Morning Glory (51 page)

Miss Beasley grew incensed at Will’s callousness and took Elly’s shoulder.

“Now you listen here, young woman. You didn’t do anything that any normal human being wouldn’t have done.”

“But I should’ve trusted him better!”

“So you experienced a moment of doubt. Any woman would have done the same.”

“But you didn’t!”

“Don’t be an imbecile, Eleanor. Of course I did.”

Surprise brought Elly’s head up. Though her eyes were streaming, she swiped at them with a sleeve. “You did?”

“Well, of course I did,” Gladys lied. “Who wouldn’t? Half of this town will. It means we shall only have to fight harder to prove they’re wrong.”

Miss Beasley’s staunchness suddenly put starch in Elly’s spine. She sniffed and mopped her eyes. “That durn husband of mine wouldn’t even tell me if he suspected anybody.” With the return of control, Elly began rationalizing. “Who could’ve done it, Miss Beasley? I got to find out somehow. That’s the only way I know to get Will back. Who should I start with?”

“How about Norris and Nat? They’ve been sitting on that park bench for years, watching Lula Peak point her bodice at anything in pants that came along the sidewalk. I’m sure they’d know down to the exact second how long it took her to follow Mr. Parker into the library every time he brought me eggs, and also how long it took her to come back out looking like a singed cat.”

“They would?”

“Of course they would.”

Elly digested the idea, then had one of her own. “And they’re in charge of the town guard, aren’t they?”

Miss Beasley’s face lit with excitement. “Prowling around town at night, listening for airplane engines, looking through binoculars and checking blackout curtains.”

Elly tossed her a hopeful glance, tinged with anticipation. “And chasing curfew violators off the streets?”

“Exactly!”

Elly started the engine. “Let’s go.”

They found Norris and Nat MacReady soaking up the late afternoon sun on their usual bench in the square. Each received a quart jar of pure gold Georgia honey in exchange for which they gladly revealed the startling details of an overheard conversation behind the library one night last January. They had been together so long they might have had a single brain at work between them, for what one began, the other finished.

“Norris and I,” Nat said, “were walking along Comfort Street and had turned up the alley behind the library—where the podocarpus bushes grow by the incinerator—”

“—when a high-heeled shoe sailed out and clunked me on the shoulder. Nat can testify to the fact—”

“’Cause he had a purple bruise there for well over four weeks.”

“Now, Nat,” chided Norris, “you might be stretching it a bit. I don’t think it was over three.”

Nat bristled. “Three! Your memory is failing, boy. It was there a full four, ‘cause if you’ll recall, I commented on it the day we—”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” interrupted Miss Beasley. “The conversation you overheard.”

“Oh, that. Well, first the shoe flew—”

“Then we heard young Parker beller loud enough to wake the entire town—”

“’If you’re in heat, Lula, go yowl beneath somebody else’s window!’ That’s exactly what he said, wasn’t it, Nat?”

“Sure was. Then the door slams and Miss Lula—”

“—madder than Cooter Brown—pounds on it and calls young Parker a name that you ladies are free to read from our logbook if you like but one that—”

“Logbook?”

“That’s right. But neither Norris nor myself would care to repeat it, would we, Norris?”

“Most certainly not, not in the company of ladies. Tell ‘em what happened next, Nat.”

“Well, then Miss Lula yelled that young Will’s—ahem—” Nat cleared his throat while searching for a genteel euphemism. But it was Norris who came up with it.

“—his, ahh,
male part”
—the words were whispered—“probably wouldn’t fit into Lula’s ear anyway.”

Almost simultaneously, Miss Beasley and Elly demanded, “Did you tell this to the sheriff?”

“The sheriff didn’t ask. Did he, Norris?”

“No, he didn’t.”

Which gave Elly the idea about running an ad in the newspaper. After all, running an ad had brought results before. Why wouldn’t it again? But Miss Beasley’s ankles were swollen, so Elly took her home before returning to the
Whitney Register
office to rid herself of another quart of honey as payment for the ad which stated simply that E. Parker, top of Rock Creek Road, would pay a reward for any information leading to the dropping of charges against her husband, William L. Parker, in the Lula Peak murder case. To her amazement, the editor, Michael Hanley, didn’t bat an eye, only thanked her for the honey and wished her luck, ending, “That’s a fine young man you married there, Mizz Parker. Went off and fought like a man instead of runnin’ his finger through a buzzsaw like some in this town.”

