Once I had overheard Mamadee remarking to one of the women with whom she played Bridge, that when her Bobby died, it killed Captain Carroll too, sure as God Made Little Green Apples. I reckoned that meant Captain Senior grieved himself to death, a common fate of the bereaved in Alabama. I had to wonder now that Daddy was dead—if he really was—if I could grieve myself to death.
Almost outside the window, one of the old oaks whispered and creaked, and in it, the birds and the squirrels and chipmunks carried on their daily lives.
Mamadee’s yardman, Leonard, had placed my suitcase on the bed, my record player on the floor and my Betsy Cane McCall doll and box of paper dolls on the bed. He had opened the window a few inches to air out the room; now it was chilly. I flung my coat on the bed, opened my suitcase and one of the dresser drawers, threw the contents of the first into the second, and slammed them both shut. I slid the suitcase under the bed next to the pot. That left the doll and my paper dolls. I lifted the box top and looked down into it. Betsy McCall Was Still In Pieces. At Ramparts.
My stomach grumbled. I ran downstairs and banged through the doors into the kitchen. Tansy paused with her chopping knife over the carrots she was dicing.
“Gone tear tha hinges right out the wall,” Tansy said. “You git, gal. I don’t need no chile unfoot in my kitchen. Somebody could be done a harm.”
“I’m hungry!” I cried. “Desperate hungry!”
“So’s a million Chinamen. Git.”
Tansy did the cooking and the light housekeeping and found professional fault with the succession of hard-up women who came in to do the heavy work. Mamadee had fired every servant she had ever had, or had them quit. Tansy had been fired or quit everywhere else and the only job she could get was at Ramparts. They were stuck with each other. Tansy gave Mamadee somebody to rag everyday, and Mamadee gave Tansy somebody to resent everyday.
I banged back through the doors out of the kitchen and headed down the hall for the library.
Ford lunged out of nowhere and grabbed my wrist. He spun me off course and pushed my face against a wall, holding my arm behind me. I opened my mouth to scream and he kneed me in the small of the back, so I couldn’t get any air down my lungs.
“Ssshhh,” he whispered in my ear, strong-arming me into the powder room. His breath smelled of bourbon, which meant that he had penetrated the defenses of Mamadee’s liquor cabinet once again. He shoved me inside and shut and locked the door behind us. I finally got a look at him. His hair was raked up and down and he had been crying. His nose was leaking. He wiped it with the back of his hand.
“I am gone crazy,” he said in a croak. “I caint take this no more. Mama got Daddy murdered and chopped up by those women. I do not know how but she did. You know it. You don’t miss the sound of a mouse fart.” He threatened me with a curled fist. “You tell me how she did it and you tell me why she did it right now, or I swear I will kill you, Dumbo, I will cut your stupid ears off your stupid head and shove them down your throat!”
“She did not!” Then I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Mama did not do what you just said. You are a liar, Ford Carroll Dakin, a liar and a bully.”
We stared each other down for a long moment.
Then Ford said, “She’s gone kill me next. You would like that. You would help her.”
I shook my head no. “Course I would help her, but Mama ain’t gone kill you. Why would she? Why would she kill Daddy?”
“Money,” he whispered. “Get rid of me, she gets all the money.”
I knew money was important. Mamadee and Mama talked about it enough. I just could not see how any amount of money explained what had happened to Daddy, especially since I was not entirely sure exactly what had happened to Daddy beyond two crazy women having killed him and cut him up and stuffed most of him into a footlocker. Mama had not killed Daddy; those women had. And those crazy women had never collected the ransom.
And while Mama had threatened to kill me so many times that I could hardly take it seriously, I knew that she had never threatened to kill Ford, not in my hearing. She doted on him; he could do no wrong in her eyes.
“Money? You can have mine. You can have that silver dollar I got hid in my bedroom at home.” I reconsidered. Daddy gave me that silver dollar for my fifth birthday. “If you really want it.” Now it seemed like we were dickering. “You could let me have that Fred Hatfield card you got.”
“I can take that old silver dollar anytime I want. You are never getting that Fred Hatfield, you might as well forget it.”
I was relieved; if he took it from me, then I was absolved of the guilt that a trade would have carried.
I heard Mamadee’s step in the hall.
“Mamadee!” I whispered.
Ford held his finger to his lips. We both froze. Mamadee paused at the powder room door.
“Calley? Ford? Ford, baby, you in there? I heard you. You sick, baby boy?” The doorknob rattled violently. “You unlock this door right now.”
The solitary window was too high and small for escape. There was no way out. Ford never did have sense enough to make sure he had a way out. He shot me a look of warning and flicked the lock.
Mamadee stood in the open doorway with her hands on her hips. “Just what is going on?”
“Nothing, ma’am,” Ford said. “We just had to do some crying, so we come in here so as not to bother anyone.”
My stomach gurgled loudly.
“Calley,” Mamadee said. “How many times have you been told not to swallow air?”
She engulfed Ford in an embrace that he could not gracefully escape. I lingered only long enough to enjoy his discomfort.
“My poor, poor orphan boy,” Mamadee murmured. “Don’t you worry now, I’ll keep you safe.”
Slipping past them and out the door, I heard Ford hiss, sadly, like a tire with a nail in it.
I stopped with my hand on the doorknob of the library. Mama was inside, talking on the telephone.
“—never informed that the police were gone to search my home. I never saw a search warrant—” There was a pause for an answer, and then Mama continued, “I beg your pardon? You had no business ‘sparing me,’ Mr. Weems. You had no business authorizing an invasion of my home. You do not have my power of attorney”—her voice went high and shaky—“that was only to get the ransom money! You had better explain this right now. I will expect you within the hour.”
The telephone receiver crashed down onto its cradle.
Mama blew her nose. “Jesus God,” she muttered.
I opened the door and peeked in. She was sitting at Senior’s desk.
“You heard everything, I suppose,” Mama said. “You never mind those words I just used. I am having a crisis. I do not know what is gone on but I do not care for it one bit.”