Late One Night

17

Missy barely slept that night, turning over and over in her head what Shooter had come to say and what Pat had finally told her. Milt Timlin thought there was something fishy about the way Della’s trailer had burned.

That wasn’t any surprise to him, Shooter said, not given what he’d seen the night of the fire.

“I saw Ronnie’s Firebird pulled off to the side of the blacktop a little ways up the road, pointed toward town.”

“You mean he was there?” Missy said.

Shooter nodded. “I saw him come from behind the trailer. He was toting something. I can’t say what it was, but he put it in that Firebird, and then he started up the blacktop, not fast like he usually does, but real slow like he didn’t want anyone to take note of him.”

“Like he had something to hide,” Missy said.

She was still thinking on it the next morning when she set out for town. She meant to go to the bank to speak with the president, Faye Griggs, about the fund she’d set up for the girls. Missy wanted to make sure that Ronnie wouldn’t be able to withdraw that money. She was the account holder, and she didn’t intend to step aside. This seemed important to her, especially in light of Shooter’s story. If the authorities came for Ronnie, would he try to get what was in that account and then run?

“Good folks gave that money,” she said. “Faye, it’d just kill me if it went for something other than what it’s meant for. Can we make it so I can divvy it out as I see fit to help with the girls’ care?”

They were sitting in Faye’s office, Faye behind her desk and Missy in a chair in front of it. Faye leaned forward to close the space between them, and she spoke in a low, confidential voice. “You know, the world is full of folks who mean well. All sorts of people trying to do the right thing. What is it they say about the road to Hell? Paved with good intentions?”

Faye had worked at the bank as long as Missy could remember. Her hair had gone gray in all the time she’d worked there, and the skin had gone loose under her chin. She’d been at the bank so long she knew about everything there was to know about the business of the folks who lived in and around Goldengate. She’d notarized their wills, handled their quit claim deeds on land sales, set up annuities for their retirements, sold them certificates of deposit, taken note of the balances in their savings accounts. She was known from time to time to let something slip about how well-off someone was or what had caused someone to have to make a significant withdrawal. She knew about sons and daughters who needed bail money. She knew who had disinherited whom. She knew about people with accounts they were keeping secret from a husband or a wife. She was sometimes — to put it plainly — a gossip. Over the years, she’d come to believe — at least Missy imagined this was true — that since she was the guardian of so many people’s business, she had a right to say whatever she wanted. “Sometimes it’s hard, isn’t it?” she said now to Missy. “I mean, it’s tough knowing the right thing to do.”

The smell of eucalyptus coming from a candle burning on one of Faye’s filing cabinets was too strong for Missy’s preference. She coughed a little. “Are you saying it’s not right for me to watch over that money?” She’d lain awake long into the night thinking about what Shooter had said about Ronnie. She and Pat talked about it there in the dark of their room, wondering, again, whether they should carry Shooter’s information to Ray Biggs, fearing, finally, that such a move might be risky. If Ronnie was capable of burning that trailer, then what might he do to them if he found out they’d talked to the sheriff? “Shooter will do the right thing,” Pat said, and Missy agreed, but she didn’t feel absolved of the burden of carrying what she knew. Still, it was a bit of a relief to have to do nothing, to wait for Shooter to come forward. She and Pat came to the conclusion that she passed on now to Faye. “There’s no telling what he might do. Ronnie Black. You remember how he chopped up Della’s hair back in the fall?”

“Night of the pancake supper. Oh, I know Ronnie Black.” Faye tipped her head and looked at Missy over the top of her glasses. “Not exactly a model citizen, is he?”

“No, ma’am, not by a long shot.”

Missy and Faye glanced at each other and then looked away, both of them aware that they were talking in less than flattering terms about a man who only a few days before had lost three of his children. Missy could hear the tellers chatting with customers at the counter outside Faye’s office. A telephone was ringing. Someone was counting out money—“That’s twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred.”

“Well, it’s just a fact,” Faye finally said. “That’s what it is. Don’t worry, Missy. No one can get at that money except you.”

