She shrugged. “Him and my mama. She said he was at home with her when it happened and that I was always getting into trouble.”
I was horrified. Mommy dearest, indeed. “Your own mother sold you out?” I asked.
Dolly shrugged again. “She needed my brother around the house and he’s the firstborn. She just did what she had to do.”
I understood why the guard had called her an even bigger loser than Gail.
“How long you in for?” I asked.
She considered the question. “Hard to tell with armed robbery. Parole boards don’t like women who get involved in shit like that. They think I’m Bonnie without the Clyde. Full term, I got me four more years. Maybe I can get out in two.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m not,” she admitted. She ground out the cigarette and rolled her shoulders, then turned her face up to the sky as if she were speaking to someone a lot higher up than me. “I like it here. It sure as hell beats where I was. I’m in no hurry to get out.”
“Why did you call me?” I asked her.
“I thought maybe I could help Gail. Me and her got to be pretty good friends,” she explained. “She don’t make fun of me like some other people I could mention. I slip her notes with her dinner, and she leaves me notes under the dirty dishes when we pick up the trays. So after you gave me your card, I asked around to see if anyone had ever heard of you.”
“Had anyone heard of me?” I asked.
Dolly nodded. “Sure. You kept that girl in Zebulon from going to prison, and there’s another girl in here says you helped her get a reduced sentence by proving she didn’t know she was smuggling drugs in her boyfriend’s backpack.”
“I wondered where Sally ended up,” I said. “She doing okay?”
“Yup. Got her two girlfriends and a good job in the beauty parlor so she can shop for more. I don’t think she’ll be smuggling drugs for no boyfriends after she gets out.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Why won’t Gail let anyone help her?” I asked.
The girl scuffed the sidewalk with the tips of her high-tops. They were screaming orange. I admired her taste in footwear and told her so.
“Thanks. They’re cheap. I like yours, too.” She stared down at the bright red high-tops I’d changed into. Boots are too flashy for prison since they don’t let the girls wear them in there. “I bet no one gives you a hard time.”
“No one who lives to tell the tale,” I said and was inordinately pleased when I got a laugh from her that was cleaner than the ones before.
“About Gail?” I prompted her.
“Yeah. Gail.” She fiddled with the strings on her apron. “I ain’t no genius, you understand? I’m not trying to pretend I know things other people don’t.”
“But?” I said on cue.
“But I know enough to know that Gail didn’t kill her husband. She wouldn’t have had a gun in that house. She was afraid of them.”
“Okay,” I said. “So why does she act so guilty?”
“Because she feels guilty,” Dolly explained. “Like my mama made me feel so guilty I took the rap for my brother. Gail thinks that if she hadn’t of had so much to drink that night, she might have been able to keep her husband from being killed. It don’t matter to her who pulled the trigger. What matters is that she didn’t stop them.”
Well, there you had it. An uneducated hillbilly girl had gotten closer to the real truth about Gail Honeycutt than a decade’s worth of Ph.D.‘s.
“She talked to you about her fee I bout helings?” I asked.
“Sure she did,” Dolly explained. “She don’t know I’m talking to you right now, though. She’d be mad.”
“Why?”
Dolly looked at me like I was the stupidest damn thing she’d ever run across. “‘Cause she wants to be punished,” she explained slowly. “She thinks she deserves to die. But I don’t. That’s why I’m talking to you.”
“Who does Gail think did it?” I asked.
“She don’t know,” Dolly explained. “But I can tell you something peculiar that happened over the past year.”
“What?” I asked casually, not wanting to scare her by showing how much it might mean to have even a scrap of information to go on.
Dolly lit another cigarette and offered me a hit. I declined. If I ever want nicotine again, I’ll start licking ashtrays. Tastes the same to me. She stared at the burning tip as she spoke. “When I got arrested, the officers weren’t none too nice to me. They threw me up against a wall even when I told them I’d go to the station with no fuss. They handcuffed me behind my back and it hurt. They shoved my head down into the car seat. No one in a uniform was nice during the whole trial. It weren’t until I got here that people started treating me right. And I damn sure never had a visit from none of the officers who tracked me to Mama’s house.”
“What’s that got to do with Gail?” I asked.
