Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows

by Nora Deloach

  “Somebody saw you,” Mama told him, her voice low, calm.

  “That somebody lied to you. Like I told you, I’d worked twelve hours straight that night. I came home, took a bath, and crashed.”

  “Do you know Charles Parker?” Mama asked.

  “No,” he answered.

  Mama tilted her head a little.

  Leman stood up to leave, took a breath as if to say something, then didn’t. He left us, pushing through the restaurant’s door and into the warm darkness.

  Something’s wrong, I thought. I glanced at the speedometer. Sixty miles an hour, a cruising speed on the dark and desolate road from Avondale to Otis. So why is my heart pounding?

  Then the hood of my Honda flew up in my face.

  I hit the brakes. Mama reached out and grabbed my arm but then quickly released it when she realized how tight my fingers were wrapped around the steering wheel and how hard I was struggling to blindly keep the car on the road.

  “Take it easy, Simone!” she shouted as the smell of rubber and asphalt recorded the Honda’s disastrous skid.

  The darkness confused me and the Honda spun around, left the pavement, flew up in the air and nose-dived in straight down.

  Then all was silent, except for the trickle of some fluid running somewhere in the darkness of the car.

  My body ached like I’d been used as a punching bag. “Mama,” I whispered.

  Nothing.

  I tried to turn, but my seat belt and the air bag pinned me tight. “Mama, are you all right?” I shouted.

  Nothing.

  Then, feeling myself a long way off and drifting farther into darkness, I decided that my mother was dead and I hadn’t told her good-bye.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  The trip to Otis County General Hospital’s emergency room in the ambulance was a nightmare that I was glad to have over. We were lucky: a man driving by had spotted our wreck and called 911 to say that a car had gone off into a ditch.

  “Nothing broken. Nothing fractured, not even a concussion,” the doctor told us, his voice devoid of emotion. “You can go home.”

  My father smiled nervously. “Thank God,” he told Mama. “I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost both you and Simone at the same time.”

  It was almost one A.M. when we finally got home. Other than reassuring my father that we would be just fine, Mama hadn’t said very much. When my father asked, “What happened out there?” she simply told him, “Maybe tomorrow it’ll all make sense.”

  Mama’s words told me that she, like me, was trying to understand what had really happened to us. The hood of the Honda—why would it go up like that? Had somebody snapped the latch? If so, they’d have to undo the lock from the inside of the car. I tried to remember: Did I lock the car door when we went into McDonald’s? And who was the Good Samaritan who had called Abe?

  It was almost noon before I opened my eyes. My body hurt all over, so the first thing I did was to take a steaming hot shower. I almost felt human by the time I stumbled into the kitchen.

  Mama sat at the table, sipping coffee.

  “What’s up, pretty lady?” I asked.

  “You all right?” she responded without looking at me.

  “Except for soreness, I’m terrific. What about you?”

  “I’m okay,” she said, her voice distracted, her mind somewhere else. “Your breakfast is in the microwave.”

  “Thanks. Where’s Daddy?”

  “James has gone to get the car towed. I suspect you’ll need a rental to get back to Atlanta.”

  “Today is Sunday, isn’t it? I wonder whether my car can be fixed.”

  “James will take care of that,” Mama said.

  I poured my coffee and orange juice. “Have you decided what happened out there?” I asked, taking a plate of golden waffles from the microwave and joining her at the table.

  “Simone,” Mama said, “why would that hood fly up like that?”

  I looked into her eyes; the concern was deep. I picked up my fork, then put it back down. For once, even Mama’s wonderful food wasn’t tempting. We’d almost died on the road from Avondale to Otis. Why?

  “Could it have been Leman Moody?” Mama continued. “And, if so, why? I didn’t say anything that would have threatened him, did I?”

  “Of course not,” I said, but I didn’t sound as soothing as I’d hoped. “It could just as well have been Inez Moore or her old man.”

  Mama nodded but didn’t say anything. It was as if she was following some thought inside her head.

