Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows

by Nora Deloach

  “I was just wondering whether you’re going to let me do anything.”

  The warm, glowing smile that tells me that I will always be a part of whatever she does flashed across Mama’s face. “Truth is, I was thinking that it would be nice if you and your friend Yasmine took care of the flowers, the decorations, and picking out invitations.”

  “I got you,” I said, finishing up my French toast and reaching for the cantaloupe. “James and Candi’s anniversary bash is going to be the biggest thing this town has ever seen.”

  “It’ll be a nice party,” Mama agreed, so low that you’d almost think she was talking to herself. “I’ve got to think of letting Gertrude and Agatha do something to help.”

  I’ve already told you about Daddy’s cousin Gertrude, but he’s got another cousin who’s very important to the Covington family. Her name is Agatha; she’s a spinster who manages the family heirs’ property—the hundreds of acres of land that my great-grandfather amassed when his fellow freed slaves deeded him their forty acres and decided to migrate north.

  Mama sat straight up in her chair. “First thing we’ve got to do as soon as you finish eating, Simone, is go to the hospital and visit Sarah Jenkins.”

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Otis County General Hospital, like all hospitals, is a sanctuary—a sterile place that smells of medicines and powerful disinfectants. It’s supposed to be a haven for the sick and injured. You’d think Sarah Jenkins would feel right at home in such a place, since she’s enjoyed so many infirmities and ailments over the years.

  Today, though, it was clear that Sarah wasn’t having fun.

  Mama, who is normally composed under most circumstances, couldn’t hold back her astonishment. “My Lord, Sarah, what’s wrong? What happened?”

  Sarah was sitting up in bed, and although I was sure she’d been given at least a mild sedative, her coal black eyes were as large as silver dollars. Tears sparkled in them. Her trembling hands clutched the neck of her pale blue hospital garment as if she was holding the gown closed to keep somebody from snatching it from her. I don’t know if it was because of whatever medication she had been given or her mental state, but sweat formed like little pearl beads on her forehead. “Candi,” she gasped, her voice desperate, her eyes frantic, “thank God you’ve finally come!”

  I glanced at Sarah’s two constant companions. Annie Mae Gregory is a very fat, very dark woman with eyes that are small and very piercing. Set deep in her fat face, Annie Mae’s eyes always remind me of a raccoon’s—bright and extremely inquisitive. When her head is tilted a certain way, she looks cross-eyed.

  Carrie Smalls, on the other hand, is tall, with mocha skin and straight, shoulder-length hair. Carrie looks younger than her two friends but that’s because she dyes her hair jet black. She also has a strong chin, thin lips, and eyes that seldom seem to blink. She has a scary strength about her. I always tell Mama that it’s Carrie Smalls’s strength that gives these three women their presence when they’re together.

  Sarah’s two companions sat on chairs on each side of her hospital bed, arms folded over their bosoms like they were Roman sentries standing guard at their post. Carrie’s back was so straight you’d think she’s carried books on her head most of her life. “Pull up a chair,” she told Mama in a tone that sounded like a command.

  Mama complied. I stood behind Mama’s chair.

  “Candi,” Sarah wailed, gripping her hospital gown. “You’ve got to help me!”

  Mama reached over and patted Sarah’s arm. “I’ll do what I can,” she soothed. “But, Sarah, tell me exactly what’s happened.”

  “You heard that Ruby Spikes was found dead in one of the rooms at the Avondale Inn, haven’t you?”

  Mama nodded.

  “Ruby was my godchild, Candi. After her mama and daddy died, I took out a life insurance policy on her. I’ve paid one dollar and fifty cents a week for the past ten years.”

  Before Sarah had a chance to finish her story Carrie Smalls blurted out, “The insurance company won’t pay Sarah the five-thousand-dollar face value of the policy. Sarah almost had a heart attack when she found out that she wasn’t going to get her hands on that money. That’s why she’s here!”

  “It ain’t right,” Sarah said dramatically. “Carrie and Annie Mae know I paid my premiums regularly!”

  Annie Mae spoke for the first time, her fat body shaking like Jell-O. “That’s right. I can testify to the fact that Bobby Campbell shows up on Sarah’s doorstep every Monday morning to collect that money.”

