“Alice wasn’t murdered, was she?” Gusta drew slightly away from Terri.
“No!” Terri’s one breathed word was a cry of pain. Maynard put a quick hand of sympathy over hers, but she snatched hers away.
“Alice’s death wasn’t intentional,” I granted. “But what followed was. She intentionally came here as Alice Fulton to work for you.”
Terri’s breaths were short and shallow. One finger twirled a piece of hair.
“You can’t take somebody else’s identify for long. Somebody was sure to recognize her.” Meriwether always had a fine brain. “Besides, what difference does it make who she really is by now, when Nana so obviously adores her? Yes, you do,” she said, answering the quick jerk of Gusta’s head. “She does an enormous amount of work for you, and does it well. She’s put all your addresses into the computer, and all your properties, so you don’t have to keep that tedious ledger every month—”
I touched her. “That tedious ledger is one reason we are here. Gusta, do you have your checkbook with you? Would you get it out?”
Gusta grudgingly allowed that she did, and pulled it from her pocketbook.
“Is this your account number?” I handed her the stamped paper from my pocket.
As Gusta compared the two, Terri held her breath. Gusta gave a perplexed grunt. “No. No, it’s not. And I don’t have but one bank account, so why does this stamp say, ‘Deposit to the account of Augusta Wainwright’?”
“Did you get her purse?” I asked. Maynard held it out. Terri made a grab for it, but he pulled it away. “Look inside,” I instructed, “and see if there’s a checkbook. Then compare these two numbers.” I handed him the stamped paper.
“They’re the same,” he announced. When Terri looked at me, it was a good thing looks weren’t fire. I would be charcoal.
“I never agreed to open an account with her,” Gusta objected.
“You didn’t have to,” I told her. “All Terri had to do was get a signature card from her own bank, sign your name on it, and take it back. That gave you permission to write checks and deposit funds to her account.”
“I don’t have checks to her account.” Gusta still didn’t understand.
“Of course not. But once your name was on the account, nobody would be surprised when you deposited money into it. All she had to do was make a second deposit stamp with your name and her account number on it. I suspect we’ll find she’s already deposited a number of your checks.”
Gusta’s eyes bored into me like gray drill bits. “You said that rubber stamp was a good idea.”
“It was. It saved you endorsing all those checks. But we didn’t either one expect Terri to have two stamps made.”
“I told you I didn’t want a stranger handling my money,” Gusta snapped at Meriwether.
In his corner, Otis raised a hand in protest. “You got no cause to fuss at the judge and Meriwether ’cause you didn’t take care of your own business.”
Gusta whirled toward him, madder than a rattler in a bucket, but she wasn’t the only one in that room who was mad. Before she could speak, Terri lashed out, eyes blazing. “With all the money you’ve got, you’d never have missed it. I wasn’t going to bleed you dry.” She looked around the room in amazement. “Do you know how much rent she collects every single month? Nearly sixty-five thousand dollars! Would she miss a few thousand a month?”
“It wasn’t your money.” Otis spoke again from his corner, in a gentle tone of reason.
Terri poured her rage over him. “You ought to understand, if anybody does. What have you ever had? What have I ever had? Daddy died in a crazy accident. Mama could have sued and lived comfortable, but she wouldn’t. Instead, she worked herself to death and we had nothing. How much work did she”—she pointed to Gusta—“ever do for all that money? Tell me that!”
“Now, now,” Otis remonstrated, patting the air with his thin old hands.
She gave him a furious look. “Somebody owes me!”
