Murder Carries a Torch (21 page)

“Well, do you mind if I look in your bathroom? I was thinking it might have slipped out in there.”

“You’re welcome to look. I hope it’s there. I lost my billfold at Sears several years ago and I was in a panic,
but some nice lady found it and turned it in to Lost and Found. Everything was there, credit cards and all. I thought for sure I was going to have to call and cancel them.”

He stood there looking at me. Oh, God. He knew I knew. It was the babbling.

“May I come in?”

“Of course.”

“I can’t get by you.”

“Oh, pardon.” I moved aside.

“Is something wrong?”

“I just had some bad news.” I hoped to hell he didn’t ask me what. I was too rattled to come up with something sensible.

“I’m sorry. Well, I won’t be but a minute.”

I watched him turn and go down the hall. Maybe I was wrong. He was an English teacher, for God’s sake. English teachers didn’t go around murdering people. Even English teachers who looked like Rip van Winkle. Sister was right. The Chandler Mountain booger was a joke.

“Here it is,” he said, coming back holding up the wallet. “Thank goodness.”

“Thank goodness,” I echoed. I was still reminding myself that he was an English teacher not a murderer as he said goodbye and stepped onto the porch. But just as I was about to close the door, he turned and asked if he could get the Tupperware bowl that he had brought the soup in. He had promised his mother he would bring it back.

“Of course. I should have thought of it. I’ll get it for you.”

“And could I bother you for some water? I took some
aspirin a while ago for a headache and they’re stuck about halfway down.”

An English teacher. Not a murderer.

“Come on back to the kitchen. You want a Coke?”

Sister was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper.

“Morning, Albert Lee,” she said. “What brings you out this early?”

“Morning, Mrs. Crane. I dropped my wallet in Mrs. Hollowell’s hall bathroom yesterday afternoon.”

“Well, I declare. I’m glad you found it.”

“So am I.”

“Sit down,” Sister said, pushing a chair back with her foot. “How’s your mama?”

“Fine.” Then, “Just water, Mrs. Hollowell. Thanks.

“I’ve got an aspirin stuck halfway down,” he explained to Sister.

“I hate when that happens. You need to get the coated kind.”

Four things happened then almost simultaneously. I put the Tupperware bowl and a glass of water in front of Albert Lee, Sister folded the newspaper, the receipt from Rich’s Fine Jewelry drifted from the table, and Albert Lee reached down and picked it up saying, “You dropped something.”

What happened next I’ll always blame on Sister. If she hadn’t said, “Oh, my God,” and grabbed for the receipt, chances were that Albert Lee wouldn’t have paid any attention to it.

But he did. When Sister’s swipe at it missed, he looked to see what he was holding.

For a moment, I don’t think any of the three of us breathed. Then Albert Lee stuck the receipt in his jacket
pocket and drank the glass of water I had given him. Drank it slowly, looking out of the bay window.

“I like this house,” he said. “I see your sasanquas are already blooming.”

Sister and I glanced at each other. Maybe everything was okay. So he knew we had looked through his wallet. So what?

But everything was not okay.

“You know, don’t you?” Albert Lee said almost dreamily.

“Know what?” Sister and I said together.

Albert Lee stood up, reached in his back pocket, and pulled out a small pistol.

“Come on, ladies. I guess we’ll have to go see Mama.”

“Damn, damn, damn,” Sister said in my ear while I was wrapping the tape around her ankles. “This is all your fault.” She was sitting in the backseat of Albert Lee’s car. Stuffed in, really. Albert’s Neon had not been designed with Sister in mind.

“Shut up.” I had already taped her wrists together with the clear reinforced tape that I was sure Albert Lee used when he shipped books. It had been in the glove compartment of his car and, surely, he didn’t go around taping women up all the time.

“We’re going to be all right,” I whispered to Sister. “The man’s an English teacher.”

She banged her chin into the back of my head. It hurt like hell. I’d never before realized how pointed her chin was.

“Ow,” I flinched back and felt a tiny circle of steel between my shoulders.

“Something wrong?” Albert Lee asked.

“She hurt me,” I said, rubbing my head.

“Well, shame on you, big sister. Don’t try that on me.” He reached over with a penknife in his left hand, cut the tape, and pressed it down against Sister’s ankle. Then he motioned with the pistol for me to get into the front seat, which I did and he taped my wrists and ankles. So much for our “Neighborhood Watch” program. Here we were being kidnapped in broad daylight at gunpoint and what everybody was watching was
The Price is Right
or
All My Children
.

“Albert Lee, why are you doing this?” Sister asked. “You’re just going to get yourself into more trouble.”

“Not if you just disappear off the face of the earth.” He got in the car and pulled away from the curb.

“What is it you think we know anyway? We don’t know a damn thing except you’re kidnapping us,” Sister said.

“You know I killed Susan.”

“I don’t know you killed Susan. Do you know he killed Susan, Patricia Anne?”

“I don’t know it.”

“Of course you do. You’d been through my wallet. You saw all the pictures, the receipt.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions, Albert Lee,” I said.

“And so did you. The right one.” He had turned right onto Valley Avenue by this time.

“Let us out,” I said. The danger of the situation was just registering with me. We were being kidnapped by a murderer with a gun who was going to make us disappear off the face of the earth. “Let us out, Albert Lee. I
don’t know what happened to Susan, but kidnapping us is just going to compound your troubles.”

“Shut up. Just shut up. I need to talk to Mama.”

“The crack in Vulcan’s butt is really getting wider, Patricia Anne. Look,” Sister said, apropos of nothing. “He could fall right down here on Valley Avenue.”

