by Julie Smith
His eyes traveled to the back of the church, and for a moment Talba thought he was looking at Jason. But surely not—no one would be that tacky.
“From the moment of that first horrible brutality—you in this congregation all know whereof I speak—from that moment on, our daughter Clayton lost her faith in human nature. And with that she lost her way. And she never found it again.” Here, his voice dropped and he bowed his head, as if he were talking about someone who’d become a triple murderer.
Talba whispered, “What’s he talking about?”
Jason’s forehead furrowed. “I have absolutely no idea.”
“Our daughter was lost to us from that moment. She never came back to our town; or to her loving family; or to God. All because of the destructive act of one violent human being, our daughter was lost—to drugs, to drink, to depravity—and later to false gods and golden idols.”
Talba wanted to scream. She wanted to jump up and shout the man down. Jason was pale and his mouth was tight, moving slightly at the corners: he was fighting the same thing she was. Neither could say anything, and both knew it. Mary Pat, please! she thought. Stop this unctuous asshole. Get up and say who she really was. Don’t let these people get away with this crap.
But there was never a place in the service where friends were invited to talk. Midway through the tooth-grinding banalities about how “our daughter” had suffered one disappointment after another, and then at last “one final betrayal” and was “driven to take her own life,” Jason took Talba’s hand and tried to break every bone in it. Talba didn’t even ask him to let up. Focusing on the physical pain was better than giving way to the psychic pain.
She tried to tune it out—thought about how glad she was that she’d come. Jason could have reported this, but she’d never in a million years have pictured anything nearly so extreme, no matter what he said.
And then she thought about killing the minister. In the end, she made a vow—to right this wrong; the wrong done in the pulpit this Saturday morning. She still only half believed Babalu had been murdered, had yet to get outraged on that account. But this was beyond outrage. This was not salt but fire and acid in the wound. It must be avenged, she thought, much as the Reverend Scruggs might have.
Jason kept getting redder and squeezing her hand harder; Talba hoped he’d hang onto his temper. He made it, just. When the last note of the last hymn had been sung, he said, “Who the hell does that asshole think he is? He just crucified her.”
As far as Talba was concerned, that was old news. “What on earth do you think happened to her? Could she have gotten pregnant or something?”
“I have absolutely no idea. Come on, we’re going to the cemetery.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Low-profile seems like the way to go—or as low as you can manage when you’re an inkspot on a white sheet.”
He didn’t smile. “I’m going. They aren’t getting away with this.”
She shrugged. “Let’s go together then.”
Once they were in Jason’s car, she started in. “Listen, you aren’t planning to do anything, are you?”
“I’m going to punch ’em out. Methodically. One by one. Men, women, and children.”
“Jason, do you want me to work on this case? Do you really think a single one of them’s going to talk to me if you make the slightest ripple? The best thing you could possibly do is impress them with what a gentleman you are.” He didn’t answer, which gave her more time to think about it. “Besides, Babalu would have wanted it that way.”
He hit the steering wheel with a fist. “Yeah. I guess she would.”
In the end Talba was glad they’d gone. Not that many people had. Just the immediate family, Mary Pat, a black woman—the maid, Talba thought—and six or eight other people, all of whose lives, from the looks of them, revolved around the local country club.
In the sun and the quiet, she was able to dissociate herself from the horror of the church and really say good-bye to her friend. She took pleasure in watching Jason introduce himself to each member of the family and tell them how much he’d loved their daughter. King Jr.—Big King, they probably called him—looked as if he’d been eating sour apples, but obviously he couldn’t bring himself to whip Jason’s ass right here in the cemetery.
Talba seized the moment to buttonhole Mary Pat. “What’d you think of the service?”
Mary Pat was crying. “Oh, Talba, she was right. These people are savages!” Talba liked her better all of a sudden. “They ought not to be allowed to live.”
“What happened to her? What was the minister talking about?”
“I swear to God I haven’t the least idea.”
Chapter Nine
“You’re her best friend. She must have talked to you about it.”
The redhead shrugged. “Okay, I knew there was something. I just figured her father molested her. That’s the thing people usually don’t talk about. But I don’t think that’s what that slimeball meant. This is something the whole town knew about. Listen, she had a shrink—she was talking to somebody; I sure wasn’t going to press her about it. You know, half the time—I’m ashamed to say this, but half the time people say they have some awful traumatic thing in their pasts that’s just too wounding to talk about and once you find out what it is, it seems almost trivial. You know what I mean?
“I mean, not trivial—but not anything that hasn’t happened to a lot of people—and something they really ought to just get over. Do I sound harsh? It’s terrible for them and all, but you just want to shake them and say, ‘Move on; enough already.’ Well, Clayton was moving on, and she wasn’t dramatizing, and frankly, I didn’t even want to hear about it—that’s what shrinks are for.” She gave her head a shake, which made the beaded strands of her earrings click together.
“But you’re the one who said you’d been through so much together—divorce, heroin…”
“But this other thing happened earlier. We didn’t have to talk about it. There was too much bad stuff happening today to worry about yesterday.”
In one way the minister’d been right, Talba thought—Babalu really had had her share of bad luck. It was just too bad he couldn’t see how well she’d come out of it.
