Who Let That Killer In The House? (31 page)

Or maybe not. He passed their house without a change of speed and rolled through town—past the courthouse, past Yarbrough’s, where the bunting was already up advertising our Fourth of July sale, out past the end of town. When he turned down our road, I cut my lights and turned behind him.

Joe Riddley taught me to drive on that road nearly fifty years ago, and I’ve always claimed I could drive it blindfolded. That night was the closest I’ve ever come to testing that theory, and I was real grateful for the full moon that made the road and woods all silvery, like in a fairy tale. If this were a fantasy, though, I hoped I’d soon get back to reality.

When Buddy’s brake lights glowed, I slowed. When he stopped next to Hubert’s pasture, near where Garnet had parked earlier, I turned into Hubert’s drive and hoped his big hydrangea would hide the light while I opened my door. As I climbed out, Art Franklin’s old car crunched past me on the road and slid to a stop behind Buddy’s.

Our dogs started singing four-part harmony, and the air was so clear I could even hear Bo shrieking, “Hello, hello, hello!” from the barn. I’d never realized what a noisy welcome we offered folks this far from the house.

I left my keys in the ignition, in case I had to get out quick, and gently pushed my door just barely closed. Then I hurried on tiptoes around Hubert’s hydrangea. A light flashed in Buddy’s car and I heard him say impatiently, “Come on. Get out.” Garnet whimpered a protest.

Art shouted, “You let her go! You hear me?”

I tried to figure out what I ought to do. I wouldn’t be of any help to Art personally, but our dogs and telephone were only a few hundred yards down the road. Could I get past Buddy unseen, run home, call for help, and get back with the dogs while Art stalled him?

When you have only one choice, you take it. Bent low, I hurried across the road and crept into the shadow of the pines on the other side. That was a young plantation we’d put in to sell for paper, and the pines were small. Their nettles would mask my footsteps and their branches partly conceal me, if I didn’t move abruptly and catch Buddy’s eye.

I didn’t need to worry at the moment. He was occupied in dragging Garnet from the car while Art tried to shove him away from her. Garnet seemed to be fighting them both, and I would never have believed she knew all the words she was using.

While I worked my way down the trees, Buddy shoved Art across the road with one fierce push. He sprawled in the dust and gravel while Buddy jerked Garnet out. Then he pulled one arm behind her back and stiff walked her toward the fence. “No! No! No!” she gasped all the way.

When Art climbed to his feet, Buddy shoved Garnet’s arm farther up her back. She yelped in pain.

“Let her go!” Art screamed.

“Go home, or I’ll hurt her bad,” Buddy promised. “I mean it.” He grabbed Garnet’s mass of hair with his free hand and yanked. She shrieked.

Art flung himself on Buddy, pummeling him with his fists.

It was a brave, stupid act. Buddy played tennis every week and worked out regularly at a gym. Art waited tables and wrote poems. In two seconds Art was flat on his back on our gravel, his nose spurting blood. But his courage gave Garnet the seconds she needed to slip between two strands of barbed wire and dash up the hill, where she stood poised to run again. In the moonlight, she was as white as chalk.

Buddy turned to follow her. I stooped, picked up a length of pine branch maybe three inches thick, held it behind me, and stepped into the dappled road.

“Give it up, Buddy.” I sure sounded a lot more confident than I felt.

He huffed out a huge breath and shook his head, like he needed to clear it. “Go on home, Judge. You shouldn’t be out here.”

“Garnet and I will both go—back to the hospital.” I moved toward him, holding the log behind my back. Art moaned and rolled over to sit up, but Buddy and I ignored him.

Buddy pressed down the top strand of wire and swung one leg over. “Go on back, then, but by yourself. We don’t need you here.”

“I can’t let you hurt her, Buddy.”

He laughed and stood with one leg over the wire, holding it with both hands like a very skinny horse. “I’m not going to hurt her. It was your family’s meddling that started all this mess. Ridd getting DeWayne to coach the team, convincing Garnet and Hollis he was some sort of hero. Martha teaching that stuff to Garnet’s class that made her think what we were doing was wrong. It’s not wrong, Judge. You heard her. It’s in the Bible. There’s nothing dirty about it. The only thing dirty around here is you. You stink to high heaven of cow manure from that pond.”

If he thought I was dumb enough to care about that right then, he could think again.

