WITH RUBY AND her Peter Beater missing I knew, I absolutely knew, she hadn't gone without a fight. Searching through the house again looking for any signs of a struggle, I found nothing. I stood at the kitchen sink, looking through the window, wondering what she had seen to make her leave her dirty dinner plates out and disappear so quickly and quietly. The clock on the coffee maker said 4:28. Nothing moved outside in the darkness; no cars drove by; no people jogged along the sidewalks. The world seemed suspended, waiting for Ruby to bring it back to life.
I glanced toward the driveway. From the kitchen window, Ruby would have been able to see if anyone was there. I decided to reenact the scene, try to make sense of it. If Ruby had finished her dinner and had just started to put everything away, dishes in the sink, leftovers in the refrigerator, she would have stood right where I stood. The side porch light lit up the driveway; of course, Ruby had been standing here in the daylight. If she saw the scratchy-voiced man- and I knew it had to be him-she would go for the Peter Beater.
But why was the side door locked when I got home, with the front door open? She always kept all her doors locked, unlocking them only when she needed to. Did she lock it after he came in? Did she know him? The questions swarmed my mind as I stared into the early morning darkness through the window.
"Okay," I steadied myself, "I'll try it." She saw something that made her go for the baseball bat. I walked back to the bedroom to see how long it would take Ruby; step by step, attempting to match her pace, I returned to the kitchen.
What if he'd seen her, too?
When she returned, he would have had time to come after her. The side door was locked when I got home; hopefully, it was locked while Ruby was here.
She had the bat in her hands. Someone lurked outside. I turned to look for an escape route. "Of course, through the front door."
I walked through the dining room to the living room front door, the one left open. "Yes, this is it." Had she made it out before he caught her? Probably. I retrieved a flashlight and a pair of dirty jeans from the laundry room. I pulled on the jeans and searched around the front porch. Just as I suspected, I discovered the baseball bat under an azalea, partially hidden by ivy crushed from the impact. I held the Peter Beater in my hands, wishing I had been there to use it for her. My mind turned back to the reenactment. They must have struggled on the front porch, and then he took the bat away from her. A smug smile of satisfaction flushed over me. "That's it. That's what happened."
Then the loss of Ruby returned. I searched the dark yard again, wondering what had happened next. Where was Ruby now?
I COULDN'T SLEEP. Pacing the house didn't help make the sun rise any quicker. Mark slept on, snoring quietly. How can he? Ruby's in danger, and he sleeps. I decided to wake him up, then reconsidered. I needed time to think, to figure out how to rescue her from the dark clutches of the scratchy-voiced man. I'll kill the bastard when I find him.
Lighting a cigarette, I sat on the front porch steps. "Why Ruby? What did he hope to accomplish by taking her?"
I could see only two possibilities: someone was trying to keep me from learning whatever Ruby knew, or she was a hostage to my good behavior, to make me toe the line. In either case, it seemed connected to Vernon 's campaign, his Senate race. He would be safer with me obedient, and silent. Is that why Mark sleeps so soundly?
Then a thought hit me. "The diaries. Maybe Ruby wasn't the only thing taken from here." I snuffed the cigarette into the geranium pot and rushed back to the hallway.
Grabbing the chain and jerking the pull-down stairs to the attic caused a loud creak, and Mark called in a raspy voice from the bedroom, "What's wrong?"
I ignored him and bounded up the rattling stairs.
When I clicked on the bare light bulb at the top of the stairs, harsh white light illuminated Ruby's motionless body tied to an overturned wooden chair.
I struggled to breathe, my lungs heavy with horror. Pushing overturned boxes of clothes and books out of my path to get to her, I reached out to touch her face, afraid of what I might find; my trembling hand felt the soft warm flesh of her neck.
Her pulse, where's her pulse? I finally found it.
"Mark," I yelled, "call an ambulance. Ruby's up here."
He rushed up the steps to join me, not bothering to get dressed.
