Who Let That Killer in the House?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  This time her sources were late. “He wasn’t found until half an hour ago. I know, because Ridd and I found him. It wasn’t the best morning either of us has had lately.”

  “Tell Mama to come,” Bethany whimpered from her granddaddy’s lap. “I need her.”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “I heard it. As soon as I can get somebody to cover for me, I’ll be right over.”

  Once she knew her mama was coming, Bethany calmed down and accepted my offer of a Coke. Then she asked, “Could I use your cell phone for a minute, Me-mama?”

  “There’s a phone right there.” Joe Riddley nodded toward his desk.

  “Yeah, but this is kinda private.” When I handed her the phone she left the office, already dialing. I heard her voice faintly through our thin old walls. “Hello, Todd? The awfullest thing has happened.” We didn’t see her again until her mother arrived.

  Bless Martha’s heart. While she was waiting for her replacement to come in, she had called somebody from the school who was trained in grief counseling. “He’s going to call all the team, have them meet at our house, and tell them together,” she reported when she arrived. “He’ll be there when we get home.” Her face had been serious, but now it broke into a wry smile. “I saw my younger offspring running the store. Can you keep him awhile longer?”

  “We’ll keep him until suppertime,” Joe Riddley offered. “Good counter help’s hard to come by.”

  Bethany might be five inches taller than her mother by now, but she clung to Martha’s arm as they left.

  Joe Riddley waited until the door closed behind them, then demanded, “How come you always land up in the middle of these things? That takes real talent.”

  “Don’t you fuss at me, or you’ll have me crying on your lap like Bethany.”

  “Not to worry. Not to worry,” Bo begged anxiously.

  Joe Riddley held out his arms. “In that case, I’ll fuss. Come here.”

  I didn’t climb in his lap—that wouldn’t look dignified if somebody passed our door and looked in. But I did go over and rest my head on his shoulder for a while. Some days are heavier to carry than others.

  Clarinda doesn’t work Saturdays, except to do her own laundry if she hasn’t gotten to it sooner, so we generally eat dinner at Myrtle’s. That day, I couldn’t stand the idea of meeting people and hearing them talk about DeWayne, so I suggested that Joe Riddley and Cricket go down to Hardee’s and bring back hamburgers to eat in our office. As soon as they left, I turned to the computer.

  The Internet is a fearsome thing. It holds enough dirt about people to create another planet and spews it willingly for anybody able to work a mouse. All I had to do was type in DeWayne Evans and it referred me in seconds to twenty-two articles. Nine were about the right DeWayne.

  Two were from recent editions of the Statesman. I preened to think our little paper went all over the world via the Internet, whether anybody read it or not. The next article was about DeWayne’s previous baseball team winning the state championship. I doubted he’d killed himself over any of those, so I pulled up the next listing. That’s where I found what I was looking for: COLLEGE ATHLETE ACCUSED OF RAPE.

  I had to get a Coke to help me through the next four articles. They reported that when DeWayne was a college fresh-man, he was accused of slipping something into a female student’s drink and raping her after a fraternity party. She wasn’t shy about telling her story. A large picture showed her, a slender white woman with straight blond hair falling in front of her face, clutching the arm of a male friend (also white) for support. I had only one article to read when Joe Riddley and Cricket got back, and I went off-line at once. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want Joe Riddley catching me reading up on DeWayne and accusing me of sleuthing. I simply couldn’t read any more. The way I felt, I didn’t want a hamburger, either.

  While Joe Riddley and Cricket prattled on about nothing, I sat there wondering why our school board hadn’t found out about all that before they hired DeWayne. Why was he still permitted around young girls? Did Tyrone and whoever else had painted the school know, or was that caricature a well-aimed shot in the dark? That half-hour lunch seemed to last as long as Moses wandered in the wilderness. Finally Cricket stood up. “I has to go now. Miss Charlene needs me to run the register.”

