The sheriff sighed heavily. His fingers drummed on the table before him. Had I not remembered how rude he had been to Biff and me the night before, I would have felt sorry for him.
“Now these murders,” the sheriff said. “They must be mixed up with the business in some way.”
His hands were still now. Then he pounded on the table until I thought it was going to break into splinters.
“But I’ll find the guilty one,” he said.
“Well, don’t look at me, brother,” I said. “I just got into town.”
“I know,” the sheriff said. “So did the corpse. And not long after you all arrived we found another corpse. Then there’s a little matter of untruth. That Graham girl, for instance. It was stupid of her not to come to me immediately after finding the body. She should have told me about the Gus business in Los Angeles . . .”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’ve trouble enough sticking up for my mother without making alibis for friends, but how was Gee Gee supposed to know you were looking for reefer peddlers? She sees a dead guy in a bathtub. She knows him. She has reasons maybe for wanting him out of the way. Under those circumstances I don’t blame her for keeping her mouth shut.”
“Reasonable enough,” the sheriff said, nodding his head slowly. “In any other case than a murder case. I understand you and your husband were mixed up with a murder case once before . . .”
“Not exactly mixed up. Biff only found the murderer, that’s all.”
If I expected a look of respect for Biff after my announcement, I certainly would have been disappointed. The sheriff brushed away my statement as though it were an everyday occurrence for a burlesque comic to find a murderer. His mind was on facts, he said rather coldly, not fancy.
“I’m not going to discuss your mother at all,” he said, “other than to mention the fact that she lied about the gun. As for these three people traveling with you to open an engagement at The Happy Hour, well I guess work is work, but I didn’t think any self-respecting, decent people would play a nightclub like The Happy Hour.”
“There’s nothing wrong with The Happy Hour that a police clean up wouldn’t cure,” I said. It wasn’t the thing to say, but it was too true for me to let the chance slip by.
“What about Corny Cobb? Is he the type of person a couple of honeymooners would invite along for the trip?” the sheriff asked.
“You don’t know my husband,” I replied. There must have been a weary note in my voice.
The sheriff dismissed me. For the time being, he added hastily. He saw me to the door and spoke in an undertone to the two men who were waiting outside. I didn’t hear his words, but I knew he was asking them to bring someone else in for questioning.
The picture that greeted me when I returned to the trailer was a familiar one. Gee Gee was still playing cards with Mandy and Biff. Corny was tenderly nursing a drink. Dimples was plucking her eyebrows. The mirror hung from the doorknob of the front door, and Dimples sat on the top step. Mamie stood by, stage managing the beauty operation.
“You’re not doing it right,” she said. “Why don’t you girls let me do these things for you? I’ll admit the only training I’ve had was a mail-order house, but I have had a lot of experience. For instance, you should put alcohol first . . .”
“I wouldn’t waste it like that,” Dimples muttered. “And what’s more, I like to do it myself. A smart guy once told me it had something to do with masochism or something. Anything that goes by a handle like that is for me.”
Biff got to his feet and yawned loudly. “Think I’ll go for the papers,” he said.
The mail delivery was at noon, and the trailer post boxes were at the bend of the road. Biff whistled softly as he sauntered down the road.
I thought it strange that no one had asked me anything about my interview with the sheriff. They seemed to take it as a matter of course that nothing new had happened. The thought disappeared and another took its place. The new thought was an uncomfortable one. It made me tingle as though my feet had gone to sleep.
The tingling traveled slowly up my spine. I suddenly wanted to yell to Biff. I wanted to tell him not to leave me, that I was going to need him. I knew something was going to happen and, whatever it was, I didn’t want to be alone when it did.
If Mother hadn’t called me from the trailer, I would have followed Biff down the road, but Mother’s voice sounded so urgent. “Is that you, Louise?” she asked.
She opened the bedroom door and stood on the top step. Her face was swollen and tired looking. The bright sunlight made her eyes water; her breathing was heavy. Even as she mumbled down the steps and walked toward me she spoke hurriedly.
