Husband and Wives

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  I dug in my pocket and found one of my business cards. I handed it to Charlotta. ‘Call me when you’re sober,’ I told her. ‘You need to go to rehab before you can get your children back.’

  She took the card, spat on it, and tossed it in the dirt. ‘Fuck you, bitch!’ she yelled, pulling away from Milt.

  Milt and I got back in his Jeep and drove away in a cloud of Oklahoma dust.

  Milt Kovak – Saturday

  I dropped Jean off at the hospital and headed over to Tejas County to the sheriff’s office and an interview with Earl Mayhew Jr, aka Buddy.

  ‘You gonna take him back to Prophesy with you?’ Bill asked me.

  ‘We’ll see,’ I answered.

  ‘Well, don’t expect me to keep him here overnight. I ain’t got the budget for it anymore. They cut my night guy out entirely and there’s no overtime, so I can’t keep him.’

  ‘If he looks good for it, I’ll take him with me. If not, he can go home.’

  ‘You’ll have to give him a ride,’ Bill said. ‘Nothin’ in the budget for taxi service.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ I said, heading back to his cells. One of the deputies gave me the keys, as they no longer have a jailer due to budget cuts. As we never did have a jailer, I didn’t really feel all that sorry for Bill.

  Buddy was sitting in a cell, on a mattress covered in dried blood and urine, his hands in his lap and his head down.

  ‘Hey, Buddy,’ I said.

  He looked up. ‘Oh. Hey, Sheriff,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry about the lock-up,’ I said. ‘I thought they were just gonna hold you in an interrogation room or something. Didn’t know they were gonna lock you up.’ Sometimes, to get on the good side of a perp, a police officer has to fudge the truth. But a cop’s gotta do what a cop’s gotta do.

  Buddy shrugged.

  I unlocked the cell door and went inside, closing the door behind me. I took a seat across from him, on another blood-and-urine-stained mattress.

  ‘Buddy, look at me,’ I said.

  His head came up.

  ‘We need to talk,’ I said.

  ‘Where’s David?’ he asked.

  My turn to shrug. It’s not like he actually asked for an attorney.

  ‘Buddy,’ I said, ‘I need to ask you about Sister Mary Hudson. I know you liked her.’

  Buddy shrugged again.

  ‘You didn’t like her?’

  Again, the shrug.

  I sighed. ‘Buddy, you gotta say something. If you don’t, then I gotta leave and go back to my county, and I guess just leave you here. Is that what you want?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Buddy!’

  ‘No, that ain’t what I want,’ he said, his voice low.

  ‘Then talk to me. Did you or didn’t you like Sister Mary Hudson?’

  ‘I liked her, all right,’ he said.

  ‘Is that why you spied on her through the window of the kindergarten room?’

  He shrugged again, thought better of it, and said, ‘I wasn’t spying.’

  ‘Buddy, don’t fib,’ I said.

  Again, he sighed. ‘I was just looking,’ he said, a whine to his voice. ‘She was real pretty, and real nice. And real good with the little kids.’

  ‘I hear she was a real nice lady. You talk to her much?’ I asked.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Sometimes she’d say hello to me and I’d say hello back, and once she said ain’t it a pretty morning, and I said I reckon so.’

  I smiled. ‘Sounds like y’all were friends,’ I said.

  He smiled back. ‘Yeah, reckon so.’ And he laughed.

  ‘Y’all ever talk off the church grounds?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head. Then he looked up at me and said, ‘Is the parking lot offa church grounds?’

  ‘You talked to her in the parking lot?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ He beamed at me. ‘One Sunday I helped her bring in some stuff from her car. Her husband wasn’t there that morning and she needed help and I helped her.’

  ‘That’s great, Buddy,’ I said, beginning to realize that ol’ Buddy was maybe a taco short of an enchilada special. ‘You ever go over to Sister Mary’s house?’ I asked.

  He thought about it for a moment and said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘What do you mean you don’t think so, Buddy? Either you went over there or you didn’t.’

  ‘My daddy goes to visit lots of his parishioners and I go with him sometimes, but mostly I stay in the car.’

