When Did We Lose Harriet? (16 page)

Death and Destruction are
never satisfied.
Proverbs 27:20

On Saturday, Jake hit the traditional third-day-after-surgery low.

Sunday he got what Glenna called “the male grumpies.”

In addition, his recovery was being celebrated by half of Montgomery. Between answering all the calls from well-wishers, accepting food and flower gifts, and spelling Glenna at the hospital, I didn’t have a minute to even think about Harriet the entire weekend.

Monday I was sitting with Jake when Glenna called about half past one. “You just had a phone call from a woman named Myrna Lawson. Do you know who she is?”

“Myrna Lawson? Harriet’s mother? Where is she? Is Harriet with her?”

“I don’t know all that. She just said to call her, and left a number.” I guessed Glenna had been woken from a nap, poor dear. She sounded a bit cross.

Myrna sounded like a Kewpie doll who’d had too many drinks and too few grammar lessons. “Hey! I’m glad you called back. I’m up at Eunice’s. She said you might have a clue where Harriet could be. I been lookin’ for her. Called down to that teen center Eunice said she used to go to, but they ain’t seen her. Listen, I got somebody coming, and I think they’re at the door, but I sure do want to talk to you.”

“How about if I come up? It’ll take me about an hour to get there.” I’d have to see how fast Glenna could get to the hospital.

It was more like forty-five minutes after the call when I pulled up in front of Eunice’s house and climbed out into the still, dead heat of early afternoon. The street was bright and deserted. The day was so still I could hear the buzz of bees and the thrum of the air conditioner, but Eunice’s front door stood open behind the screen.

My heels sounded loud on the cracked walk. Inside, I heard a slight sound of alarm. Then I heard running feet, and a door slam at the back of the house.

Startled, I watched someone dash across the side yard, hurl himself over a neighbor’s fence, and disappear behind that house. Ricky Dodd.

Had he been the visitor Myrna mentioned? If so, what was his hurry now?

I walked thoughtfully up the steps and across the porch toward the open door. It was hotter than blazes. Why should Myrna leave the front door open?

I rang the bell. Nobody answered. I knocked. Still nobody. Finally I leaned toward the screened door and called, “Hello? Myrna? It’s MacLaren Yarbrough.”

Still no answer. Only the buzzing of bees and flies.

I pulled the screen open and took one hesitant step into the living room. “Myrna? Myrna Lawson? Are you here?”

Myrna didn’t—couldn’t—answer. She lay on the couch like Sleeping Beauty. Except this Sleeping Beauty had a small bullet hole in the center of her forehead.

Her house leads down to death and
her paths to the spirits of the dead.
Proverbs 2:18

It was hard to tell what the woman really looked like, because her hair was bottle blonde, her eyelashes fake, her mouth a pout of dark red lipstick, and her cheeks a brighter purply-pink than any God ever made. Her eyes were amber, like her daughter’s, and they stared like she was thinking about something very serious. Maybe she was, but not in Alabama.

On the floor beside her, the Polar Bear pillow lay shredded.

Do you know what finally got me moving again? Flies. Great big bluebottles that gorged themselves on her forehead, then circled the room. Getting their exercise, I guess, but they made me sick. I couldn’t bear the thought of one of them touching me.

“Get away! Get away!” I shooed them and headed for the kitchen phone to call 911. When I told them there’d
been a shooting, I also asked them to tell Carter Duggins that MacLaren Yarbrough was on the scene. I had no idea if the dispatcher got all that, but by then, I needed to hang up and go hang over the toilet.

I waited in a porch rocker. The old gray Persian leaped onto the porch and settled on my lap, as welcome as a hot water bottle in that heat. I let him stay. I had no energy to push him off. I also kept my feet firmly planted on the floor and didn’t rock. Between the heat, my memory of Myrna, and the sound of the flies, my stomach was awfully queasy.

It seemed like hours, but was probably less than five minutes before a squad car screamed to a stop at the curb. Two officers dashed to the house, a man and a woman. I couldn’t tell if the man was Carter or not. He didn’t look the least bit like Glenna.

They looked at me curiously. “Are you the one who called?” the woman asked.

