Butterfly Sunday (35 page)

SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 1998

7:00 A.M.

Eight months after Averill left Soames to explain Henri Churchill’s body, he moved down the front steps of the Clay house in Fredonia and slipped up the block in the twilight past the neat bungalows and squared hedges of the saved. In his pocket was a yellowed envelope containing seventeen thousand dollars, Viola Clay’s life savings. She had ferociously held on to it through the bad years, believing she would spend the money on Leona’s wedding one day.

By his own reckoning Viola couldn’t survive more than a day or two. It had taken all her strength to lift the envelope and give it to him.

“Leona’s in a familial condition and I ask your help in getting her away.” He said that he would. He meant what he said. He’d been to visit as part of his duty as a
part-time assistant to the Church of Christ minister. Since Viola was Methodist to the bone, the minister considered his obligation to her as secondary. Averill had gone to visit her twice a week in his stead.

“I assure you we’ll find her a respectable option,” Averill said.

He felt sorry for the girl. The whole town was spinning on the fact that the Crockett boy had ruined her. She was a pretty thing, full of spunk and warmth. Now all he had to do was find a way to keep his promise and Viola’s money as well. Was he supposed to turn a girl’s whole life around for free? As long as he left Leona in good stead at the end of the day, he was sure Viola would consider it a bargain.

He turned the corner and moved toward the boarding house where he’d taken a room. Soames was sitting in a raveling wicker chair on the porch. He’d spoken with her on the telephone twice since last Christmas, but this was the first time he’d seen her in person.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, with undecorated dismay.

“Who are you doing without me?”

The answer was Helen Brisbane, but he and Helen had taken extraordinary pains to meet in secret. He was sure Soames didn’t have a clue.

“What are you doing here?” he asked her again, almost angry.

“I have news from heaven.”

Henri Churchill’s death had been investigated every way the old sheriff knew how to do it. The coroner had finally closed the inquest, and Henri Churchill’s death was forevermore an accident.

“Congratulations.”

“I’m lonely. I miss you.”

“That’s your bid’ness.”

“I shouldn’t have tried to involve you.”

“It turned out all right.”

“I was Henri’s prisoner, Averill. It made me crazy.”

“Done is done.”

“We’re not done!”

“I am,” he said, feeling the power of a dying woman’s seventeen thousand dollars in his pocket.

“I’ll give you anything you want, Averill.”

“I don’t believe you, Soames.”

“I’ll deed you that church and the parsonage and pay you a good salary.”

“Why?”

“I’m not too proud to buy your love, Averill.”

“Suppose it doesn’t work out that way?”

“Give me a chance at least.”

“I’ll call you,” he said, feeling more than a little triumphant as he waltzed past her into the boarding house and let the screen door close in her addled face.

It was a trap. He knew it was a trap. He told Helen it was. She saw his point, but she was in love with him. She wanted him near. Her daughter Rhea Anne was engaged to be married next September. After that, they could go their own way. In the meantime, Soames’s offer would keep him close to her. She was miserable without him. She was afraid of losing him.

Averill knew that Helen loved him. Or needed him in that desperate way some women called love. There was no question he wanted the things her money could buy. Yet he sensed that he was able to earn it in some ways. He pleased her in bed, as he had never felt he could please any other woman. He didn’t find her as
alluring as Soames. However, he didn’t feel what went on between him and Helen was dark and wrong in ways he couldn’t understand. Helen was easy. She had made a lot of compromises long before she met Averill. He seemed to possess enough of what it took to keep her content.

They meant a lot to each other. They weren’t holding out for anything like perfection. They would work it all out just fine.

Leona was a complication. He had a promise to keep. Even his easy morals wouldn’t let him feel right about keeping her money and leaving the poor girl out in the cold. Still, he had to play it all Soames’s way.

He didn’t tell Soames his plan until the day he and Leona had left the town of Fredonia in his truck. They had stopped near Grenada to buy gas. He called her from a pay phone while Leona went inside to use the rest room.

“Soames?”

“Yes,” she said with a voice full of sleep.

“I’m going to accept your offer, but …”

“That’s wonderful, darling.”

“I said, but …”

As if one small Mississippi town was an island to itself—as if Soames didn’t know, hadn’t spoken with any number of connections in the Fredonia area. As if Viola hadn’t told half the world that she had given the nice young man her money to see about Leona’s future.

“But what, angel?”

“I’m bringing a wife with me.”

That was to create a boundary, a wall of decency over which Soames would find it more difficult to climb—and behind which Averill could hide with Helen Brisbane as
long as it was necessary. Of course he didn’t say any of that. He said that they could use Leona as a decoy. Soames acted thrilled.

“Since when did a wedding band overpower destiny, Averill?”

What an idiot he’d been. What a fool! God, she loved it. Did he really think she hadn’t watched his every move during the last six months in Fredonia? No, of course not. No more than it would have occurred to him that Soames could use his so-called wife as a means of communicating with him whenever he decided to play hide-and-seek. There was no legal limit preventing further investigation of Henri’s murder. Yes, the coroner had been forced from lack of evidence to rule it accidental. That didn’t mean a judge and jury had legally declared it. She still had everything she needed to pin it on Averill if she decided to. In fact, she had long ago decided to. The only question was, when?

