Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle

by Ann B. Ross

  I flew to the door, almost skidding on a million screws scattered everywhere, but not stopping until I was out the door and curled up under a clump of some kind of bushes in the Masons’ backyard next door.

  I heard the door of the apartment above the garage open and waited to hear the sound of James’s feet running down the stairs. It was quiet for the longest time until I heard James whisper, “Who’s there?” All was quiet until he whispered again, “Anybody out there?”

  Bless his heart, he was as scared as I was, and not about to come down to investigate. All I had to do was wait until he went back to bed, then I could leave.

  I waited and waited, and almost waited too long. Two car doors slammed somewhere in the front of Sam’s house, then two strong flashlight beams began to crisscross the yard. That sorry James had called the cops.

  Then lights began to come on in the house, which meant that Sam was up.

  I had to get out of there before the deputies started looking around the garage. Backing out of the bushes and staying low, I scurried from one shadow to the next, intent on crossing the next street and melting into one yard after the other until I was out of the vicinity. Getting picked up by the deputies was unthinkable. They wouldn’t put me in jail, but they’d put me in the paper. I could see the headlines: LOCAL WOMAN CAUGHT TRESPASSING. No, it would be worse: ELDERLY WOMAN CAUGHT TRESPASSING.

  As soon as I deemed it safe, I dashed across the street, making tracks for dark places wherever I could find them. Thank goodness, the people in the houses I passed were all decently in bed and no one challenged me. I stumbled through one yard after another, praying that all dogs were safely inside, then groped my way across an empty lot, stopping only when my breath gave out, which was when I fell flat on the ground after breaking through an ice-covered puddle. More worried about breaking a hip than muddying my coat, I stumbled on to a group of pine trees. And all the time I was going farther away from Sam’s house and, even worse, farther away from mine. I was intent on getting far enough from Sam’s to be able to cut sideways, then pick up a straight track toward home.

  But every time I thought it was safe enough to cut across, I’d see car lights coming slowly toward me as a sheriff’s cruiser patrolled the streets. And on top of that, spotlights were being played across the sidewalks and yards, which just did me in. You’d think they were after a common criminal.

  After slogging through backyards and side yards and across empty lots full of briars and thorny bushes, I was exhausted and about ready to sit on a curb until a deputy picked me up. I could hardly catch my breath, my knees ached, and it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. Sitting on the cold ground behind an oak tree, I decided to just head home. If a deputy stopped me, quite possibly I could talk my way out of it. I mean, a lot of insomniacs take walks in the middle of the night, don’t they?

  But no, I couldn’t bear the embarrassment of being questioned and, more than likely, disbelieved. And I couldn’t bear the thought of facing Lieutenant Peavey’s skeptical frown and Sam’s disappointment when they called him. So after resting for a while and hearing no cruisers pass by, I peeked around the tree to get my bearings, just sure that I’d traversed a mile or more—all out of the way and getting farther from home with every step. I could’ve cried because I was so tired and fed up with being on the run.

  My only hope of getting out of this mess with my pride and reputation intact was to get home and pretend none of it had ever happened. So before my nerve gave out, I stood up and ran—if you can call my shuffling steps running—into the street. Just as I got midway, I heard the heavy motor of a cop car, almost idling as it turned the corner, the probing beam of a spotlight sweeping both sides of the street.

  I flew the rest of the way and flung myself through a thick hemlock hedge, the branches snagging Lloyd’s cap from my head. With no time to retrieve it, I rolled away, hugging the ground as the car eased closer. Why didn’t those deputies go home? Or go get a doughnut?

  When the car finally passed, it was all I could do to get to my feet in the darkest yard I’d yet encountered. There was a distant glow from a house in the next lot to my right, but the light wasn’t strong enough to do me much good. But at least somebody was up, and I wondered if I dared knock on the door and ask for help. Then, as I realized I’d only come six blocks and was still within the search area, I recognized Thurlow’s house. Which meant that I was in Miss Petty’s backyard.

