“Over my dead body,” I said, fresh out of dignity.
“We’ll see about that.” She glared, then marched down the stairs and out the door.
“We’ll see about that,” I mocked sitting on the floor and rummaging like a maniac for an incriminating file.
“She gone?” called Merry from somewhere over my shoulder. Two little arms wrapped themselves around my neck.
“Gone as a goose,” I said squeezing her hands. She tiptoed to the window and stared out, like a little princess trapped in a castle, waiting, wondering about her future...
Rosalie Sikes’ file, almost five years old was near the bottom of the box in a thick gray folder. I sat on the floor, Merry tapping her pen on the desk, and read a judgment denying an adoption petition on the grounds that “Petitioner Rosalie J. Sikes is not a person suitable for the above task.” The decision was based on a prior felony conviction, referencing case #90-CI-682.
I scribbled the case file number on my hand and asked Prudence Geasley to babysit Merry for an hour or so while I made a little trip to the county seat of Jones’ Fork for a dose of paydirt.
It was late afternoon and the line in the circuit court clerk’s office extended into the hallway. I elbowed my way toward the snack machine in front and saw, of all people, Eva Wadsell, Jeb’s one time honeybun, who just happened to be the new deputy court clerk. She was sitting behind her desk mourning a paper cut, jangling a gaggle of bangle bracelets while an elderly woman in a wheelchair who was first in line complained about the snack machine. No peanut butter nabs. I could see the gray metal cabinets behind Eva with the case numbers labeled on the drawers. I cleared my throat loudly. Eva told the lady to sign on the X, pretending not to know who I was. “I’d like to review a case file, please,” I said with the warmth of an icicle.
“Case file? I don’t recall you being a law school graduate,” Eva said with a smirk, briefly looking up.
“I’m workin’ on a case, Eva. It’s very important. A child’s safety may be at stake.”
“Sorry.” She blew on her paper cut. “You gotta be a lawyer to see a file, and you ain’t a lawyer.” She gave me a quick goodbye wave.
I moved away from the desk flaking an exit and thinking the day Eva Wadsell had an impact on my life would be the day I took up cocktail waitressing on a Playboy yacht. I wasn’t above sneaking or making a fool of myself not if it was for Merry Brumbeck or, in my philandering late husband’s words, “the quest for justice.”
I’d neared the hallway when the woman in the wheelchair backed up, causing a domino effect on the line of people behind her. Somebody rammed into the snack machine and landed on the linoleum.
Eva left her post with a handful of Band-Aids, gooing and gushing all over whoever it was lying on the floor and giving me the chance to do something I seldom do, scuttle like a crab. I got around behind her desk to the cabinet with Rosalie’s case file, jerked open the drawer, pulled the file out, shut the drawer with an elbow. I scuttled back into the hallway, Eva’s bracelets clanging like dinnerbells while she tried to open a Ninja Turtle Band-Aid with two-inch-long fingernails.
I found a quiet place in the hallway and read bits and pieces of a trial transcript, a trial that had been appealed. The felony charge was for first degree assault. Rosalie Sikes had passed a stopped schoolbus twelve years ago and hit a child as he was crossing the street. The child, a boy, lived but sustained a major injury to his femur, causing a noticeable limp. The parents, Rosalie’s ex-husband and his wife, claimed the assault was intentional. The prosecutor had gone into Rosalie’s past, citing multiple miscarriages while married to the ex-husband, and called Rosalie “a childless woman ravaged with spite.” The motive was sheer envy.
I slid the folder next to Eva Wadsell’s Rolodex and slunk down the hallway. Maybe I wasn’t the answer to a prayer after all. Maybe America Joyce Brumbeck was an uncanny judge of human character. Maybe her good sense, her instinct, had caused her to sneak into the pickup truck of a stranger and be carried a safe distance away from someone she felt was untrustworthy. And then maybe, as she said, my showing up wasn’t coincidence at all...
I found a pay phone and called Prudie. Merry had cried in the bathtub over her Aunt Nell for a few minutes, then consumed half a cantaloupe and a hot dog with mustard and was currently sitting in the parlor perusing a box of Russell Stovers. Clint Knuckles had driven by three times or four, Prudie couldn’t remember.
I rolled down the windows in Jeb’s truck to freshen my brain. Poor Merry. And poor Clint. He’d been stood up by the teacher voted Most Likely to Have a Bad Hair Day by Deerfoot High’s senior class. I figured it would be a miracle if he ever called again.
Dark clouds were swelling in the west, and blustery winds had kicked up all over Deerfoot. I couldn’t fathom the train of thought that skirted the edge of my sanity — Rosalie’s insistence that Nell’s disaster was an accident, her reluctance to tell me about the girl, the packed El Camino waiting for takeoff to somewhere, to anywhere she could get away. None of it was enough for a conviction of first degree murder. Rosalie’s fingerprints got on the stepback when she tried to “rescue” Nell. Mine were there, too. She could’ve gotten away, would have...
Thunder pounded the sky, and I remembered something in the antique shop that didn’t fit. Something brand-new.
Gale force wind warnings saturated the airwaves as I made the drive into the far corners of Poke County, back to Nell’s Elegant Junk. I skidded into the gravel drive, avoiding tree limbs blowing like tumbleweed across the road.
The sheriff had strung the entire place with yellow tape and turned on the neon sign, which now flashed a permanent CLOSED. I went under the tape, used the key Merry had found in her shorts pocket, and unlocked the door. One of Merry’s dragon drawings drifted to the floor. I couldn’t chance turning on any fights, but there was still enough daylight left to see Jeb’s stepback where the sheriff had left it. The burly mass stood near the bottom step like a neurosis. But it looked different. The brunette wood had been cleaned and polished, even around the broken glass that stuck in the upper cabinet doors.
I noticed the stairway. Dark smears stained the worn carpet on the steps — but the killer had wiped her weapon clean. No fingerprints, no evidence.
I tugged at the bottom drawer of the stepback, spit out a choice four letter word, and bent down behind the chest, thinking I could reach in from underneath. It was boarded almost to the floor, where traces of bright pink flaked across the back lower edge. Bubblegum pink — the color of Rosalie’s shoes, new except for the dark scuffmarks across the toe of each one. She’d been nearly flush with the stepback when she stood behind it ready to push after she’d somehow coaxed Nell up the stairs, leaving gravity to do the rest of the damage. She’d used the strength of her entire body to push the thing over and had caught her feet just under the back of the chest as it went down.
“Thought that was your pickup out there.” I hadn’t heard her walk in. I moved toward the side of the stepback. The pink shoes stood out in the gloom of the antique shop, pointy bright triangles, with the scuffmarks still on them. Even murderers can’t think of everything, I thought. Rosalie hid her hands behind her back. “It’s such a pity, bout Nell,” she said, her eyes wandering over the stairs. Thunder rattled a chandelier, a stack of china. “Merry okay?”
“She’s fine.” I leaned against the front of the stepback. All I needed were the cotton-picking shoes.