Miss Julia Delivers the Goods

by Ann B. Ross

  But Sam, in his mild and comforting way, said, “With your help, Miss Baine, I’d like to set the record straight. If you’ll let me, I want to formally interview you for my book. In that way, people can understand the kind of man he was.”

  I thought Sam might’ve gotten through to her, for she continued to stare at him. Then I realized that she wasn’t looking at him but through him, her eyes and mind fixed on something in the room beyond. I turned to see what was there, but saw only dust motes in the sunlight that streamed through the half-opened curtains.

  Then without any notice, the woman suddenly stood up, her lean body engulfed in the outsized clothes she wore. Sam immediately came to his feet, and I followed somewhat stiffly.

  “Miss Baine?” he said.

  She started for the door, then turned back to look up at the portrait. “Time to go,” she said. “The judge needs his dinner.”

  Disappearing down the hall, she left us to find our way out. We immediately did so, uneasily closing the front door behind us and happily getting into the car.

  “Sam,” I said, locking the car door, “that woman is crazy.”

  Sam cranked the car and eased around the bare yard, looking for the opening to the drive. “Seems so, doesn’t it?” he said. “Pitiful, though. All alone out here with the memories of her father.”

  “The judge,” I corrected him, smiling. Then with a shiver running down my back, I went on. “You reckon he’s really in there with her?”

  “In her mind, Julia. Only in her mind.”

  Chapter 37

  I glanced back at the house as Sam carefully maneuvered the car around the bare yard toward the opening to the drive.

  “Oh, Sam, she does get out, at least some,” I said, craning my neck to see along the side of the house. “An old green pickup’s parked back there. Remind me to watch out for it. I wouldn’t want to be on the road when she’s driving.”

  “Goes out for groceries, I expect,” Sam said, his attention on the rutted lane. “I’m glad she’s not a total recluse. Even so, I’m going to ask the patrol deputies to look in on her every now and then. Make sure she’s all right.”

  I smiled to myself, thinking that this was just one more instance of the kind of man I’d married. Thoughtful, he was, and concerned about others, even one as strange and unfriendly as Roberta Baine.

  “So,” I said, as we bumped our way down the drive toward the highway, “it doesn’t look as if you’ll get much help from her. Even if she agreed to an interview, how could you trust anything she said?”

  “Probably couldn’t. Still, it’d be interesting and worth doing if only for my own understanding of the judge.” Sam glanced at me and smiled. “Not sure I could use any of it in the book, though.”

  I was quiet for a few minutes, thinking about the unusual woman we’d just left. The thought of her alone in that big, dilapidated house fixing dinner, as country people called lunch, for her father who’d been dead for ten years made me shudder. What went through her mind when it didn’t get eaten? How did she explain that? And, even more intriguing, what had made her the way she was? The judge himself? If he’d been anything like Sam said he was on the bench when he was home, he would’ve been awful to live with—awful enough, perhaps, to warp an only daughter’s mind.

  Well, I thought, parents in general have a lot to answer for, and I was glad I’ d been spared. Which brought me right back to Lloyd, because the way I worried about his welfare made me realize that I’d not been spared at all.

  Sam spoke up then, distracting me from my thoughts. “I may try again,” he said. “Maybe take her something, like a certificate of honorable service, or some such, for the judge from the county. That should please her if I can get the county to do it.”

  “That’s a good idea. At least, it’d get you in the door again. But, Sam,” I said, struck with another idea, “think about this. The judge’s name was Robert, and she’s Roberta, so he named her for himself. A lot of fathers used to do that. Why, I once knew a woman named Willie, and it wasn’t a nickname. It was on her birth certificate. But I guess that’s not the same as Roberta, which is a feminine name to start with. Even so, it tied her to him right from the cradle, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe so,” Sam said, “but I wouldn’t read too much into that. I’ll tell you this, though, after meeting her I can understand why the judge put his estate in a trust. Well,” he said with a smile, “besides for the tax benefits. There’ll be a trustee who looks after her finances and makes sure she has what she needs. It relieves my mind to know somebody is looking after her.”

