Miss Julia Lays Down the Law

by Ann B. Ross

  I stopped halfway home, wondering if I should go back to Mildred’s or hurry on to my house. As I vacillated, the sound of running shoes beating rhythmically against concrete was coming ever closer.

  Without thinking, I slid in between two large boxwoods, scraping my hand against a forsythia branch, and melted behind an azalea bush—an evergreen one, thank goodness. A running figure sprang into the light at the corner of my front yard, crossed Polk Street, and turned to run down Polk right across the street from me.

  It was a man, tall and thin, churning away in latex and large running shoes with neon patches. He wore a shiny jacket, but nothing below the tight-fitting running shorts, so that his white legs looked like a pair of scissors zipping along the sidewalk. I strained to see who it was, but the visored ball cap he wore low on his brow shielded his face. He didn’t pause, slow down, or turn his head, just loped along as the streetlight behind him stretched his shadow ever longer down the sidewalk until he looked like a thin-legged stork high stepping in front of me. He soon passed out of my sight into the darkness beyond, as the soft thumps of his shoes dwindled in the night air.

  I slid out of the bushes and hurried home, trembling and on edge. I hadn’t been able to get a good look at the runner’s face, but the first thought that had entered my head as he passed by began to form more clearly in my mind. The figure had looked an awful lot like the man I’d met the night before—minus a woolen suit and a silk tie, but a self-confessed runner.

  If so, though, what was he doing in this part of town late at night? The Clayborn house was some five miles from Polk Street. Why would he choose this street to run on? Was he watching my house? Or watching me?

  • • •

  “I’m sorry I’m so late, Lillian,” I said as she met me at the door. “But thank you for waiting up.” I turned and locked the door, deciding that I would not mention the runner. He was probably a perfectly innocent man out for exercise, although he’d chosen a strange time and place to get it.

  “You’re not so late,” Lillian said. “The news not even on yet.”

  “I know, but it feels late. And you’ve had a long day. Did the children get to bed all right?”

  “Yes’m,” Lillian said, smiling. “And it been real peaceful ever since.”

  We went around the house, making sure that all the doors were locked, then, turning out lights as we went, we started up the stairs together.

  “Oh, Miss Julia, I almost forget to tell you. But I write it all down.” She pulled a piece of notepaper from her pocket and handed it to me. “He say he a detective, an’ he want you to call him first thing in the morning.”

  I took the paper, saw that Lillian had jotted down the time of the call—eight-thirty that evening. In her scratchy writing, she had written: Call detetive Ellie early tomorow.

  “Oh, my,” I said, my heart sinking. “What could he want?”

  “He don’t tell me. I tole him where you went, but he say no need to bother you tonight.”

  “Well, I wish he had. Now he’ll be bothering me all night long, worrying about what he wants.”

  And worry I did, getting up several times in the night, each time looking through the blinds down onto the street. Except for the occasional car, it was always empty. I saw no runners, which should’ve reassured me, but didn’t.

  And if that wasn’t enough to disrupt my rest, there was the phone call from Detective Ellis to worry about.

  What could he want with me a second time? Why call so late in the day, then say it wasn’t important enough to call me at Mildred’s? And with Pastor Ledbetter out of town—obviously avoiding me, although he had a good excuse in Emma Sue—should I go ahead and tell Detective Ellis why I’d gone to Connie’s?

  And if even that wasn’t enough to trouble me, I missed Sam. The bed was too wide and empty without him. It was one of the longest nights I’d ever spent.

  • • •

  The phone started ringing the next morning before I’d had my first cup of coffee, and the first call indicated the way the day would go.

  “Julia!” LuAnne demanded, as if something were my fault. “What does Detective Ellis want with me?”

  “I don’t know, LuAnne. Why?”

  “He called last night while we were at Mildred’s, and Leonard didn’t give me the message until just now. And would you believe that detective wants me at the sheriff’s office at nine o’clock this morning! What’s going on?”

