Up Jumps the Devil dk-4 Read online

  “And we just heard that Dwight thinks the Wall boy killed Jap Stancil so he could keep all the money to pay his gambling debts,” said Isabel. She clucked her tongue at the idea.

  “Well, that’s what happens when you can’t leave it alone,” said Doris, who was one of the ones who disapproved of their trips to Atlantic City.

  With a mild glance at the cigarette in Doris’s hand, Isabel said, “Any kind of addiction can be real bad.”

  The soft dig went right past Doris. She dropped her cigarette in the ashstand just outside the door and offered around her roll of breath mints as we went inside.

  A funeral home visitation is uncomfortably like the receiving line at a wedding reception except that the deceased occupies the spot usually reserved for the bride and groom. One passes through a line of lesser relatives, pauses a solemn moment before the open casket, then passes on to the immediate relatives.

  Tonight, there were only three people to represent the family. Allen Stancil stood just beyond the bier, looking decidedly uncomfortable in a necktie and a too-big sports jacket that Pete Grimes had probably lent him. Merrilee Grimes stood next to him and Pete hovered protectively at her elbow.

  Jap Stancil had been an ornery old man who’d outlived his wife and son. He had died without grandchildren or any church affiliation and had been considered slightly disreputable by many of his more self-righteous neighbors. As a result, the turnout at Aldcroft’s tonight was rather light and most came to pay their respects to Merrilee and Pete, not because they grieved for Allen, who was relatively unknown to the community, or because they personally mourned the old man’s passing.

  Of those who did come for Mr. Jap’s sake, Daddy and Aunt Sister were probably the only ones who remembered him from childhood although my older brothers had certainly known him in his prime.

  “He kept our old ’thirty-nine Ford V-Eight running three years past its natural death,” said Haywood of the first car he and Herman owned together, and they got downright lyrical about the way he’d helped them rebuild the engine of a 1950 Studebaker, a car legendary among the boys for its great heart and stamina. It was still up on cinder blocks under one of the shelters at the homeplace, like a trusty old mule let out to pasture.

  Despite those memories, there was more talk about the way Jasper Stancil had died than the way he’d lived—especially after one of Merrilee’s Yadkin cousins arrived. The cousin lived in the same trailer park as Billy and Jenny Wall and she described in lurid detail how a patrol car from the Sheriff’s Department had come out and taken Billy Wall away in handcuffs not two hours ago.

  The sedate parlor where Mr. Jap lay in unaccustomed state was electrified.

  “Billy Wall? Naw, you know not!”

  “Billy Wall? I can’t believe it. Why, he was telling me just last week how grateful he was to Jap for letting him grow his corn there with no up-front money.”

  “ ’Course you know, Billy was flashing a pretty big wad of cash down at the store yesterday.”

  “And I hear tell his wife’s been buying stuff for the baby’s room like she found the money tree.”

  “Won’t nobody else with any cause to do him in.”

  When it was my turn to speak to Allen and Merrilee, I restrained myself from skewering Allen with Diana Henderson’s name and expressed my formal sympathy to both Grimeses since Pete had been Merrilee’s surrogate whenever she was too busy to run by there herself.

  “You were mighty good to him,” I told Merrilee. “You too, Pete. I’m sure it made him rest easy knowing he could count on y’all when Dallas wasn’t there.”

  Merrilee smiled bravely and Pete shuffled his feet in embarrassment.

  The formality of the occasion had begun to dissipate beneath speculation about Billy Wall on the one hand and discussion of weekend holiday plans on the other. Conversation lost its reverent hush and occasional bursts of laughter punctuated the buzz and hum. Daddy and Aunt Sister were seated at the end of the big room beside Herman’s wheelchair and I joined my sisters-in-law who were standing nearby.

  Adam wasn’t at the funeral home. Isabel said that he was spending the night at Zach’s and would be flying out the next day. Evidently, he’d made the rounds that afternoon and said good-bye to everyone except me. There was no reference to any land sale, so I had to assume no one else knew.

