by June Shaw
His hesitation made me fear he was spearing his unmarked car toward my house. After I arrived there, he would arrest me for sure.
While I waited for him to make up his mind, I waved across the showroom and mouthed, “Come on” to Eve and headed for the exit.
“Now?”
I gave her a big nod and rushed to the door.
“I’ll tell you what,” the detective said in my phone. “Just come to the office once you get through with your business.” It didn’t sound like he considered whatever I was doing too significant. “And you’d better not be long.”
“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir, I will be there. And it won’t take long.”
“So which one did you want?” the salesman called to me since Eve only looked confused and came after me. The salesman stood a wide palette that held the various small samples that we had been looking at.
Yanking the door open, I glanced back. He was pointing at one of them, although I wasn’t certain which one. “Let’s go,” I told Eve as she came to the doorway, and I nodded toward the area the man stood in, then rushed out to my truck.
“What’s going on?” Eve barely got in and shut her door before I took off. She swerved to the side with my fast turn of the truck and needed to right herself before she could grab both sections of her seatbelt and strap herself in.
I realized I’d better do that myself, normally a must-do before I drove, but this minute I needed to get to my house. But a police officer was waiting for me back in Sugar Ledge, and I didn’t want to get stopped by police here for speeding. Getting a ticket would take too long and add to the time Detective Wilet would have to wait for me, and I didn’t have extra cash to throw away. While I drove, Eve helped buckle me in. “I’m thinking your phone call had something to do with a detective in town.”
“I think you’re right.” I sped only a little to get to the stoplight we approached and barely made it underneath before the yellow changed to red. As I raced across the Huey Long Bridge, my mind conjured possibilities and concerns about what the officer wanted with me that was so imperative, and I found nothing positive.
Chapter 20
“So you completed your business?” Detective Wilet leaned back in his chair behind his desk.
“Yes, sir, we did.” I included Eve in my reply since we’d arrived in town together, and I drove straight to the station. He had agreed that she could come into his office with me, so now we sat facing him.
“Murder is rather important, too.”
“It is.” I swallowed and scooted to the front edge of my chair. “What can I help you with concerning that?” The corner of my eye let me see Eve’s knee jerk.
The man facing me pushed himself even further back against his swivel chair. “Did you do it?”
“What?”
He leaned way forward, his thick upper body over his desk. “Did you kill someone?”
“Who?”
“Sunny.” Eve elbowed me.
I looked at her, looked at him. “Sir, no, my reply to you is absolutely not. I never killed anyone and would never do anything like that. Nothing could ever make me consider doing such a violent act.”
“Yes, it could.” He said it so matter-of-factly that I believed him, but then pulled my head back.
“Excuse me. Maybe you don’t know me well enough, but I would never kill another person.”
“Suppose someone was ready to shoot your sister.” He pointed at Eve and left his words like a question in the air. The way he held his hand as though it were a pistol aimed at her brought back an image and reminded me all too well of when that happened. And if I had had a gun close-by when that took place, would I have shot the person? Like somebody shot at and killed our sister?
I hated guns, hated violence. I needed to swallow three times to get enough moisture in my mouth. “I would shoot him.”
“Okay, now that we have that out of the way, we need to discuss the death of your sister’s neighbor.” He nodded toward Eve.
“Which one?” The second I asked it, I cringed. Why couldn’t I have waited for him to go on before I opened my mouth?
“I understand your question since two of Eve’s neighbors have perished, and you were the person who discovered both of their bodies.”
Eve lifted her hand. “I was there, too.”
I looked at her with gratitude and squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to say that.”
“Yes, I do.” She faced the detective, her face solemn. “I was at the scene of the crimes when my twin was, so if you’re going to do something to her, you need to also do it to me.”
Her words melted my heart. A lover could never pull up such an emotional reaction.
“What can you tell us about what you’ve learned with both cases?” I asked the man who already found me guilty. “Dave Price didn’t kill anyone and should be released. I can bet everything I’ve got on it.” I hoped he didn’t know how little that was. “Of course, Eve and I are innocent, too.”
The detective gripped his hands together on top of his desk. They were so wide, they looked like insulated gloves. “I can tell you we can’t let him out now, not yet anyway. If he didn’t murder Clara Wilburn, we need to find out who did.” He quirked his brow—maybe thinking I would confess.
After a moment of silence building pressure in the room, Eve spoke. “So y’all aren’t really looking for anyone else since you already believe Dave did it.” Possibly, that was a question, but it came out like a statement.
“Right now,” he focused his attention on me, “I need to ask you about something concerning Mrs. Wilburn’s son who was murdered.” I waited during a long pregnant pause. “What were you yelling at him about the night before he died?”
I pressed back and sat straighter in my chair. “Who? Me? Yelling at him?”
“You most definitely were.”
I looked to Eve for help. She had none. My mind rolled back to the evening before Royce’s death. Did I yell at him? Mm, yes, I did. “I didn’t really yell.” I spread my hands. “My sister and I were getting ready to back out of her driveway, and he blocked us.”
“Oh, he did? With what?” Now he looked sincere, interested.
