I looked around the room. “Here? Now?”
“Very definitely now.”
I glanced at the front of his shorts. “Looks like you’re in the mood for more than a massage.”
“I know it’s goofy, but sitting with my dad, I’d think about a lot of past stuff, but I’d also think about holding you and being with you and doing stuff with you, and …” He blushed.
“And what?”
“I’ve always wanted to make it with a guy in my own bed in my old room at home.”
“This does seem to be that venue. What if somebody’s in the house and hears us?”
“I told you, they left. If Nathan’s here, he’s outside working.”
“He could stop in.”
“We’ll be quiet. He won’t be jealous anyway.” He let the fingers of his right hand slowly caress the tips of the fingers on my left hand. He stroked each finger from tip to base, moved to my palm and then slowly onto my wrist.
I remember taking one of my boyfriends in high school back to my house when I knew nobody would be home. We never made it to my room, but had a wild time in the rec room in the basement. Doing it on the couch in my parents’ house was one of the hottest sexual moments of my youth.
Most often our lovemaking is slow and sensuous, and this time Scott seemed ready to let each caress take an eternity. I lay back and let his hands rove over my body, and eventually I did the same to him.
When his hand began exploring the front of my pants, I pulled him to me. I swung my legs round, put one arm under his head, my hand on his hip and pulled him close. I held his strong, muscular body tightly. The agonizingly gentle caresses were replaced with mad, passionate kisses and fierce embraces.
A long while later he breathed deeply, his mouth next to my right ear, and whispered, “That was unbelievable.”
“I’d be content to lie here like this with you for several centuries.” I held him tightly. I felt his breathing slow and his muscles relax. I let my hands gently rove over his back in slow circles. I enjoyed the feel of the weight of his body on mine. I felt warm and safe and protected.
Someone knocked at the door. Scott jumped to his feet. We both pulled on pants. Scott opened the door. It was Nathan.
“Didn’t know if you were here,” he said.
“We’re here,” Scott said. “Any news from the hospital?”
“No.” I thought I caught Nathan trying to look further into the room. Was he the sex police, or interested?
“We’ll be down in a few minutes,” Scott said.
We showered, dressed, and met in the kitchen. We had orange juice. Nathan was nowhere to be seen.
“We can eat in town,” Scott said.
“I can fill you in on all the details from yesterday. There wasn’t much time at the hospital.”
I phoned the library and set up a meeting with Violet for early in the afternoon. After a call to the hospital, we strode out into the humidity.
“All this damp, you’d think it would pour rain,” I said.
“Supposed to. Tropical depression that’s been developing over the Gulf of Mexico is moving in this afternoon.”
“We aren’t going to have to evacuate or something like that?”
“A tropical depression is not a hurricane.”
“I knew that.”
“Mostly in June storms start over the Gulf of Mexico and don’t get that strong. Not like hurricanes later on in the summer. We’re not that near to the coast, so mostly we just get lots of rain. Farmers could use it.”
Out front was a pearl-gray BMW.
“Where’d this come from?”
“Am I fabulously rich?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Therefore phone calls can be made and deliveries can occur, even in Brinard.”
“I’m suitably impressed.”
Other than what I considered essential for a car—four wheels and the ability to go—this one also had blessed air-conditioning.
I was curious about Nathan’s trying to see into the bedroom, so I asked. “Nathan seemed kind of interested in what we were doing,” I said.
“Nah, he’s straight.”
“Well, you hear about all these incestuous southern-gothic sexual escapades between brothers and brothers, or brothers and sisters, and what all.”
“You have got to stop being so prejudiced. I never touched any of my brothers or sisters. They never put a move on me. That’s all overblown bull. I watched a few animals screw out in the barn when I was four or five. Wasn’t exciting then and I ignored it the rest of the time I was growing up. As for Nathan, I accidentally walked in on him when he was more than making out with a girl in the barn.”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
“He’s got his own place a couple miles down the road. Got a wife and four kids. He kind of runs both farms now and hires help during the busy seasons. Daddy does what he can when he’s in the mood.”
I told him everything that had happened the night before. Scott was furious at Hiram and Shannon. I thought about not telling him what they’d said, balancing the feeling of tattling with the fact that Scott was an adult. He could deal with the information any way he saw fit. My general policy was that withholding information was childish and stupid.
This noon we chose to dine at the exquisite and well-appointed Huddle House. A bright-eyed and bubbling teenager served us. She seemed quite pleasant and unaffected by the word on us. In the newspaper boxes out front, the death of the sheriff held the headlines. Scott’s presence in town was little more than a sports-page squib—mostly speculation about whether he was really in the South for his father’s illness or merely in hiding because of the headlines.
Scott was more concerned about family politics than he was about the sports world. “I’ll talk to Hiram and Shannon,” he said. “They may not like my being gay, but this is bullshit. As for that crap you heard Hiram and Nathan saying the other night …” He sighed. “I tried talking to Nathan last night. I think he listened. It’s this damn religious stuff down here that makes it so tough. Shannon and Hiram are real religious. Nathan told me Hiram had joined Reverend Hollis’s church.”
