Thoroughly 10 - What Are You Wearing to Die? (12 page)

As if she had read my thoughts, Selena swiped her nose with another tissue and wailed, “But he’s so
good
with children. And they adore him. You saw him down at Ridd and Martha’s. All I wanted was one child who looked like him.” Her fountains gushed forth again.

It took nearly ten minutes before she took a deep breath and sat erect. “I guess it wasn’t meant to be.” She didn’t sound resigned. She sounded as bleak as if somebody had condemned her to a life in solitary confinement.

Which could have been how she felt.

Lots of things I could say flitted through my head, things like “Lots of couples are happy without kids,” or “Why don’t you all consider adopting?” None of them were appropriate at the moment. I winged a quick prayer for wisdom, hoping I’d get an inspiration that would turn me into a good counselor. Instead, the first thing that popped into my head was that new apartment Maynard had been talking about. Maybe it was as good a distraction as any.

“I hear you all are turning the upstairs of Gusta’s house into an apartment.”

She nodded as she gave her nose a final wipe. “It got finished Saturday. Maynard thinks it will be good security to have somebody living on the premises, and he doesn’t need the upstairs for display. It’s lovely. Would you like to see it?” She stuffed all the soggy tissues into her pocketbook and gave me the first hopeful look I’d seen from her all afternoon.

I had half a dozen things I ought to be doing, but none of them were all that important right that minute. I gathered up my pocketbook. “I’d love to see what you’ve done with it.”

She had her car, so we drove the short distance and parked in the driveway of the big antebellum house with the discreet sign out front:
WAINWRIGHT HOUSE ANTIQUES
. Gusta had agreed to sell her home only if Maynard would use her name. He had kept the feel of the place as well. Bright pansies bordered the walk, and porch rockers invited you to sit a spell on a warmer afternoon.

“The first time I ever came to this house was nearly sixty years ago, for Gusta’s bridesmaids’ luncheon,” I ruminated. “I was not quite six, and Gusta had asked me to be her flower girl. Mama was worried sick I’d spill something on my white organdy dress at the luncheon, but all I could think about was that I had on new ruffled panties and I was going to lunch in the castle where the princess lived.”

Selena gave a watery laugh. “She sure grew up to be a queen. You ought to hear her when she stops by. Says she’s coming ‘to visit my old house,’ but she’s really coming to snoop. She tells Maynard how to display every item, and she even made him get rid of one set of dishes. Said they were trash and she didn’t want them in
her
house.”

“How does Maynard deal with that?”

“He adores her, and says she is almost always right.”

As I followed Selena up the drive I’d used so often, I knew why Gusta kept coming back. Times change and age must make way for youth, but it is hard to turn a house you have loved over to other people. Martha’s den furniture was much nicer than the old recliners Joe Riddley and I put up with, but I still missed our decor. What I missed most was being able to sit out on the wide screened porch after a hard day at work and let the peace of the countryside seep into my bones. What did Gusta miss most about her house? I would have to ask.

We climbed a new fire escape/entrance staircase on the side of the house and opened a new door where a hall window used to be. I couldn’t remember ever being upstairs at Gusta’s except once, when she was sick and I took her a potted cyclamen.

“He sealed off the front stairs with that wall.” She pointed. I would never have guessed that the wide curved staircase was beyond the wall. “And he sealed off the back two bedrooms and the attic rooms to use for storage.” She led me through a wide hall, where heart pine floorboards were polished to a gleam, to the front room where Gusta used to sleep, overlooking the courthouse square. The room had been pale gray, for Gusta was fond of gray, especially after her hair went silver. Now it was a soft butter yellow.

“This will be the living room, with the dining room behind it. See? Maynard had a door opened up that used to be there anyway.”

“I like the color you used. It brightens the place up considerably.”

She led me to what used to be a storeroom at the back. “This is the kitchen.”

It wasn’t large, but seemed larger because it had white appliances, white cabinets, and a white floor. “I like a white kitchen,” said Selena-the-nurse. “If it’s dirty, I want to know it. The tenants can put up curtains and accessories in whatever color they like.”

Across the hall were a large front bedroom with a full bath and a smaller bedroom with a shower-only bath.

“That’s it.” Selena concluded the tour. “I hope somebody is going to want it.”

“Folks will be beating down your door to rent it. Are you sure Hubert couldn’t live here?”

Even as Selena shook her head, I knew it wouldn’t work. Hubert could never climb all those stairs, and he’d already paid to put an elevator in Pooh’s house as his “entrance fee.” I doubted he’d pay again to put one in Maynard’s. Besides, as Maynard had pointed out, the two of them got along better when they weren’t living in each other’s pockets.

