Mama Cracks a Mask of Innocence (10 page)

“This way,” Mama said, pointing the beam at a door in the back of the room. We left the living room and walked through a small hall. As we went into the kitchen, we heard another sound.

“Did you hear that?” Mama whispered.

“Yes,” I said.

We peered vainly into the stream of the light.

“Miss Sharp?” Mama called again.

Still nothing.

My skin tingled.

My eyes darted, trying to focus on things that weren’t in the flashlight’s line.

We came upon another door. “This might be the bedroom,” I whispered to Mama. “Maybe Miss Sharp is inside.”

“Maybe,” Mama answered, reaching for the door and opening it. We entered the room. The flashlight illuminated a large window. It was open, and a breeze blew the curtains inward. Mama turned slightly. The light shone on a king-sized bed. It was covered by a gaily-colored comforter, with large pillows.

A woman was lying in the middle of the bed. She had on a pair of beige slacks, a yellow sweater, and a pair of brown boots. Blood trickled from her mouth, her head was twisted at an odd angle, and her lips were curled in a tight smile. It was almost as if she was laughing at how frightened we were to have found her. It had to be Miss Sharp.

The silence was broken by a loud rustling outside of the window, the sound of a slamming car door, the firing of the Jaguar’s engine as it sped away from the house.

“We almost walked in on her killer,” Mama whispered.

W
ednesday morning a loud clap of thunder woke me. I lay in bed, trying not to think of Kitty Sharp’s corpse. But the memory of the sound of the Jaguar racing away from the house, followed by the thought that Mama and I were in the same house with the teacher’s killer, did not leave me.

It seemed hours that my mother and I sat in the Honda waiting for Abe to arrive. Mama had told me to turn on the light inside the car. “Look at this,” she said as she opened her hand. My eyes rested on one of the small plastic bags we spotted on the teacher’s coffee table. She also held a small clear oval stone that, to my untrained eye, looked like a diamond. It must haven fallen from a setting on a piece of jewelry.

“Do you know what that bag is used for?” I asked.

“No,” Mama said, “but judging by the size, it can’t hold much.”

“It’s used for drugs,” I told her. “The word ‘viper’ is the street name for cocaine.”

“Dolly insinuated that Kitty Sharp was a user.”

“She may also have been a dealer,” I said. “You shouldn’t have picked those things up—they’re evidence.”

“Abe won’t miss one bag; there are others.”

“What about the diamond?” I asked. “Are you going to turn that over to him?”

Mama considered briefly. “I don’t know,” she said. She turned the diamond over, holding it up to the faint light. “I wish I could be sure that once I turned it over to him I’d get a chance to see it again.”

“You could be charged with evidence tampering.”

“Simone, the stone may not have had anything to do with Kitty’s death. It could very well have dropped from a piece of
her
jewelry.”

I could feel my eyes roll heavenward. Mama was smart enough to realize that anything in Kitty’s house was considered evidence and that she had no business with either the plastic bag or the diamond.

Mama threw me a calculating look, one that told me she wanted these items in her possession a little longer. “Until I’m sure of their significance, I’m going keep them.”

About that time we heard sirens. Abe, Rick, and Lew Hunter arrived. Next we peered out as the ambulance,
its orange flashing light coming to a halt, stopped in front of the house. Two paramedics got out.

Once Rick turned on the electricity and got the lights working, things moved swiftly. He secured the perimeter with yellow crime-scene tape, then dusted for fingerprints. Next photographs were taken, the place was combed for evidence, and after the coroner arrived, the paramedics took Kitty’s body to Otis’s makeshift morgue housed at Zainer’s Funeral Parlor.

Before any of that had taken place, however, Abe introduced us to Lew Hunter, who made it clear that he was in charge. When Hunter told us to meet him at the sheriff’s office the next morning so that he could personally take our statements, I knew by his official tone that the probability of Mama turning over the plastic bag or the diamond was slim to none.

That was last night. I was safely in bed, listening to the rain and to Agatha shuffling down the hall toward the kitchen. Outside, Sunshine was barking.

Next Mama’s footsteps.

Finally I could hear both women’s voices. They weren’t shouting at each other but it was clear that they weren’t having a polite conversation.

I joined them.

“It’s time for me and Sunshine to go home,” Agatha was insisting.

“You shouldn’t be out there alone for a few more days. You’re not well enough.”

“Sunshine needs to be let in the house,” Agatha continued. “Sunshine is afraid of stormy weather.”

“Now, Agatha, you know that I don’t allow dogs in my house!”

“That’s why we need to go home,” Agatha told Mama. “Sunshine is
welcomed
in my house.”

My father entered the room. “With the rain, thunder, lightning, the dogs barking, and you women talking so loud, the dead are going to wake up!”

“James, take me home!” Agatha told my father. “I want to go right now!”

“In this weather?”

“Sunshine’s used to coming in the house when there’s a storm. Candi won’t let her come inside, so I want to take her home now!”

My father’s eyes met my mother’s. He turned to Agatha. “Do you think Sunshine would feel safer if I put her in the shed?”

“She’s afraid of bad weather!” Agatha repeated.

“Perhaps an old blanket with Midnight as company would settle her!”

“She’s used to coming into the house with me!”

“Candi, do you have an old blanket or two that Sunshine and Midnight could use?”

Mama went to the back of the house. My father followed her. I had put on the coffee, and Agatha and I sat at the table waiting for it to finish percolating.

