Dead End (41 page)

Oribel trudged toward the house.

“Oh no,” Madge said. “We’re not going to be able to wait long.”

While they watched, another half-inch of bronze legs sank from sight.

Oribel hadn’t arrived at the kitchen yet. Madge whipped out her cell phone and dialed William’s number. “It’s ringing.” She listened a long time. “Number not available,” she said and dialed again, commenting, “Calling his place...Hi, Martha, is your daddy there?”

Cyrus watched her frown.

“Does he do that sometimes?...No, no, I’m not suggestin’ anythin’, just asking a question. Father’s looking for him is all. How about your uncles?” She took the phone from her ear and looked at it. “I’ve offended Martha by suggesting her daddy could be in the habit of staying out all night. She hasn’t seen him since he left to come here early yesterday. William’s brothers are away. Sounds like she’s worried but looking for trouble at the same time.”

“Martha has a little problem with anger management.”

Madge tutted and gave him a friendly punch. “I like you better when you forget you’re a priest and say what you really think.” She bit her lip. “Sorry, Cyrus, I shouldn’t have said that.”

She should be able to tell him anything she wanted to. He smiled at her, feeling rain drip off his chin as he did so. The truth was that they could never freely express personal feelings about each other.

He was grateful Wally chose that moment to push his bike through the mud and stand between them. “Oh, wow,” the boy said. “Oh, wow.” His voice was hushed.

“You’ve got that right,” Cyrus said. “If it moves any more, we’ll have to get a professional outfit in to lift it.”

“That’ll cost a lot,” Wally said.

Cyrus didn’t feel like discussing unexpected expenditures this morning.

“Something happened to my bike.” Wally planted himself astride the front wheel and facing the handlebars. “Some paint’s coming off.”

“Is it?” Cyrus’s plate was overflowing for one day.

“See this? The handlebar? All coming off, it is. I’ll get into trouble all over again.” Sure enough, flakes of shiny black paint came away on his fingers. “There are scratches in the old paint underneath. Someone tried to fix it so I wouldn’t know. Another thing. This isn’t my headlight. Mine was a bit bigger and it had a rim of chrome around the glass.”

“Someone repented for a sin and tried to make up for it,” Cyrus said. “They borrowed your bike, and when they had an accident with it, they put it right. We should try to forgive. The paint can be done properly.”

“Here comes Spike,” Madge said. “Maybe you should tell him about this, Wally.”

“Oh no,” Wally said. “He’s probably coming to arrest me.” His serious face made Cyrus smile a little.

“Nothing bad will ever happen because of the purse. Now stop worrying about it.”

“Thought we had a meeting here this mornin’,” Spike said. He drew near to the bronze and closed his mouth.

Wally muttered that he had to go and bent to the task of propelling his bike through the mud again.

Spike turned up one corner of his mouth. “We can hope that boy keeps some respect for the law.” He looked around, then at the sculpture. “Guess they overdid the dancing.”

Laughter was beyond Cyrus, but he grinned, and Madge laughed enough for both of them.

“We’re trying to track down William and see if he and his brothers can do something. No luck yet. We’ll have to hire equipment to lift it pretty soon.”

“Almost makes me feel sorry for Oribel,” Spike said. “She’ll be mortified. I want you to listen to something, though. Now would be good as long as we’re alone. Here come Reb and Marc,” he added. “Those two seem joined at the hip.”

An interesting thing about Spike Devol was that he rarely showed regret for anything he said. Already he was slipping a tape cassette into a bright yellow player. “The tape’s a copy,” he told them. “My daughter lent me her tape player.”

Inquiries about young Wendy had never seemed welcome, so Cyrus didn’t often mention her. “Is it a copy of the one from Reb’s house?”

“Yeah.” He waited for Marc and Reb to arrive and then told them what he was doing. “It’s not much, but listen.”

There was a click, and a woman’s voice said, “You messed up.
Okay,
I’ll do it for you.” Another click, and then there were sounds, like the rustling of clothes, or just hands passing over the speaker or taping the machine under the examining table, maybe, then fading footsteps. Following two more clicks there were more footsteps, and Reb was heard talking on the phone. More background noise. Again two clicks. Gaston barking. The front doorbell, and eventually Cyrus’s voice calling for Reb. From a distance Cyrus said, “I’ll wait in the kitchen.” The next click was followed by, “Yes, I’ll do that. Wait in the kitchen, that’s what I’ll do. No, I’ll sit on the stairs; that way I can say ‘hi’ the minute she comes in and I won’t shock her.”

