Fadeaway Girl (37 page)

I sat up straight. “The Diggses? You mean the adopted parents?”

The Sheriff smiled a little. “In any case, the couple who brought Ralph Diggs up.”

Maud asked, “Do they have to, you know, identify his body? The poor souls.”

The Sheriff nodded. “Afraid so. They're coming in from Doylestown.” He looked at his watch. “Pennsylvania.”

He shook his wrist as if that might make time stand still. “They're probably already here. Maureen can take care of them until I get there. I've got to see the Mayor before I see them.”

Already here? I was fairly itching to go with him, not to see Mayor Sims, but to the courthouse.

He read my mind. He could do that. “Forget it, Emma. You can't talk to them.”

I changed my expression from whatever it was. “Who said I wanted to?” I pressed up the crumbs of my doughnut and licked my finger and gave the Sheriff a look of what I hoped was indifference.

“They're in mourning, Emma. They don't need a pile of questions thrown at them.”

“As if I would. Anyway, you're going to ask them a ton of questions.”

“What's necessary, that's all.” He checked his watch again. “I'll see you.”

As soon as he was out of the door, I jumped up. “Excuse me,” I said to Maud, and nearly ran to the front. Her question, “Where are you—?” followed me to the baked goods cases, but didn't get answered. I told Wanda I wanted a half dozen doughnuts with sprinkles—vanilla, chocolate, rainbow. I bought four cups of black coffee, cream and sugar on the side, which she crated up. I carried the whole caboodle across the street and into the courthouse. I couldn't go very fast because of the coffee.

I stopped outside of the Sheriff's office door and listened. Donny's voice was the loudest, of course, but I heard a woman's voice too, which was not Maureen's. I pulled myself up and balanced the doughnut bag on the tray of coffees and opened the door.

Donny swung around. “What're you doin' here?”

He had on his “in-charge” manner, walking around to no purpose, thumbs hooked in his belt. It had been a couple of big days for him and he was enjoying them. He was telling the Diggses a trooper had just found Ralph's car, half buried in the woods across from the Silver Pear.

I said, “You mean he left it and walked the rest of the way.”

“Now I don't see this is any of your concern.”

I tried to look embarrassed and awkward. “Only, the Sheriff said that Mr. and Mrs. Diggs had come all the way from”—I forgot the name of the town—“from Pennsylvania, and I just thought they'd like some coffee. . . .” I looked at the middle-aged couple sitting beside Donny's desk. They were both heavyset, with brown hair and pale skin.

Mrs. Diggs spoke up. “Now, that's real sweet of you, dear.” She had a handkerchief balled up in her hand. Mr. Diggs said thanks. He sounded choked up and sat with his head down.

“Brought some for you too,” I said to Donny, “and Maureen.”

From her desk in the back, Maureen smiled and waved thanks.

“Well, yeah, okay.” Donny helped himself to a cup and took two sugars. “Them doughnuts you got there?”

I handed him the bag. He did not offer it to the Diggses after taking out a chocolate iced one and inspecting it. He grunted a thanks and gave back the bag.

I offered the tray of coffee to the Diggses. They both took a cup and he took a creamer. She just drank hers black and said no thank you to the bag of doughnuts. I guess if your son's just been murdered, not even a doughnut looks appealing.

“I'm so sorry,” I said, remembering what I'd heard the Sheriff say, “for your loss.”

They both nodded. She pressed the handkerchief to her nose.

The Sheriff would walk in at any minute, and I searched my mind for maybe the one question I wanted answered. But there were too many. How stupid of me not to work this out beforehand. But I hadn't even known Ralph's parents were here until fifteen minutes ago.

“Ralph was really nice. Everybody at the hotel liked him a lot. You know he worked at my mother's hotel for a short while.”

Mrs. Diggs shook her head. “No, we didn't know anything. Didn't even know he was going—”

“Now, Mame. No need to talk about that,” said Mr. Diggs. He sounded resentful more than sad.

The door opened and the Sheriff walked in. When he saw me, he stood there and shook his head, but then he went to the Diggses and introduced himself. “I'm Sheriff DeGheyn, Mrs. Diggs, Mr. Diggs. I'm terribly sorry.”

For your loss, I added in my head, in a prompting way.

And he, of course, reading my mind, turned. “Emma?”

I hung my head, but only a bit, as the Sheriff knew I wasn't the head-hanging type. “Sorry. I just thought—”

Mrs. Diggs came to my rescue. “This here's one nice little girl, Sheriff. She brought us coffee and doughnuts. It was real sweet.”

I kind of scuffed my shoe on the floor, but stopped, as he also knew I wasn't a shoe scuffer. I scratched my ear. I didn't look at him. “Well, it's just they had this long drive. . . .”

Donny was standing there now. “Thought you told her to bring the stuff over, Sam. That's what she said.”

“I did not say any such thing!” I paused and turned to the Diggses. “Oh, I'm so sorry to be fussing at such a bad time for you.”

I cast Donny what I think is called a “baleful look.”

The Sheriff said, “That's very nice of you, Emma, to be so concerned. But we have a very sad undertaking here, so maybe we'll see you later.”

He actually smiled. I could not read the smile. But I kept looking at it as I passed through the door.

“TRAGEDY TOWN.”
Sitting at one of the tables in the Abigail Butte County Library, I set down that title with as heavy a hand as I could, pressing hard with my pencil, thickening up the letters until I nearly tore the paper.

