The falling shelves had caught momentarily on the edge of a chair, but now they broke in two, and dropped heavily onto Ruby’s separated corpse.
Chapter 63
Directly after the noon meal on Saturday afternoon, Becca Blair and Sarah Howell had driven a mile or two out into the country to visit a farm-produce stand that was reputed to have the best berries and fruits in the county. Jo Howell had been complaining that Dean was finding his food dull, and that he surely could do with some mashed strawberries, that he was, in fact, aching for fresh mashed strawberries. Sarah suspected that it was Jo that hankered after the strawberries, but when she told this to Becca, Becca had said, “Well, honey, I don’t mind going out there, won’t take twenty minutes, and I might get some for Margaret’s picnic on Monday, she’s going on a picnic to celebrate school’s being out, you know. Going with those people, the Nelsons, that lived next to the Coppages and watched ’em burn up with us, gone take little Mary Shirley long too, ’cause that child can’t be having much fun anymore, not with so many people dropping around her like flies, and not nobody left to take care of her. Who’d take her on picnics if it wasn’t for Margaret?”
This trip into the country was a real luxury, for on it Sarah did not allow herself to think of the amulet, to wonder around whose doomed neck it now hung. The sheriff had assured her that he was going to take care of the entire business, and the sheriff, even more importantly, had told her to leave it all alone. And that—at least for the weekend—was exactly what Sarah Howell intended to do.
Becca was very pleased with the alteration in Sarah’s attitude. She seemed freer, less worried than at any time since the news had reached her, through Jo, that Dean had been wounded on the Fort Rucca firing range. All the way out and back, Becca made jokes about Jo Howell, and Sarah giggled uncontrollably.
And now Sarah and Becca were driving back into Pine Cone, with a cardboard box on the backseat filled with sacks of sweet fruits, and even sweeter berries. Their way led them through the blocks of the town where all the blacks lived, and they were surprised to be forced to slow up for a great crowd that had formed in front of one of the houses. Cars were parked along both sides of the street, and a great number of black people were standing around in the yard.
“Ohhhh!” cried Becca, “Sarah, let’s stop and see what’s happened!” Her tone was still gay and abandoned. “Knifing, I bet,” she said, with an amused conspiratorial voice. “Playing poker on a Saturday afternoon, and somebody up and knifes somebody else. Ohhhh!” she exclaimed then, in a lower-pitched voice, “Sarah, look! It’s the hearse. It’s not the ambulance—there’s somebody dead . . .”
As soon as Sarah had seen the crowd of seventy-five or so, with none of the noise usually attendant upon such a gathering, all the day’s good spirits flooded out of her. Very suddenly she became weary and despairing.
“It’s the amulet,” she whispered to Becca, but did not look at her friend.
Becca pulled up to the curb half a block away from the crowd. She spoke hurriedly as they got out of the car, trying desperately to reassure her friend. “Maybe it was a heart attack. There’s the fat woman who works at the plant, I cain’t remember her name but she lives right around here. She’s real fat, and they say when you get like that, it’s good chance that you’re gone have a heart attack. It can come like that—” and she snapped her fingers desperately.
Sarah shook her head. “It’s the amulet, Becca, and you know it. Audrey Washington had it in this part of town. It wasn’t on her in the coffin, and her daddy didn’t have it. Somebody got hold of it, and now somebody else is dead.”
Sarah and Becca, the only two white bystanders in the crowd, moved up toward the front. Sarah had turned to a woman beside her, and was about to ask what had happened, when all at once, there was a gasp from all the crowd, and as sudden a return to the solemn silence. Silence, except for a pitiable uncontrolled whimpering—a frightening whimper, because it was a man that was crying.
Around from the back of the house appeared two men carrying a stretcher between them. The first was Deputy Barnes, very pale, and the second was Roosevelt Garver, weeping copiously, and moaning with an open mouth, so violently he could barely keep the stretcher steady. A bloody, flowered sheet covered the body being borne toward the hearse. The crowd drew well away, but they all stared intently at the strange lump, the size of a small pumpkin, sitting on the chest of the corpse beneath the sheet.