“You’ll find somebody,” I said again as we clumped downstairs. “Now, you go talk to Maynard. I need to get back to the office, and I’ll walk. I need the exercise.”

She gave me a quick hug. “Thanks. I’m glad you were there.”

“Always at your service,” I told her. “Especially for pie.”

As I walked the short distance to the store, my mood was as somber as the scudding clouds overhead—and as fruitless. Just as they could not seem to bring us rain, I could not think of easy solutions for any of the problems my friends faced. I couldn’t figure out how to help Selena in her sorrow, how to advise Otis and Lottie about getting out of their situation with Gusta and Hubert, how Trevor would ever emerge from his deep pool of bone-numbing grief, or what any of us would do with Hubert once he didn’t have that store to go to every morning.

I walked along in such a deep funk that I didn’t notice Robin and her girls until I heard Natalie’s piping voice. “Anna Emily! Come on!”

On the sidewalk ahead, Robin and Natalie were heading toward their car, down the block. As usual, Natalie was prancing around, talking a mile a minute, while Anna Emily lagged behind. Robin was so busy listening to Natalie, she didn’t notice that Anna Emily had paused at the doorway to an empty storefront that used to house a children’s boutique.
⁷

I saw the child look up at somebody in the doorway and speak, and I knew exactly what she was asking: “Can I go home with you?”

Not until Robin reached her car did she miss the child. “Anna Emily, get over here!” The child reluctantly followed the others to the car.

Robin smacked her sharply on the bottom before fastening her into her car seat, but I suspected it was going to take more than smacks on the bottom to cure Anna Emily of that habit.

By the time Robin drove away, I was abreast of the doorway. The man standing there looked familiar, but I couldn’t identify him until I saw the photograph he was holding. He was staring after Robin’s car with a bewildered look on his face.

“She asks everybody that,” I said, greeting him. “The little girl. She has this habit of asking to go home with anybody she meets.”

It took him a moment to register that I was speaking to him. “That was really weird.”

He was thinner than he had been, and slightly unkempt. His face was so gaunt, and his skull showed clearly beneath the skin. His hair was growing out into a crop of curls. His clothes were crumpled, like he’d left them in the dryer too long. I wondered how much eating or sleeping he had been doing since I ran into him at the corner back in September, and whether he was running out of money to support his search.

The look in his eyes disturbed me enough that I looked around to make sure there were other folks on the sidewalk before I continued the conversation. Even knowing that the killers of Starr were behind bars didn’t break a weeks-long habit of distrusting strange young men.

“Did you ever find your wife?” I gestured toward the photograph.

He looked down at it like he had forgotten he held it. His hand was shaking.

Impulsively, I caught his wrist. “You look like you need something to eat. Down that next side street is a great local restaurant, with the best chocolate pie in the world. Go get yourself something to fill your stomach, and tell Myrtle that Judge Yarbrough sent you. She’ll put it on my tab.”

“I’m not—” He started to protest, then nodded. “That would be great. Thanks.”

He set off down the sidewalk at a rangy lope.

The whole town was edgy, knowing that the alleged murderers of Starr Knight were in the detention center. That was especially true after Slick went berserk and raised such a ruckus that he injured two guards. By nightfall, everyone knew he had been put into solitary confinement, but I’m sure a lot of folks slept uneasily, knowing he was breathing the same air they were.

The sheriff came by the next morning to tell me about it. “He jumped his attorney and would have throttled him if the guards hadn’t intervened. As it was, he left one guard with a broken arm and one with a broken nose. It took five men to wrestle him down and get him into solitary. He fought them tooth and nail, and his vocabulary gave us all an education.”

“What on earth set him off?”

“The bat. He didn’t know we had it. Therefore, he thought the prosecutor didn’t have any concrete evidence against him except somebody who might have seen him with Starr. From what he said—or shouted—Roddy was supposed to have gotten rid of it, and Roddy thought kudzu would do the trick. Could have, too, if Joe Riddley hadn’t reminded me that the stuff is deciduous. Slick started yelling that he’d kill Roddy for that. He is now utterly out of control. We slammed him into solitary, but that hasn’t settled it, not by a long shot. He yelled and screamed half the night. Our deputies are wary of him, the guards are scared to take him his food, and all the inmates are restless. Roddy was shaking so bad, the doctor gave him something to calm him down.”

“Have you tried working on Roddy? Maybe he’ll do a plea bargain and testify against Slick.” As soon as I said that, I could hear Joe Riddley inside my head:
Don’t tell the sheriff how to do his job, Little Bit.

Fortunately, Buster is sometimes more lenient with me than my husband.

“We tried that, but Roddy isn’t talking. Won’t say a thing, either to us or, apparently, to his attorney. Just shrugs when he’s asked a direct question. But I’ll be glad when this trial is over. The detention center is beginning to feel like one of the lower circles of hell.”

