“No,” she said. “No . . . thanks.”
“Miss Lottie, they’ll be waiting for you,” said the nurse behind them. The hand holding Laurel’s gave it a gentle squeeze, and then Laurel stood up and followed Lottie to the cemetery.
The minister invited everyone at the graveside to come to the reception. Laurel started to go inside with the rest, but then she stopped. A tall bulky figure had broken away from the crowd and headed toward the graveyard. Miss Li’l Bit was going back to say good-bye again.
Good manners, decency, and common sense said it was a lousy time to try to question the woman. On the other hand, she just might be off guard. Laurel started after Miss Li’l Bit, only to have her arm grasped firmly from behind and to feel herself being forced to turn around. The scent of bourbon was in the air. She found herself face-to-face with Miss Peggy.
“Laurel, how nice,” said Miss Peggy, as if they’d just bumped into each other casually—and as if her hand wasn’t doing a remarkably good imitation of a tourniquet on Laurel’s arm. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
Years of dealing with a drunk had taught Laurel to read the signs. Miss Peggy had had more than a few. However, her blue eyes were sharp.
“I’m sure you know how close I am to Li’l Bit and Maggie,” Miss Peggy said, in a chatty voice. “We’ve gotten in the habit of taking care of one another. You’ll understand how protective you can be about your friends when you get older, dear, and they’re all you have.” She paused. “Li’l Bit and Maggie are kind of frail now, and all of this is very hard on them. They loved Vashti a great deal, and they’ve gotten to the age where they don’t take loss as well as they did when they were young. I’d hate for either of them to be fussed at, Laurel. Especially today.”
“I have a few questions I want to ask Miss Li’l Bit.”
“I’m sure you understand this isn’t the time to ask them.”
“When would be a good time?”
“Laurel, dear, perhaps you didn’t understand me. I don’t want Maggie and Li’l Bit to be hurt. Ever. Now, I’m sure Hank would have a hard time replacing you, because you really do keep his newspaper going, but he wouldn’t want to lose all the advertising money he gets from Garrison Gardens resort either. And I do have influence with the board.” She paused to let the threat sink in.
Laurel was torn between admiration at her balls-out honesty and wanting to smack her. Miss Peggy seemed to understand, because she smiled sympathetically.
“I’m too old to be afraid of anyone anymore, Laurel,” she said. “And I will take care of my own.” She turned and walked to her car as Laurel watched.
As soon as Miss Peggy’s car had pulled out of the church parking lot, Laurel got into her own. She opened the car window to get some air, and in the side mirror she saw that she and Miss Peggy had not been alone. Lottie, minus her faithful caretaker, was sitting on the porch of the church in her wheelchair, looking in Laurel’s direction. Laurel wondered how long she’d been there. She started her car and drove out of the parking lot. In her rearview mirror she saw that Lottie was watching her go.
MAGGIE HAD STAYED AFTER the funeral to help with the cleanup, but it was clear the Funeral Dinner Committee had everything in hand. She was starting out the door when the nurse who was attending Lottie came up to her.
“Miss Lottie wants to see you,” the girl said. She took Maggie out to the parking lot, where Lottie’s chair was next to the nursing-home van.
“Have to talk . . . Maggie,” Lottie said.
“Of course. I’ll come see you tomorrow.”
“No. Now.” Lottie looked up at the nurse standing behind her chair and indicated the church cemetery. “Over . . . there,” she said.
“Yes, Miss Lottie.”
“I’m not sure—” Maggie began, but the girl had already started pushing the chair.
They stopped at Vashti’s grave. The little nurse murmured something about Miss Lottie not tiring herself by staying too long and melted away. Lottie and Maggie were alone.
Maggie forced herself to look down. Vashti’s new grave was a red clay wound in the green lawn. White flowers from the church covered it like a massive bandage. It’s too soon to come here, Lottie, she wanted to say. The ground is too raw and so are we. Give me a few days to get it prettier in my mind. Then I’ll come with you and look. But Lottie wasn’t looking down at the ground. Her eyes were raised up to Maggie’s face. The hand in Maggie’s tightened its grip. “It’s time . . . Maggie,” Lottie said.
