Unknown (28 page)

In a few minutes she rose, moved quickly through the living room, and
softly
opened the door to Dean's bedroom. The light of a mercury lamp shone
through
the
Venetian blinds
of one
window,
across the body of her
husband
lying
crossways
on the bed. His head hung over the edge
slightly.
He looked like a
corpse
found on the desert, with
bleached
skin and a black,
desiccated mouth
. Jo was
seated
in her
accustomed chair
at the foot of the bed.

'Dinner ready yet?' the woman said surlily.

Sarah moved quietly into the darkened room.

'Why you so late tonight?' her mother-in-law continued. 'Dean's hungry. I'm hungry. Where were you?'

Sarah did not answer. She turned on a small lamp on the dresser; it was of low wattage and covered by a shade of thick red material, but she and Jo both blinked several times, unaccustomed to the light.

At first Sarah and Jo spoke in low voices, almost in whispers, out of consideration for Dean, who might well be asleep; but quickly
they
fell into normal voices, forgetting his comfort and his presence.

'Where were you?' Jo repeated.

'Somebody else got hold of that amulet', said Sarah quietly.

Jo spoke quickly. 'Who?' Her lips clamped shut after that, and Sarah could tell that she was thinking hard. Sarah did not immediately reply, and Jo refused to repeat the question. At last Sarah said, 'The woman that run down Dorothy Sims on the Montgomery highway.'

Jo chose her words carefully. 'I thought it was a man that was driving the truck.'

' It was', said Sarah, 'it was her husband that was driving the truck. Merle Weaver was in the cab with him.'

'Didn't know 'em', said Jo, recovered now from her momentary surprise.

Sarah stood at the dresser, and stared at her mother-in-law. After another pause, Jo asked, 'Now, what you mean she got hold of what amulet?' Her voice sounded curious, but Sarah thought she detected a note of urgency in it as well.

'Merle Weaver's dead', said Sarah slowly. Jo Howell never answered a question directly, ngver gave the answer that was strictly called for, and Sarah considered that she could play that game as well.

'I told you', said Jo, commandingly, 'that that thing burned up in the Coppage place.'

'Hogs got her', said Sarah quietly.

Jo squinted. 'Hogs?'

'Out on their farm', said Sarah grimly. 'She's dead, and I don't think her husband's right any more.'

Jo shifted uneasily in her chair, as if she wanted to remove herself from her daughter-in-law's directed gaze. 'Well', she said, 'what do you want me to do about it?'

Sarah was calm. Her fingers played with the switch on the small lamp. She said quietly, 'You plan these things, don't you - and Dean?' She glanced down at her husband, motionless, a bizarre figure of immobility and helplessness.

'You not talking sense, Sarah', said Jo, with a grim smile that turned into a prolonged sneer.

Sarah decided that she must continue the attack. 'You sit there all day and plan.'

'We sit in this house all day', echoed Jo, 'and we watch television, and we look out the window, except Dean, he can't see, and he can't talk. I watch television, and I look out the window, and I keep Dean company while you're away at work, and
that's
what we do all day.' Jo's words protested her innocence, but the tone of her voice was insolent, as if she were daring Sarah to prove her guilty. It was the ironic denial of the murderer who knows he can never be convicted.

'Becca and I went out to the Weaver place', said Sarah.

Jo looked displeased, and a little startled: 'What'd you want to do that for?' she asked uncomfortably.

i wanted to talk to Mr Weaver, and I wanted to find that thing - that amulet', said Sarah. All this while, she watched her mother-in-law very closely, trying to find out all that she could from the way that Jo responded to anything that she said.

'D'you find it?' Jo demanded, but in a way that suggested that she did not expect an affirmative answer.

Sarah shook her head.

'Well, what makes you think that it was out there?' Jo said, once again on the offensive.

