by Ann B. Ross
“Miss Julia?” Hazel Marie said. “I just got a call from Binkie and they’re home. So they’re coming to dinner tonight, too. And—”
“Oh, I’m so glad that Coleman is back, but, Hazel Marie, Lillian has been on her feet all day. That’s too many to ask her to cook for, so I’m wondering if—”
“I’m way ahead of you,” Hazel Marie said. “I couldn’t believe that J.D. would give a gun to James in the first place, and not even think of what it would do to our dinner plans. So I’m picking up two or three buckets from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Unless,” she went on, “you think that’d be cheating.”
“Cheating! Hazel Marie, that’s just what I was going to suggest. It’s a fact that some people,” I said without mentioning Mr. Pickens, “think that food cooks itself. Kentucky Fried Chicken will be perfect, and if anybody complains, we’ll point them to the kitchen.”
—
Lillian was much relieved not to be facing two or three skillets of popping grease while frying enough chicken to feed a dozen people. So after watching her put the large bowl of banana pudding in a cardboard box, then stuff newspaper around the bowl to keep it from sliding around, I followed her outside with a bag of tomatoes and cucumbers. Moving aside a suitcase and a couple of full paper sacks, she carefully set the box in the footwell of the backseat of her new used minivan, then turned to me.
“We goin’ back to our house after supper,” she said, “an’ I was meanin’ to take Latisha with me now to get her out of y’all’s way. But she have a fit, wantin’ to stay with Mr. Sam. He ’bout to spoil her, Miss Julia, but I sure do ’preciate him lookin’ after her. I jus’ hope he don’t get enough of it, ’cause Latisha can wear on you real quick.”
“He’s doing exactly what he wants to do, but I expect that as soon as Mr. Pickens—and now Coleman, too—get on the case we’ll all be going back to normal living again. Don’t worry about her, Lillian. We’ll bring her with us around five-thirty or so.”
But I knew she would worry, as, indeed, all of us would. As I slogged back across the soggy yard to the house, I realized how eagerly I was waiting for an end to the constant uneasiness that had hung over our heads for the entire week.
A little later as I was getting myself ready to go out to dinner, even though it was only four blocks away, it occurred to me that exactly two weeks before on another Saturday night, I had been packing for our beach trip. Thinking over the week we’d had at the beach, I decided that it had been a success. No one had gotten cranky, or had their feelings hurt. Everybody seemed to have enjoyed the house as well as those who had filled it.
It was just our bad luck that Marty had chosen our beach time to make landfall, and just our bad luck that we’d had to evacuate and return home so early. But what a return it had been, and I’m not talking about that interminable drive on the interstate. I’m talking about the constant concern for the entire week that we had been under the scrutiny of unscrupulous smugglers who’d apparently thought so little of money that they’d thrown a pile of it overboard. Thinking back over the week that had just concluded, who would’ve thought that someone—or, most likely, three someones—would be overshadowing everything we did?
Going out to the upstairs hall, I leaned over the bannister and called to Latisha. “Do you need to do anything to get ready? It’s about time to go.”
“No, ma’am,” she yelled from the kitchen. “I’m already ready.”
I wasn’t too sure of that, so I went downstairs to find her and Sam sitting at her little table in the corner of the kitchen. She was wielding the hot-glue gun like a professional with Sam sitting across from her watching carefully. He was selecting intact shells from the pile on the table and laying them in a row for her to glue onto the design she was making.
As I approached, Sam looked up and smiled. “Bet you didn’t know we have an art class in progress.”
“See this, Miss Lady?” Latisha said, pointing to the sheet of poster paper in front of her. “I don’t have another frame, but Mr. Sam say I can make designs on this paper an’ later on I can frame it like a picture.”
“What a good idea,” I said, and looked admiringly not only at her design—which I would call abstract modernism in the extreme—but at Sam for coming up with the suggestion. “But we should be on our way. You need to go to the bathroom? Wash your hands? They’ll be expecting us soon.”
Sam stood up then and, saying that he needed a little getting ready himself, left to go upstairs.
