Jay-Jay gave a sad smile. “Before Sally and me left home, we’d sneak out here to smoke pot because Mama always sat on the other side of the house where she wouldn’t have to look at that chimney and remember what it felt like to watch that house burn and know who was inside.”
“It did seem to be one of the things weighing heavy on her mind,” said Dwight. “Was there ever any talk that it might be arson?”
“Arson?” Jay-Jay’s gentle face looked bewildered. “Who’d burn down an old house with people inside?”
Dwight shrugged. “Kids who didn’t realize the house wasn’t still empty? Or a man who didn’t want to pay child support?”
Sally snorted. “What child support? When it turned out that Mrs. Howell wasn’t as rich as everybody thought, Jannie’s husband left her. Left the state, too, and no forwarding address.”
“Mrs. Howell?” said Dwight. “Their mother?”
“Grandmother. She was the one finished raising Jannie and Richard. Their grandfather owned a little piddly-ass feed store in town and he sold out when the new highway went through. We heard it was thousands, though that might have been wishful thinking. After he died, she let the house run down because she was too tight to let go of a dime. Richard was in school and Jannie was married, so she just lived in one or two of the rooms. Jannie’s husband was sure she was going to leave them a fortune, but when they went to the bank after she died, there was only a checking account with a few hundred dollars and nothing in her lockbox but a garnet ring, the deed to the farm, and three thousand dollars in cash. Jannie got the land, Richard got the house and a couple of acres it was sitting on. Back then, land wasn’t worth much but Jannie sold her part of the farm right then and there. Soon as the money was gone, though, her husband ran. Hadn’t been for Richard letting her use that tumbledown old house, she’d have been out on the street.”
Dwight frowned. “But surely Dr. Howell—”
“He wasn’t making much money yet,” she reminded him. “He was just finishing up his residency. That’s what nearly killed him. That he was so close to being able to help her and her daughters move into a decent house.”
Life’s ironies, thought Dwight. All the money Howell had made since then, yet just scraping by when his sister needed it. “Tell me about Chad Rouse.”
They gave him blank looks. “Who?”
“The orderly who worked the third floor last week.”
“What about him?”
Both looked surprised to hear that he was the grandson of the Letha McAllister their mother kept talking about.
“Nice kid,” Sally said.
“He wanted to hear stories about Uncle Kezzie,” said Jay-Jay.
“You’d’ve thought we were kin to Robin Hood,” said Sally. “Oh, and that reminds me, Dwight. Her pillow case has showed up.”
“Huh? Where?” He looked around as if expecting it to appear in her hands.
“Lois called me this morning.”
“Your mother’s aide?”
Sally nodded. “She’s helping another patient now. A young man with leukemia. How she can keep taking on new ones time after time, I don’t know.” She gave a deep sigh. “But anyhow, she said that it’d come back from the laundry with the other hospice linens and as soon as she saw it, she knew it was Mama’s. Irish linen? With a lace edging? I don’t want it back, but I told her I’d tell you. Not that it’s going to be much use. She said it’s been bleached so there’s no stain on it, but I still couldn’t bear to touch it.”
“I’ll run by and talk to her again,” Dwight said. “See if we can figure out how it got from Miss Rachel’s room to the laundry.” He drained the last of his soda and set the can back on the table. “Tell me about some of those things she kept saying. It sounded like Mr. Kezzie’s first wife, Annie Ruth, told her that someone had signed a note for a debt that was never paid?”
Neither could hazard a guess.
“What about the man who beat his wife?”
More blank looks.
“The cowbird remark?”
Again, brother and sister both shook their heads as one of Sally’s sons came around the corner with a hall mirror in a carved wooden frame. “You want this, Mom, or can Abby take it?”
“She can have it,” Sally said, “and that little table from my old bedroom, too.” She rose to follow her son and give instructions. “Back in a minute, y’all.”
Left alone with Dwight, Jay-Jay said, “You reckon you’ll ever find who did it?”
