“It’s no problem,” I said. “I’m happy to do it.
“Good, good. Two o’clock?”
I agreed and hung up. It was actually kind of nice to have something on my schedule for today. I wasn’t used to being at loose ends. I looked at the stack of documents again, but I was feeling too antsy to sit and read any longer. I had the feeling that something more than the hurricane was coming to a head. The events of the past few days sifted through my brain, images of Rothmere, Cyril, the high schoolers—especially Rachel so upset about the vicious rumors that she’d pushed Braden—and the other people I’d talked to this week. My mind went back to the conversation with Rachel where she’d told me Braden was wrestling with a dilemma of some sort, wondering whether he should intervene. Somehow, that seemed like the crux of the matter to me, the motivation for his murder. He hadn’t told Rachel what his quandary was, and he hadn’t told his best friend Mark, so who else might know?
His therapist, assuming he had one. But no therapist would talk about a patient’s confidences. His family. I focused on the image of Mr. and Mrs. McCullers as I’d last seen them in the hospital waiting room, confused and worried. They’d gone out of town, someone had said, but maybe they were back? I headed for my bedroom. It would be appropriate to visit them to express my condolences, I told myself, shrugging out of my tee shirt and reaching into my closet for a less casual white blouse with a small ruffle on the front. I could take them some flowers. Slipping on a dark green denim skirt that fell to mid calf, I wound my hair into a knot and secured it with an enameled chopstick Vonda had given me two birthdays ago. Satisfied that I looked suitably somber, I looked up their address in the phone book and headed for my car.
Stopping by the Piggly Wiggly to pick up some flowers—I decided on a potted African violet and a tray of cookies—I drove to the two-story stucco home on a street of similar houses where the McCullerses lived. Nothing about the home shouted “tragedy.” The lawn was neatly mowed and raked clean of leaves, begonias added a note of cheerful color in pots at the door, the cement driveway was free of pine needles and old newspapers, and a mixed flock of sparrows, mockingbirds, and finches squabbled over the seed in a house-shaped birdfeeder.
The birds gave me hope that someone was in residence. Birds could deplete a feeder in a matter of hours; the fact that this one was full told me someone had filled it recently, maybe even this morning. Holding the violet in one hand and the cookies in the other, I walked to the door, suddenly beset with qualms. Southern society put a premium on graciousness and manners, and what I was doing was pretty suspect. On the face of it, I was bringing food to a recently bereaved family—an approved, even encouraged gesture—but I was really hoping to grill them about their deceased son—an underhanded, insensitive thing no one with the least pretension to Southern good manners would consider. I had made it to the covered porch when conscience overcame me. I couldn’t do this. I bent to leave the cookies and flowerpot on the welcome mat.
As I straightened up, the door swung open. Startled, I stumbled back a step as a girl of maybe nineteen, wearing a long-sleeved coral tee, shorts, and high-end running shoes, flapped a dust cloth over me.
I sneezed.
“Ohmigod, I’m so sorry,” the girl said. “I didn’t see—Who are you?” She pulled ear buds out of her ears and let them dangle around her neck, merging with thick, taffy colored hair.
“Grace Terhune,” I said. I indicated the offerings on the mat. “I was just leaving these for the McCullerses.”
“They’re not here,” the girl said. She stooped to pick up the cookie tray, loosening the plastic wrap to examine the contents. “These look great. Come on in. I was due for a break, anyway. I told my folks it wasn’t fair to stick me with the cleaning, but they both went to the hardware store, anyway, since Mom finally convinced Dad that the hurricane is really coming. Won’t it be exciting?”
Without waiting for an answer, she started down a hallway, leaving the door open behind her. Hesitantly, I entered the foyer, a ceramic-tiled space with a coat closet on one side and a staircase marching upward six feet away. The girl called, “In the kitchen,” and I started down the hallway that led off to the right, wondering who she was. I’d originally thought she might be a cleaning lady, but her assault on the cookies suggested she was more than a hired worker.
I emerged into the kitchen, a large room with an eating nook decorated in the country style that made me claustrophobic: lots of natural oak, dusty blue and rose pink for colors, flat cushions tied to the chairs with perky bows, ruffled curtains, a toaster cover shaped like a rooster, and a tea cozy in the form of a hen. The girl—lean, athletic, and modern—seemed out of place in the fussy kitchen.