Motherhood Is Murder

by Carolyn Hart

  She tried to get Martha out but couldn’t budge her or Idola, the way they were wedged together. He was coming fast, was halfway down, a dark-coated figure running in the forest’s shadow. She looked up through the shadows into his face, caught her breath and spun away, running.

  She ran as she had never run, sick with shock. Knowing he would grab her. He made no sound. She could barely hear him running now, on the damp pine needles.

  “Florie Mae, wait.”

  She ran full of fear, riddled with guilt for leaving them there. Cold with terror for her unborn baby. She fled around the curve of the hill, hit the gravel road and across it, pounding the forest floor racing for the house faster than she knew she could run; but he was gaining. She imagined his hands on her…

  “Florie Mae! Whatever happened isn’t…Florie Mae, wait! We can talk. We need to talk.”

  She ran cold with terror, his voice sickening her. What kind of fool did he think she was? His footsteps pounded, gaining on her. “Florie Mae, it’s all right, it’ll be all right.” She didn’t dare look back. Any second he would grab her. He was so close she could hear him breathing. Her own breath burned like lime dust in her lungs.

  “Wait, don’t run. It’s all right!” He hit the gravel behind her as she dove for Martha’s truck, the closest truck, swinging into the camper banging her knees on the metal, jerking the tailgate closed. She was snatching for the upper door when he grabbed it, pulling it from her hands. She rolled to the back of the camper, pressing against the cage, looking frantically for a weapon, for maybe a wrench, anything among the clutter.

  The second she touched the cage, the tomcat hit the wire, screaming. Its claws slashed through the wire mesh, raking her arm as Grady lunged in, reaching for her. “Wait, Florie Mae. It’s all right. Believe me, it’s all right.”

  What did he mean, it’s all right? What kind of brazen talk was that? Snatching the cage, she shoved it at him, forcing the door open. She watched in relief and horror as the tomcat flew out biting and raking him. That cat clung to Grady’s face venting all its wild rage, clawing and tearing at him, biting so deep that Grady screamed and struck at it, stumbling back. Tripping, he fell, his arms over his face. He rolled over, pressing hands and face to the ground, shouting something she couldn’t understand. The cat leaped off him and fled.

  Blood spurted from Grady’s neck. Sick and horrified, she rolled out of the camper nearly on top of him and flew for her own truck. Flinging the door open, she snatched up her phone—was into her truck dialing the sheriff when she heard a siren up on the road, the whoop-whoop of the rescue vehicle…

  Where was it headed? Was someone sick, up the mountain? Could she stop them, bring them here? They had to come here, come now. Martha and Idola needed them. If she ran to the road they’d be past, they’d be gone. In panic she lay on the horn, honking and honking, her racket mixed with the siren. How could they hear?

  But the siren died.

  She kept honking. She opened the door and shouted. “Down here!” She screamed. “At McPherson’s!” Then, gathering her wits, she snatched her phone and punched in 911.

  The sheriff answered. She couldn’t talk right. “At the lake,” she screamed. “McPherson’s. Ambulance is here, but…it’s the killer. Grady Coulter. He’s bleeding. Martha and Idola are hurt bad, real bad…in a car above the lake, a car he meant to push over.” All of this as the ambulance scorched down the gravel drive skidding to a stop beside her truck. She watched the medics race out to kneel over Grady Coulter. Dropping the phone, Florie Mae ran to them.

  In a moment she was in the ambulance beside one of the two medics, while the other had stayed with Grady. Moving fast up the little road, the vehicle’s wheels skidded in the gravel and pine needles. The driver was younger than Florie Mae but he looked determined, finessing the big van. At the third curve, he slowed, approaching the promontory where the rusted-out Dodge would be poised above the lake.

  The car was gone. The rocks that had held its wheels had been tossed aside. Piling out, she ran to the edge of the cliff, stood at its edge then started down clinging to the bushes, hugging a bush, panic sickening her.

  Far below, the water was still churning. She could see the glint of metal or glass down within the dark lake—but the car hung only half submerged, its right rear wheel wedged between the boulders.

  Above her, the medic started down. As he passed her, telling her to go back, she tried to follow him, but she was terrified of the height. For an instant, she hung on the side of the cliff, frozen and immobile.

