Mr. X (78 page)

A Ford identical to mine drifted toward the long line of cars on the shimmering drive. Attired in a charcoal-gray wool suit and a gray felt hat, C. Clayton Creech took in the assembled gathering with his customary matchless cool. I glanced at the headstone next to Toby’s grave.
HENRIETTA “QUEENIE” DUNSTAN KRAFT, 1914–1964, A VIRTUOSO NEVER TO BE SURPASSED
.

“Between you and me,” I said to Creech, “how much of a crook was Toby, actually?”

“Indicted only once,” Creech drawled. “Bum rap.”

Down the slope, my Taurus’s doppelgänger parked at the end of the row of cars. Mr. Tite emerged from the driver’s seat and opened the door for Helen Janette.

“Had nothing to do with the adoption business,” I said.

“Hazel kept her mouth shut.” Creech had not so much as glanced down the slope.

“What was it, then?”

“Jive bullshit.”

Helen Janette and her guard dog reached the top of the slope. Frank Tite pretended not to notice that Helen was walking toward me.

The lawyer tipped his hat. “Good day, Mrs. Janette.”

“Mr. Creech, I have something to say to your friend.” She motioned me aside. “I want to apologize for the way I behaved the night of the fire. I was a miserable old woman, and I couldn’t think straight.”

“It must have been terrible for you,” I said.

“Lose everything you own, you’ll learn the meaning of terrible. I don’t understand why that La Chapelle boy went so crazy.”

“You knew him?”

“Frenchy grew up right around the corner. Him and Clyde Prentiss, knee-deep in trouble from day one.”

The last of the mourners joined the throng behind Toby’s grave. All but two or three of them were black, and everyone had dressed for the occasion.

“It starts with
Hatchtown
,” said Helen Janette. “Who needs a convention center? Stewart Hatch should tear down the whole place, rebuild it from the ground up. Or at least fix those properties. Your family would be happy to see some work done on Cherry Street, too, wouldn’t they?”

“With them, you never know,” I said. “But why would Hatch have anything to do with it?”

She said, “Okay, never mind,” and left me.

Mr. Spaulding stationed himself beside the open grave. The quiet hum of conversation from the mourners ceased.

“Dear friends and neighbors, Mr. Kraft declined the services of a clergyman at his last rites, but he welcomed spontaneous reflections from those who have assembled here. If you care to express your feelings, step up and speak from the heart.”

A little stir came from the crowd, and an elderly woman came forward. She raised her head, and sunlight sparkled off her glasses.

“Toby Kraft was not what I could call a close, personal friend,
but I appreciated the man. He was honest with his customers. He treated a person with respect. He had a generous heart, too. Toby had a rough side, but I know there were times he offered a helping hand to lots of us here today.” The crowd murmured affirmation. “In my opinion, Toby Kraft was a man who made a contribution. That’s all I have to say.”

One after another, seven other people moved up beside the grave and spoke about Toby. A white-haired man said, “Toby never appeared to be a romantic or a sentimental man, but no one could say he did not have a deep love for his wife.”

I asked Creech if he had known Queenie.

“Toby was completely smitten,” he said. “She could make his jaw drop open and his eyes spin around in his head. They had me to dinner many times, and Queenie’s sweet-potato pie was like nothing I have tasted before or since.” Creech smiled, more to himself than at me. “Hers was the only pie I ever observed rise an inch or two above the table, as if begging to be eaten.”

The last speaker said, “Mr. Kraft acted like he ate hubcaps and razor blades for breakfast, but he was on our side. He once told me, ‘Georgia, I may be a son of a bitch,’ excuse my French, ‘but watching out for you is part of my job.’ He helped pay for my husband’s funeral. When my daughter went to Morehouse, he sent her money every week and never asked for anything in return. I say, Toby Kraft was a good, good man.”

Mr. Spaulding sifted through the crowd to shake hands with his future customers. People moved down toward their cars.

“Toby was an excellent fellow, all in all,” said C. Clayton Creech. He gave me a lizardlike glance. “I trust you do not regret your decisions of the other day?”

“Toby would have approved,” I said.

“I always enjoyed that whimsical streak of his. Most of my clients resist whimsy. As the years go by, I more and more appreciate evidence of the imaginative faculty.”

We moved down the slope. “What was the reason he went to jail?” I asked.

Creech’s car keys twinkled in his milk-white hand. “I suppose he possessed enough imagination to recognize he had no other choice.”

112

The aunts were bustling back and forth in front of the stove. Splendid in a canary-yellow sports jacket, Clark looked up from the table. “Look here, boy, I got a new coat to celebrate your birthday!”

