by Jackie Lynn
“Mother, there is no baby,” Rhonda said again. “Why do you have that in your mind?” she asked.
Rose turned around to get a closer look at the older woman and to discourage her from telling Rhonda and Lucas about what she had shared with her. Ms. Lou Ellen was already staring in her direction.
“I don’t know,” Ms. Lou Ellen responded. “Must be in the stars,” she added and then winked at Rose.
Rose blushed and turned to make sure that neither Rhonda nor Lucas had noticed. They didn’t let on if they had sensed anything more to what Ms. Lou Ellen was implying.
“Whose murder?” Rose asked, glad to get back to the main story of interest.
“Should we go over to pray with her?” Lucas asked before his wife could answer the question. He had closed the magazine and taken off his reading glasses. He turned to face his wife.
Rhonda shook her head. “Not right now, I think,” she replied. “Maybe later in the afternoon.” She seemed reluctant to share the rest of her news. She watched her husband.
Lucas nodded and turned back so that he was once again sitting with his legs under the table. He bowed his head and the women could see that he was praying. Accustomed to his silent prayers, they carried on their conversation quietly.
“It was …” Rhonda was going to answer Rose, but she waited until her husband had finished his prayer. “Lucas, it was Jason.”
The man looked up at his wife. It wasn’t the news he expected to hear. He shook his head and then bowed again in what appeared to be another prayer.
“It was sometime in the middle of the night and they were packing to leave South Dakota. She had taken a load of stuff to the car and she said that she put the belongings in the backseat and started the engine to warm it up. She cleaned off the windshield and when she got back to the apartment she discovered that he had been shot.”
“She didn’t see who did it?” Rose asked.
Rhonda shook her head. “She saw a man leave and she said that he had also followed her part of the way here,” she replied.
“Why didn’t she call the police?” Rose was curious about why the girl would run instead of seeking help in the town or at least in the state where the murder occurred.
Rhonda shrugged. “She wouldn’t say. She just said that she didn’t know who to trust and that she didn’t have anyone else to contact.”
“Amen,” Lucas said, ending his quiet meditation. “Jason is dead?” he asked. The news had really shaken him.
Rhonda nodded solemnly. “I’m afraid so,” she replied.
The room grew silent as Rhonda and Lucas thought about the man who had been killed, the young boy they had gotten to know from South Dakota.
“He was a good kid,” Lucas said. He folded his hands in front of him.
The women assumed he was going to pray again, but he just looked ahead.
“Chariot said you met each other at a bike rally?” Rose asked. She recalled what had already been said about their friendship.
Rhonda nodded. “We rode around with them that year and then went back again to see some other parts of the area.”
“We tried to help them a bit,” Lucas added. “They had both struggled with drugs and were messed up most of the time.”
“I think she had done a little jail time,” Rhonda said. “And was having a hard time being out.”
“Rhonda was like a big sister to her that first time we met,” Lucas said.
The two of them smiled at each other. He was proud of the way his wife cared for others who had walked a path similar to her own.
“She just needed a little guidance,” Rhonda said. “Sounds like she still needs it,” Ms. Lou Ellen noted. Lucas nodded.
“What do you know about him, the boyfriend?” Rose asked.
Rhonda shook her head. “Not much,” she replied. “We were really only around the two of them a couple of times,” she added. “Unlike Chariot, he seemed to have a good head on his shoulders.”
“She’s just young, love,” Lucas said, referring to the woman who was sitting in her tent at the edge of the woods while they discussed her a few hundred yards away. “She does okay for where she’s come from,” he explained.
Ms. Lou Ellen lifted her head and studied her son-in-law. “What does she come from?” she asked. She placed the pen down on the paper in front of her. “No, wait, let me guess.”
The three waited for her to finish.
“Trouble,” she answered her own question.
Rhonda smiled at her mother. She nodded.
“If I remember the story correctly,” Lucas spoke quietly and with thoughtful consideration. “Her father is dead after being shot by her mother. She was cleared of the charges because she said it was self-defense and that he had almost killed her before she was able to shoot him. As a result, her mother has been in a wheelchair and incapacitated for most of young Chariot’s life. I also think the woman is prone to drink now and again.”
“I get that,” Ms. Lou Ellen responded.
Lucas reached over and patted his mother-in-law on the arm. “But you have been delivered,” he announced with a big smile on his face. “We’ve all been,” he added, “and now we must pray for those who are not.” He pulled his hand away and bowed his head again.
The three women waited this time before continuing their conversation. Ms. Lou Ellen and Rhonda bowed their heads and closed their eyes. Rose just watched. She was used to how the Boyd family included prayer as a part of their table talk as if God was simply another person sitting around the table. She respected their faith, but she didn’t always join them in the physical ways that they engaged in prayer. She didn’t usually bow or close her eyes. She just held the last thought of the person mentioned in a cloud of light. She waited until Lucas signaled the end of the silent prayer.
“Amen,” he said and Rhonda and her mother glanced up. The conversation continued as if there had been no divine disruption.
“Jason said Chariot and her mother never really got along,” Rhonda explained. She pushed herself away from the desk and stretched out her legs. She crossed her feet at the ankles.
