Southern Discomfort (18 page)

"A nail set is used to set (meaning to countersink slightly below the surface) the heads of nails in finish carpentry. The purpose of setting is to improve the appearance of the work by concealing the nail heads.... The small surface hole above the head is usually plugged with putty"

It was one of the fastest exhumations I ever heard of. I don't know if it was a combination of Dwight, Terry, and Gordon O'Connor all pushing, but by midmorning on Monday, Ralph McGee had been dug up, relevant tissue samples had been collected, and his body was back under six feet of dirt again out at Centenary Cemetery where most of the best people in Dobbs were buried.

Results of the tests would take a while. As I understand it, proving arsenic's in a body is a fairly simple reactive test; proving it
isn't
there is a bit more complicated. Still, we were hoping to hear by Wednesday at the latest.

Rumors were flying all over Dobbs, especially since Bo Poole's office had queried Bass Langley's brother in Georgia and the brother said no, he hadn't heard a thing about Bass supposed to be coming home. "He hain't showed up here. Y'all ask Ava where he mought be?"

"Something 'bout that boy makes me think Bass got all the brains in his family," said Dwight as he went off to query the Duprees again.

Wasn't like he had to fight his way through hordes of lunchtime customers, he told me later. The only ones sitting at the Coffee Pot's counter were two out-of-town salesmen, our in-town drunk, and Gordon O'Connor, who was eating the same thing Ralph McGee usually ordered: a rare hamburger all the way and a glass of sweet iced tea.

In most small places, there's always a cousin or a neighbor's elderly sister who'll tell you—for your own good, of course—what folks are whispering behind your back and Dobbs was no different. Retha was red-eyed, Tink seemed bewildered, and Ava acted belligerent when Dwight came in to ask them where else Bass might be, since he wasn't in Georgia, far as they could tell.

"What's the matter, Deputy?" said Ava. "You think we poisoned him, too? You want to look out back in the dumpster?"

"Now, Ava—"

"Mrs. Langley to you, Deputy Bryant," she snapped.

"Now, Ava," said Tink. "No need to get huffy with the customers. What'll you have, Dwight?"

Up until that minute, Dwight says he hadn't really given it much thought as to whether the Coffee Pot actually was the source of the arsenic. He hesitated and saw Gordon O'Connor watching him through those shiny glasses. The epidemiologist picked up the succulent hamburger Retha had made him and bit into it with exaggerated relish.

("Well, he could, couldn't he?" Dwight asked me defensively. "They certainly weren't going to poison somebody from the Health Department.")

"I could sure use some iced tea, thank you, Tink."

"You like it sweet, don't you?"

But that far, Dwight was not prepared to go. He has a flat belly but he patted it anyhow and said he thought he'd better start cutting back on sugar.

"Humph!" said Ava and went outside to wash the windows, the better to glare at the townspeople who hadn't stopped in for their usual morning snacks.

While everyone might've been walking around the Duprees, Paige Byrd was suffering from too much attention. She and her mother had unplugged all the phones and fled to her Aunt Faith's house the night before. Friends and relatives quickly figured it out though, and by noon on Monday, they had crowded into Faith Taylor's house to lend aid and comfort and hear all the titillating details firsthand.

The consensus seemed to be that Paige had done what she had to when she defended her honor and Annie Sue's; and while it was too bad that she'd panicked and run, well, shoot! She was only sixteen, not even over her daddy's death good, and had never said boo to a goose. Who knew if they'd've done any smarter?

Paige stood it as long as she could, then called Annie Sue, who swung by on her way to run a line of 220 wire for a customer's new air-conditioning unit. The customer was an elderly farm woman who, after her husband's early demise, had managed eight acres of tobacco, thirty acres of sweet potatoes, plus the usual corn and soybeans till her sons were old enough to take over the farm.

No big deal, right?

But she thought it was just wonderful the way young women today could do so many things. Imagine being electricians! She was so impressed. And couldn't she just fix them a plate of cookies and a Pepsi?

