by Ann B. Ross
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, following me down the hall. “But, Julia, I didn’t know you could cook.”
“Anybody can scramble eggs, for the Lord’s sake,” I said, though if the truth be known, I wasn’t much of a hand for any kind of cooking. And didn’t care to learn.
I HAD ANOTHER restless night, in spite of Sam’s suggestion and Deputy Bates’s willingness to make an official inquiry into Hazel Marie Puckett’s whereabouts. The sheriff would be interested, too, he’d told us, since she was wanted for questioning about the blood on her garage floor and walls. Deputy Bates hadn’t been too happy to learn that Little Lloyd was gone. I’d seen disappointment and concern written all over his face, and his response had rankled me.
“I’m going to miss that boy,” he said.
I took that as criticism and snapped back, “Well, I won’t. How do you think I felt, having that illegitimate child underfoot every day, all day long?”
My eyes welled up, and Sam said, “Now, Julia.”
That wasn’t much help, because I had been remiss in letting that child go off. They knew it and I knew it, but what could I have done when his own kin showed up to claim him? A lot of things, as it turned out. I could’ve wakened Deputy Bates, for one. I could’ve questioned Brother Vern, for another. I could’ve asked, even demanded, that he give me her address. I could’ve gone upstairs with Little Lloyd and made sure, out of his great-uncle’s hearing, that he wanted to go with him.
Oh, there were a lot of things I could’ve done and should’ve done, and now I had to live with it all. I got up sometime in the middle of the night and walked across the hall to Little Lloyd’s room. The empty bed made me realize how empty my house was, and maybe my life, as well.
I was just a selfish old woman with nothing but a few million dollars to her name. No husband, no children, nothing to look forward to but more of the same. Even the thought of writing checks and buying things couldn’t lift my spirits.
I cried. Sitting there in Little Lloyd’s room, not a light on in the house, an old, slightly blue-haired woman who’d thought of nothing but herself all her life. Yes, I cried.
But not because I missed the boy, not at all. He’d been nothing but a reminder of Wesley Lloyd and, I hate to say this, I wasn’t missing him. It was because I was worried about the child and because I’d been lax in looking after him. If I could be assured that he was safe with his mother, I could put the whole week behind me and get on with my life. I might even plan a tea and invite all the women of the church. Wesley Lloyd hadn’t been gone a year yet, but there was no reason I couldn’t entertain if I wanted to. It’d show everybody that I could still hold my head up. So I went back to bed and filled my mind with cucumber sandwiches and layered cream cheese sandwiches, and cheese straws and petit fours and flower arrangements and linen napkins, planning the most elaborate tea anybody’d had since Lula Mae Harding had her last one before she passed and the ladies’ Sunday school class named itself after her.
SAM ARRIVED THAT Monday morning about the same time Lillian did, one at the front door and the other at the back. We all ended up in the kitchen, drinking coffee and eating the toast Lillian had fixed. She wouldn’t sit at the table with us because she’d once told me that it wasn’t right for her to visit with my company. I didn’t care, especially since Sam wasn’t real company, but she busied herself around the stove, getting a big breakfast ready for Deputy Bates when he got off duty. She listened to us, though, and made her opinions known by the expressions on her face. She hadn’t liked it one little bit that I’d let Little Lloyd go off with “somebody callin’ hisself his uncle.”
“What you do that for, Miss Julia?” she’d asked. “That baby need lookin’ after, not let go off with ever’ Tom Dick that come by.”
I said, “It was his mother’s uncle, not any Tom, Dick, or Harry. So don’t blame me for his own mother’s neglect and carelessness.”
“That be a pitiful excuse,” she’d told me.
Sam stirred his coffee, then reached over and put his hand on mine. “I went by this morning and talked to Sheriff Frady. Just laid it all out for him. I don’t have to tell you he was mighty interested in the relationship between you and the boy. Then he called in this lieutenant and I had to tell it again. That lieutenant is sharp. He put it right together with the blood Coleman found at the boy’s house.”
