The Last Innocent Hour

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  He passed a shaky hand over his brow. He felt weak. The buzzing noise hovered in his head.

  “You done for, Tinker. You gone too far this time. They gon find out Miz Lucy was pregnant; they gon know she was sober, too. You drownin’ her in that liquor not gon fool nobody.” Maizie paused, gulping for air. “I can testify to that and plenty other things, like what you done to Miss Beth ‘fore she left here.”

  “Shut up!” The hum battered his ears. He put his hands up, dropped them and crossed to the bedside. “I don’t know why I’m listening to you.” He jerked the pillow from under Maizie’s head.

  Jason didn’t mean to look at her; it was an accident when his eyes collided with hers at the last second before he lowered the pillow. The old woman’s gaze bored into him, as black as she was, as black and deep as hell, and the sense of this hung in the air even after he began to smother her. She fought him, raised hands clawing the air, but not with real intensity. Killing her was easy, easier than Lucy and that other one.

  o0o

  He was looking around the carport, trying to decide whether Beth could have taken the old witch woman’s Buick the way she’d said—somehow he didn’t think so; he didn’t remember that Beth had ever learned to drive—and spotting a flashlight, he grabbed it and went outside, walking around the carport and then along the back of the cabin, beam of light trained to the ground, hunting for footprints, a sign.

  That's when he saw it: the stuffed lamb, its one opaque button eye cocked toward the sky, and he lifted it from the bed of pine needles, held it close, sniffing it, then stuffed it down inside his shirt.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Holding Chrissy in a firm embrace, protecting her as best she could, Beth worked her way through the thicket of trees not a hundred yards south of the cabin. Behind her, she thought she heard Jason shout Maizie's name and in the silence of her mind, she begged God, Please don’t let him hurt her. Her grip on Chrissy tightened. Pain from her twisted ankle jolted through her with each step. Every instinct urged her to run, but the most she could manage was a fast lurch. She headed in a southwesterly direction toward the county road. They could hitch a ride into town from there. Get a doctor. Get the sheriff.

  She tried not to think of how scared she was, how wet and cold. And she prayed for her mama. But she couldn’t think of her, or of what had happened, or of how Mama might even now be dying. She would lose it, if she did. She would not be able to go on. And she had to. Had to make it to the road and get help. That was her focus. Make it to the road. Get help. Makeittotheroadgethelp ... makeittotheroadgethelp.... The words ran across her mind, a banner, a litany.

  She stumbled and righted herself, fell to one knee and got up. Branches slapped her face; the snarl of vines and underbrush snared her ankles and knees. In the aftermath of rain, the night music had resumed. Frog song mingled with the chant of crickets. An owl shrieked. She was thankful for the noise that covered the sound of their movement and Chrissy's occasional frightened sobs.

  “Mommy, where are we going?” She cried the question in intermittent bursts.

  “Hush, sugar,” Beth murmured each time. “It's all right. All right....” She kept her gaze trained to the near distance beyond the curve of Chrissy's back, alternately slowing through thicker stands of yaupon and scrub oak, and picking up her pace in places where the underbrush thinned. Her feet slid around in her wet loafers. The smooth soles provided little traction on the sodden ground.

  Her teeth locked against recurring waves of desperation. What if she couldn't make it? What if Jason caught up with them? She stopped to listen and heard nothing beyond the pulse of her blood pounding in her ears, the wind dabbling in the leafy canopies of the trees. Even Chrissy was finally quiet. They must be nearing the road, Beth thought, but there was no way, really, to tell. It was just the tree covering was less dense, and the ground was harder making it even more slippery. But weren’t those lights through there? She peered into the middle distance waiting for the beams that could only be from headlights to come again, and when they did appear, when she was certain, she picked up her pace feeling a surge of hope. Maybe they would make it after all.

