Fadeaway Girl (34 page)

We were nearly at the courthouse before he remembered the other 50 percent of the story. So he didn't have time to make much of Morris Slade, especially since I slammed the door halfway into his description. I was that mad listening to Delbert telling me how I should feel.

 

“The fact that he brought it does not mean he used it.”

The Sheriff was talking about Ralph Diggs. I couldn't believe my ears. “It was Aurora Paradise's gun.” I said. “He stole it from the garage. It was meant to be used in Will's new play.”

“You don't know what you're talking about, Emma,” said the Sheriff, sitting hard in his swivel chair, as if circumstances were pushing him down.

“Thing is,” Donny said, “if he'd come to kill Morris Slade, how come he didn't have his own gun? Yeah.” Donny chortled.

It might have been the first bright idea he'd ever had.

“And he's the one that's dead, or have you forgot? And it's him that was kidnapped, don't forget either. It ain't the rich Morris Slades of this world that wind up bleedin' out, oh, no—”

“Donny. Shut it.”

“Yeah, well I was just sayin'—”

“You said it.” The sheriff gave him an icy look.

I stared from one to the other. I saw what it was: it was going to be another “hearsay” evidence thing. Not that, precisely, but another example of the Sheriff's mind being made up. If he didn't see clearly right now, he was never going to see it, because it was one of those things of such blinding clarity that if you blinked you'd miss it.

Ralph Diggs had taken a gun to Brokedown House to kill Morris Slade because he hated him. He hated him because Morris and his mother had abandoned him—no, worse than that. Ralph thought his father had had him “kidnapped,” taken to an untraceable place. Or perhaps the luckless bellhop from the Belle Ruin was supposed himself to abandon the baby, like Moses being left in the bulrushes.

Ralph Diggs had probably had plenty of time to make up scenes, acts, a whole play to explain his hatred of Morris Slade. For some reason, the mother, Imogen Slade, didn't figure into it. I didn't understand why.

I said, “Ralph's having the gun doesn't
prove
it, but if he brought it, it sure wasn't for rabbit hunting.”

Donny opened his mouth, then shut it when the Sheriff gave him another look as sharp as a knife. Then the Sheriff said to me, “Emma, I think you're in over your head on this one.”

I could feel again the cold waters of Spirit Lake. “No. My head's right here.” I made a ledge of my hand and rested my chin on it. “Your head, that's down here.” My hand went atop my head. “You're the one under the water. Excuse me.” I turned and walked out.

 

Hands on hips, sitting on that stool of hers, Shirl gave me an iron look.

“We-ll, I guess I'll have a chocolate frosted with sprinkles.” I gave Shirl a smile, took my doughnut on a napkin Wanda supplied, and walked back to the last booth, where I sat and went on being mad. I sat and looked at my doughnut and wondered if I wanted to eat it.

Maud appeared with a glass of Coke and set it before me, then sat down herself. “You look as if you're sucking a lemon.”

Frostily, I said, “The Sheriff doesn't believe me.”

“About what?” She lit a cigarette.

“About Morris Slade.”

I was facing the front of the Rainbow. Because the back of my booth was so tall that I couldn't see anyone coming in, I didn't see the Sheriff until he was there. He removed his dark glasses and stuck one of the stems into his shirt pocket. He leaned against the end of the booth and smiled. “Hello. Hello.”

I was silent for a few heartbeats. “Have you got him in jail? I mean I guess you arrested him, even if he didn't do it.”

“Correct. I like to arrest the innocent.”

“How are you so sure about this?” said Maud.

“Could I get a cup of coffee? Or don't you serve the local law anymore?” he said to Maud.

“Oh. Is that what you are?” She smiled sweetly. “It sounds to me as if you're ignoring some evidence, like why would a man like Morris Slade have a shotgun? He just doesn't strike me as a shotgun sort of guy.”

