“I’m concerned about you, Jordy, and I’m here to help. You need my representation. I’ve just had me a fascinating conversation with Billy Ray Bummel.” He bit into the apple and chomped noisily. That didn’t keep him from talking. “Let’s look at the facts, boy. Beta Harcher popped you one and threatened you in front of a library full of witnesses. You were in the library, by y’own admission, in the range of time the murder took place. If she was going to burn down the library, that was an immediate threat not only to you but to the only employment that you are remotely suited for in this town-aside from village idiot. And only your prints are on the murder weapon. Now do you still think you don’t need my help?” “I’ll get my own legal representation, thank you.” The phone rang. I scooped it up, willing to chitchat with an obscene caller rather than Bid. It was Candace.
“Glad to see you’re home. I waited last night for your call.” Oops.
I’d been so wrapped up in pulling my thoughts together and writing out my notes I’d forgotten my promise to phone Candace. “Sorry,” I said.
“Look, this isn’t a good time. Can I call you back?” “As long as you’re not fixing breakfast for Ruth Wills.” It might’ve sounded mean if she hadn’t laughed. “I’m not. Talk to you in a minute.” I hung up and turned back to Bid. He munched the apple down to the core. I kept hoping there was a seed or two he might choke on. “I’m offering you free legal representation, just as soon as you’re arrested,” he said, wiping his mouth with a dainty, monogrammed handkerchief. “I’m not going to be arrested. If they had anything on me, they’d have arrested me by now.” I said it with more conviction than I felt. “And even if they do, I’ll get me a good attorney, someone over in Bavary who actually hasn’t been investigated by the state bar.” Bid shrugged away the history of his luminous career. “And how will you afford it, Jordy? With your stellar librarian’s salary?” He got up and thumbed his cigarillo stub into the trash. “You don’t have the money to spend on legal defense. And trust me, you don’t want a public defender.
Bonaparte County’s recruiting from the very dregs of the dreggiest of law schools.” “I’ll take my chances, thank you. I’m sure any public defender would do a more conscientious job for me than you would.
You’ve never given a crap about me or my family. You always acted superior because you had all the education and Daddy didn’t. Well, I’ve got an education now, Uncle Bid. But I didn’t need that to see that you’re just an uncaring, selfish bastard.” His bony, ugly face (thank God I didn’t favor the Poteet side) screwed up in anger. He turned red. “You listen to me, boy. I will represent you. You are kin and I will not have the Poteet name disgraced. I will not entrust your defense to some wet-eared kid straight out of school. There’s too much at stake-” “Too much what?” I crossed my arms and smiled. “You’ve never offered to do anything that you didn’t get a ton of benefit from.” He fished another cigarillo from his pocket and lit it in a fluid motion. He took his time, making the end of the nasty thing glow with each suck of whispered breath. When he finally spoke, his voice was sulky but reasonable. “Jordy. I know we’ve had our differences. I know I haven’t been”-his face screwed up as he breathed in smoke, making him look like a little dragon-“the best uncle to you and Arlene. I’ve been remiss in my duties to your poor mother. I’m asking for a chance to help you.” He laid his palms up in mock surrender.
“Please, let me help you if the worst happens and you get charged with Beta’s murder.” I watched him. He acted sincere. Acted. I’d had enough experience with him to avoid embracing him and sobbing that all was forgiven. But maybe the old coot was genuine this time. “Please,” he said once more. I loved hearing him beg, but I wanted him gone more.
“Tell you what, Uncle Bid. If I do get arrested, I’ll retain your free services. Until then, we won’t have any sort of formal agreement.
Deal?” He didn’t look entirely pleased, but he’d honed his ways of hiding disappointment through his many failures in the courtroom. He came forward and shook my hand. His was sticky with apple juice.
“Deal, then, Jordy.” He relinquished my hand and tried a new buddying-up tactic. “Although I remain staunchly convinced of your innocence, it wouldn’t surprise me that you could’ve killed that woman. Crazy old bitch. Waste of what was once fine womanhood.” “You knew Beta?” I asked, wishing I could wipe my palm. “I wasn’t on speaking terms with her,” Bid offered congenially, “but I knew her when she was younger. An eye-popper, that girl was. And knew how to have a good time.” Uncle Bid thoughtfully gyrated his pelvis so I wouldn’t miss his point. Beta? Bob Don had said she didn’t get religion until she was in her twenties. What kind of woman was she before then? Bob Don’s description of wild had been vague. “You and Beta?” I asked, incredulous. Imagining oddities from the Kama Sutra was easier than conjuring up an image of my uncle and Beta Harcher coupling. “Oh, Lord, no, Jordy. I never dated her. I wouldn’t have soiled my reputation by doing so. Funny how people turn out, though.
Such a wild thing in her youth, then such a dried-up old church hag.”
He shook his head. “Bob Don said she was pretty when she was younger.”
Bid frowned. “You stay away from Bob Don Goertz. He’s nothing but a dirty liar.” God only knew what brought that on. I didn’t know Bid and Bob Don knew each other. “I’ll be going. Remember what I said, and you call me if you run into trouble. Give my best to Arlene, Mark, and your mother.” I nodded, not wanting to argue again. Beta Harcher, party girl turned keeper of morality. I wondered if Uncle Bid was trying to make his own metamorphosis. Candace had nothing new to report. I told her about Ruth witnessing the fight between Bob Don and Beta, didn’t mention Ruth’s offer of sexual solace, and concluded by telling her that apparently my prints were the only ones on the baseball bat. At the last tidbit, she gasped. “My God! Maybe they will arrest you.” “I don’t know. It seems odd that I would have the only prints on it. Say the killer wore gloves. If a kid left it in the field, it should also have his or her prints. Why doesn’t it?” “The killer wiped it clean,” Candace prompted. “And missed my prints? I don’t think so. I was the only person to handle that bat when it came into the library.” I closed my eyes, remembering. “I brought the bat into the library. I put it in my office. No one else went near it, until the killer used it to bash Beta.” “The only explanation,”
Candace said slowly, “is that it was wiped before you handled it. A kid wouldn’t do that; there’s no reason to. Unless-” she stopped.
“What?” “Oh, God. Unless the killer planted it there, already wiped clean of prints, and waited for you to pick it up.” “That’s crazy, Candace,” I coughed. “Doesn’t that seem like putting a lot up to chance? That I’m the first person to walk by the bat, that I notice it, that I pick it up, that I even take that path at any given time of the day?” “Jordy,” Candace’s tone was flat. “You’re far more a creature of habit than you realize. You always cut through the field on your way to the pharmacy.” “Yeah, but I don’t go to the pharmacy on a regular basis. Whenever Mama needs her medicine.” “Maybe the killer knew when that would be. When you’d be going next.” “My God!” I exclaimed. Pictures unraveled in my mind, like a grainy, old-time newsreel. “You’re onto something, Candace. Imagine you’re the killer.