“You were at all three?”
“Well, not that little one with the trailer. Burning Heart of God? Boy, that was a real appropriate name, won’t it? Naw, none of us got to that one. We was all at Mount Olive, working on that fire, when the little ’un went.”
Donny Turner’s Colleton County accent was as thick as Daddy’s—wasn’t is always won’t, fire is far—and he was bad for making every other sentence sound like a question, but I grew up on those sounds and I’ve never needed a translator.
“Did you know Charles Starling or Raymond Bagwell?” I asked.
“Oh, sure. Charles, anyhow. He was a year behind me but we rode the same school bus and we carpooled after I got my license. Till he quit school? Man, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heared he was the one done it.”
“Really?” I halted on the stairs and stared at him.
Surprised, Donny stopped, too. His eyes met mine briefly, then darted away. “Well, no, I guess not really. He was sorta wild in school, always breaking the rules? He was the one spray-painted our bus when we was in middle school? And you know his momma kicked him out of the house ’cause he kept burning holes in everything with his cigarettes and I heared he was real mad with Balm of Gilead ’cause they stole his granddaddy’s land?”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard, too.” I said.
“Maybe that’s how come they want to talk to me? ’Cause I know Charles could’ve done it?”
Again his eyes shifted away. Nervousness?
We entered the Sheriff’s Department through the glass doors. “Right around that corner.” I told Donny Turner. “Major Bryant’s office is the second door on the left.”
At that moment, a familiar person rounded the corner.
“Hey, Chief!” said Donny. “They got you down here, too?”
“Uh, yeah, well, you know how it is.”
Was it my imagination or was the chief of West Colleton’s volunteer fire department having trouble looking Donny Turner straight in the face?
“I’d better not hold y’all up.” he said, giving me a nod as he passed. “I believe they’re waiting on you, Donny.”
“Yeah, okay. See you later then.”
The chief headed through the swinging doors and Donny turned back to me. “Nice seeing you again, Judge. Thanks for showing me how to get here.”
“1951,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to see it for ages and Vallery Feldman at Blockbuster finally got it in for me. Dick Powell and Peggy Dow. She was in
“This isn’t one of those goopy musicals, is it?”
“Trust me. Dick Powell’s a dog who comes back to earth to find out who murdered him. There’s a horse angel, too. You’ll love it.”
Dwight’s not quite the old-movie addict I am unless it’s set against the Second World War. Then we both cry when Van Heflin dies or John Payne throws himself on a hand grenade to save his comrades. (At least, I cry. Dwight always claims a summer cold or sinuses.)
Uncle Ash and Aunt Zell had already gone up to their room and I was in the kitchen waiting for Dwight to come before microwaving some popcorn.
The rain had begun again and I held the side screen open for him. His sandy brown hair was damp and his cowlick was standing straight up as he swiped at it.
“So how’d it go with Donny Turner?” I asked.
Dwight looked at his watch. “Fourteen seconds,” he said. “Ed Gardner owes me five bucks.”
“Excuse me?”
“I bet him I wouldn’t be here two minutes before you asked about Turner. He thought you’d be more subtle and take at least five.”
“Very funny. Just for that, we eat our popcorn plain tonight. No butter. No salt.”
“Hey!”
I pinched him on the side just where a slight bulge was forming when he belted his jeans too tightly, and he quit grousing.
“Did y’all arrest him?” I persisted.
“We’re a long way from another arrest. Of course, a lot of arsonists do start out fighting legitimate fires, then move on to setting them and he sure fits the profile.”
“But?”
“No ‘but.’ We didn’t push him hard. Just told him we wanted to get an idea of how long it takes people to respond to a fire call. What was he doing when he was paged? That sort of thing. Because Ed and his people
