Hard Truth

7

Lorna was still asking herself that same question-if Dustin Lafferty lied about having seen Jason go into the house that night, what else had he lied about, and why-later that afternoon as she turned into Veronica Hammond’s driveway and parked her car. T.J. had left shortly after they’d walked back to the farmhouse, after he’d given Lorna his card with several phone numbers and the suggestion that she give him a call the next day after she’d had time to think things over.

She still wasn’t sure what to do. It seemed that with every hour that passed, she had more and more questions, and fewer answers. She was hoping that Mrs. Hammond, as an old friend of the family, might be able to shed some light on the situation.

“Lorna, for heaven’s sake, walk a little faster and get out of this heat.” Veronica Hammond stood in the open doorway, looking as tall and formidable as she did when Lorna was a child. Neither her hair, which was now snow white, nor her cane diminished her presence. “Can’t remember the last time we had so many hot days in a row like this, can you?”

“It is pretty hot.” Lorna greeted the older woman with a hug, then stepped inside. Mrs. Hammond quickly closed the door behind her. “Hey, when did you get central air?”

“Summer before last.” Mrs. Hammond led her into the living room. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d held out all those years, thinking I didn’t want to shell out the money, then remembered how old I was and that I wasn’t going to be able to take any of it with me, so I said, ‘What the hell,’ and called Sears. They did a nice job.”

“It feels so good in here. The farmhouse is stifling.”

The room was just as Lorna remembered it, all the same furniture placed in exactly the same spot where it had stood thirty years ago. Iron plant stands, dripping with enormous Christmas cactus and African violets in heavy bloom, stood in front of every window, and the end tables held stacks of books. Even Mrs. Hammond’s old sewing basket sat in the same place next to her favorite chair.

“Well, if it gets too bad, you can always come down here and spend the night. I have extra rooms.” Mrs. Hammond plopped herself into her favorite chair and pointed to the sofa, where Lorna assumed she was supposed to sit. “Johnny’s here for a while, not sure how long this time.”

“Your grandson?”

Mrs. Hammond nodded. “My son Charlie’s boy. I swear, I don’t know what’s wrong with Johnny. Can’t stay married to save his soul. He’s on his third wife, and she just tossed him out.” She shook her head in disgust. “Not sure what the problem is-not sure, frankly, that I want to know-but every time a wife kicks him out, he ends up here.”

Lorna, for her part, didn’t quite know what to say. Offer sympathy? Make some banal remark? She decided to let it pass altogether.

“So, you’re back in Callen. It’s wonderful to see you, Lorna.” Mrs. Hammond leaned over to pat her hand. “I do miss your mother. She was such a darling girl, all her life. It seems like only yesterday Alice was dressing her up and showing her off…”

She sighed deeply.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am that she’s gone, Lorna.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hammond. And thank you for the lovely card you sent. My sister and brother and I all appreciated your kind words.”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Rob hadn’t bothered to read any of the cards, but why get into that?

Mrs. Hammond nodded again, acknowledging Lorna’s thanks. “How long will you be staying? And what are you planning to do with the old place? And please tell me what you were thinking when you offered to post bail for Billie Eagan.”

Lorna almost laughed out loud. Mrs. Hammond definitely had her priorities.

“I’m not sure how long I’ll be here. We have pretty much agreed to sell off the property, as much as we all hate the idea. None of us can afford to buy out the others right now, and we’ve all established ourselves elsewhere. So selling makes the most sense. I don’t know what else to do with it. It hasn’t been an easy decision, I assure you. That farm has been Palmer land since the eighteen hundreds, as I’m sure you know. We just don’t have many options.”

“Have you contacted a Realtor yet?”

“No. I was putting that off. I’ve only been here since Sunday, and I think I’d like a little time to unwind. Between my mother’s illness and getting my business off the ground, it’s been a tough few years for me. I want to take my time, and make sure that whatever decisions I make now are the right ones.”

“That’s smart of you.” Mrs. Hammond was nodding that head of white hair, and once again patting Lorna’s hand. “Don’t rush into anything you’ll regret. Once the farm is sold, it will be gone forever. You’re wise to take your time.”

“Well, I don’t have all that much time. I do want to get back to Woodboro. My business is there, my friends…” Lorna was getting tired of the same old explanation. “In any event, I’ll need to go through the house, see who wants what, that sort of thing.”

