Miss Julia Delivers the Goods (26 page)

I patted her shoulder and turned to leave. “I’ll ask Sam to check the vents in here tomorrow.”

 

 

 

 

After dinner, Sam, Mr. Pickens, and I adjourned to the living room where both men brought out folders and opened briefcases. I heard Lillian finish up in the kitchen, then walk to Hazel Marie’s room to collect Latisha.

Before we could get started, Latisha appeared in the doorway. “Great-Granny say for me to say good night, an’ thank you for supper, an’ can I come back tomorrow?”

“Why, of course you may,” I told her. “And we thank you for being such good company for Hazel Marie. Did she eat a good dinner?”

“No’m, she jus’ pick at it a little bit, but Lloyd, he tell her he gonna hand-feed her, she don’t do better.”

“I’ll give her a snack a little later on,” I said. “She probably didn’t need a heavy meal anyway.”

“Well, I tell you what she do need,” Latisha said, as firm and confident as a medical practitioner. “She prob’bly need some of that choc’late candy I seen settin’ in yonder.”

We couldn’t help but laugh, knowing who really needed it. Mr. Pickens said, “Latisha, I think you’re right. Why don’t you take the box and give it to her. Tell her it’s for everybody and you need some to take home with you.”

Latisha’s eyes lit up. Before she left, she turned back and said, “If you the one that brung it, I sure do thank you. I been cravin’ some choc’late candy this whole day.”

I followed Latisha out into the hall, watched as she carefully took the box and carried it in to Hazel Marie. Thinking that Hazel Marie would be more receptive of the gift if I wasn’t there, I lingered outside the door.

“Look!” I heard Latisha say. “That big, ole black-eyed man brung us all some candy. He say for us to open it right up.”

“Law, chile,” Lillian said. “That candy’s for Miss Hazel Marie. Come on now, we got to get home.”

“Oh, wait, Lillian,” Hazel Marie said. “Let’s all have some. Lloyd, you open it and pass it around.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that I’d been afraid she’d throw it across the room, out the window, or in the trash when she learned who it was from. The children certainly had a calming effect on her, and I determined to have Latisha over again not only tomorrow but for as many more days afterward as possible.

Then Lloyd said, “Mama, there’s a card here. From J.D., I guess.”

There was silence, while I held my breath. Then Hazel Marie, sounding as if she were gritting her teeth, said, “Put it on the dresser, honey. I’ll look at it later.”

Going back to the living room, I thought that the gift-giving-and-receiving had gone better than I’d feared. And all because the children had been around. If they hadn’t, it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d come flying out and thrown the Godiva box straight at Mr. Pickens. I’d have to tell him that Lloyd and Latisha most likely saved him from suffering great bodily harm.

 

 

 

 

By the time I got to the living room, Mr. Pickens had drawn up a chair to the coffee table where there were papers and notes spread out. Sam was on the sofa jotting down more notes on a yellow legal pad.

Excited at the prospect of uncovering the mystery of the missing files, I took a seat beside Sam, then looked from him to Mr. Pickens. “I can’t wait to hear what you’ve found.”

“Not much, I’m afraid,” Mr. Pickens said, tapping his paper with a pen. “But let’s see where we are. We got nothing from the four people we went to see, less than nothing, in fact, because they closed right down on us. I’m convinced, though, that something has to tie them together.”

“I am, too,” Sam said. “But I’ve looked and looked and I can’t find a thing. I’ve checked arrest dates and court dates up one side and down the other, and none of them were ever arrested at the same time or arraigned at the same time. They didn’t live near each other, and there’s no indication they ran around together. I’ve about reached a dead end.”

Mr. Pickens leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling, moving into his deep thinking mode. “Okay, but we’re agreed that something connects them, right?” His black eyes settled back on Sam. “You didn’t find anybody else during that time who got the same special treatment as these four? Five, I mean?”

“Not a one,” Sam said, shaking his head. “That’s what caught my attention in the first place. Everybody else arrested during those years got exactly what you’d expect, given the charges against them. No question about that. These are the only ones who slipped through, time after time.”