  “Can we find out who the trustee is?”

  Sam shook his head. “It’s probably a bank.”

  “Then they’re not doing a very good job of it. That place is so run-down, it’s a wonder she can live in it. Then again,” I went on, “maybe the judge didn’t leave much of an estate. Maybe what he left is about to run out. I wish we could find out more about him. And her.”

  Sam nodded and kept on driving. After a few minutes, I thought of something else. “If we could find out what those ‘other valuable considerations’ were—the ones the sheriff granted Judge Baine when he bought that land—it might open up everything else.”

  “Or a whole can of worms,” Sam said with a short laugh. “But that’s not so unusual. A lot of people don’t want a public record of the money involved in a land transaction.”

  “Well, I’d think Judge Baine would’ve had a whole lot of resentment when the sheriff made a killing on land he’d gotten for a song. I say, ten dollars for acreage of that size.”

  “We don’t know, Julia. Each one may’ve gotten exactly what he wanted at the time, both of them figuring they’d made a good bargain. And, there could’ve been more money paid for it or some other consideration, like an exchange of property. I’d say it’s likely, though, that there was some resentment on the judge’s part, although whether it carried over to his daughter, I don’t know. Even if it did, what part would the other five people play? None of them, except the Tillman woman, had anything to do with it.”

  “Maybe Bob and Teddy? No,” I said, shaking my head, “that’s too far-fetched. They might steal Ted’s records, but they’d have no reason to take the others. What about the sheriff? Did he have any children? They’d be about the same age as the people we’re looking at, wouldn’t they?”

  “He had two sons, but he kept them on a tight rein—no records on them at all. And now that I think about it, Al Hamilton died not long after he sold out to the development company. That was, I don’t know, maybe in the early eighties, and his wife soon after that. Those boys would’ve come into a nice inheritance, but they were gone by then and as far as I know, they’ve never been back.

  “Come Monday morning, though,” Sam went on, “I’ll get Pickens to help me go through the phone book and the tax rolls. There’re a lot of Hamiltons around, and we need to know if any of them are the sheriff’s kin. If so, then we’ll have a few more suspects, though I can’t imagine why those particular files and tapes would be important to them. The only reason I can think of is that they might not want the details of the land deal getting out. Because almost any way you look at it, Sheriff Hamilton was bought off. Except we don’t know why.”

  “And except,” I added, “you wouldn’t have known anything about it if those files hadn’t been stolen.”

  “Right. Whoever stole them shot themselves in the foot. Anyway,” Sam said, “I’m hoping Judge Anders over in Asheville can shed a little more light on both of them. If he can’t, then we’ve hit another dead end.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’ll leave us having to deal with what we have. And I think Roberta Baine could clear up a lot of things if you could catch her in the right frame of mind. That commendation or whatever you spoke about might just do the trick. And something else,” I went on after thinking about it a few seconds, “did you notice that she completely ignored any mention you made of your book?”

  Sa
m smiled somewhat ruefully. “I think she completely ignored anything I said. She was off in another world, Julia.”

  “Yes, well, it just seems to me that as obsessed as she is with the judge, she would’ve latched onto the idea of somebody publicly praising him in a book. No matter how far off she is, I would think that would’ve reached her. Unless,” I said after a moment’s thought, “she wanted to put us off by acting crazy.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Julia.” Sam slowed at an intersection, then continued on toward town. After a few minutes, he said, “But it’s worth considering. You may’ve picked up something I missed. I’ll talk it over with Pickens, see what he says and try to get back in to see her.” He reached over and took my hand. “Anyway, I appreciate all your help, taking the time to go around with Pickens and with me. I know you’ve had other things on your mind.”

  “I was happy to do it, Sam, and I’ll be glad to do anything else you need. I just don’t want you to be discouraged.”

  “Well, it’s looking more and more like I’ll have to try to reconstruct everything without the records and do the best I can with it.” He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “Maybe instead of a book of facts, I’ll be writing a book of fiction.”