Nettie sang out, “Happy Birthday!” and bussed my cheek. May said, “Stay right there, I’ll get your present.”

“Old Toby’s funeral was a lonely business, I reckon,” said Clark.

“No, a lot of people turned up,” I said. “Some of them spoke about how much he loved Queenie.”

“You can’t take that away from him,” said Nettie. “From the moment Toby Kraft laid eyes on my sister, he was a man under a spell.”

“And I wanted to ask you something,” I said.

May returned with a plastic bag bearing the logo of a local grocery store. She looked almost coquettish. “When I gave you those socks and undergarments, Ned, I was keeping a secret for your birthday.”

“You’re giving me a secret for my birthday?”

“It won’t be a secret any longer.” She pulled from the bag a pink sports jacket randomly imprinted with golf bags, golf clubs, and greens with flags jutting from the cups. Grenville Milton would have drooled.

I shrugged off my blazer and got into May’s pink extravaganza. It was exactly my size.

“Damn, boy,” Clark said. “Now you look like you know how to have a good time.”

“And there’s another treat,” said Nettie. “Sweet-potato pie. Mine is as good as Queenie’s, you wait and see.”

“What else do we have in the works?” I asked.

“Dry-rubbed pork ribs and my black-eyed peas. May brought over homemade bread. There’s the marshmallow salad from
The Ladies of Galilee Cook Book
, and we still have plenty of that
tuna casserole from yesterday. There is no need to worry about
food
.”

“We deserve a feast, after all our sorrows,” Clark said. “Now that he has passed away, I miss old Toby more than I expected I would. Is there any progress on bringing his murderer to justice?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Jack the Ripper is running around Edgerton, but the police won’t admit it. Tell you why. The news would alarm the populace.”

“It isn’t only Jack the Ripper,” Nettie said, sounding ominous.

“No, sir. Take the events in College Park last night.”

I felt as though I had been stung by a bee. “What events?”

“Around one
A.M.,
people up there heard a god-awful noise. A good many windows blew out of their frames. They say a light filled the sky, and that the light was
blue.”

“It is undoubtedly a sign,” May said.

“A fellow on the radio this morning said the ruckus was brought on by an alien spacecraft. That idea deserves consideration.”

Through the kitchen window, I looked out at the paper tablecloth and jugs of Kool-Aid and iced tea on the old picnic table. “Too bad Joy can’t be here.”

“Joy wouldn’t talk to me this morning,” May said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she has had second thoughts about putting Clarence in that home.”

A premonitory tingle coursed through my chest, in its mildness suggesting that I had three or four hours before onset of the seizure. “Mr. Creech was at the funeral,” I said. “I asked him why Toby went to jail, but he wouldn’t talk.”

“Today,” Clark said, “we should remember the good things about the man, not his misdeeds.”

“Which were legion,” said Nettie.

“Numbered like the grains of sand on a beach,” said May. “Are we ready to start the festivities?”

On the other side of the picnic table, Clark made the most of a single black-eyed pea. Substantial piles of bones had accumulated on the aunts’ paper plates. My warning signals hummed quietly in the background. All of us felt the warm, expansive sensation that follows a satisfying meal. At the moment when I
was thinking about bringing up Toby Kraft’s incarceration again, May did it for me.

“Nettie, do you remember? When Toby was sent away, Queenie still had that little icebox, and she was upset because she wouldn’t have the time to pick out a new one for six whole months? When Toby came back, I remember, he told Queenie to get a new icebox right away.”

“If he served only six months, his crime wasn’t very serious,” I said.

“Not only was his offense not serious,” May said, “he didn’t do it. Why would Toby Kraft break into another man’s house? If that was what he wanted, he would have had some fool do it for him.”

“He was home with Queenie the whole time.” Nettie glanced at me. “She testified to that effect, but the jury chose not to believe her, which was the same as saying that she told a pack of lies. Our sister was the picture of honesty. Honest as sunshine.”

“At times,” May said, “our sister’s honesty was of a sort to make you check and see where you were bleeding. I’d like more ribs, please, Ned, and some of the marshmallow salad from the Ladies of Galilee.”

“Toby didn’t say anything to save himself?” I asked.

“Didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t.” Nettie took the bowl of marshmallow salad from May and spooned half of it onto her plate. Disgust won out over her reservations. “Toby hardly talked to his own lawyer. They convicted him of stealing a silver picture frame, all because a Hatchtown no-good claimed he saw Toby hanging around outside the house.”

A familiar sensation, that of steady electrical pulsations, flowed into my arms, and the colors around me blazed. I could not be sure how much time was left me. Robert lingered somewhere close by, burning with jealousy. I said, “This is a wonderful birthday party, but I should go inside and lie down for a while.”