“Good-bye, Mumsfield, honey. You take care of yourself, now.”
She felt drained and sweaty when she got off the phone. Sad, too. She really liked Mumsfield.
Ardell, she thought. Every time the subject of friendship had come up lately, it had called some part of her relationship with Ardell to mind. Now she remembered she’d never made that hangout date with Ardell. She dialed Ardell’s number.
“Hey. Let’s go over to Chapel Hill to the movies. We ain’t done that since Hector was a pup.”
“You kidding? Girl, I got so much work to do I can’t see straight! Invoices to send out, bills to pay, working on a new brochure, and these bicentennial people want to see a piece of paper for every time we folded a napkin. I don’t know what I’m…”
Blanche could hear the tightness in Ardell’s voice. No wonder they weren’t having any fun together. Ardell was nose-deep in the business. And I ain’t even thought about the paper end of things, she scolded herself. Acting like I’m working for some stranger instead of thinking about being a partner in the business with my best friend. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll come over and help you for a couple hours, then we can go somewhere.”
“Deal!”
Ardell’s kitchen table looked like a portable office on which Ardell had marked off a spot for Blanche, complete with the bicentennial contract; menus from events; receipts for ingredients, flowers, linens, and so forth; and the bicentennial report forms. Blanche found that she enjoyed filling in all the little details about money spent and materials used that the contract with the Bicentennial Commission demanded. Around noon, she and Ardell took a back-and-lunch break.
Blanche made chicken sandwiches while Ardell squeezed lemons for lemonade. Feels good to be here, Blanche thought. She arranged their meal on the small table in front of the sofa, then watched Ardell fiddling with the radio. She loved this woman. Couldn’t imagine life without her. They were not so much alike as they were complementary parts. She thought of the many years and ways in which they’d shored each other up when the shifting slipperiness of their lives threatened to sweep their feet out from under them. Now they settled down on the couch, just like old times. We’ve taught each other a lot, she was thinking when the local newscaster began a story about a fire out on Rochester Road. Blanche only half listened to what sounded more like a put-down of the folks who’d been burned out than a straight news report.
“Neighbors stated that the family is in a long-standing feud with another branch of the same family in the Dolly Point area. Members of the Dolly Point Larsen clan have been implicated in arsons in the past. The Sheriff is investigating. Mrs. Delvinia Larsen, the matriarch of the burnt-out Larsen clan, says the Sheriff is wasting his time.” The voice of an elderly woman, cracked but clear, came next: “That there fire started in my great-grandson Bobby’s bed in the lean-to. It’s a sign. A message from my Bobby from beyond the grave, tellin’ these menfolk to mend their sinful ways.” The newscaster ended with a smile in his voice: “And that’s the news.”
The weatherman was well into guessing tomorrow’s temperature and pollen level before Blanche was struck by the lightning of what she’d just heard.
“That was Bobby’s house!”
“Bobby who? Oh, you mean the dead alibi boy? What’d they say?”
Blanche repeated what she’d heard, half irritated that Ardell hadn’t been listening even though she herself had missed the first part of the story.
“Damn! Can you believe it? First Bobby and now this!”
“Yeah, he’s even worse than I expected him to be.”
“You think Palmer burned that house down?”
Blanche nodded. “And it looks like I was right about him not getting the key before he killed Bobby. Now he’s made sure nobody else will find it either.”
“Humm. I guess, if you go so far as killing somebody, burning out their family ain’t a problem. What you gonna do now?”
Blanche sighed. “I don’t know. If I had any sense, I’d just forget about it.” She stared out the window and tried to remember life before she’d seen Palmer at that dance. She turned to her friend. “You were right, Ardell. I should have done something about him right away. At least I could have marched around in front of his house with a sign saying, This man raped me. Even if nothing happened to him because of it, I’d at least have called him the rapist he is. He’d have been talked about for a little bit, whether people believed me or not. Maybe Maybelle would have heard about him and picked another sugar daddy. Maybe he’d have left town and never met her.”
