Pride v. Prejudice (14 page)

“Grady and Tricia?” I said.

He frowned. “Choir practice is on Saturdays at four. Try the church.”

I asked for directions and he obliged. After thanking him, I returned to my car. It was already four thirty. I careened down the road, loosening some neurological screws as well as whatever held the car together, and turned on the county road. As I went past the turnoff for Pinkie Sheer Road, I noticed more official vehicles parked alongside the ditches. The deputies must have been annoyed by having their weekend interrupted, but I was not tempted to meddle. If Prosecutor Wessell heard about my minor involvement, he would be out on the courthouse steps yet again, gleefully slandering me. If and when I sued him for defamation, I would think twice before retaining the services of Evan Toffle.

The Mount Zion Methodist Church was at the edge of Farberville. The white-shingled building had a steeple but lacked the spires and Gothic arches of a cathedral. Gargoyles need not apply. Numerous cars and trucks were parked in the gravel lot. I found a space, gazed sadly at myself in the rearview mirror, and then entered the building.

“No, no, no!” shouted a perturbed male voice. “You sound like a bunch of alley cats! Focus, people!”

The choir appeared to be composed of about a dozen kids, some barely into puberty and others ready for college. Acne abounded. Their director was a man in his late twenties, dressed in trousers, a white short-sleeved shirt, and a bow tie. He would not get past Miss Poppoy's doorstep—even if his name was Cochise.

I walked down the aisle and tapped his shoulder. “Please forgive me for interrupting, but I'd like to speak to you for a few minutes.”

“Yeah, why not?” He looked at his charges. “Take five and be ready to hit the right notes when we start up.” He gestured at a pew.

Once we were seated, I said, “I know this is a long shot, but I'm looking into what happened the night you took this group camping at Flat Rock. Do you remember anything out of the ordinary?”

“Out of the ordinary for these outstanding young people? I don't recall any earthquakes, bolts of lightning, tidal waves, or nuclear explosions. Rachael had hysterics because Jason sat next to Annie on the bus. Tricia confiscated two bottles of vodka, a switchblade, and a plastic bag of hand-rolled cigarettes. Owners of said contraband were not happy campers. Young Atkins forgot to mention that he doesn't know how to swim until he reached the middle of the river. Carter was found hiding in the girls' tent—twice. Other than that, no.”

“No one saw anything in the field across the river?”

Grady's smile vanished. “What do you mean?” he asked in a hard voice.

“There was a report of activity in that area.”

“The young people were told not to cross the river, and none of them did. What's this about?”

“Did you hear a shotgun blast?”

“Oh,” he said, nodding, “that was the night some woman shot and killed her husband. Who are you?”

“A friend of the accused woman, who has the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise. Do you mind if I speak to your choir members?”

“Good luck with that.” He stood up and went through a door next to the platform, apparently unconcerned by the possibility I might be gunned down by the sopranos or trampled by the tenors.

I gazed at the sprawl of teenagers. Some were texting; others were in cozy conversations. They hardly looked outstanding, or upstanding, for that matter, but there might be a future mathematician or surgeon among them. I made my way up the steps and approached a trio of girls. No one showed a flicker of curiosity.

“I'd like to ask you about the camping trip a year ago,” I said.

“Really?” said a well-developed brunette in a tight halter. “That was ages ago, like history.”

“Bianca can't remember what she had for lunch,” inserted a less-developed blonde with dark roots and braces. The third girl whipped out her cell phone and began to text.

I looked at the blonde. “Did you hear a loud noise around midnight?”

“You mean Jessie's fart? It was like an explosion. We all had to scramble out of the tent before we died of asphyxiation. I almost threw up.” Her laugh was brittle as she studied her fingernails.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“You ought to ask Miss Yates, the church secretary,” the brunette said. “She had some kind of allergy thing and spent the night out on the rock, splashing water on her legs and feet. She went through a whole bottle of calamine lotion.” She took out her cell phone to update the world on the current noncrisis.

