Where The Heart Is Part 24

"So you were home the rest of the week?" Forney asked.

"Oh, I went to my AA meeting on Thursday night."

"Anyone there who might have some grudge against you?"

"At AA?"

"Someone who would want to hurt you for some reason?"

"No, Forney. We're alcoholics. We're generally satisfied just to hurt ourselves."

Forney considered that for a moment, then he nodded. "Let's go through the week and try to figure out who came here, to the trailer."

"Okay. On Monday afternoon that Douglas boy with the gas company came to check the furnace."

"Would he be a suspect?"

191.

"Oh, no. I've known him all his life. Went to school with his granddaddy. They're good people."

"Good people," Mr. Sprock whispered.

"I was here on Tuesday with the kids," Lexie said.

"That's right, and Dixie Mullins came right after you left. Brought over some sourdough bread."

"Sister, how about door-to-door salesmen, that sort of thing."

"No. I get some of the school kids selling Girl Scout cookies, or candy for the band, but not here lately. Jehovah's Witnesses came by-no, that was last week, or the week before. I can't remember."

"Anyone else?"

"Well, Mr. Sprock came to me on Tuesday evening, while Novalee and the baby were at Lexie's for supper."

Mr. Sprock smiled a sad smile and stroked Sister's hand. "Tuesday evening," he whispered.

"I'm afraid that's it, Forney. No one very dangerous, I guess."

"You're right." Forney leaned back and ran his hands through his hair. "I just hoped you might recall someone . . . a stranger . . . a phone call . . ."

"Forney!" Sister yelled, then slapped her hand on the table. "That woman!"

When Forney jumped up, his chair turned over backward and tumbled to the floor. "What woman?"

"I knew it," Lexie hollered. "I knew it was a woman."

Novalee came running from the bathroom, wide-eyed and pale.

"What happened?" she screamed.

"A woman came in to use the phone."

"When?"

192.

"Yesterday. No, the day before. Said her car broke down and she needed to call her husband."

"Can you describe her?"

"She was about as tall as me, a little heavy. But I can't really say what she looked like. She wore a scarf and dark gla.s.ses. Said she'd just had cataract surgery."

"Does she live around here?"

"Have you ever seen her before?"

"I . . . I don't know. Something about her seemed familiar, but I can't say. She just used the phone, then she left."

"Did you see her car? Did you see where she was parked?"

"No. Just as she walked out, Americus woke up from her nap and I went back to get her out of bed."

Mr. Sprock dabbed at his eyes when Sister said, "Americus."

"Oh, Forney. I did a bad thing letting her in here, didn't I?"

"No, Sister. You couldn't know."

"You couldn't know," Mr. Sprock whispered.

"Besides," Forney said, "we don't know if she had anything to do with this."

"She did," Sister said. "I just know she did."

After the police had come and gone a second time, Novalee was in the bathroom, sick again. The policeman had explained that without a description of the car or more details about the woman, they weren't much further along then they were before.

When Novalee came dragging back to the kitchen, Sister made her drink a cup of comfrey tea, then insisted she rest for a while. But she felt worse on her bed when she was still. Her heart raced and her legs twitched and her head felt like it was caught in a vise.

193.

As she crawled out of bed, she could hear Forney and Sister and Lexie trying to be quiet in the other room.

Novalee opened the top drawer of a chest where she kept Americus'

clothes-stacks of gowns and undershirts, socks rolled into pairs.

She lifted out a white gown printed with clowns and held it to her face.

She couldn't stop thinking about the description she had given the policeman. Americus-her weight, the color of her hair, her eyes.

But he didn't know about the smacking sounds she made when she was hungry. Or the way she closed her eyes when she laughed. He didn't know about the mole in the bend of her knee and the tiny cut on the pad of her thumb put there by Henry's cat, Patches.