“Humm. And maybe the sun will turn into a bullet-sized pellet and shoot him in the butt! Girl, you got better sense than to do that coulda-woulda what-if shit. Anyway, you had a living to make, as much as I wanted you to nail that sucker. And…”
“And what?”
“Well, you didn’t really want nobody to know about it, did you? And we both know why, don’t we?”
Blanche almost thanked the phone for distracting Ardell from her questions, although Blanche couldn’t avoid the answers. She didn’t want to see that look of pity on people’s faces, or hear that tone in their voices—equal parts relief that what had happened to her had not happened to them, and curiosity about just how it had happened and how awful it had been. She and Ardell both knew she couldn’t handle that.
“…and how many guests do you anticipate?” Ardell grabbed a notepad and pencil from the table and turned her back to Blanche.
By the time she got off the phone, Ardell had promised to get together with whoever she was talking to about a catering job.
“I’m sorry, Blanche. But this sounds real promising. A bridge club. They have their meeting catered every month. Their regular caterer died. It’s just the kind of steady gig I need, and just the kind of women who’ll recommend me to their friends.” She offered to drop Blanche off at home on the way to her meeting, but, as usual, Blanche wanted to walk.
“We’ll do something together real soon, I promise,” Ardell said before she drove off.
Blanche hung somewhere between depression and rage that the key was gone. She’d already given up on Daisy’s looking through Bobby’s things for the key. What could she have done with it anyway? The burning of Bobby’s house didn’t really change anything. It was all still on her to tie Palmer to Maybelle’s murder. When she got home, the red eye of her answering machine winked at her from the shadows of the living room:
“Blanche White! It’s Bunnie. I could hardly believe my ears when I heard you and your wild self was back in town. It’s almost two now, and I got to get a haircut, but if you got a hot minute, come on by Miz Mackey’s around four this afternoon. If that ain’t good, call me back and we’ll work something else out. Can’t wait to see you, girl.” At least he remembered her. She wondered if women still panted after him the way they did in high school. She hoped Palmer spent enough time in the bar at the Sons of Farleigh Club where Bunnie worked so Bunnie would have something useful to tell her.
There was no legal public bar in Farleigh where black people congregated, only Miz Mackey’s blind pig, or speakeasy, as they say up North: a basement “paneled” in gray plywood and carpeted in unnatural green indoor/outdoor carpeting. The jukebox against the wall was an old domed yellow-and-gold one with plastic bubbles cascading up and down its insides. It was a weekday, so the place was far from full. Two men sat at the small bar, one at each end, one reading the newspaper, the other drumming his fingers on his thigh like he was thinking at a fast rate. There was no one at any of the square metal tables.
“How you doin, Miz Mackey?” they both called out to the wrinkled and rouged woman behind the bar. Miz Mackey didn’t take her eyes off her story on the little TV in front of her, but raised her hand in greeting. She managed to fix their drinks, take their money, and give them change and thanks without ever looking away from the TV screen.
Blanche watched Bunnie’s pert behind as he preceded her to a table. He was just as cute as he’d been in high school. They sat at the table farthest from Miz Mackey’s TV.
“Girl, it sure is good to see you, although why you come back to this one-horse town I’m sure I don’t know.” Bunnie took a long drag from his cigarette and sipped his Jack Daniel’s with water, no ice. His big, soft brown eyes were even longer-lashed than she’d remembered.
“It ain’t that bad, Bunnie. You still here.”
“Yeah, well, it ain’t nothing to be proud of. I’d leave if I wasn’t such a lazy, triflin heifer.”
“Heifer?!” Blanche laughed. “So that’s why nobody could snag you in high school!”
Bunnie winked at her. “At least none of the girls. But I sure had the hots for Melva’s brother!”
Blanche could feel surprise reordering her face. She raised her glass in salute.
They caught up on what Blanche had been doing all these years, on Bunnie’s life, the death of his mother, and his sister’s sudden decision to move to Atlanta last year and leave her kids with Bunnie. Then Bunnie said: “Your message sounded like you had something particular you wanted to talk to me about.”
