Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows Part 5

CHAPTER.

NINE.

We got home at a quarter to nine. I went to the backyard, where my father was playing with Midnight, and said h.e.l.lo, then I went into the kitchen, poured two gla.s.ses of iced tea for me and Mama, and waited for her to join me.

Mama, on the other hand, wasn't interested in something cold to drink on a hot August evening. Instead, she went straight to the phone and called Abe. She asked whether or not he knew Leman Moody.

Abe told Mama that Leman Moody and a man nicknamed Fingers had gotten into a fight three months earlier over a gambling debt. Both had spent a day in the Otis County jail. Mama thanked Abe for the information and hung up.

No sooner had Mama joined me at the table and picked up her gla.s.s of tea than the phone rang. I glanced at the kitchen clock. Nine o'clock. Mama picked up the phone, and less than three minutes later her conversation was over.

"That was Leman Moody," she told me. "He wants us to meet him in the parking lot of the Avondale Inn."

"Now?"

Mama nodded, then walked out back to tell my father of our plans. I'd just taken my first sip of iced tea when she was back in the kitchen, picking up her purse, and motioning me toward the door.

In the brightness of sunlight, the drive from Otis to Avondale is beautiful. Pine trees line both sides of the highway. At nine-fifteen on a night when the moon is new, however, the darkness drapes the fifteen-mile stretch in a blackness that's only occasionally pierced by the glowing eyes of racc.o.o.ns, possums, or deer. The highway is virtually empty at night, seldom used by the locals since the advent of the interstate. As I drove, I felt a growing apprehension. "What does this Leman Moody want with us at this hour of the night?" I asked Mama.

"I sent him the message that I wanted to talk to him, remember? I'm sure Inez Moore got in touch with him as soon as we left her house."

"Why couldn't he come to Otis?"

"I didn't ask," Mama said, her tone short the way it gets when she doesn't want to do a lot of talking.

"Suppose this Leman Moody killed Ruby. Suppose he'll try to kill us."

"Simone, you're exaggerating again," Mama murmured.

"Okay, I'm putting it on, but I don't like this. Something tells me we shouldn't be going to Avondale tonight."

"Tell that something that we have to find out whether Ruby committed suicide or not."

"Mama, that's not funny. You're always talking about instinctsa"your instinct tells you this or that. Well, right now my instinct tells me that we shouldn't be going to Avondale tonight!"

Mama's head turned toward me, and although I couldn't see the expression on her face, I sensed my concern had gotten her attention.

"We'll be careful," she rea.s.sured me.

As we pulled up in the Avondale Inn's parking lot, a sleek black Mercedes pulled out. Six or seven cars in the lot made me think that there were more people staying in the Inn than the night Ruby died.

We sat quietly, looking out the car window. "What now?" I asked my mother after we'd been waiting over five minutes.

"Leman told me he'd be here," Mama replied. "We'll wait a little longer."

It was then that a white Volvo circled, then parked directly in front of us. The lights were switched off, the driver's door opened. A tall, lean man approached us, his face in shadow. I felt my heart start to beat a little faster.

"What this I hear about you putting the word out that somebody killed Ruby instead of her killing herself?" the man asked without greeting us.

"Can we go someplace and talk, Mr. Moody?" Mama suggested. "Maybe across the street at the McDonald's?"

Leman Moody hesitated. "Okay," he finally said, not bothering to hide his reluctance.

McDonald's had few patrons, although the drive-thru seemed busy. We sat in the back of the restaurant. Even though Leman Moody wore dark gla.s.ses, I could feel his unblinking stare. "I'm asking again, what this I hear that somebody killed Ruby?" he insisted in his gravelly voice.

If Leman's tone worried Mama, her face didn't show it. "Did you see Ruby the night she died?"

Leman took a deep breath and let it out, then he glanced toward the front of the room. I followed his glance but saw nothing. "No," he answered to the empty s.p.a.ce, as if someone were there, listening.

Mama gave him a curious look. "What about Ruby's money?"

Leman's head turned; he faced Mama again. "What little bit of money Ruby loaned me isn't worth talking about. Besides, I planned to pay her back. No matter what had happened between us, I had all intention of paying her every cent, and she knew that!"

"I understand that Ruby had a large sum of money a few weeks before she died. And that money seems to be missing."

"What Ruby had was her business. What she loaned me was our business, and she didn't loan me no large sum of money and don't you go telling n.o.body anything differently. I ain't looking for trouble but I ain't scared of causing trouble when it's due. Don't you be going around throwing my name in the pot with Ruby. What went on between us was mutual. Ruby understood where I stood from the first day I took up with her."

"I heard that you broke up with Ruby just before she died. Is that true?"

"So what if I did? Listen, if you want to point a finger at somebody, talk to the people at that factory. I wasn't the only person who didn't want anything else to do with her after she helped set up Inez and her old man. And there is that husband of hers. Talk is that she was about to dump him 'cause he wasn't treating her right. That woman was off her rocker, taking pills to sleep and pills to wake up. Maybe she forgot what pills she'd taken and overdosed herself."

"But Ruby didn't overdose on medication," Mama reminded him. "She was shot."

"I don't know anything about that!"

Once again, very quietly, Mama asked Leman, "Are you sure that you didn't see Ruby the night she died?"