  “I have no idea, LuAnne. But maybe he’s interviewing Connie’s friends.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call myself a friend. I barely knew the woman.”

  “Then that’s all you have to say.” And I went on trying to reassure her, and all the while, I, too, was wondering what Detective Ellis was up to.

  It didn’t get any better when Callie called as soon as I put the phone down. “Julia, did you get a phone call from the sheriff’s office last night? What in the world do they want with us? I just talked to Sue, and they’ve called her, too. I’m supposed to be there at ten, and she’s going at eleven.”

  “Oh, my,” I said, “they’re running us in every hour on the hour. LuAnne’s going at nine, but I don’t know when he wants me. I haven’t called him back yet.”

  “Well, you better go ahead and do it. Sounds like they’re calling in everybody who knew Connie, but I’d never met her before she had that coffee. I don’t know why they want to interview me.”

  “Me, either,” I said, “but, Callie, I better get off this phone and see when he wants me.”

  “You know what I’ve a good mind to do? Take all five children with me. I’d probably have the shortest interview on record.”

  Glad that at least one of my friends could face an official interview with humor, I hung up the phone, stood there a few minutes, then answered it when it rang again.

  “Julia, it’s Mildred. I haven’t been up this early in ages, but Ida Lee woke me because some detective called last night and wants me at the sheriff’s office at twelve noon. Who makes an appointment right at lunchtime? I could have a drop in my sugar level and faint dead away. Did you get a call?”

  “I did, but I haven’t returned it yet. But LuAnne, Sue, and Callie have to go in this morning, too. I don’t know what’s going on, Mildred, but it’s beginning to look as if they’re interviewing everybody who was at Connie’s coffee.”

  “That’s right! That’s exactly what they’re doing, because Helen just called me, and she has to go at one this afternoon. What do they expect to find out from a bunch of women who did nothing but stand around and drink coffee?”

  I hated to think what they’d find out, because I well remembered the anger and outrage I’d felt—and not only me but everybody else, too—after Connie had criticized us up one side and down the other. Detective Ellis was well titled, for he was undoubtedly detecting into a possible source of extreme umbrage toward Connie Clayborn.

  Chapter 22

  “Binkie?” I said when I was finally able to stop answering calls from worried friends and dial her number. “I’m sorry for calling so early, but I wanted to catch you before you left for the office.”

  “It’s all right, Miss Julia. I’ve been up for a while. What’s going on?”

  I told her about the interviewees that Detective Ellis had lined up and told her that I also had a message to call him.

  “He’s interviewing all of us, Binkie, but I’ve already been through that. What should I do?”

  “Call him back,” she said. “Call him right now, and if he’s not in, call me back. I have his home number.”

  “Oh, Binkie, I can’t call him at home.”

  “Yes, you can. He called you at home, didn’t he?”

  Somehow that didn’t seem to be quite the same, but I didn’t argue. Sam had told me that the law was an adversarial process, and with Binkie, I was seeing it
in action.

  Binkie’s last command to me was to call her back and let her know what the detective wanted.

  So I did, for I had no trouble reaching the detective at the sheriff’s department, and was able to call her back just as she was leaving for work.

  “He does want to interview me again,” I told her, my voice revealing the agitation I was feeling. “Can he do that?”

  “Only if you agree to it,” she said. “And I advise you to agree for one reason only, and that’s to find out how the investigation is going. If he wants to go back over your first interview, I’ll put a stop to it. But if there’s something new, I want to know it. We’ll be able to tell what he’s up to by his questions.”

  “You’ll be there with me?”

  “Absolutely. When does he want you?”

  “This afternoon, about three. I’m way down on the list, so maybe that’s a good sign.”

  “I’ll call and tell him we’ll be there at four.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Binkie. Three, four, if I have to do it, either one is fine with me.”

