Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle (40 page)

So when the pastor announced that his text was from the book of First Samuel, specifically King Saul’s consultation with the witch of Endor, I wondered what had set him off. It never took much—reading or hearing of spiritualism, Ouija boards, children dressed as ghosts and goblins on Halloween, even Halloween itself. But this time it had been an article in the Asheville paper about a coven of witches dancing around a tree.

I began to nod off as he droned on about Saul’s fear of the Philistine host and how the Lord’s help was no longer forthcoming. Going to the witch of Endor, Saul begged her to call on the deceased prophet, Samuel, to give him military advice.

“And when,” Pastor Ledbetter went on, “against her better judgment, she called forth Samuel out of the earth, Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?’”

That woke me up.
Had I disquieted Richard in the toolshed?
Heaven knows I hadn’t meant to.

But no, in the light of day and sitting in church, I could discount to some extent what I’d seen and heard the night before. I mean, I didn’t believe in ghosts, yet here was my own pastor speaking of them as if they were actual beings. He didn’t say that the shade of Samuel was imaginary or that Saul was mentally ill or that the witch of Endor used a magic trick. He was saying that the ghost of Samuel was real and
reachable.

For the rest of the sermon my eyebrows stayed up as far as they would go. It was the only way I could keep my eyes open as I waited to hear what could be done once a dead person was disquieted.

Not much, as Saul learned. I comforted myself by recalling that, unlike Saul, I’d visited no witch and done no calling forth. If there’d been any disquieting of Richard’s rest, it’d been done by Helen, not me.

With that reassuring thought, I dozed off during the collection, only to be startled awake when the pastor announced the closing hymn. I came to enough to catch Sam and Lloyd grinning at each other.

“Tired, honey?” Sam whispered.

I nodded as we stood. “Babies cried half the night,” I murmured, and hoped he believed me.

After filing out of the church as slowly as I could manage so everyone who’d heard James’s grocery aisle news could see that Sam and I were together, I asked him to have Sunday dinner with us.

“I can’t, sweetheart,” Sam said. “Pickens is coming over to discuss moving arrangements—he’s still not comfortable about taking over my house. So man to man, I’m going to convince him that it’s the best plan for all of us. And,” he went on, smiling, “James has been cooking all morning.”

James,
again
!

So Lloyd and I left the church, my mood lighthearted because Sam was making plans to return to the head of my table, where he belonged.

As we waited for passing traffic before crossing the street, what I saw parked in front of my house made me want to turn around and go back. Maybe I could tell Lloyd that I needed a private word with Pastor Ledbetter or that I’d left something in the pew or that I had to ask LuAnne about the Cirle meeting. But we were too close and I wasn’t quick enough to come up with a single valid excuse to avoid what was waiting for me.

“Wonder what that patrol car’s doing at our house,” Lloyd said.

“Probably looking for Sam,” I said, as dismissively as I could. “They may have arrested an old client of his. Latisha’s waiting for you, so you run along and I’ll see what he wants.” By this time a vaguely familiar deputy had crawled out of his car and was waiting for us on the sidewalk. “Watch the traffic, Lloyd,” I went on, “and tell Lillian I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Lloyd scampered across the street, gave a friendly wave to the deputy as he went by, and disappeared into the house. I walked sedately up to the officer, keeping a serene but slightly questioning expression on my face, as if willing, but not necessarily eager, to help our local law enforcement personnel.

“Mrs. Murdoch? ” he asked, seemingly hesitant to question me. In the daylight, I saw how young he was and how unsure he was in dealing with influential and law-abiding citizens.

“Yes?” I observed him coolly, noting his name tag—Deputy Will Powers—and met his eyes as if I had nothing to hide.

“I’m, uh, well, I was on duty last night and I picked up a woman, a lady, who seemed to be lost and, well, a good bit confused. She told me she was visiting you and directed me here, although I wanted to take her to be checked out at the emergency room. She looked pretty messed up. Well, not really
messed up,
ma’am, I mean, more like she’d had a rough time.” He stopped and I waited, giving him no help at all. “Well, anyway, I got to worrying about her, thinking I might shoulda taken her to the hospital anyway. And, uh, I just wanted to make sure she’s all right.”

“How very thoughtful of you, Deputy Powers,” I said in a distant manner. “I’ll be sure to commend you to Lieutenant Peavey. Your concern is well placed. We’d noticed a real deterioration of my friend’s cognitive functions since her visit last year, so we put her on a bus home this morning. Her daughter is, as we speak, making arrangements for full-time care.”

“Then that’s a relief,” Deputy Powers said. “I sure didn’t want to miss something on my first week of patrol duty. But, Mrs. Murdoch, I don’t want to offend you or anything, but up close, the two of you could be sisters. Not,” he hastily added, his face suddenly tinged with red, “that you look anything like she did last night, but I mean, up close. Kinda.”

I permitted a condescending smile to tighten my mouth. “She was once a beautiful woman, so I’ll take that as a compliment. Now, they’re waiting Sunday dinner for me, so I must go in. Thank you again, Deputy, for your commitment to duty.”

I offered my hand in a queenly manner and he hesitantly shook it. Then I turned and walked toward the house without glancing back, but listening as he got into his car and drove away. Gaining the living room, I closed the front door and leaned against it, drained from withstanding his dutiful follow-up on a possibly vagrant woman.

If that close call hadn’t taught me the value of good grooming, nothing would.