BY THE TIME SHE GOT HOME from work on Monday, Laurel had spent the better part of the day beating up on herself. She had gone to a funeral where she had no business being and harassed two old ladies, just because Sherilynn had a conspiracy theory. She told herself it had to stop.
She fixed dinner, taking much longer than usual to eat and to clean up the kitchen. She washed her hair and dried it. She made a halfhearted attempt to do her toenails.
Finally, she gave in. She went to the closet, got the snapshots and the birthday card out of the box, and spread them out on the coffee table. Young John Merrick stared at her from the pictures, looking eager and sincere. I wasn’t as bad as they said I was, he seemed to be saying. She couldn’t ignore him.
So what if Sara Jayne was right? What if something else did happen the night Grady shot her father, and the three Miss Margarets were lying about it? Why would they do that? She wondered vaguely if there might be some point in asking Sherilynn for her daddy’s phone number and calling him. He was retired and living on his boat in Florida. But what could she say? “Did you guys get it all wrong on the biggest case that ever hit this town?” seemed a bit tactless.
She opened the birthday card and read the inside again. Then she reread it. John had mentioned some kind of job, one that was important enough to warrant a story in the Gazette. How long would it take to go through the newspaper morgue and see if there was any mention of a job for John Merrick? Laurel had a key to the building.
She looked at her watch. It was after nine. She should stay home, watch a little television, and go to bed. She got her purse and headed out.
LI’L BiT HUNG UP THE PHONE wearily. For the past two hours she and Peggy and Maggie had been making marathon calls, arguing back and forth until all three of them were exhausted. At first she and Peggy had stood together, solidly opposed to what Maggie wanted to do. Then Peggy began to waver, worn down by the force of Maggie’s hoarse tired voice repeating the same arguments, the lateness of the hour, and possibly the refills of Gentleman Jack that Li’l Bit heard splashing over ice cubes on the phone. Finally Peggy capitulated and Li’l Bit was left alone, still insisting that she would never go along with them.
AT A LITTLE AFTER THREE IN THE MORNING, Laurel rubbed her burning eyes and looked around the windowless basement room that was the Charles Valley Gazette’s morgue. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d stayed up this late when sex and/or music hadn’t been involved.
The morgue consisted of floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets filled with old newspapers in oak-tag folders—no microfiche or computer files here. Some of the papers were spotted and smelled of mold; others were crumbly dry and brownish yellow. She had already worked her way through the month her father was killed, the three months preceding his death, and the two months following it.
The reporting on the story was terse, which was to be expected in a newspaper that could have been shut down with a snap of Mr. Dalt’s fingers. In late November there was an announcement of John Merrick’s death from a gunshot wound in a brief column placed on the front page below the fold. No space had been wasted on journalistic frills like who, what, where, why, or when. There was no mention of Grady Garrison or Nella Johnson, no mention of witnesses. The bulk of the piece was devoted to the history of the deceased’s checkered past and previous problems with the law.
Two weeks later another story appeared—this one buried on the back page of the paper—that informed the reader that Grady Garrison had admitted t
o second-degree murder in the accidental shooting of John Merrick during an altercation. Sentencing would follow.
That was it. No mention at all of a job. Frustrated, Laurel bundled the papers into their folders, put them back into the file cabinets, and left.
By the time she got home she was past frustration and into depression.
She walked into her cramped living room and turned slowly, taking in every corner and article of furniture. “This is my life,” she said out loud. “I live in a house I hate with the sofa I used to sleep on as a kid because Ma never got around to buying me a bed. I’ve got a wall full of old books from my dead daddy, the murderer. I live with ghosts.”
She ran to the closet in the bedroom, pulled out the carton of junk, took it into the kitchen, and threw it in the trash. Then, just for good measure, she dumped the remains of the grits on it.
