Marshall interrupted his wife, “Holly, I guess you’re involved in these murder investigations. It’s absolutely shocking to have three people killed like that right here in Delta Ridge. A real blow to the medical community, I can tell you. You can’t imagine the feeling at the hospital.”
“Yes, I’m sure...,” I began.
“Holly’s only been home a couple of weeks,” Aunt Elizabeth said in an effort to rescue me.
“Yes, let’s see, I read in the paper that that new lawyer, Michael Martin, has been appointed prosecutor, and you’re the deputy. Is that right, Holly?” Marshall asked.
“Yes, and my grandfather too,” I responded. “Ham will be serving as deputy as well.”
“That’s good,” Marshall said, “I’m sure he’s forgotten more than most of the prosecutors in this state will ever know about prosecution.”
Let’s just hope he remembers some of it, I thought to myself.
“Are you a teacher?” Jack Walker turned to Aunt Elizabeth.
“No, a psychologist,” she responded.
“And a Carter as in Carter County?” he inquired, obviously interested.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “That was an ancestor.”
“Jack, Delta Ridge was built by Elizabeth and Holly’s great-great-grandfather, before the War between the States. I’m sure you’ve heard of Hamilton Carter, ‘Ham,’ the lawyer and former prosecutor. He’s Elizabeth’s father and Holly’s grandfather.”
“I’ve heard the name,” Dr. Walker responded.
“Where are you from, Dr. Walker?” Elizabeth asked, changing the focus that was becoming somewhat embarrassing.
“Please, call me Jack.” His smile at Aunt Elizabeth revealed his straight, white teeth, probably strong enough to bite into brick. My recollection was correct. He does look like a Sixties movie star. “I’m from California. I’ve only been in Delta Ridge about three months.”
“However did you get here?” Aunt Elizabeth wanted to know.
“Oh, I had an offer I couldn’t refuse.” He smiled. “I’d been ready to leave California for some time. I was in the L. A. area. It’s so overpopulated. Crime. Pollution. I had just been through a divorce. I needed a change of scene, a slower pace.”
“Delta Ridge is perfect for that,” Donna concurred.
“That’s what I thought—until I came home,” I interjected, and the group laughed again.
“Hello, everyone.” Felicia appeared before us.
“Are you working tonight, Felicia?” Donna inquired.
“I’ve just finished,” Felicia responded, looking as if she were anxious to sit down and have a drink. “The table is ready,” she announced to her mother.
“Felicia, have you met Dr. Walker?” Marshall, standing for Felicia’s arrival, made the introductions.
“We’re here for dinner too,” Donna announced. “Why don’t we all eat together?” She looked at Elizabeth.
“Well,” Aunt Elizabeth glanced from me to Felicia waiting for a consensus.
“Sure,” Felicia answered. “Let me get us a larger table.” She left without waiting for a response.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about an evening of being grilled by Marshall and Donna, but the new doctor was certainly attractive and pleasant enough, even if he did have a foot fetish. My discomfort was momentarily alleviated by his attention to Aunt Elizabeth, who seemed to be enjoying herself. As the group walked into the dining room, I found myself between Donna and Marshall, while Aunt Elizabeth and Dr. Walker walked in front of us. He gives new meaning to the phrase, ‘hanging on her every word’. My lord, she can lasso a man in a hurry, I thought, hoping I wasn’t jealous. Elizabeth Taylor and John Gavin in their prime make a striking couple. Elizabeth was talking with both voice and hands and seemed oblivious to the other diners in the half empty room who, I observed, looked curiously at our group.
“You sit here between Marshall and me so we can visit, Holly,” Donna eyed the round table for six. “Jack, why don’t you sit between Elizabeth and me?” Felicia, who had been involved in a discussion with the waiter, returned to the table and took the remaining chair between her mother and Marshall Brooks.
“Everyone we know is distressed over Sam Oliver’s arrest,” Donna began. I am captured, I thought, looking across the table at Aunt Elizabeth, who was too busy mesmerizing Dr. Wallace to notice the plight of her beloved niece. I should be studying her tactics with men. She moves them in fast, and God knows I need help.
