Whew! This is bizarre, but Angela apparently is not ready for me to make love at her house, and isn’t comfortable going to a motel. All I can do right now is imagine what the gossip will be if Cecil and the family show up unexpectedly an hour from now. Yet, didn’t I hope something like this would happen?
“Sure,” I say before she can change her mind, though in truth that doesn’t seem to be something I need to worry about.
I follow her into the house, astonished by her boldness. Cecil’s kitchen table is covered up with a year’s accumulation of bank statements, receipts, IRS forms and two pocket calculators. I feel ill at ease even though Angela apparently has no qualms about using her brother-in-law’s home as a try sting place. Still, the smile on Angela’s face is enough to overcome my scruples, and within two minutes we are rolling around naked in Cecil and Nancy’s bed as if it were our own. I needn’t have worried about rubbers. Angela makes me laugh by withdrawing a fistful from her purse and placing them on the nightstand by the bed.
“Don’t you think that might be about four more than we need?” I ask, more than a little intimidated by the prospect of at least seven orgasms.
The expression on my face makes her burst out laughing.
“I just grabbed up a handful from a box in the boys’ room. I’m not expecting company.”
“Good,” I say, relieved. I was beginning to think Dwight died from something other than cancer.
Her body is amazing; I run my hand over her right hip and am delighted by its suppleness.
“You don’t mind betraying your eighteen-year-old girlfriend?” she asks.
Rising to the bait, I answer, “She’s almost thirty. Actually, we broke up last week.” Aroused by long-forgotten memories and the sight of her
flesh, I add, “It wasn’t that big a deal.”
Angela buries her face into my neck.
“I bet she would disagree.”
“She might,” I allow, not wanting to argue.
Angela’s hands and mouth feel spookily familiar.
Can I really remember after so many years?
“You’re still so sexy.”
She raises her head and pretends to roll her eyes back in mock disbelief and then kisses me hard on the mouth. Yet because I am in another man’s house and bed, I am uneasy.
“I doubt if Cecil and Nancy would be too happy to see me right now,” I say.
“I called them yesterday,” Angela says, stroking my thigh with her hand.
“They won’t get back until late tonight.”
“If they knew, they’d die, wouldn’t they?” I ask. Instead of answering, Angela kisses me again and puts her hand between my legs.
An hour later, with Angela resting in the crook of my arm, I look across the room at the far wall, which contains a collection of family
photographs. I can identify Dwight standing next to Cecil in one of them. Dwight, in addition to being brighter and better educated, was, as well, by far the better looking of the two. This picture, probably taken when they were in high school, shows a pock faced boy whose unstraightened teeth and unruly hair were too much in evidence, as if someone hadn’t bothered to take any trouble with him.
Dwight, on the other hand, is, as I remember him, a boy with a strong chin and piercing blue eyes, his hair neatly combed as he smiles serenely into the camera’s eye. To the right, another photograph, perhaps a quarter of a century later, of the same individuals, confirms my suspicions that life wasn’t going to get any better for Cecil, who, instead of a farmer, looks like a middle-aged hippie with his long, untamable hair and acne-scarred face concealed by a beard. Judging by the set of his mouth, teeth still shoot in all directions behind unsmiling lips. Dwight’s weathered face gives the impression he is older than his chronological age. Perhaps disease had begun to alter his appearance even before it began to destroy his ability to breathe.
Certainly, toward the end, Rosa’s lovely features were fast-forwarded by her pain. Still, he is handsome, with his Paul Newman eyes still undimmed.
“Nancy’s not bad looking, is she?” Angela asks, looking up at me and then twisting her neck back to follow my gaze to the next picture.
“Why she married an ass like Cecil, I’ll never know. If his mouth were open, he would even look like a donkey.”
I stroke her flank thinking that her bitterness seems all out of
proportion to what she has told me about him. As someone whose sympathies usually lie with the underdog, I have begun to feel sorry for Cecil. I was never unhappy I didn’t have an older brother to torment me emotionally or physically. Perhaps preoccupied by her own teenage demons, Marty rarely abused me unless I asked for it.
“Is he as sorry as all that?” I ask, now curious about him. Until now Angela has made him seem slightly pathetic but not mean. Bad people have always been more interesting to me than good. Maybe that’s why I have so many clients who won’t pay me.
“Yes!” she says, her voice an angry hiss, but instead of saying why, she turns and grinds her pelvis into mine. Once more I am made to understand that pent-up lust in a sexually mature woman, despite the twaddle to the contrary, is the most exciting kind.
An hour later, as we ride through the now dark town toward her house, Angela asks, “If you were given evidence that convinced you that Paul wasn’t guilty, would you tell him?”
I look over at her. In the dark I can’t see her expression. Now that we are out of another man’s house, I am again filled with desire. I would love nothing better than to be invited inside to supper.
“Sure,” I say, wondering if I would.
“But my primary job is to represent Class Bledsoe.”
As we stop in front of her house, Angela becomes slightly distant. She reaches over and covers my hand on the steering wheel.
“Listen, I know you’d like to come in, but I need some time to assimilate this afternoon. Do you mind?”
Buyer’s remorse already.
“I understand,” I say, trying not to have my feelings hurt. Yet maybe I should be more charitable. Maybe she feels as if she has somehow betrayed Dwight.
“I like you very much, Gideon,” she says, squeezing my hand.
“I just need some time. I’ll call you next week.”
I nod, and in an instant she is walking quickly into her house. A little pissed that she won’t even let me walk her to her door, I drive westward in the cold night air, telling myself that Angela’s guilt is normal. She was married almost thirty years to one man. I hold the Blazer on sixty-five, deciding not to risk a ticket. I will be back over here many times. If I don’t rush things, this could have a happy ending.
At 4:30 Monday I receive a fax from Eddie that says he has “talked to the employees per Tommy’s request.” Included is an up-to-date list of the plant employees’ addresses and home phone numbers. Tommy has kept his word. The first call I make is to Darla Tate at her home. I ask if there is a time when she would be willing to talk to me.
Though it would make just as much sense to start the interviews with someone like the foreman or one of the meat inspectors, Darla’s testimony of what she overheard Class say on the phone will be an
important part of the prosecution’s case, and I want to find out how solid it is.
“Eddie told us that we should feel okay talking to you about his uncle’s murder,” Darla says, a Jimmy Buffett song in the background.
“For some reason, he didn’t say why, the family isn’t convinced that Willie murderer has been charged.”
Leaning back in my chair with my feet propped on my desk, I notice I have written Angela’s name on the pad in front of me as if I were a lovesick punk in junior high. To my relief, this woman doesn’t sound defensive, merely curious.
“I think they believe it would have been easy for someone to have set up Class,” I say earnestly, “and since I’ve known the family for a long time, they trust me enough to talk to the people in the plant who worked with him.”
She, or someone in her house, turns the music down, before she says, “Mr. Page, I think I’ve figured out who you are. Your father used to extend credit to my mother at his drugstore. She said she couldn’t have made it without that.”