“What did the sheriff say to you?” she asked. “Did he say anything about me?”
I’ve never seen Mother look so ill. I put my arms around her trembling shoulders and tried to force her gently into the chair.
“He didn’t ask me anything new,” I said soothingly, “just the usual things. Certainly nothing to upset you like this.”
Mother pushed me away. Her face was crimson. Small beads of sweat covered her forehead.
“You’re lying!” she shrieked. “Everybody’s been lying to me right along. Even my own daughter is against me!”
Great blue veins stood out on Mother’s neck. Her eyes searched my face frantically. When I tried to hold her, she swung her arm about. Her fingers were like claws as they clutched at the air.
Mandy jumped to his feet, upsetting the cards and Corny’s bottle. He ran over to Mother and tried to help me hold her, but Mother scratched at him and pounded his arm with her fist. Mandy drew away and looked around helplessly.
Gee Gee and Dimples were frozen to the spot. So was Mamie. They didn’t try to hold Mother back as she ran toward the office.
“I’ve got to talk to him again,” she screamed as she ran. “I’ve got to tell him everything before it’s too late.”
Gee Gee grabbed my arm and held it so tightly I could feel the blood leaving my hand. “Let her get it off her chest,” she said. “Maybe she really does know something.”
“Let go of me,” I heard myself say. “She’s sick. Can’t you see that?”
I wrenched my arm away from Gee Gee and ran toward the office. When I was still a hundred yards from it, I saw the door close behind Mother. I ran faster until I could feel the knob under my fingers. I turned it and tried to open the door. It was locked.
“Let me in,” I screamed. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Don’t listen to her.”
The door remained closed. I ran around to the side of the cabin and pounded both fists on the window. There was no answer. I beat on the windowsill until my hands felt raw. The rough wood of the sill left splinters on my knuckles and a broken fingernail hung loosely from the cuticle. It began to bleed as I stared down at it stupidly.
Then I heard the door open. I ran around the small building and into the room.
Mother stood at the door. The sheriff and two men stood near her.
“You’re too late Louise.” Mother was calm, too calm. It was as though she were in a trance. “I’ve told them everything. I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. They would have found out anyway, and I think it’s better this way.”
Mother smiled up at the sheriff. It was a sad little smile that made my heart skip a beat.
“Shall we go now?” she asked in a small, childlike voice. Mother turned to me then. “No one will blame me for killing them when they know the truth,” she said simply.
The sheriff took Mother’s arm and helped her to the car. She waved to me as she sat next to him in the front seat. She went on waving to me until the car was out of sight.
16BIFF RACED THE MOTOR FOR A MINUTE. THEN he let it idle as he held both my hands tightly.
“Pull yourself together, Punkin,” he said. He had said it many times before. It wasn’t the repetition that annoyed me; it was the coaxing note in his voice. I tried to pull my hands away, but he held them tighter.
“This throwing your weight around isn’t helping Evangie any,” he said. “Instead of following them this minute, you oughta lie down and rest a while. Have a cup of tea or a drink . . .”
“Oh, stop babying me!” I said. “It’s all right for you and Gee Gee and Dimples and everybody to keep on saying ‘pull yourself together.’ It isn’t your mother who’s sitting in jail with a murder charge hanging over her head. It isn’t your mother who confessed to something she didn’t do just because it was forced out of her. I think you all want to believe she did it. It’s easier than having the cops suspect you. And that goes for the whole damn bunch of you, too. I’m going to my mother and I’m going right now.”
“Very well then,” Biff said quietly. “I’ll drive you.”
“You can drive or get out. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”
“Look,” Biff said after a moment. “No one forced Evangie into anything. She said what she wanted to say when she wanted to say it. And it seems to me she has enough on her mind without you doing a free Bernhardt for the cops. Save that talent for the theater; a little of it wouldn’t hurt your career a bit. And where do you get that ‘she’s not your mother’ dialogue? Just because they put an in-law handle after it is no sign she isn’t my mother, too. I got her when I married you. From now on remember that she’s as much my mother as she is yours.”
