“How big is that?” Richard asked.
“Come outside with me, and I’ll show you.” We went out to the back porch, and I showed him how the landmarks corresponded with reality.
“What’s that?” Richard asked, pointing to a large rectangle on the map.
“That’s the tobacco curing shed. From when this was a farm. They’d cut the tobacco and then leave it to dry out there.”
“Why so far from the house?”
“Whichever great-grandmother it was then didn’t care for the scent of tobacco, so she made them put it far enough away from the house that she couldn’t smell it.” I pointed to a dusty track leading from the back of the house, and then to the same track on the map. “The tobacco road leads to the shed, and then to Rock Creek Road.” I rolled the map back up, sat down on the white-painted porch swing, and patted the spot next to me. Richard took the hint.
Despite everything, I had to admit that it was a beautiful night. The humidity had subsided some, there was the hint of a breeze in the air, and the tree-frogs and crickets added their familiar songs. I snuggled closer to Richard’s side, and when he put his arm around me, I realized with some surprise that I was smiling. Guilt tweaked me for a moment, but I shook it off. Like Aunt Daphine had said, Paw would want me to feel better.
“You know, I had forgotten how nice this could be,” I said.
“Hmmm?”
“The crickets and the frogs, and the smell of fresh cut grass. And sitting on the porch in a swing. Look, see that!” I pointed at a yellow flicker in the air.
“One of Bush’s thousand points of light?”
I elbowed him gently. “It’s a lightning bug. I haven’t seen a lightning bug in I don’t know how long. We used to catch them in our hands to make our hands glow.”
“You touched bugs?”
“Lightning bugs aren’t bugs. I mean, I know they’re insects, but they aren’t bugs. They’re different.”
“Of course.”
“We used to catch pocketbook ladies, too.”
“Is that anything like a bag lady?”
“Did y’all not catch pocketbook ladies? Those little black bugs that roll up into a ball like an armadillo. We’d pick them up and watch them roll up. Then we’d put them down again and watch them unroll.”
“I guess I had a deprived childhood.”
We swung gently in companionable silence, then I surprised myself again. “You know what? Even with everything that’s happened, part of me is glad to be here. To be home.”
Richard kissed my forehead gently. “Of course you are.”
Then very quietly I said, “I miss Paw,” and Richard held me for a long time while I cried.
Chapter 22
It was well after midnight before Richard and I got to bed, but we made up for it by sleeping until ten o’clock the next morning. By the time we made it out of the bedroom, the house was empty, other than a note from Aunt Maggie saying that she had gone out. We had picked up cereal and milk at the store the previous night, and we took our time eating breakfast as we read the newspaper. I checked for more news about Melanie Wilson, but there was only a brief mention that the investigation was continuing.
“What do you want to do today?” Richard asked once we had washed our bowls and spoons.
“I’m supposed to meet Aunt Daphine for lunch at one, but that’s all we’ve got planned so far.” I considered the possibilities. “I think our first stop should be the mill.”
“Are you sure you want to go there?”
“I don’t want to, but I feel like I need to. It’s been a while since I’ve been inside the mill, and I don’t have a clear picture in my head of where it happened.”
We showered and dressed, and drove to the mill. After we got through the main gate, I pulled over to the security booth.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” the guard asked.
“Could you tell me if either Davy Sanders or Ralph Stewart are working today?”
“I’m Ralph Stewart.”
“I’m Laura Fleming, Ellis Burnette’s granddaughter. This is my husband, Richard. If you don’t mind, we’d like to talk to you about his accident.”
He looked nervously toward the front of the mill where Burt Walters’s office was. “I don’t know…. I better not without Mr. Walters’s say-so.”
“Then we’ll go see Mr. Walters,” I said. Stewart directed me toward the visitor’s parking lot, and retreated into the booth.
I checked with the woman at the information desk to make sure Walters’s office was still on the fourth floor, and we rode the elevator up. The first thing I saw was a bolt of faded blue gingham in a glass case with a sign identifying it as the first woven at Walters Mill. The second was a sharp-faced secretary with arched eyebrows and a seemingly permanent frown. Her desk was placed directly in front of a door with a brass plate that read “Burt Walters, Chief Executive Officer.”
“May I help you?” she asked stiffly.
“I’d like to see Mr. Walters. I’m Laura Fleming, Ellis Burnette’s granddaughter. This is my husband, Richard.”
The receptionist peered at the calendar on her desk. “Did you have an appointment?”
“No, but it shouldn’t take but a minute.”
Her frown deepened. “And may I ask what this pertains to?”
“I’d like to talk to the security guard who found my grandfather, and to go see where he was found.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
I guess Richard saw the steam starting to come out of my ears, because he said, “You can tell Mr. Walters that we wanted to investigate further before we decide what legal steps to take.”
The secretary’s frown turned into a straight line. “Legal steps? Just a moment.” She went through the door, closing it firmly behind her, and stepped out a minute later. “Mr. Walters will see you now.”