“It’ll take you forever,” Mrs. Hammond said bluntly. “Your grandmother was a collector. You’re going to have to get people in who know what they’re looking at, or you’ll get robbed.”

“I promise, I’ll check out the reputation of every dealer who passes through the front door.”

“Your grandmother would appreciate that, I’m sure. She did have some lovely things.”

Lorna was about to respond, when Mrs. Hammond leaned forward and tapped her on the left arm. “Now, about Billie Eagan’s bail. Not that it’s any of my business, of course…”

“I did offer to put up her bail, and I spoke with the attorney who was appointed to defend her. He didn’t seem to be too interested, frankly, so I-”

“Overworked, they all are. Too many cases, too little time to prepare. I watch all those law shows on TV, I know what’s going on.”

“I’m sure overwork has something to do with it. But it seems to me that everyone has basically decided that Billie’s guilty.”

“Pretty much everyone has,” Mrs. Hammond agreed, as if Billie’s guilt was a given. Lorna decided to let it slide. She wasn’t about to go toe-to-toe with an eighty-something-year-old woman.

“Mrs. Hammond, did you see my mother very often before she got sick and came to live with me?”

“Oh, yes. At least once a week. She stopped by on her way to the supermarket, to see if I needed anything, bless her heart. And she always checked to see if I had my heart medication, or if I needed a ride someplace. She was very thoughtful that way, you know. She looked out for everyone, it seems.”

“Do you know if she had much of a relationship with Billie Eagan?”

“Well, I can tell you that after Billie was evicted from that house she’d been living in, and rambled about for a while, Mary Beth moved her into the cottage out there on the farm. So I guess she was her landlord. Not that Billie paid much in rent, but that was between her and Mary Beth.” She shook her head and said, “You know, once your mother got something into her head, that was that. And she never asked me for my opinion, but if she had, I would have told her-”

“Do you know if they were friends?” Lorna interrupted, trying to steer the conversation back on track. She had a feeling she knew what Mrs. Hammond would have told Mary Beth.

“Friends?” Mrs. Hammond appeared to consider it. “I don’t know that you couldn’t call them friends, as unlikely as it was, Mary Beth being as sweet as she was, and Billie being the ornery little piece of work that she was. I do know that Mary Beth shopped for Billie’s groceries and took Billie to her doctors when she had no other transportation. She did a lot for Billie, but Billie wasn’t the only one she helped.”

“She wasn’t?”

“Well, like I said, she picked up things at the store for me, mailed packages if I needed it. Even went to the library to get books for me. She did the same for two others I know of.” Mrs. Hammond tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. “But friends? I don’t know if I want to call it friendship. I can’t imagine why your mother would even want to be her friend. Though I do know Mary Beth was defensive where Billie was concerned.”

“In what way?”

“Always reminding people how hard Billie had had things, how her husband up and left her for that young girl who worked in the flower shop. How Billie had two small kids to raise by the time she was twenty.” Mrs. Hammond’s head bobbed up and down. “I even asked her, ‘Why would you want to be friends with a woman who treated her kids so bad, Mary Beth? How can you overlook all she did to those children?’ ”

“What did she say?”

“She said Billie’d spent the last twenty-odd years paying for what she’d done, that losing her kids should be punishment enough, and that she wasn’t about to judge someone else’s past.” Mrs. Hammond paused, then added, “And she said that she felt somewhat responsible for what those kids went through. Said she had wondered about bruises she’d seen on Melinda, and had been tempted to ask, but never had. She said maybe if she’d done something back when it might have mattered, things could have turned out differently for all of the Eagans.”

“Mom said that?”

“Billie did have her hands full, that’s for sure. That Jason was one nasty boy, even when he was a small child. You wouldn’t believe the things I heard come out of that mouth of his.”

Oh, yes I would. Lorna thought back to the many times Jason had hurled curses at her and Melinda. She knew firsthand how vile he could be.

“And your mother always told me how Billie was remorseful, how much she regretted that she’d been so rough with her kids. Well, sorry’s easy to say, when both kids are gone God knows where and you don’t have to deal with them anymore, isn’t it? Of course, now we know where Jason had gone. Most people think he only got what was coming to him. There are a lot of folks who still think he killed his sister.”

“There are people who think Billie killed her.”

“I don’t know about the girl, but I do think there’s a good chance Billie killed the boy.”

“Why?” Lorna asked.

“Everyone knows that Billie and Jason had a screaming match that night when he came home so late.”

