Butterfly Sunday (22 page)

What harm could it have done to let Leona hold her baby a moment before she blacked out there on the icy road? What monstrous cruelty wouldn’t let a mother hold her infant? Leona had seen her ghost in the woods once. Seen the wavy yellow-red hair that she took on faith, which had already faded in her imagination, faded with her dying faith in everything.

She had gotten used to thinking about seeing Tess with her bright copper hair in the woods—Tess, her baby, quiet and peering at her from the arms of death. She had gotten too used to it to bother reminding herself that it had been in a dream.

It was no dream that she had been Tess’s mother. And now she would speak in a great forum. She would hold her fat, ginger-freckled infant duchess up before a crowd. She would hollow out a niche for Tess and secure her being against people’s obliterating indifference.

“… hereby sentenced to die,”
the judge would say, and she would detest the immutable meaning of his words. But she’d take the opportunity to turn around so that the reporters could hear her. “What does that matter? It’s a very small sum to pay for this singing heart and the happiness to say I’m Tess’s mother at last and what mother would hesitate to die to ensure that her child will, if not live, then at least exist in people’s minds.” Not real flesh, no, but the past perfect fact established.

Then she heard Tess cry. She was dreaming. No. She had closed her eyes, but she was still awake on the porch and the sound had come from the church. Not Tess at all, but Averill, distant and muted, calling her name. No. She’d heard no such thing. It was that infernal mewing catbird in the sweet gum tree across the road. How many times had its mournful mewing turned itself into someone calling her name? She had to grab something real, something here and now, like the time: 5:17. And that low sound. It was a car. Five-seventeen and a car was coming.

Five-seventeen and a car was coming and Averill was lying on his study floor up at that church deader than a brick-mason’s level. There was no way, no chance that he was still alive. Yet every few minutes the twitter of a sparrow was all it took to convince her the dead could walk. Now the boding whine of that fast-moving car. It was past the house and out of sight by the time she reached the front porch. It seemed to pick up speed as it passed. This was the last house before the road petered out half a mile beyond the church.

Teenagers, probably.

Sooner or later that car had to come back. She’d keep a listen. She was pretty sure it was teenagers, though. That’s all it ever was. Getting themselves stuck for life. Would she be at the end of her own lonely road now if she hadn’t believed in Tyler Crockett’s sweet lies? Sad how there wasn’t any magic set of words to explain it to them. How many skinny kids had passed this place on their way into that tender forest of illusions? Sometimes it wasn’t even half an hour before they were headed back toward town. How would anyone ever convince those dewy-eyed girls that they had just imprisoned themselves for the rest of their lives?

Oh, it made her shake with frustration. She wanted to shout at them as they passed, “Baby, he don’t want you now. He wants to spend the rest of the night telling his buddies all about it. Not that a one of them will remember a word of his bragging when you’re starting to show.”

Time and event turned over on themselves that afternoon. Leona seemed to be observing, experiencing and reliving every moment. Somehow in all of it she had gone down to the road from the porch to wait for the police and seen the silver Lincoln fly past the house. Soames had gotten the message after all. Minutes before she heard the car—or was it days—Leona had picked up the telephone and confessed everything into Soames’s answering machine. No doubt she’d raced over, hoping against hope that she could still save him.

Now Leona heard the church doors screech open. They were heavy and they wouldn’t close unless she pulled them shut behind her. So Leona knew by the silence and the diminishing footsteps on the hardwood floor that Soames was hurrying. Then there was a scream. He must have bled through the eyes. They said all of Tilly Crowe’s victims did. Next she heard a thud. Or a plop maybe. She must have knocked one of Averill’s reference books off the arm of his chair. Now Leona heard her frightened feet on the gravel. Now her car door made that heavenly, heavy gloop sound. Now the whoosh of a fine automobile engine starting. In seconds the Lincoln pulled onto the dirt road and headed toward Leona.

“He’s not worth killing, sugar,” Soames had so often repeated. “Rare is the man who is.”

Leona waved to reassure the poor, startled thing, but Soames didn’t slow down. In fact, Soames didn’t act like
she saw her. Instead, she hit the gas and the Lincoln fishtailed through the silt where the driveway met the road. It came on so fast that Leona had to jump backward to avoid being hit. Before she was back on her feet, the car had sailed down the hill and out of sight.

Two things Leona knew. The first was that Soames had seen her leap back. Of course she’d seen her. The second was that Soames would never deliberately hurt her. Then why hadn’t she stopped? That didn’t take a whole brain to figure out. Hadn’t Leona just confessed to committing murder? Soames was doing the right thing. She had gone to see if by chance she could still help Averill. Then, seeing that it was too late, she had gone to get the law. If she had done otherwise, if she had come straight to Leona first, Soames would be burdened with all kinds of legal ropes and chains that implicated her.

She’d as much as warned Leona not to go off of her nut and do something she’d regret. Leona had all but assured her that she was already way off her nut and she wouldn’t have the slightest regret. Soames knew why. Soames knew everything. Soames had landed in the hapless seat of mother confessor, sister, advisor and friend. Leona trusted Soames more than she trusted herself.

The last thing Leona wanted to do was see her friend mired down in all of this.

SUNDAY, APRIL 23, 2000

5:29 P.M.

Soames hit the gas when she saw Leona at the end of the driveway—pure instinct. She could have cheerfully mowed down the stupid bitch. She’d screw up a rotten egg, that one. Ignorance really must be bliss. Or maybe the puritanical slut was so bent on her next roll with her redneck lover that she didn’t know confectioners’ sugar when it stuck to her fingers. The car skidded. She had to slow down. Now, that would solve her problems, running herself into an oak tree at ninety miles an hour.

