“Are you absolutely sure about that?”
“I had my hands on her face. I felt her move her head. Very deliberate like. Yes. I’m positive.”
“Did you think to ask her who it was that hurt her?”
“Yes. I asked her, but by then . . .” She looked over at Savannah and saw tears in the girl’s eyes. “By then, it was too late. She was already, you know, going.”
Stella felt her own eyes filling as she recalled the exact moment when she felt Priscilla leave her body.
Priscilla’s departure hadn’t been a peaceful, sweet passing, like those Stella had attended when she’d sat with people whose long, painful battles with sickness were ending.
No, Priscilla Carr hadn’t passed gently.
She had fought, clinging to life and feeling it slip away from her long before she was ready to let it go.
“I want you to catch whoever did this awful thing, Manny,” Stella told the sheriff. “Promise me you will. I swear, I’ll do everything I can to help you. Whoever took Prissy’s life, they can’t have the chance to do something that awful to someone else.”
Sheriff Gilford rose from his desk, walked over to his friend’s chair, and pulled her to her feet.
He wrapped Stella in a tight, strong embrace, hugged her close to his big, broad chest, and said, “Don’t you worry, Stella May. Nobody takes a life in my town and gets away with it. Nobody.”
He pulled back and looked down at her, his expression soft, kind, affectionate. Gently, he brushed one of her dark curls out of her eyes and said, “Thank you, Stella, for all you and your family did tonight.”
“You’re welcome. We were glad to help.”
“We’ll get him. You and me and my deputies. We won’t stop until we do. I promise.”
“Good,” Stella said, feeling a bit better already. “That’s a promise I’m going to hold you to, Sheriff.”
Chapter 8
When Stella finally made it home with a sleepy Waycross and an uncharacteristically quiet Savannah, she expected to find Elsie weary and ready to go home. But her friend was quite the opposite—bright eyed, bushy tailed, and as hungry for gossip as Stella was for the apple pie.
The moment they walked through the door, Elsie jumped up from Stella’s avocado leatherette recliner and rushed over to them. “I heard all about it! I can’t believe it! Is it true?”
“If you’re talking about what I think you are,” Stella said, slipping off her shoes and placing them behind the door, “then I reckon it’s true.”
“We had us an honest-to-goodness murder right here in McGill?” Elsie asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “And you guys all saw it? You were official witnesses?”
“We were witnesses. I don’t know how ‘official’ we managed to be,” Stella admitted. “I didn’t see the murder happen, thank goodness. I saw the aftermath, and heaven knows, that was bad enough.”
“I didn’t see nothin’ at all,” said Waycross. “Me and Savannah was coolin’ our heels in the sheriff’s station while Gran was gettin’ to do all the excitin’ stuff.”
“I wouldn’t call it exciting, Waycross,” Savannah told her brother in a curt, reproving voice. “Christmas is exciting. Halloween is exciting. Somebody lost their life tonight. That’s just puredee sad.”
But Waycross wasn’t prepared to surrender so quickly. “I reckon it’s a mite sad, like you say. But that woman who died, that Prissy Carr, she wasn’t a very nice person. Mama said she was the worst woman in town. If Mama saw her comin’ down the sidewalk toward us, she’d make us walk across the street, so’s we wouldn’t meet up with her.”
The weariness that Stella had been feeling since she left the sheriff’s station suddenly increased tenfold at hearing her grandson’s words. “Waycross, I know you’re just a child repeating what you’ve heard from grown-ups,” she told him. “And you’re probably gonna hear those exact words too many times in the next few days. When you do, I want you to remember something. Miss Priscilla Carr did some bad things in her lifetime, some things that weren’t wise or kind to other people. That’s true. Most of us do things we shouldn’t at one time or another. That doesn’t make us bad people. It just makes us human beings.”
She reached over and pulled the boy to her. She smoothed his tousled hair and continued. “Whatever bad things Miss Carr did, she didn’t deserve to have that happen to her. Nobody does. Taking a person’s life . . . Crimes don’t get any worse than that. You know how you made restitution tonight, fixing what you’d done wrong?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The boy’s face was solemn but peaceful—the peace of a person with a clean conscience.
