Dream With Little Angels

by Michael Hiebert

  She laughed. “I actually don’t think that’s true.”

  “Then why did you say it in front of Mr. and Mrs. Yates?”

  “Because some people wouldn’t think it’s proper for me to allow my eleven-year-old son to drink coffee. I’m not really entirely sure why, but I’m quite positive the bit about it stunting your growth is an old wives’ tale.”

  “Like whistling when you walk past a graveyard so the spirits don’t think you’re scared?” I asked.

  “Actually,” my mother said, “that one may be true. I still do it.” She shrugged. “Usually I find it’s better to err on the side of caution with things like that. Being short ain’t that big of a deal if I turn out wrong. Being attacked by someone’s dead ghost is another thing entirely.”

  I laughed as my mother handed me the second cup of coffee I had ever been given in my life. Once again we went into the living room, taking the same places on the sofa we had before. I set my mug on the table. This time, she held hers in her lap and sat back, crossing her legs.

  “So,” she said, “you wanted to ask me something about Mr. Garner?” I could tell she was a little worried about what it was I wanted to know. Likely it had to do with our conversation earlier.

  “Well, I have some questions and stuff,” I said, not liking how awkward it all felt. It felt so awkward that I came close to telling her to just forget about it, but I couldn’t on account of some things were really bothering me and needed to be gotten off my chest.

  “Well, then,” she said, “go ahead and ask me, Abe. I’ll do my best to answer as honestly as possible.”

  I took a deep breath. She could tell I was a bit wary. “Well,” I said, “if Mr. Garner killed Mary Ann Dailey, does that mean he also took Tiffany Michelle Yates?”

  She thought about this a minute, then leaned forward, her hands coming around her cup, placing it between her knees. Steam rose from the top. I had no idea how she could grasp the sides of the mug that way; her fingers must have been burning. “Yes, honey, I think so.”

  “Then, where is she?”

  “That’s a good question, Abe. It’s the one we’re all asking. And it’s something we have to figure out soon, because wherever she is, she probably doesn’t have any food or water. You were there at the station today—I’m not sure how much you heard or how much you understood, but we do have some new evidence and clues to follow up on, and we’re hoping it will help us uncover her whereabouts.”

  “So you don’t think Tiffany Michelle is dead?” I asked.

  She sipped her coffee. “I’ll be honest,” she said, “I truly don’t know. What I do know is that we haven’t seen her body, so I’m hoping that’s a good sign.”

  I stared at my coffee on the table in front of me. Then I noticed the table. It was old and brown and chipped. We had had it for as long as I could remember. It was yet another piece of furniture that would one day be replaced with something brand-new, according to my mother. I didn’t see why it was so important to replace old things if they still worked fine. All the furniture in our house seemed as reliable as always to me.

  “Do you really think he did it?” I asked without looking up. “Mr. Garner, I mean.”

  “Them experts from Mobile found lots of forensic evidence supporting that he did, Abe.”

  “Yeah, but what does that mean?”

  “It means they found his prints on her body and nobody else’s. Fingerprints are like snowflakes. Everybody’s is completely different than everyone else’s. And they’re tiny. You can only see them under a microscope.”

  “I know,” I said. “We studied them in school. But couldn’t they have come from when Mr. Garner found Mary Ann Dailey’s body? I mean, they said they found Dixie’s hair on her, too. Do you think Dixie killed her?”

  My mother gave me a patronizing smile. “Come on, Abe. The important fact is that nobody else’s prints were found.”

  “What if the real killer wore gloves? And a hairnet? Or some kind of space suit?”

  “Okay, maybe you aren’t old enough for this conversation,” she said.

  I regretted mentioning the space suit. With a sip of my coffee, I continued, ignoring her comment. “All right, but Mr. Garner’s fingerprints could easily have already been on that shovel, right? I mean it was his shovel. And it could have already been by that tree. He goes to that tree a lot. You guys saw the flowers underneath Mary Ann’s body, right?”