“Okay, hold onto that for a minute,” Mr. Pickens said, turning his pen around and making a note. “Tell me again about the sheriff and the judge.”

“Well, like I said,” Sam said, “Al Hamilton was the sheriff back then for twenty years or more, and that covered the time we’re interested in. I knew him, and it’s hard to believe he’d let these people squeak by, especially since all of them, except the Weaver woman, were repeat offenders. Now, Al wouldn’t qualify as the greatest sheriff around, but he was a big law and order man, which is why he kept getting reelected.” Sam shook his head, unable to figure out the problem. “I just can’t see him flagrantly flaunting the law for people who had no pull that I can see. If anything, putting them away for a stretch would’ve been to his advantage. Of course,” Sam went on, “you never know about people.”

“All right,” Mr. Pickens said, turning his pen around and making a note. “Let’s think about the judge. Tell me about him.”

“District Court Judge Robert Eugene Baine,” Sam said with a long sigh. “He was a piece of work. Ran his courtroom like it was his own little kingdom. But a lot of judges did that—up until 1968, that is. That year, the legislature set sentencing guidelines that clamped down on the free-wheeling judges we had then.” Sam smiled, a look of nostalgia crossing his face. “I was just starting out in the early sixties, and I’ll tell you, when we walked into a courtroom, we never knew what a judge would do.”

“All right,” Mr. Pickens said again. “Let me be sure of this. The cases involving these five people, they all happened before 1968? And they were arrested while Sheriff What’s-His-Name was in office and they all appeared before Judge Baine?”

Sam nodded. “Sheriff Hamilton, right. And those that got as far as a courtroom, yes, they all appeared before Baine. But, remember, some of the arrests never got to the courtroom. That’s why it’s hard to pin on one or the other. It would have to’ve been both of them, and that’s hard to imagine, given their personalities. So maybe I’m seeing problems where there aren’t any. The cases could just be anomalies, even though there’re five of them, and it kept happening over and over.” Sam sat back, resting his pad on his knee. He ran his pen down the list. “But something or somebody has to tie them together—Cassie Wooten, Teddy Tillman, Ilona Weaver, and Rosemary Sullins.”

And Rafe Feldman,
I thought.

Mr. Pickens leaned back in his chair, stretched out his legs, one foot crossed over the other. “Okay, let me add a kicker, here. I spent some time today going through the Index of Deeds at the courthouse, looking through the entire decade of the sixties. I found one thing of interest—a deed registered in 1969 by which a certain Amelda Capps Tillman sold a small tract of land to Albert H. Hamilton. The survey indicated that it was a little less than an acre, bordering a river. She got three hundred dollars for it, which I guess for the times would’ve been about right.”

“Well, that
is
interesting,” Sam said. “Amelda Tillman, that would be Bob and Ted’s mother, all right. Where in the county was it?”

“Place called River Bend.”

“Huh,” Sam said, concentrating hard. “That area was nothing but wilds in sixty-nine, away in the southwest corner of the county and barely accessible except by the river. Too bad she didn’t wait a few years. It really built up later on.”

I thought back to that time several years into my marriage to Wesley Lloyd Springer and couldn’t recall knowing either the sheriff or Amelda Tillman, much less any kind of land deal between them. Still too busy trying to adjust to Wesley Lloyd’s requirements, I guess.

“The thing is,” Mr. Pickens said, “the timing is suggestive. If the judge, for whatever reason, had been letting Ted slip through the cracks for several years, then lost his discretionary powers, Mrs. Tillman may have had to look elsewhere. What I’m saying is that one thing happened in sixty-eight and the other right soon afterward in sixty-nine. Does that tell us anything?”

Mr. Pickens scratched his head with the blunt end of his pen, and Sam looked lost in thought. Finally, Sam said, “Looks like it tells us that both the judge and the sheriff were involved.”

“Maybe,” I said, adding my opinion for the first time, “but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as somebody said. Because why would the sheriff want a piece of land so far off the beaten track that the only way to get to it was by boat?”

