Mama Cracks a Mask of Innocence (16 page)

“Is that why you never married?”

Agatha didn’t answer my question. “After Ray
was gone for six months, the other fella admitted to my father that Ray had pushed him up to lie, but it was too late. The lying Ray Raisin ended up a highbrow lawyer and I’m—”

“The smartest businesswoman this area has ever known,” Mama said, finishing Agatha’s sentence.

Agatha shrugged. “I used to sit on our front porch and wonder how far I could have gone if I had been given that chance. Truth is, I hate the way he’s come back home acting like he wants me to believe he’s sorry for what he did. Being so polite and nice, telling Sarah, Carrie, and Annie Mae that he wants to visit me. He must be crazy to think I would have forgotten what he’d done forty-five years ago!”

For a moment none of us spoke. “The sky would have been your limit,” I finally said. “If you had gotten that scholarship it’s no telling what you might have become.”

Agatha’s eyelids blinked, then she looked away. “What might have been doesn’t matter now, does it? The fact is that it wasn’t me that touched the sky, it was Ray Raisin. I guess I should be Christian-like and forgive him, but the truth is he never changed. I kept up with what was going on in his life. He’s a liar, a good-for-nothing person who pretends that he got what he has straight-up like the good Lord meant him to have it. I’ve got an article from a New Jersey newspaper that shows Ray lost his license to practice law twenty years ago. One of Daddy’s
cousins sent it to me. She told me that Ray was involved in something illegal, that she had seen him and told him that she was going to send me the article out of the newspaper.”

“Where is that article?” Mama asked.

Agatha got up and went into her room. When she returned her hands were empty, her mouth open. “It’s gone!”

W
e spent an hour combing through Agatha’s closet, which held boxes upon boxes of clothes she’d never live long enough to wear. According to Agatha, everything was accounted for except a large box where she kept family pictures, mementos, obituaries, graduation programs, wedding announcements, and newspaper clippings.

“Why would anybody steal pictures, things having special meaning to only you or your family?” I asked.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Mama replied. “Whoever came in here and took it must have known that you were spending a few days with us when you were ill.”

“That could have been anybody in the county,” I said, thinking of Annie Mae, Carrie, and Sarah. Once they got wind of Agatha’s stay with us, it would be all over the county in a matter of hours.

Agatha didn’t say anything, but she paced the floor, wringing her hands until I thought they’d blister. She was a smart and talented woman who’d spent her life preserving our family’s heritage. Now that accomplishment had been taken away from her.

Anger flashed through me for what Ray Raisin had denied her. I had been born at a time when I could be spared such indignities. I could get as much or as little education as I chose. It was something I rarely thought about, but now outrage welled up inside of me and made me feel like I’d been personally attacked.

What happened next was totally unexpected and caught us all by surprise.

There was a knock on the door.

Ray Raisin stood on the porch, a large box in his hand, the one I surmised belonged to Agatha. His face was draped with disgrace, like it was painful for him to have come. “I’d like to return your box. It shames me that it’s in my possession.”

Agatha’s eyes shot darts at him.

Mama took charge. “Come in.”

Ray hesitated for a moment, then swept into the room. He sat on the sofa, put the box on the floor and stared at it, his hands clasped loosely in his lap.

The three of us stared back at him.

His gaze shifted to Agatha. “I owe you an apology—no, I owe you several apologies. You see, I came into your house uninvited and borrowed your box of mementos. I—”

“I hate you!” Agatha spat.

“You should hate me,” he replied evenly.

A look of annoyance flashed across my mother’s face. “Why in heaven’s name did you break into Agatha’s house?”

“I wanted a newspaper clipping, the one that reported I’d lost my license to practice law. I worked my butt off, but I made some bad decisions. Hell, I was young, without an inkling of how to handle myself in the city when I first got out of law school. I made a few bad choices. When things went bad, it took me years to clear up my legal problems, to overcome the scandals, but I did it. I got my license back and things got better. And when my poor wife died, I decided to give up my practice and come back home. I felt this was the one place on earth I could die in peace and everybody made me feel I’d made the right decision. Everybody except Agatha, that is. After she treated me the way she did at the community center, I was sure she’d show people the clipping and once again I’d be the center of rumors and gossip.”

Mama’s impatience intensified. “You’re a lawyer, you know that’s not a reason to break into Agatha’s house.”

Ray looked genuinely remorseful. “I didn’t destroy the clipping. I intended to destroy it, intended to bring the box back. By the time I’d decided to return the things undisturbed, Agatha had come home.”

Mama gave him a long look as if she was trying to decide whether or not to believe him. “Why did you bring the box back today?”

“I got a call an hour ago from Calvin Stokes.”

“The lawyer?”

He nodded. “You know that my family owned quite a bit of land in the area at one time. Well, they lost it. Now the only property that’s in the family is an acre and a house. Calvin told me that he owned twenty-five acres around the homestead and he was interested in selling it. He’d called Agatha and asked her whether she knew anybody interested in buying it. Agatha told him that the land had belonged to my family, that I was back home, and that I should be given the first offer to buy it back.”

“It’s only right,” Agatha muttered.

“After Calvin and I spoke and I hung up the phone I realized that Agatha wasn’t holding a grudge. I realized something else too. I finally realized how much I was indebted to her, how it was time to stop being afraid of not getting what I wanted. It was time for me to start giving something back to Agatha. This box is my first effort to do that.”

Mama’s look sent Ray Raisin the message that she understood that there are people who’ll do you in and not care how much pain they inflict and that she considered him one of those people. “Since you seem to be in the mood to confess your sins, are you so low that you’ve been distributing drugs to the young people in this town?”