  But now, suddenly, she was sliding, and nearly before she could register what was happening, her feet flew out from under her. She saw them as she went down, the wet, mud-crusted toes of her loafers raised unbelievably to eye level. She landed on her back bearing the full weight of Chrissy's body, and just as her head slammed into the ancient rotting stump of a bur oak, she heard Chrissy scream. And that was the sound she carried with her, the terrible, haunting noise that echoed and echoed down a dark corridor in her mind.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jason wouldn’t have gone back to the house, but he had to get the papers, the ones Lucy had signed that ceded ownership of her land over to him. He crossed the foyer, carefully keeping his gaze from the foot of the stairs. The air was rank with the stench of booze. It hung around him like an accusation. But he did not have to look, he told himself. And yet he did have to, was inexplicably drawn to look. Even eager in some part of his brain. And so he found himself standing over Lucy, staring down at her as if her corpse had used its own cold fingers to pull his eyes right from their sockets.

  Her mouth had slackened and gaped open now, a dark rictus. Her neck was frozen at an agonizing angle that jutted her chin toward heaven. The cloud-shredded moonlight that streamed through the beveled glass window on the stairway landing marked the purpling bruise of his fingers. And there was blood now soaking Lucy’s gown between her legs.

  The nigger had said she was pregnant, but everybody knew niggers lied, especially voodoo niggers. Lucy would have told him; she would have used it on him some way. She could never keep a thing like that to herself. Jason pinched his nose. Still the sweet stench of her blood made his stomach roll. Bile rose in his throat, and he gagged. But then he was laughing, great gasping gouts of laughter that felt torn from his chest. The sound was obscene, terrified and lovely. She was dead.

  Dead! He'd shut her up for good. She’d thought she was so smart with her money and her land, her fucking divorce papers and her restraining order. She’d thought she could play him. But she couldn’t and never would ... never....

  ... never feel the press of her arms around him ... the swell of her breasts against his face....

  Jason’s laughter died. He looked down at her, perplexed, rubbing his brow. A wave of sadness engulfed him. Through the low hum in his brain, he thought he heard his mother’s voice and covered his ears with his hands. But no, he told himself, warned himself. This was not about her. His chin came up; he looked around sharply, and wheeling, crossed to his office. The file that contained the signed documents was on his desk where he’d left it, but the plan had changed now, hadn’t it? Now that Lucy was dead? There would be procedures to follow; the coroner would come. After that a funeral, the probate of her will. Holy Jesus!

  Lucy’s will. He could inherit everything if she hadn’t changed it. Picking up the file, he walked with it into the library and opened the wall safe. He’d stow the docs and talk to Royce before he did anything, he decided. It was almost an afterthought when he pulled the stuffed lamb from his inside his shirt and pushed it into the safe alongside the legal papers.

  He was closing the safe door when the light exploded into the room. He swung his gaze, wildly, hunting the cause, and then realized it was the electricity, that the power had been restored. He might have laughed again at his folly, but when the phone began to ring, it alarmed him. He stared at it, where it sat on the corner of the bar. The continuous jangle felt like an invasion, as if whomever was calling could see straight into the room, straight into his mind. Now there was only his panic and a desperate wish to get away.

  Still as he retraced his steps across the foyer, he paused and looked at his wife, and in the shaft of moonlight that fell across Lucy's open sightless eyes, it appeared as if she watched him. Bolting for the door, he practically dove through it, slamming it hard enou
gh behind him that it didn’t shut but only bounced in its frame. He left it, not caring that it stood unlatched. He was hardly aware.

  Moments later, headed into town, he turned left onto the county road in the wake of a tanker truck. Mud from under its tires coated his windshield, and he glanced down, fumbling for the wiper switch. Otherwise, he might have seen Chrissy Cunningham's small head lift from her mother's quiet breast. If the windows had been down, and the night dead silent, he might have heard her worn-out whimper.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The light. That was Charlie’s first clue that something was wrong. It poured from the window of every downstairs room. It ran a dirty flush across the handsome front door … that stood ajar. Charlie could see that it was open slightly even from behind the wheel of Maizie’s vintage Buick. He shifted his gaze forward, felt the sleek contouring of the steering wheel under his hands and suffered an unreasoning urge to drive away. Dread took his gut in its fist, broke sweat out on his brow, between his shoulder blades. The wet sticky breeze that crawled around him through the Buick’s lowered windows gave no relief.

