Bootlegger’s Daughter (25 page)

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.”

Surely an odd choice of subjects?

Between the two was an empty space about four feet wide, and I realized it held a third pair of pegs positioned slightly higher on the wall. One peg was snapped off flush. And there was the third dowel itself, wedged between the back edge of the chest and the wall. Was that what had knocked over the cross?

Dwight’s people had searched here, but they wouldn’t have disturbed things more than necessary and they would have left all as they found it. Certainly they wouldn’t have thrown a towel on the bathroom floor, nor dirtied the sink. Amid such disciplined tidiness, these anomalies leaped out at me.

I could almost see it happening: Michael had returned from the creek, seen that his truck was gone, questioned Cathy King, who was on her way home, and learned about Denn’s phone call to me. Cathy told Dwight that she’d left Michael loading one of the racks with greenware; and from the condition of the workshop, one of the other potters thought he must have put in at least an hour’s work.

After that, for some reason, he’d suddenly rushed upstairs, into the bathroom to wash the clay dust from his face and hands, then back here where he’d yanked down the middle panel in such a hurry that he’d broken one of the pegs and knocked over the cross.

And then what? Driven over to the theater with it? Why? And where was it now?

No sooner had Lily and I returned to the living room than Denn entered, properly dressed for a funeral. There was a lost look in his eyes when he mentioned Michael’s strong streak of conventionality, but I was too wired to be his comforter at that moment.

“Tell me, Denn, what was the middle tapestry in Michael’s bedroom?”

His head jerked up and his eyes blazed. “What the fuck were you doing in there?”

I stepped back involuntarily and he rushed past me toward Michael’s room.

“And how’d you get in?” he cried. “Pick the goddamned lock?”

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to like that?” I shouted and strode after him with matching anger. He was on his knees in the hall, examining the lock on the door, and I saw immediately that it was a heavy-duty Yale lock, not the usual flimsy thing found on interior doors but one that required a key both to lock and unlock it. For some reason, the open door caused Denn to break down again and once more I was disarmed.

“It’s always locked,” he wept. “Always. No one’s allowed in when Michael’s not here. No one!”

“Not even you?” Surprised dissipated the rest of my anger.

“We each needed private space,” he said defensively as he pulled out a white handkerchief and blew his nose. “Michael didn’t go into my room uninvited either.”

Didn’t go/no one’s allowed. Where was Denn’s choice in the matter? I filed it in the back of my head.

“Dwight had a search warrant,” I said, “but that lock doesn’t look forced. You sure Michael wouldn’t have left it open when he rushed out?”

I told him about the crumpled towel, the dirty sink, and then the missing panel.

Denn stood as if dazed and uncomprehending.

“Why would he take it down?” I prodded. “What was the scene?”

“Scene?” he asked stupidly, staring at the empty wall a long moment. Then he sighed and shrugged his shoulder. “It wasn’t a scene. Just symbols of the Holy Ghost. You know-a white dove. Lilies. That sort of thing.”

“We have to call Dwight,” I said.

“Why?”

“If it wasn’t in the Volvo when I found Michael, that might mean he either gave it to someone or his killer took it. Either way, it could be important.”

We both looked at our watches.

“It’s eight o’clock,” Denn said plaintively.

He was right. Too soon for Dwight to have gotten back to Dobbs and getting too late if we wanted to have much time at the funeral home.

“I’ll call him from Aldcroft’s,” I said.

As we passed back through the living room, Denn suddenly darted over to the open shelves that lined the stairwell and landing. Samples of the Pot Shot’s products were displayed on lighted glass shelves like works of art.

“Here,” said Denn and presented me with a pitcher that had such subtle tones in the glazes that the colors seemed to glow with jewel-like intensity. I hated to think what it would cost in that expensive Atlanta store, but it felt good in my hands, with a nice balance and a well-designed lip. Just looking at it, I was positive this was one pitcher that would never let liquids drip or slop when I poured.

“It’s not much compensation,” said Denn, “but I really am sorry if I’ve damaged your campaign.”

