Spare Change (28 page)

Ethan’s eyes filled with
tears and he stopped to wipe them away.  With the sound of sorrow latching onto
his voice, he said, “That’s when Mister Scooter started beating up on Daddy.
Believe me, Grandma, you don’t never ever want to see a thing like that; it was
really, really awful…”

The words eventually slowed
to a stop and Olivia understood; Ethan Allen was looking back in time,
rerunning his memory of the event as it had happened. “It wasn’t a fair fight,”
he finally said, his voice thick with resentment, “Daddy didn’t do nothing to
defend his self, just stood there and let Scooter beat on his head till it was
split open. I was scared Scooter would kill me too, so I stayed hid. Even after
I peed my pants, I stayed hid. I could’ve done something to help my daddy, but
I didn’t even try.”

“You’re just a boy,” Olivia
said, her arm wrapped around his shoulders. “You
couldn’t
have done
anything.  A man such as that would have killed you too!”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe about it.
He’s a violent criminal. He belongs in jail.”

“You think his policeman son
is gonna put him there?”

“Somebody has to!”

“I know you’ve a mind to
help, but Mama warned me—if I tell tales on Mister Scooter, his policeman son
will see I go to reform school.”

“Nonsense,” Olivia answered,
although she knew it was a good probability that the son would not, in fact,
acknowledge the crime of his father. 

“The best thing,” Ethan
said, “is for me to be gone when they get back.”

“No,” she answered,
“Absolutely not!”

“Ain’t you listening? That
policeman
knows
I saw and he’s sure as hell gonna—”

“Stop your cussing; nothing
is going to happen.”

“That’s what you think! He’s
gonna—” 

“He’s not going to do anything,
because I won’t allow him near you.”

“Have you noticed that he’s
three times your size?”

“Yes I have. But, we’ve got
truth and justice on our side.”

“Oh, great,” Ethan moaned,
“that ought to scare the shit outta him.”

“Stop cussing,” Olivia repeated.

Irreconcilable
Differences

A
fter Ethan Allen’s grandmother slammed the door in
their faces, the two police officers walked out of the Wyattsville Arms
apartment building and climbed into the car without saying a word. Cobb turned
his face to the window like a man obsessed with seeing scenery and Mahoney
grabbed hold of the steering wheel so ferociously that his knuckles were
bloodless long before they reached Richmond. 

They went without a single
exchange of words for almost two hours; then as they sat waiting for the ferry
to transport them back to the Eastern Shore Mahoney grumbled, “This just isn’t
working.”

“What isn’t?” Cobb replied,
even though he could see the set of Mahoney’s jaw was rigid as a railroad
spike.

“Us working this case
together; you’ve got zero tolerance, whereas I believe in giving folks the
benefit of doubt, letting them tell their side of a story before—” 

Cobb gave Mahoney an angry
glare. “What I do is put an end to the crap you’re willing to take,” he snorted,
“In my mind that’s just good police work.”  

“Good police work? Last
month you handcuffed a seven year old boy, is that what you consider good
police work?”

“The kid was a menace,
kicking at me, trying to—”

“He was seven years old!”

“Okay, so maybe I could’ve handled
that situation differently; but that’s one instance.”

“It’s not the only one; what
about last week when you took the woman in the five and dime—”

“Okay, okay. Maybe I got a
short fuse at times, but—”

“You’re a hothead, just like
your pop.”

“Screw you,” Cobb answered
and turned back to the window.

For the remainder of the
ride, they didn’t speak again; not even after Mahoney parked in front of the
station house and they both climbed from the car. 

Unpleasant as it might have
been, it wasn’t the drive home that sent Mahoney looking for the Captain; it was
the look on Sam Cobb’s face—a look of pure hatred.

Captain Rogers was in his
office trying to focus on some paperwork when Mahoney walked in and closed the
door. “I’ve got a problem with Cobb,” Jack said.

