Miss Julia Lays Down the Law (11 page)

After the evening meal and taking a long, interesting call from Sam, I walked next door to Mildred’s. Staying as long as I could within the light from the streetlamp on the corner, I occasionally sidestepped into the street to keep my footing. The darkest place was at the line between our lots, filled as it was with boundary plantings of dogwoods, azaleas, forsythia, and laurels on both our sides. The area was glorious in the spring, but a little spooky in the early November night.

I made my way easily toward the flickering gaslit sconces flanking Mildred’s front door, although walking up her curved drive was somewhat hazardous. Several cars were already parked there, which meant that I was late. I didn’t mind, because talking with Sam and hearing his comments about a senile judge who’d just won reelection were worth being the last one to arrive.

Ida Lee welcomed me and led me into Mildred’s double living room, where Sue, Roberta, Callie, LuAnne, and, of course, Mildred were already delving into the sewing boxes.
Leave it to
Mildred,
I thought, as I saw that she had rearranged her fine French furniture to form a circle in front of the fireplace, where a small fire fluttered around ceramic logs.

Well, of course I don’t mean that
she
had done the moving, but she’d directed it.

“It’s just chilly enough to warrant a fire,” she said as she patted the chair next to her. “Come on, Julia, you’re late and we need to get some work done.”

“Sorry,” I said, taking the chair. “We took the children out to see Coleman this afternoon, so supper was later than usual.” I laughed. “I think Latisha would’ve stayed if Lillian had let her.”

“Oh,” Roberta moaned, “aren’t you all worried sick about Coleman? When the temperature started going down as it got dark, all I could think of was how he must be
suffering
.”

“He’ll be all right,” Mildred said, unconcerned, as she snipped off a length of embroidery thread. “If he gets cold enough, he’ll come down.”

“I do hope so,” Roberta said as she clasped a felt Christmas tree to her bosom. “He’s such a
giving
person that he could do himself harm by living so much for others as he does.”

Hm-m,
I thought as I glanced at Roberta in the throes of hero worship,
I hadn’t noticed
that
. Not that Coleman wasn’t a kind, thoughtful person, of which I had long been aware, but I seriously doubted his desire for martyrdom.

“Okay, ladies,” Callie said, holding up her ornament, “I’ve finally finished this reindeer and it’s the last one I’m making. I’ve sewn his horns on three times, and they’re still crooked. I’m switching to something easier this time.”

Roberta bent over her ornament. “Antlers,” she said.

“Antlers, horns, who cares?” Callie said. “They both grow out of his head, and I’m through making either one.”

“Do a star,” LuAnne said. “They’re easy, and there’re several already cut out.”

“Hand ’em here, then. And the yarn box, too.”

The muted ring of a telephone somewhere in the depths of the house made us all look at Mildred, expecting her to answer it, as we would’ve done in our homes. She didn’t stir, just kept on sewing, then shrugged in response, and said, “Ida Lee will get it.”

I straightened to ease my back, then glanced around the circle. “Mildred, we’re going to have bits of thread and yarn all over this beautiful Aubusson. You should’ve put us at the kitchen table.”

“I don’t mind,” Mildred said, laughing, “and neither does Ida Lee. Besides, I just finished having the old elevator refurbished, so we’ll be doing a thorough housecleaning anyway.”

“Good gracious,” LuAnne said. “I didn’t know you had an elevator.”

“Oh, it’s back yonder,” Mildred said with a wave of her hand. “We haven’t used it in years. But I got tired of trudging up and down stairs all day long just because I thought I needed the exercise.”

Roberta, off in space somewhere, held up her Santa ornament to see how it looked. “Did you get any?”

“Roberta!”
We all glared at her, because Mildred’s generous size was never referred to by any of us.

Roberta looked up, blinking. “What?”

Mildred, bless her heart, laughed. “Well, not enough, obviously. Anyway, it was getting too hard to get up the stairs, so I thought, why have an elevator and not use it? So we do.”

None of us had anything to say to that, so we stayed pretty much on target by working steadily on our ornaments. We finished several and started on others by the time Ida Lee served tea, finger sandwiches, and biscotti—more extras as only Mildred would do.

“Has anyone heard anything from Emma Sue?” LuAnne asked as she took two of the tiny sandwiches from Ida Lee’s tray. “Sue, do you know anything?” Sue Hargrove, the doctor’s wife, was our go-to person when any medical question came up.

“Not a word,” Sue said, shaking her head. “But they may not know anything yet. I’m sure they’ll do a battery of tests, so it could be several days before we hear.” She threaded an embroidery needle. “I just wonder who’ll be preaching Sunday. They left in such a hurry that the pastor might not’ve had time to get a substitute.”

Startled to think that the pastor could leave me hanging for several days, I said, “Surely he’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Sue said. “If they admit her, he’ll probably stay for a while. I expect he’ll call one of the elders to take the service on Sunday.”

Mildred smiled and said, “Y’all can to come to the Episcopal church. We’ll be happy to have you.”