  Now in the full grip of his panic, he bolted from the car and rounded the front end, shouting for Beth, but there was no response other than the echo of her name floating uselessly back at him. He pounded up the veranda steps and pulled up short before the door. “Beth?” he said, softly. Pushing the door, he widened it just enough to allow entry … and saw her immediately....

  “Oh, Jesus,” he murmured. “Dear sweet Jesus,” he said, and he went to her, not noticing the broken glass scattered everywhere, or the sound it made beneath his feet as if he were crunching across gravel. And he didn't connect what he was seeing to the smell of bourbon or the odor of spilled blood, either. Not right away. What he did take note of in that first handful of terrible moments was her red-stained, white satin gown tangled in a wad between her legs, her wide-staring, terrified eyes, and her face that was some inexpressible shade of unearthly pale. He knelt beside her.

  “Lucy?” He touched her cheek. It was cold and rigid, and he jerked his hand back as if she had burned him. He saw the ghostly bruising that noosed her neck, but he did not in that moment attach any meaning to it. He wiped his mouth and sat back on his haunches, only now registering the broken glass, the fruity liquor smell, the saltier stench of blood. His stomach heaved and clapping a hand to his mouth, he lurched to his feet, but even in his horror, he knew a moment of dreadful joy: It wasn’t Beth. Thank God, it wasn’t Beth.

  But where was she? And where was Chrissy? Were they hiding? His gaze raked the light-glazed hall, vision blurring as he careened in a circle shouting their names. He looked into the library. “Beth? It's all right. You can come out now, okay? Chrissy?”

  No answer. No sign.

  He went into the music room. “It's just Daddy, Stinkerbelle. You’re safe now. Everything is okay.”

  His voice rose and fell on the words as he paced through the downstairs rooms. He hit the stairs at a run, climbing them three at a time, light-blind in the utter upstairs darkness, groping his way. He fumbled with the switch in the room where he had put Chrissy to sleep only hours ago and didn’t trust his vision, but tossed the covers on small empty bed as if he would find her burrowed beneath them. The bed in the room he was to have shared with Beth was empty too, and although the coverlet was wrinkled, the four-poster didn’t look slept in. Their suitcase was open but unpacked on the chest at the bed’s foot; the cartons still tied with string were on the floor nearby where Beth had directed he leave them.

  Heart wallowing in his chest, he came back downstairs and squatted again beside Lucy’s body. From the look of her, she'd been dead awhile. He rocked back on his heels, eyes burning, blood roaring in his ears. He tried to think what to do and couldn’t.

  What the hell happened here?

  Standing up, he forced himself to study the scene. First glance, he might have guessed Lucy had been drunk and fallen down the stairs. But somehow, it didn't add up. Those bruises on her neck--

  The phone rang interrupting his thought, startling him. He went into the library to answer it, but the ringing stopped just as he put his hand on the receiver. He started to pick it up anyway, to call for help, but when he saw the safe with its door hanging open, he crossed the room, thinking robbery, that this was a robbery, until he looked inside.

  At the neat stacks of bound cash, lot of it, and there was an assortment of envelopes, too, a couple of small boxes. But there; what was that? Something soft and worn, with ears and a tail, and it was so dear and familiar to him that his heart staggered. His brain was telling him no way even as his hands closed over the stacked bills, shifting them to reach what he knew with a kind of sick confusion was Chrissy’s stuffed lamb.

  “Hey! You in there!”

  Charlie froze.

  “This here is the police, Deputy Lance Devers,” the voice announced. “Come on outta there now!”

  “Thank God!” Charlie thrust the cash back into the safe and went across the room to the doorway. “Is Beth with you? Chrissy?”

  “Hold it right there, boy. Get your hands up. Who are you?”

  Charlie’s gaze dropped to the Glock the deputy had trained on him and then rose quickly to see Jason Tinker standing in the background. It didn’t take a genius to see what they thought. Charlie put up his hands. “No, I didn't do this. I just got back here, I swear.”

  Charlie heard how it sounded and appealed to Jason. “Tell Dick Tracy here you know me.”

  “Yeah, we’ve met. I caught him snooping around the barn earlier today. Said he was Beth's husband.”

