mother?
My mind raced across the events of the last week, fitting one fact with another as everything spun like the wheels of a slot machine planning to come up cherries straight across. Unfortunately, it was another four minutes to the Freeman house and I couldn’t say a word to Cyl.
Ralph and his father-in-law were getting out of the car when we drove up. A chinaball tree had blown down near the carport, just missing one of the support posts, but that seemed to be the only damage here.
By the set of his chin, I saw that Stan meant to step between Cyl and his father so I quickly loaded him down with his and Lashanda’s overnight backpacks and asked where he wanted his radio as I carried it up to the side door. Too well-mannered to dig in his heels, he reluctantly followed Lashanda and me up the drive. I greeted a weary Reverend Gaithers with burbling cheerfulness, asked about Clara, and said how much we’d enjoyed having the two kids. All this so that Cyl could have one very quick, if very public, moment with Ralph.
“She’s doing better,” said the old man. “I really do believe the good Lord’s going to spare her. She opened her eyes this morning for a few minutes. I don’t know if she knew me, but when I squeezed her hand, she squeezed mine back.”
As we stood talking, the kids went on into the house and began opening all the windows, not that there was any breeze to mitigate the smothering, humidity-drenched heat. A chain saw three doors down made it difficult to understand each other and when it paused, I heard the siren of a rescue vehicle rushing somewhere several streets over. Ralph came up the drive and it was hard to meet his eyes as I told him I was glad to hear that his wife seemed to be coming out of her coma.
“Did you tell him Stan knows?” I asked Cyl as we drove away.
She nodded. “I’d give anything to take that knowledge away from him.”
“Ralph? Or Stan?”
“Stan.”
I started to speak, but she said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay?”
“Okay.” I paused at the stop sign, trying to remember precisely how we’d come. “Jason Bullock’s car is black,” I said.
“I noticed.”
“Want to bet he’s already lined up a body shop to get the dents banged out and repainted?”
“No bets.” She sighed and I wondered if that sigh was for Ralph or Jason.
Either way, I reached over and squeezed her hand.
“I guess I don’t have all the facts straight,” Cyl said gamely, trying to match my interest in Lynn Bullock’s murder. “How could Jason be at the motel killing his wife at the very same time he’s at the ball field playing ball?”
I’d already figured it out.
“Remember last night?” I told her. “How we thought Cletus was upstairs asleep? If anybody’d asked me to alibi him, I’d have taken my oath he was there all the time, wouldn’t you?”
“I guess.”
“Well, it’s the same with Jason Bullock. I heard him get a call from his wife around five and he was there for pregame pictures around six-thirty. He wandered down for a Coke, and I saw him talking to people on his way to the rest area, but he could have slipped away for a half-hour and who would notice? I wonder if he got a little too cute, though?”
“How do you mean?”
“The switchboard says a man called the motel twice—right before she checked in and again after she called Jason. If he got cocky and made those calls from his cell phone, there’ll be a record of it on his bill. Reid, Millard King, and Brandon Frazier all say she wouldn’t give them the time of day anymore. Maybe she really had quit messing around with other men.”
Cyl nodded thoughtfully. “So she went to that motel expecting Jason to join her for a romantic tryst after his ball game, perhaps trying to put the spark back into their marriage?”
Our line of work made us familiar with the sexual games some couples play.
“And Jason used it to set up her death. Reid says he’s ambitious, and he’s certainly bright enough to see how a woman like Lynn could hold him back. The way she dressed, the way she’d slept with half the bar in Colleton County? He could divorce her, but then he’d be in the same spot as Dr. Jeremy Potts. Everybody knows Lynn put him through law school. He wouldn’t want to pay alimony the rest of his life based on his enhanced income potential, now would he?”
“But Rosa Edwards saw him and he came after her,” said Cyl.
“Only first, he came after an African-American woman driving a white Honda Civic,” I said.
Cyl’s lovely mobile face froze as the implications of my words sank in.
“Of course,” she said bitterly. “He didn’t run Clara Freeman into the creek, it was the car and whatever black woman happened to be driving that car. We probably all look alike to him.”
The street ahead led straight out of town and seemed to be clear as far as I could see. Nevertheless, I turned left, retracing our trek through town.
“Why are we going this way?” asked Cyl.
“Because I want another look at Jason Bullock’s car. It seems to me that that was an awfully small tree to have done that much damage. Maybe he helped it along with a sledgehammer or something.”
“And you want to play detective? No. Call the Sheriff’s Department. Let Dwight Bryant handle it. I mean it, Deborah. I want to go home.”