Sarah and Becca stared and were silent also; instinctively they grasped one another’s hands.
Sheriff Garrett and another black man appeared presently, carrying another body on another stretcher, and all the crowd shook their heads in wonder and in pity.
The two corpses were placed in the back of the hearse, and Roosevelt Garver staggered around to the front and threw himself behind the wheel. His wailing voice was the only sound apparent among the men gathered there. In another moment the hearse careened away with the screech and stink of burned rubber.
The sheriff and the deputy turned and mounted the steps of the little frame house and spoke in low voices to a weeping couple standing there who Sarah and Becca took to be grieving relations of one or both of the corpses.
“Let’s go, Sarah,” pleaded Becca. The scene was painful, and she did not want Sarah to get worked up.
“No,” replied Sarah peremptorily. “I want to find out what happened.” She turned to a woman who stood beside her. “You know what’s going on?”
“Ohhhh!” the old black woman wailed softly. She faced Sarah and Becca, but her eyes were turned toward the couple on the porch of the house. “I don’t know what happened. They was best friends, they was borned weeks apart, weeks! And I don’t know what happened! Ruby done took Martha-Ann’s scalp off! Took it off with chemicals and rubber gloves! They was the bone and they was the blood, and why she do it? I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. And Ruby! Ruby got paid back for it! Ruby got her head taken off by a ceiling fan! Blades are still going!”
Sarah and Becca were wide-eyed, and could hardly credit the story they had been told. They questioned the woman again on all these points, and received corroboration from another woman who was standing by. This second woman pointed to the couple on the front steps. “It would have been better for them if the finance company hadn’t have give them the loan to build Ruby her House of Beauty, better for them if the electric company had shut off their power ’fore that ceiling fan took off their little girl’s head! They got nobody now but Jesus and the Dove of Peace to help ’em through their lives!”
Becca shuddered, and motioned to Sarah that they should return to the car now. “The sheriff knows what to ask ’em,” whispered Becca. “He knows to look for the thing. We don’t have to have nothing to do with it, the sheriff told you to leave it alone.”
Quietly, resolutely, Sarah replied, “We got to talk to the sheriff. We got to find out what happened.”
“You heard what happened today,” argued Becca, a little panicky, “and you don’t want to see where it happened. Sarah, let’s get out of here.”
Sarah shook her head, and moved along the edges of the crowd, around toward the back of the house. For a moment Becca stood behind, faltering, but she caught up with Sarah in a few steps. “Let’s don’t go in, Sarah, please let’s don’t go in there!”
The people in the crowd looked at them wonderingly, but said nothing, and made no move to stop the two white women as they mounted the steps in back, and opened the screen door that led into the House of Beauty.
Chapter 64
For having been in the last hour the scene of a violent and heinous crime, Ruby’s House of Beauty was a lively, almost cheerful place. The sheriff and his deputy stood at one end, talking to one another volubly, and several brave, middle-aged black men hovered about the doorway, staring into the room—though they dared not cross the threshold. Four tiny children were squeezed into two chairs in the room all chattering and arguing wit
h bright garrulousness; it is certain that they did not understand the enormity of what had transpired.
When Becca and Sarah entered the room through the back screen door, the policemen turned around.
“Miz Howell? Becca?” said Sheriff Garrett, surprised.
“Hey, Sheriff,” said Becca in a low voice. She looked all around her, at the window whose frame had been broken through, and at the ceiling fans, whirling softly above.
“You two taking to chasing murders?” asked Deputy Barnes.
Sarah did not answer. She suspected that the sheriff had not told his deputy about the amulet. She didn’t blame him, and she was relieved in fact to think that the story had gone no further than Garrett himself. In support of this theory, Garrett nodded knowingly to Sarah, glanced at the deputy, and held up his hand for Sarah to say nothing more at the moment.
