him a bill.”
“You never saw him?”
“Just said that, didn’t I?”
“Did you see other members of the family?”
“I’m about to tell you. You’re the one wanting to know all about it.”
“Sorry.”
“Charity’s boyfriend, Harley, came out to help if I needed him. And the mother-in-law, don’t remember her name, came out of the garage apartment and watched us for a spell. While we were pouring, Washington was in the form getting everything to flow right, and then we were both finishing it. I could see in the kitchen window. Hope was in there wearing an apron, fixing supper, looked like. She waved at me but didn’t come out to speak. I thought, She must be in a hurry. They must be going out later.”
“She was usually friendly?”
“Hope? Oh, yes, she was a friendly woman, meek. That cancer was really draining her, but that day she looked better and moved easier than she had in the month or two I’d known her.”
He’d seen every member of the Julius family but T.C.
“Was the light in the kitchen on?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so. There was still plenty of light. I got there at four, and it was late October; it wasn’t real bright, come to think of it. But it was Hope I saw.”
“And there’s no way that after you left, bodies could have been put in the concrete.”
“I went out late the next day after I’d talked to the police. That concrete was exactly like me and Washington left it, and no one had touched it.”
Parnell said this with a finality that was absolutely believable. He leaned up in his chair to a squeal of springs, and said, “Now, I think that’s it, Roe.”
He got up to walk me to the door, so I slung my purse over my shoulder and obediently preceded him. I thought of one last question.
“Parnell, why did you think Mrs. Julius was going out later?”
“Well,” he said, and then stopped dead. “Now why did I?” he wondered, scratching the side of his nose with the papers he’d picked up again. His narrow face went blank as he rummaged through his memory. “Because of the wig,” he said, pleased at his ability to recall. “Hope was wearing her Sunday wig.”
Next I went to the church.
I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.
It was unlocked. I could see across the right angle formed by the church and the parish hall, where the office was. Aubrey was seated at his desk. But I went in the church. It was warm and dusty. I sat at the back, let down a kneeler, and slid down on it.
I was hoping to bring order to chaos.
I’d promised Martin to stay with him, when we married. I loved him.
But he was-a Bad Guy. Or, at the very least, a Not-So-Good Guy.
I winced as I formulated the thought, but I couldn’t deny its truth.
If someone came to me-say, Aubrey-and told me, “I know a man who sells arms illegally to desperate people in Latin America,” what would I assume?
I would assume that this man was bad, because no matter what else was good in his life, it would not balance that piece of-evil.
This man who was doing that evil act was my husband, the man who had made alternate honeymoon plans so he’d be sure I was happy, the man who thought he was extremely lucky to marry me, the man who’d fought a horrible war in Vietnam, a man who loved and supported an ungrateful son.
I was convinced Martin was doing what he was doing not because he was intrinsically evil but because he was addicted to danger, adventure, and maybe because he thought he was serving his country. But what he was doing would poison our life together, no matter how much good that life contained. He was my sweetheart, he was my lover, he was an agricultural company executive, he was a veteran, he was an athlete, but I could not forget what else he did.
I cried for a while. I heard the door of the church open quietly. I felt someone standing in the narthex behind me: Aubrey. He must have noticed my car. But I didn’t turn around because I didn’t want him to see my face. After a while I felt his hand brush my hair in a caress and rest lightly on my shoulder. He gave me a pat, and I heard the door squeak shut behind him.
Peachtree Leisure Apartments. A different security guard, also black, less formidable and less good-natured. This man’s name was Roosevelt, which I was sure pleased Mrs. Totino. She was less pleased with me, however; her voice, which I could hear crackling over the lobby phone, was not enthusiastic. Perhaps she was regretting the purple and silver placemats.
“You been crying,” she said sharply, standing back from her door with none too gracious an air. Why the sudden coolness? I remembered she had a reputation for being disagreeable. Maybe she’d just reverted to character.
“I wanted to ask you something,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t call before I came.” Actually, that had been a stroke of luck, I now considered.
She wasn’t going to ask me to sit.
“What?” she said rudely.
“The day the concrete was poured for the patio…”
She nodded curtly, her thin bent figure outlined in the sun coming through the one window in the cramped and crowded living room.
“Can you think of any reason why your daughter would be wearing her Sunday wig?”
“Go!” she shrieked at me suddenly. “Go! Go! Go! You bought the house! That’s an end of it! You can’t leave it alone, can you? We’ll never know! You know what one old fool here told me? Told me they’d got eaten by Martians! I’ve listened to it for years. I just can’t stand it!”
Utterly taken aback and deeply embarrassed at having provoked such a ruckus-doors were opening up and down the hall-I stepped back and gave her the room she needed to slam the door in my face.
To cap off a perfect twenty-four hours, Martin telephoned from work to say his superior at the main office in Chicago had called an urgent meeting of all plant managers for as soon as everyone could get there. He’d come home to pack and I hadn’t been there, and no one had known where I was.
Whom had he asked? I wondered.
“So I’ll have to fly straight from Chicago to Guatemala,” he said.
I made a little noise of protest. I couldn’t reach any decision about my life with Martin, but I knew I would miss him and I hated for him to leave the country before we could resolve our problems.
“Roe,” he said in a more private, less brisk, voice. “I’m going to quit.”
Unfortunately, I started crying again.
“Promise,” I sobbed, like a nine-year-old.
“I promise,” he said. “This last trip is it. I’ll start disentangling myself while I’m down there. There are people I have to talk to, arrangements I have to make. But it’s over for me.”
“Thank God,” I said.
I thought I’d wept more in my four-week marriage to Martin than I had in the previous four years.
Chapter Twelve
THE NEXT DAY, I called Harley Dimmoch’s parents to find out where their son was now. The name was not exactly common, and Columbia, South Carolina, is not that big. There were three Dimmochs; the second listing was
