Read When Did We Lose Harriet? Online
Authors: Patricia Sprinkle
When Did We Lose Harriet?
Nonfiction
Children Who Do Too Little
A Gift from God Women Home Alone
Women Who Do Too Much
MacLaren Yarbrough Mysteries
When Did We Lose Harriet?
Sheila Travis Mysteries
Deadly Secrets on the St. Johns
A Mystery Bred in Buckhead
Death of a Dunwoody Matron
Somebody’s Dead in Snellville
Murder on Peachtree Street
Murder in the Charleston Manner
Murder at Markham
Maclaren Yarbrough Mysteries
Patricia Sprinkle
Zondervan
When Did We Lose Harriet?
Copyright © 1997 by Patricia H. Sprinkle
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ePub Edition APRIL 2010 ISBN: 978-0-310-87711-0
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sprinkle, Patricia Houck.
When did we lose Harriet? / Patricia Sprinkle.
p. cm.—(MacLaren Yarbrough mysteries)
ISBN: 0-310-21294-4 (pbk.)
I. Title. II. Series. PS3569.P687W48 1997
813’.54—dc21
97-13722
CIP
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the
Holy Bible: New International Version®.
NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
For Sarah Gay Edwards for years of laughter, friendship, and counsel, and for letting Jake and Glenna share your neighborhood
Harriet Lawson, age fifteen, and her family:
Dee Lawson Sykes, Harriet’s paternal aunt, with whom she lives
William Sykes, Dee’s husband
Julie Sykes, their sixteen-year-old daughter
Nora Sykes, William’s mother
Lou Ella Sykes, William’s grandmother
Myrna Crawley Lawson, Harriet’s mother
Frank Lawson, Harriet’s deceased father
Bertha (Granny) Lawson, Harriet’s deceased paternal grandmother
Eunice Crawley, Harriet’s maternal aunt
MacLaren Crane Yarbrough and her family:
Joe Riddley Yarbrough, her husband
Jake Crane, MacLaren’s brother
Glenna Crane, his wife
Carter Duggins, Glenna’s cousin the police officer
Other characters:
Josheba Davidson, part-time employee, Rosa L. Parks Avenue Branch Library
Morse, Josheba’s boyfriend
Lewis Henly, director of the teen center
Kateisha, Harriet’s friend at the teen center
Dré, Kateisha’s brother
Z-dog, Dré’s friend
Ricky Dodd, friend of Harriet’s who once lived as a foster child with Harriet’s grandmother
Beverly White, Ricky’s girlfriend
Claire Scott and her mother, Harriet’s former neighbors
Montgomery, Alabama, is a charming city with big, beautiful homes and the most hospitable people in the world. Natives may wonder why this book set in Montgomery, then, doesn’t just deal with charming parts of town and leave out the rest.
It is the nature of fiction that characters have lives of their own. Characters in this story kept wandering in from all over town, and I could not be fair to their story if I didn’t let them live where they felt most at home. To those who would complain, “But Montgomery isn’t like
that,”
I would urge you to sample the rich diversity of your wonderful city. And if you’ll let me come back, I’ll set a murder on the Shakespeare Festival grounds with your favorite people.
I have taken liberties with the community around Rosa L. Parks Avenue. The teen center in this book does not exist—although maybe it should. The Rosa L. Parks Branch Library does exist, and Teresa Temple and her wonderful staff gave me almost as much help as they do my detective. They also repeatedly told me no librarian could give out the address of a patron, which forced me to come up with a fictitious way around that law.
I want to thank Judge Mildred Ann Palmer, who inspired this whole series. Special thanks to several Montgomery people who helped me with research. Sarah Gay Edwards housed me, fed me, encouraged me and acted like a “mean teacher with a red pen” to help me get
the book as accurate as possible. Allison Gore, Craig Cornwell, Kimble Forrister, and the staff at Alabama Arise shared their perceptions of the city. Carol Gundlach and John “Boo” Starling talked in his hospital room about teenagers in Montgomery. The Rosa L. Parks Avenue Branch librarians let me use both their library and their books. Two nice men in Cottage Hill left their truck and reconstruction deliberations long enough to fill me in on some of the characteristics of that neighborhood. Eleanor Lucas at Capitol Book and News recommended the new Chamber of Commerce book on Montgomery just when I needed it. I hope I’ve been faithful to the help all of you so graciously gave me.
Thanks also to Julie Martens, Gardening Editor,
Southern Living Magazine,
for help with plants that would be in bloom in Montgomery in July, and to Dr. Lee Hearns, Toxicology Department, Metro-Dade Medical Examiner’s office, for invaluable assistance on the forensics aspects of this mystery. I promise, Lee, not to tell everything I now know—nor to use it.
Finally, thanks as always to Anne Strahota, Paula Rhea, my agent Dominick Abel, and my editor Dave Lambert, who all read the manuscript and made me redo it until I got it right. Thanks! I could not have done it without all of you.
But little do they know that the dead
are there, that her guests are in the
depths of the grave.
Proverbs 9:18
The step was steeper than Harriet expected. She stumbled, fell face forward, and caught herself just in time to plunge awkwardly off the bus into the breath-sucking heat that smothers Alabama in June.
She glared down the long sidewalk strafed by the noonday sun, then turned back accusingly to the driver. “This the closest you can get? It’s got to be two blocks, and it’s hotter’n a stove out here!”
“You can go on a block or two if you like,” he said with practiced patience, “but this is the stop you asked for. You won’t get any closer.”
Outrage in every movement, she shrugged on her backpack and whirled away.
He closed the door. When the bus roared off in a noxious cloud, she felt suddenly, inexplicably abandoned. Raising one fist to her mouth, she coughed dramatically
in case the driver was watching. Harriet liked playing to an audience. Still playing, she adjusted her backpack and stomped off in the direction of Oakwood Cemetery—as instructed.
