“I know! How about something for his beer-making? When he was moving the other night, somebody stepped on his measuring scale, so he certainly does need another one and there’s a kitchen supply store just two doors down from here.”
Soon we were discussing the merits of the different scales for weighing quarter-ounces of hops or flavorings and settled on one that had a small removable aluminum pan.
Best of all, it cost less than fifteen dollars.
By now it was lunchtime, as Jake had reminded us ever since we left the toy department at Mertz’s, so it was back over to the food court over beside the linen store for egg rolls all around and a communal carton of shrimp fried rice. The place featured stainless steel tables and chairs and was jammed with Christmas shoppers. At the next table, two young women were showing each other their finds while their toddlers played around their feet.
“I’ve been wanting linen napkins forever,” I heard one of them say. “And these were such a good buy, I decided the hell with it.”
“Good for you. You know, I’ve never regretted the things I’ve bought for myself,” the other one said solemnly. “Only the things I didn’t buy.”
At that moment, the first woman’s little girl tripped and fell and split her lip on the edge of the stroller.
Blood streamed from the cut. The mother instantly scooped up the wailing child and started to dip one of her new napkins into her cup of ice water. At the last second, though, she pushed the cloth napkins aside, grabbed one of the used paper ones littering the table, and held it to the child’s mouth while she darted to the counter for more. The other woman brought another handful back to the table and they applied ice and cold wet napkins until the bleeding stopped, all the time worrying aloud whether or not the child would need stitches. The young mother was almost in tears herself. By the time they’d decided it should be looked at, I had heard enough to realize they were sisters, wayfarers off the interstate, who hadn’t a clue as to where the nearest emergency room was.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but if you’re wanting a hospital, you’re only about two minutes away.”
“Oh, thank you,” they said, gathering up their belongings.
I gave them directions and they hurried out.
“I hate stitches,” Cal said darkly and the other two nodded in total agreement.
As they compared their various scars and told one another horror stories about hospital emergency rooms, I started thinking about the implications of what I’d just seen. That was a distraught protective mother, no question of her maternal concern, yet she had unconsciously rejected the option of using one of her new linen napkins to stop the blood, had even wasted a precious extra second or two to go fetch paper ones.
I remembered Herman bitching at us the other day for using his good screwdriver to open a paint can.
So why, given her choice of three softball bats, would Martha Hurst have smashed her stepson/ex-lover with her good game bat?
Maybe Nolan’s mother was right after all. Maybe she really hadn’t.
But Roy Hurst had died in her trailer on the only day Martha could have killed him.
Or did he?
I thought about all the literature I’d read on forensic entomology and the graphic discussion Kayra and Nolan and I had about blowfly larvae at the Taos Tacos. No way would the ME have made a mistake about counting the stages.
Unless—? What was it that old woman at the trailer park had told them?
Kayra and Nolan had struck out with Deenie Gates, but I was a judge. And what’s the good of having the office if you can’t take advantage of it once in a while?
“Come on,” I told the children. “Let’s go visit Miss Amy.”
“Who’s Miss Amy?” they asked.
“My brother Will’s wife.”
“You have an awful lot of brothers, don’t you?” asked Cal.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “There won’t be a test till next Christmas.”
I called ahead and gave Amy a sketchy idea of what I wanted without going into too much detail—too many little big-eared pitchers in the car with me—and when we got to the hospital, she pointed me to a meeting room off the lobby where Deenie Gates was waiting and whisked the three kids off to check out the games in the children’s lounge on the third floor.
I had expected the same sullen reaction that Kayra and Nolan said they’d received from the woman and had thought I might have to trick her into talking. Instead, I got a shy smile of genuine warmth when I sat down at the table across from her. Now that I saw her again, I began to remember. Lank blond hair, the muddy skin tones of a recovering alcoholic, and eyes that kept glancing away, unable to maintain steady contact. She was still prematurely stoop-shouldered as if expecting a blow, but there were no visible bruises today.
“How’s it going, Ms. Gates?”
“Going good, Judge Knott. Real good,” she said. “I been doing what you told me to—making up my own mind, not waiting for some man to make it up for me. You were right. I won’t really getting nothing from none of ’em ’cepting their fists and more stuff on my charge cards. I’m the one going out to work every day while they lay around and watch the sports channel and drink my beer. I’m the one putting food on the table. How come I need to take their shit? That talking-to you give me was the best thing ever happened to me. I mean, I know some of the others tried to tell me, but something about seeing you were there in that black robe? I only come up before men judges before and you talked to me like you knew I could do it.”
I was profoundly surprised. I had evidently given Deenie Gates my standard battered-woman talk, but for once it hadn’t fallen on deaf ears. I barely remembered her, yet she remembered me and what I’d said to her.
“Ms. Gates—”
