Roots of Murder (28 page)

His answer was calm. “I was down the street at Joe's Corner, having my usual two Saturday beers. I was walking home.”

Nell said nothing, her brain coming up with no explanation. She finally settled for the truth. “You must think I'm crazy.”

“No. But I am curious.”

Suddenly it came rushing out. “It's his truck. J.J. Jones, the man who killed Thom, my husband. He just got out on bail and now he's here drinking again. I was driving around, I couldn't stay at home, my children at their grandmother's and the house is too empty. I wanted to drive someplace that didn't have memories and then I saw his truck and I couldn't just leave it … leave it for him to drive away in.”

Marcus looked at her, then at the truck. His eyes narrowed at the Confederate flag proudly displayed in the back window. “You shouldn't be out here by yourself doing this,” he said. “So why don't I help you and let's do it right.” He pulled out a small pocket knife, opened it, and jabbed the blade deeply into the tire that had so frustrated Nell.

Wrenching the blade out, he proceeded to the next tire. “You just let the air out; he can fill them up again easy enough. Might be stupid enough to drive around on the rims and ruin them, but you can't always count on people being stupid when you need them to be.”

He pulled the knife out of the second tire and said, “Keep a watch” as he moved to the side of the truck on the street.

Nell walked to the corner, looking both ways, but no one, save them, was about. Only by straining to hear it could she pick out the soft hissing of the tires from the other noises of the night. It hadn't been that loud, she realized; only in her head, rambling around with guilt and fury.

“All done,” he said softly.

Nell rejoined him at the truck. Why am I crying, she thought, realizing that there were tears running down her face.

He clearly noticed, handed her a tissue, and then said, “Let's leave him a message.” Marcus carved
“KKK = Idiots”
on the driver's door. His handiwork was crude but legible. “It should cost people to be racists and it should cost people to be drunken murderers. Now let's get out of here. Where are you parked?”

“Right here,” Nell replied, trying to wipe the tears away. Relief, that's why I'm crying, she thought. And maybe guilt and frustration and anger. Four flat tires was small satisfaction. Putting him in jail wouldn't be enough.

“Okay, we need to drive far enough away from J.J.'s truck. He has the kind of temper that might take it out on anything close by.”

Nell got in her car, with Marcus climbing in the passenger side. “Where to?” she asked as she turned the ignition.

“Halfway down the block. You can park in my driveway. He can't go on a rampage against every car on the block.”

“Maybe I should just drop you off and go home,” Nell offered.

“You're in no condition to go home alone,” Marcus said. His voice was calm, even warm, as if stating a mere fact.

He pointed to a driveway and she pulled in.

“Now let's go back to Joe's, find a quiet corner. We can talk or be silent, whatever you need.”

“Thanks,” was all Nell said.

They walked back past the truck, the tires now satisfyingly listing, and at the corner turned the opposite way from the bar with the disco music. In the next block was Joe's, a
hand-lettered
sign over the door, no blinking neon beer signs in the windows, only the soft glow of light from some wall sconces and from behind the bar.

Marcus nodded to several people as he led Nell to a table in the back. Billie Holiday was playing softly in the background.

The barman brought over a beer for Marcus, presumably his standing order.

“I'll have the same,” Nell said to his questioning look. When he brought the beer, it was cold, and it took away the fever she'd felt when she saw that devil truck.

“You still must think I'm crazy,” she said as she sat the glass down.

“A few years back, I lost my wife. She got up one day, said she felt dizzy, and then collapsed on the kitchen floor. I called 911 right away, but it was too late. A massive heart attack. She was
sixty-eight
. We had a good life together. Four kids, got ourselves through Darin not coming back from Vietnam, all the other kids now adults with kids of their own. She got a number of years with the grandkids. We all got to go and she went quickly, so I can't really complain. But, no, I don't think you're crazy. I had almost fifty years of not being lonely. When it hit, it hit hard.”

“It's been a month,” Nell said softly.

“A month? You could be howling
half-naked
at the moon and I wouldn't think you'd be crazy.”

“Thank you. I will, however, try and confine my insanity to misdemeanors of the clothed variety.”

Marcus picked up his glass and touched it to hers. “Woman that can manage a touch of humor after a month is going to do all right. Took me almost six weeks before I got there.”

“It seems so hard,” Nell said softly.

“Yeah, it does and it will. It always will.”

