Miss Julia Meets Her Match (22 page)

He moved off, but I wasn’t finished. “Wait. How will I know what to do?”

“I’ll call you.” And he was gone.

I crawled back into the car and fastened my seat belt. “That man,” I said, as I switched on the engine and the headlights. “He tries my very soul.”

“Yessum,” Lillian said, nodding. “He good at that.”

All the way home, I thought about what I had just done. Agreeing to finance Monique Mooney’s departure put me squarely in the criminal column, if I understood the ramifications of blackmail. But it really wasn’t blackmail, and if I kept telling myself it was charity, and not a bribe, I could go through with it. And the more I thought about it, the less I cared. If only she’d stay paid off, and not come back for more.

Then there was the talk that could still reach Little Lloyd’s innocent ears. The best I could hope for was that it would die down with her out of sight and mind. Of course, a story as good as the one about her and my husband could just go dormant until somebody remembered and dredged it up again.

“Lillian,” I said, “I know it’s a sin to want to wring your husband’s neck, but if I could get at Mr. Springer, I believe I’d do it.”

“Yessum, but you can’t, so you do better to keep on lookin’ after our little boy.”

“I know. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

When we pulled into the driveway and walked into the house, we found Hazel Marie pacing the living room floor. She stopped long enough to listen to me go into a song and dance about the problems incurred in hemming LuAnne’s dress. I needn’t have bothered, because Hazel Marie had more on her mind than what Lillian and I had been doing or where we’d been doing it. Of course, if she’d known our true destination, it would’ve been a different story.

“Y’all, I got to go to bed,” Lillian said, as she headed for the stairs. “It past my bedtime.”

“Yes, run on, Lillian,” I said. “I know you’re tired after sitting on the floor, pinning and repinning that dress a dozen times.”

She gave me a frowning glance, and I thought I’d better ease up on the LuAnne story. With her hand on the bannister, she said to Hazel Marie, “Both them chil’ren sleepin’?”

“Yes, I just checked on them and they’re sleeping like logs. Good night, Lillian. Sleep well.”

“Yessum, I aim to.” And she went on up the stairs.

“Now, Hazel Marie,” I said, taking a seat in one of the Victorian chairs by the fireplace. “I can see you’re all up in arms about something. What’s bothering you?”

“Why, the same old thing!” She flung out her arms as she took another turn around the room. “J. D. Pickens, of course. There’s no doubt about it, Miss Julia.
Something
—I don’t know what—is going on with him. There’s something he’s not telling me. He’s being entirely too secretive.”

Well, she’d certainly hit that nail on the head, but I had to steer her away from it. “He has to be secretive, Hazel Marie. That’s the nature of his job. You can’t blame him for keeping a confidence when that’s what his business is based on.”

She stopped and stood over me, her hands on her hips. “That’s just the thing. I don’t believe he’s on a job. I don’t believe he has a case or a client. And I don’t believe he has to be out of touch. Anybody can get to a telephone, and he has a cell phone on him all the time. I know, because it’s forever ringing at the most inopportune times.” She whirled around, then narrowed her eyes. “He’s hiding something from me. I know he is, because it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

This line of thinking had to be nipped in the bud, so I said, “I can’t imagine why you’d think such a thing.”

“If you knew him like I do, you’d know why. I can read him like a book. And if he was on a regular case, I wouldn’t mind so much. But he’s not. He’s doing something else, and he doesn’t want me to know about it.”

I gripped the arms of my chair. “Be reasonable, Hazel Marie. What else could he be doing?”

She blew out a long breath, then ground her teeth. “He’s seeing somebody, that’s what. Why else would he put me off when I said we wanted to move back in with him? There’s not a case in the world that would’ve kept him from running over here and getting us that very day. How long would it have taken? An hour? Less than that, even. Or he could’ve said he had to meet a client or something, and for me to just pack up and come on. But no, he said he’d be out of touch for a week or more, and for me to stay here.”

“He just didn’t want you and Little Lloyd to be by yourselves,” I said, finding myself in the position of defending that world-renowned ladykiller. “Better for you to stay here until he could be at home with you.”

“Yes,” she said, frowning darkly, “so who is
he
at home with?”