"Ruby? She's up here?" Then he saw her. "Oh God, is she…?"
"She has a pulse, and she's breathing, but unconscious." I turned to see him hunched under the rafters, trembling. "Go back down and call 911." Relief settled over me like a soothing, warm quilt; I knew she was safe and alive. I eased the duct tape off her mouth and untied the ropes that bound her hands and feet to the wooden chair. No sign of blood, but I found a bruise the size of a half-dollar, and a knot had swollen on the side of her forehead.
I pulled the chair away from Ruby. "Mark, did you get the ambulance?" I yelled toward the stairs.
He stuck his head up through the opening. "Yeah, they're on their way." He climbed back up to join me. This time, he had thought to pull on his khakis and running shoes. "Let's get her down to her bed."
Ruby wasn't an extremely heavy woman, just bulky. Mark and I struggled to get her down the stairs without dropping her. Delivering her to her bed, I heard the doorbell ring and Mark rushed to let the paramedics in.
As they assessed her condition and loaded her into the ambulance, I paced. Who did this? Is Vernon 's campaign that important, important enough to chance murder? The police came back, different officers this time; two men asking all the same questions. I let Mark deal with them.
I called Valerie. "Val, meet me at Carolinas Medical Center. Ruby has a concussion."
"What?" she choked out. "She has a concussion? What happened? Will she be okay?" The questions fired out of the phone.
"Meet me at Carolinas Med. The ambulance is leaving now. I'll tell you everything I know when we get there." Then I added, "Don't tell Gladys, just meet me." I didn't want Gladys the Bitch there. She never cared for anyone but herself, and if she had something to do with this, I might just kill her as soon as she walked into the hospital.
The ambulance pulled out of the front yard; the driveway packed with Walterene's Taurus, Ruby's Oldsmobile, my rental Camry, and Mark's Mercedes hadn't allowed them access. Ruby would be pissed that they'd driven through the yard. Mark and I followed the ambulance in his car.
VALERIE WAITED AT the Emergency Room desk as we hurried in. Ruby had been taken in for examination, and Valerie filled out paperwork.
"Derek, what happened?" She shoved the clipboard of forms at Mark, then asked, "Why are you here?"
"She's my Aunt Ruby, too." He grabbed the clipboard and walked away.
She watched him plop down on a couch, then looked back at me. "Well?"
I steered her to another area of the waiting room and guided her to a chair. I told her what had happened from the time I drove into the driveway after dropping her off until the time we drove out a few minutes ago. Leaving off the more personal details between me and Mark, I told her I had called him first because he might be able to get something done faster with the police.
"You think this is the same man who's been calling?" she asked. She didn't know about the Observer building incident.
"Who else would have a reason to do something like this?" I asked, although my list of people and reasons kept growing. "But, why Ruby? Why not go after me?"
"No one has a reason, other than being mentally unbalanced, to tie up an old woman and put her in the attic." Valerie thought for a moment. "You know, he had to be a big man to get Ruby up those stairs."
The struggle we had getting her down from the attic came to mind.
"Do you think there could have been more than one man?" she asked.
Shit. I hadn't considered I might be battling more than one foe. That complicated my theories.
"Val," I felt I needed to tell her, "I found some of Walterene's diaries in the attic a few days ago."
Her face blanched.
"In those diaries, she wrote about a gardener Papa Ernest had and how he had been accused of something that made him run. From reading Walterene's account-and Ruby pointed out that they were young and didn't understand everything that happened-but from what Walterene wrote, it sounds like he was lynched because Gladys accused him of fondling her or something like that. Walterene never wrote exactly what Gladys said, but the family fired him after years of working for them."
Valerie sighed and said, "I don't remember anyone mentioning this."
"I think it happened in the late forties, before Walterene and Ruby's house was built." I shifted in the vinyl-covered chair. "You see, the oak next to their driveway was where they found him, hanged."
"Walterene and Ruby found him?"
