Stone Angel

by Carol O’Connell

  His head jerked back as though she had slapped him.

  Her voice softened. “I’ll tell him any filthy lie he needs to hear.” She whispered, “That’s what cops do.”

  And now she was rising, going away from him again. She stood by the rail and leaned back on her hands, all cold to him now, and mechanical when she said, “So Alma Furgueson slit her wrists. Alma’s still breathing. My mother is dead. Time to choose up sides, Charles.”

  She hovered by the staircase, undecided whether to go or stay. “Has Riker won you over?” She set one boot on the steps. “Are you throwing in with him or me?”

  “I would never – ”

  “Are you in or out, Charles?”

  “I’m in.” After all, Alma was still breathing.

  CHAPTER 22

  The sheriff sat back and evaluated his young deputy over the rim of his beer glass. Though Lilith Beaudare still had a lot to learn, she had been broken of arrogance – just as he had broken Eliot Dobbs before her. Deputy Travis had come to him prebroken, and was no damn fun at all.

  “Very soon, things may get ugly, Lilith.” And how would she react? “Could you kill somebody if you had to? If you can’t do it, you might wind up dead, or someone else will. You’ll only get one second to find out what you’re made of.”

  And now he knew he had hit on a soft spot. She lowered her eyes – a bad sign. Had she already been tested under fire? There was nothing in her file to say she’d ever been involved in gunplay.

  “Have you ever killed anybody, Sheriff?”

  He approved. Distraction was a good move on her part. But her brains were not in question today. “In all the years I’ve had this job, I’ve never had occasion to fire my gun in the line of duty.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I do believe we’ll have the time to know each other a little better, Lilith, but that time is not here, not yet.” Well, that knocked her down again. “So what is it you’re not telling me?”

  Her hands wormed around her glass as she dropped her eyes again, casting around for some better diversion. Soon he would have to teach her not to give so much away.

  She looked up again. “I think Mallory might be a cop. It’s just a – ”

  “A good guess. She is. Detective Sergeant Kathleen Mallory.”

  “How did – ”

  “Well, if it isn’t the man from New York City.” He pointed toward the door of the Dayborn Bar and Grill.

  Charles Butler was blocking out most of the sunlight streaming in behind him. The door swung shut, and now he was in that disorienting passage from bright light to dim.

  While the man was still half blind and vulnerable, the sheriff called out across three tables, “Mr. Butler! If you’re looking for your friend Riker, you just missed him. He’s gone off to New Orleans.”

  The sheriff gathered that Butler had elected not to bluff his way out, but to ignore the remark. The man was smiling as he joined the sheriff and his deputy.

  “Call me Charles, please. Actually, I was looking for you, Sheriff.”

  Tom Jessop was working hard to suppress a grin, for now this poor bastard had to come up with a reason for his impromptu visit.

  “I was just wondering if you had any men on your suspect list yet. So far you seem to favor women.”

  “Still do, Charles. I’m nothing if not politically correct.” He turned to his deputy. “Ain’t that right?”

  Lilith smiled as she rose from the table and left with explanations of places to go and things to do. Out of respect, Charles stood up to see her off. Tom Jessop remained seated for much the same reason.

  “So, Sheriff, you don’t think Fred Laurie could have done it?”

  “He could have.” And he did like the idea of a dead man as a suspect. Fred was probably in the ground by now and in no condition to whine about being maligned.

  “I also wondered where you were when Babe Laurie died.”

  The sheriff grinned. “You have real good instincts. If I’d known what Babe did to Ira, I might have been your best suspect. As it is, I still like the ladies. And now you’re probably thinking I missed Augusta, but I didn’t. I just didn’t want to ask her on the off chance she might confess. As I’m sure you know, letting Augusta get away with murder is a tradition in St. Jude Parish.”

  “You’re speaking figuratively, of course.”

  So Charles didn’t know. “Didn’t you take the tour? Betty tells the whole story to everyone who comes through here.”

  “I’ve been rather busy.”

