I read again the statements of the Devereau sisters to see if there were any other clues. I looked at the photo of Mary-Evelyn, her closed eyes, her water-scattered hair, water-darkened. Darkened. I frowned. What had Imogene said about Mary-Evelyn? I thought she was so lucky, having that pale hair and the bluest eyes, and having all those dresses. Pale hair. Only Rose had that kind of hair. The other Devereau sisters had dark hair. I thought of the photograph hanging on the wall in the parlor. The three sisters grouped around light-haired Rose when she was only a child. Their hair was almost black.
Sitting back, I tried to recall something Dwayne had said when we were talking about Lena from Light in August and her “condition.” Dwayne had joked about nearly every woman in Faulkner being in some kind of “condition.” I looked at the photo of Jamie again, saw how handsome he was, saw his golden hair. And I thought of Lena, walking along that dusty road in Tennessee, hoping to find the baby’s father.
I looked up and stared at what was in my head. Mary-Evelyn couldn’t have been Rose’s child because Rose was only a child herself back then. But she could have been Iris’s. Iris’s and this golden-haired Jamie Makepiece’s child. It made sense of all the attention Iris had lavished on Mary-Evelyn’s clothes, since she wouldn’t dare lavish it on the girl herself, even if she’d wanted to, not living as she did with Isabel and Elizabeth watching.
Mary-Evelyn was their scapegoat. That was why they hated her, especially Isabel. Imagine every day having to be reminded you’d been thrown over for your own sister. Worse, that Iris’s and Jamie’s child made sure she’d never forget.
That was why they wanted her dead, at least why Isabel did.
I picked up Jamie’s letter and read it over again.
My dear I Have faith that we will be together again and soon. It has become too much for me and, I’m sure, too much for you. It’s betterforme to leave for a little while until this fury quiets down. I suppose a century ago, my faithlessness wouldhave been shouted in all the newspapers!
Your, J.
Did he ever know about Mary-Evelyn? I doubted it. But what happened to him?
He had not come back.
I lay in bed that night, weary with thinking, and still thought. Where was Ben Queen? He was around; I felt it. If the Girl was still here—and I’d seen her boarding the train just two days ago if she was still here, so would he be. Ben Queen was not the sort to leave on account of trouble. He was not a Jamie Makepiece. Ben Queen would never desert a person.
I think he really did believe that what happened to Mary-Evelyn was an accident. He believed it because Rose believed it. Even though she had lived in that house for years, still Rose believed it was an accident because she couldn’t bear not to. You do that sometimes; you slam the door on the truth because you don’t want it inside overturning tables and knocking photos off shelves.
That’s what I felt the Sheriff was doing—shutting out the truth. He was seeing my gym bag as nothing more than a bag of tricks. Or maybe he was angry with me because he thought I knew something and had refused to tell him what it was. That was true. I had let him down. Maybe our way of seeing this was that we’d let each other down.
I suddenly felt very old and reached over for the teddy bear that was always on the bed. I had to check to see if the stuffing was still in place.
52
We remember it well
“Well, my goodness,” said Louise Snell as I took my place at the counter in the Windy Run Diner, “a person’d think you moved to Cold Flat Junction, hon. You want the roast beef sandwich? It’s real good today.”
“It’s always good. Yes.” I had become a regular; I had my own stool and my own story. Maybe I’d tell them another chapter about my mother’s friend Henrietta Simple and the Simple family, if I could recall what I’d told them before.
Billy asked if I had found “that Calhoun gal,” and I told him I had and thanked them for such good directions.
Don Joe gave me a wide smile that showed a lot of broken and nicotine-stained teeth. “So who you lookin’ to find this time? Seems to me you spend half your life lookin’ for people.”
Everybody laughed. I smiled back displaying my own perfect, white teeth. “Seems like it. Well, today I’m not looking for anybody.” Saying that, I almost felt I was here under false pretenses.
“What’s goin’ on over in La Porte about Fern Queen? They any nearer to finding who done it?” asked Mervin from his booth bench. He was here without his wife again; I’m sure he was happy about that.
