Miss Julia Lays Down the Law

by Ann B. Ross

I stood by the phone a few seconds after hanging up, thinking of how anxious Pastor Ledbetter must’ve been to keep his distance from me. Anxious enough, it seemed, to seek refuge with an Episcopalian, even though a member of his own church stood at the ready.

  Well, I thought, at least I know where he’ll be as long as the power’s out—right next door, and I’m not afraid of a little ice.

  Chapter 42

  Looking in on the pallet-littered library before going upstairs, I knew that this night would be long remembered by the children. Too bad that the Pickens twins were too young to join them. Binkie had turned out all the lights, so that only the gas logs in the fireplace lit the room. Lloyd, Latisha, and Gracie had their pallets laid out on the carpet close to the leather sofa where Binkie was ensconced, propped up by pillows and covered by quilts. She was telling ghost stories by the flickering fire, and the children were clearly entranced.

  Lamar was upstairs on the floor in Sam’s office, the erstwhile sunroom that Coleman had once rented. After showing Lamar the hall bathroom, I had apologized to him for the lack of a bed.

  Eyeing the quilt-padded pallet, soft pillow, and covering blankets that Lillian had placed on the floor for him, he’d said, “I’ve slept on the floor many a time, so it don’t bother me. Fact is, that pallet looks better’n them cots at the mission ’cause it don’t sink down in the middle. An’ won’t nobody be snorin’ to keep me awake, neither.”

  Looking in on Lillian in her room, I thanked her for her help and wished her a good night. “You and I,” I said, “are the only ones sleeping alone in a bed tonight.”

  “Yes’m, an’ I aim to enjoy it.”

  We laughed together as I said, “Me, too.”

  I passed Lloyd’s room on the way to mine, but refrained from tapping on the door for fear of waking the babies. Hazel Marie would probably have the worst night of us all, what with a tossing toddler on each side.

  I closed the door of my bedroom behind me, relieved to have my guests satisfactorily dispersed in beds and pallets throughout the house, and looked with a twinge of guilty anticipation at my unshared bed. I missed my usual bedfellow, but was glad that no one else would be in it with me.

  Walking to the side window, I peered through the glass toward Mildred’s house. Her lights were still on, but it was dark everywhere else as far as I could see—no streetlights or traffic lights, even, and certainly no headlights. I wondered how my other neighbors up and down the street were faring. The town would open a few buildings with generators to house some of the elderly, the sick, and families with small children. And those with coal or wood stoves or fireplaces would welcome neighbors and friends. People would look after one another, I knew, but some would certainly spend a cold and hungry night.

  “Oh, my goodness,” I gasped, and pressed my face closer to the glass. Then I quickly turned off the lamps in the room and hurried to one of the front windows for a better view. Pressing my face close, I could hear the tick of falling ice outside the window.

  All I could see was a swinging light aimed at the ground as somebody walked across the parking lot toward the church. Glancing up and down the street—or at least where I knew the street to be, for I couldn’t see it—I looked for the lights of a patrol car, thinking a deputy might be making building checks. But I quickly discounted that, for they’d be too busy on a night like this for such routine calls.

  Ah-ha, I said to myself, it’s Pastor Ledbetter, without a doubt, checking on the church. I mean, who else could it be? Maybe he planned to turn the faucets on in the kitchen and all the bathrooms to prevent the pipes from freezing, because there was one thing you could say about the pastor—he took care of that church. It was, however, a little late to be worrying about frozen pipes—ice had been falling since midafternoon.

  Well, maybe he’d had his hands full with Emma Sue. Maybe he’d been kept busy by looking after her or hovering over her, as Mildred had reported him doing. But Mildred didn’t know how the pastor suffered from Emma Sue’s migraines, and of course I wouldn’t discuss such a thing with a non-Presbyterian.

  When whoever was holding the flashlight went inside the church, there was no doubt in my mind that it was the pastor. I pulled an easy chair around so I could sit and watch what would happen next. Occasionally, I saw a glow through some of the windows in the Sunday school building, so I was able to mentally follow the pastor as he made his rounds.

