Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle (21 page)

Who would’ve thought that Lieutenant Peavey would be more receptive to my explanations than Sam had been? Sam had sat beside me in front of the lieutenant’s desk, acting more like my hired lawyer than my husband. In fact, there had been a decided chill radiating from him aimed in my direction.

In response to Lieutenant Peavey’s questions, instead of “Mrs. Murdoch did not. . . ,” Sam would say, “Mrs. Murdoch
says
she did not . . . ,” and so forth. Finally, I decided to answer for myself, realizing that my attorney did not have his whole heart invested in the interview, and I told the lieutenant everything. And I mean everything: that I’d invested with Richard Stroud for charitable reasons, how I’d lost the money and never been repaid, why I had not sued to get it back, how checks had been stolen from the center of my checkbook because I stopped to get gas—he got a little confused at that, so I had to explain how I’d not been able to find the Texaco card and had dumped everything out, obviously failing to replace the checkbook, so that it had been left lying in plain sight on the car seat for Richard Stroud to come along and find. I told him that obviously Richard had copies of my signature on investment papers during our earlier dealings, so he had something to go by when he forged my checks more recently.

“And, Lieutenant Peavey,” I summed up, “I assure you that I have not seen Richard Stroud since we were both at a certain party given by Mrs. Allen on the same day he was arrested some few years ago. And furthermore, I’ve had no contact with him at any point in time since then. I didn’t know he was out of prison, I didn’t know he was back in town, I don’t know what he was doing in Miss Petty’s toolshed, and I don’t know why he died there.” I gave a firm nod of summation, then added, “Or why he was killed there, as the case may be.”

Sam gave me a sharp glance as Lieutenant Peavey asked, “Why do you say
killed
?”

The whole interview was beginning to get on my nerves. “Because,” I said, “I don’t know
how
he died, and because, as Lillian says, it’s not exactly a natural death when you do it in a toolshed.”

“Well,” Lieutenant Peavey said, gathering up papers and stacking them neatly before putting them aside. “As it happens, it was a natural death in an unnatural place. The autopsy confirmed that he had a heart attack, which was probably intensified by hypothermia. That information is being released today.”

I had the wild notion of nudging Sam and saying, “At least you can’t lay that at my doorstep.” But I didn’t. I was afraid to touch him, for he was still engulfed in a coldness that kept him stiff and unsmiling.

After signing some papers that transcribed my answers to Lieutenant Peavey’s questions, Sam and I walked out to the car. As gentlemanly as ever, he helped me into the front seat, then drove home in silence. And the longer it went on, the more anger I could feel welling up in me. I wanted to shout, “Lieutenant Peavey, who never believes
anybody,
believes me. Why can’t you?”

But again, I didn’t. Because the fact of the matter was, I couldn’t figure out why Sam was so put out with me. So I had thrown away a hundred thousand dollars. I hadn’t, by any means, done it intentionally, for it had been a goodwill gesture toward Helen, the kind of gesture I knew Sam had made to other people under different circumstances. He’d just been smart enough to distinguish well-intentioned people from crooks.

Or was he mad at me for not first discussing it with him? Or at least with Binkie? Yet he was always telling me that it was my money and that I had a say in how it was invested or spent. But when, on my own, I took a step—a wrong one, as it turned out—he closed up shop and would hardly look at me.

Or could it be, I suddenly thought as he turned the car into our driveway, that he suspected something had been going on between Richard and me? I almost laughed aloud—a decidedly unhelpful action, given his current state of mind if I’d actually done it.

Surely he couldn’t think that. For one thing, Richard was, or had been, some few years younger than I was, and as far as I had known, he’d been happy with Helen and had never strayed—certainly not in my direction. There’d never been a smidgen of gossip about him. Well, except for his various business ventures, the last of which landed him in jail. There’d been plenty of gossip about that, nearly killing Helen with shame in the process.

