Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 08 - Wed and Buried

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “I’ll walk you out,” Dorcas said, and escorted me to the front door. In a low voice, she said, “I apologize for suspecting your aunt, Laurie Anne. You may not believe it, but I do like her very much.”

  “You just didn’t want her to marry Big Bill,” I said.

  Dorcas was far too well bred to agree explicitly. “It was unexpected,” was all she would admit to, and she even added, “Perhaps Maggie is just what Big Bill needs.” Then, as she closed the door behind me, she sadly said, “But that dog of hers…”

  Once I got into the car with Richard, I told him what Dorcas had told me.

  “Do you believe her?” he asked when I was done.

  “She seemed sincere. Of course, acting convincingly sincere is a survival skill for pillars of society.”

  “Did you consider the idea that her accusing Aunt Maggie was a clever ruse to find out if we knew about the other attempts on Big Bill’s life?”

  “You mean, did I just feed her information she needed? Shoot, I never thought of that. I should have let you talk with her.”

  “I probably would have done the same thing,” he said kindly. “Besides, I can’t see how the information could be that vital.”

  I didn’t either, but that didn’t mean that I should go around blabbing everything to our suspects. Maybe seven months of baby talk had caused my brain to atrophy.

  “Where to next?” Richard asked.

  “How about Aunt Nora’s house? Big Bill wasn’t much help with our potential suspects, but maybe Byerly’s gossip connection will have more for us.”

  “I smell ulterior motives.”

  “It is getting on toward lunch time, if that’s what you mean. Aunt Nora might have some spare servings of whatever she’s making for Big Bill and Aunt Maggie.”

  “Always an attraction, but I think there’s even more to it than that. You miss Alice, don’t you?”

  “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  “But you miss her!”

  I sighed. “Yes, I miss her.”

  “Why are you so embarrassed about it?”

  “I don’t know, Richard. Maybe because I promised myself I wouldn’t be one of those clingy mothers who doesn’t think anybody else can take care of her child. It’s not like an infant Alice’s age even knows who’s changing her diaper.”

  “Not true,” Richard said. “According to the literature, seven-month-olds are able to recognize their parents, both by sight and scent.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of arguing with the literature,” I said. “Still, I’ve been dying for a chance to be alone with you, and Aunt Nora is perfectly willing to babysit for as long as we want, but all I can think about is Alice. It’s making me crazy. I feel like such a…”

  “A woman? A mother?”

  “A cliché! I’m a cliché new mother!”

  “Egad, can the horror of driving a minivan be far behind?”

  “I’m serious, Richard. Right now, I can’t even stand to think about going back to work.” My company’s policy, created at the height of the Internet boom as an inducement for recruiting employees, was incredibly generous, and I’d augmented it with vacation time and unpaid leave, but I was going to have to go back someday if I wanted to keep my job.

  “Is this what this is about? Are you feeling guilty because of what Vasti said? Do you want to quit your job and stay home with Alice?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “Laura, we don’t have to decide anything right now. And whatever we do decide isn’t carved in stone—we can change courses as many times as necessary until we’re comfortable.”

  I nodded, but I still felt confused. Making the decision to go up north to school had been so easy for me, and even deciding to stay in Massachusetts hadn’t taken too long. Though it had taken Richard and me a while to get around to having a baby, once we decided, I hadn’t questioned myself. Now I didn’t know what to do with myself or with Alice.

  Aunt Nora shushed us as soon as we came in the back door of her house. “Alice is sleeping. I’ve got her laid down in Thaddeous’s room.”

  I knew Alice was fine, of course, but that didn’t stop me from sneaking back there to take a peek. Aunt Nora had made a pallet of blankets to lay her on, and the baby was flat on her stomach, as limp as only a baby can be.

  When I got back to the kitchen, Aunt Nora had already set two places for lunch and was pouring me a glass of iced tea. Richard, who just can’t overcome his Northern roots enough to appreciate iced tea, was drinking Coke.

