Stone Angel

by Carol O’Connell

  “A piano. Right. And Mallory is supposed to have accomplished all this in one day?” Not likely. Though she was capable of frightening a man into a heart attack, she was fanatically neat, hardly the most likely suspect for a messy homicide by rock. And as for the idiot’s broken hands, though Mallory was a highly original creature, if she were merely assaulting someone, she would probably not use a piano.

  With light pressure on his arm, the woman moved him forward again. “Well, we’re pretty sure she had something to do with the deputy’s heart attack. He had a dickey pump. It wouldn’t have taken much of a fright. Your friend startled a whole lot of people, showing up the way she did.”

  Well, that fit. Startling people was Mallory’s forte. She had an unparalleled talent for it. “After we drop off your groceries, perhaps you could give me directions to the jail?”

  The woman’s face was stark-naked incredulity. Oh, you rube, said her eyes. “So you’re gonna go strutting in there and demand to see her, is that it?”

  “That’s my plan, yes.” It was a nice straightforward plan, no flaws, no holes in it.

  “The sheriff’s bound to ask what you know about her. If she’d wanted him to know anything at all, I guess she would’ve told him.”

  But, according to this woman, who now introduced herself as Augusta Trebec, Mallory had refused to say anything at all. Miss Trebec had this on the word of the cafe proprietress who delivered the prisoner’s meals. For three days, Mallory had sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the jail cell wall and driving Sheriff Jessop wild. She never moved, never said a word. Except once or twice, Jane, of Jane’s Cafe, had seen Mallory smile while the sheriff was pitching a fit. “Jane says the girl is making him a little crazier every day. So if you go in there all – ”

  “I see the problem.” It might create complications for Mallory, and it would certainly ruin her fun.

  When they cleared the cemetery, the path changed from gravel to hard-packed dirt. As they drew closer to the house, he was told that jail visits were limited to the morning hours. Charles also learned that Mallory had not been blamed for breaking the idiot’s hands. The murdered man had done that particular piece of damage.

  Well, that was encouraging.

  He paused at the foot of a wide lane flanked by stands of ancient trees. Their dark twisty limbs reached out across space to form a green canopy high above them. The ground was dappled with bright patches of late afternoon sun streaming through the leaves.

  “These are live oaks – Quercus virginiana,” said Miss Trebec, in the manner of a tour guide. “And the house at the end of the lane was built in 1850.”

  He had seen centurion oaks before, but never one approaching the enormous girth of these giants. Surely the trees were older by -

  “The trees are three hundred years old,” said Miss Trebec. “Give or take a few decades.”

  Charles shook off the idea that she was reading his thoughts. She could no more do that than could the men who regularly beat him at poker. It was his face that spoke to everyone. Even his most private thoughts were on display in every change of expression. She must have noted his confusion and followed the swing of his eyes from manse to tree trunks.

  “So the oak alley was planted for another house?”

  She nodded. “And it was built by a real tree-planting fool. There’s fourteen varieties of trees back there.” She gestured back over her shoulder. He turned to scan the woods extending out from the cemetery, east and west of the oaken lane.

  “Now that first house was destroyed in a flood, and my house sits on top of its remains.”

  He smiled. “Hence the ten-foot hill?”

  “Right you are, Mr. Butler. My place, however, has never shown any structural weakness. It’s harder to destroy.” By her tone, she seemed to take this as a challenge.

  Looking westward through the spaces between the massive tree trunks, he could see an open field of green grass stretching out to the levee. He watched the slow flight of a bird in a glide, a free ride on the wind. There were birds everywhere – singing, and some were screaming. Everything was in motion. Drapes of Spanish moss swayed in the boughs of the oaks, and shade-loving ferns waved in the breeze. There were nods from blooming shrubs and deep bows from independent flowers.

