‘Naw, sir. But Esther seen her on Saturday. They went down to the church together.’
‘When was the last time you actually saw Doreen?’ Ben asked.
Mr Ballinger took a can of snuff from his shirt pocket and opened it slowly. ‘Well, now, that musta been on … lemme see … that musta been on …’ He took two fingers, dug them into the snuff, then brought them to his mouth. ‘I ain’t too good at figuring back.’ He thought a moment longer. ‘Saturday afternoon, I guess. I was still sleeping when she left on Sunday.’
Ben took out his notebook. ‘Well, I know that she went –’
Mr Ballinger leaned forward suddenly and held out the tin. ‘Want a dip?’
‘No, thank you,’ Ben said.
Mr Ballinger smiled. ‘Young folks don’t much like snuff no more,’ he said. His eyes drifted over to Doreen’s room. A large tin bucket sat at the base of her bed, gathering a stream of droplets that fell from the ceiling. ‘I promised her I’d fix that leak in her room,’ he said quietly. ‘Now, I guess it don’t matter.’
‘The man who used to take Doreen to work and then bring her home,’ Ben said. ‘Do you remember him?’
‘Why sure,’ Mr Ballinger said. He started to go on, then suddenly stopped, his eyes squinting slightly as he concentrated on Ben’s face. ‘I seen you before,’ he said. ‘You was at the ballfield. You the one that come to look after Doreen.’
It came together instantly. ‘And you’re the one who found her,’ Ben said. ‘Who called the police. You’re the one who was watching us from across the field.’
Mr Ballinger’s eyes seemed to grow inexpressibly weary. ‘I seen that little hand from a long way off,’ he said. ‘But I knowed it was Doreen. My heart knowed it.’ He shook his head. ‘She a good little girl. When she didn’t come home that night, I knowed it was something wrong.’ He picked an empty Buffalo Rock bottle from off the floor beside his chair and spit into it. ‘I looked all over just the same. But that wadn’t enough for Esther. She stubborn, that gal. She say she gone down to the police, and that’s what she done.’
Ben glanced down at his notes. ‘The man who drove Doreen back and forth from her job – did you get to know him?’
‘I talk to him a few times,’ Mr Ballinger said. ‘Name of Gilroy, Jacob Gilroy. He got a sister down on Nineteenth Street.’
‘Where on Nineteenth Street?’ Ben asked immediately.
The old man shrugged. ‘Little house there on the corner of First Avenue. Look like a cave or something, all them vines growing on the porch.’
Ben wrote it down quickly, then glanced back up at Mr Ballinger. ‘I talked to Mrs Davenport today,’ he said. ‘Gilroy doesn’t drive for them anymore.’
‘That’s right?’ Mr Ballinger asked without surprise. ‘I thought something wrong.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, that last Sunday,’ Mr Ballinger said, ‘I waited and I waited, but I never did see her.’ He blinked rapidly. ‘I seen the car, though. It passed right by the house.’
‘This house?’
‘That’s right,’ Mr Ballinger said. ‘Went right by, but they wasn’t no little Doreen in it.’
‘Did you see anyone?’
‘Just a white gentleman,’ the old man said.
‘Mr Davenport?’
Mr Ballinger shrugged. ‘Don’t know ‘bout that. I never seen Mr Davenport.’ He shook his head. ‘He live a long way from here.’
SIXTEEN
The house was not hard to find, and from Mr Ballinger’s description, Ben instantly recognized it. Dense clusters of poke salad grew along the porch, their pink stalks surrounding it like a rail. Vines spiraled upward toward the roof, then nosed over it, while thick waves of kudzu tumbled over the edge in an impenetrable green flood. A dark oval had been hacked out of the vine, and through it, Ben could make out the brown rectangle of the front door.
He knocked once and waited. There was no sound but the rain as it slapped against the leaves or drummed on the tin roof overhead.
He knocked again, this time a bit louder, rapping his knuckles against the wooden frame of the screen. Still there was nothing but the rain which swept across the sodden porch or streamed off the roof in slender white threads.
A low moan came from the house after he knocked a third time, and the door opened slowly to reveal a large man, slightly bowed, with gray hair and large brown eyes.
‘Yes, sir, what can I do for you?’ the man asked blearily, his eyes blinking painfully in the grayish light.
Ben took out his identification. ‘I’m looking for Jacob Gilroy.’
The man’s head bobbed slightly to the left as he stared at Ben. He labored to hold it upright. ‘What you want him for?’ he asked weakly.
‘It’s about Doreen Ballinger,’ Ben said.
The man’s eyes lowered drowsily. ‘That little deaf girl?’
‘Yes.’
The man retreated back into the house. ‘I’m Jacob,’ he said. ‘You can come on in, I guess.’
Ben followed him into the house and stood near the center of the room as the old man lowered himself uneasily into a small blue chair. ‘I hope you be gone before my sister come back. She mad at me enough already. She mad at me for having to stay with her.’ He leaned to the side, picked up a bottle of whiskey and took a long pull. ‘But I can’t help it. I ain’t got no other place to go.’
Ben took out the picture of Doreen and showed it to him.
‘Yes, sir, that’s her,’ the old man said. ‘That’s surely her.’
‘How well did you know her?’ Ben asked.
‘I knowed Doreen a little,’ Gilroy said. Another line of whiskey spilled from one corner of his mouth, then washed over his belly. ‘Something happen to her?’
‘She’s been murdered,’ Ben told him.
Gilroy stared at him nervously. ‘Didn’t know her that good,’ he said quickly, ‘but she was real sweet, far as I could tell.’
Ben took out his notebook. ‘I understand you used to work for the Davenport family.’
Gilroy’s eyes squeezed together. ‘Forty years, I done it,’ he said as if it were a badge of honor. ‘Forty years I work for them.’ He shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘I ain’t got nothing against them. Not a thing. Wouldn’t do them no harm at all.’
Ben returned the picture to his pocket.
‘I done everything for them,’ Gilroy protested. ‘Everything they said. I done their driving, done their errands, done ever-thing they said.’
‘And Doreen worked for them, too,’ Ben said.
‘She a nice little girl,’ Gilroy blurted immediately. ‘She real nice. I ain’t got nothing against her.’
‘Did you spend much time with her?’
‘She tend to Miss Shannon,’ Gilroy said. ‘They up in Miss Shannon’s room a whole lot.’
‘So you didn’t see her very often?’
‘No, sir, I didn’t,’ Gilroy said. He took another drink from the bottle, then burrowed it deep between his legs. ‘I take a drink once in a while, but it don’t do nobody no harm.’
‘Did you pick Doreen up on Saturday and Sunday morning?’ Ben asked.
‘That was my job, so I done it,’ Gilroy said. His head drooped forward slowly, bobbed softly, then lifted again. ‘You be gone before my sister come back,’ he said. ‘She mad at me for quitting.’
‘Why did you quit?’ Ben asked immediately.
Gilroy shook his head despairingly. ‘Just a stupid thing, like my sister say, just a stupid thing.’ He looked at Ben plaintively. ‘It happen so fast, I don’t know what hit.’ He shook his head. ‘Fast as anything, that’s the way it
