Gladys Kestrel had lived most of her adult life in an old boarding house owned by Miss Audie Briggs. It had once been a stately home with a wide brick porch and one dormer window that jutted out proudly above it. Years earlier, when Miss Audie had several renters, the place had bustled with activity. Now, the only renter was Gladys, and the house showed its age with rotting window frames, gutters filled with sprouting maples, and mole tracks crisscrossing the yard. Two overgrown trees hugged the front, covering the windows and shielding its inhabitants from the outside world. The whole place seemed trapped in the past, as if every creak and sigh was a reminiscence.
Hick knocked on the screen door and Miss Audie shuffled to answer. She was a large woman in a worn house dress. Her breasts hung pendulously to the sides and her back was bent forward. “Oh, mercy,” she said, smoothing back her gray hair and opening the door. “I just got off the phone with Deputy Wash. I don’t know where Gladys is, but she ain’t been home since yesterday. I’m out of my mind with worry.”
Hick and Adam entered the room. The corner table was piled with newspapers. A plate of barely touched biscuits and a half-empty cup of coffee sat on a small tray. Miss Audie’s breakfast. It had hardly been touched.
“Miss Briggs,” Adam said touching her shoulder. “We got some news for you. Why don’t you have a seat?”
Miss Audie’s face whitened. She grasped Adam’s hand. “I had a feeling. There’s been an accident. Is she okay?”
“Why don’t we sit down, Miss Audie,” Adam said leading her to the plump chair in which Miss Audie spent most of her days. He sank into the worn sofa across from her and spoke gently. “Ma’am, Gladys is dead.”
Miss Audie stared, first at Adam and then up at Hick as if hoping he would contradict the report. Then her face crumbled. Plump jowls began to wobble, her forehead wrinkled, and her lips quivered. She let out a wail that took hold of Hick’s spine and twisted. The wordless grief erupted from somewhere deep inside the old woman, and the two watched helplessly as a landslide of sorrow nearly buried her. She pulled a handkerchief from a pocket in her house dress and covered her face, howling in agony.
After a few moments, Hick reached out and touched her arm. “Miss Audie, can I get you something? A glass of water?”
She shook her head and wiped her nose, Finally, between sobs, she croaked, “How? How did it happen?”
Hick hesitated, glanced at Adam, and finally said, “Ma’am, we think Gladys was murdered.”
Miss Audie’s eyes widened and her mouth gaped open.
“What? But why?”
“That’s what we aim to find out,” Hick said. “Do you know if Gladys had any enemies or anyone who might have held a grudge against her?”
“She didn’t have an enemy on this whole green earth. Why every child that went through that high school looked to her as a friend. They were always coming over to visit, to just sit and chat.”
“Has anyone in particular been coming over and spending an unusual amount of time with her?” Adam asked.
“No,” Miss Audie said. “She ain’t had as many visitors since the school closed.” She paused. “In fact, she’s been a little down-hearted lately.”
Hick sighed. The Cherokee Crossing High School where his father had once been principal had closed the previous year. Dwindling enrollment was the latest indicator that the town, a once vibrant farming community, was facing a slow demise. Gladys, like so many others, had become a relic, once revered and treasured and then tossed aside and forgotten.
“When you say down-hearted, what do you mean?” Hick said.
Miss Audie hesitated. “I never pry into the affairs of my renters. I don’t snoop and don’t like those who do. I didn’t ask no questions, and Gladys was always so private about her personal life. But I did notice that she seemed preoccupied lately. Like something was preying on her mind and she was tryin’ to puzzle it out.”
“And you don’t have any idea what or who might have been on her mind?” Adam asked.
Miss Audie knitted her brow at him. “Like I said, I don’t pry.”
“But you and Gladys were friends,” Hick prodded.
“It ain’t possible to not be friends and love a person who lived in your home with you for thirty years. Every day Gladys got up and went to the school. She went to church on Sundays. She always paid her rent on time. She might have never had a suitor and no family ever visited her, but she did have friends. Yes, of course, I was her friend.” Miss Audie’s eyes filled with tears again and her lips trembled. “I don’t understand. Who would want to hurt someone like that?”
“When did you see her last?” Hick asked.
“Why yesterday morning we ate breakfast together right here in this room, same as every day. We had our coffee and she read the paper.”
“Did you see her leave the house?”
