As dark draws deeper into the cave, Clever and me are cuddlin’, consoling each other over the-there ain’t no treasure ’cept for some stupid gold weed that gets ya high-news. The boys are a ways off, opening tin cans, slicing cornbread, and speaking in whispers. We can’t build a fire ’cause Billy says the Brandish Boys will spot the smoke, so we have to eat cold grub. After we get something into our tummies, we’re gonna decide what our next move should be. Keeper’s at the mouth of the cave, his snout twitching.
Even though Clever says her stomach feels like somebody reached in and pulled it out, nothing can stop her from vigorously sniffing on the dead Mr. Buster pictures. “Ya know who I think murdered him?” she asks me.
“Who?”
“Miss Loretta.”
“Why’d she wanna murder Mr. Buster?” I ask, more than a little curious.
“Well,” Clever says, using her storytelling voice, “I was gettin’ me some peanut brittle last week when Buster came into the shop to pick up a bag of his butterscotch candies.”
(She means she was stealing some peanut brittle last week.)
“When Miss Loretta apologized for not having them done up yet, Mr. Butter got real ugly with her,” Clever goes on. “Told her, ‘Ya better get on the stick, Retta, or I’ll take my business elsewhere,’ and slammed outta the shop. And Miss Loretta, when she was stickin’ her little tinker bell back up to the door, she said, ‘I could wring his stinkin’ neck, that’s what I could do. Goes and gets hisself elected governor and now he thinks he’s even more better than everybody else.’ ” Clever flashes the pictures of dead Mr. Buster in front of my face. “And look here… that’s just what somebody done, wrung Mr. Butter’s stinkin’ neck but good.”
That’s just so goddamn dumb. Miss Loretta of Candy World is always rantin’ on like that. It’s the heat in her kitchen melts her patience away. Everybody knows that it’s best to go and buy your sweets early in the morning ’fore it gets so hot in that shop. I don’t point that out to Clever though. She can get awfully ratty.
“Ya doubtin’ me?” she asks, when I don’t pipe in to agree with her.
“Not doubtin’ exactly.”
“Ya ain’t callin’ me a liar, are ya?”
“No… no, I am not callin’ you a liar.” Trying like the devil to keep her calm, the way Billy told me I should, I think fast. “Hey, Cooter told me something real dishy!” (This’ll calm her down. She’ll eat this up. Dirty gossip about high-and-mighty folks is Clever’s most favorite thing in the whole world next to shoot-’em-up movies, and stealing, and roses, and funerals, and I guess now, Cooter.) “On the way home from the jailbreak, he told me that he believes that Georgie Malloy didn’t die of natural drownin’. Cooter thinks Mr. Buster murdered Puddin’ and Pie!”
“Already knew that,” Clever says, yawning in my face. “Suppose ya don’t know either that Buster was not only Georgie’s uncle but also his daddy.”
Laboring a baby must make you temporarily insane! “Poor ole girl. That’s just not possible,” I explain to her slow and pronounced. “It’s common knowledge somebody can’t be somebody’s uncle and at the same time his daddy… that is just not humanly possible.”
“Ya think I’m dumb, don’tcha? Ya think just ’cause I didn’t finish high school. Well, I got news for you. Buster forced hisself on Miss Lydia one night when he was drunk, and nine months later out popped Georgie!”
“Billy!” I yell. “Come quick. Ya gotta ride Clever over to the mental institute at Pardyville.”
“Why, you little…” She lunges for me, her hands clawed up and ready to give me one of her dreadful Indian burns.
"Y’all quit! This ain’t no time for you two to be jumpin’ on each other,” Cooter shouts, rushing over to separate us. “We gotta stay calm. ’Specially you.” He passes Clever a plate full of chow that she turns her nose up at. “What she’s tellin’ ya about Mr. Buster forcin’ hisself on Miss Lydia is true, Gib.”
“But… how…” This is just too much information for one almost Quite Right reporter to take in! My brain feels like it’s under one of those attacks Billy’s always flashing back on. Only the sky’s not sheeting bullets, but news. Miss Lydia was taken advantage of by her own brother Buster Malloy? And she bore him a boy? And that boy was Georgie Puddin’ and Pie? No wonder she likes to listen to that opera music so much. (Even though they’re well known for their excellent salad dressing, there’s always something tragic going on with those Italian folks.)
“Ya absolutely sure ’bout that, Cooter?” I ask, taking my supper out of his hand. “That Mr. Buster took advantage of his own sister?” Everybody knows these types of family unions happen from time to time in the hollers, but here in Cray Ridge?
We got a larger population to choose from when it comes to courting.
“Just as sure as I am that a lot of folks gonna be happy as hell Buster’s dead,” he says, digging in. “Gonna be hard to find out who actually murdered him since just about everyone hankered to.”
Uh-oh.
It’s just occurred to me that I may have overlooked a few things.
“Whoever it was that murdered Mr. Buster, the importance of perception in meticulous investigation says in the means, motive and opportunity chapter that a person would have to have all three of those things in order to commit a crime,” I blurt out.
Clever frowns. “I already told ya. Miss Loretta murdered Buster. Stabbed him with that sharp fudge-cuttin’ knife and then wrung his neck with those powerful candy-makin’ hands a hers.”
“Clever,” I say, “the knife and her hands are the means, and I’ll give ya the fact she knows where Browntown Beach is, so I guess she had the opportunity. But what’d be Miss Loretta’s motive?” I can tell by the way she’s cockin’ her head at me that she is not familiar with the meaning of that word. “Motive means a damn good reason for doin’ something. Just ’cause Mr. Buster irritated her some in the heat of the day, that is not a damn good reason for Miss Loretta to kill him. Hell, if irritation was a good motive to murder, half the town’d be dead!”
