The house was dim and smelled slightly sour, like milk left overnight in a glass. Straight ahead, a staircase rose to the second floor, to the right and left archways opened on to large rooms filled with sofas and chairs.
The woman led us to the room on the left and indicated a grouping of rattan couches. As we sat she whispered something to Howdy, and he disappeared up the stairs. Then she joined us.
“Yes?” she asked quietly, looking from Baker to Ryan.
“My name is Harley Baker.” He set his hat on the coffee table and leaned toward her, hands on his thighs, arms bent outward. “And you are?”
She placed an arm across the baby’s back, cradled its head, and raised the other, palm toward him. “I don’t mean to be unpolite, Sheriff, but I got to know what you want.”
“Do you live here, ma’am?”
She hesitated, then nodded. A curtain rippled in a window behind me and I felt a damp breeze on my neck.
“We’re curious about some calls made to this house,” Baker went on.
“Phone calls?”
“Yes, ma’am. Last fall. Would you have been here at that time?”
“There’s no phone here.”
“No phone?”
“Well, just an office phone. Not for personal use.”
“I see.” He waited.
“We don’t get phone calls.”
“We?”
“There are nine of us in this house, four next door. And of course the trailers. But we don’t talk on no phones. It’s not allowed.”
Upstairs, another baby started to cry.
“Not allowed?”
“We’re a community. We live clean and don’t cause no trouble. No drugs, none of that. We keep to ourselves and follow our beliefs. There’s no law against that, is there?”
“No, ma’am, there isn’t. How large is your group?”
She thought a minute. “We’re twenty-six here.”
“Where are the others?”
“Some’s gone off to jobs. Those that integrate. The rest are at morning meeting next door. Jerry and I are watching the babies.”
“Are you a religious group?” Ryan asked.
She looked at him, back to Baker.
“Who are they?” She raised her chin toward Ryan and me.
“They’re homicide detectives.” The sheriff stared at her, his face hard and unsmiling. “What is your group, ma’am?”
She fingered the baby’s blanket. Somewhere in the distance I heard a dog bark.
“We want no problems with the law,” she said. “You can take my word on that.”
“Are you expecting trouble?” Ryan.
She gave him an odd look, then glanced at her watch. “We are people wanting peace and health. We can’t take no more of the drugs and crime, so we live out here by ourselves. We don’t hurt no one. I don’t have no more to say. You talk to Dom. He’ll be here soon.”
“Dom?”
“He’ll know what to tell you.”
“That would be good.” Baker’s dark eyes impaled her again. “I wouldn’t want everyone to have to make that long trip into town.”
Just then I heard voices and watched her gaze slide off Baker’s face and out the window. We all turned to look.
Through the screen I saw activity at the house next door. Five women stood on the porch, two holding toddlers, a third bending to set a child onto the ground. The tot took off on wobbly legs, and the woman followed across the yard. One by one a dozen adults emerged and disappeared behind the house. Seconds later a man came out and headed in our direction.
Our hostess excused herself and went to the foyer. Before long we heard the screen door, then muted voices.
I saw the woman climb the stairs, then the man from next door appeared in the archway. I guessed he was in his mid-forties. His blond hair was going gray, his face and arms deeply tanned. He wore khakis, a pale yellow golf shirt, and Topsiders without socks. He looked like an aging Kappa Sigma.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize we had visitors.”
