Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows

by Nora Deloach

  When the phone rang, I took my time answering it.

  “Simone,” Mama began without waiting for me to ask why she was calling. “You won’t believe what I just learned about Ruby Spikes!”

  “What?”

  “Do you remember Louise Barker?”

  “No.”

  “Louise is the legal secretary of Calvin Stokes.”

  “The lawyer who handled Hannah Mixon’s will?” Hannah Mixon’s death last year was one of the cases Mama and I had helped solve.

  “The same,” Mama continued, clearly excited with what she was about to tell me. “I ran into Louise at the florist an hour ago. She told me, confidentially of course, that Ruby Spikes had come to Calvin’s office to make out a will.”

  Now Mama had my attention; I sat up straight on the sofa.

  The words spilled out of Mama’s mouth so fast I thought she was going to lose her breath. “Louise told me Ruby asked Calvin a few questions and then told him she’d come back after she decided on a few things … but Ruby never returned!”

  “So?”

  “So?” Mama said, sounding more than a little annoyed with my reaction, “Ruby made that visit to Calvin’s office the day before she died!”

  “That’s interesting,” I said. “Why would she ask questions about making a will and then go off and shoot herself?”

  “That’s the exact same question I’ve asked myself. And that’s not the only thing that’s mysterious,” she continued. “Sparkle, Curtis and Mack’s cat, showed up at Portia Bolton’s house. The boys were glad to see their pet, but I can’t for the life of me figure who took the poor thing in the first place!”

  “And who tried to kill you to get it from you,” I said.

  “There are so many things going on in Otis.”

  I agreed, then tried to turn the conversation to the party. Mama listened to my recital of the preparations I’d made, told me, “That’s fine, honey,” and said good-bye. I knew that what she was really thinking about was the tidbits she’d just learned about the late Ruby Spikes and Betty Jo Mets’s cat.

  Cliff and I pulled into Otis at noon on Saturday. We unloaded the beer and wine at my parents’ house, then went and picked up my Honda, which looked even better than new, and returned the rental car. We got back to Mama and Daddy’s house at one o’clock, just in time for lunch.

  Though Mama calmly watched us savor her food, I knew her well enough to know that she was anxious to get on with tackling the events that had shaken the serenity of Otis.

  When we’d finished our lunch, Mama took me aside and said, “The rapist has struck again. Dawn Crosby was attacked early this morning. This time the man succeeded. The poor girl is in shock; she’s been admitted to the hospital.” Mama’s voice shook; Dawn was the grown daughter of a friend of hers.

  “Abe called and asked me if I’d go talk to her,” Mama continued. “I said you and I would be there shortly.”

  “Let me just tell Cliff and then I’ll be right with you,” I said matter-of-factly, trying not to let on how scared and nervous I felt. I wondered what kind of shape Dawn was in, and I wondered what Mama and I could possibly say or do to help her.

  Dawn Crosby was curled up in bed like a little child. I had never been raped, but I knew women who had been where Dawn was at. I wasn’t surprised by how miserable she looked. She’d been violated and it showed.

  We sat quietly next to her bedside for some time before Mama decided to speak. “Dawn,” she began gently. “I know you’ve been through an ordeal.”

  At first Dawn stared at us with a blank look, then she buried her face in the pillow. “It was horrible,” she wailed.

  Mama reached out and touched Dawn gently. “It must have been a nightmare.”

  Dawn shook her head violently. “I fought as hard as I could,” she cried. “Lord knows, I tried to stop him!”

  “You did a good job, too,” Mama reassured her.

  Dawn pulled herself up in the bed. Her eyes darted back and forth from Mama to me, and back again. “I was asleep. I tried to scream, but—” She sobbed.

  “I understand from Abe that you got a look at this man.”

  Dawn shuddered. “When it was all over, I snatched the blanket from my head. I saw him, all right!”

  “You say he was young?”

  Dawn looked at Mama strangely, like she didn’t understand why she was asking questions. “I gave Abe his description,” she said.