I had been trying to think of a way to bring this up, so I was grateful Mervin had done it. “I don’t think so, at least I haven’t heard. But I do know the Sheriff’s looking for Ben Queen. That’s who he thinks is guilty.”
“With Fern being his own child?” said Louise Snell, indignant. She had given the cook my order and was waiting for it, leaning up against the Plexiglas pie shelves. “Your sheriff mustn’t have kids of his own to think a man could shoot his own child.”
“The Greeks did it all the time,” I informed them. “Killing off kinfolk (a word I loved)—kids, mothers, dads, all sorts. It was like a way of life with them. Didn’t think a thing of it.” The little window barrier shot up and the roast beef sandwich appeared. Louise set it before me and I got my nose right into the steam coming off the mashed potatoes. I wished my mother would make it, but it was a dish she thought “common.”
“Greeks? You sayin’ like that fellow outside La Porte has that restaurant—?”
“It’s Arturo-something,” said Don Joe.
“Yeah. That Arturo fella.”
“He’s Italian,” I said, eating instead of thinking.
Don Joe, wanting to broadcast his superior knowledge said, “Hell, yes, Billy. He’s one of them I-ties. Arturo ain’t no Greek name.”
Billy was irked. “He sure looks Greek.”
Why did I have to open my big mouth? We were getting miles away from Ben Queen.
“Looks?” said Don Joe. “How come?”
“That real dark hair and what’s called ’swarthy’ skin. And his eyes looks like black olives. Yessir, Greek to the core, far as looks go. Just because his name’s Italian-sounding don’t mean he is.”
It was like being back in the Big Garage.
“Well, why in hell would he have an I-tie name if he wasn’t an I-tie?”
I stepped in. “I think you’re both right. He’s half Greek and half Italian. His mother was Greek. I think his middle name is something that ends in -opotis. You know, like so many Greek names. ‘Acropolis,’ that’s Greek. And so on.” I shoveled a forkful of mashed potatoes in my mouth, feeling quite proud of my mastery of nationalities.
“Well,” said Billy.
“Well,” said Don Joe.
Frankly, I think they were both glad I’d put an end to that discussion. Now, I would have to work the talk around to Ben Queen again, so I picked up where I’d left off. “All I meant when I brought up the Greeks was pointing out that their plays often have characters killing off their kinfolk.” (I managed to work that in again.) “Kinfolk (again) being children sometimes.”
“That’s horrible, hon. Why, you ought not to be seeing things like that! Where’s it at? They got this summer theater in La Porte, I know.”
When she looked away, I rolled my eyes. Then I said, “No, they don’t put on the Greek tragedies at the summer theater.” Maybe I should invite them all over to the Big Garage. “All I’m saying is it’s perfectly possible for a mom or a dad to kill their own child. I’m not saying Ben Queen did it, though.” I decided to ask a jackpot question. “Were any of you here then?”
You’d think this was a perfectly simple question, but they had to argue about whether they were or not. It was Mervin who said, “I can tell you everybody who was here acted like they’d been hit by a truck. Yessir.”
Don Joe agreed and tried to get in on the telling of it, but Mervin just ran right over his words. “First person they thought of—the sheriff’s
people, I mean—was the husband, Ben, for as we know, it’s most often the husband or wife.” Here Mervin got out of his booth and came to the counter to sit beside Billy on the stool that was usually occupied by the woman in dark glasses. Billy didn’t like this one whit, Mervin moving to the counter. He went on: “When Ben Queen come in, there wasn’t a spot of blood on him. Yet the crime scene was covered in it; there was like a lake of blood and it was ev’erwhere. So that told me right there it could not of been him.”
Just to argue, probably, Billy said, “So? He coulda just changed his clothes. Mind you, I ain’t saying Ben done it, for I definitely don’t believe he did.”
Mervin said, “How’s he goin’ to change his clothes without the Queens seein’ him? He’d have to come in from the barn and get past Sheba and his brother George. That’s when Ben and Rose was livin’ with them that time. When their house was bein’ built.”