Biff shoved the truck into gear and faced toward the main road. For a moment I thought he deliberately drove through every rut and bump. Then I looked at his face. I had never seen his jaw set so firmly. I felt suddenly ashamed of my outburst.
“It wasn’t only you,” I said, “but the others, too. You didn’t see them or hear them like I did. They acted like they almost expected Mother to confess. Even Gee Gee was funny about it, and Corny, with his ugly, gloating face, smiling to beat hell. He was glad, I tell you, really glad. I could have killed him. I think I would have, too, if Mandy hadn’t pushed him away from me. Then you, instead of helping me, what do you do? Nothing, that’s what. You waste hours talking about it instead of getting to her.”
“It was ten minutes, not hours,” Biff said. “Confession or no confession, they won’t hang her before we get there. Now shut up and light me a cigarette.”
I felt in his breast pocket for the package. The cigarettes were damp and spongy. The matches were too wet too ignite.
“You’ll have to smoke one of mine,” I said. “These are soaking wet.”
“Now you’re going to beef about that, I guess,” Biff said. “A guy can’t even sweat anymore. His wife has hysterics all over Restful Grove, and a guy’s not supposed to sweat a little. Nice thing.”
His eyes were still on the road ahead and his chin still jutted out belligerently, but there was a satisfied half smile in his voice. I lit two cigarettes and handed him one. Over the bearing knock of the motor I heard him mumble thanks and then the radiator boiled over. A thin geyser of rusty water splattered on the cracked windshield, and Biff set the wiper in motion. I listened to the steady click-clack as the rubber flange raced back and forth in front of my eyes.
“Feel all right now?” Biff asked.
I didn’t answer him. It didn’t seem necessary.
“Well, then, we better get a couple of things straightened out before we see the sheriff,” Biff said. “First of all, no jokes with him. Let him say his piece and don’t interrupt him. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, but don’t add anything but yes or no to ’em. Let him do the figuring. There’s a couple things I don’t like about this business. It doesn’t seem right to me that he should bundle Evangie up in the car and drive her away without checking her story with the rest of us. He’s got something up his sleeve, and I’ll be damned if I like it.”
“I tried to tell you he forced the confession from her,” I said.
“You were right outside the door,” Biff said patiently. “Evangie was in there for five minutes? No, I got two ways of looking at that confession. One is that she did it because she thought you killed the guys . . .”
“Me?”
“You don’t have to be dumbfounded about it. She’s got plenty of reasons for thinking that. The handkerchief had your name on it. So I know all about the laundry being sent out with your name, but the sheriff doesn’t know it. We told him, that’s all. She might wonder why you didn’t admit knowing Gus. You played the Burbank Theater. Gee Gee said he was around there all the time. Evangie knows what a sucker you are for a bargain, and there’s that guy selling stuff for nothing and you aren’t in on it. That alone looks bad. She knows how you are; hot or cold, if thing’s cheap, you’ll go. The gun thing; she thought it was yours, so she tried to ditch it.”
“Well, the gun wasn’t mine. And if Mother would think that just because I’d played the Burbank I’d know Gus, then she’d think that all of us knew him. You played the Burbank, you didn’t know him. Corny played it, he didn’t know him. Dimples played it, she didn’t know him . . .”
“Yes, she did,” Biff said. “But that’s beside the point. I’ll get around to Dimples later. Right now I’m talking about you. The cops don’t know your sweet, sunny disposition. They want a murderer. Your mother gets frightened and gives ’em one. That’s the way it goes if she didn’t kill the guys herself, but you’ll have to admit that her killing ’em is the easiest thing to believe. Aside from great great grandmother with the human steaks and poor Uncle Louie with the tattoos. Evangie’s got the guts to kill a guy. She proved that when she buried the body. That wasn’t kid stuff, ya know. Think about the strange way she’s acted since San Diego. That could be explained if she knew the body was in the bathtub. You can’t act natural with a thing like that on your mind.