“He said that Chariot lived with her grandmother most of her childhood while her mother stayed with Chariot’s sister next door. No one really talks about why Chariot left home and why she didn’t stay with her mother.”
“I never understood why Jason and Chariot stayed in South Dakota,” Lucas remarked. “Neither one of them seemed all that crazy about living there.”
“You would think with a family history like she had that she would have wanted to leave,” Rhonda speculated.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rose responded. “Even with crazy families, loyalty is still an issue.” She hesitated. “Believe me, I know,” she added. “Home is with the folks who know you best, even if they’re nuttier than fruitcakes.”
“Yes, but you did eventually leave,” Rhonda said.
They all knew about Rose’s family history, her father’s alcoholism and her childhood abuse.
“Not for a very long time,” Rose explained. “I was almost twice Chariot’s age before I packed up my little Casita and drove away.”
“But you did it,” Ms. Lou Ellen said with a nod in Rose’s direction. “And you are still a young enough woman,” she added. Rose sat up in her chair.
“Young enough for what, Mother dear?” Lucas wanted to know.
The room fell silent. Rose really didn’t want her employers and friends to know what Ms. Lou Ellen had predicted for her. She just wasn’t ready to talk about motherhood with a group of people.
“Young enough to enjoy life,” Ms. Lou Ellen replied. She shrugged as if it was a completely innocent notion.
“That’s a true statement, Mother,” Lucas said.
“Well, back to Chariot, I think there was something holding her in Pierre, something she would never talk about,” Rhonda said. “But it was real and it kept her there even when Jason tried to find work in Minneapolis.”
“She
sounded to me like she was eager to get out of South Dakota,” Ms. Lou Ellen recalled, remembering the conversation she had with Chariot when she first arrived. “She said she was tired of snow.”
“I still don’t understand why she wouldn’t call the police when she found her boyfriend’s body, when she saw the man who she assumed had done it,” Rose said. “And how did she know that he was really dead?” she asked.
Even trained as a nurse, Rose hadn’t always been able to tell when a person was dead. Sometimes a person appeared to have died, but there was still a pulse, still breath in the body that could only be determined with a stethoscope or some other medical equipment. She knew that an untrained person couldn’t possibly know for certain whether or not a man was dead or just seriously injured.
“Shouldn’t she have at least called an ambulance?” Rose shook her head. Things weren’t making a lot of sense to her.
“Jason told her to leave,” Rhonda explained. “He wasn’t dead when she found him. He had been shot, but was still conscious, and he told her that she was in danger and that she needed to leave.”
“So, the boyfriend might not be dead?” Ms. Lou Ellen asked.
“No,” Rhonda replied. “She was pretty sure that he died right after that.”
“Then what happened?” Rose wanted to know. “Then she got in her car and drove to Arkansas,” Rhonda replied.
Lucas began tapping his pencil on the table. He was clearly thinking about the situation. “I don’t know, sisters,” he said. “I don’t mean to doubt our young friend, but something just doesn’t seem quite right about this,” he noted.
“I have to agree with Lucas.” Ms. Lou Ellen spoke to her daughter. “She’s not telling you everything.”
“Like what else?” Rhonda asked.
“Like why were they leaving in the middle of the night to begin with? And why didn’t she call 911 to send an ambulance even though she had left?” Rose was listing a number of the things that bothered her. It just didn’t seem to her that the young woman from South Dakota was being completely honest about what happened in Pierre, what happened to Jason.
“And why is there a report of the police looking for a woman by the name of Chariot Stevens who is suspected of killing her boyfriend, Jason Holmes?” Ms. Lou Ellen had started reading the newspaper that carried the puzzle she was working and found the story right on the front page.
EIGHT
The phone rang before any of the others could react to Ms. Lou Ellen’s discovery from the newspaper on the table. Rose reached across the desk in Rhonda’s direction and answered it.
“Shady Grove,” she said.
“Why you not answer like I taught you?”
Rose smiled. She knew immediately from the broken English and the hint of sarcasm that the caller was Mary, the manager of Shady Grove and the friend of everyone gathered in the office. “Because I knew it was you and I just wanted to get your goat.”
“Why you think I got a goat?” she asked, not understanding the metaphor.
“Never mind,” Rose replied.
Rhonda got up and walked over to the table to read the article in the paper that Ms. Lou Ellen and Lucas were hunched over.
Rose tried to hear anything that they were saying, but she couldn’t make out any words. She leaned closer to the group.
“Are you enjoying being in Little Rock with your sister?” Rose asked, trying to sound interested in Mary’s call. She knew that the woman from overseas had never visited Mary and that Mary had made lots of plans for the two of them while she was in town. It had been the first time she had ever taken time away from the campground. There were also some other friends of the family in that part of the state so they were spending a lot of time reuniting with old relations.
“We eat so much I have to buy new pants,” Mary replied. “Phong never have French fries or Big Whopper or chocolate syrup. All we do is eat,” she added.
Rose laughed. “Well, I don’t know about your sister, but you could use a few extra pounds anyway. You’re kind of skinny with a mouth that’s too big. You need to gain some weight so that your voice isn’t so much larger than your body.”
