by Ann B. Ross
“Okay,” he finally said, “Rosemary Sullins is the last one. We might as well go on and see her.”
“Don’t forget Rafe Feldman.”
“I wouldn’t bother with him, Julia,” Sam said. “It’d be a waste of time. He’s in the final stages of dementia, so you wouldn’t get anything sensible out of him.”
“Well, so far,” I said, “we haven’t gotten anything sensible out of anybody.” I pushed back from the table and stood. “I won’t be but a minute, Mr. Pickens. I want to check on Hazel Marie, then I’ll be ready to go. You know where the powder room is.”
Walking around the table, I put my hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Don’t be discouraged, Sam. When we sit down and put all this together, I expect something—one name or another—will jump out at you. Of course,” I said, thinking of Ilona Weaver, “one of them isn’t in any condition to steal anything, so I don’t know what good it’ll do. But we’ll keep working on it.”
Sam smiled up at me and put his hand on mine. “I appreciate what you’re doing, sweetheart. Seeing these people may not tell us anything, but it has to be done.”
“Right,” Mr. Pickens said. “Basic investigative work.”
As I gave Sam a final pat and turned to leave the room, Mr. Pickens said, “Tell Hazel Marie I hope she’ll be feeling better soon.”
I stopped without turning around, thinking that I should urge him to tell her himself, but decided against it for the time being. Lillian was with her, and Sam and I right here, making too much of an audience for a reconciliation or a knockdown, drag-out fight or any kind of confrontation between two people at such cross-purposes.
“Yes, I will,” I responded and left the kitchen, wondering if I’d made the right choice.
I knew I had as soon as I walked into Hazel Marie’s room and saw Lillian sitting on her bed, holding a Kleenex box.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, hurrying in. “Are you . . . ?”
Hazel Marie shook her head and wiped her streaming eyes. “No’m, I’m all right. It’s just hearing him! He’s just sitting out there, eating and talking like, like everything’s normal. And I guess it is. For him! But there’s nothing normal about the mess I’m in.”
“Well, for goodness sakes, Lillian,” I said. “Why didn’t you close the door?”
“I did, but she want it back open.”
“It gets too hot in here with the door closed,” Hazel Marie said, defending herself. “Besides, I shouldn’t have to close myself in just because he comes and goes as he pleases.”
“That’s exactly right,” I said, soothingly, but thinking that this was another example of an extreme emotional upset. “But we’re leaving now to go see somebody else on Sam’s list. So I want you to get some rest. Lloyd’ll be home in a little while, and you’ll want to be cheerful and perky for him.”
She looked up at me through red, tearful eyes. “Shouldn’t he be coming home for lunch? He’s over at the courts all day long.”
“Don’t you be worryin’ ’bout him,” Lillian said. “I ast him everyday what he have to eat, an’ he goin’ to that Country Club Grill an’ orderin’ they biggest lunch.” Lillian laughed. “I ’spect you stop worryin’ when that bill come.”
I surveyed the tray on the bedside table. “Speaking of that, Hazel Marie. You’ve hardly eaten anything. I thought you were craving chili.”
“I was,” she said mournfully. “Then I just couldn’t get it down. I’m sorry, Lillian, I know you worked hard on it. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
“Oh, I expect you do,” I said with a laugh, trying to lighten her mood. “Appetite changes are to be expected. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“That’s right,” Lillian chimed in. “You no diff ’runt from anybody else. Why, you not even bad as some I knowed. That little girl, name of Precious Watson, when she ’spectin’, she crave that white clay some like to eat. She out diggin’ that stuff outta the creek bank with a spoon everyday. An’ she be chewin’ on it the whole time till that baby come.”
Well, that took Hazel Marie’s mind off her own erratic appetite, and mine, too, if you want to know the truth. Wishing her a restful afternoon, I hurried out to join Mr. Pickens for our last visitation. And a good thing, too, for he was standing by the door, impatiently jingling the keys in his pocket.
Before I got the door closed good and my seat belt on, he had the car cranked and was backing out of the drive. “Which way?”
