Delta Ridge

by Frances Downing Hunter

  WEDNESDAY HAD BEEN an especially irritating day, and I was salivating for the time when I could unlock the door and enter into my shelter from the storm, my fortress, my sanctuary. Since Ham’s heart attack, Charley Carpenter, the blackmailing brother of Uncle Garland’s sweetheart Randy, had started calling me. Three times this week he informed me, urgently I might add, that he was willing to settle on behalf of his deceased brother’s estate regarding Uncle Garland’s will. Charley must have decided that he wanted to take the cash and let the credit go. He may have threatened to separate me from my toenails if I didn’t talk Ham into an immediate settlement, but my day was so bad, his threat was not its highlight. That’s why, I think, I couldn’t remember what his final figure of the week was exactly. Two-hundred thousand or three? The muse of booze, I suspected, paid him a daily visit too.

  Billy Ball had already been calling me every day with his perpetual “You’re the only one I’ve been able to open up to. You alone understand me,” ad nauseam. He didn’t seem to understand that the purpose of my intensive Q & A was to determine if he had motive, opportunity, or means to murder his wife. I was baffled that he had become an amorous little rodent before she was cold in the ground. Ironically, his appallingly unwanted and horribly disgusting pursuit worked in his favor. I quickly discounted Billy’s having found a new honeypot as a motive for Bootsy’s murder.

  My ego, not often given to delusions of grandeur, was not fantasy-driven enough to believe that Billy had killed Bootsy on the hope that I would one day succumb to his charms. “Could I ever see him in a different light?” he wanted to know.

  The most diplomatic response I could think of was, “Quite honestly, I have never seen you in any light at all.” I personally pronounced Billy not guilty of anything except an unrequited sexual addiction when he said, “Well, if you’re not available, (unfortunately, I was) could you check and see if your mother would go out with me? You know we were school mates.” (Unfortunately, I did.)

  BY FRIDAY MORNING good sense finally overcame my manic greed, and I decided to share with Michael the file that I had taken on Monday night from my daddy’s basement stash. I knew Michael could identify with my aversion to Ham’s “Why didn’t you do this?” and “Did you forget to ask that?” grilling over the questions he thought I should have asked. Fortunately Ham’s quizzing had paid off big time. Through my nightly file perusal, I was shocked to discover that my dad, Tom Scott, was Avon’s lawyer in her divorce case against Jack Wallace.

  I had not failed my father. My motivation for my nightly basement dumpster diving in the first place was to uncover a missing link somewhere—a piece to the puzzle—that could lead to the solving of unresolved mysteries. Finally, in the third cabinet, I was successful. While reading the faded, moisture riddled pages, I discovered that Daddy had met Avon secretly both for her protection and for his own. With no facts to support my thesis and a giant leap of faith, I shared with Michael my theory that Jack Wallace had entered the Vine Street house that fateful night and shot my dad with his own gun.

  “The man revealed in the retrieved file was a psychopath, crazy enough to kill anyone who thwarted him in his desire to control Avon. He had beaten her, raped her, stalked her, threatened her life, and the court’s restraining order had not been effective.”

  “How could it have been?” Michael asked after absorbing the information I presented. “At that time, no real stalking laws existed to protect her. Even now, they’re ineffective. Too many men still believe that a wife is a man’s chattel, his property”

  “I know,” I agreed, “The files make it apparent that twelve years ago, the police, in both Little Rock and Delta Ridge, had more domestic violence complaints than they could handle and no laws to prevent harassment until it turned to extreme battery or murder.”

  “You know, if your theory is correct, your father’s death twelve years ago saved Avon’s life.”

  “Well, at least it extended it”

  “According to the FBI report, Jack Wallace fled the state and was later found to be incarcerated in a California prison. After serving five years on a cocaine delivery charge and receiving three years’ probation, he dropped out of sight. Interrogation of a former cellmate, still in custody, revealed Wallace died somewhere in the Midwest during a drug deal gone sour, but no proof of that existed when final notations were made in the file. The same inmate also said that Wallace was always obsessed with his ex-wife and determined to get back at her. And, he remembered Wallace telling him that he had killed two men and would kill again if necessary.”