  “I was hoping Karen and the children could maybe fly over for our Thanksgiving get-together on Saturday,” said Isabel, “but Adam says they wouldn’t get enough time off from school to make it worthwhile. Beats me how it can feel like Thanksgiving or Christmas either with palm trees and going swimming in your own backyard.”

  She was confusing San Diego where Frank lived with San Francisco again. In Isabel’s mind, the whole of California was surf and sun three hundred and sixty days a year with earthquakes, canyon fires, and mudslides on the remaining five.

  “You get the plates yet?” Doris asked me.

  I assured her that I’d already taken care of it. “Plates and napkins, too.”

  “I thought if you didn’t, I could pick them up tomorrow. I’m going to Raleigh. Start my Christmas shopping.” She looked at Isabel and Nadine. “Y’all want to come?”

  Nadine said she had to work. She’d promised a customer to give him an estimate on wiring a new bathroom. Isabel just smiled patiently. “Now, Doris, you know well and good that Haywood and me are driving over to Kinston tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Oh yes. For that plane to Atlantic City.”

  The devil was in me and I pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to Isabel. “Play one of the machines for me, okay?”

  Isabel smiled and tucked the bill in her purse. “I’ll dedicate tomorrow night to you, honey. Where you gonna be if you win a million dollars?”

  “Bet she’s going to New Bern,” said Nadine with a sly smile.

  All three of them suspect I’m sleeping with Kidd, but as long as they don’t know for sure, they like it that I seem to be settling down with one man and they’re keeping their fingers crossed that he’ll give me a diamond for Christmas. (It’s never occurred to them that I might not accept one.)

  But neither Isabel nor Doris had heard her. They were facing the doorway and both of them had their mouths hanging open as Nadine and I became aware that a sudden silence had fallen over the parlor.

  I turned and there was Billy Wall’s wife.

  This afternoon, she’d been dressed in baggy jersey warm-up pants, old sneakers, and a jacket that didn’t meet across her bulging abdomen. Tonight, she wore formfitting black stretch pants, shiny black high-heeled boots, and a tunic-length black knit top with a pink-and-gold scarf tucked into the neckline. Her long brown hair was done up in a becoming twist and she had put on eye shadow and bright red lipstick. She might have used rouge, too, but it was hard to tell because she had flushed such a deep pink from her neck to her brow.

  Little Jenny Wall marched across that pale gray carpet with her chin up and her eyes snapping. She could have been Hester Prynne striding the streets of Boston, only instead of a gold-embroidered scarlet A on her breast, she proudly carried Billy’s unborn child.

  The silence was so complete that we could hear her every word when she reached Merrilee.

  “Billy told me to come, Miz Grimes. We were coming together, but they—” She gulped and almost lost it, then her chin came up again. “Billy loved Mr. Stancil. He was good to us. Billy would never! He couldn’t!”

  Blindly, her hand went out to Mr. Jap’s casket. “If he could sit up and talk one more time, he’d tell you that himself. Billy never harmed a hair on his head. He didn’t!”

  “Of course he didn’t, honey,” said Merrilee and gathered Jenny Wall in her arms.

  Pete rumbled something encouraging and Allen, who’d gone out for a quick cigarette and had stopped to speak to someone on his way back in, looked grateful not to be up there at the front.

  Talk quickly resumed in a self-conscious attempt to smooth away the rip in the soci
al fabric by politely pretending that nothing had happened.

  “You don’t reckon she’s by herself, do you?” worried Isabel.

  “This far along?” said Nadine. “To be sure not. Why, when I was having Reese, my doctor quit letting me drive after I was seven months gone.”

  Merrilee was evidently worried about that point herself because she walked Jenny Wall back across the long room. As they moved out into the hall toward the front door, we heard Jenny say that a friend was with her, that they were going back to Dobbs to see what was happening with Billy.

  Now that she had faced down the community and paid their respects to Mr. Jap as Billy had asked, we could see her composure slipping again in the face of the unknown.

  It was none of my businesss, of course, but I caught up with her on the front walk. “Do y’all have a family attorney?”

  She shook her head. “No, ma’am. We never had the need of one before.”

