Mr. Judd nodded. “You do what you have to do, ma’am.”
I leaned closer and tried to cajole him in a low voice. “You really don’t want to go to jail. Why don’t you just tell us the truth about what happened?”
In a whisper so low that only I could hear him, he said, “Ma’am, you see those two women out there? One already wants to kill me. If I tell everything that happened that morning, both of them’ll want to. I believe right now I’d rather go to jail, if it’s all the same to you.”
I had to agree it was probably safer and had the bailiff place him under arrest for contempt. I dismissed the assault with a deadly weapon since Ms. Johnson had been erroneously charged for the wrong person and I fined her for simple assault along with twenty-four hours in jail, suspended on the usual conditions.
Well, at least I hadn’t tried to throttle Kidd’s wife.
CHAPTER
13
The problem of continuity . . . resides in the potters and their families, in their subjective reaction to the loss of traditional culture. The craft may continue to be handed down within a family or younger generations may decide to enter a different career . . . although others are realizing the rewards of making pottery and are taking it up as their heritage.
—Raised in Clay, Nancy Sweezy
Services for James Lucas Nordan were at four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon at the funeral home. The casket was closed, of course, which had made the “viewing” the night before more awkward than normal. After the interment, his extended family gathered at Amos Nordan’s house while June Gregorich put together a buffet supper comprised of leftovers from all the food various neighbors had brought in during the last three days.
“Times are changing,” said a friend of Betty Hitchcock who had come by to help in the kitchen and who’d brought a basket of freshly baked yeast rolls and three plastic milk jugs full of iced tea.
“In what way?” asked June as she assembled one large platter of fried chicken from several Bojangles, Food Lion, and KFC boxes. Another platter held sliced ham.
“Two years ago, I’d never heard of green bean casseroles, yet here’s four different ones. Nothing molded in Jell-O, though, is there?”
June smiled. “Not that I’ve seen.”
“And time was, nobody’d bring store-bought fast food. Or if they did, they’d put it in their own bowls and pretend like they’d made it themselves.”
“I think it’s nice, however they do it,” said June, looking around the comfortably shabby old kitchen. Her unruly hair was neatly tamed this evening by a black ribbon at the nape of her neck. A white bibbed chef’s apron protected her dark green dress. “It shows a sense of community, how people care about each other. More than you’d ever get in California. Don’t forget to write down your rolls in the food register there by the door. Betty asked me to make sure I got all the names so she can write thank-you notes.”
“If that’s one of Amos’s bread baskets on top of the refrigerator, I’ll go ahead and put my rolls in that and it’ll be one less thing you have to return.”
“Thanks. I’ve tried to keep track, but there’s no name tape on the bottom of that cut-glass deviled egg plate and nobody wrote it in the register.”
“Don’t you worry,” the neighbor said comfortably as she began to fill disposable cups with ice from a cooler chest. “Pretty as it is, someone’ll come asking for it.”
In addition to his father and his sister Betty’s Hitchcock clan, James Lucas Nordan’s three aunts and their assorted spouses and descendants overflowed the living and dining rooms and spilled onto the porch, where swings and rockers accommodated those who wanted to sit outside and smoke as the sun went down and darkness fell.
Bobby Gerard, completely sober and wearing a clean white shirt, sat on the steps with a cigarette in his hands, listening to all the speculation going on. No one paid much attention to the itinerant kiln worker, nor did he seem to seek any. He nodded to those who greeted him perfunctorily but didn’t try to engage them in conversation. Over thirty relatives were there, along with a half-dozen close family friends, and they ranged from a baby who was just starting to pull up on rubbery legs to its great-grandmother, who needed a walker.
As is usual at such times, emotions bubbled near the surface and went from tears to laughter to tears again. To this was added the baffled sorrow and anger over the way death had come to James Lucas. Everyone kept going over and over the known facts and there was endless theorizing.
“If the blow came from above,” said one cousin’s husband, “there’s no way Sandra Kay could’ve done it, short as she is.”
