Hotel Paradise (47 page)

For heaven’s sakes! I wanted to say. Sheba was one of those grown-ups who liked to drag kith and kin and blood ties across your path like dead skunks. It was to make you sit up and take notice and clap your hand over your heart.
That’s my kin!
I spent a moment wondering what “kith” was.

But George Queen wasn’t having any of that. “
You
know what trouble that child was! Must’ve gone with every man in Cold—”

Now Sheba was all the way up, waggling her finger at him. “Don’t you never say that, George Queen! Not now she’s dead.
Murdered
is what po-lice are saying.”

In a low voice, George said, “Chickens come home to roost.”

I should have been working out in my mind what all of this meant instead of sitting there enjoying hearing grown-ups fight. Sheba yelled at him again, but he didn’t answer.

I was sitting so far on the edge of the swing I was tilted nearly to the porch floor. But then Sheba’s voice dropped to a whisper as she leaned herself nearly right into Mr. Root’s face and kind of grabbed at his forearm with clawlike fingers, and then I could hear nothing clearly, only this savage whispering. Then I thought: the scandal. This is the scandal Aurora spoke of. I watched Mr. Root, who was sitting forward too, and could tell he was really concentrating on what she was saying, probably trying to memorize it to tell me later. I was so pleased with myself for bringing him along I could hardly sit still. I never would have got this information by myself, for it was obviously thought to be unfit for childish ears.

But Mr. George Queen apparently wasn’t worried about my ears, for he was getting more and more impatient with her telling this story and finally broke right in and said: “It’s neither one of them to blame! Neither one. Ben
never
would’ve done that!”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you defend your poor brother for once,” she said primly.

“It was somebody else. I always did say it was somebody else.”

“Don’t be silly. There wasn’t no one else that’d have reason to. She drove him—”

“Oh, stop saying that, woman! You don’t know what you’re talking about. He loved her and that’s a fact. And there was too somebody else could’ve done it.”

“Stop it—just you stop it now!” What he’d just muttered seemed to get her madder than anything. She nearly got out of her chair to say something back, but thought better of it and sat down again. Rocked, rocked as if she wanted to rock all the way to perdition. I wondered if
she
was in that line of women Aurora said stretched “all the way to perdition and back,” the ones that had a case on Ben Queen. It sure sounded like it.

In the silence that followed, Mr. Root finally cleared his throat, then, with a kind of exaggerated look at his watch and at me, said, “You best be gettin’ back to the Hotel Paradise, I guess.”

I could have hit him. Everybody was just getting down to business, and he had to interrupt. But then I felt ashamed of myself, for I saw by my watch it was much later than I’d thought. “Yes, I do have to get back.”

The Queens seemed surprised I was still here, for Mr. Queen started a little, and said, kindly, “It’s nice seeing you, young lady. I know your mother. Used to take my produce truck over there to the Hotel Paradise. Me and Ben. Years, that’s been.”

And he looked out over the porch railing and into the sun, casting deep shadows across the dusty road. He must have been remembering better days, days when he was happy with his brother. I concentrated hard, willing Mr. Root to ask, “Where is Ben?”

But he didn’t, so I did, taking my roundabout way. “Well, I’m sure my mother remembers you and your brother, too. Where’d he go? Is he here?” I looked around, trying to sound as if I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ben Queen step through the screen door at any moment.

George Queen opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off from doing it by his wife. “Now, never you mind, dear.” She gave me a maddening, unmeant smile and him a hard and warning look.

So irritated I could have spit, I said, politely, “Thank you for the lemonade. And cookies.” I had bit into one and sunk the rest in my pocket to throw away later on.

Mr. Root rose and hitched up his pants the way men do and shot out his hand to George. He said goodbye to Sheba, who was still steaming from what George had said. But she tried to be polite and told Mr. Root not to wait so long between visits, for heaven’s sakes.

We left them standing there on their porch, waving.

As soon as we got out of their sight, I stopped, pulled at Mr. Root’s sleeve, and demanded, “Well? What’d they say?”

He was fingering a cigarette from the pack straining his shirt pocket and striking a match to light it. I guessed this was so he could feel important, knowing things I so much wanted to know. But I didn’t mind. Really, he deserved to be able to keep me in suspense for a minute. I hopped from one foot to another, unable to contain myself.