  “Miss Julia,” Lillian said as soon as Sam and I walked in the kitchen door. “I hope I done the right thing.”

  “What? Has something happened?” My mind flew to all the dire possibilities involving Hazel Marie and her condition.

  “No’m, nothin’s happened, ’cept Lloyd come in here with all his notebooks an’ pencils an’ papers an’ things, then got his bathing suit an’ left again.”

  “That’s all right, Lillian. I told him he could go swimming and stay all afternoon if he wanted to.”

  “Yessum, but did you tell him Mr. Pickens could go, too?”

  “Why, no,” I said with a sinking feeling, seeing my plans for the afternoon being foiled again. “I didn’t think of it.”

  “Well,” Lillian said with some relief, “I hope it was all right, ’cause I don’t know if them country club folks let jus’ anybody in.”

  Sam started laughing. “There’s some question about Pickens, that’s for sure. It’s fine, though, Lillian. Lloyd will just sign him in as his guest. I’m glad they’re enjoying the day together.”

  But I wasn’t glad. Lloyd was supposed to be at the pool, but Mr. Pickens was supposed to be right by himself at Sam’s house where he could be told his duty. I declare, people were just going hither and yon, with nobody where they should’ve been. What was I supposed to do now?

  Well, there was one thing I could do, and I’d thought of it coming home in the car. It didn’t have a thing to do with Mr. Pickens, and if I’d given it more thought I might not have done it at all. As it was, I wanted to help Sam, so I’d come up with an idea that just might shake things up and get all those tight-lipped people talking again.

  Telling Sam and Lillian that I needed to freshen up, I took my pocketbook and went upstairs to our temporary pink bedroom, ours only until Hazel Marie could go up and down stairs again. Taking from my pocketbook a list of the interviewees and their phone numbers, I went straight to the telephone and dialed the first one.

  “Mr. Tillman? Bob?” I said when he answered. “This is Julia Murdoch and I’m calling to tell you that we may not have to worry any longer about those files and interviews that Sam lost due to the theft at his house. Even though his computer got smashed in, Mr. Pickens—you remember him, don’t you? Well, he’s an expert in these matters, and he thinks he can recover all the information Sam had in it. And,” I went on before he could respond, “as soon as he does, he’ll move it from Sam’s house to an undisclosed location to prevent a recurrence of the previous mishap. Of course we’d still like to know who ransacked his house, but as far as his book is concerned, Sam thinks he will have exactly what he needs—dates, times, arrest reports, and final disposition of the charges. I do hope you’ll buy a copy when the book comes out.”

  Bob stuttered around a few minutes, then threatened a lawsuit if the book hurt his brother’s reputation. Assuring him that Sam would not write anything but the facts, from which his brother had no recourse, lawsuit or no, I wished Bob a good day as pleasantly as I could and proceeded to call the others with slight variations of what I’d told him.

  Ilona Weaver hung up on me, but not before she heard the gist of my message. Rosemary Sullins, in between yelling at a child, wanted more details—what exactly did Sam intend to write? Would her name be mentioned? How could he get anything out of a broken computer? I had to pretend ignorance of it all, but since I was already engaged in a great deal of pretense, that wasn’t too difficult to do.

  When I called Cassie Wooten, I got William instead. I almost hung up, but decided he was the one that needed to hear what I had to say. His response was a long moment of silence, then he came out with a nasty pronouncement that Sam Murdoch wasn’t the only man who could write a book so he’d better be sure he had nothing to hide himself.

  My hands were shaking when I finished the calls, hoping that I’d implied rather than outright lied. There’s a fine line between saying something and letting somebody think you’ve said it. I hadn’t mentioned that the stolen records hadn’t been in the computer in the first place. And, in fact, the only blatant lie I’d told concerned Mr. Pickens’s electronic expertise. I didn’t know whether he had any or not.