Latisha put the glue gun down and stood up. “I’m jus’ gonna leave everything right here, an’ let them shells get glued on real good. Great-Granny say we goin’ home tonight, but don’t worry, I”ll come back tomorrow and finish it. Besides, Mr. Sam, he say artists need time to think. So that’s what I’ll be doin’ tonight.”
“Good idea,” I said again, for who could argue with an artist’s need for creative thinking time?
As Sam drove us to the Pickens house, I said, “Did Lillian tell you about James?”
“What’s he done now?”
I laughed. “Not what he’s done—except try to get Lillian to cook supper for him—but what Mr. Pickens has done. Don’t be surprised when you see James guarding the front door with a shotgun on his lap.”
“Do what?”
“Oh, it’s not loaded, but Mr. Pickens wants anybody passing by—especially anybody in a big, black car—to think it is.”
“Well,” Sam said with a wry smile, “I guess James is safer than Granny Wiggins would be. It wouldn’t surprise me if she kept a few shells in her pocket.”
“Shells?” Latisha asked, perking up in the backseat. “Did Miss Granny go to the beach, too?”
“Different kind of shells, honey,” Sam said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. “Not the kind that you can glue.”
“I bet I could,” she said. “That hot-glue gun’ll glue anything to anything you want.”
“Here we are,” Sam said, turning into the Pickenses’ drive and pulling up beside a familiar SUV. “Looks like Coleman and Binkie are already here. And there’s James, armed and ready. Better put your hands up.”
As we walked up onto the porch, Latisha edged close to Sam at the sight of James with a shotgun. And James himself greeted us warmly without stirring from his chair.
Smiling broadly while straightening his shoulders, he said, “You folks real welcome. Jus’ go right on in. We been ’spectin’ you.”
“Good to know you’re on duty, James,” Sam said, acknowledging James’s important post. James, in turn, visibly stiffened and tightened his grip on the long gun.
“Yessir, I’m the lookout. And, Miss Julia, I got to ’pologize for wantin’ to put supper off on Miss Lillian. They wadn’t nobody else but Miss Granny, an’ she cook so slapdash you wouldn’t wanta eat it.”
So it had been James’s idea to maneuver Lillian into the kitchen, probably to keep Granny Wiggins from edging into his domain.
“Arrangements have been made,” I told him, “so don’t worry about it. But, James, have you seen any black cars go by? And maybe slow down as they pass?”
“No’m, nothin’ like that, but I’m watchin’ for ’em.”
Latisha, still eyeing the shotgun, asked, “How long you got to sit out here with that thing?”
“Mr. J.D. say till he say to quit. An’ when Mr. J.D. say do something, I drop my cookin’ an’ moppin’ an’ dustin’ an’ everything else, an’ hop to it.”
“You and me both, James,” I murmured as Sam held the door for me to walk into the Pickens house. “You and me both.”
Chapter 45
Hazel Marie, wearing one of the sundresses she’d bought at the beach, hurried out into the hall to welcome us. She looked lovely, as she always did, the tan she’d worked so assiduously to acquire contrasting with Velma’s expertise in the field of hair color.
“Come i
n, come in,” she said, her face glowing, not, I suspected, because we were visiting, but because Mr. Pickens was home. “Binkie and Coleman are here, drying out, they say. Sounds as if it rained more over in Pisgah than around here. Latisha,” Hazel Marie went on, “Gracie and the twins are with Granny Wiggins in the study. You want to run back there with them?”
“No, ma’am,” Latisha said, looking around at the gathering of adults. “I’ll stay with Mr. Sam an’ Lloyd. An’ that black-haired man with the mustache, jus’ in case somebody still lookin’ for my shells.”
And there he was—Mr. Pickens himself, broad and powerful—standing behind Hazel Marie. He gave Latisha a reassuring pat on the head, then reached for Sam’s hand, adding his welcome to his wife’s. “Sam,” he said, “good to see you. And, you, Miss Julia,” he went on, turning to me as his black mustache twitched, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but you just get younger every time I see you.”
