Miss Julia Lays Down the Law

by Ann B. Ross

  “Yes’m, it’s real easy. Well, not so easy on foot, ’cause it’s longer, but you go in on a fire lane back off New Hope Church Road, wiggle ’round up there on the mountain awhile, an’ pretty soon you come right close to where they built them houses. You can look right down on ’em. But if you keep on a-goin’, you come out on the Greenville Highway, an’ by that time, you’re just another car toolin’ along. Nobody’d know the difference.” He nodded his head in conclusion, then said, “’Course it could be so overgrown by now, couldn’t nobody get through on it.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” I said, leaning back in my chair, just about done in. Not because his information put me in greater jeopardy—I could account for my time that entire day, and Lillian and Mildred and Ida Lee could confirm where I was every minute of it. No, in fact, if anything, a previously unknown access road into Grand View Estates opened up a certain can of worms I thought I’d sealed up for good.

  Anybody could’ve gotten to the Clayborn house, unseen by human eyes, by the back way. Certainly a random attack by an unknown person who just happened to be wandering through the woods would have to be seriously considered. A lone woman working in her kitchen, seen through a window, might’ve been a tempting sight to a criminally inclined stranger.

  It also opened up the possibility that her husband could’ve left for work that morning, then snuck back home without being seen. As a homeowner, he would surely know about the fire lane.

  There was also another possibility—that certain aforesaid can of worms. Either of the Ledbetters could’ve gotten in that way as well. Although, as I thought about it, I had to discount Emma Sue—she’d been in no physical or emotional state when I saw her to make that trek. And how would she know about it in the first place? But the pastor could’ve known—he’d grown up in Abbot County. Granted, he’d left to go to college and seminary at a fairly young age and had served a couple of small churches before being called by the First Presbyterian of Abbotsville, where he’d been for the past twenty years or so. During that much time, though, he could’ve easily reacquainted himself with the highways and byways of the county.

  I could’ve cried. It made so much sense, especially in the face of the pastor’s strange evasive actions over the past several days. But I didn’t want to even think what I was thinking. I may have silently disagreed with Pastor Ledbetter on a few theological issues and vocally disagreed on a number of his high-handed methods, but it hurt me to the quick to raise the possibility that he could’ve done what had so obviously been done in Connie Clayborn’s kitchen.

  “Mr. Owens,” I said, breaking the long silence that had ensued as I considered this new information and while Mr. Owens’s stomach continued to greet the sudden influx of food, “I need to see that fire lane. I need to see how close it comes to the Clayborn house and how difficult it would be to get from one to the other. You know where it is and how to get there, so will you show me?”

  “Anytime, ma’am, anytime. I know ’zactly where it is. I used to hunt back up in there. Did a little trappin’, too. So I can show you anytime you wanta go.”

  “Right now?”

  “Now?” Mr. Owens straightened up, causing an internal growl, as his eyes widened. “Ma’am, it’s dark out there. You can’t see your hand in front of your face.”

  “Oh, come now, Mr. Owens, it’s a little cloudy out, but the moon is up and I have a flashlight.”

  “Yes’m, but you can see a lot better in the daytime.”

  “Quite true,” I agreed, “but the deputies—if they’re still investigating the scene—can see us a lot better in the daytime, too. I’m hoping nobody’ll be out there at night.”

  “Maybe not, but they’ll have a patrol drive by ever’ once in a while to make sure nobody’s monkeyin’ around out there.”

  “On the fire lane, too?”

  He considered for a minute. “It ain’t likely. Even if the fire lane’s open, they don’t have enough radio cars to cover the county, much less tackin’ that on, too.”

  “Then it’s more likely that the best time to go is in the dark of the night. You see, Mr. Owens, I trust your superior knowledge of the patrol circuits and so forth of the sheriff’s department.”

  “Well, I sure have rid with ’em enough times,” Mr. Owens said, quite modestly for one who had so much experience with law enforcement personnel. “I orta know what they’re up to and where they go and how many times they do it.”

