“She hasn’t harmed anything,” Lucinda said evenly.
“She scared the hell out of all of us, and she could have hurt you, bad. And damage? We don’t know what damage she might have done taking those pictures and spying. Do you want to be a party to some kind of blackmail?”
Lucinda looked surprised, as if she hadn’t thought of that-but Kit leaped to the arm of her chair, hissing at both of them. “When you questioned her,” Kit asked impatiently, “what did she say, Lucinda?”
“She gave me a wild tale,” Lucinda admitted. “And yet…She was so upset. She sounded…Well,” Lucinda said with embarrassment, “I’m really inclined to believe her.”
Pedric snorted. Kit didn’t reply. Joe and Dulcie, unable to remain uninvolved, slipped in through the cat door and dropped from the windowsill to the dining-room rug, beneath the table.
Looking into the living room, which Lucinda had turned into a forest of evergreen boughs dominated by the Christmas tree in the far corner, they were very still. The room smelled of pine and nutmeg, and a fire burned on the hearth. The cats could see only the back of Pedric’s head where he sat, rigid and angry. Kit sat on the rug, between their two chairs, looking intently at the thin old woman. “Tell us, Lucinda. Tell us what she said.” The fire’s pleasant crackling was the only comforting sound in the tense room.
“She told me she followed those three down from Eugene,” Lucinda said. “She thinks-is convinced that one of them killed her niece, after the girl testified against him.”
“This was in Oregon?” Pedric said.
“No, that was in southern Arkansas, some little backwoods town. She told me that when the killer ran, she thought he would head to Oregon to his girlfriend, and-”
“Then why is she here?”
“Let me finish. She said that he’d been phoning the girlfriend, that she’d found portions of his phone bills in his trash.” Lucinda gave Pedric a wrinkled smile. “She broke into his cabin and tossed it. She said she couldn’t go to their sheriff with her suspicions, that he would have done nothing.”
“Lucinda,” Pedric said, “that’s-”
“She said the killer was thick with the law in their town, and that the sheriff was so corrupt she had no faith he’d ever arrest the man.”
“Lucinda, this sounds…” But at her look, Pedric went silent.
“You grew up in the South,” she said. “You know what some of those little country towns are like that. Good-old-boy buddies, looking out for their own.”
Pedric wouldn’t argue. “Start from the beginning,” he said. “Try to make sense of what you’re saying.”
Lucinda looked beyond Pedric to the dining room. “Come in by the fire, you two, and get warm.”
Quietly, Dulcie and Joe padded in, settling on the thick rug by Pedric’s feet, and Lucinda continued. “Her name is Evina Woods. She followed Leroy Huffman, the man she thinks killed her niece, from Arkansas to Eugene, then down here.”
“From the beginning,” Pedric repeated.
Lucinda sighed. “Huffman had been dating a friend of her sister, Neola Black. Evina said he milked Neola for everything, including ten acres of land that he got her to deed to him. Evina’s sister couldn’t talk sense to Neola, not even when there was nothing left but the woman’s house. Only when he tried to get her to mortgage that, after he hadn’t paid back any of the money she’d loaned him, did Neola come to her senses.
“Evina said that when Neola refused to mortgage her house, Huffman killed her. Maybe to avoid her filing a complaint with the county attorney, or simply in a fit of rage-Evina said he was known for his violent temper.
“Evina’s seventeen-year-old niece, Marlie, saw him kill Neola; she was the only witness. She saw them in the woods behind Neola’s house, saw him stab her…saw them fighting, saw Neola twist and fall and lie still. Marlie ran home to her mother, she didn’t think Huffman saw her. When Marlie and her mother went to the sheriff, he laughed at them.
“He sent someone out for Neola’s body, all right. But he made fun of Marlie and her mother, said he knew for a fact that Huffman had left town two days earlier, that the sister’s death had been a simple accident, that she’d fallen on her own butcher knife.
“Marlie asked why she’d have a butcher knife in the woods, and the sheriff said he’d heard she collected herbs sometimes, and that she liked to gather mushrooms.
“Now, mind,” Lucinda said, “this is what Evina told me. She and her sister went to the county attorney, and he took action. Finally this Leroy Huffman was arrested and charged with murder.
“Marlie testified at the trial, but according to Evina, even the county attorney wasn’t too clean. She said Huffman got only six months, for accidental manslaughter, that the jury apparently believed, or was bullied into saying, that’s all it was.”
“Sounds,” Pedric said, “like something she took off a TV movie.”
Lucinda shook her head. “She sounded…It was hard for her to tell this. The poor thing kept…Either she’s a mighty good actress, or her story’s true. She seems really shaken over this.”
“But how does that put her here?” Kit said. “What was she doing in our house, taking pictures?”
“She said that the same week Leroy Huffman got out of prison, Marlie, who had testified against him, disappeared. That she hadn’t told her mother she was going anywhere, and she wasn’t the kind of girl to just take off. And then, a few days later, Huffman was gone. Apparently there was nothing legal to stop him, he’d done all his time.
“Marlie was popular, and the sheriff said she probably ran away with some guy, or that if she hadn’t run away, then maybe she felt ashamed after she’d testified against Huffman. Evina says Marlie wouldn’t go away like that and worry her mother.
“She was so sure that Huffman had either killed Marlie or had her prisoner, that she broke into Huffman’s house, dreading what she’d find.” Lucinda stroked Kit, and sipped her cold coffee. “She didn’t find any trace that Marlie had been there. But she found letters from Huffman’s girlfriend in Oregon, and the torn-up phone bills in the trash showing several recent calls to Eugene. She traced the phone number, and it was the girlfriend’s number, all right.
“Now she had the woman’s address, and with no other clue to where Huffman might have gone, and still thinking he might have Marlie with him, she headed for Eugene, caught a red-eye flight. In Eugene she bought an old car so she’d be able to follow him.
“She watched the girlfriend’s house until she saw Huffman, he was staying there with the girlfriend and another man that Evina thought was her brother. For several days she spied on the house. She saw no sign of her niece, and was beginning to think he’d killed her. She waited until all three were out, and then broke in there, too. But again, no niece.”
“Quite the skilled little housebreaker,” Pedric said, and Dulcie cut an amused look at Joe. Pedric Greenlaw was the gentlest of people, though he was far from weak or innocent. He had committed his own share of petty crimes in the distant past.
Maybe that was why he was angry now, was more distressed by Evina than was Lucinda, more willing to see through Evina’s story.
“But in the house in Eugene,” Lucinda said, “Evina found her niece’s locket and watch.
“There were several duffel bags packed and sitting by the door, and in the garage a stack of packed boxes. On a desk, she found some clippings and papers that made her think they meant to head down the coast, that they had some business in California.
“She left Marlie’s jewelry there, but took pictures of it in that setting. She watched the house, and when they left Eugene, she followed them.” Lucinda paused when Kit rose to stand on the arm of her chair, looking her squarely in the face.