“West. I mean, east. Go east. Turn toward town and go across Main Street. Then right on Old Wellburn Road. We’ll follow that for a few miles to South Wellburn. You know where that is, don’t you?”
“Farming community? Beyond that big manufacturing plant?”
I nodded.
Then he asked, “What do they manufacture, anyway?”
Pleased that he was willing to converse, I was nonetheless chagrined that I had no answer. “Law, I don’t know, Mr. Pickens. They used to make blue jeans until the owners moved the business to China or Mexico or somewhere. I don’t know what they do now.”
He grunted.
Unwilling to leave it at that, I went on. “It really created hardships for a lot of families when they moved, though. I mean, that business was the basis of the whole county for years and years. Then they just up and closed it down. That plant sat empty for several years, and people were hurting. That’s when the state started the technical college here. To retrain people for other jobs, you know. Then some other business bought the plant and hired a few workers back. But what they do, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this, the place is just a ghost of its former self.” I finally ran out of anything to say and waited for his response.
I didn’t get one, so I summed up. “I guess that’s what you call outsourcing, isn’t it?”
“Not quite,” he said, his eyes on the road. “That’s what you call moving to a cheaper labor pool.”
“Oh.” Then, “I guess you’re right. Well, tell me about Rosemary Sullins.”
“You know her?”
“No, never even heard of her. Sam gave me her address, though, and I know about where that is. At least, she doesn’t live out in the sticks somewhere, so we shouldn’t have a problem.”
It wasn’t so easy, though, for it seemed that Rosemary Sullins lived in what was once a mill village—block after block of small, identical houses, most of them without house numbers. After stopping and asking a boy who was pumping up a bicycle tire, we found the house, which stood out from the others because of the chain-link fence around the front yard.
We parked by the curb, then got out of the car. Mr. Pickens, with admirable courage, walked right up to the gate and unlatched it.
I clutched at his sleeve. “She might have a dog.”
“I doubt it. Look around.”
I did, and saw what the practiced eye of an investigator had already noted. A plastic tricycle lay on its side, pails and shovels stuck up from a sandbox, and a red and yellow plastic sliding board leaned to one side on the uneven ground beneath a shade tree. A deflated basketball lay next to the porch steps.
“Kids,” Mr. Pickens said.
We walked up onto the porch where there was one Adirondack chair with an open Coke can on the floor beside it. An air conditioner, dripping water down the wall, rattled loudly in the window.
Seeing no doorbell or knocker, Mr. Pickens opened the storm door and rapped on the wooden door. “You introduce us,” he said, “and get us inside.”
A thin, angular woman opened the door and stared at us. She had grayish hair with streaks of white running from both temples. It was pulled back so tightly from her narrow forehead that it added to the gauntness of her face. She wore a pair of blue polyester knit pants that ended at her calves, reminding me of a certain green pair I’d once owned. A T-shirt with the logo of Tweetsie Railroad—namely a locomotive—hung loosely from her shoulders. And, Lord help us, I couldn’t help but notice her long toes with chipped polish gripping the flip-flops on her fee
t.
I opened my mouth to greet her, but her mouth flattened out into a thin line and she said, “I got a permit.”
“What?” I was confused.
“I only got four, so that’s home care,” she said. “I’m not runnin’ a day care, so I don’t need no more permits.”
Mr. Pickens picked up on her meaning before I did. “We’re not from Social Services,” he said smoothly. “I’m J.D. Pickens and this is Mrs. Julia Murdoch. We’d like to talk with you about that break-in at Sam Murdoch’s house. I’m not sure you know this, but some information relating to you and a few others was stolen in the break-in.”
“Something of mine?” She looked as confused as I was feeling. “Who did it?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out, Ms. Sullins,” Mr. Pickens said. “The only things missing are some interview cassettes and some case files. Yours were among them.”
She stood for some little while, staring at us, then her eyes drifted away. I was about to burn up on the hot porch, and the noisy air-conditioner was getting on my nerves.
“May we come in?” I asked, fanning the bodice of my dress. “The heat, you know.”
