Too Black for Heaven (12 page)

One of the men got up from where he was sitting and laid a thirty-two caliber revolver on Sheriff Early’s desk. The sheriff asked, “Is this your gun, Miss Santos?”

“It looks like it,” Dona admitted.

“It’s your gun,” Early said. “The serial number checks with the permit Jack Ames got for you. The first of my boys to set up a portable trouble light spotted it in the water a half-dozen feet from shore.”

“I told you I heard a splash.”

“But you didn’t throw it into the lake?”

“No, sir.”

“When did you see it last?”

“This morning.”

“Where?”

“It was under my pillow when I left the cottage.”

“You left the cottage unlocked?”

“Yes and no.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Hattie was cleaning the place.”

“Hattie who?”

“I don’t know her last name. She’s one of the maids from the big house.”

Deputy Sheriff Ransom said, “That would be the youngest Elfers girl. That pretty little high yellow who wears them silver ear bobs. They’s been talk in Pepper Town that she’s been wagglin’ her hips at Blair since she’s been ol’ enough to waggle. Least she’s worked out there ever since.”

Sheriff Early indicated two of his deputies. “You, Bruce and Gordon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Find the Elfers girl and bring her in. And while we’re at it, Eli, you and Fred pick up Beau Jackson. I can’t see Beau shooting a man in the back but he wasn’t any too happy ‘bout the way Blair treated him in the square yesterday.”

The four men left the office. Yarnell left with them to reappear in the doorway a moment later to report, “Jack Ames and Kelly of the
Courier
are outside raising hell. The man on the door wants to know if he should let them in.”

“How much do they know?” Early asked.

“Just that Sterling’s been shot and you’re questioning Miss Santos.”

“Good. Let’s leave it like that for now. Miss Santos is entitled to consult a lawyer. But we’re also entitled to hold her incommunicado until we finish our preliminary investigation. Tell Jack he can see her the first thing in the morning. As for Kelly, until we know just where we stand, the less publicity given this affair the better.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Yarnell said.

He left the office a second time and Early returned his attention to Dona. “Now I’m not trying to frighten you, Miss Santos. But you understand this is a serious matter, that if the coroner’s jury should choose to disbelieve your story and accept Blair Sterling’s dying statement, the jurors will surely find he came to death at your hands and will recommend that you be indicted. The grand jury will then vote a true bill and you’ll be held without bail right here in the county jail until the Fall term of court, at which time you’ll be charged with and tried for the murder of Blair Sterling.”

The wisp of hair escaped its pin. Dona tried to repin and couldn’t. The ends of her fingers felt numb. Her forehead was as flushed as her cheeks. “I understand.”

“Do you wish me to notify your mother?”

“No.”

“Do you want to change your story?”

“No.”

Sheriff Early stood up. “That’s all the questions for tonight, then. Take her back to the detention cell, Ransom. But before you lock her in, have Gleason run a paraffin test on her hands. Then get Doctor Nelson out of bed and tell him to come right down and bring his nurse with him. I want to know if ever and how recently Miss Santos has had relations with a man.”

Chapter Twenty-one

W
HAT WAS
left of the night was hot and morning was long in coming. Shortly before daybreak it rained, great iridescent plumes of water that shook themselves against the wire mesh of the window of the cell and formed shallow silver lakes on the courthouse lawn.

Dona spent most of the night sitting cross-legged on the thin mattress of the bunk bed lighting one cigarette from another until she exhausted the package in her purse. When her cigarettes were gone she just stared into the corridor. Her throat was raw. Her head ached. Her eyes burned in their sockets.

From time to time the deputy in charge passed down the narrow corridor. During the forepart of the night, every time she heard his footsteps approaching Dona tried to make herself small and invisible, then realized she was being foolish.

The man had no intention of forcing his attentions on her. Since she’d been in the South no one, except Blair Sterling, had tried to molest her. She’d met with nothing but courtesy and kindness.

