Bitter Sweets

can you say that? You’ve lived long enough to see people do horrible things to each other.”

    “Sure I have. But I don’t think there’s anybody that hasn’t got a smidgen of good in ‘em. Course, with some folks, the good is as hard to find as teeth in a hen’s beak. But that doesn’t mean it ain’t there. Just means you ain’t looked hard enough to find it.”

    Savannah shook her head and began to draw nonsensical lines in the sand to express her anger and frustration. “1 guess YOU haven’t seen the sort of things that I have, Gran. When You’re a cop, you-”

    ‘Now, don’t go givin’ me that bunch of hooey. A body doesn’t have to be a police officer to see meanness. You think I haven’t seen wickedness in my day, girl? I lived through two world wars, not to mention those messes in Korea and Vietnam. I was in the thick of the Civil Rights Movement, marchin’ right there with the best of’em. With my own eyes I saw horrors perpetrated on African-Americans and their little children by cowards wearing bed sheets. And I tell you now, I’ll never forget it.”

    She took a deep breath and rolled over onto her back. “I’ve seen evil and I’ve seen the suffering it caused. But I still don’t think people are ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ We’re all a combination of both. It’s just that some are more one than the other.”

    A couple of seagulls floated overhead, while sandpipers pranced on skinny legs along the lacy edges of the waves. Savannah watched, feeling mildly chastised as she considered her grandmother’s wisdom. It was always so easy to assume that you knew more than your elders, she thought. So easy, and so foolish.

    “That’s why people are so surprised,” Gran continued, “when a ‘good’ person does a ‘bad’ thing. We go around thinking there are the heroes and there are the villains, and that everybody is either one or the other. But even the best of us and the worst of us play both roles from time to time. A person is capable of doing loving and noble deeds, and he’s capable of doing hateful, hurtful things. He makes the decision every minute of every day which he’s gonna do.”

    Savannah thought of the trials she had attended, where the defense attorneys had presented evidence that their clients had given generous donations to orphanages, lovingly cared for aged parents, and supported the local Little League teams. But the prosecution had proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that those same individuals had committed heinous crimes with cold calculation and a complete lack of remorse.

    “I guess,” Savannah said, “that in the course of a lifetime, we all do plenty of both.”

    “That’s right, sugar.”

    “But that’s a lot more complicated, Gran. It’s so much easier to just think ‘we’ are the good guys, and ‘they’ are the bad ones.

    “ Easy ain’t always right. “

    “That’s true, Gran. And right ain’t always easy.”

    When the petite, conservative brunette behind the bar at the Shoreline told Savannah, “No, Vanessa isn’t working today,” Savannah could almost swear she looked relieved.

    Past experience had taught her that it could be very enlightening and worthwhile to talk to your suspect’s enemies. Their motives for spilling what they knew might be less than honorable, and you had to take what they said with a barrel of salt pork. But often they were more truthful than friends.

    “I’m Zelda. What can I get you to drink?”

    Savannah knew better than not to order anything. Bartenders didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t holding a glass in their hand.

    “A Coke will be fine.”

    Slender, physically fit Zelda looked Savannah up and down. “Diet?”

    “No way.”

    She drew her a cola and set it on the bar in front of her. What do you want Vanessa for?” she asked, trying to sound casual, but not succeeding.

    Aha, Savannah thought, Zelda is nosy, too. All the better, “I wanted to ask her some questions about her boyfriend, Earl.”

    “He’s dead. Murdered, they say.”

    “Who says?”

    “The police. Some half-bald guy in a trench coat and dirty sneakers came in this morning and told her.”

    “That would have been Dirk Coulter. The sneakers aren’t really all that dirty, just ancient. He really does toss them into the washer once in a while.”

    “You know him?”

    Savannah nodded.

    “Are you a cop, too?”

    “No, a private detective.”

    Zelda looked up and down the bar, but the place was