No Way Home (9 page)

Mary Dean, a hefty woman with flawless skin, was seated behind her desk drinking a diet Sprite. Mary Dean did not seem to see anything amiss about her, Lillie noted as she sat down. She must look normal.

“Honey, you’re an angel to come. This little gal is up in maternity and she is just scared to death.”

“What’s wrong with the baby?” Lillie asked.

“He’s got a little bitty hole in his heart. They’ve got him in the ICU. I think they’re going to move him to Nashville.”

Lillie stared into the arrangement of plastic geraniums on Mary Dean’s desk. “It sounds familiar, all right.”

“That’s right,” Mary Dean said firmly. “You’ve got experience, Lillie. You understand these things. Now I want you to go in there and tell her how great the surgeons are these days, and how tough these kids can be.”

Lillie looked up at her with wide, anguished eyes. “And what if I start to cry?”

“That’s all right,” Mary Dean said matter-of-factly. “She knows you’re a mother. She’ll figure you’re crying in sympathy. That’s why I’m sending you. Because she’s only going to listen to another mother who’s been there.”

“And what if she asks how Michele is now?” Lillie asked evenly.

“Well, honey, you’re going to have to pretend a little bit. You’re gonna tell her that Michele is fine. You tell her how Michele was even sicker than her own little boy, and how she survived, and got well, and turned out fine. That part is true, isn’t it?”

Lillie felt an unexpected sense of gratitude toward Mary Dean. It felt good to hear someone say how well and strong her daughter had turned out. She realized that ever since it happened, people referred to Michele in those same hushed, pitying tones they had when she was sick. As if she were somehow tainted. A victim again.

“Go on, now,” Mary Dean was saying. “And let me know how it went.”

Lillie took the name and room number and rode the elevator to the maternity floor. She hesitated outside the room, afraid for a moment that she would not be able to do it. But when she walked in and saw the terrified mother’s face, she felt suddenly calm. She thought how Michele would be proud of her if she got through it without tears.

The new mother was too distraught to notice the pallor of the comforting hand on her own. Her spirits seemed to flare as Lillie told her seriously that they would have to fight, she and her son, but that they could win. The woman pressed Lillie’s hand to her hot cheek before Lillie left the room, and thanked her sincerely.

The visit gave Lillie a little lift. Preoccupied with her thoughts, Lillie passed through the doctors’ waiting area outside the maternity wing and pressed the button for the elevator. She thought she heard someone call her name, and she turned around to see a pregnant woman struggle up from her chair and lumber toward her.

“Miz Burdette,” said the young woman.

Lillie frowned. “Yes?”

“I’ve been waiting for you. I’m here for my checkup.” She placed a protective hand on her own stomach. “I spotted you going in there and I waited. I’ve got to talk to you.” The girl saw from the puzzled look on Lillie’s face that the woman did not recognize her. “I’m Debbie Par-tin,” she said. “Dwight Partin’s wife.”

“Oh, yes,” Lillie said in a wary voice. She had a vague recollection from Michele’s funeral of a frail, very pregnant girl in a lavender raincoat flattening herself against the church steps as Grayson and her husband nearly came to blows. Lillie pressed the elevator button again.

“Could we talk for a minute?” Debbie asked. “Sit down somewhere out of the way? I don’t want anyone to see me talking to you, ‘cause if word got back to Dwight that I was talking to you he’d figure out why and he’d kill me.”

“Look,” said Lillie, “there’s nothing for us to say.” She could feel herself beginning to tremble, like someone who has gotten up from a sickbed too soon. She checked the floor light on the elevator. It was sitting still in the lobby. “I have to go.”

“It’s about Ronnie Lee,” the girl whispered. “It’s important.”

Lillie looked up at the floor number lights, which had begun to change.

“Over here.” Debbie pointed.

With a sigh more of worry than exasperation, Lillie followed the young woman as she waddled toward an alcove in the waiting area where no one else was seated. She settled herself into the molded plastic seat of a chair. Lillie perched on the chair opposite her and looked longingly at the elevator doors as they opened and closed again. “What is it you want?” Lillie asked.

“Ronnie Lee didn’t kill your little girl,” Debbie said earnestly.

Lillie pressed the heels of her hands against the hard edges of the chair seat. “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said.

