Miss Julia Lays Down the Law (16 page)

All those decisions flew out the window before suppertime. Sam called just as the afternoon began to fade, apologizing as he told me he wouldn’t be home until the following afternoon. And all afternoon I’d been mentally following him along I-40 West, picturing him drawing nearer and nearer home.

“I’m sorry, Julia,” he’d said. “We just can’t come to terms on what to do, and rather than leave and have to come back, we’ve decided to stay another day.” Then he’d added, “At least.”

“But what about the storm? You could get snowed in down there and have to stay for who-knows-how-long.”

“We’re watching the weather. It’s coming in from the south and will either head up the coast to New England—and get us on the way—or go on out to sea. Parts of Alabama and Georgia are already iced over. But we’re watching it, don’t worry.”

After a little more conversation in which I assured him that all was well on the home front, we hung up. Of course, all was not well with me, but what good would it have done to moan and groan about my worries, the biggest and most pressing of which was the fact that I’d be spending the night alone?

You’re a grown woman,
I told myself as I lingered by the phone,
and the doors are strong and the locks are new and nobody’s after you anyway
.

I wasn’t so sure about that, but I kept saying it until I was almost convinced. The thing to do was to check all the avenues of ingress to the house, make a little supper, check the doors again, go upstairs, get in bed, and read until I was good and sleepy, maybe come down and check the doors—and windows—one last time, then go to sleep. Before I knew it, it would be morning and I could laugh at being so unnerved by an empty house.

So I kept myself busy as the night began to close in. I turned on all the lights downstairs and a few upstairs as well, intending the house to look full and busy. I felt a noticeable chill as night fell, and, as I turned up the thermostat, spared a few minutes of concern for Coleman. But surely he had enough sense to come in out of the cold if the temperature dropped too low.

Opening the refrigerator door, I looked in to see if Lillian had left anything that looked like supper. She had, but a leftover pork chop and sauerkraut just didn’t appeal. I decided that a little cooking would keep me busy and make the time pass as well. So I got out a skillet and began to fry a few strips of bacon, which almost immediately burned and had to be thrown out.

A few more strips went into a cool skillet and I made sure the eye was on low heat. I sliced a tomato, washed some lettuce, and put bread in the toaster. Opening a can of tomato soup, I congratulated myself on being able to feed myself with little trouble.

I sat down at the table with a fine-looking bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, along with a bowl of tomato soup. I had successfully passed one hour of the night with no mishaps—well, I had burned some bacon, but besides that, I was managing to move the lonely night along quite well.

As I finished eating, I began to think over what I could do to move it along even further until it was time to go to bed. That’s the problem with changing back to standard time—night comes so early, but actual time doesn’t correspond to it. So it looked like bedtime, but it was barely six o’clock and I was through with supper, with a long, empty evening in front of me.

I cleaned up the kitchen, checked the doors, then walked across the hall to our new library. The lamps were lit and a small fire flickered across the gas logs, so that the room looked warm and welcoming. I turned on the television for company, and took an unaccustomed seat in a wing chair facing the door to the hall so I wouldn’t worry about someone coming up behind me.

I was spooked, no doubt about that. But who wouldn’t be after what I’d been going through—suspected of a brutal crime, stalked by a shadowy runner, stymied by a slippery preacher, and on high alert for anything happening out of the ordinary.

Then the doorbell rang.

I thought my heart had stopped. I know my breathing did. I sat absolutely still, while my mind whirled with visions of who would be at the front door in the dead of the night. Except it wasn’t that late, it just felt that late. Still, who would be visiting on a storm-threatened Saturday night?

Lloyd? No, he’d come to the back door and use his key.

Sam? No, he was still in Raleigh.

Hazel Marie? With all three children? No, she would’ve called first.

Mildred? Ha, not a chance. Mildred would not walk next door uninvited and unannounced.

Lillian and Latisha? No, they, too, would use a key to come through the back door. Besides, Lillian knew not to scare me half to death.

Coleman? Binkie? Unlikely. They’d both call first.

Stan Clayborn, dressed in Burberry or half-dressed in latex? A good possibility, but did I want to see him? Should I let him in since I was here alone? Not hardly. Visions of what I’d found in the kitchen of his house flashed through my mind.

And still I sat, hardly daring to move. Maybe whoever it was would go away. But whoever it was didn’t. The doorbell sounded again, insisting I get up and see who was ringing it.

Ah, of course! My breathing settled down and so did my heart rate. Who had I been looking for all day? Who had finally gotten my messages that I needed to see him?

