And say our prayers and brush our teeth and gargle.
I ask, “Who… what…?” Starting down this road… it’s like picking the right trail home when you’re in unfamiliar territory. I’m completely lost.
Lieutenant Sardino shows me the way. He asked us to call him Tony, but I just can’t. He’ll always be Curry Weaver to me. “I guess the best place to start the story is when Sam called me a year ago and told me about your mother’s disappearance.”
“Tony and I go way back. He’s the best investigator I know,” Sam says. “He introduced me to Johnny.” As always, his Adam’s apple goes wobbly at the mention of his dead partner’s name.
I ask Curry, real put out, “Why didn’t you just tell me that Mama was alive at Miss Artesia’s shop tonight? Why’d you lead me on like that? And you, Sam… you could’ve said something when E. J. and I saw you in the back of the sheriff’s car in front of Slidell’s. Told us you weren’t really arrested.”
“I’m sorry,” Curry says, and really sounds so. “We wanted to tell you sooner, but Sam, the sheriff, and I decided that we had to let this all play out.”
Sam pipes in with, “We couldn’t take the chance that you might let something slip to your father, grandfather, or uncle. If they found out before we had the chance to… we couldn’t risk something happening to your mother before we were able to free her.”
“Besides,” Curry says, looking at me in the rearview mirror, “if I had told you in the secondhand shop that your mother was alive and up at the Colony, would you have believed me?”
I don’t admit it, but he and I both know that I wouldn’t have. I barely believed that he was an undercover cop and not a hobo. That’s also probably why the sheriff didn’t tell me on the ride to the hospital that he wasn’t taking me to be committed, but to see Mama. I wouldn’t have bought that neither.
Somewhat mollified, I say to him, “Let’s start over, all right? When Sam first called and told you that Mama had vanished, did you think she’d been kidnapped or fell down and hit her head or…?” I don’t say, “Or ran off to join the carnival,” because that seems really imbecilic now.
“When Sam filled me in about your mother’s plan to leave your father and hide nearby until he could bring you girls to her, I didn’t take much of what he said seriously,” Curry says. “I thought your mother had not followed through because… well, people change their minds. Especially scared ones. Not knowing her, I thought that once she was safe from your father, Evie had just kept running.”
He really
“What changed your mind?” I ask Curry, thinking how hard I tried and how bad I failed at finding her. It must’ve been triple difficult for this stranger to piece together her vanishment. Like one of those cruel one-color jigsaw puzzles they sell down at the drugstore.
“Many phone calls later, the more Sam talked about her, the more your mother didn’t seem like the type of woman who would escape a bad situation with the intent of reuniting with her children and not stick to the plan. Her body never turned up either. That left me with a couple of other options, none that I could act on long distance. So I decided to take advantage of the two weeks’ vacation I had coming.”
I say to Sam, “You acted like you hadn’t done one thing to find Mama, you faker.” All those visits to the Triple S asking for his help and him deflecting me. My nose is pushed out of joint.
“I did what I could,” Sam says. “I checked in at local hospitals where I knew folks and spent time driving the backroads. I also spent quite a bit of time trying to sort things out with Sheriff Nash. If you take some time to think about it, Shen… I couldn’t tell you what I was up to. I didn’t want to let you and Woody down if the news wasn’t good. The sheriff agreed with me.”
Like I normally do upon hearing Andy Nash’s name, I say, irritable, “That man can’t add one plus one and come up with…” But then I remember how he helped save Mama. And me. It’s going to take some time to start thinking of the sheriff not as a dunce, but more like Albert Einstein. I’ve been so overwhelmed with finding Mama alive, I forgot all about what I leaned in the window and told the sheriff before we left the hospital. I don’t know if the timing is right, but I can’t keep it inside me anymore and Mama deserves to know and not have it sprung on her by somebody else who does not love her. “Gramma killed Clive Minnow!”
My mother gasps and says, “No.”
“Yes, she did, Mama. She got me up in our bedroom and she had one of her fits and told me she did in Clive with one of her pies.”
Curry says, real coplike, “The sheriff knew Clive had been murdered, but not by who. The medical examiner found-”
“Rat poison,” I say. Remembering how proud she was when she told me she kneaded it to the crust on the advice of the Lord makes me shiver.
“That’s right,” Curry says.
Sam asks, “Did your grandmother tell you why she murdered Clive?”
“He was blackmailing Grampa for a lot of money. Clive must’ve been looking for UFOs the night of the carnival but heard Mama and Gramma arguing out in the clearing. He took pictures of them with a fancy new camera he got that can see in the dark.”
Mama stifles a cry when she wraps her arms around me and gives me the most breathtaking hug. She knows the same way I do what it feels like to be at the mercy of my grandmother. Once she relaxes her grip, I say, “Something’s been botherin’ me.”
“What’s that?” Sam asks.
“How did the sheriff know to come lookin’ for me under my bedroom window after I got away from Gramma?”
My sister tries to speak. It comes out as gobbledygook, so Sam says, “I think Woody’s trying to tell you that Louise Jackson told the sheriff and me that you were in trouble.”
“Lou?” I ask my twin.
She nods.
“Really?” I think of the last time I saw our housekeeper. In the kitchen. Drunk Grampa and Uncle Blackie salivating over her.
Sam says, “Lou came running to the sheriff’s office crying about how your father, grandfather, and uncle were being, and I quote, “ ‘Wicked. Something real dangerous is happenin’ up at that house. I throwed the bones. Sprinkled red pepper powder. Now y’all better go get that girl outta there or I’ll find me a gun and do it myself. Woody’s over at the Tittle place, you get her, too. Those peas need to be in the same pod.’ ”
So Lou did get the hoodoo mind message I was sending her! Once again, I am astounded by how much smarter some folks are than they appear.
“Obviously, rescuing your mother in the middle of the night was not part of our plan,” Curry says. “We’d intended to take you and Woody up to the hospital to reunite with her a few hours from now, but after Lou showed up frightened for your safety, we had no other choice but to act. So Sam and I left to get Woody from the Tittle place and the sheriff hurried over to Lilyfield. Lou Jackson told us that you were in the kitchen with your father and grandfather, so Andy went around to the back of the house. He found you lying unconscious.”
“Why’d he have Doc Keller with him?” I ask.
“We needed Keller to check Evie out of the hospital,” Curry says. “I have no jurisdiction there and the sheriff doesn’t either.”
Mama is biting her fingernails. “I think that’s enough questions for tonight.”
I want to ask how she got from the clearing after Gramma tried to murder her all the way up to the Colony. “But what about…”
“Shenny, hush.” She nods towards Woody. My twin is doing her SOS eye blinking and twitching like crazy. Finding our lost-then-dead-and-then-found mother… almost losing me… my grandmother murdering Clive Minnow… it’s all too much for her. I reach across Mama’s lap and take Woody’s other hand into mine and shut my mouth.
We listen to the hum of the car engine and the tires gripping the road. The radio has changed to something that sounds like a love song. My mother is staring straight ahead. Every once in a while, a car comes from the other direction and lights up her face in its headlights. Her cheekbones look like diving boards jutting over two empty pools. They must not have given her much to drink up in the hospital. I didn’t notice earlier how her once-lush lips are chapped and split.
We have come to the crest of the mountain where we can see down into The Big Valley.