'Merle Weaver's dead, that's why. Died peculiar, just like the others. A whole line of 'em, and I didn't want anybody else to die. The others had the amulet and they're dead. Merle Weaver's dead, and so she must have had the amulet too. I went out to find it.'

'That don't necessarily follow, Sarah, you know that', said Jo, with another derisive smile. 'Just because she's dead, don't mean she had the tiling on her. It got burned up, like I told you.'

Sarah stared at Jo a few moments, and then said, 'I talked to Mr Weaver too. He said that his wife had the amulet. They found it yesterday morning, the day before. It came off of Dorothy Sirns's body, when they were driving her back to Pine Cone.*

it still don't prove nothing', said Jo. 'How could a piece of jewellery cause all them deaths? You're still talking crazy, Sarah.'

Sarah realised then that no matter how convincing her evidence was, no matter how closely she could get to the sequence of events, and reproduce them in front of her mother-in-law, the old fat woman would fall back on the same argument: 'You're talking crazy, Sarah.' And she was, because it was a crazy thing to begin with. There wasn't any sense to make out of it. It was magic - black magic, and black magic didn't make sense, it didn't even exist. Suddenly Sarah was very angry. Without thinking about it, Sarah turned off the lamp, a little involuntary movement of her fingers. In a second, she flicked it back on, and said to her mother-in-law, in a vicious voice, 'Why don't you just shoot 'em in the head, be a lot better than these terrible things that are happening to everybody. There's twelve of 'em, Jo, twelve people dead, so far!'

Jo was petulant. 'They got Dean in the head, didn't kill him.'

'You blame me too', cried Sarah, "cause I'm on the 'ssembly line, don't you? And you blame Becca Blair too! 'Cause we had our hands on that rifle that blew up in Dean's face. It was a accident. He could've got his legs cut off in a jeep. You wouldn't have blamed the people in the factory up in Ohio that made the jeep.'

Jo made no reply.

'Do you two plan who's going to get it next?' Sarah looked with loathing at her mother-in-law, and then transferred the gaze to her husband, who had not moved at all in the course of the conversation. In a slightly calriier voice, she said, 'These people didn't have nothing in this world to do with what happened to Dean. Miz Weaver, the Simses, the Shirleys, they didn't none of 'em have nothing to do with the Pine Cone rifle that blew up in Dean's face. The Weavers was good people, James Shirley was a good policeman, they was five of the Coppage kids and they probably never even set foot one in the Pine Cone Munitions Factory. You want to get back at somebody, you ought to burn the factory down, you ought to stop the war.'

Sarah turned away in disgust.

'Well', said Jo, after a few moments in which the only sound was Sarah's laboured breathing, 'well, who's got it now?'

Quietly, Sarah replied, 'I don't know. I couldn't find it. It's still in the mud out at the Weaver place.'

'You'd better find it then, you better crawl through that mud and get it before someone else finds it, and dies too, 'long with their husband, and their children, and the animals in the barn.' Jo was sarcastic, and it sounded really as if she didn't believe that the amulet had anything to do with the deaths.

Sarah did not reply to all of this. 'One day. ..' she said quietly.

'One day what?' snapped Jo.

'One day', repeated Sarah, 'we are gone take those bandages off Dean.'

She switched off the light and walked swiftly out of the room, leaving the mother and son alone in the stuffy darkness. .

Early the next morning Sarah and Becca rode back out to the Weaver farmstead. Along the way they said very little, for it was very early in the morning and neither of the women had much liking for the errand.

'Well', said Becca, 'you came in late yesterday afternoon, you're leaving early this morning. What'd you tell the old biddie?'

'I told her that I had been out to the Weavers' - she didn't like that—'

'Good!' interjected Becca.

'—and then I told her I was coming back out here this morning, and she didn't like that either.^She told me I ought not be going around causing people anguish.'

' If Jo Howell didn't like it, then I'm glad we 're doing it. If she did something wrong, I mean something real
bad,
then we've got to get her on the run.' Then Becca laughed at the image called up of that great, fat, greasy woman trying to propel herself on her two short thick legs.