  Mom leaned forward and set her mug on the coffee table. “How do you know about the flowers?” she asked, looking at me until I rose my face up to meet hers. “We were holding that evidence back in case of false confessions.”

  “What’s a false confession?” I asked.

  She sat back. “Well, as strange as this sounds, some people want to be noticed so much that, when they hear about somethin’ like this happenin’, they’ll tell the police they were the ones who did it, just so they feel important.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said.

  “It’s a crazy world, Abe,” my mother said. “Anyway, what we normally do is hold back at least one pertinent piece of evidence from everyone, especially the newspapers, so that nobody but the real killer could possibly know ’bout it. That way we know whether or not the person really did it. In this case, it was the fresh flowers we found when we removed Mary Ann Dailey’s body. They had been placed right beneath her.”

  “Yeah, I know. White daisies, clipped and tied in a bunch with a pink ribbon,” I said.

  This grabbed my mother’s attention in a way I had seen nothing do before. “Now, how in the name of the Lord do you know that?”

  It took me a few seconds to figure out why she was so surprised. “Wait,” I said. “You think the killer put them there?”

  “Who else would’ve, Abe?”

  “Mr. Garner. Those daisies were there when we rode our bikes over earlier that day. Mr. Garner always puts flowers around that tree. He’s done so ever since finding Ruby Mae Vickers.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “He told us during the time we walked along the river lookin’ for Mary Ann Dailey the day after she disappeared. Remember? The day it rained somethin’ awful and most everyone in the town went out searching for her. Well, except Mr. Farrow from across the street,” I said, letting that fact sink in. “We saw flowers then and asked him about them and he said he put them there, but I got the distinct feeling he didn’t much like discussin’ them too much. But when me and Dewey rode up that day right before he found Mary Ann’s body, those daisies was already there. You can ask Dewey if you don’t believe me.”

  “Now, why would I believe Dewey over you, Abe?” she asked. “Of course I believe you. But why didn’t you tell me this before? You didn’t even tell Chris when he took your report.”

  I shrugged. “Guess I forgot about them. Seeing Mary Ann Dailey’s body just thrown away like that made it hard for me to think properly.”

  Closing her eyes, she let out a shallow breath, then opened them again. “Do you wish you hadn’t seen it? Did I make a mistake bringing you along?”

  “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t. But I don’t think you made a mistake. It’s like you said earlier, I already thought about things like that a lot. Sometimes what you picture in your mind can be worse than it turns out to be in real life.”

  “Was this one of those times?” she asked, looking as though she hoped my answer would be yes.

  But I shook my head. I figured there was no point in not being honest now. “I never expected her eyes to look the way they did. All the life was gone, yet they was still open. It was like seeing a puppet without a hand inside.”

  Her head dropped, and I wished I would have said it different. I touched her hand. “Mom, I’m glad I got to see it. It didn’t mess me up, like you said earlier. I promise.” She brought her eyes back up to mine. “But there’s something you need to understand,” I said. “Maybe you’re right about Mr. Garner killing Mary Ann Dailey, although I don’t rightly think you are,
but you sure as heck aren’t right about him doin’ the same to Ruby Mae Vickers. Me and Dewey listened to the way he talked about her. It was almost as though he had found his own daughter dead by that tree, he felt so bad.” A wetness was coming to my mother’s eyes, making them look like pools of blue. “Mom, for twelve years he’s been putting flowers out for her. Do you think he’d do that if he killed her? I sure as heck don’t.”

  Now normally, I would be expecting a slap for using an almost cuss word like heck once in front of my mother, and here I had done it twice. But today was special and I could sense it. Maybe it was the coffee, maybe it was the way she was treating me, but I felt more grown up than ever.

  She may not have even noticed I did so. Her head turned toward the window. Outside, a bluebird perched on a branch of one of the two fig trees that grew along the edge of our property. Across the street, Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow’s house sat dark and quiet, as though it were asleep. I guessed my mother had been right. He probably did spend most early parts of the days sleeping and then used the nights for working. I found it strange that some people worked at night. But then, Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow apparently built stuff for a living, although where he found a market for Roadkill Frankensteins was a problem for another day.

