Mama Cracks a Mask of Innocence (12 page)

“The kids probably volunteered to help her,” Mama said, as she handed Elliott several dollar bills to pay for the peppers. “You know she doesn’t have relatives here and there’s a lot to be done in pulling Brenda’s funeral together.”

Elliott nodded, as if he was satisfied with what she handed him. “I’ve p-passed by there more than three or four t-times this week already and that place has got young people in and out. That Washington boy stays there so much that if I didn’t know his m-mama, I’d swear he lived with Tootsie.”

“I stopped by Tootsie Long’s house to see if I could be of some help to her,” Ray Raisin said, stepping forward. “I saw that boy Stone going into her garage. Tootsie told me he insists on helping her out as a way of showing how sorry he is that Brenda was killed.”

“Elliott,” Mama said. “I was wondering. Since you get around town a great deal, have you seen anybody driving a Jaguar? A black one?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“If you happen to run across a car like that, would you let me know?”

“Sure w-will. As a matter of fact, I’d let the whole t-town know. Car like that ain’t likely to be in these parts unless somebody with money is sporting it.”

Once Elliott left the center, Ray Raisin packed his trunk with a third of the clothes for distribution today, then escorted Sarah, Annie Mae, and Carrie to his car. The four of them drove off into the sunset, the women looking like contented cows. The disdainful look on Agatha’s face told me she was glad they were gone.

We broke for lunch. Mama invited Gertrude and Agatha to our house where Mama took a spinach lasagna out of the refrigerator and put it in the oven. While it was baking she tossed salad, and put slices of garlic bread in the broiler. Then she took out a dish of sliced peaches sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon. Sweetened iced tea topped off our meal.

While we were eating, Mama made a phone call.

At two o’clock the dishes were in the dishwasher and we were walking out the door to return to the center. It took us another three hours to finish up the separation of the clothes. Then Gertrude packed her car with another batch of the clothes with the intention of starting their delivery first thing in the morning.

Once we packed the Honda’s trunk with the remaining clothes that we planned to distribute the next morning, we swept the place clean. As we pulled away from the center, Mama shared her disappointment that she hadn’t heard from Rick and that he hadn’t picked up Clyde so she could talk to him.

After supper, while my mother scribbled something on a notepad and my father played with Midnight, I went into my bedroom and called Cliff.

“You’re having company next week,” Cliff informed me.

“I am?”

“A Naomi Flowers left a message on your answering machine. Seems you two went to college together. Well, Naomi’s going to be in Atlanta on business. She doesn’t want to stay at a hotel so she’s coming to stay with you.”

“Naomi Flowers,” I said. “I don’t remember a Naomi Flowers.”

“She remembers you.”

“Let me think,” I said. But after a few moments I had to admit, “Nobody comes to mind.”

“Maybe she called the wrong Simone Covington.”

“Did she leave a number for me to call her back?”

“She sure did,” he told me, then read it off to me. “Naomi Flowers,” I repeated, baffled.

“Call her,” he suggested. “She may be somebody in your past. Or she may have called the wrong person.”

“What time are you arriving Saturday morning?”

“What time is breakfast?”

“I got Mama to agree to nine o’clock.”

“I’ll see you at eight-forty-five,” he said, with a smile in his voice.

We talked for another half hour before we said good-bye. I walked into the kitchen. “Naomi Flowers,” I said again out loud.

“Your old classmate,” Mama said, looking up from what she was writing.

“I had a classmate named Naomi Flowers?”

“Sure did.”

“You remember her?”

“She was tall, thin with a very bad complexion. But she loved chocolate. Every time I’d visit you, I baked a pan of brownies for her. I remember her well because she’d eat the entire pan of brownies in one sitting.”

I snapped my fingers. “Now I remember! I remember, too, that she was one of those girls I vowed to make an effort to forget.”

“You must have done a good job at forgetting,” Mama said.