  “How could a man that violent stay out of trouble so long?”

  “He probably didn’t, but he may have had an alias or two that kept him free. But how could he have disappeared unless he’s dead?” Michael answered his own question: “Only with a fresh identity! By the way, Holly, you’re doing a great job on this. Keep up the good work.”

  Had Michael’s tone this morning been condescending? I didn’t have time to pursue that thought. At least my work induced Michael to give me the FBI report for weekend reading. Maybe he remembered that he would be otherwise occupied and suspected that I would not be. Whatever… I’m making progress. With my new best friends, my Jigger dog, an Australian wine bottle, and my frosted glass, I sat down at the desk in the library. Barely aware that it was Friday night, I said aloud, “I need to make my thoughts work for me.”

  Discovering that I liked the sound of my own voice as much as I liked the sound of the hot fire crackling in the library hearth against the accompaniment of Jigger’s rhythmic snoring on the ottoman beside me, I fumbled in a desk drawer for my old Dictaphone, clicked it on, and began speaking in my most resonant voice—putting creative flesh on the bony facts.

  I needed a new tale for this engagement. I had carried so many old lies with me throughout the years. Here goes, I thought as I began to record: “Jack Wallace would be forty-eight years old if he were alive. Described as highly intelligent and having an associates’ degree in radiological technology, he was working as an x-ray technician in Little Rock when Avon met him at the med where she was in training. Tall and good looking with a dominant personality, Wallace manipulated the shy, young Avon from Jericho through attention and flattery. Because she worked such long, grueling hours, he encouraged her amphetamine use. Later he introduced her to cocaine. His addiction to the drug increased the violence in his already borderline, paranoid personality. Obsessed with control and needing her future income and drug access, he couldn’t afford to lose her nor could his ego bear to think that she might dump him and move on. She was his ticket out of the North Little Rock slum of his birth. Son of a much-married waitress mother and a father who died in a prison fight shortly after his son’s birth Wallace feared female abandonment and inherited violent tendencies, which his environment encouraged. Dependent on an unstable and often absent mother, the boy became obsessed with the need for keeping a woman, controlling her, while remaining totally misogynistic.”

  Aunt Elizabeth would laugh at my psychobabble, I guess, but … If Jack Wallace is alive and in Delta Ridge, I know that he committed all these murders. “He killed the Tices and Bootsy for money and drugs. Avon, he killed from rage, personal humiliation, and a desire to control her. His ego could not bear that she had escaped from him after finishing her medical degree.

  “But what if he weren’t alive? Who then? A hit man? Who let the contract? Who needed quick money for old gambling debts? Who could afford to pay a contract killer? What about Charley’s doing it all himself? His cronies offer him alibis seven days a week, twenty four hours a day. A den of thieves, small time con artists, grifters, perverts, drunks, and druggies hang out in his club. How could you ever sort it out?

  “What about Billy Ball? Could he have killed the Tices, raped Avon, put out a hit on Bootsy? Avon was his doctor. He probably slept with her or tried to. He had a five-hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy on Bootsy. His pharmacy was near the hospital in the same strip cente
r as Dr. Tice’s office. He was Mrs. Tice’s druggist. He attempted instant intimacy with me this week. Was he a sex addict or a spy? Was he courting me to find out what the police knew? Did he think he could play me like a drum and I would sing? Bad metaphor. Worse theory.

  “What about Simon? The California drug conviction? Where did he get the money to finance his Delta Ridge salon? He’s doing well now but he must surely be heavily in debt from the start-up expenses, and the jewelry always visible in his salon on the arms, the wrists, the necks of his clientele. And he had the taste, the discrimination to know the difference between real gold, genuine diamonds, and paste. Theft would be a great temptation if he were an addict. (Felicia would surely know.) Dr. Sullivan says the killer’s no addict. Too rational. Never mind… Simon could sell the drugs to pay his debts. The salon would be a perfect cover for drug deals. And, he knew all three women very well… was probably the recipient of personal information, disclosures. In each case, all three women were clients. All three had Simon set their hair within three days of their deaths. Could he have raped and stabbed Avon Wallace so brutally? Wait… Simon wouldn’t have had to rape her. The semen sample matched Sam Oliver’s. And why was Simon so suddenly courting Felicia?”