Sarah had wondered if she shouldn't go up to the house first and speak to Mr Weaver, introduce herself and explain to him again why she wanted to go through the mud in his pigpen with a leaf rake. Farm people got up with the sun and there was no danger of awakening him, but still she hesitated to intrude upon his grieving solitude.

But from the main road, Sarah could see a figure moving about the barnyard, and she had Becca drive directly there. Jack Weaver stood in the open barn door and waited patiently, and without any expression of curiosity or interest, for the two women to get out of the Pontiac and approach him.

Sarah introduced herself and Becca to him, reminding him that she had called the night before, and asked if he would allow them to search the pigpen for the amulet.

'Worth something?' the farmer said automatically, but his eyes moved vaguely over the barnyard.

Sarah nodded. 'It's been in the family a long time, and we just didn't want it to get lost.' This was a lie made up on the spot, and Sarah realised even as she spoke, that it made no sense, for how would a Howell family heirloom come into the hands of Dorothy Sims? But Jack Weaver was in no emotional shape to cross-examine Sarah on her motives, and in fact he did not even notice the logical discrepancy. Sarah wanted to tell the farmer nothing about her fears concerning the amulet, for she saw he felt bad enough already, and was better off believing that his wife had died simply by horrible accident.

'It's bad mud in there. You gone get yourself filthy', said Jack kindly. 'Why don't you let me go in there and try? Give me that rake, and I'll look for the thing for you. It wasn't ours, and we was on our way practically to go back into Pine Cone and give the thing to the sheriff, when Merle' - he broke off and looked away, then picked up again - 'Merle said she thought it might be worth something, and I guess she was right. I sure do wisht she hadn't never found it though

Sarah refused the farmer's offer; she didn't want to put him to any trouble, but also she knew that she would not be satisfied unless she examined the pen herself. Without ceremony then, Sarah simply climbed over the fence into the pen and, starting in the far corner, began to rake through the mud. This was a difficult enterprise, for since the pigs had been removed the ground had not been disturbed and had begun to firm. For a few minutes, Jack Weaver and Becca watched the young woman at her strange task.

Becca had told the farmer who she was, and reminded him that she used to come out here with her mother and father fifteen, twenty years before. Jack smiled mournfully and started immediately to talk to Becca of his dead wife. He spoke quietly and with great feeling for some minutes, and Becca wouldn't look into his face for fear that she would see him crying and embarrass him. The two leaned forward on the fence and watched as Sarah raked carefully through the congealed mud.

Suddenly, Jack Weaver shook his head and exclaimed loudly to Sarah, 'I'm just standing here, talking my head off, when you are in there breaking your back! You got to let me help you!' He

ran back into the barn for another rake, and returned presently.

Now Sarah allowed him to assist her, for the work was hard and she knew that, though this was not a common task, the farmer would probably be better at it than she was. In another twenty minutes the two had gone over every square foot of the pen and turned up nothing.

'I don't know where it could have gone', said the farmer, 'but I sure don't think it's here.' He moved over to the spot just where Becca was leaning on the fence. He faltered, 'Merle .. . Merle was standing right there.. . when the thing fell out of her pocket. She couldn't find it either, but it mu st have fell just about here—' He raked through the stiffening mire for another few minutes, but still came up with nothing.

He turned to Sarah apologetically. 'I'm real sorry. I'm real sorry that we couldn't find it. I know how much that thing means to you, to come out here and look for it like this. If I come across it, I'll call you right up.'

Sarah nodded nervously. She was worried about the amulet, but she was even more concerned for this unfortunate, good man and his grief just now. Obviously he had nothing on his mind but his wife, and yet he had been willing to spend a good hour raking up the mud in a pigpen as a favour for two women he didn't even know, searching for apiece of jewellery that he credited with the death of his wife.