“Hard to say,” Dwight admitted.
“Um, about that cowbird egg.”
“You know who she was talking about?”
“Mama really didn’t gossip, Dwight.” His round face was troubled. “Not like some people who can’t wait to spread bad things about people. Folks did tell her things, though, and she did like to fancy them up and make people laugh without ’em knowing who they were laughing at, you know? She never meant anything mean about it.”
“I know,” Dwight said encouragingly. “But this time?”
“Don’t tell Sally, okay? It was about fifteen years ago. I was laying on the couch under the living room window after Sunday dinner, almost asleep. It was right after my first divorce. Mama and I’d been to church that morning and she and Dad were out on the porch, round on the other side, and she was telling him about who was in church. Dad had his whittling knife out and Mama told him he needed to whittle out a cowbird for one of their customers at the vegetable stand. The window was open and I heard her say, ‘His wife should’ve picked a crow to mess around with, not a goldfinch.’ Soon as she said that, I knew who she was talking about. I didn’t know their names back then, but I knew who Mama meant. They were visiting at our church that day with their little girl. Both of them were short and stout and had curly brown hair, but the little girl’s was straight and yellow as a goldfinch. The wife said that Jim’s grandmother had been just that blonde at her age.”
“Jim?” asked Dwight.
“Jim Collins.” The name came reluctantly. “His wife Mavis had diabetes and died about six or seven years ago, but Jim used to stop by the vegetable stand every chance he got and he brought Amanda along from the time she was a baby till she left for college last year. Mama used to say, ‘Jim Collins loves that daughter of his better than Peter loved the Lord,’ but she never once mentioned anything to me or anybody else about cowbird eggs till the other day. And Jim was there, Dwight. Right there in Mama’s room. Him and his daughter both. I was so afraid she was going to blurt out the whole story. She almost said his name. Remember?”
“Remember what?” asked Sally as she rejoined them.
“Jay-Jay was reminding me about your neighbors out here,” Dwight said easily. “The Byrds?”
“Sam and Kitty?”
“Which is their house?”
“You passed it coming in,” Sally told him. “That house with the red tin roof. First one on the left after you turn back toward the highway. Want me to come with you?”
“That’s okay,” he said. “You’ve got your hands full here.”
At that moment, one of Jay-Jay’s daughters appeared with some handmade bed quilts. “Do you know who made these, Aunt Sally?”
“Catch you later,” Dwight said and headed for his cruiser.
CHAPTER
19
Let the punishment match the offense.
— Cicero
Like Deborah’s Aunt Zell, indeed like most elderly Southern women of that generation when they go out to garden, Kitty Byrd was swathed from head to toe despite the warm May day. A man’s faded cotton shirt was buttoned at neck and wrists, loose cotton slacks reached to the ground, gardening gloves protected her hands, and the floppy brim of a straw hat shaded her face from the sun. In times past, such a costume kept a lady’s skin from tanning; today it was to prevent skin cancers.
Mrs. Byrd gingerly straightened up as Dwight parked in the gravel driveway and smiled in recognition when he got out of the cruiser and came
closer. Her first few steps toward him were stiff, as if her joints had briefly frozen. “The older I get, the more I agree with Charles Dudley Warner,” she said, stripping off her gloves and extending a thin white hand.
Dwight took her hand in his and was careful not to squeeze too hard. “Who?”
“Mark Twain’s friend. He said that what every gardener needed was a cast-iron back with a hinge in it.” She gave a rueful laugh. “My hinges are so rusty, it would take half the oil in Texas to keep them working. I just wish I could take my skin off and give my poor old bones a shot of WD-40.”
She led him up two shallow steps onto a porch shaded by huge oaks and did not insist when Dwight declined her automatic offer of something to drink. She seemed grateful to sit down in a rocker with a high seat and took off her hat to use the broad brim as a fan. Her short white hair was damp with perspiration and the hat had pressed it flat against her skull. “If you were hoping to see my husband, I’m afraid he’s gone to try to find some more cabbage plants. The cutworms got most of the first planting. I told him to put a paper cup around the stems till they got some size on ’em, but did he listen?”
