Down by the River

by Lin Stepp

  Vincent joined in then. “A friend in the church has offered us their rental cabin in Gatlinburg for our honeymoon nights. It’s in a gorgeous location on a mountaintop with wonderful views.”

  “So, you see everything’s worked out!” Margaret chimed in again. “Vincent has already started all the arrangements for the church. Grandma Richey said she and Grandpa would take care of the flowers with the florist they know. And with it only being family and friends, we’ll be mailing announcements rather than invitations. There’s really not that much to do!”

  Grace tried to catch her breath. “Margaret, as I said before, Labor Day weekend is only a few weeks away!”

  “I know! Isn’t it great!” She flashed another smile at Grace and let a hand rove intimately over Vincent’s thigh.

  Grace sighed.

  “Might as well accept the inevitable,” she heard Jack mutter near her ear.

  She flashed him a look of annoyance—even knowing he was right.

  “Well, I guess we have a lot of planning to do.” She tried her best to offer Margaret and Vincent a charming smile.

  Jack reached a hand across to shake Vincent’s. “Congratulations, man. Guess I’ll need to dig out my best suit and get it cleaned.”

  Grace suddenly felt overwhelmingly weary.

  Seeming to sense it, Jack added, “Grace is pretty bushed from the long flights back and forth to California and from all the excitement with the twins. I think she might need to get some rest before she starts planning a wedding or any other event tonight.”

  “Oh, well, sure.” Margaret jumped up solicitously, leaning over to give Grace a kiss on the cheek. “And I’m going to go open the bottle of champagne Vincent and I got to celebrate right now. Vincent and I made dinner, knowing you would be tired. We’ll all eat a bite together and then share a toast to the girls’ getting back safe and to Vincent’s and my wedding plans. After that, you men can say good night, and I’ll tuck mom into bed early for a good long rest.”

  Jack stood up and reached down a hand for Grace’s. He smirked at Margaret. “What did you cook? Is it safe?”

  “Stuffed ziti. I can cook some, Jack Teague.” Margaret swatted at him playfully. “Vince helped me make it. It wasn’t too hard. We have a Caesar salad and a good French bread, too.”

  The four shared a nice evening, but Grace’s mind raced in a whirl the whole time, thinking of all she had to do in the next weeks to prepare for a wedding at the Mimosa. She would need to plan the menu, order the tents, tables, and chairs, buy invitations and announcements, decide on beverages—naturally, there would be no alcohol. She would need to find a dress for herself and be sure Margaret had gotten the correct sizes for Elaine’s and the bridesmaids’ dresses. There were tuxes to think about and boutonnieres. Did Margaret even say who the best man and the groomsmen would be? Surely Vince had decided that.

  She sighed to herself. There was so much to do. Even with the florist chosen, there were decisions to make about what flowers they would use and where. There were decisions to make about where everyone would stay. And, on top of everything else, she had to worry about whether Jane would come and how she would act.

  “One person I don’t want to invite,” Margaret said, as she raised her glass for another toast, “is Crazy Man.”

  They laughed, but their laughs held an edge to them.

  Vincent gave Grace one of his intense gazes. “Margaret will be safer with me, too, Grace, with Crazy Man still not found. You know that.”

  It was one point Grace had to concede.

  The subject of Crazy Man was on the table a week later as Grace scolded Margaret at the breakfast table for taking off the previous day on her own with no one with her.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mother! I had to go over for the final fitting on my wedding gown at Richey’s.” She gave Grace a pouty look. “Besides, I’m tired of governing my life, worrying about that stupid little man.”

  Grace frowned at her. “I doubt Sheriff Walker would consider him only a stupid little man after all the problems the sheriff has had with him.”

  As if on cue, Grace looked up to see Swofford Walker at the back door. Behind him, as Grace unlocked the door to let him in, were Jack and Vincent.

  Grace put a hand to her throat. “Has something else happened? Don’t tell me someone has been hurt!”

  “Well, we had an incident.” The sheriff took his hat off and laid it on the sideboard before he sat down at the kitchen table. “But it’s resolved now. And we’ve caught our man.”