  While I waited for him to reappear, a possible plan began to form in my mind—what I should do was to start putting on layers of clothes and get myself outside to meet him on his return to Mildred’s house. It would be a showdown at the O.K. Corral, or, more likely, given the insecure footing, a broken hip at the church parking lot. I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk it.

  Nonetheless, I eased my door open and leaned over the banister to listen, wondering how many were still awake downstairs. They all were. I heard Lloyd and Latisha talking as they walked from the library to the kitchen for who-knew-what, and Binkie and Gracie laughing as they sang “This Little Light of Mine.”

  I’d never get out of the house without being seen, questioned, and talked out of arranging a chance meeting on an icy night. Somewhat relieved, I closed my door and went back to the easy chair to watch for the pastor’s return. The ice might be preventing me from confronting him, but it was also preventing him from seeking a better hiding place than my next-door neighbor’s house. I know where you are, Pastor, and where you’ll be in the morning. I leaned forward, peering through the black night as I kept my silent watch.

  My eyes got heavy after a little while, but I stayed at it, wanting confirmation that Pastor Ledbetter would go back to Mildred’s and not go sneaking off somewhere else. What I wouldn’t have given for one of those tracking devices I’d heard about—I’d slap it on him so fast it would make his head swim.

  Of course if I ever got close enough to put one on him, I could go ahead and have it out with him right then and there, so all that thought proved was that I needed to go to bed.

  Ah, I breathed, standing and peering closer, as the light from the flashlight appeared where I knew the back door of the church was. It lingered there a few seconds as I pictured the pastor locking the door. Then the light wobbled around a few times, then began to move toward the street. I could make out large boots moving cautiously in the round splay of light on the ice-covered pavement.

  I gasped as the light suddenly flared up in the air, then dropped and rolled free. I could almost feel the impact as the pastor hit the ground. What if he’d broken something?

  But no, the flashlight was picked up after a few seconds and began moving toward the street, but something was different. It looked as if the light were being pushed along the ground. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but then I did—the pastor, flashlight in hand, was crawling along the slick pavement.

  Well, I couldn’t blame him. It takes only one bad fall to forgo your dignity and get home the best way you can.

  Assured that he hadn’t broken anything that would slow him down, I was ready to consign him to Mildred and go to bed. But just as I almost gave up my watch, a brighter light—maybe something like the long, heavy one that Coleman carried—appeared from the right and moved quickly toward the pastor. Whatever it was cast a much larger beam of light, so that I could see that the new arrival knew how to manage ice, and probably snow as well, for, I declare, if the figure wasn’t pushing himself along with a pair of ski sticks or poles or whatever they were. With little short skis on his feet, he was gliding along with that big flashlight attached to his body somewhere. I’d never seen the like.

  I nearly pushed my head through the windowpane, I was peering so hard. I saw the newcomer help Pastor Ledbetter to his feet, then steady him to Mildred’s driveway. Running to the side window to watch, I waited as the two figures seemed to stand talking, the glow of their flashlights outlining the lower parts of their bodies. What c
ould they be discussing on a freezing night in the middle of Mildred’s drive? After a few minutes, I saw only the smaller light go to the house, while the smoothly gliding, larger light disappeared down Polk Street.

  I sat down on the side of the bed, practically winded, after watching . . . well, I wasn’t sure what or who. One thing was for sure—whoever had come upon the pastor crawling across the street on his hands and knees certainly was prepared for getting around in a wintry landscape.

  Who would that be? Why, someone who habitually exercised at night, and someone who was known to have lived in Switzerland, that’s who.

  Chapter 43

  “Binkie,” I said as soon as I stepped into the kitchen later than usual the next morning. I had not slept well, that long-legged skier having flitted through my dreams throughout the night. “As soon as you finish here, get a cup of coffee and meet me in the living room. I need a consultation.”

  She laughed and wiped cereal from the chin of one of the twins. With no high chairs at my house, she and Hazel Marie were feeding the babies on their laps.

