Peggy Holloway - Judith McCain 02 - Portrait on Wicker (12 page)

Then I told him the worse,
about the things found in Calvin Lessiter’s house and the story they told. He was quiet for awhile and stared off into space. He looked angry.

Finally he said,
“I should have killed that bastard, as soon as you told me what he did to you over ten years ago.”

“And ended up in jail?
” I said.

“At least it would have saved some othe
r young girls the trauma they went through. No telling how many girls went through hell, including your own sister.”

“Twenty seven
.”

“What?”

“There were twenty seven girls, counting myself, that we know of. He kept all their school notebooks.”

“That makes me want to puke.
I wish I could get my hands around his neck.”

“You’re too late,” John said as he stepped out onto the porch.
“They just found his body, floating in the Mississippi River, with a bullet hole in his head.”

Everyone else joined us then.
The judge looked at her watch.

“I’m getting too old for these late nights,” she said, “It’s already after one.
Bill, will you call me when you get back from the autopsy?”

“Will do,” he said.
“We’re not going to be able to keep this quiet, judge.”

She blew
out a long breath, “I know. We’re going to have to be careful though. Try to make sure you and Sandy are assigned to this case. Then maybe we can keep it under control.”

After everyone either left or had gone to bed, Ben and I sat and talked a long time.

“I know this isn’t the best timing, Judith, but, you being a psychologist, can you tell me what has been going on between us?

“I waited until yo
u reached eighteen, before I even had hopes of you wanting a committed relationship with me. Then when you got to college I understood that you wanted to concentrate on getting your degrees.

“I backed off and waited for you to make the first move.
When you got your license and opened you office, you called me. Your office was in one of those cottages next to Rosewood Hospital in Houston.

“It was like a little house and you invited me to come see you there.
We ended up spending the night in the cottage.”

He chuckled, “You told Mimi you had work to do and may be there all night.
But Mimi wasn’t fooled. She knew I was in town. She had me over for one of her delicious meals. When I came over the next day, she actually winked at me, did you know that? It was like she and I shared a secret.”

He didn’t say anything else for some time
but sat there staring at nothing and I wondered if he was pausing for me to explain. I knew I couldn’t.

When he finally turned to face me, it broke m
y heart. He had tears in his eyes.

“I had finally let myself hope, Judith.
I thought we were building a wonderful relationship. Then you dashed all my hopes by telling me you wanted us to be friends.”

“I’m so sorry, Ben,” I said and tried to put my arms around him, but he pushed me away.
It was the first time he had ever pushed me away, and it hurt.

“I’m done, Judith.
I’ll help all I can with this stuff you’re going through, but I refuse to hang around hoping you will one day want to marry me. I don’t hear from you for months and then when you need me you call.

“I refuse to be hurt anymore, Judith.
You’re a psychologist and do marriage and couples counseling. You need to figure out what’s going on with you and why you can’t make a commitment.

“I want to have children, Judith, if not with you, I want you to leave me alone and let me get over you so I can move on.
”

“I’m sorry…” I began.

“No, I’ve heard those words from you so much, they mean nothing to me anymore. Good old Ben will always understand. Just say you’re sorry and he runs after you like a puppy dog.”

Without another word, he got up and left.

I felt so alone and ashamed. If I was honest with myself, I knew I had used him horribly. I didn’t know how to approach him and fix anything. I knew I should have answers but I didn’t.

CHAPTER 30

The next morning, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. After Ben had left the night before, I had called Dr. Anna and woke her up. While she was as supportive as ever, she told me I knew the answers as to why I couldn’t make a commitment to Ben.

“Be honest with yourself, Judith, just like you tell your patients.
Follow your heart. How is Julia, by the way?”

After talking about Julia
, I let her go so she could get some sleep. I knew I couldn’t.

The next day, John said he wanted to get everyone out of the house for awhile, to get some fresh air. He was taking us all to Audubon Park down the road.

I told him I
wanted to be alone, to catch up on my sleep. Mark went to see his old buddy, Dave Boudreaux.

It’s so much easier to take an objective look at someone else and I felt like I was a good psychologist.
But trying to look at something within yourself, that you don’t want to see, is so much more difficult.

I was sitting in the swing
, thinking deep thoughts, when Bill drove up. I was surprised. He was alone, and besides, I thought he was attending an autopsy.

“Where is everyone?” he asked.

“Mark is visiting an old friend and everyone else is at the park. I thought you had an autopsy.”

“I saw all I needed to see.
I left Sandy there to take any additional notes. I thought I would come by and relax here for awhile. It’s such a nice peaceful house.”

“I know.
I feel very relaxed here. I love both John and Rosa so much and Trudy is such a good kid. Of course the baby is beautiful and such a happy baby.”

I had always felt comfortable with Bill.
When he had arrested me for prostitution at age sixteen, he had been gentle and kind to me.

“Would you like some iced tea?” I asked.

“That would be nice,” he said, and followed me into the kitchen. He sat at the kitchen counter and watched me. “I might be speaking out of turn, Judith, but I guess you know, I’ve always been attracted to you. I hope you don’t mind me telling you.”

“To tell you the truth, I’ve a
lways been attracted to you too. I’ve got to tell you, Ben broke it off last night. Not that we had much there to begin with. I feel so bad, like I’ve strung him along.