On Tuesday morning, I awoke to the sound of Mr. Ou's lawn mower. The deep back gardens are overlooked by screened verandas that run the width of the house upstairs and down, and I pushed open my bedroom doors and stepped outside. A lacy screen of clematis shaded my part of the veranda and I looked down onto beds of splashy summer flowers at the height of their colors and riotous beauty.

Aunt Zell has never gone in for exotic plantings. She prefers sturdy common annuals and old-fashioned perennials: zinnias of every color and height from multicolored miniatures to four-foot red giants, clear yellow marigolds, white and pink cosmos, blue salvia, more blue in the speedwell, clumps of old-time daylilies, and stiff purple phlox.

In the middle of the yard, in a long diagonal from the house, is Uncle Ash's lap pool, forty feet long by six feet wide and only four feet deep. A narrow footbridge arches over the center to a weathered gazebo almost hidden in its tangle of purple clematis.

Along the side wall, rhododendrons had finished blooming, but hydrangeas sported deep blue blossom heads bigger than honeydew melons.

Except for a wide swath that meanders through the flowerbeds and strips each side of the lap pool, there isn't much grass here in the back; and one of Mr. Ou's adolescent sons guided the power mower along the path while he and another child weeded and a third boy used an electric edger to trim where the mower couldn't reach. A much younger child gravely lopped off dead flower heads with a pair of hand clippers.

All wore khaki shorts and shirts, brown leather sandals, and cloth hats against the July sun. Mr. Ou himself was so young that I found myself suddenly taking another look at the three older boys. They were quite close in height and build. Too close, in fact, to be brothers unless they were triplets. Perhaps cousins?

In the mad scramble to get out of the refugee camps, Mr. Ou, hardly more than a boy himself, might well have wound up claiming younger brothers or nephews as his own sons. Difficult to imagine all the hardships they must have endured before fetching up here in Colleton County—exiled to a strange land, their future entrusted to strangers.

(By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.)

I wondered what his work had been in his homeland and wished his English or my French were better so that we could speak about something other than the weather and how he was feeling.

Aunt Zell had started putting the puppy out on the grass inside a portable fence after his morning feed so he could start his training, and the youngest Ou child had discovered him. He scooped up Brinkley/Donaldson/ MacNeil/Lehrer (Aunt Zell thought he'd cocked his head with interest when the news came on last night) and spoke to the others in lilting phrases that I took to be a Cambodian dialect.

There were broad grins and smiling replies as he hefted the puppy in an oddly familiar gesture I couldn't quite place. A stray breeze rippled my gown and one of the boys spotted the motion. He hissed a quick warning to the young one, who even more quickly returned Cronkite to his pen. The others paused and gave me half-bows of formal greeting.

"
Bon jour
," I called down.
"C'est un bel matin, non?"

"Good morning," replied Mr. Ou. "Is beauty day, yes. Very hot soon."

Another round of smiles and nods and I went inside to shower and dress. I admired the courage and tenacity that had allowed Mr. Ou to survive and now, even begin to flourish in a modest way. Lu told me that she'd signed up enough home owners for his services that by next spring he would probably be able to afford a riding mower for bigger yards. Dobbs can be suspicious of strangers and foreigners and I was proud they'd let the Ou family settle in without any friction. Cultural clashes can sometimes—

"Oh, dear Lordy!" exclaimed the pragmatist, who often puts two and two together a step ahead of my conscious mind.

"Now don't go jumping to conclusions," the preacher warned nervously.

"Who's jumping? And why are you wringing your hands if you haven't already jumped, too?"

I found Lu Bingham's private number in my address book and when she answered sleepily on the fourth ring, I said, "I have to be in court in exactly one hour and twenty-two minutes. If you want to keep Mr. Ou from having a cross burned on his front doorstep, you better get here in fifteen."

I skipped my shower, threw on some clothes and hurried downstairs.

"Is something wrong?" asked Aunt Zell when I came barreling through the kitchen.

"No, no. Lu Bingham's coming over to help me talk to Mr. Ou. There's a question about wages," I lied, knowing the mention of money would keep her inside.

Aunt Zell would never ask how much I was paying for her anniversary gift, but she did say, "Whatever you're giving him, dear, he's worth every penny. He and those boys do
such
a good job."