“How do I find Miss Yates?” I asked the blonde, but a cell phone had appeared in her hand as well and her mind had left the building. Perhaps they should text their Sunday morning choral presentation, I thought as I went back down the steps and followed Grady's path into what proved to be an office.

He was standing next to a desk occupied by an older woman with short silver hair and faded blue eyes. She clutched a wadded tissue in one fist. Although I was not at my best, I was offended by the apprehensive expression on her face. I resisted the urge to check behind me for ghouls or armed men in ski masks.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

Not among ye faithful, I surmised. “Claire Malloy. I live in Farberville and own the Book Depot on Thurber Street. I'm trying to help Sarah Swift before her trial begins on Tuesday.” I could have offered a more detailed autobiography, but I felt as though I'd covered the essentials.

“She shot her husband,” Grady added helpfully, eliciting a gurgle from the woman, who seemed ready to take refuge under her desk.

“Sarah Swift has been accused of shooting her husband,” I corrected him. “I'm here with her lawyer's permission.”

“What do you want from me?” the woman asked.

“Are you Tricia Yates?” I waited until she nodded. “You were with the choir at Flat Rock the night it happened. I was wondering if you might have seen or heard anything?”

Grady snickered. “I already ran through the list of high crimes and misdemeanors, including Stanley's vodka and Carter's nocturnal expeditions to visit the girls.”

Tricia Yates continued to regard me with anxiety. “I don't understand why you think I know anything. It was a horrible night. I wasn't happy until I got home and took a long hot bath. If you think I had time to wander around that nasty field, then why don't you volunteer to chaperone this group when they go on a retreat in October? Tell me your name again, along with a telephone number.”

“Yeah,” Grady said.

“Then you didn't hear a shotgun go off about midnight?” I persisted despite the warmth of my reception, which registered thirty-two degrees on the Fahrenheit scale and zero on the Centigrade scale.

Tricia dropped the tissue on her desk. “I heard frogs, birds, and a whole lot of giggling.”

“Yeah,” Grady said again.

He was beginning to annoy me. “Could I speak to Ms. Yates privately?” I said as I sat down and crossed my legs.

She gestured at him to leave. When he was gone, she said, “I told you that I have nothing to contribute. It was an ordinary campout. We arrived in the middle of the afternoon. Grady supervised the boys while they put up the tents, unloaded the gear, and gathered firewood. I organized the girls for kitchen duty. We ate hot dogs and burned beans for supper, and had a lovely prayer service at sunset. After that, we all sat in a circle around a fire and talked about keeping Jesus in our lives. They were all very earnest, naturally. You'd have thought they were little saints, not jail bait and drug dealers.”

“One of the girls mentioned that you developed an allergic reaction,” I said with a slathering of sympathy. “What a miserable night.”

She shuddered. “Hellish. I must have walked through poison ivy somewhere along the path. I had blisters for two weeks.”

“I'm surprised you didn't hear the shotgun.”

“Maybe I heard something, but I didn't worry about it.” She put the tissue in a wastebasket and picked up a pen. “I need to finish the books for August, so if there's nothing else…?”

There was, but I wasn't sure what it was. “Thanks for your time, Ms. Yates. I hope you don't get roped into chaperoning this retreat.”

“Not on my life.” She tried to smile, but the result was tepid.

Grady had failed to reorganize his troops and was pacing across the front of the room, his brow creased and his lips tight. I wasn't sure if he was anticipating another round of atonality or more questions from me, but I went out the front door to my car. My visit had caused Tricia Yates's visible disquiet. I didn't understand why, since I'd asked mild questions with low expectations of learning anything of relevance. There was more to their story than they had shared, but I couldn't force them to elaborate. I knew where they and the choir would be the following morning, should I come up with a way to coerce any one of them to spill the truth.

The sun was not yet over the yardarm (or my arm, anyway), so I decided to drive back to the Lippets' road and have a look at Flat Rock. I debated calling Peter, but I didn't need any discouragement. I retraced my route and turned past the bridge. I saw no indications of a path or a stile before the Lippets' house, so I continued. The road grew rougher, and I slowed to a crawl as I gazed at pastures on both sides of me. At last I came to a dirt road with a padlocked gate. I parked, put my cell phone and keys in my pocket, and locked my purse in the trunk of my car.