  “Oh, my!” Grace sat down herself then.

  Jack and Vincent went to pour themselves and the sheriff cups of coffee.

  “Hey. Can we eat some of this banana bread on the counter?” Jack’s voice floated over. Grace nodded at him dismissively. How could he even think of food at a time like this?

  “Tell us what happened?” she asked the sheriff.

  “Who was it, Sheriff Walker?” Margaret added this as she pulled out a chair at the table for herself. “And how did you find him?”

  “Crazy Man is Beecher Webb,” Jack put in. “Can you believe it? Jerrell Webb and his boys Beecher and Cecil have been mowing our yards and doing all our landscaping around here on the River Road for ten years or more. Who would have thought?”

  The sheriff took the coffee cup Jack offered him with annoyance. “Now, who’s telling this here story, Jack, you or me?”

  Jack sat down, chastised, and bit into a piece of banana bread.

  “It was, in fact, Beecher Webb.” The sheriff affirmed this with a deep nod. “I’d never have thought it would have been him. Fine family, the Webbs. But Lora Jean Johnson came forward to talk to me yesterday, and she sort of put a finger on him. We’d had another incident involving her this time. She and her little girl Janelle live not far down the road from the Webbs—up off Sugar Loaf Lane. Janelle plays with Beecher’s little boys. Lora Jean says she’s felt right sorry for them since their mother died. And she told me Beecher hadn’t been quite right ever since Ira Nelle got murdered.”

  “She was murdered?” Grace knew her voice sounded incredulous.

  “Yeah, and a brutal murder, too.” The sheriff took a long drink of his coffee after stirring cream and sugar into it. Then he cut off a piece of banana bread and put it on one of the plates Vincent had brought over from the sideboard.

  “Beecher’s wife Ira Nelle came to town one night to listen to a little bluegrass band at the Riverside Restaurant down on the Little River, but she never came home.” The sheriff shook his head. “It took dogs to finally find her. She’d been raped and stabbed. Pretty brutal thing.”

  “Who did that?” Margaret asked.

  The sheriff scratched his head. “Well, that’s the worst of it. We never did find the killer. Sad thing, that. Makes it hard for a man to get peace in his mind and soul when the killer of his wife isn’t found. Must have been that fact to push Beecher over the edge. Got him to acting nutty.”

  Vincent picked up the story while the sheriff dug into his piece of banana bread. “I wasn’t living here then, but I remember the retiring pastor told me a lot about what had happened. Said it had been hard on the family. Ira Nelle was the only woman who lived up there with all the Beecher men—with Jerrell, Cecil, Beecher, and their two boys Harley and Hixon. Twins—and real close to their mother. Plus, Ira Nelle sang with the family in the Webb Creek Band—and could play a fiddle right well, from what I’ve been told.”

  “But why all the notes?” Margaret asked. “And why, particularly, such a focus on me?”

  “You look somewhat like Ira Nelle.” The sheriff smiled. “Blond, pretty, and about the same height. There was a resemblance with Grace, too, and with several of the other women who received notes of warning. Lora Jean got a note a few days ago after she had a date with the Statton boy who works at the River Rat tubing company. Told her to beware of bad men.”

  Grace felt confused. “But those Statton boys are all fine young men. And Lora Jean isn’t
even blond. Plus that doesn’t explain why Jack got notes, or his girls—or Samantha and Roger about their Ruby.”

  The sheriff looked irritated. “Well, now, I’m getting to it all if you’ll just give me enough time. It took a while to make sense of it, and it takes a while to tell it.”

  Grace shook her head slightly at Margaret who was preparing to jump in with an undoubtedly critical or impatient comment. Grace knew patience wasn’t one of Margaret’s long suits.

  Margaret rolled her eyes—but bit her tongue.

  You see,” the sheriff continued, “Beecher got himself eat up with guilt because he didn’t protect Ira Nelle better. Seems she wanted him to go down to the Riverside with her that night, and he didn’t care to go. They had a bit of a snit over it, and she went on down on her own. So that was the first problem. Then, of course, the second was that we never did find the man who murdered Ira Nelle.”