They sat in silence, listening to the music.

Marcus went to the bar and got two more beers. There was an unspoken agreement that neither of them wanted to go home, and they had achieved a communion of grief that could best be expressed in simply being together.

After a few songs, the music changed to Louis Armstrong jazz, and it changed the mood.

Nell asked, “How do you know about J.J.? You said he was the kind to rage at anything.”

“Man that parks his truck with a Confederate flag in this neighborhood gets noticed. He came out of that bar one afternoon, found someone had stuck a beer car on his antenna, and he just let loose. Screamed racist drivel at a teenage boy who happened to be walking by. He might have started swinging, but about five of us came out of Joe's and I guess he was only drunk enough to take on one black boy, not five black men.”

“How long ago was that?”

“A while back, probably a year or two. A few vandal things happened right after that. We couldn't prove it on him, but the suspicion was high. Someone threw a brick through the window at Joe's and people saw a black truck speeding away. I don't think anyone around here would mind if he spent a few years in prison and left us alone.”

“What about his brothers?”

“None of those apples fell far from the tree. Every list we ever made of Klan members had Norbert Jones'—the father's—name on it. J.J. has the hottest temper and hangs out in the bars the most, from what I hear. But given a choice between any of them and a rattlesnake, I'd take the snake any day.”

Nell told him about the probable assault on Josh.

“Two men that'd go after a young boy to get back at his widowed mother? That's lower than despicable. Don't know that I can do much, but if you give me a call, I can get five big guys from Joe's and a few other places to come around.”

“Thanks, but I hope not to need it, especially as I've bartered my soul to the devil.” Nell proceeded to tell him about the sheriff's consternation at finding out his rich cousin was black, his drunken confrontation with her at the bathroom, and the deal they'd made. By the time she'd finished and Marcus had added his comments, they were both laughing so hard they were almost crying.

“I'd give half the hair on my head to see the look on his white face when he caught sight of her black face,” Marcus hooted.

“I won't take your hair, but I have pictures. I made sure I got several of that look. It stayed on his face for a long time.”

“Page two, with one of those pictures. I'll trade that for getting you the five guys. You can trade off this story to the whole town. Get everyone to go after the Jones boys.”

They finished their third beer before finally winding down.

“This is just what I needed,” Nell told him.

“A little vandalism, a few tears, and some belly laughs. I have to say it's been a while since I've had this much fun. We should do it again.”

“We might skip the vandalism. I'm a much better newspaper
woman than I am a criminal.”

With the same unspoken agreement that had held through the evening, they both stood to leave. It was only as they walked out that Nell realized she'd been the only white person in the bar. As if it matters, she thought. Maybe Josh and Lizzie will get to a place where they won't even notice.

As they came out, Marcus said, “We might want to go the other way.”

Nell looked where he was looking. A group of men were leaving the disco bar, heading in the direction of J.J.'s truck. From this distance they were just a blur of shapes, their voices loud with liquor and bragging.

She and Marcus turned, going around the block the other way. As they rounded the corner that would bring them back to Marcus's house and Nell's car, they heard the sound of loud cursing, confirming that J.J. had indeed been one of the exiting men.

Nell took Marcus's arm, as if conferring some protection on both of them. They walked slowly and quietly to his house, sticking to the shadows of the street. When they got to his driveway, they both stood beside Nell's car, watching the scene over its roof, barely visible.

When J.J. started screaming, “Someone is going to pay for this,” Marcus went into his house and called 911, then rejoined Nell as they watched for the arrival of the police.

“Maybe I should saunter by when the police get here and suggest that J.J.'s blood alcohol level violates his bail,” Nell whispered.

“Be good if you could do that without him seeing you,” Marcus softly answered.

When the police car arrived, Nell recognized one of the men as Boyce Jenkins, the officer supposedly looking into Josh's attack. He greeted J.J. as if he knew him. Nell shivered in the shadows and Marcus put an arm around her shoulders.

They watched for a long time, the police taking the report. Finally they left and J.J. went back to the bar.

“Perhaps it's time for me to turn into a pumpkin,” Nell said.

“Can't imagine you accomplishing that, but you might want to get home,” he answered.

Nell hugged him, then impulsively bent up and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “See you Monday morning.”

“Monday indeed. Be safe,” Marcus said.

He watched her as she drove away.

