Somehow we got through the rest of the evening, and managed to convince ourselves that everything was fine.
They say God only gives you what you can handle. I was guessing He’d gotten me mixed up with someone else.
*
“The next morning I awoke to the sound of rain lashing against the windows of our old house. It was Wednesday, which meant visiting day at the prison.
I slipped out of bed, so as not to disturb Joe, dressed quickly, and left a note in the kitchen.
River Road was flooded over in places, and water rushed by in a vicious brown torrent. My wipers barely kept up against the driving rain, which clattered against the roof of the car. I gripped the steering wheel, hoping the Subaru would make it through some of the deeper puddles. Many streams and creeks flowed downhill and under River Road, which made it about ten degrees cooler and pleasant on summer days, but today the terrifying power of water swept all along before it. Some of these cottages at the river’s edge would be flooded out if this kept up.
I passed the quarry, with gigantic blocks of rock and a towering cliff above me, and raced alongside the river, where a flotsam of logs, branches, a Styrofoam cooler, and a wooden pallet whipped along, marking the pace of the thunderous current.
“What’s up, Daisy Duke?” Angus greeted me with a flash of his former exuberance when he walked into the visiting room.
“What’s up, Burger Boy?”
He surveyed my attire—a hastily thrown together combination of long-sleeved cotton top and khakis. “How come you didn’t dress up to come see me?”
“Ha! And this from the guy who was always telling me to wear jeans.” I wiggled my fingers through my rain-dampened hair to release some of the moisture.
We smiled at each other briefly, and then he lapsed into what was becoming his habitually morose expression.
“Why doesn’t Betty ever visit?”
“She had hip surgery, Angus.” I could feel my smile fading in disappointment. I’d thought for a moment he was back to his old self. “I told you that before.”
“But she doesn’t even call.”
I bit my lip. “Look, don’t worry about that right now. She’ll see you at the hearing tomorrow.”
He rubbed at his forehead.
“Are you all right? I came to see you on Sunday, but they said you were undergoing a medical evaluation.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled. “Will you give me twenty dollars for the lot?”
I skipped over that for the moment. I needed to get my questions in. “I want to know about this estate company that consigned the pens. Had you dealt with them before?”
He shrugged as if I were speaking a foreign language.
“The pens, Angus. The valuable pens that were stolen?” I doggedly recited every detail of what I’d found out so far, hoping that perhaps something I said would resonate.
“Don’t wanna talk about this. No point.” He seemed more despondent, more confused than ever. “You get a line, I’ll get a pole, we’ll go fishing in the crawfish hole.”
“Okay.” Struggling for a lighter note, I told him about the successful auction with Patsy’s bid calling and Martha’s party afterward.
He leaned forward, a spark in his faded blue eyes that crinkled up like check marks in the corners.
“That Martha, I tell you, Daisy, she was a firecracker in her day. She was something else. She still dresses up like she’s going to the prom.”
He went off on a tangent about some of the friends he remembered from high school. At least he was coherent when talking about the past.
Could Alzheimer’s come and go like that? And if it came to a jury trial, how the heck would Angus hold up? If he fell apart when questioned about the murder or recent events and started talking nonsense in the courtroom, he’d lose his case right then and there.
“Yeah, Grandma Perkins was a real ol’ witch,” he said. “Shot Sammy Jones with a BB gun when he wandered onto her pumpkin patch by accident.”
At the mention of the Perkins name, I snapped to attention. “What happened?”
“Kid got a glass eye, that’s what happened.” His lip curled up. “Screw that whole Perkins family. They’re pure evil. Including the grandsons.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered, so as not to break the fragile train of his erratic thoughts.
“There was a girl, a friend of Patsy’s, that one of them Perkins boys took an interest in. She wanted nothing to do with him. Think it was the older one, Tom. Well, one night, he went over to her house and stole her cat.”
I swallowed. This was going to be the story that Patsy couldn’t tell me in front of Claire. I flashed on a scene from Fatal Attraction and the pet rabbit . . .