One Summer (14 page)

He might not be good enough to sit down to dinner with her, but he was good enough to give her the best lay she had ever had.

The cycle roared down Main Street. With the hardware store in view, Johnny was just easing off on the throttle when he spotted a cop car parked in front. The engine was turned off and the lights were out, or he would have seen it sooner. His eyes narrowed, and he gave a moment’s thought to pouring on the juice and racing by. But in Tylerville there was no place to go, and even if he gave them the slip for the night, they knew where to find him on the morrow.

Johnny pulled into the parking lot and braked, still straddling the idling cycle as he supported it with one leg. The cop got out of his car and walked toward him. A long metal flashlight that Johnny knew from experience could easily double as a night stick was clutched in his hand.

The cop was a big, burly dude, and as he drew close, Johnny recognized him as the police chief, Wheatley, The same guy who’d been chief when he’d been arrested for murder. Not overly bright, but basically fair. At least, Johnny thought, he didn’t have to fear an unprovoked beating.

“What do you want?” Truculence sharpened Johnny’s voice.

“Can you cut the engine?” A gesture imparted Wheatley’s meaning since the cycle’s roar all but drowned out his words.

Johnny hesitated, then turned off the ignition. In the sudden silence that followed, he dismounted, propping his bike up on its stand. Then he took his helmet off, tucked it under his arm, and turned to face the police chief.

“I broke some law I don’t remember?”

“You been drinkin’?”

“Maybe. I’m not drunk. You want to give me a test, go ahead.”

Wheatley shook his head. “I don’t think you’re that stupid, though I’ve been wrong before.”

For a moment the two men said nothing, just eyed each other suspiciously. There was something odd about the cop’s manner, something almost tentative. It gave Johnny, who was used to bluster and bullying from the strong arm of the law, the willies.

“You got something to say to me, or are you just out here star-gazing tonight?”

“Smartass, aren’t you?” Wheatley pursed his lips and tapped the flashlight against his leg. “I got some bad news.”

“What kind of bad news?”

“There’s been an accident.”

“Accident?”
Rachel
. The name immediately sprang to Johnny’s mind. Which was stupid. If anything had happened to Rachel, he’d be the last person they’d tell.

“Yeah. A bad one. Your dad.”

“My dad?”

“Yeah.”

Johnny felt as if he’d unexpectedly had all the breath knocked out of him. It was all he could do to find enough air to force out the single pertinent word.

“Dead?”

“Yeah. Dead. He got hit by a train, where the tracks cross the road not far from his house. It looks like he was drunk, though we can’t be sure.”

“Oh, Christ.” Johnny hadn’t meant to let even that much emotion escape him, not in the presence of the cop. But he couldn’t help it. The news left him raw, exposed, bleeding as if an artery had been sliced. His dad, the mean old son of a bitch, dead.

Johnny clamped his lips together and forced himself to take a deep breath through his nose. He’d learned how to handle himself in a crisis because he’d had to. He’d also learned that, one way or another, if he could manage to keep breathing, the crisis would pass.

“I hate to ask you this, but we need somebody to identify the body. It’s just a formality, there’s no doubt about who it is. But—”

“Sure.”

“I’ll drive you over. Come on.”

It was the first time in his life he’d ridden in a cop car and not been under arrest.

14

R
achel heard the news the next morning in church.

“I say it’s God’s judgment on the whole wicked family.”

“Oh, no, Idell!”

“Well, I do! Those Harrises are all bad, all of ’em, and I feel God in His wisdom must be meanin’ to rid the world of ’em one by one to keep decent folks safe. At least, I hope so. I’ll sleep better nights when they’re all gone.”

“But it was such an awful way to go!”

“It’s bad of me to say so, I know, but I just don’t feel a bit of pity for the man! It wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been falling-down drunk. He brought his misfortune on himself, as most sinners do.”

“But to be run over by a train, Idell …”

Rachel’s blood ran cold. Regardless of the fact that Reverend Harvey was just reaching the thundering crescendo of his sermon against complacency in those who are blessed with plenty, Rachel turned in her seat to address the surprised whisperers.

