“You heard her killer,” Melinda said.
“What?”
“You heard the voice of the person who killed Poppy,” I said.
“Oh, that’s…” On the verge of saying “ridiculous,” Lizanne stopped speaking, stopped moving. Her lips lost their color.
“I could have saved her,” Lizanne said finally. “I could have saved her life, and instead I went back to the van and sat.”
“Or,” I said, not liking the way her color had changed, “you could have gotten killed right along with her, and your children would have been left out in the van all by their lonesome selves.”
Lizanne sat down across the table from us. She looked positively punchy with shock.
“Oh,” she said, and that was all, but it spoke volumes.
I’d been sure that Lizanne wasn’t as hard-hearted as she’d been letting on, and I was right. But she’d felt better when she’d acted tough.
“Could you make out who it was?” I asked after a pause to let Lizanne gather herself.
“No, I was so wrought up, and the radio was playing, and I was so angry…”
“Could you tell if the voice was a man’s or a woman’s?”
Lizanne’s large dark eyes focused on me. “Surely it must have been a man’s?”
“Look at how angry
“No, I reckon not,” she said. “I assumed at the time it was a man’s voice. Poppy’s radio was on so loud-she was listening to NPR, like my daddy used to. Remember, Roe?”
Truthfully, I didn’t remember what radio station Lizanne’s dad had listened to, though I remembered Arnie with great fondness. But I nodded anyway.
“So, I guess I’ll have to go to the police,” she said after a moment. “I mean, if I really did hear…”
“You ought to,” Melinda said, trying to make her voice gentle. Davis squawked, and Lizanne got up and handed him the pacifier that had fallen from his mouth. He resumed sucking and fell back to sleep. Brandon watched us as if we were performing in a soap opera. To my eyes, both children looked like little Bubbas. If Lizanne did divorce Cartland Sewell, his face was still going to be right in front of her for the next sixteen-plus years.
“I guess I wouldn’t be telling anyone anything they didn’t already know,” Lizanne said. I thought she was backing out of going to the police, but finally I decided she was thinking of having to tell the police that her husband was cheating on her. “The way things spread in a small town. Why did Bubba think he was fooling anyone?”
There were probably people in Lawrenceton who hadn’t known that Cartland Sewell and Poppy Queensland had been having an affair (me, for example). But while I told myself that I enjoyed juicy gossip as much as the next person, this wasn’t entirely true. Illnesses, inheritances, land transactions, job promotions-I was interested in all these bits of information. But sexual misdeeds, no, I didn’t want to hear about them. I only knew the cast of John David’s couch because Melinda had told me one afternoon when we were driving to Atlanta to shop, and I couldn’t get away.
“Do you want Arthur to come here?” I asked, trying to sound offhand.
“That would be good. I have a lot of cooking to do; plus, I don’t want to take the boys down to the police station,” Lizanne said. She brightened considerably. “Oh, do you think he would?”
“Yes, I bet so,” I said. Melinda handed me the phone, and I placed the call. Arthur didn’t sound very glad to hear from me, which I could understand. I explained as neutrally as I could.
As I expected, he was angry with me. “You knew all along that Lizanne had been there that day,” he said unequivocally. After all, that was the absolute truth.
“Well, we suspected.” I was trying to sound mild and intractable, but that’s hard to pull off. I just sounded stubborn.
“You’re lucky I don’t put you both in jail for obstructing an investigation.”
Melinda was leaning close enough to hear that, and she looked at me with alarm written large in her brown eyes. I shook my head. No way was Arthur going to do anything like that. “On the other hand,” I said, still trying for mild, “we happen to be over at Lizanne’s right now, and we happen to know she has some information for you.”
“Maybe I’ll just arrest her,” Arthur said. “She had plenty of reason to kill Poppy.”
“Well, if she loved her husband, that would be so. But that’s not the case,” I snapped. I had run out of mild. “Arthur Smith, you know a woman with two babies in her van is not going to go in and stab someone to death!”
“Still waters run deep,” Arthur said portentously.
“Still waters, my round rear end.” Now I was sounding like a real Uppity Woman. But as I thought twice, I looked at Lizanne’s placid and beautiful face, and read nothing there but polite interest in the outcome of my conference with the detective. Maybe Lizanne was deep water, and maybe she was only a shallow, still, pond. Either way, she was my friend.
“Are you coming?” I tried to sound more moderate.
He sighed, a deep and unhappy exhalation. “Yes, I am. But I’m going to pretend she called me herself, instead of you, and I want you and Melinda gone by the time I get there.”
“Okay,” I said unhappily. “Let’s try to make it a trade-off.” I didn’t want Lizanne to be alone for very long at all. She was having a tough time, and being alone might sap her good resolution to come clean.
“I’m bringing Trumble with me,” he said, and for a second I drew a blank. Then I remembered that was the name of the detective who’d interviewed me. “I’m leaving here in five minutes.”
So Melinda and I talked babies with Lizanne for the next ten minutes. That was easy for Melinda, but not for me. I’ve never had a baby, and I never will. The elderly OB-GYN I’d consulted in Atlanta had been pretty clear that the chances of me conceiving were infinitesimal. I have a tilted womb (charming, huh?) and I don’t always produce eggs, which makes me feel like an inferior chicken.
I suppressed a familiar ache and listened with a smile to their swapped stories about teething, walking, crawling, and sleeping patterns. This is the small talk of women of a certain age, and not only was I getting past that age; I’d never learned the language.
I quit feeling sorry for myself when I passed Arthur and Cathy Trumble on the sidewalk to Lizanne’s front door, and reflected on how much I had to do between now and tomorrow. It was incredibly fortunate that I had to work only three hours today, and the library would be closed tomorrow and through the weekend for the Thanksgiving holiday.
When I pulled up to Melinda’s house, she persuaded me to come in for a minute and talk to John David. He didn’t want to go back to the house he’d shared with Poppy, cleaned or not, and he was taking very little care of his son. Melinda hadn’t spoken to him about it yet, but she was going to, she told me. “It’s not that I don’t care for the little guy; he’s cute as he can be,” she said, guilt written large on her face. “I just feel like I have enough to do.”
“Of course,” I agreed promptly, because to do less would have been insulting. I realized that no one had suggested that I should take Chase. And I realized that I was relieved. A couple of years before, I’d had the care of a baby, with absolutely no preparation or warning. Going into it cold was simply terrifying. “John David should be able to take care of his own son, especially if he hires a nanny,” I said cautiously.
“Avery could cope with the situation,” Melinda said. “He took as much care of Marcy as I did, when he was home… which wasn’t as much as I was, of course. And he was so excited when Charles was born!” Melinda’s face was transformed by a huge smile. “Avery’s a good dad,” she said, wrapping up a whole bundle of memories.
“I guess John David got a big bundle of charm but none of the moral fiber,” I said.
She considered. “I think he likes to do the right thing, as long as it’s not too much trouble.”
That summed up John David pretty accurately. But maybe we both would be proved wrong.
Melinda seemed relieved to get out at her own home, where she could follow her own normal round of activities. She’d deposited the children at Mother’s Day Out at the Methodist church so she could finalize the preparations for driving to her parents’ home for Thanksgiving, and she told me she was determined to go no matter what happened. “It’s been awful and tense the past few days,” she said. I couldn’t argue with that. “We don’t know when the funeral will be, because Poppy’s body hasn’t been released yet, and this is a good time to get away, at least for a day. The kids need some downtime.” I wasn’t sure who needed it more, but obviously Melinda
