Aftermath Read online

  Praise for Aftermath

  “Another winner for George Weinstein. Luring you in with atmospheric elements—a small town hiding dark secrets and a woman determined to uncover her questionable legacy—Aftermath’s final, disturbing twist will jolt you and good.”

  —Emily Carpenter, author of Burying the Honeysuckle Girls

  “A full-force story of a small-town murder.... You know early on that in the end all the right dots will be connected, but you don’t know how the lines will be drawn.”

  —Terry Kay, author of To Dance with the White Dog

  “… Great writing kept me clenched in the fist of this small town. Weaving past with present, light with shadow, Aftermath maintains a perfect and engaging balance.”

  —Susan Crawford, author of The Pocket Wife

  “A dark mystery that will keep you turning the pages as you follow a trail of clues…. This is a masterful study of the unfortunate truth that sometimes, in order to fix things, you first have to break them again.”

  —Roger Johns, author of Dark River Rising

  “Aftermath has everything I crave in a novel: the perfect blend of mystery and romance, flawlessly crafted dialogue, and an unsinkable heroine with equal parts grit and heart.... Go to bed early, or prepare to stay up all night.”

  —Erika Marks, author of The Last Treasure

  “This novel tells the story of coming home, proving Thomas Wolfe wrong with a strong-willed protagonist, Janet Wright, the new owner of Graylee, a tiny Georgia town. And only in the Deep South can one inherit a town. Kept me on the edge of my seat until I finished the last page.”

  —Ann Hite, author of Sleeping Above Chaos

  “Weinstein works miracles getting us to suspect everybody in Aftermath. This thoroughly satisfying tale of deceit and emotional devastation in a small town rings true.”

  —Fran Stewart, author of the Biscuit McKee Mystery Series

  “A truly satisfying mystery is one that keeps the reader guessing until the very last page.... The dialogue is realistic, the situations ring true, and the settings dovetail seamlessly with the plot and, ultimately, the resolution. If you only read one mystery this year, read Aftermath by George Weinstein.”

  —Raymond L. Atkins, author of Sweetwater Blues

  “To unravel the mystery shrouding the gruesome murder of her estranged father, heiress Janet Wright will do whatever it takes, no holds barred. Set in a sleepy Southern company town, George Weinstein’s twisty Gothic who-done-it will keep you guessing right to the very end.”

  —Ronald Aiken, author of Death Has Its Benefits

  Also available by George Weinstein:

  Hardscrabble Road

  Aftermath

  George Weinstein

  Aftermath: A Novel

  Copyright © 2018 by George Weinstein

  Published by

  Southern Fried Karma, LLC

  Atlanta, GA

  www.sfkpress.com

  Books are available in quantity for promotional or premium use. For information, email [email protected].

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval or storage system, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-9979518-4-4

  eISBN: 978-0-9979518-5-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939392

  Cover design by Olivia M. Croom

  Cover images: field by iStock.com/Viktorcvetkovic; house by iStock.com/irina88w

  Printed in the United States of America.

  For Kate

  Whose love has enabled me

  to confront the mysteries of life without fear.

  CHAPTER 1

  Only one stop, I promised myself, and then I’d go to my father’s house—where he had been murdered in July. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to that. On Main Street in tiny Graylee, Georgia, I parked the rental car I’d picked up after landing in Atlanta that morning. Seventy-degree weather in late December and BBQ smoke on the breeze through my open windows reminded me I had returned to the Deep South, way below the Gnat Line.

  Though I’d been born in Graylee, I only lived there until I was five and had no memory of it. I assumed the place would be just another backwater burg, decorated as countless others were a few days before Christmas. Yes, church steeples were the tallest structures around. However, instead of check-cashing parlors and pawnshops outnumbering the places of worship, the town somehow supported quaint bistros, boutiques selling luxury goods, and spa-salons, with upscale cars parked in front of each one. Manhattan it wasn’t, but it wasn’t the sticks either.

  How had they maintained such prosperity in the middle of nowhere? Between that and the weather, the place was a modern Shangri-La. If I were back home in the center of the universe, I would’ve still needed the heavy coat I’d worn while catching a cab to LaGuardia, and which now covered my purse in the front seat. I pushed it aside so I could retrieve my hairbrush and lipstick. As I touched up, I surveyed Main Street again.

  The variety of dining and shopping options surprised me, but the best part was a silence I never experienced except when I got out of New York City. No radios blasting, jackhammers machine-gunning concrete, or car horns blaring. The hush and the temperature put me in the mood for a nap but that meant going to Dad’s house. I just didn’t want to deal with it yet. Too many conflicting emotions, including a helping of dread as big as the deli counter at Zabar’s.

  At least the remarkable surroundings made me stop wondering for a moment whether I’d been foolish to quit a good job on Wall Street, leave my friends and everything I loved, and return to a home I no longer remembered. From the looks of it, Graylee seemed like a fine place to start over. To give my life a little meaning. To finally do something that mattered.

