The girls hadn't heard about Bannerman's death until we arrived, and they were wide-eyed as Richards scooped the clothes from Jessica's hands and put them in a brown paper sack.
'Carver Bannerman got his head smashed in?'
Some of my eye-for-an-eye nieces immediately declared he got what he deserved. Andrew's Ruth looked apprehensive though. When Reese rushed out of the hospital to look for Bannerman with violence in his eyes, her brother A. K. had gone with him. I squeezed her hand and told her not to worry, that Bannerman was probably dead before I carried Annie Sue to the hospital.
Paige Byrd and Cindy McGee were also there at the house. Paige kept saying, 'If only we hadn't left when we did!'
Cindy's face was splotched and her eyes were red and swollen. When she heard that Bannerman was dead, fresh tears rolled down her cheeks, but at least she didn't moan and shriek and overdramatize like some of my nieces would have.
Amazingly, they didn't seem to notice, and Annie Sue had loyally kept her mouth shut about Cindy.
Knowing what I did, Cindy's misery seemed palpable, but I honestly couldn't tell whether it was (1) because her erstwhile lover was dead, (2) because he'd tried to rape her best friend, or (3) because, like Paige, she was blaming herself for leaving Annie Sue when Herman's tongue-lashing made them too uncomfortable.
Maybe it was (4)—all of the above.
Despite all the evening's shocks and a mild concussion that would have me in bed sound asleep by now, Annie Sue seemed to be bouncing back okay. As soon as she'd realized that all her injuries were external, she'd become giddy with relief. Before she'd had time to come down from that, she'd been sucker-punched with her father's collapse, which sent her into a crying jag, terrified that Herman might die.
Now, just as abruptly, her attacker was dead.
'It's so weird,' she told Jessica and me as we helped her pack Nadine's cosmetics and night clothes. 'I don't know whether to laugh or cry or just throw my head back and simply
Jess and I nodded. More of Annie Sue's dramatics, but it had become family lore. First she'd screamed from fright and then she'd bawled for an hour because the snake, though poisonous, had been killed.
Driving to Chapel Hill with Jess and a couple of the others would help. If she didn't fall asleep driving over, by the time they got there, they would have hashed and rehashed every detail of the whole evening. 'I said— Then he— So what did
Telling and retelling ought to blunt the knife edge of trauma before it could cut her too deeply.
Annie Sue had already packed her overnight bag and now she closed Nadine's.
'Wait a minute, honey,' I said as the others picked up the bags and headed down the hall with them to Jessica's car.
Mayleen Richards didn't want to let me—or rather my clothes—out of her sight, but I asked her to wait down the hall and I stood in the open doorway so that she could watch without hearing.
Annie Sue's eyes grew large, but she sat down on the white hobnail spread that covered her parents' bed. She had changed into a pink floral jumpsuit and her shining chestnut hair was caught up in pink hair clips. Except for the scrapes on her elbows and chin, there were no outward signs of the mauling she'd taken.
'Dwight Bryant'll probably talk to you sometime tomorrow,' I said, 'and I'm sure he'll ask you if you were aware of anyone else in the house when Carver Bannerman jumped you?'
She shook her head. 'No.'
'Think carefully, honey. Could someone have been waiting for him out in his car?'
'Maybe,' she answered slowly. 'I didn't see. He didn't act like anybody was there to walk in on us. Not the way he grabbed me.'
'And after he threw you down?'
'Honest, Deb'rah, I can't remember. I must have been unconscious. But when I was starting to come out of it . . .
'Yes?'
'Something... a noise? Something fell? And then... yes! A car! I heard a car start up and drive away. I guess I sort of thought it was him. Driving away in the rain. Because I remember feeling like maybe everything was going to be all right. And then I guess I must have gone under again because I don't remember anything else till I heard you calling me.'
'Did you recognize the sound of the motor?' I asked cautiously. Herman's new truck was only a few months old. Maybe it had no distinctive sounds yet.
She looked at me blankly. 'Nope. It was just a car. Or a truck, I suppose.'
'No loud rattles, no shriek when the gears changed?' She smiled. 'Like Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang or something?'
I smiled back, not wanting to put ideas in her head. 'Or something.'
She smoothed the lace collar of her jumpsuit as she considered. I could tell that she was replaying the sound of the engine in her head. A shadow flicked across her face and was instantly gone.
'It was just an ordinary car motor,' she said and looked me straight in the eye as she said it.
CHAPTER 12
