“Oh,” Rose said. Then she added, “That's odd. I thought Sheriff Montgomery was going to come tomorrow and examine everything again. Did this guy say he was with the FBI?”
Mary studied her message. “He say he was an agent.” She reflected on the conversation. “He sound like FBI.” She sat down at her desk, seeming very confident of her assessment.
“How does the FBI sound?” Rose asked, uncertain of what her friend was implying.
“Short words, no small talk,” she replied.
Then Rose asked the other question that had come to her mind after Mary's comment. “How do you know what they sound like?” she asked.
“My husband was not a very smart criminal,” Mary replied, referring to Roger, the man who had brought her to Shady Grove. “For many years while he was in trouble, I learn how all lawmen sound.”
Rose waited to hear more.
“Highway Patrol very courteous, call me Mrs. Mary Phillips. Deputies not too bright, talk too much about themselves. FBI always suspicious, say very little,” she explained.
Rose nodded. She continued to be amazed at how much she was learning at the campground. Having been the daughter of a career police officer, she thought she knew everything about people working in the criminal justice system.
As she was pondering this information, both of the women heard motorcycles coming up the driveway, heading in the direction of the office. They smiled at each other and Rose said out loud what they both knew: “Rhonda and Lucas are back.”
There were at least twelve or fifteen other bikers riding into the park with the couple. Mary and Rose watched as they pulled in, circled the campground, and then returned to the office. It was a kind of ritual with the Boyds. They always met up with their biker friends in town when they returned to West Memphis after one of their trips. After a brief reunion, the group always followed them into Shady Grove. It was a kind of Welcome Wagon greeting, a means of saying, We're home and we're making a lot of noise!
After a few minutes, Lucas and his wife, the owners of Shady Grove, entered the office. This time they had been gone for about three weeks, sailing near the Gulf of Mexico. They went there every year to help in a village somewhere on the east coast of Mexico. They built houses and did work on the school and the church. They also collected clothes and money for months and then took a boatload of supplies to the people at least twice a year.
“Well, little sisters,” Lucas said as he greeted his two friends, giving each a kiss on the cheek.
Rhonda walked in behind her husband and hugged Mary and Rose. They had both removed their helmets and appeared tired from their journey from where they sometimes docked their boat, down at the Arkansas-Louisiana state border. It was about a three-hour ride.
“I thought you wouldn't be back until the end of the month,” Rose said, helping Rhonda take off her thick leather jacket. Rhonda's long red hair cascaded down along her shoulders. Rose had always thought the campground owner was beautiful, even though she was somewhat rough around the edges.
“Ah, little sister,” Lucas replied, “the sheriff ended our mission work once again.” Lucas took his wife's jacket and placed it on the coat tree by the table and then removed his and placed it there, as well.
“I tell him you are not to be disturbed,” Mary said, sounding a bit irritated. She always tried hard to protect her employers and friends.
“Don't worry about it, Mary,” Rhonda responded. “I wanted to see Mama anyway,” she added.
“Did the doctor say everything was okay?” she asked Rose.
Rose nodded, remembering her early trip to the doctor's office. It seemed like days ago to her, given everything else that had happened. “She was released from his care this morning. However, she did request another month with her physical therapist.”
“Leonard,” both Lucas and Rhonda said at the same time. They knew Ms. Lou Ellen's appreciation for the young man who had been working with her for more than six months. They exchanged glances and Lucas winked at his wife.
“Well, bless the Lord,” Ms. Lou Ellen's son-in-law added. “She does have a taste for men.”
“Yeah, apparently even the reincarnated ones,” Rose added.
Rhonda and Lucas seemed puzzled.
Mary made a hissing noise, understanding that Rose was referring to the dog. She waved her hand across her face.
Rhonda started to ask for an explanation but then proceeded to question them about the murder and what had happened that day at Shady Grove.
Rose reported everything to the couple. She told them about finding the man earlier in the day, how he had apparently been strangled, the destruction in his trailer, and how he had traveled alone with the three-legged dog that was now staying in the cabin next door. After she gave them all the information she had that she was willing to share, she paused.
She knew upon hearing such sad news that Lucas would want to pray. They all bowed their heads while he uttered a short prayer for the dead man and his family and for those affected by his death. He ended with words of gratitude for the safe journey he and his wife had enjoyed and for the good news about his mother-in-law.
“Amen,” he said, nodding as he did so. He seemed pleased with the blessings bestowed on them.
“Well,” Rose said, breaking the silence after the prayer. She glanced up at Lucas and Rhonda, their faces aglow with goodness.
Rose remembered how surprised she'd been when she first met them, how she'd thought that to see them with their tattoos and motorcycle regalia, no one would believe Lucas and Rhonda were devoted people of faith.
Their faith wasn't false. It wasn't something they tried to use as a means to say they were better than anyone else. Their commitment was based on the fact that they knew all about hitting rock bottom and they recognized they would have never found their way up had they not had a little help from a higher power. It was as simple to them both as taking twelve steps to sobriety.
Once they got out of prison and made a life for themselves, Lucas and Rhonda didn't become like a lot of folks who hid behind the walls of a church, claiming that they deserved to be there and that they therefore had the right to keep others out.
Rose saw something different in this couple than she remembered seeing in the people she knew from the church pews of her hometown. The Boyds never forgot where it was they'd come from and they never looked at anybody else with the thought that they shouldn't be welcomed or couldn't be saved.
Rose said her own quiet prayer, enjoying a moment of clarity, and then continued what she had been about to say to her friends.
“So, I'm tired and I'm going to go to my trailer and fix me some dinner. It's been a jam-packed day for me,” she said, reaching for the door.
