Designated Daughters (6 page)

W
e left Cal and two of his cousins shagging flies hit by my nephew Reese, who’d assisting one of the Little League coaches this summer. This is Cal’s second summer playing in his age group and young Jake’s first year with T-ball. Mary Pat’s not sure how much she likes softball, but she won’t let the boys leave her behind and she does okay with her glove if Reese hits her easy flies.

Reese can be a feckless screw-up at times. With twenty-five in his rearview mirror and fast heading for thirty, he’s an electrician in my brother Herman’s electrical contracting business along with Annie Sue, his younger sister. Actually, Herman and Annie Sue are the licensed electricians. Reese can pull wire and put it where it needs to go, but he won’t buckle down and get his own license. He’d rather hunt and fish than crack a book. He lives in a singlewide at the backside of Seth’s place where various women come and go. Come, because he can be charming as hell. Go, because he won’t commit. He’s surprisingly good with kids, though, and always seems to find time for his younger cousins.

Rather than take two vehicles, Dwight and I drove to the courthouse in his truck. I figured that if we went together, he couldn’t decide he needed to stay in Dobbs and work, because I certainly didn’t intend to miss Cal’s game. Aunt Rachel’s death might be of personal concern to both of us, but it wasn’t the only item on his plate.

In addition to the usual petty crimes, there had been a rash of break-ins over near Black Creek, the SBI was keeping an eye on a potential meth lab, and allegations of brutality had been lodged against one of the jailors.

An unidentified male body had been found in a drainage ditch out by the interstate. His tats indicated that he’d been a member of a gang active in Baltimore, so Dwight had hopes that the Maryland State Police might take that body off his hands.

The kid who got shot in a Cotton Grove barroom brawl last night was his problem, though, and at that point, none of the customers in the bar would admit to seeing anything.

Unless time is a factor, Dwight always chooses to drive the back roads to Dobbs. Despite all the development our county’s seen these last few years, there are still plenty of open fields away from the main highway. Cat’s-ears and coreopsis were patches of bright yellow along the edges of the cultivated fields. Corn and cotton were several inches tall and someone was setting out a few last acres of tobacco plants near Pleasants Crossroads.

“You ever miss working in tobacco?” I asked Dwight.

He shook his head. “Not for one single minute. You?”

“I know I ought to say yes, but I can’t. I’m glad it’s not being raised on the farm anymore, but in a way I’m sorry Cal will grow up not knowing what it was like.”

“Because it taught us about hard work?”

“And the value of an education if you don’t plan to earn your living sweating in a hot gummy tobacco field.”

“Yeah, it did do that,” he agreed.

Where the fields hadn’t yet been planted, drifts of blue toadflax and dark red sourweed swayed in the warm breezes. Purple wisteria blossoms still twined through the pines on north-facing roadsides and as we drove into Dobbs, every yard sported masses of azaleas in reds that shaded from pale pink to deep scarlet.

“I love this time of year,” I said, drinking in all the beauty of a Carolina spring.

He smiled. “Tell me a time of year you don’t love.”

“Good news, Major,” Raeford McLamb called out to Dwight as we walked down the hallway to his office in the basement of the courthouse. “Tub found us a witness from last night’s shooting and we’re about to go arrest the guy.”

“Great,” said Dwight. “That was quick.”

Tub Greene was the newest member of the detective squad and he was shaping into a competent investigator “real fast for a fat little white boy,” according to Ray, who was mentoring him.

“Mayleen left you these,” he said, handing Dwight a packet of DVDs. Richards no longer worked weekends as a regular thing, but Ray said she’d spent the morning sequencing the various pictures and videos my family had provided and she had made several copies before leaving thirty minutes ago. “I’m not sure how much longer we’re gonna have her.”

“What do you mean?” Dwight asked.

“Well, you know how she likes to be outside and now that she and Mike are married? I get the feeling she might want to work with him. Landscaping.” He shrugged. “We maybe ought to take a look at the kids graduating in criminal justice out at Colleton Community this spring.”

“Hope to hell you’re wrong,” Dwight said glumly.

“Yeah, me too.” Ray slipped on a brown poplin jacket and holstered his gun.

As he headed out to meet Deputy Tub Greene, he held the door open for Sally. Before he could ask who she was there to see, Sally spotted us and waved extravagantly.