No, I couldn’t figure out why Sam was so distant and so silent and so hurt. I had wounded him deeply, that was plain, but I didn’t even know what to apologize for. So I decided to issue a blanket apology and hope it would cover everything.

As he pulled out the keys and started to open the car door, I said, “Sam, I’m sorry. I am sorry for anything and everything I’ve done or said or even thought, if any of it hurt you. You know I’d never deliberately and with malice aforethought do anything to upset you, so I ask you to forgive me for whatever it is that has cut me off from you.” I began to choke up, for he didn’t immediately respond. “Please say you forgive me, or at least tell me what’s wrong so I can correct it.”

I didn’t think he was going to answer, yet he stayed in the car and finally said, “You were awfully eager to go to Thurlow’s the other night.”

“Thurlow’s?” I looked up with a frown. “When?”

“The night they found Stroud’s body.”

“Why, Sam, I was worried about Lloyd. I was going to look for him, but you went instead.”

“Yes, but that didn’t stop you. You went anyway, and what were you doing with Thurlow that kept you away for so long?”

“Wait a minute!” I said, thoroughly confused by this new tack and more than a little agitated by it. “Wait just a minute. Is this about Richard Stroud or Thurlow Jones?”

“Take your pick.” He slid out of the car, stood by the door for a moment, then leaned down and said, “I think we need some thinking time. I’ll be staying over at my house for a few days.” And he closed the door and walked off through the backyard toward his house, leaving me sitting alone in the car, dazed by such an unexpected turn of events.

Stunned, I sat watching as he walked around patches of snow, going farther and farther away until he brushed past overgrown forsythia bushes to unlatch the gate that led out of the backyard onto the sidewalk. I watched his black overcoat grow smaller as he continued on his way until he turned a corner and was gone.

A wave of desolation filled the car, almost suffocating in its intensity. My head slumped down to my chest and a ringing in my head blocked out every thought except one: Sam had left me. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t. I wanted to scream, but wouldn’t—somebody might hear me. I wanted to run after him, beg him, plead with him, but I couldn’t move.

And that reminded me of what I’d heard about Lois Iverson when her husband told her he wanted a divorce so he could marry his secretary. Everybody was talking about it—the word was that Lois cried and pleaded and begged him not to do it, finally falling to her knees and throwing her arms around his hairy legs—he’d been in tennis shorts when he made his announcement—and threatening suicide if he left.

Well, he went ahead and left, and she’s still alive, but it was the consensus of both the book club and the garden club that none of us would degrade ourselves in such a shameful fashion, and that if she wanted to threaten anything, it should’ve been murder, not suicide, neither of which would’ve been carried out, but the threat of the former might’ve made him stop and think.

Mildred had leaned over to me and said, “There’s not a man alive I’d kill myself over.” Then she’d gotten up and given the report on our last flower show, while I thought admiringly of what Mildred had done when Horace had strayed—she’d given the biggest party the town had ever seen.

And still I sat, feeling the cold seeping in along with the desolation. I was about to freeze but was unable to move as I sat there like a statue in an unheated car. There was a hole in the center of my chest, and what had once been there seemed to be lodged now in my throat. I might never be able to speak again.

I saw Lillian look out the kitchen window, then in a few minutes she opened the door and came to the car, pulling a sweater on as she came. Frowning, she looked in the car window at me, then all around the yard. Finally, she opened the door and slid under the wheel in Sam’s seat.

“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “What you settin’ out here freezin’ to death for? Where’s Mr. Sam?”

“Gone,” I croaked, loosening whatever it was that had clogged up my throat. “Oh, Lillian, he’s left me.”

“Uh-uh, not Mr. Sam. Where’d he go, anyway?”

“His house. So he could think. For several days, he said. Oh, Lillian, he’s so mad at me, and I don’t know why. Not exactly, anyway. He may not ever be back.”

Lillian didn’t say a word, just sat there watching me sob and thinking over the situation.