“Yes. She’s in there.” The man hurried inside. The woman stayed with me. She had tightly permed blonde hair, a dusting of freckles, and light but very bushy eyebrows.

“You live here?” she asked.

“No, Eunice Crawley does. That’s Myrna Lawson inside, her sister. I just found her. Was that Carter Duggins?”

“No. You know him?”

“I’ve talked to him on the phone a couple of times. I asked for him to come.”

“We didn’t get that. Just got word of a shooting. You actually heard the shot?”

“No, I found the body. She was dead when I arrived.”

She looked puzzled. “And you are?” She poised a pen over her report pad.

I gave her my name, Jake’s address and phone number, and said I had come by the house on business. That seemed simplest. “You might want to call her sister,” I
suggested. “Eunice Crawley, the one who lives here. A neighbor might have her work phone number.”

“We’ll find her.” She wiped sweat from her brow with one forearm and went inside.

Another squad car pulled to the curb, and a man got out. He was as tall and lean as Glenna, less than thirty, and had a lopsided grin that probably broke hearts on a regular basis. I greeted him from my rocker. “Carter? I’m MacLaren, Jake’s sister.”

He gave me a little wave and loped up the steps. “Hey, Miss MacLaren. What’s happenin’?” When I told him briefly, he headed for the door. “I’ll get right back to you.”

He didn’t, but I didn’t mind waiting. I figured after a while I’d get popular. Meanwhile, I watched the comings and goings of a slew of people whose business it is to investigate a homicide. I thought about going to ask one of the neighbors how to call Eunice, but as hot as that old Persian felt across my legs, I hated to move him. I hated to move, period. If I weren’t there, the police would get Eunice’s number. They didn’t need me to do it for them. I stroked the cat and waited for Carter.

I found I didn’t have the least bit of curiosity about what was going on inside. I had no interest in butting in, either. Do you know what I kept thinking? I kept looking at those daisies across the street and thinking it wasn’t fair that Myrna wouldn’t see them again.

Finally Carter came out on the porch, slumped into the other rocker, and stretched out his long legs. “Please tell me what happened and what you’re doing here, Miss MacLaren.”

I told him about the call from Myrna, and about coming to the house.

“You didn’t know her at all?”

“No. She called and said she was Harriet’s mother—”

He stared at me like I’d gone stark raving crazy.
“Harriet’s
mother? You mean the one you asked me to look for, Miss MacLaren?”

“I think so. I know it sounds like a coincidence, but—”

His voice was full of disbelief and more than a little peeved. “That makes no sense at
all!
Did you see that woman in there?” He jerked his thumb toward the door.

“More of her than I’ll ever be able to forget.”

“How old would you say she is?”

I tried to work it out. “Her sister said she got married before she finished high school, so by now I’d guess she’d be—what? Thirty-one or -two?”

“How can a woman in her early thirties be the mother of somebody who’s fifty?”

Our trains were traveling down two different tracks. “Fifty?”

“You said a fifty-year-old female.”

Silently I tried out the two words. “I guess over the phone fifteen could sound like fifty, Carter, but Harriet’s fifteen. A child. How old was the woman you showed William?”

“Fifty-four. We’ve identified her, by the way. She was from Huntsville.”

“Why on earth would William have identified her, then? You said he did, didn’t you?”

“Positively, at first. He changed his mind later, but there’s no way he could have mistaken her for fifteen, no matter how upset he was. I’ll want to talk to Mr. Sykes again.”

In the next few minutes, I told him about coming up the steps, hearing a noise inside, and seeing Ricky Dodd run away—and that Ricky was the person I thought had tried to break into Glenna’s. “Did you ever compare his blood with that on the glass?”

He looked embarrassed. “No ma’am, not yet. Since you all were okay and nothing was taken, I put that on a back burner, I’m afraid. We’re pretty busy. But you know him?”

“I’ve met him, looking for Harriet. He lived as a foster child with Harriet and her grandmother for a while, and a couple of times she ran away and went to his place. He hadn’t seen her this time, though.”

“Did you see if he carried a weapon today?”