  What was it Mr. Garner had said that day we went huntin’ for Mary Ann Dailey? That he just built stuff to keep busy because “the devil finds work for idle hands to do.” So he didn’t have to work nights. In fact, he had just been finishing up his work on that tool shed that afternoon Dewey and I pulled up on our bikes. The day Mary Ann Dailey’s body turned up.

  It was then that I realized what it was that’d been bothering me the last few days. The thing I kept feeling like I should be remembering but couldn’t. “Mom?” I asked.

  She seemed distracted, and I nearly repeated the question until she tore herself away from the view outside and looked at me. “Yes, Abe?”

  “How long does it take to put a roof on a tool shed?”

  She shook her head. “I have no idea, why?”

  “Because it took us, say, twenty-five minutes or so to ride home that afternoon from Mr. Garner’s ranch. Then it probably took another fifteen or twenty before you and I got back there in the car. It took almost as long in the car on account of me and Dewey know some shortcuts, and it took me a good five minutes or so to convince you to let me come along, remember?”

  From her eyes, I could tell she was completely lost as to where I was going with this. “Abe, what’s your point?”

  “My point’s this. Mr. Garner claims he had just finished the roof of his tool shed and gone in for a beer when but five minutes later Dixie’s barking brought him back outside and, maybe five minutes after that, he found Mary Ann Dailey. It probably took him a couple more minutes to run back to the house and call you.”

  She nodded. “And what evidence we have supports his claim that the body had only been under that tree maybe ten minutes or so, so I will agree with you that on this particular point, Mr. Garner is probably not lying.”

  “Good,” I said, feeling myself get on a roll. “And then there’s the very shallow hole someone dug. I mean, it wasn’t even a hole. It couldn’t have been more than three or four shovels of dirt.”

  “Right.”

  “So, why even dig that much? Unless you planned on diggin’ more, only what you didn’t plan on was to have some coon dog spot you and start raisin’ up such a fuss. So you drop the diggin’ idea completely and just toss the body down. I mean, if Mr. Garner wanted to dig a hole, he could dig all day, and Dixie wouldn’t even raise an ear.”

  “Okay, now you’re speculatin’, but go on. If you have more, I mean.”

  “Oh, I do,” I said. “Okay, so say the total time between me and Dewey leaving Mr. Garner’s ranch and you and me getting back there was forty minutes. Mr. Garner had just finished putting his sixth rafter up when we left. It took him four minutes and maybe twenty-two seconds to get it done.”

  “Now how do you know that?”

  I showed her my wrist. “On account of my new timepiece Uncle Henry gave me. I time everythin’ now. You know I can run from here to Dewey’s house in less than fifty-six seconds. Well, I did it once.”

  “Abe, please go back to Mr. Garner’s tool shed.”

  “Right. Anyway, he had four more rafters to go when we left. If he spent that much time on the rest, that means it would have taken him about fifteen minutes or so to finish. Then he had to nail up the plywood over top of those to make the actual roof and then that had to be covered with tar paper that he stapled onto that plywood.”

  “Why do you suddenly know so much about construction work and what the hell does this have to do with anything?”

  “Because, Mom? When you and I got back there less than an hour later, that roof was done. He had finished all the rafters, put on the plywood, and stapled the tar paper on. Now, I’m assumin’ he must’ve previously cut everythin’ to size or there’s no way he had time to do it. As it is, he must’ve just worked at lightnin’ speed if he had been inside five minutes with his beer before hearing Dixie,” I said.

  I paused for a breath and another sip of coffee. “My guess is that I’m probably a little low in how long of a stretch occurred between us leavin’ and returning and, more likely, Mr. Garner’s probably off on how long he was inside before Dixie brought him back out. I mean, I saw Mary Ann Dailey’s body. It messes up your perspective on things a bit. But one thing I know for sure. There’s no way he had any time to finish that tool shed and then go get her body from someplace else, dig a quick hole that makes absolutely no sense anyway, throw her body in it, and then call you on the phone.

