Miss Julia Lays Down the Law (12 page)

“Binkie?” I said when I was finally able to stop answering calls from worried friends and dial her number. “I’m sorry for calling so early, but I wanted to catch you before you left for the office.”

“It’s all right, Miss Julia. I’ve been up for a while. What’s going on?”

I told her about the interviewees that Detective Ellis had lined up and told her that I also had a message to call him.

“He’s interviewing all of us, Binkie, but I’ve already been through that. What should I do?”

“Call him back,” she said. “Call him right now, and if he’s not in, call me back. I have his home number.”

“Oh, Binkie, I can’t call him at home.”

“Yes, you can. He called you at home, didn’t he?”

Somehow that didn’t seem to be quite the same, but I didn’t argue. Sam had told me that the law was an adversarial process, and with Binkie, I was seeing it in action.

Binkie’s last command to me was to call her back and let her know what the detective wanted.

So I did, for I had no trouble reaching the detective at the sheriff’s department, and was able to call her back just as she was leaving for work.

“He does want to interview me again,” I told her, my voice revealing the agitation I was feeling. “Can he do that?”

“Only if you agree to it,” she said. “And I advise you to agree for one reason only, and that’s to find out how the investigation is going. If he wants to go back over your first interview, I’ll put a stop to it. But if there’s something new, I want to know it. We’ll be able to tell what he’s up to by his questions.”

“You’ll be there with me?”

“Absolutely. When does he want you?”

“This afternoon, about three. I’m way down on the list, so maybe that’s a good sign.”

“I’ll call and tell him we’ll be there at four.”

“It doesn’t matter, Binkie. Three, four, if I have to do it, either one is fine with me.”

Binkie laughed. “We don’t want to be too accommodating. Let him wait. Four is soon enough. I’ll meet you there a few minutes before.”

Goodness,
I thought as I hung up. Adversarial might have been the correct description, but it was sounding more like a game between Detective Ellis and Binkie, although, to tell the truth, I didn’t feel much like playing.

 • • • 

By the time I readied myself to make a return trip to the sheriff’s office, I’d heard from all those who had been interviewed before me. Not that I hadn’t thought of them all day long, wondering what they were saying and what conclusions Detective Ellis was drawing.

One after the other, Mildred, LuAnne, Callie, Helen, and Sue called to tell me how their interviews had gone.

“I was right,” Mildred had said. “He wanted to know all about the coffee—who was there, what was said, and especially if there’d been any spats with Connie.”

“Spats? What does that mean?”

“Fusses, fights, arguments, and the like, I guess. I told him I didn’t know what kind of social life he led, but we weren’t accustomed to such unpleasant occurrences in ours, and nobody
spatted
with anybody.”

“That’s true,” I said, “but none of us was happy by the time we left.”

“Believe me, Julia,” she said with a sigh, “he knew all about that by the time he got to me. I don’t know what LuAnne and Callie and whoever else he interviewed said, but he already knew that Connie had upset us all. I just spoke to LuAnne, and she swore that she’d not said a word. Just told him that she was devastated that such a kind and far-seeing woman had been struck down.
Then,
Julia, do you know what she said?”

“What?”

“She told me that she was disappointed that the Run for Rehab had been canceled, and then she said she’d asked Detective Ellis if they’d found any trophies in Connie’s house. She thinks that everybody who’d signed up—all three of them, I expect—ought to get them because they’d
tried
to run!”

 • • • 

The only bright spot of the day had been when I’d called Norma Cantrell to ask if there’d been any word from the pastor about his return. Couching my question in terms of concern for Emma Sue, I was relieved to learn that they were on their way home as we spoke. So if, during the approaching interview, I could avoid answering a direct question as to the reason for my second visit to Connie’s house, I would get my release from the pastor and make a full and complete confession soon enough.

 • • • 

Sitting in the same small room where they’d put me before, I waited with Binkie for my second interview. We were sitting side by side, for Binkie had moved one of the two chairs to my side of the table—something I was not bold enough to do. But Binkie was not intimidated and thought nothing of rearranging the sheriff’s furniture.

“Binkie,” I said, trying mightily to hide my dread of what was to come. “How’s Coleman doing on his sign today?”