“No, and I saw him pretty clearly. Besides, if he’d had a gun and had already killed one person, why would he have run away instead of coming after me?” Until I said that, I hadn’t given a second’s thought to the fact that I could have been in danger myself. It was a good thing I was already sitting down.

“You never know what people will do in a panic.” Carter hadn’t lived long enough to know as much about that as he sounded like he had.

The woman officer came out. “Thought I’d look around outside for a possible weapon.” Given that Eunice only had two bushes, her search was as complicated as a two-year-olds’ egg hunt. She reached into the hydrangea just to the left of the steps and pulled out a pistol. “The murder weapon,” she crowed to Carter. “I’ll bet you a steak dinner on it.”

That rooster wouldn’t fly. “No wager, no dinner,” Carter told her.

She looked disappointed, but brightened when he added, “But we’ve got a suspect.” He gave her everything I’d told him, then turned back to me. “We’ll bring him in. He’ll swear he didn’t do it, of course, but since you found him standing over her…”

I’ve been a magistrate’s wife long enough to know the importance of precise evidence. “I didn’t even see him in the house. I heard a slamming door and saw him running away.”

“That’s close enough to start. Let me send somebody out to pick him up.” He went to his car without suggesting that I leave. I didn’t think I could summon the energy, anyway.

After a while he came back and went inside. I heard him tell the others, “We’ve got an ID on the gun. Belongs to a Beverly White.”

“Carter,” I called through the open door, “I think she’s the girl Ricky lives with.”

Carter slapped his thigh. “Hot diggety! One we can solve in time for supper!”

He wasn’t so cocky when he arrived at Jake’s room a little past five. After hugging Glenna and teasing Jake about getting a vacation the hard way, he asked, “Hey, Jake, can I borrow your sister for a cup of coffee?”

“She’s a little old for you, isn’t she, son?” Jake inquired mildly.

“No pretty woman ever gets old, Jake. You know that.”

“Well, watch your step. She’s got a lean, mean husband.”

“This is a weird case, Miss MacLaren,” Carter said a few minutes later, stirring enough sugar into his coffee to ice a cake and giving a girl at the next table a smile that would keep her happy for days. “You know you called 911 and asked for me?” I nodded. “Well, I wasn’t far away, but the reason that other car arrived first was, there’d already been a 911 for the same address, a few minutes before.”

“Who on earth—?”

“It gets weirder. The caller spoke in a loud whisper and claimed to have heard a shot. And, like yours, that call came from inside the house. What do you think of that?”

“Ricky?”

Carter shrugged. “He swears he wasn’t there but a second when he heard a noise and ran. But it’s his gun, all right—or his girlfriend’s. He’s on probation and not allowed to have a gun. But given that the gun was there and he was there—”

“Why would Ricky go out front to throw the gun away, then go back into the room?”

Carter shrugged again. “Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe he was planning to rob the place, but you disturbed him. All he says is, he was there, heard the noise, and, with his record, was scared he’d be blamed, so he ran.”

I’d heard Ricky talk. I appreciated how much editing Carter was doing for my benefit. I offered him a gift in return. “Ricky said he didn’t know Myrna. I have witnesses to that.”

“He
still
says he didn’t know her. That’s all he
will
say, though, until he gets a lawyer. He’s been through the system a few times already. He knows the ropes.”

“But he took a gun to her house, Carter? Why?”

“That’s the weirdest part of all. He says he hadn’t had that gun for weeks. He swears Harriet’s had it.”

“Harriet?”

“Yeah. I told you it was weird. Beverly corroborates that, by the way. She says she bought the gun for protection before she met Ricky, and forgot all about it. Harriet found it and got real mad they had it, with Ricky being on probation and all, so she took it and said she’d put it in a safe place where it couldn’t hurt anybody. Looks like she didn’t.”

I was cold all over. “Oh, Carter, I do hope she hasn’t killed her own mother!”

Give beer to those who are perishing,
wine to those who are in anguish;
let them drink and forget their poverty
and remember their misery no more.
Proverbs 31:6-7

When Josheba called Jake’s room to ask how he was doing, I couldn’t very well tell her about Myrna’s murder with old Big Ears right there. “I’d like to see you,” I said formally. “How about if we go out for supper? Glenna’s ordered a tray to eat with Jake.”

