Not one to be intimidated by a former clerk, I immediately held out my hand and said, “Julia Murdoch, Mr. Wooten. And this is Mr. J.D. Pickens. We’re here on behalf of my husband, Sam Murdoch. Actually, though, on behalf of Cassie when you get down to it. I’m sure you’ve heard of the break-in at Sam’s house and we’re anxious to get to the bottom of it, as I expect you are, too.”
William Wooten quickly changed his tune, asking us to have a seat and ordering Cassie to the kitchen for iced tea, which both Mr. Pickens and I refused. The two of us sat on the sofa in front of a window, Cassie took a straight chair, and William resumed his seat in a Barcalounger.
“I wondered when you’d get around to it,” William Wooten said expansively. “Soon as I heard about that break-in, I told Cassie that Murdoch would be sniffing around again. Didn’t I, Cassie?”
Cassie nodded, I thought somewhat hesitantly. I also noted that she kept looking at her husband, waiting to follow his lead, which he seemed to think his right.
Mr. Pickens jumped in. “Murdoch wants to know if you have any thoughts on who might have stolen the cassettes and the records of the people he interviewed. You might also be interested to know that the original records are missing from the courthouse. He’s anxious that they not be in the wrong hands, as you must be, too.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” William said, “all that stuff would be better off at the bottom of the river. Murdoch came in here when I was gone and, I’ll tell you the truth, Cassie don’t know what she’s sayin’ half the time.” He glared at his wife. “Told him all kinds of things better left unsaid and forgotten. She knows better now.”
Cassie’s face reddened as she looked at her hands knotted in her lap.
“Oh,” I said, wanting to reassure her, “but you know that Sam would respect anything that shouldn’t have been said. The problem now is that we don’t know if the person who has them will do the same.”
Mr. Pickens frowned at me and said, “I assure you, Mr. Wooten, that we’re not here to go over the past. We’re here only to see if you have any idea of who might have that information now.”
Mr. Wooten snapped up his recliner. “I’m gonna tell you something,” he said in a belligerent tone, “and you can take it straight back to Sam Murdoch. I don’t appreciate him coming in here to talk to my wife when I’m not here, and frankly I don’t care if he never finds ’em. Cassie doesn’t have the sense she was born with, and he took advantage of her.” He raised a finger, then pointed it at Mr. Pickens. “And furthermore, you got no right to come in here, upsettin’ her and wantin’ to dig into things that’re none of your business. Cassie’s a different woman now.” He leaned back. “Tell ’em, Cassie.”
Shocked, I glanced uncomfortably at Cassie, embarrassed for her and angered by her husband’s outburst. Her hands were twisting in her lap, splotches of red on her cheeks, as she murmured a few words.
“Speak up,” William Wooten demanded. “You got nothing to be ashamed of.”
She looked up, but not at us. Her eyes gazed at something in the distance. “I found the Lord,” she said.
“That’s right,” her husband said, nodding with approval. “I led her to the Lord, and now she’s a born-again, church-goin’ woman. Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Except,” he said with a glare at me, “when somebody like Sam Murdoch wants to rake it all up again. But Cassie knows better now, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she murmured, looking at her hands again. “I won’t talk about it any more, William.”
“Well,” Mr. Pickens repeated, “we’re not here to go over anything again. We just want to know if you have any ideas about who could’ve stolen the records and interviews, that’s all.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree then,” Mr. Wooten told him. “Cassie and me got nothing to say about any of it. Cassie’s learned her lesson, haven’t you, girl?”
“Praise God, I have,” Cassie said, her voice gaining in strength. “I haven’t put a foot wrong in forty years, have I, William?”
“Not if you don’t count yappin’ off to Murdoch,” he said with a tight-lipped grimace that seemed to pass for a smile. “And not if you don’t count that meatloaf you fed me last night.”
Lord, I’d had enough of him. I stood, thanked them for their time and walked out. Mr. Pickens had no recourse but to follow.
Chapter 24
“My word, Mr. Pickens,” I said as he backed the car out of the driveway and headed toward Delmont. “That was the most down-trodden, repressed woman I’ve ever seen. I felt like smacking William Wooten out of that Barcalounger.”
Mr. Pickens nodded. “Too bad we didn’t catch her alone like Sam did.”
