Etta Mae's Worst Bad-Luck Day (6 page)

It could be that way, no reason why not, if Junior could just see his way to having me in the family.

“You gonna make that call?” Clyde picked up the receiver and handed it to me.

“Thank you very much.” I snatched it from him and turned my back. “Now, if you’d just give me some privacy.”

With trembling fingers, I dialed Mr. Ernest Sitton’s home number, realizing that it was past midnight and he might get mad about being called so late and not even listen to me. Realizing, too, that if he turned me down, I’d probably spend the night in a cell, and maybe more than one. And realizing also that I was putting all my eggs in this one basket.

 • • • 

I couldn’t believe it! Mr. Sitton was coming down to the station and sitting with me while Clyde asked his questions. And I didn’t even have to mention Mr. Howard and our ongoing, but threatened, relationship. Which I wouldn’t have done anyway, not wanting to have someone of Mr. Sitton’s caliber lined up against me.

Still, I could hardly believe it. I’d just told him that I was being questioned about something I didn’t know anything about, and he asked if I had two hundred dollars. When I said yes, with thanksgiving in my heart that his fee wouldn’t be any more than that, he’d said, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Meanwhile, keep your mouth shut.”

Clyde put me in the interrogation room, which badly needed some helpful hints on decorating. There was a scarred wooden table, four metal chairs, one of them bent so bad it sat lopsided, and nothing else. A window faced the hall, but it was covered with blinds, so I couldn’t see what was going on in the station.

After walking around and around that pitiful-looking table for ten minutes or so, I was ready to jump out of my skin. I’m the nervous type when I don’t know what’s going on.

Then the door opened and Wendell stuck his head in.

“Thought you might want some coffee,” he said, holding out a Styrofoam cup. “Didn’t know what you take, so I fixed it with cream and sugar.”

“Thanks.” I walked over and leaned against the door beside him, standing hip-shot to rest up from all the pacing I’d been doing. I took the cup, tilted my head, and gave him a mournful smile. It was all I could manage. “This is awful nice of you, Wendell. I sure won’t forget it.” I sipped at the hot, super-sweet stuff and looked up at him, wondering how he could help me. “This is just the worst night of my life, being dragged in here when I haven’t done a thing. You don’t know what it means to have someone as nice as you around.”

He flushed red and said, “Well, ah, you know, not everybody that’s brought in here has done anything wrong. So don’t you worry. I’ll, I mean, we’ll look after you. I mean, well, Bobby Lee, he’s my training officer, and I figure, well, you know.”

“I do know, and he’ll appreciate it, just like I do. Now, Wendell, I don’t want to ask you to do anything illegal or anything like that, but if my lawyer can’t get me out tonight, could you see your way to letting Bobby Lee know I’m here? He’ll find out tomorrow anyway, when he comes on duty, but I thought maybe he’d like to know tonight.”

“Why, sure, I could do that. I’ll call him right now. Well, as soon as Clyde goes to the bathroom again. He’s about ready to come out now, but he’ll go again in a little while.” His face turned even darker at the thought, I guess, of Clyde in the toilet. It wasn’t a picture to thrill me, either.

“Whatever, but let’s wait and see what my lawyer can do first. If he clears me, as he ought to do since I haven’t done anything, then there’s no need to bother Bobby Lee. But just knowing that you’re out there, ready to help me out, makes hope spring eternal in my breast.”

I smiled at him, sort of sad-like. “You like poetry, Wendell?”

“No’m, I mean, well, when you say it, it sounds real nice. I guess I better be going, Clyde’ll be flushing any minute. Don’t you worry now, me and Bobby Lee’ll look after you.”

“I feel so much better, knowing you’re on my side.” I smiled a real sad smile, looking up into his face. “You go on now, I don’t want you to get in any trouble.”

When he left, I sat at the table with the coffee and tried to drink it, not wanting to hurt Wendell’s feelings. That’s almost the worst thing you can do to a man. I won’t mention the very worst. Drinking bad coffee was little enough to ask. I needed all the friends I could get.

Hearing a commotion out in the hall, I stood up and faced the door. I’d never met Lawyer Sitton face-to-face, but I’d seen him around town, so when he flung open the door, I knew who he was. The way he banged into the room, slapping his briefcase on the table, with Clyde, Wendell, and the desk sergeant trailing behind him, showed me that he was a take-charge kind of person. And I was glad to have him take it.