She had to think. She had no time to think. Her first impulse was to reload her small ivory pistol and head over to Helen Brisbane’s house. It was a thousand-percent certainty that Helen would point fingers at Soames. Not that Soames hadn’t just pointed one long, straight finger at herself. Now she had to get her head
on straight. She had to. Where to first? The sheriff? Leona? Or should she call the county paramedic unit?

No. No, not the last option. He was dead. There was no point in having a big rescue drama up this country road. Go home. Keep shut. Press her luck one more time? The best lies always ran as parallel to the facts as you could get them. She had Leona’s confession on her answering machine. She’d admitted poisoning him and why she’d done it. What did Soames have to worry about? How much of the truth could she salvage?

Leona called to say she’d poisoned Averill and wanted Soames to drive her into the sheriff’s office. But Averill was still alive when Soames got there. She could sail through a lie detector on that part of it. Then her heart sank because any nut deputy sheriff would ask her why at that point she didn’t call for help.

Because Leona said that she already had?

No. Not on her answering machine tape.

She looked at her watch. Leona’s call had come thirty-three minutes ago. Her machine always gave the date and the time of each message. Why couldn’t she think?

Bingo! She wasn’t home when the call came. In fact, she had just gotten it. She was on her way over to the church to see if Averill was all right. Perfect! Would a murderer phone the law to announce she was on her way to shoot someone? No. In thirty seconds she was at the crossroads store, talking into the pay phone.

“Orpheus County Sheriff’s Office.”

“Blue Hudson, please.”

“Speaking.”

“Blue, this is Soames Churchill. I’m afraid we have a situation out here.…”

Sundays were hell on a divorced man who lived three thousand miles away from his kids. It had been a long one for Blue. He’d spent the whole day alone in the county sheriff’s office covering the phones. He didn’t see why he should take some poor deputy away from his family to twiddle his thumbs in the smelly courthouse all day long. Besides, it was a kind of penance the way he saw it, an obligation he had. Any man stupid enough to love and lose twice owed himself a strong dose of humility.

Blue was the sheriff. “Interim sheriff,” it said on his contract. His predecessor, seventy-four-year-old Warren Meeks, had broken his hip in a fall during last winter’s big ice storm. Blue, who was exactly fifty years younger than Sheriff Meeks, was appointed when the board of supervisors deadlocked on their first two choices for the job.

Twenty-four was a little green to wear a silver star. It was only supposed to be temporary. Meeks had been expected to be back at work within six weeks. Instead the poor man had lain in bed for three months growing weaker and weaker until pneumonia set in and he died. In the meantime the young sheriff hadn’t disgraced himself. So no one saw the harm in letting him keep the job until a new lawman could be elected in July.

“He’s finally driven her to do it, Blue.”

What a bitch. Of course, Blue understood Soames. At least to the extent that she meant Leona had done something bad to Averill. However, Leona was still legally married and what was, or had been, between Blue and Leona wasn’t meant for publication. Soames was hoping Blue would let her in on it. He didn’t know why. Though he knew her well enough not to give her the benefit of any doubt.

“Who’s calling?”

“Soames.”

“What seems to be the problem?”

Soames made an indignant snorting sound. Blue ignored it. He couldn’t stand Soames Churchill. Soames was a waste of fine Southern womanhood, in his estimation. She was one of those gorgeous, leggy redheads who could walk across the courthouse lawn on a dead August afternoon and create more fireworks than a Fourth of July parade. Seeing her from a few yards, a man couldn’t possibly deny her anything. Stuck in the same room with her for more than five minutes, however, Blue Hudson would start promising God that he’d become a priest if He’d only make Soames go away.

“Leona Sayres has poisoned her husband, Averill.”

It ran all over Soames, playing like that, pretending she didn’t know Blue Hudson and Leona Sayres had been acting like two slippery mongrel dogs in heat. Like Blue Hudson didn’t know about her and Averill, for that matter. The worst two things a person could say were what they knew and what they meant.

“She what?”

“She called me in a panic, left me a message about half an hour ago. I’m on my way over there now.”

“Over where?”

“The church.”

“You mean on purpose?”

“ ’S what she says.”

All he could do was shake and pray to God it wasn’t true. Soames was given to wild exaggerations. This had to be one of them. Until six weeks ago, Leona had been all set to walk away from Averill Sayres and marry him. There was no love lost between Leona and Averill, but to the best of his knowledge they had no deep-seated animosity between them either.

Nothing made any sense. Nothing had since Leona
turned cool. He’d never figure it out. One minute they were planning to spend the rest of their lives together; the next she was a piece of stone—unreachable, inscrutable, indifferent to his shocked pleas. Something had happened, something terrible, something that changed everything. One day, she had told him, one day he’d understand that she was powerless. One day he’d realize that she had spared him much greater sorrow than they both felt at their parting.

It was different this time. It wasn’t the sharp bleeding agony he’d felt when he and Lucy split up. That was guilt at having failed as a husband and fear of inadequacy and the terror of loneliness and all kinds of things. This wasn’t anything like that. There was less self-pity this time. There was no regret or recrimination. This had been more like a constant sick feeling, a nagging sense that Leona was in danger or that she’d had some kind of mental breakdown.

He’d had a lot of ego wrapped up in his hard parting from Lucy. There was none of that with Leona. He couldn’t regret much either one of them had done or been to each other. He’d loved her to the best of his ability in every way a man could love a woman. He still did. He’d been worried sick about her. He’d been waiting in a kind of personal hell for something to happen, something to explain it for him.