After she turned a corner, then another, she glanced at her watch. It was almost two in the morning. No wonder I'm finally tired, Nell thought as she yawned at a stop sign.

Her neighborhood was dark, save for a few night lights. She quietly closed the car door, as if making sure no neighbors would hear her late arrival and perhaps link it to an act of vandalism on the other side of town.

I'm being paranoid, she thought as she entered the house. Except, if anyone thought hard about it, I should be high on the list of suspects likely to attack J.J.'s truck. It was probably a good thing he had a habit of parking his truck with its racist symbol in a black neighborhood. That added a long—and anonymous—list of suspects.

Nell crept through the house, turning on no lights until she got to her bedroom. She hung up the dress she'd flung off. Then she got ready for bed, but lay still for only a minute. Her thoughts buzzed through her head; there were too many things to think about from this night. She got back up, still not turning on lights, and went back to the kitchen. Using the dim glow from the street, she found a glass and her bottle of Scotch. She poured a generous amount in the glass and started to put the Scotch bottle back under the counter, then changed her mind and carried it with her back to the bedroom.

thirteen

Nell was woken by
the ring of the phone. She groggily sat up, disoriented as to time and day. She glanced at her clock while the phone still rang. It was after ten. She glanced at the Scotch bottle, and then answered the phone.

“Nell. Ah, you're home,” her
mother-in
-law greeted her.

“Yes, Mother, I'm home,” Nell answered. She had the first inklings of a headache.

Mrs. Thomas, Sr. got right to her point. “Someone drove by last night at around midnight; your car wasn't in the drive.”

This was guaranteed to give her a headache. “I had it around back; I was working on the engine.”

“After dark?” Then Mrs. Thomas seemed to remember her
daughter-in
-law was not an auto mechanic. “This isn't a joke; I was concerned about you being out at all hours. Lizzie was very upset at the news coverage.”

“What news coverage?” Nell demanded, sitting up in bed, which jarred her head into throbbing.

“From last night,” Mrs. Thomas said, annoyingly withholding what she knew.

Nell had visions of a hidden camera catching her slashing J.J.'s tires. “What news coverage are you talking about? Why was Lizzie upset?”

“Of course, I haven't told them your car wasn't in the drive after midnight. That would only upset them further.”

You bitch, Nell almost hissed. She managed to keep her voice calm enough to say, “Mother, I have no idea what you're talking about. A little more information would be helpful.” Like if I should be calling a lawyer to arrange a plea bargain.

“Well, you can't blame her,” her
mother-in
-law said frostily. “We were watching the ten o'clock news and there was that picture of you dancing with another man at the Preservation Society function. She was quite upset at seeing you that way.”

Nell punched her pillow, knowing the sound wouldn't carry. “I danced with several men last night, and even some women. I neither made nor received any marriage proposals,” she said tersely, suspecting that Lizzie was less upset than Mrs. Thomas, Sr.

“It was a close waltz with that man running for mayor, the handsome one. And then your car wasn't in the driveway until, who knows, just minutes ago.”

“I did dance with Aaron Dupree. He's a nice man; he dropped me here at around ten in the evening. We chastely said
good-night
.” Nell was of a generation that could call a mere kiss chastity. “Then I found I didn't want to be here alone so I met some friends. And just as chastely left them a little after midnight.” She could also call only a few hours a little; it was compared to, say, a whole day.

“Oh,” Mrs. Thomas said. “Well, we were worried. Where did you go?”

Nell counted a beat and skipped her first answer—“None of your damn business”—and instead answered, “Joe's Corner, over on Government.”

“Joe's? On Government? Isn't that a … colored bar?”

Did I imagine it or was she going to say something else? Nell counted another beat before saying, “I was with some
African-American
friends and that's their usual hangout.” She decided it was best to gloss over that she had been out with a man, even with the
thirty-plus
years difference in their ages; she was sure Mrs. Thomas would see something salacious.

“You went out after coming home from the Preservation Society do?” Mrs. Thomas asked.

“Yes, I went out.” A silence hung between them. Nell filled it. “The house felt too empty and I didn't want to be here with my memories. I just needed to be out and with people.”

“At a bar?”

“Tutweiler's wasn't open at that time.”

“Nell, I know it's hard, but you really do need to pull yourself together and not go off like this.”

“Why? So my car can be in the driveway when your spies, I mean friends, come by to check up on me?” Nell retorted.