“That’s true. But don’t you know she’s suffered because of it.” After a few minutes, I went on. “You know what I think? I think William Wooten could be our thief. He certainly wasn’t pleased that Cassie had talked to Sam, and I wouldn’t put it past him to make sure her records never saw the light of day.”
“I had the same thought,” Mr. Pickens said, surprising me that the two of us could agree on anything. “But without any evidence . . .” He shrugged. “Anyway, I slipped my card under a coaster, so maybe she’ll find it and call.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. But I’ll tell you something else we can do. Or I can do. I’ll try to get Cassie off by herself—invite her to lunch or something, and get her talking again. The woman is starved for a little kindness. I mean, Mr. Pickens, you should’ve heard her at that Church Women United meeting. I couldn’t shut her up. Not that I wanted to, but still.” I stopped, thinking of how needy Cassie Wooten had seemed that day. “And you know something else? I think I recall hearing Emma Sue Ledbetter talking about some kind of women’s ecumenical counsel she helped form. That’s my preacher’s wife, you know. Anyway, she happened to mention that Cassie Wooten was on it, too, representing her church. I remember being surprised, not about Cassie but about Emma Sue, since Pastor Ledbetter is not at all ecumenically inclined.”
Mr. Pickens didn’t seem interested in anybody’s church activities, ecumenical or not. He just kept driving, but I thought that, if the opportunity presented itself, I’d ask Emma Sue in a roundabout way what she thought of Cassie.
Unable to stand the silence, I tried another tack. “I really don’t want to pry into private matters, but did Sam tell you what Cassie did? She just doesn’t seem the type to get in trouble with the law.”
“Look in my briefcase,” Mr. Pickens said. “Sam wrote out what he could remember from the records.” He smiled, a little grimly, I thought. “You might be surprised.”
I reached back for the briefcase, unlatched it on my lap and drew out several sheets of paper filled with Sam’s scribbled recollections of the information he’d gathered on each of the people we were to visit.
“Let’s see,” I said, flipping through the pages. “Here’s Cassie’s. Oh, my word.
Cassie? Cassie Wooten?
Mr. Pickens, I can’t believe this. Sam’s got down here that she was accused by a neighbor—this was in 1966—of harrassment. Making threatening phone calls and splashing paint on the house, and, oh, my goodness, she was arrested for being drunk and disorderly and being a public nuisance, too. Not once, but three times, and resisting arrest every time. This is unbelievable. Oh, wait a minute.” I read through Sam’s notes again, comparing one page to another. “Did you notice this? Ted Tillman had the same prosecutor and the same judge as Cassie. You reckon that means anything? Well, I guess not. They had different defense attorneys. Not that they needed defending since none of the cases went anywhere.” I blew out my breath, just done in by what I’d learned about Cassie Wooten’s run-ins with the law. “This is just so hard to take in. I can’t imagine her, or any woman I know, being drunk and disorderly, and a public nuisance, too. It’s so . . . unladylike. Of course, all of us have some regrets about what we’ve done in the past.” I gave Mr. Pickens a hard look that he didn’t notice. “How reassuring, though, that some of us can redeem those errors before it’s too late. All it might take is saying you’re sorry and that you’ll try to do better.”
I waited for a response and didn’t get one. So I tried again, since it’s incumbent upon any well-behaved person to make conversation when in polite company, and to
carry
the conversation when in impolite company. “Well, anyway,” I said, making the effort since he seemed bound and determined not to, “maybe it was the sheriff’s fault that none of these people were convicted of anything. Have you thought of that? Maybe his deputies lost evidence or something.”
“Could be,” Mr. Pickens agreed, making this a most unusual day to have a comment of mine approved twice in a row. “Sam’s thinking along those lines, too. But he knew the sheriff back then and finds that hard to believe. He told me he can’t find any connection between the sheriff and these few people that would warrant the special treatment they got.”
“As far as I can see,” I said, shuffling through the pages again, “there’s no connection among the people themselves. Let’s see, there’s four, no, five people counting Rafe Feldman, but we can’t count him, and we’ve seen two out of the four, Ted Tillman and Cassie Wooten. As unlikely a pair as you could imagine. What would they have in common, except a lot of arrests and no convictions?”