  ‘So maybe you went with your daddy to visit Brother Jerry Hudson and his family, and maybe you saw Sister Mary while your daddy was in visiting with Brother Jerry?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘And you remembered where Sister Mary lived, and you decided to go back and visit—’

  ‘I don’t think so, Sheriff. I’m like real sure I didn’t do that, Sheriff,’ he said.

  ‘Buddy, did you hear that someone hurt Sister Mary?’ I asked.

  He nodded his head, looking down again at his hands. ‘They was going to bury her today, but my daddy wouldn’t let me come. He said you’d be looking for me.’

  ‘It’s too bad you didn’t get to say goodbye,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I did. I said goodbye to Sister Mary,’ Buddy said.

  I frowned. ‘When was that, Buddy?’

  ‘When was what?’ he asked, frowning back.

  Trying hard to keep my patience, I said, ‘When you said goodbye to Sister Mary. When did you do that?’

  ‘Last Sunday when she was leaving the nursery with her little boy,’ Buddy said.

  ‘Baby Mark?’ I said.

  ‘Um hum,’ Buddy said, beaming. ‘He likes me. He smiles at me.’

  ‘That’s good, Buddy.’

  So much for my interview with Earl Mayhew Jr, aka Buddy.

  It was getting dark when I dropped Buddy Mayhew off at the New Saints Tabernacle. Since the tabernacle was at the northeast end of Tejas County and the township of Bishop, wherein lay the overly fancy subdivision of The Branches, was at the north-west end of Prophesy County, it was but a hop, skip and jump from one to the other. I called Jean and told her I’d pick up Johnny Mac at my sister’s house while I was there, and found out Jean had already done it. So I told her I’d probably miss dinner as I needed to talk to the security guard at The Branches and, while I was there, maybe check in on the Hudsons.

  ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ my wife said. ‘It’s been a rough day for them. Knowing you’re still trying to find out who killed Mary might lessen the burden.’

  Thinking my wife had higher hopes of me solving this mess than I did, I said ’bye and hung up.

  Being a Saturday night and all, I had a feeling I was going to have a hard time finding Maynard Ritchie, head of security at The Branches, but I was in luck. Turns out his weekend guy didn’t show up, and Maynard was manning the front entrance himself. I pulled up, saw it was him, told him we needed to talk, and he pointed beyond the guard shack to where another car was parked. I recognized it as the car Ritchie drove onto the cul-de-sac the day Mary Hudson was killed. I parked next to it, got out and headed to the guard shack.

  ‘Hey, Sheriff,’ Ritchie said. ‘Have a seat,’ he said, pointing to the only stool in the small space.

  As I’d been driving around a bunch that day, I said, ‘I’m fine standing, Mr Ritchie, but thank you.’

  ‘Actually, Sheriff, it’s Captain,’ he said, turning a little red. ‘Just one of them honorariums places like this like to give out instead of a decent salary. I’d rather you just called me Maynard.’

  I held out my hand. ‘Fine with me, Maynard. I go mostly by Milt.’

  So we shook on it, and I got down to business.

  ‘Here’s the thing, Maynard,’ I said. ‘It’s been like five days since Mrs Hudson was killed, and you know what it’s like. You don’t solve a whodunnit in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, you might as well give it up. But I don’t wanna do that. I think t
he Hudson family deserves some closure, so I’m still working it.’

  ‘Glad to hear that, Milt. Thing is, we want this solved too. Looks bad for my security team, and it looks bad for The Branches. We’ve had two buyers back out after the news came out, and I’ve been on the carpet twice with the bigwigs. Not to mention we got people threatening to quit the country club ’cause of this. So anything I can do to help, I’ll do.’

  ‘You heard anything this week that sounds interesting? Gossip, innuendo – hell, I’ll take whatever I can get.’

  ‘Well, people are talking about them being bigamists and all. Not that many people knew until Mrs Hudson got herself killed. Been talk at the schools – elementary anyway – about making the kids leave because these dumbass parents don’t want to have to explain anything to their kids. Hell, they don’t have a problem with “Jimmy’s got two daddies” and “Mary only has a mother and a test tube,” so what’s the problem with “Jacob has one daddy and fourteen mamas?” Huh?’

