Six Cats A Slayin'

THIRTY-TWO

I returned home from my visit with Alex feeling encouraged about her progress and the eventual outcome. Her face had lost that sunken look, and her skin had taken on a healthier-looking tone. She was still depressed and prone to self-recrimination, but there were signs of improvement. Before I left, Sean brought Rosie in to her mother, and Alex immediately reached for her baby. After a few minutes, I left the three of them together, saying a silent prayer of thanks.

When I neared my driveway, I spotted Melba’s car parked in front of the house. I remembered she had gone to visit an elderly lady in the nursing home, Ida Norwood. No, that didn’t sound right. Was it Ima? I asked myself as I pulled into the garage. Yes, that was it. Ima Jean Norwood.

Diesel met me at the door, chirping happily, no doubt informing me that his buddy Melba was here. I glanced toward the table to see Melba sipping from a mug. She was frowning when she looked across the room at me. Her face cleared, and she smiled. “I’m glad you’re back. Tell me, how is Alex?”

“Doing much better, I’m happy to say.”

Azalea came into the kitchen. “She’s doing better?” she inquired.

“Yes, thankfully.” I shared some of the details with them.

“Surely the worst is over now,” Melba said.

“I think so,” I said, “but we have to pray that she doesn’t have a relapse. This is not something a woman recovers from in a day or two. It will take time.”

Azalea said, “I’ll be praying for her, and if she needs me for anything, I’ll be glad to do it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I know how much she will appreciate that. If you have time to visit her, I think she would love to see you.”

“I’ll be sure to go,” Azalea said. “Would you like coffee? I made plenty.”

“Yes, thank you.” I could have served myself, but Azalea bustled toward the coffeemaker. I pulled out my chair from the table and took up my usual position.

While I stirred my coffee, I looked at Melba. Moments before, she had seemed happy about Alex, but now her frown had returned. “What’s the problem?” I said. “Didn’t you get any useful information from your visit with Mrs. Norwood?”

“I’m not sure,” Melba said. “It’s a strange story, and I’m not sure it makes much sense or has anything to do with what happened a few days ago.” She lapsed into silence again.

“I won’t know that until you tell me,” I said to prompt her.

Melba sighed. “Okay, but let me tell it my way, and don’t interrupt me.”

“All right,” I said. “Please proceed.”

“Now, like I told you before, Mrs. Norwood was friends with Billy Albritton’s mother. She lived on a small farm near theirs. This was around seventy years ago. They were all hardscrabble kind of folks, not a whole lot of money. Billy’s daddy and his daddy had to do a lot of hunting to keep food on the table, because there were so many of them. Billy’s dad, Jack, had twelve brothers and sisters, and he was one of the oldest. Jack had brothers and sisters the same age as his oldest kids, Billy and his sister.” She paused for coffee and stared unseeingly in my direction.

I waited patiently for her to continue, not wanting to break her concentration.

“Where they lived was pretty far out in the county. No such thing as indoor plumbing, even at that time, when everybody in town had it. Mrs. Norwood said the day her family moved into a house with an indoor toilet she sat in the bathroom for two hours just marveling at it. The point I’m getting at is, they were poor. A lot of mouths to feed, and not always enough to go around. Billy’s mom kept having kids, and a couple of them died not long after they were born.

“When Billy was about eight—did I tell you Billy was the oldest? I meant to. Well, Jack Albritton went out hunting one day with one of the little ones, a boy going on four years old. When Jack got back that evening, he didn’t have the boy with him. Claimed he lost sight of the boy in the woods, and even though he searched and called for him for hours, he never found him.” She shivered suddenly. “In those days there were still bears and panthers in the woods. I remember my mama telling me how they would hear the panthers scream at night, and she and her sister would get under the bed and hide.” Her hands were shaking a little as she grasped her mug and brought it to her mouth.

“Sounds pretty terrifying,” I said.

Melba nodded. “Jack’s daddy said a bear or a panther must have gotten the boy, but they never found any trace of him. Wasn’t long, though, before Jack came home with a new rifle and some new clothes for himself and his wife. The kids got new things, too. Jack claimed he’d done something to help a man with money, and the man was so grateful that he gave Jack a big reward. I guess they had no choice but to believe him, because he swore up and down it was true.

“The family didn’t move to Athena until some years later, around when Billy was ready to start high school. Billy’s mama wanted him to have an education so he could do better than she and his daddy had done. His daddy got a job as a mechanic, plus a timber company bought their land. The Norwoods’ land, too.

“This would have been about six years after the little boy disappeared. Mrs. Norwood said one day when she was shopping, she came across a woman and a boy about nine or ten—he was a little on the small side, she said. Anyway, the boy looked kind of familiar, Mrs. Norwood thought, but she couldn’t place him right off. She didn’t know the woman’s name, although she found out later on. Turned out it was Mrs. Halbert.”

Melba must have noticed my perplexed expression. I had no idea who Mrs. Halbert was.

“She was Deirdre Thompson’s mama,” Melba said. “Deirdre was a Halbert.”

“Okay.” I had an idea where this rambling tale was leading, but I had a piece of the puzzle Melba didn’t. I waited for her to continue and finish the story.

“Everybody knows that Mr. and Mrs. Halbert had only one biological child, and that was Deirdre. But about six years before Mrs. Norwood saw Mrs. Halbert with this boy, they came back from a trip—or so they said—and had a boy with them. Claimed he was the son of friends of theirs who’d died suddenly. The Halberts had adopted him. Named him Ronnie.”

