The Julius House

the right one.

I told Harley Dimmoch’s mother that I had just bought the house the Julius family lived in. “I’m interested in the history of the house. I was hoping he could tell me about the day before they disappeared.”

“He doesn’t like to talk about it. He was really sweet on the girl, you know.”

“Charity.”

“Yes. I hadn’t thought of that in a year or two, Harley is so different now.”

“Does he live in Columbia with you?”

“No, he lives close to the Gulf Coast now, working in a lumber yard. He’s got a girlfriend now, oh for several years he’s been seeing this young woman. He comes home to visit about once a year, to let us have a look at him.”

“And you say he doesn’t talk about Charity’s disappearance?”

“No, he’s real touchy about it. His dad and me, we always thought he felt kind of guilty. Like if he’d stayed instead of coming on home that night, he could have stopped whatever happened.”

“So he came home the day-”

“He came home very late the night before Mrs. Totino found they were gone. Oh, the police came over here and talked to him forever, we were afraid he’d lose his temper, which he’s a little prone to do, and say something that would make them think he’d done it…”

I liked this woman. She was loquacious.

“But he just seemed stunned, like. He hardly knew what he was doing. He told us a thousand times, ‘Mama, Daddy, I helped Mr. Julius with the roof and I watched that man pour the concrete for the patio and I ate supper, and I left.’”

“He never mentioned they were quarreling with each other, or strangers came to the door, or anything odd?” I was trolling, now.

“No, everything was just as usual, he kept on telling us that like we doubted him. And the police went over and over that old car of his, like to drove us crazy. He was just nuts about Charity. He has never been the same since that time.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, he just couldn’t settle down after that. He is older than-well, Charity was fifteen or sixteen, and Harley was eighteen when it happened. It’s hard to believe my baby is twenty-four now, almost twenty-five! We had hoped he’d stay with us, maybe think about going to a junior college, or something like that. He had just gotten laid off at his first job when he went over to see Charity that time. But after it happened, he just wanted to take off on his own, didn’t want to stay around here. And the shock of it. It’s like he don’t want more surprises, ever in his life again. He don’t like phone calls if he’s not expecting us to call. We call him on Sunday, or not at all. We don’t drive down to see him on the spur of the moment, so to speak, we tell him way in advance.”

I made an indeterminate sound that was meant to be encouraging.

“So I’d better not give you his number, Miss. Because he wouldn’t appreciate a phone call from out of the blue. But if you’ll give me your number, I’ll pass it on to him the next time we speak.”

I gave her my name and phone number, thanked her sincerely, and hung up.

I related this conversation to Angel as we sat on the front porch with lemonade two days later. The house was measured all over and we’d knocked on walls for hollow places. We’d scanned the yard. Neecy Dawson, whom I wanted to ask about the sealed-up closet, had gone to Natchez to tour antebellum homes with a busload of other ladies. Bettina Anderson had left a message on my answering machine. I’d seen my mother and John off to a real estate brokers’ convention in Tucson, and the weather was swiftly getting hotter. There was never enough spring in Georgia.

Martin had called to say he’d arrived in Chicago, and Emily Kaye had called to ask me to join St. James’s Altar Guild. Both calls had made me anxious, though on different levels. Martin had sounded worried but determined; it was the worried part that frightened me. Would it be easy to extricate himself from this business? Emily, in her very nicest way, had quite refused to take no for an answer and had sweetly demanded I attend the Altar Guild meeting today to find out more about it.

“So what have you learned?” Angel was asking in her flat Florida voice.

“I have learned,” I began slowly, “that Mrs. Julius was wearing her Sunday wig on a weekday night. I have learned that Mrs. Totino doesn’t want to talk about the disappearance anymore. I have learned that there were no bodies under the concrete, and none could have been put there afterward. I have learned that Harley Dimmoch was a changed person after Charity Julius disappeared, but that at the time the police were satisfied with his story, because Mrs. Totino saw the Juliuses after he left-presumably.”

“So Mrs. Totino’s word is all you have that they were alive?”

“Yes,” I conceded. “But after all, she’s the mother of the woman who’s missing. She was part of the family. Her daughter had cancer.”

“Maybe you should talk to the sister. Mrs. Totino’s sister. The one in Metairie.”

“I don’t know what she could tell me. According to Mrs. Totino, the sister’s never been up here. Mrs. Totino is so in love with New Orleans she goes down there every now and then, she says, though somehow it sounded like the sister wasn’t exactly happy to have her.”

“Wonder why?”

“Well, she can certainly pitch a fit when she wants to, and evidently from what the security guard said the first day I visited, she has a reputation for being unpleasant.”

“If she’s such a bitch, how come the Juliuses wanted her around?”

“To help in the house, while Mrs. Julius was having her cancer treatments, I guess.”

“But wouldn’t that have made everything worse? I mean, you’ve got a sick woman, and a teenage girl mad because she had to move away from her boyfriend, and a husband trying to start his own business in a new town. Wouldn’t a woman like that be more trouble than she was worth? They could’ve hired a maid cheaper than building onto the garage.”

Put like that, it was mysterious. I would mull it over when I had the time. Right now I had to meet with the members of the Altar Guild, presumably to talk about altar topics, whatever that might include.

“I’ve got to go,” I said reluctantly. I moved to pick up the glasses.

“I’ll get them,” Angel said. “I’ll just put them in the kitchen and lock the back door on my way out.”

So we went inside together, since I needed my purse and keys. I was wearing what I hoped was a suitable tailored khaki skirt and a striped blouse with a bright yellow barrette to hold back my hair, and my soberest pair of glasses, the ones with the tortoiseshell rims. My purse was right inside, at the front door, so I was going down the front porch steps before Angel had even reached the kitchen. It was warm, but not that breathless glaring heat you get in a fullblown Georgia summer. I scuffled through the grass, thinking that buying a riding mower at Sears might be a good idea; the yard was so big.

Madeleine suddenly ran from the garage, crossed the yard with speed surprising in such a fat cat, and disappeared under the bushes around the front porch. What on earth had spooked her? I looked into the shadowy interior, walking slowly now, anxious without formulating exactly why.

The tool-room door was open a crack. Surely Angel and I had shut it the day we’d been in there measuring and straightening.

Angel came out of the side kitchen door and was halfway across the sidewalk between the house and the garage.

I took another step and it seemed to me the crack widened some.

“Angel,” I called, panic sparking along my nerves and surely showing in my voice.

She had a reaction that even at the time struck me as extraordinary.

Instead of saying “What?” or “Got a problem?” she broke into a dead run and moved so fast that she was in front of me one split second after the tool-room door had burst open. The man erupting from it was heading straight for us, and he had our ax in his hands.

“Run!” Angel said fiercely. “Run, Roe!”

That seemed extremely disloyal to me, but also intensely desirable. I couldn’t abandon Angel, I decided nobly, idiotically, since the man was swinging the ax and yelling and coming straight for us. Angel ducked under his arm, attempted to grab the ax handle, lost her footing on the loose gravel, and went down. My purse was all I had, and I