“Thank you so much,” I said sweetly, and Richard winked at me as we went in.
Burt Walters was coming out from behind the massive mahogany desk, and reached out to take my hand in a gesture that was not so much a handshake as a pat. “Why Laurie Anne. It’s been an age since we’ve seen you. This must be your husband.”
I performed introductions, and Walters shook Richard’s hand in a more manly fashion.
“Come on in, have a seat,” he said. He was a small man, conservatively but expensively dressed in a blue seersucker suit. His hair and mustache were jet-black, and although I knew the color was almost certainly from a bottle, it was at least skillfully applied. Though he was not unattractive, he still suffered by comparison with William “Big Bill” Walters, forever peering over his shoulder in the life-sized oil painting hung on the wall behind him.
“I cannot tell you how sorry I am about Ellis,” he said once we were all seated. “What a tragedy for all of us here at Walters Mill! The Burnette family has been a mainstay of the mill since its very inception. Your grandfather, and then your aunts, and now your cousins. The Burnette girls are still a legend around here.”
“Women,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Since my aunts all have grown children, I thought that ‘women’ was a better word.”
“Of course, of course.” He smiled weakly. “It’s just that I still remember them as they were when I first knew them, and I never saw a prettier bunch of girls… women. Your mother was the prettiest one, and I can see that you’ve inherited her good looks. Did she ever tell you that we used to keep company when we were in school?”
I said, “Yes, she did,” but keeping company was not how Mama had described it. Walters had asked her out a few times, and then tried to use his father’s power versus her father’s job to convince her to “show him a good time.” He never expected Mama to tell Paw, who promptly told Big Bill, a man of honor in such matters. They had not kept company after that.
“The reason we’re here, Mr. Walters, is to find out more about what happened to my grandfather.”
“Surely t
hat would only upset you.”
“Actually I think it would clear my mind to know everything. We’d like to talk with Ralph Stewart, and we want to see the place where he found my grandfather.”
He clasped his hands together and nodded. “I see. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if Ralph Stewart is on duty today.”
“We already spoke to Ralph. He’s working the front gate.”
“That’s right, he is. The problem is that I couldn’t possibly spare time to take you down there today.”
“Mr. Walters, as you just pointed out, the Burnettes have been around this mill just about as long as the Walterses. I know the way.”
“Insurance regulations prohibit unescorted visitors from wandering around the mill.”
“Then Ralph could take us.”
He hesitated, and I guessed he was out of excuses. He leaned back, then sat up straight with a look of determination. “Let’s put our cards out on the table, shall we? Does your family intend to sue Walters Mill? Because if you do, I can assure you that you would fail. There is not one shred of evidence that we have been negligent. Not one shred!”
“We’re not really planning to go to court,” I said soothingly.
“Then you’re hoping for an out-of-court settlement, is that it? I don’t know what you’ve heard, but Walters Mill is not made of money. What with foreign imports and inflation, we’re barely keeping our heads above water. A settlement could put us into bankruptcy, and then what would happen to the people of Byerly?”
This was going too far. I had wanted to scare him a little, not throw him into a panic. “Mr. Walters, we’re not planning to sue the mill, and we don’t want an out-of-court settlement. My grandfather died here. I want to know why. Surely you can understand that.”
He still looked suspicious, but after fidgeting a few more seconds, he finally nodded. “Well, if you’re sure it won’t upset you. I’ll call Ralph to come show you around.”
“Thank you,” I said, and Richard and I stood.
“Now you be sure and let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”
“Yes, sir,” Richard answered for us. “We certainly will.”
Chapter 23
Ralph Stewart met us downstairs. “Sorry about putting y’all to the trouble of talking to Mr. Walters, Mrs. Fleming, Mr. Fleming,” he said, “but a fellow can’t be too careful. Not as hard as jobs are to come by these days.”
“That’s all right. Mr. Walters is an old friend of the family. And please call me Laura.”
“What can I do for you, Laura?”
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“How about the break room? Morning coffee break is over, so we’ll have it to ourselves.”
Some of the “Safety On the Job” and “Punctual Employees are Happy Employees” posters were new and the old toaster oven had been replaced with a tiny microwave, but otherwise the room looked much as it had when I used to wait there for Paw’s shift to end. Ralph brushed the crumbs from someone’s Moon Pie off of the table nearest the window, and courteously held a chair for me to sit.
“Do either of y’all want a Coca-Cola?” he asked.
“No, thank you,” I said, and Richard added, “You go ahead.”
“I believe I will.” He fed change into an ancient Coke machine, and I was a little surprised when it produced a bottle instead of the ubiquitous can. Ralph popped the cap off, took a long swallow, and sighed in satisfaction before sitting down.
“It gets right hot in the booth,” he said. “I’ve got a fan, but it don’t do much when it’s as hot as it’s been lately.”
I nodded, and let him take another swallow before beginning. “I understand you were the one to find my grandfather after the accident.” Or whatever it was, I added silently.
