by Nora Deloach
“You don’t know who hit him so brutally?” The doctor frowned.
Daddy tucked his hands in his pockets, a gesture he uses when he feels tense but is trying to fake it. “No,” he said brusquely.
The doctor looked him directly in the eyes. “Police will want to know,” he said.
Daddy’s eyes didn’t blink. “Then they’ll have to get the story from Nat,” he said. “When he came to our house, he had already gotten busted.”
The doctor looked confused. He slipped his little pad back in his pocket. “I’ll have to tell the police you brought him here,” he said.
Daddy’s hands slipped further into his pockets. “Tell the police anything you want. My wife and daughter were with me having breakfast, Nat started banging on the window, we opened it, and,” he pointed to Nat, who was moaning softly while Mama held his hand, “this is what we found.”
Dr. Jamison smiled and nodded politely, as if he didn’t quite believe Daddy’s story but was too courteous to dispute it. “Thanks very much,” he murmured, then turned and walked away quickly down the long white corridor.
“You’re going to be all right,” I whispered to Nat. He looked at me, then closed his eyes. A tear rolled down his bruised face. His lips quivered and I imagined he was praying that his dead mother would come walking through the door and protect him from all the world’s misery.
Ten minutes later, my parents and I were in their car underneath the stoplight on King Street. Mama shook her head. “Nothing about this whole thing makes sense to me,” she said. “Who would want to hurt Nat like that?”
“The secret to this mess is in that envelope,” I said. “Once we find it, well find Miss Hannah’s murderer, and maybe—”
Mama cut in before I could finish my sentence. “And maybe save her darn fool son’s life!” she said softly.
CHAPTER
SIX
My parents had taken the previous day off to keep their appointment with the lawyer Calvin Stokes. Today they both went to work, Mama to the welfare office and Daddy to Westinghouse, Micarta Division.
I was alone in the house, but I couldn’t seem to settle down. The weather was cold, the November sky gray, heavy with icy rain. Inside was warm but, for some reason, it too felt as depressing as the outdoors.
Of course, I missed Cliff. I cursed the fighting Zwigs whom I hoped never to meet, and I cursed Mr. Zwig’s live-in secretary for getting herself pregnant. It’s not fair, I thought. These people who don’t even know I exist shouldn’t impact my life.
For the twentieth time that morning, I glanced through the window at the little house next door, the house where Hannah Mixon had lived and where she had died. Smalls Lane is a cul-de-sac. Besides my parents’ house and Hannah and Nat Mixon’s, there are four other houses on Smalls Lane. Each has a large yard planted with oak and magnolia trees. Behind Smalls Lane is a patch of woods that is a mile deep. On the other side of those woods a highway leads to Highway 6, the road that takes you to Darien.
Miss Hannah’s house is cement block. It had originally been painted white and green. Now, its exterior was faded, its awnings dirty. Everything about the house needed repair. It was a shabby sight, as dreary as the weather.
On the other hand, my parents’ home is a sprawling brick ranch with huge, bright rooms that are filled with objects from Daddy’s tours around the world. Daddy had purchased this property years earlier when they were first married, before my two brothers and I were born. I suspected that, even back then, Daddy planned to build on it whenever he retired. He always intended to call Otis home, no matter where the Air Force took him.
I sighed. Otis seemed so peaceful. Why would anybody who lived here poison Miss Hannah? Why would someone try to kill Nat? It was true that Miss Hannah was hateful, but as far as I could tell that was her only sin. And Nat, poor Nat, a thirty-year-old uneducated man whose only errors seemed to be that he was never trained to do anything productive and that he couldn’t seem to hang on to a dime. It was true, Nat probably owed everybody in Otis money. Last year, he’d borrowed twenty dollars from me, which, now that I think of it, he never paid back. Could the attack on him last night have something to do with his bad habit of borrowing money? Maybe, I thought, he owed someone a lot of money and that person had murdered his mother, thinking that Nat could repay him back with Hannah’s insurance money.
