Tar Heel Dead Read online

  Randy and Detective Mertis exchanged a long look; then Mertis asked, “Where is Freddy now?” He spoke in a still, flat voice. It was my first indication that Freddy was a suspect. Later, looking back, I could follow his reasoning. But hearing the words come from him, in Freddy’s shop, with Eaudelein lying on a piece of black plastic in the bait room, sent shivers down my spine. They didn’t believe me. I’m about as trustworthy as they come. I don’t look like a liar. Hell, sometimes I wish I did, but I look more like your mama. I’m plump and short, with a fresh-scrubbed complexion and pink cheeks. My hair went gray years ago. Give me a ribbon-racked apron, and I could be Betty Crocker. I drive their children to school in one of the four schoolbuses that Wallace County owns. If they couldn’t trust me, who could they trust?

  No, they thought Freddy had somehow gotten Eaudelein to meet him at the shop and murdered her. My Freddy may have hated Eaudelein, but he would never have killed the mother of his daughter, no matter how evil she’d treated him.

  Raydeen put the word out on the police radio she carried that we were looking for Freddy. Detective Mertis held a low-toned conference with Randy. Randy shot a few worried looks in my direction, then wrote a few more things in his notebook.

  Around nine, Freddy and Hank came tearing up to the store in Hank’s old pickup. Freddy rushed through the door. “Patsy, I just heard. Are you all right?” Surely, I thought, Detective Mertis could tell, just from meeting my Freddy, that he was no killer. But that wasn’t the case.

  “Fred, I’m afraid we’re going to need to ask you to come down to the station with us,” said Randy. He didn’t say he was sorry or talk to Freddy like they’d known each other for years. He was Randall Vaughn, Wallace County sheriff. And Freddy was a prime suspect in a murder investigation.

  They didn’t tell me or Hank to come to the station. They just took Hank’s prints and asked him where he’d been last night. When he said fishin’, they didn’t say anything about him coming down there. Of course, he hadn’t been married to Eaudelein, but it was the principle of the thing.

  As Randy was leading Freddy to the patrol car, Freddy stopped dead in his tracks and whirled around. “Oh my Lord,” he cried. “What about Loretta? Does she know?” No one had thought to go to Freddy’s daughter. “Babe, I hate to ask you, but would you find her? Someone’s gonna have to tell her about her mama.” I quickly figured out that the someone was me.

  What else could I say but “Sure, hon, don’t worry. I’ll go get her and bring her back to our place.”

  Freddy and I weren’t married. Yet. Freddy’d gotten taken in the divorce. Things were so tight financially that he just couldn’t see getting married. He said he didn’t want to marry me with so much debt hanging over his head. If you ask me, I think Eaudelein burned him so bad he was afraid of its happening again. So, against the town’s better judgment, ’cause you know they judged everybody, I let Freddy move in.

  He’d been such a pitiful wreck when we met. Although we both grew up in Barrow, he’d been a few years ahead of me in school and left to join the army as soon as he graduated. Freddy was a Baptist and I belonged to the Methodist church, so our paths never crossed until I stopped in the store to buy bait. Fishin’ was gonna be my new hobby, and Freddy was only too happy to help me find a tackle box.

  His divorce had only been final a few months, and he was bitter. He couldn’t cook, didn’t care to, and lived like a prisoner in his tiny apartment. When we began dating, all that changed.

  We’d been living together for almost ten months, and in that time Freddy’d come around pretty well. He liked my fried chicken and creamed potatoes, and he’d put on about fifteen pounds. He’d made himself a little workshop in my shed out back and had even joined the softball league. But we didn’t talk about marrying any more. I felt that was best left to time.

  Loretta, his fifteen-year-old daughter, had been the one thorn in the side of our relationship. She was a dark-haired, sullen child who took after her mother in looks and attitude. Loretta saw me as the Other Woman, standing between her parents and reconciliation. No amount of talking on Freddy’s part could persuade her otherwise. She tolerated me and rarely spent the night at our house. Of course, Eaudelein had a lot to do with that. She poisoned the child’s mind. She told Loretta that Freddy had started seeing me long before he and Eaudelein separated. That was flat not true. Freddy was living on his own when I met him.

