The Amulet

  Sarah hurried forward to the car, but Becca grabbed her, and held her back. “What are you doing, Sarah?” she cried. “Ever’body’s looking! You can’t run at a fu­neral!”

  “Got to talk to Dorothy Sims,” Sarah explained breath­lessly.

  “No, you don’t!” said Becca. “You don’t even know her, and it’s been a bad day for them. What you got to say to her?”

  “She’s got on the thing that Jo gave Larry Coppage. I know that’s what it is! She’s got it round her neck!”

  “Can’t be the same one. Must be one just like it.”

  “I never saw another one like it,” argued Sarah. “Can’t be two of ’em if I never even saw one before.”

  “Must be. The one Jo had would have burned up at the Coppage house.”

  “Well,” said Sarah, “it didn’t, ’cause now Dorothy Sims has got it.”

  The car had driven off, and Becca relaxed her grip on Sarah.

  “Well,” said Becca for the sake of argument, “what if she has got it? Jo gave it away, it’s not hers anymore. You wouldn’t want it anymore anyway, would you?”

  “I don’t like it,” Sarah admitted.

  “Then why do you care whether Dorothy Sims has the thing or not?”

  “Because I want to know how she got hold of it, that’s why. There’s something real strange about all of this. That jewelry, all these people buried—seven of ’em yes­terday, and two more today.”

  “People die,” said Becca. “They die in fires, and they kill each other. It’s just because it happened two days apart, and it happened in a little place like Pine Cone that it seems strange.”

  “That’s not all,” said Sarah, “that’s not all though. There’s something else, and I don’t know what it is yet.”

  Chapter 29

  Sarah and Becca were silent on the drive home after the funeral. You are likely to be thoughtful after such a ceremony, even if the man buried had been your enemy, even if you hadn’t known the dead woman at all.

  It was a crazy thing: Sarah was actually having to de­cide whether she thought that the amulet had anything to do with the deaths that had occurred in Pine Cone. That was crazy. But supposing it was true. Then she had an obligation to warn Dorothy Sims against it. Or even be­yond that, since it was Jo Howell that had put it into circulation, it was her responsibility (since Jo wasn’t go­ing to do it) to get it back altogether, and hide it or destroy it.

  But what could a necklace possibly have to do with so many deaths? Five were obvious accidents, and the other two . . . who would ever know why Thelma Shirley had killed her husband? It couldn’t have been a fight over a piece of jewelry. Sarah wasn’t even really sure that Thelma had had it in her possession—but then how else could it have got from Larry Coppage’s pocket onto Dorothy Sims’ neck? The questions were endless, and they circled back on themselves, and not one of them could be answered.

  Probably there were two necklaces, and she was imag­ining everything. One had burned up with the Coppages, and the other one had probably been given to Dorothy Sims at a wedding shower or something. Maybe, Sarah thought, if she had looked more carefully at the amulet that Jo had given to Larry, she would realize that they were nothing at all alike.

  But Sarah knew she was only fooling herself; she knew in her heart of hearts that there was only one amulet. Larry Coppage had had it, and now Dorothy Sims had it. Sarah realized in a few moments that she had only been trying to talk herself out of her fears, because the thing she wanted the least in the world right now was to go up to Dorothy Sims and tell her some damn-fool story about a necklace with a curse on it. The woman would stare, and say she didn’t know what Sarah was talking about and ask why she was bothering her at a time like this. That was what Sarah didn’t want, but that was precisely what she was going to endure. She would have to make a spectacle of herself, and on top of everything she knew that she wouldn’t be believed, that the warning, even if it were legitimate, would do no good.

  She wished desperately that she had been able just to speak to Dorothy Sims at the funeral. She could have admired the amulet and then asked Dorothy where on earth she had found it—but that wouldn’t have worked either, really. It was hard to make small talk at a funeral with the sister of the dead man. Sarah realized, though, that sometime that afternoon she would have to call up Dorothy Sims.

  Becca was pulling the car into the driveway, and Sarah said, almost to herself, “I shouldn’t have let ’em go.”