“I’d have thought Deputy Bates would’ve already reported it all,” I said, surprised at where Deputy Bates’s loyalty seemed to be placed.
“No, apparently Coleman just explained that the boy was staying with you and that the three of you had driven out to check on the house. He let them assume that the Puckett woman knew you and that you had agreed to look after the boy. He was trying to keep social services out of it.”
“I hope he won’t get in trouble over it.”
“I doubt it. He could only tell what he knew for a fact, and that’s what he did. Still, he respected your wishes to keep the boy out of a foster home. But, Julia, you’re going to have to talk to them yourself. That lieutenant, what’s his name, Peavey, he wants to know what you know and what you suspect about the whole situation. He’s treating the Puckett woman as a missing person and, after hearing what I had to say, is about ready to treat the boy as one, too.”
“But he’s with his uncle!” I protested. “Great-uncle, I mean. I know, I know. Lillian, quit looking at me that way. I know I shouldn’t have let him go off, but what was I supposed to do?” I wanted to cry again. Instead, I refilled our cups. It was all so unfair. I hadn’t asked to be betrayed by my own husband, and I hadn’t asked to have his bastard dumped on my doorstep, and the Lord knows, I hadn’t asked to be blamed for it all, either.
“Nobody’s blaming you, Julia,” Sam said, reading my mind again. “Tell you what. Why don’t you go fishing with me tomorrow?”
Lillian started laughing, and I glared at her. “Yes, and I can see me going fishing with you, Sam Murdoch. First off, I’ve never fished in my life and, second off, if this town didn’t already have enough to talk about, that would do it.”
“It’d be good for you, Julia, and who cares if the town talks? The men would just wish they were in my shoes, and the women would be jealous of you for landing the handsomest man in town.”
Lillian laughed out loud. “Don’t sound like no fishing I ever heard of.”
“You two,” I said, feeling my face redden. “I’ve got enough worries without adding you to them, Sam Murdoch.”
“Ah, Julia,” Sam said, cocking his head to the side and lowering his voice. “I don’t want to be a worry to you. I want to help you, if you’ll let me. Getting away for a few hours out on a lake would make all the difference in the world. You’d like it, I promise.”
“No, and that’s that,” I said, refusing to look at him. “You can fritter your time away if you want to, but I have things to do.”
“You better listen to him, Miss Julia,” Lillian said. “Not too many men knocking on yo’ door that I been noticin’. ’Specially not one like Mr. Sam.”
“You tell her, Lillian,” Sam said, smiling now. “Tell her she’s letting the best man she’ll ever know slip through her fingers.”
“That’s about right,” Lillian agreed, with a long look of warning at me.
“The subject is closed,” I said, tired of being teased. I was in no mood for it.
I heard Deputy Bates’s car pull in and was glad to see him come in the back door. He looked tired, but maybe he’d turn the conversation to something more sensible. Lillian and Sam took on over him, Sam pulling out a chair for him and Lillian hurrying over with coffee.
“I’m fixin’ you two eggs over light, sausage, and grits. That all right with you?” she asked him.
“Sounds great,” he said, twisting around to turn off his walkie-talkie that was giving out bursts of static and a jumble of words from somebody with a real bad cold. “What a night,” he went on. “I’m glad to have it over with.”
“Lotta calls?” Sam asked.
“Man, yes. A robbery out at the Motor Inn. Three fights down on Mercer Avenue, and speeders all over the county. Then an Alzheimer’s patient walked out of a nursing home. Had to get the trackers and dogs out, but we found him. It just never stopped.”
“What you need,” Lillian declaimed as she flipped eggs, “is a little honey in yo’ life.” Then she laughed so hard I was afraid she’d break the yolks.
Deputy Bates grinned and said, “What makes you think I don’t already have some?”
She whooped then and told him she could tell when a man had a little or a lot or none at all, and he was in the last category. Sam sat there laughing with them, but to me the conversation was getting a little too racy. It was my kitchen, after all.
“Has there been any word on Little Lloyd or his mama?” I asked, and everybody got serious again.
