Since I’d gone home to feed Delbert after we finished Operation ONAG, I gratefully took her up on the offer. She loaded me down with crisp white sheets and cozy pillows from the linen closet and then went to see what Jaelyn was whimpering about.
I made up my bed, decided to sleep in the shorts and shirt that Kyle had loaned me, and lay down. I think I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow. It felt like only a couple of minutes had passed when I suddenly jerked awake, but I heard Charli’s anniversary clock bong four. I climbed out of the bed and fumbled my way down the hall to the bathroom. As I washed my hands I saw a shadow slide in front of the window. I peeked out behind the window blind.
Two figures stood next to the line in the mulch between Charli’s house and Frank Billingham’s. I watched for a second, but couldn’t tell who it was. I decided that I’d better wake up Charli to see if she thought we should call the police. She wasn’t in her bed. Must have gone to the kitchen to get some water or something.
As I headed down the hallway toward the kitchen I heard a loud popping sound and muffled cry come from outside. It scared the hell out of me, but I recovered quickly, worried that one of the figures had been Charli and that it was she who had screamed.
“Charli! Are you okay?” I yelled as I ran to the front door and darted outside.
One of the shadow figures disappeared around the back of Frank’s house. Someone was lying in the mulch where we’d had the run-in with Frank. “Charli?” Please, please, please don’t let it be Charli. It wasn’t. Her floodlight came on and my sister joined me.
“It’s Frank,” I told her. “Go call 911. I think he’s been shot.”
Charli didn’t move. Blood squirted from a gaping wound in Frank’s chest.
“Charli! Go! Call 911. Tell them to get an ambulance out here immediately.” I kicked back with my foot and landed a mean wallop to her shin.
That got her moving. She flew into the house. I checked Frank’s pulse and tried to remember what to do. I had a vague memory of high school first aid class and it popped into my head that I should start CPR. I ripped a strip of Frank’s shirt and pressed it into the wound, then struggled to begin the CPR. Within minutes it seemed like half the neighbors had flooded out of their homes and were gathered around me. First Kyle and then Sue Parnell, who is a nurse when she isn’t singing in her band, joined me on the ground next to Frank and I gratefully let them take over the life-saving duty.
Shaking and shivering from shock and fear, I moved back out of the way and found myself standing next to Frank’s wheelbarrow. Piles of plastic pink flamingos replaced the compost it had held earlier. I guess he’d been out pulling up the little buggers.
But what had happened to cause him to be shot? And who was the mystery person who’d done the dirty deed? I was trying to concentrate, trying to see if I could identify the other shadowy figure I’d seen, when I noticed a glint of metal lying in the big azalea bush that was at the back of the planting bed.
It was Dicey’s necklace. How did that get there? Something else caught my eye underneath the foliage and I bent down to see what it was. It was a small handgun. I stuck the necklace into my pocket and then I did the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. I picked up the gun. When the first squad car rolled up the officer saw me with the gun and automatically drew his own weapon.
“Drop it!” he shouted. “Drop the weapon and put your hands in the air.”
My mom might not agree, but I’m not always as dumb as I look. I tossed the gun away from me. He rushed me, kicked it even farther from me, and practically slammed me against the side of Frank’s house. Within seconds I was cuffed and locked in the back of the squad car.
Charli evidently called Mom and Dad after she dialed 911, because just as the officer deposited me in his cruiser, they arrived. But the problem wasn’t Mom and Dad’s arrival. For once I was actually grateful to see them.
Robby and Giselle, on the other hand, I could have lived without. They made a real nuisance of themselves, spending most of their time screaming at each other, but there was no doubt that they managed to get the whole arrest on tape.
As I sat in the back of that squad car, shivering, all covered with Frank’s blood, watching the red lights of the ambulance flash on and off, watching Giselle gesturing toward me, watching them cover Frank Billingham’s face with a sheet, I realized that Mom had it all wrong when it comes to bad things happening. When it comes to murder there is no ‘bright side’.
8
“How bad is it?” Charli asked as soon as Mom returned to the family room. Mom and Dad had just spent thirty minutes talking with the detective in charge of the investigation.