“They visited Gail,” she explained. “Gail don’t talk about who they were, but I saw them come see her last Christmas, one by one. Three of them in all.”
“Three of what?” I asked. “Police officers?”
Dolly nodded. “They weren’t in uniform or nothing, but I know a cop when I see one. It’s their hair, you know, and those shirts they wear and the boots and the way they walk.”
I knew only too well what she meant. In fact, my extensive knowledge of typical policeman attire went even deeper than shirts and boots. “Maybe they were private investigators?” I suggested. “Trying to help Gail?”
“Ain’t nobody tried to help Gail until you,” Dolly pointed out. “These guys were cops. Besides, Anna who makes the sugar cakes recognized one. She says he’s from Durham. Why would a cop from Durham come to see the person who killed another cop from Durham?”
Why indeed? “You got mean> “You g there,” I said.
“Well, find out why,” Dolly ordered me. She looked at her watch. It was a cheap Timex with a battered wristband. “My break’s over. That’s all I had to tell you. I just think it’s funny is all. Those policemen hated Gail. They weren’t coming here to say they forgave her.” Suddenly Dolly leaned forward and spit on the grass. “They ain’t gonna forgive or forget.”
“Can you ask Gail who they were?” I asked. “And give me a call?”
She shrugged. “I can try. I did ask once before and she wouldn’t say a word. But maybe I can sneak it out of her. It’s hard now that we don’t get to sit and talk. All we got is notes, and sometimes we get to talk through the back window of her building when no one’s looking.”
“Do what you can, please?” I asked. “In the meantime, I’ll try to find out on my own.”
“Sure,” she promised, extending her hand for a good-bye shake. It was as limp and brittle as a broken bird’s.
“It was nice to meet you, Dolly,” I told her. “There’s no flies on you.”
Her guard dropped and a smile escaped. She forgot to hide her teeth, and I was treated to a pirate-like, almost dashing grin. Then it disappeared. “Can you help her?” she asked me, her twang vibrating with worry. “They’re gonna kill her. And once you’re dead, you’re dead.”
“I’m going to try,” I promised. I watched her slip back inside the low brick building. When she opened the door, a wave of familiar noise billowed out into the quiet courtyard: the clanking of pots, steel on steel, steam hissing, voices shouting above the din. Institutional music. Dolly’s life. One that was better than the life she’d had before.
I signed out under the watchful eye of Herman, the front- gate guard.
“How’s Dolly doing?” he wanted to know.
“She’s doing all right,” I said. “She said nice things about you.”
“Dolly’s a good girl,” Herman explained. “She just had a piece of bad luck. And she always seems to say the wrong things to the parole board. It’s almost like she doesn’t want to get out early. I guess you could say she’s one of life’s losers.”
I nodded and hurried to my car, thinking about that. Everyone thought Dolly was one of life’s losers, but I’ll tell you what—she was happy where she was, even if she was in a prison. Most of all, she was going out of her way to help someone worse off than herself. So how big ooreSo how f a loser could she be?
Spring arrived the day of Peyton Tillman’s funeral. I awoke bleary-eyed to find green shoots peeping up through the new grass in my backyard, and every songbird within three miles busting a gut in relief. I felt like singing myself. I opened the windows and breathed in the richness of warm air tinged with the tang of tobacco from the Liggett & Myers plant on Main Street. Two squirrels were chasing each other up the trunk of my oak tree, and a cat sat on top of the red-cedar fence washing itself meticulously. All I needed was Bambi bouncing across the backyard and I’d be in a goddamned Disney movie.
I selected a black dress with a neckline that wouldn’t horrify the elderly mourners sure to be out in force at Tillman’s funeral. My leopard-skin pillbox hat, fishnet hose and a pair of slut pumps completed the ensemble. Maybe I’ve seen Witness For The Prosecution one too many times, but I don’t feel a black dress is complete without black heels.
The Church of Good Shepherd was on Hillsborough Street, just a few blocks from the police station and barely half a block from the Capitol building. Its graceful spire rose high above the smaller buildings surrounding it. The front sidewalk was cluttered with men in dark suits and women in dark dresses. I was the only leopard-skin pillbox-wearer among the bunch, and most of the female mourners had opted for support hose over fishnets.
