Around two, the wind finally slacked off enough to be noticeable. Lashanda had fallen asleep with one arm around Ladybelle and the other hugging her doll. Reese, too, was snoring on a pallet in the corner.
Daddy stood up stiffly and said, “Well, if that’s the worst it’s gonna do, I reckon I’ll go lay down and get a little rest.”
Maidie and Cletus followed him upstairs to real beds.
Stan lay on his pallet, fighting to stay awake enough to jot notes from the radio reports.
Cyl, Dwight and I went out to the kitchen where I boiled water for coffee. (With the power going off so often, a lot of us have our own LP tanks and cook with gas.) Dwight was hungry again, so I set out leftover fried chicken and the fixings for tomato sandwiches.
While he ate and Cyl and I drank coffee, we talked about the two killings—Lynn Bullock and Rosa Edwards—and whether Clara Freeman’s wreck had anything to do with either of them.
“Which happened first?” I asked, trying to make sense of it. “The wreck or the Edwards killing?”
“If she went into Possum Creek immediately after leaving Miz Thomas, then that was first,” said Dwight, “because Rosa Edwards worked her regular shift yesterday.”
I tried doing a timetable. “So say Clara Freeman crashed her car around noon. It probably wouldn’t take an hour to zoom out here from Dobbs at the precise moment and get back again, but how would anybody know where she was unless they’d spent the morning trailing her? Reid and Millard King were both roaming in and out of my courtroom all morning. Even Brandon Frazier came up during the lunch break to get me to sign a pleading, so unless Dr. Potts—”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Cyl protested. “Brandon Frazier? Millard King? Reid Stephenson? Your cousin? What do they have to do with the wreck or last night’s murder?”
We’d forgotten that she wasn’t up to speed on this.
“Rosa Edwards worked at the Orchid Motel. We think she saw Lynn Bullock’s killer, and each of those three men slept with Lynn Bullock in the last few months,” I said bluntly.
“Really?” Despite her own situation, Cyl frowned in distaste. All the men were familiar courthouse regulars, but she hadn’t known Jason Bullock’s wife. “Was she such a fox?” Cyl asked curiously. “Or such a slut?”
Dwight and I both shrugged. “Some of both probably,” I said.
Interrupting each other, he and I almost did a probable cause on each man and how none of them had a watertight alibi for the time of death—between five and eight on Saturday evening. As rain pounded against the window glass, we discussed Millard King’s desire for future elective office, Reid’s late arrival and early departure from the field, Brandon Frazier’s frank admissions, and the tie tack that probably belonged to Millard King. (I busied myself tidying the table while Dwight told her about the silver pen.)
“What about her husband—Jason Bullock? Did you eliminate him?”
I explained how I was there when Lynn Bullock called, pretending to be a hundred miles away and how he’d been at the field during the relevant times.
“She was registered under her maiden name, and some man called the motel switchboard before she checked in and again just a few minutes after she talked to Jason. Asked for her by the name she was using, too.”
“Might as well tell her about Jeremy Potts, too,” said Dwight. “Deborah thinks—”
At that moment, we were startled when the back door opened with a loud squeak and something dark and shiny walked in from the storm. In the flickering candlelight, it gave the three of us a start till we realized it was Cletus, wearing a large black plastic garbage bag for a rain poncho.
“I thought you went up to bed,” I said.
“Naw, I got to worrying about how the house was faring down there. Went out the side door. They’s a tree down across the path now, so I had to come back in this way.” He pulled off the bag and left it to drip in the sink before heading back upstairs. “You young folks oughta get a little rest. Be morning soon.”
Physically, we were all tired but were too keyed up to call it a night just yet. And Cyl wanted to know about Jeremy Potts. Once again, I found myself describing that acrimonious divorce and Lynn Bullock’s part in it.
I finished up by reminding her that she was there at the hospital when I told Ralph that I had his wife’s handbag. “And less than forty-five minutes later, somebody popped the lock on my car trunk.”
“Looking for her purse? But why?” Cyl asked. “And why would anybody hurt Ralph’s wife if this Rosa Edwards was the one who could put him at the motel?”
“Maybe he was afraid Rosa had talked to her good friend Clara,” I said. “I don’t know.”
“We do know that she was driving Mrs. Freeman’s car last Saturday,” Dwight reminded me.
“So maybe he thought she was the one who’d seen him.”
“
Yawning widely, Stan came out to the kitchen. “They say the eye just collapsed over Garner a few minutes ago. I guess it’s pretty much over.”
His own eyes were looking at the chicken with such interest that I got him a paper plate, napkins, and a big glass of milk to go with it. He wasn’t interested in a tomato sandwich, “but if there’s any of that potato salad left?”
There was.
When his plate was full, Stan looked around the table. “Miss Cyl told me about Miss Rosa getting killed. Is that what y’all were talking about?”
We admitted we were.