Why, Pastor Larry Ledbetter, of course. At last, he was ready to face me. I put aside a magazine, gathered myself to go to the door, and wondered why I had no fear of someone to whom I had so recently attributed a murderous intent toward his wife’s tormentor.

Well, the answer to that was as clear as day. Who kept the church in the black, the budget balanced, and the pastor well housed and well fed? No matter his state of mind, he would no more endanger the church’s major contributor than he would dance in the street.

I walked with confidence down the hall to the front door. At last, I would have it out with Pastor Ledbetter, maybe learn how Emma Sue was doing, and have him out of here in plenty of time for me to call Binkie and Detective Ellis before they went to bed, thereby having the burden of silence that had been imposed on me lifted for good.

I didn’t turn on the hall lights. Every lamp in the living room was on, and so was the chandelier in the dining room. I had plenty of light. As an indication of welcome, I switched on the exterior sconces that lit the porch.

My front door had three small windows high enough that I almost had to stand on tiptoe to see through them—not at all like Connie’s door, which was half glass paned and half paneled.

So as I unlocked the deadbolt, I strained upward to assure myself that it was the pastor outside my door. But perhaps he’d stepped to the side, for I didn’t see even the top of his head, which I usually could when he visited.

I hesitated, thinking that I might’ve been mistaken in deciding who was there. One thing was sure: it couldn’t be Stan Clayborn. He was tall enough to have looked straight into the hall through the little high windows.

After another moment of hesitation, I comforted myself with the knowledge that a strongly locked storm door would stand between me and whoever was there. I opened the front door.

Nobody was there. My heart went into its stop-flutter-and-go mode again, and I quickly stepped back. Swinging the door closed, the possibility of a prankster flashed through my mind. I didn’t care. If it was a child having fun or a teenager bent on wrapping my house with toilet paper, I was calling the cops.

“Miz Murdoch?” a voice from a mouth I couldn’t locate called out.

“Who’s there?” I demanded, clinging to the almost closed door.

“It’s just me.” And Lamar Owens hopped down from the fern table, empty now for the winter, which was beside the front door. “Beg your pardon, ma’am, I’m kinda wore out. Been walkin’ from over at McDonald’s all the way here. I had to set down awhile.”

“Mr. Owens? Is that you?” I patted my chest in relief, but left the storm door locked. “My goodness, you gave me a fright.”

He stood on the other side of the storm door, looking cold and peaked in an oily-looking barn jacket that was about two sizes too large for him. His battered tennis shoes turned up at the toes—nothing he wore seemed to be sized for him, as he wasn’t a large man by any means. Actually, he was a wizened little man, malnourished and poorly cared for, and the dirt-streaked, tattered Burberry scarf wrapped around his head didn’t improve his looks. Scotch clad or not, he was certainly no Stan Clayborn.

I couldn’t just stand there all night, as he seemed willing to do. So in the absence of any further word from him, I asked, “What can I do for you?”

“Well, see, you done me a good turn one time, so I wanta do you one, too. That’s why I walked all the way over here—my ole car’s give out again. Had to ask where you lived a coupla times, but everybody knows you, so I didn’t have no trouble gettin’ here.” He shifted his feet, looked down, then back up at me. “See, Miz Murdoch, I heard something you might orta know, seein’ as how the cops already got you on their list. I tole Sergeant Bates you couldna done it, an’ he believed me, but, see, I don’t know as how the other’uns do.”

“What? You mean they really think that I . . . ?”

“Yeah. I mean, yes, ma’am, some of ’em. I heard some of ’em talkin’ in the Bluebird an’ I spent the night in jail last night an’ heard some more. ’Course they don’t know I was listenin’, but that’s how I learn a lot of things. I figgered I owed it to you to warn you. I can help you with some alibis, if you need ’em. I pretty much know which of ’em work an’ which of ’em don’t.”

I was both frightened anew by the possibility that I was back in Lieutenant Peavey’s sights and moved by Mr. Owens’s offer of help. Who else, I ask you, had cared enough to gather a few tried-and-true alibis for my use, free of charge?

“Won’t you come in, Mr. Owens?” I said, opening the storm door. “I was just about to put on a pot of coffee.”

I closed and locked the door behind us and led Mr. Owens through the hall and into the kitchen, all the while wondering why I, the most fearful of women, felt perfectly at ease with this unkempt stranger. Enough at ease that I brushed aside the thought that I was locked inside my house with a habitual ne’er-do-well who was apparently more at home in a jail cell than in his own house, if he had one.