She grinned. “Well, he’s decided that flip-flops aren’t ideal for the weather—so he’s wearing his wool socks and hiking boots. Put on his long johns, too. He’s been lucky so far since we’ve not been below freezing. But,” she said, laughing, “he didn’t get much sleep last night. Said he was all snuggled up in his sleeping bag when about three o’clock, one of the youth groups from church came by with a water balloon launcher.”

“My goodness, I hope he wasn’t hurt. Did he arrest them?”

“Oh, no, it was in good fun, and he didn’t care. Except, that is, when he crawled out of the tent, one of the balloons hit the sign above his head and almost drowned him.”

After an abrupt knock, Detective Ellis strode in, smiling his let’s-all-pretend-we-like-each-other smile. I knew better by now, but he could still take me in with the patient, yet concerned, expression that came over his face with each question. That expression now seemed somewhat strained, and from his wrinkled shirt I figured he’d had a long and grueling day interviewing the likes of the women I knew.

“Ms. Bates,” he said, nodding at Binkie. “Glad you could join us.”

Binkie grinned. “I bet. But thank you for inviting me.”

He grinned back at her, while I realized that this wasn’t the first time those two had been legal opponents.

“And, Mrs. Murdoch,” he went on, “thank you for coming down again. I only have a few things to go over, just to get a better picture of what may’ve led to the attack on Ms. Clayborn.” He put a legal pad and a recording machine on the table, scooted his chair up close, and gave me a warm smile.

“This won’t take long, but I do have to record our conversation. Is that all right with you? Like I told you before, it’s really for your protection.”

After looking at Binkie, who nodded, I nodded at Detective Ellis, and he went through the recitation of names, dates, and so forth, as he’d done at my previous visit.

As I stiffened in anticipation of his questions, he turned a few pages on his pad, looked up at me, and said, “What I’d like to talk about today is that morning when you and some other ladies were invited by Ms. Clayborn to her house. Tell me about that.”

Well, I happened to know that he’d asked the very same question of everyone he’d seen that day, so what more could I tell him? I suspected that he was looking for discrepancies among the accounts, but he didn’t realize how many notes had been compared through a series of telephone calls.

So I told it from my perspective—that I’d almost not accepted the invitation, went only for the sake of politeness, and to visit with friends, and hadn’t particularly liked Connie’s house.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” Detective Ellis said, nodding encouragement throughout my narrative. “Now tell me what you heard Ms. Clayborn say about the town and what she’d like to do to it.”

“Pretty much what everybody else heard, I expect.”

“Oh, we always hear things differently, don’t you think? I’d like to know what you thought was important in what she said.”

“Well,” I said, and began reeling off Connie’s plans for rehabilitating the town—Main Street especially, and the old courthouse park specifically—even as I glanced now and then at Binkie to be sure I was not missing any signals from her.

“Okay,” the detective said. He flipped another page on his pad, then went on. “How did you ladies respond to her suggestions?”

“We listened.”

“I know, but did anybody say they didn’t like her ideas?”

“Nobody said anything.”

“Well, then give me some specifics. What exactly did she want to do?”

“Bulldoze both sides of Main Street, for one thing, and most of the houses in town, for another.”

Detective Ellis’s eyebrows went straight up. “Really?” He scribbled that down. “And nobody objected?”

“She said it later, as we were leaving, so not everybody heard it.”

“But you heard it.”

“
Over
heard it, because she wasn’t speaking to me.” I glanced at Binkie, who was watching Detective Ellis with squinched-up eyes.

“How did the ladies respond to this grand rehabilitation scheme? Were they for it? Against it? Was there any discussion about it later? Did anybody say anything to you?”

“I try not to repeat what’s told to me, Detective. Things tend to get muddled when they’re told over and over.”

“I understand,” he said, sounding as if he really did, “but you realize that you could help solve a shocking crime. So let’s take it as a given that you don’t engage in gossip, but there might be something you can share with me that’ll help the investigation.”

I should’ve known that when anyone uses the word
share,
it’s time to look out. They want to unload on you, or, more likely, want you to unload on them. Binkie was staying quiet, so I gingerly recalled a few things I felt safe in
sharing
.