“You hadn’t ought to be here, Becca,” said Deputy Barnes. “You neither, Miz Howell.”
“Sarah made me come in,” said Becca, a little peevishly. She had not noticed the exchange of signals between Sarah and the sheriff.
The deputy laughed uneasily. “Why?”
Sarah coughed lightly, trying to indicate to Becca that she should say nothing more; but Becca did not heed her, and said: “She wants to know if one of these two girls was wearing a necklace.”
The deputy glanced uncomprehendingly at the sheriff, who refused to acknowledge his glance. “Why you want to know something like that?”
Sarah did not answer, and neither did Becca.
The deputy cocked his head, and said severely, “This the same one that you was asking Morris Emmons about? Why you think just dead people in town gone have that thing?”
Barnes again looked to the sheriff, hoping that he would be backed up in this attack on Sarah Howell, but the sheriff said nothing. The deputy saw that he had best not continue. He shrugged. “No, didn’t neither one of ’em have nothing ’round their necks. And one of ’em didn’t even have a neck no more . . .”
He laughed at his little gruesome joke, but stopped abruptly when the four children in the two chairs laughed uproariously, jabbing one another in the ribs, and repeating in little screams, “No neck! No neck no more!”
“You kids hush!” commanded the sheriff. “You ought not be in here nohow!”
During this little exchange, Becca had caught the smell of blood in the room, underneath all the cosmetics and shampoos, and had turned her back on the others, momentarily, to take a piece of tissue out of her purse, and hold it to her nose. She stood still a moment, trying to catch a calming breath; the amulet, which had been caught on one of the blades of the ceiling fan, slipped off, and fell neatly into her handbag, which sat open on a small table next to one of the chairs. She did not notice it, but two of the children in the room did see the thing happen. They exchanged surprised glances and began to giggle, pointing at the purse. Becca glared at the children, thinking that they were making fun of her, and she snapped the handbag shut.
“You two girls go on home now,” said the sheriff. “I know what I’m looking for here. I haven’t found it yet, but I’ll know it when I do. I’ll give you a call if anything comes up, and I’ll probably give you a call if it doesn’t.” The deputy stared at his superior during this speech, which made no sense at all to him.
“We didn’t mean to bother you,” apologized Sarah, “but we saw the crowd, and we knew that something else had happened.” She smiled bravely. “I guess we’re just gone have to leave it up to you.”
The sheriff nodded.
“But you see what happened—” said Sarah, with furrowed brow,—“what’s gone continue to happen . . .”
“What’s she talking about?” demanded the deputy of Becca Blair.
Becca shrugged and turned to go.
“ ’Bye, ya’ll,” said the sheriff, and Sarah and Becca hurried out of the building.
As soon as they were gone, the deputy turned to the sheriff, about to demand an explanation, but both men were distracted by sudden loud laughter among the four children in the room. One little boy had taken Martha-Ann’s scalp off the wig stand, placed it over his head, and was parading about the room in it. “Miss America!” he cried. “Look out for Miss America!”
Chapter 65
Sarah said nothing at all on the drive home. Becca thought that her friend was only distraught—though understandably so—by the new set of double deaths in Ruby’s House of Beauty. It was just as well to leave her in her thoughts. But when Becca had pulled the purple Pontiac into the driveway between their houses, and had herself got out, she was surprised that Sarah remained in the car. The reflection of the bright afternoon sun on the windshield prevented Becca from determining Sarah’s expression. She went around and leaned in the window. “Sarah,” she said, “what’s wrong? Come on out of there. You gone burn up in that car.”
There was no response from Sarah, who sat motionless—still as Dean himself, thought Becca involuntarily.
“Sarah?” said Becca questioningly. “Sarah, is something the matter?”
The troubled woman didn’t move, and Becca, with much concern, pulled the door open. She placed a hand on Sarah’s shoulder, and shook her. Sarah’s head waggled a little, but there was no other response.
Becca drew in her breath sharply, much concerned that something was very wrong.