  Joe Riddley went down to the nursery to start getting ready for our Fourth of July sale. I paid a few bills, but all the time I was working, I kept seeing pictures in my head: a shy little boy with a big round head ducking and smiling as I handed him a cherry sucker. Coach Evans in his uniform proudly watching another Honeybee streak home. DeWayne in a yellow shirt sitting in Joe Riddley’s chair, trembling so hard he could not stand. The face of that young blond woman whose life had been so brutally damaged.

  Tears filled my eyes again and again, and I drank so many Cokes that afternoon, their stock should have gone up five points.

  You needn’t think I was getting much productive work done. I had about decided to go on home and bob around in the pool—one of my favorite places to wash off troubles—when the phone rang. “Mac, it’s Martha. We’ve had a good meeting, but the girls don’t want to go home. They’re crying and holding each other and say they can’t stand the idea of being separated tonight. I’d invite them all to sleep here, but—”

  I knew what she didn’t like to say. Ridd and Martha lived in a small bungalow with two bedrooms downstairs and one they’d put in upstairs for Bethany after Cricket was born. It only had one bathroom—nowhere near enough for twelve girls overnight. We, on the other hand, had five bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs, plus another bathroom and a den with a sofa bed downstairs. We also had a swimming pool.

  “Why don’t you take them down to our place tonight? You and Ridd can stay in our room and we’ll stay at your house with Cricket.”

  “That would be marvelous.” She sounded so relieved, I knew she had hated to suggest the idea but had been holding her breath until I did. “I’ll tell them to go get their suits and pajamas and meet us down there.”

  Before I could hang up, she said in a tentative voice, “There’s one more thing.”

  Martha knows good and well that Joe Riddley and I will give almost anything we’ve got to somebody who needs it, and she wasn’t generally nervous about asking. So I was surprised when she came to a flat-out halt.

  “What do you need?” I figured she wanted to know if she could raid our freezer for supper, and I was trying to remember how much hamburger we had, when she sighed.

  “It’s Hollis. She wasn’t at the meeting, and Bethany says she didn’t accept DeWayne’s offer of a place on the new team. Oh, darn, we’ll need to call those girls, too—”

  “Ridd can do that. You’ll have enough to do, getting the Honeybees fed and bedded down for the night.”

  “I guess so. But somebody needs to tell Hollis what’s happened. Bethany says she’s scarcely left their house all week, but one of the few times she went out was to talk to DeWayne on Wednesday. She doesn’t need to hear about this by accident. I’d do it, but I can’t leave the girls.”

  I’d rather have volunteered for an experimental case of West Nile Virus, but I said as willingly as I could manage, “Okay, I’ll go. I’m not getting much done around here anyway.”

  15

  On my way over, I tried to think how to tell Hollis what had happened. I’d seen her have a conniption over a rip in a new shirt, so I decided to take it in stages. First I’d tell her DeWayne died. Then I’d tell her he killed himself. I hoped to high heaven she wouldn’t start flinging her arms around like Bethany did. Hollis wasn’t tall, but she was sturdy. We might both wind up on the floor.

  I also wanted to sound her out about whether DeWayne had ever made improper advances toward any of the girls. Could that be what had been bothering her this past week? If he had and had thought it was about to come out, he might have preferred suicide.

  If I had thought he laid a hand on Bethany or Hollis, I might have ki
lled him myself.

  With those sentiments, regrettable for a magistrate and a Christian, I pulled into the drive.

  The afternoon was delightful, so I expected the Stantons’ front door to be wide open to let in the breeze and save on air-conditioning. Instead, the door and all four porch windows were closed. From the front walk I heard a soprano run up and down a scale. Hollis must be practicing her voice lessons. I hated to interrupt, but I pressed the bell.

  She peered through the glass, then fetched a key, unlocked a bolt, and slid off a chain. Few folks in Hopemore lock doors in the daytime if we’re home. Nobody I know puts on a dead bolt except at night. Only our most timid citizens use a chain.

  When she finally got the door open, she stood there barefoot, wearing a T-shirt so long I could only guess she had on shorts underneath. Her hair was limp and dim as a dirty penny, and instead of greeting me with a tidal wave of talk, she stood there without saying a word.