The bus driver, Jerry Banks, caught one final glimpse of her in his side mirror. He was glad his wife Netty couldn’t see that kid. Now that their own two were grown, Netty was always bringing home strays. She would know what to do with this one—eyes as gold as a tiger’s pelt and a temper to match. She’d scrub off half the makeup and take a hairbrush to the long brown hair. While she brushed, Netty would sweet-talk the kid into losing her black nail polish and half the cheap perfume. The girl would clean up real good.
As he pulled in to his next stop, Jerry felt a twinge of uneasiness. What did a teenager want in that old cemetery in all this heat? He couldn’t see her as a faithful daughter of the Confederacy, going up to read the historical marker and check out gravestones of early citizens or Confederate soldiers. He hoped she wasn’t making a pilgrimage to Hank Williams’s grave—old Hank was buried in the Oakwood Annex. She could have stayed on a few stops for that. In either case, she’d surely be the only person up there at high noon.
But passengers weren’t Jerry’s responsibility once they left the bus—especially young white passengers. He knew that, and shrugged at his own foolishness. After all, the police station was right across the street from the cemetery.
Jerry didn’t know that ivy and kudzu make an effective barrier between the Montgomery police station and Oakwood Cemetery.
He’d guessed right about Harriet’s interest in history and Hank Williams, though. She had never heard of Hank Williams. She had no idea the old burying ground
had
a historical marker. And it would never occur to her
to be interested in tombstones. Harriet’s concern with Oakwood Cemetery was uniquely her own.
The black backpack hung heavily from her shoulders. A vivid bird of prey on her black T-shirt stuck damply to her front. Black jeans hugged her small flat behind. Harriet always wore black. Black sandals. Black lipstick. Black nail polish. She’d dye her hair black if Uncle William would let her. Women looked better in black. That’s what fashion magazines said. They never said how hot it was, though. She was so sweaty she felt grimy all over. She had wanted to meet later so she could go back to Aunt Dixie’s and change, but the morning caller had been insistent. “I want to see you right now. I can’t wait any longer!” The voice was a soft, muffled whisper. Harriet had read her own yearnings into it.
Just remembering made her walk faster, hurrying toward her own particular miracle.
Not that she quite believed it. Fifteen years of living had given Harriet a strong practical streak, and she’d never seen an honest-to-God miracle. She didn’t really expect to find one at the end of this hot street.
“But it
might
be her,” she argued aloud in a fierce whisper, clenching her fists around hope. “Sometimes…in stories…”
Stories, to Harriet, meant romance novels, where a secret caller
could
be the heroine’s mother coming back after thirteen years. Clasping the heroine close, she’d whisper through raining tears the reason she’d had to leave long ago without a word. Unfortunately, only in her deepest soul was Harriet the heroine of anything.
Perspiration trickled down her back and under her arms. In her sandals, grit stuck to the balls of her feet and crept between her toes. “I’ll be filthy before I get there,” she muttered. With one hand she wiped her neck, then held her arm out critically. She’d have looked better with a tan.
Anxious thoughts circled like buzzards. Would her mother think her pretty? “You’ve got great eyes,” she reminded herself. Did her mother have the same eyes? Harriet wished Granny Lawson had kept at least one picture.
Mother. Harriet savored the word and regretted she hadn’t put on fresh mascara and eyeliner. She’d scarcely spent any time on her face this morning, she’d been in such a hurry to get to the bank.
“What difference does it make?” She could hear her cousin Julie’s scorn. “You’re such a mess, nobody notices your eyes.” Julie the cheerleader, with the perfect figure, red-gold hair, and perfect tan. All Julie and her friends did on weekends was sit by pools and brag about all the boys they knew. Harriet wasn’t about to sit around with them and let them smirk at her flat chest, or ask whether
she
knew any boys. Her shoulders sagged, then lifted defiantly. She’d show Julie. She’d show them all!
The cemetery gates were just ahead. Beyond them, irregular lines of white tombstones and a few tall trees marched up a high hill crowned by a grove and a small white gazebo. “At the gazebo,” the voice had said.
She squinted against the sun, still afraid to believe. “Probably somebody just puttin’ me on,” she told herself for the umpteenth time. Anger surged. “But if it is—if they do—” She didn’t know how she would punish such betrayal, but it would be terrible.
She felt torn between wanting to dash up that hill and wanting to turn and run. She wished it were yesterday, tomorrow, any minute but now.
Harriet was no coward. “I can leave if I want to. I don’t have to stay.” Once she’d said it, she said it again. It became a rhythm to march to as she slogged up the narrow road, dogged purpose in every line of her body and a trace of hope in the way she lifted her head to gauge her ascent.
The hill, however, was too steep for heroic entries. Gradually her steps slowed. Halfway up she stopped and
swiped her forehead with one forearm, panting for breath and swatting pesky mosquitoes that swarmed around her head. It was so hot that Spanish moss dripped from an ancient cedar like branches melting.
Jerry Banks was wrong again. The cemetery was not quite deserted. One person observed Harriet’s slow progress—a person who had parked behind the crest of the hill well before the appointed hour and now stood concealed by the gazebo. A cooling breeze brushed through the shady grove on the hilltop. The mosquitoes weren’t quite so thick up there, but from time to time the observer fanned away a few persistent ones and dabbed at a sweat-beaded forehead—keeping carefully out of sight.
Not until Harriet arrived and looked warily about did the observer step out. “Hello!”
Harriet’s eyes widened in recognition—then narrowed in suspicion. “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m supposed to take you to her. Come on.”
Nobody saw them walk together down the back side of the hill.
Nobody heard the parked car start, or saw it leave.
After that, the cemetery was truly deserted.