The Cantaloupe Thief Read Online Free

table that sat between two rocking chairs. He took the rocker with navy cushions, motioning her to take the softer, green-upholstered rocker she loved.
    â€œDespite your unwillingness to feed me adequately, I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “These guys think no one cares when one of them dies.”
    Branigan was embarrassed. She hadn’t been aware until this morning that one of them had died, and reluctantly told Liam so.
    â€œYou can make it up to me,” he said. “I’ll help if I can with your murder story, and you write something on the hit-and-run.”
    â€œDeal.” She took a sip of coffee. “You know what I’ve always remembered you saying? Early on you said a man told you the worst part of being homeless wasn’t being cold or wet or hungry. The worst part was being ‘looked right through’.”
    Liam nodded. “And we try to look. I say that in every speech.”
    â€œThat sticks with people. Anyway, tell me about your guy. After I talked to you, I looked it up. All we ran was three inches. I missed it entirely.”
    â€œWell,” he said, “Vesuvius Hightower was killed on his bike where Oakley crosses Anders, there at the library. The driver didn’t stop.” The intersection was three blocks away, between the church shelter and Main Street. “I have no idea what he was doing there. Obviously, he missed our 9 o’clock curfew, so he was going to have to sleep outside. But he had done that before. No big deal.
    â€œVesuvius was a sweetheart when he was on his meds,” Liam continued. “Very gentle. Childlike. I’m pretty sure he was MR in addition to bipolar.”
    Branigan scribbled “mentally retarded”, which was still the official diagnosis, though not the politically correct one. “Mentally challenged” or “mentally disabled” were the terms The Rambler used.
    â€œHe lived here for eight months,” Liam went on. “Our mental health worker was making progress with him. He was on his meds and about to get permanent housing. But the reason I thought it was a story for you is that his father died the same way five years ago.”
    â€œYou’re kidding.”
    Liam picked up his phone and punched in three numbers. “Dontegan, can you come to my office for a minute?” He turned back to Branigan. “Dontegan told me about Vesuvius’s father on the morning we got word about V. It must have happened just weeks before I got here, because I didn’t know.”
    Dontegan walked through Liam’s open door.
    â€œDon-T, can you tell Branigan what you told me about V’s father?”
    â€œV used to ride his bike with his ol’ man,” Dontegan said. “Ever’where. You ain’t never see one ’thout the other. They come to church here way before Pastuh Liam, when nobody else hardly came. They stay in that neighborhood ’cross Garner Bridge. One night the ol’ man got on his bike, way late in the middle of the night. They think he was headed to the grocery. He got hit crossin’ the bridge. Car kilt him.”
    â€œAnother hit-and-run?” Branigan was amazed at the careless violence this population faced.
    â€œNah, the woman, she stop,” Dontegan said. “She was all cryin’.”
    â€œWas she charged?”
    He shrugged.
    â€œThen how do you know she was crying?”
    â€œJust what I heard.”
    She nodded. Armed with Vesuvius Hightower’s last name, she could search the paper’s archives for confirmation.
    Liam took up the story. “A lot of times our guys don’t have any family to organize a funeral service. But Vesuvius did. He had aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters. We held his service yesterday. They had honestly tried to help him, I think, but he’d worn them out. That happens a lot with the mentally ill and mentally challenged. Their families don’t have resources