 

 

 

“Here’s what we do, then,” Mr. Pickens said, not deigning to answer the question I’d posed. “Let’s look at both of them, find out everything we can about the judge and the sheriff, and see what pops up.” He stared at Sam for a minute, thinking. Then he went on. “Would the judge have had any influence over the sheriff?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sam said, a flash of hope passing across his face. “Politics could’ve been behind it all. Judge Baine had political ties everywhere. Nobody got elected to anything without his backing. And, believe me, he had his way until people got their fill of it and turned him out of office. But that was way down the line. He was on the bench for close to thirty years.”

Mr. Pickens said, “All the more reason to think he’s our man. If he could do as he pleased on the bench, plus having some kind of hold over the sheriff, then he was in the catbird seat.”

I could keep silent no longer. “But they’ve both been dead ten years or more. How could either one of them break into Sam’s house?”

“Well, that’s the question,” Sam said, running his hand over his head. “We’re still missing something. Maybe we ought to look further into that land deal.”

“That’s on my list of things to do tomorrow,” Mr. Pickens said. “The office closed before I finished, but I think now I’ll look through the fifties and the seventies, see if any of these five sold any property to anybody at anytime. But one more time before we wrap this up, is there anything else that could connect those five people to each other? Anything you can think of that they have—or might’ve had—in common?”

Both Sam and Mr. Pickens leaned back and gazed at nothing, as they thought over all the possibilities. While they were doing that, I gazed at Mr. Pickens, noting for the first time the deep lines on his face and the flecks of gray in his black hair. I wondered how much Hazel Marie had had to do with putting them there. As I looked at his tired face, I felt a tug of pity for him. Poor thing, as much as he was going through now, he had no more idea than the man in the moon what he was in for.

“Sam?” Mr. Pickens said, coming out of his reverie. “You come up with anything?”

Sam shook his head. “No, nothing. Except they were all residents of the county and their crimes were all misdemeanors. Well, except for Ilona Weaver’s embezzlement. Other than that, I just don’t see a thing.”

“Me, either,” Mr. Pickens said, turning his gaze to his notebook. “Well, keep thinking about it, and let’s move on.”

“Good hair,” I announced.

Their heads swiveled toward me, both foreheads wrinkled with frowns. “What?”

“Good hair,” I said again.

“Julia,” Sam said, a smile playing around his mouth, “where in the world did that come from?”

Glancing at Mr. Pickens who was frowning at what he assumed was my trifling with his serious case, I said, “Well, you asked if they have anything in common and that’s what they have—at least the ones I’ve seen. Some are grayer than others, but I couldn’t help but notice that every last one has a good, thick head of hair, except Bob Tillman who hardly has any, but he doesn’t have an arrest record, either.” I set my mouth, preparing to defend myself. “Hair is important, you know, since it tends to get thin with age. Not that either of you need to worry about that.” I reached up and touched my hair, so recently styled by Velma. “Or me, either. But not a one of those four people has suffered any thinning or hair loss, and I think it behooves us to check Rafe Feldman’s head to determine the state of his scalp.”

Sam started it. He looked at Mr. Pickens and began to laugh, then Mr. Pickens cut loose. So there I sat, having offered what I considered a valuable clue, while they leaned back and laughed their heads off.

“Julia,” Sam sputtered as he tried to get his breath, “I’m sorry, honey. It just struck me as funny.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Pickens said, “we don’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s just . . .” He had to stop and wipe his eyes. “It’s just that I’d’ve never thought to consider hair.”

“Well,” I reminded him, “you said anything and that’s all I could think of.” I laughed along with them, but I didn’t think it was all that funny. I was just happy to have given them a moment’s release from all the heavy thinking they’d been doing. Besides, what had they come up with?

 

 

 

 

When breakfast was over the next morning, I walked upstairs to Lloyd’s room, where he was gathering his tennis gear for another day on the courts.

“Lloyd?” I said, tapping on his door. “You have a minute?”

“Sure, Miss Julia, come on in.” He zipped his racket cover, then picked up a can of balls.

“I know you’re ready to go, but I was wondering if you’d have time to go visiting with me this afternoon.”

That stopped him. Not wanting to turn me down, he hesitated. Visiting with me was not something he’d ordinarily be eager to do. “Um, well. I guess I could.”