I immediately took umbrage, stiffening at his carelessly offered and patently untrue compliment. But that’s the way he was, always with the teasing remark that made you look ridiculous if you challenged him.
So I didn’t. Instead, I said, “We’re glad you’re home, Mr. Pickens. Has Hazel Marie told you what’s going on?”
“Yes,” he said, frowning slightly as he put on his business face, “but I want to hear it again from everybody who’s had any contact with them.”
“You realize, I hope, that we’re not even sure who ‘them’ are. But finding that out is in your hands now, and I hope to goodness that you’re up for it.”
“Oh, I’m up for it,” he said, his black eyes gleaming enough to make me wary of another unwelcome comment. Instead, he urged us into the living room, where Coleman stood to shake Sam’s hand and Binkie slid over on the sofa to make room. Mr. Pickens made sure that we were all comfortably seated, proving once again that he could, on occasion, be quite gentlemanly. From my viewpoint, however, those occasions were few and far between.
Yet, I found myself feeling as if a burden had been lifted—actually feeling almost euphoric—because Mr. Pickens was finally on the job. Even though he could aggravate me beyond endurance, I had total confidence in his investigative skills and his ability to get things done. And with Coleman around to back him up if need be with a crew of deputies, I could rest assured that we’d soon learn why we’d attracted the attention of shell-stealing strangers.
He didn’t, however, jump immediately into what I had assumed would be an interrogatory session. The little twin girls came running in and climbed into his lap, so we had to wait while he played with them.
Then Granny Wiggins appeared in the doorway, announcing that Gracie and the little girls had had their supper and that she was ready to put them to bed. Gracie sidled up to her mother who assured her that it wasn’t yet her bedtime. The two little girls, however, created a firestorm of wails as Mr. Pickens carried them both upstairs.
Latisha, covering her ears with her hands, said, “I never heard such a racket in my life.”
Lloyd shrugged. “You get used to it.” Then he grinned at her. “I mean, if it’s a fact of life, you learn to live with it.”
When Mr. Pickens returned to the living room, Lillian announced that dinner was served. Noticing how tired she looked, I moved beside her and whispered, “You are not to do another thing but eat your dinner, and that’s it. No dishwashing, no putting food away, no pot scrubbing, not one thing! Leave it all for James.”
“James say he got to guard the door.”
“Guard the door, my foot! Nobody’s going to come in with all of us here. James can either clean the kitchen tonight or he can do it in the morning.”
—
As we finished eating Lillian’s banana pudding dessert, Mr. Pickens stood up and invited us back into the living room. “I want to hear from everybody who met the people on the beach or who saw them later, as well as those of you who’ve seen the suspect car. Come on in and have a seat.”
So we did: Hazel Marie, Latisha, and I on the sofa; Sam in an armchair on one side of the sofa; Binkie, with Gracie in her lap, in one on the other side, with Lloyd on an ottoman beside her. Mr. Pickens brought in chairs from the dining room, and Lillian and Coleman took those. Lillian, I noticed, heaved a sigh of relief as she stretched out her left foot.
Mr. Pickens took his usual large wingback chair that faced us and the television set. “Start at the beginning,” he said, “which I believe was the morning of the Great Money Haul. Did anybody see or hear anything unusual before money started washing up on the beach?”
“I wasn’t even on the beach that morning,” I said, “and knew nothing about it until Lloyd came running up to tell me.”
Sam said, “The first I knew of it was when people started running into the water—sort of everybody at the same time a little farther south of where we were.”
“I didn’t notice anything,” Hazel Marie said. “At first, I mean, because Lily Mae had sand in her mouth.”
“Me, either,” Binkie said. “I was trying to get some sun.”
“And,” Mr. Pickens said to jog our memories, “what about Etta Mae and Mrs. Conover? You think they might’ve noticed anything?”
“I’ve spoken with Etta Mae,” I said, “and she’s not seen anything unusual. As for LuAnne, well, she’s had her mind on other things.”