Josheba plumb flabbergasted me. “Lewis is coming over to my place for lasagna and a glass of wine, Mac. Why don’t you join us?”
Lewis?
I’d thought Morse was coming home the day before. Before I could ask, Josheba urged, “Come on over. I’ve got plenty.”

I accepted. The way those two bickered the first—and, so far as I knew,
only
—time they’d been together, I might be needed as a referee.

I am ashamed to admit I’d never been a guest in an African American home before. I felt a bit dashing driving up to Josheba’s, and wasn’t sure what to expect. I discovered
she lived just a few blocks from Glenna and Jake in a modest six-room brick house very like theirs. The main difference was, Josheba’s furniture was newer and better. She had a collection of African art and sculptures I could have appreciated more if I hadn’t been keeping one eye on Lewis and Josheba. The way they carried on in the kitchen, they could have known one another for years. I had never heard her laugh so much.

The food was delicious, but while we ate I obeyed Josheba’s command to “fill us in on the latest developments.” My news got far more attention than the lasagna. They were as shocked as I that Harriet’s mother had been shot with a gun last seen in Harriet’s possession.

“Tell me truthfully,” I finished, looking from one pair of concerned dark brown eyes to the other, “do you all think Harriet is the kind of child who would shoot somebody?”

Josheba looked shocked. “No way!”

Lewis looked grave. “I hope not, but she has a temper. If pushed far enough—”

Josheba covered her ears with her hands. “I won’t listen to this! What are you going to do next, Mac?”

“I’d like to go talk with Eunice again.” I was surprised to hear myself say it. I thought I was going to leave everything to Carter, but if Carter was looking for Harriet because he thought she’d shot Myrna, I wanted to find her first. “I think I’ll go offer condolences tonight and ask who else might have known Myrna was here. Do you all want to come?”

Josheba nodded. “I’ll come. You, too, Mr. Henly?”

We turned toward him and found him sitting slumped over with his eyes closed. “You praying?” Josheba demanded bluntly.

“No,” he murmured, “I was just wondering if I’d brought out jigsaws the first day Mac came to the center, whether she’d have given this Harriet thing a miss.”

“Think how dull your life would be,” Josheba scolded, but her eyes danced.

“My life isn’t going to be dull for a long time, woman.” He pushed back from the table. “I’ve got a meeting. Call me, Josheba, and keep me posted.” He tried to sound casual, but he didn’t fool me one bit. I wondered if he knew about Morse—and where Morse was.

When he was gone, I sighed. “I’d have felt a lot safer driving up there at night with Lewis along—even if he does rank as a suspect.”

Josheba stared. “What do you mean a suspect, Mac?”

I started gathering up dishes to take them to the sink. “Only so many people could have known she was in town, and Lewis was one. When Myrna called me, she said she’d already called the teen center.”

Josheba followed me with the serving platters. “Well, you know good and well Lewis didn’t shoot her. He wouldn’t kill anybody!” She started rinsing dishes for the dishwasher.

“Do!” I said, running some hot soapy water for the pots. “Sounds like you know Mr. Henly better than I supposed.”

Her face grew slightly rosy and she turned away. “We’ve had dinner a couple of times, that’s all. As friends.” She moved to put things in the refrigerator.

“A couple of times? When? And where’s Morse? I thought he’d be home by now.” My boys and I used to carry on that way. I hoped Josheba knew I was teasing.

Her voice was muffled from having her head in the fridge. “Morse isn’t studying coming home. He called Friday to say the weather had cleared up, the river was fantastic, and he was staying an extra week.” She stood up straight and added, a bit defiantly, “And Lewis and me—well, it isn’t what you think, Mac. We had dinner twice, that’s all. After you and I went up to Eunice’s I dropped by to tell him about that visit and your break-in. He was about to get some supper before a basketball game, so he asked me to go along. Not having anything better to do, I accepted.”

“That’s once,” I counted.