  After exiting my rental and locking it with the remote, I noted a few elderly shoppers jaywalking across the road to their Beamer. They didn’t look like the type to hotwire a car and go joyriding. If I planned to live here, I needed to start blending in. Feeling ridiculous but determined to establish new habits, I unlocked the car. After all, probably the only crime committed in Graylee in the past six months had been my father’s murder, and the police shot the guy who’d done that.

  The phone in my back pocket had been vibrating periodically with texts from friends who demanded updates on my adventure “down South.” A new one buzzed my butt. With nothing significant to report yet, I let the messages accumulate unanswered.

  I pushed open the door of a gift shop, and sleigh bells jangled. The Christmas murals on the windows had been painted with skill, drawing me inside, but who could I buy a present for? With my father’s death, I had no family left. My New York friends were much too sophisticated to appreciate anything from small-town Georgia. Andy Jessup had broken off our engagement six months ago, and—unheard of for me—I hadn’t rebounded with another guy yet. I’d always feared I would be all alone at forty, and here I was.

  A housewarming gift, I decided, glancing at the displays of yuletide cheer. For my new home, which I’d never seen. Perfect. I took a breath and settled into browse mode, letting my gaze drift over the aisles of goods as my boots led me up a random row.

  “Can I help you find something, honey?” A middle-aged woman, wearing a snowflake sweater
despite the warm weather, approached me from the back of the shop.

  “Just looking,” I said, picking up a plush reindeer and putting it back on the shelf. Did that sound too abrupt? “Thank you,” I added, drawing out the vowels to sound less like a damn Yankee than a Southern girl who had gone to live among them when I was young.

  The woman asked, “You passing through?” Obviously my twang hadn’t fooled her. She wove her way among the displays of reds and greens, putting on half-moon glasses that had dangled from a beaded cord around her neck. “Oh, Ms. Wright,” she said, taking me in from across a display of holly boughs and fluffy snowmen, “um, welcome to Graylee.”

  Small-town living, where everybody knew everybody else’s business. Maybe someone had spotted me dawdling in my rental car and sent a warning to all of Graylee that Brady Stapleton’s daughter had arrived in town.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Please call me Janet.”

  “I’m Paulina Lollybelle O’Shea.” Her snowflake-clad arm reached over the shelf, and she shook my hand in a perfunctory way. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Her delivery was robotic, chilly.

  “I appreciate that,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as puzzled by her tone as I felt.

  “You take after your mama—right pretty, the spittin’ image of Mary Grace.”

  The folksy compliment surprised me. I patted down the cowlick on the back of my head, a gift handed down from Mom. “You knew her?”

  “Yes, ma’am, went through school with her. She was a peach. Never understood what she saw in your daddy, though.” Her look suggested I had some explaining to do on my mother’s behalf. “They made the strangest couple, with her such a petite beauty and him a big ol’ bear of a man, bless his heart.”

  From photographs I’d found on the Internet, that described him well. I said, “I don’t remember my father. In fact, I hadn’t seen him, or even talked to him, in thirty-five years.”

  “I reckoned, what with you having your mama’s last name.” Her voice dropped then, as if the plastic Santa Clauses could overhear us. “Did she tell you about him?”

  “No, she never talked about my dad.”

  “Well, he just about owned Graylee. We heard you were coming down all the way from New York City to be the new owner.” She didn’t look pleased by this latest Northern incursion.

  I own a town, I reminded myself. It was impossible to wrap my mind around that. Paulina’s sour expression and the possibility that the people here were already gossiping about my arrival got the better of me. Although I had inherited my mother’s looks and I carried her name, the one thing she would say about Dad was that I’d gotten his smart mouth. I snapped, “I promise to be a benevolent dictator.”

  Paulina’s eyebrows rose over the tops of her glasses. Then her look of shock turned to delight, and I realized the depth of my mistake. Soon all of Graylee would hear about my snotty declaration.

  Damn. I needed to make friends and allies, not score points. Wincing, I shook my head. “Sorry, bad joke. What I meant to say is I’m not planning on running anything—my father seemed to have put really good people in charge. It’s not broken, and I don’t want to risk breaking it.”

  The apology seemed to mollify her, or at least she realized what poor manners she was displaying, too. She re-spaced some holiday tchotchkes on her side of the shelf and changed the subject. “All of us sure are glad about what happened to that Wallace Landry.”

  I nodded at the name of the drifter who had murdered my father. “I guess everyone was spared a pointless trial.”

  “And fifty years of that horrible man on Death Row,” Paulina added, “filing endless appeals. I know it’s not the Christian thing to say, but he got what he deserved.” She looked at me hopefully, as if seeking something we had in common, a means of building a bond. Either that, or she was setting a trap to get some more juicy quotes she could broadcast.

  I said, “You’re right, I guess. Although I would’ve liked to ask him why he did it.”

  “Because he was evil, you hear? Came into the shop one time, and I knew the moment I laid eyes on him that he had the devil inside. What he did shook up Graylee something awful. We hadn’t had a murder in years.”

