Randy White - Deceived

It was then my mother noticed the Fisherfolk of South Florida pamphlet I’d left on the desk. Instantly, her demeanor changed. “My dear lord,” she moaned, “Pinky’s dead, that’s why you’re being so nice. I told you when it was happening. Was she murdered?”

I hadn’t received confirmation from Joel Ransler, but I also couldn’t lie-not after the stories I’d just read about ignoring the elderly. “It’s not official, Mamma, but, yes, Mrs. Helms was found last night. She wasn’t murdered, though, she died naturally-out for a nice walk. She didn’t suffer at all.”

For several minutes, my mother cried, halting her tears long enough to tell me what a good woman Rosanna Helms had been, then mixing in stories about the fun they’d had as girls. “We were always there for each other,” she sniffled. “Except for the years we weren’t speaking, I’ve never had a closer friend!”

I said the things people always do under those circumstances while I knelt by the recliner and waited for Loretta to get hold of herself. She finally did, and was still in control after I’d returned with a fresh box of tissues, her eyes rheumy as grapes when she looked up at me. “You searched Pinky’s house yesterday. Didn’t you tell me that?” She had the date wrong, but I was struck by how unusually lucid my mother sounded.

“Yes, late Friday afternoon, but Mrs. Helms wasn’t there,” I said, once again omitting details about my attacker.

Her attention shifted to the pamphlet and she sighed. “So now you know the truth, I suppose.”

“Truth about what?” I asked.

“You know what I’m talking about. Why torture me by not saying it?”

“You’re upset,” I replied. “You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about.”

“I don’t?” she asked as if surprised. Then she began her nervous habit of tapping thumbs against middle fingers, a sure sign her mind was working hard at something. It made me suspicious.

“Know the truth about what ?” I asked again, voice firmer.

Loretta’s thumb tapping stopped. It meant she had come to a realization or had settled on a strategy-seldom did it mean she was about to speak the truth. This time was different, apparently, because she replied, “Teddy Roosevelt’s fishing reel. And the book you mentioned… And a bunch of other junk nobody cared about until you went snooping. I had Levi drive it all to Pinky’s place.”

I had been comforting the woman by patting her shoulder but decided she had received enough comforting for one day. I pulled my hand away and stood straight. “Snooping?” I said. “Granddaddy left those things to the family in his will. That Vom Hofe reel alone was worth a thousand dollars-I looked it up on the Internet. Why in the world did you give it to Pinky?”

Loretta exchanged her tissue for the TV remote and swung her face toward the television. “Don’t begrudge a dead woman a bunch of old fishing tackle you never used in the first place.”

“That’s not an answer,” I countered. “Besides, more than just a reel is missing. Where are the framed photos of Great-grandma and Aunt Sarah? There was a mesh gauge for weaving nets that was over a hundred years old. And a bill of sale for cattle from the Confederate Army signed by-”

“Which is why it belongs in a museum, not your Uncle Jake’s Army trunk!” Loretta interrupted. Then snapped, “Pinky’s dead-go to her house and steal the junk back, if you want it so bad. She’s not around anymore to stop you!”

I had suspected a connection between our missing antiques and the drawing of a museum on the pamphlet, so what I’d just heard wasn’t shocking news. What bothered me was the look of secret triumph fixed on Loretta’s face. There had to be a reason. Had she intentionally steered me to the subject of Teddy Roosevelt’s fishing reel to avoid admitting something far more serious? Yes, I decided. It explained why she’d appeared surprised when I declared she had nothing to feel guilty about.

“There’s something you’re not telling me, Loretta,” I said.

“Next, you’ll be accusing me of a crime,” she responded, “or of sleeping with a married man-as if you’ve got room to talk.”

Now I was very suspicious. Never before had she tried to bait me by alluding to a love affair she had kept secret for years-but that’s what she was now attempting.

I knelt by the recliner again and asked for the third time, “Tell you the truth about what , Loretta? You were afraid I found something when I was at Mrs. Helms’s house. What are you hiding from me?”

Right away, from the sad, sincere look my mother gave me, I knew what came next was a lie or another small truth meant to throw me off the track. “It’s about that membership form you found at Pinky’s,” she said, meaning the Fisherfolk pamphlet. “I think you’ll be proud when I explain about our family history’s being preserved. But, Hannah darlin’? You’re the one who never used Teddy Roosevelt’s fishing reel or the rest of that junk, so please don’t get mad when I do.”

FUMING ONCE AGAIN,I let the porch door bang close and was almost to the dock when I noticed that Levi Thurloe was across the street, standing in the mangroves, watching me. Not hiding, exactly… Or maybe the strange man was hiding because he backed deeper into the bushes as I approached the road. Never in my life had Levi frightened me, but he did now-a silent presence dressed in coveralls who looked huge in the shadows and was holding something, a tool or a broken branch, in his hand.

I had to make a decision. If I crossed the road, as I’d intended, the path to the dock would take me within a few yards of Levi. Turn right, the road curved along the bay toward the marina and the row of rickety docks and cottages we called Munchkinville. Because of what Loretta had just told me, I had a reason to go there. I wanted to knock on every door and ask owners if they, too, had donated some of their property, or even all of it, to a nonprofit organization that was collecting for a museum that, for all Loretta knew, existed only in the mind of some architect she’s never met. Even if Joel Ransler hadn’t offered me the job, it was a task I would have undertaken because that’s exactly what my mother had done-signed over some of her property, how much I was still uncertain.

“It’ll save me taxes!” was the only explanation she would offer.

I thought for a moment, then turned right to avoid Levi but took only a few strides before my spineless behavior angered me enough to reconsider. No one, especially a poor, brain-damaged man I’d known since childhood, was going to scare me away from my own boat. So I did an about-face and crossed the road, calling, “Come out of those bushes, Levi, before mosquitoes eat you alive!”

Instead of doing it, though, the man crouched lower as if unconvinced I could see him. It was a strange reaction even for Walkin’ Levi, which should have stopped me in my tracks but only made me more determined. “You come out of there and talk to me or I’ll come in and get you!”

Several slow steps the man took, his weight crunching branches, before he appeared in the shadows next to a buttonwood tree. A hammer-that’s what he was holding in his right hand.

“I don’t know nothing,” he mumbled, responding to a question I hadn’t asked. Then lifted his head enough to look at me, which was unusual and didn’t last long but enough to notice that his eyes appeared as glazed and cold as glass. His earbuds were still missing, too, so maybe the absence of music had left the man alone in his head. Or had his expression always been so empty? He avoided eye contact, so I couldn’t be sure, but I had an uneasy feeling that something inside Levi Thurloe had changed.