“You don’t have to do that.”
“I never do anything I don’t want to do, you’ll see that about me soon enough. Say seven thirty? I’m not from around here, but I can cook a damn good southern meal if I choose to.”
Robie nodded. “Okay, I’ll see you then.” He looked at Tyler. “You said you’re taking him to the doctor. Is he okay? He doesn’t look sick.”
“Ty has some…challenges,” she said, gently pressing down a cowlick on the boy’s head and giving the spot a kiss. Then she strapped her son in the booster, climbed into the driver’s seat, and kicked up some pebbles as she sped off.
Robie watched them go for a bit and then walked the grounds of the Willows. He remembered the place as being meticulously maintained, because the Barksdales had come from money and Henry Barksdale had worked hard at maintaining his ancestral home.
Robie’s father had obviously kept the grounds in excellent condition. A few features had been added, like a swimming pool, a stone pavilion, and a fenced-in kitchen garden.
Whether the Barksdales had done this after Robie left Cantrell, or his father had, or some owner in between, he didn’t know. He still couldn’t understand how his father had come to own such a place. Even in Cantrell, where the cost of land and living were preposterously low, this place would not come cheap to own or maintain.
He stood at a spot near a stacked rock wall at the rear of the property. He took in a lungful of air, and the briny smells from the nearby Gulf filled his nostrils. Growing up here he hadn’t thought there was any other kind of air.
It had been at this spot that Laura Barksdale and he had made their plans. He had already reached his full height and his shoulders were broad and his muscles hard from year-round sports. In addition to football, Robie had played basketball and run track. You could do that back then, especially in a small town like this where there weren’t enough young men to fill the various teams.
Laura was a brunette who wore her hair short. She was slender and of average height. They both had been popular in high school, he for his athletics and good looks, and she for her intelligence, kindness, and beauty, and in spite of her prestigious family, which some at Cantrell High held against her. She had been nice to everyone, but Robie had always felt there was something she was not telling him. He caught it in a look, in something she said. Sometimes, simply in her silence. But then she would push away whatever seemed to be bothering her and come back to him. He had asked her many times to confide in him. But she would only smile, shake her head, and say that she had told him everything. And then they would kiss and the teenage Robie would forget about everything else.
Yes, they had made plans for their future. Together. Only they would never come to pass.
As he finished his exploration of the rear grounds and headed back toward the house, he caught a glimpse of a face at one of the upstairs windows before it was gone.
The face was lined and the skin the same color as Deputy Taggert’s eyes.
Priscilla.
Chapter
11
Robie stepped up onto the porch and knocked on the door. The heat of the day was bearing down on him; it was a humid heat, unlike the desert kind he’d recently been in. He’d take dry over wet. The humidity just sucked everything right out of you. He remembered how his mother would take a bath in the morning and then again in the afternoon for that very reason.
He heard feet coming down the set of grand stairs he remembered that flared out at the bottom, and that he also remembered were set right in the center of the substantial foyer.
The door opened and there was the face he had glimpsed a minute ago. Priscilla was in her early sixties, about five feet four inches tall, thickset, with straight graying black hair tied back in a severe bun. She had on a maid’s outfit, and her feet were encased in worn, soft-soled shoes, the kind that nurses wore, only black.
“You Will Robie?” she said immediately, almost fiercely.
“I am.”
“I’m Priscilla. I take care’a your daddy’s home.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you. Ms. Victoria said you was around. Liked to knock me over when she said so.”
“How long have you been helping my father?”
“Four years now.”
“Do you mind if I come in and look around a bit?”
She opened the door wider and moved aside, shutting the door after he entered the foyer.
She stared up at him. “You handsome, like your daddy. Though not as big. But you not too scrawny. You look like you can take care’a yourself.”
Robie was gazing around at the rooms bleeding off the entrance hall. The furnishings were tasteful, solid, everything situated just so. His father’s doing, most certainly. But he could see a bit of Victoria, perhaps, in the fresh-cut flowers and colorful drapes and throw pillows. And the artwork that ranged from simple to substantial carried a whimsical feel that he just didn’t see his Marine father possessing.
His gaze dropped to Priscilla. “Can you tell me what happened? Why my father’s in jail for killing Sherman Clancy?”
“I just made a pitcher’a tea. You want some?”
“Is it sweet tea?”
She looked at him funny. “Is there any other kind?”
She led him into the large, sunny kitchen with blackened beams across the ceiling. Priscilla poured out two glasses of sweet tea, and they sat at a round cedar table in front of a bay window overlooking the rear grounds.
Robie took a sip of his drink and couldn’t keep his face from puckering as the truckload of sugar walloped his taste buds.
Priscilla took a long drink of her tea and smacked her lips before saying slyly, “You been gone from Mississippi a long time?”
“Yes, I have,” said Robie, putting the glass down.
“Sherman Clancy,” said Priscilla, watching him closely.
Robie leaned in a bit and met her gaze directly. “I’d appreciate all that you can tell me.”
“Sherman Clancy wasn’t a good man. But truth is, I ain’t see him as no killer, neither.”
“Why not?”
She took another gulp of tea. “You want something to eat?”
“No, I’m good.” He watched her expectantly.
“Clancy was in with those casino boys. Those junkyard dogs drain every cent from you and laugh all the way to the bank while they givin’ you another watered-down glass of whiskey cost ’em ten cents and they sell for ten dollahs.”
“But he wasn’t a killer?”
“What he mostly was, was fat and drunk. Doubt he’d have the energy or what you need upstairs to kill nobody and then get away with it.”
“And Janet Chisum?”
“Didn’t know her. Her family ain’t here too long. Seem nice ’nuff. Saw ’em drivin’ to church on Sundays. That’s all they got to keep ’em now. God’s love. He’ll see those poor folks through this, yes he will. When I lost my baby, God was with me all the way.”
Robie’s mind went back to the tragic image of Sasha toppling dead to the floor. “How’d your child die?” he asked a moment later.
“Was livin’ up near Hattiesburg back then. Big old rattler done got my Earl when he was just a little boy. Went over to the county hospital but the man there said there was nothin’ they could do and I’d best take him over the clinic near where we lived. So’s I took him there, but they told me the county hospital was the only place ’round got the serum for the rattler. Earl died in my arms in the car on the way back to the county hospital. I walked into that place holdin’ my dead son and you know what that same man done told me?”
“What?”
“That he ain’t remember me comin’ in. That I must’ve made some mistake. That I must not be right in the head. And that I needed to take my boy’s body outta there right that very second, ’cause it was upsettin’ his staff.” She shook her head. “Upsettin’ his staff? Hear them words till I breathe my last.”