“Not a car or his body or anything like that. It was only a motorcycle he had just bought—actually he’s bought a lot of things since his mother died—that new bike and a fine new automobile.” I caught a breath, giving him time to look shocked or surprised or something besides that straight face he kept. “Royce stayed there behind Eve’s car, revving up his motor, and not letting us get out.”
“So you think that was bad?”
“Of course. Why would you ask that?” Eve’s eyes narrowed with righteous indignation.
He aimed his focus at her. “Did you ever think that quite possibly he was proud of his new possession and wanted to show it off to both of you?”
Eve and I glanced at each other. We shook our heads.
“So you were screaming at him in the driveway—in fact, you were so angry, you got out of the car and threatened to harm him.” Wilet’s neck turned red.
I sucked in a breath. “Who told you that?”
“Neighbors.”
Eve and I did double-takes toward each other. I faced him. “You’re kidding. Which ones?”
“Ms. Taylor, did you or did you not yell threats at Royce Wilburn?”
“Not to kill him.” My words came out as loud as his.
Eve whispered, “Shhh,” making me realize what I was doing.
My thoughts scrambled back to the evening with Royce behind her car in the driveway. I did yell something at him, fearing him, wanting him to leave us alone. I had feared him and knew he believed I killed his mother instead of just finding her body stuffed in a garbage bag at Dave’s camp. I had been proud of myself for getting out of the car and hollering at him instead of letting the fear get the best of me. But what did I yell…? Yes, his bike might get smashed. Maybe his leg?
&
nbsp; “I did tell him his bike could get hit if he didn’t move it out of the way.” I offered an innocent shrug. “I mean, of course Eve’s driveway couldn’t be obstructed for too long or she wouldn’t be able to get to the street.”
The detective narrowed his eyes, making his thick dark brows meet above his nose.
“We had seen his motorbike and had enough time to admire it,” Eve said, pressing forward in her chair, “and we needed to leave. But his bike made so much noise, Sunny had to get out of the car and speak loud so he could hear her.”
Seeing my sister make those wide innocent eyes and hearing her statement made me almost convinced that she told him exactly what happened.
We all sat staring, us at him, him skimming the air from one to the other of us, his harsh eyes wanting to suck an admission of guilt. To murder? The odor of burned coffee from the hall beyond the open door reached my nostrils. Voices of other officers sounded out there, males and females speaking. My mind scrambled, seeking anything that might help me not be thrown in prison. I could feel my arms pressed behind my back and cold hard handcuffs clinking around my wrists. His stare hardened on mine and his hands flattened on his desk, but with wrists raised. I sensed he was tensed and ready to shove up to his feet and come at me.
“Did I tell you a woman down my street heard the guy who lives behind the Wilburns’ fence yelling at Royce?”
“At Royce Wilburn? Are you certain the young man was yelling at him?”
“That’s what she told me.” I felt sweat pop out on my forehead. Good grief, was I telling the truth? Was I so desperate that I would grab for lies to a detective? What if he hooked me up to a lie detector? My mouth dried, shoulders tightened. My mind brought up the clang of the jail cell door slamming behind me.
“And listen to this,” Eve said, pulling his attention toward her. “Did you also know that a woman who works at Sugar Ledge Manor got pregnant by him?”
The detective’s hands and wrists relaxed. “By Royce Wilburn?”
“Yes,” I said, all too happy to pick up the story, “and she aborted the baby, but he wanted her to have it.” Did he? His angry stare from his front window when he’d watched baby Noah leave Eve’s front yard had told me he did. Although come to think of it, he normally had an angry stare.
The detective did something that pleased me. Instead of coming near to arrest me, he grabbed a pen and pad. But then he asked, “What’s her name?”
I looked at Eve, whose wide eyes and blank stare I was certain mimicked mine. My shoulders dropped lower. “We’ll have to get that information for you.”
He threw down his pen and placed his hand over his lips.
“Okay, this is what happened.” Eve sat so far up on her chair, it appeared she might tip over. “One of our mother’s friends who’s a resident there like our mom is told us that. She had a picture of the young woman who works there in her phone and told us all about it. We’ll need to get the woman’s name from her. That should be easy.”
He stared at me. The fingers covering the detective’s lips spread apart, letting his thick lips show through. Those lips pressed tighter together.
I felt blood thumping in the outer corners of my forehead. It struggled for my attention with the sweat covering it.
Finally, the detective spoke again, giving us his verdict. He slid his hand away from his face so he could do that. “I’ll tell you what. You have until this time tomorrow to get me that information. And I had better not find that you’re lying.”
“We sure will get you that information. And no, we are not lying.” I looked at his wall clock and then at Eve. She was looking at me. We stood at the same time.
“Thank you,” she told him on our way out of his office. I wasn’t certain what she was thanking him for, but guessed it was the extra twenty-four hours of my freedom.
Chapter 21
Since we were fairly close, the first place Eve and I rattled down to was my street, where, as I’d hoped, Mrs. Hawthorne knelt in her yard, weeding the flowerbed alongside the cement path leading to her house. The wind had picked up, I could see, since the wide brim of her straw hat that normally shielded her face was pushed up and shifting.
