Final Justice (23 page)

"Why, when she'd like to see you bust up?"

"Oh, she don't want that. She says what's done is done, and we have to stay together, no matter what. We've got to have babies because that's what a woman is supposed to do, have babies and keep her mouth shut so she won't make her husband beat her."

Luke drained the bottle and put it in the rack. "Well, like I've said before, it's none of my business, but I don't understand why you don't leave him."

"Leave him?"
she hooted, putting her hands on her hips and staring up at him like he had lost his mind to suggest such a thing. "Why, if I leave him and don't work here anymore, who's going to fold your clothes and give you free pop? Think about that."

She gave him a good-natured cuff on his chin, and Luke fought the impulse to grab her hand and press it to his lips. What was wrong with him, damn it? He'd never in his life thought about kissing a girl's hand. "Yeah, you're right. Now I guess I better go so you can get back to work."

She looked beyond him to the window. "Uh-oh. Here comes
plenty
of work."

Luke followed her gaze and saw Lucy Moon getting out of her car with a big basket.

"She called yesterday and said she'd be dropping off the slipcovers from the chairs in the parlor if they didn't have a
call,
as she put it—meaning a dead body—before today. She and Mr. Moon are going to Atlanta for the weekend to a funeral directors' convention."

Luke knew it was the chance he had been waiting for, and the wheels in his head started to spin.

"Sure you've got time to do my things?" he asked as she walked with him to the door.

"For you, I'll make time. You're my friend, Luke. Probably the only real one I've got in this town."

Lucy Moon had left one basket outside the door and gone back to get another from the car. Ordinarily, Luke would have done the gentlemanly thing and given her a hand, but instead he savored the last moments alone with Emma Jean.

"You've listened to me," she continued. "For the first time in so long I can't remember, I haven't felt like I was wrong all the time, that everything I do isn't stupid and everything I say isn't dumb, you know?"

He knew. Alma sometimes made him feel that way, too.

"You're my friend," she repeated solemnly.

Suddenly, he knew he had to get out of there before he did or said something he might later regret.

"Luke, you don't think I'm awful, do you? Rudy would kill me if he heard me talk like this. He'd say I'm acting like a strumpet, saying such things to a man."

"You could never act like a strumpet, and I could never think you're awful. What we say to each other is nobody's business, anyway. We're friends, remember?"

The smile he gave her came from a place in his heart he had thought was sealed forever.

* * *

That night, Luke entered the funeral home the same way Betsy and her family had, through the unlocked parlor window. He found nothing out of the ordinary in the office. Lucy did most of the paperwork, he'd heard, and things were neat and clean. Going through the files, he found the one he was looking for... Henrietta Cochran. He scanned the bill for her funeral and saw the charge for the white pine coffin had been eight hundred dollars.

Deciding there was nothing else to be found there, he went down in the basement where Hardy did the embalming. The windows were painted black, so he turned on the lights.

It was like a chamber of horrors: the metal table with the trough running down each side to catch blood and send it on to the lidless toilet under the hole at the end for flushing to the sewer; the rubber hoses, still blood-stained at the ends from being attached to a cannula in the carotid artery; and the embalming pump, with its big glass jug filled with pink formaldehyde next to a tray with all kinds of instruments used for pickling a corpse.

Again, he found nothing out of the ordinary till he spotted a curtain in one corner that hid a door. It was locked, but he had brought a ring of skeleton keys. He took one look inside, then stumbled back a few steps, for within was the
real
chamber of horrors.

* * *

Emma Jean was so far over on her side she was almost falling off the sagging mattress. She did not want to touch Rudy when he came to bed, especially when she was feeling all warm inside, like her tummy was filled with hot, buttered biscuits. Thinking about Luke made her that way as she thought back to that morning and every word he had spoken and how he had looked at her like he could eat her.

She had been telling herself all day she had to be crazy. Luke was married, just like she was, and there was no need in starting something that could get both of them killed. Still, there was no harm in dreaming, was there? After all, it might help her through the bad times, till she could finish the correspondence course and get a job at the mill in the steno pool. She had learned to type before she quit school.

She was confident Rudy would let her do it, too, when he found out how much she would make, $1.50 an hour. He only made $1.80 on the line. Then, when she had some experience, she could find a job as a stenographer anywhere, maybe even as a private secretary. She could run away and make a new life. Till then, the only thing she could do was bide her time and try not to make him mad enough to hit her.

It was nearly two in the morning. The grill had closed at midnight. That was the law. No beer sold on Sundays in Buford County. Rudy hadn't come in yet, which meant he and some of his low-life friends had a bottle of whiskey and were riding the back roads drinking. They wouldn't come home till they ran out of whiskey or the sun rose, whichever came first.

She was starting to relax, daring to hope he would be out all night. Hugging the pillow, she pretended it was Luke. He wasn't so big and gruff as he made folks think. He could be gentle as rainwater. She just knew it. And he liked her. She could tell.

Headlights turning in the drive flashed across the bedroom windows. Emma Jean let go of the pillow and sat up. Brakes squealing. Laughter and loud talking punctuated with filthy language. A door opening and closing. An engine roaring. Tires squealing into the night. Rudy was home.