She turned to Lucas and Rhonda. “I'm sorry that you had to leave your work. I know how important that is for you.”
“Little sister,” Lucas said as he jumped up from his seat at the table and held open the door, “you are also very important to this family. Rhonda and I were speaking of it just last evening. Like our dear Mary, you are a gift from God to Shady Grove.” He smiled and his big round face shone.
“He's right, Rose,” Rhonda added from her seat at the table. “We thank you for taking care of Mama and for just being here.”
“Well, I'm glad you feel that way, since I'm starting to think maybe I brought you bad luck when I came.” She turned and looked out to the area where the murder victim had been found. “Two dead men in less than a year,” she added somberly.
“Sister Rose, did you ever think that maybe God sent you here for us to be better equipped to handle the deaths of those two dead men?” Lucas asked. “Maybe you're the egg before the chickens,” he added with a wink.
“Dead chickens,” Rose replied. “But thank you, that's a lovely sentiment just the same. And no, I hadn't thought of that.”
Lucas touched her on the shoulder.
“Good night, Rose,” Rhonda called out. “Get some rest.”
“See you in the morning,” Mary added.
“Good night,” the nurse replied as she walked out of the office and headed toward her home.
ELEVEN
Rose decided to walk up the path, turning to head along the river before returning to her camper. She wanted to sort through the events of the day, try to think about what she needed to do next.
The bracelet bumped against her leg and she realized that she would not be able to get to bed early like she wanted. Instead, if she followed Ms. Lou Ellen's advice, she would have to wait a couple of hours until everyone was asleep in their campers. She would then have to walk around to the far side of the campground and drop the jewelry somewhere near the trailer now marked with bright yellow caution tape, keeping people away from the site.
She stared down at her watch to see the time and wondered who would be the one to discover the bracelet and whether or not it would fall into the right hands, the hands of the dead man's family.
She thought of a greedy deputy or a curious fisherman and how the bracelet could be lost forever if found by the wrong person. And with that thought, she considered not returning the jewelry to where she had found it, but, rather, waiting until she knew the name of the next of kin and then just sending it straight to them. She moved along the shadows of the descending darkness, unsure of exactly what to do. She stopped at the edge of the water, near one of the small crepe myrtle trees, and sat down.
She reached inside and pulled the now-familiar piece of jewelry out of her pocket. She held it in her hands and then glanced around to see that no one was nearby. When she was sure that she was alone, she clasped the thick cuff-style bracelet around her right wrist. She carefully squeezed the two ends and held up her arm to see how it looked.
In the dimming light of the day, she could make out only the edges of the jewelry. She could not see any of the symbols or even the large turquoise stone. She reached out with her left hand and held the bracelet and her arm against her chest. The dead man's belonging, she thought, somehow connected her to him, and she leaned her head back so that she completely rested against the trunk.
Rose listened to the waves rolling against the shore and considered a family living somewhere hundreds of miles away that could, just at that moment, be finding out about the death of their loved one. Since hearing the recent phone call between Mary and the FBI agent, she knew that the dead man's identity was known and that at some time during the day or during that evening, someone was breaking the news.
She thought about how the next of kin would be given the details. She considered a family preparing to gather around a dinner table, expecting to enjoy a meal together, and receiving a knock on the door or the ring of the phone, which would suddenly change everything about the night, their weeks to come, probably even their lives.
She thought of a grandchild's grief, the littlest one wanting to understand what had happened to the oldest member of the family, the questions about death that a young person so innocently asks. She considered a wife, though she had seen no wedding band on the dead man. Rose thought of how devastating the news would be of a spouse murdered so far away from home. She thought about a son, his anger at some mysterious killer who had so violently stolen away his father.
And then Rose thought of the reaction of a daughter to the news that her father had died. She thought of the sadness, the loss. And then immediately she remembered her own father and the news that she herself had only just received. She recalled how it was, not more than a couple of hours before, to hear a grave report about a family member.
Her father's condition had worsened and at least one person, a person who had lived many years with her as she struggled with her aging parent, a person whom she felt anger toward but whose opinion also mattered to her, had reported that she needed to go home.
Rose held the bracelet closer against her chest and peered out to Memphis, the lights shining across the river. Once she crossed the bridge from Arkansas into Tennessee, she realized, she would be only one state away from seeing her father. She would be only one state away from the man she had decided almost a year earlier she would never see again.
Now she was being asked to reconsider the choice she had made. She sat at the shore of the river she had come to love and wasn't sure what she was going to do, whether to return to Rocky Mount and her father or not.
It was true, she knew, that she had made her peace with the man who had treated her with such abuse and contempt. She had made peace with the ghosts of her past. Mostly because of her ex-husband's kindness and support throughout the years, she had, by the age of thirty, let go of her long-held bitterness at her father. She drove away from Rocky Mount thinking that she had forgiven him. She had also driven away allowing herself the opportunity not to feel responsible for him any longer.
She had been the one to admit him to the nursing home when his condition had worsened. Later, after making all the arrangements, seeing that he received acceptable care, and helping him settle into his new environment, she had felt released from having to be his caregiver, maybe even his daughter.
And now, right out of the clear blue, just like Ms. Lou Ellen's three-legged dog, her ex-husband had shown up at Shady Grove. Rip had appeared from nowhere and tried to convince her that she was still his caregiver or, at the very least, a daughter who needed to see him. He had tried to say that she had one more responsibility to the man she no longer worried about or fought against.
Rose sat forward, resting her head against her knees, and knew that she wanted to be angry with her ex-husband. She also knew that she had plenty of causes. Aside from his early indiscretions, his affair, now, just after she was starting to heal, starting to make a life for herself, he had come crashing into her new world in his shiny gold Cadillac with his perfect new wife.