  When she looked up, Albern Haber stood above her, his heavy work boots planted solidly, his black hair blowing against the sky.

  His arm and shoulder were bleeding, were all torn up, his bloody shirt was in tatters. She had seen animals with shotgun wounds, torn up that way. His face was ashen pale, his dark eyes wild. He held the shotgun by its barrel, the butt down as if he would chop down at her, would slam it on her hands, make her lose her frail grip on the bushes. Even as she stared up at him frozen with fear she heard the sheriff’s siren coming fast up the hills.

  A breeze drifted through the open windows of the Harkin kitchen, its cool breath mighty welcome after the heat of the day. Though the night was not so cool that the katydids had stopped their song; their buzzing filled the kitchen, as comforting as the crackle of the wood stove would be, come winter. They sat around the oak table, Florie Mae and James close together with their three babies sprawled on their laps. Granny, dishing up the children’s plates from the bowls that filled the table. Martha with her bruised face and sprained and bandaged arm. And Grady Coulter, Grady’s own face crisscrossed with claw scratches that were still red and angry, and his throat sewn up with seven stitches and sealed with a plaster-tape bandage.

  Their early supper was picnic leavings, cake and slaw, potato salad and deviled eggs and pickles and tea, and Granny had fried up a couple more chickens. Idola was in the hospital with two broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and two broken fingers where she had fought with Albern Haber. Albern was in the hospital, too, but he was under guard. They’d all just come from the little Greeley hospital, where two sheriff’s deputies sat with their chairs tilted back against the door of Albern Haber’s hospital room, one inside, one in the hall. Albern would be headed for a jail cell as soon as his shotgun wounds were tended.

  As for the tomcat, the moment he sprang off Grady, he’d scorched away through the woods heading for parts unknown. The worst of that was, from Florie Mae and Martha’s view, he hadn’t had a chance for his life-changing operation. Dr. Mackay had already left, that morning, when Martha got back to the clinic, the door had been locked tight, and no one answered at the house. Martha had caught up with Dr. Mackay at Cody Creek and had arranged to take the cat back late that afternoon. Now, such was not to be.

  Who knew where that tomcat would end up? Or what other mischief he’d stir in Farley County or how many more kittens he’d sire? Martha and Florie Mae just hoped he wouldn’t show up around Harkin’s store again. Even when Florie Mae had thought that cat was saving her life, lighting into Grady, that also had turned out a disaster. Maybe that tomcat carried bad luck around with him like a drinker totes his moonshine.

  Sheriff Waller had identified the fingerprints on the shotgun. The over-and-under twelve-gauge held enough prints to implicate half of Greeley. Rick McPherson’s prints, of course. It was his gun. The prints on top of Rick’s, on the trigger and stock, were Idola’s. Florie Mae’s prints were on the stock, where she’d picked up the gun. And then Albern’s prints, mostly on the barrel where he’d meant to use the gun as a battering ram against Florie Mae.

  But it was Idola’s prints on the trigger. Idola’s handling of that weapon had been quick and deliberate. She’d blasted Albern Haber twice in the shoulder before he snatched the empty gun away from her. If she’d had any more shots she might have finished him and saved Farley County the cost of a trial.

  The sheriff had a full confession from Albern,
who had turned cowardly at the last, meek and frightened. “He just spilled it all out,” the sheriff had said. “As to Rebecca, maybe Albern is telling the truth, that he had no notion to kill her. That he never meant to hit her, sure not hit her that hard. Said it happened real sudden-like.” Sheriff Waller, standing with them in the hospital emergency room, had tried hard to contain his anger. “Well, Albern sure didn’t stop with killing Rebecca. Once he killed Rebecca, seems like he taken off on a reg’lar binge of meanness.”

  Now, at the table, Martha said, “When I got up to Idola’s, it must’ve been around nine this morning, before ever I knocked on the door I saw Rebecca’s cat up that new gravel road. That’s what I come for, so I went on up the road before I rang the bell. See if I could catch her.

  “And there she was. It was Nugget—mostly all white, with that big gold circle on her side. Sitting smack in the middle of the new gravel where it was spread on the road.” Martha shivered. “Sitting on Rebecca’s grave.

