Luke had been thorough in his planning, too, not allowing for any chance that word might get out. Emma Jean-Irene had made each lady she called promise not to tell her husband, not to tell a soul, for fear it might somehow get back to Ramona.
As for why the party was being held in the sanctuary instead of the church fellowship hall, he instructed Emma Jean-Irene to say that the special treat she had planned could only be held there and later they would know why.
But no presents were wanted, Emma Jean/Irene had emphasized. The reason was that Luke did not want paper rattling when the ladies came down the aisle, afraid Burch might hear. Emma Jean/Irene had explained that Ramona would like it better if everyone contributed a few dollars each to buy a needed electric skillet for the church kitchen in her name. But, most important, Emma Jean/Irene had instructed, they all had to be very quiet and sit in the dark till the big surprise happened.
"Come on," Burch was snarling at Sara's ear as he clutched her buttocks and thrust himself at her. "I want a quickie now. We can play later."
* * *
Luke could hear every word and knew Sara was having a rough time holding Burch off. They were still by the door, far away from the pool, so he stealthily picked his way to the curtain separating the pool from the sanctuary and opened it just a crack. The soft, sparse light from the foyer behind them was sufficient to frame the women seated on the front row. He counted ten. One was missing, Irene Cleghorn, the purported hostess.
Emma Jean was to have called her at the very last minute and pretend to be the maid of one of the other ladies, apologizing for her mistress because she had not been invited to the surprise party. She was also to convey the explanation that her mistress had been so busy getting everything together she thought she had already invited her and was so embarrassed when she realize she hadn't. Irene's feelings would be hurt, but she would, of course, rush to the church.
Burch was trying to push himself inside her, and Sara twisted away. "No," she whispered, remembering despite her rage to keep her voice down, for the guests had probably begun to arrive, though it was doubtful they would be able to hear from such a distance. "I told you, we have to do it special."
"And I want it now."
"And you're going to have to wait."
"Hey, I think you better get something straight." His hand shot out to twist her hair and yank. "I'm boss here. Always. I say how we do it and when. Not you. Now get on the floor and..."
"I won't."
He yanked harder.
"Listen," she hissed between clenched teeth because he was hurting her, "If you want just plain, ordinary sex, man on top, woman on bottom, then you aren't half the man my Dewey was."
"Oh, yeah? And what made him so damn special? I saw his pecker, remember?" He snickered. "Or maybe I should say his weenie. Feel of this, bitch." He grabbed her hand and pulled it against his erection. "It's big. Real big. You saw it before. You're feeling it now. And Dewey Culver, the old fart, never saw the day he was half my size."
Sara's knee was actually starting to twitch from wanting to slam into his balls, but she managed to hold back and continued to goad, "I'm not talking about size, Burch. I'm talking about being adventuresome. Now I told you I wanted tonight to be special because it's the first time. If you aren't willing to play, then okay, we do it your way. I'll take your money and screw you whenever you want, and it'll be as boring to me as it probably is for your wife."
He gave her hair one last yank and let her go. "Okay. So what do you want to play? I'll stand you on your head if that's what you want. And you can bet your sweet bippie when this night is over, you'll know you've been had by a real man, damn you."
"Talk, talk, talk," she said, swinging her head from side to side.
"I said tell me what you want."
"Okay. Why do you think I asked you to meet me here at the church?"
He thought a minute. "Hell, I don't know. Maybe you're just a nut. It doesn't matter to me where we do it, but I'm ready right now."
"Silly." She managed a giggle. "I want to play in the pool."
"The... pool?" he sputtered. "You... you mean the baptismal pool?"
"That's right. And I've already filled it with water." She put her arms around his neck, rubbed her breasts against his chest and heard him suck in his breath. "I think it'll be fun. Then, every time it's used from now on, you'll think of us doing it there, and if I'm in church that day, I'm going to look at you and smile, and I'll bet it makes you hard."