“Just put your coat over there, Mr. Owens,” I said, pointing to a chair against the wall, “and have a seat at the table. I’ll have the coffee on in a few minutes.”

He came out of his coat, folded it, and laid it across the chair. Then he unwrapped the scarf from his head and neck, and laid it neatly on the coat. The scarf had hidden a mop of hair that needed washing, combing, and cutting, but from the scarf’s ragged condition, it looked as if it had been retrieved from a Goodwill bin.

Hm-m,
I thought,
two visitors in Burberry
. Did that mean anything?

Mr. Owens sat, carefully and uneasily, where I indicated at the table, then looked around. “Sure smells good in here. Kinda like bacon.”

I laughed. “Yes, and unfortunately I burned most of it.” Then, on impulse, I added, “Mr. Owens, could you eat a pork chop, already cooked, and just needing heating up?”

“Why, yes’m, I b’lieve I could. Don’t go to no trouble, though.”

“It’s no trouble at all.” I took the chop from the refrigerator, dumped it and the sauerkraut onto a square of tin foil, wrapped it up, and placed it on a baking sheet. Into the oven it went, along with a square of cornbread. Without asking, I poured a container of leftover black-eyed peas into a pan and set it on the stove, turned low to heat up.

Then I directed him to the downstairs bathroom to wash his hands. No one comes to my table with dirty hands, although I had to close my eyes to the fact that they would be the only clean bodily parts on the man.

While he was gone, I had a sudden urge to do something nice and offer to wash that filthy scarf. I picked it up to check the label, noting that I had not been wrong in identifying the maker. But when I turned the label over, I saw “Dry Clean Only” and got over my urge to do something nice.

To say that I was anxious to hear what he had to say is putting it mildly. I could hardly contain myself and had to struggle to keep from demanding what he knew and when he’d known it. Could I believe him? Well, why not? People, even officers of the law, often discuss important matters among themselves, unaware that others are listening.

To my way of thinking, Mr. Owens was a sudden and unexpected pipeline into the thinking of the investigators who were looking into Connie’s death, and I was just before learning how high on their suspect list I was—something they wouldn’t tell me until they snapped the handcuffs on.

Still, I could not bring myself to believe that they could actually suspect me. I mean, how
could
they, given that I had a lifetime of following the rules and walking the straight and narrow behind me? Plus being a faithful Presbyterian every step of the way?

Except, I reminded myself, they had nobody else to suspect. By the gatekeeper’s written record, I was the only visitor that day to the Clayborn house—unless he had abandoned his post long enough for someone to get in unseen, which, from what Coleman had said, was a possibility they were looking into.

Back at the table, Mr. Owens seemed to marvel at the placemat, napkin, and utensils I’d put at his place. I quickly turned out the heated food on a plate and set it before him. Then I poured two cups of coffee and took a chair at the table, myself.

“Sure looks good,” he said, and dug in.

He must have been half starved, for I got no further word from him until he’d cleaned his plate, emptied three cups of coffee, and sat back with a beatific smile on his face.

“That’s the best I et in a long time,” he said, almost in a state of bliss.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it. But now, Mr. Owens, tell me what you heard the deputies say. Tell me everything.”

“Well, see, they was talkin’ about how they got nobody else to pin it on ’cept you. So they’re lookin’ for something to make a case.”

“But Coleman, I mean Sergeant Bates, said that the evidence proved I couldn’t have done it. They know when and how long I was there, and all the evidence points to an earlier time of death.”

“I don’t know nothin’ ’bout that, but I tell you, Miz Murdoch, them boys is all fine an’ good, but if they need some evidence, they’ll find it. One way or t’other.”

I didn’t believe what he so evidently did. The sheriff’s department and the district attorney surely would not manufacture evidence. It frightened me, though, to realize that Mr. Owens had a great deal more experience in what they would and would not do than I did.

“I just don’t understand,” I said, leaning toward him. “How in the world could they think I did it? I wasn’t there more than fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, from gatehouse to gatehouse, where my presence was duly noted both times. Coleman said she had been dead at least an hour or more. So that proves that somebody else got there before I did.” I sighed and sat back. “Except there’s no record of anybody else visiting her. But somebody
had
to, because she was dead when I got there.”

“Well, see,” Mr. Owens said as he pushed his plate away, “that’s what they fin’lly figgered out. One of ’em said—this was while I was gettin’ booked—he said you coulda come in the back way, killed her, then later on, come back in the front way so you’d have yourself a alibi. An’ it’s a pretty good one, ’cause if you come in the back way, nobody’d see you.”