“Well. . .” He drew in on his cigarette and stared off down Schoolhouse Road. “Well. . .” He cleared his throat and finally said, “That’s some story.” He drew in on his cigarette again.

I gritted my teeth but refrained from saying anything.

“What happened was near twenty years ago. Rose Queen got killed.” He paused.

“Killed? How did she get killed?”

“Well, she got murdered. Now ain’t that something?”

My mouth dropped. Rose Devereau was
murdered
?

He went on. “Seems they found her one day out there in the backyard down by where they kept the layin’ hens, all bruised and bloody. Somebody’d took a knife to the woman . . .” He stopped, shook his head.

I took a step back, shaking mine, too. I couldn’t find my voice to say anything for a minute, and then I asked. “Well, but who . . . ?”

Still shaking his head, as if it’d happened in his own family, he answered, “They say it was Ben Queen done it. I don’t mean
they—”
he hooked his head back toward the Queen house—“believe it. No, they don’t believe Ben was the one. But he got jailed for it. Went to prison. Had a trial and all and went to prison.”

I just stared. My mind was so full of questions, I hardly knew what to ask.

Mr. Root went on. “What some people
said
was, it was another
man, probably some trash Rose Devereau run around with behind Ben’s back.” Mr. Root held up his hands as if to ward off my questions. “That’s all she told me. I guess Sheba thought Rose just brought it on herself, whoever done it to her. Sheba must not’ve liked her much.”

Was
that
ever an understatement. I thought for a moment. “How come Fern Queen was over in La Porte? Did you ask Sheba that?”

Mr. Root nodded. “Said Fern said she was going there to meet somebody.” Mr. Root shrugged. “That’s all she knew.” He shook his head. “I guess she met somebody, all right.”

“Then it had to be somebody Fern knew.” I was stunned by this: two murders in one family. I turned all of this over in my mind while looking down Schoolhouse Road. How could Ben have ever killed Rose? How could Rose have been running around with “trash”? It didn’t make any sense. From what Mr. George Queen said, Rose was crazy about Ben and Ben was certainly crazy about her. I guess I could see why, too.

I could see in the distance down Schoolhouse Road the little swings in the schoolyard turning in the wind, the chains twining around each other the way they do, the way I used to make the swings do by shoving off with my toe so I could go dizzily around. I think I let this take up the slack in my mind so I wouldn’t have to let pictures in of Rose Devereau and all that blood.

But then my thoughts untwined and I asked, “And that’s everything she told you?”

He nodded and said nothing.

I groaned. It was almost worse than not knowing. How could all the people I knew have forgotten such a terrible thing? There must be somebody—

“Mr. Stemple!” I started pulling at Mr. Root’s shirt sleeve. “Come on!”

“Where? The Wood boys, what about them? And you said you had to be back at the hotel—”

I didn’t care if I was late to do the salads; it wasn’t important. “Mr. Jude Stemple—you said you knew him a little.” I pulled him along a step or two beside me. “He lives right down there in Flyback Hollow. He knows the Queens. He’d know what happened.”

•   •   •

Jude Stemple and his hound dog were there, sitting on his front porch, just like I left them. It was as if he might have been waiting for me to return and continue our talk. I was flattered, I must admit.

He looked up from the piece of wood he was whittling and called out, “Well, look who’s back!” And his dog even got up and swished its tail.

I pulled Mr. Root up the walk and introduced him to Jude Stemple and his dog.

Jude Stemple squinted. “Ain’t I seen you out there at Britten’s store? On that bench out front?” He snapped his whittling knife shut and invited us to sit.

“Mr. Root here wanted to visit the Queens because he knew Mrs. Queen a long time ago.” Why was I telling Mr. Stemple these half-truths? You get in the habit, I guess.

Jude Stemple nodded and opened his knife again to cut off a piece of tobacco, which he offered to Mr. Root. They both sat for a minute chewing away, talking about Mr. Stemple’s dog and about hunting. That could go on forever if I didn’t say something, which I did: “You remember we were talking about the Queens?”

Mr. Stemple nodded eagerly. Living here in Flyback Hollow by himself, I imagined, he was more interested in gossip than he was in dogs and hunting. I just told Mr. Root he should tell Mr. Stemple what Sheba Queen had said, which he did, but with a lot of pauses and offering his cigarettes around and asking for a drink of cool water and so forth. This was to draw out his telling of the story. But he told it, finally. Jude Stemple thought it over.