"I don't know who found him, but Walterene suspected Papa Ernest led the hunt and the lynching. She believed that Vernon took a big part in it to help avenge the honor of his sister."
Valerie kept quiet for a moment, but her eyes darted back and forth; I almost thought I could see sparks as her mind processed this new information with things she had known or suspected for years. "I don't think it's true. Probably, like Ruby said, just young girls adding drama to their lives for the sake of the diary." She glanced over at Mark as he turned the paperwork back into the nurse at the station. "What else did she write about?"
"Just regular teenage girl stuff; she didn't like Gladys, that's for sure. A lot about the family, I didn't get to go through all of them." The realization shook me: I had been going to check for the diaries when I found Ruby; now I wasn't sure if they were still there or not.
Mark sat down in a chair next to mine. "The nurse says a doctor will be out in a few minutes. She said the initial diagnosis was a concussion, but the doctor will have to give us any more details."
Valerie's eyes searched my face as if to ask whether Mark knew about Mr. Sams and the diaries.
I answered that unasked question with, "Mark, I was just telling Valerie about Walterene's theory on Mr. Sams and the lynching that took place in the oak tree. Whoever did this knows about it; otherwise, the noose wouldn't have been there when I first arrived home." I looked to Valerie. "Can you find out how much Gladys knows?"
"I doubt she would admit remembering it, but I can ask." She glanced down at the floor. "I'd like to see what Walterene wrote exactly. I might get something different out of it, you never know,"
I hated sharing Walterene's private thoughts with more people, but Valerie knew her better, and she had just as much right to see it as I did. "Okay, but Ruby didn't like me looking through them, so you better not mention it to her."
"Fine," Valerie agreed.
A young woman approached us. "I'm Doctor McConnell." Crimson lines ringed her tired emerald eyes. Her pale delicate hand reached out to shake Mark's strong hearty one. Funny, how people gravitated to him as the one in charge. Valerie and I stood to shake her hand as Mark introduced us.
"How's Ruby? Will she be all right?" I asked.
Dr. McConnell adjusted a pencil in her thick auburn hair. "She has a concussion. We're going to run a CT scan to look for any possible blood clots that could have formed near her brain."
Valerie gasped.
"It's routine at her age," the doctor assured. "We'll keep her overnight for observation. Hopefully, she'll be ready to go home tomorrow."
"Is she conscious?" Mark asked.
"Yes, but she needs rest. I'll tell her you are all here." She began to turn away.
"Wait, can she tell us what happened?" I took a step toward her, afraid she would get away.
The doctor stopped. "Oh, the police officers have already asked her a couple of questions, but she has a slight case of amnesia from the blow to her head. That's common with concussions."
Mark shook his head in disbelief. "You mean she can't tell us who did this?"
"She couldn't tell the police anything," the doctor said, "but the good news is, the memory usually comes back in time."
I looked at Mark and Valerie. "Maybe that's not so good. I'd almost prefer she didn't remember what happened."
The lack of sleep and the stress of the night began to swallow me. I sank down into the chair and held my head with both hands.
"Mark, can you stay here for a little while?" Valerie asked. "I'm going to take Derek home and let him get some sleep."
"Sure, go ahead," Mark agreed. "Derek, get some rest, and I'll catch up with you later this morning."
Valerie and I drove back to Ruby and Walterene's house in silence. The early Sunday morning sun sparkled the dew on the lawns of the neighbors. When I unlocked the door, I hesitated before going in. Would they come back looking for me? Would we be safe here? I grabbed the baseball bat from the kitchen counter where I had left it and walked through the house checking behind doors, under beds, and around corners. I asked Valerie to double-check that all the locks were secure.
"I'll stay here while you sleep," she offered.
The thought of having her in the house relieved my anxiety, somewhat. "Great. Thanks, Valerie."
"What about the diaries? Maybe I can go through them while I'm here." She headed toward the attic pull-down in the hall.
