The array of chips wasn’t proof, but they had led his thoughts to a certain conclusion. The second trail belonged, he believed, to the third member of Marlena’s picnic and the owner of the Chevy that had been towed to a Drexel garage. John Hubbard. If his assumptions were correct, Frank had to try and understand why Hubbard had run in a different direction than Marlena.
In his methodical investigation, Frank had found some interesting facts about the Big Sun salesman. He’d been arrested once in Hattiesburg for drunk and disorderly involving a bar fight. He’d pled guilty and paid a fine. He lived at 2121 Kenner Street off West Fourth in a modest shingle house with a one-car garage. Lieutenant Lloyd Hafner of the Hattiesburg P.D. had been very helpful. The Hattiesburg officer had done a little digging and found out that Hubbard was a single man who lived alone. He drove a two-tone green Chevy. His neighbors said he was quiet and gone a lot. He spent a lot of time polishing his car, and for a single man he led a solitary life. He hadn’t been home for the past few days.
John Hubbard was missing in action with Big Sun. Frank had spoken to an irritable man whom he visualized pulling a beard as he talked. The Big Sun manager had told Frank that Johnny, as he called him, had covered a route for another salesman during the first of the week, and that he’d taken up his regular route to New Augusta, Beaumont, McLain, Lucedale, State Line, Leakesville, and Drexel. John Hubbard should have reported in Thursday afternoon. He had not.
Frank moved slowly, carefully along the trail. Whoever had gone this way had been in a hurry. Leaves were stripped from limbs and there were places where a shoe heel had dug deep into the soft ground. He carne upon a footprint and knew he had the best evidence of the case so far. What troubled him was that he couldn’t even form a supposition as to why John Hubbard, if this was indeed his trail, had run in a different direction from Marlena. Why hadn’t he gone to help her? And why had Suzanna left no trail?
Frank considered the possibility that he was following the trail of Suzanna’s abductor, and that he had carried the child in his arms, but Frank didn’t think so. This way led to the river and the swamps. Someone carrying a child would have gone to the road to be picked up in a vehicle. That assumption was based on an abductor who wanted to keep Suzanna alive. If John Hubbard had killed the child, or if she’d been taken by some deviant, some sick pervert who had other plans for the child… . He stopped that thought before it could go further. There was sickness in the world, that much he knew. He’d come from a family of it, and he’d seen it across the United States and Europe, most especially in the POW camp in Germany where he’d been held. There, he’d come to accept that human beings were capable of inflicting terrible pain for the pleasure of it. That knowledge darkened his hopes for Suzanna. And for Marlena, too. She would pay with guilt and grief for whatever happened to her child.
The trail he was following came to a swamp where yellow flies swarmed him in a cloud. The footprints he’d been following disappeared in a mud slick covered with a half-inch layer of rancid water. Frank hesitated. He did not believe the man who went this way could have carried the weight of a child, and pursuing the fleeing man through the swamp would take all the resources of the Jebediah County sheriff’s department and a host of volunteers. As interesting as it would be to find Hubbard and question him, Frank knew that finding Suzanna was his primary goal. Punishment could come after Suzanna was found.
T
he hospital room was small and smelled vaguely of pine cleaner and Clorox. Dotty felt a headache begin at her temples. In another half hour it would be pounding, and there was nothing she could do about it. Walking out of the hospital and into the fresh air was the only thing that would help, and she couldn’t do that. She’d promised Lucas she would sit with Marlena and listen, on the chance that Marlena might say something that would help the searchers find Suzanna.
The little girl was dead, and that’s all there was to it. Dotty knew that. If a ransom request were coming, it would have arrived by now. And what was Marlena doing out in the middle of the woods with Suzanna anyway? Marlena wasn’t some tomboy. She’d never hunted or fished, to Dotty’s knowledge, and Dotty pretty much knew everything there was to know about Marlena. What Marlena was was a spoiled rich woman who didn’t know which side her bread was buttered on. Dotty had told her that again and again. Told it to her face, not behind her back. She’d done everything she could to help Marlena see how lucky she was.