Which accomplished exactly nothing. She knew that. Because even if she locked the door on this place and ran to New York to be with Josh, a part of her would still be trying to make things right for her ma. And she’d still be hoping her daddy wasn’t a mindless animal who killed a man so he could screw the widow.
She sat on the sofa and looked at the wall of books. “I’m trapped,” she said.
That was when she noticed she had a message on her answering machine.
Chapter Twenty-four
THE NIGHT BEFORE, when they finally made their decision and left the message for Laurel, they hadn’t discussed where they would sit when they talked to her. But when Li’l Bit walked out to the porch, Maggie and Peggy automatically followed, even though the afternoon sun was starting to fade and it was getting chilly. Maggie pulled a heavy cardigan around her shoulders and sat on her swing. Peggy took her place in the rocker and put her thermos on the porch floor next to it. Li’l Bit had already brought out a straight-back chair from the kitchen. As Maggie and Peggy settled in, she set the kitchen chair so it would be opposite the big wooden one she used.
No one spoke. Peggy and Maggie seemed to be waiting for her to go first, but she wasn’t about to say anything. This meeting was their idea. She went inside and brought out Maggie’s lemonade, her own iced tea, and a glass for Peggy, who was thoroughly capable of sipping straight from her thermos if she didn’t. It had been many years since she’d given up bringing out a Coke for Peggy, but she had one in the fridge, along with a Dr Pepper and some apple juice. She had no idea what Laurel McCready drank.
She had given in to them because she was tired, not just of fighting but of the whole business. And besides, they had nothing to be ashamed of. So why was she ready to jump out of her skin? And why did Peggy look so grim? And why was Maggie sitting up in that ramrod-straight way that said she was holding herself together with spit and Scotch tape?
“We did what was right,” she said, to no one in particular.
“We did what we thought was right,” Maggie amended.
“We did what we had to do,” said Peggy.
Then they all stiffened and didn’t say anything more because a car was coming down the driveway. It stopped by the boxwood hedge at the side of the house and Laurel got out. They watched her come toward them.
LAUREL GOT OUT OF THE CAR and saw the three women on the porch. They sat in a row, watching her walk toward them and, for no reason she could put her finger on, scaring the hell out of her. She walked slowly, hoping that something, a rogue tornado twisting out of the sky or a once-in-a-lifetime Georgia earthquake, would keep her from reaching them.
THAT GIRL COULDN’T MOVE any slower if she was trying to make us all crazy, Peggy thought. One more minute, and I’m going to drag her up here by her hair.
She looks frightened, Maggie thought. As frightened as we are.
There’s nothing to be afraid of, Li’l Bit thought. We did the right thing.
LAUREL REACHED THE STEPS to the porch. She started up as Miss Li’l Bit pushed herself out of her chair and Dr. Maggie let herself off her swing, and they both came to her. Miss Peggy also rose, but she stood in the background.
“Laurel, thank you for coming,” said Dr. Maggie.
“May I get you something to drink?” asked Miss Li’l Bit.
“No, thank you,” she said. She stood awkwardly in front of them. They didn’t seem to know what to do about her either. Finally Miss Peggy moved in. “Take that chair, Laurel,” she said, “and let’s get started.”
“Peggy—” Dr. Maggie said.
But Miss Peggy cut her off. “We need to get this over with,” she said. “If you stay out here too long you’ll get one of your chest colds. And if we don’t start soon, we’ll lose Li’l Bit to apoplexy.” She turned to Laurel as if the other two weren’t there. “Please sit,” she said. “This is going to be a strain on them, so the sooner we get going the better.”
Laurel sat. So did Miss Li’l Bit and Dr. Maggie. Laurel turned to Miss Peggy, but it was Dr. Maggie who spoke. “We want to tell you how your father died, Laurel,” she said. “We want you to know what really happened.”
Having gotten the ball rolling, Peggy sat back to let Li’l Bit and Maggie take over.
