Home Fires dk-6

by Margaret Maron

  “All I could think of was getting the hell away without getting involved. I carried him into the storage room, then I got the mower and clippers and stuck them there, too. The room was just sheets of plywood nailed to two-by-four studs. I took a hammer and pulled one of them off and got Isaac into the crawl space under the church. I pushed him as far in as I could, back to a part that didn’t have any electric wires that people might have to get to. There wasn’t much room to dig, but I managed to scoop out a little hollow and cover him over and that’s where I left him. Your grandmother didn’t say much when he didn’t come home that night. It wasn’t the first time.”

  Even with air-conditioning, the little lounge was beginning to feel hot and humid. Beads of perspiration stood out on Adderly’s face and he took a handkerchief and wiped them away.

  “Next morning, I don’t know if you remember, but you and your grandmother and your cousins went off to pick dewberries for a truck farmer down the road?”

  Cyl shook her head.

  “Well, you did. Which was a good thing, because lying in bed that night, I realized I hadn’t thought of something. Then I remembered seeing a dead hound out by the side of the road—a big stray that got hit by a car. After y’all left that morning, I found a burlap sack in your grandmother’s garage and I waited till the road was clear and stuck the dog in the bag and carried it through the woods to Mount Olive.”

  “There were sacks of quicklime in the storage room—that stuff they used to sprinkle down the hole to keep outhouses smelling sweet? I layered a whole sack of it over Isaac’s grave, then I made a little hole in that lattice skirting at the back of the church behind the shrubs and pushed the dog through it. I figured if the quicklime didn’t do the whole job, they’d find the dog first and think it crawled up under there to die and they wouldn’t look any farther.”

  “Afterwards, I went back to the house, packed up my clothes and a few things of Isaac’s so y’all would think he’d gone with me, then I hitchhiked into Raleigh, cashed in my bus ticket to Boston and bought another one home to Wilmington.”

  “Where you quit NOISE, studied for the bar and started preaching about people needing to take responsibility for their actions,” Cyl said.

  “Makes me sound like a hypocrite, I know,” said Adderly. “But if I preach, it’s from experience. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about Isaac and feel ashamed because I didn’t take responsibility for bringing his killer to justice. Maybe after all these years, we can find the men who held him down. Maybe they’re ready to accept their part in it and testify against Buck Ferguson.”

  “Very noble,” I said. “And I suppose you’re willing to tell the Sheriff your part in all this and testify, too?”

  “If that’s what it takes,” Adderly said.

  “Even though Buck Ferguson died in prison at least eight years ago?”

  “What?”

  Most good lawyers are actors and Adderly’s certainly a good lawyer. Even so, his surprise looked genuine to me.

  So did the expression of relief that immediately followed.

  22

  Praying hands

  Aren’t preying hands

  —Sandy Hill United Christian

  “So what are you going to do, Ms. DeGraffenried?” Adderly asked. “March out there and throw me to those reporters?”

  “No,” Cyl said slowly. “Destroying you doesn’t bring Isaac back.”

  “You’re going to keep quiet about this?” I asked indignantly.

  “You said it would be my call.”

  “But you’re letting him get away with—”

  “—with what exactly?” Cyl interrupted sharply. “He didn’t kill Isaac.”

  “So he says now.”

  “He had no reason to kill. And as for hiding his body and running away, there’s probably a statute to cover it, but I don’t know what it is off the top of my head. Do you?”

  “No,” I admitted, although preacher and pragmatist were both frantically flipping through all the cases filed at the back of my skull.

  She gave an impatient twitch of her shoulders. “If anything, it’s probably just a misdemeanor that the statute of limitations ran out on years ago.”

  I shook my head. “Hiding a body and covering up a violent death? That’s more than a misdemeanor, Cyl. We’re talking felony here and there’s no statute of limitations on felonies in this state.”

  When I’d said it would be her call, it was because I’d been so sure she’d go by the book. I had no grudge against Adderly, but neither was I ready to sacrifice my career for him and no way did I like where this situation was headed. Cover-ups are stupid and they never work if more than one living person knows what’s being hidden.

  Somewhere a little bell went off, but Cyl made it hard for me to hear.

  “Prosecute him for that? What’s the point? Isaac’s still dead, the man that killed him is dead, his accomplices scattered and even if we could round them up, the worst we could charge them with is involuntary manslaughter.”

  Smart enough to know that any comment by him might tip the balance scales of justice either way, Wallace Adderly watched us silently, motionless except when his dark eyes shifted from Cyl’s face to mine and then back again as we argued it out between us.

  “You’re willing to risk censure if this comes out?” I asked her. “And what about your grandmother? Is she this forgiving?”

  “My grandmother admires the man he’s become,” Cyl said stiffly. “She doesn’t know that he’s the same person who stayed in her house twenty years ago.”

  “And if she did know?” I persisted.

  Her voice hardened with scorn. “You whites can pull a leader off his pedestal every time you notice a clay foot because you’ve got a whole row of men waiting to take his place. We don’t have that luxury. Our leaders have been bombed and shot and lynched and I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to help this culture destroy another one just because he panicked and did something stupid before he was fully mature. Something he could have denied till the day he died, if he’d wanted to, because who could prove anything? You? Sheriff Poole? Doug Woodall? I certainly couldn’t and I was there.”