  I was tired and getting confused. In Avon’s case there could have been live sex with a condom, or necrophilia, or no sex at all. Even murderers and rapists were becoming savvy high tech criminals, wearing condoms to conceal their DNA prints. “All four deaths could have been simple stabbings, three for profit, one from hate—on a cocaine-fused, alcohol high. But what could Avon Wallace have possessed that Simon wanted badly enough to stab her 147 times? No rebukes to her stylist for a bad hair day could make him angry enough to kill her and kill her and kill her. Unless she knew his secrets as well as he knew hers and was about to expose him. What secrets? The drug conviction? Not enough? That he had AIDS? Why does my brain keep jumping back to that one? What kind of prejudice do I have toward male hairdressers that I think they all must be gay? Time to give Simon a rest.

  “What about my date of the evening? Jack Walker? Jack Walker—Jack Wallace. Could they be the same man? Radiologist. Radiological technician. Both tall, dark. Jack Walker looks early forties. If alive, Jack Wallace would be… probably…forty-eight.” Plastic surgery would solve that problem, slim the nose, widen the eyes, puff up those George Clooney cheek bones. Contacts would change the eye color from blue to brown or brown to blue. I was tired and past remembering, but I knew their eye color was different. Both had lived in California. Jack Walker had been in town long enough to have done the deeds, all of them. And he was coming to my house to eat pizza at any minute. Smart. At that exact minute, the doorbell rang.

  “Do you like pepperoni?” Jack Walker asked in lieu of hello.

  “I hate pepperoni,” was my response.

  “I thought so. So do I. That’s why I asked them to hold it and the anchovies. You like ham, green peppers, onions, sun-dried tomatoes, Romano cheese, and black olives, right?”

  I had to laugh, even though I had not had time to make a phone call telling anyone he was coming over in case I needed rescue.

  “You’re a Sagittarius. I know. I checked. So am I. November 24th. We’re much more compatible than you would suspect,” he smiled the full Clooney smile.

  In spite of myself, I was charmed. I had not been alone with him, and in groups, he was not a talker. Together we made a fire in the fireplace, ate the pizza, and drank a good cabernet Aunt Elizabeth had left behind. I was set for an interrogation; yes, but for the first time, I sincerely wanted to know more about him and asked questions about his earlier life, questions to which he responded openly.

  “I was raised by my mother, a nurse. My dad was killed in Korea, an officer. No brothers or sisters. I married another nurse when I was doing my residency in San Diego. She left me for another resident from a rich, southern California family. No children.”

  “Why did you leave California?”

  “My mother died. I had some health problems. I wanted a slower pace.”

  I stared at what looked like small crows’ feet or thin scars at the outer corners of his eyes. The eyes that looked so strange. I had thought that every time I had seen him. His eyes were blue, but a strange blue. Is he wearing contacts? The eyes didn’t move exactly together but they were the same color. Has he had eye surgery? Had they been crossed when he was a child? Head on, they gave him a cold, almost unseeing look so different from the warmth of his conversation. I couldn’t quite connect with this man. He made me feel weird. What did a cocaine user’s eyes look like? Were the pupils contracted or dilated? His were neither.

  “I have a theory,” I interrupted him. “I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell.”

  “Sure,” he said, looking stunned at my abrupt and impulsive topic switch. I surprised myself as well, introducing a subject I had always been reticent to discuss.

  “My father was Avon Wallace’s divorce lawyer. I think her ex-husband killed my father right here in this house. Would you mind moving into the front hall so I can explain my theory, show you how I think it happened?”

  He looked stunned and surprised, but recovered quickly, said, “Sure,” and followed me to the front entry where, observed only by Uncle Garland’s urn, I recreated the hypothetical murder scene. I played my mother, then myself. I had Jack fill the role of both my father and the suspected murderer. I apologized for the dust on his navy blazer after he picked himself up from the hard tile floor where he had lain for ten minutes posing as the dead body of my father. My exercises and suppositions continued over an hour supplemented by cabernet and random conversation.