“Yes, I do get great satisfaction from my work,” Aunt Elizabeth reflected, staring down at her hands as Dr. Walker’s eyes attempted to hold hers. No, she will not help me. I am doomed to old maid-dom. Dr. Walker glanced sympathetically in my direction giving me his best ‘Poor lost girl’ look. Good Lord, no wonder Aunt Elizabeth is captivated, as I tried to recover from his penetrating gaze for the second time. Those eyes are the color and size of robins’ eggs, and they nest on the sides of his head. The thick lashes matched the darkness of the neatly trimmed beard and thick hair that was slightly gray at the temples. The long, slim, manicured fingers encircled his wine glass.
“I want you to try this new Australian Chardonnay,” Felicia announced, as the waiter filled the glasses. “Compliments of the club. We need your opinion.”
“Delicious.” Jack sipped his wine, studied the glass and turned his gaze back to Aunt Elizabeth who was looking at him now and waiting expectantly with the expression of a puppy needing a rub.
Hopeless. I surrender. I didn’t say aloud, thinking, Sometimes in trying to impress men, I outdo myself, while other times I do myself in. I never seem able to control which one.
“The police did arrest Dr. Oliver Friday,” I said flatly, assuming it had already hit the newspaper, and thinking that the only power I had at this table was the ability to share fresh information.
“We’ve known Sam and Carla for years,” Donna said, attempting to speak for the good doctor’s character. “I can’t imagine Sam’s ever killing anyone. It’s inconceivable.”
I studied my aunt. She is a striking woman. She looks younger than forty-six. I wonder how old Jack Wallace is.
Getting no response, Donna continued. “Sam’s always been a hell raiser but that woman was brazen. She ran after him and every other doctor at the hospital who looked like he might have fooling around on his mind. I have to say that she never bothered Marshall.”
“Thanks a lot, sweet thing.”
“Well, anybody could have done it, the way she conducted her life. I used to say that one day she’d get what she deserves, didn’t I, Marshall?”
Marshall offered an obviously much practiced nod and said, “Yes, dear,” as the group continued to stare at Donna with half-concealed amusement.
“You can’t go around trying to seduce every man, I should say every husband, you see and not expect to pay the price. There’s no telling who she’s been involved with. I mean, she was looking for somebody, like in the movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar, if you ask me. Probably somebody out of her sordid past crazed on drugs did it.”
All other conversation stalled as the group continued to look at Donna.
“Let’s order dinner,” Marshall interrupted the silence. “Felicia, what do you recommend?”
“The quail is wonderful,” Felicia said quickly. “It comes with wild rice and fresh asparagus.”
“Sounds good,” Marshall nodded to the returning waiter. The others nodded affirmatively.
“Put everyone’s dinner on my check,” Marshall whispered to the waiter. “And bring another bottle of the chardonnay.”
“At least half the town knew about the money the Tices kept in their bedroom safe.” I marveled at Donna’s complete control of the conversation that offered little possibility of a change of subject. “Even Simon was telling me about her estate jewelry.”
My God, I’m caught up too, I thought. I had forgotten all about the charming Dr. Walker as all ears waited for Donna’s next proclamation.
“Yes,
he did Mrs. Tice’s hair, poor thing. That’s about the only time she went out anymore—once a week for a shampoo. Her arthritis was so bad she couldn’t do it herself. And from what I hear, she had early Alzheimer’s. You know, she’s always loved jewelry, grew up poor as a church mouse. She was Dr. Tice’s nurse. He married her after his first wife died.”
“I remember that,” Aunt Elizabeth entered the conversation.
“Don’t date yourself, Elizabeth. That was twenty-five years ago,” Marshall winked as Donna continued to hold the floor.
“Simon said every week she wore different jewelry: diamonds, rubies, emeralds--lovely old pieces. He said her fingers were so crooked from the arthritis that he wondered how she got the rings on her fingers.”
“Arthritic spring,” Jack announced as the group turned to look at him. “Rings can be hinged like bracelets. My mother wore them.”