He kept right on talking. “Go home and take a bath. Garnet and I need to have a little talk.” He looked over his shoulder. “Garnet, come here.”

Like someone in a dream, she started toward him.

I ran across the road, pine log aloft, and brought my puny weapon down on his head.

“Ooof!” He staggered and fell forward on the wire, yelled as a barb found its mark. But my log had shattered, leaving just a stub. Daddy always said pine’s too brittle to trust. He would never have pines near his house.

Still, I lifted it again, ready to club him until I had nothing left but sawdust.

That’s when I heard an incredulous voice. “Miss Mac?”

Ronnie and Yasheika stood in the moonlit road. Lulu squirmed in Ronnie’s arms, fighting the fingers that muzzled her. “Lulu!” I yelled. “Take him!”

She gave a ferocious wiggle and Ronnie dropped her. She hit the ground already flinging herself at the leg on our side of the fence. She caught Buddy’s pants in her teeth and held on while he bounced on that wire, swearing and trying to kick her off. She held firm, growling like she’d eat him bite by bite as soon as I gave permission. Lulu might have lost a leg, but she hadn’t lost an ounce of courage.

I figured I might as well add my voice to the din. I looked around for Yasheika. “My car’s in the next driveway,” I panted for breath. “Keys are in it. Take Garnet to the hospital and call 911. Run!”

Like I’ve said before, Yasheika is smart. With a quick nod, she hared toward the car, calling up the hill, “Come on, Garnet! Come with me.”

Garnet hesitated, then turned and stumbled toward my car, bare legged and barefoot.

When they were nearly there, I said, “Okay, Lulu. That’s enough. Good dog.”

She backed off and sat down. Buddy put the rest of the fence between them, eyeing her warily. She rumbled deep in her throat and showed her teeth to prove she still had fight left in her.

“What’s going on?” Ronnie looked from me to Buddy and back.

“More than you want to know.” I didn’t feel free to tell him much. It wasn’t my secret.

Buddy had no such inhibitions. “A big misunderstanding,” he told Ronnie man-to-man. “Garnet fell in that cattle pond tonight and the judge rescued her. Hollis got real upset about what happened to Garnet and made some accusations about her. Between them, she, Mac, and Martha got Garnet locked up in the psycho ward. I rescued her and thought I’d bring her back here to look at the pond and see it’s just a little-bitty thing, nothing to be scared of. But Art showed up trying to fight me. Then the judge misunderstood my motives and attacked me with a pine tree.” He gave Ronnie a rueful grin, and Ronnie’s face creased in a sympathetic smile.

I waited until Yasheika had driven away, then I said, “You’re looking at a child molester, Ronnie, pure and simple—if anything is pure and simple anymore.”

“No!” Art moaned from the dirt at my feet. “No!” He dropped his face to his hands. Poor thing, I was sorry he’d heard that. I had plumb forgotten he was there.

Buddy shook his head. “That hasn’t been proven, Mac. You’re skating real close to slander here.” Ronnie looked from one of us to the other, clearly baffled.

Seeing Buddy there, so handsome in the silver light, I couldn’t blame Ronnie for doubting what I was saying. I almost disbelieved myself. But then a shadow passed over the moon and Buddy’s face dissolved into darkness. I’m not much on signs and portents, but when the moon came back out, I saw him in a whole new light. He wasn’t really handsome. He was evil incarnate, held together by a fancy skin.

“I suspect he’s a murderer, too,” I said, feeling sad and very old and tired. “He’s cleverer than Tyrone or even Smitty. Clever enough to copy their badness and use it to his own advantage. The purple ink on the notes was a nice touch, Buddy.”

Ronnie stared like I had gone plumb crazy. Buddy lifted both hands and backed farther up the slope with a little laugh. “Whoa! First a molester and now a murderer? Come on, Mac, who am I supposed to have murdered?”

“DeWayne, of course. You said you talked to him on the phone that Saturday before he died. You were making sure where he was, weren’t you? So you could drop by the school with clippings that would scare him nearly to death, just thinking they might be spread all over Hopemore. Then, when he was trembling so bad he had to sit down, you left the room—for what? Did you tell him you’d get him a glass of water? Instead, you went to the gym and cut off a piece of rope with that pocketknife you’re so proud of, put it around his neck, and pulled. Then you dragged him down the hall and strung him up in the locker room to make it look like suicide. You even wrote a short note for Yasheika, using purple ink and block letters you learned in architecture classes. I guess it was you who burned the clippings in his wastebasket, wasn’t it, so the police would think DeWayne had done it? Then you wiped your prints off the doorknobs and scrubbed the seat of the chair DeWayne was sitting in when he died.”