“Hey, Dwight! Deb’rah! Y’all been waiting long?” She pushed past Ray McLamb, who stood with his mouth agape.

Whereas her last two wigs had been short, today’s was a mass of long blonde ringlets that fell below her thin shoulders to spring out in every direction and bob up and down across her forehead like wire coils. She wore skintight black jeans and a fringed black leather vest over a flesh-colored top that fit so snugly she might as well have been nude under the vest. Nails and lipstick were also black.

Sally’s idea of mourning?

“Jay-Jay stayed with us last night,” she said when we were seated inside Dwight’s office, “but he had to go home to Raleigh to get his dog. He’ll be back tonight, though.”

“Us” would be her and her husband, Buzz Crenshaw, who owns Crenshaw’s Lake, an RV campground that does a thriving business thanks to the interstate highway that skirts the lake. We’re about halfway between New York and Florida and a lot of vacationers seem to find Crenshaw’s a convenient and picturesque stopping point. In his way, Buzz is as colorful as Sally—his nickname comes from his reckless handling of speedboats out on the lake—and both seem popular with their customers.

Dwight handed her a couple of the DVDs Mayleen had made. “Mr. Kezzie and Miss Sister are coming over to our house tomorrow to watch with us. Why don’t y’all come, too? Around two o’clock?”

“That’ll work for Jay-Jay and me, but Buzz can’t come. He’s giving a waterskiing class then.”

“Still a little chilly for that, isn’t it?” Dwight asked.

“Oh, you know Buzz. He’s well insulated and we’ve got wet suits if someone wants them.”

Like Haywood, Buzz must weigh close to two-seventy, so yes, he’s very well insulated. I spent a moment trying to imagine him on water skis in a Speedo and then I spent another few minutes trying to get that image out of my head.

“Now about the Daughters,” Sally began, but I stopped her because Dwight had suddenly become absorbed by something on his computer screen.

“We’ll be up in my office if you finish first,” I said and warned him that I’d be ready to go in a half hour.

He gave me a distracted nod. “It’s Baltimore,” he murmured.

“Thirty minutes,” I said again.

“Let’s go to the old courtroom,” Sally said when we reached the elevator. “More room.”

More room?

When the doors slid open on the second floor, I saw why. It was the same group who had been in my courtroom earlier. The elderly woman who had looked around in bright-eyed interest was now asleep in a wheelchair, her small white head drooped onto her chest. The old man who had occupied it yesterday was seated on a nearby bench.

“Well, it’s about time you got here,” he said testily. He tried to rise to his feet, grabbing a startled Marillyn Mulholland’s arm for leverage. The pretty young woman who had been pushing his chair yesterday hurried to help. “Now, Grampa, we’ve only been waiting about ten minutes.”

“At my age, I don’t have all that many ten minutes left to waste, Katie. Why are we hanging around here anyhow? I say we take my gun and just—”

“We’re not doing guns,” Sally told him firmly. “Not yet, anyhow.”

“Not
yet
?” I said. “Sally?”

Before she could answer, the hefty middle-aged man who hovered near the old woman asked the octogenarian gunslinger if he wanted his wheelchair back.

“Naw, I can walk just fine if these two don’t let me fall.” Half pulling them along, shoulders humped with what looked like osteoporosis, he hobbled toward the double doors that opened into our old superior courtroom.

As the others followed, I heard the same faint squeaking sound I had noticed when I first saw them earlier in the week but I couldn’t tell if it came from the wheelchair or from someone’s shoes.

All the courtrooms in the new wing are stripped-down modern, but here in the original part of the building, it was dark oak benches, oak paneling, and large gilt-framed portraits of earlier superior court judges. All males. All white. The floor had a gentle slope and with the support of Marillyn and his granddaughter, the old man made it to the nearest bench and eased himself down stiffly. The rest found seats and the young woman showed the other man how to set the brake on the wheelchair.

Sally pushed aside some of the exuberant blonde coils that had fallen over her eyes and said briskly, “Y’all, this is my cousin, Judge Deb’rah Knott. She’s gonna help us.”

“She’s going to listen,” I corrected sternly.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Sally, waving off my stipulation. “Judges can’t give legal advice, but she’ll listen to us and then we’ll listen to her.”

She quickly introduced her friends.