Ray jumped up like he’d been rammed in the rump with a poison dart. “Is that what you think of me?”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Mama told him.

Now, I’ve said before that my mother’s manner is usually warm, and gently persuasive. Not this time!

Ray stepped back, his eyes locked on my mother’s. He seemed to start to say something, but decided against it. Instead, he asked, “Why would I do that?”

Agatha spoke, tears choking her words. “Because the good Lord took that law license away from you, to punish you for the way you schemed and lied to get it.”

“I’ll never be able to meet my Maker in peace because of that lie.”

“If you lie once, you’ll lie twice,” Mama jabbed.

“I don’t sell drugs to children!” Ray hollered.

“Do you own a black Jaguar?” Mama challenged.

“What?”

“You heard my question.”

He scanned Mama’s face, then broke off eye contact. “No, I don’t own a black Jaguar, nor a red or white Jaguar. God, this is all so screwed up. I can’t believe this is happening. I didn’t mean for things to go this way.”

Ray Raisin sounded like a self-indulgent teenager with no concern for dishonesty. In my head, I could see how a youthful Ray schemed to cheat my cousin out of her scholarship. I’d misjudged the man. Now he looked
like a dressed-up common thief, the kind I’d seen many times in my work.

Mama’s brow wrinkled. “What did you expect when you come in here acting like a remorseful soul? That Agatha would have the town give you a parade and put up welcome banners?”

“If Agatha wants to press charges against me for breaking in and stealing her box, she can do it. I’m prepared to pay the price for what I’ve done.”

There it was again, the foolish and empty statement of an old man with a adolescent’s sense of right and wrong.

“What you’ve done to Agatha is no small matter, but it only highlights your capacity to hurt others. As far as I’m concerned, you’re not only capable of selling drugs to our children, but you could just as well have killed Brenda, Kitty, and poor old Elliott because they caught on to you!”

Something stirred inside my head, the notion that in my experience working with a defense lawyer and dealing with convicted murderers or drug dealers, Ray Raisin’s personality didn’t fit the profile. Still, a few days earlier I’d thought he was what I wanted my man to look like in his senior years—I could be wrong again.

He looked at Mama like he realized the force of her accusations. “The State Law Enforcement man is looking for a teenager. If it were me, I’d be looking for a kid that’s almost scared to death.”

He turned to Agatha. “I’m sorry, really sorry for
what I’ve done to you,” he apologized. “I won’t trouble you any longer.”

Then he left.

“You want to report that he broke into your house and stole your box?” I asked Agatha.

She made a face and shook her head in disgust.

“Do you want us to check to see if everything is still in the box?”

“I … I can’t right now. I’m sorry, but I can’t—”

“You want us to go?” Mama asked.

“I’m sorry—”

“We understand,” Mama reassured her. “I’ll call you later.”

“I … I’m sorry,” Agatha repeated, and burst into tears.

“W
hat do you think of Ray Raisin now?” I asked just before we pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office.

“He’s slick,” Mama confessed.

“Afraid I don’t see him as Otis’s enterprising drug dealer.”

“I don’t know,” Mama muttered, frustrated. “My theory seemed plausible a few hours ago.”

“The more I think of Ray, the more I realize that he doesn’t fit the profile of a drug dealer. When you take the nature of the crime, the circumstances surrounding when it happened and how it happened, and you look at the physical evidence, things like hair samples, nails, blood, fingerprints, and mix these elements together you’d have to conclude that Ray isn’t the type of person we’re looking for.”

“You’re trying to tell me you’ve looked at all those things with Ray in mind?”

“Of course not, but in my opinion, he fits the slicker profile whose main game is to get over on people.”

“Ray is a thief and a liar in a business suit, I know that already.”

“I mean that’s about all he’s good for. He’s too conceited to go after anything outside of himself and, judging from his having been disbarred, he’s not very good at what he does. If he had a drug ring going on, he’d have been caught by now.”

“Are you saying that drug dealers aren’t conceited?”

“That’s not what I’m saying and you know it.”

The look on my mother’s face was a combination of worry and irritation. “I know what you’re saying, Simone, and the truth is, I’m inclined to agree with you. Something is right in front of my face and I can’t see it. Brenda had seen it, that’s why she was killed. If only she had left us a clue, something that would point us in the right direction.

Lew Hunter was talking to the dispatcher when we arrived. After a cordial greeting, he escorted us into Abe’s office. As we were being seated, I looked around the room. A cream-colored cinder-block wall directly behind Abe’s large desk had a new bulletin board. Colored tacks and what I assumed were crime-scene pictures covered it.

Lew eased the door shut behind us. Abe was conspicuously missing but the room stank of cigarette smoke and ashtrays were spilling over with cigarette butts. Somehow, I felt he wasn’t far away.

Lew looked tired. Not like he’d missed a night’s sleep, but like he’d missed two weeks’ sleep. “It looks like we’re again talking about your discovery of a body,” he said.

Mama threw him a look that said something was happening that she didn’t understand. “I suppose you want to know the purpose of my visit to Elliott’s last night?”

“Let’s wait until Abe returns,” he said. “He’s just down the hall in the john.”

I knew that Mama was all ready to explain that Elliott had left a basket of tomatoes and she went to his house to pay him for them, that she’d seen Clyde pull away on a motorcycle, that she’d tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t stop. And I understood that what she really wanted was any new information that would help her in her own inquiry. But instead of a maneuvering conversation, there was silence.

Mama shifted in her seat. Her movement was slight, but I saw it.

Abe finally came into the room. He walked over to his desk, sat down and picked up a pack of Camels and stuck one in the corner of his mouth.