Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle (13 page)

I turned to face him, holding Mama’s camera tight. “If you ever try that again,” I warned, sickened at the pleasure in his eyes, “what I leave as your face in one piece, my father will cut up like that rabbit, do you hear me, creep?”

Nightmare’s grin widened. He gestured with his left hand, the dead rabbit dangling in midair. “Nightmare can tell you be real scared right now,” he said smugly.

By this time I’d gotten to my Honda, had opened
the door, and was sitting behind the wheel. I tossed Mama’s camera on the passenger’s seat and switched on the ignition.

Nightmare’s crazy laughter ricocheted through the still hot air. “Mr. James won’t do nothing to hurt Nightmare,” he shouted confidently. “Mr. James
likes
Nightmare’s venison!”

I
t was a little after eleven o’clock when I finally got the film to the drugstore. I asked for their one-hour developing. When I got back to the house, Mama was stretched out on the sofa. Rose Childs sat in an easy chair nearby. I said hello, then headed straight toward the kitchen to get a cold drink.

“Sometimes, Rose,” I heard Mama say, “keeping things to yourself is the best thing to do.”

When Rose answered, her voice was low and tense like she didn’t want anybody to hear. “I don’t like people getting into my business.”

“I can understand how you feel,” Mama agreed. She sounded relaxed, gracious.

“People always looking to say something bad,
always trying to find fault.” Rose paused. “Lord knows, I did what I thought was right.”

“Nobody can blame you for anything,” Mama said.

I walked into the family room, tilting a glass of Coke up to my lips. “Simone,” Mama said curtly, “I’m surprised you didn’t offer Rose or me a cold drink.”

I shrugged, turned, and headed back for the refrigerator. A few minutes later, I handed both Rose and Mama a glass of cola.

“Still, Rose,” Mama was saying, “there are times when a burden becomes too heavy to bear alone. That’s when you need to talk with somebody you can trust.”

Rose stopped the glass halfway to her lips. She gave Mama a quick, suspicious glance.

“There are people who know how to keep a confidence,” Mama told her.

Rose looked down into her glass.

“There’s something heavy on your mind, isn’t there, Rose?” Mama asked.

Rose looked into Mama’s eyes, her lips twitching.

Mama said, “I believe it’s got something to do with poor Cricket’s murder.”

Rose blinked. “I don’t want people saying bad things about me.”

“I can’t imagine anybody thinking bad of you,” Mama told her. “But if what you’ve got on your mind is something you want me and Simone to keep to ourselves, I can understand that.”

Rose nodded but still she said nothing.

Mama eased back against the sofa cushions. “As long as what’s bothering you doesn’t have anything to do with breaking the law or hindering Abe from catching up with Cricket’s killer, I see no reason for me or Simone to repeat it. Your secret is our secret, isn’t that right, Simone?” Mama asked me.

I nodded, placed my empty glass on the table, sat in the chair next to Rose, and waited.

For a while, Rose didn’t speak. She sat, biting her lip and rubbing her half-empty glass with her fingertips. Finally, she said, “I reckoned I should have paid more attention—” She stopped.

“To what?” Mama asked gently.

Rose let out a breath that sounded like a sorrowful sigh. “To what Cricket said about somebody wanting to take little Morgan.”

“Go on,” Mama said.

“Six weeks ago, Cricket found a note on her car windshield,” Rose continued. “It said,
Morgan is pretty enough to steal.”

“Sounds like a compliment to me. That child is real pretty.”

“Cricket thought so, too. Then a week later she found another note. This one read,
Tainted blood runs inside you
.”

Mama frowned.

Rose continued. “Cricket asked me what to do. I told her not to put too much stock in it.”

“What happened to the notes?” I asked.

“I guess she threw them away,” Rose answered.

“There was another note, wasn’t there?” Mama asked.

Rose nodded, looking miserable. “The third note read,
Morgan suppose to be mine
.”

I thought Mama was going to say something, but to my surprise she was silent. Rose took a stuttering breath. “It pains me that Cricket was going to take that note to the sheriff but I talked her out of it.”

