The phone on his desk rang and he was tempted to let the answering machine take it, but yielded to duty on the third ring.
“Bryant here.”
“Major Bryant? This is Donald Barley. We talked this morning?”
Barley. Brother of the boy who dragged Jacob out of the creek.
“Yes, Mr. Barley?”
“I’m over here at Ransom’s house. I was telling his wife—or rather, his widow—about your call and she remembers Ransom talking about how Jacob died. You want me to put her on?”
“Please.”
“Hello?” The woman’s voice was thin and quavered with age, but she sounded quite clear in her thoughts and memories. “You were asking Donald about that boy who fell off a rope swing and died in a creek up there?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Donald said Ransom never said much about it to him.”
“Did he talk about it with you?”
“Not a lot, but he did tell me about that girl Donald said you were asking after.
“One night after we got engaged, we were talking about puppy love and the people we’d liked before we met. Sort of clearing the deck, before the wedding, you know?”
“Yes, ma’am?” he said encouragingly.
“I told him about a boy that flipped his car right when he was coming to propose to me with the ring in his pocket, and he told me about a girl up there that all the boys were silly over.”
“Did he tell you her name?”
“Letha McAllister.”
“You’re sure?”
“Oh yes,” she said dryly. “He had an old history notebook that he used to keep baseball scores in and one whole page at the back was covered in her name where he’d written it over and over. Liked to’ve embarrassed him to death when I found it. Said she was like a sickness in his blood that summer. From what he told me, she was one of those girls who flirted with all the boys, kept ’em stirred up. He said he fought with his best friend over her and then she went off with somebody else. He said that she was the reason another friend got himself killed. I reckon that would be this Jacob Knott you were asking Donald about?”
“He told you that?”
“Said the boy was showing off for her. Tried to do a somersault off a rope swing and the rope broke so he landed wrong.”
“Did your husband say anything that would lead you to believe it might not have been an accident?”
“No, but then he didn’t actually see it happen. Said he was on the path to the creek when he heard her yelling and crying. By the time he got down there, the boy was lying on some rocks with his face in the water. There was another boy—Ransom never said his name, or if he did, I forget it—and the two of them got Jacob up on the bank. He said Letha just ran. Didn’t call for help or anything, just ran away like a yellow hound. That soured him on her right then and there. He couldn’t even say her name without looking like it tasted like vinegar on his tongue.”
And then there was one, thought Dwight.
Billy Thornton.
Whose memory was going fast, according to his son.
He glanced at his watch. Plenty of time to get over to Cotton Grove before he needed to pick up Cal.
CHAPTER
15
But memory is impaired by age.
— Cicero
As he pulled up in front of 402 Magnolia Street, Dwight realized that he had driven by this house several times over the years. The street was typical of small southern mill towns, which Cotton Grove once was. The houses here were 1930s working class—well-tended single-story clapboard bungalows, painted white or soft earth tones, wide front porches shaded by old oaks and the occasional magnolia or pecan tree. Most of the porches had hanging baskets of bright flowers or ferns, swings, and rockers, as did 402. Indeed, as he approached the house he saw an old man seated in the swing, gently rocking to and fro.
A middle-aged woman dressed in a pink scooped-neck T-shirt and black slacks rose from one of the rockers. Her wiry gray hair was at least two weeks overdue for a trim and she tried to smooth it down as he came up the short walkway. “Major Bryant?”
Dwight nodded. “Mrs. Sterling?”
“Yes. My brother called and said you were coming. That you wanted to talk to Dad about a drowning or something that happened when he was a boy? Sixty-five or seventy years ago?”
“That’s right. We heard he was present when a friend of his hit his head and drowned in Possum Creek.”
“One of the Knott boys, Davis said.”
“That’s right. Your dad and two other kids were there—a Ransom Barley and a Letha McAllister. Are those names familiar to you?”
“Never heard them,” she said, shaking her head and then pushing her hair away when it fell into her face. “A lot of people, when they start getting old, will go on and on with stuff about their childhood, but Dad never did much of that. He might say how hard the work was, and I can remember a little bit of that myself, but we lost touch with everybody out there in the country after we moved to Benson. Davis says we were in school with some of Kezzie Knott’s sons, but I don’t remember. Is this about his sister getting killed when she was dying?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he admitted.
Even though they had tried to keep it low-key, too many people knew about the murder because anything connected with Kezzie Knott would always make the local news. Fortunately, the public seemed to have a short attention span and there wasn’t enough sex or titillation about the death of an eighty-year-old woman to keep it on the front pages or on television after the first news cycle ended.
“We’re trying to locate people who were in her hospital room that day.”
“But what does that have to do with us? We weren’t there. I don’t think Dad knew her, and even if he did, he hasn’t been out of the house alone in three years.”
“We’re just hoping he could tell us what happened back then. It might help our investigation.”
“Well, you’re welcome to try. He’s a little hard of hearing, though.”
She invited Dwight to a white wicker rocker near the swing, where Billy Thornton gave him a welcoming smile. A sturdy white bentwood table between the two rockers held a newspaper with a half-worked crossword puzzle and a radio tuned to a country music station.
