The Wedding Gift (26 page)

Then Mama was there with
her arms around me too. She said “
Hush
now, Jessie. No one is saying Leeann did this awful thing. Charlie
is just wondering if she saw or heard anything before she left the
house. Isn’t that what you're asking Charlie?
”

Mama’s glare at him was
fierce. Daddy just nodded and said, sure, that’s what he meant, he
was just upset. I knew that wasn’t the truth, but I couldn’t deal
with that right now.

I guess, seeing everybody
else had gone crazy, Mark decided he’d best step in. So he told
Daddy and Jessie that no matter what had happened, if we didn’t
call the police then, everyone was going to jail. Daddy nodded and
indicated that he should go ahead and call, and then he and Mama
followed Mark into the kitchen where our old wall phone
was.

Jessie was still holding me
and she tried to talk. I stopped her and said “
Not now, Jess, later. Listen, the police will be here soon
and we don’t know what’s going to happen so
…”

She cut me off, saying
“
Nothing is going to happen! God dammit,
Leeann, what are you saying?
”

I cut her off again,
begging her to listen to me now, just listen to me. She nodded
okay. I went on “
Jess, I don’t know what’s
going to happen, but I do know this: I was the last person to see
George alive and I’m his wife and both of us have seen enough
movies to know the police will suspect me, especially when Miz
Bethany gets ahold of them
.”

Jess nodded
reluctantly.

“
Okay, then, they may take
me away for a while. Now I know Robina did this,
Jess
.”

Suddenly I had an awful
thought. “
You believe me, don’t
you?
”

She nodded
fiercely.

“
Okay then, thank God for
you. Here’s what I need … I need you to read those books and find
out what the hell she wants and, Jess, I need you to do something
else, too
.”

She just said
“
Anything
.” God I
loved Jessie.

“
Okay, Jess, when I left
the house this morning, I wasn’t thinking that I would need money,
lots of money
.” I started crying while I
talked and she pulled me closer. “
But I am
going to need money Jess, for a lawyer, for bail… I don’t know.
Anyway, the only things I have that are worth any money are the
engagement ring and the earrings. I don’t sleep with the ring
because it's so big, it’s uncomfortable. Jess, somehow you have to
get inside that house and get my jewelry box. I know the cops will
seal it up, but somehow you have to get in there before Miz Bethany
does. She’ll take it if she gets a chance and then I have nothing.
Hell, if I have a public defender in this town, I might as well
just say, yes, your honor, I killed George. Please throw the key
away. Will you do it, Jess. Can you?
”

She inhaled real deep.
“
Of course I can. Listen, Leeann, this
stuff you’re talking about, it probably won’t even happen,
but
…” She raised her hand to cut me off.
“
I will do it, of course I
will
.”

Looking at her then, I got
scared deep down. What if Robina hurt my Jessie? Screw the jewelry,
I’d rather spend my life in prison than have her hurt, and I told
her so.

She actually laughed.
“
Shit, that old girl isn’t going to mess
with me. She should be more afraid of me than I am of her, which
ain’t much. And, anyways, I already told you its men she hates.
Shit, she really did kill poor old George, huh? Shit, I’m sorry now
how I used to say he was an asshole. He wasn’t a bad guy really. Oh
shit, Leeann Honey, don’t cry, it’s going to be
okay
.”

I begged her again to be
safe. She said she would be fine, that she wouldn’t go alone. I
asked her if she meant Mark. She said yeah “
Mark or someone
.”

Before I could ask her what
she meant we both heard the sirens. We stood up clutching each
other. Jess kept saying it would be all right. Daddy came in and
opened the door to Sheriff Riffler and two other deputies. I looked
around wildly. Mama grabbed for me and held me close to her.
“
Shh, Baby, it’s gonna be all right. It’s
going to be fine, I promise
.”

Well, it wasn’t fine; it
was just horrible in fact. Sheriff Riffler had come for one reason,
and that was to arrest me. He had even brought along a female
deputy. That was so I could be watched if I needed to change
clothes, or in my case, put some on.

I guess as soon as they got
Mark's call, a dispatch car was sent to verify the truth of George
being dead, though not the truth of how he got dead. That no one
was ever going to believe.

Sheriff Riffler was real
nice to all of us. Like everyone else in Dalton, he thought the
world of my mama. But nice or not, he was here on business, the
business of arresting me. He told me I could go on upstairs with
the lady deputy and change into some clothes, that they needed to
“
bag
” my nightgown
anyway.

Then Mark stood up and said
real respectfully, but real firm too, that he wanted to take
pictures of me just like I was, my nightgown and my hands too. He
said after he took his pictures then he wanted Jessie in the room,
and either she or the female detective could take more pictures of
me naked.

Sheriff Riffler bowed up,
and said “
Son, just what are you implying
here? Do you think we mean to put something on Miz Leeann’s
nightgown or body that isn’t there right this
minute?
”

Mark shook his head, and
said no sir, he didn’t think that but even Sheriff Riffler himself
would have to acknowledge that the Willets were a powerful family
and he just wanted to do what he could to see that I was treated
fairly.

C
hapter 35

This made Sheriff Riffler
mad as hell, but Mark just held his ground. Young and skinny as he
was, he was a man right then. And finally, at long last, I saw why
Jessie loved him.

Sheriff Riffler was pissed,
but there wasn’t much else he could do but agree with my daddy now
joining in with Mark in demanding the pictures.

So I stood still downstairs
while Mark took a whole roll on my daddy’s camera, and then Jessie
bullied her way upstairs along with the deputy to shoot another
roll of me naked.