“For heaven’s sake, why?” I demanded. If Abe had known about those threats, maybe Cricket would be alive today.

“I told her Timber wrote the notes. He had strong feelings for Morgan, and he hated that Cricket was working with Sabrina Miley. He’s jumped on Cricket to fight her more than once because he hated that Sabrina was taking money from men because she knew things that they wanted to keep secret. For the past few months, Timber has even been threatening to have the welfare take Morgan away from Cricket, but Cricket told him that she wasn’t scared of that—that the people at the welfare knew how much she loved Morgan and what good care she gave that child.”

“And when Birdie snatched Morgan out of Cricket’s car?” I asked. “That day at the Winn Dixie?”

“Cricket went ballistic on Birdie when she caught up with her. But she still believed that Timber was behind those notes.” Rose sighed. “Everybody knows that Birdie has a nerve problem and as long as she
takes her medicine, she’s okay. But, whenever she misses a few doses, she gets confused.”

Mama spoke. “Abe told me that he’s had a good talk with Isaiah, Birdie’s husband. Isaiah has promised to make sure that Birdie takes her medicine.” She turned to look at me. “Simone, you saw her on Wednesday fishing with Koot. She seemed okay, don’t you think?”

I nodded.

Rose rolled her eyes. “Timber …” Rose stopped, and started again. “I expect I should tell Abe that Timber wrote those notes and that he killed Cricket so that him and
some
woman could take the child.”

Mama looked confused. “I don’t follow you.”

Rose cocked her head and frowned. “Last Monday morning,” she said, “Timber came and told Cricket that he wanted to take Morgan to visit his mama. At first Cricket said no, but then she remembered she wanted to go off to Savannah with one of her men. And Timber swore that his mama had clothes and money for the child and she only wanted to keep the baby for a few hours. So, Cricket finally said okay. But when she got back home around nine o’clock that night and discovered that Timber hadn’t brought Morgan back, she called his mama’s house. Timber’s mama told Cricket that she hadn’t seen Timber or Morgan in weeks. Cricket called the sheriff but when she couldn’t reach him, she headed out to hunt for Timber herself.”

“Did you talk to Cricket after that?” I asked.

Rose’s voice rose. “No. The next day, Abe and that deputy of his, Rick Martin, came and told me that Cricket had been killed.”

“And Morgan?” Mama asked. “Have you seen Morgan since Cricket died?”

Rose said very softly, like she was in great misery, “I’ve talked to Timber’s mama. She swears that not she, nor anybody else in her family, knows Morgan’s whereabouts.”

I held my hands up. “Wait a minute,” I protested. “I happen to know for a fact that somebody in
your
family is hiding Morgan.”

Rose looked at me, surprised.

“Daddy told me that big ugly guy who folks call Nightmare is your cousin, isn’t that right?” I asked, scowling at the memory of the big stinking man holding up his dead rabbit and laughing tauntingly at me.

Rose nodded.

“The same Nightmare who gets his kicks from scaring women.”

“He’s a little touched in the head,” Rose conceded, “but he doesn’t mean no harm.”

“Touched in the head or not, his little tricks could get him hurt,” I continued. “Especially if he tries to pull another one on me.”

“When did you see Nightmare?” Rose asked.

“On Tuesday afternoon,” I said, “I saw Morgan in Nightmare’s blue sedan.” I wasn’t about to tell Rose about my encounter with Nightmare a few hours ago in her grandmother’s graveyard.

Rose leaned back in her chair and knitted her hands together. “You didn’t see Morgan.”

“On Tuesday afternoon, the day after Cricket was murdered, I was driving on the Cypress Creek road going to Cousin Agatha’s. I saw Morgan in her car seat in the back of Nightmare’s car. I’ll swear to that!”

Rose’s shoulders relaxed; her look softened a little. She put down her glass. “You saw my daughter Trice’s baby, Lizzie, with Nightmare,” she told me. “He was bringing her back from Miss Lottie’s house.”

“I saw Morgan,” I said.