  “He probably made everyone here feel nervous about strangers…but, uh, I hope I fit in and won’t be considered an outsider much longer.”

  “Plan on staying, do you?”

  It seemed more like a threat than a question, but I soldiered on. “I thought I’d volunteer, maybe start a charity. And work on a book I’ve always wanted to write.”

  “Why, honey, we already have an author: David Stark. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

  Who hadn’t heard of the South’s answer to Stephen King? I felt another emotional bruise from the passive-aggressive Q&A, but the woman did succeed in making me want to quit procrastinating and escape to my father’s house.

  “Sure,” I said. “I just want to try it. I’m not going to compete with him or anything.”

  “He even did a holiday story.” She pointed at a tall display of hardback books, green dustcovers ornamented with blood splatters, which she’d arrayed in the conical shape of a Christmas tree. Her expression showed pride in Graylee’s favorite son and more than a touch of scorn, as if challenging my right to try to write anything.

  So much for Shangri-La. Feeling cornered, I said in my mother’s sweet Georgia drawl, “But can’t there be more than one writer, even in lil’ ol’ Graylee?” Then I hammered her with my usual don’t-screw-with-me New York accent: “Since I own this freaking town and everything in it.”

  Including the lease on your shop, I hoped my toothy smile conveyed.

  At first I took some satisfaction at how Paulina paled to the color of her ridiculous sweater, but then I felt guilty for lording it over the woman. So this is what it was like to have power. First chance I got, I’d wielded it like a club instead of an olive branch.

  “Of course, of course,” she replied, backing down the aisle, palms out as if to ward off another blow. “Um…you, uh, still need help finding a gift?”

  “Actually, I’d better go.” Although the woman had been beyond rude, I added, “Sorry I was out of line. I’m a long way from home and feeling like an exposed nerve.”

  That stopped her retreat. “Think nothing of it, honey. We just got off on the wrong foot is all. I hope you’ll come back in, and hello me when we see each other around town.”

  “Count on it.” We exchanged wary goodbyes, and I headed outside, sleigh bells ching-chinging behind me. The shame I felt continued to sting. I’d acted like a bully. “Benevolent dictator” would’ve been an upgrade.

  Grimacing over my shortcomings, I checked the GPS on my phone for the drive to Dad’s house and then pressed the remote to unlock the car door before remembering my “when in Rome” resolution. Of course, if Paulina’s attitude indicated how everyone in Graylee felt toward me, I probably needed to lock my doors after all. Hell, I might want someone to do a daily bomb sweep.

  As I drove down Main Street, I noted two blinking caution lights at cross streets. Steering with my wrists, I took a photo through the windshield to share with my friends later: Look, there aren’t even real stoplights here; three cars going in the same direction would constitute a traffic jam. However, my picture also would show them clean gutters and not a single spray of graffiti on the buildings. There were some nice things about small-town living.

  The GPS stated, “Take left onto Brady Stapleton Boulevard.” I was starting to get a feel for my father. Not exactly humble. And “Boulevard”—seriously?

  Ahead, I spotted a Denny’s Restaurant, which seemed out of place with the upscale finery. Beyond it, I turned left onto a narrow strip of blacktop instead of the usual pitted concrete. Thick woods lined both sides. Not only was the ride much smoother, but the sound of the rubber against the road was like high-pitched singing. Dad probab
ly had kept his boulevard tuned, so the angelic choir would stay in proper voice. I wiggled the steering wheel back and forth, serpentining across the single lane, and listened to the heavenly song rise and fall.

  My father had located his house on the only spot in town with any real elevation. It was just a steep hill with trees all around it, but I half-expected the GPS to announce, “Arriving at Brady Stapleton Mountain.” Nothing was modest about the house, however. The sprawling stone hunting lodge covered most of the hilltop.

  In the pea-gravel curve of courtyard that fronted the house, I stopped near an iron lawn jockey. The figure’s face and hands had been painted bright white, but chips and scratches revealed black paint underneath. If all of this truly belonged to me, the jockey would be the first thing to go.

  The granite manse boasted a deep, wraparound porch and an equally impressive balcony that bordered the entire second floor. No one greeted me. My father’s lawyer had specified that, after the holidays, a “licensed, insured, and bonded” cleaning crew could tend the house and landscape each week for me. Perhaps that was in reaction to the drifter, Wallace Landry, who’d talked his way into the job of groundskeeper back in late June and thanked my father a few weeks later with seventeen bullets at point-blank range.

  I called the lawyer, Mr. Pearson, who also was the executor of the estate, to let him know I’d arrived. Then I walked up the steps and followed the porch in a counterclockwise trek around the house. Clusters of cushioned outdoor furniture provided small oases on the wide expanse of wood. In back of the house, a flagstone walkway led to a four-car garage of stacked stones and slate roof that was larger than the apartment my older brother, our mother, and I had shared after she’d taken us from Graylee to the Atlanta suburbs. It was impossible not to feel anger at how he had thrived while we struggled.