Then out it came. “This is James’s fault,” she said, “and nobody else’s.”

“James? What’s he got to do with it?”

“He always sayin’ Mr. Sam b’long in his own house, always sayin’ he miss cookin’ for him, always tellin’ him the house fallin’ apart with nobody in it. An’ all that sorry thing want is to keep his job, so he won’t have to go lookin’ for another one and have to do some work for a change.”

“Why, Lillian, Sam has no plans to let him go. How in the world would what James thinks make Sam leave me?”

“’Cause he
there
! You think any man leave a good home if he don’t have no place to go? No, ma’am, they always have somewhere to go ’fore they up and leave. An’ that’s what James been doin’, always sayin’ how he miss havin’
life
in the house. I bet he down there dancin’ a jig right now ’cause Mr. Sam back where he b’long.”

“Well, they Lord,” I said, leaning my head back against the headrest. “You’d think Richard and Thurlow would be enough. Don’t tell me I have to put up with James too.”

Lillian walked me into the house, where we were met with a silence so unusual that I wondered if everybody else had left me too. I eased into a chair at the table. “It’s so quiet.”

“Yes’m, Mr. Pickens, he gone; the chil’ren still in school; an’ the rest of ’em’s in there sleepin’. An’ ’bout time too—them babies been cryin’ an’ cryin’. I tell Miss Etta Mae they got the colic an’ we oughta give ’em a sugar tit, but she say the doctor don’t want’em to have such as that. But a little sugar an’ a drop of bourbon never hurt nobody.”

I was too done in to worry about giving whiskey to a baby. In fact, if I’d been a drinking woman, I might’ve had a drop or two myself. As it was, I warmed my hands around a cup of hot chocolate that Lillian had set before me and tried to think what I could do to put things right.

“What am I going to tell Hazel Marie and Lloyd?” I whimpered as Lillian sat at the table, her arms propped in front of her. “To say nothing of everybody else. How does a woman explain being left high and dry?”

“You don’t tell ’em nothin’. Mr. Sam, he always over at his house anyway, doin’ whatever he do, an’ everybody here so busy takin’ care of babies, they won’t even notice he gone. An’ by the time they do, he be back home, an’ James can moan an’ groan all he want to.”

“It’s more than James, Lillian, although I understand what you’re saying. Sam might’ve thought twice if he’d had only a motel room to go to.” I rubbed my forehead and told her all the ins and outs of my dealings with Richard Stroud, his theft of both money and checks, my sworn statement to Lieutenant Peavey, which he believed but Sam didn’t, and having Thurlow Jones thrown in my face as a final straw.

In fact, as I recounted the highlights of the day to her, I got so steamed up that the emptiness in my soul suddenly filled with outrage at the unfairness of it all. “He didn’t even let me explain. I mean I did explain, because he was sitting right there listening to it, but it didn’t mean a thing to him. He wouldn’t even talk to me, Lillian. Just got out of the car and left.” By that time I was so hot that I took off my coat and began to pace the kitchen floor. “Let me tell you something. Wesley Lloyd Springer thought he could treat me like a doormat and, well, actually he did. But I’ve turned the tables on him if he but knew it. When I look back, Lillian, I can hardly believe what I put up with with that man. I don’t know another woman who would’ve tolerated being treated as if she weren’t worth noticing, much less listened to or talked to or even looked at. And when I found out what he’d been doing all those years, I promised myself I’d never let a man treat me like that again.”

I stopped and waited for her to respond, expecting to be told I should calm down and wait docilely until Sam worked out his problem and came home.

“Well,” she finally said, heaving herself up from the table, “maybe it just as well Mr. Sam not here so he don’t have to listen to all that. But I think it good you get it all out with jus’ me to hear. Mr. Sam, he a fair man, so he’ll think it over for a while, an’ by that time you be missin’ him an’ he be missin’ you, an’ won’t nobody be mad at nobody.”