Otis spoke again, real soft. “You ain’t mad at Miss Gusta, child, you’re mad at God. You think God oughta arranged your life a mite fairer. Now I ain’t sayin’ you haven’t had a hard row to hoe. You have. But we each got our own row, and if you don’t like yours, tell the Boss. Don’t take it out on Miss Gusta, here. I ain’t sayin’ she’s perfect. She ain’t.” Gusta gasped, but Otis went placidly on, “But she never did you a speck of harm. It ain’t right for you to take your mad out on her. That’s one of the devil’s favorite little games. He loves it when we pick and tear at one another. Doesn’t make us feel any better—in fact, we usually feel a whole lot worse. But we sure feel justified.” He rubbed his old gray head like he was getting all that wisdom out of a genie’s lamp. “And when we feel justified hurting somebody else? Umm-umm. We’re dancing with the devil, for sure.” He gave his head one more rub, then let his hand stroke the back of his neck and drop to his lap. “Who you’re really mad at is God, so go ahead and tell Him. God can take it. God can even make hard things bearable.” He bent his head and his lips moved silently.
As Terri looked at the floor, she looked a lot more like the Alice I used to know and like.
Jed cleared his throat. “Thank you, Otis. Now let’s—”
Gusta stood and glared at Terri. “I hope they put you underneath the jail. Come, Meriwether.” She stomped toward the door on her cane. I will always find that hard to forgive. The child could have done with a little charity. But I understood, too. Gusta had let herself get fond of a criminal. It was not just Terri whom Gusta would not forgive. It was also herself.
Jed called her back. “Miss Gusta? We’re not quite finished. Would you come back for just a minute, please?”
Her tall old frame wavered. Gusta wasn’t accustomed to changing her mind. At last she gave a curt nod. “Might as well, since we’re here.” She stomped back to her seat.
Jed looked around the room and finished with his eyes on Terri. “Mac called me this evening and asked me three questions. First, she asked where my uncle Hiram worked in Atlanta.” Terri grew very still. “I could answer that. He did maintenance for an apartment complex. She asked if Teresa Civilis lived in that complex, and if she knew Hiram. I verified tonight, by a call to the manager, that Teresa Civilis did live there until her death, and that Hiram fixed her sink and spoke with her often. Apparently there are several people who can testify he knew her and she knew him—at least to speak to. When he found her apartment empty one morning, he was told she had died and her family had come for her things. But Hiram didn’t believe it. He called me and told me aliens had taken her away.”
Meriwether’s voice was soft and sad. “Poor Hiram and his aliens.”
Jed nodded. “Hiram was so worried about aliens in Atlanta that he came home to Hopemore, where he thought he’d be safer.”
I picked up the story. “But one of the first people he saw, the Friday after he got back, was Teresa Civilis, at the wheel of Gusta’s car. I was with him at the time and heard him exclaim, ‘Ms. Civilis!’ ” Terri shifted uneasily in her chair. “I didn’t know what he meant, at the time, so I ignored him.” I didn’t see any point in telling them what I thought he’d said.
Gusta leaned forward on her cane and contributed her bit. “He came by one Friday night while we were eating and insisted that Florine call Alice—Terri, whoever she is—from the table.” I wasn’t surprised she remembered. For Gusta, leaving the table during a meal ranks on her Poor Taste list right up there with wearing white shoes after Labor Day. “You came back and said he had you mixed up with somebody else. Florine said she gave him a glass of water afterwards, and he was talking wild about people from Mars.”
Jed nodded. “He called me that same evening and said an alien was walking around Hopemore in somebody else’s skin. He said as a lawyer, I could get the proof we’d need.” Jed apparently remembered then that he was a lawyer, not supposed to commit himself to anything, because he added, “He was not, however, more specific than that.”
&
nbsp; I picked up the story tentatively. “You already had a gun you’d found on Gusta’s closet shelf—” This was the part where we were waltzing on roller skates and anything could happen.
Gusta huffed, appalled. “Are you saying Alice used my gun to shoot Hiram?”
Darren slid open one door in time to hear. “You’re crazy, vieja! Alice hasn’t shot anybody.” I didn’t know Spanish, but the word was pepper on his tongue.
Terri’s scorn was so thick she could have poured it on pancakes. “They don’t have a shred of evidence. Just because I knew that filthy old man doesn’t prove I killed him.”
