by Ron Levitsky
McCrae shrugged. “Don’t seem to matter much, seein’ the mess Sister Claire’s in. This mean you’ll be leavin’ town soon?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like the way Grimes tried to link Ben Hobbes’s murder with your church—guilt by association. I’d like to monitor the case at least for the next few days.”
Johnston said, “We may hold on to you for a spell after all. Like the Good Book says, the Lord works in mysterious ways.”
Fifteen minutes later a well-dressed young man carrying a leather slipcase scurried into the building. Putting his arm around the bank clerk, Johnston led him up the stairs, Jesse and McCrae following closely.
Rosen walked from the courthouse, blinking in the sudden morning light. He sat on a bench and, looking past the statue of the lone Confederate soldier, saw downtown Earlyville spread before him like an open hand. The old-time drugstore, the Country Inn, antiques shops, white-haired gentlemen taking deliberate steps with their canes, children tumbling from the soda shop—as if he were thumbing through a box of old postcards.
Rosen understood such a world, for he had been born into one like it, although the people he watched on Jackson Street wouldn’t have understood. He had once performed his own daily rituals—prayer and studies—with the same quiet devotion. Perhaps that’s why the murder angered Rosen; it didn’t belong in Earlyville. There was, of course, the moral indignation against taking a human life, but also a sense of violation—like a poisonous snake suddenly striking on a path that had always been safe.
Fifteen minutes later the four men walked from the building with Claire Hobbes. While Johnston chatted about “liquidity” with the young banker, McCrae placed his hands on the woman’s shoulders and spoke softly. Nodding to Rosen, he led his cousin and the banker toward Jackson Street.
Rosen joined Jesse and Claire Hobbes. This was the first time all morning he’d really noticed her; earlier he’d been too busy sparring with the D.A. She was probably attractive, but that would’ve been after a good night’s sleep, a little makeup, and a skirt tailored to show off her figure instead of the shapeless green dress she was wearing. Her skin looked waxy; the only color was the red of her eyes, red like open sores. It was as if a leech had attached itself to her soul.
Rosen sat in the front seat of the Porsche and, while Jesse drove to her house, glanced at Claire through the rearview mirror. She stared at the wadded tissue in her hands, occasionally dabbing her eyes and wincing. Did she even know where she was?
She was like a little girl, reminding Rosen of his daughter. He was supposed to call Sarah tonight. What would he say—should he practice his arguments as he did before a case? She had been hurt so much already. He couldn’t add to that pain.
Jesse stopped the car at Claire’s backyard gate but kept the motor running. “I thought this would be better, Mrs. Hobbes. No one to see you come home. Give you some peace and quiet.”
“Good idea,” Rosen said, helping Claire from the car. “Aren’t you coming, Jesse?”
His friend’s cheeks darkened. “I have to run a few errands. I can pick you up later.”
“That’s all right. It’s such a beautiful day, I’ll walk home.”
Rosen led Claire through the backyard into her house. They stepped into a narrow utility room, where a doorway opened to the kitchen. The mess made by the police remained on the table, stale cigarette odor hanging in the air. The rough piece of oak still leaned against the counter. Opening a window, Rosen watched as Claire stuffed the table litter into one of the doughnut bags. She worked absently, as if from habit.
“Claire, do you know who I am?”
She kept cleaning. “Uh-huh. Some lawyer.”
“My name’s Nate Rosen. I’ve been working to help Reverend McCrae.”
At the mention of McCrae, the woman looked at Rosen hard. Blinking several times, she relaxed a bit. “Reverend told me not to worry, to trust the Lord. I’m sorry, Mr. . . .?”
“Nate.”
She looked around, then rubbed her forehead. “Where’s my manners? Please sit down. Can I get you something?”
“Actually, I am hungry . . . went off this morning without breakfast. It looks like you could use something to eat as well.”
“Let me fix you something.” She tried to smile. “Ben was always bragging on my cooking.”