Louise Snell interrupted. “That’s all beside the point. The point is Ben Queen never would’ve harmed Rose. Never.”
Evren said, “Except they was fighting, him and Rose. There was this big row they had the night before.”
Billy flapped his hand at Evren. “Be quiet, Evren. You wasn’t even here, so you don’t know.”
“I’m only goin’ by what Toots said, over to the Esso, that’s all. Toots was here, wasn’t he?”
“Where was Ben Queen when Rose was killed?” I asked, feeling something significant was being left out. They all looked at me as if this question had never come up.
Mervin, now back in his booth, answered me. “Hebrides. That’s where he was at.”
“But then somebody in Hebrides must’ve seen him.”
Billy held up his cup for a refill. He said, “Nobody come forth to say.”
I frowned. If the Sheriff waited for somebody to “come forth” he’d never be arresting anyone. “But didn’t the police investigate?”
Mervin was up and over to the counter again, this time on the empty stool nearest me. “That’s just the thing,” he said to me. “That’s what’s so damned fishy. There was hardly any questions asked, and after they took in Ben Queen, then there was none. So as you see there was precious little ‘investigatin’ ’ going on.” He slapped the Formica countertop.
Louise was pouring refills and said, “That’s because Ben never put up any resistance. He hardly even said a word, according to Boyd Spiker.”
Don Joe said, “Oh, hell, Boyd Spiker’s an injit.”
What I was thinking now was that I should have paid more attention to the details of the police investigation of Rose’s murder. I knew Ben Queen didn’t do it and so did people like Louise Snell, but the law didn’t. “Who’s Boyd Spiker?”
Mervin answered, “He’s a trooper. Troopers got there first. When Ben come back, they took him in. First thing.”
“But if he was gone from Cold Flat Junction, then how could he have killed her?”
“That was my point,” said Louise.
“Cops just figured Ben was fixin’ to alibi hisself,” said Don Joe.
For me, this was just like Aurora and her find-the-pea so-called trick. She just told you you were wrong no matter what walnut shell you chose. She wouldn’t lift the shells, either. That’s what all of this sounded like. The obvious conclusion for the police to draw was Ben Queen didn’t do it. One, he was in Hebrides, two, his truck was being worked on, so how did he get back? And, three, he adored his wife. It was crazy, and I said so.
“I’m with you, hon,” said Louise, giving me a fresh Coke.
I asked, “Didn’t the Sheriff from La Porte investigate?”
“Not really. Come around, asked a few questions. But like I said, Ben never put up any fight.”
Louise asked, “Who’d have the gumption after finding the wife you dearly loved had been knifed to death?”
That wasn’t exactly logical, but it was a point. “Did he confess?”
“‘Cording to Boyd, he just said, ‘Let’s get it over with,’ ” said Billy.
Mervin was still determined to get his first point in. “Witnesses said him and Rose’d been fightin’ somethin’ awful.”
“What were they fighting about?” I asked.
“Their girl, Fern. You know, the one that was killed out your way. They went round and round about her, Rose and Ben did. She wasn’t playin’ with a full deck—” Here Billy made circles near his ear.
Louise was annoyed. “No need to make fun, Billy; the woman was just retarded, and you shouldn’t be speaking ill of the dead, anyhow.”
“Anyway, they fought a lot about Fern. Rose wanted to ship her off to an institution but Ben didn’t. That girl was a handful. ”
Louise wiped the counter, absently. “It was a real shame. They’d only the one child and she turned out that way. Didn’t seem to get nothing from Rose and Ben, certainly not looks.”
Don Joe said, “I think you had a crush on him.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I wasn’t more’n eight or nine years old then.”
“Still, every woman around was sweet on Ben.”
“Like every man was sweet on Rose,” said Billy, tapping ash from his cigarette with his little finger.
Billy must have been older than he looked, for he said this as if he remembered. Remembered it well.