I had Ronnie’s attention, but Buddy shook his head and leaned his wrists on the fence like we were neighboring farmers. “ ‘I guess’?” he mocked me. “You better give up being a judge and start writing fiction. I worked Saturday, in my office. I was nowhere near the school.”

“I saw you at the school early that morning.” Art climbed stiffly to his feet and limped toward Buddy. His voice was hoarse, his face streaked with blood. “I had to sleep in my car that night, because—” He stopped. “Well, I just did.” I figured his mama had a man at home and he preferred not to be in the house. Or maybe they’d had a fight, or he was drunk or writing a poem. While I was having those interesting speculations, Art had gone on talking.

“. . . down the side street that goes by the school, about the time I was waking up, I heard a car park up the street. I checked my watch to be sure I wasn’t going to be late for work. It was five after eight and Myrtle wanted me there by ten-thirty, so I had time to go home and change. Then I saw you in my rearview mirror. You got out of your car and dropped something in the wastebasket over across the street. Then you went up the path behind the science rooms—”

“You never saw jack,” Buddy told him fiercely, “because I wasn’t there.”

“He was, Miss Mac.” Art turned to me, his eyes huge in the dimness. “I saw him. I even went over to see what he’d thrown away, but it was just empty cans of paint.”

“You even painted his house?” I was so disgusted I could hardly stand.

Art didn’t give me time to say more. He looked at Buddy and his big gray eyes swam with tears. “Were you really—you know, sleeping with Garnet? She always seemed so pure. ” He stumbled toward his car and fell across the hood, sobbing.

Buddy called after him, “It was somebody else you saw, Franklin. I wasn’t there.” He turned back to me. “Why would I kill DeWayne? We were friends years ago. I was looking forward to getting to know him again.” But I noticed him eyeing his car, as if measuring the distance, so I moved toward it. Lulu growled.

“You took the notebook, too,” I said, talking more to myself than to him. “You showed up behind me, so you had circled around and beat Tyrone and Willie to it. You could easily pick it up and stick it in your pocket. You had heard me tell Ike it was important.” I thought of something else, too. “You are one person DeWayne would have let in the back door of his classroom.”

“But that’s because he and DeWayne liked each other,” Ronnie argued. I didn’t blame him for still sitting on the fence about how much of this was true. The man was his boss and his friend. He hadn’t seen Buddy sling Garnet in the car and yank her hair or heard what she’d called him.

“Maybe so,” I said. “But I think Buddy killed him in spite of that. Garnet and Hollis were both too fond of DeWayne for your liking, weren’t they, Buddy?”

“Hollis . . . ” Ronnie said her name as though it were a new idea. He turned to me. “DeWayne told Buddy that Hollis had come to see him with a story about somebody she knew who was sleeping with somebody she shouldn’t be sleeping with. He didn’t mention any names or anything—”

“You didn’t tell me that,” I rebuked him.

He ducked his head. “I didn’t like to mention it. Seemed kind of private. But you think DeWayne was talking about Buddy and Garnet?”

“I don’t think he knew who he was talking about, because Hollis couldn’t quite bring herself to name names. But it was all coming apart, wasn’t it, Buddy? Hollis suspected, and now she was talking to DeWayne. Next time she might tell him exactly who she meant, and you couldn’t afford that. Hollis didn’t know what to do except tell a grown-up, but DeWayne knew. He’d have had to report you if he suspected anything was going on.”

Buddy climbed back over the fence. “Folks, this has been a most interesting evening, but I’m going home now. There is not one shred of proof for any of these wild stories you all are concocting at my expense, but first thing tomorrow, I am calling my lawyer. You’d better be calling yours, too, if any of this gets beyond this stretch of road.”

As he moved toward his car, Lulu growled again, but I shushed her. Garnet was safe. As for the rest, it was a matter for the police. And I was afraid Buddy was right: Nobody would find a shred of evidence to prove it.

Deep down, I do believe that evil is eventually punished and good wins out, but this was one of the times I might have to chalk up to “not in this lifetime.”