by Ann B. Ross
“What is it?” I asked, although I could plainly see that it was an amber plastic vial with a white cap and a scratched and blurred prescription label glued to it. Shaking it, I confirmed that it was empty.
“Where did you get this?”
“On the floor of that house.”
“Why, Lloyd, it could’ve had somebody’s medicine in it. He might need a refill or something. You think we ought to take it back?”
“No, ma’am, I do not,” he said, staring straight ahead as he gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “I think we ought to get as far away from that place as we can and stay away from it. Miss Julia,” he said with a frowning glance at me, “that was a drug house.”
Chapter 44
*
A drug house? What did that mean, for heaven’s sake? I wasn’t exactly sure, but I could imagine enough to send a tingle rippling down my back. People who fiddled with drugs in empty cabins deep in the woods weren’t the most welcoming when visitors dropped by, no matter how urgently a rest stop was needed.
“You really think so?” I asked, wanting to look over my shoulder to see if we were being followed, which was ridiculous, in that there really was a long line of cars following us.
He nodded. “Yes’m, it had all the signs—empty house, no neighbors, off the beaten path, tire treads in the dirt, and a few empty prescription bottles. Somebody could be selling from it, or it could just be a safe place for people to take drugs, then sleep it off. You know, without being afraid the cops’ll bust in.”
“Hm-m, well, you seem to know a lot about it, Lloyd. I don’t think I would’ve thought of such a thing.”
He shrugged. “You hear things at school. I mean, teachers talk to us, and there’re all these videos they show us. You know, to warn us about dirty needles and taking stuff when you don’t know what it is. Things like that.”
“Seems to me they’d warn you about taking something even—maybe especially—when you do know what it is.”
“Oh, they do. Anyway, I’m just glad nobody was there. We could’ve really been in hot water if we’d come tooling up when a sale was going on.”
“Well, there’ll be no more sales going on now,” I said, dropping the vial in my purse for safekeeping. “I’m going to report this to Coleman.” Coleman Bates, my special friend in the sheriff’s department, was now a sergeant but, with the recent election over, expecting to be promoted. To take down an active drug house could easily boost him to a captaincy. “But what about this, Lloyd? What in the world could one of the Crawfords have been doing there?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he said, slowing as the line of cars bunched up. “Whichever one it was could’ve been looking at property, like you heard. Or they could’ve taken a wrong turn, like we did.”
“That’s true,” I said, but something else had occurred to me that I was unwilling to even think about, much less mention. “We’ll let Coleman figure it out.”
Lloyd was silent for a few minutes, then he said, “I don’t know, Miss Julia. Word could get around that I’m an informer or something. I mean, I’m all for law and order and all that, but I’ve got enough to worry about already.”
Before I could bore into that, he flipped on the blinker and turned onto the drive to The Safe Harbor. “We’re here,” he said. “And, uh, maybe we should just tell Miss Mildred about the chicken truck. Not about the house.”
“I agree. The fewer who know, the better. And as for being an informer, don’t you worry about that. I don’t mind informing on drug dealers one iota. I’ll tell Coleman and, of course, Sam. Lillian, too, because I tell her everything anyway. And I guess your father, as well—he’s in the business of law enforcement, too. But nobody else. Mildred can keep a secret, but with all she has on her mind now, well, there’s no telling what she might let slip. We’ll just forget about it and let the experts deal with it. But one thing, Lloyd.” I stopped and sat up to look for Mildred. “Pull up under the porte cochere where she can see us.”
He did, but Mildred didn’t come out.
“What did you want to tell me?” he asked, watching the double doors.
“What? Oh, well, speaking of who not to tell, let me tell you that you should never, ever share anything with Miss LuAnne unless you want the whole town to know. That woman—and she’s one of my best friends—is an informer of the first order. She can’t keep anything to herself. And I don’t mean to talk about my friends behind their backs—I’ve told her the same thing a million times. So don’t tell her.”
