Southern Discomfort

As soon as he turned and walked away from us, I pounced on Dwight. 'Has anybody seen Reese or A.K.?'

He shook his head. 'I canceled that order as soon as I heard Bannerman was dead. They still out there somewhere?'

'They must be. A.K. hasn't come home and Andrew's getting worried.'

'They're probably sitting out at a tavern on the truck lane about now and—'

Our attention was snagged by Jack Jamison lifting the yellow police tape for a couple of young women. I recognized the taller by sight if not by name as the one who'd worn a funny Calvin and Hobbes T-shirt—Rochelle Bannerman's friend, according to Annie Sue and Paige.

That probably meant that the shorter, pregnant one that Deputy Jamison was escorting so solicitously was Carver Bannerman's widow. Bannerman's very pregnant widow. She wore shorts and a bright yellow T-shirt that read BABY ON BOARD. A big black arrow ended at her bulging middle.

'They said he was here,' she sobbed. 'What've y'all done with my husband? Where've y'all got him?'

Her friend, Opal Grimes, patted her arm like she was trying to soothe her, but there was a self-important near smirk that said she was enjoying the drama. Certainly those pats only seemed to encourage Mrs. Bannerman's hysterics.

'O, Carver, Carver! My darling!' Despite the humidity, her blonde hair was freshly blow-dried around her pretty face. Her feet were thrust into yellow rubber flip-flops and mud squished between her toes as she clutched her belly and wailed, 'What are me and your baby going to do without you?'

Dwight looked at me helplessly. He really does get spooked by women grieving for their dead.

I would have tried to help, but as soon as I stepped toward her, the Grimes woman whispered in her ear and her tears dried up as she turned on me.

'You the bitch judge Carver told me about?'

'Excuse me?'

'You heard me! Think just because you sit up there on that bench you can cut the balls off a man and he won't notice?'

'Now just a minute,' Dwight said.

But she was beyond listening. 'And then when your niece gets the hots for him, you send your brothers over to beat him up and now you've killed him and O Carver, baby!'

And here came the tears again.

CHAPTER 13

BRIDGING

'The system of bracing the joists to each other is called bridging. The chief purpose of bridging is to hold the joists plumb and in correct alignment, but bridging also serves to distribute part of a concentrated heavy load over several joists next to those directly under the load.'

Nosy as I generally am, it was no sacrifice when Dwight excluded me from his interview with Rochelle Bannerman.

Besides, he hit the high spots for me afterwards while we were splitting a Pepsi in Aunt Zell's cheerful kitchen: two glasses filled with ice, one Pepsi, and a bottle of Uncle Ash's best Jack Daniel's on the table between us.

Soon as I got home, I'd gone up and tapped on Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash's door to see if they'd heard any news of Herman.

'No change,' said Aunt Zell from the darkened room. 'We're going over first thing in the morning.'

'I'll come, too, soon as court's adjourned.'

She raised up on her arm. 'If you're still going to be up in a half hour, would you feed that puppy?'

'Damn thing's more trouble than a real baby,' Uncle Ash rumbled from his side of the bed.

'How 'bout I take care of him all night?' I volunteered.

'You need your sleep,' Aunt Zell protested weakly.

'So do you!' Uncle Ash and I chorused.

'Well, if you're sure... ?'

'Sleep tight,' I said. *      *      *

Back downstairs, Dwight had already taken the little guy on his lap and I warmed the bottle and handed it to him.

News always travels fast in Dobbs and news of this death was no different, according to Dwight. One of the residents of Redbud Lane had called Opal Grimes in Magnolia Mobile Home Park, and Opal immediately hightailed it over to the Bannerman trailer where she found Rochelle Bannerman fending off questions about Bannerman's whereabouts from an enraged Reese and A. K.

I suppose I had Opal Grimes to thank for connecting me to those two peckerwoods; and if Bannerman had told his wife that I'd treated him unfairly in court, well, no wonder that young woman felt as if Knotts had it in for Bannermans. On the other hand, if she was going to keep interpreting her so-recently-late husband's attempted rape as attempted man snatching by my niece, she wasn't going to win any prizes from me for Euclidian logic. Besides, it was Cindy McGee who wanted to snatch him away, not Annie Sue.

'Let her go worry Gladys,' I told Dwight.