“Yes, ma’am, I was. I sure was sorry to hear he had passed on. We’re going to miss him around here, and that’s a fact. Everybody thought a lot of him. He was still working full-time when I first started here, and he took the time to show me around and help me get settled in. He knew my daddy from when he worked here years ago, and was always asking about him. Daddy had the brown lung.”
I nodded sympathetically. Brown lung, long unacknowledged by the powers that be in the mill, had reduced uncounted men and women to constantly coughing wrecks. We Burnettes were unusually fortunate in that we had escaped it.
“Anyway,” Ralph continued, “I don’t really know what I can tell you.”
“Just tell us what happened that day,” Richard said.
“Let me think a minute.” Ralph took another swallow of his drink. “I got here a little early that day so Davy could leave early. We’re not supposed to leave the booth early like that, but he was going to take his two boys out to the movies, and he was in kind of a hurry.” He looked a little uncomfortable.
“We won’t tell anybody,” I said.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t. Now, this was about a quarter of three and what with Davy being in a hurry and all, he left as soon as I got there and never mentioned that Ellis had gone inside. It wasn’t until about five that I was looking through the sign-in book and saw that he had come in and never signed back out again.”
“Y’all keep track of everyone who comes in, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Especially on weekends.”
“Did anyone else come in that day?”
“Not a soul. Ellis was the only one on that day’s page in the book. I thought at first he must have just forgotten to sign out, but your grandfather was always careful because he knew we could get into trouble if he didn’t follow the rules. I called the warehouse, and when I didn’t get an answer, I went and looked in the parking lot and there was that old station wagon of his.
“Seeing his car still there scared me. I knew Ellis was getting on up there in years, and that his heart wasn’t what it used to be. I locked up the booth and went inside to the warehouse where we keep the socks for pulling. There he was, lying face down with a tube of socks on top of him.
“At first I thought he was…” He hesitated, and I realized gratefully he was trying to spare my feelings. Richard took my hand under the table.
Ralph went on, “Well, I couldn’t tell how bad off he was. There wasn’t much blood, but there was a lump as big as a goose egg on the back of his head. I rolled him over real careful and saw that he was breathing, but he was cold as ice. I found a piece of cloth to lay over him and then called Mr. Walters and an ambulance.”
He shrugged. “That’s about it. I stayed right there with him until I heard the siren, and then I went to let the ambulance in.”
“When you were waiting with him, did he say anything?” Richard asked.
Ralph shook his head. “Not a word. Mr. Walters showed up as they were taking him away, and followed them to the hospital. That’s when I called your aunt and uncle.” He finished his Coke, and stood. “If y’all still want to see where I found him, I’ll be glad to show you.”
The warehouse always seemed cold to me, no matter what the weather was like outside. We walked through the huge, dimly lit room, the clicking of our shoes against the concrete floor mingling eerily with echoes from other parts of the mill.
“This is it,” Ralph said, stopping at a bank of high shelves. There was a rickety-looking stepladder leaned against the end of the shelves, and the shelves themselves were filled with open cartons with the word “SOCKS” scrawled on all four sides in black Magic Marker.
“He was right about here,” Ralph said, using his foot to draw a circle on the floor. I looked away, the picture of Paw laying there suddenly all too clear.
Had Paw just had that heart attack his doctor had been warning him about for years, or had someone been waiting for him? I looked around the warehouse. There were plenty of places someone could have hidden. Over behind that rack of shelves, or next to that column. If Paw had known the person, he or she could have been in plain sight, with Paw suspecting nothing until it was too late.
I shook my head. Ralph hadn’t really told or shown us a thing that we hadn’t already known.
“Is there anything else?” Ralph asked.
“Just one more thing,” I said and hesitated, wanting to word my next question carefully. “When you went looking for Paw, did you see anything odd?”
“Like what?”
“Just anything different,” I said, not wanting to ask him directly if he had seen signs of someone else having been there.
He rubbed his chin for a moment. “I can’t think of a thing. I came in, and there he was.”
I forced myself to visualize it as it must have looked. It would have been much like today, only quieter, when Paw came in. He would have reached up to pull a carton off of the shelf, and must have gotten hold of it when he either fell or was hit, and spilled the socks on himself. Wait a minute! That didn’t make sense.
“Ralph, did you say he was face down?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But if the socks were on top of him, he must have been reaching up to pull a box down when the heart attack hit or he lost his balance or whatever. It was the back of his head that was hurt. So why was he face down? He should have been on his back.”
Ralph shrugged. “I never thought about it. I suppose he rolled over after he fell.”
“Maybe.” I looked at the spot once more, and shivered.
Richard put his arm around me, and said, “Let’s get you out of here,” and Ralph walked us back to the front door.
“We appreciate your time, Ralph,” I said.
“That’s all right,” he said. “I just wish I had found him sooner, and maybe things would have turned out different.”
“Ralph, according to the doctor, it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference,” I said. I didn’t know whether that was true or not, but it was at worst a white lie.
Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 01 - Down Home Murder Page 13