“No’m, I won’t.”
Then we both started laughing—a little nervously, I admit, but laughing at the thought of Lloyd’s sharing a secret with, of all people, LuAnne Conover. It was ludicrous of me to have even brought it up, but that just shows how shaken I was at the thought of our having ended up at a drug house in the wilds of Abbot County. And, even worse, at the thought that Lloyd could be thought a confidential informant and, consequently, appear on somebody’s hit list.
“You just forget about it, honey,” I said, my laughter suddenly gone as a roll of thunder warned of another imminent downpour. “Don’t tell any of your friends—don’t confide in anyone, except maybe your father. I expect Coleman will want us to keep quiet about it anyway while he organizes whatever he has to organize. But I don’t want word of your involvement getting around school. Just leave everything to me.”
* * *
—
We finally got Mildred home, but, I declare, that woman talked the whole way. We heard all the details of Horace’s progress—slow but steady, it seemed. We heard about his physical therapy routine, his memory lapses, his diet, his medications, his restless leg syndrome, even his daily constitutionals. She stopped enumerating the items on Horace’s rehabilitation routine long enough to commiserate with us about the perils of sharing a road with top-heavy trucks, as well as with tandem trucks, box trucks, and noisy smoke-spewing trucks, then tacked on pickup trucks for good measure. We heard about her plans to employ a gentleman’s gentleman to care for Horace when he came home, as well as her intention to have a physical therapist make thrice-weekly visits to her home to increase Horace’s muscle tone.
Silence reigned when she finally climbed out of the car at her front veranda and the door closed behind her, closing off a paean of praise and gratitude for our having driven her.
“Whew,” I said as Lloyd drove back onto Polk Street. “The more worried she is, the more she talks. But she is a good person, Lloyd, with the kindest of hearts.” I looked with longing at my own house as we passed it on our way to Rosewood Lane. “I just hope she remembers to call Lillian and let her know why we’re running late. And Sam, too, of course, but he’ll be engrossed in the news and may not even have noticed the time. And your mother, too. She’ll be worried about you. I tell you, Lloyd, this has taught me a lesson—I am going to start taking my phone everywhere I go. Even if it is as heavy as lead, and I have to empty my pocketbook down to the lint in the bottom in order to find it when I need it.”
“Me, too,” he said. “But I sure do thank you for coming to the house with me. It’ll be dark pretty soon, and it’s already raining again, so I’ll hurry and check the cabinets.”
He pulled to the curb in front of number sixteen Rosewood and turned off the ignition. “It won’t take long,” he said. “I hope.”
“I see Mr. Wheeler’s truck’s still here,” I said, noting the pickup parked in front of number eighteen as we disembarked and hurried to the porch. “So you wouldn’t have been alone after all. But, then, he doesn’t work late very often, does he?”
“No’m,” Lloyd said as he inserted the house key in the front door. “He starts real early, though.” He looked up as another car pulled to the curb behind Mr. Wheeler’s truck. “Come on, Miss Julia,” he said, pushing the door open and entering. “I need to get started on this.”
As I be
gan to follow him inside, I looked back and saw Lauren Crawford getting out of the car. Thinking of Sam’s advice to befriend her, I turned back to greet her and, hopefully, to engage her in conversation.
“Come on,” Lloyd said again, taking my arm and pulling me inside. “I need to get this done and get home. Mama will be worried.” He closed the door behind us, picked up a box cutter, and began to open one of the several cabinet-size cartons in the middle of the room.
“Well,” I said, frowning, “I just thought I’d speak to Mrs. Crawford while you do this. I mean, I’ll help if you’ll tell me what to do, but there’s only one box cutter.”
“You can look over the cabinets when I get ’em open. Look for scratches in the paint and cracks in the wood—things like that. Things that might’ve happened during shipment. Anyway,” he went on after a brief pause, “she won’t stay long with my car parked out front.”