The kitchen door opened with a bang, and she heard him bump into the table, which was right in the middle of the floor like it always was. He hadn't remembered that because he was drunk.

She squeezed her eyes shut, pulled the sheet up over her head, and got very, very still. He gave the dangling overhead cord a yank, and the room was flooded with light. She could hear him taking off his clothes.

Please, God, let him be too drunk to do anything.

The covers were yanked off her.

Don't move, Emma Jean,
she commanded herself, teeth ground tight together.
Maybe he'll think you're so dead to the world, he won't...

"Hey. You ain't asleep, bitch."

She forced herself to do what he wanted, and dreams of Luke faded as she surrendered to the wretchedness of her life.

Chapter 13

Leaning back in his chair, Luke stared moodily through templed fingers. The door to his office was closed, which meant he was not to be disturbed except for an emergency. He could hear the phone ring now and then, the sounds of people coming and going. But he wanted no part of that world now, for he was lost in thoughts of another world, one that was not only disgusting but also illegal.

What he had seen in Hardy's closet four nights ago had turned his stomach, and not because of the gore. He could handle that. It was some of the items in Hardy's collection that repulsed. Collecting eyeglasses and false teeth was one thing, but it took a real sick person to harvest a fetus from a female corpse. Hell, if Hardy had gone that far, he shuddered to think what else he may have done to her. And, sweet Jesus, there had even been a penis and testicles among the glass jars filled with formaldehyde.

But, aside from Hardy and his macabre hobby, something else was crowding his mind... Emma Jean. When he had returned to the laundromat Saturday afternoon, his laundry was neatly folded and stacked in the basket, the ticket on top. Bert was there to collect the money, and Emma Jean was busy with a customer. So Luke had left without talking to her, figuring there was no need to give Bert ideas that something was going on between them. He had been wondering ever since if maybe there actually was. He kept telling himself they were just good friends, yet there was no getting around the reality that what he was starting to feel for her had nothing to do with being buddies.

She had not been at work Monday or Tuesday. He knew because he had driven by the laundromat.

Forcing himself to stop thinking about her, he tried to concentrate on Hardy. He knew he had to have a good, solid case against him. The first step was to hide and watch what happened after old Minnie Plummer's funeral, scheduled for that afternoon. He heard that morning that Minnie's son, Virgil, had bought the most expensive coffin Hardy had because a sideline of Hardy's was selling burial insurance. Since he had sold Minnie a huge policy several years before, Virgil intended to use every penny of it. It was a perfect setup for another coffin switch, and, if it happened, Luke intended to get proof.

His stomach gave a rumble. He looked at his watch, almost twelve-thirty. He hit the intercom switch. "Wilma, I'm going to lunch. Do I need to return any calls?"

"No, I took care of everything," she said, "Except a call from Emma Jean Veazey. She wouldn't say what she wanted."

Luke felt a quickening in his gut. "What did she say?"

"Nothing. I told her you were busy, and she hung up."

He switched off the intercom and pulled on his heavy jacket. It was cold outside, the sky gray and overcast. He hoped it didn't start sleeting because he was going to be outdoors for no telling how long.

He went into the front office. "Did she sound upset?"

"Who?" Wilma blinked, confused. She had already forgotten what they had been talking about.

"Emma Jean Veazey."

"Oh." She thought a second. "No. It was like I said. Why?"

"I thought she might be calling about her old man beating her again."

"She didn't sound like anything was wrong, not that I could tell, anyway."

"Well, if it's important she'll call back. I'm going to the cafe."

Instead, he drove straight to the laundromat. Emma Jean was folding clothes. At the tinkling sound of the bell over the door, she glanced up, gave a shy smile of recognition, then nodded ever so slightly toward a woman sitting near a chugging machine to let him know she was not alone.

Luke nodded politely to Sadie Perkins, one of the biggest gossips in town.

Emma Jean raised her voice so Sadie wouldn't miss a word. "Sheriff, thanks for dropping by. I wanted you to check the new lock on the back door and see what you think. Bert's afraid now that we've got a drink machine somebody might break in to steal the money out of it."

"Sure. Lead the way."

When they got to the storage room where the back door opened to the alley, Luke started to inspect the lock, but Emma Jean quickly whispered, "That's not really why I called. I wanted to give you this." From her apron pocket she took a black sock. "This was left in the dryer Saturday." She was not about to admit she had purposely overlooked it so she would have an excuse to call him. Neither was she going to tell him how she had pressed it to her cheek too many times to count when nobody was looking.

He stuffed it in his pocket, thinking how she could have given it to him out front but pleased she hadn't. "I thought maybe you weren't working here anymore. I didn't see your car yesterday or the day before."

"I wasn't feeling good." It was not altogether a lie. Rudy had slapped her so many times Saturday night that she'd had a blinding headache and couldn't get out of bed.

Luke noticed her heavy makeup and couldn't remember her ever layering it on like that before. Then he noticed the dark place on her cheek, like a bruise. "Did he hit you again?"

She forced a shaky laugh. "Yeah, but it wasn't so bad."

He swore under his breath. "Maybe I'd better have a talk with him."

"No, don't, please," she was quick to protest. "It would just make things worse."