“How does everyone know that?” Lorna asked.

“Well, that’s what Nancy Lafferty says, anyway.”

“Dustin’s mother?”

“Yes. He was a friend of Jason’s. He knew what was going on down there.”

There was a rumble from outside the windows, and Mrs. Hammond started out of her chair.

“You sit, I’ll see what that was.” Lorna stood and went to the window. “Must have been thunder. There are a lot of low, dark clouds up toward Route One.”

Someone dashed out the back of the house next door and ran to the black pickup in the driveway. He opened the driver’s-side door and turned on the ignition, then rolled up the windows before jumping out of the pickup and running back toward the house.

“Is that Fritz Keeler?” Lorna asked.

“Yes, he still lives in his parents’ house. You’d think a good-looking young man like Fritz would have found himself a nice girl to marry by now. I swear, I don’t know what he’s waiting for.” Mrs. Hammond shook her head. “Now, Michael-you remember Michael, his younger brother?”

“Sure. My first crush.” Lorna turned away from the window.

“He’s married to Sarah Watts, you remember her?”

“Two years ahead of me in school, sure.”

“Yes. Well, they live out on Cannon Road in a nice little ranch house. Two kids. Michael and Fritz bought that gas station and convenience store, the one that sits right before the intersection, after their mother died. Pooled their inheritance, I suppose, and bought the business.”

“Quik Stop?” Lorna frowned, trying to recall if she’d heard that news before. “I don’t think I knew that. I’m surprised I haven’t seen Fritz or Mike there. I buy my coffee at Quik Stop every morning.”

“I heard lots of folks do, they say the coffee’s good. The boys are doing real well, from what I hear. But Fritz,” another solemn shake of the head, “he’s an odd duck.”

“In what way?”

“Well, he’s got no life. Spends most of his time in that house or working. Takes a week off here and there and takes himself on trips. Don’t know where he goes, but he leaves every other week or so.”

Sounds like me. Without the trips. Hope he goes someplace good. “I’m sure he gets bored, staying in that house alone all the time. And if he works that much, he’s probably tired and just needs to relax.”

“Yes, well, then there are the roses.”

“What roses?”

“I swear, every time I look out the window, Fritz is planting another rosebush. Says his mother loved roses, so he plants them for her.”

“Did he plant them for her when she was still alive?”

“Oh, yes. Just look at their backyard. It’s one huge rose garden.”

“I’d think you’d like that. It must be very fragrant early in the summer. And it’s got to look beautiful from your house.”

“Well, it does that. Strange, though. He’s still odd, in my book.”

“Fritz always was a little shy, Mrs. Hammond. Maybe he still is.”

“Could be. His father never had much to say either, though God knows his mother made up for that. She could talk the ears off a-”

Another rumble of thunder, louder, closer.

“I think I should go before the rain hits,” Lorna said.

“I won’t argue with you, dear. They’re predicting quite a storm.” Mrs. Hammond reached for her cane, then eased herself out of her chair. “But you’ll have to come back to see me again soon.”

“I’d love to,” Lorna said.

“Well, I’ll look forward to that.” The old woman leaned upon her cane. “Now, I don’t know what you’re planning on doing, far as Billie is concerned, and I don’t know that anything I say could sway you, one way or another, and that’s fine. We’re all entitled. I suspect you’re inclined much as your mother was, and if I told her once, I told her a hundred times, I said, ‘Mary Beth, that is not a good woman. She beat her children, she drank half of every dime she ever made,’ and like I told you, she’d say, ‘Miss Veronica, that was a long time ago. Billie’s stopped drinking, she’s worked hard to clean up her life, she’ll never forgive herself for the way she treated her kids,’ ” Mrs. Hammond sighed. “Sounded like too little too late to me, but you know how your mother was, Lorna. If any woman ever had a softer heart, I swear I never met her. I suppose if Billie Eagan said the right words and shed enough tears, Mary Beth would have bought into it. I never did. I’m thinking you have, though.”

“You really think she’s guilty?”

“Yes, I do. I think sure as I’m standing here, Billie Eagan smacked that boy in the head and broke his skull. And I can’t help but wonder if she hadn’t done the same to that little girl of hers.” Mrs. Hammond leaned heavily on her cane. “And don’t you have to wonder what your mother would be saying if she were alive today.”

“I think she’d say, ‘Innocent until proven guilty.’ ”