“That’s not going to help.”
“Plus I think they believe that I’ve betrayed my family. Somehow, all these headlines reflect on them. Like I chose to be gay.”
“Is it worth a family fight at a time like this?” I asked.
He thought a minute. “If there’s a good time to say something, I will. I guess it’ll depend some on how Daddy’s doing. Did that young cop really admit to dancing in Atlanta?”
“Sure did. I wouldn’t mind seeing one of his performances. At least it gave us some leverage.”
“I don’t think that stuff about Hiram and the sheriff was important. Those kinds of fights aren’t big deals around these parts.”
I kept silent. I wasn’t eliminating anybody from my list of possible suspects, no matter what their relationship to Scott.
“You know anything about a guy named Jasper Williams, local eccentric, skinhead, and budding Nazi?”
“Never heard of him. The town eccentric when I was growing up was Theodore Horst. He owned a flower shop on the square. He lisped and swished. I thought that’s what it meant to be gay. It was part of the reason it took me so long to come out to myself. I thought I’d have to be like him.”
We finished eating and returned to the car. “I’m supposed to meet Violet later,” I said. “You can go to the hospital, and I can try and keep from being arrested.”
He dropped me off at the library.
Today, Violet wore a bright yellow-and-green flower-print dress. She introduced me to Lisa, the woman taking her place at work.
Lisa shook my hand and said, “I’m happy to meet you. I hope you don’t think everyone in this town is in the hands of the preachers and the bigots. There’s lots of folks who are sympathetic. Course, they’re afraid some, but I know you didn’t kill the sheriff. He was a mean man.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Us kids used to just hang out in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly—that’s the grocery store—on Friday and Saturday nights. Used to be we could just be there to talk to our friends, but the last few years he’d come by, not just send a deputy to warn us, and he’d get all ugly. Nobody liked it, but we couldn’t complain to our parents. He was just bein’ mean.”
I sympathized with this dastardly behavior.
“Violet says y’all might talk to Jasper Williams?”
I nodded.
“You be careful. All of us kids grew up scaring each other with stories about him. I know kids do that a lot, try to scare each other, but we all know Jasper is a mean man.”
I thanked her for the warning.
Violet grabbed an oversized bag and we left. “Who do you want to talk with first?” she asked. She started the Cadillac and turned on the air-conditioning.
“I’d like to begin with Clara Thorton. She seems to be the biggest honcho around here, and she had the nerve to stand up to Peter Woodall.”
“I thought you might. I called and set up an appointment.”
We drove directly to the courthouse. Outside, a few people sat on cement benches in the shade. Inside, the floors were highly polished wood. The walls were painted beige, with black-and-white photos of the early days of the courthouse, showing mules, horses, buggies, and people traversing the unpaved street.
Clara Thorton’s office was in the front on the second floor. She had a light orange rug, blond chairs, a teak desk, and several filing cabinets. Each wall had two paintings of antebellum homes: Classical and Gothic Revival on one, Federal and Regency on the other.
Clara put on her gold-rim glasses and stood to meet us. She wore a black skirt, a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, and strands of pearls around her neck. Violet formally introduced us.
Clara’s watery gray eyes stared at me uncompromisingly. She said, “I agreed to see you, Mr. Mason, because Violet asked me. I was also intrigued, maybe even pleased, when you held your temper with Peter in the Waffle House. I admire self-control.”
“It took a lot,” I said.
“Don’t mistake me,” she said. “I appreciate what you did, but I’m not fond of you or your lifestyle.”
“What lifestyle is that?” I asked. “The one where I teach school? The one where I go home and read books? The one where I go to movies, and eat dinner, or laugh or cry or care for someone I love, or the one where I have a mother and father and brothers and sisters who I love and care for as much as they love and care for me?”
Violet said nothing to interrupt me.
Clara said, “You’re very bold for someone who is a thin line away from being arrested for murder.”
I spoke very quietly. “I didn’t kill anyone. I found the body and now I’m going to find the killer, since the local police don’t seem to be interested in doing that.”
“Insulting me won’t help that,” Clara said.
“Treating me like dirt, talking down to me, won’t find out who killed the sheriff.”
“Depends if I really care who killed the sheriff, and if I really care what happens to you, doesn’t it?”
“I appreciate your honesty.”
Violet said, “Clara, I know you’ve had a feud with the sheriff for years. Everybody in the county knows it.”
“And you think that makes me a murder suspect?” She smiled for about two seconds and laughed for maybe five.
“It makes you a better suspect than me,” I said.
“Maybe I’ll talk to Judge Collins, convince him to have you arrested. I don’t know what kind of pull your lawyer friend had, but we folks in this county have our ways as well.”
“What did you feud with the sheriff about?” Violet asked.
“You know as well as I do, Violet. There are few secrets in this county.”
“I know that you didn’t like each other,” Violet said, “but I haven’t really been in town much since I was a kid.”
I said, “Mrs. Thorton, I understand you don’t like me. I apologize if my words a few minutes ago offended you. I feel cornered and trapped just being in this town, and since I discovered the body I’ve been pretty uptight. I’d like to do what I can to clear my name. It looks like solving the crime is the only way for that to happen. I’d appreciate any help you can give me.”
