The Julius House Part 8

"That's what I presumed. I never met him. The few people who did meet him, like Parnell Engle, liked him, and liked Hope, too. The picture I get is of a rigid kind of man, very honest and aboveboard, very meticulous in his dealings, punctual, orderly; of course, some of that might be from being in the service for so long. As far as I can tell, Hope was not a strong person, emotionally or physically, and I'm sure her illness had sapped her." "And Charity?"

"Charity was a typical teenager, according to the local kids who knew her for a few weeks. She talked all the time about her boyfriend she'd had to leave behind when she moved here, but most of the girls I interviewed seemed to feel that was a ploy to make her look important. Though since the Dimmoch boy cared enough to drive over, I guess they were wrong. Her grades, if I am remembering correctly, weren't that good, implying either that she wasn't bright or that she was more interested in other things; don't know which. She was an attractive girl, they all said that in one way or another, even though she didn't seem so pretty in a photo. I managed to talk to a couple of kids who knew her when she lived in Columbia, and they all spoke of her as being a strong girl, one with a lot of adult qualities, especially after her mother got sick." I offered Sally another gla.s.s of tea. She looked down at her wrist.

"No, thanks. I've got to be at a City Council meeting in ten minutes."

Sally left me with a lot to think about as I put the dishes in the dishwasher.

And I realized I'd forgotten to ask her about the aerial search.After I saw Angel leave on some errand of her own that afternoon, I did something peculiar.

I retraced Mrs. Totino's movements of the morning of the disappearance-no, the morning the disappearance was reported-as she had told them to Sally. I walked in the front door, looked around, went to the kitchen, went out the front door again, looked in the garage, went between the garage and the house to the backyard. I looked around it, and up at the window of our guest bedroom, the room that had been Charity's. Then I went in the front door yet another time.I was certainly glad we lived out in the country so no one would see this bizarre exercise, which netted me exactly nothing but chills up and down my spine.

I called Lynn Liggett Smith that afternoon. Conversations between Lynn and me were always egg-walking exercises. On the one hand, she'd married Arthur Smith, the policeman whom I'd dated and been very fond of for months before he up and married Lynn-who was pregnant. I didn't care so much about that anymore, but Lynn felt a certain delicacy. On the other hand, we would have liked each other if it hadn't been for that, I'd always thought."How's Lorna?" I asked. I pictured Lynn at her desk at the Lawrenceton police station, tall, slim Lynn who'd lost all her baby-weight very fast and resumed her tailored suits and bright blouses with ease. I'd seen Lynn at the wedding, but of course she and Arthur hadn't brought the baby. Since I'd seen Lorna being born, I was always interested in her progress. "Is she walking yet?" I had a very shaky idea of baby chronology.

"She's been walking for months now," Lynn said. "And she's talking. She knows at least forty words!"

"Eating real food?"

"Oh, yes! You ought to see Arthur feeding her yogurt."

I thought I would pa.s.s that up.

"So what can I help you with today, Roe?"

"I wondered," I said, "if you would mind very much looking in the file on the Julius disappearance, and telling me exactly how the police searched." Long silence.

"That's all you want to know?" Lynn asked cautiously.

"Yes, I think so."

"I can't think of a good reason why not."

The phone clunked as it hit Lynn's desk, and I heard other detectives talking in the background as the click of Lynn's pumps receded.With the phone clamped awkwardly between my shoulder and ear, I wiped the kitchen counter. I tried to decide what I'd wear to dinner that night. Should we take a bottle of wine with us? What if the Andersons were teetotal? Lots of people in this area were.

"Roe?"

I jumped. The telephone was speaking to me.

"Every inch of the house was searched, and the garage apartment, too. No bloodstains. No signs of foul play. Gas in both vehicles, both vehicles running normally ... so they hadn't been disabled. Beds stripped and mattresses tested .. . yard gone over inch by inch. The fields visually surveyed. According to the file, Jack Burns requested an aerial search but the city didn't have enough money left in the budget to pay for one."

"Golly. Since there wasn't enough money, one wasn't done?"

"You got it."

"That's wrong."

"That's fiscal responsibility."

"I just never thought about police department budgets not permitting things like that."

