This is like a treasure hunt. And I’m so easily made happy lately. Give me anything that doesn’t deal with death or duplicity. Then I felt both sad and guilty as I remembered poor Uncle Garland whose ashes were probably still at the funeral home. Actually, I guess it’s not a treasure hunt; it’s more like sacking King Tut’s tomb.
At Commerce Bank, the manager came out to report, somewhat apologetically, that Mr. Carter had no accounts of any kind with the bank. As usual I’d gotten cocky too quickly. As I drove the three blocks to Merchants and Farmers, I hoped my luck would improve. I did find more stock certificates and bonds, but no will. At Carter County bank, my luck improved. In addition to stocks and bonds, I found a sealed envelope that said “Last Will and Testament of Garland Carter.” I drove quickly back to the Carter office building, anxious to catch Ham before he left for lunch.
When Marie saw me with the stack of large manila envelopes in my hands, she quickly knocked on Ham’s door and opened it before he had time to respond. Ham stood up from his desk as I entered. “Look at that treasure trove. You did good, girl. Is there a will?”
I tried to nod affirmatively, but my chin was holding all the envelopes in place. I moved quickly toward him, raised my head, and let the envelopes fall forward onto his desk. He was already dialing the telephone.
“Victoria, this is Ham. Can you and Charlotte come back to Delta Ridge for the weekend? We’re having a reading of Garland’s will. Yes, okay. We’ll see you Friday night.” I realized that, as chief flunky, I might not know much, but I did know that readings of the will were usually done in the movies or in television drama. Lawyers sent letters to individuals mentioned in an estate informing them only of their individual inheritances. What Ham had in mind was a dramatic reading with appropriate theatrics and an excuse to summon Victoria and Charlotte back to Delta Ridge.
Trudging back up the stairs to my office, I met Sara Lee and Aunt Elizabeth on their way to lunch. “Can you take time to eat?” my aunt asked.
“No. Ham’s had me traipsing the streets to find Garland’s will.”
“Well, did you?” Aunt Elizabeth asked.
“Yes, we’re having a reading at the Hall this weekend. Victoria and Grandmother are coming back to Delta Ridge.”
“I’ll keep my calendar open,” Aunt Elizabeth shook her head.
“You and J.D. didn’t meet long,” Sara Lee interjected.
“No, we were both called away on separate missions. Nice fellow, though.”
“I think so,” Sara Lee agreed.
“Is there something I should know?”
“Well, we’ve been seeing each other for a while. Do you approve?” Sara Lee smiled.
“I do. I wish I could join you for lunch, but I have to return phone calls and do some work.”
I glanced through the stack of messages on my desk. Dental appointment confirmed. Reminder to call Donna Brooks. What could that be about? I dialed the number.
“Holly, you’re a busy lady,” Donna said as a remark to flatter. “I’m having a small dinner party Saturday night at our house. We want you to come.”
“My mother will be home this weekend. I don’t know if I can get away.” I was tentative as I tried to decide what Ham would have me do since Donna had been one of my specific investigative assignments.
“Do bring her. I’d love to spend time with Victoria. She’s made herself a stranger for too long. I’ve invited Elizabeth. It’s seven o’clock Sunday evening. Very casual. We’re looking forward to seeing you then, dear. Bye bye.”
I stared at the silent phone in my hand. Well, that’s one more decision I didn’t get to make.
I began studying the FBI report that J. D. hadn’t had the opportunity to explain. I determined that I would work until five o’clock. From five to seven I had another project in mind now that I had discovered I was such a good detective. After I got home, I was going into the basement to explore my daddy’s old files. I would read every file active on the day he died and look for whatever clues I could find that might tell me more about his professional life. I would work every day on my own time, no matter how long it took. Only then would I be able to lay him to rest. Only then did I feel he could rest.
