Amos nodded. And told him how to find the latest victim’s house.
“Thanks, Lester. See you tonight?”
“I’ll drop by if I don’t have anything better to do.”
Longarm touched the brim of his Stetson and strode away in the direction of the Deel residence.
Town clerk, dammit. A citizen, then the postmaster, then the county’s Whig secretary, and now the Addington town clerk. It occurred to Longarm that he’d forgotten to ask Amos if the town’s records had been tampered with. Or for that matter if anyone had yet thought to look into that.
If nothing had been disturbed yet, well, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep an eye on City Hall tonight. Just to see if there were any nocturnal visitors.
Chapter 29
Peter Nare hadn’t had any living family, and the other murders were pretty much in the past by the time Longarm arrived on the scene. But Jim Deel must have been a popular fellow, and his death was fresh and shocking. The town was turning out in huge numbers to express their sympathies to the bereaved widow.
It was mid-afternoon when Longarm got to the Deel residence, and the killing had taken place just that morning. Already, though, there was a regular procession of friends, neighbors, and probably total strangers, too, marching in through a wide-open doorway with platters of sliced ham or fried chicken, huge mounds of mashed potatoes, fragrant casseroles, and tray after tray after tray of freshly baked bread, rolls, biscuits, pies, cupcakes, layer cakes, and hoecakes. Whether among the cotton fields of east Texas, the sugar bush of Vermont, or the green valleys of Oregon, the American belief is and always has been that grief is best assuaged by hiding it under an onslaught of foods. The good folks of Addington were just proving that penchant now.
Women, giggling girls, and grubby-faced little boys walked, ran, or scampered through the yard and down the side streets.
A dusty patch of yard beneath a drooping oak seemed to have been set aside as a nursery where toddlers and crawling children were deposited, and the older girl children showed signs of being more or less in charge there.
Two hams and a meat loaf arrived at the same time Longarm did, the women carrying them bustling past him on the walkway between the gate and front porch, their mission too intense to allow time for normal politeness. After all, one of their own was in pain and therefore in need of the twin reminders that the other ladies cared … and that life goes on regardless of loss and grief. For that too was hidden within the messages of the food platters. Weep for the dead but do not neglect to feed the living.
Longarm mounted the steps to the broad porch and removed his hat. The door was already propped open to receive the callers, so he shouldered his way in behind a plump lady carrying a pot of steaming, aromatic baked beans.
A parlor to his left held a bunch of women and elderly men, all of them gathered close around a large, red-faced and stunned-looking woman in her thirties or thereabouts. That would be the widow Deel, of course.
Ahead and to his right the dining-room table was sagging from the weight of the foods that had been piled a couple feet deep atop it—well, it looked to be that deep anyhow—and additional space had been created by someone taking a door off its hinges and laying it onto a pair of chairs turned to face inward. A similar arrangement would no doubt be prepared, if a little more carefully, to hold the coffin in the parlor once the undertaker was done with the remains of the dear departed.
At the back of the narrow hallway he could see through into the kitchen where there were so many women crammed into the place that if someone on the south end got a pain in the belly, someone on the north end would surely feel the contractions as they passed from one to the other like ripples in a small pond.
A middle-aged woman whose expression showed the compassion of a saint and the raw determination of an infantry-corps commander took Longarm by the elbow and steered him in the direction of the dining room. She was a little bit of a thing, the top of her head coming about up to his third shirt button, but that didn’t slow her down. She had as good a hold of him as a kid leading a bull by a ring through its nose, and he was dam well going wherever she chose to take him. “I know you haven’t had a chance yet to speak to Jessica, saw you come in just now, but you can’t go in yet, she’s with the preacher and they’re praying and then he will want her to tell him what Jim’s favorite hymns were and take care of all those little details for the service, and I’m sure you understand, so please be patient, have yourself something to eat and wait here until the preacher and his missus leave and then you can go in, and don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye out and come get you to tell you you can go in then, all right?” She smiled up at him and continued dragging him on into the dining room without ever once giving thought to whether or not he wanted to go there. She wanted him to go there, he was going there, and that was that.
Longarm looked at the little woman with no small amount of awe. Damn if she didn’t seem to have conquered the need to breathe. Sure seemed to have, anyway. She’d got all that out in one seamless rush, which he would not have believed except that he’d heard it his own self and would swear to the fact in a court of law if called upon.
“Yes, ma’am.” It was about the only response that was open to him.
The little woman put a plate in his hand, the china so freshly washed that it was still warm and slightly damp from rinse water incompletely dried off.
“The meats are at this end, so start here and don’t be shy. There’s more in the kitchen and more on the way.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And if you need anything that you can’t find here”—she smiled up at him—“then you are entirely too picky and can stand to do without for right now.”
Longarm smiled back at her. “Yes, ma’am.”
Satisfied, the little woman turned and whisked herself away into the kitchen—who’d have thought there was room enough in there for her to squeeze in and never mind how small she was?—leaving him standing in the midst of all that food with a plate in one hand and a set of silverware in the other.
And come to think of it, he was pretty hungry. He hadn’t gotten around to lunch yet today. And damn but those oven-baked beans had smelled good, and now there was all this succulent ham and other goodies laid out in front of him.
