In the days to come, it would be his burden that there had been no love in his heart for her this morning.
That he hadn’t said, “Your mama does look pretty today.”
That he hadn’t even said goodbye.
* * *
“Hello? . . . Hello?” The man’s voice became impatient. “Is anybody there? Hello!”
The rain was coming down hard, drumming on her red umbrella like the racing of her heart. Rosa Edwards swallowed hard and tried to speak, but she was so nervous, she knew she’d botch it.
Instead, she abruptly hung up and moved away from the exposed public telephone outside the convenience store. She had thought out everything she meant to say, but the minute she heard his voice, knowing he was a murderer, she couldn’t speak.
Telephones were so fancy these days. Buttons you could push and it’d call the person you last called. Another button and it’d tell you what number last called you. Not that it’d get him anywhere if he did find out she was calling from this phone. Wasn’t in her neighborhood.
Her feet were soaking wet as she splashed back to her raggedy old car that just came out of the shop for $113.75. While rain beat against the piece of plastic she’d taped over the broken window on the passenger side, she rehearsed it in her mind all again, the way she’d just say it right out, no messing around. Then, when she was perfectly calm, she walked back to the phone, inserted her coins and dialed his number again.
As soon as he answered, she spoke his name and said, “This is the gal that saw you coming out of Room 130 at the Orchid Motel Saturday evening.”
First he tried to bluster, then he tried to intimidate her, but she plowed on with what she had to say.
“Now you just hush up and listen. What you done to her ain’t nothing to do with me. You give me ten thousand dollars cash money and I won’t never say nothing to nobody. You don’t and I’m going straight to the police. You get the money together and I’ll call you back at this number at six o’clock and tell you where to leave it.”
She hung up without giving him a chance to answer, and even though the concrete was wet and her tires were almost bald, she laid down rubber getting out of the parking lot just in case there were fancier, quicker ways to find out where she was calling from.
* * *
The rain was starting to get on Norwood Love’s nerves. The young man had worked his muscles raw these last few days, trying to get this underground chamber fitted out properly with running water, drainage pipes, air-conditioning, propane tanks, and ventilation ducts. His cousin Sherrill had helped some. Sherrill was the only one he trusted to help and keep his mouth closed. Most of it, he’d done alone though, keeping it secret even from his wife. Not many women want their husbands to mess with whiskey and JoAnn was no different. Fortunately, she worked regular hours in town, so it wasn’t all that hard to do things without her noticing.
With the money from Kezzie Knott, he’d bought some stainless steel vats second-hand at a soup factory over in Harnett County. He’d fashioned the cooker to his own design, did the welding himself. The copper condensing coil was one his dad had made before he flipped out the last time—Only thing he ever give me that he didn’t take back soon as he sobered up, thought Norwood. The fifty-gallon plastic barrels from that pickle factory out near Goldsboro stood clean and ready to fill.
He knew how to buy sugar in bulk without getting reported and he had a couple of migrant crew bosses waiting to buy whenever he was ready to sell.
Best of all, he’d figured out a way to keep the smell of fermenting mash from giving him away. That’s how most ALE officers claimed they stumbled over a lot of stills, just following their noses. In his personal opinion, that was a bunch of bull. Oh, maybe once in a blue moon, it’d happen like that. Most times, though, it was somebody talking out of turn or talking for bounty money. All the same, for that one chance in a hundred, he meant not to be found by any smells.
But this rain! The dirt floor was turning into a mud-pie and water was seeping down the concrete block walls. And now the weatherman was saying hurricane? Be a hell of a note if he got flooded out before he even got started good.
* * *
To Rosa Edwards’s relief, she hadn’t left it too late. The Freeman children were just coming out to the carport when she got there. She pulled her car in beside Clara’s and hopped out, leaving the motor running. “Your mama inside?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Lashanda.
“We’re on our way to school,” Stan warned her.
“It’s okay,” said Rosa. “I won’t make y’all late.”
She darted on into the house just as Clara came down the hall with her purse in one hand and car keys in the other.
“Rosa! Good morning.” She tilted her head in concern. “Is something wrong?”
“No, no, and I know you’re in a hurry. I got one quick little favor to ask you though.”
“It’ll have to be real quick,” Clara said, glancing at the kitchen clock. “I forgot how rain slows everything down.”
Rosa handed her the white envelope she carried. Humidity made the paper limp, but it was sealed with Scotch tape.
“Would you keep this for me?”
The envelope wasn’t thick. No more than a single sheet of paper inside. Clara turned it in her hand and looked at Rosa inquiringly.
“I can’t tell you what it is,” said Rosa. “But would you just hold on to it for me till I ask for it back? Keep it somewhere safe?”
“Sure,” said Clara and tucked it in her purse as she shepherded Rosa toward the door. “I’ll keep it right here next to my billfold.”
“Thanks,” Rosa said, heading for her own shabby car which waited with the motor still running. “See you tonight.”
Then she was gone before Clara remembered to tell her that prayer meeting was going to be cancelled.
* * *
“Millard King? Yes, I know him,” said the librarian. “Well, not know him, but I know who he is. Why?”
Deputy Mayleen Richards smiled encouragingly. “He said you passed him out on the track at the Dobbs middle school Saturday afternoon.”
Peggy Lasater wrinkled her forehead in an effort to remember.
“He said you were wearing red shorts and a white shirt.”
“Did he happen to mention that I was also wearing a Walkman?”
Richards checked her notes. “No Walkman.”
“People think if you’re a librarian, you spend your days reading. They should see all the shelving and cataloging we do. When I run? That’s when I get to read.”
“Read?”
The librarian nodded. “Books on tape. I did run Saturday afternoon, but I was too absorbed in the last Charlotte MacLeod to notice anything except where I was putting my feet. Sorry.”
* * *
Clara Freeman left Cotton Grove and drove south on Old 48, a narrow winding road that follows the meanders of Possum Creek. With headlights and wipers both on high, she drove cautiously through the heavy rain. Where the road dipped, deep puddles had formed. They sent up broad wings of water on either side of her Civic as she plowed through.
Once beyond the city limits, there were few cars on the road and she was able to relax a bit and to open her window a tiny crack. Not enough to let the rain in, but enough to keep the windshield from fogging up so badly.
She had dropped the children off at school, taken Brother Wilkins to the eye clinic, picked up the dry cleaning, waited for Brother Wilkins to come out of the clinic, taken him to the Winn-Dixie with her while she shopped for Sister Grace, then helped him into the house with his few bags of groceries. (“Bless you, child,” he’d said. “I’m gonna pray God sends you help in your old age like He sent you to help us.”)
She would deliver Sister Grace’s things and then it would be time for lunch. After lunch—?