53
An alibi
I left the Windy Run Diner minutes later. Now I had something else to discover and that was what else Ben Queen was doing in Hebrides besides getting his truck fixed. People who would know this would be his brother and sister-in-law, the ones who lived in the big yellow house I had visited once. I had taken Mr. Root along as a reason to go, for Bathsheba Queen had once been his “girl,” he said.
Today I stood outside their house trying to make up what I would give as the reason this time for visiting. My mind was as blank and smooth as an eggshell. It was still blank five minutes later when George Queen, Ben’s older brother, came out on the porch with a newspaper, meaning, I guessed, to sit and read. I thought about the newspaper.
“Hello, Mr. Queen!” I called, as if I had just then been passing by. I didn’t want him to find me skulking outside his house. I waved as he got up from his chair and kind of squinted down the path between fence and steps. “It’s just me, Mr. Queen. Emma Graham. I guess you don’t remember me.” I’d found that the elderly don’t like it if you suggest their memories are slipping, so that comment might get him up and going. Mr. Queen came right down the path and unhooked the garden gate.
“I sure do remember you. Come on up to the porch. I bet Sheba will rustle up some lemonade and cookies. You just sit yourself down and I’ll be back in a flash.”
I hoped Sheba would produce store-bought cookies, as her own were so bad. I settled into an old wooden rocking chair and waited for him to come back. I saw he was reading the Cloverly paper, which was a daily. Our own Conservative was a weekly, out every Thursday. I don’t know how much was in it now about the White’s Bridge murder, but I didn’t need to read the paper to find out, as I knew more than the paper did. I looked through the first two pages of his paper but saw nothing about the murder or about Ben Queen. I folded the paper back carefully and returned it to the seat of his chair.
Mr. Queen came out then with a pitcher of lemonade on a little tray with three glasses, which meant his wife would be joining us. “Sheba’ll be out in a minute. She’s taking the cookies out of the oven.” I winced as he drew over a round table and set the tray down. “Nothing like fresh-baked cookies, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
Depends who baked them, I didn’t say. “I surely do, Mr. Queen.”
He poured out lemonade and handed me a glass and sat down with his own.
“This is really good,” I said, which it was. Then for some reason I remembered the girl with the Kool-Aid stand. It was only two streets up and over from here. I pictured her there with a drink nobody much wanted and with nobody much passing her way. I wished she had some of this lemonade to sell. I looked at
the paper and asked, in an offhand way, if there was anything in it of interest.
“Not much. I was looking for mention of Fern—you know. The city paper thinks it’s old news.”
Cloverly hardly rated as a “city.” I said, “I’m really sorry about her, Mr. Queen. And I’m sorry about your brother, too.”
Just then Sheba Queen came out carrying a plate of the same kind of cookies she’d served before. “Well, hello, Em‘ly. How are you? How’s your mother? You came just at the right time. Here I was baking cookies and only us to eat ’em.”
“Thank you, ma‘am.” “Ma’am” was a word I was never to use, as my mother considered it common; so in her honor I corrected myself. “Thank you, Mrs. Queen.” I took a cookie, the smallest I could find, wondering why Sheba Queen seemed so much more friendly than the last time. But I guess people can have on-Em‘ly-days and off-Em’ly-days. I wondered where I could slip the cookie.
Sheba Queen sat down in the third rocker and munched her own cookie. I bit into mine and gave her a big smile back.
“We were talkin’ about there not being any news.” George fluttered the paper a little.
Sheba put on her hrr-umph look as she resettled her shoulders. “Police ain’t done a lick. That sheriff of yours is just dragging his feet.”
“I think he’s really trying, Mrs. Queen.” Even though the Sheriff and I were on the outs, I would still defend him. I made a note to tell him what we said here to show how objective I could be.
“Well ... maybe,” said George Queen. “Depends how hard he’s looking for anybody besides Ben.”
That was a good point. I would add this to my defending him. “Yes, sir. I know what you mean.” I did, too. I could have kissed him for bringing Ben up, but settled on another bite of the cookie to express my gratitude. There was a silence into which I dropped Rose’s name.
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