  Binkie laughed. “We don’t want to be too accommodating. Let him wait. Four is soon enough. I’ll meet you there a few minutes before.”

  Goodness, I thought as I hung up. Adversarial might have been the correct description, but it was sounding more like a game between Detective Ellis and Binkie, although, to tell the truth, I didn’t feel much like playing.

  • • •

  By the time I readied myself to make a return trip to the sheriff’s office, I’d heard from all those who had been interviewed before me. Not that I hadn’t thought of them all day long, wondering what they were saying and what conclusions Detective Ellis was drawing.

  One after the other, Mildred, LuAnne, Callie, Helen, and Sue called to tell me how their interviews had gone.

  “I was right,” Mildred had said. “He wanted to know all about the coffee—who was there, what was said, and especially if there’d been any spats with Connie.”

  “Spats? What does that mean?”

  “Fusses, fights, arguments, and the like, I guess. I told him I didn’t know what kind of social life he led, but we weren’t accustomed to such unpleasant occurrences in ours, and nobody spatted with anybody.”

  “That’s true,” I said, “but none of us was happy by the time we left.”

  “Believe me, Julia,” she said with a sigh, “he knew all about that by the time he got to me. I don’t know what LuAnne and Callie and whoever else he interviewed said, but he already knew that Connie had upset us all. I just spoke to LuAnne, and she swore that she’d not said a word. Just told him that she was devastated that such a kind and far-seeing woman had been struck down. Then, Julia, do you know what she said?”

  “What?”

  “She told me that she was disappointed that the Run for Rehab had been canceled, and then she said she’d asked Detective Ellis if they’d found any trophies in Connie’s house. She thinks that everybody who’d signed up—all three of them, I expect—ought to get them because they’d tried to run!”

  • • •

  The only bright spot of the day had been when I’d called Norma Cantrell to ask if there’d been any word from the pastor about his return. Couching my question in terms of concern for Emma Sue, I was relieved to learn that they were on their way home as we spoke. So if, during the approaching interview, I could avoid answering a direct question as to the reason for my second visit to Connie’s house, I would get my release from the pastor and make a full and complete confession soon enough.

  • • •

  Sitting in the same small room where they’d put me before, I waited with Binkie for my second interview. We were sitting side by side, for Binkie had moved one of the two chairs to my side of the table—something I was not bold enough to do. But Binkie was not intimidated and thought nothing of rearranging the sheriff’s furniture.

  “Binkie,” I said, trying mightily to hide my dread of what was to come. “How’s Coleman doing on his sign today?”

  She grinned. “Well, he’s decided that flip-flops aren’t ideal for the weather—so he’s wearing his wool socks and hiking boots. Put on his long johns, too. He’s been lucky so far since we’ve not been below freezing. But,” she said, laughing, “he didn’t get much sleep last night. Said he was all snuggled up in his sleeping bag when about three o’clock, one of the youth groups from church came by with a water balloon launcher.”

  “My goodness, I hope he wasn’t hurt. Did he arrest them?”

  “Oh, no, it was in good fun, and he didn’t care. Except, that is, when he crawled out of the tent, one of the balloons hit the sign above his head and almost drowned him.”

  After an abrupt knock, Detective Ellis strode in, smiling his let’s-all-pretend-we-like-each-other smile. I knew better by now, but he could still take me in with the patient, yet concerned, expression that came over his face with each question. That expression now seemed somewhat strained, and from his wrinkled shirt I figured he’d had a long and grueling day interviewing the likes of the women I knew.

  “Ms. Bates,” he said, nodding at Binkie. “Glad you could join us.”

  Binkie grinned. “I bet. But thank you for inviting me.”

  He grinned back at her, while I realized that this wasn’t the first time those two had been legal opponents.

  “And, Mrs. Murdoch,” he went on, “thank you for coming down again. I only have a few things to go over, just to get a better picture of what may’ve led to the attack on Ms. Clayborn.” He put a legal pad and a recording machine on the table, scooted his chair up close, and gave me a warm smile.