Stella continued, “Murder’s a lot different than most crimes. If you steal a person’s money, you can work hard, get some more money, and give it back. If you lie to someone, you can tell him the truth and apologize to him. But there’s no way to make murder right. No way to undo it. That’s what makes it such an awful sin. You understand?”
He nodded, his eyes red rimmed from crying and fatigue.
She hugged him close and luxuriated in the warm, loving way he returned the embrace. Just for a moment, Stella believed that perhaps the world wasn’t such a bad place, after all.
“I know you’re tired, sugar,” she told him. “Why don’t you go lie down for a while there on my bed? If you go to sleep, I’ll carry you in here and put you on the couch, once me and Miss Elsie are done talkin’ and I’m ready for bed. Does that sound good?”
“It sure does.” He wasted no time heading for her bedroom and her big, comfy featherbed.
Stella reached for Savannah and patted her shoulder. “How about you, babycakes? Aren’t you tuckered out, too?”
“I am,” Savannah admitted. “I’m going to go hit the hay myself. But there’s just one thing I’ve gotta do first.”
Without another word, the girl disappeared, heading toward the back of the house.
Stella sank onto the sofa, exhausted. Finally, she turned her attention to Elsie, who had been waiting patiently for her to finish addressing her grandchildren. One look at her friend told Stella that Elsie was about to burst with anticipation. Stella couldn’t blame her. If the house slipper were on the other foot, Stella would be just as eager to hear the gory details as Elsie.
“I didn’t want to say so in front of the kids,” Stella told her, “but it was bad, Elsie. Really bad.”
Elsie hurried over and sat next to her on the couch. “How in tarnation did they do it? Did somebody shoot her or stab her? How did they kill her?”
“I don’t exactly know for sure. It was dark, and I couldn’t see her very well. But she was lying there, all crumpled up, at the bottom of her stairs in the alleyway.”
“Oh, Lordy. How awful.”
“There was blood, lots of it, all over her head. I had a bunch of it on my hands, but the sheriff let me wash it off when we got to the station house, before he questioned us.”
She looked down at her fingers and saw that there was still plenty of Priscilla’s blood under her fingernails. She shuddered, reached over to the end table, pulled open its small drawer, and took out a nail file. She ran the tip of it under each nail and dug deeply to get out every bit of the dark red gore.
“If I live to be a hundred, I won’t forget tonight, Elsie. I couldn’t if I tried. Being with that young gal when she died, I tell you, it’ll haunt me for the rest of my days.”
Elsie nodded knowingly. “I understand. I really do. It would’ve scared me half to death if I’d been there. That ain’t all. If I was you, I’d be worried about her haunting me, too. You know, they say a murdered spirit is a restless one. She won’t be resting in peace, that one.”
“Oh, mercy, Elsie. Did you have to go and say a thing like that? I reckon I’ve got enough on my plate, worrying about the living, let alone the dead.”
“Are you worried about the killer?”
Stella shrugged. “I don’t know. Should I be?”
“I would be, for sure. What i
f he’s afraid you’ll identify him?”
“But I can’t identify him. I don’t know who he is. Unless it’s Elmer Yonce. I did see him running away from the scene of the crime. But it’s hard to imagine him killing somebody—him all old and rickety like he is.”
Elsie laughed. “He ain’t all that old. Not much older than we are, Sister Stella. And I’m pretty rickety myself, especially when there’s a storm a-comin’ and my joints act up.”
“I guess we could kill somebody if we had to. Some folks claim I darn near killed Bud Bagley that day with my skillet.”
Elsie gave a sniff and said, “Too bad you didn’t hit him just one more time and a wee bit harder. This old world of ours would be a better place without Bud Bagley in it. Oh, and speak of the devil, Florence called about an hour ago. She’d heard about Prissy’s demise, too. She wants you to call her back and give ’er the whole rundown on it. Said to tell you it doesn’t matter how late you get in, that she’ll wait up for your call.”