Lynn laughed sardonically, and did a good job of it, too. "Budgets don't permit lots of things we'd like to do. Our budget doesn't even permit us to do some of the things we need, much less the things we'd like." "Oh," I said inadequately, still at a loss.

"But short of that, the investigation was very thorough. And the search was meticulous. There was a complete search of the house, an exhaustive search of the yard and the field around the house, and a lab examination of the two vehicles, all of which turned up absolutely nothing. Bus stations, airlines, train stations, all queried for anyone answering the description of any or all members of the family. That took some time, since they were all more or less average looking, though Hope was visibly ill. But no leads." "Eerie." I jumped at the sound of the pet door as Madeleine entered. She walked over to her food bowl and deposited something in it, something furry and dead."Jack still talks about that case, when he's had a beer or two. Which is more often-" Lynn stopped, reconsidered, and changed the subject. "So how's your husband?"

"He's fine," I said, a little surprised. Arthur had strong views about Martin, and he had shared them with Lynn, I could tell."He is a little older than you?"

"Fifteen years. Well, fourteen plus."

I could feel my brows contracting over my nose. I took off my gla.s.ses-the tortoisesh.e.l.l pair today-and rubbed the little spot where tension always gathered. Madeleine was waiting for me to come over and compliment her."I want to talk to you sometime soon," Lynn said, with an air of suddenly made decision.

Arthur and Lynn, through some law-enforcement channel, had heard something about Martin's former activities, I thought. All I needed at this point was someone else lecturing me. Or telling me something I didn't know about my own husband, pitying me.

"I'll give you a call when I'm free," I said.

Chapter Eleven .

A SPRING DINNER at an employee's house; our first social engagement as a couple since our wedding. I finally chose a short-sleeved bright cotton dress and pumps. Martin brushed my hair for me, something he enjoyed doing. I was ready to get it cut. Its waviness and resultant bus.h.i.+ness made it a pain if it got too long, but Martin really liked it below my shoulders. I would tolerate the extra trouble until another Georgia summer. Since the dress was blue and red, I wore my red gla.s.ses, and I felt they added a cheerful touch. For some reason, my husband found them amusing.

Martin wore a suit, but when we got to the Andersons', only a few houses down Plantation Drive from my mother's, we found Bill Anderson shedding his tie."It's already heating up for summer," he said, "let's get rid of these things.

The ladies won't mind, will you, Roe? Bettina?" Bettina Anderson, a copper-haired, heavy woman in her mid-forties, murmured, "Of course not!" at exactly the same moment I did.

Our host took Martin down the hall to deposit his coat. They were gone a little longer than such an errand warranted. While they were gone, I asked Bettina if there was anything I could help her with, and since she didn't know me, she had to say there was nothing.

I was glad we hadn't brought the wine when we were offered nothing to drink stronger than iced tea.

Bill and Martin reappeared, Martin wearing a scowl that he made an effort to smooth out. Bettina vanished into the kitchen within a few minutes and was obviously fl.u.s.tered, but I noticed that when the doorbell rang again, it was Bettina who answered it.

I wondered how long the Andersons had been married. They didn't actually talk to each other very much.

To my pleasure, the other dinner guests were Bubba Sewell and his wife, my friend Lizanne Sewell, nee Buckley. Bubba is an up-and-coming lawyer and legislator, and Lizanne is beautiful and full-bodied, with a voice as slow and warm as b.u.t.ter melting on corn. They had married a few months before we had, and the supper they'd given us had been the best party we'd had as an engaged couple.

I gave Lizanne a half-hug, rather than a full frontal hug, befitting our friends.h.i.+p and the length of time we hadn't seen each other.Bettina turned down Lizanne's offer of help as well; so she was certainly determined to keep us "company." We chattered away while our hostess slaved out of sight in the kitchen and dining room. Lizanne inquired about the honeymoon, but without envy: She never wanted to leave the United States, she said. "You don't know where you are in those other countries," she said darkly. "Anything can happen."