The diaries. I'd forgotten them again. We pulled down the stairs and climbed up. The remnants of the ropes and the overturned chair lay under the eaves. I found the boxes of diaries untouched where I had last seen them. Valerie and I hoisted them down to the den.
"I can barely keep my eyes open," I said.
She sat on the floor sorting out the journals. "Okay, go to bed. I'll be here."
"Thanks." I kissed her cheek and headed for bed.
I WOKE TO voices in the den. Still groggy, I checked the clock; I had only slept a few hours. I dressed, wondering who could be here and why, then opened the bedroom door slowly, trying not to make any noises, and crept to the kitchen door to listen.
Valerie explained Ruby's condition."…and she has to stay in the hospital until tomorrow."
A male voice I couldn't identify said, "They know she's a Harris, don't they?"
Then I heard the unmistakable high-pitched voice of cousin Edwina. "Valerie, you make sure they know she isn't on Medicare and that she has insurance, otherwise those doctors will try and push her out the door as soon as possible."
I walked into the den to see Edwina, in another nylon crinkly wind suit, and Roscoe her twin agreeing with every word she said. "Edwina and Roscoe." I yawned. "Why are you here?"
Valerie answered for them, "Just a Sunday visit."
"Boy," Edwina started, "can you get me some more iced tea while you're up?"
"The name's Derek," I corrected. Bitch, go home, I want to sleep.
Valerie jumped up and took her glass before I could snatch it from Edwina's fat little fist.
"Your sister was just telling us about Ruby." Roscoe informed me. "We stopped for our usual Sunday visit only to find Ruby's in the hospital."
"Yes, yes, Derek." Valerie returned with Edwina's tea. She set it down on the coffee table. "I was just telling them about Ruby's terrible fall." She stared me in the eyes and nodded as if to make me agree with her.
"Yes, it was a bad fall," I agreed, unsure why I needed to hide the truth from these two. I dropped into the wingback chair next to Valerie's and glimpsed around the room for Walterene's diaries.
Valerie caught my searching glance and nodded toward the laundry room. Good, she'd put them out of sight. I didn't want the rest of the family clamoring to read them.
The clock on the mantel read 10:20; I'd only had two hours sleep. "Why aren't you two at church this morning?"
Their tired old faces blanched; maybe they thought I accused them of being heathens, since one thing in the lives of the Harris family that remained constant was regular church attendance. Roscoe piped up, "Edwina wasn't feeling well."
Edwina managed a weak cough.
So, I thought, you decide to visit other people to make them sick.
"Boy," Edwina started. "Derek, your father had his," she croaked another fake cough for effect, "retirement party last night, but not all of the family was invited."
My mind popped, Yeah, so? Instead I said, "That's right."
Edwina straightened herself up on the couch to the crackle of nylon fabric. "I thought it would have been nice if the whole family had been invited." She smiled with lipstick-stained teeth.
"You're right, but I didn't have any say in who was invited."
"Your mother did," she countered. "Gladys should have invited us. Roscoe and I are on the Board; we're shareholders just like Gladys and Vernon."
Valerie tried to soothe her hurt feelings. "The party was very small. You know how Dad doesn't like a lot of fuss. Just us kids and a few of the people who worked directly with him were invited."
I hadn't been invited; I had to push my way in. If I hadn't, maybe Ruby wouldn't be in the hospital. No one had expected me to be there. Is that why the scratchy-voiced man came here? Expecting to find me? I spoiled his plan by going to the retirement party when I hadn't been invited. The party sure gave the family a tidy alibi.
Roscoe fidgeted with the zipper on his jacket. "Ed, you ready to go? We still got a couple more stops to make before lunch at the Rodale's."
"Rodale's steakhouse?" Valerie asked.
"Yeah." Edwina hoisted herself off the couch. "They have an all-you-can-eat buffet."
"Good food," Roscoe added.
Valerie stood to walk them out. I waved good-bye and ducked into the laundry room to retrieve the diaries. I had some reading to do.