The Sheriff put his dark glasses back on the way someone else might settle a hat to show they were leaving. He said, “You don't know one goddamned thing about it, Maud. Not one damned thing.”

Then he turned and walked out, not returning good-byes from the counter sitters or Wanda. I knew because I leaned sideways and watched him go.

There was a heaviness in the air.

“I guess I shouldn't talk so much,” I said.

She looked over. “You weren't the one doing the smart talking: I was. I don't know why I can't shut up sometimes.”

“Don't the state police do anything? They were there.”

“Sure, but—”

“Maud!”

Shirl was yelling. Maybe it was just as well. It let Maud go.

I wished something would let me go too.

I
was so lost in thoughts of another person that it covered over the anger of Morris Slade getting arrested. For I knew there was another person.

Wondering who this other person could be made me nearly miss Souder's Pharmacy. Yet, some part of my mind registered the long gloves and perfume and powder window display, so I backed up a few feet and went in.

Souder's in the summer was the coolest place in La Porte, with the blackest shadows, the coldest marble, the airiest ceiling fans, the best ice-cream sodas. But for once I hadn't come for that.

I went to the rear of the store to see where Mrs. Souder was, and as I was about to ding the little bell, she came out, the beaded curtain swirling around her tall, thin shape, the beads sending out their tiny clattering sound.

It surprised me greatly that she seemed almost glad to see me.

“Oh, Emma. Well, how are you? I suppose you want a soda? Come on.”

Apparently, all of this new friendliness had to do with my articles in the
Conservative
, for she complimented me as she put the chocolate syrup in one of the tall ribbed glasses, her head twitching as if it were on the strings of a puppeteer. Mrs. Souder had “an affliction”; I had no idea what it was.

She called my piece a “truly interesting overview.” After adding two scoops of ice cream, she blasted it all with fizzy water. I thought she enjoyed that part of it; it must have allowed her to let off steam. A spiral of whipped cream topped off the soda. Then she said what was really on her mind:

“Well, I can tell you we were completely shocked about what happened! And you, you must have been just frightened to death!”

“Oh, I was. But it wasn't me, really, that found him; it was Mr. Butternut that lives out there on the same road.” I don't know why I was being so precise about my secondary role here. Maybe it was because I didn't want to be the one who first saw Ralph Diggs dead. Maybe it would make me feel less responsible, or something.

She talked about the Slades and the Souders and the Devereaus for a while as she smoked a cigarette, leaning back against the big mirror that ran the length of the counter. I was surprised to see her smoking.

“You know Rose was one of us Souders?” she said.

I nodded. “My great-aunt Aurora told me so.”

Her thinly penciled eyebrows went up. “Aurora Paradise? Is she still around?”

“She was this morning.” I licked my long spoon. “They looked a lot alike, Rose Queen and Morris Slade.”

Mrs. Souder stubbed out her cigarette and started in wiping down the soda fixture, already polished to a high gloss. “Looked alike, they certainly did. Of course, he was lots younger.”

“How old would he be now? In his forties, maybe?”

She nodded. “He's around the same age as our eldest, and she's forty-three.”

I didn't even know the Souders had an “eldest.” I'd never seen any of their children. I worked it out. Twenty years ago, when Rose was murdered, he'd have been around twenty-two or three, if Mrs. Souder was right. I wondered. “He must've been sixteen or seventeen years younger than Rose.”

“Round that, yes. Rose wasn't a Devereau, except by her mother marrying the father. She was a Souder. Her mother was Alice Souder and she was married three times: to a Souder, then a Slade. He got custody of Morris, which certainly was a surprise, him being such a drinker and all. Then she married old Mr. Devereau. Rose's daddy was Albert Souder, a cousin of my husband's.”

I frowned at all of these complications.

She went on. “I think Rose looked on Morris as sort of a kid brother. He seemed to idolize her.”

It was strange, but as she reminisced, her twitching stopped completely, as if going back to the time when she was young had a calming effect.