Debbie leaned over and tugged at her sleeve like a child. “I know I’m right,” she said. “Oh, Miz Burdette, you don’t know what it’s been like for us since your daughter was killed. Everyone is treating us so bad. Nobody’ll talk to us, and kids come and throw rocks at our trailer at night, and I’m afraid Dwight is going to get fired from his job. He works down there at the discount furniture place, doing deliveries in their truck. And now they’re saying they might not need him. They say it’s slow, but really it’s not. It’s their busiest season. And we’ve got a baby almost here,” she said in a pleading voice. “Dwight needs that job.”

Lillie could hardly believe that this girl could be complaining to her about her troubles. She felt like reaching over and shaking her and saying “Don’t you know my child is dead? How dare you complain to me?” She recalled her father saying to her once, “Everyone thinks his own troubles are the worst.” She took a deep breath and composed herself.

“That’s a shame,” she said dully. “People shouldn’t be blaming your husband for what his brother did. But that’s human nature, I guess.” She looked at the girl’s stricken face and softened. “I guess, if you want me to call his boss at the furniture store I could do that. If that would help.”

The girl sat up in her seat as if startled. “That’s so sweet of you. Why, thank you. Really. With all you been through.” She shook her head. “That is sweet. But no, that’s not it. You see, I reckon this is going to go on as long as people think Ronnie Lee did this.”

“Well, it seems as if he did,” Lillie said coldly. She stood up. “If you want me to call that man at the furniture store, I will. I don’t believe you can ask any more of me than that.”

“Dwight could prove Ronnie Lee didn’t do it, but he won’t,” the girl blurted out. “He’s protecting his hiding place.”

Lillie stared at the girl, who began shaking her head. “He’ll kill me if he finds out I told you. He’ll loll me. But it’s not fair. I can’t stand any more of this. No one’ll even talk to me,” she wailed. She started to sniffle and pulled a tissue out of the fringed cotton bag she was carrying.

Lillie sat back down in the chair and continued to stare without speaking.

“Dwight’s a good person, really. He’s kind and nice. Not one bit like that shiftless brother of his. But he has this notion that he’s always got to protect him. And Ronnie Lee doesn’t deserve it. He’s always been bad and now he’s ruining everything for us and Dwight won’t say boo. But I have to think of the baby,” she said earnestly, looking at Lillie with imploring eyes. “That’s why I’m telling this to you. You’re a woman. You can understand. I don’t want people calling my baby names. Making a poor baby suffer when all the time Dwight knows where Ronnie Lee is and knows everything that happened.”

“What do you know about my daughter’s murder?” Lillie asked in a low, icy voice.

Debbie took a deep breath. “All right. Just please promise me you won’t tell anyone where you heard it.”

“I’ll try not to let anyone know,” said Lillie.

“Because if Dwight found out—”

“Please,” Lillie said through gritted teeth.

Debbie hiccuped and was silent for a moment. Lillie watched her solemn, childlike face as she waited, fearfully, for the girl’s information. Debbie looked up at her with round, determined eyes. “Okay,” she said. “The day your daughter…the day of the picnic, we were home ‘cause I didn’t feel good. The first we heard of the jail-break was when Ronnie Lee called Dwight. He was hiding out over at Caitlin’s Crossing and he wanted Dwight to come get him. Dwight tried to tell him to go back but Ronnie Lee was cursing him and arguing with him. I begged Dwight just to leave him there, but Dwight said he had to go get him. I threatened to call the sheriff so he made me come with him. We drove over to the crossing and picked him up.”

“When was that?” asked Lillie, feeling a tightness in her chest.

“About four o’clock,” Debbie said. “He knew this woman in Kentucky who he met one time when he was out of jail. He called her up and she came to meet us, about three hours from here. He was drinking the whole way, singing these stupid songs.” Debbie shuddered with remembered disgust. “He was so drunk by the time we got there we had to roll him into the backseat of her car. She was so happy to see him. I thought, good riddance, you’re welcome to him. He even threw up in the back of her car but she was happy as a snake in a swamp. He’s still there with her, although they’re fighting like cats and dogs. He called us twice from there. I think he’s getting ready to take off though. Probably find some other girl to sponge off of.”