Thunder and crackling lightning greeted my father as he opened the back door holding two thick blankets. He rolled his eyes, then dashed outside. Midnight and Sunshine really started to howl.

I poured three cups of coffee, holding Daddy’s favorite mug ready for his return. When I heard the shed door slam, I poured a fresh cup and handed it to him the moment he pushed back inside the kitchen.

Mama started breakfast. The telephone rang. It was Cliff. I told him to wait while I headed to my bedroom for a private talk.

“There’s been another murder,” I told Cliff once I was comfortably seated on my bed.

“Why is it that I’m not surprised?”

“Mama and I found the teacher I told you we were going to visit. She was in her house, killed in her own bed!”

“What have you and Miss Marple found out?” (Cliff had taken to calling Mama Miss Marple since her success in solving murders.)

“Mama is baffled. She keeps saying that events are like a maze, one turn leads to another with nothing pointing to a way out.”

“Sounds like you’re not having fun,” he teased.

“We haven’t distributed one item of clothes since I’ve arrived,” I reminded him.

“I’m coming in on Saturday morning. Catch the killer before I arrive—I don’t want your mama doing anything other than cooking.”

“Cliff, this is no time to be thinking of your stomach. Two women are dead.”

Fifteen minutes later, our conversation was over and I was walking back into the kitchen when the phone rang again. This time it was Carrie who called. She wanted me to tell Mama that she thought it would probably be better for us to meet at the center tomorrow instead of today, since the weather report said that the rain wouldn’t be ending until later today. When I gave Mama the message, she nodded in agreement.

The front door of the Otis jail opens into a small foyer. On the left side, a door leads into a room that has one large desk, one small desk, two executive chairs, two file cabinets, an old water cooler, a small table with a coffee urn on it, and four wooden chairs.

Lew Hunter was the first person we spotted when we walked into Abe’s office. He was perched in the executive chair that belonged to Abe’s desk. It was my guess that Abe had told Hunter how Mama had helped him out before, perhaps in an effort to impress him with her sleuthing talents, because Hunter glared at Mama, his eyes screaming that he wasn’t partial to an ordinary citizen who might feel she could outwit his professional mind, talents, and resources.

To tell the truth, I was uncomfortable at first. I knew Mama wasn’t impressed with this SLED agent for two reasons: first she didn’t like Abe turning
over the investigation to him, and she certainly didn’t like the way he’d talked to us the night before. What I didn’t know was how Mama was going to handle Hunter.

As Hunter stared unflinchingly at Mama, she refused to break eye contact with him until he finally looked down at papers on Abe’s desk. By this time, we were seated in two of the wooden chairs. Hunter cleared his throat. “Why did you and your daughter go into Kitty Sharp’s house last night?”

“The door was open.”

“Did you have an appointment with the teacher?”

“No.”

“Why did you go there?”

“A personal matter.”

“Why did you go into the house when she didn’t answer the door?”

“I heard a noise—footsteps.”

“You heard footsteps
after
you’d entered the house?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure they were footsteps?”

“Footsteps,” Mama repeated, glancing at me.

“Footsteps,” I confirmed.

Lew Hunter took a notebook from his inside pocket and scribbled something on it. He stood up, walked across the floor in front of us and thought for a while. “You know that this teacher was suspected of selling drugs on the high school campus?”

“Are you sure about that?”

Lew took a deep breath.

Abe entered the room and handed Lew Hunter a piece of paper. The detective looked at the note, folded it and put it in his pocket.

You couldn’t tell by the look on Mama’s face, but I knew her well enough to know she was dying to know what he’d just learned.

“Mrs. Covington,” Lew began, “I know you don’t agree that these murders are tied up to drug trafficking. That’s because you’re naive. You insist on believing that your town is immune to drugs’ influence. Let me assure you, you’re wrong!”

Mama started to say something but before she could speak, Hunter threw up his hands. “That’s all for now. If there is any need to talk with you again, the good sheriff here will be in touch.”

Mama looked at me and instead of saying anything she stood up and walked straight out of Abe’s office. I followed, happy that our interview was over.

The rain had stopped, the moving clouds clearing to show a blue sky.

I was surprised to see that Abe was behind us. When we got onto the sidewalk, he apologized. “I’m sorry, Candi. I’d hoped Hunter would have handled you with a little more—”

“Respect,” Mama said, completing Abe’s sentence. She looked at him like she could have said plenty more about Lew Hunter, but discretion held her back. “How are the investigations going?”

“There’s a lot of information we’ve got, but nothing
has come up yet that points in the direction of a suspect.”

“Did you get my message about Clyde Hicks?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “I’ll see that Rick picks him up again but—” his voice trailed.

“You don’t think Clyde did it?”

Abe began to stroke his chin like he was nervous. “Hunter’s got a theory.”

Mama walked forward a few feet. She looked back over her shoulder at her old friend. “I’ve got a theory, too,” she told him.

B
efore we pulled away from in front of the sheriff’s office, I sat for a moment, wanting to say something encouraging to Mama but my mind went absolutely blank. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

The look on her face, though, told me Mama’s mind was ticking like a faithful timepiece. She laced her fingers together, making a steeple of her two index fingers, which she rested against her lips. “Brenda was cocky, she interfered with other people’s lives, she miscalculated when she turned Clyde in, and he decided she’d gone too far, he killed her.” Then she lifted an index finger, like a teacher who wants to make a point very clear. “That theory works until we ask, why kill Kitty Sharp?”