“Well, Mrs. Conover thought she’d been tricked into participating in the Run for Rehab. She was fairly hot about it, until Connie said there’d be trophies for everybody. She was fine with it after that. And my friend Mrs. Allen just laughed at the idea of tearing down and rebuilding Main Street. I can’t recall anything else. Oh, wait,” I said, wanting to prove to Detective Ellis that I could be open and aboveboard, but without tattling on my friends. “I think a few people came down with headaches afterward, but I wouldn’t necessarily say it was because of what Connie wanted us to do. A lot of people get headaches when jobs are being handed out.”

“Uh-huh. Okay, you’ve told me how some responded, but, Mrs. Murdoch, how about yourself? Did you say anything in rebuttal? You know, stand up and say something like, ‘We like our town the way it is,’ or, ‘This sounds like more than we can take on’?”

I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t the time or the place. I figured she’d find out soon enough that she was biting off more than she could chew. Besides, there wasn’t time for a long discussion. People had things to do, so we were getting ready to leave.”

“Sounds like y’all were anxious to go. Why was that? Was there a problem?”

“No, we’d been there a couple of hours. We’d eaten, we’d socialized, we’d listened to Connie’s ideas, and it was time to go. See, Detective Ellis, if we’d stayed any longer, the hostess would’ve felt obligated to offer us lunch. And that’s not the way we do things in Abbotsville.”

“I see,” he said, although I wasn’t sure he did, it being highly unlikely that he’d ever been to a ladies’ coffee. He tapped his pen against his pad as he studied me intently. “But tell me this, Mrs. Murdoch, what did you really think about Ms. Clayborn’s proposals? How did you feel when you had to listen to what sounds to me like pretty ruthless criticism, not just of the town but of each one of you personally?”

Detective Ellis
did
understand, I thought, and opened my mouth to tell him how white-faced with anger I’d been at Connie and her arrogance in condemning us for being slack, lazy, and unwilling to lift our hands for the betterment of those who would come after us. Then I closed my mouth, afraid of what would come out if I ever started.

Detective Ellis waited for my reply, then to encourage me, he said, “I know Ms. Clayborn was pretty hard on you ladies, and probably accused you of some things you had every right to resent. I’d just like to know your reaction, what you thought as you sat there listening to her.”

He waited patiently for my response, a look of understanding and concern softening his face. “I know this is difficult for you, Mrs. Murdoch. But it’s important for me to know if there were any hard feelings toward her—on anybody’s part. Was anybody angry or upset about what she’d said?”

“I can’t speak for everyone.”

“I understand. But what about yourself? I’d really like to know how you felt?”

And, again, I almost let it all spew out—how I’d felt and what I’d thought and why I’d taken myself to Connie’s house a second time, even though I hadn’t wanted to go even the first time. It was all I could do to contain it all, but years of restraint stood me in good stead.

“Binkie,” I said, turning to her, “I believe I’ll take the Fifth on that.”

“You did fine, Miss Julia.” Binkie and I were standing outside the sheriff’s brick building before going our separate ways. Then she peered closely at me. “Are you all right? You look a little peaked.”

“I feel a little peaked,” I said. “Binkie, did I do myself in by taking the Fifth?”

She smiled and patted my shoulder. “You didn’t take the Fifth. I didn’t give you time.”

And she hadn’t. Before the words were out of my mouth good, up she’d popped from her chair, talking over me. “Mrs. Murdoch is tired, Detective. Let’s continue this another time. I think you’ve quite overtaxed her.”

I remembered thinking as she urged me to my feet that she was right—he should’ve seen my tax bill last year. Of course, at the same time I knew that Detective Ellis had had nothing to do with that, and I’d begun laughing at my own errant thoughts.

“See, Detective,” Binkie had said as she shoved my pocketbook at me and urged me toward the door, “my client needs to rest. She missed her nap today.”

Detective Ellis hadn’t been sympathetic because he’d said, “I have one last question.” He looked kindly at me. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Murdoch, let’s go over your actions one more time after you found Ms. Clayborn on the floor. You squatted beside her, shook her shoulder, called her name, pulled down her skirt, and about that time the lights went out. Describe for me in detail what you did then.”