14 Road To Jericho
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING I dropped by the law office to pick up a map of Carter County. Dressed in a denim shirt and jacket over khakis, I hopped back into the Bronco ready to begin my investigation. Turning onto Main Street, I drove north to Grace Street, then headed west to the backside of the ridge. Passing through acres of pine trees on both sides of Grace Street, I observed the Jericho city limits sign on my right. Immediately I crossed a rough, rusty bridge over Gracey Creek, a muddy stream that ran dry in summer and solved some of Jericho’s drainage problems the rest of the year.
I had not been in Jericho since childhood when I occasionally rode with mother to take Queen Esther home. I neither remembered nor was prepared for the marked change in the landscape I observed during the three-mile drive. I quickly saw why Delta Ridge residents sometimes referred to Jericho as Greasy Acres. The railroad track that shimmied down the length of the ridge was, in Carter County, relegated to flat land. As I crossed four widths of tracks, I noticed the Coffee Cup Cafe on my right only a few feet away. A row of grimy windows in the once white building gave the appearance of a dining car with odd views. The windows looked not out on the surrounding countryside, but at the tracks and occasional trains parallel to them.
Grace Street narrowed and filled with potholes as it became Jericho’s main street. Having passed the initial pine break, planted to screen off the sensibilities of the residents of Delta Ridge, I noticed the absence of any kind of tree or other plantings. Trash blew along the street cluttered with pawn shops, bail bond offices, and rent-to-own stores that advertised rooms full of furniture for fifty-dollars a month. Mauve velour reclining chairs and pictures of flowers in intense blues, violent greens, and shocking pinks peered tiredly from the dusty windows. On a portable metal sign a FINA station, fronted with a tire fence, advertised regular gas at $1.09 a gallon. A small dingy hotel or large boarding house, depending on one’s perspective, its once white windows now gray and peeling, stood on the corner a block from the tracks. Its pretentious, dilapidated sign announced “The Royal Arms.” Once a lodging place for railroad men, it probably was filled still, but with vagrants, drunks, and drug users. I studied the black man with red eyes propped beside the doorway of a convenience store and wondered if his home was the large dumpster in the trashy vacant lot on the left.
Driving slowly as I studied the map, I turned sharply to the right as Kitchen Street appeared too quickly on a sign obscured by a flea market in a building that appeared abandoned. The business district, one block deep on Kitchen Street, was quickly replaced by small, faded, frame houses with cars in narrow front yards where grass might have grown but probably never did. The street was relatively quiet. It was a cold morning and those who went to work had already gone.
The sameness of the houses was broken by an occasional trailer or ragged vacant lot covered in straw grass, the remnants of summer weeds. I passed a few houses of more recent vintage, probably the Fifties or Sixties, four rooms, a bath and a picture window. One had a chain-link fence in the front yard surrounding what looked like spiky, brown rose bushes. Another pawn shop, an auto body shop, and a convenience store on the left made up a mini-mall, six blocks down the street. A run-down building holding a tobacco shop was next door. I glanced down again at my notes. I was looking for 803.
Slowing down again, I stopped the car before a large two-story, red brick house obviously built in the Forties. An old, red Chevrolet with chrome fins sat in the yard under a drooping oak tree. Parking on the street, I walked across a broken sidewalk up concrete steps onto the wide front porch.
PEELING PAINT GREETED me on the white square posts that supported the porch roof and on the gray, painted porch floor. A broken swing dangled from wire hooks in the water-stained porch ceiling. I k
nocked on the door, waited a few moments, and knocked again. From a distance deep within the house, I heard a baby cry. Finally, a plump, young woman in blue jeans too small and a stained white sweatshirt appeared at the door holding the now silent baby.
I smiled. “I wonder if you could help me? I’m looking for Roy Anderson.”
“He don’t live here,” the woman hesitated. “What you need him for?”
“I’m Holly Scott from the prosecutor’s office. I’m investigating the murder of his sister, Avon Wallace. Do you know where I might find him?”
The woman studied me for a full minute as if trying to decide what to do. “Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared down the dark hall that I could see through the door left ajar. Returning shortly, she said, “He stays upstairs sometimes. Go on up, second door on the right.”
