“Yes, Mr. Hope?” she said. Her voice was almost a whisper, an echo of the frail body in the frayed black coat.
“I’d like to talk to you, if I may.”
“Please sit down,” she said.
I sat beside her. Behind the altar, a tall window streamed early afternoon sunlight.
“Mrs. Harper,” I said, “your son is in serious trouble, he’s been accused of murdering his wife.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I want to ask you some questions. Your answers might help us in—”
“I wun’t in Miami when he was here,” she said. “If thass whut you wants t’know, I wun’t here. I was up visitin my sick daughter in Georgia. She’s still sick, but I couldn’t stay away no longer. Not with George spose to’ve done whut they say he done.”
“Do you think he did it, Mrs. Harper?”
“No, sir, I do not. Ain’t a gentler soul alive than my George. Loved that girl to death, wouldn’ta lifted a finger to her ever.”
“Mrs. Harper, your son claims he went to your house on Sunday the—”
“Yes, he did.”
“And was told by a neighbor that you were in Georgia.”
“Thass juss where I was.”
“Which neighbor would that have been?”
“Miz Booth next door.”
“Could I have her full name, please?”
“Alicia Booth.”
“And her address.”
“837 McEwen Road.”
“Did she report to you that your son had been there?”
“She did.”
“When did she tell you this?”
“When I got home.”
“Which was when?”
“Lass Wednesday. Soon’s I learned my boy’d been locked up.”
“She told you he’d been there on Sunday the fifteenth?”
“Thass ezzactly whut she said.”
“I’d like to see her before I go back to Calusa,” I said. “Would you know whether she’ll be home during the day, or does she work?”
“She’s ninety-four years old, an’ she’s blind,” Mrs. Harper said. “You’ll fine her home, I’m sure.”
“Mrs. Harper, from what I understand, your daughter-in-law came here to Miami looking for your son, is that correct? I’m referring now to the time before they were married. This would’ve been approximately a year and a half ago, would you remember?”
“I remember.”
“Did she, in fact, come to see you?”
“She did.”
“When was that, exactly?”
“George got his discharge in January and they was married in June. So this would’ve been in the spring sometime, March or April, sometime in there. I remember she was wearin a coat. It’s unusual you see anybody wearin a coat in Miami, even on the coldest day. But she was wearin one. All bundled up, she was, like she was expectin a blizzard down here.”
“Can you tell me in detail what you remember about that visit?”
As Mrs. Harper remembered it, she had just come home from visiting a friend that day — yes, it had to have been in April because she recalled that she and her friend had been talking about the flower arrangement they planned to put on the church altar on Easter Sunday, this had to be just before Easter sometime. She was putting her hat on the rack in the front hall when she heard someone knocking at the door, and she opened the door and this very beautiful woman was standing there, prettiest young woman she’d ever seen in her entire life, white or black. The woman said her name was Michelle Benois, and she was looking for George Harper, was this where George Harper lived?
Mrs. Harper heard Michelle’s French accent, and surmised she might have been someone George had known overseas, but she wasn’t about to go telling her where she could find her son because she didn’t know but what this was trouble standing here on her doorstep and shivering in what was sixty-degree weather, holding her coat closed tight around her, asking where she might find George Harper. George had moved to Calusa by then, to start his junk business, told his mother he’d make himself a fortune buying and selling junk, fat chance of that happening. But she wouldn’t tell this strange beautiful woman with the French accent where she could find George, not until she’d talked to George at least, which she did by telephone every Saturday, to take advantage of the lower weekend rates. She planned to call George the very next day — she remembered now that this had to be a Friday when Michelle came to the front door because she was planning to call her son the next day, and what she did was call every Saturday — and she would ask him then about whether she’d done the right thing in not telling a stranger where he was living.
Michelle then asked — and this surprised her — if Mrs. Harper knew where she might find a man named Lloyd Davis, who was a friend of George’s and who, Michelle said, she had also met in Bonn. Mrs. Harper was beginning to think now that this was some kind of trouble involving both George and Lloyd, who she knew had been with her son in the MPs over there in Germany, and who she knew when she saw him on the street, but not really to talk to. She didn’t know where Lloyd was living at the time, knew he was married and lived with his wife somewhere in this section of town, but not exactly where, and anyway she wasn’t about to give away Lloyd’s address, even if she had known it, same as she wasn’t about to tell any white woman looking for trouble where she could find George.
“I was polite to her an’ all,” Mrs. Harper said now, “but I tole her to go try the supermarket, or one of the bars, ast them there where Lloyd Davis lived ’cause I juss dinn know.”
“What kind of trouble did you feel she represented?” I asked.
“I dinn know whut kind, Mr. Hope. All I knew was a beautiful young woman showin up on my doorstep in the middle of Niggertown, askin for my son’s whereabouts, an’ that meant trouble, white trouble. Turns out I made a mistake, but I dinn realize that at the time.”
“What kind of mistake?” I asked.
“Well, I dinn know George was in love with her. I dinn know he’d be happy to see her.”
I looked at her.
“When you say ‘happy to see her...’”
“Beside hisself with joy. I called him the next day, you know, Saturday, like I always called him, an’ I tole him this woman named Michelle somethin had stopped by the day before, askin where she could fine him an’ all that. Well, I tell you, I never heard him sound so excited in his life. He kept askin me questions on the phone — how’d Michelle look, whut was she wearin, did she finely cut her hair short the way she said she was gonna do the last time he’d seen her, did she leave a number where he could reach her—”
“Did he say when that might have been?”
“Whut?”
“The last time he’d seen her?”
“No, I don’t recall as he did. But, oh my, he was juss thrilled t’learn she was here in the States. I tole him she’d asked after Lloyd, too, an’ he told me he was gonna call Lloyd soon’s he hung up with me, couldn’t wait to get off the phone, didn’t even ast me how my rheumatism was, which’d been botherin me somethin terrible just then.”
“Do you know whether he called Mr. Davis or not?”
“Well, I spose he did, but that din’t help him none.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dinn actually get t’see her till almost two weeks later, when she showed up in Calusa.”