"It... it probably will," he whispered, digging his fingers into her buttocks and trying once more to pump against her, only she wriggled away from him.
"And what we can do then," she went on to arouse him even more, "is sneak into that Sunday School room upstairs that's got the little cloakroom and have a quickie 'cause everyone will have left. Now won't that be fun to think about while you're watching all those folks getting dunked in the water?"
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah..."
He was running his tongue over her face, and Sara mustered all her willpower to keep at him, wanting to get it over with, desperate to end the madness.
"I'm going to get in the pool, real quiet. And I want you to stand at the top of the steps on the other end, and when I call you, you come in and try to find me. You know, like a submarine firing a torpedo.
Mercifully, at that instant, Sara heard Luke's signal, a hoot owl, so very, very faint. She stepped away from Burch and into the shadows. "Think you can find me in the dark, you big bad submarine?"
"Oh, I'll find you, all right. I'll..."
"Shhhh. No noise. It's part of the game. You have to find your way to the pool, and I've got to be real quiet so you won't know where I am."
She could tell by the lilt in his voice he was getting into the spirit of what he thought was going to be the wildest sex he'd ever had. "That pool's not all that big. I'll find you, all right."
"But you can't use your hands to reach out for me because I'm going to be waiting with my legs spread wide open, and I want to see if you can find me in the dark and plunge right in, and then we'll have at it, big guy."
"Big guy," he echoed proudly. "Oh, yeah, I'm big, all right. Hell, I don't think I've ever been this big. You've got me so hot I don't have enough skin left to blink my eyes."
Sara found the curtain and parted it as she whispered, "This way. You stand right here. Feel with your toe for the water, so you'll know where the steps begin. I'm going on in, okay? Now remember to be real quiet so you can hear which way I'm going."
"So what happens if I don't find you the first time I try?"
"Then you lose."
"What does that mean?" He was beginning to wonder if it were going to be as much fun as he'd thought.
"You don't get any tonight."
"Hey, that's not going to happen."
"We'll see."
She stepped into the water that Luke had made sure was warm and immediately moved to the side to position herself for a quick exit, aware at any time the overhead lights would flash on, the curtain to the sanctuary would open, and she would have maybe two seconds to hoist herself out of the pool and shimmy on her belly to disappear beneath the rear curtain. She only hoped Luke moved fast to pull her up so they could get out of there before anyone recognized her.
Pressing her hands, palms down, on the floor behind the pool, Sara took a deep breath and readied herself. It would be over any second. All of it. Burch would be ruined forevermore, and she could get on with her life, satisfied that Dewey had been avenged.
Suddenly, Burch let out a roar that would have made Johnny Weismuller proud and yelled, "I'm gonna fire my torpedo. Me and my big torpedo are gonna..."
The lights flashed on. The curtains opened. And ten women plus Irene Cleghorn gasped in unison at the sight of Burch standing on the top step into the baptism pool pumping his penis up and down as he tried to make himself even harder in anticipation of launch.
Those who could tear their astonished, horrified gaze away from
Burch caught only a glimpse of a woman's bare ass as she slipped beneath the curtain with all the ease and grace of a seal sliding along ice. No face was seen. Not even the color of her hair was noted. It all happened too fast.
Burch, still holding onto his penis, which was rapidly shrinking, threw himself into the pool, for, in the midst of the horror of realizing he had an audience, heard Luke's hasty, whispered warning from behind the curtain.
"Say it was Sara, and I swear I'll kill you and make it look like an accident."
Burch hit the water so hard it splashed up and over the sides.
Irene fainted. The other ten women, their gasps having changed to hysterical shrieks, ran into each other in their mad haste to exit. One fell and her ankle snapped when someone stepped on it. Another slipped in the water spilling from the pool and split her head open on the edge of the altar. The rest made it to the door and burst onto the wide marble steps outside to scream at the top of their lungs and wake the whole town.