  “Was that you singing?” I asked. “It sounded real good.”

  “Could you hear it plumb out in the street?” Getting her dander up when embarrassed—now, that was more like the old Hollis we knew and loved.

  Relieved, I said, “Oh, no, just from the walk. May I come in a minute?”

  Her eyes grew wary, but she’d been raised right. “Yes, ma’am.” She stepped back for me to enter. “We can go to the living room.” She sounded like it was the best she had to offer, but it wasn’t much. I saw at once what she meant.

  When Sara Meg inherited the house, it had a boring yard, pallid rooms, heavy drapes and a few good Persian rugs. When she and Fred married, they poured their hearts into the place. He painted the chalky green exterior shiny white. She planted flower beds and laid a curved brick walk. While he painted inside and refinished the floors, she sewed curtains and slipcovers and painted lovely pictures for their walls. The living room, particularly, was such a happy place. The fabric on the sofa and a big overstuffed chair looked like somebody had flung daisies, daffodils, irises, and tulips all over them.

  Fred painted the dining room buttercup yellow; Sara Meg hung white sheers and brought down a red and yellow rug from the attic. “It’s the color of mustard and ketchup,” she had joked. “Nothing the girls spill will show.”

  Back in those days, Sara Meg’s life was her family, her house, and her community work. By far the youngest member of our Hopemore Garden Club, she had loved for us to meet at her place. She had always served cookies that she and the children had baked and told us with a laugh that in a year or two they’d redo the old-fashioned kitchen.

  As soon as Fred died, Sara Meg dropped the Garden Club and started neglecting her yard. I doubted that she had ever redone her kitchen, and I wondered how long it had been since she’d had the time or energy to bake. The place was swept and dusted, but it had that neglected look that said nobody’s heart was in the house anymore. Fingerprints showed up on the cream newel post at the bottom of the stairs. Through an archway down the hall, I could see the den piled high with newspapers and sewing projects. To my left, the dining-room sheers were limp, and behind the glass doors of a mahogany sideboard, silver trays were black with tarnish. The once-vibrant rug was hidden beneath papers, and the table was covered with books, hinting that Garnet studied there.

  In the living room, sunlight straggled through unwashed windows to rest on a baby grand piano and a stack of music in the overstuffed chair beside it. The piano had been polished until it shone, and the navy rug was striped where somebody had recently vacuumed, but the now-faded flowers on the slipcovers looked wilted and dying. A grubby afghan slung over the couch only partly covered a rip it was supposed to hide. It made me sad to see the place looking so unloved.

  Hollis shifted the stack of music to the top of the piano. “Won’t you have a seat?” Generally, Hollis either loved or hated things. She was so apathetic today, I wondered if she’d already heard my news. If so, she was taking it mighty calmly.

  I perched on the front of the chair and she sat at one end of the couch and drew her feet up on the cushion in front of her. Green shorts peeped from beneath her shirt. “Did Bethany send you?” Her toes wiggled, like they were wondering, too.

  “Not exactly. But she’s been missing you.”

  Hollis twisted a long strand of hair. “I—I’ve had some things to do.”

  “You’re not mad at her for any reason, are you?” Grand-mothers stalk right in where others hesitate to tiptoe.

  “Oh, no, ma’am. I’ve just been real busy. Stuff I left undone during the school year, you know? And Garnet’s been—uh—sick this week, so I’ve been staying with her.” She picked her way through that story like a child climbing barefoot through blackberry briers. I suspected she was making it up as she went along, especially when she gave me a real earnest look and added, “Mama couldn’t leave the store.”

  “Garnet looked okay Thursday at Myrtle’s, and she said she’d been to class. Cricket even came here to play that afternoon.”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. Garnet’s real dedicated. She wouldn’t skip classes, no matter how she felt. Besides, she felt a lot better Thursday. And she’s not contagious or anything. You don’t have to worry about Cricket catching it.”

