The Peace Haven Murders

by M. Glenn Graves

  “Then use any word you like.”

  “Well, could you give me a better word than invalid?”

  “How about incapacitated?” the tall woman said with some slight irritation in her voice.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Mattie said.

  “It means your husband cannot walk without assistance, use the bathroom without help, and has trouble eating without another person assisting him,” the tall woman said trying hard to control her annoyance with this unnecessary ruse. She had a job to do and wanted to complete it expeditiously.

  “Well, all of that is true, of course. But, I can’t spell that word. Do you have something simpler?”

  “Put down that your husband has problems with mobility,” the tall woman said, controlling herself. Her voice had no emotion in it except impatience.

  “Oh, that’s better. I like that. I can spell that, too.”

  The two people sitting on the sofa continued to watch Mattie Rowland as she filled in the forms. She had other questions which the tall woman answered without feeling. Mattie left the living room two or three times to look in on her husband who was resting, and to check on the bread she was making in the oven in the small kitchen in the back of the house.

  “The timer on the stove is broken,” she confessed as she returned to her seat next to the sofa. “But I’m almost finished here. Just another two or three questions. So many questions to answer. Why is there so many forms to fill out?”

  “Blame the government,” the tall woman offered. “They force us to ask all of these things. Regulations, just more and more regulations. Somebody is always adding to our work load. Most of it is unnecessary, but it’s the law. It’s demanded of us and we have to comply,” she said with the ever-so-slight feeling of annoyance in her voice.

  It was as if Mattie had inadvertently touched a nerve of some sensitiveness in asking her innocent question. The black man even noticed the difference in the tall woman’s voice. He knew that she was lying, but her words sounded as if she were telling the truth on some level.

  Mattie finished the forms and handed them to the woman.

  “May we see Mr. Rowland now?” the tall woman asked.

  “Well, he’s still resting. He always takes a little nap after lunch. He’s awfully tired these days.”

  “We have to see the patient, Mrs. Rowland. We have to set up his room for our therapy to be any value to him,” the tall woman said.

  “I understand. Let me go back and see if I can wake him.”

  The tall woman almost smiled and nodded agreement as Mattie got up and left the room. She slowly walked down the short hallway to a back room. The floor creaked and popped as she slid along the uncarpeted hardwood floor. The black man looked at the tall woman and gave the impression he wanted to say something to her, but didn’t. The tall woman stared at the papers on the clipboard she had in her lap. The writing appeared to be that of an early adolescent, someone learning to write cursive and not too sure of themselves about forming the letters. She thought how funny it is that we begin our writing lives with an awkward script and more often than not end our lives with the same type of script.

  “Miss Saunders,” Mattie said in a loud voice from the back of the house, “would you come in here please?”

  Marilyn Saunders got up and walked confidently in the direction of Mattie Rowland’s voice. At the end of the hallway she could easily see that Ernie Rowland was in a bed in the room on the left. Mattie was standing on the left side of the bed next to him. Ernie was not awake.

  “I can’t rouse him,” Mattie said. “Would you see if you can wake him up?”

  Marilyn Saunders moved closer to the man lying in the bed. She approached him from the right side even though there was less room to do so. She put her left hand close to his nose and mouth to see if she could detect any air coming out. She felt nothing. She shook the patient and waited to see if he would open his eyes and speak. Nothing happened. She shook him again and waited. The patient was very still. She felt for the pulse on his left hand. Nothing. Marilyn knew enough to check for the pulse around his neck. She could find nothing pulsating.

  “Henry,” she called out to the black man still in the living room, “come in here.” It was an order, not an invitation.

  “Check Mr. Rowland for vital signs?”

  Henry stared at her in disbelief. He was thinking that this was not part of what he had reluctantly agreed to do. He stared at the man in the bed who was not moving at all. Henry looked over at Mattie who was just standing by the left side of the bed without comment. She was waiting for Ernie to wake up. It was more than obvious to Henry that Ernie Rowland was not going to wake up.

  “He’s dead, Miss Saunders,” Henry said after he barely touched Ernie Rowland’s wrist.

  The tall woman’s first reaction was disbelief, but that quickly changed to relief when it crossed her consciousness that she would not have to perform her duties on this day, this time, to this person. Natural causes had taken some desperation out of her life and she was relieved. She composed herself quickly.

  “Mrs. Rowland, I think you need to call the funeral home.”

  Mattie moved her eyes slowly from Ernie’s body to Marilyn Saunders who was still standing on the right side of the bed. Her eyes were empty of any expression. It was as if someone had removed her personality from her body without asking her permission. She felt numb. She had no idea what to do next. There was no way she was going to call anyone at this moment.

  “Grab her, Henry. I think she’s going to fall,” the tall woman directed.

  Henry quickly moved from the foot of the bed to the left side and placed his strong hands on Mattie’s fragile body to steady her and keep her from falling. He guided her to the only chair in the room and helped her to sit down. His help seemed to be more kindness than duty, but it went unnoticed because was Mattie Rowland was in shock. She would remember little of what was done for her the rest of the day.

