On my way back to Varena's, I scavenged alleys for more boxes. I was particularly interested in the alley behind the gift store and furniture store.
It was clean, for an alley, and I even scored a couple of very decent boxes before I began my search. There was a Dumpster back there; I was sure the police had been through it, since it was suspiciously empty. The appliance carton Christopher Sims had been using for shelter was gone, too, maybe appropriated by the police.
I looked down the alley in both directions. Main Street was on one end, and anyone driving east would be able to glance down the alley and catch a glimpse of whoever was in it, unless that person was in the niche where Sims's box had been located.
To the south end of the alley was a quiet street with small businesses in older houses and a few remaining homes still occupied by one family apiece. That street, Macon, saw quite a lot of foot traffic; the square's parking space was severely limited, so downtown shoppers were always looking for a spot within walking distance.
It sure would be easy to catch a glimpse of Christopher Darby Sims while he squatted in this alley. It sure would be tempting to capitalize on the presence of a homeless black in Bartley. It would be no trouble at all to slip through the alley with, say, a length of bloody pipe. Deposit it behind a handy box.
The back door of the furniture store opened. A woman about my age came out, looking cautiously at me.
"Hi," she called. She was clearly waiting for me to account for my presence.
"I'm collecting boxes for my sister's move," I told her, gesturing toward my car with its open trunk.
"Oh," she said, relief written on her face in big bold letters. "I hate to seem suspicious, but we had a ... Lily?"
"Maude? Mary Maude?" I was looking at her just as incredulously.
She came down the back steps of the building in a rush and threw her arms around me. I staggered back under her weight. Mary Maude was still pretty and always would be, but she was considerably rounder than she had been in high school. I made myself hug her back. "Mary Maude Plummer," I said tentatively, patting her plump shoulder very gently.
"Well, it was Mary Maude Baumgartner for about five years, and now it's back to Plummer," she told me, sniffing a little. Mary Maude had always been emotional. I had a clenched feeling around my heart. I had a lot of memories of this woman.
"You never called me," she said now, looking up at me. She meant, after the rape. I could never get away from it here.
"I never called anyone," I said. I had to tell Mary Maude the truth. "I couldn't face doing it. I had too hard a time."
Her eyes filled with tears. "But I've always loved you."
Always right to the emotional truth, no matter how uncomfortable. Could this be why I'd never called Mary Maude after my Bad Time? We'd let go of each other, taken a step back.
I remembered another important truth. "I love you too," I said. "But I couldn't stand to be around people who were always thinking about what had happened to me. I couldn't do it."
She nodded. Her red hair, almost to her shoulders, turned under in a neat curve all the way around, and she had heavy gold earrings in her pierced ears. "I think I can understand that. I've been all these years forgiving you for refusing my comfort."
"Are we all right?"
"Yeah," she said, smiling up at me. "We're all right, now."
We both gave a little laugh, half happy, half embarrassed.
"So, you're getting boxes for Varena?"
"Yeah. She's getting her stuff out of the cottage. The wedding's day after tomorrow. And after the murder last night..."
"Oh, right, that's the place Varena rented! You know, the husband, Emory, works right here, with me." And Mary Maude pointed at the door from which she'd issued. "He's the sweetest guy."
He would certainly have been aware of Christopher Sims's presence in the alley in back of the store.
"So, I guess you knew this guy was living back here, the purse snatcher?"
"Well, we'd caught glimpses. Just in the two days before the police got him. Wait... my God, Lily, was that you who kicked him?"
I nodded.
"Wow, girl, what have you done with yourself?" She eyed me up and down.
"Taken karate for a few years, worked out some."
"I can tell! You were so brave, too!"
"So you knew Sims was back here?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. But we weren't sure what to do about it. We've never had any problem like that, and we were trying to decide what the safe thing to do was, and what the Christian thing to do was. It's tough when that might not be the same thing! We got Jess O'Shea down here to talk to the man, try to see where he wanted a bus ticket to, you know? Or if he was sick. Or hungry."
So Jess had actually met the man.
"What did Jess say?"
"He said this Sims guy told him he was just fine right where he was, he had been getting handouts from some people in the, you know, black community, and he was just going to stay in the alley until God guided him somewhere else."
"Somewhere where they had more purses?"
"Could be." Mary Maude laughed. "I hear Diane positively identified him. He told Diane at the police station that he was an angel and was trying to point out to Diane the hazards of possessing too many worldly goods."
"That's original."
"Yeah, give him points for a talent for fiction, anyway."
"He say anything about the murders?" Since Mary Maude apparently had such access to the local gossip pipeline, I thought I might as well tap in.
"No. Isn't that a little strange? You'd think on one hand he'd be too deranged to understand that the murders are so much more serious, and yet he's saying that he never saw the pipe until the police found it stuffed behind his box, you know, the one where he was sleeping."
I noticed that Mary Maude had come to check me out without a coat on, and she was shivering in her expensive white blouse and sweater-vest embroidered in holly and Christmas ornaments. Our reunion had its own background sound track, as the loudspeakers positioned around the square continued to blare out Christmas music.
"How do you stand it?" I asked, nodding my head toward the noise in the square.
"The carols? Oh, after a while you just tune them out," she said wearily. "They just leach the spirit out of me."
"Maybe that's what made the purse snatcher deranged,"
I offered, and she burst into laughter. Mary Maude had always laughed easily, charmingly, making it impossible not at least to smile along with her.
She hugged me again, made me promise to call her when I came back to town after the wedding, and scampered back into the store, her body shaking with the cold. I stood looking after her for a minute. Then I threw a couple more boxes into the car and drove carefully out of the alley.
Within a block of turning out onto the side street, Macon, I passed Dill's pharmacy.
I had a lot to think about.
I would have given almost anything to have had my punching bag.
I returned to Varena's place and packed everything I could find. Every half hour or so, I straightened up and looked out the window. There were lots of visitors at the Osborn house: women dropping off food, mostly. Emory appeared in the yard from time to time, walking restlessly, and a couple of times he was crying. Once he drove off in his car, returning in less than an hour. But he didn't knock on the cottage door again, to my great relief.
I had carefully folded Varena's remaining clothes and placed them in suitcases, since I didn't know what she'd planned on taking on the honeymoon. Most of her clothes were already at Dill's.
Finally, by three o'clock, all Varena's belongings were packed. I moved all the boxes into my car, except for a short stack by the front door that just couldn't fit. And of course, there was the remaining furniture, but that wasn't my problem.