“No. But she always went for a walk in the morning before she went to the school building. She left every day at the same time, about 6:30 in the morning. When she didn’t come back after her walk I just reckoned she went straight to school, she’s been known to do that.” She paused. “She can’t seem to stop going to that place. I don’t think there’s any real work left for her to do, but every day, same as clockwork, she gets up, eats breakfast, and goes there. I says to her, ‘Miss Gladys, what can you possibly find to do at that school? It’s been closed up for a year. Why don’t you just stay home one day?’ But it was like she just couldn’t stay home, like she had to go there.”
“And when she didn’t come home last night?”
Miss Audie shrugged. “I didn’t think much of it. At first. I reckoned your mama come by and asked her to dinner. People was always trying to pull Gladys out of that school building and back into the world.” She sniffed loudly. “I just went on up to bed at about eight o’clock. To be truthful I was a little put out that she didn’t come home for dinner ’cause we had talked about what we was having just that morning.” She sniffled and her mouth turned down into a pained line. “I never dreamed anything might’ve happened to her. I didn’t even know she wasn’t here until the morning.” A tear spilled into her lap and she dabbed at her eyes with her hankie.
Adam leaned forward. “Can you think of any reason why Gladys would be up at the drainage ditch?”
“The drainage ditch?” she asked, her voice a low whisper as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear. “Which one?”
“Number nine,” Adam said.
“Nine?” Audie repeated. “How on earth would she get there? Why, it’s a good five miles from here.”
“You don’t remember seeing or hearing a car?” Hick asked.
“No, and Gladys couldn’t abide by ’em. She don’t like automobiles one bit. I can’t believe she would get into somebody’s car.”
“Well, she got out there somehow,” Adam said, “and I’m pretty sure she didn’t walk.”
“Gladys in a car …” she muttered to herself in disbelief.
“Can we see her room?” Hick asked.
With a deep sigh, Miss Audie pushed herself up from her chair and looked around expectantly, as if Gladys might come down the hall any moment with a fresh cup of coffee. Then another sob broke free and she shook herself and said, “I’ll take you.”
The three climbed the dusty stairs to a small landing where a table festooned with several dead and dying house-plants sat in front of the dormer. Hick and Adam exchanged glances. Clearly Miss Audie’s housekeeping had suffered of late. The old woman hesitated in front of the door to the left of the front window. “I never go in here,” she said. “I always prided myself that my renters had their privacy.” She opened the door to the small space Gladys had called her own. It was a decent sized room that contained a single bed, dresser, chifferobe, desk and chair, and it was neat and tidy, a stark contrast to the shabbiness outside the door.
“Thank you,” Adam said. “If we need anything, we’ll call.”
Miss Audie nodded and went back downstairs, her tread slow and heavy on each step.
The two men took in the room. “What are we even looking for?” Adam asked.
“I’m hoping we’ll know when we find it.” Hick picked up Gladys’s purse from the bed. “Look at this.” He peered into the purse, dumped the contents on the bed, and then opened the wallet. “Funny she didn’t take this with her. Looks like everything is still here.”
“What the hell would Gladys have to steal anyway? We all know she didn’t work at the school for the money.”
Gladys’s room reminded Hick of her office. Meticulous. Nothing out of place. “No sign of a struggle.” Hick walked to the window and pulled aside the curtain. In spite of the tree branches that shrouded the house, he could see the driveway and had a clear view of the street in front of the house.
Adam opened the desk, an antique drop-front secretary with a variety of small drawers and cubby holes. He opened a cigar box and shuffled through a stack of papers. “These all appear to be letters from students.” He shook his head. “Damn shame. Everyone loved her.”
“Not everyone,” Hick corrected. He opened the chifferobe that contained Gladys’s clothes, clothes that were tailored, and, Hick supposed, elegant in a way, but that had remained unchanged since the days of Hick’s youth. At the bottom were several neat stacks of Cherokee Crossing High School yearbooks. The school had been Gladys’s family, the only one she could claim. “We’ll have to go through ’em. Maybe there’s something in there.”
Hick then opened the top drawer of Gladys’s dresser and timidly pawed through the delicates. They were all folded one like the other, placed neatly in the drawer. There were no messages from scorned lovers, no angry letters. The room was like Gladys herself, unassuming and ordinary. It was not the kind of place tragedy visited and Hick got the feeling that the room itself was perplexed as to why two men were in there poking around. As they continued looking, the phone rang downstairs and they heard Miss Audie’s voice rise and fall with a whimper
Hick was searching another dresser drawer when a tap sounded at the door. It creaked open and Miss Audie peered inside. “Sheriff, that was Doc Prescott. He asked if you could stop by the undertakers and take some clothes for Gladys’s buryin’ tomorrow.” She began to sniff and looked into Hick’s face. “Do you think I oughta go on down there … just to see her?”
