Sour Grapes

ones who hadn’t led a habitual life of crime, people who had—other than one or two extremely foolish or cruel things—committed mostly decent deeds in their lives. They just couldn’t bear the burden alone.
    “If that phone hadn’t rung last night,” he said, twisting his hands in front of him so hard that his knuckles were turning white, “at that very moment when you and I were both walking by it. If that person on the other end had dialed correctly...”
    “Or if you hadn’t decided that murder was the best way to handle this problem.”
    When he didn’t reply, she decided to nudge him a little more. “Why didn’t you just let her win the beauty pageant, or pay her the money, or whatever she was wanting from you?”
    “Pay her? Fix the contest? If only that had been all she was asking for. Demanding. No, she wouldn’t let me pay for a quiet abortion, or send her away to Europe for a luxury ‘vacation’ and then find a good home for the baby. Not Barbie. She expected me to divorce Catherine and marry her. Winning a crown wasn’t enough for her; she wanted to be a senator’s wife. She wouldn’t settle for anything less.”
    “And you didn’t feel you had any other choice.”
    His eyes met Savannah’s; they were haunted, full of pain. “I did something very stupid, Savannah. I’d been faithful to my wife from the moment I met her, and then, this little twit comes along, shaking it under my nose, telling me what a strong, smart, sexy older guy I was, telling me how much she’d like to win this contest. She caught me at a lonely moment, and I went for it Not once, but twice. Two times and she was pregnant Can you believe it? The sex wasn’t even any good.” Savannah shook her head. “Such a big price to pay— those two girls’ lives, yours, your wife’s, your children’s, all destroyed—for some bad sex.”
    “Yeah, we sign these blank checks, buying something we want, without thinking what’s going to be written on the line. Someone my age should’ve known better.”
    “And you should have known that killing those girls would make it worse.”
    Anthony pulled back his fist and hit the barrel so hard that she heard the wood crack. “Don’t tell me what I should have known, what I should have done,” he shouted. “You don’t know what you would have done in my shoes. I had hurt my family with my stupidity, and I had to protect them any way I could from the repercussions of what I’d done. I did what I did for them... and this.” He waved his arm, encompassing the vast room and its bounty.
    Then his anger dissolved as quickly as it had appeared. He sagged against the barrel and began to weep.
    “I’m so glad that my father is dead,” he said, “and my mother and my grandparents. They were such proud people. They would have been so ashamed... so ashamed.”
    Savannah would have walked over to almost anyone who was sobbing, broken like that, and tried to comfort them. But the thought of Francie’s cold skin stopped her. She just stood there, watching, until she heard the footsteps behind her.
    Dirk and Jake McMurtry were entering the aging room, and behind them came Ryan, John, and Tammy. Dirk had a pair of cuffs in his hand.
    “Did you get it all?” Savannah asked Ryan.
    “Yes, every word,” he replied.
    Anthony Villa continued to cry as Dirk put the cuffs on him and Jake read him his rights. He was still weeping when they left the room with him, the rest of the entourage following close behind.
    Thanks for the loan of that new high-tech equipment,” she told Ryan, lacing her arm through his. “Dirk’s old department-issued wires don’t work worth beans, and I wanted to get everything.”
    “Well, they got it all,” Tammy said proudly. “I was sitting right there in the van with them while they were taping it. You came through loud and clear, and best of all, so did he. Congratulations.”
    Savanna watched as Dirk and Jake loaded Anthony Villa, husband, father, winemaker, and senate candidate into a waiting cruiser. “Yeah,” she said, subdued. “Thanks.”

    When Savannah crawled into her own bed that night, she couldn’t believe how comforting it felt to be home. Her old flannel nightgown, her familiar pillow, the moonlight streaming through her lace curtains and painting lovely shadows on the pink comforter that she had treated herself to last Christmas.
    Life was hard, work was brutal, her daily grind anything but feminine. So, Savannah made up for it