As soon as he left, I called Judge Stebley, our chief magistrate. We consulted; then he called up to Augusta and requested a speedy trial. When a slot opened up in the Superior Court calendar, the two of us pulled in a couple of favors and got the trial set for the third week of December. We needed to get that case over and those guys shipped out of town.

Business was slow enough that Evelyn and I left Gladys in charge and attended the proceedings.

Slick was shackled, cuffed, and heavily guarded, but if looks could have killed, we would all have been lying on the floor and poor Roddy would have been pulverized.

Roddy reminded me of a child: contrite, bewildered, and resigned to punishment. His main fear seemed to be of Slick.

Slick was like a cornered tiger, tensed and ready to pounce. It was clear he had never expected a case to be built against him. His primary response to concrete evidence was not remorse but rage.

Wylie disturbed the court as much as Slick did. He boohooed when the prosecutor introduced the photographs of Starr’s body, and called Slick such filthy names that the judge threw him out.

Trevor sat like a man of stone. Evelyn whispered to me, “Everybody who knows him begged him not to come, but he shook us off like a horse shakes flies.”

I had expected Robin to be there to support him, if nothing else. She did not appear. I tried to tell myself that maybe she was squeamish, that maybe somebody had to keep the business open, but a voice inside my head kept saying,
She ought to have come for Trevor, after all he’s done for her.

Then I discovered she was a subpoenaed witness for the defense. She took the stand nervously, spoke inaudibly, and never looked at the defendants, but she testified that the bat could have been in her truck when Starr took it. I reminded myself not to judge people until all the evidence is in, and then only in my courtroom, where rules are predetermined and clear.

Trevor sat up front, close enough to get a good look at every photograph and every scrap of evidence. Most of the time, he stared at the backs of those boys’ heads so hard it was a wonder he didn’t bore holes in their skulls.

That week’s
Hopemore Statesman
reported, “At the end of each day, Trevor Knight rose and walked alone from the courtroom through a crowd that parted like the Red Sea to let him pass.”

Proceedings were mercifully short. Neither of the defendants testified, and the only pieces of evidence introduced were photographs, the prints from the bat and Starr’s body, and lab results that indicated the blood on the bat was Starr’s, the prints were Slick’s and Roddy’s, and the bat fit Starr’s wounds.

The verdict was predictable. As my son Walker phrased it, “Guilty as hell.”

Roddy stiffened for an instant as the verdict was read; then his shoulders slumped.

Slick turned to his attorney and shouted a stream of profanities, the gist of which was, “What good are you? He said you’d get me off!” He lifted his cuffed arms and would have slammed the man if a guard hadn’t stepped between them and held him.

The day of the sentencing, it finally rained. The courtroom was full of dripping umbrellas and pungent with the smell of wet coats.

The judge asked Trevor if he had anything to say before he sentenced them.

Trevor walked heavily up to the witness chair, but when he got there he simply sat for a long time, looking at each boy. Roddy looked down at his hands and shuffled his feet. Slick lifted his chin and glared.

Trevor heaved a sigh. “You don’t deserve to live and you don’t deserve to die before you’ve lived long enough to realize what you’ve done. I hope you both experience some regret, but neither your regret nor anything they do to you will ease my pain.” He turned to the judge. “Whatever you decide is fine with me.”

He lumbered out of the courtroom, his shoulders hunched, his beard resting on his chest. Not one soul spoke to him. It would have been a gross impertinence to interfere with such cataclysmic grief.

By then the rain was coming down in slanting silver lines. I heard more than one person claim that the heavens were weeping for Trevor. Knowing what I do of God, I suspected the heavens were also weeping for Starr and those two young men. Every child starts out with the possibility of a brighter future than the ones they had chosen.

Because no evidence was presented to show premeditation—their attorney had done his best for them, in spite of Slick, and had produced Robin’s testimony to indicate that the bat could have been readily available and used in a fit of anger—the defendants got life in prison. Slick got no possibility of parole. Roddy could get out in fifteen years or so if he behaved.

Some thought that was better than either of them deserved, but Slick raised his cuffed hands and lunged at Roddy. “I’ll kill you! So help me, if it is the last thing I ever do, I will kill you!”

It took three guards to wrestle him down. Not a soul doubted he was serious, especially Roddy. The judge recommended that the two of them be sent to different facilities.

However, as usual, Georgia penitentiaries were crowded. Hope County was informed we’d have to retain the prisoners for a number of weeks.

Hopemore looked forward to Christmas with mixed feelings—nervousness that the two killers were still in our community, but a sigh of relief that the nightmare was over.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t.