  “If you want me to, I could call Zack Young and ask him to meet you at the Sheriff’s Department. He’s real good.”

  I didn’t know if Billy was innocent or guilty, but if anybody could give Jenny’s courage another shot of confidence, surely Zack could.

  Jenny thanked me and after she’d driven off with her friend, I went into Duck Aldcroft’s office and called Zack, who agreed to meet her at the courthouse.

  Back outside, November was doing its thing again. A low front was pushing in directly from the south and the night air was already warmer here at eight-thirty in the evening than it had been even an hour ago. Mid-sixties were predicted by Thanksgiving day. As people crossed Aldcroft’s wide veranda and headed for their cars, they marveled at the heavy fog rising up from the damp earth. It muffled noises, blotted out the stars, and put halos around every streetlight.

  “It’s pretty all right,” said Doris, “but it just doesn’t feel healthy.”

  25

  « ^ » Merchants in the town, and considerable planters in the country, are now beginning to have a taste for living, and some gay equipages may be seen…“Scotus Americanus,” 1773

  The fog was even thicker next morning and when I carried my garment bag and overnight case out to the car, I wasn’t aware of Reese’s truck until he pulled into the drive behind me and powered down the window.

  “Ma says Dwight’s arrested Billy Wall for killing Mr. Jap?”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “Don’t you ever watch Matlock or Law and Order?” I arranged my bags in the trunk so that things wouldn’t wrinkle and closed the lid. “He’ll be arraigned, the DA will present evidence to a grand jury and if they find probable cause, he’ll go to trial. Depending on how the DA decides, he could be tried for anything from involuntary manslaughter right on up to murder in the first degree.”

  “But if they don’t have any real evidence, the grand jury’ll let him off, right?”

  “Who knows?” I looked at him closely in the damp foggy light. “And why are you asking? I didn’t know you and Billy were particular friends.”

  “We’re not. I just hate to see somebody stuck in jail for something he didn’t do.”

  “Now see here, Reese.” I went around to the driver’s side so I could look straight up into his worried blue eyes. “Was there something about Saturday morning you didn’t tell me?”

  “Jesus! You never quit, do you?”

  He slammed the truck into reverse and roared out into the street so fast that he almost clipped Miss Sallie Anderson, who was there walking her dog, one of Hambone’s litter-mates.

  The young dog gave a startled woof and Miss Sallie said, “My goodness. He must really be late for work.”

  “Telephone, Deborah,” Aunt Zell called from the doorway. “It’s Isabel.” Hambone scooted past her feet and rushed over in hopes of a frolic with his sister.

  Aunt Zell handed me the phone and went out to collect her dog and exchange a few words with Miss Sallie.

  “Deb’rah?” came Isabel’s voice. “Now if it’s not convenient, just say so and we’ll do something else, but the fog’s so bad and the weatherman says it’s just going to get worse and I hate for Haywood to drive in it and you did say you were going to New Bern this afternoon, didn’t you? And Kinston’s right on the way, so if it’s all right with you—”

  “Sure,” I said. “I have half a day of court, but I planned to leave around twelve-thirty or one o’clock if that suits you.”

  “Oh good! That’ll get us there in plenty of time. Stevie can drive us over to Dobbs.”

  We settled on a meeting place and as Aunt Zell and Hambone came back into the kitchen, I told her I’d be back sometime Friday, depending on when Haywood and Isabel’s plane got in. She and Uncle Ash were going to spend Thanksgiving morning picking up pecans out at his sister’s farm near Cotton Grove, then come back to Portland and Avery’s for a full-blown turkey dinner.

  For some reason the zaniest cases seem to show up in pre-holiday court sessions. Wednesday started out normally enough, but shortly after morning recess, we got Marcus Sanders, black, sixty-nine, bone skinny and still spry.

  Mr. Sanders was not a stranger to my court because he was bad for augmenting his small pension with shoplifted steaks and chickens from the Harris Teeter store at the north end of Main Street, about two blocks from his house.

  More than once the same Harris Teeter security guard had sat in this same witness box and testified as to how he had stopped and searched Mr. Sanders “immediately outside the store” whereupon he had discovered the stolen meats “upon the suspect’s person.”

