Mama Stalks the Past (22 page)

“And Reeves, how did he get there to die?” Cliff asked.

Moody coughed. “I didn’t mention this at the trial because nobody asked, but …”

We waited. But when I glanced at Mama, I
was certain she knew exactly what Moody was going to say.

“The truth is,” Moody continued reluctantly, “Reeves died in Florida, in Raven’s house. She didn’t want to fool with burying him so she drove him home, here to Otis, then got me to help her take him out to the old house. She said the wild animals would eat him. She said nobody would ever find him.”

I shivered, remembering the sad, bloated body in the decaying house.

“That woman
is
mean, ain’t she?” Rodney murmured. My brother Will, whose mouth was full of lemon cream pie, nodded.

“After Miss Hannah died, I wanted to warn Nat to watch out ’cause Raven was after him.”

I snapped my fingers. “That night we saw you go to Nat’s front door!”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to believe that Raven had done anything to old Miss Hannah, so I turned around and went back home. When I asked Raven about Miss Hannah’s death, she admitted to it. She told me that since I’d helped her handle Reeves’s dead body, I’d just as well go all the way and help her kill Nat since I was a part of what she had already done!”

“So you waited for him in the dark that night?” I asked.

Moody’s narrow face looked regretful. “When
Nat came home, he was drunk. I hit him two times with that hammer, but then I smelled his blood and I couldn’t hit him again!”

I made a point of making eye contact with Moody. “Nat told us that the person who hit him smelled funny. What was he talking about?”

Moody turned his head slightly. He shuddered. “Chloroform. Raven used it on Miss Hannah to knock her out before she injected the arsenic. That night, she tried to put a rag soaked in chloroform over Nat’s mouth, but he fought so hard, she couldn’t do it. Like I said, after the second blow, I just dropped that hammer and ran. Raven figured I hadn’t killed Nat, so she picked up the hammer, hit him again, then followed me.” He shivered again. “After that night, I told her that I couldn’t help her anymore. Killing people ain’t my nature.”

Cliff cocked his head in Moody’s direction. “How did she poison Nat when all those people were around him in the Melody Bar?”

“I was in the club at the time. Nat was pretty drunk, he was spending money, buying drinks for everybody. I saw Raven slip inside, saw her stand next to him, then slip back through the crowd. A few minutes later, he fell to the floor.”

Mama frowned. “I can only imagine her fury when she discovered that after those two killings, she couldn’t get the land after all.”

“Raven
really
wanted to kill you, Miss Candi,” Moody said. “But she decided the only way for her to get the land was to
pretend
to be trying to kill you so that you’d be scared into giving it to Hannah’s kin. She was sure that sooner or later, you’d track her and give the property to her.”

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Moody sighed. “I hadn’t seen Raven since Nat died. She must have slipped in and out of town. But then she came to my house. She was so happy. You’d finally found her, she told me. Calvin Stokes had contacted her.”

“So you don’t know when she hooked up with Trudy Paige?” Mama asked.

Everybody at the table stared in Mama’s direction but it was Sheriff Abe who spoke. “When the hunters stumbled upon Trudy’s body we found a note in her pocket. She had been offered a hundred and fifty dollars to play a trick on Candi,” he told us. “A black bird was drawn as a signature on the note, the same bird we found on the note in Trudy’s wallet.”

Mama frowned. “That trick she got paid for was to lure me to the café and then back to the hospital.”

The sheriff nodded. “SLED’s forensic verified that Raven was with Trudy when she died,” he said. “That evidence is what the prosecutor used
to convince the jury that Raven murdered Trudy, too.”

Daddy leaned back in his chair and raised his arms, lacing his fingers so his hands were resting across the top of his head. “That land didn’t mean anything to Raven, but it meant everything to poor Reeves. I reckon when Raven told him that she was his mother’s niece, the poor boy thought if she had it, it would once again be in the Gordon family, where it belonged.”

“You don’t think Reeves knew that Raven was going to sell the land, do you?” Cliff asked.

“Heavens, no,” Mama replied.

“What a trap you set for Raven,” I told Mama. “I liked the way you didn’t put much food on the table. It took all I could do not to ask for more.”

“How did you know she’d come here for dinner?” Will asked. “I think if I was a poisoner, I would have been too
scared
to eat anybody else’s food.”

Mama laughed. “First, I knew that Raven had no idea I was on to her. And I knew she wanted that land bad enough to kill three times for it. To make sure she’d come, though, I told Calvin to make it clear that her coming to my house for the meal was an important part of me giving her the land. It was the best way to ensure that she’d show up,” Mama said.

“She was glad for the invitation,” Moody said.

“Fortunately, Raven had a good appetite,” Mama said.

“Everybody knows what a good cook you are, Miss Candi,” Moody said. “I told Raven it was a privilege to sit at your table.”

When everybody at the table enthusiastically agreed, Mama smiled. These were the kind of compliments that pleased her.

“Mama, what are you going to do with that land now?” Rodney asked. “It does belong to you.”

Mama crossed her arms under her bosom. “I’m giving it to Moody here,” she said, her eyes resting thoughtfully on him. “It’s Gordon land. His grandma was a Gordon. It’s rightfully his.”

To everybody’s surprise, however, Moody disagreed. “I don’t want it,” he said quickly and too loudly. “It’s tainted. I don’t want no tainted land!”

Daddy threw back his head and laughed. “I’m with you, boy. Land like that needs cleansing.”

Mama looked at Daddy, then studied Moody for a moment. “If you’re sure that you don’t want it, I’ll go with my first inclination. I’ll give it to the county, let them use it as a nature preserve, so
everybody
can enjoy it.”