  “Up until you started asking questions,” I said, “the consensus has been that Ruby Spikes committed suicide. The killer might have been satisfied that was going to be the end of it.”

  “Yes,” Mama said. “But this only confirms that somebody killed Ruby, doesn’t it? If what happened to us was no accident, Ruby’s death wasn’t a suicide.”

  I nodded. “You’d better be careful,” I warned. “The killer may try again!”

  “Yes,” she murmured, “but I’d rather James not know what we suspect just now. He’d panic and do something to scare the killer.”

  “That lunatic should be scared! Mama, we almost died last night. And it’s really true: my whole life flashed in front of my eyes when I thought I was going to die!”

  “Simone, honey, you’re exaggerating again.”

  “Okay, but it was a close call and you know it. When I called you and you didn’t answer, I just knew you were dead. And, lady, that’s pretty scary!”

  “I was stunned,” she admitted softly. “Confused, I guess. I heard your voice but—”

  I reached over and squeezed her hands. “No need to apologize,” I said. “We got through that alive, that’s what counts.”

  The front door opened and closed.

  “Candi,” my father said as he walked into the kitchen. “There is a skid mark where you and Simone had your accident last night that looks like somebody pushed the Honda in the ditch.”

  “Really?” Mama said, trying to look surprised.

  “And the back fender on the car is dented, like it might have been the spot that took the blow,” he added, shaking his head.

  “Things happened fast,” Mama said. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

  “No,” Daddy answered. “You know, baby, both Abe and I think there’s more to what happened than a freak accident. Do either you or Simone remember being hit from the rear?”

  “Maybe the person who called Abe to report our car in the ditch bumped us accidentally?” I suggested. “Maybe, because of the darkness, he saw us too late and—”

  “If it happened that way, I guess whoever called Abe did the right thing. Although he should’ve stayed around to make sure you and your mama were okay.”

  “If he was alone in the car, he had no other choice but to get to a phone and report the accident. Everybody knows that the chances of another car driving on that road that time of night are nil,” I said.

  My father seemed to relax. “Abe said that the caller didn’t give a name.”

  “Whoever made that call saved our lives,” I told him, hoping this interpretation would satisfy his concern about the skid mark and dented back fender.

  “I guess so,” my father said reluctantly. But it was clear from his tone that he wasn’t sure that my story was really what had happened to me and Mama as we drove back from Avondale the night before.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  I stayed in Otis until Monday morning, when my father helped me arrange for the Honda’s repair and a two-week rental of a Ford Escort. I arrived in Atlanta late Monday afternoon. The balance of the week was hectic, but Friday morning was a demon.

  First thing that happened was that I got a ticket. The residential area off Piedmont onto Morningside is always targeted for speeders. I’d seen at least a dozen people get tickets there, but for some reason their sad experience escaped me this morning. I was driving fifty in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone wh
en I got nipped right after I came over the small hill that’s down from Morningside Elementary School. That meant a $125 fine.

  Once I finally got to the office and tried to make a pot of coffee, the darn machine wouldn’t turn on. Shirley, Sidney’s assistant, called the company that services it. They told her it would be three days before they could get us another machine to replace it. So I had to make coffee the hard way, the way it was done in the Stone Age: put a cup of water in the microwave, boil it, and then use instant coffee. While my water was being nuked in the microwave, I discovered I had a run in my pantyhose an inch and a half wide that ran straight up my right leg. I groaned.

  The only thing to do, I was thinking once I’d gotten back in my office with my cup of instant coffee, was to go down the street to buy another pair of stockings. That thought hadn’t cleared my mind when my boss walked into my office. “Simone,” Sidney snapped in an unusual tone, “this brief has so many typos in it, I refuse to read it!”

  “Two of our typists are out with the flu,” I reminded him. “And the temp we hired just can’t cut it—she’s not familiar with legal terms.”