I may just do that,
I thought, but got sidetracked before I could say anything.

“What’s wrong with her, anyway?” Callie asked. “I mean, why did she have to go to a specialist?”

“Migraines,” Sue answered in a tone that invited no further questions. Her husband had been treating Emma Sue, but now had apparently been judged insufficient.

“Well,” LuAnne said, “what’s happening in this town is enough to give anybody a migraine.”

“What?” Roberta asked, suddenly interested. “What’s going on besides Coleman’s sacrificial outing?”

“Roberta,” LuAnne said, “don’t you hear anything at that library? I’m talking about Connie Clayborn being killed in her own kitchen, and I think it’s strange that nobody is talking about it. I mean, how often is a prominent woman found dead in this town? And everybody just goes on about their business like it happens every week. But I’ll tell you, it’s been a real shock to my system. Although,” she said after a pause, “I am relieved I won’t have to enter that run next week.”

“Nobody’s talking about it,” Mildred said, coming to my rescue so that the conversation wouldn’t turn to my involvement, “because nobody knows anything. Obviously, it’s under investigation, so it doesn’t help for us to be speculating.”

“I wonder, though,” Roberta said, gazing off into the distance, “how they’ll manage without Coleman. You’d think the sheriff would want him on that assignment.”

Mildred’s eyes rolled just a little. “I expect the sheriff has it well in hand. But has anybody met Connie’s husband? He’s been strangely out of the picture, it seems to me.”

That could’ve been my cue to say that I had met him, but before I made up my mind to do so, Roberta went back to her favorite subject.

“Well,” she said, “I went out there today, you know, to drop a donation in his bucket and to take him some hot doughnuts. I know how he likes them, and I asked him . . .”

“Who?” Callie asked. “Connie’s husband?”

“No, Coleman. I asked Coleman if he knew who’d killed her.”

“What’d he say?” LuAnne asked eagerly.

“He said he didn’t know, because he’d been off duty. As, of course, I knew, him being where he is. But he was so sweet, thanking me over and over for the doughnuts. He loves doughnuts.”

Really rolling her eyes this time, Mildred said, “
All
cops do,” as if she knew the gastronomic preferences of every law enforcement unit in the country.

 • • • 

As the ladies got into their cars and began to pull out of Mildred’s driveway, I lingered by the door for a few minutes. I was feeling I’d been somewhat dishonest by letting everyone assume that, like them, I had not met Connie’s husband. Of them all, Mildred was the only one I felt I could trust, so I was about to tell her about my visitor the evening before. Before I could bring it up, though, she took my breath away with something else entirely.

“I think Roberta has a crush on Coleman, don’t you?”

“What? Oh, surely not, she just gets these little enthusiasms now and then, and she, well, she’s Roberta. Don’t you remember how she ordered all six videos of
Pride and Prejudice
just so she could have Mr. Darcy on her shelf?”

“Well, that’s true,” Mildred conceded, laughing. “Bless her heart, we need to find her a husband.”

“Maybe so,” I said, laughing with her, “but, believe me, it won’t be Coleman. I shudder to think what Binkie would do if she thought somebody was after him. This town would never be the same.”

Still smiling at the thought, I thanked Mildred for her hospitality and started down the drive toward my house. Calling after me to scream if anybody got me, Mildred closed the door and left me to it.

With the cars gone, the drive was wide and well lit by the light from Mildred’s sconces—easy walking. Through the branches of the now leafless trees, I could see my own porch light and the streetlamp beyond it.

It was a matter of only a minute or two to step up to my own door, where Lillian would be waiting for me.

As I reached the sidewalk at the foot of Mildred’s drive, I became aware of a soft but steady thumping sound. Looking around, I saw only the empty street—no cars, no walkers, not even a swirling leaf. Moving right along, I tried to place the source of the sound and vaguely thought that someone blocks away was running a generator. Then the sound conjured an image, and I knew what I was hearing—the measured thump of a runner’s feet pounding on pavement.

I stopped halfway home, wondering if I should go back to Mildred’s or hurry on to my house. As I vacillated, the sound of running shoes beating rhythmically against concrete was coming ever closer.

Without thinking, I slid in between two large boxwoods, scraping my hand against a forsythia branch, and melted behind an azalea bush—an evergreen one, thank goodness. A running figure sprang into the light at the corner of my front yard, crossed Polk Street, and turned to run down Polk right across the street from me.

It was a man, tall and thin, churning away in latex and large running shoes with neon patches. He wore a shiny jacket, but nothing below the tight-fitting running shorts, so that his white legs looked like a pair of scissors zipping along the sidewalk. I strained to see who it was, but the visored ball cap he wore low on his brow shielded his face. He didn’t pause, slow down, or turn his head, just loped along as the streetlight behind him stretched his shadow ever longer down the sidewalk until he looked like a thin-legged stork high stepping in front of me. He soon passed out of my sight into the darkness beyond, as the soft thumps of his shoes dwindled in the night air.