That went right past me while I was running my hand over a white upper cabinet, feeling for signs of damage. Then I straightened up and looked at him. “What does your car have to do with Mrs. Crawford?”
“Well,” he mumbled as he slit open another carton, “it lets them know somebody’s over here.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Lloyd,” I said, quite firmly, “what is going on? What’re you acting so funny about?”
He sighed and put down the box cutter. “Come on,” he said, and without looking at me, turned and went into what would eventually be the back bedroom. I followed him into the darkening room, saw him point at a rain-spattered side window, and looked over his shoulder to see a matching window, blazing with light, in the house next door.
“I saw them,” he mumbled, his head turned away. “I didn’t mean to. I mean, I wasn’t looking or anything. I just couldn’t help but see them . . . kissing.”
“Who kissing?” I demanded. Then with a sudden clearing of the mind, I said, “You mean . . . Mrs. Crawford?”
“Yes’m,” he said, plainly miserable, “and Mr. Nate.”
“Oh, my Lord,” I said, and would’ve sat down if there’d been a chair.
“Miss Julia, I wouldn’t have looked if I’d known. I just walked back here to get my jacket to go home, and there they were right in front of the window. They didn’t know I was here because I hadn’t turned on any lights. And I don’t want ’em to know.”
“No, of course not, but didn’t they notice your . . . ? Oh,” I said, the light finally dawning, “you’d come on your bike, hadn’t you?”
He nodded. “It was up against the porch. I guess they didn’t see it.”
“Oh, Lloyd,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry that happened, but you know it’s not your problem.”
“Yes’m, I know, but it kinda feels like it is.”
Chapter 45
*
Now, isn’t that just the way it goes? Guilt by association, I guess, even when the association is as slight as having glanced through a window. I could feel a spark of indignation light up at the carelessness of the truly guilty parties. How dare they carry on like that where they could be seen? And be seen by an innocent who wouldn’t know what to make of it?
Yet even though I was hardly an innocent, I didn’t know what to make of it, either. How was I to help Lloyd lift the burden of feeling himself a peeping Tom or an informant or, heaven help us, somebody who was aiding and abetting by keeping silent? Or, if we turn it around, feeling that he was a tattletale or a gossipmonger if he told what he’d seen?
One of the things—well, one of the many things—I’ve learned about teenagers is that they have strong feelings about fairness. They recognize injustice as soon as they hear or see it. And they have difficulty just shrugging it off or accepting the fact that life, in general, is not fair. As somebody famous once said.
So I tried to ease Lloyd’s sense of being an unwitting witness to a wrongful act by telling him that these things have a way of working themselves out, that he should try to put it out of mind, that some adults get in over their heads before they know it, and that it wasn’t his problem to solve.
All of which were inadequate responses to his very real question of how he should handle what he had seen.
“Here’s the thing, Lloyd,” I said as we walked out of the back room and I immediately ran into a cabinet still sitting in the middle of the floor. Rubbing my thigh and limping a little, I went on. “There’s nothing you can or should do. You’re certainly not going to run tell Dr. Crawford, are you? And you’re not going to go talk man to man with Mr. Nate, are you? And as for Mrs. Crawford, I’ll tell you that she may already be suffering the pangs of guilt. The whole thing may be in the process of resolving itself, so all you have to do is to keep reminding yourself that it’s not your business. You had nothing to do with starting it nor do you have anything to do with ending it.”
“Yes’m, I guess so,” he said. “But I feel better with somebody else knowing besides just me.”
I could take some comfort in that, but of course the onus was now on me. What should I do about an extramarital affair between two people I knew? Taking the advice I’d just given to Lloyd, I reminded myself that it was none of my business. Not by any means, though, did that mean I approved of it.