  “You must be the only visitor in fifty years who didn’t know that Augusta murdered her own father.”

  Charles only shook his head from side to side, smiling now to say this must be a joke. “She couldn’t have done that.”

  “She dragged it out, too.” The sheriff caught the bartender’s eyes and held up two fingers. “Not a neat clean death. ‘Course, I know the details better than most. My father was her lawyer. Augusta would be happy to tell you the story herself. It’s not like she ever tried to deny it. Fact is, she took a lot of pride in that murder. She’s a rare one. Most southern women would favor slow poison for the alibi factor. They’d want to be three counties gone before your body hit the floor. Not Augusta. Hell, she wanted the credit.”

  Two beers landed on the table, cold gold on the inside, cold sweat on the glass. “Put it on my tab,” said the sheriff. The bartender nodded and walked off.

  “Thank you,” said Charles. “So, she confessed? There was a trial?”

  “No, it never went beyond the coroner’s jury. The ruling was accidental death. You gotta remember that she was fifty years younger then – nineteen, almost twenty years old. The coroner’s jury was all men. Not a one of them wanted to see her hang for murder. And to be fair – she meant to shoot the old bastard, not push him down the stairs in his wheelchair.”

  “Was it the money? I know he cut her out of the will.”

  “Oh, hell no. That’s Betty’s theory, but Augusta didn’t care about that. She could have married more money and a bigger house if that’s what she wanted. You just don’t know what a beauty she was. People from Nashville to New Orleans had heard of Augusta Trebec.”

  “I know her mother committed suicide. Was it -?” “You could say it started with her mother’s death. The local doctor – he was also the town drunk – he said Nancy’s suicide was insanity. Old Jason probably figured her blood was tainted. Now suppose Augusta went crazy, too? What would happen to his precious house? That’s all any of the Trebec men ever cared about – that damn house. And what if Augusta married? His property would pass to another family. So Jason had his own daughter neutered like a cat.”

  “Augusta wouldn’t have allowed that.”

  “She didn’t know. Old Jason and the doctor made up some bullshit story about her appendix. She was only sixteen. Well, he’d killed off his last chance for an heir with Augusta’s surgery. He was a sick old man in a wheelchair, and in no shape to make another baby.”

  “So he made the house into a historical monument to himself.”

  “Right you are. By the time Augusta turned nineteen, the hack doctor who butchered her was dead. It never occurred to Jason that the drunken old fool left medical records on Augusta’s surgery. So another doctor took over the practice, and he told Augusta what had been done to her.”

  “And then she killed her father?”

  “Didn’t waste any time, either. She came home that very day and went after him with a pistol. The sight of the gun scared him so bad, he backed up his wheelchair – backed it right down the grand staircase. But he didn’t die right away. He was lying there all broken up and screaming in agony. Augusta decided it would be a damn shame to put him out of his misery. So she stayed with him until he died. It took the better part of two days.”

  “Are you telling me she didn’t call a doctor?”

  “No, she didn’t. But she had the presence of mind to call a lawyer. That was my father. That’s how
I happened to be in the room the night she finished the old man off. I was five years old.”

  “Your father brought you into a thing like that?”

  “He had no idea what she wanted him for, and it was late at night. He couldn’t leave me at home. The housekeeper was gone, and I didn’t have a mother. So I was there when Augusta hurried up Jason’s demise. Half the bones in the old man’s body were broken. My father called for an ambulance the minute we got there. I suppose Augusta was afraid her father might pull through. So she leans down and tells Jason she’s gonna bury him in the family plot where he can have a good view of the house he loves so much. The old man smiles. And then she yells, ‘So you can watch it fall down! I’m gonna let it rot!’ Well, the old man turned red, and then he turned blue and died.”

  “But you said she confessed. How could the coroner’s jury bring in a verdict of accidental death?”

  “It was a bit of a stretch, but their reasoning was pretty sound. They figured if she was gonna lie about him backing his wheelchair down those stairs, then she would have lied about her original plan to kill him with the gun. So they decided she was truthful about that fall. And it was sort of an accident, if you look at it with a legal squint.”