  “Then,” I said, getting to my feet, “you’re just the man I need. Let me get my coat and a flashlight. I hope, though, that we’ll be able to stay in the car and see what I need to see. I’m not all that eager to be tromping through the woods at night.”

  Looking somewhat stunned by my sudden decision, he kept his seat and watched as I searched a drawer for the flashlight and went into the hall for my coat.

  Finally he stood, picked up his empty plate, and carried it to the sink. Then he mumbled, almost under his breath, “Me neither.”

  Chapter 32

  Putting on my coat and finally locating a flashlight that worked, I led the way out the back door, then turned and locked it behind us. Mr. Owens had taken his time putting on his coat, then, following me, he moved slowly around the car to the passenger side then, as if reconsidering the wisdom of our expedition, seemed to hesitate before sliding in.

  I was behind the wheel with the car cranked and running before he got his door closed. He was telling me without saying a word that what we were about to do might not be the best idea anybody’d ever had. I didn’t care. Anything was better than sitting around waiting for something to happen. And wondering if, when it did, it would involve me.

  “It’ll warm up in a minute,” I said, adjusting the heat vents, then beginning to back out of the driveway.

  “It ain’t too cold,” Mr. Owens said, although he commenced wrapping his head with the scarf again.

  “Which way, Mr. Owens?” I asked as we reached the street.

  “Go west on the highway till you start up the mountain. Then take a left on Pisgah Road. Stay on it for a few miles, then turn on New Hope Church Road. I’ll have to look for the next turn.”

  I shot him a sharp look. “You do know the way, don’t you?”

  “Yes’m, I do. But that fire lane ain’t used much and, ma’am, it is dark.”

  Yes, it was, in spite of a low-hanging moon barely visible above the treetops. Strips of cloud streamed across it. Harbingers, I supposed, of the storm coming up from the south.

  “Well, I’m in your hands, Mr. Owens, and I’m depending on you to get us there without getting lost.”

  “No’m, I won’t do that.”

  But he shrank back against the seat, huddling down in his outsized coat. As the car warmed up, I began to get some whiffs of a musty odor. Mr. Owens needed more than a washing of hands, but, as he had spent the previous night in jail, I couldn’t fault him. The sheriff’s hotel, as I’d heard it called, lacked a number of amenities.

  I drove and drove, following Mr. Owens’s directions, until I began to wonder if we’d end up in Tennessee or South Carolina. Gradually, though, I realized that we were making a wide circle through the county, all the while closing in on the back of Grand View Estates.

  “Okay,” Mr. Owens said, sitting up to look out the windshield. “Better slow down now. It’ll be up here a little ways.”

  We’d been driving some thirty minutes or so, and I’d seen farmhouses, barns, and lonely clapboard churches that I’d never seen before. I’d had no call to be in the southwestern part of the county in a long while and, let me tell you, there wasn’t that much to see. The occasional car passed us, heading toward town, but none was behind us. It was a lonely place, which was all to the good for what I had in mind.

  “Right there!” Mr. Owens yelled, startling me after his long silence. “New Hope Church Road. Turn left.”

  Easy e
nough, because left was the only way to turn. New Hope Church Road either began or ended, depending on which way you were going, at Pisgah Road. It wasn’t much of a road, narrow with crumbling pavement and no shoulders, obviously little used by travelers and forgotten by the Department of Transportation. And no wonder. All I could see were a few cleared fields interspersed with timbered tracts along the roadsides. I could feel the car shift down as the road began to rise along the side of the rounded mountain.

  Mr. Owens still sat forward, peering out the windshield, on the alert for the fire lane. “I don’t know as how you wanta take this fancy car on that fire lane. They may notta cleared it in a while.”

  Now you’re telling me? I thought it, but didn’t say it.

  “Right yonder!” he suddenly yelled. “See that big rock? Turn left right there.”

  I slowed, peered at the huge boulder on the left side of the road, then asked, “Before or after it?”