“I did a good job of forgetting her but she remembered me, remembered that I live in Atlanta, and wants to stay with me next week.”

“How long will she be with you?” Mama asked, putting her pad and pencil in her purse.

“I don’t know. I’ve got her phone number. I’d better call.”

So I called Naomi Flowers. “Does your mother live near you?” she asked immediately. “Can you get
her to make me brownies?” Yes, she was the girl with the bad complexion.

“My mother lives in South Carolina,” I said, as if I were in Atlanta. “It’s a three-hour drive.”

Naomi sounded disappointed. “I know I shouldn’t eat chocolate …,” she admitted.

“How long are you going to be in town?” I asked her.

“Three days. It’s a work-related conference. I could have stayed at a hotel, my company would have paid for it. But why stay at a hotel when you got a friend in town?”

“You’re right,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too sad that she was so willing to save her company hotel charges.

“Anyway, pick me up at the Delta terminal.”

“You need me to pick you up?”

“Yeah, Monday evening, seven o’clock. I made the reservations for that time so you’d have plenty of time to get to the airport from work.”

“That was thoughtful,” I said.

“My flight number is two-four-seven. Remember, I’m coming in from Kansas City, Missouri. Girl, I can’t wait to see you. You still carry that weight around your hips?”

I didn’t answer.

“Listen,” she continued as if she didn’t expect a reply, “I’m bringing a few nice dresses, so line us up someplace to party, okay? Dancing, you know the kind of place. My conference is over every day
around three. See if you can get off work early enough to pick me up downtown.”

“Naomi, I live in Decatur,” I told my ex-classmate. “That’s at least twenty-five minutes from downtown Atlanta.”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t have to be at the conference until ten. You can drop me off on your way to work.”

“Yes,” I sighed. “I work in downtown Atlanta.”

“See, it’ll work out fine. Girl, we are going to have a
ball
. Party, party, party. Don’t forget. I’ll be flying in on Delta, from Kansas City, Missouri. I’ll be wearing a pair of black jeans, boots, and a white sweater. By the way, what is the weather like in Atlanta? I need to make sure I have enough of the right clothes. Don’t worry, I’ll bring enough to handle anything. Remember, my flight arrives at seven P.M. sharp!”

“I’ll see you then,” I said, the only words I could squeeze in before I hung the phone on its receiver.

Mama’s smile told me she understood my dilemma. “Sounds like you got talked into a housedguest.”

I moaned. “More like a teenager who needs a baby-sitter.”

“I’ll bake her a pan of brownies and send it with you.”

“Oh, no you won’t. I’ve got a hunch that I’m going to share a lot with Naomi Flowers while she’s here and your brownies won’t be a part of it.”

B
efore we started delivering our share of clothing the next day, we attended a memorial service for Brenda held in the high school auditorium. It was scheduled for the first period, so it was over by ten o’clock.

We delivered our share of the clothes, dropping off our last load to a woman whose husband had recently been killed in a fire that destroyed their home and everything they owned. The woman, who was now the single parent of six children under the age of eight, was still trying to deal with her loss. Mama and I stayed with her for more than an hour to allow her to talk about the tragedy.

It was almost four o’clock when Mama told me that she wanted to stop by the field where Brenda’s body had been found. “It’s over a week now since
she was killed,” I told her. “No doubt Lew Hunter has gone over those grounds with a fine-tooth comb.”

“I know,” Mama said. “Still, it won’t hurt if we have a look at it.”

The area was a perfect place to commit a murder. Lew Hunter had roped off the area with police tape. A shallow grave dug in a field of wildflowers, it was out of view from the highway because of a grove of trees. Despite its serenity, there seemed something ugly about this place. Mama, after standing and looking for a moment, began to walk beyond the site.

“Wait a minute! Where are you going?”

“I want to see how far this place is from the beehives. You remember, Abe told us that Zack Garvey found the grave when he checked on his hives.”

“I remember now.”