“That would be fine. While you’re making breakfast, do you mind if I go upstairs and look at the room where your husband was . . . where he died?”
Swallowing hard, she said, “First bedroom on the left.”
“Could you give me a scissors and some plastic wrap?”
A stairway led from the foyer to the second floor. The hallway displayed rows of old photographs, tracing the Hobbes family back before the Civil War. Rail-thin frontiersmen with their dour-faced wives stared at the camera as if it were a gun.
Opening the bedroom door, Rosen thought at first he’d made a mistake. The small room, almost monastic, contained one twin bed with curved head- and footboards resembling a sleigh, a chest of drawers, a night table with a telephone beside the bed, and a closet with a few changes of clothes. The walls were bare. Above the night table, a single window overlooked Jackson Street.
There was nothing to indicate murder. Only the bedsheets, twisted and touching the floor, appeared out of the ordinary. Examining the bed, he saw a few small stains where liquid had spilled onto the sheets, then dripped to the floor. A small piece of sheet had been cut out and the floor scraped, no doubt by police looking for evidence. Taking the scissors and plastic wrap, Rosen did the same thing, putting the samples into his shirt pocket. While on his knees, he noticed a tiny shard of glass, which he also took. Something else. Glancing at the electric socket and phone jack below the night table, he saw that the telephone wire had been cut.
He looked out the window. A man was standing on the sidewalk in front of the house. Wearing a cheap green suit tight at the shoulders, he appeared solid as a ham shank. He noticed Rosen, and for a moment their eyes locked. He had thick coppery hair and a broken nose, and his eyebrows looked like pieces of Brillo pad. Checking his inside coat pocket, the man took a step toward the house, paused, then walked away.
Rosen checked the other three bedrooms on the second floor. One was used for storage, another for guests, but the third—by far the largest—would have suited the Queen of England, with a canopied bed, long chests of drawers, full-length mirror, and two rocking chairs—all furniture handcrafted in the early-American style that was the Hobbes trademark. The brush and comb on the dressing table were silver, and the open closets displayed enough clothes to fill a boutique.
Also on the dressing table lay a copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. Rosen turned to the bookmark, at Sonnet XXXV:
If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange
And be all to me? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessing, and the common kiss. . . .
A sheet of paper was tucked under the book. Someone had begun a poem:
My heart can only beat when I’m with you,
To no one else will I ever be true.
If we two are kept apart . . .
He wondered whether Ben Hobbes was the kind of man who would appreciate her poetry. Rereading the sonnet, he felt a sudden chill—was Claire’s poem intended for her husband? What would her next line have been?
Walking downstairs, Rosen smelled the aroma of freshly brewed coffee mixing with that of ham sizzling in the pan. He should have told her . . . no . . . what was the difference? After all these years, what was the difference?
She was standing by the stove, spearing slices of ham and dropping them onto a platter. She had placed two settings on the table, and he sat in front of a steaming bowl of what appeared to be mush. After pouring the coffee, Claire sat across from him.
He asked, “What’s this?”
“Haven’t you ever eaten grits before?”
“No . . . I . . .” He remembered his conver
sation with the man on the airplane. He tasted a spoonful—bland but filling.
“You might like some butter on it. Hope it’s smooth.”
“Yes, just fine.”
“Ben always said how nice and creamy my grits tasted. The kind you get in restaurants got lumps big as your knuckle.” She served the meat. “I suppose you never did eat real country ham.”
Rosen shook his head. “I didn’t grow up eating pork.”
“Why not?”
“My religion. I’m Jewish.”
“Oh, like that Mrs. Shapiro folks tell about. Gave all her money to an orphanage. All I can say is that you sure been missing some good cooking. Sorry I ain’t had time to bake. Got drippings in the pan there for some red-eye gravy that’d be right good with biscuits.” Her eyes began to glisten. “How Ben loved my cooking.”