  I was going to have trouble with Loretta, I just knew it.

  When I pulled up in front of Eaudelein’s house, there were cars parked in the driveway. Folks would have known that Loretta was alone, with no one to break the news to her. It wasn’t their place, however, to come tromping over and interfere. It was just going to make my job harder.

  As I walked up the path, I could hear Loretta wailing. She’d been close to her mother, but this was the wail of someone milking it for all it was worth.

  Loretta’s aunt, Minnie, Eaudelein’s oldest sister, was sitting on the sofa, patting Loretta’s hand. Tears streamed down both their faces, and a little group of busybodies stood around looking helpless.

  They were not glad to see me, but Minnie was at least civil. She only asked “What are you doin’ here?” instead of “What are you doin’ here, bitch?”

  “Freddy was worried about Loretta. He asked me to come over and make sure she was all right. He’s down at the station, helping the police with the investigation.” I was putting the best light on the situation for Loretta’s sake.

  “Loretta,” I said, “your daddy wants me to bring you back to our place till he gets home. Then we can sort things out from there.”

  Loretta lifted her tear-swollen face and favored me with a malevolent glare. “You did this,” she shrieked. “You killed my mama!”

  Minnie broke in, “Now, Loretta, honey, Patsy wouldn’t have killed your mama. And if she had,” she continued, with a warning glance in my direction, “the cops would have her in jail.” Minnie wasn’t defending me. She just didn’t want to end up with Loretta in her custody. Everybody knew that Loretta was trouble. Her mama’d been having a devil of a time trying to ride herd on her rebellious child.

  Every time Freddy turned around, Eaudelein was on the phone whining about how Loretta had skipped school, missed curfew, or talked back. What was he going to do about it? Then, when Freddy tried to do something, Eaudelein and Loretta double-teamed him. Watching the two of them work Freddy over was like watching Roller Derby, only my Freddy was stuck in the middle.

  “Loretta, honey,” I said, trying again, “I know you feel awful. I can’t imagine how terrible this is for you. Let’s get a few of your things and go on back to my place. Your daddy needs you.”

  That did it; Freddy’s baby girl was on her way to comfort her daddy. She tolerated me on the ride back across town. She sat hunched against the passenger-side car door, snuffling into a crumpled Kleenex. She was actually a very sad little girl, vulnerable in her grief, and not the hard case she led the rest of us to believe.

  I didn’t say much until we were inside. I offered her a Coke or something to eat, but she said no. “Where’s my dad?” she asked after an hour had passed.

  “I don’t know, sugar.” I was beginning to feel a little anxious myself. “Loretta, did your mama go out anyplace last night?” I figured Loretta might know something that would help Freddy out. The police would want to talk to her at some point, too.

  “I don’t know. I was over at Tammara’s, spending the night. Mama said she might be going out later but that she wouldn’t be gone long.” Loretta was tugging at her long black hair and chewing her lip. I could tell that my asking her questions was only going to make her more nervous, so I quit.

  The sound of a car door slamming had both of us up out of our seats and over to the front door. It was Randy, and he was alone. Where was Freddy?

  He didn’t look me in the eye the whole way up the path. When he got to the bottom porch step, he looked up at the two of us. “Patsy. Loretta, I
’m sorry about your mama.” His eyes were sad.

  “Where’s my daddy?” Loretta asked, ignoring Randy’s solicitude.

  “Let’s go inside,” I interjected. I didn’t figure we should be talking about all this under the neighbors’ watchful eyes. Randy seemed to jump at the idea, so we trooped into my tiny living room.

  “Loretta, Patsy, I wanted to be the one to tell you this. Freddy has been arrested for the murder of Eaudelein.”

  “Randy, how could you?” I yelled over Loretta’s howl of rage and grief. “You know better than that! You’ve fished with him. You know Freddy would never hurt anybody. It was all that Mertis’s doing, wasn’t it?”

  Randy looked apologetically at Loretta. “Honey, I need to talk to Patsy alone. Would you excuse us?” Loretta favored him with one of her most evil glares, then flounced from the room. I figured she’d go just far enough to be out of sight yet still overhear our conversation.

