“I got to get down to the area office by one, Mr. Preston.”
“Oh?” he said, pretending to sympathize. “Some problems?”
“What do you want, Bill?”
He took a deep breath and then looked back over his shoulder at the curtain. I wondered briefly if he was going to throw a roundhouse right.
He didn’t.
“You talk to the police?” he asked.
“Some.”
“I heard that they had you down at the gardens.”
I nodded and looked at my watch.
“What did they say?”
“I don’t know.” Easy, the honest man, was reluctant. “I mean, they said that it was all hush-hush, confidential. You know, police business.”
“Did they say anything about me?” he asked innocently.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, as doe-eyed as I could be. “Why would you think I know any more than anybody else?”
“Because of Gladys Martinez.”
“What about her?”
“She was telling Newgate about how Sanchez suckered you. He told her to report anybody who asked about Idabell.”
“So? I heard that she was sick or something.”
“I don’t care, Mr. Rawlins.” Preston put up his hand to assure me. But instead of relaxing I put up my forearm to block anything he might have thrown.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, surprised at my reaction.
“Forget about me. What is it that you’re asking, and what do you have to do with Mrs. Turner and that dead man in the garden?”
“The police said that?” There was real fear in Preston’s voice.
“No. You did.”
Suddenly Preston was confused.
“Didn’t you just ask me about what the cops knew about you?” I asked him. “And then you said that it had something to do with Mrs. Turner. I don’t need a Ph.D. in PE to figure that one out.”
Preston was guilty of something — I was sure of that. All of his military certainty and gym-class tough-guy pose went out of the window when I caught him in his words. His breathing got shallow and his hands began to wander as if he were trying to ward off what I had said in sign.
“Well?” I asked.
“Forget it. Just forget I asked you anything. Just go on down to the area office. I, uh, I was out of line.”
Preston had fallen into another trap. It’s the way many people, then and now, fall under the spell of their own superiority. There he was a white man with a college education who dictated the rules to children, their parents, and their teachers. No waitress or gardener or janitor — certainly no colored man — was going to disobey his rules. I was supposed to erase all of his questions from my mind and go on about my life.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Preston, but I can’t forget what you said.”
“What?”
“I mean, what if Sergeant Sanchez wants to question me again? If I lie and then he finds out that I knew you were askin’ questions, then he could see me as a whatchamacallit — an accomplice.”
“Are you crazy, Rawlins? I didn’t do anything.”
“How do I know that? Here you callin’ me in here all secret-like. And you know the last time I saw you in here you almost killed that man Brown.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“That man in the garden was hit. Somebody hit him with something like that rod you tried to hit Brown with.”
That really opened Preston’s eyes. He saw for the first time how much trouble he’d opened himself up for with me.
“Sit down, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. “Please, sit down.”
“After you.”
Preston jumped up to a seated position on the apron of the stage. I followed his lead.
“What can I do to keep you from being worried, Mr. Rawlins?” he asked.
“I just wanna know why you all secretive,” I asked.
“Well, let’s just say that I didn’t have anything to do with what happened but I know something about the people and I don’t want it getting around that I do.”
“You knew that dead man?”
“Now listen…” He was trying to be reasonable.
“Did you know him?” I said with emphasis. I was looking down at his hands as if I were afraid of the answer; as if I were just a poor peasant afraid of a world that I could barely comprehend.
“Yes,” he said. “His name, well, his name is Roman Gasteau, and he’s Idabell’s brother-in-law.”
“But her name is Turner.”
“It’s really her maiden name. She kept it because she was a teacher before she got married.”
“What was he doing in the garden?” I asked, pretending nervous impatience.
“I don’t know. I swear I don’t.”
I just looked at him.
“Listen, Mr. Rawlins. A lot of people around here knew Idabell and her husband, and brother-in-law. For years she’s been giving faculty teas at her house. Maybe five or six a year. And when her brother-in-law moved into town…”
“That’s the dead man, what you call him, Roman?”
“Yes, Roman Gasteau. When he moved in some of the men teachers would go to some, uh, parties a little bit wilder than a tea. If you know what I mean?”
“No, Mr. Preston, I don’t know what you mean at all. If half the school knows this, this Roman, then why are you scared that somebody might put you with him?” Or with Idabell Turner, I thought.
“Well, you see,” he said, “Idabell’s husband is a real jerk. He was okay at first, she said. But then he went off the deep end. She blamed it on Roman, because he had a wild lifestyle. But Roman was a nice guy. Holland was abusive. He had girlfriends, he quit his job and used Idabell’s money. He even hit her once. She didn’t know what to do.”
Bill Preston took a deep breath as if he had gotten some big problem off his chest.
After his second gasp I said, “So? What if she told you all that? That doesn’t make you a crook to be hidin’ from the cops.”
Another sigh.
Another silence.
“She used to come up to my office, Mr. Rawlins. She’d come because I was the only one…” He paused for a second. “…the only one that she could talk to. You know what I mean. I couldn’t do anything but console her. We got close. I think we fell in love.”
“You fell in love right up there in your office?” At least I wasn’t the only fool at school.
“When he hit her that time…”
“When was that?”
“Two weeks ago. When he did that I begged her to leave him. I told her that I’d go tell him that she was gone and take her clothes and everything. At first she said no, but then she said that she’d think about it while she was away with a friend who could get cheap tickets to France. She wanted to clear her mind.
“I was glad that she was gone, because if she had stayed in that house with that man I don’t know what I might have done. The night before she left I went by there with some state aptitude tests that I said she had to have graded by the time she got back. I just wanted to know that she was all right.”
“And was she?”
“She walked me out to the car and said that she was fine, that she’d see me when she got back.”
“And she saw you?”
“Only for a moment. Yesterday. The day they found Roman. She told me that you had her dog and that Holland was going to beat her for something. She didn’t say what. Just that she was going to leave right then.”
“So you think that Sanchez is going to point at you for Roman?” I asked.
“No. He was killed in the early morning. I was in bed with my wife out in the valley. That’s what I’m afraid of, that Sanchez might find out about me and Ida. Maybe she told somebody, maybe somebody saw us somewhere.”
Or maybe somebody saw him drive out to her house to shoot her husband. He might have done it. Maybe. I didn’t care, though. Not unless it brought me grief.