She handed him the paper where she’d written Anne’s address and phone number. “Maybe we’ll be lucky, maybe he won’t know about Anne. His mother might remember, but they don’t get along, I’d guess he seldom sees her. We’re taking Mama’s car to Anne’s. Mine will be here, in Mama’s garage.”
On impulse Lowe gave her a big bear hug that made tears start. “I’ll call you before I leave Rome, let you know what else I find, and of course I’ll call you at Anne’s.” He turned and left her, swinging out the front door heading for his car. Getting in and pulling away, he waved. She stood at the front door, tears gushing in spite of herself, watching him drive away.
It was twenty minutes after Quaker Lowe left that she discovered someone had been in the house. She hadn’t gone into the bedroom when she got home. Now when she went in to change to a pair of slacks she stopped, looking down at scattered shards of smashed glass, at broken frames and the torn pieces of their family pictures. She spun around, her back to the dresser facing the closet door.
Reaching up, she snatched the dresser key from where it clung to a magnet behind the mirror. She unlocked the dresser drawer and took out Morgan’s loaded and holstered .38. Only when she was armed did she open the closet door.
No one there. Her blue dress, Morgan’s favorite, lay on the floor torn into rags.
No other clothes had been disturbed but when she turned to the dresser and pulled out the drawers she found her bras and panties tangled in a mess and they smelled; every piece of her more intimate clothing reeked with an ammonialike male smell. Her sweaters, blouses, everything had been pulled out, wadded up, and stuffed back again. Morgan’s clothes had not been touched.
Carrying the gun pointed down, her thumb on the hammer, she walked slowly through the rest of the small house, stepping back as she flung open each door: Sammie’s room, Sammie’s closet, the coat closet, the bathroom, the kitchen. When she checked the service porch, the back door was unlocked. She locked it and called the police.
From now on she’d keep the loaded gun with her. She would train Sammie, she’d gun-proof Sammie just as she knew the children of police officers were trained. She should have done that before. Now she would drill Sammie over and over in the rules for caution and safety, she had no other choice.
Standing at the front window she waited nervously for the police, but then when Sergeant Leonard did arrive, the stern older man made her feel that she had called him out for nothing. Leonard was a beefy man, forty pounds overweight with soft, thick jowls and an attitude of boredom. He made little effort to conceal his amusement even when, entering the bedroom among the broken and torn pictures, she showed him her ruined dress and the wadded clothes in her dresser. When he looked at them, stone-faced, embarrassedly she asked him to smell them. He sniffed her clothes with distaste and gave her another amused look. “Is anything missing?” he said as if she had made up the intrusion, had made this mess herself.
“Nothing’s missing that I’ve found.” She told him she had locked both doors when she left the house that morning, and that just now, when she went through the house, the back door was unlocked, the bolt slid back.
When she moved to the front door and asked him to look at the lock, the pry marks were easy to see, bright scratches in the weathered brass. When, in the kitchen, she showed him that the milk bottle had been left out and the leftover spaghetti had been dug into, she felt awkward and stupid. She said Sammie was at Caroline’s, that she hadn’t been home at all to enjoy a little snack. Everything she showed him or told him seemed to amuse him. He moved back to the living room, stood by the front door asking questions about what time she had left the house this morning, how long she had been gone, and where she had been. He didn’t make any notes, though he carried his field book in his hand.
She said, “Can you take fingerprints, can you find out who was in here?”
“If there’s nothing missing, no break-in, no door or window broken, we don’t take fingerprints.”
“But the pry marks on the front door. That is the sign of a break-in.”
Carelessly he scribbled a few lines in his field book as if to humor her. His disdain, his refusal to take prints made her feel totally helpless. This was not how the police handled a problem, this was not what she’d been raised to expect of them, in Rome or anywhere else. Enraged by his lack of concern, by his sarcasm, all she could think was that the entire Rome PD was against Morgan, was sure Morgan was guilty, and had lost respect for their family. Leonard said nothing more. He turned, let himself out the front door. She watched from the window as his patrol car pulled away.
When he had gone she locked the door and checked the bolt again on the back door. Tonight she would either booby-trap both doors or go back to Caroline’s. She had moved home yesterday, leaving Sammie cosseted at Caroline’s, so she could get her bills and papers in order and pack what they’d need in Atlanta.
In the bedroom she removed her clothes from the drawers, her panties and nighties, bras and slips, and put them in the washer. She washed everything twice, with a little bleach. But for months afterward the touch of her undergarments against her skin made her feel violated and unclean.
While she was running the wash she called Quaker at the motel. He was out but she left a message. When he called back and learned what had happened he made her promise to go back to Caroline’s, where at least the neighbors were younger and more able to come if they were needed. “How soon can you leave for Atlanta? How soon can you be out of Rome?”
“A day, maybe two. As soon as I can wrap up the figures for my last job.”
He said to call him when she left, and again when she got to Atlanta, he wanted to know she was safe. “As soon as I get back to Atlanta myself, I’ll set up a meeting with Morgan, go over the transcript with him, see if he can come up with anything else, even the smallest lead I might follow.”
“Don’t tell him Falon broke in. I’ve told him nothing about Falon’s attacks, it would only worry him when there’s nothing he can do.” She was still shaky when they hung up. She put her clothes in the dryer, dragged out their old battered suitcase and some grocery bags, and got to work packing.
SAMMIE SNUGGLED DEEPER under the quilt, pulling Misto warm against her. “You’ll come with me tomorrow, you’ll come to Aunt Anne’s house. No one will know.” It was late after supper, Mama hadn’t come to bed yet, she could hear Mama and Grandma in the kitchen, the bright rattle of silverware as they washed dishes, the soft murmur of their “good-bye” voices, their sad voices. “You can ride on top of my new suitcase or anywhere in the car you want and Mama can’t see you.”
Sammie’s small brown suitcase, the one Grandma had given her, stood packed and ready, across the room on the cedar chest beside Mama’s battered one. She didn’t want to leave Grandma, she didn’t want to move to Atlanta, she wanted Daddy home again, not gone away like when he was in the war. Why did things have to change? Mama said life was change, she said the important things stayed the same because the important things were inside you. Like loving each other and being strong.
Ducking her head under the covers she pressed her face against Misto. When she stroked his ragged ears and tickled him under the chin the way he liked, he purred and patted a soft paw against her cheek and she knew he loved her just the way she loved him. That would never change.