Her fevered mind wound through strange channels. No one knew she was colored. If the worst happened on that score, if there was even a suspicion she was ‘passing,’ she could get Jack Ames to testify that she was white. It wasn’t true. It was an old wives’ tale mumbled over a voodoo pot that a southern white man could tell. And if she hadn’t been trying to test that wives’ tale, Jack Ames would never have happened to her. She would never have taken him into her bed. Jack knew where she was and had tried to get in to help her. Sheriff Early promised Jack he could see her the first thing in the morning. The knowledge was comforting. It made her feel less alone.

After the rain ended, the night man stopped in front of her cell. “You get any water in here, Miss Santos?”

Dona glanced at the cement floor. “A little.”

“I’ll get a mop,” he said.

He returned with a dry mop and a pail and mopped the cell floor in front of the window. “Cain’t sleep, eh?”

“No.”

The deputy’s drawl was somehow narcotic. “A thing like this is a strain. But don’t you worry, Miss. It’ll come out all right. You’ll see. Sterlin’ was purely no good. Us boys is all fo’ you. An’ fo’ whatever consolation it may be, I chanced to glance at Doctor Nelson’s report an’ it proves Sterlin’ a bald-faced liar.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Dona said.

The deputy was middle-aged, with grown girls of his own. He set the pail and mop in the hall and studied Dona with fatherly eyes. “You look a mite flushed to me. Your head ache?”

“Yes, a little.”

“I’ll git you a couple of aspirins. An’ seein’ you cain’t sleep, how ‘bout a cup o’ coffee? I got a pot boilin’ back in the office.”

“I’d like that.”

“Milk an’ sugar? All I got is canned milk.”

“Canned milk will be fine.”

He brought her two aspirin tablets, a glass of water and a large mug of steaming coffee and locked the cell door behind him. She slipped off her shoes and sat with her feet tucked under her, sipping at the strong coffee, listening to the snores of the girl across the corridor.

“You got no call t’ worry,”
the girl had told her.
“Not so long you white.”

The coffee was hot and tasted good. When she’d drained the mug, Dona stretched out on the bunk and closed her eyes to rest them.

The courthouse was awake and had been awake for some hours when Dona woke up. There was a rattling of keys in locks and the scrape of shoes on cement. She could hear male voices down the corridor and, outside the barred window, someone was hammering on metal. She sat up with an effort and looked through the wire mesh. The courthouse square was bright with morning. She could see part of the carousel and, in the center of a group of admiring children, a mechanic in grease-stained overalls was pounding on one of the steel rods that made the battered horses rise and lower as the carousel revolved.

Her cheeks were even more feverish than they had been before she’d gone to sleep. Her clothes were cutting into her flesh. She crossed the cell to the basin and tried to fill it with cold water. There was no stopper in the basin. When she released the spring handle the water stopped running.

The girl across the corridor was amused. “You never ben in jail befo’, have you, honey?”

“No,” Dona admitted, “I haven’t.”

The girl explained, “You have to hol’ the faucet with one hand an’ splash with the other. They fix it that way on purpose so drunks won’t run water all over the floor.”

Dona held the faucet with one hand and splashed water with the other. The water had a strong sulphur smell that sickened her. There was no towel in the cell. She dried her face as best she could with toilet paper and sat back on the bed.

The cell had a tendency to revolve. She had difficulty taking her compact from her purse. Her eyes were unnaturally bright. There were deep blue circles under them. Her rumpled hair looked lifeless. The splashed water had completed the ruin to her tear-streaked make-up. She started to repair the damages and gave it up as hopeless. Then she lay down, hid her face and cried.

Feet clomped down the corridor. The door of the cell on the opposite side opened. A male voice said, “Okay. Let’s go, Annie.”

“How’s the jedge look this mawnin’?”

The deputy laughed. “Like his breakfast is settin’ well.”

“Good,” the girl said. “Good. Then mebbe I git off with ten days.”

When they had gone the corridor seemed too quiet. Dona continued to cry. The girl might get off with a sentence of ten days but her own situation was much more desperate. Sheriff Early had warned her.

She heard the cell door open and tried to sit up, but her slight body was too convulsed with sobs. Jack Ames sat on the bunk bed beside her. “Dona. Sugar. Please don’t.”