  Sidney wasn’t satisfied. He threw the papers on my desk. “Get this corrected!” he roared, thrusting his face a little too close to mine. I noticed that there were tiny white flakes of dandruff on his shoulders. “I want it back on my desk today!” Then he stomped out.

  For a moment, I didn’t know what to do. Finally, I decided to do the corrections myself. It would be the best way to make sure that they were done right, the way that Sidney always wanted it.

  Then my computer went down. I went into the secretaries’ office: the whole system had crashed. “Now that we can’t live without them,” I told Shirley, “the machines have started to exercise their control over us.”

  “Maybe they’re like all the rest of us overworked laborers,” Shirley grumbled. “They stop when they’ve been pushed too far.”

  Uh-oh, I thought, Sidney must have taken an angry swipe at her this morning, too.

  “I’ll call the repairman,” Shirley told me. “I’ll make sure he understands that we need him ASAP.”

  It wasn’t ten minutes later that I was at the copier and that sucker jammed. I pulled paper from every nook and cranny I could see, but to no avail. The message light kept flashing “Jammed.” Reluctantly, I had to go back to Shirley.

  When I told her what had happened, she demanded, “What do you want me to do?”

  “Call another repairman,” I suggested, bracing myself for another fit of temper.

  “I’ll call in a minute.” Her tone told me that I’d been dismissed from her presence. I shrugged and headed back to my office. I drank two more cups of instant coffee, and cursed the run in my stocking at least a dozen times until I decided to leave the office early and stop by Lenox Mall before lunch. Just as I made that decision, the phone rang. It was Cliff. Cliff has eyes that remind me of Richard Roundtree’s, deep, dark, and sensuous. Today, however, his voice didn’t sound sexy. It sounded exasperated. “I have to break our lunch date,” he told me.

  “What’s the matter now?” I asked, no doubt sounding more than a little impatient.

  “It’s Daniel Abrams. That man won’t give me a break.”

  Daniel Abrams was Cliff’s client. He was an accountant, a man who got his kicks knowing where every penny of his money was twenty-four hours a day. Daniel Abrams’s divorce was now final. Cliff’s law firm had given him an itemized bill for the services rendered. Now Abrams wanted proof that x amount of dollars had indeed been spent on postage, telephone calls, copying, etc., and it would take Cliff all afternoon to satisfy this man so that the firm could finally get paid for hours and hours of work.

  “Will he keep you through dinner?” I asked.

  “Heck no,” Cliff said. “And he’ll be told that I’m leaving town tomorrow and I won’t be back until Monday noon.”

  “That means we’ll have an uninterrupted weekend.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Cliff said enthusiastically and hung up. I decided to walk across the street and get lunch, which turned out to be a tuna-fish sandwich that didn’t taste like tuna and a diet Coke that had more ice in it than Coke. Maybe that was the diet part.

  Around three o’clock, I called Mama. “How are things going?” I asked.

  “Okay.”

  “Cliff wants to get out of town for the weekend.”

  “Great. Bring him home. I’ll make a meal especially for him. What time can I expect you two?”

  “We’ll be there by nine o’clock in the morning.”

  Going to Otis suited me fine. It would give me another opportunity to work on party plans with Mama. Her cooking would be the thing to ease the anxieties Cliff was having over his penny-pinching client. And I’d get to hear firsthand what was going on in Mama’s private investigation into the murder of Ruby Spikes.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  Cliff’s favorite dish is Mama’s skillet-roasted lemon chicken with potatoes.

  Mama was just sliding this dish from the oven as Cliff and I walked into her kitchen. She’d also fixed fresh string beans, glazed carrots, sliced tomatoes, a tossed salad, and a sweet-potato pie that threatens waistlines. We all sat right down to eat.

  “Candi, I’ve done what you asked,” Daddy said thirty minutes later as he dished himself a second helping of chicken and potatoes. “Neither Coal nor I could come up with the fella who wore a shirt like that piece of material you showed me last week. The more we thought about it, the more we drew a blank.”

  Mama looked disappointed. “I appreciate your efforts, James,” she said as the telephone rang. She excused herself from the table.