“I reckon,” she said, moving back so we could step inside what may have once been a living room. It was now a playroom with three toddlers playing on the floor and an infant asleep in a crib beside a green sofa that was propped up with a brick where a leg was missing. On a small yellow plastic table, there were a box of Ritz crackers and a jar of Jif peanut butter with a table knife sticking up out of it. One child’s face was smeared with what I hoped was peanut butter. Cracker crumbs crunched under our feet as we walked onto the indoor-outdoor rug, and an odor of milk, both fresh and regurgitated, mingled with that coming from an overflowing trash can of previously worn diapers.
As Rosemary Sullins turned around, I saw a long, thick switch of hair, coarse and stringy, more gray than white that was gathered by a rubber band on the back of her head. A ponytail, I thought, so unsuitable for a woman of her age. I noticed something else as she turned, as well. Those figure-hugging blue knit pants were tight everywhere except in the seat, which bagged, both noticeably and unattractively.
“Have a seat if you can find one,” she said, moving a full ashtray from the sofa to the top of a television set. Some sort of animated cartoon featuring chipmunks ran unheeded on the set.
I sat gingerly on the edge of the sofa, propping my pocketbook on my lap, and Mr. Pickens eased down beside me.
Rosemary Sullins pulled up a yellow plastic child’s chair and sat down, her knees hiked up high. “Well?” she said, her eyes narrowing at us. “Who else’s did they get?”
Chapter 29
Mr. Pickens leaned forward, readying himself to draw out whatever information he could from this person of interest. “Ms. Sullins,” he began, then winced as a piercing scream cut through the air. The baby in the crib startled awake with a cry, its little arms waving. It must’ve been used to the uproar, though, for it settled down and went back to sleep.
I thought I’d have a heart attack from the fright, but Rosemary Sullins had heard it before. She sprang from the plastic chair and ran over to two children struggling over some kind of toy.
“Greg’ry!” she yelled. “Let her have that. You hear me, let her have it!”
“I had it first!” the boy screamed, as he tried to jerk it from the girl’s grasp.
“I don’t care who had it first. Let her have it. I can’t stand that screechin’, my nerves is already shot.”
“But I got it first!”
Rosemary raised her hand. “You turn that thing a-loose or I’m gonna pop you one.”
I made to move, but Mr. Pickens put his hand on my arm and shook his head. It was just as well, for Gregory had turned it loose, but not before shoving the girl out of her chair. She cut loose with another unearthly shriek, and Gregory got his pop. It wasn’t much of one, I’ll have to say, but it was enough to send him to a corner where he sat, hunched over with his arms folded across his chest. He glared at Rosemary, his face red and streaked with the unfairness of it all. The first step, I thought, of growing up sullen and angry at the world.
“Them kids,” Rosemary said, resuming her seat. “They about drive me crazy. Where was we?”
“Ms. Sullins,” Mr. Pickens began again, “I’m sure you read about the break-in at Sam Murdoch’s house. Whoever was responsible for it could’ve taken any number of things—television sets, computers, and so on—but they didn’t. They only took the cassettes with interviews on them and copies of certain case files. Yours was among them. We’re trying to find out who would’ve been that interested in information on five people, and five people only. Those five files were specifically taken. We know that because Murdoch had files on hundreds of people dating from the eighteen hundreds up to the present. Since yours was one of them, we wanted to ask if there’s anything you can think of that would lead us in the right direction.”
“You sayin’ I done it?”
“No.” Mr. Pickens shook his head. “Not at all. We don’t think any of the five did it. If one of you had, I figure you’d’ve only taken your own. Or else, you’d have grabbed any files at hand to cover yourself. But these five cases all occurred within the same ten-year period, back in the sixties. Something or someone ties them all together. We want to know if you have any idea of who or what it might be.
“Because I’ll tell you this,” Mr. Pickens went on in a seriously professional manner, “Murdoch is concerned that the information could be used against you—harm your reputations in some way or held over you to extort money.”
Rosemary Sullins considered that for a moment, her dark eyes staring steadily at Mr. Pickens. It came to me that she had a sharp native intelligence that was belied by her incorrect use of the language.