  “Um-m, lemme think.”

  “It makes a difference, Mr. Owens.”

  “Yes’m. Right after. Yeah, that’s it. Turn left after you pass it. I used to come at it from t’other side. That’s why I got mixed up. And, uh . . .” He stopped, thought a minute, then said, “I don’t hardly know who you’re talkin’ to, so you can call me Lamar if you want to.”

  “Why, thank you, Lamar,” I said, with a quick glance at him. “That’s kind of you and easier for me.” But I did not make the same offer to him, nor, I thought, did he expect it of me. Distinctions must be made for the comfort of all.

  I carefully passed the boulder on the left side of an unpaved track consisting of two shallow ruts with weeds growing between them. I could hear them swish against the undercarriage of my car. I stopped and sat for a few minutes, gazing through the tunnel of my headlights into more weeds, bushes, and, on each side of the track, tall pines swaying slightly in the wind.

  “You think the road’ll get any worse? I don’t want to get stuck.”

  “Oh, no’m. It looks in pretty good shape—better’n I thought it’d be. They have to keep it passable—fire laws or something.”

  “Let us hope,” I murmured and began to creep along the track as pine trees on each side converged overhead. But I’d begun to doubt that it was a fire lane—too narrow for the department’s huge trucks, for one thing. Of course it didn’t matter to me what it was or how it was used if it gave access to the Clayborn house.

  At one point, I thought I saw the gleam of metal to the right of the lane in a clump of bushes. I kept driving. “Lamar, did you see that?”

  “See what?”

  “There might’ve been a car parked back there.”

  “Could be,” he said with no noticeable concern. “Lotsa people park up in here. Hunters an’ the like. An’ people who don’t want nobody to know what they’re up to.”

  “Oh,” I said, and kept maneuvering along the uneven road.

  We bumped along at a slow pace, the car listing now and then as it went in and out of dips in the road, but on the whole, it could’ve been worse. It was likely that the road had started as an animal path, then used by the Indians who had once roamed the mountains, as many paved and heavily used arteries in our area had been.

  Mr. Owens, I mean Lamar, fully alert now, sat forward in his seat, watching the road in front, but more often gazing off to the left.

  “You might orta turn off your lights,” he said. “I’m thinkin’ we’re pretty close to some houses. They’ll be down on the side of the hill a little ways.”

  “On my side?”

  “Yes’m. They cut ledges in the hill to make a place to build on. So we’ll be lookin’ down on whichever house you wanta see.”

  I turned off the headlights and came to a full stop. It was so dark that I wondered what I’d been thinking to believe I could pick out Connie’s house from the back, through the trees, and by its roof, which I’d never seen.

  “It’s too dark,” I said. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “Yes’m, but I got eyes like a cat. I’ll find what you’re lookin’ for.” Then with a wave of his hand, Lamar said, “Ease on up, but don’t make no noise. I see a light down there a ways. Somebody’s up and stirrin’.”

  That made sense, because it wasn’t all that late. But I knew that the houses in the area were far apart, so I hoped that we could glide on by and no nosy neighbor would wonder at the sound of a heavy motor going past in the night.

  “Lamar,” I said, whispering because it just seemed the thing to do in the dark that surrounded us. “If I hit a tree, what’re we going to do?”

  “Aw, you won’t hit no tree. But, if you do, it won’t matter. We’ll just get out and walk.”

  I rolled my eyes at the thought of walking all the miles we’d just driven and leaving my car as more evidence to be used against me. And as my eyes rolled, I realized that my vision was improving enough to make out the trees on either side and, glancing out of my window, to also see a cleared area where a large structure stretched out several yards below us. Lights were on in the house, as was one yard light over what appeared to be a garage.

  “That it?” Lamar asked, whispering as I had done.

  “No, I don’t think so. The Clayborn house had a neighboring house on either side, but they were quite far apart. The next house may be it.” And I eased the car along, trying to keep it quiet. I even turned off the heater fan to cut down on the noise.