As a paralegal, I decided, I’d been trained to dig, to find a trail and follow it. I sat down with a notepad to jot down questions that I intended to find answers to. On the top of one page I put down, MISS HANNAH: At least 60 years old. Married at least twice. She must have had Nat when she was 30. Check into her past … her husbands … her relatives … check county tax records to see when she bought the 250 acres of land … find envelope … Find Bible!
On the next page, I wrote, NAT: Thirty, uneducated, loves to gamble, hang out at Melody Bar. Check into his friends … his girlfriends … people he owes money.
Anything else? I wondered as I fidgeted with my pencil. Nothing came to mind. I picked up the remote and clicked on the television. A talk show had a mother and daughter who had switched roles. That was as senseless, I thought, as a murderer being a part of the serene Otis community. I clicked off the remote.
Next I checked out Mama’s bookshelves. She had a collection of books that she had gotten from the places where she and my father traveled. I found one that interested me. I curled up on the sofa and read until I fell asleep.
Around three o’clock I was up again wandering around the house. Lunch had been a thick ham sandwich and a cup of hot tea with lemon. I was sitting with my notepad again, trying to figure out a motive for Miss Hannah’s murder, when the doorbell rang. Surprised, because I didn’t expect a visitor, I disarmed the alarm system and opened the front door to find Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls standing on Mama’s doorstep.
“Thank goodness you’re home,” Carrie Smalls said, pulling at the front door to escape wind and rain.
“Ladies,” I said, ushering them into the dry, warm house. I closed the door behind them.
Annie Mae Gregory is a huge, dark woman. Her black eyes are small and very piercing—in her fat face, her eyes always remind me of a raccoon’s. She has small black moles on each side of her face that extend from her bottom eyelid down to her neck. When her head is tilted a certain way, Annie Mae looks a little cross-eyed.
Sarah Jenkins, on the other hand, is a tiny, frail-looking woman with a pecan complexion that’s filled with wrinkles. Mama has told me that Sarah Jenkins is obsessed with her own health and visits her doctor’s office at least once a week. Today, she smelled sour, like vinegar and garlic.
Carrie Smalls is very tall, with mocha-colored skin and long straight hair that hangs to her shoulders. She looks younger than the other ladies but, I believe, that’s because she dyes her hair an extraordinary shade of jet black. Carrie Smalls has a strong chin, thin lips, and eyes that seldom seem to blink. She has a strength about her. It’s Carrie Smalls’s strength that gives the three women their presence when they are together. And when they’re together, you know gossip is on the menu.
“We came over to ask you what happened to Nat Mixon early this morning,” Carrie Smalls began, her intense eyes locked on my face.
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. For a moment, I really didn’t know what to say. I finally stammered, “Would you ladies like a cup of tea?”
“Lord, yes,” Sarah Jenkins exclaimed, wrapping her neck with a thick scarf of navy wool. “Dr. Clark told me yesterday to stay in out of this weather, what with my various ailments.”
Annie Mae and Carrie decided they would like tea, too.
After I hung up each of the ladies’ coats in the hall closet, I directed them into the kitchen. Once I had them seated and had turned on the teakettle, Annie Mae Gregory opened the conversation. “Simone, we got news that somebody hit Nat Mixon over the head.” Her jowls shook as she spoke.
“Yes,” I said, my min
d wild in trying to figure out how to handle this. Mama held that these three women knew useful information. You could say Carrie, Sarah, and Annie Mae were the town’s historians—they knew everything about everybody in Otis.
Sarah Jenkins took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. “Your Mama and Daddy took Nat to the hospital just after daylight,” she said.
I took cups and saucers from the cupboard, all the while wondering how these women had learned so much in such a short time. The FBI could use their skills, I thought, and tried not to giggle. “What can I tell you?” I said.
Carrie Smalls tilted her head upward. “Tell us whether or not you saw anybody hanging around Nat’s house, anybody who would try to kill the boy?”
I was speechless. “No,” I said, at last. Then I decided that this wasn’t my expertise. “Maybe you ladies would enjoy your visit more if Mama was here,” I said, reaching for the telephone and dialing Mama’s office number. “Maybe she could come home.”
“We tried to see Candi,” Sarah Jenkins said. “We stopped by the welfare office before we came here. Candi was busy, she wouldn’t see us.”