“I not so loud,” Mary argued. “You should hear my sister. Listen.”
Rose could tell that her friend had held out the receiver so that Rose could hear the conversation going on around her. Mary was right; there was one very loud and distinctive voice that sounded familiar. She guessed that this was her sister talking in the background.
“Is Phong older or younger than you?” Rose asked. She had not remembered what Mary had told them about the visiting sibling.
“She a twin,” came the answer.
“Your twin?” Rose asked. “I didn’t know you had a twin,” she said. “Is she identical to you?”
“We look exactly the same, only she used to be fatter. But not anymore,” she noted.
“I know, Big Whopper and chocolate syrup.”
The two of them laughed.
“So, what is going on at Shady Grove?” Mary asked. “You close office since I’m gone?”
“Can’t you enjoy your vacation without worrying about us?” Rose asked. She had known that her manager would call. In fact, she was surprised that Mary had waited a couple of days before checking in with her. Mary had worked at least two weeks trying to make sure that Rose knew everything about running the Shady Grove office before she would even agree to take the time away.
“I figure you mess everything up for me so that I have to work extra when I get back,” she explained. “I call now to see if I can fix it.”
“Well, I am happy to report that I haven’t broken anything for three entire days. Of course, that is mostly because we have had only a couple of guests check in since you left.” Rose knew that Mary loved to think of herself as the most competent of the Shady Grove staff. Rose thought she would feed the manager’s ego a bit.
“You take any reservations?” Mary asked.
“A few for early summer,” Rose replied. “Nothing too complicated though. I left you all the work of charging their credit cards and confirming them.”
“You clean out toilets and take out trash from laundry room?”
“Will you leave me alone?” Rose said. “I know what I’m doing here. You just stay in Little Rock and eat. Worry your sister.”
“Pssst.” It was the sound Mary liked to make when she became impatient. “She worry me.”
Rose laughed. “Good,” she replied. “You need somebody to let you know how annoying you can be.”
“Ah, you miss me,” Mary said.
“More than you’ll ever know,” Rose said. “You want to talk to Rhonda?” she asked.
Rhonda glanced up from the table where she had been reading the paper and walked over to the desk and took the receiver. Rose headed over to take her spot and to catch up on the story that the others had read and that she had missed.
“What’s it say?” she asked.
Since she was finished, Ms. Lou Ellen slid the paper over to where Rose could read it. Lucas was shaking his head and making a kind of clucking noise as if he were worried or disappointed, Rose couldn’t tell which. She started to read.
The article in the Tribune didn’t reveal too much information. It only noted that a body had been found at an apartment complex near downtown Pierre and that it had been identified as Jason Humphrey Holmes. It read that there had been a report of gunfire in the area and that when the police arrived they had found the victim, shot and lying in the hallway of his apartment.
The police were most interested in locating the other apartment tenant, the victim’s girlfriend, a woman known as Chariot Stevens. It cited two eyewitnesses. There was one who reported that he had seen the woman fleeing the vicinity and the other, a next-door neighbor, who claimed he had seen her shoot the victim.
Rose finished reading the article and scanned the rest of the front-page news for more information, but found only the anchor story about a senator’s daughter, a
beautiful young woman from Mitchell, who had just won a beauty contest and a big scholarship. There was a large photograph accompanying the story. Below that one was also a small article about the senator from Mitchell and her history in targeting drug dealers in the state. There was also something about how she was planning to turn over much of her work against drugs to someone else because she was considering a run for national office. There was nothing else about the murder. She looked up to see Lucas bowed in prayer and Ms. Lou Ellen shaking her head.
Rhonda was finishing her conversation with Mary.
“Well, just make sure you bring her by here before she leaves to go back to Vietnam. It would be awful if we didn’t get a chance to meet her.”
Then there were a few other greetings exchanged and Rhonda hung up the phone. “They’re visiting family and mostly just eating,” she said to the others, summing up her phone conversation.
Rose smiled. “She said she had to buy new clothes she had gained so much weight.”
“I wish I would have known,” Ms. Lou Ellen responded. “I would love to help Mary pick out some new things for spring.”
“Yes, I hear you’re taking the staff shopping,” Rhonda said, referring to Lou Ellen’s plan to buy Rose a new dress.
“Yes, dear, it is true, but if you are perturbed or jealous even in the slightest way, you know that you are welcome to join the two of us. I’d love nothing more than to purchase a lovely spring frock for you.” She winked at Rhonda.
“Never mind,” Rhonda said, wanting to turn the conversation back to what they had all just read. “What does everyone think about the story?” she asked. She noticed her husband in a prayerful position. She looked at the other two.
“Sounds pretty incriminating,” Rose replied.
“It seems odd that they would be allowed to report eyewitness accounts,” Ms. Lou Ellen said. “I thought that they tried to keep that kind of thing quiet to use in the trial. I thought such information could prejudice a jury and therefore create difficulties for the prosecution.”
“Maybe there was just a guy eager for his fifteen minutes of fame, someone the reporter got to before the police did,” Rose guessed, shrugging.