Dovey could see dark circles under his eyes. He had been working so hard this week that he had barely slept. The Pickett brothers had decided to move John’s shop and supplies to the new store at night so they could keep the move from their mother until they figured out how to tell her. Pete had helped them every night after he did his schoolwork. Yet here he stood in tattered jeans and an old T-shirt, ready to clear flower beds with a pickax for her.
“Now that I think about it,” she said, “you’re the one who’s dressed all wrong for what we’re gonna do today. But I divined your mistake and had Miss Lila send you some clothes over by Daddy yesterday. They’re in a sack on the couch. After you change, you can swing by the kitchen and grab that picnic basket I packed us. Best I recall, there’s no Dairy Queen at Pine Bluff.”
Pine Bluff was a wooded state park on a crystal-clear lake about an hour away. It had become their special getaway when they wanted to be completely alone.
“Just the thought of that pickax made me wanna cry,” he said as he threw his arms around her.
Lila caught a glimpse of her reflection in a pedestal mirror that John had brought in that morning. The image of a smirking Geneva immediately popped into her head. Her sister had stopped by just as she was about to leave for the store and had a high old time with Lila’s pretty rose-colored tank top and white capris: “Myself, I usually mop and dust in old dungarees and a ratty T-shirt, but I guess you have to look nice for your customers—oh, wait, you haven’t opened yet! Whoever could you be dressing up for?”
It wasn’t as if she were some giddy teenager who had never been married or raised a child, for goodness’ sake. Lila assured herself that she wasn’t dressing up for John. She just wanted to look nice—what was wrong with that?
She doused a soft cotton rag with Old English and began cleaning the long counter in the store. She and John didn’t have any furniture to deliver this Saturday, so they could spend the whole day getting the store ready.
It was a great building, with solid pine floors, high ceilings, and tall rectangular windows all the way across the front on both levels. The upstairs had two big skylights in the roof and a few more windows along the back wall, letting even more light in.
In its fifty years, this building had been first a mercantile, then a hardware store, and finally a clothing store, which sold the ugliest clothes in ten states and quickly went out of business. Down in the basement, Lila and John had found the original brass cash register, brought it up, and cleaned it. It still worked. They had also found the original butcher block and brought that up too. They weren’t sure what they were going to do with it yet, but it looked so great in the old store that they knew they could find a place for it.
Already they had scrubbed the floors and cleaned all the windows. Now Lila was ready to tackle the counter. A good six feet long, it hit her a little above the waist. It was made of solid walnut—no doubt the original owner’s way of projecting “quality establishment”—and it had to weigh a ton. Every swipe of her rag made the old counter come to life a little more as the grain began to shine through. When she had finished, she stepped back for a look. Beautiful. She should show John.
She hurried upstairs where he was setting up his shop, but at the top of the stairwell, something stopped her. She stood still and silently watched. He was standing at a big worktable in the center of the room, holding the carved front piece of a new dressing table and running his hands over it to check his work. She had to admit, he had great hands—strong and a little weathered, with long, slender fingers so attuned to what he was doing that she imagined he could’ve felt what a piece of wood needed to be even if he had to work blindfolded. The late morning sun had so aligned itself with one of the old skylights that it looked like a spotlight shining down on him.
He glanced up to see Lila smiling at him. “What?” he asked.
“You know what I think?” she said, tilting her head to one side. “I think every now and then we get these little split seconds of perfection. I just saw you in the middle of one.”
He blinked at her. “I got no idea what that means.”
That made her laugh. “Doesn’t matter. Come downstairs and I’ll show you something pretty.”
Finally, Ned got the call he had been hoping for. Despite Agent Davenport’s warning, that sorry Bobby Earl Bobo had tipped off his brother and sister-in-law, who had fled Panama City before the FBI could get to them. Fortunately, they ran out of money and were also short on brains, so they had made the necessary mistakes to get themselves noticed and caught somewhere around Pensacola. They were in custody in Birmingham, and Agent Davenport felt so bad about losing them the first time that he was willing to spend his Saturday interrogating them. He thought it only fair to invite the man who had invested so much in this case to be there when the truth finally came out.