“Why didn’t she want us to call the cops? Why did she want to bury the body and drive away? She recognized the handkerchief with a quick glance. How? There’s only one way she could tell that that handkerchief was Corny’s. Gyp, I hate to say it, but I’ve got the damndest feeling that she knew about the second corpse. I don’t say she killed him, mind you, but . . .”
“But you think she did.”
Biff leaned forward and turned off the windshield wiper. Then sudden silence made me want to scream.
“You think she is a murderer,” I said.
Biff’s hand fell on my knee. I felt him shake me gently.
“No encores with the dramatic scene, Punkin,” he said. “Smoke the cigarette and take it easy. I’ll put it to you like this: What do you think Evangie would do if someone threatened her? Or you? What if someone tried to blackmail her, not about herself, but about you? Say a guy tells her that he knows something ugly. He says he’ll blab to the papers if she doesn’t pay up. Maybe he says he’ll blab anyway. Spite or something. I know what she’d do. What do you think?”
“I-I think she’d kill him,” I said. The smoke from my cigarette was curling up into my eyes. I opened the window a crack and let the cigarette fall.
Biff drove on silently, and I looked out the dusty window at the monotonous view ahead. I had thought the country was romantic when we first arrived in Texas. The yucca had been in blossom then and the splashes of red across the desert had looked like small bonfires. Now they were gone and there was nothing to relieve the parched, hot look of the sand. A breeze rolled a branch of sagebrush across the road. It seemed like a living thing, a living thing that couldn’t make up its mind which way to roll. It suddenly was tossed under the wheels of the truck and I could almost feel the pain of its being crushed.
“No,” I said. “Mother could shoot a man, I think, but she couldn’t stab him in the back. If she shot him, it could be in self-defense, but if she stabbed him it would . . .”
“It could still be self-defense,” Biff said. “At least to a jury.”
A jury! I hadn’t thought of that. Mother on trial for her life! The realization that this wasn’t just another of Mother’s difficult situations made my hands tremble. This wasn’t something that Mother could smile her way out of. It wasn’t
a piece of stolen wardrobe or a steamed-open letter; it was murder. What if they found her guilty?
“She could have stabbed him in a moment of panic,” Biff said. His voice sounded strange to me, as though I had never heard it before.
“Just because the knife was in his back is no sign that she sneaked up on him or anything. He could have been reaching for a weapon even, and when he turned she . . .”
Biff stopped talking suddenly. I knew that he didn’t believe what he had been saying.
I watched the heat rise in small ripples on the road ahead of us. The radiator had begun to boil over again and almost unconsciously I leaned forward and started the wiper in motion. We passed a sign that read dip, and Biff put out his arm to hold me as we reached the depression in the road. I wanted him to hold me closer; the tenseness of his muscles seemed to give me courage, but he released me and clutched the wheel again.
“It wouldn’t be hard for her to plead insanity, ya know,” Biff said slowly. “It might be better than self-defense at that.”
We had reached the outskirts of the town, and Biff slowed down. The traffic signs read: TWENTY MILES AN HOUR. DRIVE SLOW AND SEE OUR TOWN. DRIVE FAST AND SEE OUR JAIL.
Biff chuckled. “Fast or slow, it’s all the same with us.”
A second sign read: DRIVE SLOW, DEATH IS PERMANENT. As we drove through town I noticed how small groups of men nudged each other as they followed our truck with their eyes. One man leaning against a signboard spat. The brown juice from his tobacco dripped down his chin and he rubbed it away carelessly. It was an ordinary gesture, but it was done too deliberately. The man’s eyes were narrowed, and one hand fell significantly on the holster at his hip.
Mother Finds a Body Page 14