  Mama took a deep breath. “The only thing I can suggest is that you report this to Abe,” she offered. Abe Stanley is Otis’s sheriff.

  Sarah Jenkins clutched her nightgown even tighter. “I’ve gone to Abe,” she wailed. “He claims there ain’t nothing he can do to make Bobby pay the policy.”

  “I don’t believe him,” Carrie Smalls interjected sternly.

  “Why won’t Bobby pay the policy?” I asked, not understanding why she couldn’t get the money.

  Sarah cut her eyes at me. “Bobby Campbell says that Ruby died by her own hands. And the insurance company won’t pay in the case of suicide. But I know for a fact, Ruby wasn’t about to kill herself!”

  Carrie leaned forward. “I was in Capers Hardware two days before Ruby died. I heard her order a brand new washer and dryer from old man Capers. Candi, do you think Ruby would have ordered that kind of thing and then decide to kill herself?”

  The light in Mama’s eyes as she sat there thinking was the glint that always shines in them when her sleuthing instinct is aroused. I was a bit concerned. I could tell that Sarah’s plea had struck a chord with Mama, and I didn’t want her tied up with Ruby Spikes’s suicide, apparent or otherwise—I wanted her to help me plan her party!

  “The paper is lying, Bobby Campbell is lying, Abe—” Sarah sounded absolutely frantic.

  “Sarah, I really don’t see that there is anything I can do,” Mama said, getting to her feet.

  I let out a breath, one that I didn’t know I was holding. Mama appeared to have shaken off the inclination to dig into Ruby’s death, and I was glad!

  But Sarah grabbed for Mama’s hand. “Candi,” she pleaded, “you’ve got to help me.… I need that five thousand dollars.” She hesitated. “I need it to pay my property taxes.” Now she looked ashamed, like a small child who had just been caught stealing. “You see—”

  “Sarah did a foolish thing—she used the money she’d saved to pay her taxes to play a lottery that a man sold her over the telephone,” Carrie interrupted.

  Sarah sat up straight in her hospital bed. “The nice young man talked so sweet. You’d have believed him, too.”

  The glint in Mama’s eyes I dreaded so much was back. She was interested in this drama that I was sure Sarah was playing out just to get her all tangled up in Ruby’s death. “What did he promise you?” she asked Sarah gently.

  “He told me that I’d already won three times what I needed to pay my taxes. I just knew the Lord had heard my prayers and sent me a blessing.”

  Mama looked surprised. “You sent your tax money to a stranger simply because he told you you’d won the lottery?”

  “There was more to it than that, Candi,” Sarah tried to explain. “You see, the first thing I got was this notice in the mail that said I’d won the lottery in Canada. Just a few days after that, I got this call from a very nice young man. He explained to me that I’d won the money, that it was mine fair and square. He told me that all I needed to do to get the check was to send him fifteen hundred dollars for the paperwork.”

  “And you sent it!” I exclaimed, incredulous.

  “Over six weeks ago,” Sarah confessed. “I ain’t heard a word since then and I don’t have no way of getting in touch with the young man I talked to over the phone.”

  “No telephone number? What about an address?”

  “The only thing I’ve got is this letter.” Sarah pulled a crumpled paper from under her pillo
w and handed it to Mama. I read it over Mama’s shoulder, and my heart sank. It was the standard swindle letter, promising big winnings. Sarah started to cry. “Candi, I sent him my tax money. If I don’t pay my taxes by the end of August, I’ll lose my place. So naturally when I heard that poor Ruby had died, I remembered that I had this little policy that I’d been paying on since she was sixteen, so I called Bobby Campbell. Candi, I’ve got to get that money,” she sobbed. “I’ll lose my place, my home. I’ll lose everything I own!”

  “Sarah’s heart couldn’t take the strain of the thought of losing her place,” Annie Mae told Mama. “She carried on so last night, it took two doctors and three nurses just to try to calm her nerves.”

  “Promise me you’ll prove that Ruby didn’t kill herself, that somebody killed her,” Sarah begged my mother as she hung on to Mama’s arm like the hospital bed was the Titanic and she was about to sink under icy waters.