  “But she let him lie there in agony for two days.”

  “Now that did trouble the jury. So my father solved that problem for them. He swore under oath that Jason Trebec, late in life, had converted to Christian Science and didn’t want a doctor – so Jason and Augusta had spent those two days praying together.”

  “And the coroner’s jury bought that?”

  “Don’t you see? They wanted to believe it. They were smiling the whole time Dad spun that lie. But then, when he finished his testimony, Augusta burst out laughing. Well, Dad stepped down from the stand, cool as you please, and he slapped her face. He told the jury she was hysterical with grief. And then he strong-armed her right out the door before she could do any more damage.”

  “Your father was in love with her, wasn’t he?”

  “And fortunately, so was her doctor. He backed up my father’s story on the witness stand. So, you see, she could have killed Babe Laurie. But I don’t ever want to know that for a fact, so I never asked.”

  “She had no motive to kill him.”

  He liked Charles’s loyalty, and he was satisfied in the man’s character. Augusta’s friendship spoke well of him, considering that he had no feathers or fur.

  “Augusta presides over every matter of life and death north of Upland Bayou,” said Jessop. “I don’t think much has got by her since Cass was murdered. She took that killing very hard. She blocked off Finger Bayou and the road to the mansion, locked up her land just like you or me would lock up a house. So there was Babe on that road to Cass’s place, lying in wait for Kathy. And I know that’s what he was doing. I found three of his cigarette butts near the spot where he died.”

  “But how would Augusta know that? You would have to assume that she knew all the events leading up to the death. That’s really reaching, isn’t it, Sheriff?”

  “If she didn’t do it, I’d bet good money she knows who did. Don’t you understand it yet? Augusta can see everything from her attic window and she spends a lot of time with that spyglass. You think she’s only watching her birds? We’re all part of Augusta’s aviary.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Jimmy Simms sat tailor fashion on an old plaid bedspread, hunched over his book, and resplendent in his new-old clothes. His feet were encased in Ira’s castoff socks.

  The wooden crate beside Jimmy’s cot held the rest of Darlene Wooley’s charity. T-shirts, jeans, a sweatshirt and a denim jacket were neatly stacked in laundry-faded stripes of red and blue. Jimmy was a rich man now. Beside his cot were shoes that fit his feet perfectly.

  The rough surface of the crate held one can of soda, a pack of doughnuts, and a lamp with no shade. The bare light bulb was warm as a hand on the back of his neck, and this illusion of human contact counted as an additional creature comfort.

  His small room had once been a storage area for books, and now it was home. Disowned and unhoused at seventeen, he had taken to making his bed alongside the sleeping drunks on the streets of Owltown. One chill night, as winter was coming on, the sheriff had picked him up off the sidewalk and dropped him into this safe harbor at the back of the library. For the past thirteen years he had been content in this place. Augusta Trebec had given him the first odd jobs, and Tom Jessop had scared up more work. Between the all-seeing eye of Miss Augusta’s attic window and the gruff attentions of the sheriff, Jimmy had lived with the delusion of aloof but constant parents.

  Now, beyond the door, the telephone was ringing in the main room of the library. He ignored it, taking the call for a wrong number. It was always a wrong number in the evening hours when the library was closed.

  When he was still a teenage boy, he had run into the main room each time it rang, believing his mother was calling.

  But she never called.

  When he missed her terribly, he would show up on the front steps of the house, and she would bring him inside quickly, lest the neighbors should see him and tell his father. Then his mother would give him hot soup and a warm meal – mother food. And she would wash his clothes just like a mother, and give him more clothes, miles too big, to take away with him. She would pack extra food in a paper bag, the way she had once packed his lunch for school. But once he was gone, she forgot him again. She never called. So he had learned not to answer the library phone in the night.