The bare boards creaked beneath my feet as I held onto the rickety banister. It was hard to see in the dim light, and the open staircase smelled of cooked cabbage and sour milk. I approached the drab gray door in the dingy hall and knocked.
“Come in,” called a man’s voice from inside.
I entered the room, also dark, and made out the figure of a lanky, unshaven man in a red flannel shirt sitting in a brown plaid chair of indestructible fabric in the corner.
“I’m Holly Scott,” I announced from the doorway.
“Yeah, come on in. Have a chair.” He pointed to a metal kitchen chair covered in green vinyl. The only light in the room came from a large, uncovered window on the side of the room facing the street. My eyes finally adjusted to the drab light.
The only other furniture in the room was a brown Naugahyde couch. A dark coffee table with round legs, and a small metal TV tray, which held his cigarettes, beside the man’s chair, ash tray, and coffee cup. Across from him on the wall by the door, an antique Philco portable television sat on a rickety wire stand.
“You want some coffee?” He looked at me.
I do, but not here, I thought. But I said, “Do you have some more?”
“Gladys,” he shouted to no one present. He shouted again. A door opened between them and a woman’s face appeared. “Gladys, this here’s Holly Scott. She’s the prosecutor. Would you git her some coffee?”
The woman’s face, revealing the ravages of more miles than years, looked like Gladys might have put in long hours in smoky bars gazing into the cloudy bottoms of numerous empty beer mugs. After a “How you?” she disappeared into the small kitchen behind her and returned with a chipped white, restaurant mug.
“How you take it?” she inquired.
“This is fine, thank you.” I said as we assessed each other.
“She’s here about Avon,” Roy volunteered.
Gladys was interested. She returned to the kitchen for her own coffee cup, picked up a cigarette from Roy’s pack, and settled down on the couch.
I tried not to look astonished at the middle-aged woman’s too-black, uncombed hair or the large red sweatshirt that boasted: “Missouri Bomber.” She’s big enough to wrestle, and probably tough enough too, I thought.
“What do you wanta know?” Roy sat upright in his chair and placed his hands on his knees.
“Confidentially, Mr. Anderson, we have one man arrested, as well as several other possible suspects in your sister’s murder. We want to be sure we try the right person. Any information you could give us about your sister would be helpful.”
“I already talked to the police.”
“Yes. I read your statement. Were you and your sister close?”
“Naw. I wouldn’t say close. She used to come over here some when Ma was alive, but I probably ain’t seen her but a coupla times since.”
“Roy, now she sent you some money when you hurt your back and got laid off at the mill,” Gladys reminded him.
“Yeah, she did. She was good about gittin’ things for ma, but she was ashamed of the rest of us,” Roy conceded.
“Do you have much family?” I asked.
“Three other brothers, but nobody else here. They all went north when they quit school. Rockford and Rochelle and up to Michigan. Don’ never come home much neither. Got their own families up there.”
“Is your father living?”
“I can’t rightly say about that. Let me see. Avon was the youngest. He left home when I was twenty. Got laid off at the mill. Said he was goin’ to Chicago to get work. Ma never heared from him after that. People we knowed up there would see him from time to time. Ain’t heared nothin’ in a long time. I’m the oldest. I was already workin at the mill. Ma worked at the shirt factory. We made out OK.”
“How old was Avon when he left?”
“I reckon about thirteen.”
“What kind of relationship did she have with your father?”
“What do you mean?”
“How did they get along?”
“Not so good. He drank a lot and was a real mean drunk. She tried to stay out of his way. He was sure happy when she was born though. After four boys he really wanted a girl. He never was one to buy Ma gifts or nothin’, but when Avon was born, he came home with this big blue bottle full of pretty perfume. It was called “Evening in Paris,” but Ma got mixed up, thought it was in an Avon bottle. That’s how Avon got her name. Ma was so happy about that perfume, she named her new baby Avon. She kept that bottle on her dresser all the rest of her life. Sure did.”
“What was Avon like as a child?” I wanted to keep him talking.