  Becca had been lost in her own thoughts, and didn’t hear her friend. “What?” she said. Sarah shook her head, and did not try to repeat herself, but she determined that she would speak to Jo, just as soon as she got into the house. If she could get something out of Jo then maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to make that dreaded call to Dorothy Sims.

  Sarah nodded good-bye to Becca and Margaret and went inside. Jo was in the living room watching television. The house was dark and airless, for the curtains had not been opened all day. Dean was lying on the sofa, mo­tionless. Sarah didn’t like to see him there, on the place that she now considered her bed. His body, and the medicines that were rubbed into his injured skin, left an odor in the upholstery that lasted the night through and were the cause, Sarah was sure, of a series of nightmares that she had been suffering lately.

  “Well,” said Jo, “how was it? How many people come?”

  Sarah replied briefly, “It was all right. Nothing hap­pened. Seventy-five in the church, about fifty more than that in the cemetery.”

  “Never could abide that woman, or her husband ei­ther,” said Jo.

  “Which ones, the Shirleys or the Simses?”

  “Neither one. Sorry lot, all of ’em.”

  “I didn’t know you knew the Simses,” said Sarah. She was trying to maneuver the conversation slowly to the amulet.

  “Knew ’em when they lived in Pine Cone. We weren’t friends then and we’re not friends now that they moved away either.”

  “Well,” said Sarah, “this is a bad time for them.”

  “If I was to go up to them—or go up to Dorothy Sims I mean, ’cause I never met her husband—and say I was sorry that James and Thelma Shirley was dead, why she wouldn’t believe me! She’d say I was a hypocrite—and I would be!”

  “I don’t think anyone in this town has ever said that you were a hypocrite. It’s not one of your faults,” com­mented Sarah, trying hard to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

  “I went to her daddy’s funeral, right after he run his truck into that Greyhound, and you know what?” said Jo, “Dorothy was wearing navy blue! Like she didn’t have a black dress to her name!”

  “Well,” said Sarah, “she had on black today. And you know what else she had on?”

  “What?” asked Jo.

  “She had on that amulet that you gave to Larry Coppage the night his house burned down. Wednesday night.”

  Sarah waited to see what effect this had on Jo. The old woman said nothing for a moment, but stared hard at Sarah. Sarah couldn’t tell if she were angry or sur­prised or puzzled, but it was evident that Jo Howell was repressing some emotion.

  “How do you suppose she got hold of it?” said Sarah. “I’d have thought that the thing would have burned up in the Coppage place.”

  Still Jo did not answer.

  At last, when Sarah continued to stare, Jo faltered, “It’s . . . none of my business. None of yours neither. Dean and me gave the thing to Larry Coppage, and it was up to him to do with it what he wanted.”

  “But Larry Coppage didn’t hardly have time to get the thing home, much less to give it away.”

  “Well,” said Jo, a little more easily, “if Dorothy Sims has it now—and I’m not saying that she does, you could be mistaken—then how else could she have got it if Larry Coppage hadn’t give it away to her?”

  “She was in Montgomery, so he would have had to give it to James and Thelma Shirley. That’s the only place that Dorothy could have got it.”

  “Loo
k,” said Jo peevishly, “I don’t know why you’re going through all this with me. I don’t care what hap­pened to it. It’s not ours no more. I don’t know why you keep harping on the thing. It wasn’t worth much—I or­dered it out of the Montgomery Ward catalog. You didn’t like it, so you can’t want it for yourself. What does it matter who’s got the thing now?”

  With this anger, Jo felt that she had regained her poise, and Sarah knew that she had lost the argument, at least at this point.

  “It don’t matter to me,” said Sarah, “I’m just curious, that’s all. It seemed peculiar—to see Dorothy with it on, I mean.”

  “If that woman would wear navy blue to her daddy’s funeral, then I don’t think I’d be surprised at anything she did! And, Sarah,” concluded Jo, “there’s dishes in the sink that’s left over from dinner, and if you don’t wash them, then they’re just gone sit in there and rot to pieces!”