I could see Bill Anderson had overheard this and was about to take issue, an incredulous look on his face. (I was beginning not to like Bill, and unless I was mistaken, Martin didn't like him either. I wondered if this was something we would have to do often, dine with people with whom we had nothing in common.) "Are you enjoying not having to go to work every morning?" I asked Lizanne instantly, to spare her discomfort. (Lizanne probably wouldn't care one bit what Bill Anderson or anyone else thought about her opinions, but her husband would.) "Oh... it's all right," Lizanne said thoughtfully. "There's a lot to do on the house, yet. I'm on some good-works committees . . . that was Bubba's idea." She seemed slightly amused at Bubba's efforts to get her into his own up-and-coming pattern.

We were called to the dining room at that moment, and since I had my own agenda, I was pleased to see I was seated between Martin and Bubba at the round table.After the flurry of pa.s.sing and serving and complimenting an anxious Bettina on the chicken and rice and broccoli and salad, I quietly asked our state representative if he had been the lawyer in charge of the Julius estate since their disappearance. It was heartless of me, since the conversation had turned to regional football.

"Yes," he said, dabbing his mustache carefully with his napkin. "I handled the house purchase, when Mrs. Zinsner sold the house to T. C. Julius. So after they vanished, Mrs. Totino asked me to continue as the lawyer in the case." "What's the law about disappearances, Bubba?"

"According to Georgia law, missing people can be declared dead after seven years," Bubba told me. "But Mrs. Totino was able to show she was the sole remaining relative of the family, and since she had very little without their support-she'd been living with a sister in New Orleans, sc.r.a.ping by with Social Security-we went to court and got her appointed conservator of the estate, so I could arrange for her to have enough money to live on. After a year, we got a letter of administration, so she could sell the property whenever she could find a buyer. Of course, this is all a matter of public record," he concluded cautiously.

"So in a few months, the Juliuses will be declared dead."

"Yes, then the remainder of their estate will be Mrs. Totino's."

"The house sale money."

"Oh, no. Not just the house sale money. He'd been saving for a while, to start his own business when he retired from the Army." And Bubba indicated by the set of his mouth that this was the end of the conversation about the Julius family's financial resources.

"Did you like him?" I asked, after we'd eaten quietly for a minute."He was a tough man," Bubba said thoughtfully. "Very much . . . 'everything goes as I say in my family.' But he wasn't mean."

"Did you meet the others?"

"Oh, yes. I met Mrs. Julius when they bought the house. Very sick, very glad to be within driving distance of all the hospitals in Atlanta. A quiet woman. The daughter was just a teenager; not giggly. That's all I remember about her." Then our host asked Bubba what was coming up in the legislature that we needed to know about, and my conversation with him about the Julius family was over.On the way home, I related all this to Martin, who listened abstractedly. That wasn't like Martin, who was willing to be interested in the Julius disappearance if I was.

"I have to fly to Guatemala next week," he told me."Oh, Martin! I thought you weren't going to have to travel as much now that you're not based in Chicago."

"I thought so, too, Roe."

He was so curt that I glanced over with some surprise. Martin was visibly worried.

"How long will you be gone?"

"Oh, I don't know. As long as it takes . . . maybe three days."

"Could ... maybe I could go, too?"

"Wait till we get home; I can't pay attention to this conversation while I'm driving."

I bit my lip in mortification. When we got home, I stalked straight into the house.

He was just getting out of the car to open my door, and I caught him off guard.He didn't catch up to me until I was halfway down the sidewalk to the kitchen side door.

Then he put his hand on my shoulder and began, "Roe, what I meant..." I shook his hand off. "Don't you talk to me," I said, keeping my voice low because of the Youngbloods. Here we lived a mile out of town, and I still couldn't scream at my husband in my own yard. "Don't you say one word." I stomped up the stairs, shut the door to our bedroom, and sat on the bed.What was the matter with me? I'd never had open quarrels with anyone in my life, and here I was brawling with my husband, and I'd been within an ace of hitting him, something I'd also never done. This was so trashy.I had to do some thinking, and now. Our relations.h.i.+p had always been more emotional than any I'd ever had, more volatile. But these bright, hot feelings had always served to leap the chasms between us, I realized, sitting on the end of our new bedspread in our new house with my new wedding ring on my finger. I took off my shoes and sat on the floor. Somehow I could think better."He's still not telling me the truth," I said out loud, and knew that was it.I could hear him faintly, stomping about downstairs. Fixing himself a drink, I decided. I felt only stunned wonder-how had I ended up sitting on the floor in my bedroom, angry and grieved, in love with a man who lived a life in secret? I remembered Cindy Bartell saying, "He won't cheat on you. But he won't ever tell you everything, either."