Lillie’s mind was working furiously as the girl spoke. The girl was telling the truth. She was sure of that. But it forced her to think about something she had not wanted to think about. She had numbly accepted the idea of Ronnie Lee as the killer, and it made it seem like Michele’s death had been almost accidental, as if she had been hit by a car. She had fallen into the path of an oncoming criminal, who was out to kill a girl. Any girl.

Now everything was different. If it wasn’t Ronnie Lee, then maybe it wasn’t accidental. Maybe it was deliberate. Maybe someone had killed Michele, her Michele, on purpose. She felt all her psychic wounds start to bleed again, all at once. Suddenly she remembered different things the sheriff had said. Different things she had heard. All along Royce had been saying that he didn’t think it was Ronnie Lee. That he had no motive. That he wouldn’t risk such a crime, that he just wanted to get away. But who, then? Why? She shook her head. Then she looked up at Debbie. “So, it couldn’t have been him,” she said.

Debbie shrugged. “It wasn’t. We were with him.”

“But why are you telling me? Why not tell the sheriff?”

“I told you,” Debbie explained patiently. “Dwight would kill me. But you can tell the sheriff. You can give him the address where Ronnie Lee is, and they can get him and say they just tracked him down. Then the whole thing will come out and people will know it wasn’t Ronnie Lee.”

“Dwight could get in trouble for helping him to get away. Did you ever think of that?”

Debbie looked squarely at Lillie. “I thought of it,” she said. “I’ll say he forced us. With a gun.” The girl pulled a piece of paper out of her bag and wrote on it hurriedly. “This is the address, where he’s at.”

Lillie looked down at the paper rattling in her hands. “Thank you for telling me,” she said softly.

“It was the Lord’s will for me to run into you today,” Debbie said sincerely. “I just hope they catch who really did it.”

Lillie exchanged a wondering glance with the young mother-to-be and then she shivered. “I have to talk to the sheriff,” she said. “Right away.”

A DEPUTY WHOM LILLIE DID NOT RECOGNIZE
sat with his feet up on Royce’s desk, studying the latest issue of Guns and Ammo magazine.

“The sheriff’s not here,” drawled the young man in answer to Lillie’s anxious request.

“Where is he? I need to talk to him right away.”

“Out of town,” said the deputy.

“Out of town!” Lillie cried. “There’s a cold-blooded murderer loose in this county. Why isn’t the sheriff here?”

The deputy suddenly recognized Lillie as the murdered girl’s mother and took his feet off the desk. His cowboy boots hit the floor with a thud. “Deputy Reynolds is in charge, ma’am,” he said respectfully. “He’s over having lunch at the five and ten. He can help you, I’m certain.”

“Well, I hope so,” Lillie said angrily. She slammed the office door behind her in frustration, then strode out of the town hall. People came and went across the main square of Felton and the atmosphere in town was normal, business as usual. Shoppers visited the slightly shabby stores that bordered the square. A couple of kids sat on the base of the statue of Andrew Jackson in front of the courthouse, crushing the Virginia creeper vines that entwined it. Oh, people talked about the murder. She knew that. Every time she passed people she recognized and a silence fell, she knew that her daughter’s death had been the subject of conversation. But soon it would just be gossip in town, an event that had once shocked them. For them there was no urgency about the whole thing. Not even for the sheriff. It was not their lives that had been changed forever, she thought, angry tears pricking her eyelids. She took a deep breath and composed herself. She could not wait for the sheriff. If Wallace Reynolds was all she had, then Wallace it would have to be.

She crossed the square to the five and ten, glancing into Flood’s Pharmacy on the way. Bomar must have been out, for only his salesgirl was behind the counter. She was talking to a customer and all the while staring at herself in the mirror behind the soda fountain, examining her makeup with an intent expression. A couple of teenagers sat, as usual, at the soda fountain. Lillie walked on and opened the door to the five and ten. The familiar woolly smell of stale popcorn, sweetish candy and old cardboard boxes greeted her. She spotted Wallace Reynolds at the lunch counter and hurried over.

“Wallace,” she said without preamble, “I have to talk to you right away.”

The deputy set down his sandwich and looked up, surprised. “Miz Burdette,” he mumbled, wiping his mouth. “Shouldn’t you be at home?”

“Why should I be at home, Wallace?” Lillie asked. The deputy was a good four years younger than she, but he had a reproving manner that tended to make people feel as if they had to explain themselves. “I came to see the sheriff but it seems that he just up and left town,” she said indignantly.