After I told the police officer who’d nabbed me my story, and then repeated it to the detective, they let me go, but told me not to leave town, that they’d have more questions for me about the murder of Frank Billingham. I wasn’t real thrilled that they kept Dicey’s necklace, calling it evidence, but at least they hadn’t tossed me in jail.
After lots of hugs, kisses, and reassurances that everything was going to be ‘just fine’ from Mom, Dad, and Charli, I took a long, hot shower and scrubbed all of the blood away. Since then, I’d pretty much just been curled up in a fetal position on Charli’s family room sofa.
Mom eased down onto the other end of the couch that was no longer pulled out into a bed. “Bad,” she said. “As bad as you can imagine.”
I tugged the patchwork quilt our Grandma had made for Charli and John when they got married up to my chin and curled into the tightest ball I could manage. Mom massaged her scalp and I noticed a couple of lines on her forehead that I didn’t remember seeing before. I couldn’t help but feel responsible for them.
“I don’t know where to begin,” she said. “Any suggestions?”
Charli handed Mom a steaming cup of coffee. “An attorney, maybe?”
Mom warmed her hands on the mug, inhaled the rich aroma, and took a cautious sip. “Your dad has already spoken to Dicey. And we thought that maybe Timothy could help. I tried to phone him but he didn’t answer. Don finally decided that the best thing to do is just go get him.”
“Marty, honey, are you sleeping?” Mom shook my legs. “Wake up. I need to talk to you about this.”
I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter, trying to ignore her, thinking maybe if I did so I’d wake up from what was surely just a bad dream.
Mom jarred my legs again, harder this time. “Marty, wake up.”
I sighed one of Mom’s ‘why me’ sighs. “I’m awake,” I mumbled. But I didn’t sit up.
She filled me in on her conversation with the detective. She was right: it was bad. I was now an official suspect. Giselle gave them the tape she’d taken Friday of the mulch war. Since it had a shot of me screaming at Frank Billingham, yelling that I could kill him, it wasn’t being taken lightly. Especially since not even forty-eight hours later Frank was dead.
They also wondered why I was the first person on the scene and how come no one else had seen Frank talking to this mysterious shadow man who I said ran off. The other thing that interested them was my mental state. Giselle had not only given them the tape, but had also told them that I had attacked her at the country club party, shoving her into the pool for no reason at all.
Sam English, Sue Parnell, and a couple of other people backed up her story. I guess that to them it must have looked like I’d assaulted Giselle. Dicey and Kyle had taken my side, saying that they were sure that it was an accident, but they were outnumbered. All of that, combined with the fact that I was caught holding the probable murder weapon sure looked suspicious, the detective told my folks.
“But I didn’t do it!” I choked back tears, determined not to lose control. “I didn’t push Giselle. My shoe got stuck and I was trying to keep from falling. If anything it was her fault we went into the pool. She’s the one that started the whole thing. And when I said to Frank that I could kill him it was just a figure of speech. That other person, the shadow p
erson, shot him. I just found the gun under the bush. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t do it!”
“We know that, sweetie. We know,” Charli said in a soothing, motherly voice on her way out of the family room door. She’d heard one of her kids call out for her and was on her way to check on them. “Of course you didn’t do it.”
Mom nodded her agreement. “Charli’s right, we know you’re innocent. But we’re family. We know you. The detective doesn’t. Even if he did, you can’t blame him for being suspicious. He’s just doing his job.”
“Well, he’s an idiot. I don’t care how suspicious it all looks, everybody in town knows I’m a good person, not a cold-blooded killer.”
Mom started to say something else but I buried my head under the quilt and plugged my ears with my fingers. I didn’t want to hear any more, couldn’t stand to hear any more. Mom stopped in the middle of her sentence and just sat quietly, sipping her coffee.
Charli returned from checking on the kids. “Bad dream,” she said. “He went back to sleep but they’ll be up soon. I need to call John’s folks, and then I think I’m going to go ahead and make breakfast. I’m starving.” She went in the kitchen and after a few minutes began clattering around, pulling out pans and ingredients.