“That’s what Sam wants to know, and what, apparently, somebody doesn’t want him to find out.” Mr. Pickens turned onto the Delmont Highway and aimed the car back toward Abbotsville. “You hungry?”
“I could eat,” I said, looking at my watch. “And no wonder. It’s almost one o’clock. Lillian will have something ready if she hasn’t given up on us.” With a sidelong glance at him, I casually went on. “You’re welcome to have lunch with us. Sam has his Rotary Club meeting today, so it’ll just be Lillian and Hazel Marie. And me, of course.”
Mr. Pickens’s mouth twisted just a tiny little bit, then he said, “I better get on. James said he’d have sandwiches ready, and I need to make some notes on our visits this morning.”
“Well, that certainly won’t take long. All we got from the Tillmans and the Wootens was essentially ‘No comment.’ ” Then, recognizing a captive audience when I saw one, I said, “Now I know it’s none of my business, but I declare, Mr. Pickens, if you and Hazel Marie keep avoiding each other, nothing’s ever going to be resolved. Couples break up every day of the week, and if they all avoided each other nobody would ever speak to anybody again. It seems to me that the two of you ought to be able to get along. You were certainly able to long enough in the past to know how it’s done.”
He just grunted, offering nothing else in response. I supposed I was to take that as a rebuke for meddling in his business. But he wasn’t alone in that business, although he didn’t yet know what was at stake.
I sighed, bemoaning the silent treatment he was giving me every time Hazel Marie’s name was mentioned. If he would ever open up and talk about their differences, I could perhaps guide him as I was doing with her. But if there was ever a stong, silent type, it was Mr. J.D. Pickens, P.I. Keeping one’s own counsel can be commendable, but not when somebody is right at hand, just waiting to help.
He steered the car to a stop at the curb in front of my house. “I’ll let you out here, if that’s all right.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Do you want to go back out this afternoon? We could see at least one more person today.”
“After this morning, I’m not sure what good we’re doing, but we ought to see them all. About two-thirty suit you?”
“That’ll be fine, but won’t you come in?” I asked as I gathered my pocketbook and prepared to step out. “Lillian would love to see you even if no one else would.”
He turned the full voltage of those black eyes on me as a little smile played around his mouth, acknowledging my attempt to get him inside. He just shook his head. Lord, but the man was attractive. No wonder Hazel Marie hadn’t been able to resist him. As for myself, I got out of the car while I still could.
I went in the front door and on into the kitchen. “Lillian? I’m home. Where is everybody?”
“Oh, Law, Miss Julia,” she said, coming to meet me in the middle of the kitchen. “I thought you never get here. Miss Hazel Marie upstairs packin’ her suit satchel.”
“Oh, no, don’t tell me that.” I sagged against the counter. “What does she say? Is she planning to leave right away?”
“No’m, I don’t think so. ’Least it don’t look like it. She got clothes strung out all over the place, sayin’ she can’t decide what to take and what not to.”
“Well,” I said, straightening up with an effort, “I better go see about her.”
“No’m, you set yo’self down and eat something. I already got a salat made, an’ she won’t be goin’ nowhere anytime soon. Now set down.”
“I think I will,” I said, as I pulled a chair out from the table. “I’m about to cave in, and I’m not sure I have the strength to face another hard-headed person. I declare, Lillian, I am completely dismayed. What are we going to do with her?”
“What you need is something in yo’ stomick, then you able to go at it again.” She took a covered bowl from the refrigerator and began preparing a plate for me. “Here,” she said, setting the plate before me. “This a good tuna salat I jus’ made with a little fruit on the side. I’m heatin’ up some rolls. You want coffee or tea?”
“Coffee, I guess. I don’t really care, whatever’s made. Oh, Lillian, we can’t let her go off. What has she said about Lloyd? What’s she going to tell him?”
“I don’t know, Miss Julia. She don’t tell me nothin’, ’cept she got to do something even if it wrong.”
“Well,” I said, eating hurriedly, “that’s exactly what I don’t want her to do. She’s not thinking straight. How could she, with all she has on her mind?” I buttered a roll, as one question after another rolled through my mind. Had Hazel Marie decided where she would go? Had she made plans as to where she would live when she got there? And, again and again, what would she do about Lloyd?