But now, this late morning, there was no car at all in the drive. There was no room for a car in the small garage, he knew it was stacked with boxes of automotive parts and new tires for Morgan’s shop. He remained parked for a few moments, scanning the neighborhood. He saw no one in any of the yards, no one looking out a window. Parking half a block down, he walked back beneath the tree shadows to Becky’s front porch.
Having studied the lock on earlier visits, he quickly inserted a thin screwdriver, tripped the simple device, and let himself in. Locking the door behind him he made a leisurely tour of the rooms to be certain the place was empty. In the kitchen he opened the refrigerator, drank some milk from the bottle, took out a bowl of cold spaghetti, found a spoon in one of the drawers. He ate half of it, then put the bowl back. The kitchen was too neat, the counters scrubbed, everything put away behind cupboard doors. None of the easy clutter his mother kept on the counter, the cookie jars filled with flour and packages of staples where she could reach them, the pots of miniature cacti, the pictures and lists she kept stuck to the refrigerator and to the walls between hooks bearing limp dish towels and greasy potholders. His mother still lived alone, the house too big for her. The rest of his clothes were there, but he didn’t stop by often, they had their differences. She seemed sometimes almost afraid of him, he thought, smiling.
Moving down the hall to the front bedroom he opened the closet, stroked Becky’s neatly arranged dresses and fondled them. Morgan’s clothes still hung beside hers—as if they thought he was coming home again. He chose a pale blue cotton dress Becky had worn during the trial. Stretching it tight on the hanger he slashed it with his pocketknife, ripped it nearly in half and dropped the pieces on the floor. He’d reached for a second dress when a chill ran through him, a sense that he was watched.
He stared into the shadowed end of the closet where Morgan’s clothes hung but saw nothing to threaten him. He looked foolishly up at the shadowed shelf as if someone could hide among the half-dozen shoe boxes and the battered suitcase. Nothing there of course, and no one behind him in the small bedroom. He checked the hall, went through the rest of the house, then returned. On the dresser stood a cluster of framed photographs, one of Becky and Morgan standing before the house, their hands clasped, and several pictures of the child, from baby to little girl. One by one he smashed the glass, pulled the pictures out and broke the frames. But even as he tore the pictures into small pieces and dropped them on the floor he felt watched again, felt that he was not alone. Nervously he began to open dresser drawers. He removed Becky’s panties and bras one at a time, dropped his pants, and rubbed them over himself. She wore only cotton, not silk, but the garments felt smooth and cool. From the next drawer he lifted out nighties and some stockings and did the same with these, leaving the drawers in a tangle ripe with his male scent.
He left Morgan’s side of the dresser alone except for the top drawer, which was locked. That interested him, and he was examining the lock when he heard a car door slam. As he stepped to the closed window a faint breeze touched the back of his neck, making him shiver. But when he turned, nothing was there. Outside, a car had parked at the curb. A strange man was heading for the house as Becky’s car pulled into the drive, a big man, broad of shoulder, his tie loosened over a white shirt, his gray suit wrinkled. Quickly Falon headed for the kitchen, eased open the bolt on the back door and left, shutting the door softly behind him.
BECKY CAME INTO the house ahead of Quaker Lowe. She made him comfortable in the living room, then went to make some coffee. They had met outside the courthouse where Lowe had spent the morning going over the transcripts of the trial. They hadn’t talked there, Lowe had followed her directly home. She was comfortable with Lowe, he seemed to understand clearly her lone battle and her helpless frustration.
He had driven up from Atlanta two days before to talk with the bank employees who had witnessed the guard’s murder and then been beaten and locked in the vault. He was staying at the nicest of Rome’s three motels. So far he had seemed content with the five-hundred-dollar retainer she’d given him, which was all the money she had in their savings account. She had seen him for only a few minutes the day he arrived and then again last night when they’d had a simple dinner here at the house, when Caroline had joined them bringing a hot casserole. Now, as she carried the tray of cookies and coffee into the living room, Lowe was reading his copies of the police reports.
“I read the transcripts,” he said, smiling up at her, “and talked the court steno out of a set of her carbons.” He spooned sugar into his coffee. “Last night after I left you I tried again to see Natalie Hooper. There was a light in the living room, but she didn’t answer the door. I tried again this morning. She didn’t respond and she isn’t answering her phone.”
He added cream to the brew and slid three cookies onto his saucer. “It wasn’t much good sitting in the car watching the front entrance to the lobby when she could slip out the back. I parked around the corner, borrowed a chair from the building manager, and sat in the hall. When she did come down, she wasn’t happy to see me,” Lowe said, smiling.
“I told her we could either go upstairs to her place or talk there in the hall. Reluctantly she took me upstairs. I spent over an hour with her but I didn’t get much, just the same lies she told in court. Except for one small discrepancy.
“On the stand, she said Falon left her apartment at two-thirty, the day of the robbery, to go across the street to the corner store. This morning she told me two-fifteen, I got her to say it twice.” He looked evenly at Becky. “I don’t see how she could forget what she said on the witness stand, though the woman doesn’t seem too swift.
“It may be nothing,” he said, “but it flustered her. I’ll talk with the store manager when I leave here. But the biggest hole in Falon’s story,” Lowe said, “is that double entry to the apartment building, the fact that when he left the grocery he could have gone in the front door and out the back. But with no witness, there’s nothing to support that. Can you think of anything that might have been overlooked?”
She couldn’t. Yet despite that discouragement she had faith in Lowe, he was far more positive than their trial attorney, he left her feeling so much more hopeful. She was thankful he’d taken the case, though she didn’t know where she was going to find the money to pay him, and she hated taking it from her mother. Lowe had told her to take her time to make payments, that what he was interested in right now was getting the appeal and winning it.
This morning when she’d met Lowe at the courthouse she had just come from taking the ledgers over to Farley’s Dime Store and collecting her last paycheck. Farley would no longer need her services, and he had been pretty cool. He hadn’t apologized for letting her go, he had just abruptly fired her. Last Thursday she had lost three accounts including Brennan’s Dress Shop, and she’d known Beverly Brennan all her life. She couldn’t believe Morgan’s trial and conviction had caused such a change among people she’d thought would stand by them. And business at the automotive shop was so bad she wasn’t sure she could pay Morgan’s mechanic.
Selling the automotive shop would help pay the bills. But would destroy what Morgan had worked so hard to build, destroy another big piece of his life.
Lowe finished his coffee. “You can think of nothing else?” When she shook her head, he stood up to leave. “I want to check the records on Falon, see if the police missed any old outstanding warrants here or out on the coast, maybe in Washington State or while he was in California.” He put out his hand. “Please take care. Doors locked, that kind of thing.” He took both her hands in his, looking at her kindly. “Will you and Sammie be all right? You’ll be moving to Atlanta in a few days, to your aunt’s? You’ll be near the office then, when we need to talk.”