“The back way?” I sat up straight at the thought. “There’s a back way into Grand View Estates?”

“Yes’m, it’s real easy. Well, not so easy on foot, ’cause it’s longer, but you go in on a fire lane back off New Hope Church Road, wiggle ’round up there on the mountain awhile, an’ pretty soon you come right close to where they built them houses. You can look right down on ’em. But if you keep on a-goin’, you come out on the Greenville Highway, an’ by that time, you’re just another car toolin’ along. Nobody’d know the difference.” He nodded his head in conclusion, then said, “’Course it could be so overgrown by now, couldn’t nobody get through on it.”

“Oh, my goodness,” I said, leaning back in my chair, just about done in. Not because his information put me in greater jeopardy—I could account for my time that entire day, and Lillian and Mildred and Ida Lee could confirm where I was every minute of it. No, in fact, if anything, a previously unknown access road into Grand View Estates opened up a certain can of worms I thought I’d sealed up for good.

Anybody
could’ve gotten to the Clayborn house, unseen by human eyes, by the back way. Certainly a random attack by an unknown person who just happened to be wandering through the woods would have to be seriously considered. A lone woman working in her kitchen, seen through a window, might’ve been a tempting sight to a criminally inclined stranger.

It also opened up the possibility that her husband could’ve left for work that morning, then snuck back home without being seen. As a homeowner, he would surely know about the fire lane.

There was also another possibility—that certain aforesaid can of worms. Either of the Ledbetters could’ve gotten in that way as well. Although, as I thought about it, I had to discount Emma Sue—she’d been in no physical or emotional state when I saw her to make that trek. And how would she know about it in the first place? But the pastor could’ve known—he’d grown up in Abbot County. Granted, he’d left to go to college and seminary at a fairly young age and had served a couple of small churches before being called by the First Presbyterian of Abbotsville, where he’d been for the past twenty years or so. During that much time, though, he could’ve easily reacquainted himself with the highways and byways of the county.

I could’ve cried. It made so much sense, especially in the face of the pastor’s strange evasive actions over the past several days. But I didn’t want to even think what I was thinking. I may have silently disagreed with Pastor Ledbetter on a few theological issues and vocally disagreed on a number of his high-handed methods, but it hurt me to the quick to raise the possibility that he could’ve done what had so obviously been done in Connie Clayborn’s kitchen.

“Mr. Owens,” I said, breaking the long silence that had ensued as I considered this new information and while Mr. Owens’s stomach continued to greet the sudden influx of food, “I need to see that fire lane. I need to see how close it comes to the Clayborn house and how difficult it would be to get from one to the other. You know where it is and how to get there, so will you show me?”

“Anytime, ma’am, anytime. I know ’zactly where it is. I used to hunt back up in there. Did a little trappin’, too. So I can show you anytime you wanta go.”

“Right now?”

“Now?”
Mr. Owens straightened up, causing an internal growl, as his eyes widened. “Ma’am, it’s dark out there. You can’t see your hand in front of your face.”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Owens, it’s a little cloudy out, but the moon is up and I have a flashlight.”

“Yes’m, but you can see a lot better in the daytime.”

“Quite true,” I agreed, “but the deputies—if they’re still investigating the scene—can see
us
a lot better in the daytime, too. I’m hoping nobody’ll be out there at night.”

“Maybe not, but they’ll have a patrol drive by ever’ once in a while to make sure nobody’s monkeyin’ around out there.”

“On the fire lane, too?”

He considered for a minute. “It ain’t likely. Even if the fire lane’s open, they don’t have enough radio cars to cover the county, much less tackin’ that on, too.”

“Then it’s more likely that the best time to go is in the dark of the night. You see, Mr. Owens, I trust your superior knowledge of the patrol circuits and so forth of the sheriff’s department.”

“Well, I sure have rid with ’em enough times,” Mr. Owens said, quite modestly for one who had so much experience with law enforcement personnel. “I orta know what they’re up to and where they go and how many times they do it.”

“Then,” I said, getting to my feet, “you’re just the man I need. Let me get my coat and a flashlight. I hope, though, that we’ll be able to stay in the car and see what I need to see. I’m not all that eager to be tromping through the woods at night.”

Looking somewhat stunned by my sudden decision, he kept his seat and watched as I searched a drawer for the flashlight and went into the hall for my coat.

Finally he stood, picked up his empty plate, and carried it to the sink. Then he mumbled, almost under his breath, “Me neither.”