“It’s true what you heard. Ben Queen did go to prison for killing Rose. Jury said he was guilty, but the judge, he took into account it was one of them crimes of passion.”

Mr. Root nodded. “ ‘Cream passionals,’ that’s what they call ’em in France.”

“Whatever. I never believed it was that nor anything else to do with Ben Queen, though. Always thought there was something fishy there. And I’ll tell you two reasons why: one was that Ben Queen was absolutely crazy about Rose. Never have I seen any man so taken with a woman after being married nearly twenty years. And he still doted on her. They had some fights, yes. But it weren’t over no other man. That’s just dumb.” He waved this idea away. “For she loved him, too.
I never saw Rose Queen flirting with another man long as I knew her. Not that I knew them all that well, but some. The fights they did have were about their girl, Fern. One that just got herself killed over by White’s Bridge. Fern went missing for a couple days and I was pretty sure that dead woman was her. Anyway, Fern was queer in the head. Just . . . I don’t know . . . just like she was
blank
, or something. Rose and Ben fought about what to do about Fern. Rose was more practical than Ben was; she said Fern’d be better off in an institution. Oh, Rose wasn’t hardhearted; it was just that I guess that girl was wearing them down. If anyone was runnin’ around with men it was her, and not more’n fourteen, fifteen years old. But then she hadn’t good sense, like I said. Day Rose got killed, I heard Ben and her had this bad fight, though of course Sheba Queen’d never allow Ben was mad at Rose, I’ll give her that, as that wouldn’t have looked good at his trial, would it? But can you blame Sheba? Okay, they said he killed Rose, and the really hard thing was he never took the stand. Nobody ever heard him say otherwise, not ‘I never done it,’ or ‘Not guilty,’ not nothin’. Any talkin’ done was lawyer talk.”

Jude Stemple stopped talking. He chewed his tobacco and rubbed his hand up and down the old dog’s back. I didn’t want to disturb his mind, so I said nothing. I don’t think he’d got to the second reason he’d mentioned. Then he did.

“Now, the other reason I don’t believe Ben ever could have done it was because of the way the whole thing looked. Rose was out in back, went back to the henhouse to collect eggs. They kept chickens for eggs that sometimes Rose used to sell, and for the pot, too—”

I couldn’t help thinking of my mother’s pot pie.

“—but Rose, she couldn’t ever kill them chickens, not even for their dinner. It had to be one of the others did that, mostly Sheba. Sheba could just take one of them old chickens by its scrawny neck and”— he twisted his fists, one atop the other—“or take the axe to them.” Then he raised a hand as if it held an axe and brought it down on the top step, making a scrunching noise in his throat.

I could have done without that. “But what about the way you said it looked?”

“There was blood all over, there was half a dozen dead chickens, a couple with their heads cut off. Blood all over, a lot of it Rose’s.”

He looked at Mr. Root and even included me in his silent asking.

Mr. Root said, after aiming a hard, thin stream of juice at the ground, “You’re saying that don’t look like Ben Queen done it?”

Jude Stemple nodded. “That’s right.”

Mr. Root said, “Sounds like somebody must’ve been awful mad. And you said he got real mad at her, didn’t you?”

“Mad at a person’s one thing. Killing everything in a country mile, that’s another.”

They both looked at me. I must say I was flattered they seemed to think my opinion was worth something. “Who else was there? I mean, did anyone else come under suspicion?”

Mr. Stemple chewed awhile, reflecting, then said, “I’ll tell you one got suspicioned, real bad. That was Lou Landis.”

I frowned. “The lady that used to be Ben Queen’s girlfriend? But that would have been years and years before!”

Mr. Root and Jude Stemple exchanged one of those I guess you call them worldly looks and Jude Stemple said, “There’s some women never get over a thing. Lou Landis never did marry.” He nodded up Flyback Hollow Road towards some distant object we none of us could see. “Lived here ever since and never left. She’s our teacher, maybe she’s principal now, though with only three teachers all told there’s not much to set one up over the others. Good with kids, though. Teaching, that just became her life. Never went with no one else, and, like I say, never did get married. Good looker, too, is Lou, even now.