One thing about working in a crisis center, it does seem to give quick reflexes. Lu was still in bed when I called, yet she made it in ten minutes. I guess she was expecting, from the tone of my voice, to find an angry mob storming Aunt Zell's backyard. Instead, there was only Mr. Ou and his boys, toiling peacefully in the early morning sun.

"I ran two red lights," she began indignantly. "What's the big emergency?"

"I need you to translate, okay?"

"If you'd paid more attention in Mrs. Jefferson's French class instead of flirting with Howard Med—"

"You gonna lecture or listen?" I interrupted.

We walked across the narrow arched bridge to the vine-shaded gazebo and Lu asked Mr. Ou to join us.

He came, but he looked apprehensive; and when I gestured for him to sit, he did so gingerly.

"Tell him my aunt has been very pleased with his work," I said.

I waited till she had translated and he had warily acknowledged the compliment, then said, "Ask if he understands that I'm a judge, an officer of the court and bound by the laws of this state?"

She started to protest, took one look at my face and asked him.

Mr. Ou nodded and looked even more apprehensive, if that were possible.

"I've read that dogs are considered great delicacies in your country. Even cats."

Lu gave me an outraged glare. "Of all the stereotyped, xenophobic, racist—"

I glared right back. "Why does a recognition of basic cultural differences always get labeled racism? If I were a racist, I'd have someone from the sheriff's department over going through the bones in his compost heap. I called
you
, not a reporter from the
Ledger
, didn't I? So quit hanging insulting labels on me and ask him, okay?"

"Oh, God!" said Lu and hastily translated.

Mr. Ou listened, but said nothing. He didn't have to. Not after I'd seen that youngest boy heft Brokaw the way I've seen Aunt Zell heft a supermarket chicken or pork roast a thousand times.

"In this country, cats and dogs are pets. People here would be horrified and outraged if they knew you had cooked one." I tried not to let myself think of Aunt Zell's Goldie. Of Miss Sallie's Queenie. Or, heaven forbid, Alice Castleberry's registered bull terrier.

"There is no law in North Carolina that actually forbids the eating of these animals," I continued, "but a person who took another's pet could certainly be prosecuted for theft, perhaps even for cruelty to animals."

As Lu translated, Mr. Ou suddenly began to speak and even with my limited French, I understood a protest when I heard one.

Lu confirmed it. "He swears there was no cruelty. Death was painless and swift."

"Then he admits it."

"Not exactly. It's all couched in the conditional voice."

"Well, put this in the imperative: it must stop. No more. If I hear of another single dog or cat disappearing, he and his family will be charged. Even if there's no evidence, just the accusation will make his neighbors shun them, get his children taunted in school, certainly make people quit hiring him. Some Americans get more upset over abused cats than abused children. His very life might even be threatened if certain men were to hear of it.

"These the same men who eat squirrels and possums and shoot a Bambi for their freezer every fall?" Lu asked sardonically.

"Don't try to justify or rationalize, just tell him what I said, and put in as many cultural taboos as you can."

There was a long silence when she finished, then Mr. Ou spoke quietly for several minutes.

"He's very sorry if he's done broken our laws and offended you. It's been very difficult feeding his sons. Boys need meat to grow strong, he says, and there was not enough money to buy it. Now, thanks to his lawn service business, he no longer has to forage for meat, but can buy it at a grocery store. He promises it will not happen again. He's very grateful to you for not bringing him to court, and to show his gratitude, he'd like to do this yard for free from now on."

"That sounds suspiciously like a bribe," I said. "Tell him, thanks but no thanks. If he wants to atone, let him put in a yard at the WomenAid house."

As we walked back to the house, Aunt Zell came out to ask Lu to tell Mr. Ou how really pleased she was with his work and to express her hope that he was finding America a good place to live. She had a small box of cookies for the youngest child. "Animal crackers," she beamed.

I thought of the child's sharp little teeth biting off the head of a tiger and decided to skip breakfast and go directly to court.

"Where a floor opening occurs (such as a stairway opening), the parts of the common joists which would extend across if there were no opening must be cut away."

