“Well, wanna get the show going?” I said and clapped once. It was rude, but I didn’t need the suspense.
“Well, Libby … Ned, will you get that coffee out here?” Magda started. “We’re here to talk with you about your father, as the prime suspect in the murders your brother has been wrongfully convicted of.”
“Right. The murders of my family.”
Magda pulled in an impatient breath, annoyed I would assert my rights to my family.
“But before we work on that,” Magda continued, “we want to share with you some of our stories about your brother, who we all love.”
A slender fifty-something woman with administrative hair stood up. “My name is Gladys, I met Ben three years ago, through my charity work,” she said. “He changed my life. I write to a lot of prisoners”—here I physically scoffed, and the woman noted it—“I write to prisoners because to me it’s the ultimate Christian act, loving the usually unlovable. I’m sure everyone here’s seen
Everyone added a note then:
A younger woman stood up, about Lyle’s age, trembling. “I’m Alison. I met Ben through my mom, who couldn’t be here today …”
“Chemo, ovarian cancer,” whispered Katryn.
“… but we both feel the same, which is her work on this earth is not done until Ben is a free man.” There were scattered claps at this. “And it’s just, it’s just,” here the girl’s trembles turned to tears, “he’s so good! And it’s all so wrong. And I just can’t believe we live in a world where someone as good as Ben is … is in a cage, for no good reason!”
I set my jaw then. I could feel this going south.
“I just think you need to set this all right,” spat the crucifixed snow-woman who looked the least friendly. She didn’t bother to stand up, just leaned around a few people. “You need to right your wrongs, just like anybody else. And I’m real sorry for the loss of your family, and I’m real sorry for what you’ve gone through, but now you need to be a grown-up and fix it.”
I couldn’t spot anyone nodding at that little speech, but the room was full of an agreement so strong it seemed to have a sound, an
Magda moved to the center of the entryway, swelling like a red-nosed orator on the hustings. “Libby, we have forgiven you for your part in this fiasco. We believe your father committed this horrible crime. We have motive, we have opportunity, we have … many important facts,” she said, unable to pull up more legal jargon. “Motive: Two weeks before the murders your mother, Patricia Day, filed a complaint against your father concerning child support. For the first time, Ronald “Runner” Day was going to be legally on the hook to his family. He also was in hock several thousand dollars for gambling debts. Removing your family from this situation would help his finances tremendously—he was assuming he was still in your mother’s will when he went there that night. As it turned out, Ben was not at home when he arrived, and you escaped. He killed the others.”
I pictured Runner breathing heavily, striding through the house with that shotgun, his grimy Stetson tilted back as he sighted my mother with the 10-gauge. I heard the bellowing in my head that I always heard when I remembered that night, and tried to make it come out of Runner’s mouth.
“Fibers from your home were found in Runner’s cabin, although this has been continually dismissed because he’d been in and out of your home that summer, but it’s still a viable fact. None of the victims’ blood or tissue was found on Ben, although the prosecution made a lot of the fact that Ben’s blood was found in the house.”
“Hell-ooo? Like you aren’t allowed to cut yourself shaving?” the angry crucifixed woman said.
The women laughed on cue, primed.
“Finally, the part that I’m most excited for, Libby, is the opportunity portion. As you know, your father was vouched for by a girlfriend of his at the time, a Ms. Peggy Bannion. Just so you know there’s no shame in righting a wrong, Peggy is currently in the process of recanting that alibi. Even though she could be sentenced up to five years.”
“Well, she won’t be,” cheered Katryn. “We won’t let that happen.”
The others applauded as a spindly woman in elasticized jeans stood up. She wore her hair short, the top part permed and frosted, and her eyes were small and bland as dimes that had been in someone’s pocketbook too long. She looked at me, then away. She fiddled with the oversized blue stone she wore on a chain, which matched a blue stripe on her sweatshirt. I pictured her at home in front of a water-stained mirror, enjoying the slight bit of good fortune of matching her necklace to the sweatshirt.
I stared at my dad’s girlfriend—this special guest of Magda’s— and willed myself not to blink.
“I just want to thank you all for your support these past months,” she began, her voice reedy. “Runner Day used me like he used everyone. I’m sure you know.” It took a few seconds before I realized she was talking to me. I nodded, then wished I hadn’t.
“Share your story with us, will you, Peggy,” Magda said. I could tell Magda watched a lot of
“The truth of the story is this. On the evening of January 2, I cooked dinner for Runner at his cabin. It was chop suey with rice, and of course with Runner, a lot of beer. He drank these beers called Mickey’s Big Mouths, you had to pull the tab off, but the tabs came off at these sharp angles, looked like crab claws and he was always all cut up by them. Do you remember that, Libby? He was always bleeding with those.”
“What happened after dinner?” Lyle interrupted. I waited for him to look over at me for an appreciative smile, but he didn’t.
“We, uh, had relations. Then Runner was out of beer, so he left to get more beer. I think this was about 8 p.m. because I watched