Mrs. Thomas was silent, then totally ignored Nell's comment and said, “Well, we've just left church and are on our way to luncheon. I did want to call and make sure everything was all right. It would be too stressful to have to worry through our time at Tutweiler's. I'll tell them you're fine. I'll have them back to your place at around two or so.” With that Mrs. Thomas hung up, expressing her disapproval by giving Nell no chance for a final reply or even a coolly polite goodbye.

Nell slammed the phone down, then gingerly rolled out of bed, shambled to the bathroom, and quickly downed two aspirin. Then she added a third one, to give her headache a clue that she really wanted it gone.

After that, the first thing she did was hide the Scotch back in the cupboard, then washed, dried, and put the glass she'd used back in its usual place. Then she made toast and slathered butter on it, the aspirin already starting to gnaw at her stomach.

By the time her headache had finally subsided to a mere dull throb, Josh and Lizzie arrived home. Mrs. Thomas chose to let them off, not even getting out of the car. Nell didn't go out to greet her either.

Lizzie walked in, slammed her overnight bag down, and announced, “I can't go to school tomorrow.”

Josh had followed her in and was quiet, as if to balance her noise.

“Why not?” Nell asked.

That unleashed a firestorm. “Because I can't face all the kids after they got a glimpse of my mother, the hussy widow!”

“Honey, what are you talking about?” Nell tried to keep her voice calm and reasonable.

“You know what I'm talking about!” Lizzie yelled.

“No, I'm afraid I don't.”

“They had it on TV last night. You dancing with that man! The TV announcer saying, ‘And here is Mrs. Thomas McGraw, the recent widow of newspaperman Thom McGraw, dancing with the recently divorced Aaron Dupree, candidate for mayor.' How could you?” Lizzie let out in a wail.

This is my punishment for leaving them in the clutches of my
mother-in
-law for
twenty-four
hours, Nell thought. “He asked me to dance,” she said blandly.

“And you just had to do it,” Lizzie shot back.

“No, I didn't have to do it. But it was a song I like, and he's a reasonable dance partner, so I chose to do it.”

“That's my point!” Lizzie screamed. “Dad hasn't been dead for a month yet and you're already dancing with other men!”

Nell decided this was not the time to point out it had been over a month. Her temper was fraying, but the last thing she wanted was to devolve into a shouting match. Let's try reasonable one more time, Nell decided, before I bring out roaring bitch. “Lizzie, honey, I can see that you're upset. I'm not out dating, nor do I have any interest in doing so. But just because your grandmother”—well, so much for fair—“thinks I should wear a black dress everywhere I go and only talk to other widows and spinsters, it doesn't mean that's what I'll do. All I did was dance with Aaron. One dance.”

“In front of a TV camera, where everyone could see it,” Lizzie cut in.

“I didn't notice the camera and wasn't aware they were filming. And remember, that's the skankier TV station anyway. They always sensationalize things.”

“If you hadn't danced with him at all, they couldn't have filmed it!”

“Lizzie, be reasonable … ”

“I am being reasonable! You're the one being a hussy!”

“Lizzie!” Nell shot back. Reasonable faded to a dim hope. “I don't appreciate that word when I've done nothing to deserve it.”

“What do you think Dad would say about this?”

“He'd ask why I took a whole month before dancing with someone.” Thom might well have, but Nell was aware it would do little to calm her daughter. She had to worry about calming herself first.

“Mom!” Lizzie wailed, as expected. “He'd accuse you of … of being a slut!”

“Your father had much stricter standards for sluttish behavior than one dance in a room full of people. Like sneaking off and riding behind a boy on his motorcycle.” Nell knew that Thom would probably have labeled that foolish, not sluttish, but she had sunken to trading insults with her daughter. One of us has to be the adult here, Nell realized. And Lizzie, being fourteen, made Nell look like the only qualified candidate.

“Mom! That has nothing to do with the issue here!”

Since neither being reasonable nor mean had much impact, Nell decided on the law of the land. “Look, I'm not a slut and I won't be called names in my own home. I did nothing to be ashamed of and I'm not going to be castigated, either by you or, in proxy, by Mrs. Thomas. If you want to live your life with tolerance and understanding then you'd better give a little in return. Got it?”