Lu Bingham and I crossed paths again sooner than I'd expected. When I walked into court after lunch Wednesday afternoon, there she was sitting in the first row behind the prosecutor's table.

Tracy Johnson was ADA that day. She's tall and willowy, with short blonde hair and gorgeous eyes, which get downplayed with oversized glasses when she's prosecuting. Tracy loves shoes as much as I do, but because of her height, she usually settles for flats and low heels. Some judges of the male persuasion don't like having to look up to a woman.

Shortly before four, Tracy called line thirty-seven. "Jerry Dexter Trogden. Assault on a female."

There was something awfully familiar about his Fu Manchu mustache, that bright green-and-purple dragon tattooed on his right forearm, and the swaggering flourish with which he signed the waiver of counsel.

"Weren't you in here a couple of weeks ago?" I asked.

"Yeah, but she took up the charges," he said.

"She" was the shame-faced teenager sitting close to Lu for moral support. Skinny white blonde. Hair pulled back by a bright pink scarf that matched her cheap summer cotton dress. I sort of remembered that she'd been as pretty as her dress, a shallow-rooted flower doomed to fade just as quickly as that poorly made garment would fade and go limp after two or three washings. She certainly wasn't pretty this afternoon. There were stitches both in her lower lip and over her eye, her face was cut and swollen, and her bruises were as purple and green as the dragon tattooed above the fist that had punched her out.

As Tracy laid out the charges, Jerry Dexter Trogden drummed his fingers on the tabletop before him and kept a sneer on his face.

"That sneer could be a mask of apprehension," the preacher reminded me.

"Yeah," agreed the pragmatist. "Fear that he's finally going to get what's coming to him."

"You are honor-bound to listen to both sides before you judge."

"Fine with me. Give the bastard enough rope so we can hang him in good conscience."

The testimony of Tammy Epps was as old as the Bible she swore on, as new and unnewsworthy as the back page in tomorrow's paper. They had lived together as lovers for two years, he became violent when drinking, each time he promised he would never hit her again. Last week, she finally realized he would probably wind up killing her if she stayed. When she tried to leave, this is what he did: Exhibit A, Polaroid pictures taken before her gashes were stitched.

"Your witness," said Tracy.

Trogden had watched enough television to think he was Perry Mason.

He wasn't.

His defense? Innocent because of extenuating circumstance: she was his woman, she had no cause to leave, he had a right to keep what was his.

The longer he talked, the angrier he became. I explained contempt of court; and when he began repeating himself, I asked if he had anything new to add.

"Nothing, 'cepting I don't think I ought to go to jail for trying to hold on to what's mine."

"How far did you get in school, Mr. Trogden?"

"I finished," he said belligerently.

"Then you've heard of the Emancipation Proclamation?"

"That the one that says women got the same rights as men?"

"No, Mr. Trogden, that's the one that says slavery is abolished. No one may own another human being."

He subsided and I pronounced him guilty of assault.

"I ain't going to jail for just 'cause she marks easy," he muttered.

"If I rule you in contempt, Mr. Trogden, I guarantee you will see the inside of a jail." I looked at Tracy. "What's the state asking, Ms. Johnson?"

She suggested that Trogden pay Ms. Epps's medical bills and be made to stay away from her permanently.

"Stand up, Mr. Trogden," I said. "This court orders that you be imprisoned for a term of ninety days, sentence—"

Before I could finish saying that the sentence would be suspended on condition that he pay court costs, a hundred-dollar fine, and Ms. Epps's medical bills, and that he promise not to go near her, Trogden roared to his feet and snatched up the Bible lying there in front of him.

"I ain't going to no jail!" he howled and reared back and heaved the Bible at me as hard as he could.

I ducked instinctively and it slammed into the wall behind me with so much force that one of the hard corners left a dent in the wood paneling.

Officer Mayleen Richards, a Dobbs police rookie, and an elderly bailiff wrestled him to the floor and snapped handcuffs on him.

"See?" cried Tammy Epps and promptly burst into tears in Lu's arms.