I slid out of the bushes and hurried home, trembling and on edge. I hadn’t been able to get a good look at the runner’s face, but the first thought that had entered my head as he passed by began to form more clearly in my mind. The figure had looked an awful lot like the man I’d met the night before—minus a woolen suit and a silk tie, but a self-confessed runner.

If so, though, what was he doing in this part of town late at night? The Clayborn house was some five miles from Polk Street. Why would he choose this street to run on? Was he watching my house? Or watching me?

 • • • 

“I’m sorry I’m so late, Lillian,” I said as she met me at the door. “But thank you for waiting up.” I turned and locked the door, deciding that I would not mention the runner. He was probably a perfectly innocent man out for exercise, although he’d chosen a strange time and place to get it.

“You’re not so late,” Lillian said. “The news not even on yet.”

“I know, but it feels late. And you’ve had a long day. Did the children get to bed all right?”

“Yes’m,” Lillian said, smiling. “And it been real peaceful ever since.”

We went around the house, making sure that all the doors were locked, then, turning out lights as we went, we started up the stairs together.

“Oh, Miss Julia, I almost forget to tell you. But I write it all down.” She pulled a piece of notepaper from her pocket and handed it to me. “He say he a detective, an’ he want you to call him first thing in the morning.”

I took the paper, saw that Lillian had jotted down the time of the call—eight-thirty that evening. In her scratchy writing, she had written:
Call detetive Ellie early tomorow
.

“Oh, my,” I said, my heart sinking. “What could he want?”

“He don’t tell me. I tole him where you went, but he say no need to bother you tonight.”

“Well, I wish he had. Now he’ll be bothering me all night long, worrying about what he wants.”

And worry I did, getting up several times in the night, each time looking through the blinds down onto the street. Except for the occasional car, it was always empty. I saw no runners, which should’ve reassured me, but didn’t.

And if that wasn’t enough to disrupt my rest, there was the phone call from Detective Ellis to worry about.

What could he want with me a second time? Why call so late in the day, then say it wasn’t important enough to call me at Mildred’s? And with Pastor Ledbetter out of town—obviously avoiding me, although he had a good excuse in Emma Sue—should I go ahead and tell Detective Ellis why I’d gone to Connie’s?

And if even that wasn’t enough to trouble me, I missed Sam. The bed was too wide and empty without him. It was one of the longest nights I’d ever spent.

 • • • 

The phone started ringing the next morning before I’d had my first cup of coffee, and the first call indicated the way the day would go.

“Julia!” LuAnne demanded, as if something were my fault. “What does Detective Ellis want with
me
?”

“I don’t know, LuAnne. Why?”

“He called last night while we were at Mildred’s, and Leonard didn’t give me the message until just now. And would you believe that detective wants me at the sheriff’s office at nine o’clock this morning! What’s going on?”

“I have no idea, LuAnne. But maybe he’s interviewing Connie’s friends.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call myself a
friend
. I barely knew the woman.”

“Then that’s all you have to say.” And I went on trying to reassure her, and all the while, I, too, was wondering what Detective Ellis was up to.

It didn’t get any better when Callie called as soon as I put the phone down. “Julia, did you get a phone call from the sheriff’s office last night? What in the world do they want with us? I just talked to Sue, and they’ve called her, too. I’m supposed to be there at ten, and she’s going at eleven.”

“Oh, my,” I said, “they’re running us in every hour on the hour. LuAnne’s going at nine, but I don’t know when he wants me. I haven’t called him back yet.”

“Well, you better go ahead and do it. Sounds like they’re calling in everybody who knew Connie, but I’d never met her before she had that coffee. I don’t know why they want to interview me.”

“Me, either,” I said, “but, Callie, I better get off this phone and see when he wants me.”

“You know what I’ve a good mind to do? Take all five children with me. I’d probably have the shortest interview on record.”

Glad that at least one of my friends could face an official interview with humor, I hung up the phone, stood there a few minutes, then answered it when it rang again.

“Julia, it’s Mildred. I haven’t been up this early in ages, but Ida Lee woke me because some detective called last night and wants me at the sheriff’s office at twelve noon. Who makes an appointment right at lunchtime? I could have a drop in my sugar level and faint dead away. Did you get a call?”

“I did, but I haven’t returned it yet. But LuAnne, Sue, and Callie have to go in this morning, too. I don’t know what’s going on, Mildred, but it’s beginning to look as if they’re interviewing everybody who was at Connie’s coffee.”

“That’s right! That’s exactly what they’re doing, because Helen just called me, and she has to go at one this afternoon. What do they expect to find out from a bunch of women who did nothing but stand around and drink coffee?”

I hated to think what they’d find out, because I well remembered the anger and outrage I’d felt—and not only me but everybody else, too—after Connie had criticized us up one side and down the other. Detective Ellis was well titled, for he was undoubtedly detecting into a possible source of extreme umbrage toward Connie Clayborn.