  The sheriff took a drink of his coffee. “The best clue we had was that Ira Nelle was seen talking for a little while to a trucker passing through. We didn’t find her body for three days. By then any truckers going through this area were long gone. It’s hard to track without any description of the truck or the trucking company. We did our best.”

  He looked apologetic. “We even hired a retired detective living in the area to help us on the case, but no one could find any good clues.”

  Jack spoke up. “I can vouch that the sheriff and his department did everything they could to find Ira Nelle’s killer. No one liked to think a brutal murderer was lurking around our town.”

  The sheriff shook his head. “See, that’s the kind of thinking that started turning around in Beecher’s mind. He’d helped with the investigation as he could, questioning people, trying to learn more about who Ira Nelle saw that night. Later, some of the things he learned started to fester in his mind.”

  Jack looked up suddenly. “I had stopped by at the Riverside earlier that evening. I actually spoke to Ira Nelle.”

  “You did.” The sheriff bit into another chunk of banana bread. “So did Roger, if you’ll recall. The Statton boy was there, too.”

  Jack pivoted to look directly at the sheriff. “Beecher got to thinking it might have been one of us.”

  The sheriff nodded. “You three and a few more. I heard Beecher got fixated on some of the people who last saw Ira Nelle. Felt like he needed to watch them and to watch folks who spent too much time around them. Especially felt he needed to watch out for women and girls they might get too close to.”

  Grace looked up thoughtfully. “He began to think he might take care of other women and girls like he didn’t take care of Ira Nelle.”

  “That’s about it.” The sheriff played with a spoon on the table. “It started out with little things and little warning notes here and there. But it got worse. Mental problems sort of escalate like that sometimes.”

  “Why did he follow me that day?” Margaret asked this.

  “Well, you look so much like Ira Nelle—young and blond. And musical.” The sheriff grinned at Margaret. “He heard you playing the piano and singing when he was out working in the yard. And he worried that you spent time around Jack. Also, that you walked around so much on your own. Plus the day he followed you it was because he saw the Statton boy talking to you outside of the Hart Gallery. He thought you might be in danger. He meant to follow you for a while to see you got to your next stop safely.”

  Margaret sighed. “That’s really sad.”

  “Yeah, it is. He’s going to need a lot of help to get all this sorted out.” The sheriff pushed his chair back and crossed one leg over his knee. “The medical folks seem to think he can be rehabilitated.”

  Grace leaned forward. “How did Lora Jean know it might be Beecher?”

  “She wasn’t sure it was.” The sheriff reached over to get his coffee cup. “But when she got her own little note, she got suspicious. You see, the Webb boys had been down at her house the day before playing a card game with Janelle. Lora Jean heard them, offhand, fussing that all their cards were messed up because some of them kept getting lost.”

  “I bet she got her note on a playing card,” Jack said.

  “That she did.” The sheriff grinned at Jack. “And it got her to thinking. She also remembered picking up Janelle from Scouts the day Margaret got followed. She remembered Janelle and the girls talking about Crazy Man’s driving a black truck with a headlight out and wearing a cowboy hat. Beecher and all the Webb men always wear cowboy hats. And Janelle remembered Beecher had run into a fence post up at the farm and busted out a headlight last month. She’d noticed it when he came down to pick up the boys one day.”

  Margaret leaned her elbows on the table. “Did Beecher Webb admit it right away when you went to confront him?”

  “Nope. Wouldn’t say a word for a while.” The sheriff leaned down to scratch the dogs’ ears; they’d come padding into the room. “But he broke down and snapped after a while. Said if I’d done my job he wouldn’t have needed to protect other women from getting hurt like Ira Nelle did.” The sheriff shook his head back and forth. “Made me feel real bad to hear that.”

  “What will happen to Beecher now?” Jack asked. “This must be hard for Beecher’s boys, after losing their mother only a year ago.”

