Chapter 29

Suivez: Continue, go on (Fr.)

I lifted my hand toward Martha’s brass knocker, but a tap on my shoulder stopped me from reaching it. A short, young man in a police uniform gave me a stern look.

“Are you Cressa Carraway?”

I thought of answering “Guilty,” but thought again. Not a good word to use while I’m still a suspect. “Yes.”

“Captain Palmer. Need to ask you a few questions.”

I nodded.

“First of all, where have you been just now?” His eyes were narrowed to such small slits I couldn’t tell what color they were.

“Nowhere… Well, I was driving to Moline, but I’m back,” I stammered. “I’m, um, returning this dish to Martha.”

He flipped his wallet open to his ID card, which told me he was Captain Palmer of the Cambridge County Sheriff’s Office. “I understand you found the body.”

The word “body” gave me a chill and brought back the pitiful faces of both Gram and Grace. “Which one?” I asked. His pained squint was not friendly. Are his eyes always scrunched up like that? “I found all of them.”

“Sheriff Dobson only assigned me to the latest one.”

That would be, I assumed, Toombs. “Well, they’re probably all tied together.” His piggy eyes scrunched even smaller. Did he think I was telling him how to do his job? “Don’t you think they’re connected?”

He changed the subject. “When did you last see the victim?”

“Uh… when did I last see Toombs? Alive?”

He didn’t answer. I struggled to remember.

“I saw him coming out of Hayley’s. I had just met him earlier that day.”

“What day was that?” He fished a small spiral-bound tablet from his jacket and made a big show of printing my name and the date at the top of a page.

“It was, let me see, two days ago, no… three days ago, I think.”

He scribbled in his notebook. Aren’t cops supposed to have tape recorders?

“No, wait.” Now I remembered. “I saw him day before yesterday.”

“The day he was killed?”

“I guess so.”

“Where was he and what was he doing?”

“He was by the road on top of the hill, talking with Sheila.”

“And where were you?”

“I was on the water, in Gram’s boat.” Do I sound like a suspect? “I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I could hear them talking.” I didn’t want to say they were arguing. That might cast suspicion on Sheila. “It was probably around midmorning, say, ten o’clock.”

“What was their conversation about?” He tapped his pencil on the paper.

“I couldn’t really hear.” Just one side, not both.

“And the last time you spoke with him?”

“That was when I saw him in front of Hayley’s.”

“What did you talk about?” This man did not like me. He gritted his teeth and his eyes got still narrower. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.

“Well, he talked about Hayley, his stepdaughter, and the two granddaughters.” Had Toombs been yelling at someone every time I’d encountered him?

“Let’s move on to the crime scene.”

I remained contrite and polite for the rest of his questions, which were exactly the same ones Sheriff Dobson had asked me in his office. Except I did say I’d already answered all those questions. And I added the fact that I had thrown up near Toombs’s body, in case they found the evidence and wondered what it was. I now knew I threw up when I encountered dead bodies.

He continued taking notes. Kept me waiting and fidgeting for a minute or so after we quit talking.

“Okay,” he said. He slapped his notebook shut and gave me another sharp, narrow look. “We won’t bother you anymore for the time being. Stick around, though.”

“How far can I go?” The thought of being confined to the cabin, or even the resort, panicked me. “Into Alpha? What if I need groceries? And I need to go to the funeral home this afternoon.”

“Alpha is fine. But don’t leave the area. You need to be available in case we have more questions.”

Different ones next time? I wondered.

Captain Palmer drove away in one of the Henry County cars.

“Thanks for returning my casserole dish, Cressa. I’ll have to apologize again for missing your grandmother’s funeral. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Martha Toombs, in a housedress again today, took the dish from me and set it on a nearby end table. Her eyes were moist, troubled, underneath her knit eyebrows. “I’m having a hard time feeling sorry my husband is dead,” she said, her voice low and timid-sounding. She patted her pink foam rollers, then leaned down and scratched some nasty looking bites on her legs.