  Then I saw it. Or thought I did. We’d traveled what I deemed the width of two or three sizable lots from the first house when I saw the structure below us. No lights were on, but the lot was cleared enough for the moon to give us a clear view of the house I’d hoped never to go near again.

  I stopped the car. “That’s it,” I said, really whispering this time. “See the walkway there running along the back of the house? And the swimming pool. They could walk right out of the house, take about two steps, and dive in.”

  Lamar was leaning awfully close to me so he could see out my window. I held my breath, while he said, “Don’t see no swimming pool.”

  “Oh, it’s under the tarp, the cover, whatever it is. See that long, dark rectangle right behind the house? That’s it. You see any lights anywhere?”

  “No’m. Might see some way over yonder,” he said, pointing farther along the access road. “But it’s just a flicker.”

  “That would be about right. When I was here in the daytime, I noticed that she had neighbors on both sides, but they weren’t close at all.”

  I reached down and turned off the ignition, planning to sit there until I was sure I was looking at Connie’s house and until I was sure no one else was watching it.

  “Can you see the driveway,” I asked, “and what about the street in front of the house?”

  “Yeah, pretty well. What you want me to look for?”

  “Patrol cars, Lamar.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Actually, see if there’re any kind of vehicles anywhere around. It may be, if they’ve released the crime scene, that the husband’s there. I wouldn’t want to run into him.”

  Lamar gave me a long, searching look, then mumbled, “Well, me neither.”

  Chapter 33

  We sat there in the dark long enough for Lamar to get tired of leaning over to look out my window. He settled back in his seat, willing, it seemed, to stay there doing nothing for as long as I wanted.

  I, however, was doing plenty. I was reliving that afternoon when I’d parked in Connie’s drive, walked up onto the stone pathway, around to the back of the house, and on to the kitchen door. I could almost see myself ring the doorbell, rap on the window in the door, then, with an exasperated sigh, turn to leave. Oh, if I’d only kept going.

  One thing was for sure, if I’d left without seeing that shoe, I wouldn’t be sitting now on a dark lane in the woods, wondering what to do next.

 
But, with a mental shake, I turned my mind to do what I’d come to do—determine if Connie’s house was accessible from the back. And, without a doubt, it was, one way or the other. Oh, the fire lane hadn’t been the easiest to drive, but we’d done it, and there were trees and laurel bushes on the slope between the lane and the house. But looking down on Connie’s concrete backyard, the growth didn’t seem that thick or the slope that steep, and it wasn’t that far—maybe fifty yards or so—from one to the other. Anyone with a mind to could make it with little trouble, and surely the investigators knew that.

  The one worrisome factor was that it looked to be such an easy trek that even my age and physical condition might not take me out of consideration. Maybe I should start using a cane.

  “Looka there!” Lamar sat up with a start, pointing down toward the house. “See that?”

  “What? Where?”

  “Somebody’s in there,” he said in a raspy whisper. “Watch that last winder at the end of the house. Somebody’s got a light on.”

  I peered through the windshield, straining to see what I assumed was a bedroom window, but even though I thought I could see a bluish glow, I couldn’t be certain I was seeing anything.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “It may be a reflection from something.”

  “I’m sure,” he said. “My eyes is the onliest things that work good. I can see in the dark.”

  “Like a cat,” I said.

  “Yes’m, jus’ like a cat, an’ that’s some kinda light comin’ from that winder. And it wadn’t on a few minutes ago, meanin’ somebody in there jus’ turned it on.”

  “Oh, my goodness, Lamar,” I said as a line of chills ran up my back. “It couldn’t be a deputy, could it? I mean, we’d see a patrol car, wouldn’t we?”

  “Yes’m, there’d be a car, all right. They don’t never hide ’less they’re watchin’ for speeders.”

  We watched in silence for several minutes in which the glow neither faded nor grew in brightness. No shadows passed in front of it, so it probably wasn’t a lamp, even a lamp with one of those corkscrew bulbs that give such a pitiful amount of light.