  Maybe that wasn’t so bad. I leaned against a tree, catching my breath and considering my options. Would Thurlow give me temporary refuge until the deputies got tired of cruising? Yes, he probably would, but I’d never hear the end of it and neither would anybody else in town, including Sam.

  And here came that patrol car again, and more than that, another cruiser came from the opposite direction. They stopped right in the middle of the street, their cars idling side by side and front to back as deputies are wont to do when they want to socialize. Stooping down and duckwalking until I came to another tree, I waited, listening to the static of their radios and the mumble of words as they chatted with each other.

  Then the spotlights on both cars flared on and their beams began a slow sweep of Miss Petty’s yard starting at the front and moving toward the back.

  I ran. I ran in spite of aching knees and panting breath and bone tiredness. If I’d run into a tree, I’d have killed myself. There was one place left, one place they were unlikely to search, given the outcome of the last person hiding in it: Miss Petty’s toolshed.

  Chapter 44

  I slammed against the toolshed, frantically searching for the door as the bright beams penetrated Miss Petty’s huge yard and swept closer. I pushed open the door a mere crack, slipped in sideways, and closed it, hoping that the movement had attracted no attention.

  Scuttling to the two fertilizer bags, still exactly where I, and Richard before me, had left them, I sank down and bent over, pulling my coattail over my head to make the smallest target I could. As I sat there trembling, the spotlight beams crossed the toolshed back and forth, lighting up the interior through the cracks in the walls.

  Carefully, I peeked up from my coat and glanced around to make sure I was alone. You can never tell these days who or what you’ll find in out-of-the-way places. Everything was as I remembered it: tools hanging from the wall and standing in the corner, an oil-streaked power mower that reeked to high heaven, bags of potting soil, and the two bags of fertilizer I was sitting on. Nothing looked changed or disturbed since I’d last been in it, a most reassuring assessment because now I didn’t have Lillian for company, and even though I felt reasonably safe from discovery—those deputies would rather play with their spotlights than beat the bushes—I had a tingling feeling about being alone in the place where Richard had passed.

  There was nothing for it, but to wait it out, and after a while, the deputies got tired of their light display and I heard the cars begin to move off.

  Safe at last, I thought, at least for the moment. I sat up straight and heaved a deep sigh, then began brushing the mud from my coat and picking leaves and twigs out of my hair. On my way out, I’d have to look for Lloyd’s cap in case it became evidence that would lead to me. It was one of a kind, so who else in town would be caught dead in such a fool’s cap? Lloyd certainly wouldn’t. He’d never worn it.

  In the meantime, I would stay where I was long enough to rest from my exertions and long enough for the deputies to find something else to do. But the longer I sat, the darker and colder it got as the wind sliced between the aging wallboards.

  Feeling my limbs stiffening up, I pushed myself to a standing position and began to walk around the small space to loosen them up. I still had several blocks to travel before reaching home, and I couldn’t afford to be half crippled from sitting too long.

  After circling the dirt floor a couple of times while keeping far away from anything that could be knocked over, I soon got tired of it. Needing something to relieve the boredom whil
e I waited for a safe time to leave, I sat down on the bags again, this time facing the knothole in the back wall. Thurlow’s lights were on, so I thought I’d watch him for a while and maybe learn what Richard had found so engrossing. That, after all, had been my intention all along—until, that is, Helen’s night moves distracted me.

  What I couldn’t understand was why Richard had only watched Thurlow. If he was in such dire need of money that he had to steal and forge my checks, why hadn’t he accosted Thurlow and demanded his share of their ill-gotten gains? That’s what accomplices usually did, wasn’t it?

  Pressing my face against the cold boards, I looked one eyed through the knothole, centering on the bright window in Thurlow’s kitchen. All I could see were appliances and kitchen counters, and those not so clearly—Thurlow had a deep backyard and it was like looking at a tiny picture on Lloyd’s pocket phone. Nothing was going on, so I soon tired of staring at what wasn’t there. Just as I started to pull back, a woman, wearing something red and filmy, walked in front of the window, then turned as if speaking to someone else. Undeterred by shame at spying on unsuspecting people—they could’ve closed the curtains—I pressed my eye closer, my mouth gaping in disbelief.