I spent some moments doing this, as I didn't know what was to follow. Why not? Hadn't I just shown the last thing I'd written to Mr. Gumbrel a few days ago? What was it with writing? Did there have to be this feeling you were just born ten minutes ago and didn't even know that pages had writing on them? That you weren't supposed to write on air with your fingertip the way real babies did?

I put my head in my hands. It wasn't that I didn't know what I wanted to write about; there was plenty of it in my head. I just didn't seem able to begin, despite that.

I heard a car stop suddenly out on the road, its tires screeching as if to avoid running into something. I hoped Ree-Jane was crossing the street.

I slid down in my chair and stared up at the slow-moving ceiling fan on which a couple of flies were riding as if it were a fly merry-go-round. Then I forced myself to sit up and look at my page.

I wished I hadn't already written that so I could write it now.

There was music. There was moonlight.

Maybe I could continue with that line about families that I'd thought I read or heard somewhere. I wrote down: “All families are unhappy.” No. That was too obvious for anyone to bother writing down. “All families are happy or unhappy.” No. “All families are unhappy, but differently.” That was okay, but somebody had already written it. But if another writer had written this, I couldn't use it, not because it would be dishonest, but because somebody would probably recognize it and write a letter to the editor.

So I decided to ask Miss Babbit and took the page up to the desk where she was stamping cards.

“Hello, Emma.”

“Hello.” I told her my problem and read her the line.

Miss Babbit looked a little perplexed, then told me to follow her, and we walked into the fiction shelves. She knew, I think, every book in the library, for it took her exactly one minute back there to find the book she wanted. I considered becoming a librarian. You really knew what you were doing if you were one.

The book she was holding was pretty thick; I read the title on the back:
Anna K
—Her finger was over part of the name. She read: “ ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' It's by Tolstoy.”

I'd heard of him. I think he was one of the Russians. They were all crazy. “I guess that line is pretty famous, isn't it?”

She nodded. “Of course, you could use it, Emma. Just put quotes around it.”

I wasn't about to give him space in my story. “Thank you, Miss Babbit.”

She returned to the front and I returned to my fate. I plunked down as if the chair were to blame.

And then I recalled what Maud had said about a writer who had a clock on his desk and forced himself to write a certain number of words every fifteen minutes. He just wrote the first thing that came to mind about his story.

Then I would do that. I looked at the big regulator clock on the wall—and picked up my pencil. There was music. There was moonlight. There was dancing. There was a ladder . . . Should I keep the ladder? Or did it kind of spoil the romantic sound of it? I shrugged and went on with the new episode. I thought about Bing Crosby singing “Moonlight Becomes You” to Dorothy Lamour. I gritted my teeth and thought of Morris Slade. I wrote: “He's charming. He's rich. He's in jail—Morris Slade.”

Wow! That wasn't a bad opening! I went on:

I could get a quote from Mr. Butternut. He'd love appearing in the paper, and he was probably on his way to being a celebrity. I started in again:

Once again, I forgot about me, and sighed, and went back:

I went on:

I looked up at the clock: eighteen minutes! I tossed my pencil up in the air, and as it came down I saw the Sheriff up at the front desk, talking to Miss Babbit.

What was he doing here? I didn't recall ever seeing the Sheriff in the Abigail Butte County Library.

Now he had seen me and was walking over to my table. He pulled out the chair opposite. “Mind?”

“Oh, do you read?” I said.

He smiled, you could say, thinly, a knife smiling. “Come down off your righteousness cloud and listen—”

My what? “I hardly ever think I'm right.” I think I was still on my righteousness cloud, though, because I almost always thought I was right. I recalled what Maud had said: being right can be harder on a person than being wrong. I was still trying to figure out what she meant, exactly.

“How did you know I'd be here?”

“I didn't. I came to speak to Miss Babbit.”

“Okay, I'm listening.” I said this kind of managing a yawn at the same time. I patted my mouth with my hand.

“Morris Slade wants to talk to you.”

That certainly stopped me in mid-yawn. “What?”

“He won't talk to anyone but you. Of course, you don't have to.”

Don't
have
to? Was he kidding? I sat there looking serious as if I were really considering. Then, after a few moments of fiddling with my notebook and pencil, I said, solemnly, “Well, all right. If you think it would help.”

W
hen Donny brought Morris Slade into the room, I stood up. I don't know why I did this, for it seemed to be some mark of respect.

The Sheriff yanked me down.

Morris Slade smiled at this little display of temper (mine nice, the Sheriff's not) and sat down. He looked rumpled and in need of sleep, but otherwise the same.

The Sheriff, who was sitting beside me in this small room he'd told me was for “interviews,” began to ask Morris a question.

Morris Slade kept the smile on his face, but shook his head. “Uhuh, Sheriff DeGheyn. I told you I'd talk only with Emma.”

“I'm not leaving you alone with her.”

“Wait a minute!” I said, popping up again. “That's for me to say—”

Again, he yanked me down. “You're twelve, Emma. You don't get to say.”

Morris Slade cocked an eyebrow. “Do you think she's in danger? Do you think I'm going to reach across the table and strangle her?”

The Sheriff shook his head briefly. “Not at all. I'm thinking more of a hostage situation.”

Hostage! Me?
This would be my second brush with death. I saw it in my mind, a scene where Morris was marching me out of the courthouse, gun at my back, then into his red car. . . . Or was the car still at Brokedown House? Then I noticed both of them were looking at me.

“Don't look so eager, Emma,” said the Sheriff. “It's not going to happen.”

“Why did you and Ralph Diggs meet at Brokedown House? That's way out. Nobody goes there now.” Nobody but me, I should say, and Mr. Butternut.

He looked at me. “That's why.”