testified to her gregariousness. “And I knowed that sorry Roy, too. No loss to the world that ’un was. Would you believe that he took a kittycat used to sit on my little porch here and throwed it through Martha’s window one time?”
“Was it hurt?” asked Kayra in concern.
“Oh, it won’t a real cat. Cement. Like a doorstop. But he sure did bust its head off.”
As if summoned by memory, a gray cat strolled out of the kitchen, sniffed them both, and jumped up into Nolan’s lap.
“Now that’s not something he does with everybody comes in,” said Mrs. Apple. “You must have cats yourself.”
“No, ma’am,” he said, “but I do like them.”
“They always know.” Her crochet hook flashed in and out as the pink blanket grew beneath her fingers. “Now what was it y’all were wanting to hear about Martha?”
“The day Roy Hurst was killed,” said Kayra. “Were you here then?”
Mrs. Apple beamed in anticipation of fresh ears for an old tale. “Oh yes. I’d just retired from my job with the county so I was still having fun doing nothing. I cooked for forty years out at the hospital where Martha used to work. Fact is, I put in a word for her when they won’t gonna hire her on account of some trouble she got in back when she was younger. She was an aide and I was a cook. We used to ride in to work together sometimes. Anyhow, it was a real hot day and my air conditioner was broke so the windows was open and I heard some of the yelling. Iris—Iris Ford—she was the one lived next door to them. She was out watering her flowers and she said he was hot as fire ’cause Martha was telling him to get the rest of his mess out of their trailer ’cause she was gonna change the doorlocks soon as she got back from the beach. See, he used to live there with his daddy and she was one of the women he used to bring home with him, only after she met Gene, she didn’t want to have nothing more to do with Roy. He stayed on awhile after they was married, but they didn’t get along. I don’t know if he was jealous ’cause his daddy got her or if he just didn’t want to have to pay rent on a place of his own. They had a knock-down-drag-out and he come screeching out in that raggedy ol’ black car of his like a bat out of you-know- where. Almost hit some little girls playing jumprope right out here in front of my house. And that was the last time any of us ever seen him alive. About a hour later, she went off with her ballbats.”
“Did he come back while Martha was at her ball game?”
“Not that anybody here seen. ’Course, Iris and me, we went for groceries about then, so I reckon he could’ve come and gone again.”
“What about after?”
“I just told you, honey. Didn’t nobody see him after he went tearing off like that on Saturday morning.”
“But he was killed in the trailer.”
“That’s right, and me and Iris, we couldn’t figure out when he got there less’n he sneaked in before she got home. See, after a game, she’d come home just long enough to tote her stuff in the house and get a shower and then go out drinking with her friends.”
The old woman shook her head. “I went to bed at ten that night and I didn’t see her come home, but Iris said it musta been around midnight. Not that she got up to look. She knowed the sound of Martha’s car, though. If he was there and if they was fighting, they did it real quiet. Iris never heard a thing. ’Course now, she wouldn’t, would she? She always took her hearing aid off when she went to bed. I remember one time—”
The trailer was so hot and airless that Nolan slipped off his jacket and wished he could crack open a window. He glanced at Kayra, who sat there with a frozen smile of politeness on her face while the torrent of words gushed over them.
“—so I said, if you’d’ve put on your hearing aid soon as you seen it, you’d’ve—”
“And nobody heard them fight that night?” he interrupted.
“Not a peep. Next morning, Martha was up early. Loaded up her car with stuff and took off. To the beach is what we heard, though how she could just walk away and leave him laying there’s something I never could understand.”
“When did you realize that Roy Hurst was still in the trailer?”
“Didn’t know for sure till the deputies come on Friday.”
“But you thought—?” Kayra prodded.
“Well, yeah, long about Wednesday, Iris noticed that his car was parked round back of the trailer where he used to park when he was living there. Them bushes used to be a little thinner back then. Now you could hide a herd of elephants behind Maria’s place.”
“The sheriff’s department got an anonymous call that there was a dead man in the trailer. Who do you suppose made that call?”
“I don’t know nothing about that,” she said and her crochet hook flashed even faster, in and out of the intricate loops of pink yarn. The tree lights blinked on and off and the cat rearranged itself in Nolan’s lap.
“I know I’d have been curious,” Kayra said coaxingly.
The hooked needle slowed, then Mrs. Apple shrugged her stooped shoulders. “Reckon it won’t do no harm to say now. It was Iris called ’em. The place’d been so still and quiet, which it wouldn’t’ve been if he was crashing there. He’d’ve been in and out all hours, revving up that car motor, but the car didn’t move. Another thing—it was hot, hot, hot, and the windows was all closed up and her air conditioner won’t running. Anyhow, Iris, she got me to go over with her and knock on the back door. And then we looked in the window and we could see him a-laying there.”
By noontime, Deputy Jack Jamison felt as if he’d spent the day chasing his own tail around in circles.
First, he got a warrant from one of the magistrates, then he and Raeford McLamb drove out to Whitley’s trailer to find some DNA samples. The patrol officer watching the place said there’d been no sign of the missing deputy. Inside, after bagging up Whitley’s toothbrush, razor, and a comb with some hair still caught in the teeth, they did a quick-and-dirty. Tucked down in a drawerful of socks was an unmarked jeweler’s box that held a gold-and-turquoise cuff bracelet that looked like the one in the sketch Mayleen Richards had shown them. They took it back to the