“It wasn’t my intention.
But I love Ben as a friend. Kind of like a brother. I hate that I hurt him, but the chemistry just wasn’t there.”

Bill spent the rest of the day playing hooky as he called it.
It was nice to get my mind off everything else. He said he had to get away from the case for awhile, too.

Later, we walked to the park and met up with John and them.
When the day was over and we walked back home, Rosa said she wanted to see me privately.

She took the baby to the nursery and closed the door.
As she was changing Jennifer, she shook her head like it had a motor on it. She put the baby in her crib and Jennifer fell instantly asleep. Then Rosa turned to me.

“What are you doing, Judith?”
She asked. “What would Ben say if he saw you today? You and Bill looked like a couple. He kept putting his arms around you and you were smiling at each other.”

“Ben broke it off last night, okay
? He’s tired of me treating him like a puppy dog, and he’s right. I have taken him for granted, and I feel ashamed of myself. I don’t know what I was thinking, or not thinking, calling him when I needed him; expecting him to wait around for me.”

She was quiet and reached around the back of her head for the braid she used to flip wh
en she was thinking, but she had her hair cut short when she became pregnant. She walked over to look at the baby. Jennifer was sleeping peacefully. Rosa put her finger to her lips signaling me to be quiet. We tiptoed out of the nursery and went to the front porch. She took the swing and I took the rocker.

“This is something I’ve never understood about you, Judith.
You’re so together in so many ways, but, when it comes to Ben, you act totally irrational as far as I can tell. You’re a psychologist…”

“If anyone else reminds me I’m a psychologist
again I’ll scream. Yes, I’m a psychologist, but I’m also human. I don’t do well with relationships yet. It’s something I still need to work on. I have a lot of soul searching to do about Ben and me. I called Dr. Anna and woke her up last night and she’s too old to be deprived of her sleep.”

“So…what did she say?”

I snorted, “Not much. She said the answers were within; that I need to be honest with myself, and follow my heart. Pretty much what I expected, but I needed to hear her voice. In the meantime, I’ve been attracted to Bill since the night he arrested me, years ago. I know he’s a lot older than I am, but maybe that’s just it. Maybe he does represent a father figure for me.”

“It surprised me that he took the day off today.
He seems like such a workaholic,” Rosa said.

“Well, it did
me too. When he first got here, I thought he had some more news about the case. He said he had left Sandy to finish observing the autopsy, and needed to take some time off.”

We sat silently for awhile, Rosa swinging and me rocking.
I was thinking how peaceful it was out here when Mark walked up and sat down by Rosa, on the swing.

He put his arm around
her and kissed her on the check. “Rosa, would you excuse us for a moment. I need to talk to Judith.”

She looked from one
of us to the other and said, “Of course.”

Mark watched her until she was inside
. Then turning to me, he patted the seat next to him. I sat beside him.

“Judith, Dave told me something today I found very disturbing
…”

“Why don’t you wait until this evening
, until our meeting with the judge, and tell everyone?”

“Because
I believe it involves one of the people who will be here tonight. Judith, I think someone in our little group cannot be trusted.”

My mouth flew open
, but I couldn’t come up with a name.

“Okay
, I’m going to tell you this story the way Dave told me. When Dave and all of you girls were arrested, and the house closed down, Delilah went back to her family in Houma, in Terrebonne Parish.

“There she lived with her sister, Faith
, and Faith’s husband, Jock. They lived in a tiny shack you can only get to by boat. It’s hard to find, unless you know where you’re going. There are a lot of little canals and waterways branching off back there in the swampy area.

“Faith and her husband live off the land, or I should say
, they live off the water. They fish from their front porch and have a lot of crab traps laid out all along the shallows of the waterway.

“I found all of this so intriguing when Dave was telling me this
part; I forgot he had wanted to see me to warn me about something. Dave’s quite a storyteller if you remember.

“
Anyway, when Dave was a little boy, and Delilah was working for his family, she used to take him to Faith and Jock’s for a visit. Dave loved it. They fed him crab, crawfish and catfish with cornbread and wild greens. Jock would take him for boat rides, and taught him how to fish and crab.

“When
Delilah moved back in with her sister, she got up before either one of them. One morning, while she was sitting on their small porch having her coffee, she heard something she never told anyone until now.

“She waited until Dave got out of jail and re-opened the house
; and she moved back in with him, to take care of him, before she told him.

“There were
, what sounded like, three people talking. One man said, ‘Cal, you’re going to have to curb your appetite for awhile after this. I don’t know if they will ever find the body, but let’s keep a low profile on this. I mean it, Cal.’

“Then anot
her voice said, ‘I’ll try judge. But I really think it will be all right. Mackey did a good job. There’s no one around here for miles. They will never find the body. She was just another runaway, anyway.’

“A third voice asked, ‘When
do I get my money.’ There the voices died away as the boat kept going down the canal. They evidently had no idea that, just on the other side of the bushes was a shack and that someone could hear everything they said.”

“So, when was this?” I asked.

“This would have been about six and a half years ago. It wasn’t long before Dave and the girls got out of jail.”

“That means that one of the girls we have a file on
, and her school books, is buried out there on the Bayou,” I said, thinking out loud. “If they have been burying girls out there, it could take years to find them all. They may never find them all.