Livvie's Song (37 page)

“That hound of his. When I dropped the boys off at their aunt and uncle’s, the mutt leaped out of the car and took off, sniffin’ the ground, and then ran all around the yard and out behind the house. Next thing I know, he disappears into a cornfield. Coot didn’t seem too ruffled over it. Said he’s more concerned about Livvie’s safety, and that ol’ Reggie will find his way back home soon enough. Hope he’s right. The pooch did have quite the bump on his head.”

That dog had been acting plumb peculiar lately, sticking close to Livvie’s side as if she were his master instead of Coot, and his jumping out of the car and racing into unfamiliar territory at the Grants’ confirmed that something strange was up. Were Will’s earlier conjectures true? Did Reggie have a sixth sense about something?

His thoughts were interrupted when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and found himself face-to-face with Silas Brown, a good friend of Gus Anderson’s who had become a lunchtime regular at Livvie’s Kitchen. “Hi, Silas,” he said.

“Hello, Mr. Taylor. I got somethin’ to tell you.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“It’s probably nothin’, but, then again, it could be somethin’.”

Will noticed that everyone was getting ready to resume the search, and he was impatient to join them. “I’m listening,” he said, shifting his weight to the other foot.

“Well, it’s just that I overheard Marva Dulane and Livvie talkin’ today at the restaurant.” He rubbed his jaw with a callous hand. “Marva mentioned somethin’ ’bout havin’ some ol’ photograph o’ Livvie ’n’ Frank. Livvie seemed pretty excited, and Marva tol’ her she’d drop it off. Now, that don’t mean she planned to bring it by tonight or nothin’, but I just thought it was a slim possibility Marva might know somethin’ about Livvie, even though I never did trust that woman. Anyway, I got to thinkin’ it couldn’t hurt tellin’ you what I heard.”

Will laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’m much obliged, Silas.”

The man nodded and walked off.

“You ready to go out again?” Gus asked. Howard stepped up alongside him, looking antsy. The three of them had made a good team so far and were probably more determined than any other group to find Livvie. In fact, in their determination, neither Gus nor Howard had brought up the matter of his prison stint, which was a relief. The last thing Will needed was to waste his energies on coming up with an explanation. Right now, he needed to focus entirely on finding Livvie. And what he’d just heard from Amos was occupying a large part of his mind right now.

“You two go on ahead, if you don’t mind. I have a hunch about something, and I’m going to look into it.”

“What sort of a hunch?” Howard asked.

“I doubt it’ll even hold water. I’ll tell you about it later when we meet up again.” He didn’t want to involve Gus and Howard in something that could get messy.

Ignoring their protests, he scanned the room for Quinn Baxter, breathing a sigh of relief when he spotted him. “Quinn!” he called. The man turned at his name, and Will waved, then looked at Gus and Howard once more. “I’ll talk to you later. I need to catch up with Quinn.”

With that, he left the men standing there, blank expressions on their faces.

“For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.”—James 3:16

This is it,” Quinn said, cutting the engine of his Model T. “As you can see, it isn’t much more than a shack. Marva grew up in this little house and never left it. Even brought both her husbands here to live. Neither one of ’em ever provided for her, though, just moved in and mooched off of her. She never did learn the art of stickin’ with one man.”

Will studied the house, lit by the car’s headlights, which Quinn had left illumined.

“Sad thing about Marva,” he continued, “she never had a good family life. Her daddy beat her mama on a regular basis, brutal man.”

“Why didn’t she take Marva and get away from him?”

“She had nowhere to turn, from what I heard, and Marva’s daddy had a lot o’ control. He wanted her and everyone in town to know he was in charge. He had that ‘Don’t nobody mess with me’ kind o’ mentality. So, folks mostly left him alone, includin’ his missus.”

Will shook his head.

“I heard there was a man who once tried to step in and help, offered to move Marva and her mama to a safe place in another state.”

“Really? Who was that?”

He shrugged and turned off the headlights, so that Marva’s house was lit only by a single light in a front window. “Can’t say as I ever knew the name. I was a youngster with a million things on my mind when I heard that, so, I s’pose it didn’t interest me much. Marva was probably seven or eight at the time.”