“Well, anyway, her hands were so swollen, they looked as if they pained her terribly.” Donna was not yet ready to relinquish control of the conversation. “She took a lot of medication, I think. I talked to Billy Ball, down at the drug store.”
Good grief. Donna should be conducting the police investigation, or prosecuting instead of me. I knew the police had talked to Simon, but I hadn’t seen a copy of an interview with Billy Ball. “Do the police have this information?” I inquired.
“I don’t know,” Marshall intervened to support his wife, “but what Donna says is true that several people knew about the safe. Dr. Tice mentioned his concern to me and I’m sure others at the hospital. Sometimes Mrs. Tice got it in her head that Dr. Tice was about to leave her. As her mind began to go, she became increasingly jealous. He told me once she accused him of carrying on with Jessie Lee, the cleaning lady.”
“Was he?” I asked.
Donna and Aunt Elizabeth laughed.
“I don’t think so, Holly,” Marshall said gently. “Let’s just say that Jessie Lee’s age and weight were twice his.”
I was feeling embarrassed and defensive. I had forgotten how cruel Delta Ridge society could be, and I couldn’t be expected to remember all these people. Marshall Brooks and Aunt Elizabeth had lived here almost half a century.
Dr. Walker shot me a look I took for sympathy.
“Years ago, before she got so bad off,” Donna remembered, “her grandson Jimbo lived with her for a while, while his mother was in the hospital. One day she packed a beer in the child’s school lunch. At that time, he was a shy little fellow. Thought it was a coke. He had to turn it in to his teacher. The story was all over town. All the children in his class went home and told their parents.”
“I’m not sure I understand why she kept all that money at home, or how she got it if Dr. Tice didn’t want her to have it.” I was puzzled.
“Well, Holly,” Marshall began, “she wanted it as a nest egg if Doctor Tice ever left her. It was her security. I heard that she and Dr. Tice were involved while his wife was living. The first Mrs. Tice was sick a long time. Who knows, the current Mrs. Tice may have felt some guilt because of her previous relationship with Dr. Tice? When she became ill, that guilt may have intensified. Alzheimer’s disease affects the brain in strange ways.
“But, back to the story. The Tices had a joint savings account which Dr. Tice finally closed after he discovered that, on her weekly outings to the hairdresser, she’d drop by the bank and draw out ten-thousand dollars at a time in cash, take it home, and put it in her bedroom safe where she could look at it whenever she wanted to, supposedly to take care of herself when he left with Jessie Lee. I’m speculating, you realize, but I do know that Dr. Tice was looking for some private papers in the safe and found over one-hundred-thousand-dollars’ cash and some jewelry he thought was in a lock box at the bank. He confronted her and her reaction was almost violent. She told him that if he touched it, she had a gun and would shoot him. He was thinking he might put her in a nursing home, but on her good days, she would probably walk out and go home. He talked to her daughter who wouldn’t hear of it. He was in a dilemma. That’s when he talked to me, I guess, about a month ago.”
The waiter served our dinner, and I reflected as I ate. That means Sam Oliver did know. He had not been charged with the Tices’ murder Friday, but his whereabouts were being checked. As soon as the meal was finished, I said, “Aunt Elizabeth, 1 must go. I need to work tonight, and I should be at the office early in the morning.”
I received no protest from anyone else in the group. “This was such fun. Let’s get together again soon,” Donna said to Aunt Elizabeth and me as we waited in the foyer for Felicia and Marshall to bring the cars.
“I hope to see you again very soon.” Jack’s wide smile embraced both of us.
12 Dreams And Nightmares
AT 3:00 o’clock Monday morning I woke with a start. For the first time since I returned home to Delta Ridge two and a half weeks before, I dreamed the dream that I dreaded would return. The dream, which I call the “Daddy Dream,” began twelve years ago when I was sent to live at my grandfather’s house and had continued after I went away to college the summer following that horrible February. It occasionally returned even after I moved to Little Rock.
But now on Monday night, when I least expected it, the dream came again and with it repressed memories as painful to recall as peeling back dried dressings from scabbed skin. Maybe the dream returned because I was feeling guilty that I had had no time to think about my daddy at all since I returned. Not with three murders and the death of Uncle Garland.