  Chapter 30

  “Well,” said Dorothy Sims to her husband, as soon as they were back inside the Shirleys’ house, “if there is one thing that’s worse than a wedding—and you know how I hate and despise weddings—it’s a funeral.”

  “Shhh!” her husband cautioned her, and inclined his head toward little Mary, who had entered the house di­rectly behind them.

  Dorothy turned on the little girl and said, “Mary,” in a commanding tone.

  “Ma’am?” said little Mary. She knew that she had be­haved herself, and feared no reproach.

  “Mary, do you know what all that meant, what hap­pened at the church and the cemetery today?”

  “Dot, don’t,” pleaded her husband.

  “Yes’m,” cried little Mary. “They was burying Mama and Daddy. Only I didn’t see no headstones. Where was the headstones? ’Cause when the paperboy got run down in the road last year—I almost got to see it—they buried him and he got a headstone. They’s a lot of headstones in the cemetery, and what I cain’t understand is why Mama and Daddy didn’t get one. Is it because Mama killed Daddy? You cain’t get a headstone if you kill somebody? Is that it?” Mary lowered her voice toward the end.

  Dorothy nodded in satisfaction. Little Mary was a levelheaded if somewhat superstitious little girl, and Dorothy approved of that. The child had not wept at the service in the church, and she had not been in shock at the graveyard afterward. Dorothy had seen what the death of even a single parent had done to some children, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Dorothy was very glad that Mary was taking it all so well, and she said so to her husband.

  “The child don’t realize yet what’s happened to her,” said Malcolm in an anguished whisper.

  “I do too!” cried Mary, whose hearing had not been impaired by her grief. “Yesterday morning—no it wasn’t yesterday, it was Friday morning right after Gussie lifted me out of the window and took me over next door to Mr. Berry’s house—I heard Miz Berry talking on the phone and she was telling ever’body in town that Mama killed Daddy. She said she did it with a ice pick. I told Gussie that, and Gussie told me not to believe a word of it, but I know it was true. I know.”

  “How do you know, Mary?” asked her aunt, curiously.

  “I know,” repeated little Mary adamantly. “That night I had a nightmare about Mama, and she came in my bed­room, and she was waving a ice pick around in front of me, and I said, ‘Mama, what you want in here with that ice pick?’ And she said, ‘Mary, you be quiet and go to sleep.’ And I did, ’cause I knew if I didn’t, that Mama was going to stick me with it. And when I woke up, there was Gussie wanting to haul me out of the window . . .”

  “You were real confused,” said Malcolm kindly. He hoped that Mary had only made up the story about being threatened with the ice pick.

  “Mama scared my pants off,” said Mary.

  “I don’t think we ought to talk about it anymore,” said Malcolm. “We don’t want you to have bad dreams, and your mama and daddy would want you to remember that they loved you very much, Mary. You meant more to them than anything else in the world.”

  “Mama sure could get mad though,” said Mary, and whistled a little tag of emphasis to the remark.

  This conversation was making Malcolm Sims more and more nervous. The deaths of James and Thelma Shirley had sorely tried him, and he was even more upset that his wife showed so little apparent concern. He was very sorry for the little girl, and he knew that his own life with Dorothy would be changed immeasurably now that Mary was coming to live with them in Montgomery. Dorothy had refused to bear him children. She had declared from the beginning that she didn’t want to be “saddled with a baby,” and had also refused to consider adoption. Malcolm was fond of little Mary, but he also knew that perhaps she would not be the child he would choose if he had his pick of all the little boys and girls in Alabama. She was a little too much like her aunt: very shrewd in a fashion that was somehow completely wrongheaded. But he had no intention of shirking his duty or of being any­thing but the most affectionate and caring of foster-parents to Mary.

  “Dorothy,” this good man said to his wife, “why don’t we get ready to go? There’s not much more that we can do here today. I’d just as soon get home as soon after dark as possible. I’d like to have supper at home.” He desperately wanted for this day to be over; he hated being in this house, surrounded by all the things that had be­longed to the dead couple. He could not understand how his wife could have brought herself to wear Thelma’s necklace to the woman’s very own funeral. And now she was fingering it as if it had belonged to her forever and ever.