The ham tasted sweet, with a trace of salt. Every time he ate pork, Rosen imagined an angel in heaven putting another tick mark against his name. How would the angel score Claire Hobbes? Was the woman really as innocent as she seemed? “You liked cooking for your husband?”
“Ben said I cooked good as his momma. Meals was our best time together. Breakfast and supper here at home. I’d bring his lunch to the factory, and we’d walk a spell after.”
“Is that where you first met, in the factory?”
She nodded. “I grew up in Nashville. That’s where I met Reverend McCrae and some other church folk. I came with them to Earlyville. Most of us got jobs in the furniture factory. I worked in the kitchen. Ben courted me in the old-timey way, flowers ’n’ all. His first marriage. Imagine, at his age.”
“Was it also your first marriage?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t ask about her poetry; it seemed too intimate a question. But in time it would have to be explained.
Instead, he asked, “You and your husband got on well? I couldn’t help notice upstairs that you each had your own bedroom.”
She looked into her plate. “Ben’s idea. He bought all that nonsense to pretty up my room but said it was too delicate for the likes of him. Why’re you asking?”
“The prosecution will want to know your relationship with your husband—how well you got along, that sort of thing. Claire, why do the police think you killed your husband?”
When she looked up, her eyes grew wide, but there were no more tears to cry. “I heard them talking about poison. That I put poison in the milk Ben drinks before going to bed.”
“Let’s back up. The night of the murder I saw you at Reverend McCrae’s house shortly after eight. He told you to go home and get some rest. What time did you arrive home?”
“The police asked that. It was around ten. Ben was already home.”
“Don’t you mean you came home before your husband?”
“No, it was after.”
“The district attorney has a witness who claims you arrived home at nine-fifteen, a half hour before your husband. According to what you’re saying, you must’ve stayed at McCrae’s until about nine forty-five. Can anyone who was with you confirm the time?”
Claire shook her head. “Everybody was so worried about Lem, nobody paid any heed of time. I was out back by myself for a spell, thinking things over, then kinda slipped away without telling no one. I felt bad about leaving Lem, but the Reverend said I should be with my husband. I only know when I got home, ’cause the time was on the car radio.”
Rosen said, “Let’s put the time discrepancy aside for now. When you arrived home, did you speak with your husband?”
“No, but I saw a light under the door of his room.” She glanced at the rough oak board against the counter. “He even brought that home, fixing to make me a shelf above the sink for my flowers. Since it was so late, I thought we’d talk in the morning.”
“Did you usually prepare his milk?”
“Uh-huh, but not that night. I come home too late.”
“And what did you normally do, just heat it?”
She nodded. “He drank this special kind of milk—acidophilus—took me three months before I could say the word right. I started to get his milk. I saw a new carton in the refrigerator; delivery boy must’ve brought it earlier that afternoon.”
“You called in a grocery order?”
“Uh-huh. Do that from time to time. Our next-door neighbors, the Duncan sisters, let the delivery boy in. We was out of milk and a few other things, so I called the grocer from Reverend McCrae’s about three o’clock. Didn’t want to leave poor Lem to go shopping.”
Rosen said, “So you didn’t arrive home until that night, long after the groceries were delivered.”
“That’s right. When I got home, I went to the refrigerator and started to take the carton out but saw Ben’d already opened it. Figured he’d fixed his own milk. The police found a glass broke all over the floor next to his bed. They were talking poison.”
“Do you keep any poison here, like an insecticide?”
“I . . . I don’t think so. How could they think I killed Ben?” Suddenly she stared at Rosen, as if seeing him for the first time. “I’m scared.”
Rosen sipped his coffee. “Last Friday night at the church service, your husband threatened Reverend McCrae. He accused McCrae of doing something to you, something evil. Do you know what he meant?”
Claire shook her head hard, but over his coffee cap, Rosen watched her knuckles grow white clutching the table edge.
“How could they say I killed him?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” he said, putting down his coffee. “Let’s finish breakfast, then try to find out.”