Mom patted my legs again. “Marty, honey, don’t be like this. You can’t hide under that blanket forever.”
I pretended to be asleep. She kept talking, but finally gave up and went in the kitchen to help Charli.
A few minutes later Charli flipped the quilt off of me. I half opened my eyes and scowled at her.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I’ve got sausage gravy and biscuits, your favorite.”
“It smells great, but if I try to eat anything I’m afraid I’d get sick.”
“Well, if you’re sure.” She went back in the kitchen. I covered myself again and closed my eyes. The children clambered down the hall and burst into the kitchen, filling the house with kid noises and energy. Normally I loved being at Charli’s house when it was like that, all warm and cozy, full of good smells and laughter. But not that day. That day I just wanted to be in my own bed, snug and alone.
Charli and Mom fed and dressed the kids then Mom piled them into her car and drove them over to Charli’s in-law’s. There had been a big phone pow-wow and it was decided that the best thing for the kids was to be away during all of the commotion. John’s folks and younger sister were about to go to Myrtle Beach for a week, so they volunteered to take the kids with them.
Dad and Tim rolled in during that particular bit of chaos and chowed down on an enormous amount of sausage gravy, biscuits, and eggs. A few minutes later Dicey showed up and Mom returned. They gathered around me in the family room, all talking at once, all throwing out suggestions, and all ignoring me.
Figuring that five heads were better than six, I wandered off to Charli’s boy’s bedroom and lay down on Kevin’s bed. I let my mind drift off, thinking about how I’d fix up a house if I had one. I swear that it was just a coincidence that my imaginary house happened to be exactly like Kyle Zagle’s. I’d just installed a whirlpool tub in the master bedroom and was about to dose off when Dicey knocked on the doorjamb.
“Mind if I join you?” Her face was pale and I couldn’t help but think that, in spite of the face-lift and the great figure, without her heavy makeup and sexy clothes Dicey almost looked her age.
“Sure. Come on in.” I rolled over on my side and propped my head up with my hand.
Dicey is a little ‘out there’, but from what I hear, there isn’t a better, tougher lawyer in Southwest Virginia. She sat down on the edge of Adam’s bed and smoothed her skirt. It was a soft blue that matched her eyes and was very conservative. Very lawyerly.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
Her response was slow and deliberate. “It’s not good, Marty. You can’t hide from this. You have to participate. We can’t help you if you aren’t willing to help yourself. Tell me the truth, are you up to talking to the police right now? The detective has a lot of questions, hard questions, and if you aren’t feeling strong enough, I’d like to put it off until tomorrow.”
I shook my head and then nodded. “I don’t know, Dicey. I’m feeling all mixed up inside. One minute I think it’s all just a bad dream and that I’ll wake up soon. Then, the next, I think I’m losing my mind, that maybe I’m having some sort of mental breakdown. Don’t get me wrong. Intellectually, I know that Frank is dead. I just can’t seem to make emotional sense of it, though.”
Dicey wrinkled her brow. “That’s certainly understandable. You’ve had a great shock. We all have. Unfortunately, the police don’t care if you can make sense of it or not. They just want to solve their case. And right now, they’ve got their sights set on you.”
I clenched my teeth together. “But I didn’t kill Frank. Anybody that knows me knows that. Why can’t that stupid detective get it through his thick skull? Tell me the truth, do I look like a murderer? God, I wish this would all go away. It’s just not fair!”
Dicey’s eyes flashed. “Of course it’s not fair. But fair or not, it’s real. And it’s not going to just fade away. Look, Marty, I’ve been an attorney for quite a while now. I pride myself on being a good one. I’m honest, capable, and passionate. I don’t believe for a minute that you killed Frank Billingham. And I’m going to see to it that the truth comes out.
“But if you go around with a defeatist attitude whining and wishing,” she continued, “you aren’t going to be much help. You’ve got to give yourself a kick in the pants, got to dig deep inside, and let that feistiness you’ve got come out. This is the biggest fight you’ve ever had in your life. Don’t throw in the towel before it even gets started. Get in there and win!”