  “That’s where I found the doll, just beside the gravel, nearly covered with leaves—just the way you found it later, Florie Mae. I’d knelt to pick it up when Albern came on me sudden, from around the hill—I guess he was up in the woods, saw me kneel down.” She looked at Florie Mae. “Well, I’d picked it up. I was kneeling there looking at it, feeling strange. And here came Albern, straight for me—and I knew. The doll lying there, where he’d been digging. Rebecca’s cat sitting there on the new-spread gravel. But mostly, the way Albern was looking at me. His look turned me cold clear to my toes.

  “I jumped up and run but he was faster. He grabbed me, jerked me around, bent my arm behind me, near broke it. Hit me and hit me, until I don’t remember. I just…I don’t remember much after that but darkness and hurting. Then the medics were there over me, I woke lying on the ground, on the steep hill beside the lake, looking down at the dark water. Lying beside the old car with the medic kneeling over me.”

  The medics had got Martha and Idola out of the car, had carried them around the shore and up the McPhersons’ stairs. Sheriff’s deputies had brought the car up later, using Albern’s backhoe, and chains and pulleys.

  “But up there on the road, when Albern grabbed me, the doll must have fell back into the leaves,” Martha said.

  Florie Mae nodded. “The ground was all scuffed, the leaves scuffed up. It was when he carried you around the hill and shoved you in that old Dodge that Idola saw you from her bedroom window.”

  Idola would make her statement to the sheriff when she felt stronger, but there in the hospital she’d had to talk about those terrible moments, had to tell Florie Mae. Idola had seen Martha’s pickup pull into her drive, had watched Martha hurry right on past the house and up the road. She’d figured that Martha saw the cat up there and was going to try to catch her. And then she saw the cat, too, there on the gravel.

  “Idola was still looking out the window,” Florie Mae said, “was just ready to go down and help try to catch the cat, when she saw you pick up something, there in the gravel—and she saw movement up in the woods. Saw Albern coming for you.”

  Florie Mae touched Martha’s hand. “Idola saw him grab you and hit you. She snatched up Rick’s loaded shotgun and ran, up along the road following Albern, trying to make no noise, scared he’d hear her. Said she didn’t dare shoot while he was carrying you. But when he shoved you in the car—he’d already moved it up to the cliff edge—she ran up, so scared she was shaking. When he turned on her, a-lunging to grab her looking all wild, she shot him twice in the shoulder. Said she didn’t want to kill him, just wanted to stop him, run him off.

  “That’s all she had, the two shots,” Florie Mae said. “Rick’s old over-and-under. When the gun was empty Albern, just a-bleedin’ and swearin’, grabbed her, jerked the gun away, and hit her. Pinned her against the car and beat her. She said she remembers him jamming her into the old car, on top of you. Remembers she was trying to scream but nothing came out, she couldn’t find any voice to cry out.”

  Florie Mae was still holding Martha’s hand. “When I got there—you were tangled in there like firewood, the two of you. You underneath, Idola thrown in on top. That’s how I found you—and none of us knew that Susan Slattery’s body was in the trunk.”

  James said, “Albern’ll be making his formal statement to the sheriff about now, I’d guess. He was near bawling when the sheriff arrested him.” James had ridden up from Cody Creek with the sheriff, after Florie Mae called for help—and James himself near frantic. James had helped the sheriff handcuff Albern and lock him in the backseat behind the security panel.

  “He was some talky,” James said. “Real scared. Said he saw Rebecca go in the bakery that night, said he’d only wanted to talk with her a few minutes—trying to get the sheriff to believe it was purely accident. Said he asked Rebecca to sit in his car, said he guessed she’d felt sorry for him, maybe guilty that she’d dumped him, he guessed that was why she got in his car. Albern said he’d been drinking pretty heavy. Well, they argued, he said something rude to her, and she slapped him. He hit her back, hard, knocked her against the door. Said her head hit the door and she passed out. That she never come to.