“It hasn’t been an easy life I’ve had with him. But what I feel so bad about mostly, is what he’s done to my sweet granddaughters, Rachel and Rebecca.” She stopped talking and pulled a very used tissue out of her pocket. “Have you met them?”

I nodded. We took seats in her shag-rugged early-American sitting room after Martha turned down the volume on Days of Our Lives.

I waited for her to continue. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. The whole business of incest, or child molesting, or whatever it was in this case, was completely out of the scope of my experience. Despite what I’d told Al, I didn’t really, and never truly would, understand why Martha stayed married to such a man. Maybe she had never been able to afford leaving him. But she had spent many years with him, and was feeling nothing at his death. I could easily imagine her guilt.

She started talking again. Her husband’s death had opened the floodgates of her emotions and as her anguish poured out, her voice grew stronger.

“He was my knight in shining armor a long, long time ago. Hayley’s father left us, ran off with a farmer’s wife. I wasn’t sorry to see him go—he drank, you know—but we didn’t have any support.” She dabbed at her red-rimmed eyes.

“Albert was older than me. He was so masterful and he didn’t drink hard liquor the way my father and my first husband did. All he ever had was beer. I never thought it was so bad to drink beer. But he drank an awful lot of it, I guess.”

She stared at the silent television for a moment, then shook her head and plowed on as a wildly inappropriate ad for a sexual enhancement drug came on.

“Hayley tried to tell me a couple of months ago about him bothering her girls, that Pat Fiori told her she knew he was, but I didn’t believe it. He was a hard man and had a bad temper—that’s the only time he would ever hit me, when he lost his temper, or when he’d been drinking. But to abuse those beautiful children. I couldn’t believe it. I thought having granddaughters was going to be easy after all we went through with Mo and his problems.”

Mo and his problems? What was that about? Other sexual attacks? Murder? Or just the jewelry-filching problem? Instead, I asked, “How did Rebecca get the bruises on her face I saw the other day?”

Mrs. Toombs touched the bruise on her own cheek. “He gave it to her.” Her voice was soft, breathy. “And he gave me this one.” She bowed her head. Was she ashamed? “You can’t see the ones where he punched me in the stomach.” She scraped her fingernails at more mosquito bites on her arms.

“And you’re feeling guilty not to be mourning him. Does anyone expect you to?” I ventured, trying to give her comfort. Her anguish tugged at my heart.

“Well, I don’t suppose so. I’m afraid to show it, but I’m very glad to be rid of him, even though I’m not sure what I’ll do without him.”

She raised her head and looked me in the eye. “I don’t dare tell that to the police.” Her frightened eyes pleaded. “Please don’t tell them I said that.”

“Of course not, Martha.”

She straightened and patted my arm. “You’re a nice girl.” Her voice strengthened. “And there are things you should know about your grandmother. A couple things I need to tell you. Unless… What bothers me the most is Mo. He’s in a terrible state. I’m afraid he might …”

For this remarkable soliloquy she had begun to come out of her shell. She had even sounded the slightest bit belligerent. But the last statement was spoken sotto voce, in her habitual half-whisper. She even looked around as if her husband might be coming in from the kitchen any minute.

I jumped to my feet when he did. Then he turned, and I realized it was Mo.

“I, I didn’t know you were here,” I stammered, a hot flush spreading up my face.

“Hello, Cressa,” he said, his voice low and even. I shivered with its menace, sounding as dark as his hair. “Mom, don’t you think you ought to get some rest?” He turned to me. “She really shouldn’t do too much for a few days. Doctor’s orders.”

Martha gave him a strange expression. He returned her enigmatic look with a stony one.

I knew when I wasn’t wanted, and I certainly didn’t need to be in the same room with Mo. “Sorry to bother you. I came to return your mother’s dish and report on the Fiori kids. They’ve been taken to the Moline hospital.”

I could tell Martha wanted to ask me about that, but Mo’s deep frown followed me as I hustled off, glad to be leaving that house.

“I have to go into town with Al now. Bye,” I called over my shoulder on my way out, pausing momentarily as I wondered if I might be leaving Martha in danger.