Dona felt strong hands lift her, then sat wiping at her eyes with the handkerchief Jack Ames gave her. “I thought you’d never come.”

Ames’ voice was as gentle as his hands. “I bin here since daybreak a-pesterin’ the night deputy. But he said you hadn’t gotten to sleep until after the rain, so we decided it was best not to disturb you.”

Dona squeezed his hand. “I like you, Jack.”

“I like you,” he said, soberly. He glanced at his watch, then nodded to the bellboy from the hotel who was standing in the corridor holding a napkin-covered tray. “But that can wait for now. The inquest is set for nine o’clock an’ I’ve cut it pretty fine lettin’ you sleep as long as I have.” He took the tray from the boy and held it in his lap. “Now you stop bein’ frightened an’ git some breakfast in you while I talk.”

“But I can’t help being frightened.”

“I know. But you’ve no call to be. Now, if you cain’t eat, at least git some coffee in you an’ mebbe a piece of toast. I don’t want you faintin’ away on me in front of the jury.”

Dona drank some coffee and tried to eat some toast. The toast crunched when she bit into it and felt like broken glass in her mouth.

“Dunk it in your coffee,” Ames said. He felt her forehead. “From the looks of your eyes an’ the way you feel I’d say you have a fever. But that’s goin’ to have to wait, too. Trust me. Believe me. One way or another, I’m gittin’ you out of here this mornin’.”

Dona dutifully dunked a piece of dry toast in her coffee but even sodden toast wouldn’t slide past the lump in her throat.

Ames talked as she tried to eat. “As your lawyer, they let me read Sterlin’s statement an’ I hope he rots in hell for signin’ such a pack o’ lies. The jury may believe it, they may not. Jurors, even coroner’s jurors do strange things. But I can prove him a liar on two important counts. He says he was intimate with you just before you shot him, just before you were brought here to the jail. But Doctor Nelson’s examination proves different. More, Sterlin’ in his statement claims he saw you with the gun in your hand and the paraffin test proves conclusively that he’s lyin’ on that score, too. If you’d fired a gun any time within the last twenty-four hours, the paraffin that the identification officer pulled away from your hands would be specked with powder an’ there’s no sign of any.” Ames snapped his fingers. “So that for his statement. What I’m concerned with is an’ what the coroner’s jury is goin’ to ponder is why, out of all the hundreds of small towns in the South you chose to come to Blairville.”

“I can’t tell you, Jack,” Dona said.

“Not even if it means the difference between you going free and bein’ held for the Fall term of court?”

“No matter what it means.”

Ames touched her cheek. “The hell of it is, I think I know, sugar. An’ if what I think is so, you wouldn’t have to walk across the hall to go free. But if you can’t tell me, you can’t. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Ames set the tray on the floor and Dona noticed for the first time he’d brought a small suitcase with him.

“What’s in that?”

Ames said, “Some cold cream an’ some towels and some clothes. I drove out to the cottage an’ talked some fresh things out of one of Early’s deputies.” He got up and stood in the cell doorway with his back to the basin and bunk. “Now peel down an’ take a wash-off bath. An’ don’t be shamed at the thought someone might pass down the hall. I’ll see to it they don’t.”

Embarrassed, Dona did as she was told, then dressed hastily and sat back on the thin mattress and worked on her face and hair. Her finger tips still felt numb. It was a real effort to comb her hair. She put too much rouge on her cheeks. Her lipstick slipped and she had to apply it over.

Ames studied her from the cell door. “You look better, a whole lot better. Now remember, I want you to walk into that inquest with your chin held high, like you didn’t have a care in the world.”

“I’ll try,” Dona said meekly.

Ames called to someone in the office. “Okay, Harry. Let’s go. The sheriff said he’d meet us at the inquest.”

A deputy strolled down the corridor. “It’s gittin’ on to time. Whenever you say, Counselor.” He touched the brim of his hat to Dona. “Mawnin’, Miss Santos.”