Which sparked the memory of Harley Overmire’s long-ago antagonism toward Will and made Elly wonder briefly if it were worth mentioning to either Reece Goodloe or Robert Collins. But she hadn’t time to dwell on it, for from the newspaper office Elly proceeded directly to the office of Pride Real Estate, where she unceremoniously slapped a heavy nickel skeleton key on the counter, followed by yet another
quart of honey and announced to Hazel Pride, “I want to list some property.” Hazel Pride’s husband was fighting “somewhere in the south of France” and had left her to manage the paper while he was gone. She had typeset every word about Will Parker’s heroism and his Purple Heart, so greeted Elly affably and said it was a shame about Mr. Parker, and if there was anything Hazel could do, just let her know. After all, Will Parker was a veteran with a Purple Heart, and no veteran who’d been through so much should be treated the way he’d been. Would Eleanor care to ride in Hazel’s car out to the house?

Elly declined, following Hazel in her own car through the chill of a late-winter afternoon. The morning glory vines were dry and leafless around the front door, woven into a thick mesh of neglected growth. The grass was the color of twine. The two cars flattened it while pulling around to the back door.

Of all the things Elly had done that day, none was as difficult as entering that dreary house with Hazel Pride, walking into the murky shadows behind those hated green shades, past the spot in the front parlor where she’d prayed, past the corner where her grandmother had died on a hard kitchen chair, past the bedroom where her mother had gone slowly insane, smelling the dry bat droppings from the attic, mixed with dust and mildew and bad memories. It was hard, but Elly did it. Not just because she needed the money to pay Robert Collins but because she’d come so far in one day she figured she might as well go the rest of the way. Also, she knew it would please Will.

In the parlor she snapped up the shades, one after the other, letting them whirl and flap on their surprisingly tensile springs. The sunset poured in, revealing nothing more frightening than dust motes swimming through the stale air of an abandoned house with mouse leavings on the linoleum floor.

“Two thousand, three hundred,” Hazel Pride announced, tapping her tablet. “Top listing price, considering the work that would be necessary to make the place livable again.”

Twenty-three hundred dollars would more than pay Collins’ bill, Elly figured, and leave extra for the rewards she
hoped to pay. She insisted on signing the paper there, inside the house, so that when she walked out she’d be free of it forever.

And she was. As she climbed back into Will’s car and drove through the hub-high grass of the deep twilit yard to the road, she felt relieved, absolved.

She thought about the day, the fears she had put to rout simply by attacking them head-on. She had driven a car clear to Calhoun for the first time, had confronted a town that seemed no longer intimidating but supportive, had set into motion the machinery of justice and had shed the ghosts of her past.

She was tired. So tired she wanted to pull the car into the next field-access road and drop off till morning.

But Will was still in jail and every minute there must seem like a year to him. So she drove clear back to Calhoun to find Sheriff Goodloe, give him hell about his slipshod methods of investigation and put him onto Norris and Nat MacReady’s logbook. She forgot, however, to mention Harley Overmire.

Will lay on his bunk in a cocoon of misery. From up the corridor came the chiming reverberations of a metal door opening and closing. He remained inert, staring at the wall. Footsteps came closer. One pair, two pair. Leather shoes on concrete, a familiar sound, too familiar.

“Parker?” It was the voice of Deputy Hess. “Your lawyer’s here.”

Will started. “My
lawyer
?” His head came off the pillow and he craned his neck around.

With young Hess stood an older man with flyaway gray hair and tanned skin; slightly stooped, dressed in a brown suit and a rumpled white shirt with a tie knotted at half-mast. “Your wife came to see me, asked me to come have a talk with you.”

Will swung onto the edge of his bunk. “My wife?”

“And Gladys Beasley.” The guard unlocked the door and the lawyer ambled inside, extending a hand. “Name’s Bob Collins.” He waited, peering at Will with gray eyes that appeared perennially amused, as if accustomed to introducing himself to surprised inmates.

“Will Parker.” Rising, accepting the handshake, Will thought,
She not only came to Calhoun, she hired a lawyer, too?