Always the dream began with my sitting in an open convertible kissing a young man whose face I could never clearly see. I wasn’t sure of the car’s location, but my father suddenly appeared wearing an open collared white dress shirt. “Get out of the car, Holly!” he screamed. I disengaged myself from the young man’s embrace and turned around to see my father floating in the air beside the car, his shirt spotted with fresh blood. I jumped from the car and tried to follow him, but like the class I sought from room to room at the university, he was elusive. Everywhere I thought he might be, I ran, but in vain. I search everywhere but he was not anywhere that I looked.
But this morning I awoke to the sound of my own voice crying, “Daddy! Daddy!” I lay very still in the bed realizing I was dreaming, then waiting to see if I had screamed loudly enough to disturb Felicia or Elizabeth. When no one came, I realized that maybe I had dreamed that I screamed. Maybe I never screamed at all. I went to the bathroom for a glass of water, a verification that I was really awake. Returning to bed, I could not go back to sleep. I sought the morning, wishing for daylight too bright to conceal the ghost which haunted me, but, at the same time I dreaded morning because I knew how tired I would be; yet I couldn’t get one thought out of my head. This time the dream held one difference. My father had actually spoken. “Holly, don’t you know, he’s the killer.”
In fitful dreams, I plowed on through until good light when I no longer felt that I needed quilts and blankets to conceal myself from me. There seemed to be no one else about to accost me, and the fellow in the convertible had driven away sometime after three.
Finally arising and putting on my robe, I walked through the silent hallway and down the steps through the foyer and into the library. “I’ll be back,” I said aloud to no one as I passed through the front entry. Once in the library, I poured myself a large glass of wine, found a stale cigarette in a silver box on the coffee table, and played with an antique silver lighter until it finally sparked into flame. I had smoked lightly in college and law school, but had stopped three years before. Rarely, when under stress, I would pick up a cigarette. I was amused now at knowing where to find one. Elizabeth did not smoke, had never smoked, and did not like for Felicia to smoke, so Felicia hid her cigarettes in the antique cigarette box on the coffee table in plain sight. I had encountered Felicia in the library holding a cigarette in one hand, the silver box in the other. “Don’t tell Mother, OK?” was all she said as she headed for the back porch. The cigarette calm
ed me, and the wine gave me courage. Walking back to the front hallway, I stood for a long time gazing at the staircase and remembering that February night twelve years before.
In my mind’s eye, I could see my father lying at the foot of the stairs on his stomach, his left hand on the bottom step as if he was attempting to use the step for support to stand or to crawl up the stairs. Why did I keep seeing him in a blood stained white shirt? I never saw his shirt. Only his back was visible and the navy blazer that Mother and I had bought him that Christmas at Oak Hall men’s store in Memphis two months before his death. All these years in memory I’d seen the stiff, heavily starched pinpoint cotton shirt. And only now did I understand that I had seen only the navy jacket.
Scooping me up from my corner of Catatonia, my grandfather removed me from the room before the ambulance came. He had said, “You must stay with your mother. She needs you.” Seated in a chair beside the bed, for what seemed an eternity, I watched my heavily sedated mother sleep. Hours later, it seemed, Aunt Elizabeth came to the house, walked into the bedroom, and said “Holly, I’m sorry, your father is dead.”
“No,” I wailed, even though I had thought he was dead when they later told me that I first found his body at the bottom of the stairs. For thirty minutes — until the doctor came and gave my sobbing mother a shot — I had continued to cry, “No, it’s not true. It can’t be true.” The next morning at 10:00 when I awoke at Aunt Elizabeth’s house, I asked myself the question: “Is my daddy still dead?” Hoping it was a dream, I studied myself, my clothes. Dressed in the plaid wool skirt I was wearing the night before, I realized I hadn’t dreamed. The nightmare was real. Even before I encountered the women from the church at the bottom of the stairs and saw the white book signed by callers open on the hall library table, I knew it was true. Final confirmation occurred when I walked into the kitchen and saw Aunt Elizabeth’s face, her swollen eyes. Yes, my nightmare was real.
Delta Ridge Page 12