  Empathy swept across Mama’s face, and to be honest, I didn’t like the look. You see, Mama is a caseworker at the county’s Department of Social Services. She enjoys fitting together the puzzle pieces of other people’s lives, and she becomes positively euphoric when her mind is deducing.

  The problem that faced Mama now was that Sarah Jenkins desperately needed money. Sarah could get that money if Ruby Spikes had not committed suicide but had been murdered. To me, there was no mystery: Ruby Spikes had killed herself, just like the coroner and the newspaper said. But the tone of Mama’s voice when she spoke to Sarah Jenkins told me that she didn’t share my conviction.

  “I’ll talk to Abe,” Mama told Sarah kindly. “In the meantime, you rest.” She patted Sarah’s hand.

  “If poor Ruby was murdered, you’d better hurry and find her killer,” Carrie Smalls said as she stretched her thin neck and folded her hands tight under her bosom. “Monday, August thirtieth, is the last day to pay taxes. After that, Sarah’s property will be posted in the Otis County Guardian as being up for sale. Everybody in the county will be talking about the people who didn’t have sense enough to save money for their taxes!”

  Sarah’s eyes closed; her thin body shuddered.

  “I know I wouldn’t want my name published and my property in the paper,” Carrie Smalls continued in her steely voice. “There are people in this county who wait for that yearly notice of taxes that haven’t been paid. I reminded Sarah and she knows I ain’t lying. As soon as they see the names in that notice and they see it’s property they’ve been wanting, they run to the courthouse, pay the back taxes, and, if nobody in the family shows up in a year’s time, they get heirs’ property for the unpaid taxes. The man that lives next door to Sarah has been trying to get her to sell her family land for the past few years. I wouldn’t put it past him to be the first to the courthouse after that newspaper comes out!”

  Carrie Smalls’s observation did little to console her friend.

  “Lord, please help, Candi! My great-granddaddy would turn over in his grave if he knew I lost the homestead for lack of paying taxes!” Sarah Jenkins wailed.

  My heart sank.

  Mama was sleuthing again.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Abe Stanley has been the sheriff of Otis County for the past twenty-five years. He’s a tall white man, with soft wispy gray hair at his temples. His long, narrow face has deep lines that express every nuance of whatever he feels. Abe is a three-pack-a-day smoker; there is always a cigarette in his mouth or hand.

  Mama got to know Abe right after my father retired. This is how it happened: Mama, who has a degree in sociology from the University of the State of New York, landed a job as a case manager for Otis County Department of Social Services shortly after she and my father moved back to Otis.

  One day while Mama was visiting one of her welfare clients, she got a flat tire. She was on a lonely stretch of Highway 3, five miles outside of Otis. Fortunately for Mama, Sheriff Abe and his deputy, Rick Martin, were driving by. Abe stopped his car and had Rick change Mama’s tire. Later that evening, Mama rewarded their kindness with a sweet-potato pie.

  Anybody who has ever eaten even the smallest bite of Mama’s pie, or anything else she’s ever cooked, would understand why Abe immediately became so attached to my mother. I think Abe sees Mama as his Associate Sheriff, if there is such a thing.

  Mama really loved the idea of becoming the sheriff’s confidante. It gave her the opportunity to learn things about people who live in Otis, people she thought she knew but who turned out to be very different than the way she remembered them when she and Daddy first lived there, over thirty years ago, before Daddy joined the Air Force, and Rodney, Will, and I were born. She helped Abe solve several crimes by making suggestions that steered him in the right direction. She’s helped him solve four different cases so far. Mama’s assistance with Abe’s law enforcement, as well as her gift for out-baking anybody who lives within a hundred-mile radius, really sealed the close relationship between her and the sheriff.

  Her relationship with Rick Martin isn’t the same. While Abe’s face is expressive, Rick has that simple look that makes you wonder if he’s operating one short of a six-pack. A young man who has never ventured to travel any further than the four surrounding counties, Rick shows little or no emotion. But he’s not stupid, for he can hold up his end of a satisfying conversation, and he loves to talk whenever Mama and Abe give him a chance.