“Sorry enough to let Linsey Thomas run a statement from you in the next Ledger?” I asked.

“I-yeah, okay. I guess I owe you that, too.”

Downstairs, he found a box, swathed the pitcher with tissues, and set it on the backseat of my little sports car. Lily watched with resignation as we drove off and left her sitting in the dooryard again.

Aldcrofts have been burying the dead of Cotton Grove and Colleton County from this location on Front Street for more than a hundred years; and with two Aldcroft sons recently graduated from mortuary school, it looked as if they were going to continue on into the twenty-first century.

When the first Aldcroft’s burned down around 1910, they had replaced it with a stately white mansion reminiscent of Tara; and though the interior’s been remodeled and modernized over the years, the exterior remains firmly antebellum. Across the front was a wide veranda graced by huge columns with Corinthian capitals. Inside were wide halls and three spacious viewing rooms furnished with comfortable sofas and soft chairs. Tall, gilt-framed mirrors on the wall reflected the subdued pink light cast by lamps with pale rose-colored glass shades.

The wide parking lot was so jammed when we arrived that I had to park on the street a half block away. Even though it was a quarter past eight, there was still a line of people that extended from the front door, across the veranda, and halfway down the broad front steps.

“Oh God!” moaned Denn as we drew near. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Yes, you can,” I soothed. “These are your friends, too.”

Taking his arm, we walked across the veranda and those who recognized Denn stepped back to let us pass up the shallow steps and into the crowded hall. It was just a little unnerving the way a point of silence preceded us, while a cone of low buzzing followed in our wake.

“Natural human solicitude,” whispered the preacher.

The pragmatist was too busy responding to solemn smiles and sober handshakes and trying to get a handle on the mood to remark on natural human gossips.

At most visitations, the recently deceased is the natural focal point. As a rule, collateral members of the family-cousins, nieces and nephews, or aunts and uncles-form a sort of receiving line on the right, just inside the doorway. You’ve come to pay your respects, so you’re passed along the line till you arrive at the open coffin, where there is a moment of silence, a moment to gaze with good remembrances (often), or hungry curiosity (always), upon that still face forever silent till the trump of judgment calls it from the grave.

A closed coffin seems somehow almost antisocial. Even where there are compelling reasons for it, as with Michael, there’s always a sense of something incomplete when one is confronted with nothing more than polished wood and a blanket of carnations and baby’s breath.

Then the line moves again and now you are face-to-face with the immediate family.

I have been to wakes of unloved men that were like Sunday afternoon socials where folks caught up on their visiting and almost forgot the reason they’d come together. I’ve been to wakes for well-loved matriarchs of large families and seen such gladness for release from long or painful illnesses that the wakes often turned into bittersweet celebrations of their lives. Tragic are the wakes for toddlers, more tragic still for children and youths cut down in the morning of their lives with all those shining possibilities consigned to the grave. If I never attend another funeral for a teenager killed in a car crash, it will be too soon.

Until now though, Janie Whitehead’s was the only wake for a murdered person that I’d attended and if there was a pattern, it lay in the numb disbelief of the victim’s loved ones and in the low-voiced speculations of their friends.

Denn’s presence exacerbated both.

Yet people were tactful and kind. Michael’s two sisters and their husbands and three adolescent children were first in the family line beyond the coffin and they closed ranks around Denn as soon as we had found a pathway through the crush of mourners. Each sister squeezed his arm, each brother-in-law and Dr. Vickery gave him a firm handclasp, and even Mrs. Vickery held out her hands and lifted her ravaged face for a formal kiss. Then the sisters positioned themselves on each side of him, so as to minimize any remaining awkwardness.

And I had not been wrong when I reminded Denn that many of these people were his friends, too. Most were firmly against homosexuality in theory. Most were also firmly against atheism, secular humanism, adultery, alcoholism, kleptomania, and a whole range of other things people did or were that deviated from the perceived norm; and that didn’t stop them from looking past all that if the person was basically decent and didn’t do whatever it was in the middle of the road and scare the mules.