  “This time, when I tried to stop Mr. Sanders, he took off like a rabbit and when I caught up to him, he was setting on his porch swing.”

  (Let the record show that while the witness is at least twenty years younger, he is also quite corpulent and probably does not run like a rabbit.)

  “And did you then search the defendant?” asked Tracy Johnson, who was prosecuting today.

  “Yes, ma’am. He didn’t have nothing still on him, but them two packs of steaks were laying on the floor inside his screen door.”

  Mr. Sanders, who was representing himself, bounced up from the defense table and said, “And you didn’t have no right. I was on my own premises.”

  I cautioned him against speaking out. “You’ll get your turn.”

  “No more questions from me, Your Honor,” said Tracy.

  Mr. Sanders bounced back up. “When you catched up to me, where’d you find me, son?”

  “On your porch.”

  “On my porch,” Mr. Sanders repeated happily. “And where were them steaks?”

  “Inside your screen door and fully visible.”

  “But not on my person?”

  “Well, no.”

  The defendant turned to me triumphantly, his dark face aglow with righteous vindication. “See there, Your Honor? He says it himself!”

  I seemed to be missing something in his logic. Tracy Johnson stood to elucidate.

  “Your Honor, Mr. Sanders is under the impression that since he was not searched immediately outside the store and that since the steaks were not recovered from his physical person—”

  “Home free?” I asked, disbelieving.

  Sanders nodded vigorously. “Yes, ma’am, Your Honor. Home free!”

  I almost hated to disillusion him. Since he’d spent the night in jail and since Harris Teeter had retrieved their steaks back intact, I sentenced him to time served and court costs.

  After some public drunkenness in which all the defendants were well past fifty, the last case of the morning was larceny. Two nicely dressed white women: Josephine Reed, seventy-six, white-haired, fragile-looking; and Natalie Meadows, a sweet-faced twenty-one.

  In Kmart or Wal-Mart, at Rose’s or Winn-Dixie, in fact, in any store where patrons use shopping carts, Mrs. Reed and Miss Meadows were a Norman Rockwell illustration of a dutiful granddaughter there to push the cart for her failing grandmother. They usu
ally shopped at the busiest times. On this particular occasion, however, someone noticed that after they filled their cart, they didn’t bother to stop at a cash register before pushing that cart right on out to the parking lot.

  Mrs. Reed used a cane and walked so slowly that store security had plenty of time to get a Dobbs police officer there before the women had fully unloaded their loot into the trunk of Mrs. Reed’s car. He searched the car and found items from four different stores: cartons of cigarettes, cosmetics, toys, appliances and dozens of boxes of cold tablets, aspirin and antacids. In all, the haul was worth almost two thousand, all destined for the flea market booth the two women rented once a month when their money ran out, according to the investigating officer.

  I was all set to lecture Miss Meadows for using her grandmother as stage dressing for larceny when that young woman angrily denied any kinship.

  “And I didn’t use her, okay? She came to me. Her own granddaughter was a friend of mine and when she moved to Florida last year, Jo asked me to take her place, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, and sentenced them each to jail, ten days of active time with another ninety days suspended under the usual conditions.

  “Jail?” protested little Mrs. Reed, glaring at me over her bifocals. “But I’m a senior citizen.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “No discounts for seniors.”

  Haywood and Isabel’s son Stevie, home from college for the Thanksgiving weekend, met me in chambers after adjournment at twelve-thirty.

  “You sure you don’t mind driving them?” he asked. “Gayle and I were going to Raleigh, do some Christmas shopping and maybe catch a movie, but we could wait and go tomorrow.”

  I told him not to be silly and we went down to the parking lot where his parents were waiting. Isabel looked appropriately glitzy in gold stretch pants, gold purse and shoes, and a bright green, hip-length sweater ornamented with pearl drops, oversized rhinestones, and gold beading.

  In his matching green sports jacket, string bolo tie, and porkpie hat, Haywood looked more massive than usual as he stood beside my sleek little Firebird.