She picked up a gold pen from the top of her desk and tapped it against the blotter. She took off her glasses and leaned back in her chair. She looked from Violet to me.
She said, “I don’t like homosexuals. I hope the preachers can organize and make a concerted statement. I hope we don’t have an uproar in this town, but we’re starting to get lots of publicity. I’ve heard rumors of a homosexual-rights activist coming to town, and I’ve been told the Atlanta papers are sending people here. Some tabloid creature was annoying people this morning in the Waffle House. The connection with the famous Scott Carpenter and a possible murder is a tremendous lure.”
She thought for a moment more, then leaned forward in her chair and propped her elbows on the top of the desk. “Being elected county commissioner the past couple elections has not been easy. These men would like to get me out. A big blowup about this case in the press would be bad. But if you didn’t do it, and they look stupid because of how they handled it, I’d be able to use it against them.”
Abruptly she pulled her chair closer to her desk. She said, “The sheriff liked to collect secrets, and that’s how he preferred getting elected. If someone did something, he might or might not arrest him.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Say the bank president’s son was arrested for possession of marijuana—a reasonably serious offense in this county and in this state. Maybe the sheriff would go to the bank president and talk to him. Then the kid got off, and next election one of Peter’s big supporters would be the bank president.”
“This happened?”
“Just an example. You’ll have to find the specifics. The only reasonably solid rumor I ever got was that the sheriff had some dirt on Al Holcomb.”
“Even I know he’s the Klan leader in town,” I said.
“So does everybody. That wouldn’t be the secret he’d hold over his head. I’ve always kind of wanted to know what the secret is. When I first took office, Peter tried to bully me by threatening to reveal things from my husband’s past, but I dared him to do his worst. He never did try. Came in the first day I was in office and tried to get me to knuckle under. That’s why I’ve always hated him. How dare he!”
“What did he have on your husband?” I asked.
“None of your business.”
We all paused at this barrier for a second.
I asked, “Who else in town had a grudge against him?”
“Everybody tiptoed delicately around the sheriff. You might try Wainwright Richardson, county coroner and your immediate nemesis. There’s a feud there that goes way back. I know their families openly quarreled for a while in the late forties. Don’t know about what. My husband probably knew, but he didn’t pass any political information on to me. I’ve had to win elections without threatening everybody—I’ve just had to do a good job.”
“Did the sheriff get along with his wife?” I asked.
“Haven’t heard about any problems. She’s stayed home to raise the kids. Had one almost nine months to the day after they got married.”
In the hallway after the interview I said, “I’m sorry about getting annoyed with her and letting it show, but I’m tired of being the stepped-on pansy in this town.”
“They aren’t used to an uppity queer,” Violet said. “They’ll survive. Richardson’s office is downstairs—let’s try him before we leave.”
His room was not as large, but in most other respects it was identical to Clara’s, except his pictures were of battleships, aircraft carriers, and submarines.
Richardson wore a charcoal-gray suit and smoked a pipe. He did not ask our permiss
ion if he could light up. He pulled a pouch out of his top left drawer, inserted the tobacco into his pipe, tamped it down, lit it, and blew smoke rings in our direction. It actually smelled pretty good, sort of a cherry flavor.
“Working on getting you arrested,” he said.
“Working on finding out who really killed him,” I said.
Violet said, “Wainwright, we need help.”
He turned to her. “I don’t see why you’re helping him, Violet. It’s all around town about you driving up here with him this afternoon. Somebody thought they might have seen you two together last night.”
“Wainwright,” she asked, “aren’t you interested in finding out who killed the sheriff?”
“I don’t want both of these jobs,” Wainwright said. “I’d prefer to be coroner of Brinard County. I’m not interested in this sheriff business, and I don’t want to investigate. Want to just get done with my job and get in as much fishing as I can.”
“You’re going to convict me because you’re too lazy?”
“You don’t like honesty?”
“What did your family quarrel about with the sheriff’s?” Violet asked.
“Who told you that?”
“Clara.”
“Should have kept her mouth shut.”
None of us spoke as Wainwright puffed on his pipe for several moments. Finally he said, “That quarrel can’t have anything to do with why the sheriff died.”
“What was it?” Violet asked.
“Peter’s daddy and I served in the same outfit in World War II, and we saw action together in Africa and Italy. He accused me of being a coward in the war and tried to get people here to believe it. His daddy was an ignorant blowhard, but some people will believe anything. I never had a quarrel with Peter, but his daddy was unforgiving. I suppose it didn’t help that I bought as much land around his property as I could. When Peter inherited his land, I tried to buy it from him. He never was much of a farmer. Practically drove himself and all his kin to bankruptcy. He may have had reason to kill me, but I had no reason to kill him. My family started with more money, and I made the family richer. Peter was almost broke when he became sheriff. He got elected because he was a sports hero in high school. Course, it could have been worse. What if Scott Carpenter had stayed in town? He was such a hero, he could have gotten himself elected anything—and look where we’d be. A homosexual sheriff.”
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