  If that wasn’t who I thought it was, then I wasn’t half freezing on two bags of fertilizer in a toolshed.

  And she had been speaking to someone, because that someone walked up to her, put his arms around her, nuzzled her neck, and slipped the red filmy material from her shoulders.

  No! I whispered, but it was. Neat, clean, fastidious Helen Stroud and grizzled, old Thurlow! No wonder Richard had had a heart attack. I almost had one myself.

  Glued to that hole, I couldn’t believe what was right before my eye. It was Thurlow whom Helen had been coming to and going from the times I’d seen her. And that was the reason Richard ended up dead on a dirt floor—he’d been spying on them until his heart gave out.

  But which one had he specifically been spying on: Thurlow, because Thurlow might’ve ended up with the scammed money? Or Helen, because who wouldn’t want to know what a spouse was doing? As far as I knew, Helen was still Richard’s wife—at that time, that is, because she was now his widow—so maybe he’d wanted to get the goods on her as well. It must’ve torn him up to discover the two of them together. Poor Richard. I could almost feel sorry for him, bereft of both wife and funds by one ragtag manipulator.

  But my sudden spurt of pity did nothing to release Richard from his most recent crime against me. I was going to make sure that everybody knew that INSUFFICIENT FUNDS Stamped on a returned check was not my fault, even if I had to take out an ad in The Abbotsville Times. And never show my face in the Sav-Mor drugstore, the Jiffy Lube car service, or Ingles grocery store ever again, which wouldn’t bother me because I didn’t go to any of them anyway.

  But whatever Richard’s motives had been, not one side of such an unlikely triangle had anything to do with me—so there, Sam. As the lovers moved out of my sight, I pulled back and sat for a minute, thinking. I didn’t need to see any more. I had enough to convince Sam that I’d been not only an innocent bystander but an unknowing one, and to convince Lieutenant Peavey and the bank as well.

  I might just go wake Sam up and tell him so. Smiling to myself as I thought about the improbable couple I’d just seen, I wondered how in the world Helen could stand being around Thurlow, much less submit to his nuzzling. Of course, there was no accounting for taste, but I’d thought Helen had better than that.

  It was time to go. Surely the deputies had had other calls and I could get home without interference from them. Besides, I could hardly wait to tell not only Sam but Hazel Marie and Lillian too. And wouldn’t LuAnne and Mildred be shocked and amazed to hear about Helen and Thurlow?

  I muffled a laugh, then jerked upright as a cold prickling sensation spread along the back of my neck and across my shoulders. Listening intently, my heart pounding, the rakes in the corner rattled again. A streak of fright coursed through every stiff muscle in my body. Up like a flash, I ran to the door. Throwing it wide, I heard a snap and a ghost dropped down in front of me. Too shocked to scream, though I tried, and crazed with fright, I ran right through it, heading for the hedge and the safety of the street.

  I don’t know how I got through the hedge. I pushed and shoved aside branches as hemlock needles pulled and scratched my clothes, my face, and my hair. Dashing out into the street, looking neither to the right nor the left in my terror, I was suddenly pinned in the glare of headlights as a car came to a screeching halt.

  Leaning piteously on the hood, wanting only the company of something human, I heard the car door open and footsteps coming toward me.

  “Ma’am? You almost ran into me. Are you all right?”

  I looked up, saw a deputy’s uniform, and almost fainted with relief. Still gasping with fright and unmindful of having spent hours hiding from his ilk, I clung to him.

  “A ghost,” I sobbed. “I went right through it, like . . . like nothing was there. But I saw it. Hanging there, a ghost.”

  “Ma’am, ma’am, hold on. What are you doing out here? You know what time it is?”

