Southern Discomfort Part 21

He was standing in the doorway of Bo Poole's office and he and Bo both grinned soon as they saw me. Might've known the bailiff wouldn't waste time telling them every detail.

"I know you're still new at the job," Dwight said, "but judges are supposed to throw the book, not duck it."

"You laugh, but those hardback Bibles ought to be changed to paperbacks. I could have been injured for life. Any word from the lab yet?"

"Nope," said Bo. "They've got so much on their plate it looks like Friday before we hear for sure. How's Herman?"

"We're real worried about his legs," I admitted. "They still don't know if his nerve damage is permanent. He's getting therapy, but they're also teaching him how to maneuver in a wheelchair."

"And that joker from Environmental Health still can't figure out where he got that a.r.s.enic," Bo fumed.

"Got to give him A for effort though," I said. "Julia Lee's mad because he's over at First Methodist's kitchen right this minute."

"How come? Was Bannerman at your swearing-in? Ralph sure as h.e.l.l wasn't."

I explained about how the Marthas had catered his daughter's wedding, and we kicked it around a few minutes.

"Y'all locate Ba.s.s Langley yet?"

"Tell you the truth, we hadn't been looking all that hard," Dwight admitted. "His brother doesn't seem worried, and Ava says she doesn't want him back."

"Maybe you should take her up on her offer and check out that dumpster back of the Coffee Pot," I said tartly.

Dwight thought he had too much paperwork to knock off just then. All the same, when I said maybe I'd go see if Gordon O'Connor had found anything, he said he reckoned he'd come along with me.

The church was only two blocks away, but by the time we got there, O'Connor was gone. As he walked me back to my car, Dwight said, "What time you getting back from the airport?"

"I don't know. Nine or nine-thirty, probably. Why?"

"How 'bout I come over later and keep you company? You make us some popcorn and I'll bring that video you've been wanting to see."

"The Last Wave? Hey, great!" I'd been trying to track down a copy for months. "Where'd you find it?"

"Washington."

"Little Washington had The Last Wave?"

"Not Little Washington. Washington, D.C. I got tired hearing you whine so I asked a friend to UPS it. It'd better be as good as you say it is."

"Better!" Touched by his remembering, I impulsively added, "Listen. If I tell you something, will you promise you'll keep it to yourself?"

His eyes narrowed. "What've you done now?"

"Promise first."

"Okay, I promise, even though I can tell by that look on your face I'm going to regret it."

He listened with growing incredulity as I told him of my encounter with Mr. Ou that morning.

"Jesus H., Deborah! You know how many phone calls we've gotten about those missing dogs? Miz Castleberry's in my ear every morning; Doug Woodall's wife's uncle-you can't just take the law into your own hands like that."

"Oh, come on, Dwight. What would be gained by hauling him into court at this point? It won't bring those dogs back. All it'd do is cause hard feelings. Besides, think how you'd feel if you got plopped down in India and couldn't afford to buy meat for you and Cal. You think you wouldn't soon be inviting one of those sacred cows to come home with you some dark night?"

He shook his head at me. "Don't tell me any more secrets, okay?"

I was hurt. "I thought you'd be glad to know you don't have to worry about any more pets going missing. You always say I don't tell you things."

"And this is what you start with? Barbecued beagles?" He was already heading down the bas.e.m.e.nt steps. "I didn't hear a thing you said. Remember that. See you at nine-thirty."

"Well, he's got a point," said the preacher, smoothing the wrinkles in his favorite hairshirt. "You probably should have given Mr. Ou some meaningful community service. Maybe some hours out at the animal shelter."

"That sorry place?" snorted the pragmatist from the depths of his comfortable lounge chair. "Ninety-eight percent of the animals taken out there get put down and their bodies burned. Would Mr. Ou see that as a civics lesson or a waste of good protein?"

When I got home, Aunt Zell was still trying to decide between black silk slacks, which would let her forget about heels and hose, or a champagne-colored c.o.c.ktail dress that would require an extra bag. She was as fl.u.s.tered as a teenage bride packing for her honeymoon.

Annie Sue had brought over the adapter plugs that Nadine had used with her hairdryer when she and Herman took that Holy Land tour with their church group a few years back, and Cindy and Paige were with her.

The three girls had bonded closer than ever, but there were lines of strain in all three faces as things got more weirdly complicated with each pa.s.sing day. Paige had killed a rapist; because of Paige, Annie Sue had escaped rape but now faced the possibility that Herman would be permanently disabled; Cindy's father had been exhumed and, along with Herman and Carver Bannerman, might have been the victim of a successful poisoning attempt. Yet, they were each trying to act as if the most interesting thing in their lives was Aunt Zell's first trip to Paris.

"I'm going to bring back a bottle of real French perfume for each one of y'all," Aunt Zell promised as she hung the c.o.c.ktail dress back in her closet and opted for a black sequined top for the slacks. She tucked it in next to something pale pink and lacy.

"Why, Miss Zell," giggled Annie Sue, fluffing out one of the skimpiest nightgowns you'd ever hope to see.

"Oh, it's beautiful!" sighed Paige.

Aunt Zell laughed. "Isn't that the silliest thing?"

In went her makeup kit and she was just zipping the bag when Uncle Ash came in, handsome in navy linen blazer and gray slacks.

"All packed?" he asked.

"Ready!"

"You sure you want to make that long drive, honey?" Uncle Ash asked me for the third time. "I really can leave our car at the airport. Five days won't cost that much."

"Don't be silly," I said. Also for the third time. "I'll want to hear a full report while it's fresh."