Dotty shifted in the wooden chair and felt the soreness in her bottom. Lucas had put it to her with force and a hint of savagery that she’d found more than exciting. He’d taken her from behind the first time, right there on the dining room table. He’d leaned his weight down on top of her, pinning her to the cool wood. When he’d entered her, he’d been brutal and punishing, acting like he wouldn’t be satisfied until she begged for mercy. He had no restraint. Her hand went automatically to her right shoulder, and she pressed until the pain made her gasp. He’d bitten her so hard she had a bruise in the shape of his teeth. What would Betsy McBane and Sharon Bosworth think about that? She giggled softly to herself as she thought of their scandalized reactions. Of course, that only hid the fact that they really wanted rough sex themselves. Whenever anyone talked about sex in front of Betsy and Sharon, they pruned up and acted horrified, but Dotty could see how much they wanted it. And feared it. What would they reveal about their secret selves if they dropped the shackles of propriety? They were terrified of that answer.
Marlena’s head shifted on the pillow, and Dotty stood up, causing a delicious little pull throughout her pelvic region.
“Suzanna,” Marlena mumbled.
Dotty listened with a tingle of horror. The bones around one of Marlena’s eyes had been damaged, and the doctors had done something to her mouth to stabilize that side of her face. “What happened to Suzanna?” she asked, leaning forward and putting her hand on the sick woman’s forehead. “Tell me.” Marlena was hot, burning to the touch. The doctor said infection was a probability. There had been dirt in her internal wounds.
“Two men,” Marlena said, tears leaking out of her swollen-shut right eye. “Took her.”
Dotty’s hand slipped beneath the pillow and found the nurse call and pressed it six times as hard as she could. Someone else had to hear this. Something Marlena said might lead to Suzanna’s recovery, and Dotty wanted to be sure she got it straight. She didn’t want Lucas to waste time grieving for his lost daughter, though he hadn’t seemed overly upset this morning.
“Tell me,” Dotty said, picking up Marlena’s hand and holding it. “What did the men look like?”
“Hoods.” Marlena’s first tears plopped on the starched pillow. Soon, there was a wet spot so large the tears no longer made a sound but were silently absorbed. “Help her.” Marlena pulled her hand free and made an effort to push herself into a sitting position.
“Easy,” Dotty said, trying to help her. “Be easy, Marlena, you’ve got stitches everywhere.”
Marlena frowned, finally focusing her one eye that would open on her friend. She slowly turned her head. “Where am I?”
“At the Drexel Hospital. You’ve been hurt real bad.” Dotty felt the tears spring into her own eyes. Marlena would never have a child again. There would be no replacing Suzanna if she was gone.
“Suzanna?” Marlena made fluttering motions with her hands on top of the white sheets.
Dotty’s gaze was captured by the hands, the perfectly manicured nails and the huge diamond ring. The attackers hadn’t taken the ring! Dotty forced her gaze up to meet Marlena’s. “They’ve got tracking dogs in the woods now. They’ll find her.” There was no conviction in the last sentence. “Marlena, do you know who took her?”
Before Marlena could answer, the nurse appeared in the door, a frown crossing her face when she saw Marlena half-sitting.
“Lie back down. You’ll pull your stitches.”
“My baby.” Marlena’s hands made bigger loops against the sheets, like something trying to escape. “Find her.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You aren’t fit to walk across this room. Now settle back down and try to heal. That’s the best thing you can do for your child and your husband.”
Marlena blanched. “Lucas?”
“He’s gone to help hunt,” Dotty lied, patting Marlena’s shoulder. “Calm down. I’ll try and get word to the searchers. You said there were two men? What did they look like?”
“One big. One slender.” Marlena’s face crumpled. “Mean.” Her voice broke, and her face took on a look of terror. “He—” She hiccupped. “He hurt me.” She turned her face away. “Don’t tell Lucas.”
Dotty’s tears were real. She lifted a shoulder to wipe her eye and felt again the pain of the bite. It would be a long time before Marlena could give Lucas the kind of loving he needed. It was a good thing that Dotty was around, available for Lucas to slake his lust on. A man had needs, and when a wife couldn’t fulfill them, a marriage sometimes fell apart. That couldn’t happen. No man would have Marlena after what had been done to her. Besides, Dotty knew that Lucas would never marry her. She wasn’t the kind of woman a man like him married. But he could help her financially. And he would. He had plenty. She would be rewarded for being a good friend to Marlena in her time of trouble.