  When they had come to the end of the covered lane, he had his first unobstructed view of Trebec House. The basement level was a gray brick wall with deep-set windows and a small door. Rising above this foundation was a massive structure very like a Grecian temple. He counted eight white fluted columns soaring up past two flights of windows. The breakneck flow of their lines was not disrupted by the ornate railing on the gallery, which served as a roof to the wide veranda. The scrolled capitals supported the massive triangle of a pitched roof with a round attic window.

  Thick foliage surrounded the foundation wall and climbed the brick to wind strong green tendrils around one column, threatening to pull the shaft from pedestal and lintel, and thus to bring down the house. But this was only illusion. The structure was elegant, yet bold enough in its design to withstand every assault of nature.

  Two graceful staircases curved upward from the grass, and inward to embrace on the main level above the brick foundation. A massive carved door was set well back on the veranda.

  “Those are courting staircases,” said Augusta. “In my grandfather’s day, a young lady never preceded a gentleman on the stairs. That was for the gentleman’s protection. One sight of a woman’s ankle and he was as good as engaged. So they each took a separate staircase and met up there at the front door.”

  The house was so beautiful, even in its ruination – like the woman who walked beside him. The exterior had once been white and smooth, but now was weathered by the elements and extreme age.

  He had to bow slightly to follow her through the small wooden door set into the foundation between the staircases. They passed down a dimly lit hall, which suddenly broadened into a wide, bright room.

  “This kitchen only dates back to 1883,” she said. “The original was in a separate building out there where the paddock is now.” She gestured to a tall window which framed a white horse at the center of a fenced enclosure. The entire wall was a bank of such windows.

  Charles loved kitchens, and this one was a sunlit marvel. Absent was the neglect of the exterior. The room was in perfect order and contained all the creature comforts of a twentieth-century Hobbit – microwave and dishwasher, coffee machine and bean grinder. Polished copper-bottom pots and pans hung from the mantel of a stone hearth large enough to accommodate a roasting ox on a spit.

  A broad table was laid with a red-and-white checked cloth. At its center was a sketchbook, which lay open to a rather good drawing of a white owl. Beside this book was a set of galleys with the red marks of a proofreader’s pencil.

  Augusta caught his eye. “I write monographs on local birds.”

  As he set the grocery bag down on a slab of butcher block, a hiss called his attention to the top of the refrigerator and the narrowed eyes of a large yellow cat.

  “You just sit yourself down.” Miss Trebec gave Charles a gentle push in the direction of the table.

  The cat on the refrigerator followed his every move. He stared at the animal as he spoke to the woman. “This man Mallory’s accused of murdering – ”

  “Babe Laurie?” She put the cans of orange juice in the freezer compartment, brushing the cat’s tail aside to open and close the refrigerator door.

  “Babe?” He raised his voice to be heard above the noise, for she had quickly moved on to the chore of grinding coffee beans by touching one finger to a state-of-the-art machine.

  “He used to be called Baby Laurie – that’s the name on the birth certificate. He was the last of eleven children by the same woman. When the doctor put the newborn in the mother’s arms, he asked what she would call this one. She said, ‘I’d call it a baby,’ and then she died. And that’s the truth.”

  While she set out the coffee cups, he
was told that Babe Laurie had started out as a child evangelist on the tent-show circuit through the prairie states. Charles volunteered that his cousin Max had once journeyed across the country with a tent show, but Max had done a magic act. According to Miss Trebec, Babe Laurie had done much the same thing.

  He watched the hot water from the coffee machine drip into a carafe as she explained that the murdered man was the figurehead of the New Church, which was not so new anymore, having been started thirty years ago when Babe was only five or six years old and still called Baby.

  “Wouldn’t be too surprised if your friend did kill him. Didn’t like him none myself.” She put a sugar bowl and a cream pitcher on the table. Each belonged to a different pattern of china, and both were familiar to him as priceless museum pieces.

  “You’ll be staying in town at the Dayborn Bed and Breakfast – am I right?”

  He nodded, pulling out the newspaper photo of the stone angel and unfolding it. He stared down at the likeness of Mallory’s mother. “This sculptor, Mr. Roth? I gather he knew Cass Shelley very well.”