Novalee refolded the gown and put it back in the drawer, then picked up a basket of diapers fresh from the line and stacked them on top of the chest. She wondered if Americus had been changed, wondered if she'd had her evening bottle, wondered . . .

Novalee pulled down the window shade just above the baby bed, then smoothed the blue blanket and fluffed the pillow-and then she saw the Bible. A small Bible with a silver gray cover just under the satin edge of the blanket.

She exploded into the living room. "Sister! This isn't your Bible. It can't be yours, but I-"

"No, it's not!"

"I found it in the baby bed."

"I don't own a Bible with a cover like that."

"Then who put it there? How did . . ."

"It's hers! Novalee, it's hers!"

"Whose?"

194.

"The woman who came in to use the phone! I know who she is!"

"Sister . . ."

"She came here. She and a man, right after you got out of the hospital. Said they came from Mississippi to bring you the word of G.o.d. They wanted to see Americus, too, but I sent them away. And they had Bibles with silver covers. Just like that!"

Chapter Twenty.

J UST AFTER THREE in the morning, Novalee went to the kitchen, put her coffee cup in the sink, then grabbed the keys to the Toyota from the hook beside the door. UST AFTER THREE in the morning, Novalee went to the kitchen, put her coffee cup in the sink, then grabbed the keys to the Toyota from the hook beside the door.

She had just called the police station again, her third call in an hour. On her first, she learned they were still waiting for some response to the inquiries to Midnight, Mississippi. During the second call, she found out that a man and woman driving a Ford with Mississippi plates had stayed for two days at the Wayside Inn, a motel west of town. And on the third call, her last, a policeman told her the Mississippi couple had checked out earlier in the day.

Forney slumped in a straight-backed chair, roused from half-sleep when Novalee walked into the living room. "Novalee, what . . ."

"I can't sit here, Forney. I can't just sit here and wait."

"What do you want to do?"

196.

"I don't know! Drive around. Ask some questions. Do something!"

"All right. Let's go."

Mr. Sprock, folded into the recliner and covered with a quilt, mumbled softly in his sleep, a word that sounded like "sundown."

Sister, huddled into a corner of the couch, flinched when Novalee touched her shoulder, then waved her hand through the air as if to push away sleep.

"Yes, darlin'. I'm awake."

"Sister, me and Forney are going to go out and look around. Maybe stop by the police station."

"Where's Lexie?"

"I made her go home. No sense in her paying a sitter all night."

Novalee smoothed Sister's skirt. "Will you be okay while we're gone?"

"I'll be just fine," Sister said as she patted Novalee's hand. "Mr.

Sprock will be here with me. We'll be here by the phone. You call if you need us, you hear?"

Novalee nodded, kissed Sister on the cheek, then slipped out the door.

The night air was cold and Novalee, still wrapped in the afghan, pulled it up around her neck as she slid inside the truck.

"Where do you want to start?" Forney said as he backed the Toyota out of the drive.

"Let's go out to that motel."

"The Wayside?"

"I know the police have been there, but I want to see for myself."

The Toyota was the only vehicle on the street until Forney turned onto Commerce where they saw one more, the town's lone taxi. The car was an old Dodge Charger and the driver, a Comanche woman name Martha Watchtaker, had been driving it since 1974. Forney Where the Heart Is 197.

waved when they pa.s.sed, but Novalee turned to stare, wondering if there could be a seven-month-old baby hidden inside.

A few blocks later, when Forney saw a police car in front of the twenty-four-hour Get N Go, he pulled in and parked beside it. They could see the policeman inside the store at the counter, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee.

"You want to wait out here?" Forney asked. "I'm going to talk to him."

"I'm coming, too."

The policeman, a heavyset man near fifty, smiled when they walked in. "Forney, what're you doing out this time of the morning?"

Forney turned and ushered Novalee to his side. "Gene, this is Novalee Nation, mother of the baby that's . . . uh, missing."

"Ma'am." Gene ducked his head. "Sure sorry about your trouble."