  “As long as y’all are here, I thought y’all might want a bite to eat,” Aunt Nora said.

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” I said. “Aren’t you eating?”

  “I can’t eat when I’m cooking. I nibble and taste enough to make three meals.”

  Knowing that Aunt Nora preferred not to have anybody getting in her way in the kitchen, I took my chair and watched as she cut thick slices of ham to make two enormous sandwiches with mayonnaise. Then she put the sandwiches and generous scoops of potato salad onto our plates and waited for us to take a bite. “Is it all right?” she asked anxiously.

  “It’s perfect,” I said as soon as I could speak. “When are you going to believe us when we tell you you’re the best cook we know?”

  She dimpled. “You’re just saying that.”

  Richard and I assured her that we were completely serious, but she continued to deny the compliments. It was a familiar ritual that we all enjoyed.

  Aunt Nora finally allowed that the food wasn’t too bad, and sat down with a glass of iced tea for herself. “I hope Big Bill doesn’t mind ham sandwiches. I know he’s used to eating better than that, but I didn’t have anything else in the house to cook.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be tickled to death,” I said.

  “Well, at least it will keep him from going hungry until I can fix him something worth eating for dinner. I’ll go by the store as soon as Alice gets up from her nap, and if it’s not too late, run by the farm stand to see what they’ve got.”

  “Do you want us to take her back while you run your errands?” Richard asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Aunt Nora said. “I’m looking forward to showing her off around Byerly. And I imagine y’all have things to do for Big Bill this afternoon.”

  “We might,” I said, “but we wanted to pick your brain a bit first.”

  She grinned conspiratorially. “I love it when I can help y’all—it makes all my gossiping seem worthwhile. Who do you want to know about?”

  “What can you tell us about Andrew Herron? That’s Crazy Sandie’s real name.” Herron seemed like the best place to start because he’d written the most letters, and because his were the most ominous. Besides which, now that I knew that Andrew Herron was Crazy Sandie, I was curious. Even in a town like Byerly, that was proud of its eccentrics, Crazy Sandie stood out. In fact, from reading his letters to Big Bill, I was pretty sure he’d gone way past eccentric. Though I’d never met him myself, I knew some of the stories about him and was sure Aunt Nora would have more details.

  “Sandie Herron,” Aunt Nora said, shaking her head sadly. “He was a wild one when he was growing up, always getting into scrapes. He drank and he caroused and he messed with women. All the things that drive mothers crazy—his mama had it rough. Augustus was just a little thing when Sandie went through the worst of his escapades, and I used to pray that he wouldn’t turn out like that. Miz Herron was a widow, and Sandie was her only child. Which might have been a blessing, come to think of it. He was only nineteen or twenty when he just up and left town.

  “Nobody in Byerly would have blamed Miz Herron for being relieved, but she was his mama and she worried about him something fierce. She spent a lot of money trying to find him, even though she didn’t really have it to spend, but never found a trace of him. A few years later, she got cancer, and the bills started to pile up. That’s when Big Bill came calling, wanting to buy her land. The Herrons were farmers o
nce upon a time, and they had a good-sized piece of property on the side of town closest to Hickory. Miz Herron hadn’t given up hope that her boy would come back, so she didn’t want to sell the only thing she had to leave him, but her health got worse and the bills got bigger, and Big Bill was mighty persuasive. Eventually, she gave in and sold him the land.”

  “Bullying a sick widow?” I said. “That’s awfully cold.”

  “It wasn’t like that, not exactly. Big Bill gave her a fair price, even if it wasn’t top dollar, and Miz Herron used the money to spend the rest of her life in a real nice extended-care facility. There was a good bit of money left over, which she left in trust for Sandie, hoping that the bank would be able to find him.”

  Richard said, “I take it that they did, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  But Aunt Nora shook her head. “No, they never did. One day a few months after his mother died, he just showed up, as suddenly as he’d gone. Nobody knew where he’d been or what he’d done. He did have some scars on him that hadn’t been there before, but as far as I know, he’s never explained anything.”