  “Yes, he did. And Kathy too. That child spent as much time in Henry’s studio as she did at her own place. Did I mention that the dead man was found near the old Shelley house?”

  “Who found the body?”

  “Your friend did. She found Babe by the side of the road while she was driving the deputy back to town in his own patrol car. Oh, I didn’t tell you that? She saved the deputy’s worthless life – delivered him to the paramedics at the volunteer fire department. Travis is in the hospital now. I hear he’s in critical condition.”

  “But if the deputy was with her when she found the body – ”

  “The deputy was driving toward town when he had his heart attack. Babe was found further up the road on ground your friend had already covered. She could have killed him before she met up with the deputy.”

  A moment ago, the golden cat had been perched on the refrigerator. Charles had only blinked once or twice, and now the cat was standing on the table a short distance from his right hand. How like Mallory was that trick of disappearing from one place and appearing in another.

  “You said she drove the deputy’s car to town. She was on foot?”

  The woman nodded. “She was walking in the direction of her old house. It’s on this side of the bridge, but not that much of a walk from the town square.”

  Miss Trebec poured coffee into his cup and then turned back to the half-emptied grocery bag and unpacked the rest of the canned goods.

  The cat hissed and arched its back as Charles’s hand moved toward the sugar bowl. Apparently, he had violated some house rule of table manners. Slowly, his hand withdrew from the bowl and came to rest on the table by his cup. The cat lay down, stretching her lean body across the checkered cloth, and the tail ceased to switch and beat the wood. When his hand moved again, she bunched her muscles, set to spring, relaxing only while his hand was still. The cat controlled him. Now who did that remind him of?

  The old woman was back at the table. “Don’t touch that cat. She doesn’t like people – barely tolerates them. She’s wild – raised in the woods. When I found her, she was too set in her ways to ever be anybody’s idea of tame. She had buckshot all through her pelt and chicken feathers in her mouth. Now that told me, right off, she was a thief. And she is perversity incarnate. Sometimes she purrs just before she strikes.”

  Charles nodded while the woman spoke, and he ticked off the familiar character flaws as she listed them. Now he peered into the cat’s slanted eyes. Mallory, are you in there?

  Miss Trebec bent down to speak to the cat, to explain politely that an animal did not belong on the table when company was calling. The cat seemed to be considering this information, but she left the table in her own time, as though it were her own idea. The tail waved high as she disappeared over the edge.

  It was disconcerting that the animal made no sound when she hit the floor. It crossed his mind to look under the table, to reassure himself that the cat did not float there, waiting to catch him in some new breach of etiquette. Instead, he peered into his cup as he stirred the sugar in his coffee. When he looked up to ask his hostess a question, the cat was riding the woman’s shoulders.

  “So, have you thought of a story to give the sheriff?”

  He shook his head. Making up stories was not his long suit. Under Mallory’s bad influence, his few attempts at lying had been disasters. “Could you take a message to Mallory? Tell her I’m here and I want to help?”

  “I’m your worst possible choice,” she said. “Me and Tom Jessop – he’s the sheriff – we’ve been sticking pins and needles in one another for years and years. He wouldn’t leave me alone with that girl for a minute.”

  “I have to see Mallory, but I don’t want to create any problems for her.” He tapped the newspaper clipping spread out on the table. “Do you think Henry Roth would help me?”

  “Well, Mr. Butler – ”

  “Charles, please.”

  “Charles, then. And you must call me Augusta. Yes, he might help you. Henry’s a mute, so be sure you got a paper and pencil on you. He doesn’t always carry his notebook.”

  “My father was a deaf mute. Does Mr. Roth use sign language?”

  “Yes, he does. Kathy and her mother used to be the only ones in town he could talk to with his hands. Well, you and Henry should get along just fine.”