Spike turned the machine off himself and said, “Why would you be in Reb’s house shoutin’ like that?”

“He just was,” Marc said, and Reb looked pained.

Cyrus smiled and said, “That’s right. I was waiting, and I tend to talk to myself sometimes. Comes from spending a lot of time alone.”

Spike didn’t even pretend to be convinced, but he turned the recorder back on. Clicks on and off followed and comments from Marc, Reb, and Cyrus that needed no explanation. Then it was over.

“That’s creepy,” Reb said. Cyrus noted that she didn’t look rested. Neither did Marc.

“Let’s hear the beginning again,” Marc said, and Spike obliged—several times. “Not good quality,” Marc commented. “But that’s our clue, the woman’s voice. Like we said at the time. Whatever’s going on is amateurish.”

“This is between the five of us,” Spike said. “I’m stepping way over the line sharing it at all, but I’m hoping one of you will come up with a clue about the female.” He replaced the recorder in an inside pocket.

From the kitchen doorway, Lil yelled, “May Lynn Charpentier wantin’ to see you, Father.”

“May Lynn called me, too,” Spike said. “But she said she was sorry and hung up.”

Cyrus met Reb’s eyes, then Marc’s. No interpretation was necessary. “I’ll go up and see her now. Madge, go ahead and find someone to deal with this”—he indicated the bronze—“and figure out where we can put it.”

“I can see to that,” Marc said. “You’re stickin’ around a bit, Spike? We need that meeting.”

“That’s the main reason I’m here.”

Cyrus closed out their voices and prayed quietly on his way to meet with May Lynn.

He scarcely made it through the kitchen before he heard Oribel’s raised voice. “You think you’ve got such problems,” she said. “You listen to a
heathen
talking nonsense and come rushing over here to bother Father. What you young people need to learn is that you don’t have any troubles yet. They’ll come along soon enough.”

Cyrus increased his pace.

“When I start getting mail from the chancery in New Orleans, you mean?” For all May Lynn’s brave words, her voice shook. “
Mr. Oran Scully.
You ought to be ashamed, pretending like that.”

With complete calm, Oribel told her, “I’m studying for the deaconate by mail. They don’t let women in yet, but they will, and I’m preparin’ myself. Father Cyrus knows all about it.”

He didn’t know about Mr. Oran Scully.

“How did you find out my private business?” Oribel asked.

May Lynn giggled nervously. “I happen to be very close to your mailman,
very
close. He’s my
fiancé,
and you can’t get him into trouble for mentioning it to me because you don’t want anyone to know what you’re up to.”

Cyrus just about ran the last few steps. “Hello, May Lynn, how are you? Thank you for keeping her company, Oribel. You might want to watch over the activity in the garden.”

Oribel’s face was masklike. She marched from the office without another word.

Cyrus closed the door. “You wanted to talk to me, May Lynn?”

If possible, she was even paler than usual. Her throat jerked with each hard swallow. She whispered, “Yes.”

“Sit down.” He pulled up his favorite chair for her and brought the chair from behind his desk for himself. “Would you like somethin’? Coffee?”

“Nothing, thank you. I’ve just come from Miz Leach’s house. Pepper’s grandmother.”

He smiled encouragement at her while his stomach jumped around. “A nice lady. She’s suffered a great deal.”

“I know.” May Lynn looked at her hands in her lap.

“It was nice of you to visit her.”

Tears popped into the girl’s eyes.

Oribel walked in without knocking and slid a tray on the desk. She poured coffee.

“What are you doing?” Cyrus asked, furious at her intrusion.

“May Lynn’s upset, and I wasn’t any help. The coffee cake’s from Jilly’s place.”

He held his breath for fear of shouting at her, and when she caught his eye, she backed from the room at once.

“That was nice of Oribel,” May Lynn said, and he supposed it was, but she knew better than to interrupt a private meeting.

Neither of them took the coffee or the cake.

“I’ve got to do this quickly, Father. I’m in so much trouble, and it’s my own fault. I just pray my folks and my fiancé can come to understand. What I said Pepper did? He didn’t. I made it up. Not entirely, but all the bad stuff.”