“Well,” I said, hating to mentally put myself back in that place. “Well, first of all, I was too scared to do anything, as I told you. Then when I heard something somewhere in the house, I knew I had to get out. So I stood up . . .”

“Just like that?” Detective Ellis asked. “You jumped up and ran out?”

“Hardly, Detective. I couldn’t just spring up without help. When you get to be my age and your knees give out on you, you’ll know what I’m talking about. No, I had to struggle to get to my feet, just as I have to do when I work in the yard, so I was able to push myself up with my hands. See, when you’re as scared as I was, you can do what you think you can’t do. But I was very careful not to disturb Connie—even with the lights out, I could see well enough to get up without touching her. Then I ran out.”

“But you had to put your hands in some of the blood on the floor?”

“No!” I said, shocked at first, but after thinking for a minute, went on. “At least, not on purpose. But when I got outside, there was blood on one hand—the left one, I think.” My voice was quavering by this time, and I was feeling teary as I tried to remember where I’d put my hands when I’d pushed myself off the floor. “But, Detective Ellis, whichever it was, I didn’t mean to.”

“Okay,” Binkie said, moving toward the door. “That’s enough for today.”

“She has to be fingerprinted,” Detective Ellis said. “Let’s get that done before you leave.”

“Binkie?” I said, trembling. They really did suspect me, because none of the other ladies had said they’d been fingerprinted.

“It’s just routine, Miss Julia,” she said soothingly, although Binkie didn’t do soothing so well. “You were there, and you touched things. They need your prints so they can distinguish them from whoever else was there.”

“Well, put that way . . .” And we’d followed Detective Ellis to another room, where my finger-, thumb-, and palm prints were taken and probably entered into some database on file in the bowels of the government to be accessible to every law officer in the nation. I could be a future suspect in a crime committed in, say, Idaho. Or New Jersey, even.

 • • • 

As we left the room and walked down the hall to the exit, I recalled Binkie’s remark about my being tired and overtaxed by the detective’s questions—and missing my nap. I removed my arm from her clasp and glared at her. “Now, Binkie, I’ll have you know that I don’t appreciate your implying that I’m senile.”

“Sh-h-h,” she said, grinning as she glanced behind us. “Nobody knows better how sharp you are than I, Miss Julia. But I wanted you out of there before Detective Ellis thought you were hiding something. Which is what it sounded like when you mentioned the Fifth.”

So then there we were standing out in the weak November sunshine in front of the sheriff’s office, as she explained that she’d rather the detective think I’d lost some of my marbles than that I was hiding something important to his investigation.

“I guess I was hiding something, Binkie. See, it was like this. I . . .”

“Don’t tell me. I don’t need to know.”

“Well, somebody needs to know, because it’s bothering me. So just listen. I
was
angry at Connie Clayborn. I was so mad, I could hardly see straight—mad at her arrogance, mad at her insolence in presuming that she knew everything, and mad that some one of us hadn’t slapped her cross-eyed. But, Binkie, I did not hurt her.”

“Miss Julia, I know that.” Binkie took my arm as we began walking toward our cars. “But I wanted you out of there before Detective Ellis knew how angry you’d been at her.”

“Well, but I wasn’t the only one. We all were, and now all I can do is wonder who,
among my friends,
might’ve been mad enough to do what was done. It’s a terrible thing to live with.”

We’d reached our cars by that time, and still we lingered on the sidewalk. “I know,” Binkie said with sympathy. “But I can’t believe that any of them had a thing to do with it, and I can’t believe that Detective Ellis does, either.

“But, Miss Julia, you shouldn’t be discussing this with anybody. It doesn’t matter if everybody else felt the way you did. If you’re now having suspicions about them, you can bet that they’re having the same about you. So just keep everything to yourself.” She stopped, looked closely at me again, and said, “Are you all right to drive home?”

“I’m fine. All I need is a little rest. I missed my nap today.”

 • • • 

I had to stop and pull to the side of the road before I got halfway home, and home was only eight blocks away. It had suddenly come to me that I’d admitted to Binkie something I’d not been able to face myself.

All along, ever since I’d walked into Connie’s kitchen and found her on the floor, I’d been wondering, way back where vague, unformed thoughts begin, about my friends—running each of them through my mind and questioning their hidden capabilities.

