When Did We Lose Harriet? Part 16

The girl shifted uneasily. "Uh, well...not exactly. But her mother saw her picture in the paper and recognized her." Her voice dropped.

"Why was her picture in the paper?" Raye wanted to know.

The girl looked utterly miserable. She turned and muttered something we couldn't hear. Raye shook her roughly and shoved her toward the arch. "Don't you let her hear you say that!" she hissed.

"It was in the paper," the girl said sullenly, gliding back to the television show.

Trying to distract Eunice again, I asked loudly, "Who might your sister have called in Montgomery besides me, Lewis Henly, and Ricky Dodd?"

"Who?" Eunice seemed at a loss.

"He's a boy I saw running away," I prompted her. "The police are holding him."

"I didn't know his name. The police just said they had a suspect. And I don't know why she'd have called him-or anybody else, for that matter, except maybe William Sykes. Dixie's husband? He's got a big store out on the Eastern Bypa.s.s, so I told Myrna to call and ask if he could give her a job, or steer her toward one. She wanted to stay home and...and make a fresh start." She put her head down and bawled.

Mrs. Hunter obliged with more tissues. Another woman came back from the kitchen with a fresh set of bottles, potato chips, and homemade onion dip. She set them down and announced, "I called the station. It'll be on the ten o'clock news."

Eunice nodded without raising her head.

I was horrified. "Don't you watch it! You don't need..."

Josheba ground her heel into my toe as Raye asked, "Didja ask *em for a video tape? On account of it being in her house and all?"

"Yeah. They said we'll have to tape it ourselves. Do you have a blank tape?"

"Yeah." Raye went toward the living room.

I sat there feeling sick. Nothing could make me look at any part of that gruesome afternoon again. My own memory was likely to keep me up half the night.

Eunice, however, said with satisfaction, "The cameraman got good shots of me getting out of the police car and coming up the walk, and just when I first seen her, but he didn't know how much they'll be able to use." She turned to me. "Did he get you, too?"

I shuddered. "No, thank heavens. I left before the press arrived."

Raye Hunter looked up from where she was fixing a blank tape into the VCR. "Ain't that always the way? And there you was, the one who found her. Looks like they'd have told you to stick around."

Eunice was ready to rehash her tragedy once more. "I went off to work and left her sitting right there in the living room, drinking her coffee and looking pretty as a picture. It don't seem right that she's gone."

I raised my voice and spoke to Raye. "The police said somebody called about hearing a shot. Was that you?"

Raye shook her carrot head. "Lordy, no, I don't hear a thing in the afternoon. I'm on disability, you know, so I have to rest. I lay right there on my couch with my TV stories, and the air conditioner runs so loud outside that window, I have to turn the sound up. I probably wouldn't hear a fire truck less'n it come through the door."

"I don't know who else it'd be, either," Eunice said with a sniff. "All my other neighbors work."

I couldn't think of another thing to ask, and I was feeling more than a bit queasy. Maybe it was the way Eunice was piling up sodden tissues right beside the potato chips and dip. I shoved away from the table. "We just wanted to tell you how sorry we both are. Don't come with us to the door. We'll find our way out."

"Thank you for coming." Eunice extended a plump, damp hand.

As we went through the screened door, we heard her confide to her neighbors, "That woman's just like a sister to me. In and out of my house all the time. I don't know what I'd do without her."

Twenty-One.

They cannot sleep till they do evil;

they are robbed of slumber till they

make someone fall. Proverbs 4:16

Monday night I didn't dream about the brown-haired child. It's hard to dream when you aren't sleeping. Whenever I dozed, I saw a pale white face with a hole in its forehead.

When I finally fell asleep, it seemed only a minute later that Glenna was shaking me. "William Sykes wants you, honey. He won't come in, says it will just take a minute."

I dragged on my robe and stumbled to the front door. He stood at the bottom of Glenna's three front steps, holding a plastic grocery bag.

The morning was hot and still. Boxwoods beside the stoop sent up the delicious musty smell that always reminds me of the house I grew up in, which made me greet William more pleasantly than I might have. "Good morning!"

William looked very smart in a gray suit and red tie. He thrust the bag up at me. "Dee found these CDs in Harriet's room. Can you get them to the kid they belong to?"

He wasn't dumb to come early. Before my first cup of coffee, I'll agree to almost anything. "Sure." I smothered a yawn. Sunlight slanted through the tall pines into my eyes. As he turned to go, I added sleepily, "Did you all hear about Myrna Lawson?"

He turned back slowly. "What about her?"

"She was shot yesterday in her sister's living room."

His mouth fell open. "Dead?"

I nodded.

He came back to the bottom of the steps and stared up at me in disbelief. "Yesterday? Here in Montgomery?"

I nodded again.

"Are you sure?"

"Very. I found her." I had to take a deep breath at the sudden picture in my head.

If I expected sympathy, I was wasting my time. "How'd it happen? Do they know?" He seemed awfully eager to know.

"Not yet. Eunice said she'd told Myrna to call you about a job. Did she?"