  “We need to leave,” Saunders said.

  “We has to call… someone,” Henry said.

  “You call,” she said to him.

  “They knows my voice. I used to work for them some. Too many questions if I calls.”

  Marilyn Saunders sighed loudly and walked back towards the front of the house looking for a telephone to use. She finally found one on a kitchen wall almost hidden by the cabinets and some furniture that made the already small kitchen even smaller. There was no phone book evident anywhere so she rifled through several kitchen counter drawers before she found one. She dialed the number for the Cuthbert-Boran Funeral Home and waited for someone to answer.

  “Cuthbert-Boran, may I help you?” the voice said much too politely.

  “I’m calling for Mattie Rowland. Her husband, Ernie, has died and she’s here at the home on Highland Drive. Could you send someone over to help her?”

  “We would be glad to help her. May I ask your name?”

  The only thing the voice from Cuthbert-Boran heard after the question was the sound the receiver makes when someone has hung up the phone.

  Saunders looked first at Mattie to see that she was now almost completely in shock and non-responsive. She then looked at Henry whose eyes met her glance as if on cue.

  “We need to go. Now,” she said.

  Henry walked briskly out of the room. He glanced at Mattie quickly before he disappeared down the hallway. There was nothing more he could do for that poor woman, he thought to himself. He felt sorry for her despite the fact that this was the mission all along. It just happened in this unplanned manner. It was the strangeness of life.

  Saunders was lost in her own thoughts as she walked out of the room and down the short hallway toward the front door. She knew that her employer was not going to be pleased with this turn of events. Revenge was still his cup of tea and death by any means was not the end he desired the most. He wanted to take the lives of those whom he hated, not have them die from natural causes.

  Saunders p
aused as she was passing through the threshold. She thought she heard someone crying as she closed the door to the house on Highland Drive.

  41

  Sam and I returned to my mother’s house sometime mid-afternoon after taking a long walk down to the river and back. It had been many years since I had walked that road. Sam had never been to the river, so I decided that he might benefit from some roaming time since he had been restrained by both Saunders and the animal shelter. One used to freedom can only handle so much captivity. He ran more than I did along the way to the river. In fact, I didn’t run at all while he chose to run quite a bit. He also decided to jump into the river. I refrained from such ecstasy chiefly because I knew the water to be quite cold this time of year even though the warmth of the fall sun belied the temperature of the water.

  Rosey was still cleaning the Jag as we entered into the yard from our latent pilgrimage. Rachel was sitting on the steps close by watching him work.

  “Well, the adventurers have returned,” Rosey said.

  “Sam, here, had the adventure. I simply wandered down memory lane for some cheap therapy.”

  “Chase any rabbits?” he asked Sam.

  Sam shook his whole body as if on cue to answer the question with a negative. He was still slinging water after multiple shakings along the way from the river back to the house.

  “No rabbits,” I said, “just running and playing in the water.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “For dogs,” I said.

  “Humans, too,” Rosey added.

  “Not this time of year,” my mother said as she walked down the few back steps of her house.

  “Sarah okay?” I asked Rosey who was to check in on her earlier this morning.

  “Yeah. She’s doing fine. I brought your mother home and got Joy to fill in for her for a few hours.”

  “I insisted on coming home. Keeping vigil for hours on end is not something a body can endure for long at my age,” Rachel said.

  “At any age, Mother.”

  “Well, you young folks have an advantage.”

  Rosey and I looked at each other knowing that we had passed young a few miles back. He smiled at me.

  “Joy agreed to keep an eye on J.R.?” I asked.

  “Reluctantly,” my mother said. “Seems she has a hard time with his obvious dislike for people of color. Sitting in the hallway between rooms was tolerable she said.”

  After all these years my mother still surprised me from time to time. When you think you finally have someone, like a parent, finally figured out, they say or do something which causes you to have to rethink your pigeon hole. My mother had grown up using the word Negro to refer to African-Americans or people of color. However, in my lifetime, she had used only the term black. I think the change from Negro to black occurred when Sarah Jones began working for our family. Until now, I had never thought it possible for my mother to use any other term than black. She never found it necessary to adapt to new terms as they came into vogue.

  I decided against making any comment regarding her usage of people of color. I imagine that Rosey’s presence had something to do with that. He could handle anything my mother would say, but I still thought better of exploring my mother’s growing vocabulary at the moment.

  “Do you think J.R. is safe with her?” I asked tongue-in-cheek.

  “Sarah told me that Joy has a temper,” Mother said, “but I believe Sarah’s level- headedness will prevail over any severe conflict that might erupt.”

  “She could stop a fight which might develop?” I said.

  “Without a doubt,” Mother said. “Even in her weakened state. The woman has a constitution of steel.”

  I smiled as I remembered that rescue scene from my early life when Sarah drove our family car while Mother literally road shotgun down to the city jail to rescue me from the throes of an irate man bent on destroying my mother’s precious little girl. I doubt if my mother would recall the incident in such terms. That was my memory.