“Who was the others?” she asked again.
Mr. Pickens hesitated, then he must’ve decided that secrecy wasn’t necessary. “Teddy Tillman, Cassie Wooten, Rafe Feldman, Ilona Weaver. And you.”
I wouldn’t swear to it, but I do believe I saw a glint of recognition pass across her eyes, but there wasn’t a twitch on her face. She was giving nothing away.
I had to say something, so I said, “Do you know any of them? Personally, I mean?”
She switched her eyes to me. “Cassie, a little bit, long time ago. Them others?” She shrugged her shoulders. “I know of ’em, like everybody else in the county.”
She was right about that. The county wasn’t that large or that heavily populated. Live in it a few years, and eventually you’d hear of just about everybody else.
“Can you help us, Ms. Sullins?” Mr. Pickens asked. “And maybe help yourself? Whatever you can give us won’t go any further. A name, a few names, anything that would help us recover what was stolen.”
Her hand suddenly snaked out toward me. I reared back, frightened. I thought she was after my pocketbook, but her hand went down beside the sofa and came back with a pack of Marlboros and a box of kitchen matches. She lit up and contemplated. As smoke billowed from her mouth, I thought I saw a glint of sly amusement in her eyes.
“I can’t think of nobody,” she said. “Why don’t Murdoch jes’ do it all over again?”
“That’s the bad part of it,” I said. “The case files at the courthouse are missing, too. And every one of you refuses to do another interview. He called and asked you, didn’t he?”
She did smile then, somewhat smugly, I thought. “Yeah, he did. But I’m done with all that mess. I got no reason to go back over it again. ’Specially now, after somebody showed they don’t want me to.”
Mr. Pickens, beside me, took a deep breath. “Aren’t you a little concerned about what that somebody will do?”
“Naw,” she said, looking around. “What’d I do with that blamed ashtray? Them kids like to play in it, an’ I have to keep movin’ it.” But it was too late. The long ash fell on the rug. She looked at it a moment, then rubbed it in with her flip-flop. “Naw,
I ain’t concerned a bit. I figure they did it to keep Murdoch from tellin’ stories outta school. They ain’t gonna turn around and do the same thing.”
“But you talked to him!” I protested. “You and all the others. Why’d you let him interview you in the first place if you cared about telling stories out of school?”
“Well, I guess we didn’t think it mattered after this long of a time.” She drew deeply on her cigarette, then got up and mashed it out in the ashtray she’d finally spotted on the television set. “But looks like we found out it did.”
“But to who?” I almost screeched. “Whom,” I corrected myself, as if that mattered under the circumstances. “You know, don’t you, Ms. Sullins? Or at least you have an idea of who it was.”
“I got no idea,” she said firmly. I could see her thin face set itself in rigid lines and knew we’d get little more out of her. Then she surprised me. “But if I got to guess, I’d guess it was that stuck-up know-it-all that Cassie married. It’s likely him. That’s who I’d go after, if I was you.”
“You think she’s right?” I asked as Mr. Pickens guided the car away from the curb in front of Rosemary Sullins’s house.
Mr. Pickens rubbed one hand down his face, squinched up his eyes in the bright sunlight and sighed. “Who the hell knows? Sorry, Miss Julia, I feel like we’re running around in circles.”
“Well, if you don’t turn around we will be or else on our way to Charlotte. Take a left at the next street and let’s go home. Like you, I am sick and tired of these people giving us the runaround. I think they all know who did it. Every last one of them, don’t you?”
“Hard to tell.” He fiddled with the air-conditioning vents with one hand while guiding the car with the other. “But the thing that strikes me is that none of ’em seems worried about it.”
“You’re absolutely right,” I said, recalling the complacency that the Tillmans and Rosemary Sullins exhibited upon hearing the news. “Except maybe Cassie, or at least her husband. Ilona Weaver, who could tell? But I know I’d be fit to be tied if my personal information was in unknown hands. And I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.” Seeing his amused glance, I went on. “I’m speaking of legal and/ or criminal matters, Mr. Pickens.”