  ‘See your point,’ I said.

  ‘But, hell, I can’t say anything to these people. Ain’t my job. I just say “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir,” and shut the fuck up. Excuse my French.’

  ‘So there’s some resistance to the plural family, huh?’

  ‘Yeah. A few people don’t mind, the liberals anyway. You know how they are, live and let live. Hell, they’d let a two-headed commie lesbo live here if it was up to them.’

  ‘Don’t see many of them,’ I said.

  ‘Liberals?’

  ‘No, two-headed commie lesbos,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘I’m just saying,’ he said.

  ‘I hear ya,’ I said. ‘The day it happened, anybody come in The Branches that didn’t belong?’

  ‘Yeah, I got that sheet here. I pulled it, was gonna bring it over to you, but you know how it goes.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I said, taking the sheet he handed me.

  ‘As you can see, nothing but workmen mostly.’ He pointed to each name. ‘This guy went to the Murrays on Chase Point to fix the trash compactor. This one went to Mrs Greene’s house, over on Stanton Circle, says plumbing. I know she’s been having a lot of problems. Looks like a new plumber. Here’s a flower delivery over at the Macabees on Delta Gardens for their daughter home from college, and this last one was the usual UPS guy. He had four deliveries: the Davises, the Washingtons, the Millers, and the Renterias. Need their street names?’

  ‘Naw,’ I said, already bored and hardly listening. ‘Anything else you can think of?’ I asked.

  ‘Uh uh,’ he said. ‘You want a copy of this?’

  I nodded and he uncovered a small copy machine and ran the sign-in sheet through, giving me the copy.

  ‘Country club keeps its own sign-in. It’s got members from all over the county, not just The Branches. Got its own entrance too.’

  ‘Yeah? Where is the country club?’

  ‘South end,’ he said, pointing in a southerly direction. ‘Straight down Elm Street, the main one here, till you get to Willow Lane, cross Willow and there’s the road up to the club.’

  ‘So somebody could come in to the country club and keep on going into the residential area, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Well, yeah. But, you know, only the people who live here know about that road offa Willow Lane that goes to the club. It’s more like a maintenance road.’

  ‘Well, let me sign in for today. I’m gonna drive by the Hudsons for a minute.’

  He handed me the sign-in sheet and I signed and timed it, said goodbye and headed out to my Jeep.

  So, I thought, there’s another way to get into The Branches. How hard, I wondered, was it to get into the country club? Did they have a guarded entrance, like the residential side? Or was the driveway open and you only had to show ID at the entrance to the club? That’s the way it had been the only time I’d ever been to a country club, one near Tulsa that a cousin on my daddy’s side took me to back when I was married to my first wife. If so, this really opened up the field on who murdered Mary Hudson.

  As it was just about dinnertime, the main Hudson house, Sister Mary’s former home, was jumping. All the kids, Sister Mary’s, Sister Carol Anne’s, and Sister Rachael’s, were all out front screaming and carrying on. The big yellow dog, Butch, was with them, having as much fun as the rest of ’em. I sat in my Jeep for a minute and just watched. It made me kinda sad to think of Johnny Mac not growing up like this – with lots of siblings and stuff. Hell, my kid didn’t even have neighbor kids to hang out with, since we lived in the country. But the truth of it was, Johnny Mac spent most of his time either in school or at the daycare at the hospital, and he had a bucketful of friends at each place, so I guess he was OK. But it did give you pause for thought. The one thing I could do to remedy the situation, was find my boy his own big yellow dog.

  I finally got out of the Jeep and headed up to the house, realizing for the first time since I’d pulled up that all the kids, not just Sister Rachael’s children, but the Hudson children as well, were in normal clothes. OK, normal’s probably not the right word, but you know what I mean. The girls weren’t wearing those God-awful baggy dresses and the boys were mostly wearing T-shirts with logos.

  Before I even got inside, I noticed a change to the house. The plain doormat that had been in place during Sister Mary’s reign had been exchanged for one that said ‘Welcome to our Home.’ The double oak doors had large wreaths on both sides, real fall-looking, with pinecones and corn cobs and colored leaves and such. There was also a wooden bench sitting on the front walkway with a full-size scarecrow sitting there big as life.