“Not a thing,” Deputy Bates said, going after his breakfast like he hadn’t eaten all night, and he probably hadn’t. “We put out a description of the car and notified the state troopers to watch for it, but there’s been nothing. The Raleigh police’re going to check all the beauty schools down there as soon as they open this morning to see where the Puckett woman’s registered. Other than that, there’s not much else we can do. Oh, yeah, Lieutenant Peavey’s going down to Benson’s Gap sometime today and question some of the Puckett clan. He knows a bunch of them, arrested most of ’em at one time or another, and if anybody knows anything, he’ll get it out of them. Lillian, if it’s not too much trouble, I believe I could eat another egg.”
“No trouble a’tall,” she said, beaming like she did when anybody appreciated her cooking. I didn’t tell her that he’d eaten four of mine the night before.
When Deputy Bates finally pushed his plate away and praised Lillian to the skies, more than she needed, to be honest about it, he took a deep breath.
“Miss Julia,” he said, “Sheriff Frady’s coming over this morning to ask you about Little Lloyd and his mother. It’d be best to so ahead and tell him everything.”
“Sam’s already warned me,” I told him. “And I don’t plan to leave anything out. I want that boy found so I can quit worrying and get some sleep. I’ll tell you this, though, I am certainly glad I didn’t try to hide the fact that Little Lloyd is my husband’s son. It’d be so much worse if I had, because I’d have to reveal it now anyway. See, Lillian? Sometimes I do know what I’m doing.”
“Sometimes,” she admitted.
I heard car doors slam out front, and my heart gave a lurch inside my chest. I’d never been questioned by law officers before and I wasn’t looking forward to it. It could be about as bad as being counseled by my preacher. Earl Frady wasn’t much, but he represented a lot, even if I did know his wife went on a spree now and then, and only stayed out of jail because none of his deputies was willing to arrest her.
Sam stood up with me and said, “Come on, Julia, let’s go let them in.”
Then Deputy Bates got up and Lillian folded her dish towel as they came to join Sam and me. The four of us went to the living room to greet the sheriff.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I’D KNOWN EARL Frady for all the eighteen years he’d been sheriff of Abbot County, and he still looked like a none-too-prosperous shopkeeper in his brown polyester suit and black wing tips. He smiled his quick, nervous smile when I came to the door, and smoothed the thin hair over the bald spot on his head. He looked even more uncomfortable and unprofessional than usual, standing shoulder high to the big, sharply uniformed man behind him.
I opened the screen for them, and Deputy Bates introduced Lieutenant Wayne Peavey. He was far and away the largest man in the room, towering over us and unnerving me, what with those dark glasses that reflected my image without giving away anything of himself. He had a thin, firm mouth that looked as if it would split his face if he smiled.
None of us had to be introduced to Earl Frady; he’d been getting elected every four years like clockwork. Not because he knew so much about law enforcement, but because he knew county politics and county politicians inside and out. And because he knew enough to hire professionals, trained and experienced deputies, to keep the peace. And because he had enough sense to leave them alone and let them do it. That was enough reason to keep returning him to office.
He showed up only when he thought something might make the newspaper or when, like now, somebody important might be involved in a crime.
We all took seats except Lillian, who leaned against the double opening to the dining room. She’d placed herself behind Lieutenant Peavey, but where I could see her. Deputy Bates took the piano bench, and Sam pulled up a chair next to Sheriff Frady. We looked at the sheriff, waiting for him to start, but the big lieutenant cleared his throat and took out a little notebook. Then he commenced questioning me about everything that’d happened since Hazel Marie Puckett showed up on my porch.
Lillian frowned every time he opened his mouth.
Right at the start, Sam interrupted to state in no uncertain terms that I was answering questions only in a spirit of cooperation, and that if the sheriff had anything else in mind, my attorney of record had to be present. Lillian crossed her arms and nodded in agreement.
“Nothing like that is on our mind,” Sheriff Frady said, straightening out one leg and plucking at the stretchy material to get enough slack to go over his knee. “We just need to know the sequence of events leading up to the break-in here Saturday. In broad daylight. That’s mainly what we’re investigating, and to see if Mrs. Springer’s discovered anything missing.”