Dwight sat down on the wide wooden railing and smiled. “I’m guessing the answer is no.”
She ran her fingers through her thin hair to fluff it up until stray white tufts stood straight out from her pink scalp, giving her the look of an elderly punk rocker.
“And I’m guessing you didn’t drive all the way from Dobbs to hear how two old people bicker. How can I help you, Major Bryant?” She settled back in the rocker with her feet hooked over the bottom rung and continued to fan herself with her hat.
“You were Mrs. Morton’s longtime neighbor. I was hoping you could help identify some of the things she talked about last Wednesday.”
“Oh, Lord, son! She was all over the map with her ramblings, wasn’t she? But I did recognize a lot of what she was saying. About her brother Jacob, for instance, even though we’d known each other for years before she told me about him. Rachel could keep her counsel when she wanted to. I never heard a peep about it till the Howell house burned. She said how her other brother felt guilty even though he wasn’t there and she bet that Richard was going to feel guilty for Jannie’s death, too.”
“Did you ever get the impression that she thought he was murdered?”
“Murdered? Not really.” Her voice dwindled off in uncertainty and her hand slowed until she dropped the hat on the floor beside her chair. “Not murder, but she did blame the ones that were swimming with him that day. Like the accident might’ve been their fault. That was the only time she opened up to me about it, right after Jannie’s funeral, and I doubt she mentioned it more than once or twice in the last forty years. Rachel wasn’t one to hang her private laundry out on the line unless it was to tell a funny story on herself.”
“She mentioned unpaid debts several times. Any idea what that was about?”
“No. I’m sorry, but I don’t.”
“What about somebody who used to hit his wife?”
Mrs. Byrd sat up in the rocker and planted her feet squarely on the floor. “You sure I can’t get you something to drink?”
“I’m sure, thank you.”
She made a show of looking down the road. “Don’t know what’s taking Sam so long. I worry about him off driving without me even though his eyesight’s better’n mine. Can you believe they just renewed his license for another five years and him ninety-two?”
“Who was it, Mrs. Byrd?” Dwight said quietly.
She started to deny knowing, then sighed and leaned back in the chair again. “Sam didn’t notice when Rachel said that, and I was hoping maybe nobody else did either.”
“Were you that wife?”
“Me?” She gave a soft snort of laughter. “Sam and I may fuss at each other and one of us might slam a door or two, but in sixty years, he’s never once raised a hand to me.” She smiled again. “Or me to him, for that matter.”
“But you do know who she was talking about, don’t you?”
Again she ran her fingers through her hair. It had dried enough to let the stiff tufts soften into smoothness. “I’m embarrassed to say that I’m the one who told her. She was such a good listener. Sally’s usually too busy talking to listen, bless her heart, but Jay-Jay’s more like Rachel. Hears more than he says. Back then, living out here on this empty road, I’d get hungry for woman talk and sometimes I’d say more than I should’ve. I’m probably the only one besides Furman Snaveley left to remember. And Sam, of course.”
Dwight was surprised. “The preacher that baptized Sally and Jay-Jay?”
He’d seen enough domestic violence over the years to know that wife-beaters came from all walks of life and that preachers could erupt with as explosive a temper as any layman. Still…?
“It was back when he was first called to Bethany. Right before Rachel married Brack and moved down here. First time his wife came to church with a bruise on her cheek, the deacons called on him and prayed with him and he promised it wouldn’t happen again. A few months later, it was a black eye and a swollen lip. She didn’t come to church, but somehow they found out why she was staying home. That time, the deacons sent word for him to meet with them at the church. He came in all shamefaced and apologetic, said he was sorry, he didn’t know why he’d flared up like that, wanted them to pray for him again.”