Luckily for me, the only
lucky thing today, was that I had plenty of clothes upstairs in my
old bedroom, having left behind anything that was not designer when
I married George. This spared me the further humiliation of being
photographed for the paper in my nightgown. When we went outside
and I was shoved into the back of the sheriff’s car, I saw that
someone - Miz Bethany - had already alerted the press, ‘cause there
was ole Dolly Rae from the Dalton Tri-weekly and even a
photographer from the Oklahoma City newspaper.

I was, it seems going to be
famous, or infamous anyway.

I was taken over to the
city jail which was really just the sheriff's office and two little
cells. Sheriff Riffler was still trying to be real nice and he told
me that I was going to be “
arraigned
” before Judge Styles in
about an hour. He said after that I would probably be driven up to
the women’s prison in Maybeetle unless I could make
bail.

About twenty minutes, later
this kid who looked about my age, with big ears sticking out,
showed up and said he was my lawyer “
unless you can afford to hire someone else, ‘cause to be real
honest with you, Ma’am, this here would be my first criminal trial.
I been training for tax law. But if you ain’t got no money, well I
will try my best for you. I surely will
.”

His name was Jack Dupree,
and I felt a bad sinking sensation in my stomach while he talked. I
prayed that Jessie would get that damn (and apparently damned)
jewelry out in a hurry, ‘cause otherwise I knew for certain that I
would end up spending my life in Maybeetle. I’d probably end up
married again to someone, only this time not a man, but a woman
named Big Bertha or something like it.

Jack told me that what was
going to happen now was that we would go before Judge Styles soon.
I would plead not guilty, he would ask for bail until trial and, if
I could make what he set, then I could probably go home to Mama and
Daddy under house arrest. I told him that I didn’t have any money,
but there was the jewelry. Jack said that he would petition the
court to have them ask the Willets estate to help out. I rolled my
eyes at that.

Then he started off by
asking me if I had killed George. That made me mad, and I yelled at
him, that no, I had never touched George. I told him that was a
hell of a thing for my own lawyer to ask me. He told me to calm
down and that I had better get used to talk like that because this
would get a whole lot worse before it got better. Then I just had
to ask him if it would get better? Jack said that I had some things
going for me .... that the nightgown I was wearing had no blood on
it, and I had no marks on my body, whereas the murder scene showed
that George had put up a hell of a fight, the bloodless nightgown
and no scratches on my body was in my favor. He said that the knife
they found had been sent up to the lab in OKC for fingerprints and
DNA samples.

Well, I knew they were
never going to find this killer's prints on that knife, or any damn
DNA either, as I did not think the dead left such things. I was
also positive that telling Jack what I knew had happened might keep
me out of Maybeetle for a couple weeks while they fitted me up for
a straitjacket. So all I said when he asked me what I thought could
have happened was that I had no idea. I retold him the story of my
morning, leaving out Robina. He asked why I had run off to my
mama’s house in my nightgown and I said we had a stupid little
fight, and that I had been upset. His eyebrows shot up to his
forehead; then he asked how angry had I been?

I knew where he was going
and cut him off at the pass. “
Not even
angry enough to wake up George and holler at him some more. I just
was upset because he was mad about my credit card
charges
,” (well, what else could I make up
right then?), and that I had gone over to see Mama and cool down,
that it was such a storm in a teacup, that I had asked Daddy to go
get him for breakfast (another lie), but I knew my folks would back
that one up.

He nodded, but I could tell
he was skeptical.

I could not wait for Jess
to get the damn jewelry so I could get a lawyer that wasn’t already
fixing to plea bargain me out in his head. He asked me why I wasn’t
more upset that my husband was dead. I called him an asshole then
and asked him just when in the last hour, between hearing the news
and being dragged off to jail, I had had time to grieve?

He seemed to accept that at
least.

Chapter
36

I knew it wasn’t the strict
truth ... there was something else. The sad truth was that no
matter what I had tried to tell myself before our wedding, I hadn’t
ever loved George… I hadn’t even really liked him much. I hated it
when he touched me and, sure, I had been sorry about losing the
baby, but not as sorry as I would have been if it had been, well,
Donny’s for instance.

Oh shoot, who am I kidding
here? It shames me to write this but I had never even given George
one fair chance. I had married him while in love with another man.
I still loved another man. I loved only Donny Readle. I would
always love him, and now I was glad that I had made love with him.
I was only eighteen years old and it looked like my life was over.
Thanks to that murderous, dead bitch, Robina, who had killed my
husband, and thanks as well to that horrible, no doubt vengeful,
living bitch Miz Bethany, I was going to spend the rest of my life
in prison for a crime that I was innocent of.

My single hour with Donny
would have to hold me for all of my life now, and it was this
thought, and not that of George being dead that finally broke
through my shock, and made me give way to tears.

I cried so long and so hard
that even Jack was touched. He started patting me on my back and he
went and got Sheriff Riffler who felt real bad for me,
too.

He said
“
Now come on, little one, you stop now. I
don’t believe you did this, and Judge Styles, why he probably is
gonna let you go home to your mama and daddy on bail. You know I’ll
keep looking real hard for the true killer. You just stop now, all
right? We got to go see the judge now. You just wash your pretty
face, all right?
”

Well he did make me feel a
little better, and more hopeful too, and who knows, maybe it would
have even happened the way he said, with me getting to go home, but
when we got into the courtroom there was Mr. and Miz Willets and,
just looking at her, I knew she had death in her eyes - my
death.

Sure enough, she had
already gotten to the DA, a scrawny dried up cow that anyone with
eyes could see was sucking up to the Willets' name and who probably
had already been promised a hefty donation for her next campaign.
By the time the DA got done telling Judge Styles that there were no
signs of break in, that I was unstable (huh?) and had married poor
George for his money; after first trapping him by saying I was
pregnant by him, though it “
could have
been anybody’s baby
” (huh?) …well then I
had gone on and lost the baby, who, she reminded the judge could
have been anybody’s.