All the way to Birmingham, Ned thought he might very well explode before he could get to the FBI office. Now, at last, he stood behind a two-way mirror, watching Agent Davenport settle into his interrogation of Dolores Bobo. He had never seen her in anything but her waitress uniform, but today she was wearing her vacation clothes—gaudy Bermuda shorts and an orange “I Slept on Panama City Beach” T-shirt. If she seemed nervous at the Tomahawk on a normal day, she was just about delirious with fright in the interrogation room. Another agent was questioning her husband someplace else while Agent Davenport set about calming Dolores.
“Now, Dolores—may I call you Dolores?” he began.
“Y-yes, sir.”
“Thank you. Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee or a Co-Cola maybe?”
“N-no thank you.”
“Alright then. Now first off, Dolores, I want you to try and relax. I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal, and a jail cell is by nature a frightening place. But I don’t think you’re a bad person. I think you just got caught up in something that’s a little too big for you to handle. You want to do the right thing, but you’re confused, and you’re just not sure which way to turn. Am I right?”
“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. “You hit the nail square on the head! I am confused!”
“Alright then. Let’s start from the beginning, and I’ll see if I can help you work this out.” He turned on a big tape recorder at the end of the table where he and Dolores sat across from each other. “Today is Saturday, March 9, 1968. I am Agent Billy Davenport, and I am interviewing Dolores Tarhill Bobo, also known as Mrs. Red Bobo, in connection with the disappearance of Isaac Reynolds on the evening of Saturday, March 21, 1964.”
Dolores watched the tape spool through the machine as if it might leap out at any minute and strike her like a rattlesnake.
“Now, Dolores, let’s start from the beginning. What were you doing on County Road 51 on the evening of March 21, 1964?”
She thought for a minute. “I was drivin’ on it,” she said, appearing relieved to deliver her first correct answer.
“I’m sorry, Dolores. I wasn’t very clear with my question. What I meant was, why were you driving down County Road 51 on the evening of March 21, 1964?”
“I was goin’ home from work. The Tomahawk stays open late on Saturday nights—”
“Excuse me for interrupting, Dolores—you said the Tomahawk?”
“That’s the name of the café where I work, out on the Florida Short Route. It stays open till nine on Saturday nights, and I had the late shift. That’s how come me to be on that road so late—County Road 51, I mean. Me and Red—that’s my husband—we live in a trailer park off to the right, about a mile ’fore you get to that fork in the road that takes you way out yonder to the colored section. But I want to make it clear that me and Red, we do not live in the colored section.”
“And why did you stop before you got home?”
“That durn batt’ry. I done told Red it wasn’t no good, but he was tryin’ to save a dollar and kept chargin’ it back up insteada buyin’ me a new one. The Chevy wouldn’t crank back up after I shut it off, so there I was
.”
“I don’t understand. You turned your engine off in the middle of County Road 51?”
“Oh! On accounta the hubcap. Did I leave that part out?”
“Yes. Would you mind going back to that, Dolores, if it’s not too much trouble?”
“See, I was just a little ways down that road—not too far outta sight of the main highway—when I hit a pothole, and it jarred my hubcap a-loose. Red, he’s a car nut, and I knowed he’d have a screamin’ Mimi if I was to come home without that hubcap. So I pulled off to the side of the road, turnt my engine off, and got me a flashlight out of the glove box to go a-huntin’ for that hubcap. The ditches alongside o’ that road’s real deep and weedy, though, so I couldn’t see it, and I got scared bein’ out there all by myself. That’s how come me to decide I oughta just go on home and face the music. But when I turnt the key, my car wouldn’t start on accounta that sorry batt’ry.”
“I see. So you were trying to start your car when Isaac Reynolds came along?”
“I never knowed his name, but if you mean that nice colored boy in the green Chiv-a-lay pickup, yessir, that’s when he come along.”