His brother-in-law nodded and the two cast furtive looks at Tom Hitchcock and his older brother Edward, both of whom had inherited the Nordan height.
“Besides, it takes a lot of strength to shift that car.”
“I don’t know about that,” sniffed his sister, who’d never liked Sandra Kay. “She could’ve stood on a bucket or something to hit him, and don’t forget she was the one pulled it out.”
“Adrenaline’ll do that,” said the first man. “I know a guy, when his house caught on fire, he picked up their refrigerator and carried it outside all by himself, and he won’t big as me.”
Across the room, a trio of nieces were working on a different scenario. “Besides,” said one, who’d always rather admired Sandra Kay’s independent spirit, “what reason did she have to do him in? They were divorced and they’d just finished settling up their stuff.”
“Well, I heard they had a big fight about Donny Wednesday night,” said the second niece.
“Was it Donny?” asked the third. “I heard it was something secret about his pottery stamp.”
“No, it was over their collection,” said the first. “Maybe she wanted something real bad that she knew he wouldn’t give up.”
“Dumb,” said her sister. “She has to know that Uncle Amos or Aunt Betty’d be picking for Uncle James Lucas and they’d know the collection almost as good as he did.”
The first niece leaned in close and dropped her voice almost to a whisper. “I heard it wasn’t Sandra Kay’s car at all. Tom’s car is white, too, you know. They say Tom broke up with Brittany and ditched school Thursday morning and nobody knows where he was from then till bedtime.”
“He and Brittany made up last night,” said her cousin. “I saw them kissing in a back hall at the funeral home.”
Out on the porch, one of the family friends said, “Half of Seagrove drives a white car. Besides, I heard that this Gregory woman don’t know Fords from Toyotas.”
“Gregorich,” someone corrected him. “And she said herself she wasn’t sure whose car it was.”
“What the heck kind of name is Gregorich? Russian? Shame about that boy of hers, isn’t it? Can’t understand half the things he says. It’d drive me crazy being around a dummy like that all day. Doesn’t seem to bother Amos, though.”
“Aw, Jeffy’s not so bad,” said a good-hearted cousin. “He’s a real sweet-natured little thing. Amos is lucky to have them. How else could he stay here if she wasn’t around to cook and clean for him and be here during the night if he falls or something?”
“Yeah, but what’s going to happen with Nordan Pottery now that James Lucas is gone? Amos can’t keep it going by himself with just Bobby Gerard unless he hires somebody.”
“Well, there’s Betty and Dillard’s second boy. Tom’s young, but he’ll season.”
“If he lives that long. I was doing the speed limit the other day on that winding road past my sister’s house and he passed me in the double-yellows like I was standing still.”
“Yeah,” said the cousin. “From the time he was a baby, he never liked to wait on anything.”
Through all the swirling talk, Amos Nordan sat rigidly upright in his lounge chair. His red-rimmed eyes stared deep into his own private vision of despair, his hands clenching the ends of the armrests. Jeffy Gregorich was hunched on a low stool between the arm of Amos’s chair an
d the wall, and his own eyes yearned after the children who eddied in and out of the room like a restless school of minnows. Occasionally he moved as if to follow them, but then he would look up at Amos and sink back onto the stool. That’s when he would gently pat the gnarled hand nearest him as if he sensed and understood the pain and grief gnawing at the old man. Not by the flicker of an eyelash did Amos Nordan acknowledge his presence.
But he didn’t move his hand away, either.
His son’s friends and relatives paused by his chair to express their sympathy. His daughter Betty hovered like a sorrowful black shadow. Even Tom came over and tried to distract his grandfather. He could always make Amos smile. Not tonight.
“I heard you quit school,” Amos said.
Tom shook his head. “No, I’m going back.”
“Good. I don’t like quitters. You finish and I’ll—” He broke off. “Well, no point talking about lawyers yet. You graduate and then we’ll talk.”