After we’d finished lunch, which we called dinner on Sundays, I longed for a good long nap. I stayed awake, though, because I half expected Sam to show up with Mr. Pickens after they’d concluded their negotiations as to who was going to live where. It was a settled fact that Lloyd’s inheritance could buy almost any house that Hazel Marie and Mr. Pickens wanted, on the grounds that the child needed a place to live. But Mr. Pickens was the last person on earth who would accept such a handout. Yet he was also about the last person on earth who could afford the kind of house Hazel Marie would want. I’d done my job of instructing her in the finer things of life almost too well. Not that she was demanding the best, not that at all. In fact, I think she’d live in a tent if Mr. Pickens was in it with her, but with a family of five, a little more than a tarpaulin was clearly called for.

Sam’s solution was for them to move into his house, although the problem of financing their stay remained. Could Mr. Pickens buy it with no help from Lloyd’s estate, which he wouldn’t accept anyway? Would they rent it? Rent to own? Or as Sam had suggested, live rent-free and take care of it?

There was no easy answer, considering Mr. Pickens’s commendable yet obstinate determination to take care of his own family, as well as his lack of funds. I didn’t care how they worked it out, for I had already decided to suggest that Lloyd remain with me until Hazel Marie felt comfortable managing a house and those twin babies on her own. Which, if my luck held, would be about the time Lloyd went off to college.

As it turned out, both Sam and Mr. Pickens lingered and lingered as the afternoon wore on. So I helped feed the babies, feeling almost like an old hand at it by now. As I held a bottle and rocked one of them, unsure who it was, I almost nodded off until I began to wonder what was delaying the men.

Of course! What would be more natural than that Sam would ask Mr. Pickens’s opinion about the prowler they’d had the night before? I could just picture the two of them, with James adding his two cents, reconstructing the crime. But, I reassured myself, I’d worn gloves, leaving no fingerprints, indeed leaving nothing but an overturned tin can and a million screws scattered across the garage floor.

And footprints
! I realized. Footprints in the muddy ground around the garage, across the yard, and into the Masons’ yard, and if Mr. Pickens was bound and determined to stay on the trail, across the street and on and on right straight to a certain toolshed.

“This baby’s asleep, Hazel Marie,” I said, too edgy to keep sitting there. “Shall I put her down?”

Etta Mae stopped folding baby garments and walked over. “I’ll take her. I need to put her in her little Sunday outfit.”

Hazel Marie put the one she was holding on her shoulder and patted its back. “Thanks, Miss Julia, for helping out. We’re trying to straighten up in here before people start dropping in. Binkie called and asked to come by to see the babies, and LuAnne wants to come, and no telling who else. And I don’t know what I’m going to wear. I can’t get into anything.”

“Give it time,” Etta Mae said. “You’ll lose that baby weight soon enough. You already are, it looks to me. Just put on something loose and you’ll look fine.”

“Well,” Hazel Marie said, “I had to wear safety-pinned skirts early on, so I guess I can do it again. Oh, and Miss Julia, Helen Stroud called too. She wants to come by, and I’m so glad. I haven’t seen her in ages.”

“Me either,” I mumbled, although it hadn’t been all that long since I’d seen more of Helen than I’d wanted to.

“Oh, and something else,” Hazel Marie said, “we ought to be thinking about christening these babies pretty soon, don’t you think? I don’t know what the right age is to do it, though I’ve seen Pastor Ledbetter christen toddlers and on up. I don’t want to wait that long. I want my little girls christened as soon as possible. I think I’ll sleep better when they are.”

Etta Mae laughed. “You’ll sleep better when they stop waking up every two hours. But I know what you mean. I like the idea of christening infants, although the church I grew up in didn’t believe in it. You had to be old enough to know what you were doing, and we got baptized in a river instead of sprinkled on the head.”

“Christening, baptizing,” I said, “I’m not sure I know the difference, if there is any. Although I don’t think you’d christen an adult. That’d surely be a baptism. Let’s talk to Pastor Ledbetter, Hazel Marie, and see what he says.”

“Yes, I thought I would.” Hazel Marie gazed off at the ceiling for a while—a sure sign of some deep thinking. “You know how the pastor, after he christens a baby, always carries it up and down the aisle so everybody in the church can see it? I just worry that if he tries to carry two, he might let one slip.”

“I don’t think he’d do that, Hazel Marie,” I said, wondering about the things she came up with to worry about. “You know he’d be careful. Or he might ask one of the godparents to carry one, or maybe both godparents could each carry a baby while he stayed out of it. And on that subject, have you decided whom you’ll ask to be godparents?”

“No’m,” she said, sighing and lowering her eyes, “I haven’t. There’re so many people I’d like to ask, I just can’t decide.”

“Well, let me put your mind at ease about one thing. You shouldn’t ask Sam or me, and our feelings won’t be hurt if you don’t. You should ask somebody young, somebody who’ll be around as these babies grow up and, of course, somebody who’ll watch over their spiritual growth if you and Mr. Pickens aren’t around to do it. So if we’re on your list, you can scratch us off. Besides,” I went on with a satisfied smile, “I figure Sam and I are already Lloyd’s godparents, or as good as, even though we’re slightly beyond the ideal age limit.”

Hazel Marie’s eyes suddenly filled up as if a spring had broken loose somewhere, and before I knew it, she was in full weeping mode.