“She was talking to that womanish Tippy Turner,” Annie Mae Gregory said. “That girl’s carrying her third child, and ain’t about to marry that good-for-nothing boyfriend of hers.”
“Maybe Mama is free now,” I suggested, waiting for the receptionist to answer the phone. After a moment, Mama was on the other end of the line. “Mama,” I began, “Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls stopped for a visit and—”
“She’s coming home?” Carrie Smalls asked. Her nose twitched.
I said good-bye to Mama, who had just ordered me not to say a word, and replaced the phone. “Yes. It’s only a five-minute drive from her office. Meantime, I’ll fix you ladies tea and give you a piece of Mama’s sweet potato pie.”
The ladies had just cleaned their plates when Mama walked into the room. My mother had a look on her face that was a mixture of amazement and satisfaction. I surmised she was surprised that the women were so determined to get their information. Still, she was happy to be able to have this chat with them. “Ladies,” she said, taking off her coat and laying it on a chair.
“Candi,” Sarah Jenkins said, “it’s so nice to see you, dear. I declare you look younger each time I see you.”
“You’re looking well, too, Sarah,” Mama replied.
“Ain’t doing good though,” Sarah Jenkins said. “Dr. Clark got me on heart medicine now, you know.”
“No,” Mama said, shaking her head.
I wondered why a woman with a heart problem would be facing this weather just to talk about somebody else’s business. But I was smart enough just to sip tea and say nothing.
Mama shook her head again. “I’m real sorry to hear about your heart, Sarah. And I’m sorry we couldn’t talk at the office, but—”
Carrie Smalls interrupted. “We would have never bothered you at your job or come here, Candi, if we weren’t so worried about Nat.”
“Nat is going to be all right,” Mama said.
“We stopped by the hospital to see the dear boy, but he was sleeping, and James’s cousin Gertrude wouldn’t let us wake him,” Annie Mae Gregory said.
Sarah Jenkins wrapped her hands around her bosom, pushing up her breast. “So, we came straight to you, Candi. We knew that you’d tell us how the poor boy is doing!”
“Nat is fine,” Mama assured them. She sat down and motioned me to pour her a cup of tea. “You know,” she said, after she was satisfied that her brew had plenty of sugar and lemon in it, “Hannah Mixon was my neighbor. I saw her as much as anybody in the area. Still, I didn’t know much about her.”
Carrie Smalls made a throaty sound. “That’s ’cause Hannah was a selfish woman. She could live in this world alone, except for her boy, Nat.”
“I never saw visitors. I wondered about her family,” Mama continued serenely.
“Hannah didn’t have family,” Carrie Smalls stated. “Her people died before she was full grown. Course, being married so many times, she had a lot of in-laws.” She said this grimly, as if in-laws were germs. I tried to remember if Carrie Smalls had ever married.
Mama cleared her throat. “Did either of you ladies know Hannah’s husbands?” she asked, an innocence in her voice.
“Of course we knew them!” Annie Mae Gregory roared. “I courted her first husband, Curtis Joyner, myself. That was before Curtis ever knew Hannah. Should have married him, could have if I had wanted to. Curtis died six months after Hannah got him. Had that Spanish flu that was going around right after the war.”
I cleared my throat.
“World War One,” Mama explained to me, keeping her eyes on Annie Mae.
Carrie Smalls continued. “It was years later when Hannah married her second husband, Charles Warren. He wasn’t half the man Curtis was. Charles was Nat’s father. The boy was only a baby when Charles got himself killed in a gambling fight.” Carrie Smalls shook her head. “Nat’s got bad blood in him. I reckon Hannah knew it, too. That’s why she didn’t try to make much out of the boy.”
“And her third husband?” Mama asked.
This time Annie Mae Gregory answered. “His name was Richard Wescot. Richard was from Darien. He was a fine-looking man, a red bone, high yellow with a deep singing voice.”
“He used to sing quartet,” Carrie Smalls added.
“Richard had people follow him all the way to Melbourne just to hear him sing,” Annie Mae Gregory agreed.