Whatever “it” was, though, she was determined to find out before the day was over. Glad she’d brought her rental car, she packed Jason off and headed for the parish library. To her immense relief, the librarian was a black woman. For a moment Talba considered asking her if she knew the story herself, but she was in her twenties—perhaps a bit young to have known Clayton.
After ascertaining that the librarian did, indeed, have microfilm of the Clayton Weekly Courier, she asked for the three years that Clayton Patterson would have been in high school. This was one of Talba’s least favorite forms of research—why, oh, why, couldn’t all these things be online? But she endured the tedium long enough to plough through Clayton’s sophomore year and most of her junior year before she finally found what she was looking for—a banner headline shouting BANKER’S DAUGHTER SCALPED.
The first three paragraphs told the story:
Clayton Patterson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. King Patterson, remains in guarded condition today after being attacked by an intruder who broke into her bedroom and inflicted severe scalp wounds with a machete.
Only hours after the attack, sheriff’s deputies arrested Donny Troxell, 17, a classmate of Miss Patterson's at Clayton High School. The injured girl’s father said the two had been dating, but his daughter had recently broken up with Troxell.
Talba’s heart speeded up: she’d seen the name Donny Troxell before, and recently—in Clayton’s datebook. Trying to ignore the pounding, she plowed on.
Sheriff Dickie Ransdell told the Courier he had "incontrovertible evidence" that Troxell was the assailant.
The evidence turned out to be a blood-stained, hair-bearing machete, which had been found in Troxell’s car.
Talba pressed on, finding about fifteen more stor
ies as Clayton recovered and Troxell was brought to trial. The girl’s injuries were gruesomely detailed: she’d been attacked from the left, the machete shearing several inches of scalp cleanly away from her skull, yet, fortunately, leaving it attached by a thread. Eventually, after several surgeries, some of them performed by a New Orleans plastic surgeon, she’d made a complete recovery.
Throughout, from the first story to the sentencing, she claimed she never saw her attacker.
Talba thought back to the tiny scar she noticed the week before Clayton died—she’d known her for years and never seen it.
The paper even ran pictures of Clayton in various stages of her recovery—with head shaved and stitches showing; with an inch of hair and hideous scars; and so forth, until she was once more a beautiful high school girl.
Ye gods, Talba thought, no wonder she couldn’t stand to talk about it. This is worse than the injury.
The young Clayton must have been hell-bent on revenge to permit it. That in itself was a measure of how much she’d changed before becoming the Babalu Talba knew.
At any rate, it worked—that and the “incontrovertible evidence.” Troxell was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years at Angola.
Talba wondered if he’d served the whole sentence. Perhaps so—the timing was almost right. The crime took place sixteen years ago; his name had appeared in Babalu’s appointment book a few weeks before she died.
Maybe he got out and came after her again, she thought. How did the police miss this?
But it was easy to see how they had—they didn’t know about the scalping and no one bothered to tell them, since they reported a heroin overdose and a suicide note to the family. To anyone who didn’t believe she was far too healthy in mind and body to go back to heroin, it looked open and shut. But obviously, no one in Clayton fell into that category.
I wonder, Talba thought, if I’ve just solved the case. She couldn’t wait to talk to Eddie about it. But on the drive home, she found the person she needed most to talk to was Darryl. The newspaper’s black-and-white images of Clayton, hurt and healing, pitiful, vulnerable, miserable, wouldn’t leave her. She needed the warmth of his arms around her. She’d encountered violence in her own childhood—unlike Jason, Darryl knew about it. And he knew how to make her forget it.
Today, he chose to do it (quite unwittingly) by announcing that he’d all but sewed up the Subaru—only it was an Isuzu Trooper.
“Is that better or worse?” she said.
“Well, the main thing is, it’s gray, which makes it almost invisible. Nobody’d notice it on surveillance.”
“Ummm. A ghost car—I like it. Does it run?”
“It sure does. I took the liberty of having it checked out. We can go right over and see it now.”
At that, her eyes filled with tears; she turned quickly away.
“What is it?”
She couldn’t tell him what it was; it was gratitude, and not just for the car. She blurted: “Babalu had a boyfriend who scalped her.”
“What?”
She knew he had heard her. It was just that the thing seemed so unlikely one had the need to have it repeated. On the way to see the car, she told him the story.
He said, “You think Troxell did it?”
“He’s one hell of a grudge holder if he did.”
“He’d have to be nuts.”
“Well, isn’t anybody who kills someone?”
“I don’t know. Some people kill for gain.”
“But don’t they have a fundamental screw loose?”
They’d had this conversation before; Darryl took a slightly more cynical view of human nature than she did. “I don’t know,” he said. “What about drug dealers, polluters, insurance companies who don’t provide the services they’re supposed to—people die because of all of them. And they’d all tell you they’re just trying to make a living.”
“Well, anyway, this wouldn’t be gain—I guess the motive would be revenge.”
“For breaking up with him when he was a kid?”
“Like I said. Screw loose. Makes me think twice about trying to see him alone.”