“Well,” she looked a little embarrassed, “on Friday, when Morse called, I could hear a party going on in the background. Men
and
women. Morse likes to party. So when Lewis called right afterwards and asked if I’d like to get some dinner again, I was just mad enough with Morse to accept. I figured if he was having fun, why shouldn’t I?” She lifted her chin, then her eyes sparkled with mischief. “I must have been madder than I realized, though. I put on my prettiest turquoise pantsuit and my best perfume. But it doesn’t really mean a thing, Mac. Lewis doesn’t mean any more to me than those women up at the river mean to Morse, and I refuse to build a marriage on suspicion and jealousy.”

“Next thing I know, you’ll be running for Miss Virtue,” I told her, scrubbing the baking dish. “But don’t you break Lewis’s heart, now.”

From the happiness in Josheba’s laugh when I said that, I suspected if she wasn’t careful, she might break her own. It’s so easy, once we have put on the armor of resolve, to think we’re invulnerable to temptation.

Josheba couldn’t stop talking about Lewis. When she went back in the dining room for the last few dishes, she called back, “I can’t break Lewis’s heart, Mac. He’s already given it to that filthy teen center. He just likes to have somebody to eat with before his evening basketball game. But he sure is fun to be with. That man can
talk!”

“Did he tell you anything about himself?” I asked as she returned. I wouldn’t mind knowing a bit more about Mr. Henly myself.

“Sure. He told me about being a lawyer, and trips he used to take back when he was making money—Aspen to ski, the Bahamas and Jamaica for Christmas…”

“Looks like he wouldn’t have wanted to give all that up for dirt and teenagers,” I commented, wiping the last counter. “Did you ask him about that?”

“Yeah. He just shrugged and said, ‘Some things you gotta do. Sometimes you owe a debt you have to pay.’ Now come on, Mac, let’s get up to Eunice’s before it gets dark.”

As I led the way to Glenna’s car, I couldn’t help wondering what kind of debt a man could pay off better as the director of an inner-city teen center than as a wealthy lawyer. Maybe I’d been the wife of a magistrate too long, but it sounded suspiciously like community service to me.

Eunice’s house was dark and circled with crime tape, but on the porch of the house next door several women were gathered in a huddle. When I asked if they knew where Eunice might be, the crowd parted like the Red Sea. A stocky woman turned toward the open screened door. “Eunice,” she bellowed, “you got comp’ny.”

Eunice appeared behind the screen. “Hello, folks. Thank you for coming.” She was neatly dressed in a gray skirt and white blouse—probably what she’d worn to work—but her hair was shoved about and her face was red and blotched from crying. “Come on in.”

This house was different from its neighbor. Maybe it was people coming in and out, but it was scarcely cool. The living room was a small, dim cube filled with shabby overstuffed furniture all facing a huge color television. A collection of dusty china bells filled the sill of the picture window, a collection of dusty Avon bottles the top of the television.

“My neighbor Raye Hunter’s lettin’ me stay here with her until the police are finished with my house. This here’s her granddaughter Jennifer.” Eunice flapped one hand toward a pretty girl with long black curls and bright pink lipstick watching a television program. Eunice’s eyes were rimmed with red. “So far I can’t seem to do anything but cry,” she apologized unnecessarily.

She led us to the dining room, an arch away from the living room. It was far too small and brightly lit for the warm crowd it held. Instead of a maple table and hutch, Mrs. Hunter had an old red Formica table and an assortment of mismatched chairs that had probably been dragged in from the rest of the house. A couple of women
stood and insisted we take their patched plastic seats. Eunice spoke to a skinny woman with carrot-orange hair hovering by the kitchen door. “Raye, these here are friends of my niece Harriet.”

“Let me get you a beer.” Raye darted into her kitchen and reappeared almost at once with icy bottles, brimming with foam. I hate beer, but sipped mine to be polite.

I was wondering how to start a conversation when Eunice did it for us. “It don’t seem right, Myrna coming so far just to die.” She sniffed.

“When did she get here?” I asked.

“This very morning. Took the all-night bus.” She sniffed again. Somebody pressed a blue tissue into her hand. “Me’n her wasn’t what you’d call close, but I can tell you, it upsets me to think of her coming home to see her baby, then getting herself killed.” The last word was a wail. Reaching for another tissue, she blew her nose like a trumpet. “Harriet and Myrna was all I had left in the world. Now Myrna’s gone and Harriet’s disappeared.”

