Finally, Craig stopped again. “Look, nothing about this outage is normal. Let’s just … let’s never bring it up again. How about that?”
Deni nodded, wondering if he could really do that. “Fine with me.”
He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat off his brow. “Do you think your dad has an extra razor?”
“I think he does.”
“Would he let me shave?”
“Nope,” she said, trying to be funny. “He has a no-shave rule in our house.”
He looked at her like he thought she was serious.
“Kidding,” she said. “He’ll give you a razor.”
He didn’t smile. “It’s been hot in Washington, but I think it’s hotter here. I think it’s time for this beard to come off.”
She smiled. “I kinda like it.”
“I liked it too,” he said, stroking it, “but it is really hot. Besides, I think I’d like to look in the mirror and see a lawyer instead of a hillbilly.”
“Hillbillies aren’t the only ones with beards,” she said. “It’s a noble feature.” She wondered if his shaving had anything to do with Mark’s clean-cut features.
As they turned into Oak Hollow and walked toward their house, Deni noticed the sheriff’s van sitting in front. Sheriff Scarbrough was on the porch talking to her parents, who must have just arrived home.
As they approached, her parents led him inside.
“We got the ballistics report back on the murder weapon,” he was saying in a low voice. “It was a .38, just as we thought. But Aaron’s stolen gun isn’t the only one we’re dealing with. Turns out Edith Stuart’s gun was a .38 too.”
Kay gasped. “Are you going to arrest her?”
“Already did, for robbery. She’s in jail as we speak.”
“Why not murder?”
“Because first we have to know the bullets we found in Jessie came from Edith’s gun. If they did, we can charge her with homicide.”
Deni hadn’t expected that. Edith was conniving, but she didn’t seem homicidal.
“But what would be her motive?” Kay asked. “Jessie didn’t have any money. She didn’t have anything.”
“We’re still working on that,” he said. “We’re hoping maybe the kids can help us.”
“Sure,” Kay said. “Come on in. We’ll sit out back and you can talk to them there.”
They gathered the Gatlin children around the patio table. Luke and Sarah sat together in the same chair, still dressed in their funeral clothes. Aaron stood with his arms crossed, like a sentinel guarding state secrets. Joey slumped in the chair next to him. Deni and Craig stood in the doorway, listening as her parents led the conversation.
“Aaron,” Doug said, “Sheriff Scarbrough needs to ask you some questions.”
Aaron’s face tightened. “Okay.”
Scarbrough set his foot on a chair and leaned on his knee. “Aaron, could you tell me if your mom had any kind of quarrel with Edith Stuart?”
“What’s a quarrel?” Aaron asked.
“Did they fight or argue or anything like that?”
Aaron glanced over at Joey and they both shook their heads. “Sometimes. Not any more than anybody else.”
“Was there anything of your mother’s that Edith wanted?”
“She wanted our money,” Joey said, “and she took it, that’s what.”
“No, I mean before the disbursement, when your mother was still living.”
“They didn’t get along real well,” Aaron said. “Sometimes Edith screamed at my mom to make us shut up ’cause we made too much noise. Our TV was always too loud, Edith said.”
“But sometimes it was her,” Joey said. “Edith liked to play music really loud too, and she would have parties with people coming and going all night.”
“The last time you saw your mother, had they had any kind of a fight?”
“I don’t think so.” Aaron squinted up at him. “Why are you asking us all these questions?”
“Because we’re trying to find your mother’s killer.”
“And you think
she
did it?”
“She prob’ly did,” Joey piped in. “Anybody who’d take our money like that, she probably is a killer. You should lock her up and never let her out.”
“She is locked up right now,” Scarbrough said. “I found a gun that’s the same kind of gun that shot your mother, and we’re working on proving that it’s the one that killed her. There are a lot of guns like that and a lot of people own them … including you. Despite our suspicions about Edith, it would still help us a lot to know where yours came from.”
Aaron looked down at his feet. “I told you. It was in a Dumpster. But Edith probably is the one who killed Mama. She’s mean as a snake.”
Scarbrough didn’t seem convinced. “Aaron, this is very important. People don’t generally throw their guns in Dumpsters, and it seems odd that you would happen upon it like that. Why would you be digging in that particular Dumpster? Did you see the person who threw it there?”
