Cypress Grove Part 4

From the street I caught glimpses of the university's Gothic spires and b.u.t.tresses among the trees. The house sat ten or twelve yards back, though the frontage could scarcely be called a yard. Traces of old foundation showed, like teeth rotted to gum level. Probably there had once been a stand of such structures, housing for graduate students maybe, of which only the one remained. It was in immaculate condition, however, freshly painted pristine white, window frames and trim a light, minty green.

Things were a lot looser those days. When I didn't get a response to my knock, I went around back, knocked again there, then s.h.i.+mmed the kitchen door. If it ever came to it, I'd just say the door was ajar, I heard sounds inside, suspected intruders.

Three rooms. Kitchen with counters and stove immaculate, bath just off it to the right, living room straight ahead, bedroom to the left. That's where I found her. She was propped up with pillows, dressed in a pale pink nightgown with small blue flowers at neck and hem and larger blue flowers for b.u.t.tons. Her hair, clean and bright, lay on the pillow, framing a face wherein eyes rolled left, right, left. Mucus ran out of one nostril and snarled towards the slack mouth.

"Please don't hurt her," a voice said behind me.

I told him I wouldn't, told him who I was.

"I've been out shopping. I never leave her alone any more than I have to." He put the bag of groceries on the floor by the door. "She needs changing. All right if I do that?"

Yes.

Going to the bed, he unb.u.t.toned the nightgown and unpinned the towel doing service as diaper. The strong chemical smell of her feces spilled into the room. He took the diaper into the bathroom, to a covered pail there. He ran water till it was warm, and wet a facecloth. Brought it out and, holding her up effortlessly with the flat of one arm, wiped her clean. He took the facecloth back into the bathroom, rinsed and hung it on a rack there, washed his hands. He replaced the diaper, b.u.t.toned her gown and smoothed it. Then reached up to snap a fingernail against the IV feed, checking patency, drip rate, level.

"I thought I'd have longer with her. Just the two of us."

"I'm sorry."

He hadn't meant for this to happen, he told me, standing there looking down at her, into her face; hadn't intended to cause any trouble. He only wanted to take care of her. That's what he'd been doing at Parkview, for a long time now. Cleaning and bathing her, seeing after her feeds. But there was always too much else to do, too many others needing attention. She deserved better than that.

"What will happen to her now?"

"She'll go back to the hospital."

"Parkview, you mean."

"Right."

"And I'll be going to jail."

"For a while."

"Any notion how long?"

"Hard to say." G.o.d knows what they'd charge him with. Kidnapping, endangerment? Excessive kindness? "A year, eighteen months, something like that. After that you'd be on probation."

He nodded.

"Once I'm out, I'll be able to visit her."

Chapter Nine.

BREAKFAST WAS STRONG coffee and bagels. There were five kinds of bagels in a paper bag in the freezer (s.h.i.+pped in from Memphis? Little Rock?), b.u.t.ter, homemade fig preserves and cream cheese with chives below. Also a package of lox we both agreed should be put to rest. I washed my face and did what I could by way of brus.h.i.+ng teeth while Val a.s.sembled it all; then, once we'd eaten, took care of the kitchen while she showered and dressed.

In the yellow Volvo on the way into town I thanked her.

She smiled. "Any time. It's a pleasure to have someone to talk to. You like my house?"

"I like your house a lot."

At the office she signed out the forensics kit and told us she'd be in touch when word came down. I walked her to the car.

"You get caught in town again, there's always my spare room," she said.

"I'll keep that in mind. Thanks."

"Take care of yourself, Turner."

I watched till the Volvo was out of sight. Eyes swiveled towards me when I went back in the office.

"Guess you two hit it off," Don Lee said.

"Guess we did."

"House look good?" This from Sheriff Bates.

You'd better believe it, I said, and filled him in on what I'd seen. Floors taken down to bare wood, missing pieces of banisters and mouldings pieced in, layers of paint painstakingly rubbed away.

"Wish there were more like her," Bates said. "Most of those old places have been torn down by now. Or fallen down. We won't ever see their like again. Coffee?"

"Sure thing." I chewed my way through half a cup of it. Busy day in town. Every four or five minutes a car pa.s.sed outside. The phone rang and went on ringing in the real estate office next door.