I had a moment of sheer rage and self-pity, during which I asked myself all those senseless questions. What had I done to deserve this? Now that I'd finally, finally gotten married, why wasn't it all roses? If he loved me, why didn't he treat me perfectly?

I lay back on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. More important, what was I going to do during the next hour?

A creaking announced Martin's progress up the stairs and across the landing.

"I won't knock at my own bedroom door," he said, from outside.

I stared at the ceiling even harder.

The door opened slowly. Perhaps he was afraid I'd throw something at him? An intriguing mental image. Maybe Cindy had thrown things.He appeared at my feet, two icy gla.s.ses of what appeared to be 7- and-7 in his hands. I saw the wet stain on his off-white s.h.i.+rt, where he'd tucked the extra gla.s.s between arm and chest while he'd used his other hand to open the door."What are you doing, Roe?"

"Thinking."

"Are you going to talk to me?"

"Are you going to talk to me?"

He sat on the stool in front of my vanity table. He leaned over to hand me a drink. I held it centered under my b.r.e.a.s.t.s with both hands gripping the heavy gla.s.s.

"I still. . ." he began. He stopped, looked around as if a reprieve would come, took a drink. I looked up at him from the floor, waiting."I still sell guns."

I felt as if the ceiling had fallen on my head.

"Do you want to know any more about it than that?"

"No," I said. "Not now."

"I don't think Bill Anderson is who he says he is," Martin said.

I cut my gaze over to him without turning my head.

"I think he's government."

I looked back at my gla.s.s. "I thought you were government."

His mouth went down at one corner.

"I thought I was, too. I suspect something's changed that I don't know about.

That's why I need to go to Guatemala. Something's come unglued." I struggled with so many questions I couldn't decide what to ask first. Did I really want to know the answers to any of them?"Are you really a man with a regular job with a real company?" I asked, hating the way my voice faltered.

He looked sad. "I'm everything I ever told you I was. Just-other things, too."

"Then why couldn't you be satisfied?" I said bitterly and futilely.I sat up, tears coursing down my cheeks without my knowing they had started, not sobbing, just-watering my dress. I took a drink from my gla.s.s; yes, it was 7-and-7.

When I could bear to, I looked at him.

"Will you stay?" he asked.

We looked at each other for a long moment.

"Yes," I said. "For a while."

I never finished that drink, yet the next morning I felt I had a hangover. I had to take my mind off my life. I dressed briskly, putting on powdered blush more heavily than usual because I looked like h.e.l.l warmed over, and went to Parnell Engle's cement business.

It was a small operation north of Lawrenceton. There were heaps of different kinds of gravel and sand dotting the fenced-in area, and a couple of large cement trucks were rumbling around doing whatever they had to do. The office was barren and utilitarian to a degree I hadn't seen in years. There was a cracked leather couch, a few black file cabinets, and a desk in the outer office. That desk was commanded by a squat woman in stretch pants and an incongruous gauzy blouse that was intended to camouflage the rolls of fat. She had good-humored eyes peering out of a round face, and she was dealing with someone over the phone in a very firm way.

"If we told you it would be there by noon, it will be there by noon. Mr. Engle don't promise nothing he can't do. Now the rain, we cain't control the rain. . .. No, they cain't come sooner, all our trucks are tied up till then. ... I know the weather said rain, but like I told you.... All right then, we'll see you at noon." And she hung up with a certain force. There was an old Underwood typewriter on the desk, and not a computer in sight."Is Mr. Engle in?" I asked.

"Parnell!" she yelled toward the door behind her. "Someone here to see you." Parnell appeared in the door in a moment dressed in blue jeans, work boots, and a khaki s.h.i.+rt, his hand full of papers.

"Oh," he said unenthusiastically. "Roe Teagarden. You enjoying all that money my cousin left you?"