“Mrs. Skaggs, who are you talking about?” The urgency of her hiss caused both ladies—Mrs. Ashton was the other one—to lift their silvery heads and gape at Rachel. Beside her, her mother gave her a sharp poke in the ribs, to which Rachel paid no heed. Above her head, the Reverend Harvey’s
voice continued to crash. All around her, the other worshippers gave her disapproving frowns.

“Who?” Rachel demanded in a shrill whisper.

Mrs. Skaggs blinked. “Why, Willie Harris.”

At the identity of the deceased, a huge wave of relief washed over Rachel. “Is he dead?” Her voice was lower.

“Yes.”

“Rachel, for goodness’ sake.” Elisabeth tugged at the full skirt of her daughter’s silky flowered dress. Rachel turned around and did her best to resume her former posture of quiet attention to the minister’s words. Truth was, she didn’t hear another syllable.

Willie Harris was dead. What would that mean to Johnny? As far as she knew, he and his father had never been particularly close. But then, she really didn’t know that much about his family or his early life. In any case, losing a parent, especially so suddenly and under such circumstances, was bound to be devastating. Her heart ached for him.

The service seemed interminable. Afterward, the parishioners spilled out onto the front lawn, and her mother, elegant as usual in a cobalt silk dress and tiny matching hat, stopped to chat with her friends, as she always did. Rachel, knowing from experience that it would be impossible to budge her mother until Elisabeth had concluded the after-church visiting that was one of her favorite weekly rituals, plugged into the town gossip network to learn what she could about Willie Harris’s death.

“… and they’re going to bury him in Calvary Cemetery in the morning,” Kay Nelson concluded in a hushed tone. Standing beside Kay in a circle of acquaintances as she waited with what patience she could muster for her mother to go, Rachel was surprised by how many details of the death and the burial to come Kay had already learned. The telephones must have been ringing off the hooks at dawn.

“That seems awfully soon.” Kay’s petite sister-in-law,
Amy, sounded genuinely sorry for the victim. Amy was an outsider, not having come to Tylerville until two years before, when she had married Kay’s younger brother Jim. Thus she could not be expected to fully understand the intricacies of who was who and who was nobody in town. A prominent citizen who was unexpectedly lost to them might remain aboveground for as much as five or six days after death so that a large and impressive funeral could be carried out. For someone like Willie Harris, no such time period was necessary.

Jim Nelson shrugged. “He could just as well be buried today. I don’t suppose there’ll be anybody but Johnny going to the funeral. Unless Buck or the Harris girl shows up. Don’t guess you’ll make much in the way of selling funeral wreaths, Kay.”

Only then, nudged by Jim’s seeming familiarity with the Harrises, did Rachel remember that Jim had been a high school classmate of Johnny’s. If her memory served her correctly, she recalled that he had dated Marybeth Edwards a few times himself.

“Now you’re making me feel bad. I certainly don’t think of every death in town as an opportunity for profit,” Kay protested, half-laughing as she punched her brother’s arm. “And it’s awful to think of nobody going to the poor man’s funeral.”

“I’m going,” Rachel said abruptly. Jim Nelson glanced down at her. Like Kay, he was built along sturdy lines, and in his pinstripe suit he made an imposing figure. He looked precisely what he was, a successful small-town lawyer.

“You always did have a soft spot for Johnny Harris, didn’t you, Rachel?” he said. “I remember when we were in school you let him get away with things you would have hung the rest of us out to dry for.”

“Maybe I thought that his background made some excuse for his bad behavior that the rest of you didn’t share,” Rachel retorted, and Jim grinned in acknowledgment.

“Don’t tell me you were teaching high school when Jimmy was there! Why, I don’t believe it!” Amy’s eyes ran over Rachel again, appraisingly this time, and Rachel could almost see the question in them: Just how old are you? But Amy was too well-bred to ask.

“She was. And she was a martinet, too.” Jim was still grinning. “I hear she still is.”