  The little bell was ringing like a fire alarm as the pragmatist tried to get my attention. Something about Wilmington stirred in my memory. Adderly was from Wilmington. Was that it?... No, not Wilmington exactly ... but something that happened in the Fifth Judicial District? Pender County? No. It was something I’d heard about when I was in Pender County. Yes! A Wake County ruling? Something about a fire and someone confessed to setting it, but his conviction was vacated because—

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” I said as I finally remembered.

  They both stared at me.

  “You’re right, Cyl. It’s a naked confession and an uncorroborated, extrajudicial confession cannot sustain a conviction. I forget the case but we can look it up. No witnesses, nothing to show how your uncle died, no evidence of manslaughter, no way to prove or disprove any felonious acts, including how he got under the church. Nada.”

  I gave Adderly a congratulatory tip of my imaginary hat. “Lucky you. Nothing worse than a small PR problem if rumors should start.”

  Cyl shook her head. “It’s not a complete pass. I guess I do have to tell my boss even if there’s nothing official he can do. And you,” she said to Adderly, “have to tell grandmother.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “I owe her that.”

  “How quiet it stays is up to them. And to Judge Knott too, of course.” She gave me an inquiring look.

  “Your call,” I said again, feeling better about it this time, now that some solid legal ground had appeared beneath that ethical quicksand.

  Cyl stood then and smoothed the wrinkles from her linen dress. “I’ll be in touch.”

  He nodded and the last of my indignation dissipated.

  I’d been flippant about the damage to his reputation, but Cyl was right. It would be a real waste if the act of a scared young man twenty
years ago did indeed damage the reputation of the leader he’d become.

  Isaac Mitchiner wasn’t the only victim here.

  Rain was still falling when we left the building and scurried over to the covered portico in front of the auditorium.

  Ralph Freeman was just coming out with his umbrella in hand and he shook his head as we drew nearer.

  “I can understand why you might skip the political speeches, but don’t tell me you aren’t eating either?”

  “Hungry?” I asked Cyl. “Or do you want to leave?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t take this wrong, Deborah, because I do appreciate what you did, the things you said, but—” She turned to Ralph. “If you’re ready to go, Reverend, would you mind giving me a lift back to the courthouse?”

  “I’d be glad to.” He opened his umbrella and held it over her.

  I watched them go and yes, damn it, I was taking it wrong... if feeling as if I’d been slapped was taking something wrong.

  “She didn’t mean it personally,” said Adderly, who had come up behind us and witnessed the whole scene. “Sometimes being with whites is just too stressful.”

  “Now you’re going to argue for reverse segregation?” I asked.

  “No, but I wouldn’t mind if white folks could appreciate that it isn’t a one-way street, that integration brings losses for us, too. I’m never going to quit working for a North Carolina where all blacks can feel comfortable everywhere, no matter who’s sitting at the table with us—a North Carolina where we can quit having to be a credit to our race every minute of every day because there’s always some honky ready to say ‘Ain’t that just like a nigger?’ if we aren’t. But until that happens, there have to be times and places where we can sink down and lay our burdens aside and know for sure that nobody’s sitting in judgment but God.”

  “Black churches,” I said.

  He nodded. “And black friends.”

  I could see his point, but bedamned if I had to like it.

  ✡ ✡ ✡

  Disconsolately, I stepped inside the lobby to retrieve my umbrella just as Reid was coming in. He grabbed my arm with a big smile.

  “Hey, Deb’rah! Sherry said you saw Langston King’s will, too. Guess what?”

  “Sister Williams is going to let the land revert?”

  His face fell. “How’d you guess?”

  “Just a wild stab.”

  “I drove over to Cotton Grove—the rain was coming down in buckets, too—and explained it to Mrs. Williams and then she and I went to see Mrs. Avery. She didn’t know about the reversion clause and she wasn’t real sure it was the right thing to do, Mrs. Avery, I mean. We really had to sell the idea to her and then she and Mrs. Williams had to pray on it awhile before she finally agreed. We’re going to start the paperwork first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Hey, you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You look a little down.”

  “It’s the weather. And it’s been a long day.”

  “I don’t suppose you got a chance to talk to Dwight?”

  “Actually, I did,” I said. “Unfortunately, half your client’s alibi is over in Dobbs Memorial with his jaw wired shut and the other half’s on her way back to Massachusetts.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Trust me. I’m not,” I said and related what Dwight had told me earlier that afternoon.

  He listened intently, shaking his head in dismay. “I’ll see if we can get a court reporter there tomorrow to take his deposition.”

  “It’s none of my business,” I said, “but if it were me, I wouldn’t be in too big a hurry about this.”

  “How come?”

  “Dwight may want to believe that Starling and Bagwell set those fires, but he won’t disregard a solid alibi and last night’s beating ties in with the story A.K. told me at least three hours before the beating occurred. Give him a chance to convince himself and Dwight’ll turn around and convince ATF. Bet you a nickel he’ll have talked with Jerry Farmer and Bobbie Jean Pritchett, too, by tomorrow night.”