“I’ve seen him turn out more than one church service,” Sarah Jenkins added. “Poor Richard wasn’t married to Hannah for more than three years before he died.”
“Miss Hannah may not have had the best personality,” I declared, “but she certainly had the knack of getting married.”
“Hannah got husbands but she seemed to lose them as fast,” Mama pointed out.
Sarah Jenkins coughed. “Ill tell you one thing, nobody in this town was surprised when Hannah snagged her fourth husband, Leroy Mixon.”
Mama looked puzzled.
Sarah Jenkins tried to laugh, but started coughing, instead. Nobody said anything until it was certain that she was going to live.
“That’s because Leroy Mixon was just like Hannah,” Carrie Smalls said firmly. “Together they were the meanest two people in these parts!”
That night, Nat was sitting up in his hospital bed, his long legs stretched out under the white sheet, his head wrapped neatly in bandages. Mama sat at his bedside. Daddy stood leaning at the door.
Mama urged Nat to tell me his story. Nat tilted his head to one side and gave me one of his most dejected looks. “I walked into the house—” he began.
I was impatient. “What time was that?” I interrupted.
“Five, six—”
“It had to be before six,” I said. “Everybody in the world was up at six A.M., right, Mama?”
Mama cut her eyes. “Go on, Nat,” she said, “tell Simone what happened next.”
Nat yawned. “Somebody hit me in the back of my head,” he said.
“We know that!” I said, exasperated.
Nat looked up, his head cocked. “Felt like it was with a hammer!”
Daddy interjected, “Big boy like you should watch out for falling hammers!”
“He must have hid behind something, ’cause if I’d seen him, he’d never got the best of me!” Nat declared.
Daddy laughed.
“Do you have any idea who it could have been?” I asked Nat.
“No,” Nat said. “But he was big.”
Mama’s voice sounded relaxed, at ease. “Bigger than you?” she asked.
Nat took a deep, shuddering breath. “He was big!” he repeated.
We weren’t getting very far. “Anything else?” I asked.
Nat hesitated. Then he wrinkled his nose. “He smelled funny,” he told us.
Mama’s eyes opened wide. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Funny?” I ask
ed.
“Yeah,” Nat answered. He rubbed his eyes and yawned again.
“Funny like what?” Mama demanded.
‘”I don’t know. If I smell it again, I’ll tell you,” Nat answered, making me long to smack him over his head myself.
“Maybe he smelled like alcohol,” Daddy told Nat. “Like your favorite brew!”
It’s amazing, I thought, how easily my father could see Nat’s drinking as a problem but couldn’t see his own.
Nat shook his head. “It was something else,” he insisted. “Something I never smelled before.”
“It may be a good idea for you to stay with us for a while,” Mama said. Daddy frowned.
This seemed to terrify Nat. “Oh, no!” he cried, his mouth slack with panic.
“Suppose whoever hit you comes back?” Mama asked.
Nat made a gesture. “Don’t worry, I’m listening to you, I’m gonna make sure that all the doors and windows are locked from now on.”
“Always look behind you,” Daddy joked.
“Most big fellers hit from behind!”
We had left the hospital, and were back in our snug kitchen when I turned again to the window with its view of Miss Hannah’s shabby little house. “Have you wondered how Miss Hannah got to own two hundred and fifty acres of prime land?” I asked Mama. “The way she and Nat lived, you’d never thought she had anything valuable.”
Mama began cutting slices from a fresh loaf of wheat bread. “I don’t reckon nobody knew Hannah owned that land. Except maybe the tax collector.”
“I was thinking the same thing. I plan to check the county tax records tomorrow, see when she got the land.”
“That’s a good idea, Simone,” Mama said.
Daddy sneezed loudly, pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped his nose. “Around here, land is more valuable than gold.”
“It’s so valuable,” I said, “that your Uncle Chester refuses to die so that he can continue to control the acres of land owned by your family.”
Mama started to say something, but Daddy broke in. “Uncle Chester can’t live too much longer—nobody lives forever. I’ve told Agatha to wait a few more months, a year at the most, and then she can do whatever she needs to do with that land.”