  The front door of the Otis jail opens into a small foyer. On the left side, a door leads into a room that has one large desk, one small desk, two executive chairs, two file cabinets, an old water cooler, a small table with a coffee urn on it, and four wooden chairs. This is the domain of Sheriff Abe and his deputy.

  On the other side of the foyer is a door that leads to three holding cells, residence for those who break Otis’s laws.

  “Abe,” Mama began after a few minutes of polite conversation in the sheriff’s office that very afternoon, “I’ve just come from the hospital visiting Sarah.”

  The lines in the sheriff’s face deepened; he slouched in his chair. “I know she’s in a terrible state,” he said as he slipped the unlit cigarette from between his lips and dropped it on his desk because he respected Mama by never lighting up when she was around. “I’ve talked to Dr. Mark, the doctor who was on duty last night when Annie Mae and Carrie brought Sarah in. He told me that he only gave Sarah a mild sedative until he can get hold of Dr. Baker, her personal doctor. He needs to find out what other kinds of medications she’s been taking for all those ailments she’s been complaining of for years.” He shook his head sorrowfully.

  “Sarah foolishly got rid of her tax money,” Mama said. “Now that her taxes are due, she’s not able to pay them. I understand once she learned that poor Ruby Spikes was dead, her hope was that she could collect from a policy that she’d been paying on Ruby for some years. But Bobby Campbell won’t pay the policy because of the way Ruby died.”

  “I know Sarah’s dilemma, Candi, but there ain’t nothing I can do about it.”

  “Is there any indication that Ruby Spikes didn’t commit suicide?” Mama asked Abe.

  He shifted uneasily in his chair. “Candi, Ruby was sprawled in the middle of the floor, the gun in her hand. There was no sign of a struggle, no sign of breaking and entering. She was dressed in her nightgown; her medicine was lined up on the sink. Her pocketbook, her car keys, wallet, checkbook was all there just like they hadn’t been touched. The bed did look as if she’d been in it for a while, but that’s understandable since she was dressed for bed. Why Ruby got up that night and wrote this note”—he reached into a drawer and handed a sheet of white paper to Mama—“I can’t for the life of me understand.”

  Mama read the note; her eyebrows rose. Then she passed it to me. It read: Life ain’t worth living. Ruby.

  “I compared the writing against the writing on the registration slip that Ruby filled out when she checked into the Inn,” Abe continued. “Ruby wrote that note all right, and the only prints we found in th
e room belonged to the maid and Ruby.”

  “Still,” Mama said to Abe, “the look on your face tells me that you’ve got concerns.”

  “My first concern is that her room door was unlocked. Why wouldn’t she lock it before she shot herself? Second, the wound was downward, as if Ruby had been shot by someone taller than she was,” Abe admitted. “But there is something that I didn’t give to the newspapers that really bothers me. I found a piece of paper in Ruby’s left hand that looks like the torn edge of a piece of money. I can’t help but wonder why she was clutching the edge of a piece of money in her hand. And what happened to the rest of it? I’ve sent the paper to the lab. The only other unusual things in that motel room were tiny bits of rubber in the carpet, and a receipt from a certified check for five thousand dollars we found in Ruby’s purse. That check was made out to a Charles Parker, and I don’t know who Charles Parker is.” He sighed and poked at his cigarette. “Well, Candi, you asked me, so I’ve told you my concerns. But my concerns are not enough to override the evidence that all points to Ruby having killed herself.…

  “Poor Ruby,” he continued grimly. “Seems like that girl was destined to meet her fate. Why, just a week ago, I got a call to go out to the Spikeses’ house. It was on Saturday morning, a little after daylight. When I got there, Ruby was in a state—you’d think she’d wrestled with a ghost.

  “Ruby’s story was this: She was home alone—it seems that Herman, her old man, hadn’t gotten in as yet. While Ruby was asleep, a man slipped into a window at the rear of the house, went to a closet in the hallway, and got a blanket. He threw the blanket over Ruby’s head and then tried to rape her. She put up a terrific fight—I could see the bruises on her face, neck, and hands. Still, this fella wouldn’t give up until he heard Herman’s car drive up in the yard. It was only then that he turned Ruby loose and fled through the back window.”

  “How horrible,” Mama murmured.