“She must be around Livvie’s age, then.”

“Yeah, they went to school together, but I can’t say whether they were in the same grade. Don’t think they were ever what you’d call friends, either. They ran in different circles. Marva had her eye on the boys from a real young age.”

Will almost felt sorry for Marva. Shoot, if nobody who had suffered abuse or neglect as a child did a thing to reverse the downward spiral of bitterness and baggage passed down from his parents, the world would be a grand mess. His own childhood had been nothing to brag about, particularly after Joella’s drowning accident, after which he’d felt forever despised by his parents. But, by the grace of God, he’d pulled himself out of that ditch of despair and now even thanked God for all he’d had to endure in order to find a place of deliverance and restoration.

“Thanks for bringing me out here,” he said to Quinn. “Hope you don’t mind waiting. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

“Sure. But you should take whatever information you can and get out of there. I wouldn’t be caught dead with Marva Dulane. She can ruin a man’s reputation faster ’n you can spell a two-letter word. Matter of fact, why don’t I go in there with you?”

“No, thanks. It would probably make her feel like we were ganging up on her. Don’t think I won’t motion at you if I need reinforcements, though.” With a wink, he opened the door and stepped out into the suffocating humidity.

He knocked once on the door, watching through a slit in the front curtain for a sign of Marva. Seconds later, a light turned on inside, and he saw her approaching, dressed in a purple satin gown that thankfully covered her front. It looked like she had dolled herself up, as if she were expecting him—or someone, anyway. Once again, Potiphar’s wife came to mind, and, in the seconds before she opened the door, Will said a silent prayer for wisdom, guidance, and strength to resist the urge to strangle her.

“Will,” she cooed, taking him by the arm and pulling him inside. “I thought you might come.” Before closing the door, she peered out at the driveway. “Who’s in the car?”

“Quinn Baxter.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Why don’t you tell him to leave? I’ll drive you home later.”

“I’m not staying. And why did you think I might come?”

“What? Oh.” She flicked her skinny wrist. “Let’s just say, after all my flirtatious innuendos, I hoped you would.” She touched his arm and batted her eyelashes up at him. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you realized you couldn’t resist me. I can be quite convincing, don’t you think?”

He looked down his nose at her. “Olivia Beckman is missing. You know anything about that?”

An unidentifiable expression flashed across her face before a frown settled there. “Missing? Oh, dear. Isn’t that a shame!”

He clutched her arms above the elbows and squeezed. “Where is she?”

“How should I know?”

He tightened his grasp.

“Ouch! You’re hurting me, Will. And what does it matter to you, anyway?”

“It matters plenty to me, Marva, and it should matter to you, as well. But, since you don’t seem to have a heart, I’m not surprised.”

If his words had rattled her, she didn’t let on but merely returned a sick sort of smile.

He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. “Listen to me, Marva. Earlier today, somebody overheard you telling Livvie you had some sort of photo to give her.” She jerked her blonde head back and stared up at him. “You told her it was a picture of her and Frank.”

“Who—who told you that?”

“Doesn’t matter. Fact is, you talked loud enough for someone else’s ears.” On a hunch, perhaps divine, and while he still had her somewhat confused, he went a step further. “You didn’t bother to stay out of sight when you came back to the restaurant tonight, either.” A hint of apprehension washed over her face. He was getting somewhere. “That means you were among the last people to see her before her disappearance. If anything happens to her, you’ll be counted as a suspect. How do you like that?”

He felt her stiffen. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t know anything about any…disappearance. All I did was give her the picture.”

“That right?” He decided to take his hypothesis further. “Why’d you have to lure her outside to give it to her?”

“I didn’t want to cause a disturbance.”

Bingo! He brought his face close to hers. “Marva, I know that you and Clem Dodd are in this together, and you need to understand that when he goes down, you’re going with him.”

She sniffed and tried to wrench out of his grip, but he wasn’t letting go. “Who?”

He pulled her closer, pinching till she rose up on her toes. “Don’t play dumb, Marva. If you met Hank Swain and Rudy Haskins, you also met Clem Dodd. They hung together like three peas in a pod—until Rudy and Hank went back to New York. It’s a known fact Clem is still in town.”