“Yes,” she went on, calling up this memory, “Morris kind of doted on her.” She shook her head, but it was a real shake, not a twitch. “Well, that was long ago. A lot has happened since. Most of it bad.”

The thin, filmy voice of Mr. Souder called her back to the other side of the bead curtain, and she left and was soon soaked up by shadows. It was bright light outside and yet in here it might as well have been night.

She had forgotten to collect the money for my soda, so I opened my purse and rooted out a quarter and a dime. As I did the scrap of paper with the poem on it fell out. I unfolded it:

Quickly I jammed the bit of paper into my coin purse as if the words left to lie on the marble counter too long would catch their death of cold.

 

By the time I was climbing the steps to the newspaper office, the anger that had retreated behind the chocolate soda was back.

I told Mr. Gumbrel about Morris Slade being arrested, but he already knew.

He shook his head. “Thing is, you've got to admit the circumstances seem pretty cut-and-dried, Emma.”

He had listened and given thought to what I'd told him, his fingers massaging his temples as if it were all too rich a story for his town paper.

“What if the story never gets heard? What if
your
reading public never finds out that Morris Slade only shot in self-defense or that it was an accident?”

He sighed heavily—“We got enough surprises what with finding out that F-a-y really was F-e-y, and a boy, not a girl. That's enough right there of a surprise. And there's still your next installment. You finished that yet? I want to get it in next week's paper.”

“I'm just polishing it.” To curtail any further talk about my next piece, I got up and left to go and do my polishing.

 

By the time I'd left the newspaper office it was after four o'clock and I wanted to talk to Dwayne, even though he'd probably get smart about things. He was still what you'd call a good sounding board, even when he was under a car.

Delbert was sitting in his empty taxi, idling by the curb outside of Axel's Taxis.

“Are you waiting for a fare?” I asked him through the window.

“Huh? No, ma'am. I'm just setting here, thinking.”

I got in and told him to take me to Slaw's Garage out on 219.

“Well, don't you think I don't know where Slaw's is? Ain't I dropped you off there before? I don't see why you want to hang out at that garage, anyway—”

I slid down and watched the world go by.

 

“You're
so
much help,” I said to Dwayne, sarcastically, after I'd told him what had happened and he just kept
wham wham whamming
away with his wrench.

“As if you needed it.” His voice was distorted by the bottom of the pickup truck he was under. “You and your riotous imagination.”

“My what?” No answer. “Well, what do
you
think happened?”

Clang clang clingclingclingcling c-l-a-n-g.
It sounded like a mess of tambourines. It was as if the truck were answering the question. It probably would have done just as well.

He said, “Two men, two guns. They draw. One dies.”

“Where's the other gun then?”

“The shooter took it with him.”

“Okay, then you're saying that person is Morris Slade.”

“Sounds like it.”
Clang
. Pause. “One thing's interesting. Why didn't this guy Ralph Diggs go after his mom? Did he think that crazy kidnapping scheme was all his dad's idea? That—what's her name?”

“Imogen.”

“That she had nothing to do with it?”

There was something ghostly about Dwayne's disembodied voice, as if Dwayne had gone, leaving only enough words behind to keep me thinking he was still there, long enough for him to make his getaway. This talking to him while he was looking at a vehicle's underneath was tiring. I jumped down from the tire stack and took the board You-Boy had been using and rolled it to the side of the truck and lay down.

Dwayne turned his head. There was a lantern hooked onto some part of the pickup's works that cast long shadows across his face. “What are you doing?”

“I'm tired of talking to a truck. I'm just going to lie here.”

He muttered and rolled out and stood. So did I. From his hip pocket he took out the old oily rag and started wiping his hands.

“What's wrong with my theory?” I asked him.

Carefully, he wiped each finger. “What's wrong is you're dragging a third person into this showdown. That just makes for complications, nor does it explain anything better.” He stuffed the rag into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Juicy Fruit.