His head shot up like an animal scenting danger. "No way! And if she had, I wouldn't have hired her. Can't you just picture what people would think if I kept a peroxide blonde ex-hooker around the store? Havin' her kid around was bad enough."

"You need to report Harriet missing," I told him straight out.

"We will, if she doesn't come back by the time school starts. Until then, we don't consider her missing. Now, please excuse me. I've got to get to work."

"But William!" I protested. "She's just a child. You can't-"

"In some ways, she's older than you and me put together." He stomped down the walk, then turned back. "And you tell your cop buddy I'm not going down to look at every corpse he finds, either. It's not like lookin' at photographs, you know, and I've got enough to deal with at home trying to keep Mama and Dee from killing each other before Julie goes to college. Women!" With that flattering p.r.o.nouncement, he drove away.

I stood there watching two sparrows flutter around after something in the pine straw. I wasn't really noticing them, I was thinking. Something William said reminded me of something else. Church chimes startled me back into this world. Eight o'clock. Not too early to call Carter. I wanted to talk to him as soon as possible.

Before I could even get to the phone, the police called Glenna. "Mrs. Crane? We found your husband's Buick. You'll need to come identify it and have it towed."

"I'll go," I offered.

Glenna shook her head. "I may have to sign papers or something. Just let me call Jake to tell him why we'll be late."

"At least let me do that." I hurried to the phone before she could object. I've had fifty-five years' experience in telling Jake just what I want him to know. "Hey, Jake. We're going to be a little late this morning. We need to get the car checked first."

"What's wrong with it?" he demanded.

"We're not sure. Seems to be missing a bit. We'll be there as soon as we can." I hung up with the comfortable conscience of one who has told the exact truth.

The Buick sat forlornly in the police lot. It was scratched up and missing four wheels, a radio, and a tape deck. I was devastated.

Glenna was more philosophical. "It's just a car, Clara. After nearly losing Jake, it scarcely matters. We'll have our mechanic just put tires on it for now. Jake can worry about the radio and the paint when he's up and about."

Not if I had anything to say about that.

I made Glenna leave me at the Buick dealer to wait for wheels to be put on, and I spent most of the morning there. While waiting for them to balance the tires, I finally reached Carter to explain the idea I'd had when William left.

"It's worth a check, I guess," he agreed dubiously, "but we're very thorough about things like that."

"Just check it out," I pleaded.

It felt good to be driving the Buick again. I do like a powerful car.

I headed straight to the teen center, hoping to find Kateisha.

In the lounge, I called her to a private corner and held up the disks. "Harriet's aunt found these and sent them back to you."

Kateisha grabbed them eagerly. "All right! I sure thought I could kiss these good-bye. Dre was gonna kill me."

"Now you can kiss them h.e.l.lo. I don't guess you've heard from Harriet, have you?"

She pressed her full lips together. "I tol' you before. I ain't studyin' Harriet. It ain't no skin off me if she wants to split. Now I gotta go. Dre's gonna wanna see these CDs." Before I could blink twice, she was gone.

In the hall, Lewis saw me leaving. "Hey, Mac! I've gotten permission to visit Ricky Dodd in jail. Want to go with me?"

"Why on earth would you want to do that?" I was dying to go myself, but couldn't see one earthly reason why Lewis Henly should.

He shrugged. "It's my job, remember? I help teens with problems. Ricky certainly qualifies. Want to come?"

I hesitated only an instant. "Sure. Shall I drive? Jake's car is back in circulation."

"Is his air conditioner also circulating? If so, I accept with pleasure."

On the way over, being what Joe Riddley calls nosy and what I call interested in other people, I tried to sound Lewis out about Josheba. All he'd say was that she seemed to have a good mind. It hadn't been her mind he'd been moony-eyed over the night before, but I dropped the subject. Interest in other people can only take you so far before you do get nosy.

I'll edit our visit with Ricky a bit, in case you find cussing as boring as I do.

To see that Ricky was furious was not hard. To see that he was also scared wasn't too hard, either, although he was trying hard to hide it. "What you want?" he growled suspiciously as Lewis and I met him at the barrier.

Lewis spoke softly. "Just checking up on you, Rick. How're they treatin' you?"

"It ain't the Ritz, but I been here before." Ricky flicked back his hair.

"I wondered if there's anything I could do to help."

Ricky sneered. "Can you get me out? Harriet said you're a lawyer."

"Not in Alabama. Sorry. Didn't the court give you somebody?"

"Yeah, but I don't know if he's any good."

Lewis looked at him intently. "Makes it hard on a lawyer if the client is guilty. Did you kill that woman?"

"No!" Ricky slammed the table with one fist.

"Calm down," a guard warned.

"What were you doing there, then?" Lewis asked. Ricky looked at me. "She's okay," Lewis told him. "What were you doing up there, man?"

Sullen but goaded, Ricky talked in short bursts. "Some dame called yesterday. Said she was Harriet's old lady. I told her I ain't seen Harriet for months. She said that's okay. She knew where Harriet was."

"She knew where Harriet was?" I echoed. "Did she say where?"

"Nanh. Just said she wanted to talk to me about something." His eyes darted like a lizard's toward the guard and back.