  “This won’t take long, but I do have to record our conversation. Is that all right with you? Like I told you before, it’s really for your protection.”

  After looking at Binkie, who nodded, I nodded at Detective Ellis, and he went through the recitation of names, dates, and so forth, as he’d done at my previous visit.

  As I stiffened in anticipation of his questions, he turned a few pages on his pad, looked up at me, and said, “What I’d like to talk about today is that morning when you and some other ladies were invited by Ms. Clayborn to her house. Tell me about that.”

  Well, I happened to know that he’d asked the very same question of everyone he’d seen that day, so what more could I tell him? I suspected that he was looking for discrepancies among the accounts, but he didn’t realize how many notes had been compared through a series of telephone calls.

  So I told it from my perspective—that I’d almost not accepted the invitation, went only for the sake of politeness, and to visit with friends, and hadn’t particularly liked Connie’s house.

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” Detective Ellis said, nodding encouragement throughout my narrative. “Now tell me what you heard Ms. Clayborn say about the town and what she’d like to do to it.”

  “Pretty much what everybody else heard, I expect.”

  “Oh, we always hear things differently, don’t you think? I’d like to know what you thought was important in what she said.”

  “Well,” I said, and began reeling off Connie’s plans for rehabilitating the town—Main Street especially, and the old courthouse park specifically—even as I glanced now and then at Binkie to be sure I was not missing any signals from her.

  “Okay,” the detective said. He flipped another page on his pad, then went on. “How did you ladies respond to her suggestions?”

  “We listened.”

  “I know, but did anybody say they didn’t like her ideas?”

  “Nobody said anything.”

  “Well, then give me some specifics. What exactly did she want to do?”

  “Bulldoze both sides of Main Street, for one thing, and most of the houses in town, for another.”

  Detective Ellis’s eyebrows went straight up. “Rea
lly?” He scribbled that down. “And nobody objected?”

  “She said it later, as we were leaving, so not everybody heard it.”

  “But you heard it.”

  “Overheard it, because she wasn’t speaking to me.” I glanced at Binkie, who was watching Detective Ellis with squinched-up eyes.

  “How did the ladies respond to this grand rehabilitation scheme? Were they for it? Against it? Was there any discussion about it later? Did anybody say anything to you?”

  “I try not to repeat what’s told to me, Detective. Things tend to get muddled when they’re told over and over.”

  “I understand,” he said, sounding as if he really did, “but you realize that you could help solve a shocking crime. So let’s take it as a given that you don’t engage in gossip, but there might be something you can share with me that’ll help the investigation.”

  I should’ve known that when anyone uses the word share, it’s time to look out. They want to unload on you, or, more likely, want you to unload on them. Binkie was staying quiet, so I gingerly recalled a few things I felt safe in sharing.

  “Well, Mrs. Conover thought she’d been tricked into participating in the Run for Rehab. She was fairly hot about it, until Connie said there’d be trophies for everybody. She was fine with it after that. And my friend Mrs. Allen just laughed at the idea of tearing down and rebuilding Main Street. I can’t recall anything else. Oh, wait,” I said, wanting to prove to Detective Ellis that I could be open and aboveboard, but without tattling on my friends. “I think a few people came down with headaches afterward, but I wouldn’t necessarily say it was because of what Connie wanted us to do. A lot of people get headaches when jobs are being handed out.”

  “Uh-huh. Okay, you’ve told me how some responded, but, Mrs. Murdoch, how about yourself? Did you say anything in rebuttal? You know, stand up and say something like, ‘We like our town the way it is,’ or, ‘This sounds like more than we can take on’?”

  I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t the time or the place. I figured she’d find out soon enough that she was biting off more than she could chew. Besides, there wasn’t time for a long discussion. People had things to do, so we were getting ready to leave.”