“Good to see you again,” said Mr. Thornton.
So far as Dwight knew, he and the old man had never met. His white hair was thin across the top of his head and the pale green shirt he wore was at least a size too big, as if he had shrunk considerably since it was first bought. In shape, though, he was a slightly smaller version of his chunky son. Probably built like a nail keg when he was younger.
“Nice of you to stop by. We’re just setting out here watching them wrens.”
He gestured toward a hanging basket of ferns at the other end of the porch. Sure enough, a Carolina wren with a white eye streak came winging in, an insect in its mouth. Immediately, Dwight heard the nestlings’ loud competitive peeps as each vied for food.
“Every year I swear I’m not gonna let them nest in my flower baskets,” said Mrs. Sterling with a rueful smile. “If I catch ’em at it before they lay their eggs, I’ll pull the straw out, but I just can’t bring myself to smash wren eggs. I pulled this one’s nest out that fern around seven o’clock one morning and bless me if she didn’t have a new one built and one little speckled egg in it by seven o’clock the next morning. So now I have to spend the next two weeks being careful how I water so that I don’t drown the babies.”
Springy curls fell forward over her eyes and she brushed them away again. “I was fixing to get him a glass of tea. Can I bring you one?”
“No, ma’am, thank you,” Dwight said and turned to Mr. Thornton, who looked at him expectantly.
Mrs. Sterling turned off the radio, then speaking distinctly, she said, “Daddy, this is Major Bryant. He wants to ask you about when Kezzie Knott’s brother Jacob drowned. Can you remember?”
“Well, of course I can,
honey,” he drawled. “I ain’t lost my mind, no matter what you and Mamie think.”
He leaned toward Dwight, his blue eyes shining with amused male solidarity in that wrinkled, liver-splotched face. “You married, son? Your womenfolks treat you like you ain’t got sense enough to come in out of the rain?”
On the other side of him, Mrs. Sterling paused before opening the screen door and murmured, “Mamie was my mother, Major. She died three years ago.”
She proceeded on into the house and Dwight said, “Would you tell me about it, sir?”
“Tell you what?”
“About how Jacob Knott died?”
“Jacob Knott…? One of the Knott twins?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well now, let me think…” He leaned back in the gently moving swing and stared up at the ceiling. Like many porches of that style and age, it was painted light blue, like a cloudless spring sky. An occasional car passed on the quiet tree-lined street. “Darn birds make a heckuva lotta noise, don’t they?”
“It would have been back when you were a boy,” Dwight said. “You lived out in the country then.”
“Yeah. Tobacco and wiregrass. Some of them wiregrass roots go halfway to China. You can chop up a hill of grass and leave it in the sun a week and it’ll still sprout soon as it rains.” He paused and gave Dwight a puzzled look. “What was it you were asking me?”
“When you were a boy?”
“That’s right. When I was a boy. My pap farmed cotton till the weevils got too bad, and I sharecropped tobacco till I walked out of the field one day and went to work in Benson, driving a heating oil truck. Dirty work, too, but better’n a tobacco field.”
Mrs. Sterling returned with two glasses of tea and a handful of paper napkins, which she laid on the wicker table that stood between the two chairs. She wrapped a napkin around the base of each glass and handed her father one. As he gulped it thirstily, she took a sip from her own glass and said, “His short-term memory’s pretty bad but sometimes he’s real clear about things that happened years ago. I still don’t see why you want to ask him about that drowning.”
Her father frowned. “Somebody drowned?”
“We’re just trying to get a fix on who was there that day,” Dwight said.
“After all this time?” she said. “Why?”
“I can’t really discuss that right now, ma’am. Like I said before, it might be pertinent to our investigation. Did he ever talk about it?”
She shook her head and then had to brush back the hair that fell down over her forehead. “Davis says he remembers some of the Knott boys talking about it, but if Dad ever did, I never heard it.”
Mr. Thornton rattled the ice cubes in his glass. “I could sure drink some more tea.”
Without complaint, Mrs. Sterling took his glass and went back inside for a refill, and Dwight found himself thinking about Sally and her support group. Designated Daughters. That’s what they called themselves. All over the country, middle-aged children were taking care of their elderly parents, and yeah, the majority were indeed women, just like Mrs. Sterling. They didn’t all wait to be designated either. They just stepped up to the plate and did what needed doing. If and when his pepper pot of a mother ever needed care, he knew his sisters would be elbowing each other aside to take it on. They already tried to make her slow down, worried over her blood pressure, and sneaked in when she was at work to wash her windows or scour her bathrooms, “because Bessie Stewart’s not getting any younger either,” they said, speaking of their mother’s longtime household help.
Mr. Thornton stopped the swing with his foot and gave Dwight a long puzzled stare. “Jack?”
“No, sir. Dwight Bryant.”
“You here about the termites?”
“No, I’m here to talk about Jacob Knott, Mr. Thornton.”
Mrs. Sterling had returned in time to hear the last exchange. In a soft voice, she said, “Call him Billy. Sometimes that works.”