Hick crossed the room and patted Miss Audie’s shoulder. “No, Miss Audie. Ain’t no call for you to go down there and see her. I wish I could un-see her.”
Miss Audie stared as realization swept over her. “Poor Gladys,” she moaned.
“Can you pick something … that would be appropriate?” Hick asked.
“Doc says it won’t matter much. The coffin lid’s gonna have to stay closed.” Miss Audie shook her head and said with resolution, “Still, Gladys would want to be decent.” She moved toward the chifferobe and opened the door. “I reckon this is the nicest thing she has,” she said pulling out a simple black dress that Hick had seen Gladys wear many times. “She’s worn it to functions for years.” Glancing at her own abundant figure she added, “She hardly seemed to change.”
Hick knew what Miss Audie meant. When Gladys arrived in town she couldn’t have been much more than twenty years old. When Hick was a child and first became aware of Gladys, she was barely thirty and yet she seemed ancient as if life had already wearied her. It wasn’t as much that she hadn’t aged as that she had simply always been old.
“I think that will be perfect,” Adam said taking the dress from Audie who scrunched her face so as not to tear up again.
Audie stared at the dress in Adam’s hand. “I never thought I’d bury Gladys. I always expected I’d go first.” She pulled out her handkerchief. “But I don’t reckon there’s any way of really knowing who’s gonna do the buryin’.”
“No, ma’am,” Hick agreed. “I don’t guess there is.”
After leaving the dress with the undertaker, Hick made a detour to Doc Prescott’s place where he found Jake sitting on his front porch swing. Like usual, the aroma of Doc’s cigar greeted Hick as he climbed the steps.
“Did you find anything?” Doc put a foot down and stopped the porch swing. Hick lit a cigarette and took a seat beside the older man. He took a long drag and exhaled a great cloud of smoke as Doc pushed off and set the swing going again.
“Her room was spotless. We still have more to go through, but Miss Audie seemed taxed, and we needed to get the dress over to McDaniel’s for the funeral. We’ll finish tomorrow. What about you? Did you find anything?”
“No broken fingernails, no scratches, no defensive wounds. I can tell you there was no struggle at all.”
“Strange,” Hick said, deep in thought.
Jake inhaled and then reached over the porch rail to tap ash into the bushes, “By the way, how’s Maggie?”
Hick laughed. “Tired as hell. Jimmy keeps her up all night, and she’s so afraid he’ll wake me that she just walks the floors with him. I told her to get some rest, but … well, you know Mag.”
They both looked toward the horizon as thunder rumbled and the sky darkened in the distance. A breeze picked up and rustled through the trees, but still the smoke hung in the air as if unwilling to move on.
“Yes, I know Maggie,” Jake said with a smile. “And you know her nature. She’ll work herself to death if you don’t watch it. You have to help her as much as you can. Her delivery was rough … it’ll take her some time to recover.”
“I know, I—”
“Hick, don’t let this town and this job take you away from what’s important. I know how you felt about Gladys. We all loved her. I know you have to find out who did this, and I don’t doubt you will. But be careful.”
Hick turned toward Doc. “What do you mean be careful?”
Jake exhaled a smoke ring and watched it dance and twirl before him in the soupy air. “You have a way of takin’ everything to heart … you always have. When you have a puzzle in front of you, it’s like you can’t see anything else. You almost killed yourself two summers ago workin’ on the Thompson case.” The doctor watched as the storm clouds rose and billowed. Finally, he took another drag, the red end of the cigar glowing in the ever approaching darkness. “Just remember, there was a sheriff in Cherokee Crossing long before you were born, and there will be a sheriff after you’re gone. Maggie needs you now. Don’t lose sight of what’s important.”
A cool gust of wind was followed by thunder rolling long and heavy across the flat delta plain. Large drops of rain began to polka-dot the sandy driveway. “I best get home before this picks up,” Hick said rising from the swing. “It looks like it’s gonna be another gully washer.” He looked at Jake and saw the concern in his old friend’s eyes. “I understand what you’re sayin’, Doc, I really do. But I gotta find this guy.”
“I know,” Jake answered. “And you will. Gladys may not have had family, per se, and she didn’t deserve to be dumped out by a ditch. I know you’ll find out what happened, and you need to. But I worry. That’s my job. You know I told your daddy I’d watch over you, and I plan to keep doing just that. I want you to promise to take care that you don’t let this one eat you alive the way the last one did.”
Hick flicked his cigarette into the yard. “I won’t, Doc. At least I’ll try not to.”
Jake sighed and stood up. “That’s all I can ask.”