the manicured campus. They hurried up a sidewalk beside the chapel gardens, huddling into their coats for warmth. They crossed the one-way road that meandered through the college, and walked to Greek Row, a street of mid-twentieth-century houses marking the school’s northern border. The campus was well lit, and oversized letters on the front of each stately brick house allowed them to locate the Kappa Epsilon Chi residence easily.

  A young woman in pajama pants and a Duke T-shirt answered the door. Branigan remembered her grandfather remarking on the puzzling tendency of students to wear the logos of other colleges, as if they weren’t quite sure they’d made the right choice. She’d laughed because she’d done the same when she was in school. A handful of similarly dressed young women lounged in the living room. Kappa Epsilon must be one of the more laid-back sororities: Branigan had heard of some Deep South sororities that still required street clothes, or even skirts, in their public rooms.

  “Can I help you?” asked the Duke girl.

  Branigan introduced herself and Jody as Rambler reporters. “We’d like to talk to someone about the stolen hearse.”

  “Oh, right. Let me get Sophie for you. She’s our president.”

  Jody murmured in Branigan’s ear, “Sophie Long. That’s the name on the police report.”

  The women made room for the reporters on one of three sofas. One introduced herself as a journalism major and asked if she could sit in on their interview.

  “By all means,” Branigan said. “You never know who might have information.”

  A slender woman with severely short raven hair came down the stairs in gray sweatpants and a purple and white Furman University sweatshirt. “In that case,” she said, “we can talk in here and let everyone stay.” She held out her hand. “I’m Sophie Long.”

  Two of the women got up, saying they had to study, but the others looked on with interest. “I’m surprised The Rambler wants to do a story on a stolen car,” Sophie said.

  “It’s part of a bigger story,” Branigan said. “There was a fatality involving an old hearse yesterday. Out on 441 near Athens.”

  “Oh my gosh! Was it ours?”

  “There’s no way of knowing yet. But it’s quite a coincidence that yours was reported stolen the same day. Tell me about your car.”

  Sophie bit her lower lip. “I’m a senior, and the hearse was already here when I came as a freshman. We have scrapbooks showing it in pictures for years before that. It’s sort of the Kappa Ep ‘thing’. We use it on our homecoming float every September, then we pull it into our front yard and decorate it the week of Halloween. We use it to drive girls to rush functions in January.” Sophie paused. “You know what rush is, right?”

  Branigan nodded, remembering the squeals and fake smiles from her own university days, as sorority women and freshmen girls engaged in their strange mating dance.

  Sophie continued, “Also, when a sister gets engaged, we make her lie down in the back, and we all pile in and drive around campus, honking the horn.”

  Seeing Jody’s face, she grimaced. “Silly, I know.”

  “So, clearly it runs?” Branigan asked.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “And where do you park it?”

  “Since we’re on the end of Greek Row, we have a little more parking than the other houses. Our lot holds the hearse, and space for another twelve cars.”

  “Who keeps the key?”

  “Nobody. It hangs on a hook in the kitchen.”

  Branigan and Jody glanced at each other. “So when did you notice it was missing?” she asked.

  “That’s the hard part,” Sophie said. “Of course, we used it during Halloween week. The day after Halloween, I returned it to the parking lot. I’ve been back there two or three times since then, but I couldn’t tell you if it was there or not.” She turned to the other girls. “Do any of you remember seeing it for sure after Halloween?”

  The journalism major sat up straighter. “Yes, I do!”

  All faces turned toward her.

  “I can tell you exactly when it was.” She leaped to her feet and ran up the stairs, then returned seconds later with an oxblood leather journal. Branigan smiled to see it was similar to one she’d used as a teen.

  Sophie spoke as the girl flipped through the pages. “This is Anna Hester, by the way. One of our sophomore sisters.”

  “Yeah, hi,” Anna said. Then, “Here it is.” She turned to her sisters. “You guys can’t tell anyone. I’m going to sound like an idiot. But Mike – that’s my boyfriend,” she said, glancing at Branigan, “gave me his fraternity pin as an early Christmas present. I went to lie down in the back of the hearse to see what it would be like if we got engaged before graduation.” Her cheeks flamed as the women laughed.

  “You promised not to tell anyone,” she said, and they held up their hands in surrender. “That was December 12. The hearse was here four days ago.”

  Branigan and Jody stayed for a while longer looking at scrapbook pictures of the old hearse. Some showed women dressed as witches and fortune tellers and ghosts hanging from its running boards. Others showed young ladies in shorts seated on the roof and hood, back doors open to highlight one woman waving happily with a ring-clad left hand. From what Branigan could see beneath all the smiling co-eds, the hearse looked like the one Charlie had described: 1950s, iron-gray, tinted windows at the front, short curtains at the back.

  Jody quizzed the sisters about the key. Could anyone remember seeing its empty hook? Who had access?

  Twenty young women lived in the house, Sophie told him, and their visitors were allowed in sixteen hours a day. A cook and an assistant worked five days a week and had groceries delivered. The sisters had a contract with the college maintenance staff, so those men came when called. Just about anyone could have taken the key.

  Jody tried once more. “And you don’t have any idea who might have taken the hearse?”

  Sophie bit her lip again, and her eyes slid away from Jody’s. “No.”

  Branigan got the impression she wanted to say more, and guessed she might not want to speak in front of the sisters. She stood and thanked everyone, then asked Sophie if she could walk them out.

  Sophie grabbed a jacket from the hall clos
et and accompanied them into the front yard.

  Branigan said softly, “You do have an idea who might have taken your hearse.”

  Under the streetlight, Sophie looked uncomfortable. “I have no proof at all. None.”

  “I understand.”

  “But my first thought was another sorority.”

  The reporters tried not to show their surprise. Branigan waited a beat, then asked, “Because?”

  “Well, sometimes rush and pledge season gets a little… actually a little vicious. We start rush the week we get back from Christmas break. It crossed my mind that someone took our hearse because it had become so popular during rush.” Sophie let out a sigh. “Sounds even lamer than the engagement thing, I know.”

  “Maybe not,” Branigan assured her, remembering the competitiveness of UGA sororities in her day. “Are there any sororities that Kappa Epsilon especially competes with for pledges?”

  “Two, I guess you’d say: Rho Theta Chi and Gamma Delta Phi.”

  The latter sounded familiar to Branigan. She stepped under the streetlight and flipped to her notes from her interview with Ina Rose Carlton.

  She was right. Gamma Delta Phi. That was the sorority Janie Rose had pledged during her freshman year at Rutherford Lee.

  Chapter Nine

  As Malachi finished off a six-pack, he made up his mind. He would call Miz Branigan about the hearse in the woods. He hated to cost Ralph and Maylene their new place. That was why he hadn’t called earlier. But acting as though he was admiring their find, he got a close-up look at the hearse’s front bumper. Its right side was dented and flecked with red paint.

  Alone in his tent under the Garner Bridge, Malachi crunched his last can. He grabbed the other empties and pushed out of his tent, feeling his way in the dark to a rolling trashcan made of molded plastic. City workers had learned their lesson after bringing in metal barrels last summer. By October, his neighbors Slick and Elise had built fires in them. So one morning in December, a city employee rolled the green plastic cart in. So far no one had lit a fire in it.