  “Very mysterious,” Richard said.

  Aunt Nora went on. “The first thing he did was head for his mama’s house, only to find out that the house was gone. Big Bill had put in a housing development on that land, all nice split-levels.”

  “Big Bill must have made a pretty penny off the deal,” I said.

  “Probably,” she agreed. “Somebody told Sandie about his mother’s death and how she’d sold the land, and he was beside himself! He accused Big Bill of terrible things, but Big Bill had bought the land fair and square, and there wasn’t a thing Sandie could do about it. Eventually, he calmed down enough to go get the money his mama had left him, and he built himself a house out in the woods. I say house, but it’s not much more than a shack—he’s got electricity and a phone, but I don’t know that he uses either very often. There he sits, and I guess he’s still living off his mama’s money, because as far as I know he never leaves there if he can help it. He’s got no family or friends, not even a dog.”

  “A modern-day hermit, only without the religious overtones,” Richard said. “Would it be safe to go see him?”

  “I think so. He’s never really hurt anybody.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  I added, “I used to hear all kinds of stories about him when I was younger.”

  Aunt Nora waved that away. “Kids have to have a bogeyman to tell tall tales about. Now, Sandie once chased some boys off his property, but only because they were throwing rocks at his house. And he was pretty rude to the census taker a couple of years ago, but he didn’t attack him or anything.”

  He still didn’t sound like somebody I’d want to spend time with. “We may as well not bother going out there. There’s no way he’s going to talk to us.”

  Aunt Nora grinned widely. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve got a way to get you into his house right here.” She got up to rummage around in some cardboard boxes on the hutch, then held up a thick booklet labeled Byerly First Baptist Church: Legacy of Faith. “The church put together a memory book with ads for a fund-raiser. Sandie was on my list, so I sent him a note about it and mentioned that one of the pictures we were going to use was of his mama. I didn’t expect anything to come of it, but darned if he didn’t send in money for an ad. Cash, mind you. I don’t know that he’s even got a checking account, what with Big Bill owning the bank. Anyway, Sandie’s entitled to a free copy of the book, which I was planning to mail this week, but maybe you’d like to deliver it in person.”

  “That sounds like an excellent idea,” I said.

  Richard still looked doubtful, but agreed to go.

  Alice woke up then, so I took the opportunity to nurse her before we left, which went a long way toward reassuring me that I wasn’t a terrible mother.

  I learned to drive on Byerly’s roads, and know most of the town’s streets and shortcuts, but if it hadn’t been for Aunt Nora’s detailed directions, I’d never have found Sandie Herron’s place. He’d worked hard to find the most isolated spot he could, and even the spread of housing developments hadn’t reached him yet—I wasn’t sure it ever would. The long driveway was barely more than a path, and from the height of the weeds filling it, I didn’t think Herron had left the place in a month. At least, not by car.

  Aunt Nora had been kind when she called Herron’s house a shack. I’d seen tree houses that looked sturdier than that place. It had been built of scraps of wood and asphalt shingles, and instead of a porch or stoop, it just had a pile of concrete bricks to step on to get to the front door. I couldn’t tell if the windows were clean, or even unbroken, because they were covered with wooden shutters. The building didn’t seem to be in immediate danger of falling over, but that was as much of a recommendation as I was willing to give. The mold-green pickup truck parked beside the house was so battered that I was surprised it wasn’t up on blocks.

  Not surprisingly, there was no doorbell, so Richard had to pound on the front door with his fist.

  A minute passed, and we were about to knock again when the door swung inward, the hinges creaking loudly as if rarely used. A man peered out from the dim interior, his eyes blinking at the early afternoon sunlight, even though it was overcast that day. “Can I help you?” he said politely but with no warmth in his voice.

