From Potter`s Field

'Rachael?' Mr. Gault stood before her like a bashful bachelor with hat in hand. 'We have company.'

She dipped her needle in and out. 'Oh, how nice.' She smiled and put down her work.

Rachael Gault once had been a fair beauty with light skin, eyes and hair. I was fascinated that Temple and Jayne had gotten their looks from their mother and their uncle, and I chose not to speculate but to attribute this to Mendel's law of dominance or his statistics of genetic chance.

Mr. Gault sat on the sofa and offered me the high-back chair.

'What's the weather doing out there?' Mrs. Gault asked with her son's thin smile and the hypnotic cadences of a Deep South drawl. 'I wonder if there are any shrimp left.' She looked directly at me. 'You know, I don't know your name. Now, Peyton, let's not be rude. Introduce me to this new friend you've made.'

'Rachael,' Mr. Gault tried again. Hands on his knees, he hung his head. 'She's a doctor from Virginia.'

'Oh?' Her delicate hands plucked at the canvas in her lap.

'I guess you'd call her a coroner.' He looked over at his wife. 'Honey, Jayne's dead.'

Mrs. Gault resumed her needlework with nimble fingers. 'You know, we had a magnolia out there that lasted nearly a hundred years before lightning struck it in the spring. Can you imagine?' She sewed on. 'We do get storms here. What's it like where you're from?'

'I live in Richmond,' I replied.

'Oh yes,' she said, the needle dipping faster. 'Now see, we were lucky we didn't get all burned up in the war. I bet you had a great-granddaddy who fought in it?'

'I'm Italian,' I said. 'I'm from Miami, originally.'

'Well, it certainly gets hot down there.'

Mr. Gault sat helpless on the couch. He gave up looking at anyone.

'Mrs. Gault,' I said, 'I saw Jayne in New York.'

'You did?' She seemed genuinely pleased. 'Why, tell me all about it.' Her hands were like hummingbirds.

'When I saw her she was awfully thin and she'd cut her hair.'

'She never is satisfied with her hair. When she wore it short she looked like Temple. They're twins and people used to confuse them and think she was a boy. So she's always worn it long, which is why I'm surprised you would say she's cut it short.'

'Do you talk to your son?' I asked.

'He doesn't call as often as he should, that bad boy. But he knows he can.'

'Jayne called here a couple weeks before Christmas,' I said.

She said nothing as she sewed.

'Did she say anything to you about seeing her brother?'

She was silent.

'I'm wondering because he was in New York, too.'

'Certainly, I told him he ought to look up his sister and wish her a Merry Christmas,' Mrs. Gault said as her husband winced.

'You sent her money?' I went on.

She looked up at me. 'Now I believe you're getting a bit personal.'

'Yes, ma'am. I'm afraid I have to get personal.'

She threaded a needle with bright blue yarn.

'Doctors get personal.' I tried a different tack. 'That's part of our job.'

She laughed a little. 'Well now, they do. I suppose that's why I hate going to them. They think they can cure everything with milk of magnesia. It's like drinking white paint. Peyton? Would you mind getting me a glass of water with a little ice? And see what our guest would like.'

'Nothing,' I told him quietly as he reluctantly got up and left the room.

'That was very thoughtful of you to send your daughter money,' I said. 'Please tell me how you did it in a city as big and busy as New York.'

'I had Western Union wire it, same as I always do.'

'Where exactly did you wire it?'

'New York, where Jayne is.'

'Where in New York, Mrs. Gault? And have you done this more than once?'

'A drugstore up there. Because she has to get her medicine.'

'For her seizures. Her diphenylhydantoin.'

'Jayne said it wasn't a very good part of town.' She sewed some more. 'It was called Houston. Only it's not pronounced like the city in Texas.'

'Houston and what?' I asked.

'Why, I don't know what you mean.' She was getting agitated.

'A cross street. I need an address.'

'Why in the world?'

'Because that may be where your daughter went right before she died.'

She sewed faster, her lips a thin line.

'Please help me, Mrs. Gault.'

'She rides the bus a lot. She says she can see America flow by like a movie when she's on the bus.'

'I know you don't want anyone else to die.'

She squeezed her eyes shut.

'Please.'

'Now I lay me.'

'What?' I said.

'Rachael.' Mr. Gault returned to the room. 'There isn't any ice. I don't know what happened.'

'Down to sleep,' she said.

Dumbfounded, I looked at her husband.

'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,' he said, looking at her. 'We prayed that with the kids every night when they were small. Is that what you're thinking of, honey?'

'Test question for Western Union,' she said.

'Because Jayne had no identification,' I said. 'Of course. So they made her answer a test question to pick up the money and her prescription.'

'Oh yes. It was what we always used. For years now.'

'And what about Temple?'

'For him, too.'

Mr. Gault rubbed his face. 'Rachael, you haven't been giving him money, too. Please don't tell me…'

'It's my money. I have my own from my family just like you do.' She resumed sewing, turning the canvas this way and that.

'Mrs. Gault,' I said, 'did Temple know Jayne was due money from you at Western Union?'

'Of course he knew. He is her brother. He said he'd pick it up for her because she hasn't been well. When that horse threw her off. She's never been as clearheaded as Temple is. And I was sending him a little, too.'

'How often have you been sending money?' I asked again.

She tied a knot and cast about as if she had lost something.

'Mrs. Gault, I will not leave your house until you answer my question or throw me out.'

'After Luther died there wasn't anyone to care about Jayne, and she didn't want to come here,' she said. 'Jayne didn't want to be in one of those homes. So wherever she went she let me know, and I helped when I could.'

'You never told me.' Her husband was crushed.

'How long had she been in New York?' I asked.

'Since the first of December. I've been sending money regularly, just a little at a time. Fifty dollars here, a hundred dollars there. I wired some last Saturday, as usual. That's why I know she's fine. She passed the test. So she was standing right there in line.'

I wondered how long Gault had been intercepting his poor sister's money. I despised him with a zeal that was scary.

'She didn't like Philadelphia,' Mrs. Gault went on, talking faster. 'That's where she was before New York. Some city of brotherly love that is. Someone stole her flute there. Stole it right out of her hand.'

'Her tin whistle?' I asked.

'Her saxophone. You know, my father played the violin.'

Mr. Gault and I stared at her.

'Maybe it was her saxophone that got taken. Lawww, I don't know where all she's been. Honey? Remember when she came here for her birthday and went out in the pecan trees with the dog?' Her hands went still.

'That was Albany. That's not where we are now.'

She shut her eyes. 'Why, she was twenty-five and had never been kissed.' She laughed. 'I remember her at the piano playing up a storm, singing "Happy Birthday" to beat the band. Then Temple took her to the barn. She'd go anywhere with him. I never understood why. But Temple can be charming.'

A tear slipped between her lashes.

'She went out to ride that darn horse Priss and never came back.' More tears spilled. 'Oh Peyton, I never saw my little girl again.'

He said in a voice that shook, 'Temple killed her, Rachael. This can't go on.'