"I don't know what makes you think that I've got to tell you anything." Leman hesitated. "But the last time I saw Ruby was when she knocked off work at four o'clock that day. We had a big s.h.i.+pment to get out, so I worked another four hours. When I got home that night I was bone-tired. Soon as I took my bath I went straight to my bed."

Mama leaned forward. "I was told that you were in Avondale around midnight the night Ruby died."

"Who told you that?" Leman asked. There was a trace of uneasiness in his eyes.

"Somebody saw you," Mama told him, her voice low, calm.

"That somebody lied to you. Like I told you, I'd worked twelve hours straight that night. I came home, took a bath, and crashed."

"Do you know Charles Parker?" Mama asked.

"No," he answered.

Mama tilted her head a little.

Leman stood up to leave, took a breath as if to say something, then didn't. He left us, pus.h.i.+ng through the restaurant's door and into the warm darkness.

Something's wrong, I thought. I glanced at the speedometer. Sixty miles an hour, a cruising speed on the dark and desolate road from Avondale to Otis. So why is my heart pounding?

Then the hood of my Honda flew up in my face.

I hit the brakes. Mama reached out and grabbed my arm but then quickly released it when she realized how tight my fingers were wrapped around the steering wheel and how hard I was struggling to blindly keep the car on the road.

"Take it easy, Simone!" she shouted as the smell of rubber and asphalt recorded the Honda's disastrous skid.

The darkness confused me and the Honda spun around, left the pavement, flew up in the air and nose-dived in straight down.

Then all was silent, except for the trickle of some fluid running somewhere in the darkness of the car.

My body ached like I'd been used as a punching bag. "Mama," I whispered.

Nothing.

I tried to turn, but my seat belt and the air bag pinned me tight. "Mama, are you all right?" I shouted.

Nothing.

Then, feeling myself a long way off and drifting farther into darkness, I decided that my mother was dead and I hadn't told her good-bye.

CHAPTER.

TEN.

The trip to Otis County General Hospital's emergency room in the ambulance was a nightmare that I was glad to have over. We were lucky: a man driving by had spotted our wreck and called 911 to say that a car had gone off into a ditch.

"Nothing broken. Nothing fractured, not even a concussion," the doctor told us, his voice devoid of emotion. "You can go home."

My father smiled nervously. "Thank G.o.d," he told Mama. "I don't know what I would have done if I'd lost both you and Simone at the same time."

It was almost one A.M. when we finally got home. Other than rea.s.suring my father that we would be just fine, Mama hadn't said very much. When my father asked, "What happened out there?" she simply told him, "Maybe tomorrow it'll all make sense."

Mama's words told me that she, like me, was trying to understand what had really happened to us. The hood of the Hondaa"why would it go up like that? Had somebody snapped the latch? If so, they'd have to undo the lock from the inside of the car. I tried to remember: Did I lock the car door when we went into McDonald's? And who was the Good Samaritan who had called Abe?

It was almost noon before I opened my eyes. My body hurt all over, so the first thing I did was to take a steaming hot shower. I almost felt human by the time I stumbled into the kitchen.

Mama sat at the table, sipping coffee.

"What's up, pretty lady?" I asked.

"You all right?" she responded without looking at me.

"Except for soreness, I'm terrific. What about you?"

"I'm okay," she said, her voice distracted, her mind somewhere else. "Your breakfast is in the microwave."

"Thanks. Where's Daddy?"

"James has gone to get the car towed. I suspect you'll need a rental to get back to Atlanta."

"Today is Sunday, isn't it? I wonder whether my car can be fixed."

"James will take care of that," Mama said.

I poured my coffee and orange juice. "Have you decided what happened out there?" I asked, taking a plate of golden waffles from the microwave and joining her at the table.

"Simone," Mama said, "why would that hood fly up like that?"

I looked into her eyes; the concern was deep. I picked up my fork, then put it back down. For once, even Mama's wonderful food wasn't tempting. We'd almost died on the road from Avondale to Otis. Why?

"Could it have been Leman Moody?" Mama continued. "And, if so, why? I didn't say anything that would have threatened him, did I?"

"Of course not," I said, but I didn't sound as soothing as I'd hoped. "It could just as well have been Inez Moore or her old man."

Mama nodded but didn't say anything. It was as if she was following some thought inside her head.

"Up until you started asking questions," I said, "the consensus has been that Ruby Spikes committed suicide. The killer might have been satisfied that was going to be the end of it."

"Yes," Mama said. "But this only confirms that somebody killed Ruby, doesn't it? If what happened to us was no accident, Ruby's death wasn't a suicide."

I nodded. "You'd better be careful," I warned. "The killer may try again!"

"Yes," she murmured, "but I'd rather James not know what we suspect just now. He'd panic and do something to scare the killer."

"That lunatic should be scared! Mama, we almost died last night. And it's really true: my whole life flashed in front of my eyes when I thought I was going to die!"

"Simone, honey, you're exaggerating again."

"Okay, but it was a close call and you know it. When I called you and you didn't answer, I just knew you were dead. And, lady, that's pretty scary!"

"I was stunned," she admitted softly. "Confused, I guess. I heard your voice buta""

I reached over and squeezed her hands. "No need to apologize," I said. "We got through that alive, that's what counts."

The front door opened and closed.

"Candi," my father said as he walked into the kitchen. "There is a skid mark where you and Simone had your accident last night that looks like somebody pushed the Honda in the ditch."