The walk took us past the grave to where four small hives were located. The stillness of the afternoon was profound, the fragrance of blossoms filling the air. It was in this stillness that we heard the child’s voice.

“What you ladies doing?” the youngster hollered. He was about eight years old and was rolling a tire, something I hadn’t seen a boy do since I was a very little girl.

“Just looking about,” Mama answered him.

“Those men from the sheriff’s office done looked at everything out here,” he said, letting the tire drop to the ground, then walking toward us.

“You’ve seen the sheriff and talked to him?”

The boy shook his head. “I ain’t talked, but I’ve seen him. My mama told me not to say a word, that she didn’t know nothing about a dead girl and I didn’t know nothing.”

“Is your mother right?” Mama asked him.

“Mama told me she is always right,” the child answered.

I laughed to myself, thinking that the boy was in for a rude awakening when he discovered that his mother had frailties that she herself didn’t recognize.

“What’s your name, honey?” Mama asked.

“Bubba.”

“Bubba, did you happen to see anything, perhaps something that you forgot to tell your mama?”

“Nope,” Bubba answered, his arms folded across his chest the way I suspected he’d seen his mother do whenever she was determined to hold her ground. “Just like my mama told me, I ain’t seen nothing at all.”

Just then something dropped from his pocket, a pocket that was the only sound piece on the pair of holey jeans he wore. He hastily picked it up. “I can’t lose this,” Bubba told us. “It’s my change purse. I’m going to keep my money in it just the way my daddy keeps his money.”

The small plastic bag had the word “Viper” written on it.

“Where did you get it from?” Mama asked.

Bubba pointed toward the grave, then, as if he remembered he wasn’t supposed to have seen or known anything about where Brenda had been buried, he said hastily, “I don’t know where I got it but I know I’m going to keep my money in it.”

“Where are you going to get money from?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Fact is, that is what I was wondering just before you came up. Now that I’ve got a wallet, I need to get money to put in it. I reckon I could try to work like my daddy. I wonder if he let me go to work with him on Saturday so that I can make some money.”

“Don’t know,” Mama told him. “But I know where you can make enough money to buy you a leather wallet.”

“Like the one my daddy’s got?” Bubba asked, his eyes lighting up. “I always wanted one like that, one that you can put pictures in and that you can put dollar bills, and nickels and dimes and—”

Mama interrupted. “You can get one just like that if you sell me the one you’ve got in your hand.”

Bubba looked at the plastic bag and back up at Mama. Suspicion welled up in his eyes. “How much will you give me for it?” he asked.

“Let me see.” Mama took her own wallet from her purse. “I suspect a purse like your daddy keeps in his back pocket would cost about ten dollars at Wesmart.”

“That’s right,” the boy said, holding the plastic bag even tighter now.

“And you’d need another five dollars to put in it.”

“What about the part where you keep the nickels, dimes, and quarters?” he asked. “That’s the part that Daddy opens when he gives me money.”

Mama counted out a few nickels, dimes, and quarters. “This would be for that part of your wallet,” she told him, handing him the money.

Bubba handed Mama the plastic bag, clutching the rest of the money. Suddenly a sadness swept over his face. “What will my mama say if she knew I got all this money for a little plastic bag that I picked up—”

“We’ll go home with you,” Mama suggested. “I’ll explain to your mother that I wanted to give you the money, that I wanted you to buy a wallet like the one your father owns. We don’t have to mention the plastic bag, do we?”

The boy shook his head. He looked at the money Mama had placed in his hand and grinned.

“Now,” Mama said, as she put the bag and her wallet in her pocketbook. “Let’s take you home, young fella, and talk to your mother!”

That little piece of business took us a half hour; Bubba’s mother readily accepted Mama’s desire to give her son money.

“Your hunch was right to visit the area where Brenda’s body was found,” I told Mama as we headed back to my car. “That plastic bag sure ties Brenda’s death to Kitty Sharp’s murder.”