The woman in the wheelchair was Charlotte Ashton. Her caregiver was her sixty-something son Charles, who wore white socks and black leather orthopedic sandals that squeaked with every step he took. “Charlotte’s got Alzheimer’s, but she can still walk and she has good days when she can talk and understand.”

The crusty old man was Spencer Lancaster. His granddaughter was Kaitlyn Lancaster.

“You already know Marillyn. She helps look after her mother-in-law, who’s in the last stage of breast cancer.”

“I’m Frances Jones,” said the remaining older woman. I put her at about seventy-five. She had a finely wrinkled face but she held herself erectly and her words were clear even if her voice was thin and trembly. “And this is my niece, JoAnn Bonner.”

The niece looked to be three or four years younger than me. Like her aunt, she wore a cotton shirtwaist dress in a light flowery print. Both had sweet if somewhat plain narrow faces, both wore their straight hair in bangs. The niece’s hair was a light brown and tucked behind her ears; her aunt’s was white and curved into her chin line on either side. Neither woman struck me as someone who needed care.

“Frances was one of the first Daughters,” said Sally. She had perched on the back of a heavy oak bench with her black leather boots planted on the seat. “Back then, she was taking care of her father and JoAnn’s little girl, too, while JoAnn worked.”

“That little girl’s in college now,” JoAnn said in a soft voice. “Aunt Frances took us in after my family turned their backs on me when I got pregnant.”

“And now JoAnn’s taken me in,” said Frances Jones. Her narrow face lit up when she smiled at her niece, and from the answering smile JoAnn gave her, I sensed a true fondness between the two women.

“That’s why we’re here,” said Sally. “Frances finally told us why she’s losing her house, and we need to figure out how to get it back. Tell her, Frances.”

Clearly embarrassed, Miss Jones said, “Oh, Sally, what’s the use? I signed the papers, it’s all legal, and even if it wasn’t, Judge Knott has already said she can’t advise us.”

“Shit in a henhouse, Frances! Would you just
tell
her?” Sally exclaimed, stamping one of her boots.

The sound echoed through the empty courtroom and old Mrs. Ashton’s head popped up. She blinked twice as if to clear her head, then gave me a polite smile.

“Hello,” she said, holding out a thin bird claw of a hand. “So nice of you to come. You’re Chuckie’s teacher, aren’t you?”

“Please tell her yes,” said the middle-aged Charles Ashton, gently rocking the wheelchair as if it were a cradle. He swayed back and forth and his squeaky sandals kept time with the rocking chair.

“Chuckie’s teacher? Yes,” I said, taking her hand. “Yes, I am.”

“I hope he’s not giving you any trouble?”

“Not a bit, Mrs. Ashton. He’s doing real good in school.”

“He’s a good boy…” Her eyelids slid to half-mast and her hand went limp in mine as the motion of the chair lulled her. “…good boy…”

With that she was asleep again.

“Thank you,” said her son, and mirrored in his sad smile was the good little boy he must have been.

“Okay, Frances,” Sally said. “No more false modesty here. Deb’rah’s heard it all, right, Deb’rah?”

“Probably,” I said.

Frances Jones straightened the collar of her flowery shirtwaist and spoke in a tremulous voice. “What you have to understand, Your Honor, is that my father and mother used to have money. Papa had the Ford dealership here and he made a handsome living, then sold it for a handsome amount when Mama got sick. Before that, though, they traveled all over Europe and they brought home many nice things. Mama belonged to the Daughters of the Confederacy and she had a sterling silver Georgian tea service that she used whenever it was her turn to host the meeting.”

Tears flooded her eyes. “She was so proud of it. I can’t believe I let him talk me into putting that in the sale. I should have kept it for Amy.”

JoAnn squeezed her aunt’s hand in consolation and I gathered that Amy was her daughter in college.

The story that eventually emerged differed only in details from so many I’d heard over the years. The cash money Miss Jones’s parents had accrued dwindled through the years. Bad investments, taxes, and huge medical bills—the sheer cost of living drove her father to take out a reverse mortgage.

“He could have sold Mama’s diamond engagement ring, her pearl-and-emerald pendant, and her diamond earrings, but he couldn’t bear to part with them. They were Tiffany and he had them insured for two hundred thousand up until there wasn’t enough money to pay the insurance. But he said I could sell them after he was gone and pay off the mortgage if I needed to.”