The girls each picked up a bag and as the four of us waited in the side driveway for Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash to make a final round of the house to see if there were something they needed to tell me about besides the puppy, I remembered something myself.

"That epidemiologist that's trying to find a common denominator," I told the girls. "He asked me if Carver Bannerman was at my swearing-in reception. Did y'all see him there?"

Furrowed brows and slow headshakes as they tried to recall a man they hadn't yet met themselves two weeks ago.

I had a sudden flash of brilliance. "Stevie's video!"

"Huh?" said Annie Sue.

"Stevie," I reminded her. "He was everywhere with that camera of his. Remember? If Bannerman was at the reception, Stevie's bound to have caught him on the tape. It's sitting up there on top of my VCR and soon as I get back from the airport, I'll run through it and check it out."

As Uncle Ash and Aunt Zell came through the veranda door, I called, "Don't lock it. Dwight's coming over to watch a video with me tonight and I told him to go on in if I wasn't back yet."

Annie Sue's truck was blocking my car, so the girls wished my aunt and uncle bon voyage and drove off into the sunset as I picked up one of the bags and said, "Listen, Uncle Ash-"

CHAPTER 22.

FINISH WORK.

"Most of the finish work involves items of essential practical usefulness, such as the door and window frames, the doors and windows themselves, the roof covering, and the stairs."

My car was out of sight, locked inside the garage.

Uncle Ash and Aunt Zell were so caught up in the romance of their Parisian adventure, that they didn't question my lie that I'd suddenly remembered an important meeting I simply had to attend if I expected the fall election to rubber-stamp my appointment. If anything, they seemed sort of pleased to start the first leg of their trip alone.

Now I sat alone in the dark parlor of their quiet house. Twilight shadowed the rooms, but except for dim night lights, all the lamps were off and they'd stay off till someone came.

Dwight? Or-?

I hoped it would be Dwight. I hoped it had been my imagination out on the drive an hour earlier, that involuntary startled widening of the eyes, the sudden withdrawn look of intense concentration as if she were trying to remember.

Me? Did the camera catch me?

Clever to have done it then. If she had. In such a crush of people, who would remember which girl served whom?

Now that they could drive, the three of them were always together this year; in and out of one another's houses, one another's lives, invited to all the ceremonies, caught up in their emotions and hurts-the intense, nons.e.xual but pa.s.sionate and all-consuming love that exists between adolescent best friends.

Katie Tyson. I remember the night she cried herself sick up in my bedroom, unable to tell me about the disgusting thing that blighted her life; the anger and anguish I'd felt because I knew she would be shamed even further if she told me-even me!-why she cried. I loved her so much. Would I have killed for her if I'd known for sure that a father, brother, uncle, or preacher had violated her trust?

Once, and only once, I asked my father if he'd ever killed anyone.

"No," he'd said. "Wanted to a couple of times, meant to once, but never did."

And there was Mother, who turned her back on all her chances, burned every bridge, and ran off with a fiddle-playing bootlegger.

And I'm enough their daughter that yes, I've had it in me to dance with the devil a time or two over the years.

Not that Katie gave me a chance to find out if I was ready to dance right then. She walked out of our house that dark November night and drove her mother's car straight into the headlights of an eighteen-wheeler and never touched her brakes.

Everybody else thought it was an accident.

So much ugliness, even back then. Stuff I only vaguely suspected in my safe protected world. How had I escaped? What kept things sane and normal in our household? I was the only girl child in a family of randy, roughneck boys, but never did one of them look on me with l.u.s.t in his heart. Never did my own father touch me lasciviously.

Did hers?

Oh G.o.d, which her?

For a moment, adolescence blurred with the grown-up here and now and was overlaid with all the pathological nastiness I'd seen and heard in too many courtrooms.

Dusk deepened to darkness, and the streetlight down the block cast black shadows on the sidewalk.

Had she lost her nerve? Or were her nerves strong enough to do nothing, leave it alone, a.s.sume there was nothing incriminating on the tape, or that I'd miss it if there were because I'd be busy looking for Carver Bannerman? Surely she was too young for such self-control. Killers more mature than she were unable to leave it alone, to resist that final tidying up of loose ends.

If I ever do kill anyone, I'll just do it and walk away and never look back.

Looking back trips you up.

It was barely dark good. She'd have to get free of the other two first, then drive back alone, park her car on a nearby street, and come the last little bit on foot.

But she had to come soon or risk running into Dwi- The back veranda door squeaked and I froze.

I'd unplugged the night light here in the front parlor but the one in the hallway was enough to light her way to the central staircase, and she hurried past without a glance in my direction.

The tape atop my VCR was clearly dated and labeled. Not the real one, of course, but I didn't think she'd take the time to watch it here.

Indeed, she was up there only a minute or two before I saw her dark shape on the stairway again. I waited till she was pa.s.sing the parlor's arched doorway, then switched on the lamp beside me.

"I see you found it."

The ca.s.sette fell from her nerveless fingers, but she stooped and s.n.a.t.c.hed it up again and clutched it to her chest.

"I-I thought you-"

"No," I said gently.

She looked down at the tape.

"You poisoned Herman," I said. "Why?"

Her shoulders slumped in defeat.

"He made her cry a lot," she whispered. "Like my father. He didn't trust her. That's what she always said. I thought she meant like Dad didn't trust me-always after me and after me, and talking about s.e.x and what boys wanted and making it all dirty."

"Like Carver Bannerman? You gave him poison, too, didn't you?"

"He was filth!" she said indignantly. "Married. A pregnant wife and not caring who else he made pregnant-! Dad was right. That's all any of them want. To put their hands in our pants, put their things in our-"

A great shudder of repulsion shook her.

Dwight says I never think.