He ought to be glad to hear her admission; he was glad, but he also felt sad for May Lynn, who was obviously suffering.

May Lynn cried openly, pressing her forefingers into the corners of her eyes. “Way back when we were in school, Pepper was one of the only people—guys—who were nice to me. And he was older, so he didn’t have to even notice me. I’ve always been grateful for that. And I paid him back by accusing him of something horrible and letting him go to jail. There didn’t seem to be a way out afterwards. All the time I expected to hear he was going to appeal, but he never did. He never defended himself at all. I thought he was doing that for me. That should have made me fess up, but all I could see was the shame I’d face.”

Cyrus couldn’t give her any comfort, not until she’d told him everything. Then he’d have the task of persuading her to go to the authorities. “I’m listening,” he said gently.

“It was Doctor Reb who made it impossible for me to go on. Just the way she talked. I could tell she didn’t really believe my story—then I had to do something about it. I almost told Spike Devol today, but I lost my nerve as usual.”

“Relax,” he told her. “You’re doing the right thing now.”

“Pepper’s a hunk. I never could figure out why he didn’t have a girlfriend. He could have had anyone he wanted. They were all gaga over him. That night when I saw him going into the park he waved at me, and I got this thing in my head that he hadn’t gone with anyone else because he liked me, but he was too shy to do anything about it.

“I followed him. He was sitting on a picnic table. Just sitting there with his eyes closed, and he looked so sad. I said,
boo,
and he almost fell off the table, but then we both laughed and I was happy. I was excited. And because he was shy, I came on to him.” She pressed her lips tightly together, and tears slid down her face.

“Would you like some coffee now?”

“No thank you. We weren’t kids anymore. I’m not forward, or I never was before, but I thought I was in love with him, and it was up to me to do something about it.”

“He held me off. He didn’t push me or say anything nasty, he just held me off, and I don’t know what came over me, but I didn’t stop. I waited till he let me go and was sitting there looking embarrassed, and I climbed up to sit beside him. I kissed him before he could stop me, and he did push me a bit then. He looked shaken and kind of sick. He kept saying, ‘No. I can’t do this. Go away.’ And I went mad. I was ashamed and angry. I told him he did want me. I said he’d deliberately made sure I followed him. And he didn’t say anything else. Nothing.

“I...” She seemed ill. “I grabbed him and said I wanted him to make love to me. I don’t know why I did it except I was lonely and I’d been thinking there’d never be anyone for me and everyone would make fun of me about it. We ended up on the ground and I fought with him. He tried not to hurt me, but I bit his neck and scratched his face. I tried to poke at his eyes. The marks were all there, the ones they talked about in court. There were photographs taken. Then Pepper didn’t argue about it.”

Cyrus didn’t feel so good himself. He’d had his own brushes with infatuated women, but nothing like the horror May Lynn described. “I know why he didn’t argue,” she said.

He held up a hand and listened to make sure no one was eavesdropping outside the door. He got up and opened it. No one was there. “Sorry,” he told her and sat down again. “Why didn’t he argue?”

“Because of old Miz Leach. She brought him up, and he loves her so much. He was trying to save her feelings.”

“By allowing himself to be convicted of attempted rape and intent to murder? And leaving himself wide open to be suspected of two murders? You even made up the diving suit?”

“Yes.” She rubbed at her eyes like a child. “Everyone knew about the Rubber Killer and it just popped into my head. I think he thought his gramma was too old-fashioned to deal with the truth that could have saved him. You know, attacking me out of passion sounded horrible, and everything got worse when they talked about the murders, but I expect he thought she’d think the other was unnatural and she’d hate him for shaming her in her church.”

Cyrus rested an elbow on one arm of his chair and scrubbed at his face. “I think I know what you’re trying to tell me, but I can’t put words in your mouth. Just say it.”

“I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but Pepper’s gay. He told me that night. He’d been nice to me because he was nice to everyone—not that a lot of the guys were nice to him. Being gay’s no big deal, but his gramma’s old and she’s got a real weak heart. He must have been afraid if she found out it could kill her. He’d know she could never understand.”

“She’s suffering anyway, so he didn’t save her,” Cyrus said aloud but to himself, remembering what Reb had said after they’d visited Pepper at the jail. “And he used up all his courage during the trial, or he thinks he did. He’s getting out of that place.”