“Mind your questions, then,” Sam said, giving the sheriff a squinty-eyed look.
Sam was a Democrat, born and bred, and so was Sheriff Frady, who knew which side his bread was buttered on. The sheriff nodded at his lieutenant to continue, while he leaned back in his chair and looked around like the proceedings had nothing to do with him. And they didn’t.
The lieutenant took me step by step through the past week, making notes as he went. After I went over in detail how the boy had left my house the day before, described Brother Vern and his car, and declared that as far as I knew, Hazel Marie Puckett was filing nails down in Raleigh, he closed his notebook and stood up.
“All right, Mrs. Springer,” he said as I craned my neck to look up at him. “We don’t know what happened in that garage. Neighbors tell us that the woman and her son lived there, but they’re both missing. Seems the place belongs to you, and the boy was here with you, so there’s a connection to you whichever way you look at it. And not only was there blood in that garage, we also found a couple of teeth. We’re waiting on the investigation report to confirm if we’re dealing with human substances, but we still don’t know who they belong to or how they got there.”
“Well, I don’t, either,” I said.
“No’m, I guess not, but what we found hadn’t been there much more than twenty-four hours, and from what you’ve told me, nobody knows where you were Friday afternoon.”
“Why, Friday afternoon I didn’t even know where that house was, much less that it belonged to me. And I told you I was driving around. All evening for some three hours. Ask Lillian. Ask Deputy Bates. They were both here when I came in.” Deputy Bates had been leaning his arms on his knees, staring at the floor. He looked up and confirmed my statement with a nod. Lieutenant Peavey didn’t notice.
“But according to you, nobody saw you during that three hours.”
“Well, the black truck did.”
Lieutenant Peavey aimed those black sunglasses at me and said, “What black truck?”
So I told him. He shrugged one shoulder, and didn’t even open his notebook. “Black pickups all over the place. You need a better witness than that.”
“Now, just a minute,” Sam began, getting to his feet. “Are you accusing Mrs. Springer of having something to do with all this? I told you, Earl,” he said, turning to the sheriff, “and I’ll tell you again. If you want to use anything said in this
room, you’re in trouble. Mrs. Springer has not been represented by counsel, and I warned you about it before you began.”
“Now, Sam,” the sheriff said, getting up and edging toward the door. “We’re questioning everybody and, so far, nobody’s been charged with anything.”
“I should hope not,” Sam said. “Since, so far, you don’t have any charges to file. What crime has been committed except for a break-in right here? Is Mrs. Springer a suspect in that?”
“No, no, of course not,” the sheriff said, aiming a hard look at his lieutenant, who ignored him. “We just have to, you know, cover all the bases.”
The lieutenant turned to me. “You’re not planning any trips out of town, are you? I may want to talk to you again.”
When they left, Sam was fuming at the idea of me as a suspect in a crime without a habeas corpus, or delicti, or some such. I didn’t pay much attention, because my head was in a swirl again. That child had turned my life upside down when he entered it, and was still doing it now that he was out of it.
IT HAD JUST gotten dark good that Monday night, about nine o’clock, and I was hoping for a good night’s sleep. Though now that my whereabouts last Friday had been called into question by the authorities, I didn’t have much hope for it.
I went into the kitchen to heat some milk for a cup of Ovaltine, figuring that might help. Then, on second thought, I put the pan up and took down Lillian’s cooking sherry. That ought to do it, I thought. Presbyterians aren’t supposed to use alcohol, but a lot do. Not Wesley Lloyd, though, who was a teetotaler by conviction, which meant that I didn’t either. However. It came to me as I tasted the vile stuff that the ABC store ought to have something better, since so many people seemed to like it. I resolved to take myself down there and buy something decent to drink. I didn’t care who saw me, either. Just to get a little something to help me sleep, you know. And to aid the digestion. Nothing wrong with that, since Paul told Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach’s sake. If you can find a verse of Scripture to back you up, even Presbyterians will leave you alone.