A general shuffling toward the dining room indicated that supper was finally ready. The smell of hot bread and freshly brewed coffee drifted through the open kitchen door beyond. A hush fell as the husband of one of the elderly aunts asked the blessing, then the reverent silence was replaced by the clink of tableware against serving dishes.
June cut through the line and got Jeffy and took him out to the kitchen for his supper. He could feed himself, but he was such a messy eater that he couldn’t be trusted with plate and glass except at a table.
Slowly, stiffly, Amos Nordan came to his feet
“Oh, Dad, you don’t have to get up,” said Betty. “Let me fix you a plate.”
“I’m not hungry.” He fumbled in the pocket of his jacket for his cigarettes. “Too damn hot and stuffy in here anyhow. I’m going out on the porch awhile.”
At first, it was like trying to swim upstream, but as those outside realized who wanted to come through, they all stepped back respectfully and let him pass out into the cool spring night. As the others went inside to eat, he walked down to the shadowy end of the porch away from the single low-watt light by the door, pausing to light a cigarette before easing his long length down on the swing. He had thought he was alone, but as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he sourly realized that a skinny young man sat on the edge of the porch, his back against the post, his left knee drawn up, his right foot on the ground.
Although they were now facing each other, Amos studiously avoided eye contact. He’d come out here to be by himself for a minute and by damn he wasn’t going to make small talk with one of his sisters-in-law’s grandsons.
If that’s who he was.
Didn’t look like a Godwin. More like a Nordan, with those long arms and legs. Well, didn’t matter who he was, as long as he kept his mouth shut.
The swing moved slowly back and forth as gently as a rocking chair. Amos smoked in silence except for a faint creak as the swing chains ground against the two metal hooks in the ceiling. He thought about his sons—first Donny, now James Lucas—and such pain shot through him that an involuntary groan escaped his lips.
Embarrassed, he tried to pretend it was only the opening of an extended cough. He darted a glance at the silent youth, but that one had his head back against the post now and seemed to be counting the stars.
The screen door banged and here came Libbet down the long porch with a plate of food and a plastic cup. “Mom says you really need to eat something, Granddaddy.”
Anger churned like bile in his stomach. Women never left you alone one damn minute. They always thought that if they could feed you, you’d get over it. That food would make it easier. Help you get past it.
“Dump it in them bushes if it’ll keep her quiet,” he said harshly. “I ain’t eating it.”
She moved toward the edge of the porch and almost tripped over the young man sitting in the shadows. “Sorry! I didn’t see you there.”
“That’s all right,” he said.
“Aren’t you eating, either?”
He turned his head away. “No, thank you.”
“You sure?” She leaned closer, trying to see his features. “What about some tea?”
“Yes, please, if he doesn’t want it?”
“Granddaddy?”
“Quit yapping and just give it to him.”
She handed him the plastic cup and he drank thirstily. “Thank you.”
The timbre of his voice stirred in Amos’s memory.
His granddaughter sat down in the swing beside him. “I’m Libbet Hitchcock, Betty and Dillard’s daughter. Who’re you?”
“Glad to meet you, Libbet. I appreciate this tea.” He drank again and ice rattled against the side of the cup.
Uneasily, Amos tried to remember how many grandsons his sister Miriam had. “You one of Clyde’s boys?”
“No, sir.”
He finished his cigarette and threw it in a glowing arc over the boy’s head and out onto the gravel path. “Burl’s, then.”
“No, sir.”
“I see,” he said heavily, and leaned back in the swing, waiting for the iron bands that gripped his heart to ease up a little.
Libbet looked curiously from one to the other. “Who, then?”
“He’s your cousin,” said her grandfather. There was such a roaring in his head that his voice was almost inaudible to his own ear. “He’s Donny’s boy.”
CHAPTER
14
Perhaps the most important force for the continuity of these elements has been the way of learning—the passing of skills, knowledge, and attitudes from one generation to the next in an intimate context and over a long period of growth.