Chapter Seven
tuesday afternoon
After dropping off Rosen and Claire, Jesse returned to Jackson Street. Near the corner a big man with a crooked nose stood beside an old Ford Granada with Davidson County license plates—maybe a salesman from Nashville. Crossing the highway into the Last Resort housing project, Jesse parked in front of Reverend McCrae’s house. He straightened his tie in the rearview mirror and popped two breath mints into his mouth.
Lemuel Banks sat alone on the front porch steps. The black man wore a sleeveless T-shirt that exposed arms thin as chicken wings. The swelling in his neck and shoulder had gone down, but the wound still appeared irritated, black at the center. Head bent over his guitar, Lem strummed the melody of an old Negro spiritual, “Lord, Take This Burden,” while half singing, half humming the words.
“That’s a beautiful old song,” Jesse said. “The center has a recording of Hattie Daniels singing it.”
Lem continued playing softly. After a few minutes he stopped and looked up. His face looked more like a skull, with his skin tight at the forehead and dark in the hollows of his cheeks.
“I know you?”
“Jesse Compton. I was at the Friday evening service. I’m an attorney representing Reverend McCrae. You looked mighty poorly Sunday night. Glad you’re feeling better.”
Lem shrugged. “Lord wanted me healed. I praise Jesus for His mercy.”
“That was mighty brave of you to refuse medical aid. You must have a powerful faith.”
“I can read, mister. Bible come right out and tell a good Christian to follow the five signs a’ Mark. That all I be doin’.”
“Yet you were bit.”
“Yeah.” Strumming the guitar softly, Lem continued, “My fault. Sometime I get so carried away by the preachin’ ’n’ singin’ that I don’t wait for the Power to come over me. That’s what happened. I touched the serpents without the Power comin’ over me ’n’ got hit. Reverend McCrae always warnin’ us be careful. Never mix your own will with that a’ the Lord. If’n you do, you be askin’ for trouble. Guess I know better next time.”
Lem played another old spiritual, his soft humming almost a moan. For folks like him and Reverend McCrae, music was the same as religion—simple, deeply rooted, and intensely personal. A man read the Bible and followed its dictates. That was all, and that was everything.
Jesse said, “I have
good news. The district attorney’s decided not to prosecute Reverend McCrae for what happened to you.”
“Sure glad to hear it. Any trouble brought on him was my doin’. Now there be more trouble. I feel bad for Sister Claire. Ain’t no way she’d hurt anyone, especially her own husband. You her lawyer, too?”
“Well, yes, at least for now. Say, is Reverend McCrae’s daughter around? I need to talk to her.” Avoiding the other man’s gaze, he added, “It’s very important. Legal business.”
Lem looked down at his guitar. “She busy.”
“I won’t take much of her time. I came down from the courthouse to give her some important information. Is she inside?”
Lem adjusted one of his guitar strings, playing the chord until it sounded in tune. “Guess it’d be all right, you the Reverend’s lawyer ’n’ all. She out back.”
Jesse walked around the house to a small yard. The area was scrubby with patches of dry grass, a few dandelions providing the only color. A chicken-wire fence surrounding the yard had long ago rusted, and its posts tottered every which way like a group of giggling schoolgirls.
The screen door opened, and Bathsheba walked barefoot down the porch steps. She wore a long lemon-colored dress with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and her arms cradled a large wicker basket, upon which lay a folded blanket.
“I heared you talkin’ t’Brother Lemuel, so I went inside ’n’ fixed us a nice lunch. Thought you might like goin’ on a picnic.” He watched her dimples grow as she smiled.
“Why, I’d love to go. I don’t have to teach a class until this evening.”
“Good. I gotta work later this afternoon, but we got us a few good hours till then.”
“I came to let you know that the state’s dropping all charges against your father. He won’t be prosecuted.”
“Your doin’. I knew you was a good lawyer. We’re all beholden t’ya.” Her smile faded. “How’s Sister Claire?”
Jesse wondered if Bathsheba expected him to free the woman with as much ease. “It may be a difficult case.”