I was early, but the front five pews on either side of the center aisle were already occupied by row after row of senior citizens. It was as if, by tacit agreement, Peyton Tillman’s neighbors and his parents had decided to block out his less enduring supporters. I didn’t blame them. Politicians, business leaders, civic activists and former friends who had deserted Tillman in droves when he was alive now crammed the church to pay homage. Fat lot of good it did Peyton now. I took a seat at the far edge of the sixth row, squeezing in beside a large black woman in a floral dress whose hair had turned a peppery white from age.
I searched the front row for Peyton’s parents. An impossibly old couple was seated near the altar on the right side, next to a tall blond who sat sniffling into a white handkerchief. Both the old man and woman were shrunken with age, and the father had a metal walker parked in the aisle by his side. They stared straight ahead, stony-faced, at the closed coffin holding the remains of their only child. No one, I thought to myself, should ever have to go through what those two old people are feeling right now.
The blond at their side interested me. She was at least forty-five, much older than any of Peyton’s typical girlfriends, if you wanted to believe the rumors. She had elegant features—very English-looking—and upswept hair veiled in black mesh. Her makeup was minimal and no Tammy Faye Baker rivulets of mascara marred the dignified grief of her face. She wasn’t a sister; Peyton had no siblings. A girlfriend, perhaps, or a closertse colleague.
“That’s his fiancée,” the black woman next to me whispered, cooling herself with a paper fan she had brought for the occasion. A portrait of Martin Luther King was imprinted on its surface, and his image flickered past my face with every sweep of her hand.
“He was engaged?” I whispered back.
She nodded. “For almost six months now. Very nice lady. An interior decorator, I believe.”
“How come no one knew about it?” I muttered, aware that others around us were trying to eavesdrop. The lady in front of me actually reached up to her hearing aid and adjusted the volume.
My seatmate eyed me cautiously. “I hope you and him…” Her voice trailed off.
I shook my head quickly. “No, of course not. I just didn’t know he was engaged.”
“He liked to keep his private life private,” the woman explained. “I guess you can understand why.” She lifted her brows and rolled her large brown eyes toward the rows of public figures behind us.
“Yes, I can understand why,” I agreed. “How do you know him?”
“I raised him,” she confided to me in a proud voice. “His parents wanted me to sit in the front row with them, but I prefer to keep a low profile myself.” With that, she gave a big whoosh of her fan—sending a whiff of lilac my way— and stared straight ahead at the coffin, her mouth trembling slightly from the strain of sudden memories. I knew she was probably hurting more than almost anyone else in the church. I patted her hand. She gave me a curious look before staring back at Peyton Tillman’s coffin.
Above me, the stained-glass windows of Good Shepherd blazed in the spring sunshine, sending tongues of red, blue and gold cascading over the marble altar. I had a funny feeling that the figures of heavenly angels etched in the windows were staring at me, but then I realized that the sensation came from closer to home. I glanced over the rows of elderly mourners and discovered old Mrs. Rollins, Peyton Tillman’s elderly secretary, looking my way. I stared back and she nodded. I returned the gesture. She’d let me know what she wanted when the time came.
Just as the priest entered through the altar, there was a commotion at the back of the church. The heavy wooden door wobbled a few times before swinging open. Like an extra from a Monty Python movie who had taken a wrong turn, a man with one leg hopped in apologetically, his crutches planted wide and his tie slung haphazardly over one shoulder. He glanced up at the eyes pinning him in their focus, then hurried to the very back row. It was then that I noticed that the last few pews were occupied by an astonishiwhian astong variety of men in their late forties and fifties. Most had that uncomfortable look men get when they’ve been forced to scrub for an unfamiliar function, like a bunch of bachelor uncles hiding behind the food table at a wedding reception. I spotted long hair and beards; short hair and rigid jaws; polyester suits; jeans gussied up with tweed jackets. Every now and then, there was a bomber jacket or a well-tailored suit. Heavy work boots all lined up in a row, fidgeting in unison and creating the constant scuffling of creatures forced to sit still against their nature. I definitely wanted to meet that group once the funeral was over.