Trogden came up from the floor snarling curses for every woman that ever walked, and I changed his suspended sentence to an active one and had him removed from my courtroom.

"Court's adjourned till tomorrow morning," I said.

"Oyez, Oyez, Oyez," the bailiff intoned. "This honorable court stands adjourned until tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. God save the state and this honorable court."

“Good reflexes, Your Honor," said Phyllis Raynor.

As I left the courthouse, I ran into Julia Lee and her miniature poodle. (Ever since Miss Sallie's Queenie disappeared, Julia stopped leaving CoCo unattended.) CoCo was happy to see me, but Julia was flushed with indignation. "That Health Department man! I'm a good mind to have John Claude sue him for slander."

"O'Connor? What's he done?" I asked, shaking the dainty paw that CoCo offered me.

"Somebody told him our Martha Circle catered Ginger McGee's wedding and he's over there in First Methodist's kitchen right this minute. He's even saying that if arsenic does turn up in Ralph's body, he'll want to know the names of all the women who did both your reception and Ginger's, too. A
Martha!
" She took a deep breath to steady herself. "So what I need to know is was that Bannerman person at your reception? Gladys says he certainly wasn't invited to theirs."

"I have no idea, Julia." There had been such a crush of people and at that time I didn't know Carver Bannerman from Adam's housecat. "It was a public event though, so I suppose it's possible he could have stepped in for a cookie if he was here at the courthouse. Want me to ask Annie Sue and her friends if they noticed?"

"Please," she said crisply. "The Martha Circle does too much good with the funds they raise to have its image besmirched. Heel, CoCo."

Obediently, CoCo heeled and followed Julia on into the courthouse.

I continued down the side steps and in through the basement entrance to the sheriff's department to see if Dwight wanted to come have a quick drink before I had to drive Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash to the airport.

He was standing in the doorway of Bo Poole's office and he and Bo both grinned soon as they saw me. Might've known the bailiff wouldn't waste time telling them every detail.

"I know you're still new at the job," Dwight said, "but judges are supposed to
throw
the book, not duck it."

"You laugh, but those hardback Bibles ought to be changed to paperbacks. I could have been injured for life. Any word from the lab yet?"

"Nope," said Bo. "They've got so much on their plate it looks like Friday before we hear for sure. How's Herman?"

"We're real worried about his legs," I admitted. "They still don't know if his nerve damage is permanent. He's getting therapy, but they're also teaching him how to maneuver in a wheelchair."

"And that joker from Environmental Health still can't figure out where he got that arsenic," Bo fumed.

"Got to give him A for effort though," I said. "Julia Lee's mad because he's over at First Methodist's kitchen right this minute."

"How come? Was Bannerman at your swearing-in? Ralph sure as hell wasn't."

I explained about how the Marthas had catered his daughter's wedding, and we kicked it around a few minutes.

"Y'all locate Bass Langley yet?"

"Tell you the truth, we hadn't been looking all that hard," Dwight admitted. "His brother doesn't seem worried, and Ava says she doesn't want him back."

"Maybe you should take her up on her offer and check out that dumpster back of the Coffee Pot," I said tartly.

Dwight thought he had too much paperwork to knock off just then. All the same, when I said maybe I'd go see if Gordon O'Connor had found anything, he said he reckoned he'd come along with me.

The church was only two blocks away, but by the time we got there, O'Connor was gone. As he walked me back to my car, Dwight said, "What time you getting back from the airport?"

"I don't know. Nine or nine-thirty, probably. Why?"

"How 'bout I come over later and keep you company? You make us some popcorn and I'll bring that video you've been wanting to see."

"
The Last Wave?
Hey, great!" I'd been trying to track down a copy for months. "Where'd you find it?"

"Washington."

"
Little
Washington had
The Last Wave?
"

"Not Little Washington. Washington, D.C. I got tired hearing you whine so I asked a friend to UPS it. It'd better be as good as you say it is."

"Better!" Touched by his remembering, I impulsively added, "Listen. If I tell you something, will you promise you'll keep it to yourself?"

His eyes narrowed. "What've you done now?"

"Promise first."