“I dug in that one all the time, even before the Pulses. It was behind the pizza place, and sometimes they threw away hot pizza.”
“But why would you have been looking through it after the outage, when the pizza store was closed?”
Aaron’s cheeks flushed. “I thought …” He glanced at Joey. His brother’s eyes were on his own hands. “Well … it was before the outage that I found it.”
This was new. Scarbrough sat at attention. “You’re sure? Because you told me earlier that you found it after the Pulses started.”
Aaron squirmed in his chair. “Well … I got mixed up on the time. I can’t remember exactly.”
Scarbrough waited for a long moment. Then he turned to Joey. “Joey, do you remember when he got that gun?”
Joey didn’t look up. “No. I wasn’t with him.”
Scarbrough leaned in and touched the boy’s shoulder. “Joey, look at me.”
The boy looked up.
“Joey, it may be that the real owner of that gun was your mama’s killer. None of you are gonna get in trouble for giving me a name. If you stole it from someone’s home, or if you did something else to get it, I’m not going to charge you. I just need that name.”
Joey just shrugged and looked at Aaron.
Aaron sat stiffer. “Thought you said Edith did it.”
Sheriff Scarbrough shook his head. “I didn’t say that exactly. She may have, but we can’t rule out anyone else.”
He questioned them a little more but got nowhere. Finally, he brought the interview to an end. “Okay,” he said, “then I’ll be on my way.” He shook Doug’s and Kay’s hands and they led him to the door.
Before the kids got up, Deni took his chair. “Hey, Aaron,” she said, “I have a question. Today at the funeral and before at your mom’s memorial, when we put the dirt on the grave, Sarah said something. Do you remember that, Sarah? What did you say when you threw the dirt on?”
Sarah grinned proudly. “Asha to Asha, dirt to dirt.”
Deni frowned. “Where did you hear that?”
“At a foonal.”
“But
whose
funeral?”
“Nobody’s funeral,” Aaron cut in before she could answer. “She saw it on a cartoon or something. I don’t know where she got it.” He pulled Sarah out of her chair. “Come on, Sarah. You need to wash up. You’re really sticky.”
Aaron had never wanted to wash Sarah before.
Deni stopped them. “Wait a minute. Sarah, tell me where you heard that.”
Sarah turned around, her curls bouncing. “At Mama’s foonal,” she said. “Not the one with the bush. The other one.”
“The other one?” She looked from Aaron to Joey. They both looked down at their feet, not wanting to meet her eyes.
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Aaron sneered. “She’s always making stuff up.”
“Huh-uh,” Sarah said. “’Member when we had the foonal for Mama?”
Craig had gotten interested now, and he came and stood behind Deni’s chair. “So, is she saying that you had a funeral for your mother before they found her dead?” he asked.
Aaron’s face was turning red. “We figured she was dead, okay? That’s all it was. We got tired of waiting for her to come home. And I felt bad for Sarah and Luke and I decided the best thing to do would be just to tell them she was dead.” His hands were shaking as he slid them into his pockets.
“It didn’t work. They forgot it as soon as it was done. Kept looking for her to come home and couldn’t remember we pronounced her dead and gone. But no, she doesn’t forget the stupid ashes to ashes.”
Something wasn’t right. Deni stared at him, trying to imagine a kid lying about his mother’s death to comfort his siblings. It didn’t even make sense.
Avoiding her eyes, he went inside, and she heard his footsteps going up the stairs. Joey stood still, looking into space as if remembering that day. Sarah and Luke were quiet.
“Why is Aaron sad?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know.” Deni watched the three-year-old look toward the door her brother had gone through.
“Why don’t you guys go play? I’ll check on Aaron in a minute.”
As the children went out into the yard and started to throw a ball, she looked up at Craig. He stood against the wall, arms crossed, wearing his lawyer frown. “What do you think?” he asked. “Do you believe him?”
She turned her palms up. “I guess it could be true. I mean, after a while when you get tired of waiting for somebody who never shows, you finally realize that you’ve got to declare an end to it.”
He dropped into the chair across from her. “Are you talking about me or Jessie?”
She shrugged. “Just trying to relate, that’s all. Trying to understand what would make little kids decide to have a funeral for their mom before they knew she was dead.”