“What works? You talking about me again like I’m a baby?”
“No, Dad. Major Bryant wants you to tell him about Jacob Knott.”
“Jacob’s dead.”
Encouraged, Dwight leaned forward. “That’s right, Billy. He’s dead. And you were there, right?”
That got him a hesitant nod.
“You and Jacob Knott and Ransom Barley and Letha McAllister. What happened?”
“Letha?”
“Letha McAllister.”
“Letha?…Yeah, Letha.” Suddenly his eyes seemed to focus and his voice went hard as iron. “Her fault. God damn that little bitch to holy hell!”
He shook his glass at Dwight and half of his tea splashed onto the floor. He tried to stand and the swing went out from under him. Dwight barely managed to catch him before he fell.
By the time they got him seated again and Mrs. Sterling had mopped up the tea with paper napkins, Dwight could almost see the anger leaving the old man’s eyes, as if a door was closing. An instant later, Billy Thornton looked down into his nearly empty glass. “Good tea, Mamie. Don’t you want some, Davis?”
With a wad of wet napkins in her hand, Mrs. Sterling shook her head in bewilderment. “I’m sorry, but that’s the first time I ever heard him cuss.”
She touched her father’s knee. “Dad, who was Letha?”
“Who?”
“Letha McAllister.”
“She the new preacher’s wife?”
“No, Dad. She was an old friend of yours. Letha.”
He gave her a troubled look and didn’t answer.
Further questions seemed to confuse and upset him.
Resigned to failure for the moment, Dwight stood and handed Mrs. Sterling one of his cards. “I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call if you remember anything. Anything at all.”
Still holding the wet napkins, she took the card and put it in the pocket of her slacks. “I’ll ask Davis, but I doubt he knows anything either.”
Frustrated, Dwight walked back to his truck. To come so close and then to lose it. Maybe Jacob’s death had nothing to do with his sister’s death sixty-odd years later, but now it was a matter of principle to find out exactly how he had died.
According to Ransom Barley’s widow, only Billy Thornton and Letha McAllister had actually been there. “Her fault,” Thornton had snarled, and then he’d cursed her.
Why?
CHAPTER
16
I am not ashamed to confess I am ignorant of what I do not know.
— Cicero
Harkers Island—Monday afternoon
And those are some of our oldest,” said the docent, who seemed to speak in italics. She gestured toward a glass case ahead of them. “I’m sure your editor would be interested in them.”
Monday afternoons were usually slow here at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center. With a half hour to go before closing time and no other visitors, she had time to give her full attention to this reporter from Our State Magazine, who had arrived out of breath but happy to see that the museum was still open.
“I was afraid I was going to be too late,” the woman said, after identifying herself.
“I just love your magazine. Have you written for them very long?”
“Oh, I’m not a writer,” the brown-haired woman said, although she was dressed like one in a beige photographer’s vest that matched her slacks. “My job’s to roam around the state looking for offbeat subjects that might make a good article for us. I don’t think we’ve done an article devoted solely to decoys. Is it true that the old carvers just did it with no instruction?”
“No formal instructions, if that’s what you mean,” said the docent, who was a descendant of Harkers Island fishermen. “Boys learned by watching their fathers. Some were better than others, of course. My granddad never did get the hang of it, but his brother? You’d swear it was a real duck. They didn’t need models because they hunted the birds for food every winter and they knew exactly how the heads were colored or h
ow the feathers lay along their backs. It was just something they did when the weather was too rough to take the boats out—like mending the nets or making crab pots.”
“Did they use any special wood?” The woman focused her iPhone on a handmade buoy.
“Not really. Just whatever was laying around, mostly scrap juniper from one of the boat builders here on the island. They’d rough-carve the shape with knives, then scrape ’em smooth with a piece of broken glass.”
“Any special paint?”
“Boat paint, house paint, whatever was cheap.”
The self-identified Our State scout drifted over to the locked glass case. The decoys here were weathered and faded and one of them was pitted with small holes. “Why do some of these have cracks in their necks?”
“Usually the heads were made separately and then pegged on. Over the years, as they got wet and then dried out, the wood would swell and shrink and that’s when the heads would try to separate.”
“Do you think you could take some of them out and let me get a close-up?”
Normally, this would not be allowed, but everyone else had left for the day and this was an Our State representative, the docent told herself. Every time the museum was mentioned in the magazine, attendance picked up.
“Sure thing.” She went back to the counter in the outer room and returned with a key ring.
“Why are these under lock and key and some of those prettier decoys are just sitting out on shelves?”
“These are pretty special.” The docent carefully lifted a duck from the case and set it on top. It had a red head and a white body with black breast and tail. The paint was chipped and worn, but the feathering was exquisite. “This one’s a 1902 Hanley Willis. He loved redheads. Just look at the details. And you can barely see where the head is joined. If you wanted to buy one like this, it would cost you six or eight thousand dollars.”
“Really?” She zoomed in with her camera and clicked off several shots. “Back then, though, how much would one like this sell for?”
“Oh, fifty or seventy-five cents. Certainly no more than a dollar.”
Designated Daughters Page 11