  I rang the doorbell and stood back, waiting. Carol Anne opened the door wearing blue jeans and a man’s shirt.

  ‘Hey, Ms Hudson,’ I said.

  ‘Hey back, Sheriff,’ she said, smiling. ‘Want to come in?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said and stepped over the threshold into an entirely new house. ‘I noticed you and the kids are wearing different kinds of clothes.’

  ‘We decided to go back to the way things were in Oregon, instead of wearing the required clothing of our church here. We’re not the first to be so bold,’ she said.

  ‘Looks good,’ I said.

  Looking around the house, I noticed the beige-on-beige of Sister Mary’s house had been replaced with the bright colors of Sister Carol Anne’s paintings and wall hangings. The walls were still beige, but they were covered with color. ‘House looks nice,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said as she shut the door behind me. ‘It was your wife’s idea.’

  ‘Smart lady,’ I said.

  ‘Jerry’s back in the family room,’ she said, leading the way.

  Jerry was in a recliner with Mark bouncing on one of Jerry’s outstretched legs. Seeing me, he said, ‘Good for the quads,’ and laughed as the baby bounced harder and harder, holding on to his daddy’s index fingers.

  Carol Anne rescued the baby, picking him up and nuzzling his neck. ‘You two talk while I go change this fella. I could smell him from the doorway.’

  ‘We guys gotta have a manly smell, honey,’ Jerry said.

  ‘Little too manly for me!’ Carol Anne said, carrying the laughing baby like a football into another room.

  ‘So, Sheriff, what’s up?’ Jerry asked.

  ‘It’s Milt, Jerry, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Not a bit. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Just wanted to check in, after the funeral and all, see how everybody’s doing, see if there’s anything new y’all can tell me,’ I said.

  Jerry shook his head. ‘Wish there was,’ he said. ‘I still can’t totally believe it. I know she’s gone, but that someone killed her on purpose?’ He shook his head. ‘No, I still can’t believe that.’

  ‘But you know it to be true, don’t you, Jerry?’ I asked.

  He stared at his feet for a while, then looked up at me. ‘I was with Mary longer than I wasn’t. Maybe twice as long. We’d known each other since we were in nursery
together at our church in Oregon. Were best friends until sophomore year in high school when we decided we were more than friends and wanted to marry. Our parents wouldn’t let us, so we dated until graduation. Then we got married, with their blessings. She was like half my soul.’ Again, he shook his head. ‘I know someone did this to her, Milt,’ he said, finally looking up at me, ‘but it’s hard to get my head around. Mary was . . . almost perfect. She only raised her voice to me once – right after Lynnie, our oldest, was born. Doctor said it was post-partum depression.’ He smiled. ‘I didn’t put the dishes away properly,’ he said.

  I laughed. ‘That’ll still get me in hot water,’ I said.

  ‘Dr McDonnell yells at you?’ he asked, his eyes wide.

  ‘Naw. Much worse. She corrects me. In this tone of voice like she’s speaking to our six-year-old.’

  Jerry nodded his head. ‘Oh, yeah, Carol Anne uses that tone on me.’

  I decided to try out a theory. ‘Would Sister Mary ever butt into somebody else’s business?’ I asked.

  Jerry turned red. ‘In what way?’ he asked, avoiding eye contact.

  ‘In any way,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t imagine—’ Jerry started, but Carol Anne came into the room.

  ‘Jerry, get serious!’ Looking at me, she said, ‘Mary was a fixer, and she was almost always right. I’m not saying she butted into other people’s lives, but if there was something glaringly wrong, she’d try to help. And yes, there were people who’d get mad at her about it, but the only ones I can think of thanked her later because her words helped them!’

  ‘Can you give me some examples?’ I asked.

  ‘Like back home, in Oregon?’ Carol Anne said. ‘There was this girl who was going to marry this older man who already had two wives – both of whom looked pretty miserable – and Mary talked the younger of the two into telling this girl how bad it was. The older man had money and the girl thought it would be an easy marriage, but the second wife told her he married younger women to clean the house since he was too cheap to hire a maid.’

  ‘Anything around here—’ I started.