Randy White - Deceived

“Okay-I warned you.” Joel cleared his throat, then made me a part of it all by saying, “The women who murdered Dwight Helms have one powerful protector left. You just mentioned his name. But think about your Uncle Jake. He didn’t want the women arrested, Hannah. Why would you?”

ROSANNA HELMS had endured one beating too many and had sent her husband to hell instead of prison…

Joel didn’t say that, nor had he divulged any names, but what else could explain his dark insinuation that more than one woman had played a role?

I finished dressing, put Ford’s note in my purse, then sat outside on a deck chair to think it through. It was early evening, the first week in May. Not dark enough for the automatic dock lights to come on yet late enough that across the street Loretta and her friends had gathered on the porch, awaiting the courtesy van that would take them to Friday-night bingo. The burble of their conversation filtered through the mangroves, interrupted by an occasional caw of laughter and the distant hooting of a great horned owl.

Four old friends-minus one-the women were still pressing ahead, enjoying their lives.

Sweet, perky Mrs. Helms killed her abusive husband with an axe, then one or more of her friends helped cover it up.

I had to repeat it several times in my mind just to establish the possibility. It was a difficult concept to grasp. Mrs. Helms had fussed over her clothing and wigs after surviving cancer; her dresses had shared the perfume of peach snuff when I, as a child, had sat on her lap in church. In the privacy of the mangrove homestead, however, the woman had lived in fear. Dwight Helms was a wife beater. So one long-ago night, young Rosanna Helms, mother of two, had fought back… was possibly fighting for her life when it happened and had grabbed the first weapon handy. Or she had been terrorized into insanity and had finally snapped.

In the scenario I was creating, what followed was easy enough to believe. Panicked and in shock, the woman had contacted her best friend, Loretta Smith, who then got Harney Chatham, the future lieutenant governor, involved, as well as my late uncle. For two decades, their secret had guarded the truth.

But wait… Joel had said, The women who murdered Dwight Helms. He hadn’t said, The woman and the friends who covered up for her. He had been in attorney mode and intentionally vague yet had said that plainly enough.

Loretta helped swing the axe?

I sat back and tried to imagine the scene. Couldn’t do it, though. Impossible! Yet… it was slightly easier to imagine four tough women, all hardened by island life-Epsey Hendry, Becky Darwin, Jody Summerlin, and Loretta-gathering to intervene on behalf of one of their own when something had gone terribly wrong.

Then, and only then, did it seem plausible, even justifiable, when viewed from an eye for an eye , Old Testament perspective, and that’s the perspective I chose to embrace-until I was shaken by a horrifying possibility: Crystal Helms, not yet school age, had witnessed what her mother and friends had done to the father she had idolized.

No… I couldn’t allow myself to believe it, despite Joel’s earlier warning that children seldom recognize signs of trauma in their playmates. Crystal had been quiet, true, but a shock so terrible would have left her catatonic, not soft-spoken.

Catatonic…

My thoughts shifted to Walkin’ Levi and the rumors of fever or injury that had traumatized his brain. Had he, too, been a secret witness? Levi had been so terrified that afternoon on Pay Day Road, he had jumped from the truck rather than visit the old Helms place. I thought back to my earliest memories of Levi, trying to make the time line work, but couldn’t convince myself of that either.

He was afraid of the pit bulls, I concluded, and couldn’t blame him. Nor could I blame Mrs. Helms or my mother, or their friends, for doing whatever was required to survive-not after being assaulted by the likes of Harris Spooner.

Those were different times, Mr. Harney Chatham had told me. People tended to look the other way. Women tolerated unhappiness for the sake of their children.

Tragic… and also admirable, but the saddest form of admiration because, in fact, it only rationalized looking the other way.

Enough of this! I told myself. Drop it for now.

Ford would be arriving soon. I didn’t want the upset I was feeling to taint the excitement of our first date since his return from South America. So I got to my feet, locked my boat, and went to tell Loretta good-bye. Before I stepped off the dock, I spent a few seconds staring at the concrete mansion that had displaced a shell pyramid and many tons of Florida history.

Doom with a View, Birdy Tupplemeyer had suggested as a name. “What about the Bone Throne ?”

This was two nights ago when she and my bodybuilder friend, Nathan Pace, had surprised me with a bottle of champagne and gifts to celebrate the completion of my boat and my first night aboard amid the luxury of my own possessions-including a toilet that worked and a shower that sprayed warm water.

The Bone Box, I had countered rather than risk saying her suggestions were too cute for a building that had already attracted so much misery.

The fact was, neither name fit. Birdy hadn’t found a human bone the night she had been detained, then drugged, although she had used that lie as a threat, but her lie had backfired. A sadder fact was, even the conch shell artifact she had found wasn’t enough to stop the rehab annex from being built. Alice and Raymond Candor were still rich, still walking free, and still had a powerful ally in the state capitol. The Bone Box, their home, would continue to stand through the years despite the centuries of history its spoor had despoiled.

There was a glimmer of future hope, however. If the Candors got into a financial mess, maybe they would accept the cash offer recently made in my mother’s name but backed by Loretta’s secret lover and protector.

I want you to help make it happen when the time comes, Harney Chatham had told me.

I was unconvinced The Bone Box was a worthy setting. Alice Condor was a venomous woman, and Mr. Chatham himself had said the Devil’s seed had been planted inside those concrete walls. If Rosanna Helms had avoided the mistake of returning to a tainted place, perhaps she would now be sitting atop the mound with Loretta and her other co-conspirators.

A gust of tinkling laughter escaped the porch and drifted toward the water as if to remind me: A woman’s not dead until her last friend is buried.

That’s what I was thinking when I heard the sound of a fast boat approaching and turned to see a twenty-six-foot Zodiac with a T-top crossing the flats, a stealthy-looking vessel, Sanibel Biological Supply visible on the side when the boat was close enough for me to wave hello.

It was Marion Ford, looking gaunt but tanned and healthy. He didn’t bother to double-check his mooring knots before pulling me into his arms, then saying, “I’d like to say hello to your mother before we take off. Okay?”

No… but there was no avoiding the inevitable, just as there was no dodging an answer to the note Ford had sent from Venezuela:

Sorry, delayed. I miss you. When I get back, interested in buying a place together? We’ll need more room.

I had settled on an answer days ago-a decision based on mistrust and a fear of my own poor judgment. But I wasn’t going to force the issue now. Why risk denying myself the pleasure of a night with a man my body was already responding to and for whom I truly cared?