  “Okay,” she agreed. “We probably need to go over a few things. But with the town in the shape it’s in this morning, I expect the Clayborn investigation will be on hold for a while.”

  “Not for me, it won’t,” I mumbled, and waited for Lillian to dip up scrambled eggs onto my plate. “Have the children eaten?” I could hear Latisha ordering Lloyd and Gracie around in the library.

  “Yes’m,” Lillian said, “they eat awhile ago, an’ now they in there making a fort outa the pallets.”

  “What about Lamar? Has he come down?”

  “Done come and gone.”

  “Gone! He left in all this?” I waved my hand toward the frosted window.

  “Yes’m. I tried to get him to stay, but he wouldn’t. I give him a big breakfast, then he put two biscuits in his pocket an’ say he see you when he got something else to tell you.” She cut her eyes at me. “What you reckon he mean by that?”

  “I have no idea, but I intended to find him a cap or hat of some kind before he left.” I walked, plate in hand, to the table, wanting to forestall further questioning. “I hope he doesn’t break his neck out there. Hazel Marie,” I said as I sat at the table across from her, “did you get any sleep at all?”

  “Oh, yes, I slept real well. And the girls did, too. Of course I had to move them every time I wanted to turn over, but we had a good night.” She looked around as Lillian turned up the radio on the counter. “Is that the local station?”

  “Yes’m,” Lillian said. “The weather’ll be on in a minute an’ some news, I hope.” She put the egg skillet in the sink, then turned to us. “I been listenin’ for a while, an’ it still in the twenties out there. Nobody goin’ to work this mornin’, or to school, either. Everything closed ’round town, an’ they tellin’ everybody to stay home, ’cause nothin’ gonna be meltin’ anytime soon. But that Mel in the Mornin’ been on the radio all night long. He spend the night at the station an’ he kept on broadcastin’ ’bout who need help an’ where they was a wreck an’ anything he could think of. They sayin’ he ought to get a medal or something.”

  That brought out stories of happenings during previous meteorological events, such as storms, both summer and winter, the blizzard of ’92, and so forth. Binkie, especially, had a store of tales relating to one or more of the deputies and the tight spots they’d gotten into—all from Coleman, I assumed.

  I ate my breakfast and listened, but didn’t join in. Aware of my growing edginess because nothing was getting done to clear the Clayborn case and, more specifically, my name, I couldn’t just sit around talking and laughing while waiting for the ice to melt. It could be days before we got back to normal.

  • • •

  The cup of coffee I’d taken to the living room with me was empty by the time Binkie came in with hers. I’d had time to sit and ponder my predicament as I listened to the five children playing, laughing, screaming, and running in the library. Thank goodness for thick walls. Maybe I didn’t want a new house—they don’t build them like they used to, anyway.

  By the time I’d begun to wonder if Binkie was putting me off, I’d gone over what I wanted to tell her and to ask her, and had also decided that I needed to light a fire under her so she’d start demanding some results from the investigators.

  And occasionally, in spite of my anxiety, to wonder where we all would’ve slept if Sam and I were living in the small, though perfect, house I’d once spent a morning daydreaming about. Vagrant thoughts come and go, don’t you know, especially when you have to sit around waiting for someone.

  “Sorry,” Binkie said as she came in with a rush, closing the door behind her. “Had to get Gracie dressed and she wasn’t happy about it. Okay,” she went on, perching on the footstool by my chair, “I’m here for a consultation. What do you want to talk about?”

  “Binkie,” I said, taken aback, “what do you think I want to talk about? My legal situation, of course. I want to know just what the investigators are investigating, and how far they’ve gotten. I want to know if they still suspect me. And I want to know the autopsy results, which you haven’t seen fit to tell me. I had to learn about that from somebody else.” I didn’t tell her who.

  “And,” I went on, “it might interest you to know that I’ve found out a few things that would—with the proper presentation—deflect suspicion from me. I mean, I’ve been busy working my case, and I want to know what you’ve been doing.”