“I’ll tell you what you saw,” Rose said. “Lizzie was born a week before Morgan was born. Lizzie’s daddy is Bo, Miss Lottie Bing’s youngest son. Since both Trice and Bo are in their last year of school, Miss Lottie keeps Lizzie during the day. I get Lizzie ready before I go to work and Nightmare takes her to Miss Lottie every morning. In the afternoon, he picks Lizzie up and brings her home.”

I stood and walked toward the window. “I could have sworn that was Morgan I saw,” I insisted.

Mama glanced at me, then at Rose. “Let’s get back to Timber’s mama,” she said. “You sound like you don’t believe her when she says that they aren’t hiding Morgan.”

Rose looked away, out of the window toward the garden. For a moment, she didn’t speak. Then she said, “I don’t mean no disrespect, Miss Candi, but everybody know that all of Timber’s people are natural-born liars.”

T
here had been ominous portents of an approaching storm all day. The air was turbulent, erratic, humid. The sky was charcoal instead of blue. A hot breeze sent leaves scuttling along the highway.

The women’s voices swelled above the claps of thunder. I looked out of the window of the cinder-block building. Lightning struck near the parking lot, briefly illuminating the sky. A crash of thunder followed. Moments later, the rain came, pouring from the dark sky like an avalanche.

It was Saturday afternoon, four o’clock. Inside the Baptist church, the hot air smelled of flowers and dampness.

Mourners filled the church, men dressed in dark suits, women in black dresses. They’d come to say
good-bye to Cricket Childs. There were a number of people I didn’t know, but most of them were sitting with people I did. Some were Cricket’s relatives. Others were people Mama had talked to me about, people she’d told me stories of.

My mother was dressed in a navy blue silk dress. I wore a black suit that I always kept in Mama’s closet cleaned and readied for these occasions. We were sitting in the fifth row, almost at the back of the church. We had no problem hearing the choir’s song; the singers were determined not to let the torrent outside drown out their voices.

I glanced at Mama. She was leaning forward, a look on her face that I can only describe as watchful; she looked like a good boxer studying his opponent.

Another clap of thunder seemed to shake the little building. The frowns on the faces of those gathered in the church told me that I wasn’t the only one who was wondering how hard it was going to be to get to Rose’s home after the funeral.

The preacher stood up, his pulpit high above Cricket’s bronze-colored coffin, which sat on a stand in front of it. He was a bowed little man with woolly gray hair and a flat nose. But his black eyes were piercing. He stood silently for a moment, making eye contact with everybody who looked at him. Then he opened his Bible and read a scripture. He had a low voice, almost lost in the sound of the storm overhead. I expected him to speak louder, like his choir, but he didn’t do it. It was like he was too tired to compete with what was plunging from the sky.

After his sermon, three people spoke about Cricket’s family. All testified to the Childses’ character, their place in the community.

Finally the preacher stood up again and said, “Let us pray.” All heads bowed. I nudged Mama and whispered, “Let’s get out of here before the crowd.”

Mama nodded. “When they stand to view Cricket’s body, we’ll leave,” she told me.

A few minutes later, we had to ease past two morticians who stood, like bodyguards, at the church’s open doors.

We were out of the church and on its steps when Mama stopped abruptly. She looked down on the parked cars. The rain hammered down. She shook her head, frowning. “That’s strange,” she murmured.

“Stay here,” I urged. “I’ll bring the car to you.” Then I dashed through the rain to my Honda.

The rain was steady, slicing through my headlights, the wipers barely able to keep up. A bolt of lightning cut through the sky. “Simone,”—Mama was straining to see through the storm—“watch out for that station wagon!”

“I see it,” I said.

She took a deep breath. “Did you see who was driving?” she asked, watching through the back window as the speeding car faded from sight.

My hands gripped the steering wheel. My eyes were glued to the road in front of me. “I saw a woman with a hat.”

Rain swept across the road; wind shook the car.

“I thought—” Mama began, then paused. “Could I have been wrong both times?” she murmured. Half of my mind was listening. The other half was thinking what a horrible day it was to be buried.