John Miller: Smoke and Mirrors

At the dining table a young boy with large blue eyes and thick auburn hair sat behind a plate of bacon, grits, and eggs. He wore a black cape with a red lining over his pajamas and he looked up and blinked owlishly when the men walked in. A matronly ebony-skinned woman in a bright white uniform stood at the sink washing dishes. A ceiling fan turned lazily to redistribute the warm air issuing loudly from vents.

A girl with long light-brown hair nodded at the men, tugged back the sleeves of her sweatshirt, and placed the blood-sugar monitor she had just used on the green Formica-topped counter. Her sweatshirt advertised a place called Junior’s House of Blues. Her tattered jeans stopped above her bare feet, the toes of which were painted a shade of tangerine.

“Winter Massey, meet Hampton and Cynthia, Leigh’s children, and Estelle Johnson, their maid.”

“Estelle is our housekeeper, ” Leigh corrected.

The children merely stared at Winter, but Estelle turned and smiled at him. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Massey,” she said.

“Without her the house does not function. Estelle, the sheriff is not pleased that you washed off the walk,” Leigh said, crossing her arms.

“Good Lord, Sheriff Brad,” Estelle said. “I couldn’t leave that for Miss Leigh and Cyn to see. After your people left it was a terrible mess out there. They got most everything up, but…” Her lip trembled. “Anyhow, I rolled that plastic line up on a stick and left it in the garage for you.” She wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “I can’t believe that baby’s dead. Sherry was a bright, churchgoing child. I’ve known her since she was born.”

“And I know you were upset when I first asked, but since then have you thought of anybody who would want to hurt her?” Brad asked.

“No, sir. Everybody loved her,” Estelle said. “She was an angel. Pure angel. She was going to be a nurse. Got herself a scholarship to Fisk. Only reason she didn’t start college was because her mama was down again with the breast cancer.”

Estelle turned back to the dishes in the sink.

“Sherry worked for us since she was Hamp’s age,” Leigh interjected. “She was a serious, sweet girl and the idea that anyone would purposefully kill her is absurd. Some hunter must have shot at a deer and the bullet went astray. A high-powered rifle bullet can travel a couple of miles.”

“No,” Brad said. “Whoever did it shot from the tree line straight behind the house.”

“From way out there?” Leigh asked, pointing out the kitchen window at the trees that were amazingly small in the distance. “Preposterous.” She continued, “I’ve shot rifles myself and those woods are too far away for it to have been done on purpose. There must have been a deer in the field. He missed it and hit Sherry.”

“I found the place he fired from,” Brad told her. “And he sat there and waited for her to come out of the house.”

“A sniper?” Leigh asked, frowning.

Brad nodded.

“There’s only one sniper around here that I know of,” Leigh said, putting her hand to her mouth in a gesture of surprise, then turning her eyes away. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. I’m not myself.”

“Mama!” Cyn said.

“There’s this one man,” Hampton said in a low voice. “Sherry said he wanted to talk to her. He got mad and grabbed her when she told him to leave her alone.”

“Talk about what?” Brad asked.

“Talk doesn’t mean talk ,” Cyn said, smiling coyly. “That talk means he wanted to-you know.”

Hamp continued, “He bugged her. He’d sit in his hoopty and watch her house sometimes. She said he followed her around a lot.”

“He ever sit and watch this house?” Brad asked.

Hamp’s brow creased in contemplation. “I don’t think so. If he did, I never saw him.”

“Did you see him last night, Hamp?” Brad asked.

“I saw him last night at the Shell station when we were going to the video store. He waved at Sherry and she told me not to look at him.”

“Do you know his name?”

Hamp nodded. “Alfoons.”

“Alphonse,” Cyn said. “Sherry told me all about him. He totally grossed her out.”

“He got thrown out of the Army,” Hamp said.

“Why?” Brad asked.

“He told Sherry he punched a white general for disrespecting him. Sherry said he gambles away all of his money and he owes people he doesn’t pay back. Sherry said even if he was kind of handsome and dressed up fancy, he was no good.”

“Handsome?” Cynthia blurted. “He looks like a bowlegged monkey in a pimp suit. He has creepy eyes and freckles.”

“Cyn!” Leigh snapped. “You know better than to say such a thing. If that is what they teach you at LSU, young lady, maybe you’d be better off at the junior college in Senatobia.”

“I didn’t say it because he’s black,” Cyn said. “Girls like bad boys, but not stupid, ugly ones.”

“Jefferson,” Estelle said, without turning around. “That’s his name. Alphonse Jefferson. It isn’t Christian to talk bad about people, but that is one lazy, liquor-boned, good-for-nothing boy that comes from shiftless people.”

“What’s liquor-boned?” Hamp asked.

“On account he’s mean-tempered when he drinks, which is most of the time. He stays at his grandmother’s and hangs out at Bugger’s juke joint with other no-accounts. He does look like a organ grinder’s monkey in those flashy getups, like Miss Cyn said.”

“Don’t encourage her, Estelle.”

Estelle threw up her wet hands.

Brad opened his murder book and made a note. “I know who he is. We’ve had him in the jail for drunk and disorderly a couple of times. I’ll check his Army records to see about his marksmanship ability.”

“Well, there you have it. Pick him up,” Leigh said. “Obviously he did it. Put him where he belongs, doing hard labor on Parchman Farm for the rest of his life. Sherry Adams had a productive life ahead of her. She mattered, and if you don’t remember anything else, remember that.”

“Parchman Farm be the only work he ever did,” Estelle threw in. She put the last plate in the rack, dried her hands, and let the water out of the sink.

“I’ll check him out, Leigh.”

“Good,” she said.

“Hamp,” Brad asked. “Have you remembered anything else about last night since we talked this morning?”

“Nope,” the boy said, absently spoon-stirring the grits on his plate. “I showed Sherry some new tricks I got yesterday.”

“Tricks?” Brad asked.

“Magic stuff,” Hamp said.

“Hamp is a magician,” Estelle said proudly. “He about the best there is around here. He can make about anything disappear.”

“And I always get them back,” Hamp added.

“The Great Memphister,” Estelle said, nodding. “That why he wears that cape he bought at the magic store in Memphis. You wouldn’t believe what those little thingamajigs cost.”

“It’s the Great Mephisto, ” Hamp corrected.

“He can sure make his mama’s money disappear with them tricks he buys,” Estelle said, laughing.

“I use my own allowance,” he said defensively.

“That’s what allowances are for,” Leigh said, smiling.

Brad looked through his notebook. “Sherry came yesterday morning just before your mother left for Baton Rouge. At around seven last night, Sherry drove you to town to the video store and y’all got two movies. You both watched them until around midnight. There were no phone calls or visitors during that time. And you didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary.”

“Except for Alphonse Jefferson at the Shell station,” Hamp said.

Brad made a notation about the encounter. “The Shell station.”