I’d heard them—Mildred had been furious at Connie, LuAnne had felt tricked and compelled to do something she couldn’t do, and Emma Sue couldn’t do anything but turn her anger against herself, as she usually did. But even though I was loathe to remind myself—which I did anyway—Emma Sue’s aggressive husband didn’t work that way.

And who knew the level of anger among the others who’d been trapped into listening to Connie’s sneering rant against all we held dear? No wonder Detective Ellis had looked so tired and strained—he had too many suspects.

I rubbed my eyes, trying to think clearly even as I castigated myself for considering the possibility that people I’d known most of my life were capable of causing what I’d found in that kitchen.

How I longed for Sam, so much so that it crossed my mind to turn around and drive to Raleigh. Accost him in his hotel room and bare my soul so he could assure me that there was no way in the world that what was flickering in my mind could actually have happened. Why, I’d even wondered about that lovely Sue Hargrove, who’d spent weeks designing and stitching angels’ wings and sprinkling them with gold glitter.

How could I suspect any one of us? Well, maybe because I had no other options. Except, I thought, Connie’s husband— Stan, the night runner. So where was he in Detective Ellis’s investigation? How many times had he been interviewed?

Those were the things that I so wanted to discuss with Sam, who wasn’t there to discuss anything. With him, I wouldn’t have had to watch my words, weigh my opinions, or withhold anything. I could express myself fully, and, I suddenly realized, I could feel perfectly free and justified to tell him exactly why I visited Connie that awful day when I found myself at the wrong place at the wrong time.

If Sam had been home, I could’ve told it all for I would’ve no longer felt constrained by my promise to the pastor. Too much had happened since I’d made it, and after he’d taken Emma Sue out of town—thereby avoiding me—he could no longer, in conscience, hold me to it.

So I quickly drove home, hoping and half praying that Sam would be there or that he’d left word he’d be home the next day. Instead, Lillian was frying chicken—jumping back each time the grease popped—Lloyd was in the library watching television while doing homework on the floor, and Latisha was running back and forth between them, talking and talking.

“Has Sam called?” I asked as soon as I got in the door.

“No’m, ’less he call while Latisha talkin’, an’ I didn’t hear it.”

At a burst of laughter from Latisha, I said, “I’m going upstairs to put my feet up for a while. If the phone rings, I’ll get it.”

I’d barely settled myself in the easy chair in our bedroom when the phone rang. I snatched it up before one of the children answered it.

“Julia,” Sam said, and I felt the tension in my body begin to ease away. “How are you, honey?”

“Oh, Sam,” I said, as tears sprang to my eyes in relief at the sound of his voice. “I’m fine, but how are you? Have you decided what to do about that senile judge?”

Of course I wasn’t fine, but I didn’t want to inundate him with my problems before expressing my interest in his.

He laughed. “I tell you, Julia, when you’re part of a committee or board or whatever we are, you have to listen to every member’s opinion. Then everybody has an opinion about that opinion. But I’m enjoying it, more than I thought I would. Everybody’s congenial—of course, I knew several before I got here, went to law school with a couple—so we all get along.

“But the best times, Julia, are at dinner. You’d think we’d get enough of each other during the day, but we don’t. We sit around a table in a restaurant and talk and talk, tell tall tales, and laugh our heads off. Then we fall into bed and get up the next day and do it all over again. It would be perfect if you were here. I miss you, sweetheart.”

That was thoughtful of him to say, but I knew he wouldn’t have felt free to go and come with his friends if I’d been there.

Unhappily for me, he sounded so lighthearted and enthusiastic about what he was doing that I could not bring myself to unload a pile of worries on him. I could wait until he got home.

“When will you be home, Sam?”

“Maybe tomorrow, late. We’ll definitely finish up tomorrow if we can agree on the wording of the report we have to submit to the governor. If we can’t, it’ll be Sunday, for sure. We’re watching the weather channel, and we all want to be home by Sunday afternoon before that storm moves in.”

I could do nothing but accept that, even though it meant continuing to carry my worrisome burden alone for another long day. Which, I reminded myself, is what good wives do.