Stella stifled a groan. “I love Flo,” she said. “But all I want right now is to go to bed and put an end to this miserable day.”
“That’s not all you want, Granny,” said a sweet voice behind her.
Stella turned to see Savannah standing in the doorway. In her hand was one of Stella’s nicest china dessert dishes, and on the plate was a gloriously large piece of Elsie’s famous apple pie, almost completely covered with French vanilla ice cream.
“You want this,” Savannah said, handing her the plate, a fork, and one of Stella’s Sunday-best lace-trimmed napkins. “You’ve been waiting for this all evening, and you deserve it. Every delicious bite of it. And if you want me to call Miss Flo and tell her how tired you are, I’d be glad to. I’m sure she’d understand that you’d rather talk in the morning, after you’ve had some rest.”
Stella thought her heart would beat right out of her chest as she took the plate from her granddaughter and saw the love shining in the child’s eyes.
If even one person in the whole world loved you that much, surely life was worth living—every single minute of it.
“Better yet,” Elsie piped up, “I’ll call Flo and explain it to her.” To Savannah, she said, “You look like death warmed over, child, what with the awful night you’ve had. I’ll get along home, and when I get there, I’ll call Flo and tell her to give y’all time to rest and recuperate from your ordeal.”
“Oh, thank you, Elsie,” Stella said, digging into the luscious dessert. “All I want in life right now is to eat this pie and then get myself horizontal before I faint dead away and fall on my face.”
To Savannah, she added, “And you, Miss Savannah, are the very best granddaughter who ever walked God’s green earth. What do you suppose I did to deserve having you for my own?”
Savannah laughed, her eyes shining from the praise. She bent down and gave her grandmother a kiss on the forehead. “Nighty-night, Granny,” she said. “If you get scared tonight or have any bad dreams, you let me know, and I’ll come sleep with you.”
“Okay. I will,” Stella replied. How quickly they grew up, these precious grandchildren. One day you were checking under their beds to make sure there were no bogeymen lurking beneath. Then, the next, those same grandkids were offering to comfort you, should you be visited by nightmares of your own.
Stella never failed to be surprised at how life unfolded. How many surprises it held along the way. Thank heavens, most of those surprises were good ones, she had decided long ago. Otherwise, it might not be worth the bother.
* * *
An hour later, Elsie had left the Reid house, Savannah had retired to the upper level of one of the two bunk beds in the childrens’ room, and Waycross was sound asleep on the sofa, curled up in his G.I. Joe sleeping bag.
When Stella kissed him and turned out the living-room lights, she thought he looked like one of the cherub ornaments waiting in a box in the corner to be placed on their Christmas tree, when she could find the money to buy one. No one but an exhausted child with a recently cleansed conscience could slumber so deeply and peacefully.
Stella hoped she would fare as well once she was settled in bed, but she had her doubts.
While she wasn’t worried about Elsie’s warning of an actual visitation from Prissy’s troubled spirit, she had a feeling that once she lay down and closed her eyes, all she would see was Doc Hynson and Sheriff Gilford lifting Prissy’s limp, lifeless body and putting it on a gurney, the whole scene, including her pale, once-pretty face, lit by the harsh, cold glare of the cruiser’s headlights.
“No nightmares tonight, if you please, Lord,” she murmured as she climbed into her own bed and pulled her precious wedding ring quilt around her shoulders, the one sewn by her Cherokee grandmother and given to her and Art on the day they married. “Just a nice, peaceful sleep,” she whispered, “to get me through the trials of tomorrow. That’s all I ask.”
Her prayer was answered, but not in the way she would have liked. She had no nightmares, but only because she couldn’t go to sleep.
Tossing and turning on her featherbed, Stella felt more alone than she had in a long time.
Those first few years without Art had been terrible. At times she had doubted she would survive them. With the passage of time, she hadn’t gotten used to him being gone—she was sure she never would—but the sharpest edges of the pain had dulled ever so slightly, making the loneliness almost bearable.
