Рон Гуларт - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 13, Mid-December 1994

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 four 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 ten 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.