“It’s kind of weird,” Craig said. “Most kids would be in denial about their parents being dead. They wouldn’t want to face it.”
“Yeah, well, they didn’t have the kind of parents you and I have. Their mother was neglectful, and she brought a lot of trouble and darkness into their lives. From the sound of Sarah’s nightmares, I’d say there may have been more to fear from her being alive than dead.”
When her parents came back in, Deni related the exchange to them. Her parents seemed suspicious.
Doug looked at Kay for a long moment, scratching his chin. Finally he said, “You don’t think the children witnessed her murder, do you?”
Kay swallowed hard. “That thought just crossed my mind too.”
Deni watched her dad processing the information, trying to decide what to do. “Should we tell the sheriff?” she asked.
“Tell him what? We don’t know any more than we did before. And Aaron’s sure not talking.”
“Still,” Kay said. “It might be something Scarbrough needs to know.”
Doug finally agreed. “All right. I’ll tell him. Maybe he can make some sense of it.”
E
LOISE
’
S SON CAME OVER THE NEXT MORNING AND HANDED
Doug the key to his mother’s home.
“I’ll sell it eventually, when the outage is over. But for now, please just watch after it and make sure there’s something to sell when the time comes.”
“I’ll be glad to,” Doug said. “Don’t worry about anything.”
“And you can plow up her yard or do whatever you need to do, just like you were going to,” Clark said. “I know Mama wanted to cooperate with the neighborhood in that. And, hey, if you find anybody who needs to rent the house or just live in it for a while until everything settles, let them. Just make sure they’re people who won’t trash it.” He looked down at his feet, clearly struggling with his grief. “I really appreciate all you and Kay have done.”
Doug put a hand on Clark’s shoulder. “You okay?”
Clark’s eyes misted and he tried to blink back tears. “Yeah, I’m fine. It was a good thing, me seeing my mother again. It would have been horrible to have had her die — ” His voice broke and he swallowed hard. “To have her die without saying good-bye. I’ve been a terrible son, you know.”
“No, not at all. You took care of her from a distance.”
“Thought I was doing her a big favor to put her in that house, then never came to see her. I got so busy making money that I didn’t have time to think about her.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Doug said. “You came when it was important. You were here at the end.”
Clark’s moist eyes brightened a little. “Yeah, that’s a good thing, or a God thing. I felt like the Lord was telling me that I needed to come and see about her after the outage, but I put it off. And then when I got your wife’s letter and heard how ill she was, something just changed inside of me. I really appreciate you taking care of her all this time. The whole neighborhood … you’ve all been great.”
“She was a real blessing to us,” Doug said. “A calm voice in a storm. She was the one with all the wisdom. She had already laid down her body at Christ’s altar, yet she seemed richer than all of us.”
“She was richer. And she passed that spiritual wealth on to me. It took my whole life, but I finally gave my heart to Christ too. I’ll see my mother again someday.”
Doug knew angels were rejoicing. “Then don’t worry about it anymore. You gave her all she ever wanted before she died.”
T
HE
B
RANNINGS HURRIED TO FINISH THEIR CHORES EARLY ON
Monday so they could get to Sandwood Place to work on the cleanup and prepare to start on the well.
Craig tried to beg off, telling the family that he had some correspondence he needed to take care of, but Deni wouldn’t hear of it.
“Come on, Craig, it’s a family thing. We’re all going to help. Besides, you need to see how these people live. It’ll break your heart.”
“We have poor people in Washington too,” he said. “They’re the ones who tried to burn down the Capitol. I can get along just fine without having to deal with that type again.”
“That type?” Deni couldn’t hide her disgust. “
What
type? Poor people?”
“They don’t have to live like that,” he said. “They could pull themselves up if they wanted to.”
“Some of them may have been able to before the outage, but not all of them,” she said. “And now it’s utterly impossible.” She sat down and pulled her dirty sneakers on. “I’m disappointed in you, Craig. I thought you had more social conscience.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you shouldn’t be working in government if you isolate yourself from the truth. There are people there who are trying to raise children, trying to do the right things, fighting to survive every day. Some of them are helping with the work. If we all felt like you, what kind of world would it be?”