—Raised in Clay, Nancy Sweezy
“What the hell you doing here?” Amos said when the roaring in his head stopped.
“I didn’t come to cause trouble,” the youth said. “You want me to leave?”
“Yes!” said Libbet, catching at Amos’s good hand and squeezing it protectively.
He jerked it away. “I asked you a question, boy.”
“I heard about your son. My uncle. It was in the paper. I thought the funeral would give me a chance to see this side of my family.”
“We ain’t your family,” Amos said flatly.
“That’s not what the blood test said.” The boy went back to watching the stars.
The lift of his chin, his voice. There hadn’t been any need of any fancy test. All you had to do was look at him, thought Amos. He was Donny all over again. Didn’t make him his grandson by a damn sight, though. Tom and Edward, they were his grandsons. He’d held them in his arms when they were babies, made them little glazed animals to play with, watched them turn their first bowls.
Takes more than a squirt of jism up someone else’s wife to make a person my grandson, he thought resentfully.
“What’s your name?” Libbet asked.
“Davis. Davis Richmond. He said we’re cousins. How?”
“My mom and your—” She hesitated, unwilling to grant him family status. “Uncle Donny and Mom were brother and sister.”
“There were three children?”
“And now there’s just one,” Amos rasped.
His mind shied away from the image of James Lucas lying all red and burned on the kiln car, his clothes blackened, his hair singed off. Donny’s death was bad, but this one was worse. Worse for how it was and worse for an end to his unvoiced dreams.
After Donny died, he had almost reconciled himself to the bitter knowledge that Betty was the conduit through which Nordan blood would flow into the future and he had pinned all his hopes on her son Tom, even though people in Seagrove were already taking bets on whether or not he’d make it to twenty, since he’d already wrecked two cars by the time he was seventeen. Then when James Lucas and Sandra Kay busted up, Amos suddenly realized that James Lucas was barely fifty. He could still marry again and if he picked a younger woman, he might even make a new batch of Nordan boy-babies.
Now James Lucas was dead. Today he’d been laid in a grave and
it was back to Tom, all or nothing on a hotheaded boy who’d crashed a third car just last Christmas and wound up with a steel pin in his leg. It was almost like God was dealing off the bottom of the deck, he thought. Getting ready to call in all the chips and shut Nordan Pottery down for good.
God?
Or the devil?
Somebody, for whatever reason, had killed James Lucas, and ever since that hellacious moment, one son’s death had made him think more and more on the other’s. What if somebody’d killed Donny, too? Donny’d never had cause to do like how it looked. He had all the women a normal man could want—from this boy’s mama to Sandra Kay and God knows how many in between. Won’t no way he’d have dressed up like that or been doing what they said.
But why would somebody kill both his boys? They were so different. Different likes. Different friends.
Same enemy?
Sandra Kay’d had no reason to kill Donny even if she’d been sleeping with him. And yeah, she’d been awful mad at James Lucas when she walked out, but to wait two years, then splash red all over him and throw him in the kiln? That won’t something a puny little woman did two years later.
No, it had to be man reasons. A man with a big hate could’ve rigged Donny up like that just so people would snigger about it behind his back, thought Amos.
But then why wait so long to kill James Lucas, too? What did it gain anybody? Keep on killing Nordans and it was going to shut down the pottery, but who the hell did that help? And if somebody out there was trying to kill off all the men that turned a wheel here, why was he still alive?
Because you’re so old and one hand’s so useless that he knows you can’t keep it going on your own, he told himself mournfully. All the same, maybe God slipped up when He dealt you this wild card.
Fear and rebellion stirred within him. He might be old, but he still knew how to run a bluff. He’d have to play his cards close to his chest, though, not give anybody a peek.
Craftily, he looked at the boy seated on the edge of the porch. This Davis Richmond. This bait that would do to save his true grandson from a killer.
Uncommon Clay (A Deborah Knott Mystery Book 8) Page 11