She stood facing the road before I even pulled close to the edge of the street, lowering the front passenger window. “You haven’t seen my cousin yet, have you?” She spoke with a smile, not like an accusation but only as though she stated a fact. Her gaze, though, swung toward the rear end of my vehicle, which she must have heard.
I shrugged. “I really haven’t had time to get it fixed yet.” I left out the part about not being able to afford that work. Besides, if I got thrown behind bars, I wouldn’t need to worry about a noisy rear bumper. The edges of my lips pulled up while I thought of this positive outcome.
Her sweet smile widened, and I could imagine her one day in the not-too-distant future becoming one of my mother’s Chat and Nap buddies.
“I understand. Hello, Eve.”
“Hi.” Eve spoke through her open window. “It’s nice to see you. I hope you’re doing well.”
“I am, thank you. Oh, except I get this pain right here above my stomach sometimes. Maybe it’s something I eat.”
Or that girdle I sold you way back while I worked at Fancy Ladies, and you were much smaller but still squeeze yourself into it even to eat and then bend over and work in your yard. I swung my eyes toward the clock in my dashboard. We didn’t have time to chat. “Mrs. Hawthorne, I’m sure a detective came to question you about that young man across the street from you yelling at Royce Wilburn on the other side of the fence that separates their yards from each other.” I pointed to make certain she knew exactly where I was talking about.
Her faint eyebrows furrowed. Loose dirt fell off the trowel she held. She studied the house across the street from hers and then looked at me. “You know one officer did come to ask me about that.” She paused, and I hoped she had replied what I suggested. “I’m not certain he was a detective. He might have been some other kind of police officer.”
We needed to finish this interview and get on to the manor. My eyes swung to the dashboard. I was certain the time display had jumped forward an hour. “Did he wear a uniform?”
“A uniform?” She placed her hand holding the trowel against her chin. Dirt from her fingers clung to her skin. Some of it dropped. I wanted to tell her about the rest and suggest she brush it off, but did not want to distract her thought process.
“Yes, you know,” Eve said, “the kind of uniform all of the police in town wear.”
“Ah.” She appeared to know the answer now. “You know I’m not sure.”
So much for certainty and helping us. Helping me, I realized. Yes, I was the one who’d get thrown in jail. Time raced down. I had no minutes to spare. “Mrs. Hawthorne, you told me you heard the young man who lives across the street yelling not long before Royce Wilburn was discovered murdered.”
Her lips twisted.
“And it was Royce that he was yelling at,” I suggested, or maybe I knew, especially now that I had discovered Royce drilled a small hole in the fence separating his place from theirs so he could watch the young man’s wife. I was certain she hadn’t heard me yelling at Royce on the next street, especially with that motorcycle making so much noise at the same time.
My elder neighbor stared at me long moments as though her mind was whirling. Finally, she swung a finger forward. “Yes, that’s it. He was the person that man was yelling at.”
“Thank you. And if an officer who says he’s a detective—Detective Wilet is his name—comes and asks you, make sure you tell him that.”
“I most certainly will.” She stood, her posture straighter than before. She was going to perform her civic duty. I could imagine her saluting.
“Thank you so much. I’ll see you again.” I gave a small wave.
The wind pushed her brim so that it flapped over her face. “And don’t forget my cousin,” she called as I
drove away.
I pointed my truck toward the manor, where we were about to extract the other information we required. I should be able to retrieve what I needed from my mother’s friend and get back to the police station without waiting until tomorrow. I lifted my chin, confidence regained. I was about to have myself absolved from the prime suspect pool.
Most of the usual vehicles were parked in their usual places in the manor’s parking lot. “Five dollars for your thoughts,” I told Eve when I pulled in. Neither of us had spoken during the drive from Mrs. Hawthorne’s house.
“Not a penny?”
“Inflation.” I turned off the motor.
“I guess I’m like you, needing to focus on getting the information we need from here and hurrying it back to Detective Wilet.”
“Then I should no longer be considered a killer.”
“And we can hurry and find a way to get my man, Dave, free.”
Her door slam right after she said those words couldn’t have accentuated that problem more. It felt like an exclamation mark letting me know I would face a major difficulty with letting my sister know how much Dave meant to me and I believed I meant to him.
But doing that would need to wait. I had to make sure I wasn’t thrown in a cell next to his.
We scooted into the building. Expecting to see our mother and her friends huddled not far inside, I felt disappointment swell. Not one of them was in sight. We were also looking for the woman who’d aborted Royce’s baby but didn’t see her either. By now, Mom should have found out about it and could tell us who that worker was.
An assistant administrator, a tiny woman of maybe mid-twenties and with the fastest gait I’d ever seen on a woman, bustled down a hall toward us.
“Hi,” I told her. “We didn’t see Mom. Would you know where she is?”
Without slowing a beat, she pointed back. “Right after supper just now, I saw Miriam head for that restroom.”
“Supper already?” I asked, my mind registering that I had smelled cooked onions and grits while we’d hurried past the eating area. Maybe they had shrimp and grits together, a really tasty dish. But time was moving too quickly.