The Buick stopped beside the Cadillac, and Jonah Dupree got out. Frank watched as the light-skinned black man came toward him, his eyes direct and unflinching. “Miss Marlena’s come around,” he said. “They want the sheriff up at the hospital to see what she knows. From what Miss Strickland could tell, Marlena says there were two men who hurt her. They wore hoods.”
Frank observed things about people, and what he saw in Jonah Dupree made him stop and consider. Jonah wasn’t simply delivering a message. He was emotional. That made a number of questions pop into Frank’s head. Frank knew that Jonah worked for Lucille Longier, and Lucille was Marlena’s mother. Jonah had known Marlena as a little girl. He’d been on the fringes of her life since the day she was born. Jonah had raised Marlena’s half-sister as his own child, and it was obvious he cared deeply for the brutalized woman and her missing child.
“Sheriff Huey is following a trail,” Frank said. “I’ll go to the hospital and talk to Marlena.”
Jonah nodded. “That would be for the best.”
Frank didn’t press him on that statement. Even the black folks knew that Huey wasn’t a very good lawman. His forte was politics, shaking hands and kissing babies, and making the womenfolk feel safe when their husbands were out of town. Huey had a regular little route that he drove every evening, stopping by for a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie or blackberry cobbler. He’d check the windows and doors for the widow women and those whose husbands were out of town on business. If it was necessary, he’d feed the cows and horses, slop the hogs, whatever it took. In many ways, Huey was a kind man, if not bright. Frank enjoyed working for him, because Huey most often left him alone to solve the pubic drunks, disorderly conducts, burglaries, and infrequent stabbings that were the crimes of Jebediah County. Huey was involved only so much as to
appear
involved in the actual investigations.
The sheriff hated walking in the woods, sinking up to his knees in mud and muck, stumbling upon the timber rattlers that could get up to seven feet in length and as big around as sinewy Nathan Ryan’s upper arm. Huey preferred his late evening rounds of pie and palaver. As soon as Lucas was convinced that Huey had done everything possible, Huey would turn the investigation over to Frank.
The trail Huey was working was a dead end. Frank knew it, and he suspected even Huey knew it. They would find the spot where Frank had found Marlena. There would be no sign of the girl. She’d gone with the abductors, and they had left in a vehicle, not on foot. He’d ruled out the possibility that she was with Johnny Hubbard. The route man’s trail was too fast, too reckless for a man carrying a child, but he was carrying something else. The truth about what had happened to Marlena and Suzanna.
“When are you coming to the hospital?” Jonah’s voice brought Frank back from his thoughts.
“I’m going there now,” he said. “Was Marlena able to give any kind of description of the men?”
“One was big and the other slender. That’s all they told me. They said to tell you to come talk to her, ask her the questions you need to know.”
“Who’s with her now?”
“Miss Dotty,” Jonah said, his gaze falling to the ground.
Jonah wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand the friendship between Marlena and Dotty Strickland. Frank knew the plump and vivacious Dotty. He knew her well. She didn’t seem to have a thing in common with Marlena Bramlett.
“Is Miss Jade at the beauty shop?” Frank asked. He needed to talk to her. Dotty didn’t have sense enough to come in out of the rain, but Jade had sat all night with Marlena. If something of importance had been said, Jade would remember.
“Yes, sir, she’s there. She’s busy all day.”
“Will she sit with Marlena tonight?”
Jonah sighed. “Most likely. She should go home and rest, but she’ll stay with Miss Marlena if they ask.”
“Thanks,” Frank said. “I’m headed back to town now.” Jonah got in the Buick, reversed expertly, dodging the pines and oaks, and headed back to town.
Frank watched the car disappear. Lucille Longier must have been desperate to get word to Frank if she let Jonah have the car without her riding with him. It was just another thing for Frank to ponder.
