Still mean as a snake, the way her daughter had said. Insult to snakes, T.J. thought, but she replied only, ‘Never said I was a beauty.’
‘Fucking bitch cop, if y’all was a man I’d bite your pecker off and shove it up your ass! I hate cops. And mans.’
‘Charmed to meet you too,’ responded T.J. quite evenly. ‘I came to ask about your son, LeeVon.’
‘Son! I ain’t got no son! I don’t do no man kids. Just girls.’
‘How many girls?’
‘Three.’
‘What are their names?’
‘Lee-Lee, Bonnie Jo and Sukie.’
‘By Lee, don’t you mean LeeVon?’
Thus challenged, Lettie Lou gave her snarl of a toothless grin and, by way of response, she let loose with a stream of urine. T.J. smelled it, heard it, felt it splash on to her shoes and the legs of her slacks. Reflexively, she stepped back, exclaiming, ‘Aren’t you housebroken? Why don’t they put you in a diaper!’
Lettie Lou Feree crowed, ‘They can’t keep no fucking diaper on me!’
T.J. knew when she was defeated. She retreated to a bathroom – not the Feree woman’s bathroom – and washed away the outrage as best she could with hand soap and paper towels, cursing under her breath, although she used the F-word far less frequently than that virago Lettie Lou did. When she had cleaned up and calmed down, she sallied forth to look for the manager or the head nurse or some such person.
She discovered a small office behind the deserted area where there should have been a front desk, and in the office she found an administrator, a fashionable woman whose gray hair seemed premature, perhaps due to excessive paperwork.
Noticing T.J. from behind the avalanche of documents on her desk, the fashionable administrator said, ‘Detective.’ Obviously, news had gotten around Sunset Haven. ‘How did it go with Ms Feree?’
‘She pissed me off. Literally.’
The woman didn’t even blink. ‘Yes, she pisses people off in quite a variety of ways. Thankfully, she won’t be here much longer,’ she added, motioning T.J. toward a solitary faux-leather chair.
Taking a seat, T.J. asked, ‘Why is that, Ms, um …’ The name plate on the desk was mostly hidden beneath its paperlanche.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Alison Banks, buck stopper. Please consider yourself shaken hands with. As for Ms Feree, a bed was open, but she doesn’t really belong here. Medicaid is having trouble placing her.’
‘Why?’
‘The official reason is because the experts can’t decide on a diagnosis.’
‘Might the unofficial reason have to do with her filthy personality?’
‘Certainly there’s that,’ said Alison Banks dryly. ‘But even more regrettable is the fact that she has no filthy lucre, not even social security.’
T.J. smiled in appreciation of the buck stopper’s honesty, but she hadn’t driven to Alabama to talk about the Feree woman’s lack of a pension as a retired prostitute. ‘Why can’t she just be institutionalized?’
‘Because she doesn’t meet the criteria for true insanity. But in my opinion, she has one mother of an extreme personality disorder.’
‘A personality disorder?’
‘I would vote for antisocial, although she could also be described as narcissistic, histrionic, borderline … but I’m not even a doctor, so what do I know?’
‘I think you’ve nailed it. How about all of the above?’
Alison Banks had a charming smile, but she was still a bureaucrat, and she was done kidding around. ‘Detective, may I ask, what is your objective in visiting Ms Feree?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t divulge that.’ To soften her refusal to answer, T.J. added, ‘And I can’t say I’ve learned much from her.’ She stood up, thanked Alison Banks for her time, reached across the desk to shake her hand, then left.
Once she stepped outside the front door of Sunset Haven, she breathed deeply, trying to purge the smell of decaying people out of her lungs.
Actually, she had learned a great deal from Lettie Lou Feree, most of it disturbing enough to haunt her thoughts as she drove back to Cooter Spring. But she had not learned what she most wanted to know: whether the woman was legally competent to stand trial. Admittedly, it was hard to imagine her sitting in a witness box. Perhaps with duct tape over her mouth? Secured into a diaper, perhaps one made of Kevlar? Even when Lettie Lou was younger, she must have been an extremely crappy person. Not the sort of person to have for a mother.