  At 9:30 I announced, “I really must get some rest. Do call me again, Jack,” and opened the front door. “Let me show you out. Then, according to my quickly conceived plan, I hesitated. “Would you like me to tell you what else I think?” I asked, rhetorically. “Avon Wallace’s ex-husband is among us. He is the murderer. We must discover who he is and where he is. Help me, Jack. Good night.” I shoved him out the door.

  Would he come back to kill me? I didn’t think so. He looked too stunned for immediate action. I was doubtful he would want to see me again. Probably, he’s just a normal man who thinks he’s run into a crazy lady; but normal men like crazy ladies, so he could come back. Would that be so bad? I thought that I wanted to be rid of him, and if theatrics is what it takes to make him flee, so be it. What if it makes him stay? Oh, well.

  Jigger had spent the evening by the fire in his faux coma ignoring my guest as if he were jealously pouting. He didn’t like men much except for Dr. Sullivan. I suspected Jigger had been abused some time in his past by a red haired man in a ball cap who didn’t drive a pickup truck. I had learned my dog’s preferences much better than I had ever understood those of my human men companions. I turned out the lights and started upstairs to bed, surprised that Jigger was not following me. “You act like you’re drugged, old boy,” I said as I raised his head and studied his eyes. His head flopped down again. I was beginning to worry. He had been lifeless all night. Finally, I called the animal hospital’s emergency number, scooped up the limp dog, put him in the back seat of the Bronco, and sped away.

  “He’s been ingesting something he shouldn’t have,” Dr. Everett announced after the examination. “We’re going to pump his stomach to be safe. Until we run some tests, we won’t know what’s wrong, but whatever it was, it was poison to this old boy’s system.” He loved pizza, but I didn’t remember his eating any.

  It was after eleven when I pulled up in the driveway, unlocked the front door, and returned to the car to lift Jigger and carry him into the house. “I should have turned on some lights,” I said aloud to myself, as I realized that when I closed the car door, the house and grounds would be in total darkness. But it was too late. My arms were full of heavy dog. I slammed the car door with my right foot and turned to walk up the three flagstone steps just as I heard a rustling sound behind the boxwoods to the left of the d
riveway. “Don’t panic and get carried away with wild imaginings,” I talked aloud half hoping any lurking intruder would think me not alone. I bolted up the steps carrying the dog through the door and reaching back again with the same foot to slam the door behind her. But the door did not slam. It would not close. Was it stuck? I kicked again before deciding that some large mass was blocking the doorway. I turned, the dog still half-conscious in my arms, and moved quickly through the darkened hallway toward the library. Jigger moaned. “It’s okay, boy,” I said softly. “We’re going to be okay.” I heard a soft thud from the hallway as the door closed completely.

  Thinking time is over. I’m on my own, I realized as a coldness covered me. Everything now was about survival. I was overcome, not with panic, but with a kill-if-I-have-to calm. After all, I had a sick dog to look after. “You’re a Carter, Holly, and nobody’s victim. Look after yourself,” my grandfather spoke to me in the awful silence. I must move, but to do so, I must drop the dog. My left leg bumped into the wingback chair beside the library fireplace. I eased Jigger down into the chair’s seat. My eyes searched the darkness for a possible weapon. The fireplace tools were on the other side of the massive hearth, too far away. The drapes were closed, and I was hidden in the corner of the darkest room in the house. Listen, girl, I told myself.

  At that moment I heard a bumping sound like a body hitting against a couch or scooting against a padded chair. From the entry hall, someone had entered the house and moved to the left into the living room after I had hit the door with my foot and moved around it and headed right across the entry hall and into the library. In the South the parlor was a mostly unused room except by uninvited carpetbaggers and would-be-killers. I was becoming arrogantly angry. How dare he? My thoughts had been preoccupied with placing Jigger in a warm chair by the now dead fire. Thank God, it was dead. Hopefully the intruder did not know this house. The ancient compact between guests and hosts begun in ancient Greece that remained alive in the South did not allow the former to return to murder the latter. I was alone with a stranger, a violator, an interloper who now deserved to die.