I knew she was right, but it just all seemed to be too much. Too hard. And I was so, so very tired. “Maybe, but what happens if they still don’t believe me? What if they try and railroad me?”
Dicey launched a look my way that could have fried an egg. “That won’t happen. The police don’t operate like that. They don’t railroad people, they solve crimes. Besides, I told you I’m good. I’m better than good. I’m the best defense attorney around. If you fight for yourself, get in there and tell the truth, we’ll win. I promise to give it all I’ve got. And believe me, that’s a lot.”
I liked her spirit. Her energy. I imagined some of it flowing into me. I felt a little better. I pushed up so that I was sitting on the bed. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll fight. But what do we do?”
She popped to her feet. “That’s my girl! I knew you’d come around. You’re just like your Mom. Nobody is going to keep you Sheffields down, are they? What I want you to do is to grab a shower. Have something to eat, get your head clear. I’ll arrange for the interview to take place tomorrow. We’ll get back together in a little while to talk strategy. Deal?”
I took a deep breath and blew it out hard. I managed a half-smile/half-grimace. “Deal,” I said.
She patted me on the back and herded me into the bathroom. “Remember, we’ve got the truth on our side,” she said. “And, Marty, the truth is a very powerful weapon.”
God, I sure hoped so. I watched her scurry into Charli’s family room then closed the bathroom door. The face staring back from the mirror looked strong and determined. She was right. As much as I sometimes hate to admit it, I am a lot like my mom. No one, and I mean no one, was going to beat me. Especially when I was right. All I had to do was keep telling the truth and the whole fiasco would be over. Well, that was my plan, anyway. Lady Luck and those other Devilish Darlings of Disaster, being in their usual fun-loving mood, of course had other ideas.
9
After another long, hot shower I returned to the family room. Charli leaped up and quickly switched off the television.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“Mom and Dad went on some mission that Dicey dreamed up for them. Dicey went to her office. She’s supposed to be back here about nine. Tim is outside, talking to th
e crime scene team.”
I peeked out and saw them taking pictures, making measurements, and searching around. I dropped the corner of the blind and plopped down on Charli’s over-stuffed sofa. It was fast becoming my sanctuary.
“So,” I said, waving toward the television, “is it totally awful?”
Charli was perched in her oak rocking chair munching on a biscuit. “Well, it’s not as bad as it could be,” she said. “Channel 42 is playing it to the hilt, of course, but the rest of them have barely mentioned it.”
I hugged a rose chenille throw pillow to my chest. “They will. Before this is over it’s going to be splashed all over the papers and the TV. I’ll be known as ‘Marty Sheffield, the Mulch Murderer’, for the rest of my life. We’ll probably have to all move to Pittsburgh or Cleveland or somewhere.”
Charli moved out of the chair and over next to me, then hugged me. “Come on now, honey, you know that’s not true. Eventually people will forget all about it.”
“Charli, this is Glenvar we’re talking about. People here are still talking about Ricky Ray dumping me at the altar as if it happened yesterday. And as far as gossip-worthy scandals go, I think Frank’s murder qualifies as way bigger than that one.” I finally lost control and began to blubber. Not just for myself, either.
Much as I disliked Frank Billingham, he didn’t deserve to die. He was ornery, but not a horrible person. Even though I hadn’t liked him, I felt embarrassed over the way I’d treated him. And I couldn’t help but wonder if, somehow, Charli’s operation ONAG wasn’t at least partially to blame. After all, Frank had been pulling up the stupid pink flamingos we’d planted when he was shot.
Charli handed me a box of tissues and after several minutes of hugging and back patting, went off to take a shower of her own.
The rest of the morning whizzed by in a blur. I spent quite a bit of time discussing things with Dicey. About eleven, she left with promises to call me as soon as she had firmed up the appointment with the police. I sat around Charli’s, flipping through magazines and books, bored out of my mind, for another hour. Finally, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get out of there, go back to my own place, my own things. See Delbert.
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