Unexpectedly, T.J. found herself thinking that it was high time she stopped avoiding her own mother, who still called her Shannon Marie and had no idea what T.J. stood for. Heck, T.J. herself hadn’t known until way too late. But since becoming a cop, she didn’t mind the initials. She enjoyed invulnerability and a kind of defiance, especially when she had occasion to arrest one of the lowlife guys who had nicknamed her.
Poor, blissfully ignorant Mom; she had been so proud that her only daughter, Shannon Marie, was popular in high school, with the boys flocking around her even though she was a funnyface. And to this day, Mom remained proud of her and had never stopped caring about her, even when bewildered by her choices: divorcing what appeared to be a perfectly OK husband, then throwing away the gift God gave her by insisting on breast reduction surgery, and then deciding to become a cop of all things? Carrying a gun? Dealing with criminals who might try to hurt her or even kill her?
Mom worried. And Mom wondered all too vocally whether her daughter would ever find love, settle down and give her grandchildren. Mostly, Mom just didn’t understand how messed up life had been for Shannon Marie as a girl whose only distinction had been size quadruple-D breasts.
Tremendous Jugs.
‘T.J.,’ the high school boys had snickered behind her back. ‘Tee Jay!’ they had called her blithely to her face, all innocent and ignorant. ‘Jugs,’ her husband had taunted when, after the honeymoon, he decided to hurt her. ‘Tremendous Jugs. You’re nothing but a huge pair of boobs.’
Mom had no clue that not one of Shannon Marie’s beaux, including the one she married, had given a hoot about anything except those honkin’ huge hooters.
But T.J. realized with a sigh that, compared with the Feree woman, her own well-meaning mother was a saint. So far, no one except her mother had ever loved her for herself.
Visit. Soon, T.J. told herself as she got into her unmarked car and headed back toward Cooter Spring. In the meantime, to hell with sympathy for the devil; Lettie Lou might be ancient and warped, but she did not appear to be criminally insane. And the law was still the law. It was T.J.’s job to collect evidence against that nasty old woman and make a case strong enough so that she could be tried for the murder of her son.
TWENTY-FOUR
Bonnie Jo said, ‘We wasn’t even certain sure he was dead till you found him.’
Bonnie Jo, Sukie and I sat around the table with glasses of pepsi and a box of oatmeal-raisin cookies. I’d given the kids popsicles, and because of the mess the popsicles were likely to make, Sukie had sent her grandchildren outside with orders to stay in the backyard, away from the road.
Bonnie Jo continued, ‘I guess we didn’t want to be sure, and maybe that’s why we didn’t look harder.’
Stuffing a cookie into my mouth, I nodded.
Sukie asked Bonnie Jo, ‘Sis, now you know what happened, how do you feel?’
‘How do you feel?’
‘I asked first.’
Bonnie Jo said, ‘Weird. Like, what are we going to do?’
‘About the funeral or about Ma?’
‘Mostly Ma. She done murder. Do we want her to go to jail?’
‘I do.’
‘I’m not sure—’
What I had to say was so important that I interrupted. ‘Feel however you feel, but it has to be up to LeeVon whether he wants your mother to be punished.’
Understandably, they both gawked at me, so I tried to explain. ‘LeeVon is an angry spirit. I don’t mind having him around, but it would be better for hi
m if he could rest. I think he needs to either forgive your mother or have his revenge before he’s able to rest. That’s why I put up that picture, for him to make a decision on. And that’s why I want his bones brought here. I hope the part of him that’s here in the house might choose to go to rest with them.’
Sukie whispered, ‘Jesus,’ which I did not hold against her, and then we all sat wordless, looking out the back door, watching her grandkids climbing my mimosa tree. Mimosas are good for that. Even little Liam managed to scramble up to sit, crowing, on a low branch.
I said, ‘I bet you two climbed on that tree.’
‘Not that one,’ Bonnie Jo said. ‘Them kind of tree comes and goes even quicker than humans.’ I heard a shadow in her voice.
‘I wish Ma was dead,’ Sukie said. ‘Ain’t it up to the cops whether they arrest her?’
‘Yes and no,’ I said. ‘It’s kind of up to you and your sister. How much you care to remember.’