  “What shirt?” I asked my father.

  “Ruby Spikes tore a piece off the shirt of the man who tried to rape her. Candi got it from Abe. She wanted to know whether or not Coal or I had ever seen it on any one of the fellas who hang out at Joe’s Pool Hall.”

  Mama came back into the room. Her face looked like it does when she’s trying to figure something out but can’t quite seem to put her finger on it. “Betty Jo Mets is dead,” she told us in a stunned voice. “She called me just last night, said she was confused about something and needed to talk with me. I suspected she wanted to know something about the care of her boys, because she asked me to meet her at Portia Bolton’s house this afternoon.”

  “Who is Portia Bolton?” I asked.

  “Portia is the foster mother I placed Betty Jo’s two little boys with. She is a fine woman. She never had any children of her own, but she’s the kind of woman whose care children thrive under.”

  I pushed back my chair. Mama motioned me to sit back down. “Finish eating,” she said to me. “I told Abe we’d be at his office in a half an hour.”

  “Did Betty Jo have some kind of an ailment that could account for her dying so suddenly?” my father asked.

  “If she did, I didn’t know about it,” Mama said.

  “What happened to her?” I asked, not liking the look on Mama’s face.

  She shook her head sadly. “Abe told me that the paramedics called him. They’d gotten a call from Herman two hours ago. Herman told them that Betty Jo hadn’t responded to his efforts to wake her—I can’t believe she’s dead, she sounded so alive last night when I spoke with her!”

  We arrived at Abe’s office around two o’clock.

  “Tell me exactly what happened,” Mama said as soon as we entered.

  Abe didn’t hesitate. “This is Herman’s story,” he said, toying with an unlit cigarette. “He and Betty Jo went to bed around nine last night. Betty Jo slept through the night as usual—Herman swears he heard her breathing. Anyway, when he got up this morning, Betty Jo was still asleep. He left the house and returned around ten A.M. He did some chores in the backyard before he went into the house. He was surprised to find that Betty Jo hadn’t gotten out of bed. He tried to wake her. That’s when he realized that she’d stopped breathing. He called 911. The param
edics came. They told him that Betty Jo was dead and that she’d been dead for hours, so instead of taking her to the hospital they called the medical examiner.”

  “When did you arrive at Herman’s house?” Mama asked Abe.

  “I got there before the body was moved to the morgue. Betty Jo was in the bed, looking like she was in a deep sleep. There was an empty glass on the side of her bed. I had it sent to the lab but it looks to me that she died in her sleep. Maybe a blood vessel burst in her head.”

  “An aneurysm,” I volunteered.

  “I suppose you’ve ordered an autopsy?” Mama asked him.

  Abe nodded. “I sure have. I called Charleston Medical Center yesterday. It will be a while before I get Ruby’s autopsy report because the work is backed up but the doctor is back on the job.”

  “Betty Jo called me last night,” Mama told Abe. “She asked me to meet her today at Portia Bolton’s house.”

  Abe’s eyebrow rose.

  “Nothing Betty Jo said to me gave me the impression that she’d be dead today,” Mama told him.

  “Time and life catch up with everybody,” Abe reminded her.

  “Yes,” Mama answered softly. “I’m just surprised that they caught up with Betty Jo so soon.”

  From the look on Portia Bolton’s face, it was clear that she already knew that Betty Jo was dead. “News travels fast,” she said, greeting us on her porch and motioning us inside. “The noonday news reported that Herman had found her body.”

  The living room we now stood in held an easy chair and a couch, both covered tidily with pale blue sheets. A small table stood next to the couch, pictures of two boys neatly arranged on it. Newly hung white curtains were at the windows. The smell of Clorox was heavy in the air.

  Portia offered us a seat. “The way Betty Jo lived, nothing would surprise me about her. Still, I didn’t think she’d die so young!”

  “Did she call you last night?” Mama asked.

  “No,” Portia replied, looking concerned. “Was she suppose to have called me?”