She was absolutely right, of course. Nevertheless, I plunged on, hoping—what? That she would confess? “We have the gun. I found it in Joe Riddley’s boot and gave it to the sheriff. And your prints are on my closet door.”
Darren’s eyes blazed, and blisterning words poured over me like lava. “Half the county left huellas on that door! Why should Alice kill that old man? That’s ridiculous!” He waved both hands in the air and spun from one of us to the other, blasting each with his fury.
Jed reached one arm across Alive to restrain him, and Darren whirled toward him. “Don’t you touch her! It’s a frame-up, that’s what it is. Because we are outsiders. But we didn’t do this murder! Neither of us!” He whipped back to me. “Where is your compassion? How could you think such a thing about Alice, who’s had the worst life you ever imagined? How could you? Cosmo se atreve?” He was loud, he was incoherent, he was magnificent.
In the middle of all that commotion, before any of us could stop her, Terri sprinted through the narrow opening in the door.
Everybody except Meriwether and Darren jumped up to follow her. We wound up in a jumble at the doorway. Jed pushed the hardest and I was right on his heels. As we reached the front porch, we saw a blur of white as Terri raced across the lawn and jumped into Gusta’s Cadillac. As usual, Otis had left the keys in the ignition.
She made ruts in our lawn as she turned and peeled out of the yard. Jed ran to the BMW, me close behind. He had the engine roaring before I slammed my door. “The sheriff will get her,” I promised. “I told him she might try to leave my house tonight. He’s got a deputy stationed at the end of the road.”
Jed didn’t slow a whit. He raced backward down our drive like one of the Petty boys. On the road he spun gravel as he made the turn. The misty rain was still falling.
My hands clenched into fists as we rocketed through the night. I saw Terri’s own car beside the road near Hubert’s, where Jed and Maynard had waylaid her. Up at the highway, I heard a siren open up. When we reached the corner, we followed the sound—turning right, away from town. “She’s heading for I-20,” I said unnecessarily. “Probably making for Atlanta.”
Ahead of us, Buster’s deputy wailed in her wake.
Our part of Georgia is along the geological fall line where the Piedmont drops to the coastal plain. Since our county hasn’t felt a need for many four-lane roads, the road we were on was hilly and narrow, dropping off at the side in some places nearly thirty feet. But Jed grew up on Hope County roads. He just gunned his motor and raced after them. I found myself sneaking peeks at the speedometer and whispering, “DearGoddear-GoddearGod.” I didn’t know if I was praying that we’d catch her or that we’d all be safe. Once in a while a suspicion flitted through my head that I even hoped she’d get away.
I kept sneaking peeks at Jed, too. I’d known him since he was knee-high to a gnat, but that night he was fueled with a fury I hadn’t seen before. Was it for his uncle or for Meriwether’s grandmother that he felt such rage? He hunched his shoulders and clutched the wheel as the speedometer climbed to heights I never hope to experience again.
Terri was a nerveless driver. I had to give her credit for that. She pushed Gusta’s old Cadillac harder than anybody knew it would go. Our speedometer was hovering over one hundred when we suddenly saw her swerve from the right lane into the left. A slow car was dead ahead. At the top of the next hill, we could see another approaching.
I still live those three seconds in my nightmares. The deputy and Jed slammed on brakes, fought to keep their cars on the slick road. Terri sped up and jerked her wheel to the right.
She overcompensated, fishtailed all over that wet road, and then, in a heart-stopping second, plunged into an abyss of kudzu.
30
It took a lifetime for the deputy and Jed to both stop, turn, and get back to where Terri went over. The other two cars had stopped as well.
As soon as Jed stopped, I jumped out my side and peered over into one of those places where Georgia soil is still following Sherman to the sea. In summer the deep, eroded gash of earth would be filled with kudzu, that pernicious vine somebody brought from China to prevent erosion. It now overruns the South, thick green leaves that climb our pines and snake down our hillsides. By late autumn, kudzu was nothing but thick ropy vines, but they had broken Terri’s fall.
