Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows (14 page)

“Tell Cliff I’ll have breakfast on the table at
nine
o’clock,” Mama replied, her voice soft but resolute. Then she hung up the telephone.

S
aturday evening. The sun hung low in the sky, and the air was heavy with humidity. Silence hung over us like a long, dark cloud.

Mama seemed thoughtful as we drove the twenty miles through the pine tree farm to Avondale.

It had been hard for me to convince Cliff that Mama and I would be safe driving to Avondale alone. If he had, like he’d insisted, taken the drive with us, Mama might have suspected that I’d told him about the attempts on our lives. As it was, she knew about my concerned phone call to Abe—he’d called both me and Mama to report that he’d talked to Leman Moody and that everything would be okay. Mama may not have minded me letting Abe know about our close calls, but she wouldn’t have been happy if Cliff or my father started looking after us like guardian angels.

Anyway, I started to put a Sade CD into the car’s player, but then I glanced at Mama and decided against it. She looked as if something serious was going on inside her head. I knew not to interfere whenever Mama looked so reflective. It would have been useless anyway.

The truth was, I was sulking. I wasn’t happy that Mama seemed so interested in the problems of Otis and so disinterested in her own party. I really wanted to pull out all the stops so that it would be an anniversary both she and my father would always remember. Yet she didn’t seem to care much about it one way or the other.

When we arrived at the Avondale Inn, Mama motioned me to park. “I don’t want to get out,” she told me, glancing down at her watch. “I just want to sit here and try to figure out what really happened to poor Ruby.”

I pulled the car onto the grass under a spreading live oak and turned off the ignition. I rolled down the window. Crickets sang; the salty smell of french fried potatoes filled the air. Directly across the street was the McDonald’s where we’d had our first meeting with Leman Moody.

I tried to visualize Ruby Spikes, upset, unwanted, alone. And with a wad of money in her purse. So much money, I thought. So little happiness.

We sat until I began fidgeting—I was rapidly getting bored. Mama must have noticed, because she said, “All right, Simone, let’s drive back to Otis.”

At that moment, Leman Moody, Inez Moore, and a man that I assumed was Inez’s boyfriend stepped out of the McDonald’s across the street. At first they seemed preoccupied with their conversation, but then Leman spotted us. As he spoke to them, he pointed to us.

“I think,” I told Mama, uneasy that I was in the same vicinity as Leman Moody, “that we’ll make the trip home faster than we made it to Avondale!” The twenty-mile return trip to Otis took us only fifteen minutes.

“I’ve got news,” was the announcement that Abe hit us with when we got home. He’d been there waiting. “It’s official … Ruby Spikes did
not
commit suicide. The medical examiner hasn’t done Betty Jo’s autopsy yet, but his report on Ruby shows that she had minute hemorrhages in her eyelids and throat. She was dead
before
she was shot. Somebody suffocated her, then shot her to make it look like she killed herself. There wasn’t any gunpowder on her hands. And the paper that I told you we found in her hand was a piece of a twenty-dollar bill. It looks like somebody killed her for the money that we can’t account for,” Abe said so fast, he almost didn’t take a breath. He was really excited.

Mama started to say something, but Abe held up his hand. “There’s more. Rick came up with the idea that the dates and phone numbers that you suggested Jeff Golick pull together for me might put me
onto Charles Parker. And he was right. No sooner did I have that list in my hands than I realized that I was onto something. You’ll see, Candi, Ruby stayed at the Avondale Inn eight times during the past six months. About three months ago she started making calls to a Savannah number.”

Mama’s eyes were glued to the list of neatly typed names and numbers that Abe had handed her.

“That number there in Savannah is for a real estate office,” Abe said. “The Charles Parker Real Estate Office.”

“Ruby was buying property?” I asked.

“I talked to Parker over the phone,” Abe said as Mama handed him back the typed list. “He told me he didn’t even know that Ruby was dead. He claims the last time he talked with Ruby was four weeks ago.”

“Ruby had so many secrets,” Mama murmured.

“Parker is coming to my office tomorrow morning around ten,” Abe said. His blue eyes blazed with the excitement of finding Charles Parker. “He promised to bring information that will prove his relationship with Ruby was strictly a business one. Still, I ain’t taking no chances. I called my buddy, Savannah’s chief of police, Adams. He’s doing a rundown on Parker for me. He’s also having one of his men keep an eye on him for me. If Parker doesn’t show up tomorrow morning at ten o’clock here in Otis like he promised, Adams will have him picked up for questioning.”

“I’d like to meet Charles Parker,” Mama said.

The smell of honey-baked ham told me that Mama had already gotten Sunday dinner well on its way when, at eight-thirty the next morning, I shuffled out of my bedroom into the kitchen.

“Breakfast is light,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. Then she motioned me toward toast, bacon, juice, and peaches. “I’ll poach you an egg whenever you’re ready.”

“I’m ready,” I said, pouring a cup of hazelnut coffee. A few minutes later my father and Cliff joined us.

Mama served the poached eggs, then looked around her kitchen. Satisfied that everything was in order, she finally joined us at the table.

“Would you believe,” I said, my fork in the air, “that this Parker is a real estate broker? Ruby must have been buying property. She couldn’t be selling it: she didn’t own any.”