  So, like himself, Mallory had been fluent in sign language as a child. In the past thirty minutes, Charles had discovered more about her early childhood than his old friend, the late Louis Markowitz, had learned over the years of raising her. For all poor Louis knew, his foster child had sprung to life as a full-blown ten-year-old thief on the streets of New York City.

  And now, because Augusta Trebec wanted to keep an eye out for an expected visitor, he picked up his coffee cup and followed the old woman back down the hall toward the small door in the brick wall. He was wondering where the cat had gone. Then he saw the animal’s bright eyes gleaming in the shadow of an ancient porcelain umbrella stand. She was set to spring, and her gaze was fixed on him.

  “Be sure you don’t let that cat out,” said Augusta, as she passed by the umbrella stand. “I can’t have that poor animal getting her hopes up, thinking she might catch a bird for supper.”

  “I thought cats were rather good at that.” He would have bet his life that this one was particularly good at bloody violence.

  “She shows real talent with mice, ‘cause that’s a footrace, and the quickest wins. But the birds usually see her coming in time to fly off. It’s that bright yellow fur. She’s like a little bonfire in the grass.”

  Charles nodded. Mallory had much the same problem. So she had certainly not been in Dayborn all these months – not if one appearance could cause the commotion of a heart attack, a beating and a death. Surely she would have wiped out the entire town by now. The sign which had welcomed him to Dayborn had only boasted a population of eleven hundred people.

  He was closing the door, when through the crack, he saw the cat bounding down the hallway, her lips pulled back over sharp white fangs and her eyes outraged. He pulled the door shut, and heard the angry cat’s body hitting the wood three feet off the ground.

  CHAPTER 2

  CHARLES WAS BREAKING the tradition of courting staircases, admiring Augusta’s fine legs and trim ankles as she led him up to the wide veranda. Black birds perched on the curving wrought-iron rail, unperturbed by the old woman’s presence. But, one by one, they took flight as he climbed the stone steps behind her.

  When he was eye-level with the massive base of one column, he could see patches of encroaching moss. At the top of the stairs, he stepped over a thick vine, which had crawled up from the yard and now reached out for the front door in bursts of new sprouts. He could almost hear it growing, creeping across the boards. Autumnal wildflowers bloomed all around the house, and their perfume was layered over the heady aroma of chicory coffee wafting up from the cu
p in his hand.

  “I’m waiting on a relative,” said Augusta, walking to the far side of the veranda. “Her parents phoned me this morning to say she was coming to town. Lilith’s father would have told her to pay a courtesy call before she even thought of sitting down to dinner.”

  She settled into a high-backed throne chair, the sturdiest piece among the collection of aging wicker. As he sat down beside her and gazed across the wide expanse of tall grass, he understood why the porch furniture was clustered here at the far end. Now he believed in Augusta’s invisible ten-foot hill. According to his guidebook, the levee was nearly thirty feet high along this stretch of the river. Only the rise of Augusta’s and and the added footage of the brick foundation below them would have afforded this panoramic view across the barrier.

  Sea gulls dipped and soared, screamed and swooped above the surging Mississippi. A majestic white steamboat was heading downriver toward New Orleans and churning the muddy water with her paddle wheel. He could see all three tiers of the vessel’s superstructure. For one moment of magic, the great ship seemed to glide with perfect balance along the top of the earthen dike. He followed its slow progress until he was distracted by the runner on the levee.

  Against the backdrop of bright light reflected on the water, she was a lean, dark silhouette with the long legs of a colt and the speed of a longdistance runner. She turned down the steep incline of the embankment and was lost behind the trees near Henry Roth’s cottage.

  “That would be Lilith Beaudare, my cousin’s child,” said Augusta.

  He caught sight of the runner’s shadow sprinting through an exposed sliver of the cemetery and then disappearing behind the cover of encircling trees.

  The running woman had cleared that ground with amazing speed, appearing again at the foot of the oak alley to his right. She had settled into a slower gait, jogging up the dirt path toward the house. Charles could see the runner’s true colors now: the red of her T-shirt, the purple shorts – the black skin.