L
ucille sat rigid in the passenger seat of the Buick, her gaze straight ahead, hands folded on her lap. Since coming out of the hospital, she hadn’t spoken a word, and Jonah knew to let it lie. She’d talk when she was ready. Once, she’d been very different. There had been a time when she flaunted propriety, when she’d laughed at the idea that what others thought had any control over her. And then she’d gotten pregnant with Jade.
The Buick’s engine was big but quiet. Its sound was interrupted only by the wind whipping past the open windows. The sun burned down on the paved road, sending up little shimmers of heat in the distance that made Jonah think of childhood. When he was a boy, there’d been no paved roads, just dirt. Mules had pulled wagons, except for a few rich folk, who had horses. Mules plowed the fields where timber had already been cut and the land bent to the will of the farmers. Mose Dupree, Jonah’s father, had an appreciation for the hard labor of farming, the work his father had done, but Mose had learned a trade. Folks around Jebediah County said it was more than a trade, more like a gift. Mose Dupree knew how to shape and fit wood when he came out of the womb. He could make wood curve, smooth it until it was softer than the silk worn by the wealthy, so that touching it was like a blessing. Mose could work a piece of wood until folks just stopped to stare at the wonder of it, seeing the hidden colors revealed by his artistry. When the two bachelor Kimble brothers decided to build their mansion, they hired Mose.
Gustave and Alfred Kimble had been fair men to work for, and the Dupree family had lived well for Negroes in the Pine Barrens. Mose had carved the staircase that floated on a spiral to the second floor. He built the bookcases that shifted to reveal a secret walkway. The cabinets in the kitchen and the gingerbread trim that adorned the house were the handiwork of Mose. The carpenter entertained his young son with stories of the oddity of the Kimble house, and, curious, little Jonah took to following his father to work, learning the trade of carpentry and also learning to read and write. Once the house was finished, the Kimble brothers kept Mose on. He built furniture and cabinets and counters and barns. When there was no real work, Gustave would set him to making toys for the children they hoped would come in the future. The brothers married, and Mose made boxes and ornaments for the wives.
Anna Kimble, the darkling sister whose desperation for a child was soon written on her face, nurtured Jonah. In the hour before it was time for Mose to walk home, Anna took Jonah into the library each day. Among the many wondrous colors of the leather-bound books, Jonah learned to read and do sums. He learned the Bible and he read history, so that as his knowledge grew, the town of Drexel shrank. Before tragedy struck, Jonah had read the great adventure tales of Jonathan Swift and Robert Lewis Stevenson. His mind was afire with reading. He dreamed large, imagining a world where horses talked and pirates hoarded gold that could be taken with intelligence and bravery.
After the shootings, when Greta left town with the only surviving Kimble, she took with her the good life for the Dupree family. Not deliberately. She left because she had to, but in doing so Mose Dupree lost his job and Jonah lost his dreams. Jebediah County was not a place that drew wealthy families, and those that remained couldn’t afford to hire a carpenter to make beautiful cabinets when plain ones would do as well. Mose and Jonah turned to the only thing left, farming. Neither had a talent for making the soil yield, but they worked long and hard, and grew corn, beans, turnips, melons, and squash. They had food, but no money for medicine or the simple luxury of new shoes. Hard times had fallen, and then Mose died from an infected cut. When Jonah, as a young man, was offered the job of working for the Sellers family as a yardman/butler, he took it without a backward glance. He cared for his mother until she died of what the doctor called consumption, and then he moved into a small cabin at the back of the Sellerses’ family property, where he was close to his work and the long hours necessary to complete it.
From his window, he could watch Lucille, a young teen so delicate that she seemed almost ethereal when the sun brightened her pale hair. He watched her and thought of Rapunzel in the fairy tales Anna had read to him. Lucille’s innocence caused him physical pain, and he watched as she grew to understand her power over men and lost that innocence. Had Bedelia Sellers bothered to ask him, he could have told her that trouble brooded on the horizon for Lucille. She was too undisciplined to handle her own beauty.
The road spun beneath the wheels of the car, and though Jonah knew he was in the present, the past gripped him hard. So much so that when Lucille spoke, he turned to her in amazement. She was an older woman now, just as he was an older man. The flesh along her jawline, so firm and perfect in his memory, sagged. The red lipstick she wore was now too garish for her age, her hair too blond and damaged.