“Simone and I are going to be at Abe’s office when he talks to this Charles Parker,” Mama told my father. “But I’ll finish preparing dinner before we leave.”

“Miss Candi, may I ask what’s for supper?” Cliff asked, his glance lingering on the pots on Mama’s stove.

“I’ve baked a ham.”

“I smell it,” he said.

“I’ve made okra and tomatoes and field peas and rice. I’ve got potatoes boiling to make salad, and”—Mama pointed to a counter on the other side of her
stove—“I’ve got a pan of bread rising for homemade yeast rolls.”

“You kneaded bread this morning?” I asked, wondering what time she had gotten out of bed to have all that cooking done.

“No, Simone. I keep dough in the freezer. It’s easy to pull it out. It will have risen nicely by the time we get back home from Abe’s office.”

Cliff’s eyes danced excitedly. “I’ll watch that bread every second that you’re gone,” he teased. But it was a statement that I suspected had more truth in it than jest.

Charles Parker was tall, thin. He had a yellow complexion, the color of summer squash. His salt-and-pepper hair was tastefully trimmed. His hands were slender, his fingers manicured. He wore a tailored pin-striped navy blue suit, a perfectly ironed white shirt, and a bright red tie. A gold-plated tie pin shone on it. His shoes gleamed. He smiled graciously. He reminded me of an undertaker.

Abe introduced us, then told Parker that we were close friends of Ruby’s. For a second, Parker looked doubtful, but then the lines in his face smoothed. He accepted Abe’s offer of a seat. “Ruby first called me about three months ago,” he told us. “She’d seen a piece of property I’d advertised in the Savannah Sunday paper. We made arrangements. She came to my office.” He opened a manila envelope and pulled out a signed contract. I had a momentary vision of
Ruby Spikes contemplating the purchase of a house without her husband’s knowledge, and wondered just how angry that might have made Herman Spikes.

“Ruby was a good businesswoman,” Mama commented.

Charles Parker’s manner, which up to now had been detached and coolly professional, softened. “I admired her financial sense,” he agreed. “I, of course, guided her. She paid thirty-four thousand dollars toward the purchase of a house. Because of the need of repairs, she struck a good bargain.

“The property was on a one-acre tract in Bartow,” Parker continued, showing us a color photograph of a small brick house. “The old woman that owned this house died about six months ago. Her children live up north. They wanted to sell the place quickly, so even though they wanted seventy-five thousand for it, when Ruby offered sixty thousand, they accepted.”

Abe was still looking through the papers Parker had handed to him. “Why this check for five thousand dollars?” he asked.

“Ruby asked me to see to the repairs,” Parker replied. “That’s not usually a part of my duties, but she insisted she had no other resource. The check she gave me paid for new plumbing and wiring.”

Abe seemed satisfied that Charles Parker’s story was legitimate. “Do you have an idea who might have wanted to kill Ruby?” he asked.

Charles Parker looked Abe in the eyes without blinking. “I do not,” he said. “My only dealings with Ruby Spikes were pure business.”

“Ruby Spikes’s death is an official murder investigation,” Abe told Parker.

Charles Parker’s face clouded briefly. “I understand,” was his soft reply. I could see that he was shaken by Abe’s news.

“I’ll be getting back with you,” Abe continued.

“I’ll make myself available,” Parker answered as he stood to leave. “Those papers,” he continued, “are copies. They’re yours to keep. I have the originals in safekeeping.”

Charles Parker turned to Mama, looked down at her with genuine interest, and then bowed stiffly. “I’m sorry about Ruby Spikes’s untimely death,” he said stoically as if he was giving Mama his condolences. Then his voice changed. I swear it even sounded a bit sad. “It was a nice little house. Ruby seemed truly happy with her purchase.”

Mama didn’t say anything but I could tell from the way she looked at Charles Parker that she believed his assessment.

“Well, Candi,” Abe said once Charles Parker was out of his office, “what do you think about all this?”

“I suppose you know for sure that Parker is telling the truth about buying the house? And that the five thousand dollars was for repairs, not for some kind of blackmail payments?”

“I got a call this morning from Chief Adams, in
Savannah. He assured me that Parker’s establishment is legitimate, all right.”

Mama allowed a long silence. “Let’s go,” she murmured to me, her eyes once again betraying frustration.

T
hirty minutes after we left the sheriff’s office, we pulled off onto a dirt road that wove through a pecan orchard. We drove until the main road was out of sight, leaving clouds of dust. Finally we arrived at a cinder-block house with a rusted tin roof. Chickens pecked in the dirt of the front yard. I beeped the horn. Herman Spikes came through his front door.

Now, I’d heard so much about Herman Spikes that I was almost bowled over when I finally saw the man. While he was about as tall as me, his body was irregularly proportioned, with short arms, a very long torso, and a neck the size of a tree stump. He had a scraggly beard that needed to be trimmed. He wore glasses—thick lenses with a heavy plastic frame. His hair was uncombed and badly in need of a cut. He had on a pair of khaki pants and a yellow shirt that looked as if they hadn’t been washed in
weeks. And he was drunk. When he stumbled down the wooden steps of his front porch toward us, I thought he was going to fall flat on his face, but he somehow recovered his balance and came to a stop in front of my car.