  Randy caught on and lowered his voice. “Patsy, his prints were all over the baseball bat used to bash in Eaudelein’s head.”

  “Well, that don’t mean nothing. Freddy kept that bat behind the counter, by the register. It stands to reason that his prints would be all over it.”

  “Freddy was out alone, without an alibi, at 4:00 A.M., the time of the murder. Everybody knows he and Eaudelein were at each other’s throats. Somebody overheard the two of them fighting last week, and Freddy threatened to kill her then.”

  I knew the fight Randy meant. It had been all over town. Freddy had stopped to pick up Loretta at the house, and Eaudelein had come out to pick a fight. She threatened to keep Loretta away from Freddy. He’d freaked out and told her he’d see her dead before he let her take Loretta away from him.

  He didn’t actually mean he would kill Eaudelein. It was a remark made in anger. I had to admit I wasn’t sure what would have happened if Eaudelein had somehow taken Loretta away from Freddy.

  “Daddy wouldn’t kill Mama.” We hadn’t heard Loretta creep down the hallway, hadn’t seen her walk into the room.

  “I’m sorry, Loretta.” Randy nodded to me and walked out the front screen door. “Patsy?”

  “What, Randall?” We were adversaries now.

  “Get Freddy a lawyer. He ain’t thinkin’ too clear.”

  I started to ask him what that meant, but he was already opening his car door.

  Loretta was pacing the floor when I returned. “Well, what are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Loretta, I know this has been a horrible day for you,” I began.

  “Cut the sympathy crap. I got one parent left. I ain’t gonna lose him, too.”

  “All right then,” I said evenly, “I’m dealin’ you in. You and I are going to have to work together on this.”

  For the next hour that’s what we did. I called Sam Barfield and retained him as Freddy’s attorney. I had Loretta write down everything she could remember about her mother’s last twenty-four hours.

  Loretta’s list was scrawled in childish, loopy script across the paper I’d given her. She seemed to remember the details of Eaudelein’s last day only as they pertained to herself. “Mama fixed me breakfast at 10:00 A.M. Mama told me to clean my room before I went to Tammara’s. Mama was washing up the supper dishes when I left with Tammara. She said she might go out later. I asked her to pick up more Froot Loops.”

  Loretta’s little world revolved around Loretta. She could tell me pretty much every detail of her day, when she put on her makeup, what she wore, when her boyfriend Eddie called. Her mother existed as cook, chauffeur, and banker to Loretta’s adolescent needs. Oh well, no help there.

  “Loretta, I need to leave you here and go see your daddy.”

  She didn’t like that. “I’m comin’, too. He’s my daddy.” And you’re only his girlfriend. She left that part hanging unspoken between us.

  “They won’t let minors in,” I said. I grabbed my purse and car keys and headed for the door. “There’s sandwich meat in the fridge. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back in an hour.” Loretta was looking like a thundercloud, but I continued on briskly. “If we’re gonna prove that your daddy didn’t kill your mama, we’re gonna have to find out who did. Why don’t you work on that list a bit more and see what you can remember. If your mama was going out last night, where was she going? Was she seein’ anybody in particular?”

  I left her sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the pad of paper with her mother’s activities on it. When she didn’t think I was looking, she allowed her grief to show through. Tears slid down her cheeks and hit the paper.

  I got a bit nervous on the ride over to see Freddy. I’d never been inside the jail before. Everybody in town knew where it was—a mile outside of town, on State Route 138. It sat back from the road, a small, squat, concrete building with a barbed wire-enclosed exercise yard. Livin’ around here, you drove past it on a regular basis, and like the cemetery, you didn’t pay it much mind until you needed to.

  Raydeen was working when I got there. We didn’t know what to say to each other. If everyone thought Freddy was guilty, then what did they think about me? I didn’t want to talk to Raydeen until I’d talked to Freddy and figured out where things were heading.

  “I guess you wanna see Freddy, huh?” she asked.

  “Well, yeah.” It was all I could do not to scream at her, I was so anxious.