“I’ve got worse problems
than Cobb,” the Captain replied and continued leafing through the pile of
pages. “The department’s over budget; I’ve got a car out of commission and
we’re short two patrolmen.  You got something worse than that?”

Mahoney shrugged. “Depends
on your view of
worse
,” he said; then he segued into telling how Cobb
had become a problem in the Doyle murder investigation. “The grandmother didn’t
want to let us talk to the kid, so Cobb starts threatening her and she slams
the door in our face. I’m telling you, Captain, you’ve got to get him off this
case.”

Captain Rogers sighed,
“Didn’t I just say we’re short two men?  Other than Cobb, nobody’s available
for back up.”

“I’ll handle it alone,”
Mahoney answered, “it’s a routine investigation.”

“Go ahead,” the Captain, who
was sick to death of listening to complaints, answered wearily. Turning back to
the pile of paperwork, he grumbled how he would now have to listen to Cobb
throw a shit-fit.  “Solve one problem,” he moaned, “and there’s five more right
behind.”  He wrote a reminder to himself—talk to Sam Cobb.

Grandma Olivia

S
omebody else might be inclined to believe the boy a
liar, but not me. I saw the look on Ethan Allen’s face and can say without
question, he’s telling the truth. In all my life, I’ve never felt as sorry for
anyone as I did Ethan Allen. The poor child was scared out of his head.

As far as I’m concerned,
those two policemen can stuff their questions up their backside! Regardless of
what they say or do, I have no intention of allowing them near that child.
Ethan Allen has been though enough already, he doesn’t need to have them
scaring the wits out of him.

Personally, I doubt the
big lummox can even get a warrant. I’m the boy’s grandmother and he’s got the
legal right to be living here. He’s not breaking any law, so that warrant stuff
is just a lot of hooey. That big policeman is an out-and-out bully—I’ve seen
his type before. He’s trying to scare us; but he’s about to find out Olivia Ann
Doyle, doesn’t scare that easily! 

As for the boy knowing
what Mister Cobb did, that’s another problem. Right is right—and while I’d
prefer to see the man punished, the truth belongs to Ethan Allen and he’s got
to be the one to decide whether or not to let it loose. I can tell you one
thing, whatever he decides, I’m gonna be standing right beside him and if any
harm comes to that boy, it will be over my dead body!

Searching for Hopeful

O
livia, fairly certain she had not seen the last of the
two police officers, set about finding a way to deal with the situation. First
she telephoned Clara, a woman with no legal expertise whatsoever, but an
uncanny knack for finding a way around even the most difficult problems. 
Unfortunately, this time Clara could think of nothing other than removing
Olivia’s name from the mailbox and having the other residents swear she’d moved
off and taken Ethan Allen with her. Although Olivia generally praised Clara’s
ingenuity, this time she simply shook her head. “That’s not much of a
solution,” she sighed, then called Fred McGinty. He thought perhaps Olivia
should marry him and the two of them adopt Ethan Allen but Olivia told him
right off that such an idea was ridiculous.

“Ridiculous?” he said, “I
beg to differ! You think those policemen are gonna come looking for an Ethan
Allen McGinty?”

“I’d sooner stick with
Clara’s plan,” Olivia answered then she hung up and went on to calling a long
list of other people. After she’d telephoned most everyone at Wyattsville Arms
and several of her friends back in Richmond, and still did not have one valid
suggestion for dealing with the situation, Olivia hit upon another thought. She
dialed the information operator and said, “I’m looking for the number of the
Main Street Motel in Hopeful, Georgia.”

Once she had the number,
Olivia dialed and waited as the telephone rang—four…five…six times—it seemed an
eternity; finally, a voice answered, “Sorry for being so slow,” the woman said,
“I was tending to business in the johnny.”

“Canasta? Canasta Jones?”

“Yes ma’am,” the woman
answered.

Olivia gave an audible sigh
of relief, “It’s me,” she said, “Olivia Doyle!”

“I know you?”