“Why, Jim Nelson!” Kay sounded scandalized. “What a thing to, say! You know how sweet Rachel is. He’s just teasing you, Rachel.”

“I am not. Rachel may be sweet, but Miss Grant was a regular tartar. We were all afraid of her. Even Johnny Harris. He minded his manners with her like he did with nobody else.”

“Were you friends with him? I thought …” Amy’s voice trailed off as she looked questioningly up at her husband.

Jim shook his head. “Nah. He didn’t run with our crowd. We played tennis and golf. He and his pals broke into houses.”

Kay glared at her brother. Jim’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“He wasn’t that bad. He used to cut our grass sometimes, when you were too busy playing tennis or golf, and he was always real polite to Mama and me. Anyway, Johnny’s working for Rachel now, remember?” Kay said pointedly.

“Oh, yeah.” Jim’s gaze shifted to Rachel. “I don’t know how you could have hired him, after what he did to poor little Marybeth. They ought to have given him the death penalty for that. Ten years is a joke for what he did. At the very least, we ought to run him out of Tylerville.”

“Jim!” Kay cast an embarrassed eye at Rachel.

“I can’t help what I think, and I’d feel like a hypocrite if I didn’t say so.”

“Everyone’s entitled to his or her opinion.” Rachel
smiled coolly. “Mine is that Johnny Harris didn’t kill her. Somebody else did.”

“Oh, Rachel, I’d like to think so, too, but who?” Kay’s voice was gently incredulous.

Jim spoke at the same time as his sister: “Like I said, you always had a soft spot for him. I happen to think he’s guilty as hell.”

“Hey, Jim-Bob, you got time for a round of golf this afternoon?” Wiley Brown, an age-mate of Jim’s and the newly elected county judge, joined them, clapping Jim on the shoulder as he nodded at the rest of the group. “Or does the little woman here still have you tied to her apron strings?”

Amy turned faintly red at the teasing. Jim tweaked her ear and said to his friend, “Yeah, I got time. About two? Meet you at the club. That’ll give me time to eat first.”

“Sounds good.”

The talk turned to golf. Seeing that her mother was between friends, Rachel excused herself and went to snatch her up before anybody else could. Sometimes serving as her mother’s chauffeur was a pain.

On the short drive home, Elisabeth said reprovingly to her daughter, “Really, Rachel, what were you thinking of to talk out loud like that in church? I was never so embarrassed in all my life.”

“I’m sorry, Mother. Mrs. Skaggs and Mrs. Ashton were whispering together behind us, and I overheard something that took me by surprise.”

“About that Harris man’s death, unless I miss my guess,” Elisabeth said shrewdly. There was challenge in her voice as she continued, “I suppose you’re intending to go to the funeral?”

“Yes, I am.” Rachel’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.

“I knew it! You always were the most obstinate child on earth! Why, pray, do you want to get yourself so heavily
involved with those people? They’re nothing in the world but trash.” Elisabeth cast Rachel an exasperated glance.

Rachel gritted her teeth. Of its own accord her foot increased its pressure on the accelerator until they were whizzing down the narrow road. Fields dotted with herds of Black Angus beef cattle and occasional clusters of grazing horses flew past.

“For goodness’ sake, Rachel, slow down!” her mother cried, grabbing at the armrest beside her as the Maxima took a curve on what felt like two wheels. Rachel, recalled to where she was and what she was doing, eased up on the accelerator. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to concentrate on her driving. It had been years since she had argued with her mother. There wasn’t any point in it as a general rule because Elisabeth never changed her mind about anything, no matter how many facts opposed her point of view. But this time, Rachel was not going to permit Elisabeth’s annoying comment to pass,

“What is trash, Mother? Poor people? If Daddy had died when Becky and I were little, we would have been poor. Would we have been trash?” Despite her anger, Rachel’s tone was carefully even. Her sideways glance at her mother showed her that Elisabeth looked affronted.

“You know perfectly well we would not have been trash. Money has nothing to do with it.”