Tonight, more than ever, she missed him, wished he was there to hold her, longed for his wise words and compassionate advice, which had afforded her so much guidance and comfort during the years they were married.
“I miss you, honey,” she whispered. “I wish I could talk to you about what happened today. I imagine you’d tell me that I was brave and that you’re proud of me. Boy, I could sure stand to hear that right now.”
As always, when she spoke to her departed husband, there was no reply. At least not the kind human ears could hear. He was nearby; she had no doubt whatsoever. But only her heart itself could hear any message he had to give her.
She felt him tonight, even more clearly than she had sensed that terrible, sinister presence in the alley. But instead of feeling oppressed, suffocated, and threatened, as she had earlier, Stella found that her husband’s residual love for her did the opposite. She felt warm, uplifted, and protected, in spite of the terror caused by her experience in the alley.
The two sensations fought for purchase in her spirit as she lay there alone in the darkness.
Good and evil.
Dark and light.
Fear and love.
Then, suddenly, Stella was aware of yet another presence—a slight tugging at the sleeve of her flannel nightgown. She turned over and saw her oldest granddaughter standing beside her bed, looking down on her with affection and concern on her lovely face, mixed with a bit of fear of her own.
“I was worried about you, Granny,” Savannah said, patting her arm. “I was afraid you were in here having nightmares, dreaming about what happened to that poor lady in the alley.”
Something, probably a grandmother’s intuition, told Stella that it was the child herself who was having nightmares.
But Savannah was a tough girl—at least in her own estimation. The last thing she would ever admit was that it was she who was afraid and needed some comfort and reassurance. That sort of thing was for the babies in the family, certainly not for the oldest daughter.
Stella reached over and peeled the quilt and sheet back from the other side of the bed. “As a matter of fact, I was having a tough time,” Stella told her. “I’m glad you came in to check on me.” She patted the sheet next to her. “I’d really appreciate it if you would sleep in here with me. Just for tonight, of course.”
Savannah wasted no time scrambling into bed and snuggling beneath the quilt, like a squirrel seeking refuge in a tree hollow during a snowstorm. “Of course,” Savannah said. “We wouldn’t want to make a habit of it. And we sure as shootin’ wouldn
’t want to tell the other kids that a nasty ol’ nightmare was the cause of it.”
“Most certainly not. Otherwise, the little ones will all be in here, claiming to have nightmares galore. We’ll be eight to a bed, and then none of us will get any sleep.”
“We can’t have that!”
“We certainly cannot.”
Savannah rolled toward her grandmother, slipped her arm around her waist, and laid her head on her shoulder.
After a moment, the girl said, “Remember back when I was little?”
“I most certainly do, sugar.”
“I remember when Gramps had just died, and we were all feeling really bad.”
“Yes, darlin’, I recall those times, too. Very well. Those were hard days for all of us. Nights even worse.”
“They sure were. I was scared a lot back then. About a bunch of things.”
“Me too, hon.”
“Every time it stormed and I was sleeping here at your house, you’d let me come get in bed with you.”
“I do remember that. Nobody’s fond of lightning and thunder, but you took a particular dislike to them back then, as I remember.”
“I did. But that was because I was just a little kid. I’m much more mature now.”
Stella smiled. “Yes, you certainly are, sweetheart. You’re almost a grown-up lady now. And, boy, you sure behaved like one today. I was never prouder of you.”
Savannah reached for her grandmother’s hand and squeezed it. “I was never prouder of you, either, Granny. The way you talked to the sheriff today, not telling him any lies but taking up for Waycross as best you could . . . I know that was hard for you, but you did it. You did just fine.”
“We’re family, sweetheart. We stick together and look out for one another. That’s how it’s gotta be.”
“But the thing I’m most proud of you for, Granny,” Savannah continued, her voice tremulous and sweet, “was the way you helped Miss Carr when she was dying and needed somebody. She must have been awful scared, but I know she felt better with the likes of you there.”
Murder in Her Stocking Page 8