  Crazy Sandie didn’t look at all the way I’d expected from his reputation and the appearance of his house. I’d thought he’d be a mangy-looking biker, or maybe a wild-eyed militia type. Instead, he seemed oddly familiar, and after a few seconds, I realized that he looked just like Opie on the old Andy Griffith Show. Not the man that actor Ron Howard had become, but the child character morphed into a grown-up. His hair was red, his face freckled, and he was even neatly dressed in the kind of dungarees and shirt I remembered Opie wearing in the show. The only thing at war with the illusion was a puckered scar running along one cheek.

  “Mr. Herron?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “I’m Laura Fleming, and this is my husband, Richard. My aunt Nora Crawford asked me to drop this off for you.” I held up the memory book.

  “Mama’s picture!” he said, and grabbed it from me. He thumbed through it, muttering, “Where is it? Where is it?” Finally he stopped at a page and held it out so we could see it. “That’s Mama,” he said proudly.

  The picture was a grainy black-and-white shot of a ponytailed young woman posed holding out a frozen turkey to a child. Sandie read the caption out loud: “‘Eva Marie Volin (later Eva Volin Herron) demonstrating Christian spirit at Thanksgiving.’” He let out a deep sigh. “That was Mama all over—spending her time helping others.”

  “Bless her heart,” I said. It’s an expression with no real meaning, but sometimes it’s the only proper thing to say.

  Herron flipped through the book to the section of ads at the back. “Here’s the ad I put in for her.” It was a full page, and in print so ornate it was hard to read, it read, God couldn’t be everywhere, so he created Mothers. In honor of the finest mother ever, Eva Marie Volin Herron.

  “Isn’t that sweet?” I said, relying once again on verbal white noise. Herron didn’t seen to mind, or even notice.

  He turned back to the picture of his mother and moved the book closer to his face to examine it. “They just photocopied this, didn’t they? Why on earth didn’t they scan it?”

  Taken aback, I said, “I didn’t have anything to do with producing the book. Aunt Nora just asked me to deliver it.”

  He nodded absently. “I can probably clean up the image in Photoshop, if I can get my new scanner up and running.”

  “Scanner problems?” I said, then looked at Richard, who shrugged. We hadn’t expected such a convenient opening, but we’d be fools not to take advantage of it. “As a matter of fact, I’m a programmer, and I’m pretty good with troubleshooting. Would you like me to take a look?”

  “Would you?” He broke into a
grin. “I’d love to upload this picture onto my web site, if I can get halfway decent resolution. Come on in!” He opened the door the rest of the way and stepped aside so Richard and I could enter.

  It was a pretty big room, and I guessed it was the only room in the house, other than the bathroom I could see through a partially opened door. There was a small fireplace, a scarred single bed that looked as if it had been left on the street for Goodwill, and one armchair with the stuffing coming out on one side. One corner of the room had a cabinet nailed to the wall over a sink, and there were a card table and metal folding chair to play the part of dining room furniture. There was no television, and the bare bulb overhead was the only light.

  Clearly, Sandie wasn’t spending his money on luxurious furniture, but I could tell he wasn’t so stingy when it came to his computer. Aunt Nora had mentioned that Sandie had electricity and a phone, and he was making use of both to power a PC, as well as a modem, scanner, laser printer, and color ink-jet printer. The particle-board tables everything was laid out on looked homemade, but the equipment itself was top notch.

  Though the computer was the first thing I noticed, what really caught my eye was the opposite wall. It was covered in photos of every description: formal portraits, blown-up snapshots, newspaper clippings, school photos, fuzzy Polaroids. And every one of them was of Sandie’s mother, at every age from infant to grown woman. It was obvious that some of the shots had originally included others, probably her parents or husband or Sandie himself, but everybody but Eva Marie had been carefully cropped out. No wonder he’d shuttered the windows—he was using the extra wall space for more pictures.

  “That’s my mama,” Herron said unnecessarily. “I broke her heart, but I don’t think she ever stopped loving me. I hope she didn’t, anyway.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t,” I said. “Richard and I have a little girl, and there’s nothing in this world that would ever make me stop loving her.”

  “ ‘If I were damned of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine,’ ” Richard quoted. “Rudyard Kipling.”