  She led me back to the jail proper. Steve Asher, a young deputy just a few years older than Loretta, let me into the visitors’ room. There was a bank of cubicles with brown wooden chairs in front of the counters that held the phones. Just like TV, I thought. I entered a cubicle and sat down. The visitors before me had scratched their initials into the hard Formica: C.R. + J.D.—love forever. T.J. loves M.J.—I will wait forever.

  When Freddy was brought in, I realized just how serious our situation was. The man I loved was in jail for murder. Even my loser first husband Roy hadn’t ever been in jail.

  Freddy looked scared. We picked up the receivers and pressed them to our ears. “How ya doin’, babe?” he asked with a weak smile.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Loretta’s okay, too. I got her back at our place. Minnie’s gonna handle the funeral arrangements.” Freddy nodded. “I called Sam Barfield and asked him to represent you. He’s gonna come by tonight or first thing tomorrow.” There was one brief moment when I found myself wondering, Freddy, you didn’t do it, did you? Of course not. I couldn’t doubt Freddy’s innocence.

  “Who could’ve killed her?” we both asked at the same instant.

  “Patsy, don’t take this wrong,” Freddy began. “I’m sad about Eaudelein. Yesterday I could’ve told you that if her guts was on fire, I wouldn’t a spit on her to put ’em out. But, hell, Patsy, I didn’t want her to die. I keep thinkin’ about when we first met, and when Loretta was little. I used to love her. She was Loretta’s mama for Pete’s sake.” I listened, watching Freddy’s face.

  “They say I killed Eaudelein because she was gonna take Loretta away from me. They don’t understand. Eaudelein would’ve come to her senses. I wouldn’t have killed her, no matter what she did.”

  “Freddy,” I broke in. “You don’t have to explain it to me. I know you. We just gotta figure out who killed her. Do you have any idea?”

  “Eaudelein had a habit of pissin’ people off, but I don’t know of anybody who hated her enough to kill her.”

  Freddy was thinking now, not feeling sorry for himself. That was good.

  “Was she seein’ anybody?”

  “Well,” he said slowly, “she’d been stranger than usual lately. She was real peculiar about when I picked up Loretta. She didn’t want me just stopping by to see Loretta without asking. I figured she was seein’ somebody and didn’t want me to know. When she started talking about not letting me see Loretta, I started worrying that her new guy might live out of town. Maybe she was fixin’ to move away with him or something.”

  The deputy, Steve, opened the door and said something
to Freddy. “I gotta go now, babe. Hang in there.”

  Hang in there. That was my Freddy, worrying about me. I picked up my purse and headed home. At least I had something to go on now. Eaudelein had a new boyfriend. Loretta hadn’t said a word about that.

  It was the first thing I asked her about when I got home. She had been on the phone when I got there but hung up quickly as I walked through the front door. She’d been crying again. I sat down next to her on the couch. I wanted to reach over and put my arms around her, but she was such a prickly pear. She didn’t like me, so I wasn’t going to push myself on her.

  “I stopped at the Kentucky Fried and grabbed us a bucket of extra crispy. Let’s go eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Honey, you got to eat.” Loretta was no match for me. She might have had the rest of the adults in Barrow scared of her, but I drove a schoolbus. I ate kids like her for lunch, sack and all.

  “Sweetie,” I went on, ignoring her attitude, “I know you don’t feel like it, but we’ve got a lot to do. I can’t have you fainting from lack of food. Eat. It’ll make you feel better, and you’ll be able to think better, too.”

  She followed me into the kitchen. We polished off the entire bucket between us and made big dents in the coleslaw and potatoes.

  “Now,” I said, clearing the plates away, “who was your mother seeing?”

  Loretta looked uneasy. “Nobody,” she said.

  “Loretta,” I said, daring her to lie again.

  “She didn’t want me to tell anybody.” She was working it out. “It was Daddy’s partner, Hank. Mama said Daddy’d freak if he knew. She and Hank wanted to keep it a secret till they figured out what to do.”

  Hank? That was so hard to believe. Hank and Freddy were best friends. They owned the Bait and Tackle Shop together. Hank had stuck by Freddy all through the divorce, siding with him, commiserating with him. Hank would never go near Eaudelein.