  “Miss Julia,” she said softly, as if I needed to be pacified, which I did. “It’s only been a few days, and the autopsy results just came back Friday afternoon. Late Friday afternoon, and they’re inconclusive. Ms. Clayborn was killed by a blow to the head—actually, more across the temple than on the head itself. Although there was also a cut over the wound—which may or may not have been caused by the same weapon, which, by the way, hasn’t been found. The only other trauma was a large bruise on the forehead. But no defensive wounds or anything else, except a few things thrown around the kitchen, which might indicate an attempt to escape her attacker. According to the husband, nothing was stolen, and she had no enemies. Now,” Binkie said, putting her hand on my arm, “a forensic team from the State Bureau of Investigation will be here today if the interstate is open, so we’re waiting to see if they find something that our team missed. We just have to be patient.”

  I was not appeased. “You, maybe, but not me. Have you looked out the window lately? If Sam can’t get here from Raleigh, how do you expect a forensic team to make it from the same place? And, Binkie, there’re a lot of things you don’t know, but even worse, I doubt that even the investigators know them. For instance, do they know how easy it is to get to the Clayborn house without going through the front gate and having your license number taken down? And do they, or you, know that somebody was in the house the night before last turning on a computer, because it didn’t turn on by itself no matter what the Richter scale says? And what about the strange, compulsively exercising man who’s been running past my house late at night, and here he was again last night, skiing past, if you can believe that.”

  “Skiing? How?”

  “Don’t ask me. All I know is what I saw, and that’s what he was doing. Helped Pastor Ledbetter out of the middle of the street, too. Who, by the way, spent the night at Mildred’s with Emma Sue, and, if you ask me, they need to be questioned, too. They’ve been acting in uncommonly strange ways.”

  “I heard he’d taken Emma Sue to Winston-Salem for treatment.”

  “I heard that, too. But if he did, it was the fastest treatment on record, because they were back here practically the following day. If, that is, you believe Norma, who rarely knows one day from the next. But that’s beside the point, Binkie. I happen to know that the deputies are in possession of some evidence found in the vicinity of the Clayborn house—but not in it—and I want to know
what they’ve deduced from that. And I want to know how someone could get in and out of the Clayborn house without setting off the burglar alarms.”

  “Well, for one thing,” Binkie said, still centering on what I considered trivia, “we don’t know that the house has an alarm system.”

  Believe me, it does, I wanted to say, but instead said, “All the houses in Grand View Estates have alarm systems. Homeowners’ requirement.” And said it as if I knew what I was talking about.

  “Well,” Binkie said, “be that as it may, let me assure you that the deputies on the investigative team are as good as they come. And when the SBI forensic team gets here, I think we’ll see some real progress.” She patted my arm again, still in her pacifying mode. It still wasn’t working.

  “Now, Miss Julia,” she went on, “I know this has been hard on you, but you can’t let it get to you like this. It’s normal to think up all sorts of wild and crazy scenarios when you’re under stress, as you understandably are. And I know how easy it is to put the wrong interpretations on perfectly normal occurrences. But you have to leave it to the experts—they know what they’re doing. I think it might be a good idea for you to talk to Dr. Hargrove. He could give you something for your nerves that would make all this waiting around easier on you.”

  “There is nothing wrong with my nerves.” The nerve of her to suggest such a thing. “It’s my life I’m worried about. And I assure you that I don’t intend to spend the rest of it in the Atlanta pen. Nor do I intend to sit around in a medicated haze while everybody else piddles around taking their time to clear the innocent and convict the guilty. Whoever it is.”

  “All right, all right, I understand,” Binkie said, but I wasn’t convinced that she did. “I should’ve explained things a little better, so let me tell you what will happen. After the SBI forensic team finishes, and if there’s still no clear indication of who or what caused Ms. Clayborn’s death, there may be an inquest. Everyone remotely connected to the crime will be questioned as material witnesses in a courtroom setting, and a determination of what happened will be made.” She stopped while I pictured being questioned in a public courtroom versus a private interrogation room. I didn’t like the comparison. “That’s if,” Binkie continued, looking carefully at me, “the investigators don’t come to a conclusion first.