  “You think I’m gone fix supper for you when I been through what I been through today?” his wife protested. “We’re gone pick up some fried chicken or some barbe­cue on the way. I’m not fixing supper after a funeral.”

  “No,” said Malcolm, “that’s not what I meant. There’s plenty of food in the kitchen, and we ought to take it back with us, so it won’t spoil. There’s no need for you to fix anything. I just want to get back to Montgomery. That’s all I meant, Dot.”

  Dorothy Sims looked about her. “I sure hate to leave all this stuff here. You just know that Gussie got herself a skeleton key made, and right now she is probably right outside the door hiding in the bushes and waiting for us to leave! Then she’s gone back some broken-down pick­up truck to the door, and not a stick is gone be left by tomorrow morning.”

  “Dot,” sighed Malcolm, and glanced toward Mary’s bedroom where the child had gone to begin packing, “you ought not talk that way about Gussie, ’cause you know how fond of her that child is. We’ll lock the house up, and I’ve already told the sheriff to keep an eye on it till I get back next week. You can come back with me and decide what you want to keep. Everything’ll be all right till then.”

  Dorothy allowed herself to be persuaded and consoled herself with taking only the two flat chests of silver and the cut-glass punch bowl, which she declared were “abso­lutely unreplaceable.” While she was packing these items carefully in bedspreads and other linens (she might as well take what she could, she thought), Malcolm went in to help little Mary.

  The girl pranced about self-importantly, for she had come to realize that considerable interest had been at­tached to her person because of her nearness to the hei­nous crime of Thursday night. She was also the only full-fledged orphan in her class at school. In the midst of folding up some of her dresses, little Mary turned to Mal­colm and said, “What is my teacher gone think when I don’t show up at school tomorrow morning? Is she gone think I got kidnapped?”

  Malcolm laughed briefly. “No, Mary, I talked to your principal before the funeral and I told him that Dot and I were taking you back to Montgomery with us. Dot’s going to take you to school tomorrow. Do you think you’ll still be too upset to go? ’Cause I guess you could stay at home with Dot for a couple of days or so, and wouldn’t nobody know—and even if they did, they probably would say it was all right. You’ve gone through a lot, girl,” he con­cluded with a lugubrious sigh. “We all have.”

  ??
?I sure will be upset!” cried Mary. “I don’t know a single person in that school. You think they’re gone make me write real writing there? They let me print here. I’m not any good at real writing, and I think I’d just die if I had to go up to the blackboard and do real writing on the board.” Mary paused, and trembled at the thought.

  Her uncle reassured her. “It’s all gone be fine, Mary. You’re gone make lots of new friends, and everybody’s gone love you like Dot and I do . . .”

  Mary ran over and hugged her uncle around the waist. She burst into tears. Malcolm clasped her tightly to him, and did not think it so terrible a thing that she was crying.

  Chapter 31

  It was a full two hours after the funeral that Sunday afternoon before Sarah Howell had decided that she must telephone Dorothy Sims, and ask her about the amulet. It would be going too far to warn her that her life might be endangered by the necklace that Sarah had seen her wearing at the service. At the beginning Sarah planned only to ask Dorothy Sims where she had got it. But what could she say to the woman when she answered the phone? They had never even been introduced. Maybe she could ask if there was any way she could help little Mary prepare for the sudden move to Montgomery. But Sarah knew that no matter what she decided to say, it would come out sounding foolish. But that didn’t matter, and it certainly shouldn’t stop her from calling.

  Yet it did. Sarah dialed the number, but hung up the receiver before the ringing began. Then she washed the dishes that had been left in the sink. Again she dialed, let it ring twice and then hung up. She was doubly ashamed of this—for her cowardice and for the discomfort that would doubtless be occasioned in the mourning house­hold by the nuisance of the phone ringing without any caller. Sarah waited fifteen more minutes—an excruciating quarter hour in which she told herself over and over again that she had to go through with it. She dialed the number once more. Ten rings, and no one answered at all. She dialed again. Twenty rings and no one answered. They had already left, and Sarah was sure that Dorothy Sims had taken the amulet with her.