Designated Daughters (5 page)

Practical-minded Minnie reached out and touched his sleeve. “I’ve already got the kids working on it, Dwight. They were all taking pictures and videos on their cell phones and they’ll forward those to you with a list of all the names they know as soon as you tell me where.”

I should have realized.

“God bless technology,” Dwight said.

A
unt Rachel was buried Friday morning next to Uncle Brack at Bethany, his family church down near Makely, amid his Morton kinfolks. Even though her death was officially declared a homicide, Dr. Singh had decided that the state could dispense with an autopsy. Not just because Aunt Rachel was Dwight’s aunt by marriage but because, in his experienced opinion as both a doctor and the county’s medical examiner, the immediate cause of death was a pillow held forcibly over her nose until she quit breathing.

Had it not been for those few drops of blood—“Sheer carelessness,” he’d said disapprovingly—her death would have gone down as a long-expected and natural ending.

“Who the hell kills a dying woman?” he’d asked angrily. “And how stupid was it to think no one would notice that pillow under her bed?”

He and Dwight had hypothesized that the killer must have acted on the spur of the moment and in such haste that he was too afraid of being seen to risk taking the pillow away.

(“
Or she
,” said my cynical mental pragmatist as he listened to them speculate.)

“Maybe he thought that no one would see it till after Aunt Rachel was moved and the bed was being stripped,” I said. “The pillow case could go out in a purse or pocket but by the time the pillow was found, a little blood in a hospital room might not have seemed important.”

“I doubt if he was thinking that far ahead,” said Dr. Singh, pausing to shake hands with Dr. Howell, Aunt Rachel’s one-time neighbor, as he was opening the door of the car parked a few feet on the other side of ours. It was a mid-range Toyota and not the Cadillac or Porsche most successful doctors of his age usually drove.

Between private practice and shrewd investments, Richard Howell could have retired to some tropical island by the time he was my age. Instead, he continued to head the burn unit at the hospital and was one of Dobbs’s most generous benefactors. In addition to the hospital wing and a state-of-the-art burn unit, he had established a couple of scholarships for physician assistants at Colleton Community College in memory of his nieces. He’s had just about every civic honor that could be bestowed on someone not in public office and had been Dobbs’s “Citizen of the Year” twice. His name is mentioned in the local papers almost every month. Gray haired, with slightly rounded shoulders and rimless half-glasses that kept slipping down his thin nose, he was now hailed by an elderly couple who had approached from the other side. I remembered that they had been in Aunt Rachel’s room, too. They moved with the careful attention the very old give to their fragile bodies.

The old woman called to Dwight. “I’m Rachel’s friend Kitty Byrd,” she said and fumbled in her purse for some papers. “They say you were asking for people to write down the names of everyone they saw in Rachel’s room Wednesday? I’m afraid I don’t know all the names, but I did the best I could.”

Family members were streaming from the church’s graveyard now and I was swept up by several of my brothers and their families.

I looked back and saw that Daddy and Seth had lingered at the grave with Jay-Jay and Sally and Aunt Rachel’s grandchildren. Sally’s husband Buzz had his arm around her and Jay-Jay’s daughters were clinging to him, too.

As is usual at the funeral of an older relative whose death had been expected, once we were away from the grave, the day began to take on the aspect of a family reunion rather than an occasion of real grief. True, there was anger and puzzlement over the way Aunt Rachel had died, but some were beginning to question whether it really was murder.

My oldest brother Robert stopped Dwight to say, “We was talking on the way down here, Dwight. You reckon a little blood vessel might’ve popped in her nose and that’s what killed her? Wouldn’t take much for somebody that sick.”

His wife Doris lit a cigarette and nodded. “That’s what I think, too. Almost every winter, my nose’ll bleed a little if I blow it too hard.”

“For the last time, Doris, it’s not winter and she won’t blowing her nose,” said Haywood’s wife Isabel. “And them cigarettes are probably what’s making your nose bleed.” The four of them had ridden over together and Bel won’t let anybody smoke in their new car. “Besides, how’d that pillow get up under the bed and where’d the pillow slip go?”

Doris shrugged and took another deep drag on her cigarette. Knowing she was going to have to put it out as soon as the others were ready to go, she looked around for something to delay the inevitable.

“At least Sally wore a black wig today,” she said, “but that red dress!”

“And them red heels!” said Isabel, taking the bait. “They had to be at least five inches high. It’s a wonder she didn’t sink down to her ankles walking out to the graveyard.”

Haywood was the only one of the four that had been at the hospital when Aunt Rachel died, and he, too, had a list for Dwight. “I reckon you can read my writing,” he said, handing over a crumpled piece of lined notebook paper. “You still gonna pour that slab tomorrow?”

“The foundation’s ready,” Dwight said. “The gravel truck’s supposed to come around nine o’clock and they’ll bring the concrete as soon as it’s level. I’d like to get it all done before lunch so I could go by work before Cal’s ball game.”

“I’ll put the pusher blade on the Cub,” Robert said. “Won’t take but just a few minutes if we use that. I’ll bring ’er over first thing and help y’all get the gravel smoothed out. I can’t get down and do trowel work like I used to, but pushing a mess of gravel around’s no trouble.”