‘Oh, I remember about LeeVon. Just I was too young to understand.’
‘But have the police questioned you yet?’
‘No.’
‘And Bonnie Jo, you haven’t signed a statement yet, have you?’
‘Nope.’
‘So if you could both please stall a few days, until, um …’
Not sure how to explain any more than I already had, I turned around to look at the picture I had copied for LeeVon, the one I had drawn so austerely on white paper with black marker.
The other two women must have looked also, because I heard them both gasp.
In the otherwise colorless picture, little Sukie had her yellow-and-aqua striped dress, little Bonnie Jo had her favorite red polka-dot one, and now little LeeVon had a plaid shirt with a collar, a red jacket, blue trousers and running shoes. The outline of his dress remained, but the revised LeeVon overrode it.
None of us spoke for several moments. Then Bonnie Jo said in a low, strained voice, ‘I’m sorry, but I gotta get out of here.’
‘Understandable.’ I went to the back door and called the kids.
Staring at the picture, Sukie whispered, ‘What does it mean?’
‘I’m no damn expert, but I think it means he’s feeling better. Will you wait before you tell the police anything?’
They had gotten very quiet, but they both nodded.
After they had left, I finished off the whole box of cookies as I sat looking at the picture. The colorful clothing warmed my heart, but the children were still without hands, and their faces without any expression, lacking a mouth to smile with. I got up and paced around the front room and my studio, then inevitably found myself standing in front of the picture again.
‘I know, kiddo,’ I muttered.
I knew we had more to do before it could be all right.
I needed to make a long-distance phone call.
On a Sunday afternoon there was no reason she shouldn’t be home; I had no excuses.
It took me a while to find the number, as I so seldom used it. First I tried dialing 411 for information, but the number, although a landline almost as archaic as mine, was unlisted. Eventually, I located it in an old address book I had apparently stored in my underwear drawer, perhaps because I no longer used the underwear just as I no longer used the book. Sometimes my own logic is inscrutable to me.
Having found the number, I stalled. I spent quite a while on the toilet, extended my stay in the bathroom by standing at the mirror studying the rosacea pimples on my face, and then it suddenly seemed imperative to clean out the refrigerator right that moment – but damn, I knew myself. I had to do this thing. I had to call her.
‘Her’ being Gayle Perkins née Vernon, my sister-out-law.
Sighing, I dragged a kitchen-table chair over to the wall phone so that I could sit down during the ordeal. I dialed, then perched on the chair and braced myself.
She was home. ‘Hello?’
I said, ‘Gayle, it’s all right, don’t drop the phone. I can’t crawl through the line and smack you.’
I heard what sounded like hyperventilation, and then she squeaked, ‘Beverly?’
‘That’s right. Listen,’ I said quickly in case she was thinking of hanging up, ‘do you still want my house?’
‘Your house?’ Good, she had regained her snooty attitude already.
‘The Montclair house. Do you still want it?’
‘Do you realize I shouldn’t even be speaking to you? Your daughters came to my home and confronted me in an outrageously disrespectful manner.’ This was news to me, very good news; it made me smile. But Gayle railed on. ‘They called me names—’
‘I’m the one who shouldn’t be speaking to you,’ I interrupted with all due force, ‘and you know damn well why. Do you want the Montclair house or don’t you?’
Silence.
Taking her wordlessness for yes, knowing that her bruised pride made it nearly impossible for her to tell me so out loud, I softened my voice to continue.
‘I won’t outright give it to you, Gayle, but I will sell it to you for way below market price, because I need money right now.’
I quoted her a ridiculously low price. Back to being herself, she haggled, offering even less. I countered, telling her that I would finance her purchase myself charging zero percent interest, with low monthly payments. Her voice sounded prim and cool as we reached an agreement, but I felt sure I could hear her salivating. ‘Furniture included?’ she demanded.
‘Whatever doesn’t belong to the current tenants, of course. And their lease expires at the end of the year, which gives you plenty of time to prepare.’ Smoothly, as if this were an afterthought, I continued, ‘I do, of course, require a down payment as a gesture of good faith.’
‘Money upfront?’ Her voice immediately grew fangs. ‘How much?’