Lizzie fumed for a full minute. She knew by the tone of Nell's voice that she had crossed the line, but she was too lost to give in. “Fine. Do whatever you want to do. I'm out of this house when I'm eighteen!” Lizzie stomped off to her room, closing the door with a loud bang.

Josh and Nell just looked at each other. His face was expressionless, and Nell couldn't tell if he sided with her or his sister.

“I'm sorry about that,” Nell said to him. “Are you upset by seeing me—on TV, no less—dancing with someone else?”

“Naw, I don't think it's that big a deal, but Grandmom and Lizzie were going at it like you were some sort of criminal. It's like me going out on a science trip and getting paired with some girl. Next time it might be another girl.”

Nell decided against pointing out how far he was stretching his analogy. A random pairing wasn't the same as choosing a dance partner, and perhaps the sexual tension possible in that situation was invisible to him—twelve and more excited by sharks than girls—than it was to his older sister and his grandmother.

“Yeah, it's something like that,” she said. “It doesn't really mean anything. I actually danced with several people last night, including Marion the Librarian.”

“I didn't know that women could dance together.”

“Oh, we do it all the time. When we get tired of waiting for some man to ask us and the music is good,” Nell explained, glad they had moved on to more innocent topics and that Josh, unlike Lizzie, seemed not to have been scarred for life.

Nell took advantage of Josh being a perfect son and used the afternoon to do the yard work that hadn't been done. She let him push the mower, a task Thom usually did. It felt good to be outside; the day was a crisp, cool fall one with brilliant sunshine. The physical labor seemed to purge Nell of both her headache and the emotions left over from the last
twenty-four
hours. It also gave her time with Josh. The imperfect mother part of Nell didn't mind that Lizzie was alone huffing in her room.

They finished bagging the last of the raked leaves just as the sun was setting. Nell suggested they walk to the beach and watch it from there, an idea Josh happily accepted.

Have I been so inattentive, Nell thought as they walked the three blocks to the beach, that my son hangs by my side as if starving for any notice? Josh always liked to scour the shoreline for new or interesting shells and sea creatures. Usually once or twice a week, Thom would take him there and they would beach comb for an hour or so. Sometimes Nell joined them, and she remembered Josh skipping ahead, just barely in sight. Now he was walking by her side. She suspected if she reached out and took his hand, he would allow her, something in the last few years he had wiggled out of as being “too mushy.”

Maybe he was just glad to have this routine back in his life. Suddenly, Nell realized he must have missed the beach, the custom of seeing it change every few days. He hadn't once asked to go, even mentioned it. Lizzie got attention because she demanded it. Josh was trying too hard to be perfect to ask for attention. I have to be better, Nell thought, be more aware of the places they've lost Thom, do a better job of making up for it. And stop bullets with my bracelets, as well as make the world safe for democracy.

But Josh seemed happy, naming the birds that flew by, even if it was mostly a litany of “seagull, seagull, seagull.”

They walked on the beach until there was little light left, barely enough to get home by. When they got back, Nell noticed there were no lights on. She imagined Lizzie intoning, “It's all right, my hussy mother likes me to sit in the dark.” She found her steps slowing as they got closer.

Nell asked herself the question she probably should have asked at the beginning. What was making Lizzie so upset? Other than Mrs. Thomas, Sr. egging her on. Was it her mother showing hints of sexuality? Lizzie had seemed to like Aaron when they'd met; was there some jumbled jealous crush going on here? Was it an eruption of anger and grief and this was just something to hang it on?

It was probably some tangled conjunction of all the above, plus five other things Nell didn't think of. The next question was how to handle it. Any TV mom or dad would have already solved the crisis. Of course, TV moms and dads had the advantage of being able to write in a reasonable daughter, one who could easily see the wisdom of her mother's gentle reasoning within the allotted half hour.

They entered the house and Nell began flipping on lights. Lizzie hadn't completely been a conservator of energy, however, as the overly loud sound of music, some mournful ballad, came from the closed door of her room.

Nell decided the most satisfyingly reasonable—and the most satisfyingly annoying—plan would be to just ignore her; her
too-loud
music and the dim house was an attempt to gain attention. She told Josh to put on some music. Then they tackled the kitchen, cleaning it up and ordering a pizza in the process. Since Lizzie was absent, she and Josh chose the toppings, including olives, which Lizzie claimed she couldn't stand.

The bustle of a rung doorbell and delivered pizza produced a crack in the door. Then the door shut again and the music got louder.