I didn’t remember Ronnie Halbert at all, but I knew Melba would enlighten me.

“Mrs. Norwood saw Mrs. Halbert and Ronnie a couple times more, and it finally hit her why he looked familiar. She thought he looked a little like Mrs. Albritton, Billy’s mama. Billy and his sister took after Jack in looks.”

I finally couldn’t resist a question. “Did Mrs. Norwood talk to Mrs. Albritton about this?”

“She couldn’t,” Melba said. “Mrs. Albritton had died about a year before that, not long after Jack had moved him and his kids to Athena, along with his parents and some of his youngest brothers and sisters.

“Mrs. Norwood didn’t care much for Jack, she told me. Thought he was a pretty rough character. She wasn’t about to go up to him and ask him if Ronnie Halbert was really his little boy. He would have denied it, of course, but Mrs. Norwood has always believed that Ronnie Halbert was Jack Albritton’s little boy, Jerry.”

The name clinched it for me. She really had been Gerry Albritton all along, although somewhere along the way Jerry had become Geraldine—after being Ronnie Halbert for a number of years. Was this the key to her murder? I thought it had to be. Deirdre Thompson, in my mind, suddenly moved to the number one spot on the list of suspects.

“Tell me about Ronnie Halbert,” I said. “I don’t remember anybody by that name. He had to be around eight to ten years older than you and me.”

“Close to ten, I think,” Melba replied. “I remember seeing him around town. He always dressed nice and had his own car. Mr. Halbert spoiled him rotten. He and Mrs. Halbert couldn’t have any more kids, and he wanted a son more than anything. So Ronnie got anything he wanted. Ronnie was good-looking, and he had girls running after him all the time.”

“Sounds like he was on the wild side,” I said.

Melba nodded. “Yes, but he never got arrested for anything. Mr. Halbert paid people off, I always heard. One day, though, as the story goes, he had a big fight with Mr. Halbert. He ran off and never came back. People said he went into the army or the navy, but nobody knew for sure. Killed his daddy. Mr. Halbert grieved himself to death.”

“That’s a really sad story,” I said, and I meant it. So much unhappiness, and Gerry had been at the center of it, but not by choice.

“What I don’t get is what this has to do with the murder,” Melba said. “Unless Ronnie Halbert was dressing as a woman and going around and calling himself Geraldine, since he maybe used to be Jerry Albritton. He might have been ashamed to show his face around here as Ronnie Halbert again.”

Melba had hit close enough to the mark, and I thought it was all right to let her see it that way. Until the truth was made known, Melba could think Gerry was simply masquerading.

“I’ll bet Deirdre was fit to be tied when she figured out who Gerry really was, if that’s what happened,” Melba said. “They say Mr. Halbert left Ronnie a lot of money in his will, but since they never could find him, Deirdre finally got everything.”

Another strike against Deirdre. Given her miserly reputation, I had little doubt that she would not want to share what she had with anyone else. She might very well be willing to murder her adopted sibling, not only for the money but also to keep quiet about that sibling’s gender reassignment.

“We need to tell Kanesha this story right away,” I said. “I think this could be the link she needs to bring this case to a close.”

“So you believe Gerry Albritton was really Jerry Albritton and Ronnie Halbert?” Melba asked.

“I do.” I pulled out my phone to text Kanesha that I had vital new information for her.

Melba shook her head. “I wonder why he was pretending to be a woman. I might have recognized him as Ronnie Halbert, although it’s been at least forty years since he left Athena. I’d swear he had plastic surgery, though.”

“You had no idea that Billy Albritton actually did have a little brother named Jerry?” I asked as I tapped out a message.

“No, I’d never heard about him before today. I don’t think anyone in town knew,” Melba said, “though I could be wrong.”

“Billy Albritton must have known who he was,” I said as I hit the icon to send the message.

“I guess he did,” Melba said. “Do you think Billy killed him?”

I shrugged. “He could have. Would he have welcomed the return of a long-lost brother who was basically sold to another family?”

“No, I don’t think he would,” Melba said. “Especially since his daddy’s still alive. He’s close on a hundred years old. Lives in the nursing home where Mrs. Norwood is.”

My cell phone rang, and I saw from the caller ID that it was Kanesha.

She spoke immediately. “I’m across the street right now. I’ll be over in two minutes.” She ended the call.

Frowning, I put down the phone. “Kanesha says she’s across the street and will be here in two minutes.” I got up from the table. “I’m going to look out the front door and see what’s going on.”

“I’m coming with you,” Melba said. She and Diesel were right on my heels as I hurried to the front of the house.

I opened the door, and we looked out to see a couple of police cars, plus a county patrol car, pulled up in front of Gerry Albritton’s house. As we watched, one of the policemen came out of the house, accompanied by Billy Albritton. The officer led him to a patrol car and put him inside.

Kanesha came out of the house carrying a bag. She stopped to speak to the police officer before she came across the street toward us.

When she reached us, I asked her, “What’s going on?”

At the same time, Melba asked, “Are you arresting Billy?”

Kanesha said, “Let’s go inside, why don’t we?”

We obeyed her request, and when I had shut the door behind the deputy, she faced our inquisitive expressions and explained. “Yes, Mr. Albritton is being arrested for basically breaking in to the house. The police officer caught him trying to sneak out with this.” She brandished the bag, and I recognized it as an evidence bag.

“What’s in it?” I asked.

Kanesha pulled a tissue from her pocket and then carefully extracted the object with the tissue—to protect any fingerprints, I supposed.

She held an old notebook that appeared to be falling apart.