  Be that as it may, though, my deepest concern was having put Sam’s house in jeopardy again if, in fact, any of the four had been the thief. Thank goodness, Sam’s house now had both a burglar alarm and Mr. Pickens installed there, so it should be safe enough.

  I bypassed Rafe Feldman entirely, since he wouldn’t be able to find his own house, much less Sam’s. I considered calling Roberta Baine, but decided that she wouldn’t know what I was talking about and it was best not to confuse her any more than she already was.

  Then I went downstairs, hoping that I hadn’t stoked the fires too high. On my way down, I determined I’d just keep my little deceptions to myself and see what, if anything, came from them.

  Hazel Marie came to the table in another sweat suit or workout outfit or whatever it was. This one was light blue with a white stripe down each leg. She had lunch with Sam and me but hardly ate a thing. She didn’t have much to say either, although Sam tried to draw her out by describing our visit to Roberta Baine.

  She didn’t express much interest, too wrapped up in her own problems to be concerned about somebody else’s, but Lillian did. We were eating at the breakfast table in the kitchen, so Lillian perked up at the first mention of Roberta Baine.

  “I hear ’bout that woman,” she said, coming around the counter to the table. “Everybody do. They say she not right in the head and best to stay away from her.”

  “Oh, she seemed all right to me,” Sam said. “A little distracted, maybe, but other than that . . .”

  “Distracted!” I said. “Why, Sam, she was on another planet, as Lloyd would say. She didn’t know who we were and she didn’t care.”

  “Well,” Lillian said darkly, “ jus’ ast James. He see her ever’ now an’ again, driving that ole pickup of hers right by his house. He say he used to wave at her, but one day she aim that old truck right at him an’ he don’t wave no more.”

  “I didn’t know James knew her,” Sam said.

  “He don’t,” Lillian told him. “She come to town ‘long his street, an’ he jus’ bein’ friendly. You know how he always act like he know everybody.”

  And everything, I thought to myself, and started to say, but the ringing of the front doorbell interrupted our conversation.

  Hazel Marie dropped her fork and pushed back her chair. “I can’t see anybody,” she said as she got to her feet. “Excuse me, Miss Julia, but I just can’t.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Go through the back hall, and I’ll take care of whoever it is.”

  Sam and I looked at each other as she left the room. He shook his h
ead. “She’s having a hard time, isn’t she? And you’re right, Julia, something’s got to give. If you want me to talk to Pickens today, I’ll reschedule my visit to Judge Anders.”

  “No, you run on and see him. There’s not much either of us can do with Mr. Pickens over there splashing around in a swimming pool. And afterwards if he comes by here, Lloyd will be in the house.” I leaned my head on my hand and sighed. “I declare, we might just have to wait till the middle of the night to catch him alone.”

  “Miss Julia?” Lillian pushed through the swinging door from the dining room. “Yo’ preacher come to see you. I tell him you jus’ finishin’ lunch, an’ he say he wait, so he settin’ in there in the livin’ room.”

  “Oh, my,” I said in some dismay. “What can Pastor Ledbetter want on a Saturday afternoon?”

  Sam grinned and got up from the table. “You can tell me later. I’m on my way to Asheville.”

  “Oh, you,” I said as Sam leaned over to give me a kiss. I put my napkin beside my plate, took a deep breath and prepared to greet my visitor.

  Chapter 38

  Since house and hospital calls on church members were made by the visitation committee and not the preacher, I knew I was in for something unpleasant by having him show up for a personal visit. Generally, when he felt the need to consult or counsel with a member of the congregation, he called and set up an appointment in his office. I, myself, had been the recipient of more of those calls than I cared to remember.

  “Pastor Ledbetter,” I said, walking into the living room with a welcoming smile on my face, “how nice to see you. Do have a seat.”

  He had stood as I entered, as he should’ve, so I quickly sat across from the sofa where he immediately sank back down.

  “May I offer you something cold to drink?” I asked, trying to appear unruffled by his unexpected drop-in. “It’s so warm outside, I’m sure you need something after walking across the street.”