“Skinny girl. Kept to herself. Read books all the time. That was one thing I think was wrong with her. She always read too many books. It ruined her eyes. Had to get them thick glasses.”
“Did she date much when she was in high school?” I wished I could take back the question as soon as I asked it, but Roy didn’t find it unusual.
“Naw. Never. That’s why all them stories about her messin’ around was so odd to me. ‘Course I guess folks that don’t sow wild oats early sows ’em late. But I don’t expect she ever had a boyfriend ’til she got married.”
“Tell me about her husband.” I was excited to be entering new territory.
“Well, I never met him. She married him after she went to Little Rock to medical school. He worked in the hospital as a technician or something like that.”
“How long were they married?”
“Two or three years, I think. He was a doper, mean as hell to her.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“Last I heard he was in jail.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, before Ma died, five or six years ago, but I don’t think Avon had any contact with him. They been divorced at least ten years. He probably got hisself killed by now or died of a drug overdose.”
“Did Avon take drugs?”
“I heared she did, but I never saw her on ‘em.”
“Can you think of anybody who might have wanted to kill her?”
“Naw. I told the police I didn’t know her fancy friends—none of her crazy patients.” He took a long draw off his short cigarette.
“Why do you say, ‘crazy’?”
“Oh, you know, some of them needed a lot of medicine.”
“Did she prescribe the medicine?”
“I heard that she’d prescribe stuff, yeah.”
“How’d you hear that?”
“Oh, you know, people at the mill. She’d give ’em pain killers. I don’t guess I’m talking out of school. Ain’t nobody can hurt her now.” He stopped talking as his voice choked. Then he covered his eyes.
“Was she your doctor?”
“I saw her after I hurt my back.”
“What kind of medication did she give you?”
“It’s been a while ago. I don’t take nothin’ now. At first the pain was real bad. She gave me some Darvon, but she told me to be real careful with it.”
I thanked Roy for his time and the information and Gladys for the coffee, then drove back to Delta Ridge.
AS I DROVE away, I real
ized that I felt pity for this luckless man whom life had probably never dealt a winning hand. One of the cruelest effects of poverty is how it can detach families from each other, cause them to bury their feeling until pretty soon they don’t have any or they’ve been shoved so far down beneath the surface that it takes a really traumatic event, like violent death, to bring them back up.
Avon was Roy’s baby sister, and no matter if she snubbed him from shame, he loved her from childhood, and he felt shame too. I worried about my own hypocrisy. I could care about the poor in a general way, but up close and personal the cigarette smells, the stale air, the drab, dark rooms in dilapidated houses that smelled of urine and mildew, I knew I would never get used to.
I realized again how important my family was to me. As a child, I had thought all families were alike, especially Southern families: they loved each other, their houses, their land, their sense of place. But less fortunate people didn’t own land. They were damned lucky if they had a place to live that kept them dry and warm. Their families went away, and sometimes they never saw them again. It was more like litters of puppies, spread to the wind if they survived. Mean and meager life makes people mean. I always hated that word. What have I heard about the dehumanizing effects of poverty? So much. How ironic that the murder happened in an affluent neighborhood of Delta Ridge. Actually three murders: two doctors dead and another arrested for murder.
After stopping by my house for lunch prepared by Queen Ester, I rushed back to the office to make my report to Ham.
“DID YOU CHECK on the ex-husband?” I asked in an attempt to control the Q& A., pleased with my interview with Roy Anderson.
“The police checked. They said he left Little Rock after the divorce and hasn’t been heard of since. The brother told you he was in jail. Did he tell you where?”
Had I asked? Self-applause didn’t get to last long in my family.
“Never mind. I’ll get Chief Collins to check on it. You did a good job.” I relished Ham’s praise, even though I knew better than to wallow in it. That mud puddle always dried up in a hurry, and before I knew it, I was back to picking street gravel out of my backside (figuratively speaking). But winning always made Ham magnanimous, and I suspected he thought that with my leg work and his brains, we were making progress. “Michael’s back. He wants to go over the FBI report with you this afternoon.”
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