In the dimness, the Cadillac lay on its back, tires still spinning, looking like Lulu hoping to get her belly scratched. Terri, little more than a glimmer of white top and white face, lay on her back in kudzu vines, flung a good twenty feet from the car. She hadn’t bothered with a seatbelt.
The drivers of the other two cars, one elderly farmer and an excited teen, were making sharp little grunts of dismay. “She’s gotta be twenty feet down there, and there’s no good way to get to her.” Without a word, the deputy dashed back to his cruiser and grabbed the phone.
I stood on the side of the road shaking like a kudzu leaf in the wind, except the kudzu had lost its leaves and there was no wind. Jed peered all along the bank, hoping for a miraculous staircase—or at least an easy way down.
I got the miracle, but it wasn’t stairs. I was peering through the dimness at Terri when suddenly I saw a flash of white. “She flung out her arm! She’s alive!” I yelled to the deputy in the car. “My God, she’s alive!” I bent over the gully and shouted down, whether she could hear or not, “Help’s coming, honey. Hang on! Help’s coming.”
But there was no way down. No way down at all. The red clay banks were crumbly and pitted where rivulets of rain had washed them out.
A second cruiser slid to a stop behind ours and a red-faced beefy deputy jumped out. He hurried toward me, took one look down, and sucked in a long whistle. “Boy! We had a gully like that on our place, growing up. Try and climb down there, and you’d plunge under the kudzu and never be seen again.” He didn’t seem to expect me to answer, because he turned at once and went to talk to the first deputy.
They and the other men were still by the cruiser scratching their heads when Sheriff Gibbons pulled up. I stayed where I could see Terri.
Like I said, Buster is a marvelous officer of the law. In less than a minute he’d gotten on his radio requesting a helicopter rescue. I remembered how he had fought for three counties to go together and buy a helicopter for this very sort of thing a year back, and how much opposition he’d had before they bought it. As I stood on the gully bank praying for Terri, I sent up a word of thanks for Buster.
A sizable crowd gathered before the helicopter arrived. Folks are real friendly about stopping for wrecks around where we live—and real curious. Buster had to send the deputies out to light flares to protect rescue workers and flag traffic on its way. Everybody’s face looked tense and worried in the flashing lights. I saw Darren’s yellow Beetle pass several times, but they wouldn’t let him stop. If I hadn’t been a judge, they’d have tried to send me home—but they wouldn’t have succeeded. I was also a mother, and as long as Terri lay like a rag doll below us, I planned to stay. I kept my eyes on the sky and my ears tuned for the first thunk-thunk-thunk in the sky.
Watching that rescue was like watching a miracle. I couldn’t believe it when the technicians swung down from the belly of the ’copter and actually managed to lift Terri inside. They flew off into the night sky like a giant mosquito rising from the swamps.
Seeing the sheriff nearby, I said,
“Your deputy deserves a commendation for good driving. He didn’t drive her off the road. She swerved to avoid another car and overcompensated.”
He took off his hat and ran his hand over his hair, then put the hat back on. “You deserve a paddling for being here. Do you know what Joe Riddley would do to me if anything happened to you?”
“I didn’t exactly think,” I admitted.
“I hope you think up a better story than that before you meet up with Walker and Ridd.” He gave me another look and shook his head. “This is a historic moment. You went off without your pocketbook.”
I called Ridd and asked him to send Bethany down to sleep at our house. “I may have to be out late, and I don’t want Joe Riddley waking up with nobody there.” Bethany had done that before and not minded. By way of explanation, I said that Miss Gusta’s assistant had been in a bad wreck and I needed to check on her in the hospital. “Martha’s working tonight,” he told me.
Who Invited the Dead Man? Page 27