In addition to knowing some things that Lloyd didn’t—the main one being Lauren Crawford’s questionable state of mind—I felt downright sick at heart. Being involved extramaritally would be enough to unsettle anybody—except, I reminded myself, somebody who felt above the law like Wesley Lloyd Springer, my late first husband. As far as I knew, he’d never had a qualm about breaking vows and carrying on in unseemly ways. Lauren Crawford, on the other hand, seemed to be having more qualms than she could easily handle.
If that was the case, it would certainly explain some, if not all, of her odd behavior. Which raised her in my estimation, for it showed that she was uneasy in the role of unfaithful wife.
But uneasy enough to plan her own funeral? My word, I could think of better ways to get out of an uncomfortable situation than to start specifying hymns and coffin covers! Of course, there are people—and I’ve known some—who are so particular that they plan all their social functions down to the type of script on the monogrammed paper towels in their guest bathrooms.
In other cases, though, the social functions of some slapdash women I’ve known seemed to have been thrown together at the last minute without forethought or writing out a dozen lists of things to do. Most socially minded women, however, and I admit to being one of them, make detailed plans far ahead of time—polish the silver and order floral arrangements the week before, write out a specific menu and a grocery list at the same time, arrange early for a thorough house cleaning, not forgetting the front porch and walkway, set the table the day before, and above all, discuss the details with Lillian a dozen times to be sure we weren’t forgetting anything.
Now, I don’t think that’s being too particular when you entertain a group of critical and sharp-eyed women who will certainly talk about you if your silver is tarnished. But I draw the line at being so detail-oriented as to make specific personal funeral arrangements, even though it would be your last social function. Making a good impression is important, I admit, but why should I care which hymns are sung—I won’t hear them. So LuAnne could recommend preplanning all she wanted to, I just wasn’t that picky.
I couldn’t, however, pass judgment on Lauren’s attitude about entertaining guests, because as far as I knew, she hadn’t entertained any, at least not in Abbotsville. So getting an unexpected glimpse of her personal life didn’t help me understand her any better, although I could now see why she had been distracted enough to drive through a stop sign.
I made a mental note to remind Lloyd to be extra cautious if he found himself driving on the same street as she was.
* * *
—
All of these thoughts had be
en pinging around in my head as Lloyd and I locked the house, got in the Bonneville, and drove to his house, where I just sat for a minute watching sprinkles of rain dance on the windshield.
Lloyd turned off the engine, then, half under his breath, he said, “You think I ought to tell Mama?”
I thought for a minute. “No, not yet, anyway. Your mother is trying to be Mrs. Crawford’s friend. She may have already invited her over for tea sometime in the next few days. Your mother would be very uncomfortable, knowing something like that, while trying to pretend that she didn’t.”
Lloyd managed a tiny smile. “My mother,” he said, “doesn’t like thinking anything bad about anybody.”
“I know she doesn’t. And that makes her one of the kindest of all the people I know. I think, for the time being at least, that the best thing for us to do is exactly what you’ve been doing—staying away from that house unless you have a car to park out front. Those two have been very careless, Lloyd. Who knows? You may not have been the only one to have seen them.”
I opened the car door, started to swing my feet out, then turned back. “You know, after thinking it over, I’m going to change my mind about telling anyone. I think that as soon as your father comes home, you should tell him what you saw. He needs to know why you don’t like being there by yourself, and, believe me, your father will understand. He is a man of the world and, as such, knows how to handle such matters.”
Lloyd was silent for a minute, then he said, “I sure am glad you said that. I’d feel a whole lot better if he knew why I’ve been so slack.”
“He’ll understand,” I said, repeating myself, but confident that if anybody would, it’d be J. D. Pickens. “But don’t tell anybody else about it. Your mother, though, needs to know why we’re so late, so tell her about the chicken truck and how we took a wrong turn, but I wouldn’t mention the drug house—she’d just worry.” I reached over and patted his arm. “It’ll work out, Lloyd. I’ll let you know what Coleman says, but now I’ve got to get home before Sam calls out the rescue squad. Sleep well tonight, honey. You’ve certainly had a day of it.”