I mighta said that all a tad Condescending: Displaying a superior attitude, because Clever snipes, “Goddamn you, Gibson,” and claws up her hands again. Thank heavens an awful birthing spasm stops her in her tracks. Billy checks his watch. Because he’s delivered a lot of foals up at High Hopes, he explained that when the pains don’t have much time between them it’ll be time for Rosie Adelaide to make her way out. He’s brought sheets from the cottage and has got his trusty army knife to cut the cord that’ll be attached to the baby.
“Please accept my deepest of apologies for gettin’ you all worked up,” I tell Clever once the pain’s straightened out. “During the course of my investigation, I promise I will question Miss Loretta.”
She gives me back a rumpf.
I break off a piece of my cornbread and toss it Keeper’s way. Bet he’s wishing as much as I am that it was a trout pulled straight out of the lake this afternoon by my peg-legged-fishin’-cowboy-whittlin’-bird-watcher. “It’s just… I’m so worried about Grampa and Mama isn’t resting in peace and-”
“I know, I know.” Clever won’t straight out apologize for her part of the spat, ’cause that’s not her way, but she is making a peace offering when she says, “All this chasin’ and jailbreakin’ and drownin’ and birthin’, this is just like one of our western movies, isn’t it, Butch?”
What she really means is, it’s just like OUR western movie. “Only difference is this story is true and that one’s made up,” I remind her.
“There’s no way you’re tellin’ me Mr. Paul Newman and Mr. Robert Redford are not the best of friends. ’Course they are. Tried and true. No matter how dumb one of ’em gets actin’.” Firing off an ornery look at me, she says, “Cooter, why don’t ya go ahead and tell us what ya think Mr. Buster’s motive was to drown Georgie?”
"Y’all know anything ’bout politics?” Cooter asks, showing off his college.
I don’t believe I do, so I say, “Uh-uh.” So does Clever. Billy is keeping his lips padlocked. He is being awfully excellent at that this evening. What’s troubling him?
Cooter says, “Well, right before Georgie died, that was about the time Buster’d begun to talk about throwin’ his hat into the ring.”
Clever and me give him our huh? look.
“Throwin’ your hat in the ring is another way of sayin’ ya want to get involved in politics,” Cooter explains. “And when ya do that, ya gotta make folks want to vote for ya by makin’ sure that you’re lily white.”
I say, “Everyone already knows that ya gotta be white to be governor.”
“Lily white-it don’t mean white on the outside, like your skin. It means you gotta be clean. Without a bad mark in your morals,” Cooter says, warming up to the subject. “You cain’t have nuthin’ goin’ on with you or your family that folks might consider not right. Like rumors goin’ round about breedin’ up your own sister? That might not go down so smooth with the upstandin’ voters.”
For the millionth time, I am left simply breathless by what I don’t know.
“So what you’re sayin’ is, ya think Mr. Buster drowned Georgie so he could get some more lily white votes ’cause he was desirin’ to get elected for something?” I ask.
“That’s ’zactly what I’m sayin’,” Cooter says. “Once Georgie was dead, Buster had himself what ya call an out-a-sight-out-a-mind situation.”
This is the most bastardly idea I have ever heard!
Bringing his plate up to his mouth, Cooter licks the last of the beans off. “And then everything just fell into place even betterfor Buster when Miss Lydia developed, ya know, mental area problems. That way nuthin’ she said about her havin’ her own brother’s chil’ would be held up like truth.”
I guess Cooter feels about Miss Lydia same as Grampa and, truth be told, a lot of the other folks in Cray Ridge. Miss Lydia’s gifted ways frighten them so they say she’s got problems in her mental area and tap their temples. I’m used to that. I even understand it. Miss Lydia has taught me that people are always ascared by what they don’t understand.
“Oh, Mama…,” Clever wails, balling up again.
I lean behind her back and whisper to Billy, “Seems like they’re comin’ faster now. Ya sure we shouldn’t take her to the hospital?”
“We can’t do that. The sheriff knows she’s ’bout to have a baby. The posse might be watchin’ for us. They could come down on us. Take Cooter back to jail. Or worse.”
Thoughtfully, he left out the part where they would take me away, too. Not hang me, I don’t think, but I wouldn’t put anything past the sheriff at this point. He’s already ticked off at me for breaking Cooter out of his jail and stealing back my pictures of dead Mr. Buster. And he’s probably gonna blame me for pulling that stunt on the road when he got knocked out with that limestone rock. (Getting outsmarted by an imbecile who’s dumb as anthracite coal ain’t exactly a boost to your manhood, is it now?)
Wiping off the beads of sweat that keep popping up on Billy’s forehead, I ask, “You feelin’ all right?”
“I’m fine,” he says, looking up at me, but then turnin’ his attention back to his watch. Not fast enough. I saw his lyin’ eyes. Mr. Howard Redmond in his chapter entitled Determining the Guilty Party explains that one of the things guilty people do, besideslie and fidget, is they perspire a lot. Though my man is well-muscled, he is quite sensitive, so earlier this evening I thought it might be all the sad reminiscing about his old pal Georgie that was makin’ Billy damp. Or the Brandish Boys comin’ for us, that’d make an ice cube sweat. But I was mistaken. He definitely had the means. True, I have no idea what his motive might be for murdering Mr. Buster, but he certainly had the opportunity. He’s always prowling around, sight unseen. I also understand now why he was the only one believed me right off about finding Mr. Buster dead on Browntown Beach.
Oh, my sweet, sweet Billy. What have ya gone and done?