"Okay, I promise, even though I can tell by that look on your face I'm going to regret it."

He listened with growing incredulity as I told him of my encounter with Mr. Ou that morning.

"Jesus H., Deborah! You know how many phone calls we've gotten about those missing dogs? Miz Castleberry's in my ear every morning; Doug Woodall's wife's uncle—you can't just take the law into your own hands like that."

"Oh, come on, Dwight. What would be gained by hauling him into court at this point? It won't bring those dogs back. All it'd do is cause hard feelings. Besides, think how you'd feel if you got plopped down in India and couldn't afford to buy meat for you and Cal. You think you wouldn't soon be inviting one of those sacred cows to come home with you some dark night?"

He shook his head at me. "Don't tell me any more secrets, okay?"

I was hurt. "I thought you'd be glad to know you don't have to worry about any more pets going missing. You always say I don't tell you things."

"And this is what you start with? Barbecued beagles?" He was already heading down the basement steps. "I didn't hear a thing you said. Remember that. See you at nine-thirty."

"Well, he's got a point," said the preacher, smoothing the wrinkles in his favorite hairshirt. "You probably should have given Mr. Ou some meaningful community service. Maybe some hours out at the animal shelter."

"That sorry place?" snorted the pragmatist from the depths of his comfortable lounge chair. "Ninety-eight percent of the animals taken out there get put down and their bodies burned. Would Mr. Ou see that as a civics lesson or a waste of good protein?"

When I got home, Aunt Zell was still trying to decide between black silk slacks, which would let her forget about heels and hose, or a champagne-colored cocktail dress that would require an extra bag. She was as flustered as a teenage bride packing for her honeymoon.

Annie Sue had brought over the adapter plugs that Nadine had used with her hairdryer when she and Herman took that Holy Land tour with their church group a few years back, and Cindy and Paige were with her.

The three girls had bonded closer than ever, but there were lines of strain in all three faces as things got more weirdly complicated with each passing day. Paige had killed a rapist; because of Paige, Annie Sue had escaped rape but now faced the possibility that Herman would be permanently disabled; Cindy's father had been exhumed and, along with Herman and Carver Bannerman, might have been the victim of a successful poisoning attempt. Yet, they were each trying to act as if the most interesting thing in their lives was Aunt Zell's first trip to Paris.

"I'm going to bring back a bottle of real French perfume for each one of y'all," Aunt Zell promised as she hung the cocktail dress back in her closet and opted for a black sequined top for the slacks. She tucked it in next to something pale pink and lacy.

"Why, Miss Zell," giggled Annie Sue, fluffing out one of the skimpiest nightgowns you'd ever hope to see.

"Oh, it's
beautiful!
" sighed Paige.

Aunt Zell laughed. "Isn't that the silliest thing?"

In went her makeup kit and she was just zipping the bag when Uncle Ash came in, handsome in navy linen blazer and gray slacks.

"All packed?" he asked.

"Ready!"

"You sure you want to make that long drive, honey?" Uncle Ash asked me for the third time. "I really can leave our car at the airport. Five days won't cost that much."

"Don't be silly," I said. Also for the third time. "I'll want to hear a full report while it's fresh."

The girls each picked up a bag and as the four of us waited in the side driveway for Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash to make a final round of the house to see if there were something they needed to tell me about besides the puppy, I remembered something myself.

"That epidemiologist that's trying to find a common denominator," I told the girls. "He asked me if Carver Bannerman was at my swearing-in reception. Did y'all see him there?"

Furrowed brows and slow headshakes as they tried to recall a man they hadn't yet met themselves two weeks ago.

I had a sudden flash of brilliance. "Stevie's video!"

"Huh?" said Annie Sue.

"Stevie," I reminded her. "He was everywhere with that camera of his. Remember? If Bannerman was at the reception, Stevie's bound to have caught him on the tape. It's sitting up there on top of my VCR and soon as I get back from the airport, I'll run through it and check it out."

As Uncle Ash and Aunt Zell came through the veranda door, I called, "Don't lock it. Dwight's coming over to watch a video with me tonight and I told him to go on in if I wasn't back yet."