“Thank you, Faye. That puts my mind at ease.”

Missy stood up, and Faye came out from around her desk. “You’re a good soul.” She took Missy by the hand and squeezed. “Sometimes, though, you just have to trust folks to live their own lives.”

“I wouldn’t say that Ronnie’s been any good at that up to now.”

“No, sweetie, I guess not. But maybe he’ll do better. Second chances, you know.”

“We could hope,” Missy said. “I guess.”

When she came out of Faye’s office, she heard a voice — too loud, too angry — and without looking, she knew it belonged to Ronnie.

“How in the world am I supposed to take care of my kids?”

Missy turned and saw him leaning forward across the counter, the teller on the other side, a round-shouldered girl with limp brown hair, trying her best to keep her voice steady.

“You’ll have to talk to Miss Griggs,” the girl said.

“The hell with Miss Griggs.” Ronnie slapped his palm down on the counter. All the tellers had stopped their own business, as had the other customers in the bank. Everyone was looking at Ronnie now. “There’s money here for my girls, and now you’re telling me I can’t have it?”

“You’re not the account holder.”

“Well, if I’m not then who in the hell is?”

The girl’s voice was shaking. “I’m really not at liberty. If you’d like to talk to Miss Griggs.”

“I said the hell with Miss Griggs,” Ronnie said, and he stormed out of the bank.

Missy heard someone call her name. From the far end of the bank, Laverne Ott was waving at her. Laverne’s voice rang out clear and strong the way it had so many times in a classroom. “Missy,” she said. “Missy Wade.”

Faye Griggs came out of her office to see what the commotion was all about. The round-shouldered girl at the counter was crying. Another teller, a middle-aged woman with bright red fingernails, came to see what she could do to help her.

Some of the customers were talking about what had just happened. A number of them were people who were familiar to Missy. They were talking all at once, their voices rising over one another’s.

Then Lucy Tutor’s voice, high-pitched and nasal, fought free from the others, and she said, “It makes a body wonder.” Lucy drove a school bus and she was by nature a suspicious sort.

“What’s that?” asked Roe Carl, a cashier at the Read’s IGA.

“If Ronnie doesn’t have that money, then who does?”

That’s when Faye whispered to Missy, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell. It’s no one’s business.”

Laverne Ott was with them then, and she said to Missy, “I wish people weren’t so hard on Ronnie.”

“You know what I heard?” Faye said. “Milt Timlin thinks there’s something suspicious about the whole thing.”

“The fire?” Laverne said. “Oh, don’t tell me that. Hasn’t there been trouble enough?”

Faye didn’t say a thing. A few moments went by, long enough for each of them to let their minds go where they wished they wouldn’t.

Laverne turned toward Missy, such a scared, lost look on her face. She was recalling the night in September when Della came to the Kiwanis pancake supper with her hair cut ragged, and Laverne’s first thought had been that Ronnie was to blame. “Missy?” she said now, the way she had all those years ago when Missy was just a girl in her class and Laverne expected her to give the correct answer. “Missy, surely there’s no reason to suspect Ronnie of anything?”

Missy could have said, no, of course not, don’t be silly. She could have said it would be ridiculous to think so. She could have put that thought right out of Faye and Laverne’s heads. But she couldn’t forget what Shooter had told her and Pat about Ronnie. It was such an incredible thought that she found herself talking to herself — at least she thought — and then she realized she’d said the words out loud.

“I can’t believe Shooter saw him at the trailer.”

“You mean earlier that day?” Faye asked. “I heard he was out there then.”

Missy gave such a gentle answer, but later she’d know it was the worst thing she could have said. She’d wonder if her words had been born of envy and anger and the desire to have those girls. “I don’t know.”

She said it so softly, Laverne had to ask her to repeat herself. “Did you say you don’t know?”

This time — one last chance to stop gossip before it began — she did the worst thing of all. She didn’t say a word. She turned and walked out of that bank.