  “I’m not worried about that. I came to tell you something important.”

  “I’m going to call Bethany, honest. I’ve just been so busy—”

  I held up a hand to stop the flow. “It’s not about Bethany. She’s over with the rest of the Honeybees—”

  “I’m not on the new team. Like I said, I’m real busy, and—”

  The only thing to do was shove my prow against her waves. “They called the team together to tell them that Coach Evans died this morning.” I steeled myself for a storm.

  Instead, Hollis stiffened and turned so white I was afraid she’d gone into shock. I cursed myself for being too blunt while she sat examining her toenails like they were some new and fascinating appendage. When she clutched her calves in the circle of her arms and started rocking back and forth, she still hadn’t made a sound.

  From rocking, she went to shaking, and she shook so hard, you’d have thought she had a bad case of malaria. I took the afghan and tucked it around her. I wanted to hold her, but people are funny about adults touching children these days—with good cause. Adults who touch inappropriately have defiled honest, caring hugs.

  Hollis clutched her knees closer to her chest, like she was afraid she’d shake apart if she didn’t hold herself together. Finally she whispered, “How was he killed?”

  I was so sorry I hadn’t been clearer. Children raised on television expect violence. “He wasn’t killed, honey. He hanged himself.”

  Her feet flew off the couch and hit the floor with a thump. “He killed himself? For real?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh.” What an odd little puff of relief and dismay.

  She grew still again, but it was a different stillness. Before, she’d seemed frightened. Now she seemed to be letting it sink in. In a minute or two she unwrapped the afghan and flung it to the floor. “That’s too hot.” She spoke angrily, and when she looked across at me, her eyes were full of furious tears. “He shouldn’t have done that. We loved him. We loved him so much.”

  The last two words were a loud wail. Her face crumbled and she fell forward, face buried in her hands, boohooing like a small child.

  Once Hollis let herself go, she cried a river and a stream. She got up and paced the room, dripping tears on the carpet. She belly flopped onto the sofa, buried her face in her hands, and wailed some more. I handed her every tissue in my pocketbook, and they weren’t enough. Finally, I went to the powder room under the stairs and brought back the whole roll of toilet paper.

  She cried so long and hard, I was afraid she’d make herself sick, but whenever I tried to calm her, she waved me away. How the dickens had I let Martha talk me into this? And what had scared Hollis when she first heard DeWayne was dead?

  She finally stood up and roamed
the room again, touching things lightly. I’d done that myself. It was a kind of reassurance—if they were still there, you must be, too. Finally, she asked, “You don’t reckon he did it because of what they wrote on the school, do you? Under the picture?” She plopped back into the chair across from me, her freckled hands clenching and unclenching on her bare thighs.

  Something clicked for me. Tyrone drew that picture and he obviously liked Hollis. Did she like him back? Bethany had never mentioned them in one breath, and I couldn’t imagine why Hollis would favor a big, beefy fellow who hung out with Smitty Smith, but stranger things have happened. I watched her closely as I asked, “Do you think Tyrone Noland drew it?”

  Before that afternoon, I would never have believed Hollis had such a talent for stillness. She clenched her fists tight and didn’t answer. Stubborn. That was the word that came to mind. Or my mama’s favorite, “bullheaded.”

  “I saw a notebook of his drawings, and they looked a lot like that one,” I prompted.

  Nothing.

  “Tyrone seemed to like you last Saturday.”

  That jump-started her engine. “Oh, no, ma’am! We just used to be friends, until he started hanging out with Smitty. Tyrone lives down the road, so we walked to school together before I started driving or riding with Bethany.” She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t stand Smitty Smith.”

  Were they friends until he started hanging out with Smitty, or did he start hanging out with Smitty after she found another way to get to school? Losing a friend like Hollis could take a sizeable chunk out of a young man’s life.

  She added in a rush, “Tyrone wouldn’t do bad things unless Smitty made him. Somebody ought to lock Smitty up for the next millennium.” She glowered at me as if I were personally refusing to put Smitty behind bars.