“There won’t be yard work today,” she said. “The bridge club is coming at two, and I’ll need you to park the cars for them. You’ll have to bring Ruth back to help, so take me home and then go get her.”
Jonah couldn’t quite hide his amazement.
“Don’t look at me like some flopping fish. It’s my turn for the club, and I won’t disappoint the ladies.”
“Ruth isn’t feeling well,” he said. Ruth had never missed a day of work. He kept his gaze on the road, waiting to see how Lucille would handle that bit of news. He’d defied her twice in one day.
“Can you drive over there and ask if she’s feeling better?” Lucille didn’t look at him. “Will it hurt you to ask?”
“No, ma’am,” Jonah said, and in the trembling of her lip he saw again the young girl with too much beauty, and realized that she clung to the bridge club not for social reasons, but because routine was her way of praying. “I’ll check on Ruth. Maybe she’ll feel better now. Could be she just had a headache,” though he knew it wasn’t true. What ached in Ruth was so much more than her head.
He pulled to the front of the house and went around to assist Lucille out of the car. In his days as butler for her mother, Jonah had learned the manners of the gentry. Once Lucille was in the house, he got in the car and drove home, troubled anew at the shifting order of things. Twice in one day he’d driven Lucille’s car without her present. Things were busting up and breaking apart. In his world, change meant trouble and damage.
It took only ten minutes to drive home, a distance that, walking, took an hour. He’d never gone back to the house that his parents had lived in. He’d built a new home closer to his work, and now Jade lived in the old house. Thinking of his daughter gave him a bit of peace as he pulled into his front yard. He found his wife sitting on the porch in her rocker, the chair drifting slowly back and forth as Ruth watched him come. There was no smile of welcome on her face, and Jonah didn’t expect one. They had made a bargain when it became obvious they would not have a marriage in the traditional sense of the word. He’d never regretted what he’d given for what he got.
“She sent you to see if I’d come make the food for her bridge club,” Ruth said, her mouth tightening with satisfaction. “She’s so spoiled it does her good to remember how easy I make her life.”
“She makes ours easy, too,” Jonah said, though it would only add fuel to the fire of Ruth’s hatred. He couldn’t really blame his wife, except that she’d let her jealousy and anger destroy her capacity for love.
“I’ll bet she makes your life real easy,” Ruth said in a voice like ripping cloth. “I wonder why.”
“For both of us,” Jonah said. “She wants you to come back, if you feel like it.”
“She don’t care how I feel, she just wants me to come back and help with her party.” She made a sound in her throat. “Her party! With her daughter nearly dead in the hospital and her grandbaby taken, she’s going to have her bridge party. Can’t nothin’ interfere with her party.”
Jonah let out a soundless sigh. If it wasn’t the bridge party, it would be something else. Ruth had latched onto Lucille with the power of a loggerhead turtle. She gnawed and snapped and worried at everything Lucille did or didn’t do. Criticizing Lucille had become the sum total of Ruth’s life, except for Jade. And Jade was worth it all.
“Are you coming?” Jonah asked.
Ruth stood up. “She let you bring the car for me?” Her laugh was sharp. “She must want me bad.” Her too-big shoes, cut to ease her corns, clopped on the porch as she walked across it, went down the steps, and got into the front seat.
Frank sat in his truck in the Bramlett driveway listening to the wind shuffle the pine needles. The smell of resin was on the hot breeze, and Frank wondered if Lucas was also harvesting the pines for turpentine as well as timber. Fifteen minutes had passed since he stopped the truck, thinking through what he intended to do. Huey was still in the woods with the dogs. Frank was supposed to be at the hospital but instead had chosen to visit Lucas. There were questions that had to be asked, and Huey would not ask them.