Then Sam added, “Either one would’ve mentioned anything unusual—Etta Mae, especially. She’s used to being observant. We can check with them later.”
“Okay,” Mr. Pickens said, leaning forward with his arms on his knees. “So the next thing was seeing the three people wandering on the beach. That same day?”
“Yessir,” Lloyd said, “that same afternoon while everybody was dancing at the house. Miss Julia and Latisha went for a walk on the beach and I caught up with them.”
“Yes,” Latisha said, “an’ you an’ me saw ’em at the same time ’cause nobody else was on the beach an’ they didn’t have no bathing suits on.”
Mr. Pickens’s eyebrows shot straight up. “Nudists?”
Lloyd doubled over, trying not to laugh. “Street clothes, J.D. Which made them stand out just as bad, but in the opposite direction. Too much instead of too little.”
“All right then,” Mr. Pickens said, suppressing a smile. “Now the three of you tell me exactly what was said.”
“Well,” I said, starting the account, “one of them was friendly—Rob was his name, but he didn’t introduce himself. One of the others called him that—the woman, I think.”
“He tole me I could buy a scooter,” Latisha said, recounting her most vivid memory. “An’ that I could go to the bank an’ they’d give me a good sand dollar instead of a broke one. I didn’t b’lieve it then, and I don’t b’lieve it now.”
“I’ll tell you the truth,” I said, wracking my memory to fill in the blanks, “I didn’t think too much of that meeting at the time. I mean, it was obvious that they weren’t from around there. The way they talked, for one thing. And for another, Rob was almost too familiar with us, while the other two would’ve passed by without speaking at all.” I stopped as I pictured again the meeting with the three strangers, then went on. “It was Lloyd who had a bad feeling about them from the first.”
Mr. Pickens looked at Lloyd and said, “What was it you didn’t like, son?”
Lloyd shrugged. “I’m not sure, J.D. They just made me feel they were up to something. One was too interested in us, and the other two were too busy scouring the dunes for money to pay us any mind at all. And this was hours after the money washed in. It seemed like a lame excuse for what they were really doing.”
“Maybe,” Sam said, “they were looking for something else.”
Mr. Pickens nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
After another thirty minutes or so of questions and answers, we’d given Mr. Pickens a bl
ow-by-blow account of Lloyd’s seeing the woman in a big, black Suburban on the interstate, seeing what we assumed was the same vehicle at least four times—twice near the Pickens house, once passing by ours, and once following Lillian and Sam. And maybe again as a black flash in a rainstorm after Latisha and I had been ambushed by two hooded thieves.
“Yes,” Latisha said, her black eyes glowering at the thought, “an’ one of ’em stole my best shells, an’ I prob’bly won’t never get over it.”
Hazel Marie put her arm around Latisha and whispered, “Next summer, we’ll get some more.”
“Looks like,” Mr. Pickens said, sitting back in his chair to give a summation of the situation, “we ought to assume for now that the car most of you have seen is the same one every time, and it’s the same people you saw on the beach—Lloyd recognizing the woman might confirm that. And if it was one of them that went through Hazel Marie’s car and found our address, they didn’t have to actually follow us home—they knew where we’d be. The problem is, though, just what is it that they want?”
Well, my Lord, I thought, that’s been our question all along.
Lillian, who’d been sitting quietly throughout the interrogation, said, “Maybe they was something special ’bout Latisha’s shells. A prize or something.”
Everybody turned to look at her as we considered for the first time such an unlikely possibility.
“If that’s the case,” Latisha said, “then I really want ’em back.”
Mr. Pickens rubbed his fingers across his mouth, thinking and pondering. “Well,” he said after a while, “I can’t think what it could be, except that it’s obviously something. Coleman, what do you think?”
“Beats me, but they could be casing us—or rather, your house and Sam’s—setting up for what they think could be a major haul. I’ll make sure we patrol both houses on a regular basis, but we’re stymied, legally speaking, until they make another move.”
“But they’ve already stolen something,” I said, thinking again of that frightful incident in my car.