While the men made their plans, Isabel leaned in close to me and said, “Now don’t you let Haywood sit down at your table tomorrow morning, Deb’rah. He don’t need to eat two breakfasts again. The doctor wants him to lose another ten pounds.”

“We’ll be finished long before nine,” I promised.

“Just put away all the biscuits. You know how he can’t pass even a cold one up if he sees them.”

I had to laugh at that. “Bel, do you know how long it’s been since I made biscuits for breakfast?”

Jingling the car keys in his hand as he turned to open the car door for me and looking almost as hopeful as Haywood, Dwight said, “You making biscuits for breakfast?”

On the way back to Dobbs, I drove while Dwight read through Haywood’s list. I was still hung up on that missing pillow case and now remembered how the bed was positioned when we got there with Lois. Patients can’t be restrained anymore, so hospice beds can be lowered almost to the floor so that it’s less likely someone will get hurt if they roll off the edge.

“I only noticed because Lois raised the bed,” I said.

“Noticed what, shug?” he asked without looking up from his notes.

“The pillow. I guess y’all didn’t think to really look for the pillow case?”

“We looked. Checked the laundry bins on that floor and all the wastebaskets. No lace-edged linen pillow slip. It’s probably on somebody’s bonfire by now.”

As I turned onto 401 and headed south, he read from the list the old woman had given him.

“
Teenage girl, yellow dress
,” he read. “Ring a bell?”

“Sounds like Jessica,” I said. The description fit what my brother Seth’s daughter had worn Wednesday.

“
Blue hair.
Sally’s was purple so would that be May or June?”

I nodded. “They dye it with Kool-Aid.”

Aunt Sister’s twin granddaughters now go to great lengths not to look like the identical twins they are. I still couldn’t tell them apart unless I was close enough to see the tiny scar near May’s right ear.

“What about
bald man
,
big red nose
?”

“That would be James Collins. I don’t know what he does, but he contributed to my last campaign. He was telling Minnie how he used to stop by Aunt Rachel’s vegetable stand as much for her talk as for her corn and tomatoes.”

“Pretty blonde teenager, blue shirt.”

“I think that’s Emma.” Zach’s daughter has turned into the family’s videographer, so her cell phone has extra memory and she probably got some good footage. “How’s Mayleen doing with all the pictures and videos?”

Red-haired, freckle-faced Mayleen Richards is one of Dwight’s top detectives. She had tried sitting at a desk after finishing a two-year computer course out at Colleton Community College, but she was farm bred, knew how to handle a gun, and liked physical work, preferably outdoors. After three years of trying to fit her awkward square nature into a comfortable round hole, she quit her job in the Research Triangle, took some law-enforcement classes, then badgered Sheriff Poole to hire her. What further enraged her family was that she finally stopped waiting for them to accept Mike Diaz, a naturalized citizen who owns a landscaping business, and married him this past Easter at a joyous wedding festival. Bo Poole walked her down the aisle and gave her away when all of her own people refused to come. Dwight was one of the ushers.

“She’s patching them together to make one continuous sequence,” he said. “Good thing Minnie thought to ask for them before they got deleted. The biggest help is that they’re time-stamped.” He pointed to a barbecue shack that was coming up on our right. “Want to grab lunch?”

I looked at my watch and shook my head. “I promised I’d get to court before one and it’s almost that now.”

“What time you think you’ll take a break? Three? I could send you up a sandwich.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “It won’t hurt me to skip a meal, but if you’ve got a can of tomato juice in your refrigerator, that might taste good.”

“You got it, honey.”

He put his hand on the back of my neck to give a soft squeeze and I decided that maybe I
would
make him biscuits for breakfast.

God, I love being married!

T
rue to my promise to Bel, breakfast was finished and done with next morning, and the leftover biscuits I’d made to go with the scrambled eggs, country ham, and redeye gravy were all stowed away before Haywood showed up in his truck, followed by Robert on the Farmall Cub. I learned how to drive on that small red tractor long before I was old enough for driver’s ed, and even back then it was held together with baling wire, sweat, and WD-40. It’ll probably still be running when I’m eighty.

By nine o’clock, the lower slope to the pond was crowded with pickups that carried rakes and shovels in the back and a few dogs, too. Cal’s dog Bandit knows all the farm dogs and soon they were frisking alongside the pond.

Daddy, Seth, Andrew, and Andrew’s son A.K. were there to help and offer advice, and so were Zach and his son Lee. Zach’s the next brother up from me, one of the “little twins,” which is what we say to distinguish them from Haywood and Herman, the “big twins.” Ostensibly, he had come to bring us a dozen brown eggs from his hens, but he and Lee didn’t seem in much of a hurry to leave either.