  “Abe told me you think he’s about twenty-two or -three. That he’s big, tall, and that all of his hair was shaved.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You don’t remember seeing this man around town?”

  Dawn closed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

  Mama stood up. “We’ll let you rest now,” she said softly. “I’ll be back later. I’ve got some homemade soup that I think you’d enjoy.”

  When Dawn looked up at Mama, I could see the tears that filled her terrified eyes, tears that slipped silently down her cheek. “I tried to stop him, Miss Candi,” she whispered. “I did everything in my power to stop him!”

  Mama pulled Dawn into her arms. “You did the right thing, Dawn,” she told her firmly and lovingly. “You did all that you could have done, and that was the right thing to do.”

  Dawn curled up in Mama’s arms and closed her eyes. The only sound that came from her now was a whimper. She reminded me of a puppy, one that was hurt, lost, and very, very afraid.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  Cliff and Daddy were gone when Mama and I got back home at three o’clock. Mama seemed tired and withdrawn; she lay down on the couch in the family room and stared up at the ceiling, not saying a word. I understood her mood, so I gave her some space. Around four o’clock, though, I couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

  “Mama,” I started as gently as I knew how, “I know you’re thinking about everything that has happened in Otis the past few weeks, but—”

  “Simone,” she cut in. “My intuition tells me that I know something, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is.”

  “Something like what?” I asked.

  “Something that will make all that has happened with Ruby, Betty Jo, and Dawn come together.”

  “You think all three of their experiences are related?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I feel like I’m on a mountain looking down at shadows.”

  I got up and followed her to the window, leaning against the wall so that I could see her face. I hated to see Mama like this, like she was bottled up and couldn’t figure out how to become unplugged. Her frustration always touched something deep inside of me. Mama was the coach who made our team a winner; I hated to see her disheartened, especially since I didn’t have her skill of making lemonade out of lemons.

  Just then my father rushed inside the house, his eyes shining with excitement. Cliff was right behind him.

  “Candi, baby,” my father said, almost out of breath. “I think we’ve come up with the dude that’s been climbing in women’s windows and jumping them in their beds!”

  A funny feeling rushed through me.

  “James,” Mama said, “you’re not kidding me, now are you?”

  Daddy looked Mama straight in the eye. “Baby, would I do something like that?” he exclaimed. “We think we know who he is. We’re not sure, but we think—”

  “What makes you think you’ve spotted the right fella?”

  “For one thing, this guy has fresh scratches all over his face and neck. I can tell that a woman had hold of him for a good while,” Daddy said. “And he’s talking crazy, boasting that he scored last night with a woman that he had to make give him what he wanted! And Coal now remembers that he’s seen this guy wearing a shirt that looked exactly like that piece of cloth you showed us that Ruby had torn from the man who attacked her!”

  “This is wonderful,” Mama told him. “We’ve got to get ahold of
Abe before we lose this man,” she said, walking to the phone and dialing Abe’s number. A moment later she hung up with a sigh. “His answering machine is on; he’s not in the office,” she told us.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  Mama turned to my father. “Do you know the name of this man?”

  “Around the pool hall he’s called Honey Man. I don’t know his given name.”

  “My Lord.” Mama’s eyes shone now, her frustration blasted away. “We have to get in touch with Abe!”

  “Listen, Candi,” Daddy said. “I left Coal at the pool hall to keep an eye on the guy. This is what we’re going to do. I’m going back to the hall, just in case Coal needs me. This Honey Man is big. He weighs every bit of two hundred fifty pounds or more. And he’s all muscle. I’m surprised that Ruby was able to fight him off as long as she did—truth is, I’m surprised that any woman would be able to fight him at all.”

  “What do we do?” Mama asked.

  “You and Simone go to Abe’s office and wait for him.”

  “I want in on this,” Cliff now said.

  “You stay here,” Daddy told him. “If Abe calls, tell him to get to his office as soon as possible. Tell him that Candi and Simone are waiting there for him.”

  “Why don’t I just call 911?” I suggested.