  “Beth's husband? She in town?” The deputy addressed Jason while keeping a wary eye trained on Charlie. “I ain't seen her since high school.”

  Charlie's voice rode over his. “We got in this afternoon, but she’s not here, neither is my daughter. Have you seen them? Do you know where they are?”

  “Why don’t you tell us,” the deputy suggested.

  “Jesus! No, you’ve got this all wrong. Something really bad has gone down here. We’re wasting time. Somebody opened the safe--” He pivoted meaning to show them.

  “Hold it,” the deputy ordered. “Get you hands up and keep 'em up.”

  Charlie didn’t, not until he was ordered again. “What is this? I’m trying to tell you—”

  “So, you're Beth's husband, and you say you got into town today? Seems like I would have heard somethin' if she was back. Maybe you're makin’ it up.”

  Charlie turned to Jason. “Tell him.”

  “What?”

  “You saved my kid earlier; you shot Beth’s horse, for Christ’s sake, c’mon.”

  Jason's expression was bland, a mirror that gave away nothing. “Are you saying you weren't in my barn this afternoon?”

  “You know damn well I was, but so was Beth. And Lucy. She was there too.”

  The deputy stepped close to Charlie, keeping his gun low, aimed at Charlie’s midsection. “I don't like your attitude, boy. Looks to me like you had some beef with Jason; he run you off and now you come back to rob the place.”

  “No. Listen to me--”

  Devers interrupted. “What happened? Miz Tinker get in your way?”

  “No! Hell no. I—Beth and I had a—a kind of fight, and I left for a while. When I came back, the front door was open, and I found Lucy like that. I thought she fell, but then, when I found the safe open, I figured somebody broke in and she must have found them.” Charlie started around Tinker, heading for the foyer. He was aware of Tinker backing up, of the deputy shouting at him to stop.

  “Take one more step and I’ll shoot.”

  Charlie froze. He looked at Tinker and saw nothing there he’d call human. Tinker’s eyes were opaque, as flat and colorless as ice. And that’s when it hit him: Tinker had done this; he’d murdered his own wife for whatever reason and maybe Beth, too, and Chrissy … oh, God. “What the hell have you done, you sonofabitch?” Charlie took a step.

  Dever
s jammed the gun barrel into his ribs.

  “Can’t you see? He did it.” Charlie held Jason’s stare. “Where’s Beth, asshole? Where’s my daughter? What have you done with them?”

  “That’s enough, boy. I ain’t waitin’ for backup. You’re under arrest for one murder at least. You got the right to remain silent. . . .” Devers jerked Charlie around, put him down on his knees and cuffed him, easily, while he finished reading Charlie his rights, because Charlie was weak with fear and shaking with rage.

  “I’m thinkin’ maybe Miz Tinker didn't fall down them stairs like you thought, Jayce,” the deputy said. “I’m thinkin’ this guy here strangled her. You saw them marks on her neck, right? They didn't get there from her falling down the stairs.”

  Charlie lunged to his feet. “What’s your plan, Tinker? You murder your wife and pin it on me? Is that it?”

  Devers shoved Charlie back onto his knees.

  Jason went around them to the safe. Charlie heard him cross the floor; he heard him rifling the contents, and the thought of his hands on Chrissy’s lamb inside almost unhinged him. “C'mon,” he said for the deputy’s ears only. “You've got this all wrong. Maybe you didn't know, but there’s been trouble between Tinker and Lucy. That's why she wanted Beth home. Lucy wanted a divorce; she wanted him out of here.”

  The deputy waved his gun. “You best watch what you're sayin', boy. You're in a lotta deep shit here. See, ever'body around knows if there was trouble? it was between Beth and her mama. She ain't been home in six, seven years on account of they had a big fight, an' anyway, if she'd a come home today, I would'a heard about it 'long with ever'body in town.”

  “Go ask Maizie if you don’t believe me. She picked us up at the bus station.”

  “You bet I plan to ask Miz Maizie. That's her car out in the drive, and I'm wonderin' how it got there. You steal it from her? That your getaway car? Maybe she's dead. Maybe you killed her too.”