  “And my biggest problem with this whole thing—and one that I can’t believe I never heard none of you talk about in the station this mornin’—is why in tarnation would he call you? At least right away? Especially if he’s left a shovel with whatever they found on it out there by her body. How does that make any sense to any of you? I don’t care if you’re an expert whatever the heck from Mobile or what.” I stopped then, realizing my hand was trembling. I took a few deep breaths. Never before had I spoken to my mother so abruptly.

  “Okay, your tone’s gettin’ a bit disrespectful there, Abe,” she said, but I could tell she said it more out of reflex. I had her thinking. And she was thinking hard.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But really, why would he go to all that bother of finishing his work before putting her by the tree? And then there was that thing he said about cougars. Why say something like that if you’re talkin’ ’bout yourself? Far as I can tell, nobody’d want to think of himself as bein’ that way.”

  Gears were spinning in my mother’s mind, but my last comment brought her back to the topic at hand. “Cougars? What did he say about cougars?”

  “I told you already,” I said with a sigh, then caught myself. I really did have to watch out for being disrespectful. This was new and dangerous territory for me. “That day we all went searching for Mary Ann Dailey in the rain? Dewey asked Mr. Garner if he reckoned maybe it was a cougar or something that got her. And Mr. Garner said he reckoned so, just not the sorta cougar we was thinkin’ ’bout.”

  “Oh, right, I remember you sayin’ that now.”

  “Do you really think he’d say that if he were the cougar, Mom?”

  My mother looked into her coffee cup.

  I remembered the conversation we had in the sushi restaurant. “Mr. Garner has integrity, Mom. I know it. I feel it.”

  My mother went still for a long time, and I wondered if this whole talk had been one huge mistake I might never come back from. Her fingers played with the Virgin Mother dangling from her neck. She looked out the window, her eyes focused on something very, very far away. Eventually, her lips moved, but I barely heard the two words that came out: “Oh, shit.”

  “And, Mom?”

  “Yes, Abe?”

  “That shovel hadn’t been in his shed. When we left, there were no tools in that shed.
It was empty on account of it had no roof on it.”

  She turned and looked me square in the face. “Now, why are you just telling me all this now?”

  “I tried to tell you the day Mary Ann showed back up, but you kept telling me to mind my business.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Mom?”

  She kept her eyes closed. “Yes, Abe?”

  “I really don’t think Mr. Robert Lee Garner killed Mary Ann Dailey. I don’t think he killed no one. I maybe don’t know people as good as I will when I’m older, but everything inside me says he didn’t do it. Mr. Garner was near on as upset as you when she went missing. You weren’t with me and Dewey in the forest that day in the rain. He was angry and upset and I don’t think he killed no one.”

  Reaching out, she pulled me over to her, nearly sloshing coffee out of my cup and onto my hand. Putting her arms around me, she rocked me back and forth, holding me tightly to her chest. “Oh, honey,” she said. “I think maybe I made a big mistake.”

  I looked up at her face. “What’re you goin’ to do?”

  Her jaw tightened. “What I should’ve done weeks ago. I’m gonna find Tiffany Michelle Yates before it’s too late.”

  “And, Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “What about Mr. Garner?”

  Slowly, she shook her head. “That one’s gonna be a little more complicated, but I’ll figure it out.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Two days later, my mother drove me and Dewey to school, but stopped me when I was about to leave the car.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re gonna be late today,” she said.

  “I am? Why?”

  “Because I want you to come with me to the station and tell Chief Montgomery what you told me,” she said.

  “Can I come, too?” Dewey asked. He was already outside, but hadn’t yet closed his door.

  “No. One of you’s gotta learn somethin’,” my mother said.

  With a grumble, he shut the door and skulked off to the school entrance while I returned to my seat in the front, sitting taller and more proudly than ever. Boy, did I feel important.