Morning Glory

Miss Beasley’s face lit with excitement. 'Prowling around town at night, listening for airplane engines, looking through binoculars and checking blackout curtains.'

Elly tossed her a hopeful glance, tinged with anticipation. 'And chasing curfew violators off the streets?'

'Exactly!'

Elly started the engine. 'Let’s go.'

They found Norris and Nat MacReady soaking up the late afternoon sun on their usual bench in the square. Each received a quart jar of pure gold Georgia honey in exchange for which they gladly revealed the startling details of an overheard conversation behind the library one night last January. They had been together so long they might have had a single brain at work between them, for what one began, the other finished.

'Norris and I,' Nat said, 'were walking along Comfort Street and had turned up the alley behind the library- where the podocarpus bushes grow by the incinerator-'

'-when a high-heeled shoe sailed out and clunked me on the shoulder. Nat can testify to the fact-'

'’Cause he had a purple bruise there for well over four weeks.'

'Now, Nat,' chided Norris, 'you might be stretching it a bit. I don’t think it was over three.'

Nat bristled. 'Three! Your memory is failing, boy. It was there a full four, ’cause if you’ll recall, I commented on it the day we-'

'Gentlemen, gentlemen!' interrupted Miss Beasley. 'The conversation you overheard.'

'Oh, that. Well, first the shoe flew-'

'Then we heard young Parker beller loud enough to wake the entire town-'

'’If you’re in heat, Lula, go yowl beneath somebody else’s window!’ That’s exactly what he said, wasn’t it, Nat?'

'Sure was. Then the door slams and Miss Lula-'

'-madder than Cooter Brown-pounds on it and calls young Parker a name that you ladies are free to read from our logbook if you like but one that-'

'Logbook?'

'That’s right. But neither Norris nor myself would care to repeat it, would we, Norris?'

'Most certainly not, not in the company of ladies. Tell ’em what happened next, Nat.'

'Well, then Miss Lula yelled that young Will’s-ahem-' Nat cleared his throat while searching for a genteel euphemism. But it was Norris who came up with it.

'-his, ahh, male part'- the words were whispered-'probably wouldn’t fit into Lula’s ear anyway.'

Almost simultaneously, Miss Beasley and Elly demanded, 'Did you tell this to the sheriff?'

'The sheriff didn’t ask. Did he, Norris?'

'No, he didn’t.'

Which gave Elly the idea about running an ad in the newspaper. After all, running an ad had brought results before. Why wouldn’t it again? But Miss Beasley’s ankles were swollen, so Elly took her home before returning to the Whitney Register office to rid herself of another quart of honey as payment for the ad which stated simply that E. Parker, top of Rock Creek Road, would pay a reward for any information leading to the dropping of charges against her husband, William L. Parker, in the Lula Peak murder case. To her amazement, the editor, Michael Hanley, didn’t bat an eye, only thanked her for the honey and wished her luck, ending, 'That’s a fine young man you married there, Mizz Parker. Went off and fought like a man instead of runnin’his finger through a buzzsaw like some in this town.'

Which sparked the memory of Harley Overmire’s long-ago antagonism toward Will and made Elly wonder briefly if it were worth mentioning to either Reece Goodloe or Robert Collins. But she hadn’t time to dwell on it, for from the newspaper office Elly proceeded directly to the office of Pride Real Estate, where she unceremoniously slapped a heavy nickel skeleton key on the counter, followed by yet another quart of honey and announced to Hazel Pride, 'I want to list some property.' Hazel Pride’s husband was fighting 'somewhere in the south of France' and had left her to manage the paper while he was gone. She had typeset every word about Will Parker’s heroism and his Purple Heart, so greeted Elly affably and said it was a shame about Mr. Parker, and if there was anything Hazel could do, just let her know. After all, Will Parker was a veteran with a Purple Heart, and no veteran who’d been through so much should be treated the way he’d been. Would Eleanor care to ride in Hazel’s car out to the house?

Elly declined, following Hazel in her own car through the chill of a late-winter afternoon. The morning glory vines were dry and leafless around the front door, woven into a thick mesh of neglected growth. The grass was the color of twine. The two cars flattened it while pulling around to the back door.

Of all the things Elly had done that day, none was as difficult as entering that dreary house with Hazel Pride, walking into the murky shadows behind those hated green shades, past the spot in the front parlor where she’d prayed, past the corner where her grandmother had died on a hard kitchen chair, past the bedroom where her mother had gone slowly insane, smelling the dry bat droppings from the attic, mixed with dust and mildew and bad memories. It was hard, but Elly did it. Not just because she needed the money to pay Robert Collins but because she’d come so far in one day she figured she might as well go the rest of the way. Also, she knew it would please Will.

In the parlor she snapped up the shades, one after the other, letting them whirl and flap on their surprisingly tensile springs. The sunset poured in, revealing nothing more frightening than dust motes swimming through the stale air of an abandoned house with mouse leavings on the linoleum floor.

'Two thousand, three hundred,' Hazel Pride announced, tapping her tablet. 'Top listing price, considering the work that would be necessary to make the place livable again.'

Twenty-three hundred dollars would more than pay Collins’ bill, Elly figured, and leave extra for the rewards she hoped to pay. She insisted on signing the paper there, inside the house, so that when she walked out she’d be free of it forever.

And she was. As she climbed back into Will’s car and drove through the hub-high grass of the deep twilit yard to the road, she felt relieved, absolved.

She thought about the day, the fears she had put to rout simply by attacking them head-on. She had driven a car clear to Calhoun for the first time, had confronted a town that seemed no longer intimidating but supportive, had set into motion the machinery of justice and had shed the ghosts of her past.

She was tired. So tired she wanted to pull the car into the next field-access road and drop off till morning.

But Will was still in jail and every minute there must seem like a year to him. So she drove clear back to Calhoun to find Sheriff Goodloe, give him hell about his slipshod methods of investigation and put him onto Norris and Nat MacReady’s logbook. She forgot, however, to mention Harley Overmire.

Chapter 22

Will lay on his bunk in a cocoon of misery. From up the corridor came the chiming reverberations of a metal door opening and closing. He remained inert, staring at the wall. Footsteps came closer. One pair, two pair. Leather shoes on concrete, a familiar sound, too familiar.

'Parker?' It was the voice of Deputy Hess. 'Your lawyer’s here.'

Will started. 'My lawyer?' His head came off the pillow and he craned his neck around.

With young Hess stood an older man with flyaway gray hair and tanned skin; slightly stooped, dressed in a brown suit and a rumpled white shirt with a tie knotted at half-mast. 'Your wife came to see me, asked me to come have a talk with you.'

Will swung onto the edge of his bunk. 'My wife?'

'And Gladys Beasley.' The guard unlocked the door and the lawyer ambled inside, extending a hand. 'Name’s Bob Collins.' He waited, peering at Will with gray eyes that appeared perennially amused, as if accustomed to introducing himself to surprised inmates.

'Will Parker.' Rising, accepting the handshake, Will thought, She not only came to Calhoun, she hired a lawyer, too?