I walked across the road to a stile next to an overflowing trash bin. This stile did not have railings, but I made my way up the steps, carefully eased over the barbed wire, and came down without a mishap. Giving a modest salute to my vast, unseen audience of avian admirers, I followed a trodden path through a field of cornstalks. My audience was now composed of grasshoppers that buzzed in my face and gnats that swarmed around my head. Crows jabbered as they swooped down to attack the cornstalks. I flapped my hands and muttered rude things until I reached yet another stile. As I ascended it, I saw the river and a large expanse of, well, flat rocks. Eureka.

After a short hike across a weedy expanse, I arrived on an especially fine flat rock that abutted the river. A shift in topography had created a wide pool that looked like a lovely place to swim. The high trees on the far bank made rippled shadows on the still brown water. The avian choir, initially silenced by my arrival, resumed calling for mates. Based on Grady's assessment of his choir members, I hoped they relied on other mating calls (or tweets).

Except for a crushed plastic bottle caught in weeds on the far bank and some charred wood, I saw no recent signs of human occupancy. Had there been skinny-dipping hippies the previous evening, Lippet had cleaned the area of bodies and litter. He had done so umpteen times since the choir had camped a year ago. However, anything of significance had happened on William Lund's property, which was going to require me to walk on water. Regrettably, that was not among my many talents.

I did what I was sure Sir Henry Morton Stanley had done when he failed to find Dr. Livingstone having tea in a proper tent next to the source of the Nile, which was to throw propriety to the breeze and take a break. Once I'd found a place to sit, I took off my shoes and let my feet dangle in the water. I scooped up water and cleaned my face. The serenity and the solitude were intoxicants. People, including my beloved husband, had been yammering at me for three days.

I was pondering whether or not to call him to find out if the FBI had been more forthcoming when my cell phone buzzed in my back pocket. My hand began to tremble when I saw the call was from Caron, who could be whooping with success or begging for bail.

“What's up, dear?” I asked carefully.

“We think we know where it is, but there's a problem.”

“Where is it?” I asked, then froze as an enormous dog bounded into view. Barking hysterically, it flopped across the flat rock, crouched, and growled in a most unsettling fashion. Its fangs were visible. Spittle flew from its mouth as it shifted its weight. Although it was more apt to be a German shepherd than a gray wolf (
Canis lupus
), it appeared to weigh close to a hundred pounds. Or five hundred. Some tormented soul had opened a cage in Satan's kennel.

“What is it, Mother?” Caron shrieked.

“A dog—a nice dog. Nice dog, aren't you? Yes, a good dog.” I sounded as convincing as a child miscast in a school play. “Good dog!”

The beast, whose pedigree must have originated with the Baskervilles, did not fall for my ploy. It continued to growl as it moved around me. The hairs on the back of its neck were stiff, making it clear that my mere presence had raised both its hackles and its primal instincts.

“Tell it to go away,” said Caron, always helpful.

“I'm not going to tell it to do anything,” I said in what I hoped was a steady voice. I scooted to the very edge of the rock and tried to gauge the depth with one leg. My foot did not make contact. The dog made an ominous gurgle as it approached. Clenching my teeth, I eased off the rock. The water was only waist high. That was the good news. The bad news arrived seconds later when the dog loosed a frenzy of barking, interspersed with ill-controlled lunges at my person. I shrank away, felt my feet slide, and fell backward. Despite the brute's volume, I heard my cell phone as it slipped out of my hand, plopped in the water, and sank before my deeply appalled eyes.

“See what you made me do!” I said to the dog in my bad-doggie voice. “Now go away!”

The dog stopped barking and gazed at me with a look that, had I been a fan of anthropomorphism, might be described as wounded. I was preparing a less critical remark when it began to sniff my shoes.

“Don't even think about it, Rover.”

The dog didn't pause to think about it, but instead picked up one shoe with its mouth, wagged its tail, and took off in the direction of the cornfield.