“Good morning,” Dona said. She let Jack help her to her feet. “Where is the inquest to be held? Upstairs in one of the courtrooms?”

Ames shook his head. “No. God knows why, but it’s one of our archaic customs to hold the inquest at the mortuary with the coroner’s jury composed of the first six free-holders to pass the mortuary after the inquest is convened. An’ they got Sterlin’ laid out over at Adler’s.”

Dona remembered the fan she’d seen Judge Harris using with a picture of the Christus on one side and ADLER’S FUNERAL HOME printed on the other.

The deputy said, “Right where Blair’s belonged for some time.” He led the way down a short corridor and unlocked a back door that opened into the parking lot.

Ames guided Dona down the stairs and around a puddle of water. “Sam was tellin’ me you boys picked up Beau.”

“That’s right,” the deputy answered, as he opened the door of a mud-spattered county patrol car. “They have him over at Adler’s now. But I misdoubt he killed Sterlin’. Fo’ one thing, he’s got an alibi of sorts. He claims he spent most of the night on his knees, prayin’ fo’ self-control. An’ Father Miller backs him. Least he says he found Beau in front of the altar when he got ready to say mornin’ mass. Fo’ another, feelin’ like he did about Sterlin’, Beau would never’ve used a gun. An’ effen he did he wouldn’t have run away an’ lef’ the blame fall on a girl. Beau’s too much of a man to do a thing like that. I know. I soldiered with him. An’ that big black son-of-a-bitch, excusin’ I use the word, Miss Santos, he ain’t afraid of nothin’.”

Dona considered the statement. The deputy wasn’t being derogatory. There was undisguised admiration in his voice. His use of the profane expression was a term of affection. He might have been calling Beau a bull-headed Swede or a fighting Irishman.

“How ‘bout the Elfers girl?” Ames asked.

The deputy shrugged. “We got her, too. But she claims Sterlin’ gave her the night off an’ she spent it with her family. Pretty little thing. Seems to feel quite bad ‘bout Sterlin’. Claims he was good to her.”

Ames’ smile was wry. “Good has quite a few connotations.”

Dona sat very still and small between the two big men, as the police car circled the square. Hattie had been jealous of her. Hattie could have taken the gun.

The funeral home was on a tree-shaded side street. It was a big, white-painted, square house that had originally been a mansion. The lawn was green and well-kept. One wing had been turned into a chapel. The matching wing formed a porte cochere over a wide cement drive. There were half a dozen cars in the drive. Ames helped Dona out of the car and up the stairs. A whispering little man met them in the parlor.

“Right this way, Counselor,” he said. “The others are already gathered in the chapel.”

The chapel was small with stained-glass windows that diffused the light. Dona saw a few people she knew. Belle Morgan squeezed Dona’s hand as she passed her.

“I warned you, honey,” she whispered. “I only wish now I’d advised you to move back to the hotel.”

Ames led Dona to a table in the cleared space in the front of the chapel and held a chair for her. A tall man who was not familiar to Dona was talking to Doctor Nelson. She asked Ames who he was.

“Coroner Tennent,” he told her.

A flash bulb popped and Dona looked up, startled, to see the cameraman from the
Courier
. Kelly was standing beside him. He nodded pleasantly. “Good morning, Miss Santos.”

“Good morning,” Dona said and looked past him at the front pew in which Beau and Hattie and Blair Sterling’s white-haired butler were sitting.

Beau formed a V with his fingers. The butler stared at the floor. Hattie met her eyes and glowered.

Dona resisted an impulse to put her head down on the table and cry. She had the same sensation she’d felt in her cell, as though everything around her was revolving.

One by one, the impaneled jurors trickled in and were shown to the six straight chairs standing in an isolated group.

One was a woman in a house dress, slightly resentful, carrying a shopping bag filled with groceries; one was an old man wearing a hearing aid; the next two were a young couple looking like newly-weds; another was a prosperous business or professional man; the sixth was a worker in faded blue overalls and shirt, whose jaws moved constantly. After a few words with the deputy who was escorting him to his place, a spittoon was set beside him.