“I wanted to ask you about somebody who belongs to that club where you work. David Palmer.”
Bunnie nodded. “What you want to know?”
“Oh, I don’t know, exactly.”
“Well, why you want to know?”
“Because he raped me.” Blanche gave Bunnie a startled look, shocked at her own words, yet feeling suddenly like she wanted to laugh. She hadn’t ever been able to say those words out loud without feeling exposed and somehow wrong. Now they only felt like the truth. She didn’t know why this should happen with Bunnie. Was she taking advantage? Assuming it was safe to confide in him because he was gay? Or maybe she’d told him the truth because Ardell had been right when she’d said Blanche hadn’t wanted anyone to know about her having been raped. But it wasn’t true anymore. What she hadn’t understood until now was that saying what had happened to her out loud changed her rape—changed it from being her secret problem to being the crime against her that it really was. She had not raped herself. She felt as though she’d just loosened a brassiere so tight it had restricted her breathing.
Bunnie reached out and took her hand. “That no-good…You should have him arrested! Even though the law don’t give a shit about people like us, especially when we go up against people like him.”
“It didn’t just happen. It was a while ago, but…”
He squeezed her hand. “I should have sent his drunken ass out to play in traffic last time I saw him, instead of getting him a ride home,” Bunnie said.
“When was that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, couple weeks ago. No. I remember. It was the night that white girl got murdered. Mabel, or something like that? I remember reading a couple days later about her being killed. I don’t know why, but sometimes when I see stuff like that, I think about what I was doing when the murder happened. I figured out that when that girl was being killed, I’d probably just served pigboy Palmer his ninety-ninth drink. Yeah, girl, he was wild that night! Crying and shit, mumbling to himself. His buddy dropped Palmer off early and he stayed till closing—almost got in a fight with somebody’s guest from out of town. I finally got the night manager to drag his behind on outa there.”
Blanche could hear herself panting.
“What’s wrong, Blanche?!” Bunnie looked as alarmed as he sounded. “You look…You okay?”
Blanche nodded her head, not trusting herself to speak. She took a couple of deep breaths and let them slowly out, then gulped a mouthful of her drink. Later, she didn’t remember much of what they’d talked about. Her mind was totally caught up in the meaning of Palmer’s being at the Sons of Farleigh Club while Maybelle was being killed. She just hoped Ardell was home by now.
“Life!” she said, laughing without a drop of humor, after she’d told Ardell what Bunnie had said. “I shoulda known in the beginning that it was too easy. It was like I was being led to his hanging. I was so sure, so sure! I thought maybe it was the Ancestors making it all work out for me. Now Bunnie tells me Palmer was at the Sons of Farleigh Club while Maybelle was being killed. Even if he’d left the club in time to kill her, he’d likely been too drunk to do it. Damn! I had it all worked out: Palmer’s flowers, the place in Durham, Maybelle’s barrette, the missing Sons of Farleigh key, and the fire at Bobby’s place.”
Ardell handed her a glass of fresh lemonade. “Humm. You got proof of something, but maybe you ain’t got the right person.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for example, what about Jason Morris? Didn’t Bunnie say Palmer was dropped off by a friend? Was it Jason?”
“So what if it was?”
“Well, maybe Palmer and Jason are the kind of friends who’d kill for each other. Maybe Jason left Palmer at the club so Palmer would have an alibi since Maybelle was Palmer’s girlfriend, then went off and killed her.”
“But Bunnie said the friendship was mostly on Palmer’s side, so why would Jason kill Maybelle for him?”
Ardell shrugged. “Humm, well, Bunnie don’t know everything.”
Blanche didn’t think much of Ardell’s idea but she didn’t have one of her own, so why not check it out? She got Bunnie on the phone.
“Bunnie, you said Palmer’s buddy dropped him off at the club the night Maybelle died. Did you mean Jason Morris?”
“Yeah, that’s who it was. He only stayed a minute but he was supposed to come back. When I tried to get Palmer out of the club, he said Jason had his car and was supposed to pick him up, but he never did.”