Moody smiled for the second time. “That’s fine with me,” he said, satisfied. “I’ve got enough taxes to pay on Grandma’s piece of property in
Darien. Lord knows she’d turn over in her grave if she thought I’d sold that or lost it for taxes.”

Kilroy reached for another giant helping of lemon cream pie. “Miss Candi,” he said, “I don’t know what you’ve put in this food, but if it makes me sick, it’s worth every bit of the pain and the pumping of my belly.”

Daddy started rubbing his stomach, like he does when it’s more than satisfied. He reached over and touched Mama’s cheek. “Baby,” he said, his voice warm, tender, “you’ve outdone yourself on this one, you’ve
really
outdone yourself this time!”

And Mama smiled.

I
’d failed.

Frustration hung over my head like a halo. The task hadn’t been hard. My boss had given me a routine assignment, one that normally took me less than a week to do. “Run a paper trail, find this witness; our client swears he exists,” he’d said. Then he gave me a name, a description, and an approximate age.

When I didn’t come up with the person, my boss, one of Atlanta’s best defense lawyers, plea-bargained for his client. Then he boarded a plane from Hartsfield to take a European vacation.

I sat, staring at a diploma that I’d taken so much pride in earning, and thinking about the day I’d interviewed for the position of paralegal in Sidney Jacoby’s research department. I’d already had five such interviews in less prestigious law offices without a hint of a job offer.

Except for my urge to flick dandruff from his shoulders, I swiftly sized Sidney Jacoby up to be pretty cool. Sidney looked down at my résumé, then back up to meet my eyes. “Simone Covington,” he said, as if he liked the sound of my name.

I nodded.

“Graduated from Emory, I see.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Are you going on to law school?”

“No,” I admitted. “I like the legal research.”

Sidney laughed. “I like the research myself,” he admitted. “Did a lot of that when I was in law school.”

“You were a paralegal?” I asked, surprised.

“Yes,” he said, shaking his head, his dark brown eyes twinkling in a way that made me sure he could be warm with compassion at one moment and cold at the next. He leaned back in his seat, and crossed his fingers in front of him. “Nobody can tamper with the truth,” he continued. “If you dig deep enough, peel off all the layers of appearances, cut away through the lies, and strip through the absurdities, you’ll find the truth, Miss Covington.”

I smiled.

“The adrenaline you feel from the experience is priceless,” he said.

My eyes widened. I believed the man, believed he shared my passion for getting to the heart of things.

“I suppose we have a gift,” I heard myself say.

“Yes,” he agreed, as if I had said something profound. His eyes twinkled. “And don’t you ever take that gift for granted, Simone Covington.”

The next day, Sidney Jacoby telephoned me and made me a generous offer.

I’ve worked for Sidney for five years now, five
years in which he had never taken a vacation. Oh, he’d planned to get away, all right—every detail of a six-week tour of Europe from the time the plane leaves Hartsfield until it lands in London, he had planned. But he had never done it.

When I admitted that I’d come up empty-handed in my search for our witness, Sidney didn’t say much. But I was sure he was disappointed. I suppose that’s why I was thinking about the day he had interviewed me, remembering our mutual belief in digging until we got what we sought.

Still studying my diploma, I reached for a box of Godiva chocolates and my phone and called my mama. “Sidney’s gone on vacation,” I told her.

“Good, then you can take some time off, too—come home,” she replied.

“Just because Sidney is out of town doesn’t mean that there isn’t any work for me to do.”

“It’s midsummer. Sidney needed a vacation and you do, too.”

“When I told Sidney that I couldn’t come up with his witness,” I told Mama, “he stared like he saw something in me that he’d missed all these years—”

“Simone,” Mama interrupted. “You’re doing it again. Overreacting. It’s normal for people to take vacations in the summer and Sidney is normal. Besides, if that witness existed, you
would
have found him. Sidney and I both know that!”

I swallowed. “Maybe that’s why he didn’t push me to keep looking,” I said, my spirit lightening.

Mama’s voice was softer. “Forget the case. Take a week’s vacation and come home—I need you.”

“You want help to solve another murder?” I asked, and laughed.

Mama laughed, too, a light musical sound. “Not
this time,” she told me. “I’m scheduled for surgery first thing Monday morning.”

I sat up straight. “What kind of surgery?” I demanded. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing serious,” Mama replied. “I’m just having bunions removed from both my feet. I’d planned for James to go with me to the hospital—”

“Hospital?”

“It’s outpatient surgery, Simone,” Mama said. “Anyway, you’d be a big help to me. With Sidney out of the country for six weeks, you can spare a week of your vacation, can’t you?”

“Cliff—” I started to say.

“You and Cliff will have at least two weeks left to do something together. But, tell you what I’ll do,” Mama said, and I knew I was about to be bribed. “You come home on Friday, you and I will shop and cook on Saturday, then Cliff can drive here and have Sunday dinner with you, me, and your father.”

My boyfriend Cliff is a divorce lawyer who is working hard to become a partner in his firm. The thought of how much Cliff and I both loved Mama’s cooking whirled through my mind. “Cliff has been pretty busy with another one of his detachment clients,” I said.

“Divorces seem to be plentiful these days,” Mama commented.

I nodded although she couldn’t see me. “It’s worst when a client thinks her divorce lawyer should be at her disposal every minute of the day.”

Mama didn’t say anything.

“How long will you need me?” I asked again. My spirit rose at the thought of eating another one of my mama’s meals.

“A week,” she said.

“A week,” I repeated, thinking that Sidney would surely expect me to use
some
of my vacation time while he was gone, especially to take care of my mama.

My mama’s name is Grace, but she’s called Candi because of her candied sweet potato complexion.