"The mayor's mail?"

"Beg pardon?" Don Lee said.

"What you found on the body. Outgoing mail or incoming? Circulars? Bills? Bank statements? Personal letters?"

"Bills, mostly. That's what he put out for pickup. Clipped them to the front of his mailbox with a clothespin. Same clothespin's been out there eight or ten years."

"His mailbox at home."

"Right."

"On the porch or streetside?"

"These parts, they're all by the street."

As Bates was pouring more coffee, a fortyish woman pulled the door open and stepped in. She stopped just inside, blinking. Ankle-length pants that had started off black and with repeated was.h.i.+ngs gone purplish gray, red-and-blue flannel s.h.i.+rt over maroonish T-s.h.i.+rt. She was tall. The s.h.i.+rt's sleeves, left unb.u.t.toned, came halfway up her forearms.

"Billie," Don Lee said. "How you doing?"

"C. R.'s left again."

"Honey, he'll be back. He always comes back. You know that."

"Not this time."

"Course he will."

"You think so?"

Bates walked over to her. For a moment before she looked off, their eyes met.

"Thought he liked the new job."

"Job was okay, Sheriff. What he didn't like was me."

Steering her to the desk, Bates said, "You had any breakfast? I could call across, have something sent over."

"Kids ate good this morning."

"They always do."

"Pancakes."

"Billie does great pancakes," Don Lee told me.

"Put pecans in, the way they like them." Her eyes swept the ceiling. "Woodie has to turn in his geography project today. I made sure he packed it up safe."

"You get any sleep, sweetheart?" Bates asked.

"I don't think so. I made brownies, for the kids. C. R. likes them too. It was dark outside. I think maybe I burned them."

"Don Lee, why don't you take Billie on home, see she gets settled in. That be okay with you, Billie?"

She looked wildly about for a moment at the door, window and floor, then nodded.

"He'll take her out by the ballpark," Bates said once they'd left. "They'll sit in the bleachers a while. Don't know why, but that always seems to calm her down."

"Is she okay?"

"Basically. You couldn't ask for a better person. Just sometimes, every six or eight weeks, things get too much for her. Get too much for all of us sometimes, don't they?"

I nodded.

"Been going on for three or four months, we figure-the missing mail. That's how far in arrears the mayor's bills had fallen. Gas, water, electric. Near as we can tell, he didn't know."

"Which tells us he doesn't bother balancing his checkbook."

"Mm-hm."

"And service was still being provided?"

"Things don't get shut off much 'round here. Just not the way we do it. And he's the mayor, after all."

"What about credit cards?"

"Looks like he paid those from the office. Those and the phone bill."

"He works at home?"

"Town this size, there's not a lot of mayoring needs doing. Not much call for regular office hours."

"So why would he pay the phone bill at the office? Some reason he doesn't want his wife seeing the bill, maybe? I a.s.sume there's a wife."

"Oh," Bates said, "there's a wife sure enough."

"Can we get a warrant for his phone bills? Home and at the office? See who he called, who called him?"

"No need for all that." Fie grabbed the phone and dialed, spoke a minute or two and hung up. "Faxing it over. Give her half an hour, Miss Jean says."

"That simple."

"Seems simple to you, does it?"

I understood. As a cop on city streets you learn to dodge, duck, go along, feint. You find out what works and you use it. Same here, just that different things worked.

"Where's the mayor live?"

"Out on Sycamore. Far end of town."

"Anyone else on that route have mail missing?"

"There's only the one route. And if so, they didn't notice."

"Or didn't report it."

Mug cradled in both hands, Bates swung his chair several degrees right, right knee rising to a point northeast, then a few degrees left, right knee dipping as the left V'ed northwest. "Hard as this may be for you to believe, Detective, we did get around to asking after that. Took us a few days to think of it, most likely. Probably have it written down somewhere."

"I don't mean any disrespect, Sheriff. I'm only here because you asked me, doing the job you asked me to do the only way I know how."

Our eyes met.

"All right," he said at length.

"So you found the mayor's mail in this guy's pocket."

"Right."

"But no wallet, no identification."