  “I don’t . . . let’s go. I have to get away. It could be coming.” Wanting only to get in his car and leave, I turned toward it and stumbled over his feet.

  He caught my arm and leaned toward me. “Hey, careful there. You have a little too much to drink?”

  “No. And if you’d seen what I saw, you wouldn’t be asking such a question. I’m telling you, we better get out of here before it comes after us.”

  “Okay, okay, but where do you live? Tell me,” the deputy said, turning me toward the headlights to get a good look, “where do you live?”

  I pointed in a vague direction. “Over there.”

  “Let’s get you in the car,” the deputy said, walking me toward the back door.

  “Good, that’s good. Ghosts can’t . . . Lock the door.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.” The deputy was grinning as he closed the door, then he crawled into the driver’s seat and started mumbling and talking in numbers on his radio.

  Trembling, I crouched in the corner of the backseat, as far from Miss Petty’s toolshed as I could get, watching fearfully for any signs of the ghost’s materializing out of the hedge.

  The deputy turned with his arm along the top of the front seat, looking at me through the mesh screen. “You wander around much at night, ma’am?”

  Did he know something? “Hardly ever,” I temporized.

  “Well, we’ve been searching for a prowler in the area. Where all have you been tonight?”

  “Minding my own business, young man, and I’m telling you there’s a ghost in that yard, or outside it, or somewhere around here—no telling where it is now, and I don’t even believe in ghosts. But I saw it even though I’m a Presbyterian, and I ran right through it like, like it didn’t have a body, and Pastor Ledbetter won’t believe me, but I know what I saw.”

  “Uh, ma’am, you take any medications? You know, to help you remember things?”

  He thought I was demented. “I certainly do not,” I snapped, then reconsidered. Maybe I should let him think I’d wandered from home and couldn’t find my way back. There’d be no question about trespassing at Sam’s house or spying on Thurlow if he thought I’d had memory loss, although I was far from senile, as anybody who knew me could verify.

  “Well,” I said, “maybe an aspirin now and then, and a laxative when I need it. But I don’t need either one to know what I saw, and I saw a ghost and it was right where somebody died, and Lillian says that spirits hover around for a while when somebody dies. I want to go home now.”

  “How ’bout I take you to the emergency room? You might need to be looked over.”

  “No, thank you. All I need is for you to put this car in gear and take me home. I’ll show you where I live when we get there. Turn left at the corner.”

  “Can you tell me your name now?”

  “I could, but I prefer not t
o. Besides, you haven’t introduced yourself either.”

  He laughed, put the car in gear, and we moved away, leaving, I fervently hoped, Richard’s ghost in Miss Petty’s toolshed, where it belonged.

  Chapter 45

  “You sure you live here?” the deputy said as he pulled to the curb.

  “I certainly am. Do you think I’d direct you to somebody else’s house?”

  “Well, you never know.” He still had that amused smile on his face, humoring me as if I didn’t know who or where I was. He leaned over to look out the side window at the dark house. “Nobody’s up. Guess they haven’t missed you yet.”

  “Let’s hope not.” I groped for a door handle. “How do I get out of here? I can’t get it open.”

  “I’ll come around and let you out.” He did, and as I climbed out onto the sidewalk in front of my house, he said, “We’ll knock on the door and be sure it’s the right place.”

  “There’s no need for that.” I pulled the keys out of my pocket and dangled them in front of him. “I can manage by myself. Besides, they’ve probably been up half the night. Wall-to-wall babies, you know.”

  That set him off again. In the gray light of predawn, I saw a worried look come over his face. “Ma’am,” he said, frowning, “I think I know who lives here, and I’m not sure you do.”

  I jangled the keys again. “Come watch me open the back door.” I had the urge to tell him I’d lived here for more than forty years, not all of them good ones either.

  He peered at me so long that I felt compelled to smoothe the hair out of my face and to stand a little taller. Frowning, he asked, “You wouldn’t be Mrs. Sam Murdoch, would you?”