And all the while, Burch floundered in the pool. He was still there when Reverend Lansky, hearing the commotion from the parsonage next door, arrived on the scene moments later to help him out and put yet another choir robe to use covering a naked body.
Meanwhile, Luke and Sara escaped without being seen.
"Good job," Sara gave him a hug and a kiss before turning her gaze toward the heavens to solemnly declare, "I did it for you, Dewey. Rest in peace, my love."
After she had gone, Luke also looked to the stars. "You rest, too, Momma," he murmured.
Chapter 27
Leaning back in his chair, feet propped on the sill, Luke stared out the window through templed fingers. It was October. The air was crisp and cold, with trees rattling in the wind and leaves scudding down the street.
Two months had passed since Burch was caught, literally, with his pants down in the baptismal pool at the First Baptist Church. The town could not have been rocked more had a dynamite blast at the marble quarry gone awry.
Burch disappeared for a few days, finally creeping back home when he realized he had no place to go. He was ruined, socially and professionally, and all he could do was hang his head and hope the talk would eventually die down.
Everyone knew, of course, that the party for Ramona had been a ruse and Irene had not made the phone calls. No one knew why Burch had been set up and didn't care, anyway.
As for the woman's identity, folks had no idea whose face went with the bare fanny seen emerging from the baptismal pool.
To ensure that Burch didn't yield to temptation once the initial shock wore off, Luke had phoned him at his office and bluntly repeated his threat. Burch had actually broken down crying as he promised over and over that his lips were sealed. And Luke had smiled and whispered into the phone, "Cry me a river, Burch. Cry me a river."
So now Luke had only one swing of the hammer left—Buddy Hampton, but he was starting to worry that he might not succeed in getting anything on him, after all. Sending him to jail for being involved with the Klan was not what Luke had in mind for retribution, and it would be hard to convict him, anyway. Buddy had money, connections, and would probably find a way to weasel out of it. As for his having a mistress and an illegitimate child, he could handle that kind of scandal, too.
Murline had promised to let Luke know when Buddy sent her to Talladega to wire money again, but he hadn't for the past couple of months. It wasn't unusual, she assured Luke. Sometimes when he went on a business trip, he would take care of it himself because she suspected he took an extra day or two to spend with his girlfriend.
The phone rang in the outer office. Luke hoped it wasn't for him. He was a maelstrom of emotions lately. Besides the hunger to get something on Buddy, he was stewing about Emma Jean and what she would say if he asked her to run away with him. He was pretty sure she loved him, but he was leery of giving her the opportunity to use him as a scapegoat to get away from her misery if she didn't. Yet he knew that unless he got up the nerve to ask, he might never know because so far they had both stuck to their agreement that neither would expect anything permanent, that what they had was for today only and to hell with tomorrow. And maybe he should leave it at that. Maybe it wasn't too late to take that job as a mercenary. He could make plenty of money, and if he didn't get killed, he could retire at an early age and spend the rest of his life on a beach in California with some hot-blooded babe like Coquina. Only he didn't want Coquina, or anybody like her. He wanted Emma Jean and was going to have to make up his mind what to do about her.
Wilma called, "It's for you. A woman. Won't tell me her name."
Luke took the phone and waited for Wilma to hang up the extension before saying, "Sheriff Ballard here."
"I can't talk but a second. He's gone to the restroom."
Hearing Murline's voice, Luke felt a rush of excitement. "What's up?"
"He's sending me to Talladega this morning to wire money to Birmingham. You said to let you know."
"When are you leaving?"
"In about half an hour."
"Do you think Swain knows it's being sent today?"
"Probably I got here a little early this morning and happened to spot Buddy going into the cafeteria. I was curious, so I peeked in and saw him on the pay phone. I suspect he was calling Juanita to tell her. I've never known him to call her from his office, even on his private line. He just doesn't take any chances, like I'm doing now," she added grimly.