‘Say ten thousand. If you will send a cashier’s check tomorrow by overnight express mail, I will get the paperwork started.’
‘Ten thousand!’
I estimated this was about as much as she spent most years on clothes alone. ‘Any less and I would have to increase the amount of your monthly payments.’
Protracted negotiations ensued, and I was glad I had a sturdy chair to lean back in. But when the phone call finally concluded, I was smiling. Despite all of Gayle’s protestations that Legalities Should Be Worked Out First, within a couple of days I could expect to have the money for LeeVon’s funeral.
I spent a large part of that evening exploring the mysteries of the Yellow Pages. I found no mention or acknowledgement of Burial, Interment, Cemeteries, Graveyards or Undertakers. Instead, I found Funeral Homes and Funeral Directors. I did not want LeeVon’s funeral to be at any other home but mine, and I did not want it to be directed; this was going to be a peculiarly DIY send-off. But, damn the long arms of bureaucracy reaching even to the dead, I needed an officially sanctioned location for his grave.
I needed to consult someone, and I knew who, but it was too late to call her.
At bedtime, I took the old lady with the beard and mustache off my easel and stuck her up on the wall with Poster Putty so LeeVon could admire her if he felt like it, but I left the line drawing on the easel. Also, after hiding my good brushes, I lavished the studio with several more large sheets of paper for LeeVon to use if he felt like it.
On Monday, LeeVon left several colorful but enigmatic pictures of what might have been a dragon, a pterodactyl or maybe even Two-Toed Tom with wings. It did not eat cows or breathe fire, but it had red eyes and it appeared to fly, although LeeVon outlined the blue sky rather than filling it in. Still, his brushstrokes seemed smoother and less scrubby than before – maybe less angry? The variable winged creature did not look unhappy, either flying or standing or sprawled on the ground (a green horizontal line), perhaps sleeping, perhaps dead.
But LeeVon did nothing to the drawing with his mother, quite surely dead, hanging on a gibbet.
Not knowing whether he thought she should be punished was worrisome, but my more immediate proble
m was not knowing what to wear to court for my hearing, given that I no longer owned any apparel with a skirt. The last time I had worn a dress, pantyhose and heels had been years ago at Maurie’s wedding. The inch-and-a-half heels in particular, by making me walk like a duck on tiptoe, had caused me so much unrelenting pain for so many hours that I had thrown them away the minute I took them off, along with any pretensions of ever again being less than comfortable.
So I knew damn well I had gotten rid of all my dressy clothes. Just the same, I pawed through my closet for half an hour trying to find some forgotten garment suitable for a judge to look at. Dammit that I hadn’t thought of this last week; I could have bought something … but no, I knew I wouldn’t have, not really. Rolling my eyes at myself, I found my one pair of slacks that did not have paint on them, and yes, a T-shirt – but over the T-shirt I put on a blouse with buttons, to signal respect. And I wore my newest, least-worn Skechers. Nervous, yet weirdly confident – dealing with the paranormal on a daily basis apparently will do that to a person – off I went, cleverly disguised as myself.
TWENTY-FIVE
The first thing I saw when I walked into the courtroom was Wilma Lou in what had to be her very best Sunday-go-to-church dress: a shiny black poplin floral print with a full skirt and a fitted shirtwaist to show that she still had a figure, at least when she wore a girdle. And hose. And old-fashioned patent leather heels shiny enough to reflect her underwear if she had been standing up. Which she wasn’t. Sitting down beside a business-suited young woman behind the table on the prosecution side, she gave a wince and a grimace when she saw me.
For some reason, I felt surprised to see her, too. Hadn’t realized she might be there. Naturally, I said the first dumb thing that came into my mind, which was, ‘Wilma Lou, I could have given you a lift!’ I knew she didn’t drive.
Her beady eyes shifted in evident discomfort. ‘This here young lady come and fetched me, Beverly.’
By then I was standing right across the table from the young lady in question, a robot-like creature with hair like a teakwood helmet and face completely masked with makeup. Without stirring from her seat or offering me a hand to shake, she announced herself. ‘Jill Spintaro, DCF.’
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