  “Well, the boys’ granddad is helping with that.” The sheriff looked at Vincent. “And it would be right fine if you went over to counsel with the family some. Maybe prayed with them and gave them some spiritual help at a bad time like this.”

  Vincent nodded. “I’ll go today.”

  “I’ll go, too.” Margaret reached over to take Vincent’s hand. “I want them to know I hold no hard feelings. Beecher was sick. I don’t think he would have ever hurt me. He just meant to protect me.”

  Jack slanted the sheriff a sharp glance. “Why do you think Beecher sent that note to my girls about their mother? That doesn’t seem to fit the protective picture.”

  “Well, yeah, it does.” The sheriff scratched his nose. “You see, Beecher thought you the most likely suspect among the ones he watched—what with your past reputation with women and all.”

  He sent an apologetic look to Grace. “When Beecher was working in the yard at the Mimosa one day and heard the girls in the gazebo—wondering about their mother and wishing they could know about her—he got to thinking maybe they would be safer and better off to be with her. He’d heard the old rumors about Jack’s having run his young wife off long ago, and it all rolled around and mixed in with his twisted thinking.”

  “Dang it!” Jack pounded a fist on the table. “I liked that man. Always talked to him whenever he mowed our property. Asked about his boys.”

  Grace leaned over to put a hand on Jack’s arm. “He wasn’t well, Jack. You can’t take it personally when Beecher wasn’t well. His mind was all twisted.”

  Margaret sighed deeply. “Well, I for one am surely glad we found out who this man is. I’m sick and tired of always needing to have someone with me whenever I go anywhere.”

  Vincent grinned at her. “Well, maybe not always sorry to have someone with you.”

  She giggled. “Well, maybe not always.”

  The couple passed some looks Grace didn’t even want to try to analyze. Perhaps it was a good thing the wedding date wasn’t far away now.

  The sheriff stood and picked up his hat. “I’d best be getting on now. I just wanted you folks to know we’d found our man and that things would be safer around here now.”

  “Where is Beecher now?” Margaret asked the sheriff.

  “Staying in a mental health facility of some sort for a spell. But then the doctors think they can work with him as an out-patient. He’s already saying he needs to give a lot of folks some apologies—and they say that’s a real good sign.”

  Jack got up, too. “I’ll walk you out, Swofford. I need to go on to the office. I have a closing in twenty minutes.”

  “I need to go, too.” Vincent stood up. “The florist is coming to look at
the church at nine thirty.”

  Margaret jumped up eagerly. “I’ll go with you, Vince. I want to talk with them about tying some roses on each of the pews with white ribbons.”

  Grace cleaned up the kitchen and then took the dogs outside into the backyard. She walked down toward the river as the dogs played with a stick and chased each other through the yard. She thought about all she’d learned about Crazy Man as she walked down to the tumbling mountain stream and out onto the swinging bridge. It felt nice to stand here on the bridge, looking down the river, hearing the creek rushing over the rocks below. Enjoying a moment of quiet after such a busy sweep of days.

  Grace stood in the same spot again a few weeks later—savoring the quiet once more. It was late evening with a full moon floating in the sky overhead. Margaret and Vincent were happily married and off on their honeymoon. And this morning Grace had seen the last of her family and houseguests out the door and then spent the day cleaning, stripping beds, and doing laundry. The house felt suddenly lonely after being full with family and friends for so many days.

  Grace sighed and leaned her arms on the bridge rail, looking down on the river below. She could see the moonlight flickering over the top of the water as it rushed on its way downstream. Late fireflies flickered in the shrubbery by the riverside, and the soft sounds of tree frogs kept the night from being totally quiet.

  Hearing a footfall, Grace looked up to see Jack coming out onto the bridge toward her. He came to stand beside her, leaning his arms on the rail to look up the river, too. They stood there quietly, enjoying the evening for a time before either of them spoke.

  “You were watching for me, weren’t you?” Grace said into the darkness.

  Jack’s voice came back, husky and silky. “You know I was.”

  Grace felt herself shiver. She waited, expectant, knowing Jack would soon touch her or kiss her. Her body stirred with expectancy.