  “If this Honey Man isn’t the fella who is climbing into women’s bedroom windows, you’d be hard pressed to explain an emergency call,” Daddy told me.

  Mama nodded resignedly. “James is right,” she told me. “Let’s do as he says and go to Abe’s office to wait.”

  Abe’s office was locked, so Mama and I sat waiting in the car for him. An hour passed before Abe arrived. There was sweat on his face and his shirt was wet and dirty. When he saw us waiting, he ushered us inside his office, closed the door, went behind his desk, sat down, and started fussing. “That darned old man Thrasher who lives next door to Vincent Kelley should have been locked up in the state hospital years ago,” he grumbled.

  “Mr. Thrasher isn’t crazy,” Mama told Abe. “The poor old soul is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.”

  I was impatient to get on with what we’d been waiting to tell Abe. “This isn’t the time to talk about Mr. Thrasher,” I said.

  Abe ignored me. “I don’t care what he’s got,” he said, annoyed. He pulled out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. Then, as if he remembered that he didn’t smoke in front of Mama, he snatched it from between his lips and threw it down on his desk. “Thrasher wanders off at least three times a week. His wife, Cassie, expects me and Rick to drop everything and go searching for him. There’s a whole lot more to my job than tracking down an absentminded man!”

  “Listen,” Mama said firmly, giving Abe her most steely-eyed look. “James and Coal think they’ve identified the man who’s been attacking the women in town.”

  Abe’s mouth dropped in amazement. “Who is he and where is he?” he asked.

  “His name is Honey Man. He’s playing pool at Joe’s Pool Hall right this minute. James and his buddy Coal are keeping an eye on him.”

  Abe stepped into the corridor outside of his office and shouted, “Rick! Come in here! It seems that James may have spotted the rapist.”

  “James told us that Honey Man is big—if he decides to put up a fight, you’ll have a tough one on your hands,” Mama warned Abe.

  And Mama was right.

  Mama and I waited in Abe’s office for more than an hour, staring out of the window into the streets of Otis.

  We were just about to leave Abe’s office when my father arrived.

  “I came to tell you to drive your mother home,” he told me. “Candi baby, things aren’t coming together the way I’d hoped they would.”

  “What’s happened?” Mama asked, instantly concerned. “Did Abe arrest Honey Man? Has anybody gotten hurt?”

  “No, no, baby. Nothing like that has happened.” Daddy touched Mama’s arm. “Do as I say and drive home. I’ll meet you there. We’ll talk then.”

  When we got into the house and Mama had made a fresh pot of coffee, Daddy told us this story: The moment Honey Man saw Abe and Rick Martin approaching him, he pulled out a knife. There was a scuffle. Honey Man’s eyes were wild, like those of a madman. Other men in the pool hall scattered. Honey Man broke loose from Abe and Rick and used the confusion to push through the crowd and make it through the back door. In a few seconds he was across the street. Abe and Rick followed, but Honey Man was fast. By the time Abe and Rick decided to go back to the pool hall and get their car, Honey Man was no place to be found.

  In the middle of the next week, Mama called me in Atlanta to give me the news. Honey Man had been captured. This was Mama’s account: Abe and Rick drove around town, telling people that Honey Man was the alleged rapist. But no one knew where he had gone; Honey Man had simply vanished from Otis on Saturday. Then, on Wednesday, Abe and Rick got a tip. Loggers had spotted Honey Man near an old cabin in the woods five miles behind Herman Spikes’s place. They surrounded the place and Honey Man was finally captured.

  “Are you coming home this weekend?” Mama asked now.

  “Yes,” I said, remembering that Yasmine had asked me to get her two or three of my parents’ wedding pictures. She’d wanted to surprise them by having one of the photos blown up and become part of a special table centerpiece.

  “What time Saturday can I expect you?”

  “Early.”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  “Not that early!” I protested. “It’s a three-hour drive!” I took a deep breath. There was no point in resisting her. Mama always got her way. “Okay, pretty lady. I’ll be in Otis at nine-thirty Saturday morning,” I said, feeling a slight victory because I’d pushed the time back a half hour.