Michael and Denn had been liked for who they were and for their positive contributions to the community, and there were wreaths from both the volunteer fire department and the Possum Creek Players to prove it.

Nevertheless, I could feel an unusual electricity in the air, and I’m sure more than one person wondered when they murmured condolences and shook Denn’s hand why Denn wasn’t in jail or at least under heavy bond.

When I had been through the line and signed the register, I went down the rear hall to the business office and used their phone to call Dwight.

“A what?” he asked.

Patiently I described the tapestry wall hanging as Denn had described it to me.

“No,” said Dwight. “There was nothing like that in the car. I’ll get Fletcher to make a sketch of it tomorrow and we’ll keep an eye out for it.”

The next hour passed rapidly. The large outer hall ran the entire width of the funeral home and people who had already paid their respects to the family either lingered there to speak with those still waiting on line to go in, or, as I had done, broke off into quiet conversational groups.

In addition to friends and neighbors, there were also some prominent faces out from Raleigh. G. Hooks Talbert was accompanied by the current president of the bank that had bought out the Cotton Grove bank Mrs. Vickery’s family had founded. The Vickerys were not especially political, but they contributed generously to the Democratic Party and I recognized a member of a former governor’s cabinet and some division heads.

Several of the people I spoke to were curious about my involvement with Michael’s murder and were not shy about asking, including Sammy Junior Johnson and his wife, Helen, who lived a few miles out in the country, near Bethel Baptist. Sammy’s mother and mine had been best friends from girlhood, and Sammy Junior didn’t mind telling me that he was worried about the effect all this could have on the runoff election. Both of them had campaigned for me in their community and Helen, too, was concerned.

“I mean, don’t you think it’s getting a little bizarre?” she asked. “First there’s Gray Talbert’s letter to the editor supporting you-Gray Talbert? Whose daddy’s one of the biggest Republicans in the state? Do you know how weird that sounds?”

Even though her voice was almost too low for me to hear, Sammy Junior shushed her. “He’s right over there.”

Helen ignored him. “Then that story in the paper about those two phony letters, and more stories-on television even! -about you finding Michael Vickery’s body, and now people are saying you’re the only reason Denn McCloy’s not reading about the funeral from the new jail over in Dobbs.”

“I can explain all that,” I protested.

“I’m sure you can, honey,” she said, “but who’s going to listen to the truth with such nice juicy rumors flying? You really ought to quit this messing around till after the election.”

“She’s right,” said Minnie. She, Seth, and Haywood and their kids had joined our circle just as Helen launched into her indictment.

The teenagers soon splintered off to form their own circle with Sammy Junior and Helen’s two, and when Minnie and Helen stopped lecturing me for things I mostly had no control over if they’d just stop and think about it, I stuck my head into the kid’s circle to thank them for riding the N amp;O newsbox trail for me the past few nights.

“I’ll fill you in later, but y’all can stop watching now,” I told them. “There’s not going to be any more of those letters.”

Haywood’s Stevie and Seth’s Jessica looked a bit disappointed that their night-riding was over so quickly, but I noticed that Stevie brightened up when Gayle Whitehead appeared on the line with Jed.

In the midst of death, we are in life.

It was after nine-thirty before the final visitors left. The three grandchildren and two sons-in-law had escaped twenty minutes earlier when the crowds first thinned. Dr. Vickery was bearing up well, but Mrs. Vickery looked absolutely at the point of collapse and her daughters hovered over her nervously. Even knowing how devoted she’d been to Michael, I couldn’t help wondering how much of her exhaustion was from grief and how much from all the touching and hugging she’d had to endure since Saturday night.

I lingered discreetly on the veranda while Duck Aldcroft confirmed a few final details about the next day’s arrangements. The service was going to be out at Sweetwater with interment among those Dancys who had first farmed the land where the Pot Shot now stood, and Duck needed to find out who was going to ride where. They fixed it that daughter Hope would ride in the lead car with her parents and that Denn would be taken in the second car with Faith and her family.