“Is this the man?” Agent Davenport pushed a picture of Isaac over to Dolores.
“Yessir, that’s him. Them floodlights where they park them road machines keeps that highway lit up like a Christmas tree. ’Course, all you can see from the main highway is a glow way off in the distance on accounta how the road curves around, but when you’re right up on it, why, it’s bright as day. I seen him plain, plus I got a eye for faces. Can’t remember names worth a flip, but I remember faces. Helps in my line o’ work, rememberin’ who tips big and who don’t.”
“And what time would you say it was when you encountered Isaac Reynolds?”
“Now, wait just a minute. I never said there was no encounterin’ goin’ on. I’m a married woman, and he was colored, for heaven’s sake!”
“Excuse me, Dolores. What I meant was, what time did you see him and talk to him?”
“Oh. I’d say around nine thirty—p.m., o’ course.” Dolores appeared to be enjoying telling her story now. She probably thought it was nice having a big-city detective hang on her every word.
“And how is it that he came to work on your car?”
“Well, when he passed by, I reckon on his way home to the colored section, he seen me stuck there. Like I said, them floodlights is awful bright. He woulda had to been blind to miss me.”
“So Isaac Reynolds saw that you were in distress?”
“That is exactly what I was in. I was in me a whole mess o’ distress. And that colored boy stopped to help me.”
“What happened next?”
“Well, he got him some jumper cables outta that truck and went to hookin’ ’em up, and I told him I didn’t think it looked right, me and him out there in the dark together, if somebody was to drive by, so I was gonna go back to the ditch and look for my hubcap.”
“And what did he say?”
“Well, he was real polite about it. He says to me, he says, ‘Ma’am, the last thing I’d ever wanna do is make somebody like you look bad.’ Wasn’t that nice o’ him? Anyways, he went back to work on the jumper cables, and I got my flashlight and climbed way down in that ditch to look for my hubcap in them tall weeds. I taken my purse with me, o’ course—you know how they are. Anyways, it was kinda chilly—always is that time o’ year—so I wasn’t worried about snakes none.”
“Were there any other cars on the road?”
“Just two that I remember. I was down in that ditch, so I didn’t see none, but I heard ’em. The first one sounded like it come right up on us and stopped, but then it musta turnt around and headed back towards the highway.”
“And the second one?”
Dolores gazed silently across the table at Agent Davenport.
“Dolores?” he prompted. “What about the second car?”
“Do we really gotta talk about that part?” she asked in a shaky voice. “I’ve tried so hard to get it outta my head.”
“You can do it, Dolores. I’ll be right here with you.”
She took a deep breath. “Well . . . I reckon I’d been rummagin’ in them weeds for about five minutes or so when my flashlight hit somethin’ shiny. And I was so happy because I thought I’d done fount that hubcap and Red wasn’t gonna have no call to holler at me. He don’t hit much, but he sure does holler. So I was bent down in all them weeds, reachin’ for it . . .”
Black mascara began flowing down Dolores’s cheeks as she started to cry, and then she broke into sobs. Agent Davenport handed her a box of tissues from a shelf behind him.
“Take your time, Dolores,” he said. “This is always the hard part. But I’m right here. We’ll just wait till you’re ready.”
Dolores blotted her eyes with a tissue and appeared to collect herself. “As I was reachin’ for the hubcap . . . I heard another car comin’ real fast—too fast for that narrow road and that big curve . . . and then I heard tires squealin’—you know, like somebody seen a deer or somethin’ and stomped on their brakes—and then there was this awful thud sound . . . like maybe that car had done waited too late to hit them brakes and kilt that poor deer . . . and then nothin’.”
“And what did you do?”
“I stayed hunched down in that ditch and turned off my flashlight.”
“So you didn’t see the people in the other car?”
“No, but I heard ’em talkin’.”
“And what were they saying?”