At the time of their romantic reunion on the porch of his boarding house, Soames still had good use for Averill Sayres, more than ever, in fact. Of course, she knew all about Leona. She had hired an investigator who had spent a week in Fredonia going from house to house pretending he was a Bible salesman. The man knew his trade. Under the pretext that he always gave a leather-bound copy of the Holy Word to every clergyman in town, he invited Averill to his hotel room, spiked his Sprites with pure grain alcohol and got all the information direct from the jackass’s mouth.

Averill’s self-serving rescue of the desperate girl not only was fine with Soames; it sounded like a godsend to her. It would provide her what she wanted more than anything else. This was no white trash mess-up. Leona
came from respectable people. Tyler’s family had plenty of distinguished ancestors. This was going to be a child of good old Southern stock.

“I hope this Clay girl appreciates your generosity, Averill.”

Averill was playing right into her cold, ivory hands. Leona Clay would go into labor next winter, but she would never know what happened. As far as she had to know, the baby would be a stillbirth—“decently buried” while they kept her under heavy sedation for a day or two. Averill would go along with Soames’s plan. She’d see to that.

As soon as Averill and Leona were settled, Soames called and demanded to see him. When he didn’t show up at her house as promised, she called him again. He broke his second promise as well. She sat in the parking lot next to the church and waited several hours the next afternoon. When Averill finally pulled up, he saw her and quickly drove away. Finally, Soames hid her car and cut through the woods. Then she jimmied his office window open, climbed in and hid in a closet. She was about to leap out and surprise him when she heard him speak into the telephone receiver. In three minutes Soames knew the whole story of Averill and Helen Brisbane. Soames stayed in the closet until she heard Averill’s truck start.

The next time Soames broke into Averill’s office and waited for him, she was holding a dear little white pistol and she had it cocked and pointed when he opened the door.

“What do you want, Soames?”

He was trying not to look scared, but she could see him trembling.

“You.”

“We both know better than that.”

“If I can’t have you, then no one can.…”

“You’ll have to kill Leona, too; she’s waiting in the truck.”

“Love me like you used to.…”

“Put that gun down and go!”

“Two bullets, Averill. One for you, one for me.”

“Stop it!”

“Make love to me!”

“I can’t!”

She fired over his head, though close enough to make it seem like a genuine miss. The bullet passed through the open French door and lodged in a tree, with a soft ping.

“One bullet now, Averill. One for you.”

She took aim.

“Don’t! Please …”

“Tell me you love me.”

“I love you.”

“Make love to me.”

“Later.”

“In my silk and velvet bed?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll kill you if you stand me up again.”

That night in the breathing shadows, Soames showed him his sickness. She understood his inescapable, base nature. It wasn’t mind, body or soul that turned into passion between them.

“Do you know what makes me want you, Averill?”

“No.”

“You hurt me the right way.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Do you know that you’re broken?”

“In some ways.”

“In identical ways, you and I …”

“Then we need other people to fix us.”

“We’re irreparable, Averill. We’re damaged goods.”

“I don’t want to be.”

“Do you know why you came here tonight?”

“You threatened to kill me.”

“That excited you.”

“It scared me!”

“Pain and terror are all you and I can feel, Averill.”

She was frightening him. He understood her. The conversation and its morbid tinges were having the intended effect. He could feel new desire boiling in every pore. It sickened him. That drove his lust into frenzy. She called him a mule and dog and she shrieked with pain and begged him for more and he couldn’t stop, not with the heavy aphrodisiac scent of death filling the dark.

Later she bathed him, caressing his spent flesh with warm oils and teasing and whispering her desire. He would bring her the baby, the bastard his wife carried; she would explain how to do it. When he told her she was out of her mind, she agreed. He would do it all the same, she told him. He would give her this happiness in exchange for his own. Or the state would execute him for the crime of breaking into her house on Christmas Eve 1997, tying her and raping her repeatedly, then murdering her husband. What did he want to see? Semen stains or fingerprints? Though she had so much more evidence.

So he agreed. He gave in. He tried to convince himself
that somehow it would mean a fresh start for Leona as well. He also worked hard to avoid Soames and resist her invitations, but he seemed weaker than ever. He rehearsed how the event would take place with Soames: the signal, the meeting places and the drug that would keep Leona unconscious for several days. He agreed. He resigned himself to the ugly scenario. Though in the end, he had shocked himself with the drastic act that became his death sentence. Instead of bringing the infant as promised, Averill had turned and run into the woods.

“Soames?” He had awakened her about two A.M. with his phone call. “You aren’t going to believe this.…”

He told her the infant was a stillbirth. She said all the things he would expect her to say if she believed him. Then she told him that in spite of her desperate edges and threats, she held no enmity for him. She was grateful for his efforts. Acts of God were beyond his control. She had only meant to love Averill. She had finally realized that she loved him enough to want his happiness. She convinced him that he was free of her demands, threats and influences.

She knew that he had believed her. The best way to deceive a person was to tell him exactly what you knew he most wanted to hear. She also knew that Averill was lying. Leona had seen the doctor in Orpheus the day before. How difficult was it for Soames to call his office, pretend she was throwing a last-minute baby shower for the preacher and his wife and extract the information that Leona was at full term of a normal pregnancy.

Averill had murdered that baby. What else could it
be? What Soames Churchill claimed became her property. Averill had murdered her baby. Whether it was from insanity or anxiety or for vengeance against Soames for blackmailing him, she didn’t care.