  James frowned. “He said his feelings was all mixed up inside him. He was sorry, with her a-laying there in his car. But deep down inside him, said his heart was a-pounding real hard. He kept talking, like he was in a church confessional. I just stood there by the sheriff’s car, listening. It was the last thing he said that sickened me most.” He looked down at the children, making sure they were indeed asleep. In his lap, both Bobbie Lee and Lacie June were deep under, their supper plates untouched, both children all tuckered out after their day at Cody Creek.

  “Well, I don’t see this makes Albern insane,” James said. “Don’t see that it makes him not responsible. But Albern told the sheriff that when he saw Rebecca lying there dead, that nothing he’d done in his life, not nothing he’d ever done with a woman, had filled him brim-up full with that kind of thrill as seeing Rebecca lying there dead.

  “To my way of thinking,” James said, “he got full up with the lust to kill. Seems to me that’s what made him rise up and kill Susan, when she found Rebecca’s scarf in his car.”

  Albern had told the sheriff that he’d had a date with Susan, the night she died. Said she seldom told her folks her plans. Albern told the sheriff that when Susan dropped her compact and went fishing under the seat for it, that was when she found Rebecca’s scarf. Said she’d hauled the scarf out, and just sat looking at him—then she’d snatched for the door handle, wanting to get away. And he’d grabbed her and killed her.

  “Albern told the sheriff,” James said, “that after he stuffed you and Idola in the car, Martha, he felt so weak from the gunshots, hurt so bad, that he stumbled up in the woods to hide before he passed out. Meant to go back in a few minutes, when he felt stronger, and push the car into the lake with you three in it. Get shut of the evidence, he said. Before he could do that, he passed out. That’s how you found him, Grady.”

  Florie Mae looked at Grady. “What were you doing up there? I thought it was you that hurt Martha and Idola, the way you come after me.”

  “I saw you with that shotgun, Florie Mae, I thought you’d shot Albern. Him layin’ up there in the woods half dead. I thought he’d maybe got smart with you, and you up and shot him.”

  Grady reached for another piece of fried chicken. The wounds the tomcat had bestowed hadn’t hurt his appetite. “This morning early, Albern and me went on over to Cody Creek soon as we got back from looking for Susan’s car. We helped with the fish and setting up the tables. I was helping the little kids fish, about eight, I guess, when I saw you, Martha, go by, headed up to the lake. Few minutes later I saw Albern leave, saw him heading up toward the lake, too. That made me mighty curious.

  “I told myself that was foolish, that he was likely goin’ get in a few hours work on the road. But then maybe an hour later when I saw you leave, Florie Mae, heading up that way, I got t
o thinking. Something about the way Albern acted the night before, looking for Susan Slattery, got me to wonderin’. Like he mightn’t have really been looking for Susan, like maybe he’d been playacting? The kind of uneasy feeling like when a ole bear’s prowling ’round your chickens out in the dark—you don’t see or hear nothing, but something’s not right out there.

  “When I saw you heading up for the lake alone, Florie Mae, I got that feeling. You two girls up there alone. And Albern up there. And the way he might could have only acted like he was a-lookin’ for Susan. Acted like he was lookin’ real hard—too hard.”

  James nodded. “A person’d expect Albern to just go plodding along lookin’, doing his duty. Last night he was just a-beatin’ the bushes, like a hound ready to tree a coon.”

  Grady said, “Well, I headed up that way. Figured you was going to Idola’s, Florie Mae. When I passed her road I saw your truck and Martha’s. Didn’t see Albern’s pickup down the road by his rig, didn’t see him working.

  “I went on up the road to turn around, and there was Albern’s truck, way at the top of the hill. Funny place to park. He had no work up there. I pulled up behind him, looked in his cab, then went on down the hill through the woods, listening for him. It was quiet, not a sound. Then I heard him moan.

  “Found him lying in the woods, shot, nearly unconscious. I had a look at him, went back to the truck and called the sheriff. When I got back to Albern again, I tried to get him to talk to me. He was havin’ trouble breathing. Asked him what happened. He opened his eyes, but he was groggy as a chicken in the sour mash. Said, ‘She shot me!’ That’s all he said. I asked him who shot him, but he kind of went off again, grabbing for me, muttering at me to call the medics, staring like he didn’t rightly see me.