“A cop wouldn’t do it without backup—why should you?” He looked at her sidewise but not with any real disapproval. He wasn’t at all overprotective—in fact, hardly ever seemed to worry about her. She liked that; she was a worrier herself.
“Because I’d have to take Eddie, that’s why. What kind of backup would that be?”
“You know, Baroness—”
“Your Grace will do.”
“Did Your Grace ever think about getting a ladylike little firearm?”
Her tears came again. “You know I can’t do that.” She had an extremely unpleasant history with guns.
“Oops. Sorry.”
“Oh, forget about it. Are we getting close?”
“Almost there.” They were across the river, on what was always called the West Bank, though you had to go east to get there, in a neighborhood where a lot of the homes had bars on the windows.
“Bet the car’s a wreck,” she said.
“I told you—I’ve seen it. I think some mini-gangster bought it and then got a better car—hardly ever drove it. Too ashamed.”
Actually, he exaggerated. It had a hundred thousand miles on it and was owned by a perfectly nice-seeming man who said he was a manager for the Burlington Coat Factory, but who knew? Maybe he dealt rock in a back room of his house. He did have a nice new Lincoln Navigator, destined to be vandalized soon, Talba thought, considering the neighborhood.
“Uh-uh,” Darryl said later. “They’re all afraid of him.”
She had no idea if he was joking or not. But she did like the car. For one thing, she liked riding up high. For another, it was neither new enough nor shabby enough for anyone to take much notice of. And it was cheap, which was the deciding factor.
She wrote the nice man who might be a gangster a modest check and followed Darryl to his house, where she christened her new car by ceremoniously transferring to it her maps, tape recorder, two cameras, binoculars, and Tee-ball bat. Then the two of them returned the rental car and went shopping for groceries. “Tonight I’m cooking,” she’d announced earlier. He cooked for her so much she felt guilty. “Miz Clara’s famous fried chicken, coming right up.”
“Awww. Can’t we just have quiche or something?”
His little joke. She could fry chicken nearly as well as her mother, who was famous for it at Baptist church potlucks. When he had eaten plenty of it, and some rice and gravy she made as well, he talked a little about his daughter, and his worsening problems with her. While Darryl-the-pedagogue argued for therapy, Kim, his ex, had a different plan for solving the problem—she wanted Raisa to see less of Darryl. “Kimmie says I upset her,” he explained. “Being away from home ‘disturbs her schedule.’ ”
Much as Raisa terrified her, Talba was enraged. “What is that woman thinking? I’d say ‘that bitch,’ but I know she’s your daughter’s mother…”
“Oh, Talba, come on. Anger never solved anything.”
“The hell it didn’t! Swear to God I could kill her for treating you like that.”
He was getting upset. “Let’s change the subject, shall we?”
“You always change the subject when I get upset.”
“Well, who wants all that energy coming at them? Calm down, will you?”
“You sound like Miz Clara.”
“You should listen to your mama.” His voice was teasing; he was getting over it. “So listen, let’s talk about your problem. The question of the unknown sister.”
“Not only do you change the subject you throw it back on me.”
“This is what schoolteachers do.”
“Okay, then, since you’re so interested in my problem, maybe you’d like to go to church with me tomorrow.”
“We’re going to pray for resolution?”
She considered. “It’s a thought. But not my first one. Lura was a Methodist, but no one knows anything
else about her. So I’m going to see if anyone remembers her at her old church.”
In the end, Darryl pleaded that the shock of seeing Talba in church might cause him to have a heart attack, and not only that he had Raisa. So Talba went to church alone. She was pretty sure she knew the church Lura Blanchard meant when she said “that one by Claiborne.” She had a perfect mental picture of it, but no memory of ever having been inside. When she saw the sanctuary, however, it was as familiar to her as Miz Clara’s church. She had undoubtedly been taken there, probably more than once, by her father and his woman.
What she needed was someone as old as Miz Clara, someone who’d been there then. Shouldn’t be hard, she thought, looking around. The place was full of fossils. And so, after the service, she simply asked around.
“Hello, I’m Talba Wallis. I’m wondering if you remember a woman who used to be a member of this congregation? Lura, her name was. She had a baby daughter, but I don’t know her last name.” She might have added, “And a man friend named Denman LaRose Wallis,” but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
Some of them thought they remembered Lura, but they really couldn’t put a face to the name; most looked blank. And, finally, an old man in suspenders said, “You need to talk to Sister Eula. She know everybody ever set foot in this church.”
All the bystanders said that was sure right, and the hunt for Sister Eula began, though she wasn’t in the least hard to find. Sister Eula loomed large not only in their hearts but also in other ways—and so did her hat. It was the size and color of a lemon pie, exactly matching her form-fitting plus-size suit, which was smartly trimmed in black. Her skin color was light—the word camel, for some reason, came to mind. Her cheeks were round and heavily rouged; her voice was at least as imposing as her form. It seemed to come from her solar plexus rather than her larynx. Word got to her before Talba did. “I hear you are looking for Miss Lura Jones.”
The woman was such a diva Talba almost forgot she was a baroness. “I… uh…” If it’s all right with you, she thought. If not, I’ll just be going now. “Yes,” she finally managed.