Up close, he was a smaller man than I’d thought he was. Except for his midsection, which could’ve used some daily workouts. His gray hair was combed in strands over his nearly bald head, but he was as neat and well put together a paunchy, bald man as I’d ever seen. Everybody in Delmont admired and respected him because he could get anybody off on any charge. That was his reputation, and you didn’t want to be up against him. I’d heard of people just dropping a lawsuit when they found out that Lawyer Sitton was on the other side. But here he was in the flesh, hardly as tall as Emmett, but with a lot less hair and a whole lot pinker. He had one of those fair complexions that couldn’t take the sun. Washed-out-looking, if you know what I mean. To look at him, you’d never guess how big he was around town.

“Close that door, deputy,” he said, as Clyde followed him in. “On your way out. Now, young lady, I have one question for you.”

“Nossir,” I answered. I looked straight over the glasses on his nose into his faded blue eyes, putting all the truth I had in my words. “I did not do it.”

“That wasn’t my question.” He turned his briefcase toward him, jerked his vest straight—my Lord, a three-piece suit in the middle of the night—and posed his hands over the two clasps of his briefcase. But he didn’t open them.

“My question is,” he said, looking at me for the first time. “Do you have the two hundred dollars?”

“Oh. Nossir, not on me, I don’t. But I’ve got twenty.” I started digging in my fanny pack, pulling out the bill. “Will you take this as a down payment?”

“And the other one hundred and eighty?” He straightened up and moved one hand away from the briefcase.

“I’ve got it, I promise. It’s in the bank and I’ll get it first thing in the morning. I mean, if you can get me out of here, I will. Mr. Sitton, I promise you, I’m not a charity case. I own my own home and my car, and I have a job. I can pay you and I will.”

“I’ll trust you, then, but you don’t know how many suspects have forgotten their debts once they’re cleared.” He took the twenty, folded it carefully, and put it in a money clip. When he slid the clip back into his pocket, he said, “I don’t expect you to be one of them.”

I’ll tell you this, when he stared at me over those gold-framed glasses, I couldn’t imagine being one of them.

“Now,” he said, finally unsnapping the black leather briefcase. “Let’s have it, then I’ll call in that deputy who’s so anxious to get in here.”

So I did, but putting just a little spin on my story. I said that I
thought
the man on my couch was Junior Connard, but since I didn’t really know him, I hadn’t been sure.

“See,” I said, hunching over the table, “I never ran with Junior’s crowd, they were a little older than me and, you know, they didn’t have to work after school, so I just know him from a distance. It could’ve been anybody of that build. Like I told you, I thought it was Skip Taggert at first.”

“Your ex.”

“Yessir, one of them.”

“Could he have done it? Jealous ex-husband?”

“Oh, no. Skip’s over at Lurline’s. And he doesn’t have anything to be jealous about. I hadn’t seen him for years before yesterday evening.”

“Hm-m-m. Seems like a lot of things happened to you yesterday evening.”

“Yessir, you could say that.”

 • • • 

“Come by my office right after the bank opens,” Lawyer Sitton said, as we stood on the sidewalk in front of the station. It was almost four o’clock in the morning by my watch with the sweep second hand that I used to take pulses with.

“I will, yessir. You can count on it.”

“I know I can,” he said, turning toward his Lincoln Continental parked in the sheriff’s reserved slot.

Clyde had done his questioning with Lawyer Sitton sitting right there listening to every word. When Clyde couldn’t think of anything else to ask and still hadn’t pinned anything on me, Mr. Sitton announced that I’d done my citizen’s duty. It was time for the Delmont sheriff’s office to release and thank me for my cooperation in investigating a crime against both a leading citizen and a solid citizen. It took me a minute to figure out that Junior Connard was the leading citizen, even though he lived in Raleigh, and I was the solid citizen, since I paid my bills. At least I was going to, come nine-fifteen in the A.M.

“You brought Ms. Wiggins down here, deputy,” Mr. Sitton said as we’d left the interrogation room. “See that she gets home.”

Now I waited in the cool early morning for Clyde to escort me home. He hadn’t been too happy with the way his questioning had gone, being sure that I was lying. Of course I was, but not about Junior Connard and my trashed trailer. My story hadn’t been the best, since I didn’t have enough time to concoct a good one. I’d needed an alibi as to where I was while Junior was getting bashed on the head, and I couldn’t use the real one until I’d had a chance to be sure Lawyer Sitton would stay on my side. For all I knew, he would’ve gotten up and walked out if I’d said I’d been in the bushes loving up Mr. Howard. Even if it was with a window screen between us.

So I’d said that I’d been with a certain person I couldn’t name, and let them both think it was a married man. As I stood there waiting for Clyde, I felt tired and dirty as I thought how neither of them had found the lie hard to believe.

“Get in the car,” Clyde said as he came out of the station and headed for his cruiser. “I ain’t got all night.”

I opened the front passenger door and got in, daring him to put me in the back.