“All right, all right. So I’ve met him. He picks up his weekly supply of whiskey from Dotson. Big deal. It doesn’t prove anything about Olivia.”

He released her arms, and she began rubbing them as she looked at him with pouty eyes. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”

He gave his head a couple of confused shakes. Was she insane? She didn’t get it, not any of it. He stepped around her and walked across the room to the fireplace, above which the mantel displayed several framed photographs. It was time for a completely different approach. He picked up one of the pictures and studied it. “This you with your parents?”

“Yes. Put it back, please.”

“How old were you? Six? Seven?”

She came up to him, took the picture out of his hands, and carefully set it back in its place. Since she hadn’t answered his question, he leaned in to study the other pictures. All of them showed her at various ages with her father. “Where’s your mother in the rest of these?”

“Mother usually declined to have her picture taken.”

“Why is that?”

She frowned. “There were reasons.”

“All the bruises on her face, perhaps? I heard your father beat her.”

“Who told you such a thing?”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not.” She stared at the pictures. “Mother deserved it, you know. She was naughty. Daddy even told me.” Her voice had turned childlike, as if she’d retreated to some faraway place from her youth.

“Why do you say that?” he nearly whispered.

“Mother was unfaithful to Daddy with…with that man.”
Like mother, like daughter
, he wanted to say. “Daddy said she was naughty for doing that. Very naughty. And, let me tell you, she and everybody else got exactly what they deserved.”

Will didn’t like the abrupt turn things had taken, but a new sense of urgency made him press forward. First, though, he shot another prayer heavenward.
Lord, if there’s something here that will lead me to Livvie, may it be revealed.
“What do you mean, ‘Everybody else got exactly what they deserved’?”

She picked up one of the photos and caressed it as one might pet a kitten. “Daddy always told me they were evil.”

“Who was evil?”

On the mantel, a windup clock ticked about as loudly as a bomb about to detonate. Overhead, some kind of creature scampered across the roof. And the room was so warm that he had to wipe the dampness from his brow. He hoped these distractions would not deter her from talking.

“The Newtons, of course.”

“The Newtons.” A cord of confusion and dread wove itself around his chest, squeezing. He didn’t want to know, and yet he did. “Who are the Newtons?”

“Olivia’s parents. Who else?” In spite of the hot, dank air, shivery prickles surfaced on his skin. “Daddy had no choice, when it came right down to it.”

By now, he realized that Marva had started to slip down some kind of mental precipice, a narrow, precarious, cerebral cliff she’d been navigating for some time—years, probably—trying to keep her balance as sanity and utter lunacy pulled her in both directions. And he’d helped bring her to the edge. For a moment, he wondered if he ought to move to the window and motion Quinn inside.

He decided to play along, knowing that bringing Quinn on the scene would break whatever spell she’d come under. “What was it again that he had no choice but to do?”

“Why, burn the house. It was the only way to rid it of the evil. The plan was not for Olivia to escape, of course. But, since she did, Daddy said just to let it go.”

“That…seems reasonable,” he pushed out while fighting down an awful wave of nausea.

She stared off into space but kept stroking the photograph. “Clem’s coming along when he did worked out quite well, I think.”

“How do you mean?” Without realizing it, she’d just admitted to her participation in some insidious plot against Livvie. He licked his lips and swallowed, fearful that the bile at the back of his throat might come up.
Lord God, she’s insane. Give me the words to say, and show me what to do, to bring this to a head. And please, Lord, keep Livvie safe, wherever she may be.

Marva scowled. “Things have always gone well for that girl. Even though she lost her parents, her house, and all her possessions, she just moved right in with her sister, like nothing ever happened. She got all the attention in school and always got good grades. Everybody always said, ‘Poor little Livvie.’ It got downright annoying. Nobody ever looked at me and said, ‘Poor Marva.’ Why, Mr. Emerson, my sixth-grade teacher, slapped me right across the face one time when I told him that my mother had an affair with Mr. Newton. He said I oughtn’t make up awful lies like that. That made me so mad, you know?” She shook her head and looked at him with a pathetic expression.