Slowly, Sarah turned her head towards her friend, and Becca was at first relieved, crying, “Well, thank heaven, Sarah, I thought—” But Sarah’s glance was uncomprehending, blank, corpselike. Becca shuddered, and without stopping to think about it, she reached in, and dragged Sarah out of the car.
Sarah stumbled out, and would have fallen to the ground if Becca had not, with extraordinary strength, heaved her up onto her feet.
Margaret appeared at the kitchen window and seeing that something was wrong, hurried outside and helped prop Sarah up.
“Mama, what’s wrong with Sarah? Mama, we gone take her inside her house?”
“No,” said Becca; “bring her in here.”
Mother and daughter half pulled, half dragged Sarah to their back steps. Becca hissed, as much to convince Margaret as reassure herself, “She’s all right. She just got upset. She got too hot sitting in the car.” Becca pushed Sarah up her back steps, and added: “She smelled too much blood this afternoon.”
Margaret looked up sharply. “Somebody else dead?”
Her mother nodded.
They put Sarah down on the couch, laid her out, removed her shoes, and loosened her clothing. Margaret brought a dish towel wrapped round half a tray of ice cubes and placed it carefully on Sarah’s brow.
Becca knelt at the side of the couch, and held Sarah’s hand tightly between hers. She was considerably relieved when Sarah moved her head a little, focused her eyes, and said, in a weak small voice, “Becca, I cain’t walk.”
“Yes, you can,” said Becca softly. “You walked in here. You just got excited. You gone just lie here till you feel like getting up.”
“Jo,” whispered Sarah. “What about Jo and Dean?”
“I’m gone sit here with you for a few minutes, till you feel better, then Margaret’s gone come in here and sit. I’m gone go over there and tell Jo that you aren’t feeling too well, and that tonight, for a change, she is gone have to take care of Dean by herself. She’s gone have to fix him dinner by herself, and if she wants anything to eat herself, why she’s just gone have to go over to the refrigerator and open the door. And I hope it kills her to do it!”
Sarah smiled wanly, and then turned her head toward the back of the couch. Becca remained beside her friend until she was sure that she was asleep. Then she called Margaret in, and instructed her to sit in the room—and not to leave it for anything—until she got back from next door.
Becca Blair was furious with Jo Howell, for she blamed her entirely for what had happened to Sarah. Sarah was a fine girl, and everybody in Pine Cone knew it, and Jo Howell had run her into the groun
d. It was bad enough that she had made Sarah unhappy—now she had made her sick.
Becca wasn’t even thinking about the amulet—that was neither here nor there so far as she was concerned right now. Jo Howell had a lot to answer for in any case. Becca stormed across to the other house, saying to herself over and over, “She’s not worth the trouble to pull a double-barreled trigger on . . .”
Becca found Sarah’s husband and mother-in-law on the couch in the living room. All the curtains had been closed, so that the room was dark; the new air conditioner in Dean’s bedroom was on extra-cool, and the two rooms were frigid. Dean was propped up in the corner of the sofa with pillows. Jo Howell, gross and fat, was sitting up close to him—it looked to keep her son from sliding off onto the floor—and sponged the bandages on his brow with a damp cloth.
She had not seen that it was Becca Blair who entered, and assumed it was Sarah. “Ohhhh!” she said reproachfully, with her back to Becca, “Dean is burning up, Sarah! We gone have to get a machine for this room too! In them bandages, Dean’s not gone be able to take this summer, he’s not gone be able to take it, I tell you! I think I’m gone put another order in—”
She turned at this, and seeing that it was Becca in the room, said coldly, “Where’s Sarah?
“Sarah’s sick,” said Becca quietly. She tried to avoid looking at Dean, for she didn’t want her anger mixed with either the pity or the revulsion that the sight of him raised in her.
“Where is she?” Jo demanded.
“She’s at my house. She’s asleep.”
“She’s all right then,” said Jo, and turned back to Dean. “You tell her,” said Jo, “that’s she got to get back here by four-thirty so that Dean’ll have his supper on time.”