The twenty-by-twenty footing for the floor of the pond house had been dug and the perimeter poured the weekend before. With so many men here today, they could have dispensed with the tractor altogether, but Robert signaled to Cal, who eagerly climbed up onto his lap and followed his instructions as to how to lift and lower the pusher blade. After a few minutes’ practice, Robert began teaching him how to change gears and steer and I saw Cal’s earnest concentration. He’s tall for his age so his feet reached the pedals, but he had to come up off the seat to push down on the clutch hard enough. His face was a mixture of pride and trepidation when Robert got up and stood behind him on the tow bar to put him through the paces. By the time the gravel truck arrived and emptied its contents inside the footing, Cal seemed to have the hang of it and was soon maneuvering the blade to level the gravel.

I glanced at Dwight, who stood off to one side with the same mixture of pride and trepidation on his own face. Heavy equipment, even when it’s a little red Cub, is nothing to fool around with but Robert’s a careful teacher and he never let Cal take it out of low gear.

Daddy sat down on a stack of cinderblocks in the shade of a nearby tree with his hound dog Ladybelle, who was now too old and dignified to frisk with the other dogs, and I walked over to join them. There was laundry to wash and fold, beds that needed changing, bills I should be paying, not to mention some legal documents I needed to read, but hey—it’s not every day you get to watch your son drive a tractor for the first time.

Eventually, Robert had Cal steer the Cub off the gravel and park it alongside one of the trucks.

Cal jumped down from the tractor and ran over to us. “Hey, Mom! Granddaddy! Did y’all see me drive the tractor? Uncle Robert says I can maybe help him on the bean picker this fall. And he’s gonna show me how to hitch up the cultivators so we can plow our garden.”

No bigger than our garden is, an hour or two with hoes would be quicker and more efficient than using a tractor, but a hoe doesn’t have an engine or make a lot of noise, so I just smiled and said, “We’ll see.”

“Gonna make a farmer outen him yet,” Daddy said as Cal darted past dogs and men to reach Dwight, who tousled his hair with a big grin.

The cement truck arrived, cutting more deep ruts in the grass, and then the hard work began. Dwight pulled on heavy rubber boots, as did some of the others who had remembered to bring them, and they waded in with hoes and rakes. In less than twenty minutes, the concrete was spread level over the gravel and ready for the trowels. Again, those many hands made it go fast. They deliberately left the surface slightly rough and even sprinkled a little sand over it so that the finish wouldn’t dry so smooth that we’d be slipping and sliding every time it got wet.

A.K. and Lee brought buckets of water they’d dipped out of the pond and we rinsed our hands and the men washed off their boots and the hoes and rakes they’d used in the concrete.

Before the slab could set, Dwight used a stick to inscribe the date and we each pressed our hands into the gloppy mixture and signed our initials underneath.

“Bandit, too,” Cal said. “He’s part of the family.”

Daddy nodded approvingly. Dogs have always been a part of his life. Bandit’s only three but I knew the day would come when he would lie with Blue and my own beloved Tricksy in the pet section of our family graveyard alongside all the other dogs that have been fiercely loved and sadly mourned over the years.

I’d brought down a cooler full of soft drinks and everyone stopped to open a can and admire the morning’s work.

“Hey, Deb’rah,” Seth called to me, holding up his phone. “Sally’s been trying to get you all morning and she says you’re not answering your phone.”

“My phone’s up at the house,” I called back, which got me a roll of the eyes from Dwight. He questions why I even bother to own one when I leave it off or forget to carry it most of the time.

I rinsed my hands and dried them on the seat of my jeans, then went over to take Seth’s phone. “Hey, Sally. What’s up?”

“I need to talk to you,” my cousin said. “About whether or not somebody’s broke the law.”

“Sorry, honey,” I told her. “Judges aren’t allowed to give legal advice.”

“This isn’t advice. We just need your opinion about something.”

“We? We who? You and Jay-Jay?”

“No. Me and the Daughters.”

My mind blanked for a moment until I remembered that this was the name of her support group for caregivers. The Designated Daughters.

“Please?” Sally begged. “Mama was always so proud of you going to law school and getting to be a judge.”

Even though I knew this was a calculated use of her recent bereavement, I couldn’t say no.

“I’ll listen,” I said, “but I mean it, Sally. I can’t give any legal advice.”

“It’s not legal advice. I promise.”

Dwight had heard when Seth called to me and now he strode toward me. “Is that Sally?”

I nodded and he took the phone. “Sally? You reckon you or Jay-Jay could meet me over at the courthouse in about an hour? My deputy’s finished putting together a tape and we could use your help…What?…Well, I’ll ask her, but—”

He pushed the mute button and said, “She wants to know if you’ll come, too?”

I nodded. “But remember that we have to get back for Cal’s ball game.”

“Okay, Sally. See you in about an hour.”

We handed Seth’s phone back to him and, as the others were turning to start packing up and leave, Dwight said to Daddy, “We’ve got a tape of Wednesday. Could you and Miss Sister come back here tomorrow and watch it? Maybe tell us the names of some of the people we missed if it won’t be too hard on you?”

He nodded grimly. “Iffen it’ll help catch whoever did that to Rachel, then it won’t be too hard on me or Sister either. Just tell me what time.”

“
You’re
going to call her?” I asked, astonished. He almost never dials a number of his own volition.

“I’ll call her,” he said, and the look on his face warned me off making any smart-aleck comments.