She paused and looked at him earnestly. “What you have to understand, Major Bryant, is that back then, those old country deacons didn’t know about counseling and psychology and such. They believed in deeds, not words. They said that they would indeed pray for him, but first they made him drop his trousers. He tried to fight but they bent him over the back of a pew and used a leather strap on his bare backside till he was squalling like a baby. Next day, he handed the deacons his resignation, but they wouldn’t accept it. They told him that he was a fine preacher and as long as he didn’t hurt his wife again, it would never be mentioned, but he needed to stay right where he was for at least five years and learn how to control his temper. If he tried to resign, they would see to it that he never got another church anywhere in this country. Not like those bishops who let all those pedophiles move from church to church instead of giving them a good strapping.”
“Did he stay for five years?” Dwight asked.
“He stayed for twenty-five, till he was called to a church in Raleigh,” she said. “He changed into a wonderful man—patient, kind, humble. And his wife bloomed like a rose after that. I doubt she ever knew because she always gave God the credit. She used to say that Bethany was his road to Damascus, where he really found Jesus and started walking in his footsteps. She’s buried at Bethany and he wants to be buried there, too, when his time comes.”
“So how’d you hear about it?”
“My dad was one of those deacons.”
“He told you?”
“He didn’t mean to. But Sam was made a deacon three years later and the others thought he needed to know. Dad swore him to secrecy and told him the whole story. Of course, Dad was half-deaf at the time and didn’t realize how his voice carried. Sam doesn’t know I know and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell him.”
“But you did tell Miss Rachel?”
“Lord forgive me, I did.” She gestured toward the front windows. “Right inside my living room there. It was a rainy winter afternoon and Rachel came over to help me finish up a Star of Bethlehem quilt I was making to raffle off at church. In his sermon the day before, Mr. Snaveley had talked about how God had helped him control his bad temper and Rachel said he was such a gentle person, he was giving God a bushel of credit for a pint of work, and the next thing I knew, I was telling her he hadn’t always been that gentle. I don’t know if it was the rain or how warm and cozy the room was or how peaceful it was to be quilting with a friend on a cold day, but that was the first and only time till today I ever told another soul.”
She shook her head with regret. “I was so ashamed of myself
and she just reached over and patted my hand and said not to worry, she’d never repeat it. So far as I know, she never did. Not till last week. And Mr. Snaveley was there! His hearing’s right bad these days, though, so I don’t think he caught it.”
“Was he still there when everyone cleared out of her room?”
“Oh yes, we left to come home then and he walked out with us.”
So scratch the Reverend Furman Snaveley off the list, thought Dwight.
“But then he went back in to find a bathroom,” said Mrs. Byrd. “He said it was a forty-minute drive back to his retirement center in Raleigh, and you know how old men and their bladders are.”
With a mental sigh, Dwight put the Reverend Furman Snaveley back on the list of possibilities and asked for the name of his retirement home.
Distressed, Mrs. Byrd said, “Oh no! Please! Don’t ask him about that.”
“If there’s someone who can alibi him for the first thirty minutes after you left, I won’t need to,” Dwight promised.
CHAPTER
20
The beginnings of all things are small.
— Cicero
Before Dwight could turn the key in the cruiser’s ignition, his phone rang and Mayleen Richards’s name popped up on the screen.
“I’m just leaving Widdington,” she said. “Rouse’s story about his grandmother checks out. I talked to his mother, his aunt, and a cousin and none of them ever heard her mention a drowning. According to them, they weren’t close enough for that, and even if they had been interested enough to ask about her childhood, Letha never looked back. They barely remembered that she’d come from the Cotton Grove area.”
“Any word from McLamb or Greene?”
“No, sir.”
“See you tomorrow then.”
As the call ended, Dwight saw that he had a text message from ALE Agent Virgil Dawson.
“Bingo!” it read. “2 300-gal pots n a semi nr Wilson.”
He relayed the news of the traveling whiskey still to the department’s dispatcher so that their patrols wouldn’t have to keep checking every semi parked along their stretch of I-95, then headed back to Dobbs.
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