“You have to understand what it was like thirty years ago,” Li’l Bit began, her elegant voice getting flutier and more elegant as it always did when she was under stress.
“Laurel will be fair,” Maggie murmured.
“She has to understand the context.”
“She wants to know about her father, not politics.”
“This is about right and wrong.”
Peggy closed her eyes and let herself smile. The familiar old duet was going again, the mix of high voice and low that had been the only constant source of support in her life. If only this young woman sitting in front of them with the suspicious eyes could understand how dear it was.
“Dr. Maggie, you said you were going to tell me what happened the night my father died.” Laurel’s voice cut through the cool air. Peggy opened her eyes.
“Yes, we did,” said Maggie. “It all began with Vashti’s father, Richard.” She paused for a moment; then she looked to Li’l Bit, giving her the floor. This part of the story was Li’l Bit’s to tell.
LI’L BIT THOUGHT ABOUT DISAGREEING with Maggie, because it began much further back than Richard. It began with injustice and inhumanity and evil, with concepts of right and wrong a lonely man taught his young daughter on this very porch. But Peggy and Maggie would say she was complicating things if she went into all that, and maybe they were right. So she folded her hands in her lap and began telling the story Maggie’s way.
“In the late sixties the Gardens became so popular the board decided they needed guards at the resort. No one liked the idea much, but the time had come. They put up gates and fences, and they hired men to patrol the grounds and guard the entrances to the various attractions. You have to understand the way the workforce was set up at the Gardens in those days. Menial jobs were done by African Americans; they were the maids and waiters and gardeners. Whites were the housekeepers and head gardeners. The new job of security guard carried more authority than the work usually done by African Americans, but since it was rough outdoor work, African Americans were hired. One of them was Richard Johnson.
“Then they found they needed a security staff working indoors, and they hired whites for those positions. One of them was your father. Grady Garrison got him the job.
“Sometimes the guards would be asked to cover for one another, if they needed more men for a big event or if someone was out sick. Without anyone realizing it was happening, the security staff became integrated. It was the only staff at the resort that was. I’m sure that doesn’t sound like much to you today, but it was monumental back then.
“The security staff grew until they needed someone to oversee it. The job title would be Chief of Security, and it would be an executive-level position. Some of us thought an African American should fill it. There had never been an African American in charge of a department at the Gardens before, and we felt this was a golden
opportunity. Again, I wish I could make you understand what a revolutionary idea that was. We suggested it to the board.”
PEGGY CLOSED HER EYES again, and let Li’l Bit’s voice chirp over her. A group headed by Li’l Bit and Maggie had indeed gone to the Garrison Gardens board to suggest Richard Johnson for the new position. But in those days the board did what Dalton wanted. Which Li’l Bit and Maggie and Lottie and Nella knew very well. So they wanted Peggy to take it up with Dalton. Garrison Gardens was no little local resort, it was known all over the world, Li’l Bit argued. They couldn’t keep acting like a bunch of backwater bigots forever. Richard had worked as a guard for five years at the Gardens; he was smart, dependable, and well liked.
And he was Vashti’s father, which trumped all the other reasons as far as Peggy was concerned. Peggy would have walked over hot coals for Vashti. They all would have.
Vashti was eleven by then, confident, affectionate, and smart as a whip. Nella wanted the honor of the new job as much for her as for Richard. “I want Vashti to see her daddy go to work in a suit,” she said. In addition to working in a suit, if Richard got the new job he would get a big hike in salary. Nella also wanted that for Vashti.
So even though she never talked to Dalt about business, Peggy went to him about Richard. Dalt was torn.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong, sweetheart,” he said. “I’d like to give it to Richard; he’s a good worker. But it’s too late. Grady already promised the job to John Merrick.”
“Dalt says he doesn’t want to undermine Grady’s authority,” Peggy reported back to Li’l Bit and Maggie. “He says Grady’s really trying hard now, and he has to stand by him.”
The Three Miss Margarets Page 24