‘As little as possible,’ Mrs Ballew said, as if by rote, and she burst into tears, long, heaving sobs that carried the force of long suppression. Claudia hurried around her desk and squatted next to Mrs Ballew, put an arm around her, and placed a tissue in the woman’s hands. David fiddled with the brim of his Stetson, paling under his freckles.
‘Sorry,’ Mrs Ballew gasped as her crying subsided. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘You’re doing great,’ Claudia assured her.
‘I always said she didn’t work hard enough, Jesus, and now I’m so afraid she’s dead, and I make fun of her for being lazy. But that was the thorn between us, you know. Not a joke but the one thing I got mad at her for, the not working hard enough.’ Mrs Ballew exhaled a long who-oosh and wiped her face and nose.
‘Tell me about her job.’ Claudia pulled her chair close to Mrs Ballew’s.
‘She worked as a nursing home aide in Deshay. She’d change the patients’ beds, mop up the floor, spoon lunch into their mouths. It was either that or road crew for the parish, out in the heat and wet. But she liked the clients, especially the old ladies. She’d tell me when a new widower arrived and all those old women would just start a-prissing.’ Mrs Ballew mopped at her eyes. ‘Marcy said she could make their last days happy if she snuck Viagra into the food.’
‘What’s the name of the nursing home?’
‘Memorial Oaks.’
Claudia wondered why it wasn’t a crime to use the term memorial in a facility designed to house the still- living. ‘Tell me about the day she went missing.’
‘September thirtieth, she worked her regular shift, from noon to ten at night. Usually she came right home, showered to get the Lysol smell out of her hair, got ready if she was going barhopping. She didn’t come home.’
‘The staff at Memorial Oaks were the last to see her?’
‘Yeah. Her supervisor said she left about ten after ten. She stayed to help with a patient who’d puked all over himself.’ As Mrs Ballew’s lip trembled, she wondered the inevitable: If Marcy had been her usual lazy self and not stayed that extra ten minutes, would she have escaped the boogeyman?
‘And none of her things were missing?’
‘No, all her stuff was at home. Her car was found about ten miles away, at a shopping center parking lot. But she hated that center. She never went there, so I don’t know why she would go that night.’
Bad with a capital B. The girl was, in Claudia’s opinion, an abductee and probably dead. But how and why would her ID surface in Port Leo, hundreds of miles away?
David cleared his throat importantly but said nothing.
Claudia glanced at the file. The wallet, when found on the road outside Port Leo, had had a credit card and thirty-three dollars in cash in it. The most likely scenario was that the Ballew girl had been killed close to Deshay, although the Louisiana police had not turned up a trace of her. Assuming she was dead, someone – either the killer or an associate – had come to Port Leo, where they chose to throw Marcy Ballew’s wallet – still containing cash – onto the road.
‘We traced the movements of the registered sex offenders in Encina County, seeing if any of them had gone to Louisiana recently, if any had a connection to Deshay. So far nothing,’ David said.
The words sex offender made Mrs Ballew go white.
‘Deshay is a long way for someone to go to commit a crime against a stranger,’ Claudia said. ‘There must be some other connection.’
‘I can’t think of one,’ Mrs Ballew said mournfully. So for the next forty minutes Claudia worked through Marcy’s life: old boyfriends, old high school friends, former co-workers, any hobbies or interests. David hardly asked a question.
Mrs Ballew enumerated her daughter’s interests. ‘She did like watching cable TV, the movies, and she liked wrestling on TV a lot, and figure skating, what with the fancy costumes.’
‘Wrestling? She ever watch Joltin’ Jabez Jones?’ Claudia asked.
Mrs Ballew brightened. ‘Oh, yeah, the guy who became the preacher? Sure, she watched his show. She was a big fan of his.’
23
The Honorable Whit Mosley curbed the impulse to put the small-claims hearings on a kitchen timer. Watching the Augustine brothers bicker was like rewinding a moment from his own rowdy family’s past, where the six brothers routinely waged war over who scarfed down the nacho chips and who erased the Super Bowl tape and who spread lard across a brother’s bedsheets.
The division between the Augustines – who seemed to be sharing IQ points – was a homemade barbecue grill. Each side had laid out the facts of their case in a style that would have won them admirers on the tabloid talk-show circuit.
‘Let me get this straight,’ Whit said. ‘Tony, you built the grill using your own labor, correct?’
‘Damn straight. Sir.’ Tony Augustine nodded. He was a year older than Whit and had been a minor bully in junior high, and now realized he might pay for past transgressions. ‘Sweat of my own brow. Judge.’
‘But you used Cliff’s materials, correct?’
‘That’s right. Your Honor,’ said Cliff Augustine. He had never pushed anyone out of the lunch line and suspected he had the moral high ground. ‘I spent all the money on the materials: the bricks, the racks, the wiring, all of it.’
‘And, Tony, because there would be no grill without your high level of craftsmanship’ – the sarcasm was not lost on Judge Mosley’s clerk, the constable, the Augustines, or the few spectators waiting to argue their own cases – ‘you now want it back.’
‘Well, yeah.’ Tony gulped. ‘I mean, we were gonna share it, but now our wives ain’t getting along. It’s a real sweet grill, makes the best ribs you’ve ever put in your mouth.’ A hint of bribery honeyed Tony’s voice. Whit believed a plate of the heavenly meats might anonymously arrive at his doorstep, if all went Tony’s way.
‘It’s ridiculous that two grown brothers can’t resolve this,’ Whit said. ‘You’re wasting this court’s time, boys. So call me Solomon. I’m ordering that the grill be divided equally. Right down the middle. You get the right half. Cliff, and you get the left half, Tony.’
‘That’ll destroy it!’ Tony exploded.
‘Are you nuts?’ Cliff demanded.
‘Watch it,’ Constable Lloyd Brundrett, who served as bailiff in Whit’s court, rumbled.
‘Sorry, Your Honor,’ Cliff said in sudden meekness. ‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.’
‘Or option B is you two resolve this peaceably right now,’ Whit said. Neither Augustine spoke.
‘Fine, that’s my judgment. The sheriff’s deputies will execute this order at their earliest…’
‘Wait!’ Cliff yelled. ‘Please. Please, Judge. Wait. All right, Tony built it. He can have the grill. I don’t want to see it ruined.’
Tony pumped his fist in the air in a redneck jig.
Whit rapped the gavel and pointed it at Tony. ‘Stop that celebrating. Right. This. Minute.’
The hand dropped; the hips ceased their victory sway.
‘Tony, if your brother is letting you have the grill, I strongly suggest you work out a plan to reimburse him for the cost of his materials, over time and either with cash or barter. Maybe you could feed him and his family some of that barbecue you bragged about. You need to be a good brother. Understood?’
Tony finally nodded, surprised and still pleased.
‘Fine. Case dismissed.’
His clerk handed him the file for the next case. Neighbors bickering over ownership of a lawn mower. In the next hour he adjudicated four more cases. Patsy Duchamp slipped in and sat in the back row of the courtroom. When he completed the last case and the courtroom emptied, Patsy approached the bench and slid him a folder.
The news clippings on Corey Hubble you wanted, Whit,’ she said.
Thanks. The margaritas are on me.’