  “Tell Cliff I’ll have breakfast on the table at nine o’clock,” Mama replied, her voice soft but resolute. Then she hung up the telephone.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  Saturday evening. The sun hung low in the sky, and the air was heavy with humidity. Silence hung over us like a long, dark cloud.

  Mama seemed thoughtful as we drove the twenty miles through the pine tree farm to Avondale.

  It had been hard for me to convince Cliff that Mama and I would be safe driving to Avondale alone. If he had, like he’d insisted, taken the drive with us, Mama might have suspected that I’d told him about the attempts on our lives. As it was, she knew about my concerned phone call to Abe—he’d called both me and Mama to report that he’d talked to Leman Moody and that everything would be okay. Mama may not have minded me letting Abe know about our close calls, but she wouldn’t have been happy if Cliff or my father started looking after us like guardian angels.

  Anyway, I started to put a Sade CD into the car’s player, but then I glanced at Mama and decided against it. She looked as if something serious was going on inside her head. I knew not to interfere whenever Mama looked so reflective. It would have been useless anyway.

  The truth was, I was sulking. I wasn’t happy that Mama seemed so interested in the problems of Otis and so disinterested in her own party. I really wanted to pull out all the stops so that it would be an anniversary both she and my father would always remember. Yet she didn’t seem to care much about it one way or the other.

  When we arrived at the Avondale Inn, Mama motioned me to park. “I don’t want to get out,” she told me, glancing down at her watch. “I just want to sit here and try to figure out what really happened to poor Ruby.”

  I pulled the car onto the grass under a spreading live oak and turned off the ignition. I rolled down the window. Crickets sang; the salty smell of french fried potatoes filled the air. Directly across the street was the McDonald’s where we’d had our first meeting with Leman Moody.

  I tried to visualize Ruby Spikes, upset, unwanted, alone. And with a wad of money in her purse. So much money, I thought. So little happiness.

  We sat until I began fidgeting—I was rapidly getting bored. M
ama must have noticed, because she said, “All right, Simone, let’s drive back to Otis.”

  At that moment, Leman Moody, Inez Moore, and a man that I assumed was Inez’s boyfriend stepped out of the McDonald’s across the street. At first they seemed preoccupied with their conversation, but then Leman spotted us. As he spoke to them, he pointed to us.

  “I think,” I told Mama, uneasy that I was in the same vicinity as Leman Moody, “that we’ll make the trip home faster than we made it to Avondale!” The twenty-mile return trip to Otis took us only fifteen minutes.

  “I’ve got news,” was the announcement that Abe hit us with when we got home. He’d been there waiting. “It’s official … Ruby Spikes did not commit suicide. The medical examiner hasn’t done Betty Jo’s autopsy yet, but his report on Ruby shows that she had minute hemorrhages in her eyelids and throat. She was dead before she was shot. Somebody suffocated her, then shot her to make it look like she killed herself. There wasn’t any gunpowder on her hands. And the paper that I told you we found in her hand was a piece of a twenty-dollar bill. It looks like somebody killed her for the money that we can’t account for,” Abe said so fast, he almost didn’t take a breath. He was really excited.

  Mama started to say something, but Abe held up his hand. “There’s more. Rick came up with the idea that the dates and phone numbers that you suggested Jeff Golick pull together for me might put me onto Charles Parker. And he was right. No sooner did I have that list in my hands than I realized that I was onto something. You’ll see, Candi, Ruby stayed at the Avondale Inn eight times during the past six months. About three months ago she started making calls to a Savannah number.”

  Mama’s eyes were glued to the list of neatly typed names and numbers that Abe had handed her.

  “That number there in Savannah is for a real estate office,” Abe said. “The Charles Parker Real Estate Office.”

  “Ruby was buying property?” I asked.

  “I talked to Parker over the phone,” Abe said as Mama handed him back the typed list. “He told me he didn’t even know that Ruby was dead. He claims the last time he talked with Ruby was four weeks ago.”