  “Oh, the phone’s ringing,” Mother said and turned quickly to re-enter the house and answer it before it stopped. All calls in the south are important, even the ones which are not.

  “What’s our next move, Sherlock?” Rosey asked.

  I was watching Sam sniff around the yard from my perch on the tire swing. I was almost too big to sit comfortably inside the tire, a fact that was not lost on me for obvious reasons. While I did consider myself to be in good shape for a woman of my age, I also knew that time had a way of adding inches and pounds even with the best of physical conditioning routines.

  “I’m waiting,” I said.

  “For?”

  “Don’t know. When it shows up, I’ll tell you.”

  “Is this a detecting posture?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And your solution rate?”

  “High enough.”

  “High enough for what?”

  “For people to keep hiring me.”

  “You have no goals, no aspirations towards improvement, no self-motivated incentives for betterment?”

  “Is this a survey?”

  “Honestly. I don’t get you sometimes.”

  “My daddy always said that when you get to a fork in the road, take it.”

  “He was quoting Yogi Berra, love.”

  “I know that. But I never heard Yogi say it. Only Daddy.”

  “So we’re at the fork in the road?”

  “You betcha.”

  “Which one of our options are we going to take now?”

  “Don’t know yet. But we will take one.”

  Mother came out the back door and let it slam. Still surprising me. Before I could comment on her deportment regarding slamming doors, she had some startling news.

  “Virginia Lee just called to tell me that Ernie Rowland died earlier today.”

  “One of the jurors on the list,” Rosey said to me.

  “How’d he die?” I asked.

  “Heart attack, most likely, Virginia Lee said. She gave me as many details as she had, which were considerable, but nothing you want to take to court yet. Seems as if he died of natural causes in his own bed at home.”

  “No kidding,” Rosey said.

  “Poor old Mattie. She’s beyond distraught, Virginia Lee said. Still in shock. I probably need to fix something and go over there.”

  “I assume that Mattie is his wife?” I said.

  “Yes. Married over 60 years, I think. Some such large number. Imagine finding him in bed that way. Tried to wake him and couldn’t, as the story goes. I’ll find out more details when I go over. The rumors will be wild around town. I need to get in on the early details so as not to be misled by all the add-ons and embellishments which surely will come with all the re-tellings.”

  My mother had a keen fix on life in the rural south. Clancyville was almost an archetype when it came to understanding Southern culture. Embellishment was an art form in this culture. No one considered it lying or even fibbing. It was just something that was done. If a man walked five miles to see a doctor, then by the time the story got around town, he had walked maybe twenty miles. If a person died peacefully in his bed at home, then by the time the story is all over town, he likely lay there two days or more before someone discovered him and then they imagine some kind of horrendous death attached to that man’s passing. Dying in your sleep is not an exciting story. The devil is truly in the details, especially in this culture where I was raised.

  “I think we should take this opportunity to go see the Reverend Mr. Robert Lee Rowland and speak with him in person,” Rosey said.

  “That’s a wonderful idea.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Truly. We have some time before we need to get back to Sarah and J.R. Let’s see if we can ruffle some feathers.”

  “This could be fun.”

  42

  The tall woman stood in front of the huge desk and waited for a response from the man seated in the high back leather
chair. The two dogs were sitting by the windows intently looking at something moving around in the flower garden outside. The woman could hear every beat of a large clock resting on top of a large armoire behind the man and to his right. Despite the size of the clock and the armoire, the room dwarfed the furniture. In fact, the tall woman felt small in this room.

  “I am not pleased,” he said finally.

  “But he is dead. He’s as dead as the others.”

  “But … not … by … my … hand,” he said, emphasizing each word.

  “It was out of my hands. I suspect the man was already dead by the time we arrived. Hard to say.”

  “Tell me again what happened. I need the details.”

  “The old woman was filling out the papers and finally finished. She left us to go check on her husband in the back bedroom. After a few minutes, she called for us to come back. When we entered the room, he was not moving. I checked for a pulse and found none. I called Henry to come back and asked him to check for a pulse. Henry found no pulse. We determined that he was dead. I called the funeral home because the old woman was in deep shock and nearly collapsed. Henry put her in a chair. She was like a zombie. She couldn’t function.”

  “And you called the funeral home?”

  “I did, but I gave them no name, other than Ernie Rowland.”

  “Do you get the paperwork she was filling out?”

  The question hit her hard. She had failed to retrieve the paperwork that the old woman had painstakingly worked on for at least some thirty to thirty-five minutes. She couldn’t remember where the paperwork was. She had made a mistake and left it. The sudden death of the man had caused the whole scene to shift and she forgot that pivotal detail. It was that simple. She was caught.

  “No,” she said.

  “No?”

  “I must have left it.”

  “You left it.”

  Her anger was rising. The man could be incorrigible at times. Most times. She could feel her face getting flushed. No doubt it was turning red, she had that characteristic. The color emerged immediately when something like this would happen. No way to hide it.