  “Of course you know me. I
was there last fall, stayed over a week.  Remember?”

“Not right off the top of my
head.”

“My husband died. I was
carrying him in an urn. Remember? I came in crying and feeling downright
miserable, you fixed that wonderful okra soup, remember that? When I left, you
packed up some of those happiness seeds for me to take…”

“Well land sakes alive!
Course I remember you, sugar. Sometimes this forgetful old thinker of mine just
goes on the fritz. How you doing?”

“Thanks to you, I’m getting
along just fine. That okra soup of yours really did the trick. I was about ready
to give up on living, when…”

Canasta began chuckling,
“Okra soup don’t do nothing but warm your insides,” she said, “you got to
feeling better ‘cause you decided to get on with the business of living. Only
thing what helped you, sugar, was the having of a friend’s ear to listen.”

“Oh dear,” Olivia sighed.

“Oh dear?”

“I was hoping to get some
more of those seeds, but…” 

“I thought you said you was
doing fine; a person doing fine don’t need to lean on such foolishness.”

“They weren’t for me
exactly. I was figuring to feed them to this detective, so he’d see the truth
of things and stop chasing after poor little Ethan Allen.”

“Whoa there,” Canasta said,
“You done lost me.”

“It’s a long story,” Olivia
sighed sorrowfully. She launched into the full explanation of how Ethan Allen
had witnessed the murder of his mama and daddy and then traveled halfway across
the state in search of his grandpa Charlie—the same Charlie she’d brought home
in an urn. “That poor child has certainly gone through enough; and now, he’s
being badgered by the police!”

Listening intently, Canasta
said, “How come the police is bothering an unfortunate little fella like him?”

“Because he saw the whole
thing and knows the truth of what happened.”

“If he knows, why don’t he
tell?” she asked. 

“Because,” Olivia said, “the
person responsible for the murder is the policeman’s daddy!”

“Well, if that don’t beat
all!” Canasta gasped. “Sugar, you and that boy are truly in one sorry state! A
situation such as this ain’t nothing okra soup can fix.”

“Oh,” Olivia sighed, her
voice sliding downhill. “I was hoping…”

 “Hoping? Hoping ain’t gonna
get you nowhere. You got to take action. You got to get to telling the truth to
somebody who’ll do something about it.”

“Such as?”

Canasta thought a long while
before she spoke. “When a murder’s been committed, you got to tell a police
officer. There just ain’t no getting around it. That said, I surely wouldn’t
have it be the fella whose daddy did the killing. He might well be on the up
and up, but with family blood thick between them, I sure wouldn’t chance it. No
indeed,” she sighed, “you got to find yourself a well-intended, God-fearing,
honest policeman.” 

“How am I supposed to do
that?”

“Look in their eyes. The
truth of a person’s soul is in their eyes.”

“Truth of their soul? How am
I supposed to recognize a thing like that? It doesn’t exactly stand out on a
person’s face—like freckles or bushy brows.”

“The truth’s a sight more
recognizable than folks might think. Fix yourself in place for a bit and study
a man’s eyes, you’ll catch hold of what I mean. A man who’s honest and got a
well-intentioned heart—he’s got the light of God inside his head. You look deep
in his eyes, and guaranteed you’ll see a shiny little speck sent down from
heaven. Sugar, a man like that, believe me, he’s one you wanna trust.” 

“I don’t know…” Olivia
moaned, buckling under the weight of uncertainty. “What if I make a mistake?
What if I look into some policeman’s eye and imagine I see the light of God,
when it’s nothing more than the reflection of a light bulb?”

“Hmm.” Canasta hesitated a
moment then said, “Most women’s got a built-in ability for this, but if you got
doubts, practice up by looking in your Pastor’s eye. A man of God has most
always got the light.”

“Pastor?”

“Pastor, Preacher, Minister,
whatever.” Canasta waited for a bit, then hearing no response, asked, “You been
going to Sunday services, ain’t you?”