“Why didn’t Jason have his own car?”
“Who knows? Maybe it was in the shop. But now that I think about it, I seen Palmer give his car keys to Jason more than once. Couple times a week, sometimes. Funny thing is, they didn’t always come together, so Jason’s car was probably sitting right outside.”
“What’s with Jason? You know anything about him?”
“Nothing much. He used to be a true dog. I think his family may be on his case about that because I don’t hear him talking so much about how many women he’s tricked into screwing him the way he used to. Which reminds me, one night, oh, back I don’t know how long now, I heard Palmer make a toast to Jason. Some long, drunken bullshit about Jason being a real romantic and willing to do whatever was necessary to keep the woman he loved, or something like that. Palmer acts like he thinks Jason’s piss is holy water.”
“Thanks, Bunnie. You been a great help.” Blanche hung up the phone and stared at Ardell while she tried to process this new information.
Ardell could be right. Jason might be involved somehow. But just because Palmer had been at the club the night Maybelle died didn’t mean he wasn’t responsible for her death. He could have hired somebody else. That could be why he was so upset at the club that night: because he knew his girlfriend was being killed while he was getting sloshed. Maybe Jason had been out delivering the payoff money because Palmer couldn’t face it. Why had he killed Maybelle in the first place? Was she asking for money, or threatening to tell his wife and family? Maybe she just got on his nerves. Or maybe I’m just feeding myself a bunch of junk ’cause I don’t want to give up on getting Palmer, she told herself.
She tried to remember every time she’d seen Jason Morris, going back to the first time, when Jason had gone all over furious about what Seth was trying to pull on Clarice. Or at least he’d seemed to. Was that all an act? But who was it for? His wife? Was it all an act to keep Clarice or the catering company from making a fuss? She tried to dredge up a separate memory for each of the other times she’d seen him, but her collective picture was of him laughing, and talking with his brother, Seth, and David Palmer. She was going to have to do a little check-around on Jason.
“I got a feeling you’re right and these bad boys is in the mess together,” Blanche said when Ardell came back from the bathroom. She told Ardell about her call to Bunnie.
“Well, be careful, Blanche. You already know what Palmer’s like.”
“Don’t worry. I’m taking it all serious.” And she was—she’d become more than careful while crossing streets; she made sure the little piece of paper she’d stuck between her front door and the door jamb was still in place before she went inside and her length of steel pipe was always at hand.
She didn’t have a lick of trouble finding out what she wanted to know about Jason Morris once Ardell told her who to talk to.
“Oh, he’s a devil, all right,” Katie Crumbley told her. Katie had worked for the Morrises every summer while she was going to high school. This was her last summer. She was off to Spelman in the fall.
“Both his daddy and his wife were deep in his stuff about his chasing women. He says, ‘I promise,’ but nobody in their right mind believes that boy when it comes to women. You talk about addicted! Miz Blanche, he got sex on the brain. I learned early not to be alone with either him or that brother of his, Seth.”
Blanche thought about Jason’s kindness to Clarice. “I thought he was decent.”
“Oh, he is, when his wife or his daddy’s around. His daddy threatened to cut Jason out of his will if he don’t straighten up, and his wife is talking about walking out and taking all her money with her.”
Pieces of an idea began to come together in Blanche’s mind.
“When you go back to work,” she told Katie, “I want you to do me a favor, if you can. I’ll make it worth your while.” Blanche didn’t feel bad asking, since Katie Crumbley was leaving her job anyway. “Just a little story I want Jason Morris to overhear.” Blanche told her what to say and punctuated her instructions with three twenties. She told Katie that she needed to say her lines by noon the next day. Blanche knew it was tricky, but Katie was game. And she didn’t have any other ideas at the moment. She pictured the alarm in Jason’s eyes when he heard Katie gossiping about the Sheriff’s having found evidence related to Maybelle’s death in a bungalow in Durham—something that probably came off the killer’s key chain. She hoped the mention of the key chain would generate a few drops of sweat.
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