But what kind of lawyer? His suit looked as if it had been washed in a washing machine; his shirt looked as if it hadn’t. His hair stood on end like a dandelion gone to seed, an occasional tuft lifted above the rest as if ready to fly at the smallest puff of wind. He was not only disheveled, but moved with a tired slowness that made Will wonder if he’d suddenly rusted up halfway onto his chair. There he hung, backside pointed in the right direction while Will counted the seconds—one, two, three—and finally the old duffer sat, expelling a breath and clasping one bony knee with an equally bony hand. When he finally spoke, his jocular tone of voice was one suited to a speech honoring the outgoing president of the lady’s horticultural society. “I went to school with Gladys Beasley. There was a question for a while about which of us would be named valedictorian. It was always my opinion they should have named two that year.” He chuckled as if to himself, resting a finger along his jaw. “Gladys Beasley, after all these years—can you beat that?” He glanced up with a hint of devilment in his eyes. “She was a damned fine-lookin’ woman. And smart, too. Only one in the whole class who could discuss anything more intelligent than the length of hems and the height of heels. Used to scare the daylights out of me, she was so bright. Always wanted to ask her on a date, can’t really say why I never did.”

Will sat befuddled, wondering why Gladys Beasley would recommend a creaky old fart like this. In his dotage, smelling like the inside of a mummy’s wrappings, and with a wandering, maundering mind. Will wondered if he might be better off defending himself.

But just when Will’s opinions crystallized, Collins threw him a curveball.

“So, Will Parker, did you kill Lula Peak or not?”

Will fixed his brown eyes on Collins’ faded gray ones and replied unequivocally, “No, sir.”

Collins nodded thrice almost imperceptibly, studied Will silently for a full fifteen seconds before asking, “You got any idea who did?”

“Nossir.”

Again came the lengthy silence that gave the impression
rusty machinery needed oiling inside Collins’ scruffy head. But when he spoke, Will was somehow relieved. “Then we have work to do. The arraignment is set for tomorrow.”

Collins took the case, promising to apply pressure to every possible quarter in an effort to get it through the courts fast. He was very good, he said, at applying pressure. Will didn’t believe him. Yet in spite of his constant half-rumpled appearance and his surface slowness—he had a habit of tugging an earlobe, crossing his arms and pausing as if confused—he was bright, thorough, and totally unimpressed with the prosecution’s case. Furthermore, he was convinced that he could gain a jury’s sympathy by implying that the law had pounced on Will primarily because of his prison record when it was his war record they ought to bear in mind. He gave little credence to the note bearing Will’s initials, even believed it might prove helpful since it would take one all-fired gullible fool to believe it wasn’t a plant.

The arraignment was quick and predictable: the court refused bail due to Will’s past record. But, true to his word, Collins arranged for a grand jury hearing within a week. Witnesses willing to testify for Will began piling up, but, as is the case with grand juries, the accused was not allowed counsel in the hearing room, thus the Solicitor General’s evidence weighed more heavily than it would when rebutted: the grand jury handed down a true bill.

Disappointment crushed Will. He was removed from the hearing room through the back halls which led directly to the jail, so he had no chance to learn if Elly was waiting somewhere in the courthouse for word about the jury’s decision. He had foolishly hoped for a glimpse of her, had fantasized about her approaching him with hands outstretched, saying, It’s all right, Will, let’s forgive and forget and put it behind us.

Instead he returned to his dismal cell to waste away more of his life, to wonder what would happen to him next, and if the shambling old attorney sent to him by Elly and Miss Beasley was senile after all. The confined space seemed suddenly claustrophobic, so he sat sideways on his bunk, his back pressed to the cold concrete blocks, and stared straight
through the bars—the longest view—and thought of Texas, broad and flat, with wind blowing through the pungent sage, with an immense blue sky that turned hot pink and purple and yellow at sunset, with Indian paintbrush setting the plains afire just before the sun sank and stars appeared like gems on blue satin.

But imagination could rescue him only temporarily. In time he rolled onto his side and shut his eyes, swallowing hard. He’d lost again, and he hadn’t seen Elly. God, how he needed to see her, how he’d banked on it. He didn’t know which hurt worse, the fact that she hadn’t been there, or that he’d lost the first round in court. But he’d hurt her so badly he’d been afraid to send word through Deputy Hess, afraid he didn’t deserve her anymore, afraid that even if he called, she wouldn’t come.