The girl in the living room decided the live show in the dining room was better than the one on the screen. She came in and held up part of the wall. “I read in the paper about a girl who disappeared several years ago.” I figured she was trying to show sympathy by making the only connection she could with Eunice’s grief. “She and her stepdaddy had a fight and she ran away with her boyfriend. Maybe that’s where your niece went.”

“Maybe so.” Raye Hunter moved over to give her granddaughter’s shoulders a squeeze of praise. “Anyway, Eunice, I’m sure Harriet’s okay. Kids sometimes just need some space.”

Eunice was momentarily diverted. “Did that girl ever come back?” she asked, dabbing her eyes with a sodden tissue.

The girl shifted uneasily. “Uh, well…not exactly. But her mother saw her picture in the paper and recognized her.” Her voice dropped.

“Why was her picture in the paper?” Raye wanted to know.

The girl looked utterly miserable. She turned and muttered something we couldn’t hear. Raye shook her roughly and shoved her toward the arch. “Don’t you let her hear you say that!” she hissed.

“It was in the
paper,”
the girl said sullenly, gliding back to the television show.

Trying to distract Eunice again, I asked loudly, “Who might your sister have called in Montgomery besides me, Lewis Henly, and Ricky Dodd?”

“Who?” Eunice seemed at a loss.

“He’s a boy I saw running away,” I prompted her. “The police are holding him.”

“I didn’t know his name. The police just said they had a suspect. And I don’t know why she’d have called him—or anybody else, for that matter, except maybe William Sykes. Dixie’s husband? He’s got a big store out on the Eastern Bypass, so I told Myrna to call and ask if he could give her a job, or steer her toward one. She wanted to stay home and…and make a fresh start.” She put her head down and bawled.

Mrs. Hunter obliged with more tissues. Another woman came back from the kitchen with a fresh set of bottles, potato chips, and homemade onion dip. She set them down and announced, “I called the station. It’ll be on the ten o’clock news.”

Eunice nodded without raising her head.

I was horrified. “Don’t you watch it! You don’t need…”

Josheba ground her heel into my toe as Raye asked, “Didja ask ‘em for a video tape? On account of it being in her house and all?”

“Yeah. They said we’ll have to tape it ourselves. Do you have a blank tape?”

“Yeah.” Raye went toward the living room.

I sat there feeling sick. Nothing could make me look at any part of that gruesome afternoon again. My own memory was likely to keep me up half the night.

Eunice, however, said with satisfaction, “The cameraman got good shots of me getting out of the police car and coming up the walk, and just when I first seen her, but he didn’t know how much they’ll be able to use.” She turned to me. “Did he get you, too?”

I shuddered. “No, thank heavens. I left before the press arrived.”

Raye Hunter looked up from where she was fixing a blank tape into the VCR. “Ain’t that always the way? And there you was, the one who found her. Looks like they’d have told you to stick around.”

Eunice was ready to rehash her tragedy once more. “I went off to work and left her sitting right there in the living room, drinking her coffee and looking pretty as a picture. It don’t seem right that she’s gone.”

I raised my voice and spoke to Raye. “The police said somebody called about hearing a shot. Was that you?”

Raye shook her carrot head. “Lordy, no, I don’t hear a thing in the afternoon. I’m on disability, you know, so I have to rest. I lay right there on my couch with my TV stories, and the air conditioner runs so loud outside that window, I have to turn the sound up. I probably wouldn’t hear a fire truck less’n it come through the door.”

“I don’t know who else it’d be, either,” Eunice said with a sniff. “All my other neighbors work.”

I couldn’t think of another thing to ask, and I was feeling more than a bit queasy. Maybe it was the way Eunice was piling up sodden tissues right beside the potato chips and dip. I shoved away from the table. “We just wanted to tell you how sorry we both are. Don’t come with us to the door. We’ll find our way out.”

“Thank you for coming.” Eunice extended a plump, damp hand.

As we went through the screened door, we heard her confide to her neighbors, “That woman’s just like a sister to me. In and out of my house all the time. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”