He burned a little rubber as we left the station to let me know how he felt, but neither of us said a word. It was total silence until he pulled up in front of my trailer.

“Watch yourself, Etta Mae,” he said as I opened the door.

I turned in the seat and looked at him. “Clyde,” I said sweetly, “there’s something I’d like to tell you to do, but I’m too much of a lady to say it. I expect you can figure it out yourself.” And I slid out of the car and slammed the door.

 • • • 

I could’ve cried when I got in my trailer and turned on the lights. Things had been straightened up in the living room, but not the way I’d had them. I knew it’d been Jennie, bless her heart, who’d swept up the mess in the kitchen. But as I opened the cabinets, nothing was in the right place and not everything was there. Only one plate, three coffee mugs, and a jelly glass. Everything else had been broken. She’d put the furniture right side up, but my broken lamp was in the trash. When I walked back to the bedroom, I had to hang on to the door. My underclothes, T-shirts, and night things—everything from the dresser—were strewn all over the floor and the bed. Just thrown everywhere. And handled! Somebody’s dirty hands had been all over my most intimate apparel. It made me sick. No way could I bring myself to just pick up and put them back in a drawer. I’d have to spray and wash every living thing in the place. I began to gather them in a pile, bringing panties out from under the bed and snatching a camisole off the lamp shade. I found my green mist Dream Angels bra, a sensual floral with exquisite scalloped edging from Victoria’s Secret, over in the corner, still holding its shape as advertised. I snatched it up and saw greasy fingerprints inside the cups. It made my skin crawl.

I thought of turning it in to Clyde so he could run the prints and identify whoever’d fingered it, but thought better of it when I pictured Clyde handling it. Better to let the bastards, whoever they’d been, get away with it than have to put up with that.

Then, with another sudden bad thought, I started looking through the pile I’d made, slinging lingerie items every whichaway. I couldn’t find them! My matching green mist lace bikini panties were gone! Stuffed in somebody’s greasy pocket, I bet. Oh, God, think of somebody pulling it out for a few private moments he couldn’t get any other way. I shivered at the thought.

After that, with fear of what I’d find, I looked over my Barbie dolls, picking them up and smoothing their outfits. The Skating Barbie had lost one of her skate blades, and, even worse, the Working-Out Barbie’s limbs had popped loose. I could’ve cried. One good thing, though, I’d never been able to get the Butterfly Art Barbie with the tattoo on her midriff before it was discontinued. It would’ve killed me to’ve lost that investment if she’d been manhandled like the others.

“Oh, no!” I stooped down and picked up the most valuable one with trembling hands. My NASCAR Barbie, number one in the series that celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of NASCAR racing that Junior Johnson had given me, had been slung or thrown against the dresser. I smoothed her blue driving suit and straightened her head, then got on my knees to look for her authentic racing helmet with the working visor. When I found it next to the closet, the visor was no longer working. A lost, lonely feeling swept over me, and I wanted to cry my eyes out at the unfairness that met me at every turn.

Instead, I stripped the bed and put on clean sheets, trying to occupy my mind with the practicalities. Then I scooped up my underclothes and threw them on the soiled sheets. I’d make the time to get to the Laundromat sometime during the day, so I’d have clean lingerie to start my new wedded life. By then it was close to five o’clock in the morning, and too late to get any sleep, not and get done what I had to get done. To say nothing of the fact that I was too scared to close my eyes, for fear of another visit from persons unknown. I didn’t have a clue as to who’d done the damage to my trailer and to Junior.

Unless it’d been whoever was looking for Skip. I stood thinking about it for a minute, realizing that Junior had the same big, flabby build as Skip, and could’ve been mistaken for him. Especially in the dark. Just one more thing to lay at Skip’s feet, along with the pile that was already there.

Trying to ignore the pounding in my head from all the worries in it, I took a shower and moisturized my face to keep it soft and dewy-fresh, as the label promised. Wrapped in my robe, I went to the kitchen and got a can of Coke from the refrigerator. I needed something better than coffee to settle my stomach and to fight a full-fledged headache. I poured a packet of Goody’s Headache Powders, which Richard Petty swore by, into the Coke, and figured that would do the trick.

Before settling down in the recliner, I looked for my giraffe. There it was, limper than ever, draped over an arm of the couch. I picked it up and hugged it, then did what I’d been dreading and looked at my couch. Sure enough, there was Junior Connard’s blood underneath the pillow that Jennie’d put over the stain. I did cry then, and cussed a little, too. I got an old towel, soaked it in cold water, and blotted up as much of it as I could. When I’d soaked the fabric as much as I dared, I gave up on it, hoping Lurline would know a better way to do it. She always did.