I wasn’t interested in sightseeing or Vulcan’s plight. I was trying to see if I could get my ankles loose. If I could, I could kick Albert Lee’s leg, make him wreck. But we were going down steep and busy Twentieth Street now. If he swerved, it would be a terrible wreck. Chances were that we would hit another car head-on, a car full of innocent people.

“Why are you turning on First Avenue, Albert Lee?” Sister asked when he turned on his right signal. “Aren’t we going to Chandler Mountain?”

“Goddamn interstates.”

I looked over at Albert Lee. He didn’t look good. He was pale and sweat was beaded on his forehead.

“Let us out, Albert Lee,” I pleaded. “You’re not a murderer. You’re an English teacher.”

“And you’re crazy.”

We crossed the viaduct over the Sloss Furnace Museum.

“Remember the big outdoor ad that used to be here for years?” Sister asked. “The one for dog food where the cute little puppy’s tongue wagged? It always smelled like ham here. I guess it was the dog food plant.”

I swear my sister never fails to amaze me. Here we were, kidnapped, on the verge of extinction, and she was carrying on a casual conversation about dog food.

“Penny dog food,” Albert Lee said. He wiped his forehead with his right arm leaving a wet spot on the sleeve
of his denim jacket. The butt of the pistol was clearly visible in the shallow jacket pocket.

“That’s right,” Sister said. “Penny. I couldn’t remember which brand it was. Do you suppose it cost a penny when it first came out?”

Neither Albert Lee nor I answered.

We rode in silence for a few minutes. Then Sister said, “Oh, you’re going up Highway 11. One of my husbands used to own some property up here. I should have held on to it. It’s probably worth a fortune now. You know, sometimes I wish I’d buried them up here at Jefferson Memorial Gardens. Look how nice it looks without tombstones.”

I swear you’d think we were going for a casual drive in the country.

“Albert Lee,” I said. “I think I know why you killed Susan, but will you tell me why you killed Monk Crawford?”

He looked startled. “I didn’t kill Monk. Hell, that brother-in-law of his did him in. Hated him.”

“Because of the snakes?”

“Because Monk was giving the snakes up. You don’t do that, not on Chandler Mountain. Not without paying for it.” He wiped his forehead again. “Especially if you’d been the leader.”

“Could Susan have left the group?”

“Probably. They’re not so rigid with the women. They don’t think they’re important.” He sighed. “But she didn’t want to.”

“Is that why you killed her? Because she wouldn’t give up the snake handling?” I asked.

“Not that it’s a damn bit of your business, but I loved
her. I wanted to marry her and she laughed. It was simple as that. Then I took her to Mama.”

“And you put her in the church.”

“It was where she would have wanted to be. I couldn’t do anything else for her.” Tears were coursing down his face now. “I’d always loved her. I always will.”

“Oh, look,” Sister said. “We’re in Trussville. I love the barbecue place here, don’t you, Albert Lee?”

Albert Lee turned around. “Shut up.”

There was another silence of about fifteen minutes before I brought up the subject of Susan Crawford again.

“Albert Lee, you were in the church, weren’t you, when our cousin went in.”

He nodded. “Brushing Susan’s hair. Did you see that hair? A Rossetti painting.”

“What did you do?”

“Ducked behind a pew. Mama saw him coming in. She hit him so I could get out.”

And now we were going to die because Luke had walked into a church. Pukey Lukey was going to be the death of us.

“You’re going to get on the interstate in Springville, aren’t you?” Sister asked.

Hadn’t she been paying any attention to what we were talking about? I was trying to figure out some kind of strategy here and she was doing a travelogue. The woman was nuts.

“Guess I’ll have to,” Albert Lee said, wiping his face again. In spite of being scared to death, I felt sorry for him. Chances were that he had never known the violence existed in him that had welled up when Susan laughed at his proposal.

We turned off Highway 11 in Springville and headed for the interstate.

“Goddamn interstates. I hate them,” Albert Lee said turning onto the entrance ramp. Below us the pond I had admired several days before shimmered in the sun. The black and white cows grazed in the pasture.

And below us, several police cars blocked the entrance.

“Shit,” Albert Lee said, slamming on his brakes and throwing the car into reverse. But more police cars had pulled in behind us, lights flashing, sirens wailing.

Men in uniforms surrounded us, guns drawn.

“Oh, shit,” Albert Lee said, clasping his arms around the steering wheel and laying his head on them.

“You did what?”

“She led us all the way,” Virgil Stuckey said. “Isn’t she something?”

We had just been untaped and were watching Albert Lee being led to a patrol car. Virgil had his arm around Sister and was looking at her as if she had just invented the wheel.

“I dialed 911 on my cell phone while Albert Lee was getting in the car,” she said. “Everytime I mentioned a place, I was telling them where we were going.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. “I’m proud of you.”

Sister gave an aw-shucks shrug. “I saw a woman on CNN who had done it in Atlanta when she was car-jacked,” she admitted. “And my purse was on the floor right in front of me and I remembered it.”

“She probably saved your life, you know,” Virgil said. And I knew I would hear about it for the rest of my life.

I watched a handcuffed Albert Lee being put into the back of a patrol car. I couldn’t believe it.

And him an English teacher.

“I heard,” the phone message from Debbie said. “And I’m signing you both up for karate lessons. God knows you need them. And, Aunt Pat, if you haven’t read your E-mail yet turn it on and then call me.”

I had just turned off the computer and was sniffling for joy when the phone rang.

“Now aren’t you glad I saved your life?” Sister asked.

Told you.