“Oh, Hazel Marie, I don’t think—”

“Well, I do. That two-timing rascal’s got a woman over there, and it’ll take him a week to get rid of her.”

“Hazel Marie, really . . .”

She strode across the room again. “It’s probably another one of his ex-wives, and he’s too tenderhearted to kick her out.”

“I never thought of Mr. Pickens as being especially tenderhearted,” I mumbled, but she wasn’t listening to my assessment of his cardiac functions.

“They take advantage of him, Miss Julia. You wouldn’t believe. Remember that redheaded witch who showed up last year? That’s typical, just typical!
Or,
” she flung out, “it could be some trashy barhop with a hard luck story who he just has to help. It could be anybody!” She stopped in the middle of the floor, frowning as she thought about it. “Whatever it is,” she said in a low, dark tone, “I know a woman’s involved.”

I thought I’d slide right out of my chair onto the floor. Hazel Marie certainly knew her man. But I didn’t want her to know the particular woman I knew he was involved with.

Maybe I should’ve told her right then that, far from being interested in another woman in the sense she feared, he was working hard in her interest and in Little Lloyd’s. But I didn’t want her to know about Monique Mooney, even though according to LuAnne everybody else did. I doubted that in my calmer moments, since LuAnne had been known to exaggerate on occasion. Still, Hazel Marie wasn’t going to hear it from me.

“I’ll tell you what, Hazel Marie, why don’t you give him the week or so he asked for. Give him the benefit of the doubt, then see how he acts.”

“But, Miss Julia, Lloyd
needs
him!”

“What about you?” I asked in an effort to shift the subject away from Mr. Pickens’s apparent shiftlessness. “Do
you
need him, or is this just about that boy?”

“Oh, Miss Julia,” she said, covering her face with her hands, “I
do
need him. I just feel so lost at the thought of him with somebody else.”

Before I could respond, she straightened up and said, “And I’m not going to stand for it. He
promised
me . . .” She couldn’t go on, so overcome with anger that she trembled all over.

“Listen, Hazel Marie, you need to put your mind on other things and give Mr. Pickens time to do what he needs to do. Our reception for Tony Allen is just days away, and that’ll keep you well occupied. Then there’re the Ledbetters and Norma Cantrell and Mayor Beebee and, let’s not forget, Curtis Maxwell and his lipstick-smeared handkerchief. It’s all about to worry me to death, Hazel Marie, and I need your help and your full attention, at least for the next few days.”

“You know I’ll help any way I can,” she said in a more reasonable tone of voice. “If I can get what he’s probably doing out of my mind.”

“Don’t go there, Hazel Marie,” I warned, knowing better than I wanted to how the imagination could put tormenting pictures in your mind. “Block out Mr. Pickens, and think about Emma Sue and Mr. Maxwell and what they’re doing. And think about Norma and the pastor and what they’re doing. Or the mayor or whoever she’s doing what with.”

Then I stopped, fearing that I’d just added even more instances of cheating and betrayal to her mental repertoire.

“Trust, Hazel Marie,” I advised, “is what you have to have. If you don’t have that, you don’t have much of anything. Take it from me, I know.”

“I
do
trust him,” she wailed. “I just don’t know if I ought to. Maybe he’s playing me for a fool, leading me on, making promises he won’t, or can’t, keep, lying to me. Oh, Miss Julia, I’m so mixed up. I love him, but he’s so, just so, well, he just drives me crazy.”

Well, of course that was it, wasn’t it? I’d trusted Wesley Lloyd, never imagining that he was capable of such duplicity as he’d managed with Hazel Marie and with the Mooney woman and who knew who else. And that was probably part of Hazel Marie’s problem now, having been involved with a cheating man, herself. She knew what a trusted man could get away with. But, far be it from me to bring that up. She’d figure it out for herself, if she hadn’t already.

Then she surprised me. Turning to me, she said, “How much do you trust Sam?”

“I, well, completely, I suppose.” Then I bit my bottom lip, thinking about it. “I can’t imagine him deliberately deceiving me. He’d come right out and tell me if he found somebody else. At least, I think he would. On the other hand, if somebody really tempted him, he might be too blinded by the possibilities that he wouldn’t give me a thought.”