  “Bet,” said Reid. “And I hope I lose.”

  23

  Real angels never look for the angles.

  —Booker Grove Methodist Church

  If I’d found him, I probably could’ve collected my nickel from Reid when I broke for the afternoon recess the next day.

  As I crossed the atrium that connects the new part of the courthouse with the old 1920s part, I almost banged into a hefty young white man who began with an apology and ended with a pleased smile on his face. “Judge Knott! Glad to see your hair’s none the worse for all those sparks.”

  It was the volunteer fireman who’d hauled out the pulpit on one shoulder the night Balm of Gilead burned.

  I fumbled for his name. “You’re Donny, right? Donny Turner?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he beamed, “and I owe you an apology. I didn’t know I was ordering around a judge that night.”

  “No problem,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  “Just fine. Hey, maybe you can help me?”

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  He took a crumpled slip of paper from his jeans pocket. “I got a call to come see Special Agent Ed Gardner? In Major Dwight Bryant’s office? You happen to know where that would be?”

  “Well, you could have gone in directly from the street behind, but there’s a staircase. Let me show you.”

  I led him through double glass doors, along a wide hall, down the stairs and through another set of glass doors. As we walked, Donny Turner kept up a running chatter on why he was there. He didn’t seem to be completely sure.

  “I reckon they want to get an in-depth report of what it was like when them churches was actually burning? From one of the troops? Somebody as was right there, don’t you reckon?”

  “You were at all three?”

  “Well, not that little one with the trailer. Burning Heart of God? Boy, that was a real appropriate name, won’t it? Naw, none of us got to that one. We was all at Mount Olive, working on that fire, when the little ’un went.”

  Donny Turner’s Colleton County accent was as thick as Daddy’s—wasn’t is always won’t, fire is far—and he was bad for making every other sentence sound like a question, but I grew up on those sounds and I’ve never needed a translator.

  “Did you know Charles Starling or Raymond Bagwell?” I asked.

  “Oh, sure. Charles, anyhow. He was a year behind me but we rode the same school bus and we carpooled after I got my license. Till he quit school? Man, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heared he was the one done it.”

  “Really?” I halted on the stairs and stared at him.

  Surprised, Donny stopped, too. His eyes met mine briefly, then darted away. “Well, no, I guess not really. He was sorta wild in school, always breaking the rules? He was the one spray-painted our bus when we was in middle school? And you know his momma kicked him out of the house ’cause he kept burning holes in everything with his cigarettes and I heared he was real mad with Balm of Gilead ’cause they stole his granddaddy’s land?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I heard, too.” I said.

  “Maybe that’s how come they want to talk to me? ’Cause I know Charles could’ve done it?”

  Again his eyes shifted away. Nervousness?

  “Ed’s and Dwight’s problem, not yours,” said the preacher.

  “But you can call Dwight this evening,” said the pragmatist. “See if he wants to watch a movie.”

  We entered the Sheriff’s Department through the glass doors. “Right around that corner.” I told Donny Turner. “Major Bryant’s office is the second door on the left.”

  At that moment, a familiar person rounded the corner.

  “Hey, Chief!” said Donny. “They got you down here, too?”

  “Uh, yeah, well, you know how it is.”

  Was it my imagination or was the chief of West Colleton’s volu
nteer fire department having trouble looking Donny Turner straight in the face?

  “I’d better not hold y’all up.” he said, giving me a nod as he passed. “I believe they’re waiting on you, Donny.”

  “Yeah, okay. See you later then.”

  The chief headed through the swinging doors and Donny turned back to me. “Nice seeing you again, Judge. Thanks for showing me how to get here.”

  “You Never Can Tell?” asked Dwight. “How old’s that one?”

  “1951,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to see it for ages and Vallery Feldman at Blockbuster finally got it in for me. Dick Powell and Peggy Dow. She was in Harvey. Wonder what ever happened to her?”

  “This isn’t one of those goopy musicals, is it?”

  “Trust me. Dick Powell’s a dog who comes back to earth to find out who murdered him. There’s a horse angel, too. You’ll love it.”

  Dwight’s not quite the old-movie addict I am unless it’s set against the Second World War. Then we both cry when Van Heflin dies or John Payne throws himself on a hand grenade to save his comrades. (At least, I cry. Dwight always claims a summer cold or sinuses.)

  Uncle Ash and Aunt Zell had already gone up to their room and I was in the kitchen waiting for Dwight to come before microwaving some popcorn.

  The rain had begun again and I held the side screen open for him. His sandy brown hair was damp and his cowlick was standing straight up as he swiped at it.

  “So how’d it go with Donny Turner?” I asked.

  Dwight looked at his watch. “Fourteen seconds,” he said. “Ed Gardner owes me five bucks.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I bet him I wouldn’t be here two minutes before you asked about Turner. He thought you’d be more subtle and take at least five.”

  “Very funny. Just for that, we eat our popcorn plain tonight. No butter. No salt.”