"I wonder..."he said slowly, thoughtfully, "why I get the feeling that you could save me a lot of time if you wanted to, Murline."
"What... what do you mean?"
"I mean that I think you've got all the answers I need, but you're making me dig. How come?"
"I... I don't know what you're talking about," she stammered. "You said to call you the next time he asked me to wire money, so I did."
"It's just a feeling. I hope I'm wrong."
He hung up and pulled on his jacket, thinking how he had planned to sneak in to see Emma Jean that night because Rudy was working the three to eleven shift, but now he was going to Birmingham to see if he could find out for himself what Murline seemed scared to tell him. Since there was no way of knowing how long it would take, he needed to let Emma Jean know he might not make it, after all.
"Is the jail laundry ready?" he asked as he stepped into the outer office.
In a hurry, he did not notice how Kirby and Matt looked at each other as Wilma, brows raised in surprise, reminded him, "You took it yesterday."
He remembered, felt sheepish, then quickly recovered. "Oh, yeah, well, I guess it's ready to pick up then. I'll get it on my way out of town."
"Out of town?" she echoed.
"Birmingham. I've got to check on some things." He hurried on his way, not giving her time to ask more questions.
* * *
The laundromat was so busy Luke could only have a hasty, whispered exchange with Emma Jean as he picked up the basket of clean, folded linens for the jail. He murmured he had urgent business out of town and might not get to see her that night. He stopped by his house long enough to change into civvies, glad Alma was at work so he didn't have to go through the usual inquisition, then drove to Birmingham.
The Western Union office was located in the heart of the big industrial steel town. He parked his car a few blocks away and walked back to the office. Giving the bored-looking agent a fictitious name, he asked whether a wire for him had arrived yet.
"Nothing this morning," the clerk said without having to check. He had been on duty since seven and was aware of everything that had come in.
"I'll wait then."
"Suit yourself." The clerk went back to reading the morning paper.
Luke settled into a chair and picked up an old copy of National Geographic and absently leafed through it. Glancing at the wall clock often, he watched the time creep to noon. Finally, a bell tinkled as the door opened. Luke saw it was a negro man and continued flipping magazine pages. He hoped C. Swain, Carl Swain, would hurry
up. He didn't want to spend all day in Birmingham. He wanted to get back to Hampton, catch up on all his work, and make ready for a nice, quiet evening with Emma Jean. He'd rather take her to a motel, though. He didn't like making love to her in Rudy's bed, but she said it gave her good memories for the times when... Luke shook away the thought of her and Rudy in bed.
"Count it yourself, Carl. It's twice as much as usual."
Luke's head snapped up.
"Oh, I trust you, suh," the old negro responded. He stuffed the money into his pocket, signed the receipt the agent shoved across the counter, then left.
The agent met Luke's inquiring eyes with a snicker. "Yeah, I know. That's a lot of dough for a colored, but it's been rolling in ever since I've been working here."
Luke strained to keep his voice even, to hide the excitement he felt bubbling from deep within. "And how long is that?"
"Nine years now."
"And he gets money every month?"
"Most of the time."
"Wonder where it comes from."
"The office in Talladega. Me and the agent there have talked about it from time to time. He says a white woman brings it in, but she never says nothin', just pays the fee to wire it."
"Well, maybe he works for white people and picks it up for them."
"Naw. I don't think so. But it's sure funny."
"What's his last name?"
"Swain. Why?"
"No reason. Just curious." Luke stood, stretched and forced a yawn. "Well, evidently my ship's not coming in today. I'll check tomorrow."
"I'll be here," the agent said in dismissal.
* * *
Luke burned up the highway and was in Hampton in time to change back into his uniform before Alma got off work. Then he drove straight to Murline's house but was not surprised she wasn't home yet. She was taking advantage of her day off after going to Talladega. He radioed Wilma to let her know he was back in service, then spent the rest of the afternoon just cruising around town, frequently checking to see if Murline had returned.
Final Justice Page 30