A photograph of John Hubbard was in the mail from the Hattiesburg police department. It would arrive by Monday, but Frank already had the man pictured in his mind. Handsome, with an easy smile and a string of compliments. He was a man who could light a lady’s cigarette, hold her chair, admire her with his eyes even if he said nothing. John Hubbard, a solitary man, was someone who wouldn’t think twice about crossing another man’s boundary line. From the evidence Frank had gathered at the scene of Suzanna’s abduction, he believed that Marlena had taken her daughter and driven to the woods for a picnic with Hubbard. Someone had come upon the trio, whether by chance or design, Frank couldn’t say. Lucas might be able to speak to that issue, but Frank knew that he was moving into treacherous terrain. Lucas was not a man who tolerated being questioned, not even by the law.
Through the gently swaying pine limbs he could see the second story of the house. Once, he’d seen a man move past an upstairs window. He had been only a shadow, but Frank knew it was Lucas. The Bramletts had no servants, except for Jade, who was more of an occasional companion for the child than help hired for cooking and cleaning.
He started the truck and drove to the house. When he got out he stood for a moment, listening to the quiet. Once, at a party, Marlena had confided to him that she hated the quiet. She wanted to live in town, but Lucas would not consider it. Lucas liked the isolation and the privacy, she said. Marlena had laid her palm on Frank’s arm, and he’d felt the trembling in her hand. He’d wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her until she felt safe. Instead, he’d patted her hand and uttered something inane about how safe Jebediah County was. Too late, he understood that her fear came from something inside herself.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something at the fringe of the woods. He waited until his mother stepped out of the shadows. She held the single rose that had been placed in her hands in the coffin. She wore the same pale lavender dress, her face carefully made up. She shook her head slowly and stepped back among the trees.
Walking to the front door, Frank felt weary. Lucas answered his knock, surprise on his face. “Deputy Kimble, what can I do for you?”
“I need to ask some questions,” Frank said.
Lucas stepped out of the doorway and motioned him inside. “We’ll go to the study.” He led the way through the foyer, down a hall, and into a room filled with books. Frank had a larger library, but these books looked as if they were read. A solitary chair faced a fireplace, and Lucas got a desk chair and brought it for Frank to sit in. “I’ve answered questions for Huey, but obviously you have more,” he said, sitting down.
Frank took a seat. “The dogs struck a trail. Huey is on it now,” he said, wondering why this wasn’t the first question out of Lucas’s mouth.
“Was there any sign of Suzanna?” Lucas asked.
“No,” Frank said. “We found her Keds, but nothing else.”
Lucas nodded slowly, a frown touching his face and then clearing. “Surely the ransom request will come soon.”
Frank didn’t answer. Originally he’d assumed the abduction was a kidnapping for ransom. Now he knew better. There would be no ransom request. Whoever had taken Suzanna had almost killed Marlena. They had not taken the child for money and left the mother nearly dead. Everyone in town knew that Lucas had bought Marlena once and would likely do it again. But not Suzanna.
“If you have questions, ask them.” Lucas’s hands gripped the arms of his chair, the fingers digging into the leather.
“Was there trouble between you and Marlena?” he asked.
Lucas flushed. “How dare you—”
“I dare because I want to find your daughter” Frank said softly. “If Marlena was angry, defiant, we can begin looking in that direction. The choices she made in going to the woods will be different than those if she went to fish. One way to find Suzanna is to backtrack Marlena.”
Lucas inhaled, gathering his control. “My marriage isn’t perfect, but my wife wasn’t gallivanting about the woods in an effort to get even with me. She would never do anything to endanger Suzanna, no matter if she were angry with me.”
Frank nodded. “Are you in any financial trouble?”
Lucas smiled. “None whatsoever.”
“If there is a ransom request, do you intend to pay it?”
Lucas hesitated. “Within reason. I have money, but much of it is tied up in land and timber. I’m not liquid, but I do have cash in the bank. What’s there won’t be hard to get.”
Frank wrote in his notebook to keep from showing his emotion. Lucas was a cold fish. He talked about his daughter with the same calculation as he did his money.
“Do you have any enemies?” Frank looked at him, watching the flicker of Lucas’s eyes as he went through the files in his mind.
“I haven’t thought of that angle,” Lucas said, “but I do have a few people who wouldn’t mind seeing harm come to me. But would they brutalize my wife and take my child? I don’t know.”
“We’ll check them. Could I have the names?”