  His eyes went back to the page of his book. But the ringing was persistent, and there seemed no way to end it but to take the phone off the hook. The main room of the library was not heated, and so he pulled on Ira’s denim jacket as he left his bed and walked out to the front desk.

  Wind came through the old window frames in a gusty sigh, and he could feel the room’s cold breath on his face and neck. The century-old building creaked with elderly joints of wood and plaster, and he could hear mice creeping in the walls.

  Jimmy stood by the ringing telephone, keeping one eye on the dark rows of bookshelves. The headlights of a passing car made the globe by the window cast a moving shadow the size of a child. He looked away quickly and picked up the receiver of the ringing telephone. Before he could lay it down to break the connection, a woman’s voice said, “Jimmy?” He stared at the receiver and the voice called out again, “Boy, are you there?”

  He held the phone close to his ear now, caressing it. “Mom?”

  “No, Jimmy, it’s Augusta Trebec.”

  Of course.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I got a small job for you. It has to be done tonight. Shouldn’t take more than an hour. I’ll pay you ten dollars for your time. Does that sound about right?”

  “Yes, ma’am, ten dollars sounds just fine.” And he could use the money.

  Jimmy was staring at the library window facing Dayborn Avenue. The light of the streetlamp was haloed with misty fog. Not a night to go walking, especially if he wanted to skirt the cemetery, and he did. The new shoes would be ruined by the alternate route over rain-soaked ground, and he had thrown his father’s old pair away.

  “Why don’t I come in the morning, ma’am. First light?”

  “That won’t do me a bit of good, Jimmy. I need this errand run tonight. You understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do.”

  “There’s a bit of fog out there. Why don’t I meet you at the bridge? I know every hole in that dirt road. I won’t let you fall.”

  Miss Augusta would not like to be kept waiting on a cold night. He walked along the sidewalk at a fast pace, heading for the bridge over Upland Bayou. Jimmy could only see twenty feet into the mist, and he took comfort in every normal thing in that small field of vision. Sturdy telephone poles and fire hydrants were markers of the solid world he hurried through, as were the streetlamps and the yellow windows of the houses. As he approached the bayou, every landmark beyond the near shore was lost in t
he fog.

  Miss Augusta was waiting for him at the foot of the bridge. Her white face floated above a long dark shawl. She nodded a greeting and turned away, crossing the bridge in silence. He walked behind her, making no attempt at conversation. Small talk was neither his strength, nor hers.

  Good as her word, the old woman led him around each rain-filled hole in the road. He could see the dull glow of lights through the trees. So people were still visiting the angel. Though, only this morning, he had heard that the long lines had petered out to nothing and the miracle was over.

  As they entered the cemetery, a dense ground fog rolled up to meet him. It was thick as he had ever seen it. His shoes disappeared below his ankles. His eyes strayed to Cass Shelley’s monument. He could only see the back of her wings and the votive candles on her pedestal.

  He scanned the grounds for Miss Augusta. She was farther down the alley of tombs, and he feared losing her in the mist and the turn of a corner on the gravel path.

  But he had to look back one more time.

  Cass’s wings ruffled lightly like the feathers of a living bird. It was only an illusion created by the flickering play of candlelight. He knew that for a written-down, scientific fact – but belief was a different matter in the dark.

  He was hurrying by the tombs, in a rush to catch up with Miss Augusta, when he heard the sound of stone crunching on stone. He looked back. Had the statue moved? No, that was not possible. He was only looking at it from a different angle. The great spread wings still hid her body from sight.

  He turned back to the alley of small white buildings. The old woman had probably veered down some other street in the city of tombs and vanished.

  “Miss Augusta?”

  Behind him, something heavy had hit the ground. He felt the vibrations through the soles of his shoes, but he would not turn around, not for anything. And now, something in his sidelong vision moved. He would not look directly at it; he could not. He turned to Cass’s angel for reassurance.

  Her pedestal was bare. He looked down the alley where the old woman had gone. Miss Augusta had returned for him. She was standing just beyond the periphery of clear vision. It must be a trick of the mist that made her seem so much smaller.