“Exactly,” she said. “And that’s what I’m afraid of with J. D. He’s so easily taken in that he can’t see when a woman is after him. Women just can’t resist him.”

“Well,” I said, “I wouldn’t go quite that far, although I will admit that he has a certain magnetism. Just like Sam, don’t you think? Come to think of it, they’re pretty much alike. Just look at us, Hazel Marie.” I smiled ruefully. “Here we are, two grown women who ought to know better, and we’re both embroiled with such irresistible men.”

She laughed, making me feel that she’d come to terms with Mr. Pickens’s unexplained absence.

“I know what we ought to do,” she said, a smile lingering on her face. “We ought to tell them we’re better off on our own. We can do without them.”

I bit my lip again, looking away from her. A bereft feeling swept over me, for that’s what I had told Sam.

“Yes,” I managed to say, “there’re a lot of things worse than living alone.” Then, since I didn’t want to get into the details of what those things were, I stood up and said, “We need to get to bed, Hazel Marie. It’s late, and I’m tired. LuAnne wears me to a frazzle.”

“Me, too, and I didn’t even go with you.” Hazel Marie yawned, then said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Have you heard the talk about Dwayne Dooley and that theme park?”

“No-o-o, I don’t think so,” I said, trying for a disinterested tone, even though her question had brought me up short. “What’ve you heard?”

“Nothing much,” she said, switching off a lamp as we left the room. “Just that they’re really getting the park set up, and the strangest thing. When I was at the parent-teacher conference the other night, everybody was talking about how Mr. Dooley won’t let the men and women out there have anything to do with each other. Keeps them separate all the time, except, of course, him and his woman.” Hazel Marie laughed. “But isn’t that the way it always is?”

“It would seem so,” I said, shaken at how close Hazel Marie had come to hearing the rest, and the worst, of it. “But I wouldn’t give the time of day to anything I heard about those people. Good night, Hazel Marie, I hope you sleep well.”

“Yes, and both of us have sweet dreams, too.” She smiled at me as she headed for her room, and I thought to myself that I’d do whatever was necessary to keep anyone from hurting her.

I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when the telephone blaring in the night scared me half to death. I snatched it up from the bedside table before it woke the whole house.

Befuddled with sleep, I croaked, “What?”

“Julia,”
a woman’s voice hissed. “Is that you?”

My eyes popped open, visions of wrecks on highways and late night heart attacks running through my head. “What?”

“Are you awake?”

“Give me a minute.” I sat up in bed, preparing myself to hear of some tragic event. “Who is this?”

“Emma Sue,”
she said, as if I should’ve known. “Listen, Julia, Larry hasn’t come home.”

“Oh, my goodness,” I said, swinging my feet onto the floor and fearing the worst, ambulances and emergency rooms running through my mind. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know. About three, I guess. I’ve got to do something.”

“Of course you do. I’ll go with you. Is he at the hospital?”

“Well, that’s where he
said
he’d be. The Ewell family called him hours ago to come up and sit with them. But, Julia, that old man’s been dying for months, so why would they need Larry tonight, and all night long, too? Besides, I tried to call him there, and the switchboard said he’s not answering his page. So, see?”

“Uh, no, Emma Sue, I don’t see. I thought he was hurt or sick or something.”

“No, I’m the one who’s hurt and sick.” Emma Sue broke down then and began to cry. Before I could offer to come to her aid, she said in a muffled voice, “I’m going after him, Julia. I’m going to catch them red-handed, and I don’t care who knows it. I’ve prayed about it till I’m blue in the face, and it just keeps on and on. It’s time for some action, because I’ve put up with it long enough.”

I rubbed my hand across my face, trying to come to grips with what she was saying. Although after what I’d overheard in the pastor’s study, I knew what she was talking about. “Emma Sue, it’s the middle of the night.”

“Well, I know that,” she hissed, like I was dense for not understanding. “It’s the best time to catch them. Julia, I need you to go with me. I’m scared to go by myself.”

I grabbed the bedpost and pulled myself to my feet. “Where, Emma Sue? Where’re you going?”

“To
Norma’s.
Don’t tell me you didn’t know. She’s been after him for the longest time, and now . . .” Emma Sue’s voice broke, “he’s
succumbed.
”