“Onced they was outta the car, I could tell it was a man and a woman, and onced they went to fussin’, I could tell they was up to no good.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, first I reckon they was checkin’ that colored boy to see if he was breathin’, but he must notta been because the man, he started hollerin’ and cussin’. But the woman, she didn’t sound upset even. I remember that because it kinda made the hairs stand up on the back o’ my neck. She said somethin’ like, ‘Calm down so I can think.’ But the man, he was near ’bout hysterical—kept sayin’ stuff like, ‘He’s dead, I’m tellin’ you! That boy’s graveyard dead!’ He was a-goin’ on and on till I heard a crackin’ noise, like a face gettin’ slapped, and then he was quiet.”
“Did you see them then?”
“I never poked my head outta that ditch. Somethin’ about that woman’s voice sent a cold chill up my spine. And to tell you the truth, I felt like I’d heard it before. But I hear so many voices down at the Tomahawk—coulda been any one of ’em, I guess.”
“What else did they say?”
“Well, he was worried about whoever was in my car and whether there was a witness and all. But she says, ‘Don’t be a idiot . . . Harv’—that’s what she called him. I’d forgot that till just now. She says, ‘Don’t be a idiot, Harv, there’s not another livin’ soul on this road. Can’t you see that colored boy was jumpin’ off that broken-down car so he could steal it?’ That seemed to settle him down—settle Harv down—a little bit.”
“Dolores, you’re doing beautifully. Now, did he ever call her name?”
Dolores paused and scratched her head. “You know, I don’t b’lieve he did. But she called her husband’s name.”
“Harv wasn’t her husband?”
“Oh, noooo,” Dolores said, giving the detective a knowing look.
“How do you know?”
“Well, they thought they was alone on that lonesome road, so they wasn’t exactly talkin’ quiet. And they wasn’t but a few feet away. Wasn’t hard to hear ever’ word. He was tryin’ to talk her into takin’ that boy to the hospital—you know, to have him declared dead all official. But she wouldn’t have it. She says to him, she says, ‘Are you outta your blankety-blank mind? If we take him to the hospital, Whit will find out and he’ll divorce me.’ Whit—that was her husband’s name. And then she said somethin’ about it bein’ lucky that he was outta town so much. And then Harv says to her, he says, ‘Your husband ain
’t my problem.’ And that’s when that woman got real scary.
“She told him she’d make sure he got blamed for it. Said they was in his car, not hers, and there wasn’t no way he could prove she was doin’ the drivin’. She says to him, she says, ‘See, Harv, women with any style about them always wear drivin’ gloves—not that you’d know—and gloves don’t leave fingerprints.’ She says she’ll tell her husband she only agreed to have dinner with Harv to go over their insurance policies but that he’d got her in that car and taken advantage of her. I ’specially remember this next part. She says to him, she says, ‘You won’t believe how convincin’ I can be, so shut up and do what I tell you if you don’t want to die in jail.’ Die in jail, she says. I ain’t gonna die in jail, am I, Agent Davenport—on accounta what I seen but was too scared to tell?”
Behind the two-way mirror, Ned was in shock. He had to sit down, and one of the secretaries kindly brought him a glass of ice water. Harv Akers was a big, burly insurance salesman from Childersburg. Ned knew of him because Lila had told him about getting stuck next to Akers at a dinner party. She had found him rude and overbearing and never accepted another dinner invitation from that hostess—and certainly not from Harv Akers. And there was only one Whit in town. Ned had never cared for the Highlands, but the idea that Celeste, who helped with the same bake sales as his daughters and served on the PTA at school . . .
In the interrogation room, Agent Davenport was getting every last detail from Dolores Bobo. “What happened after she threatened him?”
“Well, he was all for whatever she wanted to do after that. He asked her what they should do about the body, and she said hide it and hide the truck too. And then she said somethin’ about helpin’ her thick-skulled son with his schoolwork and how it might actually pay off tonight. What you reckon she meant by that?”
“I’m not sure, Dolores. What happened next?”
“Well, then I heard a sound like draggin’ a feed sack across a barn floor and doors slammin’, and then they drove off—in their car and that colored boy’s truck.”
Missing Isaac Page 18